Chapter Five #2
She opened her mouth to answer, and then understood what she was about to say hadn’t really been about him so much as what it would have meant for her, and at least she realised before she could insult him further.
He peered at her, reading her thoughts as clearly had she said them out loud.
‘Ahh. You would have liked to get away. From your family.’
A blush tainted with shame painted her cheeks.
‘Yes,’ she admitted, unable to lie. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean that I wouldn’t have come to love you. But I really did want the opportunity to prove to my family that I would do whatever it took—’
His brow rose.
‘Not that it would have taken a huge amount of hardship to marry you!’ she insisted. Hana thought she saw the lift of his lip, just on one side, the smallest of smiles, before he tried to look stern again, and she realised that perhaps he was teasing her just a little.
She smiled then, her heart soaring, as if she’d been let in on some big secret.
‘I’m on to you!’ she said pointing her finger at him, eyes narrowed as if only that was how she could see the real Malik.
‘What?’ he asked, looking at her as if he had no idea what she was talking about.
‘You, and this whole grumpy, angry, growly thing you have about you. It’s fake.’
‘It’s not fake!’ he replied, but his outrage had less heat than a cold ember fading on the hearth.
She rose up from her knees, enjoying the playfulness she’d never had anyone to share with before.
‘Yes, it is!’ she accused. ‘All this I’m the Regent of Al Surrahin and what I say goes,’ she said, lowering her voice, furrowing her brow and mimicking him at his worst. Until she caught the horrified look on his features.
‘I don’t look like that,’ he groaned.
‘Yes, you do!’ she laughed.
‘Stop it, please, you’ll ruin my reputation,’ he begged half-heartedly, until he seemed to realise what he’d said and then the humour from the moment disappeared as if it had been sucked up the chimney.
He wished he could call back his own words. He knew they’d opened the door to something he kept locked at all times, but somehow Hana had sneaked beneath his defences and he’d walked right into a verbal trap she probably hadn’t meant to set.
But he saw the question in her eyes before she could ask it.
‘Can I ask what happened with your fiancée? Your first fiancée.’
It was as if they both knew that they would never get this chance again.
This suspended moment in their lives—royal lives, full of duty and constraint, always on show, on display.
Yet here was this strange time out of time before they went back to their lives and pretended that it had never happened.
So he was surprised by how much he wanted to give in to the urge to say things that one usually hid. The urge to be someone outside of the duties or royalty and the strict codes of social propriety.
‘The truth. Please?’ she asked.
He could refuse her. He should refuse her.
‘Why do you want to know?’ he asked, his voice dragging over the emotional gravel clogging his throat.
‘Because I think that what I’ve heard and what happened might be different.’
This time he huffed out a laugh. No one had ever questioned the story around his broken engagement before. So of course, she would be the first to do so.
‘I won’t tell anyone,’ she rushed to offer, as if that would make it easier for him to open up his past.
‘You can’t anyway,’ he said ruefully. ‘If you did, you’d have to tell them how you heard it, and admitting to spending the night with me and no chaperone?’
‘I know,’ she said with a decisive nod.
If anyone found out, she would be ruined.
He would be fine, since such reckless behaviour was expected of the Terror of Al Surrahin.
But for Hana? There would be no future marriage.
There would be no escape from the damage to her reputation.
And while she had taken that risk herself, it had all come about because of his scars, because of her need to see the truth.
But the truth didn’t stop at the burn that had gnarled the skin and muscle beneath.
The truth went deeper than that. Was he ready to confess the truth of it?
Could he bear to hope that her accepting nature meant she might accept him?
He let out a sigh full of surrender, his head dropping back on the sofa cushion behind him, his eyes on the ceiling seeing nothing but the past.
‘Farrah was…’ He paused, trying to find the right words, buying himself some time, warding off the moment when he would be forced to remember.
But he swallowed and pressed on. ‘Farrah was a young woman in my uncle’s Bedouin tribe.
I had known her and her father for years, through the times I had visited.
Her father approached my uncle to let him know that he would welcome a match between us and I was surprised.
She was…beautiful, and happy. I liked her…
’ Malik explained with frown. ‘And while I knew that the match would benefit her father, I had thought…’
He’d thought that she wouldn’t ever want to tie herself to him.
‘I was a little different then. I was angry.’
The burn scars had healed enough by then to stop hurting, but were still vivid marks against his flesh. The anger had come rather from his father’s constant tirades and belittling that continued long after Malik had grown out of the epileptic fits his father had taken so personally.
‘More so than now?’
He threw a harmless glare and she smiled, the tease taking away enough of the edge from the past to let him continue.
‘Yes, even more so,’ he conceded. ‘My uncle helped me get it under control, but my reputation was already cemented by then. So I was surprised, but pleased…’
He’d wanted to marry. He’d wanted to have a family. Back then, before he’d known better.
‘One afternoon a group of us went out to an oasis near the encampment. Older than teenagers, but younger than adults, we were messing around in the pool, lazing beneath palm trees.’
It had been so idyllic and innocent.
‘But then one of my friends stole the shirt I’d been using. They probably didn’t mean anything by it, just some harmless fun…’
He felt Hana stiffen beside him as if she knew what was coming, but Malik still had one foot in the past. Could still feel the sand beneath his toes, the heat of the sun and the revulsion in Farrah’s gaze when she caught sight of the scar on his shoulder.
He’d known. Malik had known in that moment, but he’d hoped he’d just imagined it. Later that evening he’d gone to find her, to talk to her.
‘Farrah wanted to know how it happened,’ he said, staring into the fire, wondering what would have happened if he’d lied that day, and knowing he could never have done such a thing.
‘What did you tell her?’ Hana asked.
‘The truth. That when I was younger, I had a condition called Benign Rolandic Epilepsy. I suffered from epileptic seizures between the ages of three and about fifteen. One night the seizure was bad and I happened to be standing beside a bonfire,’ Malik said, looking down at his shoulder, not seeing the black material covering it but the scars that lay beneath.
He shrugged; no further explanation was needed.
Hana had seen the scars too. He forced himself to relax, realising that he had braced himself for her response.
‘You have epilepsy?’ she asked.
‘I had it. I grew out of it. I haven’t had a seizure for over ten years and won’t have another one ever again,’ he said looking at his hands.
But that hadn’t mattered to Farrah, who had run to her father, begging him to get her out of the engagement, crying and pleading, saying that she didn’t want to have children with him in case they too had the same ‘defect’.
Her father had refused to break the engagement until she claimed Malik had mistreated her—bullied and frightened her like the monster he was known to be.
Malik had left before he could hear more, but by the morning, she’d gone.
Fled the encampment. Just like his mother, Farrah had run from him.
Run from the monster they all believed him to be.
‘The engagement was broken shortly after that,’ he said, locking down tight the breath that shuddered in his lungs.
Hana pressed her hand against his forearm, as if giving him the strength to continue.
‘When Farrah put the blame on my monstrous nature rather than the epilepsy, I knew my father would be pleased. Weakness was abhorrent to him but perceived cruelty he could use. Nevertheless, rumours of my “deformity” reignited.’
Then, to his incredible shock, Hana cursed and Malik barked out a laugh that he would have thought impossible when speaking about what happened with Farrah.
‘Hana!’ he chided.
‘No, that’s terrible. She should never have done such a thing!’
‘You can’t blame her,’ he said through the tightness in his jaw.
‘Is it genetic?’ Hana asked gently.
Malik shook his head. ‘There can be a genetic component, but it’s not hereditary.’ He looked at the floor. He couldn’t bear to see what was in Hana’s eyes when she looked at him.
‘Regardless, I can blame her!’ Hana cried.
‘Yes. I have seen the scar on your skin. It is just that. And as for the condition you no longer have? It is medical, nothing more, nothing less. Had it been met with acceptance and understanding in the first place, none of that would have happened,’ she insisted.
He let the curse fall between them, but Hana didn’t flinch. ‘You gain nothing by lying, Princess,’ he bit out angrily.
‘The lie isn’t the one you think I’ve told, but the one that has been told about you.’
Her words landed on him like a punch, knocking the wind from him so that it was almost hard to breathe.