Chapter 37
Rheadur
Kaled’s Investiture
Three Days Later
I look around the palace’s luxurious hall as if seeing it for the first time. Until now, I’d been here as Princess Jazmina’s guest, the sister I was blessed with, even if we don’t share the same blood.
Today, as I walk across the marble floor in my formal gown, I feel like a princess who’s stepped straight out of a fairy tale.
“Don’t be so nervous,” Jazmina whispers so no one else will hear.
“Easier said than done. I’m shaking so much I’m afraid I’ll trip over my own feet. If only Mom were here.”
The words no sooner leave me than I regret them.
It isn’t fair to her. With her health so fragile, she’s already been through enough in a short span: our reunion, the return to Rheadur—knowing that regardless of what Kaled says, she’s being judged, yes, even if discreetly—and my father’s simmering resentment.
The day we landed, he stood beside former Sheikh Kamran.
Not once did I look at him, but I didn’t lower my head either. Not only because I’m now under my future husband’s protection but because he no longer frightens me the way he once did. I can finally see him as he is: an empty man.
Even with the way I was raised, alone and scorned by him and his wives and daughters, a part of me still hoped that deep down he loved me.
Hearing his conversation with the man he wanted to marry me off to was the final nail in the coffin.
My father can’t hide behind religion or custom for the way he is: the cruelty is in him. What kind of person knows his ex-wife is ill and, even with the means to help her, watches from the sidelines like a mere spectator? Worse, uses the mother’s illness to blackmail his own daughter?
Divorced or not, Mom wasn’t just anyone in his life. They were together for nearly ten years.
For what he did to her, I’ll never forgive him. He can pretend to the entire country that he’s an honorable man, but I know his true face.
“Coming tonight would have been too much for your mother,” Jazmina says, pulling me back to the present. “I think Daisy’s saving her strength for the wedding, because we both know what celebrations are like here in Rheadur.”
I smile, relaxing a little, remembering how, when we were girls, we dreamed of marrying princes. For Jazmina, that was always closer to reality because she was born into nobility—suitors won’t be what she lacks—but for me, it was a fragile illusion I clung to in order to escape my hopeless life.
And yet, soon I’ll marry my real-life prince.
But he doesn’t love you, Reason whispers.
My mother and father were in love when they married and still didn’t get a happy ending. What will be left in a few years of a marriage of convenience, one that won’t even have children to soften the loneliness?
“What are you thinking about so hard?”
“My wedding,” I answer honestly.
“Having second thoughts?”
“No, just afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of falling in love with him. It’s not hard, you know. Your brother makes my heart race most of the time.”
Instead of sympathy, she bumps my arm and smiles. “And the rest of the time?”
I don’t have to think long. “He steals my breath.”
And sets fire to every nerve ending in my body, I add silently.
“I want someone like that.”
“Like what?”
“What I see between you and my brother: a mix of uncontrollable physical pull and tenderness.” She studies me in silence, and I know she hasn’t said everything she wants to.
“Go on.”
“I think the two of you are falling in love. You just haven’t realized it yet.”
I open my mouth to deny it, but no sound comes out. Not because I think she’s a hundred percent right but because, at least on my end, it might be true.
“I’d like help with something for our wedding,” I say.
“Another gift? My brother’s a lucky man,” she says, and I smile, shaking my head.
“No. I’m hoping one will be enough.”
We went to Sofia Lambertucci’s exhibit in Paris, but Kaled couldn’t go, as he had a meeting that day. I fell in love with the sensitivity in her portraits. You can see emotion in every face, and I’m not surprised she’s in such high demand with a packed schedule.
On impulse, using the money Jazmina gave me as an engagement present, I asked the American painter to prepare a wedding gift for my husband. Even if it arrives late, I think he’ll like it.
I also sent her a wedding invitation and then called to apologize for the short notice. I expected her to say she couldn’t make it, but to my delight, she said she wouldn’t miss it for the world and would try to move the painting along, though she doubted it would be ready.
“If it’s not another wedding gift, what is it?”
“A surprise for our wedding night.”
We won’t have a honeymoon now. With the recent handover of power, Kaled explained there’s much to be done: serious issues to correct in the country’s economy, and also the start of a gradual easing to reintroduce rights so that Rheadur can again be seen as a place where Western women can travel safely.
I asked him point-blank if it was only about the economy, since tourism has plunged. He told me no. In his view, women and men are citizens, and it makes no sense to restrict rights based on gender.
Those changes, however, must be made responsibly. There’s a conservative wing among the counselors and elders.
“What kind of surprise?” she asks, a mischievous smile playing on her lips.
“I don’t want to spend the wedding night here at the palace.”
“Where, then?”
“In the desert. I need your help setting up a tent and . . .”
“I know exactly what you mean, and the answer’s yes. I remember that princess who gave an interview a few years ago about the surprise she planned for her husband. That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I say, shy.
We both swooned over the romance of the idea, and that it came from a woman, when it’s usually the men who plan these things.
“I’m in. We’ll give your wedding night a dream setting.”
Half an hour later
As I watch my future husband being invested as sheikh of Rheadur, my heart fills with an immense mix of tenderness and pride.
Since returning to our country, Kaled has dressed in traditional clothing.
I didn’t think the man could get any more handsome, but with each passing day, I’m more ensnared by the aura of masculinity and power he radiates.
And it has nothing to do with the fact that he’s now officially a sheikh.
It’s him. Kaled would stand out in any crowd—with his effortless charisma and charm—but above all, he’s the kind of man who, when he speaks, you know it’s true. Honor pours off him in waves.
I make a quick comparison to his missing half-brother, Naim.
I never saw our people look at him with the same respect and admiration they show my fiancé, and that surprises me.
I thought that, having been raised largely in the West, the people of Rheadur might eye Kaled with suspicion at first, but they seem pleased with the change in leadership.
Since we returned, not a day goes by without gifts arriving at the palace: scarves, flowers, food, honey. Small gestures that show they accept not only their new leader but me as well.
“My brother can hypnotize them,” Jazmina whispers. “Look how the representatives of the neighboring emirates are glued to his speech. I overheard a conversation with my father that Kaled may be chosen as the new emir[34] of our peninsula.”
I glance around, agreeing. Even though this was meant to be a discreet ceremony, leaders from several countries are here, and of course, his inseparable friends as well.
Alongside Kaled, they stand out from the rest of us mortals with the beauty and the bearing of alpha males.
“It would be a great honor for our sheikh,” I say, awed. “Not only to lead Rheadur but also to become the overall ruler of the neighboring emirates. Do you think he’d accept?”
“I have no doubt. If there’s one thing you need to learn about my brother, Adeela, it’s that he never runs from responsibility.”
For some reason I can’t quite place, what she says unsettles me, but I push the feeling to the back of my mind.
I get the sense I’m being watched, and when I turn my head, my father is staring at me. What I see on his face sends a chill up my spine, lifting the hairs on my neck.
Hatred. As if he were looking at an enemy.
The craziest part is that I don’t fear for myself but for Kaled. Instinct tells me to protect him.
The private ceremony finally ends, but before he goes out to the balcony, where the excited crowd waits to pay him homage, he looks at me for the first time tonight.
I’m not upset that he didn’t earlier. Even if I’m not sure about his feelings for me, I don’t doubt the pull that drags us toward each other. I suspect he was simply trying to focus on the solemnity of the occasion.
Since the day we set foot in Rheadur, we haven’t been alone for a single moment, and I have the impression we’re like two boiling kettles about to spill over, the desire for contact nearly unbearable.
So when, after speaking with his father, he starts toward me, my legs go weak.
Thank goodness Jazmina is at my side, because I can feel every eye in the room on me now.
He stops about half a meter away, but it’s as if his hands are already on me.
“Peace be upon you, Your Highness. It’s an honor to have you as my sheikh.”
Something flashes deep in his dark eyes, making my skin prickle. “In a few days, you’ll be seated at my side as I govern our country, my fiancée. Does the idea please you?”
I lower my gaze, not looking at him directly as heat spreads under my skin.
Before I can stop it, a smile curves my lips as I whisper for him alone:
“There’s nothing I want more, my sheikh.”