“I …” She shook her head. “What did he say?”
“That I’m to take you back to his apartment and lock the door.” His expression was grim; Evie couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
“I don’t understand.”
“Are you involved with him?”
Her cheeks drained of colour and she shook her head. “That’s not anyone’s business,” she said haltingly. She looked down quickly – yes, her dress was fine. It’s not like she was running around in a halter neck and shorts or in the bathers she desperately wanted to be wearing earlier. So why the cold disdain?
“Come,” Fayaz spoke urgently, apparently desperate to shake free of her. “I’ll show you the way.”
But Evie wasn’t having a bar of it! “I don’t understand, Fayaz. What exactly did he say? What’s wrong?”
“If you are involved with him, you have no place spending time alone with me.”
Her mouth dropped; her jaw slack. “You’re kidding?”
“I didn’t realise you were his.”
“I’m not his,” she snapped, appalled. “What the heck is with you two? No person can belong to another. Besides, you saw the way he was with me; like I don’t even exist.”
Fayaz seemed to be searching for the right words.
“Just spit it out,” she begged, desperately wanting to comprehend.
“Fine. You are his lover, no?”
“Yes,” she whispered, mortified.
“So it would be a great insult for him to acknowledge you in front of those men. In front of anyone, really.”
“What? So because we’re …” she lowered her voice to a whisper as a maid passed them. “So because we’re sleeping together I am no longer a woman in my own right?”
“It isn’t like this,” he murmured. “You are simply his. That’s all.”
“Like property?”
“That’s a little melodramatic. I understand there are great benefits to the arrangement. Financial benefits.”
“My God. I don’t want money. Fayaz … I don’t understand …”
He stopped walking. They were at the base of the stairs that led to the family suites. “I know. But it is for Malakhi to explain. He asked only that I escort you back.”
“Consider your job done,” she said, snapping at him despite the fact he was not really at fault. “I’d say ‘see you soon’ except it sounds like I’m not allowed to see anyone unless my lord and master approves.” She stormed away from him, fuming. She slammed the door of his apartment angrily.
But once she was in the privacy offered by the luxurious suite, her temper deflated swiftly, as though it had been popped by a pin. Her legs were shaking. She collapsed down on the edge of the bed and dipped her head forward, gripping it in her hands.
She sat like that for a long time. Long enough for the sun to begin to dip lower and cast orange hues across the room. But it was not yet dark when he returned.
His mood had apparently not improved.
He shut the door loudly. Evie startled, standing abruptly.
Malakhi didn’t notice the way her eyes were shimmering with sorrow. His own feelings were making any appreciation of hers impossible.
“We must speak.” The words ran into the room like an axe hitting a tree.
“You think?” She snapped sarcastically.
“What does this mean? Of course I think. I just said …”
“I was being sarcastic,” she shouted, thrusting her hands onto her hips. “How dare you ignore me like that?”
A muscle jerked in his jaw. “You are angry with me?”
“Damn straight. I’m not saying you had to put your arm around me and introduce me to your friends, but you could at least have smiled at me, or said ‘hey’. You turned your back on me! How dare you?”
“Introduce you to my friends? These men are Kings, Evelyn. Kings like me. Do you know how inappropriate it would have been for me to present you as my mistress?”
“So I’m good enough to sleep with, but once we leave this room I’m an embarrassment to you?”
The same muscle pulled at his jaw. “This is our arrangement.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t like it.”
His voice was gruff. “You are also not to encourage men like Fayaz.”
“Encourage … are you kidding me? We had lunch together. We talked. How is that ‘encouraging’ him?”
“I don’t think you understand. When I take a mistress, she is for my … appreciation only.”
Bile was coating her mouth. “So I’m not allowed to have a life of my own?”
“Of course you are,” he sighed exasperatedly. “But you are not allowed to go on lunch dates and drink wine with men in my employ.”
“How do you know …? Fayaz.”
He dipped his head forward in silent agreement.
“You’ve interrogated him.”
His lip lifted in a smile despite his dark mood. “I spared the rack,” he said with mock seriousness. “But yes. Once he was made aware of our … relationship … he felt obliged to confide the details of your time together to me.”
“He was just being kind to me,” she said hollowly, swinging away from him and wrapping her arms around her chest. “He’s a … friend. Someone I can talk to.” Her voice broke. “I don’t have anyone I can talk to. About Dave. And Sabra. He understands how I feel.” She ran her eyes over the city, remembering how beautiful it was from street level.
“You think I don’t?”
She shook her head sadly. Words were suddenly impossible.
“I didn’t like seeing you together,” he said, standing right behind her now.
“You think the worst of me without any cause,” she said softly, her mind tangling with the knots of her needs. “You thought I cheated on my husband –,”
“You did cheat on your husband,” he interrupted. “That kiss was hardly innocent.”
“You’re different. You don’t count.” She turned to look up at him. Her face showed the depths of her fears. “Do you really want to know why I left Nick?”
“Of course.”
“Because of you. You kissed me and I felt like the whole world opened up for me.” She squeezed her eyes shut on the admission. “It was never like that with him. I had thought, for years, that I just wasn’t a very sexual person. After I left him I went out with a heap of guys. I kissed a heap of guys.” She didn’t see the way his expression darkened. “I wanted to feel what I did with you. But there was nothing. Nothing. Until I came here and saw you, and it’s there again.” She forced herself to meet his eyes. “I hate you, you know. I hate the way you treat me. I hate the way you view women, and the way you view sex. But you make me feel more alive than I can explain. It’s like the world is black and white until I’m with you.”
He lifted a finger to her lips to stop her impassioned explanation.
“Didn’t you think about the position you were putting him in?”
“Of course I didn’t.” She shook her head slowly. “He asked me for lunch. I agreed. It’s as simple as that.”
“Nothing is simple with you,” he muttered crossly.
“I don’t understand what I did wrong.” She kept her voice level with effort.
“You are a divorced woman. You are my lover. And you were seen leaving the palace, and returning hours later, with one of my trusted advisors.”
“He’s someone I think of as a friend.” She closed her eyes. “I need friends. Don’t you see how … isolating this will be for me otherwise?”
His chest moved sharply with the rise and fall of his breaths. “You exposed him to the censure of my staff.”
“They should mind their own business,” she huffed crossly. She eased herself backwards, propping against the wall. “I didn’t know there was anything wrong with what we did.”
He shook his head. “There’s not.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “There shouldn’t be. It is … complicated.”
“I’m not like Leilani,�
� she said with a quiet confidence.
“No. You are nothing like Leilani.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not making comparisons of that nature. I just mean that it’s all muddy between us because of Kalem.”
“I wasn’t making comparisons of that nature, either, he promised.
“I’m not just a mistress.”
“No.” He rubbed his chin. “An idea occurred to me this afternoon.” He took one step and brought his body close to hers. His legs straddled hers; his body engulfed her with its masculine strength. “One that I think we should … consider.”
“I’m all ears.”
“No. You are far more than ears.” He lifted a finger and flicked her lobe teasingly. Keeping up with his mood shifts was giving her vertigo. “I am expected to marry. It is a duty and obligation that I have always felt.”
She held her breath, hating where this was going and yet unable to turn away for the morbid curiosity throbbing through her.
Her hair glowed like fire. Her hair had been the first thing he’d noticed, when they’d met. “What if you were to be my wife?”
The world was spinning far, far too fast. Evie lifted a hand and clutched the fabric of his robe for strength. “What did you just say?”
“I think we should marry.” He shrugged his broad shoulders as though he was asking her to share a pot of tea with him.
“But … why? We’re not in love.”
His face was impossible to read. “No. We’re not. But we are sexually compatible. We share a nephew. And we have both experienced a loss that would be difficult for anyone else to understand. Do you not feel this bonds us?”
Sadness choked her heart. “These are reasons for us to be friends. Not to get married.”
His smile was slightly mocking. “As my wife, you will have greater freedoms in the palace. The ability to lunch which whomever you wish. To speak to my guests as my equal. I would never again have to turn my back on you.”
“You shouldn’t have done that anyway.” Her expression flashed angrily.
“This is a country of traditions and obligations. Even Sabra knew that.”
“Yeah, and she ran as far as she could from them.” If Evie were less angry, she might have apologised for the unnecessary cruelty of the comment.
“Yes. But you cannot.”
She opened her mouth to protest and he swore softly.
Sabra’s ill-thought-out will played heavily on his mind. If Evie knew that she had the legal right to take Kalem, he would lose them both forever. It added extra determination to his argument. “Not if you want to live with Kalem. He is staying here, in Ishala, to be raised amongst our people.”
“So he can become just as set in his ways as you are?”
He compressed his lips with impatience. “Our ways are not bad. Sabra was happy here.” His eyes were dark, stormed by feeling. “And you will be too. But more so if you marry me.”
“That’s absolutely crazy.”
“Why? We are already sleeping together. There is only benefit to you in this arrangement. You will have greater privileges, respect, wealth, and our personal situation needn’t change.”
That was, of course, in a nutshell what Evie feared. Marriage to a man like Malakhi, without the warmth of affection, could prove soul-destroying.
“So it wouldn’t matter to you that I don’t particularly like you? So long as we continued to sleep together.”
He contemplated her appraisal of their situation carefully, analysing all edges of the summation. Finally, he nodded.
Evie must have lost her mind because something about his proposition was making a crazy kind of sense. “Can I think about it?”
He rubbed a hand across his chin. “Yes. And while you do, I want to show you something.”
“What?”
“Patience, Jamila. You will see soon enough.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
He drove fast but with a skill she could only admire. They’d left the city behind them an hour ago, and for a small time they’d tracked alongside the ocean, until Malakhi had turned the car sharply off the road and veered into the desert. Sand spread on either side as far as the eye could see.
“Do you actually know where we’re going?”
Dusk engulfed them; the sky out here, away from civilisation was a patchwork of streaking colours. Apricot, violet, gunmetal grey and dotted through the swathes of beauty were twinkling diamond-like stars. The sand was white, even at dusk, and its hard line was broken occasionally by a softening dune. Even more occasionally by a tree; surprisingly similar to the Australian Gum trees in shape, with solid trunks and wide-spreading branches covered in peeling leaves.
She ran a hand over her shoulder, wincing a little as it twinged.
“Are you hurt?” He asked, missing nothing.
She waved her hand carelessly. “I’m fine. Just a sore neck.”
He frowned, as if she’d said she thought she might be about to die.
“I’m fine,” she reassured him. “I carried Kalem around all morning and he’s a heavy little brick these days.”
A sand dune crested into sight and he slowed the vehicle, his eyes intent on the horizon. Night was falling now. The moon was vivid in the sky, as though a glob of pearlescent paint had been flicked against a block of charcoal.
The car drew closer, and other shapes began to appear. Edges, like walls and roofs. Fascinated, she leaned closer, her eyes skirting the unusual buildings with unbridled curiosity.
“What is this?”
“This?” His smile held no pleasure. “This is one of our most ancient and sacred sites.” He cut the engine and pushed his door open. “Come. Let me show you.”
The softness of the sand surprised her when she stepped out of the car. Her feet were swallowed by it, and she would most certainly have lost her balance altogether if Malakhi hadn’t reached out to steady her.
“You get used to it,” he murmured, stepping back easily yet keeping an arm on her back.
She made no response. The buildings were crumbling in large patches, but this added to their beauty. After a while, her feet were on firmer ground. Gradually, the sand gave way for ancient paving, misshapen and uneven. She crouched down to run her hands over it, a tingle dancing along her nervous system as she imagined the hands that had laid these bricks, one by one, many years ago.
“This was the central market,” he murmured, drawing her attention to an open space ahead. Buildings crowded it on each side, and though one had lost its face altogether, the others showed circular windows overlooking the square.
A sole tree stood, long ago denuded of greenery, in the very centre. It was sinister looking, with its gnarled branches blackened by death and age, its shape a taunt to the night sky. A bird made a loud sound from the top of the branches and Evie’s eyes flew to it.
“Khadir,” he murmured.
Her sidelong glance was wry. “Should I be afraid?”
His smile sent a thousand butterflies beating their wings inside her stomach. “Only if you plan to threaten me.”
She lifted her brow with mock consideration and then shrugged. “This place is in the middle of nowhere. Seems like a strange place to set up a town.”
“Two thousand years ago, when this village was inhabited, the country only spanned a little further. It was the turn of the first millennia when we claimed the small ocean principality to the far north.”
When he linked his fingers with hers, it felt unsettlingly natural. “This is one of the best spots. You don’t mind stairs do you?” He pulled her behind him into a narrow doorway. She gasped as they entered, for this building housed furniture.
“Oh, Mal.” And she was so caught up in the strange sense of slipping through the cracks of time that she didn’t notice she’d used Sabra’s name for him. He was so captivated by her obvious sense of wonder that he didn’t either. “Look. A kitchen.” She pointed to a rudimentary bench with a large timber bowl and various crockery flagons and plates. “Ho
w is it possible this is preserved in this manner?”
“It is part of my land,” he said. “It is protected.”
“By Khadir,” she said with a grin, remembering the first time they’d met, when he’d told her that the bird accompanied him on trips into the desert.
“Him, yes. And also my military,” he winked. Still holding her hand, he tugged her gently behind him, leading to a staircase. It was narrow; the walls seemed to be leaning in on each other and each step had a depression in its centre testifying to years of use.
There must have been almost a hundred steps. At each landing a small window showed a glimpse of the town. She paused after they’d taken six flights and stared down through one of the windows.
“Not yet,” he pulled at her hand, his smile teasing. “Don’t spoil the surprise.”
When he pushed a heavy timber door outwards she saw exactly what he meant. Here, on the roof of the building, the town sprawled in all directions. And far in the distance she could see the glow of lights that came from the principal city, near the palace. In fact, she squinted into the distance and nodded. “That’s the palace?”
“Yes.” He propped casually against the balustrade.
“This is so beautiful.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
“How come I never heard of it?”
His smile was tinged by sadness. “I’m almost certain you have.”
At her look of inquiry he pushed up from where he stood and came to link his arms behind her waist. His eyes scanned hers thoughtfully. “These are the Ruins of Fash’allam.”
For the second time that evening, she might have faltered in her stance had he not been there to support her. “Dave talked about this place,” she whispered, her eyes shimmering. “He said they were the most beautiful ruins he’d ever seen.”
Malakhi tightened his grip around her back but released one arm, pointing a little way across the desert. “That’s where it happened. The crash. The helicopter went down just there.”
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