Kalila swallowed. Her throat ached so much the instinctive movement hurt. ‘It was more than that to me,’ she whispered.
‘Yes, perhaps,’ Bahir allowed, his shoulders moving in a tiny shrug, ‘but you always knew what the future held. Your mother and I never kept it from you.’
No, they hadn’t. They’d spoken to her before that wretched party, explained what it meant to be a princess, the joy that lay in fulfilling one’s duty. Propaganda, and Kalila had believed it with all her childish heart. She’d been dazzled by the crown prince of Calista, although now she didn’t remember much of Zakari, no more than a tall, charismatic presence, a patient—or had it been patronising?—smile. She’d only been twelve, after all.
‘You will come home with me,’ Bahir finished, beckoning to the waiter to clear their plates. ‘You have a day to say goodbye to your friends and pack what you need.’
‘A day?’ Kalila repeated in disbelief. Her life was being dismantled in an instant, as if it had been meaningless, trivial—
And to her father, it had.
‘I want you home,’ Bahir said. ‘Where you belong.’
‘But if I’m not getting married until May—’
‘Your presence is needed in your country, Kalila.’ Bahir’s voice turned stern; she’d worn his patience too thin with her desperate, fruitless resistance. ‘Your people need to see you. You have been away nearly four years. It is time to come home.’
That evening, packing up her paltry possessions, Kalila had considered the impossible. The unthinkable. She could defy her father, run away from her so-called destiny. Stay in Cambridge, live her own life, find her own husband or lover…
Yet even as these thoughts, desperate and treacherous, flitted through her mind, she discarded them. Where could she run? With what money? And what would she do?
Besides, she acknowledged starkly, too much of her life—her blood—was bound up in this country, this world. Zaraq’s future was bound with Calista’s; to risk her country’s wellbeing for her own selfish, feminine desires was contemptible. She could never betray her father, her country in such a manner. It would be a betrayal of herself.
So she’d returned home with her father on his private plane, had settled back into life in the empty palace with its skeleton staff. She drifted from day to day, room to room, at first trying to keep up with her studies in history and then discarding them in depression.
She’d attended to her civic responsibilities, visiting sick children, new businesses, shaking hands and cutting ribbons, smiling and nodding. She enjoyed the interactions with the people of Zaraq, but at times it felt like only so much busy work, a lifetime of busy work, for that was her duty.
Her destiny.
Now, gazing into the mirror, she wished—even wondered if—her destiny lay elsewhere. Surely she’d been made for, meant to do, more than this. Be more than this.
‘Princess?’ Juhanah said softly. ‘Beautiful, n’am?’
Kalila had a desperate, intense urge to rip the veil from her face. She’d never been veiled before—her mother had refused, wearing only Western clothes, her nod to old-fashioned propriety no more than a scrap of head covering on formal occasions. Her father hadn’t minded. He’d married his English rose as part of an attempt to Westernise his country. Yet now, Kalila thought with renewed bitterness, she looked like something out of the Arabian Nights. Like a harem girl. The coins tinkled when she moved.
‘Lovely,’ Juhanah murmured. Kalila’s fingers bunched on the gauzy material of her kaftan and a fingernail snagged on a bit of gold thread.
Juhanah tutted and batted her hand away. Just then a knock sounded on the door of the bedroom, and Juhanah went to answer it while Kalila continued to stare.
What would Zakari think of her like this? Was this what he wanted? Was this what her future looked like?
She swallowed, forcing the fears and doubts back. It was too late now, far too late. She understood her duty.
She just hadn’t known how it would feel.
Juhanah padded back into the bedroom and flitted around Kalila, tugging a bit of material here, smoothing it there. ‘You are radiant,’ she said and beneath the veil Kalila’s lips twisted sardonically. Was Juhanah blind, or just blinded by her own happiness? Her nurse was thrilled Kalila was fulfilling her duty and destiny as a crown princess. A queen. ‘And it is time,’ she continued, her eyes lighting, her plump cheeks flushed with excitement. ‘The sheikh has just arrived. He’s coming directly from the plane.’ And as if she didn’t understand already, her heart already beginning to hammer a frantic, desperate beat, Juhanah added in satisfaction, ‘Finally, he is here.’
Aarif was hot, dusty, and tired. The short ride in an open Jeep from the royal airstrip to the palace itself was enough to nearly cover him in dust. He’d been met by a palace official who would take him to the palace’s throne room, where he would extend Zakari’s formal greetings to his bride and her father.
Aarif swallowed and the dust caught grittily in his throat and stung his eyes. Already he’d seen the official sweep a cautious gaze over his face, linger on that damnable line from forehead to jaw. His scar. His reminder, and everyone else’s, of his flaws, his failures.
The palace emerged in the distance, long and low, of mellow golden stone, with towers on either end. In every other direction the desert stretched to an empty horizon, although Aarif thought he glimpsed a huddle of clay and stone buildings to the west—Makaris, the nation’s capital.
The Jeep pulled up to the front entrance, a pair of intricately carved wooden doors under a stone canopy.
‘I will take you to wash and prepare yourself, Your Highness,’ the official said, bowing. ‘King Bahir awaits you in the throne room.’
Aarif nodded, and followed the man into the palace, down a cool, stone corridor and to a waiting chamber with benches and a table. There was a pitcher of lemon water, and Aarif poured a glass and drank thirstily before he changed into his bisht, the long, formal robe worn for ceremonies such as this. In the adjoining bathroom he washed the dust from his face, his eyes sliding away from his reflection in the mirror before returning resolutely to stare at his face, as he always did.
A light, inquiring knock sounded on the door, and, turning from that grim reminder, Aarif left the bathroom and went to fulfil his brother’s bidding, and express his greetings to his bride.
The official led him to the double doors of the throne room; inside an expectant hush fell like a curtain being dropped into place, or perhaps pulled up.
‘Your Eminence,’ the official said in French, the national language of Zaraq, his voice low and unctuous, ‘may I present His Royal Highness, King Zakari.’
Aarif choked; the sound was lost amidst a ripple of murmurings from the palace staff that had assembled for this honoured occasion. It would only take King Bahir one glance to realise it was not the king who graced his throne room today, but rather the king’s brother, a lowly prince.
Aarif felt a flash of rage—directed at himself. A mistake had been made in the correspondence, he supposed. He’d delegated the task to an aide when he should have written himself and explained that he would be coming rather than his brother.
Now he would have to explain the mishap in front of company, all of Bahir’s staff, and he feared the insult could be great.
‘Your Eminence,’ he said, also speaking French, and moved into the long, narrow room with its frescoed ceilings and bare walls. He bowed, not out of obeisance but rather respect, and heard Bahir shift in his chair. ‘I fear my brother, His Royal Highness Zakari, was unable to attend to this glad errand, due to pressing royal business. I am honoured to escort his bride, the Princess Kalila, to Calista in his stead.’
Bahir was silent, and, stifling a prickle of both alarm and irritation, Aarif rose. He was conscious of Bahir watching him, his skin smooth but his eyes shrewd, his mouth tightening with disappointment or displeasure, perhaps both.
Yet even before Bahir made a reply, even before the formalities had been dispensed with, Aarif found his gaze sliding, of its own accord, to the silent figure to Bahir’s right.
It was his daughter, of course. Kalila. Aarif had a memory of a pretty, precocious child. He’d spoken a few words to her at the engagement party more than ten years ago now. Yet now the woman standing before him was lovely, although, he acknowledged wryly, he could see little of her.
Her head was bowed, her figure swathed in a kaftan, and yet as if she felt the magnetic tug of his gaze she lifted her head, and her eyes met his.
It was all he could see of her, those eyes; they were almond-shaped, wide and dark, luxuriously fringed, a deep, clear golden brown. Every emotion could be seen in them, including the one that flickered there now as her gaze was drawn inexorably to his face, to his scar.
It was disgust Aarif thought he saw flare in their golden depths and as their gazes held and clashed he felt a sharp, answering stab of disappointment and self-loathing in his own gut.
CHAPTER TWO
HE HADN’T come. Kalila gazed blankly at the stranger in front of her, heard the words, the explanations, the expected flattery, the apologies and regrets, but none of it made sense.