by Marian Tee
She slowly shook her head.
“Goddammit---”
“Enough, Tarif.” The king issued the command grimly, knowing that only his interference could put an end, albeit temporary, to Tarif’s questioning. Looking at the pale, trembling woman before them, he said quietly, “It is imperative you answer the question, anisdi. What is your reason for disabling the cameras in the royal library?”
But still Anisah shook her head. “I cannot, Your M-Majesty---”
“I command you to speak the truth, Anisah.”
Her tears started to fall, and she furiously wiped them away. “I was in the library, reading the other palace historians’ accounts of the sheikh’s childhood. I wanted to know more about it. I wanted to understand it so I would n-never hurt the sheikh by doing anything that could remind him about her.”
She turned to face Tarif, hating herself for wanting to beg for his trust but even so – it was still what she ended up doing anyway. “Please believe me. That’s all I was doing.”
“And the security cameras?” he demanded harshly. “What purpose could you have for disabling them---”
“I didn’t want anyone to see what I was doing---” Tarif swore, and she realized how her words had only made things sound so much worse. “No, you misunderstand,” she cried out.
“You just fucking admitted---”
“I admit to nothing except that I love you!”
And as soon as the words were out, it was only then –
Only when she was about to lose him –
Only then did Anisah realize painfully that there was no ‘might’ about it, after all.
She was in love with Tarif Al-Atassi.
“P-Please.” Her voice threatened to break, and her heart along with it, but still she struggled to speak, needing this man she loved to believe her. “Listen to me, please. I did it for you, sheikh. I disabled the cameras because I knew there was a possibility my constant visits to the history vault could make the wrong person curious, and if that happened, stories about your childhood could surface and be used against you and the palace.”
She took a step towards him. “Please believe me---” She reached for his hands, but the sheikh only caught her wrists, and his fingers curled around her – no longer like a bond of protection this time. Instead, his fingers held her like one would cuff a criminal.
Something inside of her started to crack.
“Let her go, Tarif.” The king’s voice held a note of warning.
“There is no need to make any rash judgment, brother.” The gravity of Altair’s voice held a similar tone, cautioning Tarif from doing anything he might regret.
“We can have her detained while we search for evidence to refute or prove her claims,” Rayyan said curtly. “But until then, we must not treat her like a criminal---”
Tarif’s lip curled. “The way the whole kingdom didn’t treat my mother like a criminal until it was too late?”
A cry of hurt escaped Anisah. “I am not like your mother---”
“Are you not?” he asked bitterly. “You have always been a staunch defender of the traditional regime, anisdi. How do we know if all of this is not part of a grander scheme to bring down the palace and have our king overthrown?”
Understanding came to her in a painful flash, and her heart ached when she realized where the sheikh was finally coming from. “Oh, s-sheikh.”
The sheikh’s fingers loosened in an instant, his whole body turning rigid at the sound of her voice and the countless words in it that he knew she only meant for him to hear.
My love is real.
My love is true.
My love is yours.
“Tarif---”
“I don’t want to fucking hear a thing you say,” he snarled. All signs pointed to her betrayal. Did she not see that? Every fucking sign pointed to her making a goddamn fool of him, and still she dared to ask him to believe her?
The palace’s enemies demanded for a full-blooded Ramilian on the throne. Tarif was the only who fit the fucking description, and how fucking big a coincidence it was that he also happened to be the man she now claimed to love?
What if all those times she had resisted him were a mere ploy to keep his interest, and all along she had been planning to use him as a pawn – the way his own mother had?
“Tarif, believe me please---”
Her eyes told him that he had the power to kill or save her, but to believe that, he might as well as kill himself.
“I love you.”
To believe her would be to enslave himself under a woman who only wanted him for what he could give---
“Please…”
And so he chose…not to save her.
“How can I trust you,” he heard himself ask, “when you are your father’s daughter?”
Chapter Twenty
Tarif could not sleep.
He lay awake, minutes turning into hours, and no matter what he did, he could not get her silence – her goddamn silence – out of his mind.
Something in her had died the moment he had said those words, and after that it was as if she no longer saw or heard anything. She had sat down on her chair, tears falling down her face, and she didn’t even seem to be aware that she was crying.
The king demanded that every word of their meeting be kept secret. Altair reluctantly argued against this, saying that the matter was too crucial to not follow protocol merely because they all considered Anisah a member of the family. Malik’s temper, long buried in the days of his misspent childhood as a hotheaded youth, threatened to re-emerge any moment. He would not see a woman who had been unfailingly loyal to the palace treated like a criminal, and anyone who dared place her in cuffs would have to go through him.
As the other sheikhs’ voices started to rise, Rayyan was the only one who had gone to him, the sheikh’s calm voice masking both his thoughts and emotions as he spoke to Tarif.
She is your fiancée.
Rayyan’s words had worked like a bucket of ice water being dumped over him. In his pain, he had actually forgotten that he had asked Anisah to marry him, and the reminder had forced him to look at Anisah---
Ultimately, they’ll remember that your ties to her makes this your call. So what do you want to happen?
It was a question he had not been able to answer. At that moment, he had been unable to do anything but stare at her.
Sitting in her chair, her back painfully straight, and her eyes swollen by tears that did not show any sign of stopping, and silent – so damn silent.
Just when she had stopped begging him to talk to her, look at her, stopped caring that he believed her – how fucking ironic was it that was also the same moment he found himself unable to take his eyes off her?
In the end, the king had asked Rayyan to walk Anisah back to her apartment until they came to a decision, and it was Altair who had to tell her that they had no choice but to have guards keep a discreet watch.
The Anisah he knew – no, the Anisah he had loved – that Anisah would have demanded for an explanation.
But instead, she had only nodded and as she walked away, he had found himself clenching his fists, hoping like a goddamn fool that she would turn to look at him one last time.
But she had not.
Because he had chosen not to save her---
He had chosen to hurt her to save himself –
He had chosen to use the only words they both knew she could never forgive -
Tarif shot up in his bed.
All of a sudden, he found himself recalling the words Hyacinth spoke to him.
Smiles are a luxury to her, and so are her tears.
And yet she had smiled and cried for him.
Everything she does is to atone for sins even when she’s a victim herself!
So how in the hell could a woman like that betray their kingdom?
Tarif swore as the truth hit him, the truth that his old fears had made him blind to see because he had not wanted to risk devoting his life to
another woman who only pretended to love him. Fear gripped him as he tore out of his room, and he ran as fast as he could to get to the staff’s dormitory.
Protocol demanded that he keep his distance from her in the event that she was proven guilty.
Logic asserted that he was right to doubt her, with all the evidence pointing to her culpability.
And history – his own fucking childhood – tried to ram in the sheikh’s throat that he was once again about to turn himself into a slave of another fanatic.
But the sheikh didn’t give a damn.
Protocol, logic, history – they could go to fucking hell for all he cared.
All that mattered was that he saw her again, beg her forgiveness, and promise her that he would never doubt her again.
She loved him. He loved her.
He would never let himself forget that.
But when he saw the men outside her apartment, the bullet holes in the door---
He saw the king step out of the room, his face grim. “We were just about to call for you---”
Tarif shoved past Khalil. “Tory?” He looked about him wildly. “Tory?”
“S-Sheikh?” It was Hyacinth, pale and trembling, seated at the edge of the sofa, the one and only person in this room whose love for Anisah was as great as his, and so she was the only one he would listen to.
“Where is she?” he asked hoarsely even though he already knew.
The unmistakable, metallic scent of blood that tainted the air –
The splash of red on the floor –
Ah, God, no –
Hyacinth came running to him, and his arms closed around hers.
“Tarif.” She was crying as she pulled away and looked up at him like a girl who wanted her older brother to tell her things would be fine. “They took her away,” she sobbed. “They took her away, sheikh, they took her away, they took her away.”
****
He didn’t believe me. He hurt me. He never loved me at all. Those were the words that had hammered her brain over and over as Sheikh Rayyan walked her back to her apartment. She had found herself consumed by pain and anger, a sense of bitterness so great that if God had chosen to grant her one wish at that moment, she would have asked that she never saw Tarif Al-Atassi again.
But life had a funny, powerful way of changing one’s perspective.
When those people had come into her room and it became evident that she was being abducted, possibly even killed, Anisah had found herself no longer caring for those words at all. It was amazing, really, how having one’s life suddenly hanging in the balance made everything so painfully clear.
The things that had made her heart ache…the things that had made her cry and bleed…
All of it had ceased to matter, and all she could think of was the times that she had smiled…the times she had laughed…the times she had loved.
She clung to those memories as her abductors led Anisah past the guards whose throats they had slit, and she found herself clinging to them even harder and with greater desperation when the abductors then forced her down a secret passageway that they should have not known about.
But they had, and now they were all going to die.
In her course of reading through annals of the royal family’s history, one of the things she had learned was about the palace’s emergency protocols. To prevent infiltrators from escaping, the secret tunnels would be filled with a deadly gas whose unique formula was concocted and known only by the kingdom’s royal chemists.
And only members of the royal family were immune to this gas.
Tears started to fall even as she took her captors by surprise by suddenly putting up a struggle. There was little she despised more than crying, but it seemed as if crying was the only thing she had done in the past 24 hours, and it was all thanks to the sheikh. She knew she should hate him for it, but it only made her laugh hysterically.
How her life had changed because of him, but even now – even after everything he had done – she could not make herself regret it.
She thought of Hyacinth as she finally managed to free herself and unsheathe her dagger. She thought of her sister and Sheikh Rayyan even as she swung her dagger threateningly towards her assailants while using her other hand to yank the strip of cloth used to gag her.
If I die today, I know you’ll be in safe hands with the sheikh, Cin. Be happy for me.
Anisah covered her mouth and nose with the strip of cloth as the people around her started to choke and fall on their knees.
It was starting now.
She curled herself into a ball and pressed the cloth harder to her face while she desperately spun a fictional world in her imagination, a world in which she still had the chance to speak to…him.
Where are you?
I’m on my way, my sweet.
I don’t think you’ll make it in time.
There you go again, not trusting me.
Just like you didn’t trust me?
You got me there.
And oh, oh, oh…it was almost she really did hear the sheikh chuckle in her mind.
A knee-jerk reaction, Tory – that was all it was. I am very sorry to say that not everyone, least of all my humble self – is as perfect as you.
Humble? Ha!
What I’m saying is not all of us can have your strength, with the way you can believe in something so unwaveringly. I love you so damn much that when I thought you had betrayed me, and you were no different from my mother – I lashed out.
That was more than lashing out.
I know, my sweet. But if you want me to make up for it – you must hold on for me.
I don’t think it’s possible. But I’m glad we got to talk and we got to clear the air –
Don’t sleep, Anisah!
I love you, Tarif.
****
Every day, they would ask her if she wished to see the sheikh. He was outside her room, morning till night, and every day she would tell them, not just yet. Anisah knew that all of them – the entire hospital staff, the king and the other Al-Atassi sheikhs, Harper, Kyria, even her own sister – believed she was doing this to punish Tarif Al-Atassi for believing she was a traitor to the crown.
But they were wrong.
Almost a week had passed since she had been rescued from the palace’s secret tunnels. Tarif himself had been the first one to find her, unconscious but alive, and it was said that the sight of the sheikh carrying her in his arms, hoarsely shouting for help, had everyone who saw him weeping.
They told her that what saved her from certain death was the engagement ring he had given her, which contained a secret antidote. The longer she wore his ring, the stronger her body’s immune system grew against the toxic effects of all the deadly gases the palace utilized as a form of defense.
He could have asked for his ring back on the day you’ve been sent in for questioning, the people in the palace pointed out to her, but he had not. It meant that deep inside the sheikh, he still trusted her. And to which Anisah had only nodded without changing her mind.
She knew of course that this made them think she was being too cruel and unforgiving, but they were wrong about this, too.
Hyacinth often liked to recount how Tarif had come bursting into their apartment, hoping to beg for Anisah’s forgiveness for distrusting her, only to find out she had been abducted. Doesn’t that count for something, Nis, her sister would then ask her entreatingly. Can’t you forgive him?
And oh, how her sister was wrong about that, too.
Every night, Anisah would cry herself to sleep, begging the heavens for courage, but whenever morning came, she still had the same terror lodged in her throat, and she was still unable to take the risk of seeing him.
A movement in the shadows suddenly caught her eye, and her heart slammed against her chest as she pushed herself up to a sitting position. “Who’s there?” A figure slowly emerged from the shadows, and a cry escaped her.
“No!”
She scrambled to
leave, but the sheikh was faster – always was, really, and as he forced her arms down his strength overpowering her, a choked sob escaped hers. Did he not know that she was doing this for them?
“Tory---”
The rawness in his voice tore at her. “Please---” His hands came up to clasp her face, and she started to cry. “Please don’t make me do this. Please don’t make me look at you.”
Tarif whitened at the words. He really was too late then, he thought dully. He had failed to trust her. He had done the unforgivable by comparing her to her father. And because he had been such a fool, he hadn’t even been able to be by her side when she needed him the most.
“I’m sorry, Tory,” he said rawly. “I know the words are nothing to what you had to go through, but I am still giving you the words because they are the least you deserve.” He waited for her to say something, but all he heard was silence, and his chest clenched.
He knew he could think that all of this was deliberate, an eye for a fucking eye, – that she was doing the same thing to him that he had done to her when she had pleaded for him to believe her – but he was no longer the blind, cowardly fool he was.
Almost losing her had ripped his fears away, leaving nothing but love –
He would love her and only her in this life and the next, and it would not change.
“Tory---”
“Please don’t---”
“I love you.” And even though he hated himself for doing something that she had begged him explicitly not to do, he had to have one last look at her face before he got the hell out of her life.
“Nooooooooooo.”
But it was too late.
Their eyes had already clashed, and she was forced to confront her worst fears.
All along they had thought she had refused to see the sheikh because she no longer loved him.
But the truth was, she had only been desperate not to see the sheikh because of the opposite.
She still loved him, and she wanted to keep loving him.
She loved him so much that she knew she would never be able to take it if she were to look in his eyes and find out that the real Tarif Al-Atassi did not and could never measure up to the man she had desperately conjured in her imagination when she thought she was down to her last dying moments.
