worried that I will want to rule Khalia, Prince Zufar? That I will ask for a slice of your immense fortune? Because if so, then let me tell you, I have no intention of taking anything from you. I have no use for your wealth. All I want is recognition.”
“And you will not have it, not as long as I’m alive. You are nothing but my mother’s dirty secret, a stain on our family.”
The words came at Adir like invisible punches, all the more lethal for the truth in them that he had always tried to fight.
He was her dirty secret, banished to the desert without a second thought. “Watch your words, Prince Zufar. They carry heavy consequences.”
“Have you not wondered why she asked you to claim your right only after she was gone? Why she wrote to you but never confided in us that we have a brother?”
“She was protecting you and the reputation of the royal family. She was—”
“Queen Namani—” Prince Zufar’s words came through gritted teeth “—was a selfish woman who thought of nothing and no one but herself. Writing to you, I am sure, was nothing more than indulging in childish sulking. Behaving without considering the consequences...to you, to her or to any of us. It was cruel to lure you here when she knew nothing could come of it.”
“And if I spill the truth anyway?” Adir hated the bitterness in his tone, cringed inwardly at the fear in the king’s eyes. For years, he had watched his mother’s family from afar. His mother’s words about how spoiled they were, how undeserving of all the respect and privilege that were their due, had festered in his blood. “If I tell the world anyway?”
“I will not react to your threats, Sheikh Adir. The shame, if you spill it, will be yours and hers alone. Not ours. Leave now. Or I will have the guards throw you out as if you were nothing but a vulture circling at a time of mourning. If you had been anything but her bastard, you would have had better taste than to threaten my father at such a time of grief.”
* * *
In the flickering shadows of the darkness, punctured only by gaslights flickering here and there, the view from the window out of which she meant to jump looked like absolute nothingness to Amira Ghalib.
Emptiness with no relief in sight. An abyss with no bottom.
Like her life had been for the past twenty-six years. Like the prospect of marrying Prince Zufar, like her future as Queen of Khalia.
She snorted and smiled into the darkness.
Ya Allah, she was getting morbidly morose. But then that was what five days of being her father’s prisoner and a punch to the jaw had done to her.
Of pretending to her friend Galila that she had been clumsy again, that she had walked straight into a pillar. Of once again being the object of indifference to her betrothed. Of being nothing but a means to an end to her power-obsessed father.
She had even less freedom here at the palace of Khalia than her own home, and her house on the best day was a cage. Here, all eyes were on her.
But future queen or not, she needed escape. Just for a few hours.
Having failed to locate the flashlight she’d been looking for—her father’s watchdog had probably confiscated it from her suite—Amira looked through the window again. She remembered that there was a short ledge there, a rectangular protrusion to cover the window on the lower floor. Big enough for her to land on with both feet.
From there, it would be another sideways jump to the next ledge.
From there, another jump onto the curved stairway on the other side, the stairway that was unused even by servants and staff. And she would be free of the guard outside her suite, free of her father and free of her obligations.
She could walk to the stables, bribe the teenage boy there and go for a ride on the mare she had befriended the other day. She could just wander down the exquisitely manicured gardens the late Queen Namani had famously tended herself.
For a few hours, she could do whatever she wanted.
There is a ledge there, she repeated to herself.
All she had to do was hold her breath and jump.
Heart pounding, she climbed over the windowsill. Her legs dangled as she peered into the darkness, letting her eyes and ears adjust to the sounds and sights of the night. A horse’s whinny, the soft tinkle of water from the famed fountain in courtyard, the tap-tap of soles on the tiled walkway reached her ears.
Night-blooming jasmine filled her nostrils.
Already, she felt calmer. It was a lovely night to escape.
She smiled and jumped.
* * *
“You could have killed yourself. At best. At worst, broken all the bones in your body.”
Any breath that might have been left in her lungs after she’d landed wonkily on her knees whooshed out of Amira’s lungs.
She froze, the low, gravelly voice from the dark corner of the stairway sending shivers down her spine. Fear and something else swamped her. She blinked and peered through the quiet to see a shadowy outline.
Catlike eyes, amber-hued, stared back at her. Moonlight came in patches through the archway, outlining the man. He was blurry because she had forgotten her glasses.
But she could still make out broad shoulders that tapered to lean hips and powerful thighs. She searched for his face. Square jaw, sharp blade of a nose, high forehead.
Her gaze went back to his eyes. Eyes that were staring at her with unhidden curiosity.
Was he a royal guard? Another spy her obsessed father had set on her? Or worse, a guest of the palace?
No, anything would be better than her father’s spy. She would even prefer to brave her betrothed and explain herself than to face her father.
And if it was her father’s spy...
As if even her flesh remembered, a shaft of pain pulsed up her jawline and she flinched.
She could swear his scowl deepened the darkness as the man emerged from the shadows. “Are you hurt?”
“No. I’m...fine.” She dusted her palms on her thighs and winced. The skin of her palms had been pierced when she had tried to break her fall with them.
“You’re not a natural liar, ya habibiti.”
The upper-class aristocratic accent—similar yet different from her own or from the prince’s—caught her interest. With his perfect diction and the natural command in his very stillness, he could be a visiting royal—the last person she needed to be seen with. Or to have recognize her, come tomorrow.
He took another step toward her.
Still on her knees, Amira scooted back. Pains and aches forgotten, all she wanted was to get away from the...interesting stranger.
Whether he noticed her retreat or not, his long strides continued to eat up the distance between them. “Let me see if you’re hurt. You landed so hard you could have broken something.”
Another scoot back. At this rate, her knees were going to get skinned. “I did not...break anything.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
Her normally placid temper simmered. “Since I have a degree in nursing, I think I can judge whether I broke something or not.” She hissed a breath out. “Please...just leave. I’ll be on my way in a couple of minutes.”
“You don’t have to fear me.”
She was panicked, yes, but strangely, there was no fear in it.
She took a deep breath. Sandalwood, combined with something utterly masculine, filled her lungs as he reached her, settling into a strange tightness in her lower belly.
Arrested