The Royal House of Karedes: The Desert Throne

CHAPTER SEVEN

KAREEF gasped as he saw Jasmine leap her horse across a juniper bush, sweeping across the sagebrush. She’d once been terrified of horses. Now she rode with the grace and natural ease of a Qusani nomad.

He stared in shock at the cloud of her dust crossing the desert.

But she didn’t know that devious mare like he did. There was a reason Bara’ah wasn’t north at the stadium, training to race in the Qais Cup in two days’ time. She’d left one jockey in a body cast last year. Full of malicious tricks, she liked nothing more than to throw her riders.

He had the sudden image of Jasmine half-smashed on the rock, crumpled and bleeding, as he’d found her thirteen years ago…

“Jasmine! Stop!”

He saw her goad her mare into greater speed.

Fear rushed through him as he glanced back again at the distant horizon and saw scattered brown clouds moving fast, much too fast. A sandstorm could cross the desert in seconds, decimating everything in its path.

A shudder went through his body. He turned back. With iron control, he clicked his heels on the stallion’s flanks. Huffing with a flare of nostril, the animal raced forward. But Jasmine was already far ahead.

Kareef hadn’t expected her to disobey him. No one had disobeyed him for years.

He should have expected it of her.

As he pursued her, he cast another glance behind him. The clouds were beginning to gather with force across the width of the desert. The sky was turning dark. There could no longer be any doubt. Holding the reins with one hand, he reached into his pocket and discovered his cell phone was lost, fallen in the rough speed of their race. But he still had Jasmine’s necklace.

His eyes narrowed as he watched her race her horse headlong into the canyon. No help could come for them before the storm.

So be it. He would save her alone.

As long as she stayed hidden, as long as she didn’t climb up out of the canyon, she would live.

If she rode onto the plateau, the coming sandstorm would eat her alive.

Hoofbeats pounded in rhythm with Kareef’s thoughts as he raced after Jasmine into the dark shadowed canyon.

He had to find her.

He would find her.

Clamping his thigh muscles over the saddle, he leaned forward and urged his horse faster. He’d spent his youth in these canyons. He was again a reckless horse racer who feared nothing…but losing her.

He raced fast. Faster. His stallion kicked up dust, scattering it to the four winds. He raced beneath the sharp arches and towering cliffs of the canyon.

Within minutes, he’d caught up with her. Leaning forward, he shouted Jasmine’s name over the pounding hoofbeats of their horses.

She glanced back and a shadow of fear crossed her face. He heard the panic in her voice as she urged her mare faster.

But Kareef gained ground with every second. He reached out his hand to pluck her off the mare’s back—

His hand suddenly grasped air as she veered off the road. She’d abruptly turned the mare west through a break in the red rock, climbing the slope up out of the canyon.

“No!” he shouted. “The storm!”

But his words were lost in the rising blur of the wind, beneath the pounding hooves of her mare’s wild, joyful, reckless climb.

He could feel, rather than hear, the approaching storm behind him. The first edges of dark cloud pushed around them, turning blue sky to a sickening brown-gray. The crags were turning dark and hidden in deep shadows.

Cursing her, cursing himself, he veered his horse up to pursue her. She was fast, but he was faster. For the first time in thirteen years, he was again Kareef Al’Ramiz, the reckless horse racer. Unstoppable. Unbreakable.

He would die rather than lose this race.

“Sandstorm!” he shouted over the rising wind.

At the top of the plateau, Jasmine turned back to him sharply. But at the same moment, he saw her mare draw to a sudden skidding stop as she suddenly grew tired of the race and deliberately, almost playfully, threw her rider. For a long, horrible instant, Kareef watched Jasmine fly through the air.

Sniffing, the mare jumped delicately in the other direction, then turned to run back the way she’d come, toward the stables and oats that awaited her.

Jasmine hit the ground and crumpled into the dust. Kareef’s heart was in his throat as all the memories of the past ripped through him. He flung himself off his stallion, falling to his knees before her.

“Jasmine,” he whispered, his heart in his throat as he touched her still face. “Jasmine!”

Like a miracle, she coughed in his arms. Her beautiful, dark-lashed eyes stared up at him. She swallowed, tried to speak.

“Don’t talk,” he ordered. Relief made his body weak as he lifted her in his arms. He held her tightly, never wanting to let her go. How had he spent so many years without her? How could he have known she was alive…without tracking her to the last corner of the earth?

He heard the distant rattle of sand and thunder, heard the wail of the wind.

“I have to get you out of here.” He whistled to the horse. “We don’t have much time.”

He glanced behind them. The safe part of the canyon was too far away. They’d never make it.

Jasmine followed his glance and instantly went pale when she saw the dark wall of cloud. “I thought—” her voice choked off “—I thought it was a trick.”

She’d grown up in Qusay. She knew what a sandstorm could do. He shook his head grimly, clenching his jaw. “We have to find shelter.” His eyes met hers. “The closest shelter.”

Her chocolate-brown eyes instantly went wide with panic. “No,” she gasped. “Not there, Kareef. I’d rather die!”

He felt the first scattered bits of sand hit his face.

“If I don’t get you to safety right now,” he said grimly, “you will die.”

Whimpering, she shook her head. But he knew she had to see the darkness swiftly overtaking the sun, had to feel the shards of sand whipping against her skin. If they didn’t find shelter, they’d soon be breathing sand. It would rip off their skin, then bury them alive.

“No!” she screamed, kicking and struggling as, holding her with one arm, he lifted them both into the saddle. “I can’t go back!”

“I can’t leave you to die,” he ground out, turning the horse’s reins toward the nearby cliff.

“I died a long time ago.” Her eyes were wet, her voice hoarse as she stared at the dark jagged hole, hollowed and hidden in the red rock. “I died in that cave.”

The pain he heard in her voice was insidious, like a twisting cloud of smoke. He breathed in her grief, felt it infect his own body.

Jasmine Kouri. Once his life. Once his everything.

Then his eyes hardened. “I can’t let you die.”

She twisted around in the saddle, wrapping her arms around his neck as she looked up at his face pleadingly. “Please,” she whispered, her eyes shimmering with tears. “If you ever loved me—if you ever loved me at all—don’t take me there.”

He looked down at her beautiful face, and his heart stopped in his chest.

If he’d ever loved her?

He’d loved her more than a man should ever love any woman. More than a man should love anything he couldn’t bear to lose. Looking down at her now, he would have given her anything, his own life, to make her stop weeping.

Then he saw a drop of blood appear on the pale skin of her cheek, like a red rose springing from the earth. First blood.

A growl ripped from his throat. His own life he would give. But not hers. Not hers.

Ignoring her cries, he grimly urged the black stallion toward the plateau to the red rock cliff. The sounds of her wailing blended with the howls of the wind. He felt prickles of sand start to abrade his skin with tiny cuts.

He held her against his chest, protecting her with his own body as he rode straight for the one place he never wanted to see again. The place where they’d both lost everything thirteen years ago. His own private hell.

Hardening his heart to granite, he rode straight for the cave.

“No!” Jasmine screamed in his arms, struggling to jump off the horse’s back. But Kareef wouldn’t let her go.

She felt the bone-jarring pounding of the stallion’s gallop beneath her. She felt the heat of Kareef’s chest at her back, felt his strong arms protecting her as the flecks of sand began to snarl around them with deadly force.

The howl of the wind grew louder. Her dark hair flew wildly around her face. She closed her eyes, fighting the rising tide of fear. He was taking her to the cave. The place that had terrified her beyond reason for a thousand nightmares.

“We’ll make it,” Kareef said harshly, as if he could make it true by the sheer force of his will. His shout was a whisper above the wail of the storm.

Looking back, she saw a wall of sand pouring like a massive dark cloud behind them, a black blizzard sweeping across the wide plateau, leaving nothing in its wake.

They reached the cave just in time. He pulled her off the horse, yanking them back some distance inside the darkness. Stumbling, she watched the huge wave of wind and sand pass the mouth of the cave, leaving them coughing in a cloud of dust.

Staggering back, she looked blindly behind her into the black maw of the cave. And against her will…

She saw the spot where she’d lost their baby.

Pain racked through her, pummeling her like a torrent of blows. Anguish broke over her, as devastating as the wall of sand outside, crushing her soul beneath the weight.

As Kareef turned to calm the stallion, tying his reins to a nearby rock, Jasmine’s trembling legs gave way beneath her. She fell back against the red stone walls, sliding down to the ground, unable to look away from the spot of earth where she’d nearly died.

Where she had died.

Across the cave, she saw Kareef gently calm the stallion, whispering words in ancient Qusani as he removed the pack from the horse’s haunches. He offered the horse water and food then brushed down the horse in long strokes. The sound of the brushing filled the silence of the cave. She stared at him.

Kareef always took care of everything he loved. What a father he would make.

But they could never share a child.

Not a day went by that Jasmine didn’t think about the baby she’d lost in the riding accident before she’d even known she was pregnant. Their child would have been twelve now. A little boy with his father’s blue eyes? A little girl with plump cheeks and a sweet smile?

As Kareef started a fire in the fire pit with wood left recently by Qusani nomads, a sob rose from deep inside her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, looking up as tears spilled down her cheeks. “It’s my fault I lost our baby.”

She heard his harsh intake of breath, and suddenly his arms were around her. Sitting against the wall of the cave, he lifted her into his lap, holding her against his chest as tenderly as a child.

“It was never your fault. Never,” he said in a low voice. “I am the only one who was to blame—”

His voice choked off as the small fire flickered light into the depths of the cave, casting red shadows over the earth. She looked up at him slowly. His face was blurry in the firelight.

She blinked, and the pain in his eyes overwhelmed her. She could hear the roar of the wind and hoarse rattle of the sand against rock outside. Instinctively, she reached out to stroke the dark hair of his bowed head. Then she stopped herself.

“You broke your promise to me, Kareef,” she said hoarsely. “You brought a doctor to this cave, after you gave your word to tell no one. Though we both knew it was too late!”

“You were dying, Jasmine!” He looked up fiercely. “I was a fool to make that promise, a fool to think I could take care of you alone, a fool to think that love alone could save you!”

“But when I lost your child and the ability to ever conceive,” she said numbly, “you couldn’t get away from me fast enough.”

His hands suddenly clenched around her shoulders. The dark rage in his eyes frightened her.

“I left to die,” he ground out. With a hoarse, ragged intake of breath, he released her, clawing his hand through his black hair. “I failed you. I couldn’t bear to see the blame and grief in your eyes. I went out to the desert to die.”

His voice echoed in the cool darkness of the cave.

He’d tried to die—the strong, powerful, fearless boy she’d loved? The barbarian king she’d once thought to be indestructible?

“No,” she said, “you wouldn’t.”

“One more thing I failed to do.”

Bewildered, she looked up at his handsome face, half-hidden by the shadows. “But…it wasn’t your fault.”

“I was the one who saddled Razul for you! I was the one who taunted you into climbing on his back! I wanted so badly to race with you.” He gave a bitter laugh. “I thought I could keep you safe.”

“Kareef.” Her voice was a sob. “Stop.”

But he was beyond hearing. “After the accident, I let you stay here in the cave for days, injured, without a doctor’s care. You nearly died from the infection.”

“I was trying to protect my family from the shame—”

“I brought the doctor too late, and never thought to worry about his assistant.” He gave a bitter laugh—brittle, like dead leaves blowing in the wind. “Afterward, when I disappeared into the desert, I left you believing you’d be happier without me, safe and protected by your family. It never occurred to me that the scandal could break and you’d be sent into exile. You’d already been in New York for three years before I even heard you’d left Qusay!” He leaned forward, his jaw tight. His eyes were dark in the flickering fire. “But I made him pay for what he did to you.”

Her full, pink lips trembled. “Who?”

“Marwan. When I discovered he was the one who’d started the rumors, I stripped him of everything he owned. I sent him into exile.”

A small sound escaped her lips. A rush, like a shuddering sigh. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Did you know he blackmailed me?”

“What?”

“On my journey back to the city, when I still had a fever, he threatened to tell everyone about my miscarriage. He said he’d claim I did it deliberately to rid myself of the baby. He’d say I’d had endless nameless lovers and couldn’t guess the father. He said he would ruin me.” She took a deep breath, forcing her eyes to meet his. “He would do this—unless I took him as my lover.”

Kareef sucked in his breath.

“What?” he exploded.

“He was afraid of you,” she said softly, wiping her eyes hard. “But he wasn’t afraid of me. When I wouldn’t do it, he carried through with his threat. Within days, the scandal cost my father his job at the palace. It gave his enemies the weapon they needed. If my father couldn’t control his own family, they said, how could he advise the king? So everything that happened, it’s my fault, you see.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “All my fault.”

She looked back at Kareef.

And almost didn’t recognize him.

Rage such as she’d never seen before was on his face. Rage that frightened her.

“I will kill him,” he ground out. Clenching his hands, he rose to his feet. “Wherever that man is hiding in the world, I will make him feel such pain as he cannot imagine—”

“No,” she gasped, grabbing his hand. “Please. It’s all over.” She pressed his hand against her forehead, closing her eyes. “Please, I just want to forget.”

His hand tightened, then relaxed. Slowly, he sank beside her. Kneeling, he took both her hands in his own.

“By the time I found out you were in exile…it was too late to do more than send money to New York.” His voice was ragged. “But every day since then, I’ve tried to find absolution.” He turned away. “But I know now I will never find that, no matter how hard I try.”

“Kareef,” she whispered, tears in her eyes. “It wasn’t your fault. It was…It was…” Putting her hand on his shoulder, she stared at the smooth rock wall of the cave and the truth dawned on her. “It was an accident.”

His back slowly straightened. “What did you say?”

“An accident.” She looked at him, and it was as if the sun had broken through dark clouds, bringing light, bringing peace. Tears fell down her cheeks as she breathed, “I was barely pregnant. We didn’t know. The accident was no one’s fault. No one is to blame. We’ll never forget we almost had a child. But we need to forgive—both of us. It wasn’t your fault.”

His voice was low and thick with grief as he said, “I wish I could believe that.” He looked down at her hands. “You’re shivering.”

She was, but not with cold.

Rising to his feet, he crossed the cave. Digging through the horse’s pack, he found a red woven blanket and unfolded it near the fire. Jasmine watched his face in the flickering shadows, her heart aching.