Twenty nine minutes after arriving, he called an end to it, practically frog marching her back to the limousine.
His worry grew as they drove back to the palace in complete silence. She made no efforts to talk to him, she didn’t attempt a conversation. She simply stared out of her window, and he stared at her, cataloguing the changes and knowing each and every one was his fault.
His responsibility.
Sophia had come to this kingdom as a child. A beautiful, free-spirited child. She was not of this land, of these people, but she had come to exemplify the Abu Fayan spirit. She was the magic of this place. She had been wild and free and beautiful and bold, and bit by bit he had strangled that from her.
He must have made some kind of audible noise of disgust because she jerked her face to his suddenly. Their eyes met and his heart turned over in his chest because when she looked at him, he saw none of the spark in her eyes that was so uniquely Sophia.
He saw nothing, and felt everything.
When the car pulled up at the palace, he stepped out and opened her door before a servant could, reaching for her wordlessly. She stared at him like he’d taken leave of all of his senses, and perhaps he had.
She didn’t move and so, with frustration, he bent down and scooped her up, cradling her against his chest, carrying her through the palace, his face bearing a mask of utter resignation.
He took her to his apartment, to the suite of rooms he’d cajoled her to move into before asking her to vacate once more. His gut churned at the way he’d behaved that day.
“I don’t want to be here,” she said, pushing from his chest as soon as they walked in. He carried her to the sofa and settled her down before standing and staring at her as though she were a puzzle he had to fathom.
“You must stay with me now.”
“No.” She jack-knifed out of the seat, her eyes glaring at his and the spark was back, but it was a spark of angry defiance. “Never again.”
His jaw clenched tight.
“You aren’t well.”
“I’m fine. I’m seeing the doctor every week.”
He knew that to be the case. He’d been getting the reports, and yet nothing had been said of Sophia’s health – only the babies’.
“I feel like you are about to snap in two. You cannot be eating.”
Her eyes showed pure disdain. “I’m doing the best I can, Malik.”
“You are doing too much, then. You must scale back on your duties and focus only on this.”
“This is my duty,” she pointed out scathingly, swallowing, and he recalled saying that to her when he’d left her, after the first ultrasound appointment. “And it’s almost discharged. Your heirs are almost here. You have nothing to worry about.”
“I don’t care about that, Sophia. I care about you. I care about your health. And it’s so obviously failing…”
“I’m fine,” she wiped her palms on her stomach and turned away from him. “The twins are taking up too much room. They’re pressing on my stomach. I can’t eat, even if I… even if I wanted to feast, I couldn’t. Awan makes me juices and smoothies. I have more success with them. I’m doing my best.”
His heart pulled, because he believed her. He had to believe her. This wasn’t some kind of self-sabotage. She wasn’t so miserable that she was hunger-striking her way out of this marriage.
Only she was miserable. He knew that to be the case. He saw the light inside of her had been extinguished and his body flooded with anger. Self-directed anger.
“I want you to stay here. I want to help you until this is over and you are back to normal.”
Her laugh was hollow. “No.”
“Why not? I am your husband.”
“My husband?” She shook her head angrily. “You are no such thing.” She moved towards the door, pulling it inwards. “Out there, we can pretend, but when it’s just us, let’s call a spade a spade. You’re my sperm donor, and I’m your womb, and very soon you’ll have the only thing you care about. So just leave me alone to do this.”
Her words pressed down on him like an enormous weight. He heard them in his dreams – nightmares, more like – and he felt them in his mouth like acid when he was awake.
But why wouldn’t she feel that way? At every point, he’d made it obvious he wanted her for one reason only.
The line of succession.
Babies.
The future of the palace.
This wasn’t about them. It wasn’t about the way his heart soared when he thought of the children she was growing. This was… it was such a mess.
He told himself he couldn’t upset her again, not while she was pregnant. Once the babies were born, he would talk to her. He would find a way to bring her spark back, to make her smile. Not like Addan had, but like he – Malik – could. He would find a way to bring lightness to the dark.
“It is too hot to walk, your highness, and you are eight and a half months pregnant.”
Sophia flicked her gaze to Awan’s. “Thank you, I’m very aware of that.” She took a sip of her water and grabbed her hat. “I’m only going to get some rosemary. I won’t be long.”
“Then I’ll come with you—,”
Sophia reached out and put a reassuring hand on Awan’s forearm. “I want to be alone. Please.”
She didn’t tell Awan why. No one else seemed to remember that today was Addan’s birthday, but she did.
She’d felt the tug of his memories since she’d woken and now, with dusk approaching, she could bear it no longer. She had to be alone. To think of him, to sit quietly and feel his absence. To honour his memory.
The kitchen garden had the best collection of rosemary, but there were servants there – always tending to it, collecting its spoils for the palace kitchens. And so she chose the pomegranate grove, where wild rosemary could be found in clumps.
And on autopilot, she made her way to the single bush in the corner, where she and Addan had been playing that one hot day – much like this one – so many years earlier. She’d pricked her finger and he’d wound a bandage to stop it from bleeding. And eight year old Sophia, who had yet to learn anything of loss and life’s cruelties, had smiled into a pair of kind eyes, and they’d smiled back, and she’d felt like she’d come home.
Was she living out a foolish fantasy now? Had she clung so hard to Addan because he’d crystallised a perfect moment in a life that was about to be turned on its head? When her father had died, she’d lost two parents –her mother had given up any pretence of behaving in a maternal fashion, and her sister had been sent away, to live with Spanish Godparents.
Sophia had needed to feel at home somewhere, and Bashira had made her so welcome. Addan had made her so welcome.
And Malik had made her feel alive – hating him had set her soul on fire when it had been almost dead. She ran her finger over the pomegranate bush, avoiding the spikes, and her stomach twinged. She sobbed. Grief.
It overtook her.
“Happy birthday, my friend,” she said, dipping her head forward, so that her tears fell on the scorched earth beneath.
She stayed a long time, until the sun had set and darkness had wrapped its way around the palace. She picked a small handful of rosemary – for remembrance – on her way back inside.
Her stomach twinged once more.
Before she reached the steps, there was a pain low in her abdomen and then water was gushing down her legs.
“Awan!” She called at the top of her lungs, turning around. For once, there were no guards. “Awan!” She grabbed the railing and moved up one step, but there was another pain. She called for her servant once more, and then felt darkness descending – she sat down before she fell.
“Her highness is in labour,” the message came to Malik while he was in the middle of a dinner with several of his high-ranked ministers. His mind though had been on Sophia, as it almost always was. He scraped his chair back, leaving the room without another word.
“Where is she?”
&nb
sp; “En route to the hospital already,” his servant said.
“What happened?”
The servant shook his head. “I am not certain, sir.”
“How is she?”
The servant shook his head. “I cannot say.”
Malik began to run, his pulse like fire in his blood. He couldn’t get to her fast enough.
“Where is she?”
The doctor was shouting instructions and Malik’s blood pounded harder. “Doctor?”
“You cannot go to her,” he said, not looking up from the charts he was reading.
“Where is my wife?”
The doctor spoke low and fast to the assembled team and then nodded, so they scattered like leaves in the breeze, before turning to the Sheikh. “She’s in the operating theatre.”
“Why?”
“There were complications.” The doctor’s expression was grim.
“Doctor, I command you to tell me whatever it is you’re holding back. I want to know everything.”
The twins were fine. Sophia fought hard for them, even when her body was turning against her. They emerged robust and bright red, their cries loud and confident. Malik heard them from outside the Operating theatre and emotions swarmed inside of him.
He’d been told he couldn’t enter, that the room was sterile and with twins there were too many specialists on call – that it would be too crowded for another.
And a man who was used to being universally obeyed found himself deferring to the doctor even when every cell in his body was demanding he burst into the room and see for himself. See his children. See his wife.
His wife.
God. Please let her be okay now the twins had been born.
He waited, his breath partly held, his body frozen.
Then, there was a noise. A shout, and an alarm sounded. Medical teams came running. Doctors and nurses from all directions, moving in one direction.
All into Sophia’s room.
He couldn’t wait any longer.
He pushed inside in time to see a machine hooked up to Sophia’s chest, and everyone clearing while the instrument was read, then moving back with urgency. Her stomach had been cut – the babies had been born via caesarean. She was so pale. Like the sands of the desert.
Her eyes were shut. He couldn’t help it. He moved to her, closer, his throat thick as he couldn’t tear his eyes away. He looked down at her, her beautiful face so restful now, like she was asleep. And he made a guttural noise from deep within him. Her eyes lifted, slowly, with difficulty.
He felt the moment she recognised him and his chest exploded.
“They’re here,” she spoke without smiling. “Your babies.”
“Our babies.” He reached for her hand, squeezing it. She didn’t say anything. Not for a long time, and the medical staff worked frantically, pressing against her chest, doing everything they could to mend her body.
“Love them, Malik,” she said, the words obviously costing her a great effort. “Love them even when you want to push them away,” she paused, closing her eyes, and he realised she was crying, tears rolling down the side of her face. “With all that you are, please love them for me.”
Sophia had always been a fighter but finally, all the fight had left her.
Chapter Fifteen
“NO.” HE SAID THE WORD to no one and everyone. He looked around the room at the people who were working frantically on his wife. She’d fallen asleep. She’d left him.
She was gone.
But he couldn’t let her be.
He stared at her and took a step backwards, his body disconnected from his mind.
“You will make her well,” he roared, and he stared at her, but he had no hope. Nor any reason to hope. Why would life be so good to return her to him?
Why would fate reward him with her?
He’d been given the gift of this woman and he’d rejected it at every turn.
He hadn’t deserved her.
He held himself perfectly still as they worked, watching every man and woman, waiting, his body on tenterhooks. He could not look at his children, despite what she’d asked of him. He didn’t even know if they were boys or girls.
He stared at Sophia, her pale face growing more pale by the second, and he felt the world was swallowing him whole.
He knelt down beside her and did the only thing he could: he prayed.
“Don’t you leave me, Sophia.” He dropped his head forward, to hers. “Don’t you think of going anywhere.”
Four days later, he hadn’t left her side. She remained in a coma, but he spoke to her as though she were awake. He brought their children to her, their babies, two beautiful girls, and he described them in every detail to her.
On the fifth day, he began to read. He read Plato, just as his mother had read to him and Addan as children. He read Plato because he knew she loved it, and because he loved it, and because she had been right about how much they had in common.
He read Plato because it was something she’d shared with Addan and just maybe memories of his brother would stir into her mind, and bring her to life. And he wouldn’t even mind – he wouldn’t feel envy, not if it meant Sophia came back to him.
He read Plato and he refused to contemplate a world in which she didn’t wake up.
On the seventh day of her coma, he could no longer bear the grim expressions of the nurses. He asked for only one doctor – the one who didn’t look at him as though he were the only fool in the room who didn’t understand what was happening – to attend to her.
And he read Plato again, the words like an incantation, a spell, a way to magic her back to him. And sometimes, he fantasised about what that would look like. If only there was a way he could wipe away the last eight months, and take them back to the desert. To the way she’d fought so hard for their marriage, the way she’d counselled him and delighted in the people of the desert.
Even then he’d fought her. He’d pushed her away, when he’d wanted to pull her into his arms and make her his in every possible way.
His chest felt like it was going to crush and finally, he gave into the sense of brokenness that had been dogging him since then. Since he’d discovered she was pregnant and thrown the first stone that would eventually break the glass of their marriage.
He dropped his head forward, and a sob wracked from his body, the first time he’d cried since his mother had died. This was a grief unlike any other, though. There was so much guilt in it, and so much anger, so much self-recrimination and pain, because this was all his fault. His foolish, foolish fault.
“You cannot go,” he said, and lifted his lips to her forehead, pressing a kiss there, feeling her warmth that was all a courtesy of the machines she was hooked up to. “You cannot leave me. You cannot leave them. Sophia, don’t go.”
Sophia had always been a fighter, and even with her body in a coma she heard his words, they called to her, and later that same day something flickered to life, shifting in her body.
She blinked her eyes open and it was like waking from the strangest, most disconcerting dream. Everything within her body felt different. She was sore and heavy.
And she was alone.
Her eyes flew wider. Her head screamed in complaint. She pushed up, looking around. Nothing made sense. But the twins – she threw the blanket off and stared at her stomach. It wasn’t flat, but it was closer to it, and when she pressed a hand to her stomach, she knew there was no one there.
“Oh my God,” it made no sense. She looked around the room again and her eyes landed on Malik in a black armchair, his eyes shut. Her heart twisted. She skated her eyes past him, and now she saw the hospital equipment and realised she was hooked up to a thousand machines. She collapsed back against the pillows, and perhaps this motion roused Malik because he was by her side instantly.
Staring at her as though he couldn’t believe it really was her, as though she were some kind of demon or ghost, staring at her as though she were a miracle.
“Whe
re—,” her voice came out as a very dry whisper. She swallowed; it was an agony.
He reached for a plastic cup on her bedside and held it to her lips. Her eyes met his when she drank, but she couldn’t hold his gaze. It hurt too much. Everything hurt.
“Twins,” she croaked, afterwards.
He nodded. “They’re fine. Two girls.” He reached across her again and pressed a button. His expression was so grim, she was certain he was lying to her.
“Tell me, Malik. Tell me what’s happened.” It hurt to speak.
He shook his head, pressing a hand to hers, so her pulse throbbed in her body, distributing her blood. “You had complications. HELLP syndrome, and an irregularity in your heart. You passed out, and the doctor put you into a coma while your body healed…”
Blurs came back to her. Memories of being wheeled into an operating theatre, patchy and as if through a very long period of time. She shook her head. It was like a dream. She couldn’t speak those words. Her throat was raw. “The babies,” she said instead.
If she didn’t know Malik as well as she did, she’d have said he was surfing some strong emotional currents of his own. His expression was carefully guarded, but his eyes showed feelings that were overwhelming in their intensity. “I promise you, Sharafaha, they are fine.” And perhaps because he’d realised she couldn’t speak easily, he continued, “Two beautiful girls, one so like you it takes my breath away, and the other like Addan.” He squeezed her hand, and right as the door pushed open, he said, “They were born on his birthday, you know.”
Sheikhs: Rich, powerful desert kings and the women who bring them to their knees... Page 117
