The Desert King / An Affair with the Princess

His eyes narrowed, intensifying his menace. “I know far more than you so obliviously think. About you, and about what you put and are still putting your parents through. And though there’s nothing I want more than to watch you leave thinking you’ve gotten your own back, I’m not letting you walk away.”

“Aren’t you going too far into the realm of irrationality to enforce your will? To put through this ridiculous ‘deal’? You walked away from me calling me a depraved slut, if you remember. You’d make a slut your queen and the mother of your heirs?”

His gaze froze as silence stretched until it almost snapped every nerve in her body. Then he turned his face away, presenting her with the precision and power of his profile. Just when she thought he had nothing more to say, that she’d rested her case, his voice poured into the night, as deep and permeating.

“I remember one sunny day seven years ago, here in L.A. I was getting into my car when you threw yourself at me right in the middle of the street. After I pried you off me, you stalked me, did it again everywhere I went, not caring who saw your exhibitions or heard your shameless pleas, probably wanting to publicly embarrass me enough so I’d give you the chance to work on me again in private. If your memory is as intact as you claim, you surely remember what you said. Things along the lines of ‘I need you’ and ‘I’ll do anything.’ Ring a bell? You make it sound as if I was insulting you, calling you what I did. Try to put yourself in the position of an unbiased observer and tell me, how would you describe your behavior as anything other than depraved and slutty?”

Had she burned to ashes? How had she not, after he’d shriveled her up once again with the memories? Of her own condition then, her actions, his reactions?

She finally rasped, “Depraved is right. As in out of my mind. But I’m very much in it now.”

He turned back to her, his gaze the essence of ridicule. “A piece of precious advice. Drop the act. I had to tear your talons out of my flesh to make you let go. You want me with the same ferocity still.”

A surge of scalding acknowledgment had her on her feet, quaking with mortification. That he was right, that her hated hunger had never died, the weapon he’d damaged her with. That he knew. Before any defense took shape in her mind, he rose to his feet, too, slow, measured, pitiless.

“In case you’re preparing to launch into empty posturing and pretense, save it. I can feel it, coming off of you in waves. All this ‘I’d rather die than marry you’ is to goad me into giving you what you want, isn’t it? A game of pursuit? With some reluctance and dominance thrown in? Go ahead, admit it and I’ll promise to give you what you know will leave you gasping within an inch of your life with satiation, and let’s move on to something important.”

She shuddered with rage. At herself, at his unjust words and malice. Was this how people had arteries burst in their heads? She felt herself going numb, her tongue filling her mouth, swollen with the incoherent need to lash out.

Nothing came to her rescue. Nothing but, “You…bastard.”

His lips pressed together for a moment. Then they spread on a heart-wrenching parody of a smile. “It’s not me who is one.”

She almost doubled over.

She didn’t, stood there feeling as if he’d just punched through her, stared his cruelty full in the face. After all he’d done to her, she still hadn’t thought him capable of such a level of heartlessness. Her mind emptied, her heart flooded. With the acid of desperation. For something to deflect the pain with, to send it ricocheting into his black heart, to not let him have the final word. Not when it was that.

But what could be enough to answer a stab through the heart?

She shouldn’t have walked into his trap. Should have known how this would end. Shouldn’t have taken him on, shouldn’t…

Just get out of here.

She staggered around, felt the floor turning to quicksand, struggled not to sink into it.

Suddenly something sank into her—the fingers that an hour ago had barely touched her on the elbow and disrupted her balance and wrenched a response from her, that had once stripped away whatever control she’d developed before she’d met him. She wished they were violent. They were only inexorable in intent, cruel in effect.

He aborted her momentum, kept her on her feet, turned her around to meet his wolf’s eyes as they flared with antipathy. “You’re not walking out on your responsibilities like you have all your life. It’s time you behaved like the princess you regretfully are. You will honor your duties and for once be of use to others.”

“Use?” she threw at him, hating him even more for the quaver that robbed her pain of any retaliatory effect. “That’s all you think people are for, don’t you? To be used. Well, as you say, I had one use to you in the past, and damned if I’m ever going to be of any use to you again. It’s not dramatizing to say I’d rather die.”

“You think it’s any kind of life for me to be forced to make use of you? Do you think I want to marry you? The woman I found out was too depraved to be even one of my sex partners? But I will marry you. For the throne of Judar.”

Every word lodged into her with the force of an ax in the chest. And for the millionth time, the frustration, the sheer mind-con-suming confusion reverberated inside her.

Why all this revulsion? All this fluency of abuse? All she’d ever done once was lose her mind over him….

And it was there again. Like the ocean, advancing on her with its endlessness and blackness, the tide of volatility. Her vision, her emotions began to distort, to fracture, the swirling black hole she’d once been unable to exit staring at her, pulling…

No. She would not let him do this to her.

She wrenched herself from his hands, spat, “You and your throne and your Judar can go to hell.”

He seemed to expand, his hands fisting at his side. She knew that if she’d been a man of equal size he would have pulverized her.

Finally he ground out, “What about Zohayd? And your father and king? You probably care nothing if they go to hell, too, but before you consign them there, give it some thought. Think what you’ll lose, if Zohayd is dragged into civil war.”

“Civil war? What are you talking about?”

“The war that will break out in both our kingdoms if our union doesn’t come to pass.”

She stared at him as if he’d started talking a language she barely understood, shook her head. “Don’t you think you’re being far-fetched here? Zohayd is rock stable. You want to convince me that if a personal deal between you and my uncle…my fa-fa…K-King Atef falls through, Zohayd will go up in flames?”

His gaze was long and considering, the flames of his own fury banking. “So I’m being far-fetched, eh? You think anything less would make me come near you again, let alone give you access to my life, this time as my wife, to carry my name, my honor, my heirs? You won’t take my word, just as you didn’t take your adoptive parents’ or King Atef’s? When would you be convinced that our marriage is imperative? When rivers of blood run through both our kingdoms? When neighbors turn against each other, kill each other’s children and blood feuds erupt to spread devastation for centuries? When our whole prosperous region turns into another war zone that breeds anger and hunger and intolerance and spreads its infection to the rest of the world? Or would you even then say, sorry, not my business? Just because you are a woman scorned, you’d send millions, entire countries, to hell?”

The images he painted, his conviction, suffocated her. She raised her hands as if to ward off a barrage of blows. “Please…stop. I—I—God…are you telling me the truth?”

“No, I project death and destruction for millions of people because it’s fun.”

“God…” She couldn’t speak for a long moment, her throat feeling as if it were clogged with thorns. Then she looked at him through the film of moisture that manifested her dissolving control. “I didn’t know—didn’t realize the situation was anything like that. My unc—my fa…King Atef…he—he…Dammit! That medieval throwback! He said nothing like that. I know Zohayd and Judar are still tribal beneath their ultraadvanced veneers, but this is taking the entrenched stupidity of not including women in matters of state too far. He told me only that it was a political marriage, gave me the impression it was something personal between the two of you, as two monarchs. I…h-had no idea w-what was at stake…”

Then she could say no more.

Every muscle in Kamal’s body bunched, pulled, contracted, until he felt as if his spine would snap and his skull would cave in.

Tears. Gathering in those eyes, rippling like ponds shaking from nearby explosions, magnifying the moon’s beams, shooting them out in erratic flashes to blind him.

As she struggled to contain the weakness, stem the weeping, he felt her every tremor shudder through him, shaking him.

Ya Ullah, how could the sight of her distress disturb him this deeply, disarm him this totally, still? Had nothing changed? Was her spell unbroken? Or was it unbreakable?

B’Ellahi. What kind of king would he be if on his first and foremost act on behalf of his kingdom, he let his only vice, his clearly uncured addiction, take hold of him again, steer him?

He had to remember the times she’d wept for him when she’d been lying to him with every breath. The months her unbridled abandon had snared him when it—and the warnings that she was nicknamed Alley as in alley cat—should have cautioned him.

But he’d heeded nothing and no one, had thrown himself into an inferno that raged higher every day. If her mercurial nature and evasions had bothered him, she’d overwhelmed his reason with the pleasure she’d given him in every way, with her fervent protestations of love. She’d even had him agreeing that what worked—and spectacularly—was for them to keep on stealing scorching times together out of their busy and conflicting schedules.

Yes, she’d manipulated him to perfection. Until he’d showed up unannounced at her condo, unable to wait to see her and had been let in by one of the girlfriends who seemed to use Aliyah’s place as theirs. And he’d discovered her stash of a drug he knew was abused for appetite suppression and as a stimulant.

It had all made sense then. Her hyperactivity, her thinness, her insistence on keeping her distance, and the hundred other details of unexplained reticence and secrecy.

But fool that he’d been, though anguished at his discovery, he’d still tried to make her confess her problem so he could offer her his strength, his support. But she’d denied drug use, ever.

Even with the blatant lie, he’d been so deeply under her spell, he’d only wanted to save her, though he knew from agonizing experience that addicts only plunged deeper into addiction until nothing of them was left, while they dragged everyone who loved them right along with them to hell. For a month he’d struggled to decide how to proceed, the indecision infecting him with reticence, too, which had made her even more eager for him—and increasingly more volatile. At last, with his decision set—to confront her and break the vicious circle she was prisoner to by any means necessary—he’d gone to her condo again. This time, he’d found a man there.

He still couldn’t believe how far in her power he’d been that he’d refused to jump to conclusions. He’d told himself she hadn’t been there after all, and this man could have been one of the friends she gave free run of her place.

But the man, Shane, had introduced himself as one of her American cousins…and lovers. He’d still accused Shane of lying. Shane had scoffed. With his barbaric ways and views of women, did Kamal think that a woman like Aliyah, free and capricious like the wind, could settle for him alone? Kamal might be an all-powerful prince, but Aliyah valued her sexual freedom above all. Why did he think she never agreed to enter his gilded cage, even fleetingly?

Kamal had left before he killed the man, but sensing Shane was jealous and probably trying to drive him away, he’d called Aliyah to get her side of the story, giving her every opening to tell him about Shane without accusing her of anything. She’d said only that she was spending the night at a sick girlfriend’s bedside. Almost convinced that she’d given her backstabbing cousin the use of her place for the night, he’d still waited in his car, to make sure that she didn’t come back. But she had.

Everyone had been right. She’d been a promiscuous lost cause.

Then she’d walked in here today, and he’d forgotten that. Had wanted to forget. Still wanted to. As he couldn’t.

He had to brace himself against her influence. He wouldn’t sweep her into his arms and comfort her even if his heart was bursting from the holding back. Now he had to get on with his plan.

He inhaled. “I’ll suppose what you’re saying is true. But if you didn’t know before, you know now.”

“B-but how? Why? What could be so important about a marriage between the Aal Masoods and Aal Shalaans all of a sudden?”

He gave a bitter huff. “It’s heartwarming how involved you are in your region’s internal affairs. I beg your pardon, your half region. I bet your abundant…roomies know far more than you about the situation between Judar and Zohayd at the moment.”

Those mystic eyes glittered their indignation at him. “And that’s another piece of misinformation in the sea of misconceptions that form my character in your mind. I live alone as I always have. I only ever helped friends by giving them a roof over their head when they needed one. And I’m a hermit when I’m preparing for a show with most of its paintings commissioned. I haven’t been following the news and as I told you, nobody chose to enlighten me. Must have been their misguided way of being kind. Rather than dropping all bombs on me at once, they decided to space out the explosions for prolonged suffering.”

She sounded so convincing. But then when had she ever not?

He exhaled his frustration at how she kept snatching resolve out of reach, made him struggle to grab it back.

“I’ll pretend that’s a good enough excuse for your obliviousness.” He paused to gather the threads of the situation that had lead to this point. He hated recounting it, and to her of all people. But she’d asked. She didn’t know. And she had to, as his future queen. He exhaled again. “When my father, the crown prince of Judar, died, and with our late king having no sons, leaving the succession to his nephews, the Aal Shalaans in Judar demanded their turn on the throne. They threatened an uprising if they didn’t get it. An uprising that would drag Judar into civil war.”

Though reddened and wounded, her eyes stained with disdain. “If you care for peace so much, why don’t you just give it to them?”

“You think giving up the throne in a country that’s made up seventy percent of Aal Masoods and tribes loyal to them would promote peace? Wouldn’t exchange an uprising by the Aal Shalaans for one by the Aal Masoods, leading to the same end? Spare me your insights into a better solution for this catastrophe. If there’d been one, I would have gone to the ends of the earth, would have, as you so theatrically said, laid my life down for it. But there isn’t. The one thing that will maintain peace now is introducing the purest Aal Shalaan blood into the royal house of Aal Masood’s lineage.”

She looked everywhere but at him, as if seeking an escape, and mumbled, “And why not go for the foremost Judarian Aal Shalaan house for this blood-mixing ritual? Why is King Atef the one whose blood must provide the magic ingredient? He’s Zohaydan, not Judarian, for God’s sake!”

“You’ll have to ask the Aal Shalaan genealogists that. They’re the ones who decreed that King Atef has the purest Aal Shalaan blood in both kingdoms, from both sides of his family for as far back as possible. Since he had no daughter that we knew of back when that was determined, it became clear it was a two-sided ploy. To throw the most powerful Aal Shalaan at us, and to corner him into giving in to their demands to help the Judarian Aal Shalaans in their quest to rise to the throne, something he’d already refused to do point-blank at the risk of having an uprising in Zohayd. Then King Atef discovered he did have a daughter, and you know what happened from then on. Now the Aal Shalaans have cornered everyone, including themselves. They can’t go back in their decree, and King Atef’s daughter—you—is what satisfies their demands. But in case we don’t marry, they’re very clear they’ll seek their so-called rights to the throne through less than peaceful measures, in both kingdoms, plunging both into chaos and dragging the whole region right along. Any solution other than our marriage is a lose/lose proposition. I trust you didn’t forget everything about our region? You do remember how history went? How feuds start at the least provocation only to widen and engulf everything in their path?”

Silence crashed down again, as did the ocean waves as if in response to the enormity of his projections.

Her eyes remained riveted on his, as if begging for a repudiation, even a qualification. As they had seven years ago.

He’d had no idea he was that strong. To remain where he was, not to obey the clamoring instinct to crush her into his arms.

When he remained rock-still and silent, hope seemed to seep out of her. “It is that bad, isn’t it?”

Everything inside him stilled. He’d thrown in her face his assertion that she craved him still. He’d been out to provoke her, to punish her for daring to remain his craving, his addiction. Now that dejection, that desperation in her eyes—could it be that this wasn’t another manipulation?

It didn’t matter. Manipulation or truth, only one thing was relevant. He told her.

“It’s worse. We have a deadline.”

“A deadline?”

Aliyah heard the quavering voice of the punch-drunk entity that seemed to inhabit her body.

Kamal, that forbidding stranger, only nodded. “In five days. The day of my joloos will also be our wedding day.”

She felt as if she were going under, struggled to kick to the surface, to snatch one last breath of air. “There has to be another way, Kamal…We can’t get married…we hate each other….”

He flexed his fists as he closed the gap between them. “And you’d be surprised how many kings have married queens they abhor for their kingdoms. But here comes another decree to ameliorate the horror. After you conceive a male heir, I won’t touch you. After you give birth, I will divorce you.”

She stared at him, too much blaring through her mind in a loop.

And he was going on. “The Aal Shalaans won’t care after that, as you are only the instrument of securing the heir they want. Once that happens, everyone will get something out of this mess. King Atef will get Zohayd’s continued peace, and I will secure Judar’s throne and future. What do you want? State your demands, Aliyah.”

“State my demands?” she panted, hysteria staining her voice, tumbling through her blood. “In return for being used like a breeding mare then discarded like a lame one? How about the royal jewels of Judar? I hear they’re worth billions.”

And if she could think straight, she would have feared him at that moment. His gaze boiled over with rage and aggression.

Suddenly all heat plunged into subzero reaches.

Then he only said a clipped, final, “Done.”

It was then that Aliyah realized what the agony she felt at his every slashing word was.

Somehow, she’d never stopped loving him.

How had that happened? How had her emotions survived the injuries, the bitterness, the changes in her, the passage of time? Was she the depraved slut he believed her to be? Loving him even through the abuse? Or even because of it?

No. She’d fallen for him when he’d been incredible to her. So incredible, even his cruelty hadn’t erased the memories. The image of the man she’d thought was her soul mate kept superimposing itself over everything that had happened afterward. Her mind and soul kept rejecting the proof of his words and actions, still looking for reasons for his change, for ways to exonerate him.

But she believed his words now, that things were as perilous as he’d described. And in a situation that big, what did her emotions and future matter?

He was right. They didn’t. She didn’t.

But no matter how insignificant she was to him, in all this, she mattered to herself. Now that she’d realized the depths of her self-deception and weakness, it was up to her to quell them. So that his disgust and disregard didn’t annihilate her.

But there was one thing she couldn’t quell anymore. Tears.

She let them escape, inside and out. “What if I can’t…c-conceive? What if you can’t father a baby? What then?”

He grimaced. “You’d still keep the jewels, don’t worry. But my fertility isn’t in question. If you turn out to be infertile, that would be grounds for an easy divorce, even with our culture’s constrictive royal matrimonial laws. Then I’d negotiate another marriage with the daughter of the second noblest patriarch of the Aal Shalaans.”

“Just like that, huh?” She hiccuped. “Throw out the defective model and look for a functioning one…”

She stopped, at breaking point. Just get out of here…now.

He let her go this time when she stumbled around, following her silently to the door. Just as she groped it open, he broke his silence, his words lodging into her back again.

“Tomorrow you will be taken to Judar. As is our custom, I won’t see you again until our marriage ceremony, but I will supply you with the list of things to be done, the rules to be followed.” Then his voice dipped into bass reaches on a growl eloquent with everything that splintered her heart. “Don’t disappoint me.”

Four

“I would have given anything if only I could take it back!”

At the blurted-out declaration, Aliyah’s gaze swept again over the woman sitting across from her. Judar’s afternoon August sun was streaming through the western window of Aliyah’s guest wing in the royal palace, turning the woman’s hair into a blazing halo of undulating gold, striking turquoise beams off her eyes and drenching the perfection of elegant, chiseled features in a play of light and shadow.

Anna Beaumont was sure one beautiful lady.

It made Aliyah sheepish to acknowledge that the first thing she’d done when she’d laid eyes on her an hour ago was to marvel at their resemblance.

But there was no denying the fact that this woman could be her in blue contacts and a blond wig, with some aging makeup. Not much aging, though. Anna didn’t look twenty-seven years older than her. Aliyah wouldn’t have thought her a day above forty, a real good forty, if all that DNA evidence hadn’t confirmed that Anna was her biological mother and therefore over fifty.

She wondered how King Atef had never noticed this.

But then, seeing a resemblance between his niece and the ex-lover he’d cast out of his life over a quarter of a century ago, especially with their opposite coloring, would have been a long shot.

When Anna didn’t follow up her momentous declaration, Aliyah sat forward and poured another round of unsweetened jasmine tea from the heavily worked silver teapot into the handpainted, blown-glass cups. The artistry behind their every line—more manifestations of the extremes of taste and affluence permeating the royal palace—roused the artist in her. It also sort of distracted her from the quiet, desperate feeling that she was sinking deeper into the quicksand of her situation, of Kamal’s plans and decrees and existence.

She handed Anna the cup and held her eyes as they both drank in silence, her thoughts turning inward, going over the past two days.

Everything Kamal had said would happen had and was still happening like clockwork. She’d been delivered to her condo after their showdown, with that royal guard duet coming up to help her pack. She’d resorted to threats to make them refrain from folding her underwear and alphabetizing every item, had tossed them out only for them to ricochet back to her doorstep before the crack of dawn to accompany her to the Judarian equivalent of Air Force One.