“You’re wrong.”
His lips lifted in an arrogant smile. “I am never wrong.”
Indignation stole colour into her cheeks. “Yes, you are. You’re wrong right now.”
“The child stays,” he responded, his eyes straying to her plump, pink lips. Lips that he had kissed when he had no right to do so.
“I’ll fight you.”
His laugh was a harsh invective of derision. “Do you not realise how precarious your place is here?”
“You don’t scare me.” She drew herself up to her full height, admittedly a not very impressive five and a half feet, and fixed him with a glare of ice-cold determination.
“I care very little as to what effect I have on you. You are here in the palace as a sign of my goodwill. I could easily have you sent away.”
Evie felt her temperature spike as a fever of anxiety curdled her blood. “You can’t do that.”
“Of course I can. Give me a reason not to and I will consider it.” She was dressed in a simple black dress. It was linen, or some other natural fabric. It was modest and neat, but something about the way her swan-like neck dipped forward to reveal a hint of her smooth back, and the dress cinched about her waist, reminded him dangerously of her dainty proportions.
“A reason not to?” Her face was pale, her eyes sparking with anger. “Other than the fact I have been as much as parent to him as David and Sabra?”
“So you have said. But he is only little. He has nannies now, and he seems to be coping as well as could be expected with the adjustment.”
Evie stalked across the room, no longer able to keep a dignified distance. She slammed her palms down on the desk that lay between them, a surge of determination erupting through her. “He needs me.”
“What he needs is to get on with his life.”
Her fingers ached to slap him. That arrogant, handsome face, with its all-knowing declarations. “His parents have just died.”
“Two months ago,” he corrected sharply. “It is time for us all to move on.”
She was running hot and cold, her whole body quivering with disbelief. “That might be possible for a heartless automaton like you, but Kalem and I are still dealing with this …”
He might have felt sympathy for her, were he anyone else. But Malakhi was growing impatient. He needed a resolution to this conversation so that he could continue with his day’s obligations. “You should go.”
“Are you dismissing me?”
His dark eyes bore into hers and the frisson of awareness that danced along her spine whenever she so much as thought of Malakhi breathed goosebumps across her skin.
When he spoke, his voice was forcibly softened and slower, as though he could fool her into believing they weren’t at logger-heads. “You are so melodramatic. I have no interest in dismissing you. It’s only that the conversation is at an end.”
“Not by a long shot, it isn’t.”
Malakhi had an unnervingly direct stare that was capable of filling a person with self-doubt and regret. Evie felt both now.
“Sabra knew the value Kalem held for the country.”
“Sabra valued Kalem as her son …”
“Yes, of course,” he interrupted impatiently. “But my sister was a realist. She knew the price she would eventually pay for her freedoms.”
“What price?” Evie demanded. “What freedoms?”
“The freedom to be with your brother. To marry and remain abroad and anonymous. To have a child and raise him away from the palace …”
“She was a woman first, a princess second. Of course she had those freedoms.”
“Wrong,” he was scathing. “You’re as naïve as you are beautiful.” He moved towards the window, his eyes taking little relief from the stunning view in that moment. The ocean was glistening like a turquoise jewel and the sun blistered high in the azure sky, sending golden warmth over his kingdom. The town far beneath him on the hill that ran gently towards the sea was marked with small white buildings and colourful laundry was strung between the windows.
“Then explain it to me,” she hissed sarcastically, following just behind him. He was at least a foot taller than she, and broad, too. His shoulders looked capable of bearing the weight of the world.
He angled his head towards her and Evie jerked her gaze away; awareness was searing her.
“I allowed Sabra to stay in Australia, but there were always conditions.”
“You think that as her brother you had any right to dictate conditions to her?”
“Not as her brother. As her ruler.”
“That’s disgusting,” Evie shuddered. “And barbaric.”
“It is simply foreign to you. You cannot understand the way people in my kingdom feel beholden to their prince.”
“No, you’re right. I can’t.”
“And your thoughts, though interesting, have little impact on the facts here,” he said with unconcern. “My sister knew where her obligations lay.”
“To her family.”
“To me, above all else.”
Evie rolled her eyes. “Maybe you didn’t know Sabra as well as you thought.”
“Don’t.” The single word cut through her anger like a diamond on glass. His eyes clashed with hers, battling them angrily. “My sister and I understood each other.”
Evie might have argued the point were she not aware that he too was grieving. “Fine. So what do you think she felt obliged to do?”
“By Kalem’s tenth birthday, Sabra and your brother were to move to Ishala.”
Evie’s body seemed to thud to almost a complete stop. “I don’t believe … they never said that to me.”
His shrug was the epitome of carelessness. “I don’t know why they would have kept it a secret. It was something they knew to be necessary.”
“I don’t think you understand. I had dinner with them every week and babysat often. If they’d been planning to move halfway around the world they would have told me.”
“I cannot speak to that.”
“Oh. I thought you knew everything,” she snapped angrily.
His eyes were glittering his face. He lifted a hand imperiously. “I have no more time to indulge your thirst for a confrontation. The child will stay here in the palace.”
Losing Sabra and Dave had been a nightmare, but everything that had happened since then? She was gradually losing her grip on those things that mattered most to her. Panic fired her determination. “What if he comes to Australia with me until he’s ten? I’ll keep whatever agreement you had with Sabra.”
“With your husband? Do you truly think I would allow this?” He scoffed angrily. “Besides, you are not my sister,” he said with a decisive shake of his head. “You would not be able to raise him in accordance with our traditions.”
“I will raise him how Sabra wanted him raised.”
“No.” He curled his fingers around her upper arm. It had been intended as a gesture of comfort but something far more urgent lodged between them. Memories of the night before swarmed them. Her enormous dark eyes blinked up at him, lost and confused. “He stays.”
“Please don’t take him away from me,” she whispered, closing her eyes to hide her shame at having to beg.
Malakhi exhaled impatiently. Such emotional scenes were anathema to him. “He is not yours to take.”
“Yes he is,” she said, and now the tears that she contained with such effort sparkled on her eye lashes. She lifted her phone from a pocket in her dress and loaded the camera roll. “Look.” She leaned closer towards him so that he could make out the images on her screen. “How can you say he isn’t mine? He’s not my child, but he’s my little love. He’s not just some … some pawn. Some heir that you want to lay claim to, like staking a piece of land with a flag.”
There were hundreds and hundreds of photographs and they were all so happy. He spread his long, strong fingers around her phone and took it easily, flicking over the images. On autopilot, he opened one of Sabra and Kalem, laughin
g. His heart shifted as though it had been stabbed. She was so happy and full of life. Now that happiness was reduced to a pile of useless memories and her vitality had been squashed into ash and death. The next picture was just of Kalem, his face covered in mashed banana and yoghurt.
Malakhi passed the phone back, his mouth a grim line in his face. “You may visit.”
“No.” She lifted her hand and pressed it to her chest. “That’s not good enough. I want to be
“What do you suggest, Evelyn? Do you wish to remain here in this foreign country?”
“And your husband?”
Tell him the truth!
“If this is where Kalem is, then I’m here too.”
Panic wretched his body. “You don’t belong here.”
“I belong with him. And despite whatever agreement you had with Sabra and Dave, I know Sabra would want me to be with him. Especially now. Do you know how many times I’ve sung him his favourite songs? How many episodes of Thomas we’ve watched together? Do you know which are his favourite books? Which teddies comfort what nightmares? How to encourage him to wear socks with his shoes?” Tears were slipping unbidden from her eyes, marking tracks of grief all over her face. “Will you tickle him until his laughs fill the air? Will you watch him eat and wonder at the food that is making him bigger and stronger day by day? Will you love him, Malakhi? Will you love him how he deserves to be loved?”
The words barely registered. She was so angry; her face was filled with colour, her eyes shifting with emotion and her body was tense.
“Love is irrelevant,” he disputed gruffly. “He will grow within these palace walls as I did. He is destined to be a ruler, as I am.”
“Perhaps one day. But he is still a boy,” she pleaded miserably. “A beautiful, sweet, sad little boy.”
Malakhi spun away from her, furious at his own weakness where this woman was concerned. “I will think about it.” He turned once more and pinned her with a gaze that was determinedly cold.
“What does that mean?” She begged, no longer too proud to show her desperation.
“You are … not someone I would generally welcome as a palace guest, and you know why.”
“Am I really so offensive to you?”
“You know you do not offend me,” he said thickly. “You worry me.”
“Why? All I want is to be near Kalem.”
“And all I want is to possess your body, just as I wanted to then.”
Evie stared at him, torn in two by shock and pleasure.
“We agreed last night, we can’t talk like that,” she said finally, when she was capable of forming the words.
“Why not? Does that compassion you feel for our nephew not extend to me? Do you not want to comfort me? Your husband obviously has no desire to comfort you.”
Oh, how those words bubbled through her, filling her with a sense of just how they could both forget their pain. How easy it would have been to surrender to the desire and attraction that gnawed through her gut. The seeds of lust he’d planted easily years earlier had only grown and grown over time.
“Forget I said that,” he growled angrily.
Easier said than done! Evie was breathless. She spun away from him, her pulse firing angrily through her body.
“I’m not leaving Kalem.”
“And I said I will think about this,” Malakhi responded sharply. “But you should remember that we are not equals. What I say is literally law. Treat it as such.”
She whirled around, her face furious.
“Go.” He forestalled her response. “Before I change my mind and have you sent away on the next flight.”
* * *
The day was waning. Soon, it would be dusk. That magical compromise between day and night, where the secrets of one gave freely to the other. Malakhi kicked back in his seat, his powerful legs extended in front of him as his eyes chased the last rays of the sun glimmering over the buildings in the distance.
He had servants who could have sorted through the funeral correspondence for him, flagging only the most important or personal for his attention. But there was a sadistic pleasure that came from attending to it himself. A macabre way of extending the funeral process which, in an odd way, made him somehow closer to his sister.
He fingered an envelope thoughtfully, his mind in the past. Years earlier, when Sabra had been a teenager and had first encountered David Adams. It had all happened so fast. They’d buried their father and Malakhi had been learning what it felt like to rule a country and a people. His sister, always so close to him, had slipped away and he hadn’t noticed.
He shook his head, a rueful smile on his lips as he remembered their first and only argument. It had been so devastating to both to quarrel that they had agreed never to do so again. It had been a fierce disagreement: her determination to leave Ishala and live with this swarthy Australian man despite her long-standing betrothal to a high-ranking military officer.
How she had dug her heels in and told him, in no uncertain terms, that she would never think of him again if he did not allow her to move away.
What choice did he have? Her happiness had become oddly important to him: for he had realised that night that it was not guaranteed. Her happiness was contingent on someone else, someone other than him, and all Malakhi could do was rubber stamp the union.
Of course he had done so.
If he’d stood firmer, would she still be alive? Or would the cruel twist of fate that brought their helicopter down over the Muthdėr dunes to the East have happened sooner? If he’d held his ground and insisted on her going through with the marriage their parents had, in Sabra’s infancy, arranged for her, he would certainly have never met Evelyn.
He groaned and turned his focus on the letter in hand. One more.
Perhaps he’d call Leilani and pick up where they’d been forced to leave off a couple of nights earlier. Though the thought offered little interest to him in that moment.
He slit the side of the envelope with a bejewelled blade and slid the letter from its sheath.
From the desk of Nicholas Manning.
Malakhi was very still suddenly. The guy didn’t so much as show his face by his wife’s side, but he’d sent a letter? He shook his head with angry disapproval but continued to read.
His Royal Highness Malakhi Al-Sitar,
My wife and I send our deepest condolences on the occasion of your loss. Sabra and David were beautiful people. We are all better for having known them and poorer for their loss.
With sincere condolences,
NM.
CHAPTER TWO
At dusk, the sky above Ishala seemed to throb with the weight of gold and glitter. Shades of peach and purple swirled together, sparkling knowingly at the people of this ancient land. Evie breathed in the magic, wondering if it was strong enough to fill the sadness that had coated her organs in misery and grief. If anywhere in the world was capable of helping, surely it was here, high above the sea, in the middle of an ancient city, surrounded by thousands of years of love and loss.
It had been days since she’d taken part in a fiery debate with the ruler of this land. Days in which she had begun to hope against hope that this was her new home. After all, how could she leave Kalem to that cold, heartless man?
A shiver ran down her spine.
Malakhi was cold and heartless; he was ruthless and a control-freak.
But he was also passionate and fiery, heat and flame.
Memories of that scorching kiss and almost-irresistible temptation flared through her, sending her pulse into overdrive. He had kissed her as she’d imagined he would make love. His tongue had clashed with hers, his hands had pulled through her hair, his firm, strong body had pressed to hers, making her ache for more, more, more. Until sanity had intervened and Evie had pulled away, her lips swollen, her body weak.
She had never told anyone about the kiss. What would the point have been in alerting Sabra? As for Dave, how he would have laughed at her stupidity and naivety in sp
arring with the ruler of this land?
Sweat trickled down Evie’s spine, pooling in the small of her back. Her nose had little beads of perspiration across it and she stared longingly at the ocean. What it would feel like to step into its shallows so that the gentle waves could caress her feverish skin?
“Na, na,” Kalem’s little fist pointed through the air and she drew her gaze down to her nephew. His sweet earnest face wasn’t sweaty like hers. Though he’d been raised in Australia, he seemed to have effortlessly adjusted to this foreign land.
It was in his blood, she supposed. His cell memory and DNA. He was very like his uncle, with his thick hair that was curling around his nape and enormous eyes so dark they were almost black. But his smile was Dave’s, and it was hers. Impish, with little dimples in his cheeks that showed mischief making to be afoot.
She followed the line of his finger, towards a pot plant in the corner of the terrace. It was filled with flowers Evie had never seen before. Round, white heads that, as she drew nearer, were made up of thousands of individual gossamer-like threads. They were beautiful and fragile, yet with a stoicism inherent to their nature. Long stalks waved them high off the soil, and their leaves were gentle and pale. Evie crouched down beside them, marvelling at their beauty.
They were no match though for Kalem’s chief form of inquiry: his determined fist crushed around one before Evie could stop him. He pulled it from the soil and lifted it into the air. His smile showed how greatly he admired the bloom, with no concept of the fact that he had killed it. The beauty in the flower would soon wither and die. Death. It was everywhere she looked.
“Leave the others, darling,” she murmured, stroking his head and pulling his hand away, acting as a shield between his interest and the strange, exotic blooms.
He lifted the round flower to his nose, sniffing it exaggeratedly. His eyes crinkled at the corners as a smile flicked over his lips. The contented expression brought relief to her heart. To see that he was able to feel happiness despite his great loss was a blessing, indeed. How pleased Sabra would have been to know her son was able to continue finding joy in life.
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