Chapter Eight
HANA EYED THE beams of sunlight poking through the carved details in the wooden window screens. She had watched for them all night long, dry-eyed and hollow-hearted.
What kind of cruelty had Malik’s parents inflicted upon him?
She swallowed. Nothing, not her siblings’ taunts or her mother’s absence from her life, had been that cruel.
And then his fiancée? Running away and using the cruel rumours about him to justify her behaviour, to save herself and her reputation?
No wonder he kept everyone at arm’s length.
No wonder he had wanted a marriage in name only.
Even the only member of his family to show him kindness—his brother—had been taken away from him.
The people who had been supposed to love him the most had betrayed him.
Had betrayed the bonds that should have protected him.
She clenched her jaw to keep the tears at bay. But they weren’t tears for herself. They were for him. Yes, he was a man who snarled and growled, but there was no heat to his apparent anger. He was a man who had gone out in a storm to protect her. Who could have ruined her had he wanted to.
And he hadn’t.
So, she would do whatever Malik needed, be whatever he needed to her to be.
She’d barely showered and dressed before she was being whisked away to the cars that were taking them to the first stop on the twelve-day tour to introduce the newlyweds to Al Surrahin.
If she wasn’t in the back of a car with a stony-faced, silent Malik who was glued to the laptop as if it could ward off any and all of her attempts to make conversation, then she was meeting and greeting dignitaries, councillors and ambassadors.
Her facial muscles ached from the steel grip she had on her smile, her mind hurt with all the small snippets of info that Fatima—her handmaid—constantly whispered into her ear.
‘This is Councillor Mirza and his wife, Rida.’
‘This is Ambassador Saadeh and his son, Bilal.’
‘This is…’
Hana would look at Malik, his visage forbidding, his shoulder tight and raised as if it were causing him trouble, his words clipped and his demeanour sharp. He was doing the right things, saying the right things, but even she didn’t believe them.
And how he was with her?
Hana swallowed the little lump of hurt, pushing it down at the distance that seemed to be growing between them until it seemed almost impossible for it to be breached.
As her discomfort grew, the harder she tried to make an effort on the tour, but that was when the mistakes began.
At first it had been a small slip, when she mistook the child of a staff member for the chief’s granddaughter, offending the entire clan.
On the next visit, Hana was so petrified of saying the wrong thing that she barely said a word and was considered rude.
The one after—a beautiful town to the north of Al Surrahin’s capital—she wasn’t able to eat the ceremonial welcome dish because of a food allergy, and the entire town thought she was making it up.
No matter how much she tried, it was like being in Omrhain all over again.
The car trips from one visit to another provided little more than a beautiful backdrop to her obsessively worrying thoughts. Worries ate into her nights where sleep was a thing she longed for but could barely remember ever having. Her stomach in knots, she could barely eat a thing.
The staff would cast worried looks in her direction, while Malik barely said a single word to her.
He would introduce her to the people of his country as if she were a piece of artwork, refusing to engage her in conversation yet speaking about her as if she had no voice of her own.
He probably didn’t trust her to speak and not get him into trouble again.
At night, although they were assigned the same quarters, he would choose to stay elsewhere. She felt…alone. And she had no one to blame but herself.
On the seventh day, they were beginning to make their way east. Malik was once again immersed in whatever it was he was doing on his laptop.
And just like she had done the day before and the day before that, she stole furtive glances at her husband, hoping that he wouldn’t notice how drawn she was to the cut of his cheekbone, the jut of his jaw, the way that his hair would fall forward and with one hand, Malik would sweep it back and she’d catch a glimpse of that intense focus of his.
A focus she admired, on features that she felt almost hypnotized by.
When that combined with the motion of the car, her heart would begin to thud, and the scent filled her head and chest with a thickness she could hardly breathe through. Hot and cold would shiver over her body until she was near dizzy from just the proximity to him.
Annoyed with herself, frustrated by her weakness for him—a weakness that was most unwelcome—she forced her gaze out of the window at the desert that stretched out around the car as endlessly as her future felt at that moment.
Despite that, Hana hadn’t been prepared for the blast of arid heat surrounding the ministerial building in the city of Hadain.
It slammed up against her as she exited the car.
She’d missed breakfast that morning, food the last thing on her roiling stomach’s mind after another sleepless night.
A wave of dizziness turned her head, as if she were caught in a sandstorm and she couldn’t see the horizon.
Malik had gone ahead, where she could see him being drawn into the building while she was meeting with the people that lined the entrance. The faces in the crowed blurred and she blinked to try to clear her gaze, but then her stomach twisted sharply and she staggered.
And before Fatima could reach her, Hana collapsed.
Malik stalked down the corridor, led by a worried-looking man from Hadain’s council, to the room where they had taken his wife. Blood thundered in his ears louder than the sounds of their feet on the cool marble flooring.
‘The doctor is with her, Your Highness.’
The words buzzed in his ear like the sound of a hornet in the desert, making noise but not sense. Questions piled on his tongue until it ached.
Is she okay? What happened? Was it his fault? Had he pushed her too hard?
He’d recognised that Hana had been quiet, and knew that she’d been upset about the easy mistake she’d made on their first stop.
She’d been tense and quiet ever since, and he’d been keeping his distance in the hope that giving her space would allow her to relax.
To return to the Hana he remembered from the island.
The council assistant finally came to a stop outside a room and knocked. When Fatima came to open the door, the man stood back and allowed Malik to enter, while remaining outside.
Malik took in the room in a single breath. Ehsan was talking to the doctor, Fatima was wringing her hands beside him, a tray with tea and a plate of food was on a small table beside a low chaise on which Hana lay on her side looking pale and miserable.
He wanted to go to her. To drop to his knees by her side, to push the hair back from her forehead so he could see her properly, so that he could know.
‘Are you okay?’ he said instead, holding himself back.
Hana nodded. Her breath hitched before she whispered, ‘I’m so sorry.’
Malik frowned. Why was she sorry? Alarm cut through him at the thought that something was very seriously wrong and he left her only to get answers from the doctor.
‘What happened?’ he asked, without introduction.
‘A bit of dehydration on a very empty stomach. She will be fine once she starts looking after herself a little better.’
The doctor’s eyes, however, told him that Malik was the one who was being blamed. And rightly so.
‘Nothing else?’ Malik demanded, not yet ready to feel the relief that was beginning to soften the urgency of his heartbeat. If he had to force-feed her food for the next five days, he’d gladly do it himself.
‘I wondered perhaps if pregnancy could be an issue?’ the doctor asked delicately, clearly not having felt able to ask Malik’s wife. He swallowed, suddenly overcome with the mental image of a child with Hana’s eyes and his colouring, thick dark hair and a beautiful smile.
‘No,’ Malik said, though whether he was speaking to the doctor or himself, he didn’t know.
The doctor held his gaze before nodding once. ‘Then no. She’ll be fine with lots of rest, food and liquids. Sugar and salt if you can get her to agree. I would have liked to set up a drip with fluids, but she refused.’
Malik felt his ire rise at how Hana refused to look after herself.
‘Everybody out!’ he yelled, his anger barely restrained by propriety.
Everyone but Hana flinched and jumped to do his bidding, while she looked miserable with her eyes closed and a little frown across her brow.
‘I’m sorry, I really am,’ she said miserably when it was just the two of them in the room.
‘Stop being sorry and tell me what’s going on,’ he demanded, his voice harsh, but unable to soften it until he knew what was going on. Until he knew she was okay.
Her lips wobbled and his conscience thrashed. He crossed to the chaise and perched in the small space left by the way her knees were tucked up against her chest.
‘Hana,’ he said, more gently. ‘Just speak to me.’
‘It’s just like before.’
‘What is?’
‘I’m bringing embarrassment and shame on you wherever we go. Really, you should send me back to the palace and carry on without me.’
Had it been anyone else, he’d have thought that this was some self-indulgent sulk. But he could see in the way that tension pulled through her entire body, the way that her food was left untouched, how upset she clearly was.
‘I’m not embarrassed,’ he said simply and honestly. ‘Really. Besides, I’m pretty sure that the staff member’s child was in fact the sheikh’s grandchild. Burhan is known for a wandering eye and extreme fertility.’
Hana’s eyes blinked open in shock and the little half laugh that fell from her lips seemed to startle her.