‘Is there something I can help you with, Princess?’
‘Are you going to take that tone with me all the time?’ Kalila demanded, and Aarif turned back to her with a cool smile, his eyebrows raised.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘That indifferent tone, like you don’t know or care about me,’ Kalila snapped, goaded into more honesty than she wished to reveal.
Aarif hesitated. ‘I think, perhaps,’ he said quietly, ‘it is better for both of us. Safer.’
Now it was her turn to challenge him with a cool smile of her own. ‘I think the time for safety has come and gone.’
Aarif’s expression hardened. ‘Perhaps, but just because I made one mistake does not mean I wish to repeat it. I think it is wiser for us to maintain our separate existences in the palace, Kalila. At least until my brother returns.’
Kalila pursed her lips. ‘And what shall I do for the next two weeks?’
For a moment—a second—Aarif looked discomfited. ‘Do…?’ he began, and Kalila cut him off with a sharp laugh.
‘Other than languish in my bedroom, eating bonbons,’ she filled in for him. ‘There’s no one here, Aarif. I’m alone, and I’m sure there are things I should do before my wedding. You told my father there were preparations, it was why I had to leave so suddenly! Yet now I’m supposed to wander this palace like Bluebeard’s bride?’
Aarif’s mouth twitched in an involuntary smile even though the rest of his expression remained obdurate. ‘It is not my job to entertain you.’
‘Isn’t it?’ she challenged. ‘What would your brother say if he knew you were ignoring me? Didn’t he instruct you to take care of me?’
‘He instructed me,’ Aarif bit out, ‘to protect you, and I failed. I prefer not to do so again.’
Kalila took a step back at the savagery of his words, his tone. She’d been enjoying their verbal sparring for a moment, had found a freedom in words. She was restless, edgy, unfulfilled, yet release would not come this way.
‘Where are you brothers and sisters?’ she asked after a moment, and Aarif shrugged.
‘Busy.’
‘Will they return for the wedding?’
‘Undoubtedly.’ He did not sound concerned.
Kalila sank into a chair across from him, gazing blankly around the room, a library she realised distantly, taking in the shelves of leather-spined books, the comfortable chairs. It was a room to curl up, to lose yourself, in, amidst many of the stories housed here.
Her gaze found its way back to Aarif, his face still hard, unyielding, and she felt a stab of wounded disbelief that she’d held this man in her arms, had kissed him, touched him. It seemed so incredible now, as if the entire episode were a dream.
Perhaps it was, or as good as.
‘I didn’t expect it to be like this,’ she confessed quietly.
‘Nor did I,’ Aarif returned, and she thought she heard a current of sorrow in his voice, underneath his carefully neutral tone.
She sighed. ‘Aarif, I know—considering what has happened between us—things are difficult, but couldn’t you at least extend your hand to me these next weeks? I would like to see this island, the city.’ She swallowed, feeling vulnerable and needy and not liking it. ‘I want to know the country where I am to be queen, and I can’t explore it on my own.’
Aarif was silent, but she saw the reluctance in his eyes, in the tightening of his mouth. She knew the battle warring within him: the desire to serve his brother best, and the duty to stay away from her. And perhaps, with that, a desire to spend time with her? To get to know her, the real her, whoever that was?
She wasn’t sure herself; she only knew she’d felt more real and sure and right when she’d been in Aarif’s arms.
‘Yes, I could do that,’ he finally agreed, the reluctance pronounced now, the words drawn slowly out of him. ‘I could take you round Serapolis tomorrow if you like.’
Kalila smiled, suddenly feeling light. It was silly to feel so hopeful, as if he’d given her far more than an unwilling tour of the town, yet she did. She had time with Aarif…only hours, and who knew what could happen?
What did she want to happen?
The question unsettled her, made her uneasy.
You’re thinking you’ve fallen in love with me. Aarif’s warning, an ever present, insistent echo in her heart. She hadn’t, she knew she hadn’t.
But she could.
Kalila swallowed. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, and Aarif jerked his head in the semblance of a nod.
There was no reason to stay in the warm, lamp-lit intimacy of that room, the sound of cicadas a loud chorus through the open windows. Yet she wanted to. She wanted to curl up in a chair and tell Aarif things she’d not told anyone else.
Sometimes I feel like I don’t know who I am. I’m caught between two worlds, two lives, and I wonder if I chose the wrong one.
She bit her lip to keep from spilling such secrets, for she knew Aarif did not want to hear them. Worse, he would think less of her if he knew she thought such things. Wouldn’t he? Or would he perhaps understand? She’d seen that flicker of compassion before, had felt it like a current between them.
She wanted that feeling again; she didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to leave him.
‘Perhaps I’ll get a book,’ she said, and stood up, roaming the shelves. ‘Any more Agatha Christies here?’ she asked, trailing a finger along the well-worn spines.
Aarif sighed. ‘I’m afraid not.’
No, she saw, the shelves were filled with dusty old classics, and, like Aarif, she wanted something light. She wanted escape.
‘Ah, well,’ she said with a little smile and a shrug, and selected a volume at random.
She plopped down into a chair across from him and with a sunny smile opened the book.
It was in German. She stared blankly at the words, fixing a look of interest to her face, although why she was pretending she had no idea.
Aarif sighed, a smile lurking in his eyes even though his mouth was still no more than a hard line. ‘Can you read German, Kalila?’
She glanced up, the answering smile in her heart finding its way to her lips. ‘No, can you?’
‘No, but my father could. Most of these books were his.’ His lips twitched. ‘How long were you going to stare at that book, pretending you could read it?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Kalila closed the book with both reluctance and relief. ‘I don’t want to be alone,’ she said quietly, and saw Aarif stiffen.
‘It is not appropriate for—’
‘Oh, Aarif, hasn’t the time for such things passed?’ Kalila cut him off. ‘What harm can come of us sitting here, in a library?’ Yet even as she said the words she heard the answer in her own heart. The room was cast into pools of light and shadow by the little lamp and the thick, velvety darkness outside. It was an intimate environment. A dangerous one, and as Kalila watched Aarif’s eyes flare with awareness she knew he realised it too.
She felt it herself, coiling around her heart, making her body tingle. It would be so easy, she thought, to rise from her chair and go to Aarif, to take the spectacles from his nose and the book from his hands, and—
‘Go to bed, Kalila,’ Aarif said quietly. ‘It is late.’
It wasn’t that late, only nine o’clock or so, but Kalila knew what he was really saying. Stay away from me.
And yet she couldn’t. She didn’t want to, even though it was dangerous. Even though it was wrong.
Aarif continued gazing at her, his expression steady and becoming cold, the warm, sensual atmosphere dissolving into arctic awkwardness. After a moment Kalila rose from the chair, trying to keep her dignity although it was hard. Aarif said nothing, just watched as she took a step backwards.
‘Goodnight,’ she finally whispered, and turned around and fled.
It took her a while to find her way back to the bedroom, and Kalila was glad. For a few minutes she lost herself in the darkened corridors, her footsteps a whispery slapping sound against the worn stone. She didn’t want to return to her bedroom, her prison.
This is my life now. All of this, my life.
She closed her eyes. How could she have not realised how this would feel? A loveless marriage, born of duty? Hadn’t she realised in Cambridge, back when she had had a choice or at least the semblance of one, how this would feel?
How miserable she would be?
And yet, it didn’t matter, because in the end, even when she’d found something different, deeper with Aarif—maybe—she would still do her duty, would have to, and so would he. That was what hurt most of all.
She slipped into her bedroom, a cool evening breeze blowing in the scent of jasmine from the gardens.
Kalila went to the window seat and curled up there, her flushed cheek pressed against the cool stone. She gazed down at the shadowy tangle of bushes and shrubs below, and it reminded her so much of her garden at home—a garden she’d loved, a garden she didn’t know when she’d see again—that she let out an involuntary choked cry of despair.
I don’t want to be here.
A tear trickled down her cheek, and a knock sounded on the door.
Kalila slid from the window seat, dashing that one treacherous tear from her face, and went to open the door. Aarif stood there, his face drawn, as ever, into harsh lines, his eyes dark and almost angry, his mouth pursed tightly.