strong for my people, for my father, for my blood. Had I foreseen the outcome, as I should have done, my choices might have been different.”
“Are you God then?”
“I am sheikh. It is very close to being the same.”
“Then you are a flawed god indeed.”
“And you? Do you aspire to be the goddess?” he asked, moving to the foot of the bed, standing, tall, proud and straight. He was an imposing figure, and in many ways she couldn’t believe that she had dared touch him. Not when he so obviously outmatched her in strength and weight. Not when he was so clearly a deadly weapon all on his own.
“Just the angel of death, as you said. I have no higher aspiration than that. It isn’t power I seek, but justice.”
“And you think justice comes with yet more death?”
“Who sent the king of Jahar to trial, Sheikh? Who left my country without a ruler?” Who left me without a father? She didn’t voice the last part. It was too weak. And she refused to show weakness.
“I did,” he said, his tone hard, firm. “Lest we forget the blood of the king of Khadra was on his hands. And that is not a metaphor.”
“At least Khadra had an heir!”
His expression turned to granite. “And lacked an angry, disillusioned populace. Certainly the loss of the king affected Jahar, but had the people not been suffering…”
“I am not here to debate politics with you.”
“No, it is your wish to cut my throat. And I must say, even politics seems preferable to that.”
“I am not so certain.” She looked away for a moment, just a moment, to try and gather her thoughts. To try and catch her breath. “You left a little girl with no protection. A queen without her husband.”
“And was I to let the Jahari king walk after taking the life of my father? The life of my mother.”
“He did not…”
“We will not speak of my mother,” he said, his tone fierce. “I forbid it.”
“And so we find ourselves here,” she said, her tone soft.
“So we do indeed.”
“Will you have me killed?” she asked. “As I am also an inconvenience?”
“You, little viper, have attempted to murder me. At this point you are much more than an inconvenience.”
“As you see it, Sheikh. The only problem I see is that I have failed.”
“You do not speak as someone who values their preservation.”
“Do I not?”
“No. You ask if I aim to kill you and then you express your desire to see me dead. All things considered, I suppose I should order your lovely head to be separated from your neck.”
She put her hand to her throat. A reflex. A cowardly one. She didn’t like it.
“However,” he said dryly. “I find I have no stomach for killing teenage girls.”
“I am not a teenage girl.”
“Semantics. You cannot be over twenty.”
“Twenty-one,” she said, clenching her teeth.
“Fine then. I have no stomach for the murder of a twenty-one-year-old girl. And as such I would much rather find a way for you to be useful to me.” He slid his thumb along the flat of her blade. “But where I could keep an eye on you, as I would rather this not end up in my back.”
“I make no promises, Sheikh.”
“Again, we must work on your self-preservation.”
“Forgive me. I don’t quite believe I have a chance at it.”
Something in his face changed, his eyebrows drawing tightly together. “Samarah. Not a servant girl, or just an angry citizen. You are Samarah.”
He’d recognized her. At last. She’d hoped he wouldn’t. Not when she was supposed to be dead. Not when he hadn’t seen her since she was a child of six.
She met his eyes. “Sheikha Samarah Al-Azem, of Jahar. A princess with no palace. And I am here for what is owed me.”
“You think that is blood, little Samarah?”
“You will not call me little. I just kicked you in the head.”
“Indeed you did, but to me, you are still little.”
“Try such insolence when I have my blade back, and I will cut your throat, Sheikh.”
“Noted,” he said, regarding her closely. “You have changed.”
“I ought to have. I’m no longer six.”
“I cannot give you blood,” he said. “For I am rather attached to having it in my veins, as you can well imagine.”
“Self-preservation is something of an instinct.”
“For most,” he said, dryly.
“Different when you have nothing to lose.”
“And is that the position you’re in?”
“Why else would I invade the palace and attempt an assassination? Obviously I have no great attachments to this life.”
His eyes flattened, his jaw tightening. “I cannot give you blood, Samarah. But you feel you were robbed of a legacy. Of a palace. And that, I can perhaps see you given.”
“Can you?”
“Yes. I have indeed thought of a use for you. By this time next week, I shall present you to the world as my intended bride.”
“NO.”
Ferran looked down at the woman kneeling in the center of his mattress. The woman was, if she was to be believed, if his own recognition could be believed, Samarah Al-Azem. Come back from the dead.
For surely the princess had been killed. The dark-eyed, smiling child he remembered so well, gone in the flood of violence that had started in the Khadran palace, ending in the death of Jahar’s sheikh. What started as a domestic dispute cut a swath across the borders, into Jahar. The brunt of it falling on the Jahari palace.
It was the king of Jahar who had started the violence. Storming the Khadran palace, as punishment for his wife’s affair with Ferran’s father. An affair that had begun when Samarah was a young child and Ferran was a teenager. When the duty to country was served by both rulers, having supplied their spouses with children. Or so the story went. But it had not ended there. It had burned out of hand.
And countless casualties had been left.
Among them, the world had been led to believe, Samarah.
Was she truly the princess?
A girl he’d thought long dead. A death he had, by extension, caused. Was it possible she lived?
She was small. Dark-haired. At least from what he could tell. A veil covered her head, her brows the only indicator of hair coloring. It was not required for women in employment of the palace to cover their heads or faces. But he was certain she was an employee here. Though not one who had been working for the palace long. There were many workers in the palace, and he didn’t make it his business to memorize their faces.
Though, when one tried to kill him in his own bedchamber, he felt exceptions could be made. And when one was possibly the girl who had never left his mind, not ever, in sixteen years…
He truly had exceptions