by Leslie North
He had been right.
Gina’s emotions roiled like a desert storm, a rare occurrence when rain and dust kicked up to make a huge, spinning cloud that rolled over the dunes like an avenging army, spitting water and blinding people who weren’t careful about the wind. She pressed a hand to her chest, then another, and paced back and forth in the hallway. She’d turned right—or was it left? It didn’t matter. The important thing was that she’d slipped out of the courtroom and no one, not even Shahd, had noticed. If Shahd noticed, then she’d come out here to talk to Gina, and Gina would burst into tears.
She couldn’t have that.
Not now, outside the convocation. The meeting could end at any minute, and everyone would come stomping out of that room and surround her. Gina couldn’t be there when it ended, but she also couldn’t bring herself to leave.
“It’s time to face the facts,” she told herself aloud. If Skandar won the convocation, she would have been useful to him. That was it. If he lost, then she was no use—in fact, she was harmful—and there would be no more to the story. Either way, it had only ever been about her usefulness to him. From the moment they met each other that night in the desert, she had been a piece in his game of chess. No more, no less.
Her chin quivered obnoxiously, and Gina pinched her lips together to try and get it to stop. The cool of the courtroom did nothing to soothe the burning embarrassment that crawled up her neck and across her cheeks. She’d had a dream, but that was all it had been—a fantasy. She’d dreamed of Skandar making their marriage real with no time limit, and it had been foolish.
So they sought out each other’s company. So there was desire between them. All the desire in the world meant nothing if there was a chasm this deep between the two of them.
Gina took a few tentative steps toward the entrance to the courtyard. A wide pair of doors stood open, her guard waiting outside the building. Skandar had hired more security to take places in the room, but he hadn’t wanted their guards right at their sides—it would create too much of a division, he’d said. Too much space between us and the people. It wouldn’t be a good visual.
And the visual was what mattered.
She swallowed back a painful sob, not letting it out. Gina was the one who wouldn’t be a good visual. Skandar had told her, in essence, that he couldn’t have her as his wife. He’d crushed the hope of staying with him after their agreement was up without her ever having a chance to express it to him. Gone, gone, gone. Like so much shattered china. What did she do back home when she broke a plate? Swept it into the garbage, that’s what.
Gina obviously wasn’t a plate, but a laugh bubbled up at the image of a plate trying desperately to shape itself into a non-broken piece of dinnerware and ending up as a wobbly stack.
Anyway, it wasn’t what Gina was about. She wasn’t about to twist herself up in knots to make herself into the perfect wife for a man who wasn’t convinced she could be one at all. Why should she change herself? She’d given him everything he wanted and then some. Perfect rites. A pregnancy announcement. A wedding. If it ended in a quiet divorce in a few weeks, then that was the price she’d have to pay.
Another sob bubbled up into her throat, making it ache more intensely, but she wasn’t going to let that happen now. What she was going to do was leave the courthouse. She’d go back to the palace. She’d pack her things. And then she’d figure out a plan for the rest of her pregnancy.
Gina signaled for the guard, unable to say the words that would bring them over.
“Ready to leave, Sheikha?”
She nodded, still lost for words. The guards led her out to a waiting SUV, which had its engine rumbling, ready to whisk her away to wherever she wanted to go. Take me to the desert, she wanted to say. Take me back to where this all began and let me see if there’s a way to untangle it. But instead she cleared her throat and tried again.
“I need to go back to the palace, please. And I’ll need the car to wait for me. I won’t be staying long.”
18
The final words of his speech slipped from Skandar’s lips, and it was over.
He’d done it.
The speech was finished. The battle was finished. Scattered applause rose in the courtroom and was quickly hushed by the judge. The stakes were too high to have people cheering and raucous.
Skandar needed to sit down.
He took a seat on his side of the courtroom. Where was the relief? He’d made it through his presentation without any major stumbles, and he expected to feel light as a feather. But it wasn’t truly over yet, was it? It would only be over when the representatives chose the winner.
It had taken so much. From all of them. There was so much tension in the room, thick and heavy, and if he won—well, he’d still have to handle a multitude of changes. He’d made a lot of deals with a lot of people to get even this far, and the cost had been high. His family had been put through upheaval, and he knew it had taken a toll on his mother. It took a toll on Shahd, too. Of course it did.
It took a toll on all of them.
The council left to deliberate, and his mother and sister came to stand next to him while they did so. This part of the convocation was largely for show—the real work had been done in the weeks leading up to today, and now they’d discover if any of the swing voters had changed their minds. Shahd’s voice whirled around him while he sat, unable to focus on it.
Karima patted his shoulders. “It was a wonderful speech, Skandar. I’m proud of you.”
“Thank you.”
He waited for the pride to come. The pride of at least finishing the job, even if this was truly the end for his kingship. Instead, he was exhausted. He focused on the national flag hanging behind the judge’s chair, and his mother’s and Shahd’s voices faded into the background. It was the silence that snapped him out of his reverie. He had no idea how long it had been, but an anticipatory quiet had fallen over the courtroom. The judge took his seat.
“Delegates, please rise and give your verdict,” the judge said, and Skandar’s heart took off from the starting gate and raced out ahead of him, into two different futures. If they chose his uncle, it would break—but then what? If they chose him, his heart still might explode.
The council stood, and one of the elders began to speak.
Skandar couldn’t make out the words.
They were smiling at him, sure, but the sounds didn’t resolve into anything that made sense.
“Skandar!” His mother leaned into his line of sight, shaking at his arm. “You won in a landslide.”
He stood up, the movement mechanical and practiced, and drew her into a stiff hug. Shahd was next, and then people were around them, leaning in for handshakes. His smile felt forced. Where was the joy? Where was the thrill? Something was missing.
“Go thank them,” Shahd murmured in his ear. “Before the moment gets away from you.”
He went to the delegates’ area and shook each of their hands, waiting for the cascade of emotion. For sweet relief. It didn’t come.
A hand on his elbow. He met the eyes of Ekram Fazal, the lead representative of the citizens. “Could we speak for a moment?”
“Of course,” he said automatically. Skandar had been accepting meetings for weeks. He would go through his usual talking points, calibrated to bring the citizens close to him—wait. He didn’t need to do that anymore. The two men stepped to the side of the courtroom, where the noise was only slightly less. “What can I do for you?”
“I wanted you to know that this didn’t happen because of your speech or your facts or your plans.” Ekram looked relieved, at least—but what he said couldn’t possibly be true.
Skandar blinked. “What?”
“You won because you have a good heart and the good of the country in mind. It’s your emotion that won the day, not the details of your plans.” What could he say to that? For the life of him, Skandar couldn’t think of an answer. “Gina’s speech showed us that—that you care for the people, even th
ose who have nothing to offer you in the way the business leaders and nobility do. I speak for all of us when I say that under your leadership, life won’t be a zero-sum game. That’s our feeling. The people won’t lose while other interests win.”
“Life doesn’t have to be a battle between winners and losers,” Skandar echoed, and an image of Gina popped into his head. Not Gina in the courtroom, with her business outfit and her careful makeup, but Gina sliding down a sand dune, her red hair glowing in the moonlight, and hopping up to find herself in a different life entirely. Gina on the back of a horse, laughing as he spurred them on through the desert. Gina in his tent, sprawled out across the bed with her notebooks and data, a thoughtful expression on her face.
He saw his family approaching from the corner of his eye, and even without looking carefully, he knew something was wrong.
Karima’s expression was too level for post-victory happiness. Shahd looked downright grim. But it was Hamila who came close, moving forward when his mother and sister hung back.
Whatever had happened, he didn’t want to know.
“Thank you.” He looked Ekram in the eye, and the two men clasped arms. “What you’ve said means a lot to me. I’ll carry it with me as long as I rule, and longer.”
Ekram dipped his head and stepped away before Skandar could continue the conversation. A new dread had dripped into the pit of his gut. Hamila took the last few steps over to him and stopped in front of him.
“Do you have a minute before you go back to meeting and greeting?”
As much as he didn’t want to know, it was the only way forward. “What happened?”
Hamila, to her credit, didn’t flinch away from him. She took a deep breath. “Gina’s gone. She left for the palace. I think she’s really leaving, Skandar.”
Really leaving. The convocation had marked the official end of their relationship—at least according to the terms they’d laid out. He should have been expecting this. But his stomach dropped out below his shoes, the air in his lungs on fire. That was the emptiness he’d felt when they announced him as the winner. Gina, gone. He could feel her absence in the air around him. In his bones.
Skandar nodded, already straightening his back, already arranging his face into a neutral expression. “Thank you, Hamila.” He strode over to the table, where the papers he’d brought with him had been spread out for the duration of the convocation. Notes. Talking points. Plans. He gave a quick smile to a man standing nearby and began to shuffle the papers back together.
One of them resisted going back into the pile, fighting and fighting until finally Skandar yanked it out and ripped it in two.
Then he went back for another paper.
And another.
The courtroom fell silent around him for a heartbeat, and then the noise started back up. Skandar kept ripping. Nobody looked his way. They seemed to understand that this was a private moment in public—something to be carefully ignored.
He didn’t stop until he’d ripped up everything he’d been working on.
Gina sat at a desk in Skandar’s bedroom, leaning over her laptop. She’d packed a small suitcase—no need to take a palace wardrobe home to wear to the office—and just needed to do a few things before she left.
Like check up on the project she’d neglected for so long.
She had hustled to get everything up to speed over the last week, sometimes waking up in the middle of the night to work, and it had paid off. The tribes were uploading data, which she compiled and sent to the relevant departments. It was surprising how well her idea had worked—it had gone so smoothly and yielded so much data, especially considering she wasn’t there with them in person. Remote work from the palace had gone wonderfully. Gina pulled up a draft email and typed one out to the Centre, including the latest report from the day.
Then she stood up and snapped the laptop shut. She could sit here all day distracting herself, but it wouldn’t change what needed to be done. She had to move on. Gina folded the laptop into a big tote she liked to travel with. It bumped up against something, and when she reached in to wiggle it into place, her hand met a slim folder.
The contract.
She pulled out the folder—red, with the seal of Basran on the front—and opened it to find the printed document.
There had never been time to read it before now. Or maybe Gina hadn’t wanted to. Either way, she didn’t need it. There was no use in carrying it with her wherever she went next. For the first time, she spread it out on the desk in front of her and read through the provisions Skandar had made for her.
Then she took out a pen and drew a line through each and every one. She didn’t need provisions. She didn’t want anything from Skandar or the royal family. She didn’t need it.
The chief steward knocked on the door, and Gina handed over the notes she’d spent most of the time working on after her arrival at the palace—notes for all the groups and organizations she’d been involved with. She offered the steward her best wishes and pointed out the cluster of small wrapped gifts for her personal team.
Gina was almost ready to walk out the door when she remembered the last item on her list—the gifts Skandar had given her.
Clothes. Jewelry. Everything. She brought it out and spread it in neat rows on the bed, each piece of jewelry nestled on top of its own outfit. It was more than she’d expected. Strange, how a month could be so much time and so little. Strange, how she’d been focused on making it to the finish, but now that she was here...
Well, it didn’t feel as wonderful as she’d hoped.
The only gift Gina took with her was the Sweetest Flame flower he’d picked for her. They’d watched it bloom in the desert one early morning, and Skandar took it from the earth like he’d take a precious jewel. Gina had pressed it, and Skandar had it encased in clear resin as a pendant. Tears stung the corners of her eyes.
“I’m not going to cry about it,” she said to no one. “I’m just going to wear it, and it’ll be a lovely memory from my time here.”
But the pendant felt heavy around her neck, and Gina found herself clutching it like a talisman as one tear after another slipped down her cheeks. It would remind her of this time, to be sure. That didn’t tell her anything about the future. Would he find someone else? Gina couldn’t imagine it. Try as she might, not a single image came to mind. Another man for her? No. There was only a blank spot in her imagination.
Because she only wanted Skandar.
More than anything, she wanted to make a marriage with him, and make a family with him and their baby.
It just wasn’t to be. He had turned her away, been very clear that he did not value her vision, her very being.
She took a deep, shuddering breath and willed herself to stop crying. Crying wouldn’t help her get on with her life. Movement would. So Gina gave the pendant a final squeeze and called the steward.
“Is the car still waiting?” she said, her voice surprisingly steady. “I need to go to the airport.”
19
It was like nothing had ever happened when Skandar walked back into the palace. Nothing but a bit of an exciting bump in the road. The halls hummed with the same energy they always had. There was plenty of work to be done running the kingdom, and there was no time to waste. His assistant rattled off other agenda items for the day, and Skandar followed along, numb, until he took a turn into a conference room where his councilors had already convened the first post-convocation meeting. He was too restless to sit.
“First things first, we need to check in on the market construction,” one of them said, and afterward it was a cascade of business items that Skandar agreed to one after another. Approve this plan. Reject this proposal. Sign, sign, sign. It seemed like centuries and seconds. It took forever, and no time at all. “And of course we’ll need your approval on terms for the divorce.”
Ice. Ice on his hands, his neck. “Excuse me?”
“We’ve been made aware that Gina has left the palace with the intention of ending
the marriage.” This, from his closest councilor. It sounded like another item on the list. Get it done and get it off their plates. “The contract she left was a good indication of her feeling, but we need an explicit statement, in writing, that she wants nothing further from the royal household. Obviously, this can’t become public knowledge right away.”
“What about a month?” someone chimed in. A rush of blood to his head made Skandar want to sit down and stay sitting down forever.
“I think two.”
It made him numb, hearing her reduced to dates and numbers like this. They went on, the debate moving cheerfully through the room, until Skandar took a step back from the table. “You’ll have to excuse me.”
“There are things to finish—”
“I’ll be right back,” he insisted, and then he went out, wandering until he reached the private wing. Gina had been so taken with the palace decorations, even though this area was modern and welcoming and couldn’t have been so different from other places she’d visited. It couldn’t have—but when Skandar looked at it though her eyes, he saw all the clever touches. The intricate designs on the hardwood floors. The exquisite paintings on the paneled walls. And most of all, he saw Gina.
Gina’s face lighting up when he brought her the pendant with the flower in it. Gina standing in the window of his bedroom, her hands on her belly, singing to the baby. Gina leaning in to share confidences with his mother and sister. She’d worked so hard to bring peace to Basran and to the palace.
He passed by the nursery.