Especially when he felt so devoid of it himself.
But Malak only smiled and moved farther into the room. “I did not wish to disturb your reading.”
He wondered why he bothered to pretend at all. Why he bothered to produce a smile, simply because he was Malak and a carefree, easy smile was what he was known for. And at the end of the day, it appeared that no matter if he took the throne or not, he still behaved the fool when given the opportunity. It was some kind of knee-jerk reaction when speaking to members of his family, maybe. All of whom had pledged their support to him—but none of whom had ever thought he’d make any kind of good king, or any kind of king at all, before Zufar’s abdication.
Malak was the only available king. He never forgot that.
But when he looked at his father, who had been promised to the throne and to Khalia since the moment of his birth, he couldn’t help but think that might be for the best. Because Malak had lived the gift of his birth as the spare.
He thought perhaps he was the only clear-eyed king that Khalia had had in years.
Maybe that was why he knew exactly where the last two kings had gone wrong.
“My aides have told me you are to be married, after all.” His father closed the book on his lap and finally aimed that gaze of his at Malak. “There appeared to be some doubt, but I’m told it has now been settled.”
How funny it was, Malak thought, that he was now the king and his father nothing but an old man with family connections, and yet when Tariq looked at him in that particular manner Malak still felt like a rowdy teenager called to account for his behavior. Perhaps that never faded, no matter who called himself king.
Perhaps that had more to do with the fact this man was still his father.
Or the fact that he’d shown interest in Malak so rarely that it had always seemed like a grand occasion when he did.
“Marriage was always inevitable in this case,” Malak said, with perhaps a shade too much intensity. Then he shrugged it off. “But it is a major life change for Shona, of course. She has never been around royalty before. It’s not surprising she needed some time to get used to the idea.”
Maybe he’d given her too much time. Maybe that was the trouble. Maybe that was why she kept saying...that little piece of insanity. That sheer impossibility.
The thing that was precisely what he’d vowed would never taint his rule.
“She seems like a practical girl,” his father was saying. “Exactly what you need, I imagine.”
Malak found his hand on his chest, rubbing at his own heart as if the beat of it hurt him. He forced it back to his side. And opted not to examine why it was everything in him objected to hearing his father call Shona practical.
When she was so much more than that. When she was the only creature he’d ever beheld who could dim the desert sun when she smiled.
And more, why his father imagined Malak was the one who required a practical mate. When Malak was not the one who had given up a kingdom for the love of a woman who could barely contain her disdain for him in return.
But that was not something he could say to his father.
“You had a queen,” he said instead, before he knew he meant to bring up such a fraught topic at all. But he managed to keep himself from making any accusations. “Have you any advice?”
“On the care and feeding of the average Khalian queen?” His father laughed, and it was only when the sound echoed back from the books lining the walls that it occurred to him that it had been a long while since he’d heard his father make that sound. Or do anything even remotely joyful. Once again, he found that complicated sadness moving in him. Grief, he thought, for a man who had never existed. And would never exist. “I don’t think you need me to give you a dissertation about my failures in that arena. They are legion. And entirely public, to my shame.”
Maybe this was why Malak had come here today, when he was meant to be neck-deep in tedious discussions elsewhere. To finally have this exact conversation he had never dared to begin with his father. To clear this last bit of air before Malak took the final step that would make him just like the old man.
In more ways than one, he thought darkly, Shona’s voice in his head. Again.
Still.
“You loved her,” he said, and fought to make that sound like something other than an indictment.
His father’s gaze met his. And held. “I did. I still do.”
“How?” Malak shook his head. “When you knew...?”
He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t talk euphemistically about indiscretions when both he and his father knew exactly what Namani had done. Moreover, Malak found that despite the fact he’d never understood his mother, nor wanted to spend any time with a woman who clearly hated him—because he was no substitute for Adir, the child she’d given away before she’d fallen pregnant with Malak—he didn’t quite have it in him to tear her apart, either.
“Love does not change when it is tested,” his father said slowly, as if it hurt him to speak of it. Or as if he had spent a long time coming to that conclusion. “If anything, it deepens. Which is not to say it does not become...more complicated.”
“But surely there are some betrayals that make it impossible to keep loving another.”
Or there ought to have been, surely.
“I’m the last person on earth who should offer marriage advice, Malak,” his father said after a moment. “But I will tell you this. Life is filled with regrets, and I think any king’s rule must be as well. It is the nature of the throne. But while you may regret political decisions, at length, you will never regret love. No matter what happens.”
They moved to other topics, such as the wedding that would so soon take over the whole of the kingdom. And the goodwill the wedding would usher into the kingdom. But when Malak left his father to his reading again, all he could think about was what the old man had said about love.
He didn’t understand why he couldn’t get away from love, of all things, when he’d lived his whole life without it. Happily.
It was the love of a woman that had ruined his father. It had turned a decent ruler into a man obsessed with his careless, selfish wife above the good of his people, and certainly above the welfare of his own children. It was the love of a man not her husband that had given Malak’s mother a child she’d had to give away, making it impossible for her to love the children she’d kept. It was the love of a woman that had led his brother to abdicate the throne, too, throwing the kingdom into more chaos it didn’t deserve.
It was love that had stuck Khalia with Malak when the people deserved a more thoughtful king and a far better man. A man with the dignity the throne deserved instead of a sybaritic playboy who had been content to while away his days between any willing pair of thighs he could find.
Malak wanted nothing to do with love, thank you.
He wanted to rule his people with a cool head and a steady hand. He wanted to make certain that emotion could never again destroy the kingdom.
Much less another Khalian king.
He found himself walking faster and faster as he moved through the palace, hardly seeing the servants and aides who leaped out of his path. He didn’t stop until he’d made it to Shona’s rooms. He pushed through the doors and ignored how harsh his own breathing was. Particularly when he couldn’t find her.
Malak kept going, making his way into the adjoining suite that belonged to Miles. Shona was there, playing some kind of game with Miles out on their balcony, surrounded by enough toy trucks to take over the kingdom.
He stopped there in the open balcony doors, watching them, his heart beating too hard. Too fast.
His father might not regret what he’d done for love, but Malak did. He lived his father’s choices every day. His father’s, his mother’s and his brother’s.
Love had consequences. Love was ruinous. How could the old man not see that, after all that had happened?
And how could Malak see anything else?
Shona
would be his queen. Both of them could love Miles as the child deserved, and would. He knew they already did.
But he also knew, deep down inside of him, that he had to put a stop to this nonsense about Shona loving him before he was tempted to imagine he could reciprocate it.
Because he knew exactly where that ended up. It was why he’d avoided such emotional entanglements the whole of his adult life.
He wanted what they already had. Sex. Laughter. Miles and whatever babies might come in the future. A partnership far better than the one he’d seen his parents attempt all those sad, tense years.
But there was no need to muddy it up with love. He had a kingdom to rule, and that meant he needed stability. Not the constant ebb and flow of love and all the wreckage that wrought.
He was so busy scowling that he didn’t notice Shona had gotten to her feet and crossed the wide balcony to him until she was right there in front of him.
She was still the prettiest thing he’d ever seen. She glowed, especially when she frowned at him with concern all over her face. She made his chest hurt and God help him, but he was tired of hurting.
He understood that it was too late. That there was a reason everything hurt. That he was as much a fool as his brother and father before him.
But unlike them, he didn’t have to act on the things he felt. He didn’t need to call the feelings inside of him love. He didn’t have to ruin himself and his kingdom over the ache in his chest.
He bloody well wouldn’t.
“Is something wrong?” Shona asked.
“Nothing is the matter,” he told her gruffly. He tilted his head in a silent command that she should follow him inside, leaving Miles in the care of his nannies, and was gratified when, for once, she followed without argument. “The wedding is being planned as we speak. It will be a vast celebration, appropriate for the king of these lands and the woman he claims as his.”
“That sounds medieval.”
“It sounds appropriate,” he responded, correcting her. “But Shona...” He stopped when they had moved deeper into the rooms, out of earshot of the balcony. He hardly spared a glance for the sitting room he found himself in, all embroidered pillows and low tables, and he despaired of himself when all he could seem to think about was getting her naked and putting all those pillows to use. “You must never speak of loving me again. I find it offensive in the extreme.”
She blinked. Then laughed, as if he’d started a comedy routine. “What? You find it offensive?”
“That is an order.” He stepped back when she would have reached out and touched him and told himself he didn’t care that she looked crestfallen. That it was better that way. “It was the fashion many years ago to lock up the queen in a far-off garrison, the better to ensure that she could never be used against the kingdom. Do not force me to take this step. Because I will if I have to.”
“You want to...lock me up?” she asked, and she sounded...off. Weak, almost, as if he’d punched her in the stomach. He hated himself as if he really had. “In a garrison? Is that another way of saying jail?” She shook her head. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about, Malak.”
“It is entirely up to you,” he told her, stiff and dark. “I am giving you the power to decide what happens next and you should take that as the act of benevolence it is. You will become my queen either way, but I will not have this talk of love. It has no place here.”
But all he could hear was her voice, sweet and soft in the night. The way she smiled when she tipped back her head and threw herself over into all that fire, all that heat, as if his hands, his mouth and his body were a kind of glory.
The way she said those terrible words he couldn’t allow.
“Why not?” she asked now, and her voice sounded stronger. When she met Malak’s gaze, he found he couldn’t read her expression at all. It made his skin seem to tighten over his bones. “Is this your way of telling me I’ve forgotten my place?”
“Your place is at my side,” he told her, forcing himself to sound cold. Forbidding. “I have told you this. But that doesn’t mean we need to pretend that what’s between us is some kind of romantic fairy tale. It’s not. It never was, was it?” And because she only stared at him as if he was speaking in tongues, he let the curve of his lips edge into cruelty. “I think you’ll find that fairy tales seldom begin drunkenly, in bars, between strangers.”
He watched her take a deep breath and took no pleasure at all in the fact he’d clearly hurt her. But he didn’t relent.
“Let me make sure I’m understanding you,” Shona said after a long moment and with too much vulnerability on her face. “I’m good enough to parade around in fancy clothes. I’m definitely good enough to roll around naked in your bed. But if I have any kind of feelings about those things and worse, say them out loud, I’m out of line. Is that it?”
Something in him cracked at that, as if the faint tremble in her lips was a fissure deep inside of him.
“Do not make me regret that I took the pleasant path with you,” he growled at her. “That I opted to use honey rather than vinegar when I could so easily have simply taken what I wanted. Because you wanted it, too.”
“I don’t know why you’re acting like a monster when you’re not one.”
But that was the problem. He felt like a monster and she was to blame for that. She tempted him to become the worst he was capable of. She was too much temptation. She would ruin him.
She already had.
“You have no idea who I am or what I’m capable of,” he told her. “Do not make me show you.”
But Shona wasn’t like any other woman he’d ever known. She didn’t crumble. She didn’t weep in awe or gratitude.
She only eyed him, then tilted that chin up as if she was fully prepared to fight him.
He understood that his ruin was complete.
“Show me,” she dared him. “Tell me that you don’t want me. Tell me to my face when you and I both know better.”
And Malak didn’t even hesitate. Because he knew that if he did, he would never do this. And then what would become of him? Of his kingdom?
“I wanted Miles,” he told her, a deliberate and vicious blow, and the only wonder was that she didn’t fall to her knees. “I never wanted you, Shona. Why would I? You’re nothing to me but a means to an end.”
And then he turned on his heel and left her there, that stunned look in her brown eyes and her mouth open in shock, before he proved exactly how weak he was—how very much his father’s son he was, despite everything—and took it all back.
CHAPTER TWELVE
FOR A LONG time after Malak left, Shona simply...stood there.
She felt empty, somehow. As if he had done more than simply say those things to her. It was as if he’d dug into her with his fingers and scraped out her insides, leaving her hollow. Almost unbearably raw.
And altered straight through.
She didn’t know how much time passed, but eventually she realized what she was doing. Standing stock-still in one of the entirely too many sitting rooms in this palace. In this suite of rooms, for that matter.
What four-year-old required a selection of seating areas?
But her attempt to manufacture some irritation on that score faded almost immediately, as if it had never been.
Because this particular sitting room was fitted with billowing tapestries and the kind of pillows people here used as chairs scattered all over every surface. There were golds and silvers, mosaics on the floor and some parts of the walls, and thick, patterned rugs thrown here and there.
But worst of all, there was a mirror that took up the whole of the far wall. The fact that it, too, was made of gold and precious stones only made it worse.
Shona stared at herself. She could see her chest rise and fall too quickly. She could see the faint sheen on her skin that broadcast exactly how flustered she was, in case she might have missed that on her own.
Though flustered was a weak way to describe how she
felt.
It hardly touched on the swirling darkness that threatened to take her over. That threatened to drop her where she stood, and leave her there for Yadira to find, crumpled on the floor like the trash she’d always been.
Shona didn’t let herself fall. She refused to crumple. She frowned at her reflection instead.
She had tried to get used to this new version of herself. She had tried. She had done her best to attempt to see herself through Miles’s eyes instead of her own. She had tried to let the way Malak touched her, tasted her and made her feel far more beautiful than any woman ought to, be her guide.
But the words she most feared whirled around and around in her head and all she could see when she looked in that mirror was her own folly.
She was no princess. This was no fairy tale.
And she had been insane to imagine that her story could ever end differently.
How had she ever managed to imagine otherwise for even a moment?
She knew that woman in the mirror. Shona knew what mattered wasn’t the shape of her face or the way she filled out yet another one of the gowns she found laid out for her each day. It didn’t matter that this morning, when she’d dressed after another long night with Malak, she had actually smiled at this very same image. She’d found something hopeful in it. In her. There had been a light in her own eyes that she’d never seen before. She’d felt pretty, and more than that, something perilously close to happy.
She should have known better.
Shona had never yet made it through anything resembling a good moment without that other shoe crushing her flat. How could she possibly have imagined that this time it would be different?
“It’s never different,” she whispered to herself, as fiercely as she could when she felt as if she was nothing but jagged pieces of a broken thing. “It’s never, ever different.”
She heard Miles call for her from one of the other rooms, and pulled herself together. Painfully. She smoothed her hands over her dress, though her palms were damp. She straightened. She smoothed out her expression and forced herself to smile.
Sheikh’s Secret Love-Child Page 13
