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The idea of being Ferran’s wife…his lover…it was revolting.
She thought of the man he was. Strong, powerful. Broad shoulders, lean waist. Sharp dark eyes, a square jaw. He was clean shaven, unusual for a man in his part of the world, but she couldn’t blame him. For he no doubt used his looks to his advantage in all things.
He was extraordinarily handsome, which was not a point in his favor as far as she was concerned. It was merely an observation about her enemy.
Beauty meant little. Beauty was often deceitful.
She knew that she was considered a great beauty, like her mother before her. And men often took that to mean she was soft, easy to manipulate, easy to take advantage of. As a result some men had found themselves with a sword trained at vulnerable parts of their body.
Yes, she knew beauty could be used to hide strength and cunning. She suspected Ferran knew that, as well.
She had spent the past month observing his physical strength, but she feared she may have underestimated the brilliance of her adversary.
“I have brought you clothes,” Lydia said, “at the sheikh’s instruction. And he says that you are to join him for dinner when the sun sinks below the dunes.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Did he really say it like that?”
“He did, my lady.”
“Do you not find it odd?”
A small smile tugged at Lydia’s lips. “I am not at liberty to say.”
“I see,” Samarah said, pacing the width of the room. The beautifully appointed room that, like Ferran and herself, was merely using its beauty to cover what it really was.
A cage. For a tigress.
“And what,” Samarah continued, “did he say about me and my change in station?”
“Not much, my lady. He simply said we were to address you as sheikha and install you in this wing of the palace. And that you are not to leave.”
“Ah yes, that sounds about right.” She was relieved, in many ways, that he hadn’t divulged many details. “So I am to dress for him and appear at this magical twilit hour?”
“I shall draw you a bath first.”
Samarah looked down at herself and put a hand to her cheek, her thumb drifting over the small cut inflicted by her own knife. She imagined she was a bit worse for wear after having spent the night in a dungeon. So a bath was likely in order.
“Thank you. I shall look forward to it.”
Minutes later, Samarah was submerged to her chin in a sunken mosaic tub filled with hot water and essential oils. It stretched the length of the bath chamber, larger than many swimming pools. There were pillars interspersed throughout, and carvings of naked women and men, lounging and tangled together.
She looked away from the scenes. She’d never been comfortable with such things. Not after the way her family had dissolved. Not when she’d spent so many years guarding her body from men who sought to use her.
And certainly not when she was in the captivity of her enemy. An enemy who intended to marry her and…beget his heirs on her. In that naked, entwined fashion. It was far too much to bear.
She leaned her head back against the pillow that had been provided for her and closed her eyes. This was, indeed, preferable to the dungeon. Furthermore, it was preferable to every living situation she’d had since leaving her family’s palace.
And of course he’d planned it that way. Of course he would know how to appeal to certain weaknesses.
She couldn’t forget what he was.
When she was finished, she got out and wrapped herself in a plush robe, wandering back into her room.
“My lady,” Lydia said. “I would have helped you.”
“I don’t need help, Lydia. In fact, and this is no offense meant to you, I would like some time alone before I go and see the sheikh.”
Lydia blinked. “Of course, Sheikha.” Samarah could tell Lydia was trying to decide whom she should obey.
Ultimately, the other woman inclined her head and walked out of the chamber.
Samarah felt slightly guilty dismissing her, but honestly, the idea of being dressed seemed ridiculous. Palatial surroundings or not. She picked up the dark blue dress that had been laid out on her bed. It was a heavy fabric, with a runner of silver beads down the front, and a scattering of them across. Stars in a night sky. Along with that were some silken under things. A light bra with little padding, and, she imagined, little support, and a pair of panties to match.
She doubted anyone dressed Ferran. He didn’t seem the type.
She pondered that while she put the underwear and dress on. He had not turned out the way she might have imagined. First, he hadn’t transformed into a monster. She’d imagined that he might have. Since, in her mind, he was the man who killed her father.
He also hadn’t become the man she’d imagined he might, based on what she remembered of him when he’d been a teenage boy.
He’d been mouthy, sullen when forced to attend palace dinners and behave. And he’d often pulled practical jokes on palace staff.
He didn’t seem like a man who would joke about much now.
Well, except for his ‘when the sun sinks beneath the dune’ humor. She snorted. As if she would be amused.
She considered the light veil that had been included with the dress. She’d chosen to wear one while on staff, but in general she did not. Unless she was headed into the heart of the Jahari capital. Then she often opted to wear one simply to avoid notice.
She would not wear one tonight. Instead, she wandered to the ornate jewelry box that was situated on the vanity and opened it. Inside, she found bangles, earrings and an elaborate head chain with a bright center gem designed to rest against her forehead.
She braided her long dark hair and fastened the chain in place, then put on the rest of the jewelry. Beauty to disguise herself. A metaphor that seemed to be carrying through today.
She found that there was makeup, as well, and she applied it quickly, the foundation doing something to hide the cut on her cheek. It enraged her to see it. Better it was covered. She painted dark liner around her eyes, stained her lips red.
She looked at herself and scarcely knew the woman she saw. Everything she was wearing was heavy, and of a fine quality she could never have afforded in her life on the street. She blinked, then looked away, turning her focus to the window, where she could see the sun sinking below the dunes.
It was time.
She lifted the front of her dress, her bangles clinking together, all of her other jewels moving with each step, giving her a theme song composed in precious metals as she made her way from the room and down the long corridor.
She rounded a corner and went down a sweeping staircase into a sitting area of the palace. There were men there, dressed in crisp, white tunics nearly as ornate as her dress.
“Sheikha,” one said, “this way to dinner.”
She inclined her head. “Thank you.”
She followed him into the next room. The dining area was immaculate, a tall table with a white tablecloth and chairs placed around. It was large enough to seat fifty, but currently only seated Ferran. There were windows behind him that looked out into the gardens, lush, green. A sign of immeasurable wealth. So much water in the desert being given to plants.
“You came,” he said, not bothering to stand when she entered.
“Of course. The sun has sunken. Behind the dunes.”
“So it has.”
“I should not like to disobey a direct order,” she said.
“No,” he responded, “clearly not. You are so very biddable.”
“I find that I am.” She walked down the edge of the table, her fingertips brushing the backs of the chairs as she made her way toward him. “Merciful even.”
“Merciful?” he asked, raising his brows. “I had not thought that an accurate description. Perhaps…thwarted?”
She stopped moving, her eyes snapping up to his. “Perhaps,” she bit out.
“Sit,” he commanded.
She continued walking, to the head of the table, around the back of him, lifting her hand the so she was careful to avoid contact with him. She watched his shoulders stiffen, his body, his instincts on high alert.
He knew he had not tamed her. Good.
She took a seat to his left, her eyes on the plate in front of her. “I do hope there will be food soon. I’m starving. It seems I was detained for most of the day.”
“Ah yes,” he said, “I recall. And don’t worry. It’s on its way.”
As if on cue, six men came in, carrying trays laden with clay pots, and clear jars full of frosted, brightly colored juice.
All of the trays were laid out before them, the tall lids on the tagines removed with great drama and flair.
Her stomach growled and she really hoped he wasn’t planning on poisoning her, because she just wanted to eat some couscous, vegetables and spiced lamb. She’d spent many nights trying to sleep in spite of the aching emptiness in her stomach.
And she didn’t have the patience for it, not now.
She needed a full stomach to deal with Ferran.
“We are to serve ourselves,” Ferran said, as the staff walked from the room. “I often prefer to eat this way. I find I get everything to my liking when I do it myself.” His eyes met hers. “And I find I am much happier when I am in control of a situation.”
She arched a brow and reached for a wooden utensil, dipping it into the couscous and serving herself a generous portion. “That could be a problem,” she said, going back for some lamb. “As I feel much the same way, and I don’t think either of us can have complete control at any given time.”
“Do you ever have control, Samarah?”
She paused. “As much as one can have, Sheikh. Of course, the desert is always king, no matter what position in life you hold. No one can stop a drought. Or a monsoon. Or a sandstorm.”
“I take it that’s your way of excusing your powerlessness.”
She took a sharp breath and turned her focus to her dinner. “I am not powerless. No matter the situation, no matter the chains, you can never make me powerless. I will always have choices, and my strength is here.” She put her hand on her chest. “Not even you can reach in and take my heart, Sheikh Ferran Bashar. And so, you will never truly have power over me.”
“You are perhaps the bravest person I’ve ever met,” he said. “And the most foolish.”
She smiled. “I take both as the sincerest of compliments.”
“I should like to discuss our plan.”
“I should like to eat—this is very good. I don’t think the servants eat the same food as you do.”
“Do they not? I had not realized. I’ll ask the chef if it’s too labor intensive or if it’s possible everyone eat as I do.”
“I imagine it isn’t possible, and it would only make more work for the cook. Cooking in mass quantities is a bit different than cooking for one sheikh and his prisoner.”
“I’ve never cooked,” he said. “I wouldn’t know.”
“I haven’t often cooked, but I have been in the food lines in Jahar. I know what mass-produced food is.”
“Tell me,” he said, leaning on one elbow. “How did you survive?”
“After we left the palace—” she would not speak of that night, not to him “—we sought asylum with sympathizers, though they were nearly impossible to find. We went from house to house. We didn’t want people to know we’d survived.”
“It was reported you were among the dead.”
She nodded. “I know. A favor granted to my mother by a servant who wanted to live. She feigned loyalty to the new regime, but she secretly helped my mother and I escape, then told the new president—” she said the word with utter disdain “—that we had been killed with the rest.”
“After that,” she said, “we were often homeless. Sometimes getting work in shops. Then we could sleep on the steps, with minimal shelter provided from the overhang of the roof. Or, if the shopkeeper was truly kind, a small room in the back.”
“And then?” he asked.
“My mother died when I was thirteen. At least…I assume she did. She left one day and didn’t return. I think…I think she walked out into the desert and simply kept walking. She was never the same after. She never smiled.”
“I think that day had that effect on us all. But I’m sorry to hear that.”
“You apologize frequently for what happened. Do you mean it?”
“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”
“But do you feel it?” she asked. He was so monotone. Even now, even in this.
“I don’t feel anything.”
“That’s not true,” she said, her eyes locked with his. “You felt fear last night. I made you fear.”
“So you did,” he said. “But we are not talking about me. Tell me how you went on after your mother died.”
“I continued on the way I always had. But I ended up finding work at a martial arts studio, of all places. Master Ahn was not in Jahar at the time of the unrest, and he had no qualms about taking me in. Part of my payment was training along with my room and board.”
“I see now why you had such an easy time ambushing me,” he said.
“I have a black belt in Hapkido. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”
“A Jaharan princess who is a master in martial arts.”
She lifted a shoulder. “Strange times we live in.”
“I should say. You know someone tried to murder me in my bedchamber last night.”
“Is that so?” she asked, taking a bite of lamb.
“I myself spent the ensuing years in the palace. Now that we’re caught up, I think we should discuss our engagement.”
“Do you really see this working?” she asked.
“I never expected to love my wife, Samarah. I have long expected to marry a woman who would advance me in a political fashion and help my country in some way. That is part of being a ruler, and I know you share that. You are currently a sheikha without a throne or a people, and I aim to give you both. So yes, I do see this working. I don’t see why it shouldn’t.”
“I tried to kill you,” she said. “That could possibly be a reason it wouldn’t work.”
“Don’t most wives consider that at some point? I grant you, usually several years of marriage have passed first, but even so, it’s hardly that unusual.”
“And you think this will…change what happened? You think what happened can be changed?” she asked. And she found she was honestly curious. She shouldn’t be. She shouldn’t really want to hear any of what he had to say.
“Everything can be changed. Enough water can change an entire landscape. It can reshape stone. Why can’t we reshape what is left?”
She found that something in her, something traitorous and hopeful, something she’d never imagined would have survived all her years living in the worst parts of Jahar, enduring the worst sorts of fear and starvation and loss, wanted to believe him.
That the pieces of her life could somehow be reshaped. That she could have something more than cold. More than anger and revenge. More than a driving need to inflict pain, as it had been inflicted on her.
“And if not,” he said. “I still find the outcome preferable to having my throat cut. And you will have something infinitely nicer than a storeroom to sleep in. That should be enough.”
And just like that, the warm hopefulness was extinguished.
Because he was talking as though a soft bed would fix the pain she’d suffered. The loss of her family, the loss of her home.
He didn’t know. And she would have to force him to understand. She would make him look at her pain, her suffering. And endure it as she had done.
“Yes,” she said, smiling, a careful, practiced smile, “why not indeed?”
CHAPTER FOUR
NOT FOR THE first time since striking the deal with Samarah, Ferran had reservations. Beautiful she was, biddable she would never be.
She was descended from a warrior people, and she had transformed herself into a foot soldier. One he’d rather have on his side than plotting his death.
She’d been a little hermit the past few days. But he was under no illusion. She was just a viper in her burrow, and he would have to reach in and take her out carefully.
Barring that, he would smoke her out. Metaphorically. He wasn’t above an ironhanded approach. He supposed, in many ways, he was already implementing one. But the little serpent had tried to kill him.
There was hardly an overreaction to that. Though, there was a foolish reaction. Proposing marriage might be it. And there were the reservations.
He walked up to the entry of her bedchamber and considered entering without knocking. Then he decided he liked his head attached to his shoulders and signaled his intent to enter with a heavy rap on wooden doors.
“Yes?”
“It’s Ferran,” he said.
He was met with silence.
“If you have forgotten,” he said, “I am the sheikh of Khadra and your fiancé. Oh, also your mortal enemy.”
The left door opened a crack, and he could see one brown eye glaring at him through it. “I have not forgotten.”
“I haven’t seen you in days, so I was concerned.”
She blinked twice. “I’ve been ill.”
“Have you?”
“Well, I haven’t felt very well.”
“I see,” he said.
“Because we’re engaged.”
“Did my proposal give you a cold?”
The eye narrowed. “What do you want?”
“I did not propose to you so you could nest in one of the rooms in my palace. We have serious issues to attend to. Namely, announcing our engagement to the world. Which will involve letting the world know that the long-lost, long-mourned sheikha of Jahar lives.”
“Can’t you write up a press release?”
“Let me in, Samarah, or I will push past you.”
“Would you like to try?”
“Let me in,” he repeated.
She obeyed this time, the door swinging open. She held it, her arm extended, a dark brow raised. “Enter.”
“Why is it you make me feel like I’m a guest in my own palace?”
“These are my quarters. In them, you are a guest.”
“This is my country, and in it, you are a prisoner.” Her shoulders stiffened, her nostrils flaring. “Such an uncomfortable truth.”
“I can think of a few things more uncomfortable.”
He arched a brow. “Such as?”
“If I planted my foot between your ribs,” she said, practically hissing.
“You and I shall have to spar sometime. When I’m certain you don’t want me killed.”
“You’ll be waiting a long time.”
“Careful. Some men might consider this verbal foreplay.” He said it to get a reaction. What disturbed him was that it did seem that way. It made his blood run hotter. Made him think of what it had felt like to hold her over his shoulder, all soft curves and deadly rage.
He gritted his teeth. He was not a slave to his body. He was a slave to nothing. He was master. He was sheikh. And with that mastery, he served his people. Not himself. That meant there was no time for this sort of reaction.
Her upper lip curled into a snarl. “You disgust me. Do you think I would sleep with the man who ordered my father killed?”
“For the good of our people? I would sleep with the woman whose father caused the death of my parents.” The man who had wrenched the bars open that held Ferran’s demons back from the world. The man who revealed what it was Ferran could be with the restraints broken.
He ignored those memories. He ignored the heat that pooled in his gut at the thought of what sleeping with her would mean.
She blinked. “I feel as though we have an impossible legacy to negotiate. I have, in fact, been thinking that for the past few days.”
“To what end?”
“To the end that in many ways I understand what you did.” Her dark eyes looked wounded, angry. “But I don’t have to condone it. Or forgive it.”
“Your father killed mine. Face-to-face and in cold blood. My mother…”
“I know,” she said. “And…it is a difficult set of circumstances we find ourselves in. I realize that.”
“Not so difficult. Marriage is fairly straightforward.” It was a contractual agreement, nothing more. And as long as he thought of it in those terms, he could find a place for it in his ordered world.
Both brows shot up. “Is it? As our parents’ deaths were a result of marital infidelity I think it’s a bit more complex than you’re giving it credit for.”
“Passion is more complex than people give it credit for. Passion is dangerous. Marriage on the other hand is a legal agreement, and not dangerous in the least. Not on its own. Add passion and you have fire to your gasoline.”
“Okay, I see your point. But are you honestly telling me you act without passion?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Yes. If I acted based on passion I would have had your pretty head for what you tried to do. Lucky for you, I think things through. I never act before considering all possible outcomes.” He studied her, her petite frame hinted at by a red, beaded tunic that hung to her knees, her legs covered by matching pants. Her dark hair was pulled back again, the top of her head covered by a golden chain that was laced over her crown. He wondered what her hair might look like loose. Falling in glossy black waves over her shoulders.
And then he stopped wondering. Because it was irrelevant. Because her hair, her beauty, had nothing to do with their arrangement. It had nothing to do with anything.
“Are you passionate?” he asked, instead of contemplating her hair for another moment.
She cocked her head to the side, a frown tugging down the corners of her lips. “About some things,” she said. “Survival being chief among them. I don’t think I could have lived through what I lived through without a certain measure of passion for breathing. If I hadn’t felt burning desire to keep on doing it, I probably would have walked out to the desert, lain down on a dune and stopped. And then there was revenge. I’ve felt passion for that.”
“And that’s where we differ. I don’t want revenge, because the purpose it serves is small. I want to serve a broader purpose. And that’s why thinking is better than passion.” Passion was dangerous. Emotion was vulnerability. He believed in neither.
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