The Royal House of Karedes: Two Crowns

And yet, that insistent whisper protested, the horses didn’t do anything. They are innocent. You are not.

Innocence. So prized, so precious. So important for a woman like her, a woman poised to marry a king, and she was innocent no longer. Instinctively Kalila glanced down, saw a faint rusty smear of blood on her thigh. In another age that bit of blood would have been proof of her innocence, her purity, her whole reason for being a wife. It would have been displayed with bawdy jokes and satisfied smiles. In another age, she realised, swallowing down a hysterical laugh, she would have been killed for what she had just done.

Her innocence was gone.

And yet even so, despite the regret and shame and even fear coursing through her, she couldn’t forget the feeling of Aarif in her arms, in her body. She couldn’t forget, and she didn’t want to.

What kind of woman did that make her?

She took a shuddering breath, tried to calm her racing thoughts, her racing heart. She needed to think, to plan. She needed to speak with Aarif.

With a bit of water from the canteen she cleaned herself up as best she could and dressed, combing the tangles from her hair with her fingers.

Then, taking another deep breath for courage, she slipped through the flap and out into the cool night.

The air was cold and sharp, the sky glittering with stars. The sand dunes were cast in silver by the moonlight, and the air after the storm was perfectly still.

Signs of devastation could be glimpsed, shadows of broken rocks, twisted roots. Briefly Kalila offered up a prayer for the rest of her party, sheltering at the airport. She prayed no one would lose a life because of her own folly.

Her own selfishness.

She moved gingerly across the sand to Aarif; his back was to her, one arm braced against the rock overhang. His head was bowed, every taut line of his body radiating anguish. Anger.

She stood a few metres behind him, her arms creeping around herself in the cold, and waited.

What could she say? What could he say?

What, she wondered distantly, could happen now?

A long moment of silence passed; the horses shifted fretfully and a slight breeze stirred the hair lying limply against her face. Then Aarif spoke.

‘What we’ll do,’ he said in a cold, flat voice, as if they were in the middle of a conversation, ‘is tell everyone I found you this morning. You sheltered here alone, and I found a protected place of my own. Then at least your reputation will not be called into question. I don’t think there is anyone in the party who wishes to cast doubt on you or this marriage union.’

Kalila heard his words echoing relentlessly through her, but they didn’t make sense. He was sticking a plaster on a wound that required major surgery.

‘That’s all very well,’ she finally said when she’d found her voice, ‘but it hardly addresses the real situation.’

‘I hardly think you want your father’s staff knowing what happened,’ Aarif replied, his voice still cold and so horribly unemotional. ‘I am trying to salvage this mess, Princess.’

‘How? By lying?’

‘By protecting you!’ Aarif turned around, and Kalila took an instinctive step backwards at the anguished fury twisting his features. ‘God knows I made this mess, and I will be the one to clean it up.’ He spoke with such a steely determination that Kalila quelled.

‘How?’ she whispered.

‘I will have to tell Zakari.’

She closed her eyes, not wanting to imagine that conversation, or what it meant for her. For her marriage. ‘Aarif, if you do that, you will ruin my marriage before it even begins.’

‘I will tell Zakari that it is my fault—’

‘And you think he will believe that? That you raped me?’ She shook her head, disbelief and disappointment warring within her. She didn’t want this, this sordid discussion of what had just happened between them. She couldn’t bear to talk cold logistics when her heart cried out for him now—still—

‘I was responsible,’ Aarif insisted in a low voice. ‘I should have stopped, turned away—’ He shook his head. ‘I accused you of being selfish, Kalila, but it is I who have been the most selfish of all.’ He muttered something under his breath and stalked away, his body so taut his muscles almost seemed to be vibrating with a seething self-loathing.

Kalila took a few tentative steps towards him. She wanted to touch him, to reach him, yet every instinct told her she couldn’t. He had shut himself off completely, walled himself with his own sense of responsibility and guilt.

Still, she tried.

‘Aarif, I could have protested. I could have stopped. We are both to blame.’ His back was to her, and he said nothing. Dragging a breath into her lungs, she forced herself to continue, to lay her heart open to him as her body had been. ‘The truth is, I didn’t want to. I wanted to be with you, Aarif, from the moment you touched me. The moment I touched you, for if we are going to apportion blame, then I was the one who first—’

‘Don’t,’ he cut her off, ‘romanticise what was nothing more than a bout of lust.’

Kalila blinked. She felt as if she had been slapped. Worse, she felt as if he’d taken the handful of memories they’d just created and crumpled them into a ball and spat on them. ‘No,’ she whispered, ‘it wasn’t.’ Aarif was silent, and she spoke again, her voice wavering and then finally breaking, ‘Aarif, don’t make this into something sordid—’

‘It is sordid!’ he snapped. ‘Everything about it is sordid, Kalila, can’t you see that? My brother trusted me, trusted me, with your care. He asked me to come fetch you because he believed he could depend on me, and I did the worst thing—the only thing—that would betray him utterly.’ He swivelled to face her, his face pitilessly blank. ‘There is nothing good about what happened, Kalila. Not one thing. You might have felt a brief pleasure in my arms, but it was cheap and worthless, and if you had any sense of honour or duty, you would know it.’

Kalila opened her mouth but she couldn’t think of a single thing she could say. Tears rolled slowly, coldly, down her cheeks. Aarif watched her with such an obvious lack of sympathy that she felt as vulnerable and exposed as she had underneath him, her body open to his caress.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said, his voice as sharp and cutting as a razor. ‘You’re thinking you’ve fallen in love with me.’ He spoke the word—love—with such contempt that Kalila could only blink. ‘You told me you wanted love. Not an arranged marriage, you said. And so now you think this is it. Love.’ He shook his head, holding up one hand to stop her from speaking, although Kalila’s mind was too shocked and numb to frame even a syllable. ‘Oh, I don’t think you realised what you were doing. You were caught up in the moment as much as I was, but now you’re desperate to make it into something, to believe we have something.’ He spoke with a sneer that reverberated through her. ‘Well, we don’t, Princess. All we have is a mistake, and it is my duty to rectify it. As for your marriage—Zakari is a kind man. He can forgive.’ He paused, his lip curling. ‘He’ll have to.’ He turned to walk away, to leave her alone with his harsh words, his cold condemnation.

Kalila’s head was bowed under the weight of his judgment, and she spoke through stiff lips. ‘You are saying this because it’s the only way you can accept what happened.’

Aarif stilled, stiffened. ‘Still clinging to fairy tales?’ he mocked, but she heard—hoped she heard—a current of deeper hurt and even need beneath his sneering tone.

‘This doesn’t feel like much of a fairy tale to me,’ Kalila replied, lifting her head, her chin tilted at a proud, defiant angle. ‘I’m not going to cheapen what happened between us, Aarif, simply because it was wrong. And, yes, I know it was wrong. I accept that, but I also accept that for a few moments you clung to me, you needed me, and I needed you. And we found something together that I can’t believe everyone finds.’ Tears sparkled on her lashes, she felt another one drip onto her cheek, but she kept his gaze. ‘Believe what you want, if it makes you feel better,’ she said. ‘Believe your own version of the fairy tale, Aarif, but I know the truth.’

Aarif’s mouth tightened in a hard line, his eyes dark and angry. Kalila looked up and saw the stars were fading into an eerie grey dawn, the first pale pink finger of daybreak lighting the flat horizon. ‘It’s morning,’ she said. ‘Time to go.’

They packed up in stiff silence. Kalila wrapped herself in numbness; the pain and the realisation, the repercussions and the bittersweet memories, could all come later. They would come, she knew; she wouldn’t be able to stop them.

For now, she busied herself with mundane tasks of rolling blankets and folding the tent, feeding the animals and making herself as presentable as she could given their limited resources.

She had no mirror, but she didn’t need one to know her hair was in a wild tangle, her eyes dry and gritty, her face wind-reddened, her hands rough and chapped.

Would Zakari be waiting at the Calistan airport? Would he see her like this?

Would he know?

For the first time she hoped he was still seeking after his precious diamonds. The longer he stayed away, the longer the reprieve she had. The longer until the reckoning.

And yet it would come. She knew it would come, and the thought had the power to dry the breath in her lungs and cause her heart to pound with relentless anxiety until she surrounded herself in numbness once more.

It took them three hours to ride to the airport. Kalila was weary and saddle sore, conscious of the new tenderness between her thighs, the utter, aching weariness in every muscle, sinew and bone.

She followed behind Aarif as the sun rose higher in the sky, its rays merciless and punishing. Aarif did not falter once as they made their way through the shifted sand, a landscape utterly changed from yesterday, and yet he rode with an unerring sense of direction, of rightness.

Of course, Kalila thought with a weary wryness, of course he would know just how to get to the airport, an airport he’d never even been to. A man like Aarif never strayed off the path, never made a wrong turn—

Except once. Last night he had.

What had caused him to stumble? To reach out for someone, for her? Kalila’s heart ached as she thought of it, remembered how it felt to hold Aarif, to be held by him. To be needed, touched, loved.

You’re thinking you’ve fallen in love with me.

Her mouth compressing into a grim line, Kalila lowered her head and focused on the rough trail, her mare plodding wearily after Aarif’s mount.

When the airport, a low, humble building of tin and concrete, came into view, Kalila almost felt relieved. She was tired of the waiting, the tension. She wanted to get it over with, the explanations, the lies. Then she wanted a hot bath.

Juhanah came running out first, her face grey with anxiety. ‘Oh, ya daanaya! My child! We feared you were dead, both of you!’ Even as Juhanah wrapped her in an embrace the old nurse’s eyes slid speculatively to Aarif and Kalila saw it.

So it begins, she thought, closing her eyes and letting herself be comforted. The whispers, the rumours. Her reputation couldn’t be protected, not from imaginations, minds.

And it didn’t even deserve to be.

‘I found Princess Kalila a few hours ago,’ Aarif said. He’d slid off the horse and handed the reins to an aide, giving terse instructions for both horses to be returned. ‘She’d taken shelter in the storm, as I had, and when the winds died down I came upon where she had been waiting out the storm.’ He spoke coolly, impersonally, his gaze flicking not even once to her. And stupidly, irrationally, Kalila felt hurt.

She almost started to believe the terrible things he’d said to her that morning.

‘Thank God,’ Juhanah said, clutching Kalila to her bosom once more. ‘Thank God you found her, Prince Aarif.’ She took Kalila by the shoulders, giving her a little shake as if she were still an unruly child to be disciplined. ‘What were you thinking, Kalila? To run off like that? If your father had discovered—’

‘King Bahir does not need to know about a young woman’s moment of foolishness,’ Aarif cut in smoothly. His voice was pleasant although there was a warning hardness to his eyes. ‘The princess explained to me that she had a moment of folly, of fear. It is a fearsome thing, for a young woman to meet a husband she has never seen. For a moment—a moment only—the princess thought to run away. She did not go far, and in truth she was planning to turn around when the storms caught her. She knew she wouldn’t make it back to the caravan, so she sheltered by a rock. I found her in the morning, and we returned at once.’ Aarif smiled, this recitation of lies so easily given that even Kalila was almost convinced, despite the obvious evidence to the contrary. Yet if anyone thought of it, no one dared to ask why her mare, As Sabr, was there with saddlebags and provisions.

It would be better for everyone, Kalila acknowledged, to pretend this hadn’t happened. Unfortunately, she wasn’t sure she could do that. Her glance slid to Aarif, but he wasn’t looking at her. His face was hard, blank, resolute, and Kalila wondered if she would ever see the other side of him again.

Conscious of an uncomfortable silence and the many pairs of staring eyes, she forced herself to give a weak nod before bowing her head. ‘It is true, Juhanah. I had a moment of weakness, and I regret it deeply. It was wrong of me.’ Her head still bowed, her gaze slid once more to Aarif—wanting something from him, even now—but he was staring fixedly ahead, a cool and remote look on his face even though he smiled.

‘Poor darling,’ Juhanah murmured. ‘At least no one has been harmed.’

‘Everyone sheltered safely here?’ Aarif surmised, and when this was confirmed he gave a brisk nod and moved towards the airport, already taking out his mobile and punching in some numbers. ‘Then it is time to return to Calista.’

Juhanah made a squeak of protest. ‘But Prince Aarif! The princess is tired and dirty. She cannot meet her intended this way. We must return to the palace so she can wash, prepare—’

Aarif turned around. ‘I fear that would not be wise, madam. The princess’s place is in Calista now. As for the king seeing her in disarray, never fear.’ He held up his mobile. ‘I have just received a message that he has been delayed, so there will be time for the princess to prepare herself—’ he glanced at Kalila, who jerked under his cool gaze ‘—as she sees fit.’

With a little nod, Aarif turned and walked into the airport.

‘Poor darling,’ Juhanah fussed again. ‘To not even bathe or change your clothes—’

‘There is a washroom in the airport,’ Kalila said with a shrug. She didn’t want Juhanah’s motherly fussing, didn’t deserve it. ‘I’ll wash my face and comb my hair and be myself in no time.’

Yet the words held a hollow ring, for Kalila knew she would not be herself again. She’d found herself—her freedom—in Aarif’s embrace, and she was unlikely to do so ever again.

CHAPTER SIX

THE plane left the barren desert of Zaraq to glide over a smooth expanse of jewel-toned sea, the sky cloudless, blue, and perfect, the water calmed after the storm that had ravaged both land and sea in its ferocious grip.

Kalila leaned her head against the window and feigned sleep. She was weary—exhausted—yet the sanctuary of sleep eluded her. Still, she wished to avoid questions, and next to her Juhanah seemed poised to ask them.

Only Juhanah, herself, and Aarif were on the plane, as the other staff had returned to the palace with their own version of events. Kalila wondered what her father would think of her mad escape, yet even the thought of his anger failed to rouse her from her numb lethargy. She was beyond his reach now. The person to fear now was Zakari, and yet she couldn’t quite summon the energy. He was not in Calista yet; she was safe. For a while.

Once she glanced back at Aarif, seated in a deep leather seat behind her, papers spread out on his lap. A pair of spectacles perched on his aquiline nose, and for some reason that little sign of human frailty touched her, made her remember the man who had reached out to her, who had buried his head in her shoulder. The man who had needed her.

Juhanah glanced at her, sharply, and Kalila realised she’d let her gaze linger too long. She turned back to the window and was about to close her eyes again when a stretch of land—desert once more—came into view.

Calista.

Her home.

Kalila craned her neck to take it in, the stretch of sand so similar to Zaraq, the winding blue-green of a river, twisting through rocky hills, where she knew Calista’s famous diamonds were mined. Then, the Old Town, similar to Makaris yet somehow imposing in its unfamiliarity. She glimpsed a huddle of buildings, flat roofed, with a wide market square in the middle.

And finally, the palace. Made of a similar mellow, golden stone as the Zaraquan palace, its simple and elegant design speaking of centuries of rule, of royalty.

The plane glided past the palace and approached the airport, and Kalila sat back in her seat once more.

Aarif did not speak to her as they disembarked from the plane. A black sedan from the palace met them and again Aarif avoided her, sitting in the front with the driver while she and Juhanah shared the back.

Kalila was barely aware of the passing scenery, more desert, scattered palm trees, and then, closer to the city, the island’s polo club, and the newer part of town with a sign for Jaladhar, the island’s resort.

Exhaustion, emotional and physical, was crashing over her in wave after merciless wave and all she wanted was to sleep. To forget…if only for a few minutes or hours.

The car pulled up to the palace on the edge of the Old Town, and a servant dressed in official livery came out to greet them. The man’s bland expression faltered for a moment as he took in Kalila’s appearance, for, though she’d repaired some of the damage, she was hardly the royal presence he’d expected.

She smiled and he swept a bow, launching into a formal speech of obsequious flattery that Kalila barely registered.

‘The Princess Kalila is much fatigued,’ Aarif said, not looking at her, and the servant straightened. ‘Please show her and her nurse to their rooms and afford them every comfort.’

And then, without a backward glance, he swept into the palace. Kalila watched his back disappear behind the ornate wooden doors and wondered when she would see him again. She had a feeling that Aarif would make every effort to avoid her.

She followed the servant into the palace, and a waiting maid led them up a sweeping staircase to the second floor, a narrow corridor of ancient stone with open windows, their Moorish arches framing a view of azure sky and endless sand.

Although the palace was situated in the island’s main city, Serapolis, on the edge of the Old Town, the women’s quarters faced the private gardens, a verdant oasis much like the one back in Zaraq, although, Kalila reflected from the window of her bedroom, not as familiar.

Everything was strange. Even she felt strange, a stranger to herself. She’d acted in ways she’d never imagined herself acting in the last twenty-four hours, and she had no idea what the repercussions would be, only that they would be severe and long lasting.

She sighed, a sound that came from the depths of her soul, and Juhanah looked at her in concern. ‘You must be tired. Let me run you a bath.’

Kalila nodded, grateful for her nurse’s tender concern. ‘Thank you, Juhanah.’

While Juhanah padded into the en suite bathroom, Kalila glanced around the bedroom that had been assigned her. It was a simple room, yet no less sumptuous for it. A wide bed with a white linen duvet, a cedar chest at its foot. A matching bureau and framed mirror, and two arched windows that framed the view of the gardens outside.

A few minutes later Kalila entered the bathroom, outfitted with every luxury from the sunken marble tub to the thick, fluffy towels, and sank into the hot, foaming water with a little sigh of relief. From behind the closed door she could hear Juhanah moving around, and realised her bags had arrived.

It felt good to wash the dirt and sand away, yet no amount of washing would make her feel clean again. Whole. Even now a pall of misery settled over her, into her bones, so that she wondered numbly if she would ever be apart from it—be herself—again.

Yet who was she? Caught between two worlds, two lives, two dreams. Duty. Desire. It had only been in Aarif’s arms, under his caress, that she’d felt whole. One. With him.

Juhanah knocked on the door. ‘All right, ya daanaya?’

‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she called. Her nurse’s maternal worrying was sweet, yet it also made Kalila feel guilty. She didn’t deserve Juhanah’s concern. What would her nurse say if she told her…?

Kalila closed her eyes. She wouldn’t tell her, wouldn’t tell anyone. And yet Aarif would tell someone. He’d said as much. He would tell his brother.

What had she been expecting to happen? she wondered. Had she thought Aarif would tell her he loved her, that everything had changed? Had she actually believed, even for a moment, that an hour or two of passion changed everything? Anything?

Yet it had seemed so much more than that. When she’d held him in her arms, felt his heart beating against hers, felt that they were one…

That was what she wanted, she realised. That was why her heart and mind resisted marriage to Calista’s king. She wanted love, and for a few moments it had felt as if she’d found it with Aarif.

You’re thinking you’ve fallen in love with me. His words that morning mocked her. How could she believe it was love when she barely knew him? And what she knew, she wasn’t entirely sure she liked.

He was hard, unrelenting, grim-faced, determined. Yet she’d seen flickers of humour, tenderness, need.

No, she didn’t love him, Kalila knew. Yet she wondered if she could.

She also wondered about the dream that had tormented him so, what horrible memory still held him in its grip. Understanding that memory, Kalila felt, would be a key to understanding Aarif.

Yet how could she understand him when he would spend the next few weeks avoiding her at all costs? And, she reminded herself bleakly, when she was still engaged to his brother?

The water had grown cold and Kalila soaped herself quickly, her hands suddenly stilling on her flat belly. Yet another repercussion of those few moments with Aarif occurred to her with icy shock.

Pregnancy. A baby.

Aarif’s child.

Yet even as her lips curved in a helpless smile at that thought, her mind recognised the disastrous consequences of such a possibility. A royal bastard, conceived before she’d even been married.

Of course, Kalila knew, Zakari could think the baby was his, conceived on their still-to-be wedding night, but if Aarif told him—

She closed her eyes again. This was such a mess. A mess, a mistake, and she had no idea how to fix it or where to begin. She thrust the thoughts away, all of them, to untangle later. It was too much to deal with now, and Kalila had a feeling it would always be too much.

The bath had made her sleepy, and when Kalila emerged from the bathroom swathed in a robe and saw the wide, comfortable bed with the duvet turned down, it seemed only natural to slip between the crisp, clean sheets and let herself be lulled to sleep by the lazy whirring of the ceiling fan. The last sound she heard was the gentle click of the door as Juhanah let herself out.

When she awoke to the sound of a knock on the door, the sun was low in the sky, the room cast in shadow, the air sultry and still. Kalila pushed the hair out of her eyes and called, ‘Juhanah?’

‘Yes, Princess,’ Juhanah replied, and entered. Kalila watched her nurse bustle around the room, a fixed smile on her face, yet something had clearly ruffled her.