by Dani Collins
Now he was everything, her entire world, filling her, possessing her, driving her to new heights that they reached together, so intense she sobbed in glory.
Spent, she fell asleep in his arms, clinging to his damp body as if he could save her from her own subconscious.
But the lioness stalked her into the morning light.
When she woke, she knew what she had to do.
* * *
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Karim asked twice over breakfast. It was usually a private meal now. He let their aids in when they were nursing their second cup of coffee, rarely before. “You’ll feel better if you talk it out.”
“It’s silly,” she prevaricated, but couldn’t find the dismissive smile she needed. “Just a silly dream.”
He knew she was lying to him. She could tell by the grim frown overshadowing his stern gaze. It chilled her heart to disappoint him and even worse, deserve his consternation.
“I don’t want to relive it,” she said, miserable at not being able to share.
His mouth twitched with dismay, but he let the subject drop. A few minutes later, he rose to start his day.
When she was certain he was on the far side of the palace, she texted Niesha, Zufar’s wife and the new Queen of Khalia. With so much going on, she had barely absorbed her brother’s email yesterday concerning his new wife and the startling possibility she could be the lost Princess of Rumadah.
It wouldn’t have surprised her in the least if Niesha hadn’t returned her message, preferring to take time to absorb her own life changes, but she video-called Galila a short time later. Galila dismissed the maid in her room and answered, forcing herself to strike a casual pose on the end of a sofa, as if she wasn’t wound so tightly with nerves she was ready to snap. It took everything in her to get through a few gentle inquiries after Niesha’s situation and well-being.
“Thank you so much for calling me back,” Galila said when she felt she could steer the conversation to her own interests. “I don’t know what made me think of a particular keepsake of my mother’s, but I wondered if it was on the shelf in your room? Would you be able to show me? It’s an ebony bookend with a lioness cast in gold.”
“I’m so sorry,” Niesha said. “All her rooms have been completely redecorated, but your mother’s things were boxed up and put into storage. Nothing was discarded. It’s all safe.”
“No apology is necessary. Of course, you made it your own.” Galila spared a brief thought for how odd it must be for Niesha to be living as a queen, rather than a maid. They were equals now and Galila had to remember that, but she was fixated on learning the truth. “Do you recall seeing a bookend with a lioness, though?”
“I don’t recall it, no. Let me check with Zufar. I’m sure he’ll agree you should be the one to have her things. I’ll have them shipped to you.”
It wasn’t exactly the answer she wanted. Galila had hoped to solve the mystery in seconds. Instead, she had to act like it was a trifling thing, not an obsessive worry.
“Whenever you have time,” she said with a flick of her hand. “I don’t want to disturb you when you have so much going on.”
The more Galila thought about it, however, the more she was convinced that Karim’s father, King Jamil, had been her mother’s lover. The timing fit with Adir’s age and her own father’s diplomatic tour. A brief glance at Zyria’s history online confirmed that Karim’s father had died very shortly after her father had returned to Zyria.
Had his death been a catalyst for her mother telling her father about her pregnancy? Had Jamil’s accident even been an accident?
She couldn’t help dwelling on every possibility as she waited for the boxes to arrive.
What if Karim’s father had been her mother’s lover? That would mean Adir was Karim’s half brother, too. How would he react to that news?
Not that she could burden him with any of this. Definitely not until she had more evidence than a spooky dream.
But if it did turn out to be true, was it wise to tell him? He would have to keep it from his mother, who still held Jamil so close to her heart. What of the political ramifications? Zufar was already dealing with an embittered man who blamed him for the loss of his birthright. She couldn’t subject Karim to the same.
A sensible woman would leave the mystery unsolved, but she couldn’t let it go. At the same time, keeping all of this inside her was like trying to ignore an abscess. It throbbed and ached in the back of her throat, flaring up and subsiding as she pretended to Karim that she was fine, all the while waiting on tenterhooks for news that the shipment of boxes had arrived.
A week later, rather than bother Niesha again, she had her assistant speak to the palace in Khalia. The boxes had finally left and should arrive in a day or two.
Somehow, knowing they were on their way was far worse than if they hadn’t left.
* * *
“Should I cancel our dinner engagement tonight?” Karim asked over breakfast.
“Pardon?” Galila’s gaze came back from staring at nothing and focused on him. She seemed to become aware that her coffee was halfway to her mouth and set it down without tasting it. “Why would you do that?” she asked.
Because she had been positively vacant the last few days. He wanted to know why. This was usually her favorite time of day, when she had him all to herself. She usually flirted and chattered, reminded him to call his mother and asked if he had any preferences for upcoming menu choices. She might sidle up to his chair and kiss him if she was feeling particularly sensual.
She’d become downright remote of late, though.
He hated it.
“You’re not yourself. Is there something we should discuss?”
“What? No! I’m completely fine.” A blatant lie. “Just...distracted. Should I let the staff in?” She rose to do it.
“Does it have to do with Adir? Because I have news.”
“You do?” She swung back, interest sharp.
“He married Amira. She’s expecting. Sooner than one would anticipate, given she was supposed to marry your brother a month ago,” he added drily. “My reports are that they’re quite happy.”
“Oh. I thought she must have had some sort of relationship with him, to be willing to go with him like that. It’s good to know she’s well.” She stood with her hands linked before her, still taking it in, chewing her lip and pleating her brow. “That’s all you learned?”
For some reason, the way her gaze searched his caused the hair on the back of his neck to stand up.
“Yes.” The word why? stayed locked in his throat.
With a thoughtful nod, she let in their staff, curtailing further discussion.
* * *
Galila wanted the lion on hand to compare to the lioness when—if—it arrived. Would Karim miss it if she removed it from his study? At the very least, she needed a fresh look at it. She wanted to search for a signature or an identifying engraving or seal—anything that might prove it was one of a pair.
She would take a few photos on her phone, she decided, as she crossed to the far side of the palace.
Karim had left their breakfast room about an hour ago for his day of royal duties. Would he cancel their dinner? She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Her mind was a whirlwind these days, one where she could barely take in what Karim had said about Adir and Amira when she was so focused on discovering who Adir’s father was. Obviously her distraction was beginning to show, but she couldn’t tell Karim what was bothering her until she could provide a definitive answer.
Much like the first time when she had arrived without warning, she was invited to wait in his study. She again insisted he should not be interrupted. She wanted to be alone for this.
The bookend was exactly where she had seen it the first time. It was surprisingly heavy. She turned it this way and that on the shelf, taking
photos, then tilted it to look at the bottom.
There was a date that fell a few weeks into Galila’s father’s trip away. The artist was someone she didn’t know, but she would look up the name later. Where was he located? Zyria? Khalia? Somewhere in between where lovers might meet?
Most tellingly, the piece was called Where Is She?
Her heart began to thump as she instinctively guessed the other would be called Where Is He?
“They just told me you were waiting.”
Karim’s voice startled her so badly she dropped the bookend, narrowly missing her foot and crying out with alarm as she leaped back from it.
“Did it hit you?” Karim grasped at her arm to steady her, then crouched, trying to examine her foot.
Galila stumbled back, certain her guilty conscience gleamed bright as full moon on a clear night. “I’m fine,” she stammered. “Did I break it? I’m so sorry. I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Worry about your foot.” He picked up the bookend and rose, turning it over and weighing it in his hand. “I don’t think a nuclear bomb could hurt this thing, but you would be in a cast if it had landed on your toes. What was so engrossing about it?”
“I don’t know,” she babbled, finding it increasingly impossible to lie to him, especially when she had been working so hard to coax him to open up to her. “It’s just a very well-crafted piece, don’t you think?”
He narrowed his eyes and studied it more closely, reading the bottom before slowly setting it on the shelf and nudging it up against the books.
“It belonged to your father, I imagine? I would feel horrible if I had dented it.”
“It’s fine.” He folded his arms and frowned at her. “What did you need?”
“I—” She couldn’t say Nothing. Not when she had said she needed to speak to him and would wait here for a private audience. Last night, when she had decided to come here to examine the bookend, she had conjured a question about Adir and Amira, but he had answered that this morning. They had private conversations every day over breakfast. She had no good excuse for being here.
Fighting to keep her gaze from drifting back to the lion, she racked her brain.
“Is it whatever you’ve been hiding from me?”
Her heart took a hard bounce, causing her voice to stutter. “W-what?”
She knew damned well her gaze was rife with culpability as it rose to his. She watched his own narrow like a predatory bird swooping into a nose dive.
“You think I can’t tell? We’re so attuned, I sense the slightest shift in the cadence of your breath and the change of scent on your skin. You’re worried about something. You avoid my eyes—” He muttered an imprecation. “You’re doing it now. Look at me.”
She couldn’t. Guilt weighed her lashes along with her shoulders and even her head on her neck. She couldn’t tell him, though. Not until she knew for sure.
This morning, when he had mentioned Adir, she had wondered if he had learned Adir was his half brother. Now, through her panic, she recalled something else that had penetrated the edges of her mind during that conversation. A suspicion that had been overshadowed by her turmoil over a pair of bookends.
It was something she wasn’t quite ready to acknowledge because she could be just as wrong about that as she might be about his father. But she would rather speculate on that than the other.
“I think I’m pregnant.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
KARIM HEARD THE words but they didn’t make sense. They weren’t bad, just astonishing. “How?”
She rolled her eyes. “Do not tell me to have ‘the talk’ with you. Not the way we’ve been carrying on.”
He couldn’t help smirking at that, but then frowned in confusion. “I said you could use birth control. You said you wanted to.”
“Yes, well.” She wrinkled her nose and gave her hair a self-conscious flip. “I was annoyed with you the day I came in here to discuss that. The doctor was very patronizing, making it sound like I had to take something. As if it was your decision that I shouldn’t conceive. You’ll recall that we weren’t even having sex at the time...” She looked at her manicure, embarrassed by her pique that day, but also blushing at how uninhibited she’d been with him.
“I remember.” His voice held a warm, delicious undertone, one that made her toes curl. “So you didn’t go on anything?”
“I had a small tantrum about it at the doctor’s, then came here. I kept thinking I should go back and get it sorted, but I don’t care for him, so I never did.”
“He’s been my doctor all my life. He’s very thorough.”
“And I’m sure you would enjoy discussing your personal life with my female doctor back in Khalia, who is also very thorough,” she said pertly.
“Point taken. See if she wants to relocate.”
“I’ve had preliminary discussions about the women’s health center and met some excellent female doctors here in Nabata. I only have to ask my assistant to book me an appointment, but—you’re going to think me the biggest idiot alive, Karim. You’re going to say I’m the one who needed ‘the talk.’”
“Why?” He frowned.
“I honestly didn’t think it would happen so fast,” she admitted with a groan. “I’ve been ignoring the signs because I feel quite stupid for thinking I could have sex and get around to starting birth control when I felt like making a visit to a new doctor a priority. I’m a grown woman. I know better.”
He laughed. It was a brief chuckle that was more of a pair of staccato exhales, but it made her insides blossom in sweetly smug triumph for squeezing that carefree noise out of him.
His amusement lingered in his expression as he shook his head in wry disbelief at her. In fact, he was so handsome in that moment, she tipped a little further into love with him.
A little further? Oh, dear. Yes. She was quite in love with him, she realized with a stutter of her heart. She looked to the floor, letting her hair fall forward to curtain her face and hide that she was coming to terms with a lot lately. How had she been so foolish as to do that though? The very thing she feared most—yearning for someone she loved to love her back—was now the definition of her marriage.
With that burning ache for a return of her affections pressing outward in the base of her throat, she asked, “Are you angry?”
“Of course not! I’m astounded, but thrilled. You told me you didn’t desire my children.”
“I was angry.” She wrinkled her nose in apology. “It turns out, I do want your baby, Karim. Very much.” So much, the magnitude of it pushed bright tears into her eyes.
His expression of utter bemusement turned tender as he cupped her face. His gaze was quite solemn.
“I’ve been thinking lately that we ought to be trying to conceive, waiting for the right time to bring it up. I’m very happy with this news, Galila. I only wish you had felt you could trust me with it sooner. Is this why you’ve been so distracted? You thought I wouldn’t approve?”
She shrugged, feeling evasive as she buried her face in his shoulder, but enormous feelings were overtaking her. Love, a kind she had never before experienced, had a breadth and depth that terrified even as it exhilarated her. Anticipation of their growing family swelled excitedly in her while profound despair countered her buoyancy. He had said he would never love her. Overshadowing all of that was the secret of his father’s possible affair with her mother, the weight of it heavy enough to crush her flat.
He closed his arms around her, though, and kissed her with such incredible sweetness, her world righted itself for a few precious seconds.
“I’m glad you’re pleased,” she said against his mouth.
“That’s two good memories you’ve given me in this room to replace my bad one.”
She was so startled by that statement she drew back and studied him.
He clearly regr
etted his remark at once. She watched his expression close up. His jaw hardened and his lips sealed themselves into a tight line.
Ah, this man of hers. He was capable of opening up, but only in very brief and narrow peeks. She traced the hollow of his rigid spine through his shirt, saying quietly, “I wondered.”
He grimaced and his gaze struck the curtains that hid the balcony beyond.
“Do you have many memories of him? Six is so young.”
“Too young for a memory like that,” he said flatly, almost as if he’d seen his father’s body, but surely not. Who would allow such a thing?
She started to ask, but he kissed each of her eyes closed. “Shall we make another pleasant memory in here?” His mouth sought hers.
She let him erase the troubling thoughts lingering in her psyche, but it was temporary. She hadn’t been completely honest with him and couldn’t be.
Not until she had found the lion’s mate.
* * *
Galila belatedly realized how tasteless it was to have her mother’s things shipped to her in Zyria. She wound up requesting they be left in a storage room in the lower palace, rather than in the royal chambers.
Then she had to wait until she had a free afternoon, which didn’t happen until she had had her doctor’s appointment and her pregnancy confirmed.
That had prompted a flurry of additional appointments with key staff who would keep the news confidential but begin preparations for the upcoming heir. She and Karim even squeezed in a day trip to inform his mother, who was beside herself at the news.
Finally, five days later, Galila was able to go with her assistant down to the roomful of boxes and begin sifting through them. They were labeled but very generally—Books, Art and Heirlooms—all words that could indicate the box held the bookend she sought.
Her assistant was beginning to nag her about being on her feet too long when she squeezed something hard and vaguely animal-shaped through a careful wrapping of linen. She asked her helpers to leave her alone for a few moments.
