Chosen for His Desert Throne

by Caitlin Crews

  “You may not care what people think of you, Anya,” her father said, making no apparent attempt to curtail the snide lash in his words. “But I’m afraid I do. However inconvenient it might be, I can hardly pretend this hasty wedding isn’t happening. It’s been all over the news.”

  “Your daughter is my choice of bride,” Tarek said, without comprehension. “She is about to become the Queen of Alzalam, the toast of the kingdom. Yet you speak of your convenience?”

  The man bristled in obvious affront. Tarek did not reply in kind, an example of his benevolence he suspected was lost on this small and unpleasant man.

  “Rescheduling is such a nightmare,” the blonde on his arm breathed, her eyes on her husband.

  “Excuse us.” Tarek’s tone was dark as he took Anya’s arm. “Let us leave you to contemplate your calendar. We will continue with the celebration.”

  He steered Anya away from her scowling father, doing his best not to scowl himself, as that would only cause general agitation in the crowds all around.

  “I cannot comprehend the fact I found you discussing your father’s inconvenience,” he said in a low voice. “As if he was not standing in the ancient palace of Alzalam’s kings, in the presence of a daughter who will become Queen. He should have been stretched out at your feet, begging your favor.”

  And would have been even a generation ago, but the wider world tended to frown upon such things in these supposedly enlightened times.

  Anya looked philosophical. Was Tarek the only one who could see the hurt beneath? And because he could see it, he could see nothing else.

  “I suppose I should be grateful that no matter what he’s doing, no matter where he finds himself or who he speaks to, my father is always...exactly the same,” she said.

  Tarek found himself even less philosophical as the night—and the week—wore on.

  The kingdom overflowed with wedding guests and those who merely wished to use their King’s wedding as an opportunity to celebrate, now that the troubles of the past year were well and truly over. There were celebrations in and out of the palace, all over the capital city and in the farthest villages alike, as the people celebrated not just Tarek and the bride he was taking, but this new era of the kingdom.

  Tarek was deeply conscious of this. He had promised them a new world, a bright future, and this was the first happy bit of proof that he planned to deliver. And in a far different way than any of his ancestors would have. His brother was in jail, the insurgents had been fought back, and Tarek had no fear of the world’s condemnation or attention—or he would not have been marrying this woman.

  Now was a time for hope. His new Queen was the beacon of that hope.

  Love grows in the most unlikely of places...the more easily swayed papers sighed, from London to Sydney and back again.

  From Convict to Queen! shouted the more salacious.

  But either way, choosing this thoroughly American career woman—all previously considered epithets to his people—was having precisely the effect on Alzalam’s image that Tarek had hoped it would. She was a success and their supposed love story even more so. All was going to plan, save his unfortunate obsession with the woman in question that he would far rather have coldly used as a pawn.

  Yet no matter where he found himself in these endless parties, dinners, and the more traditional rituals prized by his people, and no matter the current state of his insatiable hunger for Anya herself, Tarek couldn’t keep himself from noticing that Anya’s father behaved more as if he was being tortured than welcomed into the royal, ruling family of an ancient kingdom.

  “I told you,” Anya said one night, looping her arms around his neck as he carried her from her terrace into her bedroom. He had not yet moved her things into the King’s suite, in a gesture toward tradition—even if he did not intend to install her in the usual harem quarters. He wanted her much closer. “My father believes there is no greater more noble calling than his. What are kings and queens next to the foremost neurosurgeon in all the land.”

  Tarek threw her on her bed and followed her down. “He acts as if it is an insult that he is here at all.”

  Anya had sighed as if it didn’t matter to her, yet Tarek was sure he’d seen a shadow move over her face. He hated it. “He has always been easily insulted. The real truth, I think, is that he’s used to being the center of attention. That’s really all there is to it.”

  “At his own daughter’s wedding?”

  “In fairness, if I was marrying almost anyone else he really would be the center of attention. Because the father of the bride commands a different part of the wedding where we come from. At the very least he would have stacked the guest list with his friends and associates, all of whom would be far more impressed with him than a collection of royals.”

  “Anya,” Tarek had said, not exactly softly. “Why do you feel the need to treat this man with fairness when he feels no compunction to extend the same to you?”

  She had looked stricken, then kissed him instead of answering.

  Tarek understood that was an answer all its own.

  Today there had been a gathering earlier for a wide swathe of guests, but the night featured a dinner for family only. Given the size of Tarek’s immediate family, this meant a formal meal in one of the larger dining rooms, with all of Tarek’s half siblings, their mothers, and their spouses invited to make merry. Compared to the other celebrations that had occurred this week, it was an intimate gathering. Tarek should have enjoyed introducing his bride to all his sisters and brothers—save the one, who no one dared mention.

  But it was Anya’s father who once again had Tarek’s attention.

  “It is a delight to welcome your daughter to the family,” said Tarek’s oldest half sister, Nur, smiling at the sour-faced doctor. Tarek wasn’t surprised that his sister admired his choice of bride. Nur had not taken the princess route as many of their other half sisters had. She had a postdoctoral degree at Cambridge, she had married a highly ranked Alzalamian aristocrat who also happened to be a scientist, and she had never been remotely interested in or impressed by poor Nabeeha, at large in Canada. “A real doctor in the palace at last. I fear I am merely a doctor of philosophy, myself.”

  Anya smiled. “You’re very kind.”

  Beside her, her father snorted.

  That was objectionable enough. But Tarek found himself watching Anya. At the way she lowered her gaze and threaded her fingers together in her lap, as if she was trying to calm herself down. Or as if her father had not merely made himself look foolish, but had hurt her in some way.

  Unacceptable, Tarek thought.

  “I wouldn’t call Anya a real doctor,” her father said with a sniff. “There is such a thing as a waste of a medical degree. And for what? To wear pretty dresses and play Cinderella games? What a travesty.”

  Nur drew back, appalled. Anya’s chin was set, her gaze still on her hands in her lap.

  Tarek found he’d had enough.

  “You forget yourself,” he said softly from his place at the head of the table. Though he did not project his voice on the length of it, he knew that the rest of his family heard him.

  A stillness fell over the room.

  The doctor was staring at Tarek. “I beg your pardon?”

  “It is denied,” Tarek retorted. He leaned forward in his chair. “I do not know where it is you imagine you are, but let me enlighten you. This is the kingdom of Alzalam. My kingdom, which I have bled to defend.” There was a chorus of cheers at that, startling the older man. “You are sitting at my table. The woman you insult will be my wife the day after tomorrow. Men have died for lesser insults.”

  There was more murmuring down the length of the table, rumbles of support from his family.

  But Anya’s father only blinked at him. “Anya would be the first to tell you that she hasn’t quite lived up to expectations. She wa
s raised to make a difference, not to...”

  “Not to what?” Tarek asked.

  Dangerously.

  He shouldn’t have been doing this, he knew. Not because there was any weakness in a man defending his woman—quite the opposite. A man who did not happily and thoroughly defend his woman, in Tarek’s opinion, was no man at all. But because Anya would likely not thank him for complicating her family affairs.

  But it was too late.

  “Preston,” said the man’s wife, fluttering helplessly beside him. “You haven’t even touched your food.”

  “Don’t insert yourself into things you don’t understand, Charisma,” he replied in a cutting tone that made his wife—and daughter—flinch. “The adults are talking.”

  “Dad,” Anya said then, in a fierce undertone. “This is not the time or the place.”

  “My daughter is a smart girl,” the doctor said, glaring at Tarek. “I had high hopes that she might lead with her intellect. Make the right choices. But instead, this spectacle.” He shook his head and looked at Anya. Pityingly, Tarek was astonished to note. “I told you what would happen if you joined that traveling aid organization. I even dared to hope that prison might get your head on straight for a change.”

  Anya shook her head at him. “You say that as if you were actually aware that I was in a dungeon all that time. I was under the impression you were maintaining plausible deniability so as not to make golf at the club too awkward.”

  “Of course I knew you were in prison, Anya,” her father snapped at her. “I can hardly avoid camera crews on my front lawn. What I don’t understand is how you could come out of an experience like that and decide to make your life even less intelligible. What do you intend to do? Sit on a throne as you while your days away? Useless in every regard?”

  Tarek did not like the way that Anya flushed at that, flashing a look at her stepmother. He remembered what she’d told him. That her stepmothers were allowed to be pretty and useless while she was meant to be smart. And it was clearly a downgrade to move from one column to the other.

  “You will stop speaking, now,” he decreed, and though the older man’s eyes widened as if he planned to sputter out his indignation, he didn’t make a sound. Like the coward he clearly was. “I will not bar you from your daughter’s wedding, but one more word and I will have you deported.”

  Nur, sitting across from the Americans, did not applaud. Neither did her husband. But down the table, their other half siblings were not so circumspect.

  “Tarek,” Anya murmured. “Please.”

  Tarek kept his gaze trained on the man before him. The man who’d put shadows on his bride’s face on what should have been a joyous occasion. More than once.

  This was unforgivable as far as he was concerned.

  “You and I know the truth, do we not?” Tarek did not look at Nur when she made a soft sound of agreement. Or at Anya, though he could sense her tension. “Your daughter is smart. Far smarter than you, evidently, which I imagine has scared you from the start. You wanted to control her, but you couldn’t. And now look at you. A tiny little rooster of a man, prancing around a palace and acting as if it is his very own barnyard. It is not. I am a king. You are a doctor whose worth lies only in the steadiness of his hands. And your daughter has saved countless lives and will now save more in a different role, because that is real power. Not ego—”

  The older man opened his mouth.

  Tarek lifted a brow. “I do not make idle threats.”

  He waited as Anya’s father turned an alarming shade of red. Tarek shot a look at Nur, who started up the conversation anew, and then Tarek sat back and stopped paying the older man the attention he did not deserve.

  And it was only when the room filled with warmth and laughter again that Anya looked over at him and smiled.

  Then mouthed her thanks.

  Tarek had received gratitude before in the form of treaties. Surrenders. Invaluable gifts too innumerable to name, many of which were displayed with pride in this very palace.

  But Anya’s simple thank you lodged inside him like a heartbeat.

  Until his chest felt filled with it—with her. Until it threatened to take his breath.

  Until he wondered what he was going to do with this.

  How was he going handle this woman he needed to be his Queen when she made him feel?

  And not like the King he was—but like the regular man he could not permit himself to become.

  Because Tarek knew well the cost of forgetting himself.

  Rafiq had been the only person alive Tarek had felt he could truly be himself with. They had been so close. Tarek had depended on him. And Rafiq had used that affection to stab Tarek in the back.

  Literally.

  “You cannot permit yourself the failings and petty feelings of common men,” his mother had told him time and time again. “In a king these are fatal flaws, Tarek. Remember that.”

  He remembered her words too well.

  What was he going to do?

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE DAY OF the wedding dawned at last.

  Anya had been waiting for the sun to rise for hours, unable to sleep.

  She had been ceremoniously escorted to her bedchamber the night before by Tarek’s sisters and aunts. It was tradition for the groom’s relatives to guard the bride and so they had, though the royal family’s version of “guarding” had included more laughter and abundant food. They had told Anya involved tales about Tarek as a child, omitting any mention of his treacherous brother. They had painted her pictures of what he’d been like as an adolescent, too aware of the weight he would one day carry.

  All with a kind of easy, warm familiarity that Anya had never experienced before. She hardly knew what to call it.

  It wasn’t until she’d gone and stretched out in her bed with only the moon for company that she realized it was...family. They were a family. More, they acted the way she had always imagined a family should. Teasing, laughing. Gestures of quiet support when more serious topics were addressed. The very fact they’d all gathered together to celebrate Anya when all they really knew about her was that she was Tarek’s choice of bride.

  But they loved him, so that was all they needed.

  Anya had stared out at the moon and accepted a hard truth. She had long told herself that she didn’t need the connections that other people took for granted. She had her chilly father, she’d told people when the subject came up, and that was more than enough family for her, thank you. She had friends, though she didn’t see them often enough.

  But Tarek’s family wasn’t the Turner version of family. It was the version she realized now that she’d always imagined in her head—but had assured herself didn’t exist.

  It left her something like shaken to discover that she was wrong.

  More, it made her miss Tarek.

  The solid weight of his stare. The sheer perfection of his body and the things he could do with it. The fire that burned so bright between them that she found she didn’t want to live without it, not even for a night.

  She suspected she knew what words she could use to describe all the things she felt about the man she was marrying, and none of them were practical. None of them were appropriate press releases.

  But they were right there on her tongue. Dangerously close to spilling out at the slightest provocation.

  “Until tomorrow,” Tarek had murmured much earlier that night, out in the desert where they had taken part in rituals he told her his people had considered holy since the earth was young.

  It had felt more than holy to Anya.

  The sand and the sky. The stars.

  The two of them in a circle of fire while the elders sang over them.

  Anya sighed now, remembering the stark beauty all around them. The press of the songs and chants against her skin, winding all around
their clasped hands.

  “If I hadn’t ended up in your prison, I never would have known,” she’d whispered to Tarek. “How much beauty there is in the world. Particularly here.”

  Particularly you, she’d thought, perilously close to letting those words she shouldn’t say spill out to join the rest of the night’s magic.

  “Tomorrow, habibti,” he’d said, his dark eyes gleaming.

  Out on her favorite chaise, Anya waited as the sun rose. The city below her shook itself to life in preparation. Songs filled the air, alive with the sweetness of the coming day. She pulled her throw tighter around her, breathing in the desert air mixed with the palace’s usual bakhoor, a smoky scent that would always be Tarek to her. She sighed as the first tendrils of light and color snuck across the sky while she watched. Yellows and oranges. A glorious purple.

  As the sun climbed, the air warmed.

  Anya did, too.

  And the light danced all over her, reminding her that she was still free. That stone cells were a thing of the past. That what lay before her might not look like anything she’d thought she wanted—or should want—but made her feel, finally, that it might actually be possible to be happy.

  A revolution, she thought.

  Only then did she get up and head inside to begin the long process of getting ready for her wedding. Her royal wedding that would be broadcast around the world as part of the press release portion of the bargain she’d made with Tarek.

  And in Alzalam, wedding preparations were a largely public affair. Her seamstresses swept in and out. All of Tarek’s family returned, flooding in as if the dressing of the bride was a party they were throwing—more for themselves than her.

  Once Anya was dressed in her finery and several thousand photographs had been taken, men were allowed in as well. Trays of food were brought in while the guests mingled all throughout the sprawling suite. Anya stood in one of the smaller salons, catching glimpses of herself in the enormous mirror propped against the wall while she thanked the guests for coming, one after the next, until it was all little more than a blur.