“You know the way there?”
“But of course. I’ve spent the past few weeks there.”
“You can show us?”
“Yes.”
“I hope so. Because if anything goes wrong, if you’re trying to be clever, you’ll pay. We’ll make you suffer.”
Tair took a deep, sharp breath, lungs expanding to allow the searing blade of pain to slice between his ribs, up toward his heart. Up to his ugly blackened, badly scarred heart.
He was livid. Beyond livid. He was close to violence.
His men hadn’t protected the palace or Tally. His men had fallen asleep on the job. Just as he had.
It killed him. Tally kidnapped. Taken. And he not being prepared. He felt worse than an amateur. He felt like a failure.
But he knew where she was, he knew who had taken her, knew that Tally’s hired escort had been working in conjunction with Ashraf who had poisoned her.
It was hard to trust anyone. Much less himself.
Remorse and recriminations would have to wait. He could inflict his damage later. First he needed Tally safe.
In the house where Tally was being held hostage, the door to the upstairs bedroom suddenly burst open and Tair was there, scooping her into his arms.
“Hania?”he asked, cutting the robes that bound her hands and feet.Are you well?
She nodded, slumped a little with fatigue against his chest, gulping in great breaths of air. As Tair walked out of the chamber she spotted a crumpled body in the hallway next to her door. She shuddered and looked away, not wanting to know if he was alive or dead, not wanting anything but to leave this godforsaken place.
Her arm wrapped around his neck. “I didn’t hear you outside.”
“I am very quiet.”
“Thank you.”
He made a rough inarticulate sound that she didn’t understand but she felt his chest vibrate and his hold on her tightened.
She knew he’d protect her. He’d protect her no matter what.
He loves me in his way, she thought. He loves me the way he knows how and it was enough. “I knew you’d come,” she whispered, a lump forming in her throat.
“Did you?”
She nodded, insides knotting, emotions strange and strained. She never wanted to care for him; never expected him to care for her. Love between two people such as they complicated everything. It wasn’t the tidy romantic love of Western culture—the love captured in movies and popular bestsellers. Love here in the desert was hard, fierce, sacrificial.
Love here wasn’t safe. Love in Ouaha was dangerous, nearly as dangerous as Tair himself.
“Put me down,” she said as they reached the street and were circled by Tair’s men. “I can walk.”
Tair put Tally down, let her walk.
They were in trouble.He was in trouble. He couldn’t do this. Couldn’t make this work. Not like this, not when he felt the way he did these past forty-eight hours, the worst hours he’d known since discovering the slaughtered bodies of his wife and tiny son. Feeling what he’d felt, going where he’d gone—into an endless abyss, a place of such darkness that he could only describe it as absolute rage and despair—and it wasn’t a place he could handle, wasn’t a place that allowed him to be.
He couldn’t beSoussi el-Kebir, or Sheikh el-Tayer, not with Tally here.
The marauding Barakan rebels were cowards and villains and they didn’t just pillage and burn. They’d slaughtered the elderly, the women, the children. Ara and Zaki had been among the dead in the terrible bloodbath seven years ago. But seven years seemed like nothing when he remembered his terror as he returned from Atiq riding through the night, riding with heaven and hell in his heart, only to arrive home and hold his five-year-old as Zaki died.
Tair wouldn’t let himself think much more than that.
But he knew, he knew in his black scarred heart, that he couldn’t go through that loss again, and he couldn’t think, lead, guide—not with Tally here. It was one thing to have a mistress. Another to have a beloved wife.
And Tally was his—she’d been his from the start—and she made him afraid, made him worry, made him a man.
But he couldn’t risk being an ordinary man. Mortal. He had to remain a monster. Frankenstein-like in his inability to give, or feel.
Tally. His woman.
He’d have to send her back, send her home. Not to his home, but hers, that loft space she rented in downtown Seattle’s historic district.
He felt Tally slip her hand into his as they approached the waiting armored cars. His jaw hardened and he didn’t look at her, didn’t let himself think or feel. Once his mind was made up, he never changed it.