said to Azhil then, and it was too easy, that slick, oily smile. That shrug. It came to him as if it were part of him, and there was a part of him that worried it was. That all of this was in him. That none of these past dark years had been as much of an act as he liked to pretend. “Perhaps very soon. I would like your blessing.”
Azhil studied him, his smile in place but a certain assessing look in his dark eyes that Zair was certain he’d never seen before. Or more likely, he hadn’t wanted to see it.
“You wish to marry?”
“I do.” He forced a satisfied expression, all smugness and complacency. “I’ve already started making the arrangements. She’s particularly advantageous. Old American money, a touch of celebrity in the family through a brother which, of course, their parents find vulgar—”
“You do not mean that Grant girl.”
“I see the tabloids found you in Ruyi, where I’d have thought they were banned.” Zair shrugged. “It is regrettable. But it can’t be helped.”
Azhil laughed as if Zair had made a joke. When Zair only gazed back at him, he sighed, and it was all so theatrical. Feigned and exaggerated for effect. How had Zair failed to recognize this before?
“You cannot be so naive,” his brother said. He shifted on the couch, assuming a position that was even more relaxed. Any further and he’d slide to the floor. “You occupy a prominent position in my government.” Azhil waved a bejeweled hand in the air. “The pictures from Cannes, an affair? This is questionable enough. You are an ambassador, not a pop idol. But you can’t marry such a creature.” He sniffed. “You know as well as I do that ours is a conservative country. They already consider Western women whores. That one actually is. I can’t allow it.”
Zair waited for the pounding, murderous rage inside him to subside. He let the urge to throttle Azhil settle into his bones, and waited until he thought he could keep it under control. He smiled at the glass in his hand and knew everything rode on his playing this role to perfection. All these years he’d spent neck-deep in the swill of other men’s sins. What they’d put into motion days ago. Nora.
He couldn’t fail. Which meant he couldn’t treat his brother to his well-trained fists the way he wanted to do with every last cell in his body. He couldn’t show Azhil the difference between lounging on couches all one’s life and learning how to fight instead. Though he thought he might dream about it.
“You and I have never discussed these things,” he said instead, and made certain that Azhil noted the careful way he said it. “But I have…certain preferences.”
“I am aware,” the sultan said grandly. “You have no secrets from me, Zair.” His laugh was perhaps more strained then, or maybe that was a rare bit of honesty shining through. “Unless you have something you wish to confess?”
Zair laughed, too, and it sounded so obviously fake to him that he half expected Azhil to summon his guards and have him charged with treason then and there, but his brother only watched him with that same smile and even an indulgent look on his face.
It did not occur to Azhil that the boy he’d elevated to ambassador could ever turn on him. This was perfectly clear to Zair. And if there was a part of him that grieved for both of them, if there was a space within him where he would always be that boy and believe the things that boy had believed about what little family he had, he refused to indulge it now. He couldn’t. He had too much else to lose.
“She is an asset,” Zair said when the laughter ebbed. “The fact that she was for sale means only one thing, brother. That I own her. That is why I allowed us to be photographed.”
“That is what dowries are for,” Azhil said dismissively. “They serve the same function without the attendant tabloid attention, and they are far more useful to me in other regions of the world where I could use alliances.”
“That can’t possibly offer the same level of control,” Zair replied. He shrugged at Azhil’s stare. “I am not an emotional man. I have no tie to this girl. I am anxious to please you, nothing more. I do not mean to argue with you, brother, but this is all part of a plan.”
Lie after lie after lie. What would be left of him when this was done? If this was ever truly done? What would look back at him when he saw himself in the mirror? Or would he simply learn how to live with what he was now—this ghost of a man he’d become?
Azhil sighed again, as if Zair was testing the limits of his indulgence. “And what plan is this, dare I ask?”
Zair smiled, and it was hard to keep it from edging over into something dark and triumphant.
“It would give our enemies great pleasure to see me wedded to a woman they know is nothing more than a yacht girl. Water seeks its own level, they will say.”
“This is my objection.”
“Ah, but we can use it.” Zair settled against his chair. “Our enemies may smirk, but our allies will applaud, for the same reason. Because they will know she is completely under my control.” He laughed. “And yet I will parade her into state dinners and introduce her to the American president. It can only cement your stature and legend, that you can offer such an insult on the same hand as your friendship.”
He saw Azhil ponder that obviously appealing prospect, and felt his mind quiet even as his body stilled. The way it always had in combat, when the thinking and the plotting were done and there was only the fight. Nothing but the fight.
And through the fight, the inevitable win.
“I cannot deny the appeal of that,” Azhil murmured after a moment, as Zair had hoped he would. As they’d banked he would.
“Meanwhile, Nora Grant is the equivalent of American royalty,” Zair continued. “There are only a select few who will understand what she was doing in France, and then only because they make use of such services themselves. Who will they tell? Each other? These are the types of men—and I can tell you this from experience—who are more likely to ask to rent her out instead.”
“Still. Does a woman like this deserve the elevation of a marriage that connects her to me?” Azhil’s stare was hard. Ugly, even. The truth, Zair understood, written on his face at last. “Even if it is only through one of my father’s bastards?”
Azhil smiled faintly as he said it, and his voice was something like kind, but Zair did not mistake that for anything but what it was: the sultan’s booted foot, heavy on his neck. He couldn’t remember if Azhil had said such things before—but then, perhaps he hadn’t needed to remind Zair of their positions before.
Zair chose to take it as a positive thing indeed that he felt moved to do so now.
“How could any woman be worthy of such a thing?” he asked, because that was the expected response. That was the only possible way Azhil might be mollified. He bowed his head down and it didn’t even feel servile. It was necessary, nothing more. A feint before the strike. “How could anyone?”
That sat there for a moment or two, as if Azhil wanted them both to truly experience the difference in their positions. Then he lifted a finger, beckoning Zair to continue.
“Is there more?” he asked. “I am not convinced.”
Zair shifted in his seat because he was meant to find it uncomfortable, not because he did. And because that, too, would please Azhil. All these little indications of status and sadism. All these little games.
“Her brother has the kind of fame that these people dream about in their endless quest for personal celebrity,” he said. “And all of these things together are as good as engraved invitations into different levels of American society and more important, the money that drives it.” He frowned thoughtfully. “And yet she is also tarnished. In that way, she is truly the perfect choice for one such as me.”
He paused, then inclined his head with the subservience his brother would expect, and told himself that soon enough, he’d never have to