by Dani Collins
The woman left and Angelique and Trella helped Hasna into her gown. She was a vision, with a distinct line of maturity setting her shoulders and running like a line up her spine. Some might see it as her wedding causing this coming-of-age moment, but Angelique knew it was the necklace she kept touching. The memories of time lost with a cherished brother.
It was another tear in the fabric of Kasim’s family and Angelique silently ached for all of them.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder,” Trella said, linking her hand with Angelique’s. “Oh, look at you, crying over how beautiful she is! Our tender little Gili. We used to call her Puddles. She hated it.”
Her sister was being Trella, giving Angelique an excuse for the tears that were filling her eyes because yes, she was proud of their work, but she was bombarded by so much emotion in this moment. She hurt for Hasna and Fatina, Kasim and Jamal. At the same time, she saw the dress as a symbol of what had brought Kasim into her life. It was exactly what she would never wear when walking toward him. In fact, today especially, she couldn’t go near him. In future, it would be far too painful to approach him, not that she expected to bump into him anywhere.
The wedding reception was the last time she would ever see him and she wanted to weep openly with her loss, until she collapsed in a heap.
Trella squeezed her hand in comfort, as though she felt the echo of agony that clenched Angelique’s heart.
Hasna’s bouquet dropped an inch and her come-and-go smile faded into misery.
“You have both worked so hard to make this day absolutely perfect and—” Her gaze briefly met Angelique’s, but she quickly shielded her thoughts with a sweep of her lashes. “I can’t believe I have to ask you for another favor. Sadiq will kill me if he knows, but my mother wants a picture of the three of us. She said it’s about the dress, but I know it’s because she’s excited to have the first photos of you both together in public.”
Hasna looked embarrassed and angry, but resigned.
Angelique glanced at Trella, worried the photo request was too high a price. If Trella wanted to refuse, she would back her up, even if it meant they were both expelled from the wedding, the palace and Zhamair.
Even though it would mean not catching a last glimpse of the man she loved.
Trella smiled even as her fingers tightened on Angelique’s.
“Of course,” Trella said. “I knew photos would wind up in the press and I’m only sorry it might overshadow your special day. But if you’re not bothered by that, then I’m not. You, Gili?”
Angelique shook her head and tried to bolster Hasna by saying, “Anything for you, because you make Sadiq so very happy. You know how much we want that for him.”
Hasna’s smile returned, shakily, then beaming with anticipation. She blinked. “Yes. He’s lucky to have such good friends. Me, too.” She touched her pendant and nodded. “I’m ready.”
* * *
When it came to levels of power, there were elected officials, religious leaders, authoritarian dictators and right at the very top of that heap: Mother of the Bride. When she also happened to be a queen, she accomplished great feats with a single sentence.
“You cannot expect Hasna to give up the prestige of hosting such rare guests for a woman who may or may not join this family.” Her tone implied that she would veto Kasim’s prospective bride completely if she impacted the illustriousness of Hasna’s day.
His mother didn’t know the reason Hasna had become so insistent on having all of The Sauveterre Twins at her wedding. Kasim had gone to see his sister last night, when he’d returned from the desert. She had known the moment she saw the pendant that Jamal was alive. “You would have shown this to me before, with all the rest.”
As the truth had come out, she had railed at him, and cried bitterly, but she understood that it had been Jamal’s choice, and the people truly at fault were their parents. He hoped she had managed a few hours of sleep after that. He hadn’t, too aware that Angelique was close, but essentially gone from his life.
Then, just before the ceremony, he had held out his arm to escort Fatina to her place behind the king and queen. She had been trembling, her face a stiff mask, as she’d said, “I saw what you gave to the princess.”
Her eyes had held a maelstrom of emotion, topmost resentment and betrayal, but underscored by a glittering return of hope.
He would owe her some explanations, too, he supposed. At least he was able to brood unnoticed as the attention through the reception was drawn in a completely different direction.
Watching the wedding guests behave like the twins were creatures in a zoo made Kasim sick. They had all been briefly introduced at the receiving line, Angelique removing her hand from his like the contact had burned. Her eyes had remained downcast and his heart had been a tortured knot from the moment he saw her coming to the moment she’d disappeared into the crowd.
Her brothers now bookended their sisters, Henri on Trella’s right, Ramon on Angelique’s left, all posed in a row like movie stars to allow photographs, the men wearing dark green, the women a lighter shade, so all their eyes flashed like emeralds. Their smiles were aloof and unbothered.
They were a sight, so very good-looking, tall and flawless and so startlingly the same. An old woman touched Ramon like she wasn’t sure he was real. He said something that made her cover a titter and blush. Angelique sent her brother a reproving look and pinched his arm.
Kasim’s lungs felt tight as he memorized the vision of her. His heart had echoed her voice through him with every pound since she’d said, I love you.
Respect someone weaker. Did she not know how weak she made him?
He fantasized about having a second wife. The wife he really wanted. He loved her, too.
And claiming her would make him just like his father.
He ran a hand down his face, ensuring none of this struggle was evident as he gritted his teeth and tried to get through the hours of this everlasting wedding.
A servant touched his arm. “You must come,” he said. “The king.”
What now? Kasim stalked after the man, taking a relieved breath as they went through a door and the worst of the noise was closed out behind them. “Where is he?”
“The doctor is with him in the Consort’s Chamber.”
“Doctor?” Kasim’s heart lurched. He strode past the man up the stairs to more quickly reach Fatina’s suite.
Her rooms were at the far end of the wing from the royal apartments, but it didn’t surprise him that his father was there. It did shock him to find his mother coming toward the same door from the other direction, expression tense. Fatina’s maid was trailing behind her, obviously having fetched her with the same urgency.
This was serious.
Kasim’s mind raced. Should Hasna be called away from her guests? Was it that bad? He pushed into the lounge and found his father being loaded onto a stretcher, an oxygen mask over his gray face. He wasn’t conscious.
“What happened? What have you done?” The queen was quick to accuse Fatina.
Not her. Me, Kasim thought.
Fatina was crying, tail end of her scarf bunched up to her mouth, shoulders shaking with sorrow.
“Why was he even here when he should be downstairs with his guests? You—”
“Mother,” Kasim said through his teeth. He looked to the doctor.
The royal physician wore a very grave look. “We will do what we can. Perhaps the queen should accompany us in the helicopter.”
For potentially his father’s last moments. Kasim’s insides clenched.
As they all looked to Kasim for direction, he thought about the guests downstairs. The woman he’d used to needle his father—not to score points, but because he loved her.
The end result was the same, however. He had given his father a heart att
ack.
Kasim felt not just the weight of decisions that would have to be made in the next five minutes, but the weight of a nation landsliding to rest with infinite weight upon his shoulders. Even if his father recovered, Kasim was the man in power until he did.
And he didn’t deserve it.
He had thought his father’s censure had hung heavily around his neck. His own self-contempt was worse.
“Mother,” he prompted. The word stuck in his throat. “I will follow with Hasna as soon as we can.” And Fatina. He wished he could give her the honor of flying with the man she loved. She was rocking in her chair, face buried in her scarf as she tried to stifle her sobs.
Turning to a servant, he ordered them to have Hasna and Sadiq wait for him in one of the anterooms downstairs. He would tell them first, then make the announcement.
And he would say an unspoken, but final goodbye to Angelique.
I don’t want to be the reason you two went to war the day before your sister’s wedding.
Nevertheless, she was. She would never see this differently and neither would he.
* * *
Do you need me? I will stay if you want me to.
Angelique had rather foolishly sent the text as the wedding fell apart and Kasim disappeared, presumably to have a police escort to the hospital where his father was struggling to hang on to his life.
He didn’t respond. Not that day, not before she left Zhamair, not as his nation went into mourning at the news of their king’s demise, and not after his father was laid to rest and Kasim was crowned king.
She followed all of it, doing exactly what she had told him once she would never do. She stalked him online and even read what was said about the two of them, reliving their various moments together, not caring about the inaccuracies and wild theories and outright lies.
As one week turned into two, then three and more, it became obvious that he didn’t need her. He took his rightful place on the throne and seemed fully in control of all he surveyed. Infinitely resilient and autonomous.
Now she felt vulgar for having sent the text in the first place. All she had wanted was to reach out to him in that moment when he must have been so anguished, but who was she to think she had anything a king could need?
It hadn’t struck her until afterward that her presence at the wedding might have been the catalyst for his father’s heart attack. Kasim had been so remote as he’d made his announcement that the king had been taken to hospital, so very stately and contained, yet she had sensed his agony.
Now she wondered—did he blame himself? Her?
She wished she hadn’t been so quick to climb on her high horse at the oasis. She should have stayed there with him. No, that was selfish. It might have made things worse with his father. Of course, how could the outcome have been any worse than death? Still, she had been so preachy when really, she had been doing what he had accused her of. She had hidden behind her family because she loved Kasim so deeply, it scared her.
And leaving without having spent a full night at the oasis didn’t mean she hurt any less now.
She hurt for both of them, so much so she went online yet again and walked straight into a statement from a source “close to the king.” A marriage was being arranged and an announcement would be forthcoming.
She couldn’t tell if it was an older statement made by his father or something Kasim might have said recently.
Either way, it rattled her all over again and drove her away from looking at any kind of screen for days.
She had to get on with her life.
But she couldn’t make herself go back to Paris. She had come to Spain from the wedding, to lick her wounds, allowing her mother to mollycoddle her now that Trella was so much better and spending the bulk of her time in Paris.
Trella had finally confided a few details about her night with the Prince of Elazar to Angelique and was dealing with the fallout from it—big fallout—but she was fiercely determined to handle things alone and not lean on her siblings again, particularly her twin. It was both admirable and worrying, but Angelique had to let Trella muddle through and just impress on her sister that she was here if she was needed.
Even though she felt as useful as a milquetoast.
Thank God they had Sus Brazos, the family compound. “Her arms,” it meant, referring to the safety of their mother’s arms. They had taken to calling it that when Trella had retreated here.
Trella might have come to see the family stronghold as a prison, but Angelique needed it rather desperately. The gated compound overlooked the Mediterranean, ever inspiring with its expansive view. The buildings were a gleaming white, the main villa obscenely luxurious and up-to-date even though it had been built when her parents first married. The staff were all such longtime employees they were a type of extended family.
It made her feel safe and cosseted in every way, which allowed Angelique to relax as she ate quiet meals with her mother, walked the gardens, sunbathed and sketched, turned in early and tried to heal her broken heart.
The days were very predictable here, which was part of its charm. And it was also why she was so stunned when she was interrupted while watching seabirds diving into a churning pool out on the water. She had a guest at the gate, she was told.
“The King of Zhamair.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
ANGELIQUE WORE A summer dress in pale pink with tiny ivory polka dots. It had a high neck, but bared her golden shoulders and accented her slender waist and long legs, falling in layers of tall slits and sharp points. Her hair was in a high ponytail and she pressed her lips together over what he suspected was a fresh coat of lipstick. She seemed breathless as he was shown into their lounge.
“Welcome,” she said, pressing her palms together. “My mother isn’t here, I’m afraid. She had a luncheon with friends. She’ll be sorry she missed you. Shall I order coffee? Your Highness?”
Kasim felt like it was their first meeting all over again. She was treating him like a stranger and was too beautiful for words, emptying his mind of all but base masculine thoughts. His perfectly tailored suit felt too tight.
Still, he found himself letting out his breath, relieved to finally see her, but exasperated by the fact he’d had to chase her down in Spain when he’d expected to find her in Paris.
“Excellency,” he corrected absently. “And no to coffee.”
Her mouth twitched, probably thinking he sounded pretentious. She had never been particularly impressed by his station, which was part of her charm for him.
She sent a jerky nod to dismiss the maid and said, “Let me guess. You’d prefer to stand?”
“I would. Why is that funny?” he demanded as he heard the tiny noise she tried to stifle. “I’ve been sitting for hours, traveling to Paris then here.”
“Paris?” The news arrested her.
“To take Fatina to see Jamal.” It had been a bittersweet joy to embrace his brother again. As he’d met his brother’s partner, and left Fatina to reunite with her son, Kasim had felt as though his last barrier to being with Angelique had been removed.
But now, as he entered the inner sanctum of her world, and recalled how she’d been treated like a museum exhibit at his sister’s wedding, he wondered if he was taking too much for granted. The wife of a king was not exactly a low-key profile. Why would she want to take on such a position? He was struggling with the elevation in circumstance himself and it was only one notch.
“He does live in Paris, then? I wasn’t sure,” she said.
“Hmm? Oh. Jamal. No, he doesn’t. It was complicated.” A cloak of weariness fell over him. He wanted to throw off his gutra and shave his beard and be the man of lesser responsibilities he’d been when they’d first met.
But he was king now. And was expected to marry.
“It has been
a very complicated, demanding few weeks.”
“Of course. I’m so sorry about your father. I should have said—”
“Your mother’s card was among the rest,” he cut in. “My mother appreciated the gesture.”
“She must be devastated. And poor Hasna, to lose her father on her wedding day. How is she?”
“Grieving. We all are. They curtailed their honeymoon.” But he was glad his sister had such a stalwart support in her husband. It was one less weight on his own shoulders.
Angelique nodded, mouth pouted as though she wanted to say something, but knew there was nothing to say. As she looked at him, her eyes brimmed.
“Don’t.” He flinched, took a step toward her, then veered away, running a hand down his face in frustration. “I’m so tired of tears, Angelique.”
* * *
She swallowed, trying to choke back the emotions swamping her. But she couldn’t take it in! He was here, and so blindingly handsome. His eyes were dark and unreadable, but riveting. His mouth was stern, tension pulling at that sexy mouth of his.
He wore his beard, precision trimmed to frame his face, and also his gutra.
He had come to her world, but still had one foot in his.
Her heart panged because she felt firmly shut out of that side of his life. Shut out of all of it, really.
She drew a breath, but didn’t know what to say.
He looked her over in the way he did sometimes, like he was taking in her hair or clothes or the set of her shoulders or the angle of her foot, but really, he was seeing what those things revealed. Like he was reading her. Seeing her.
It made her feel so transparent it was painful. She struggled to hold on to her composure. “This is just really...confusing. I’m not sure why you’re here.”
“After ignoring your text, you mean?”
She shrugged a shoulder, cheeks stinging with embarrassment all over again. “It wasn’t appropriate of me to send it. I realized afterward that our going to the oasis may have contributed...” Her voice dried up. She didn’t want to think she was to blame for his father’s death.
