Chapter Two
AS MALIK STALKED down the Omrhain palace hallway, he tried to force the strange encounter with the woman from the day before out of his mind, but it wasn’t working.
All night he’d had fever dreams of what could have happened had she not run away.
Of what he’d wanted to do with her. The curve of her cheek, the honey-dark gaze that had looked at him so intently.
The small mole at the corner of her eye…
Malik bit back a curse. The way he’d responded to her touch—the way his body had responded—was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. But even if he could have tracked her down, which would have been easy enough, he’d never do it. He couldn’t.
He was about to meet with his fiancée and her family! And here he was thinking of a masseuse? Al Surrahin needed this. His brother, his nephew, deserved the throne of a country that was thriving, not wilting under fear of his current leadership.
It didn’t please him to know that he was failing. It didn’t bring him joy that he wasn’t the ruler the people of his country wanted or needed. But how could he ever compare to his brother? Ishmail had been as beloved by their people as much as Malik was feared.
Growing up as Ishmail’s brother should have been hard.
But he’d made it the bright spot in an otherwise miserable childhood.
Despite the six years’ difference in their age, it was Ishmail who would sneak into Malik’s room and whisk him away for horse rides in the desert, or midnight feasts, or convince their father to let Malik accompany him to the Summer Palace for a short break.
But even the unconditional love of his older brother couldn’t stop their father’s fury at having been ‘cursed’ with such a son. Nor his mother’s misery at her fall from the grace of her husband and king. When she’d been expelled from the palace, she hadn’t even said goodbye.
Malik’s shoulder twinged, the dull echo of the pain he would have felt had it not been for yesterday’s massage. Shaking off the memory of gentle hands, Malik reminded himself of why he was here. For Ishmail. For Aayan. He would rule as they would have ruled, until they could rule for themselves.
He paused for a moment, as if waiting for an imaginary interjection from his brother, but nothing came. His heart thudded dully in his chest, once, painfully. He missed him. So much.
After their father’s death, there had been a brief period, just a few years, where Ishmail, Yara and Aayan had been his world.
Where he’d almost felt accepted. Wanted.
Where the hurts and abandonment from his childhood had begun to heal over.
And to have had that, before it was ripped away from him…
it had been almost cruel. But he’d never give those precious years back.
Not for the world. So, if this was what he had to do, lead a country that didn’t want him, marry a woman that he could hardly imagine wanting him, then so be it.
He felt the nervous glance sent at him from Ehsan, his assistant, as Omrhain palace guards escorted them towards the grand hall. They paused at a set of huge, ornately carved heavy wooden doors as they were announced.
Ehsan looked as if he wanted to say something. Perhaps words of affirmation, positive, supportive words, but realised that they were unnecessary.
‘You need to be able to rule with a firm hand, not a steel grip. A wife will make you look…approachable,’ Ehsan had said when he first broached the subject with Malik.
This time he did hear the echo of his brother’s laughter in his ear. Not mocking, more teasing, as if even Ishmail thought the idea amusing, and somehow that made Malik feel a little better.
Taking a breath, Malik turned to the guards and nodded.
The doors opened and he was led into the grand hall.
In the three years since his brother’s accident, Malik had visited many other countries, met with many other royals, or prime ministers, or presidents. But this was the first time he’d been in Omrhain.
Situational awareness had him taking in both the opulence of the room as much as the very subtle signs of wear.
He knew that Emir Hafiz was in the middle of negotiating an oil pipeline deal that was almost exclusively dependent on access through Al Surrahin.
Access that would be provided in exchange for a bride.
And not for the first time, Malik wondered how the emir’s youngest daughter felt about being bartered off to the neighbouring kingdom.
‘Your Royal Highness,’ the emir greeted, his eyes more assessing than welcoming.
‘Emir Hafiz,’ Malik returned. They had spoken, of course. The ruler of Omrhain had been one of the first to call following Malik’s brother’s accident. It had meant a lot to Malik. But this was the first time they were meeting in person.
They shared some small talk, as the neighbouring countries spoke the same language, even though areas had different, distinct dialects.
Malik used the time to gather impressions of the family he was about to marry into.
He ignored the open stares from some, and noted the sense of impatience and irreverence in others that seemed out of place for the day.
As was the custom, his fiancée would be brought to meet him here, with her father, and Malik wondered what she would look like.
He’d not yet seen a picture of her. Not needed to.
What she looked like didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she agreed to his terms, that this was a marriage in name only, with no expectations of anything more.
That aside, she could do whatever she wanted. Be wherever she wanted—as long as it drew no ill to Al Surrahin.
‘My daughter is running just a little late,’ the emir tried to excuse and Malik nodded absently.
He continued to look about, but it wasn’t the members of the royal family or the interior of the grand hall that he saw.
Instead a gaze of dark honey floated before his eyes, staring back as if it could see deep into the truth of him.
Hana’s hands shook as she applied a layer of kohl to the bottom lid of her eyes, catching sight of the small mole at the corner of her left eye.
So much so that she slipped and had to reach for the makeup remover to start all over again.
The two ladies-in-waiting her father had sent cast concerned looks back and forth.
‘It’s fine. I’m fine. I’ll get it right,’ Hana promised, peering back into the mirror and trying to force her fears aside.
Maybe he wouldn’t recognise her.
And even if he did, maybe he’d be okay with the fact that she had disguised herself and not only spied on him, but touched him intimately.
So intimately.
Her cheeks flushed and she pulled back again, flapping a hand at her face, trying to cool herself down and ignore the impatient sigh from her older sister, who lounged in the chair behind her, staring at the ceiling yet still managing to convey her intense displeasure at being in the same room as her.
‘We’re late. Neither the emir nor your betrothed will be happy about it,’ Noor warned.
Hana turned to face her sister, about to explain that she just needed five more minutes when, utterly by accident, the long loose sleeve of her abaya caught on the table, pulling it with her and half the cosmetics from the surface.
One lady-in-waiting let out a scream of concern for the beautiful dress, which had cost Hana’s family upward of twenty-five thousand Omrhani ruols, while her sister closed her eyes slowly and collapsed back in her chair from what was just one more chaotic crisis in the long sufferance of being related to Hana.
Hana quickly swept the skirts of her abaya out of the way, narrowly avoiding disaster, but in doing so managed to knock the second handmaid off her feet and onto the floor.
‘I’m sorry!’ Hana rushed to say, but the lady-in-waiting only eyed her warily and reached for her companion’s hand to help her up, no doubt worried that any further intervention from Hana would result in grievous bodily harm.
Even Hana could admit that this was worse than usual, but she was more nervous than usual. She tried so hard not to be a disgrace to her family. But every time things just…happened.
Like the time she spilled pomegranate juice on the white ceremonial clothes of the husband of the sister currently glaring at her, just moments before their official wedding photos.
Or the time she choked on a piece of shellfish and covered the foreign ambassador to France in a Michelin-star bisque.
Or the time when she had nearly ruined her brother’s wedding because the heels she could barely walk in caught in the hemline of her abaya, and she had fallen on the bride’s train, pulling her backwards and almost tearing the luxurious wedding dress in front of nearly five hundred members of their families, along with several news outlets and dignitaries and a list celebrities from around the world.
It hadn’t been her fault. It really hadn’t.
These things…they just happened.
Her sister—the one person her father had entrusted the responsibility of getting Hana to the betrothal on time—hauled herself from her chair and stalked towards her, a determined glint in her eye.
‘Now you listen to me,’ Noor said, taking Hana’s chin rather firmly in her thin fingers.
‘You are going to be ready in under five minutes,’ she hissed, reaching for the kohl pen and flicking the lid off with her thumbnail.
‘We’re going to the grand hall, and you will not say a single word.
Nothing. You will not look at him, breathe in his direction, you will not fall, or trip, or blunder, or cough or choke or whatever else it is that you are capable of doing.
You will do nothing to jeopardise your marriage to the Regent of Al Surrahin. Do you hear me?’
Hana nodded, feeling the sting of wet heat press at the corners of her eyes.
She could do all that, but it was highly likely that it was too late. Because she had already jeopardised the marriage, hadn’t she?