by Pippa Roscoe
His family needed this, his country needed—deserved—stability, unity, cohesion and healing and he knew deep down in his bones that this would be the first step.
Khalif looked out into the audience, touched by the overwhelming emotion he felt rising up to meet his own. Goosebumps pebbled his skin and he thought that he saw a flash of red, looking up in time to see the movement of a curtain at the balcony near the private suites on the upper level.
‘Uncle Kal... Uncle Kal!’
He turned just in time to catch Nadya, who had thrown herself at him in wild abandon.
‘You had the birds!’ Nadya’s voice was a little muffled from where her face was pressed against his stomach and she gripped his waist like a limpet. Nayla, the shyer of the two, stood with a massive grin and wide eyes showing her delight, standing with one foot tucked behind the other.
‘And flowers,’ he said to her, and she nodded enthusiastically.
‘Will it be bright blue and pink like the hologriff?’
Kal didn’t have the heart to correct her. ‘Well, maybe we can speak to the designers about that. We have quite a bit to do before we get to that point.’
Over his nieces’ heads, he saw his parents making their way towards him. Unease stirred briefly but then he grounded himself. He knew that he had done the right thing—not because it pleased everyone, but because he felt it in his gut. The memorial would be doing the right thing by his nieces and by Faizan and Samira.
‘My son,’ his mother, Hafsa, greeted him, her eyes crinkling the fine lines at the corners into fans. He wasn’t sure whether it was a consequence of losing his brother, or valuing the family he did have and the love he felt for them, but his heart felt torn—between being here with his family and being with the woman upstairs. And he knew that neither deserved half a heart.
It took him an hour to extricate himself from the gala, but he couldn’t have said that he’d tried too hard. He had felt it. Something in the air had shifted. A kind of knowledge, or awareness, had begun to creep over him, without him knowing specifically what it was. He just knew that he had to get to Star.
His heart was pounding as he made his way through the private areas of the palace, but his footsteps were slow and purposeful. Something inside him was roaring to get out, but he hardly made a sound. He smiled at the staff and few family members he passed, though in his mind’s eye he saw only one thing...one person.
He closed the door to his suite behind him and stopped. He inhaled the scent of her on the air, wondering if that might be the last time he did so. He didn’t have to look, to know that she was out on the balcony. She loved that view almost as much as he did.
He took two steps into the room and paused. Letting himself see her. The way her hair twisted in the gentle desert breeze. From this angle she stood at the balcony amongst the stars and he bit his lip to stop himself from saying something, not wanting to spoil the moment—for her or him.
She turned slightly to the side, as if sensing his presence, and wiped at something on her cheek that he didn’t quite see, so caught up in the sight of her.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
‘I live here,’ he said, but the joke fell flat. ‘I was worried.’
‘About the presentation?’
‘No, that went well. Really well.’ He closed the distance between them as she turned to face him fully. ‘Everyone loved it.’
‘Of course they did.’ She smiled and his heart ached at the easy acceptance and surety ringing in her voice. ‘You should probably get back,’ she insisted, ‘it’s still early.’
‘I was wrong,’ he said, offering her all that he could. ‘To ask you to stay here.’
‘You weren’t and you know it,’ she replied without malice or anger. This was Star as he’d never seen her before. Regal, poised and absolutely breathtaking. And that was when he saw the necklace, the double strands of the chain on either side of the pendant making it something strangely beautiful. And instinctively he braced himself against something he felt he already knew.
* * *
Star searched his features, her eyes running over his head, shoulders, down the length of his body, consuming as much of him as she possibly could. There was no way Kal could have let her be there at the event that evening. She understood a little of that duty now. How the crowd had looked up to him, watched him, hung on every word. How they had cried and sighed their appreciation of his plans for the memorial. He had given them a focal point for their grief and the beginning of the healing process. She supposed in some way she was about to give herself the same.
‘I’m—’ Khalif started.
‘I’m not pregnant,’ she interrupted before he could say anything more.
He simply held her gaze as if he had felt it in the same way she had. When Maya had presented her with the results of the test, Star hadn’t been surprised by the fact she wasn’t carrying Khalif’s baby, but by the extent to which she’d actually been wanting to. Not once had she let herself hope or believe because...because, she realised now, she had never wanted anything more in her life.
‘Maya assured me the test was accurate.’
He closed the space between them in just two steps, drawing so close to her, only inches really. It was as if he wanted to touch her, reach for her, just as much as she wanted him to...but couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
In one breath, Star was lost just to the sense of him. His exhale shuddered against her cheek, before he turned to stand beside her, facing the desert. She placed her hands on the stone balcony close to his, their little fingers almost touching, but her heart knew the distance might as well have been a chasm.
Go...go now.
But she couldn’t. She forced herself to stay, refusing to turn and run. She was a reader. She was a romantic. And, whether it was foolish or not, she had hope. All the things they’d experienced—an impossible meeting, ancestors torn apart by duty, families brought back together by fate. She had found Catherine’s Duratra out there in the desert. Khalif had found her necklace...
‘So that’s it then.’ His voice was rough and dark in the dusk.
She felt as if she’d conjured up the words herself. The first steps of the dance that would see them either spending the rest of their lives together or...
‘Is it?’
‘Star...’ he warned.
‘No, Khalif. It’s a question I am asking you. Is that it then?’
She refused to look at him, even though he was staring at her hard, trying to get her to face him. But she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Because he’d see. He’d see all that she wasn’t quite ready for him to see.
‘It’s funny how people behave when they think they don’t have a choice,’ she said to the desert. ‘It traps them, makes them feel helpless, makes them behave in ways that aren’t authentic to them. Ways that aren’t right for them.’
‘You can’t consider my life to have choices.’
‘Why not?’ she demanded. ‘Look what you did when you realised that you had a choice for Faizan and Samira’s memorial? Look at the incredibly beautiful, amazing thing you have set in motion. Do you not think that we could—’
‘It’s not the same. Everyone in my family, every heir to the throne has been in the same position,’ he growled.
‘The definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’
‘Why do you think I’m expecting different results?’ He looked at her, genuinely confused. ‘There were no disastrous results for my parents. And Faizan and Samira’s marriage was a very happy, fruitful one.’
‘But not for you. Not the hurt it caused you,’ she half cried. ‘Would you force this on your nieces? Would you expect them to marry for duty rather than love?’
‘No! I’m doing this so that they can have that option for themselves.’
‘R
eally? You’re not doing this because it’s easier than being true to yourself?’
His gaze met hers in a fiery clash, the golden flecks in his umber eyes swirling like a sandstorm. ‘Star—’
But she couldn’t listen to him. She had to press on. This was her last chance. Her only chance. ‘Because I suppose you can’t really fail if you’re always trying to please everyone else. If you’re being everything other people need, then it’s their need that’s failed, not you. And you’ll never know.’
‘Know what?’
‘You’ll never know how incredible you could be if you were just yourself.’
* * *
Her voice rang with such sincerity, such hope and such optimism he half wanted to believe it himself. It was seductive, what she was saying. Be himself, choose her, be a great ruler. But she was wrong.
‘I was myself,’ he bit out angrily. ‘For three years, I wined and womanised my way around Europe. Is that the kind of ruler Duratra deserves? Is that the kind of man you want?’ His voice had become a shout.
‘You were hurt. Your entire family condoned a marriage between your brother and your first love. Of course you acted out,’ she said, desperately grasping for justifications for his terrible behaviour.
‘Acted out? Is that what...?’ He ground his teeth together, hating the way that her words ran through his head and heart. Her understanding, her belief in him crucified him, made a mockery of every single choice he’d made since, tearing him in half between what he so desperately wanted and what he felt he needed to do.
And he was furious. In that moment, he wanted to bring down the palace, smash and burn everything—anything to make the questions stop. So he did the only thing he could do.
‘I know you think being a prince means that—’
‘Don’t,’ she said, the single word a plea. ‘Don’t use that—’
‘I know you think being a prince means that magical adventures await and love comes with singing birds and talking clocks,’ he said, looking away from the tears brimming in her eyes. ‘But it’s not. It’s not, Star,’ he insisted. ‘It’s constantly putting the country first. It is making a marriage that is strategic and for the good of this country.’
‘And there is nothing strategic about marrying me?’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘There just isn’t.’
‘Your happiness is not strategic? It doesn’t count?’
‘No. It never has,’ he said with the same sense of acceptance that had descended the moment he’d realised he was to take the throne.
‘If you allow that feeling, that anger and resentment about Samira marrying Faizan to shape everything you do, the choices you make—’
‘Don’t say her...’ He couldn’t finish the sentence so instead he bit off his words, his tongue. It had been cruel, and he knew it. The hurt on Star’s features was two red slashes on her cheeks.
‘You can attack my dreams but I can’t challenge your fears? Is it yourself that you’re punishing by refusing to listen to your heart, or someone else? Why would you damn yourself to unhappiness?’
Why wouldn’t she stop? Why was she pushing him like this?
‘Is it because,’ she pressed on, ‘if you can have a happy marriage, if you can choose who you marry, then so could Faizan? Then it would mean that your wonderful, incredible brother made the wrong choice and it hurt you?’
‘Wow, you’re really going for it tonight, aren’t you?’ he scoffed bitterly, wondering what else she was going to drag him through. Because being angry with her was easier than feeling the truth of her words.
‘Of course I am. My heart is on the line. My love for you. Can’t you see that?’
White-hot pain slashed across his chest, a death blow that wouldn’t end his life but could still stop his heart. Because only in the moments when his heart wasn’t beating could he find the strength to be cruel enough to force her to go.
‘Love? In two weeks?’ he taunted. ‘That really is a romance,’ he said, forcing scepticism into his tone that burned all the way down. ‘Then again, it’s easier to fall in love when the fantasy can never live up to the reality, isn’t it? You hide in your romances, preferring them to reality. But I don’t have that luxury, Star.’
She looked as if she’d been struck and the only decent thing he could do was bear witness to it. He hated himself more than he ever had done before, but her words had taken hold and weren’t letting go. He couldn’t follow them, not now, not yet, and he greatly feared what would happen when he did. He felt like a bull, head down and ploughing forward, because anything else meant that he had to confront his feelings, her feelings.
Confront her. The way she was always challenging him, demanding of him, expecting him to be better when he couldn’t.
‘You’re right. I do have choices. And I’m sorry that the one I need to make causes you pain.’ His words were mechanical, forced. She knew it, he knew it, but there was also, inevitably, a truth beneath them. ‘But I would make this choice every time. I choose Duratra.’
She wiped at a large, fat tear that escaped down her cheek, the action reminding him of what he’d seen when he’d first come onto the balcony. And he realised in that moment that she’d been crying before they’d talked. Before he’d said the horrible things, because she’d always known how the conversation would play out. She had known, before she’d even told him that she wasn’t pregnant, what his reaction would be.
As she walked from the balcony, out of the suite and the palace, he realised then that he’d got it so terribly wrong. She was not a coward, hiding in romance. She was strong enough and brave enough to face reality. Stronger and braver than him.
The blow to his stomach and heart was doubly hard, physical and emotional, and he collapsed to the floor, his back against the cold, unyielding stone balcony that both held him up and anchored him while everything in him wanted to run after her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
AT AROUND TWO in the morning Khalif found himself in one of the larger family suites, looking for whisky. He’d not had it in his quarters for three years. He’d not even had a drink in three years. But tonight he needed one.
He opened the door to the alcohol cabinet his father kept for visitors, retrieved the weighty cut glass tumbler and poured himself a satisfyingly large couple of inches of whisky. He swirled it around the glass as he sat, letting the peaty alcoholic scent waft up to meet him, his taste buds exploding with expectation and his conscience delaying the moment of gratification as punishment.
What had he done?
He was about to take a sip when the door to the living room opened and he looked up to find his father surveying him with something like pity.
‘I haven’t seen you drink since before Faizan died.’
It was on the tip of his tongue to lash out and say he’d not actually had the drink yet, but that felt churlish. Instead, he watched his father go to the cabinet and retrieve the whisky bottle and pour himself an equally large glass. ‘I haven’t seen you drink since...’
‘Faizan’s funeral?’ his mother asked as she too came into the room. Both men’s faces held the same look, as if they’d just been caught with their hands in a cookie jar. Never had they more appeared like father and son. ‘Oh, don’t be silly. If I was outraged at this, I’d have never survived the first six months as your Queen,’ she teased the men in her life, leaning to press a kiss to her husband’s cheek.
Bakir grinned conspiratorially at his son and took a seat in the large leather chair opposite Khalif as his wife perched on the arm.
Then the light dimmed from his eyes and Bakir took a breath. ‘Faizan and Samira,’ he said, raising his glass.
Khalif raised his and blinked back the sudden wetness in his eyes, swallowing his grief with the first powerful mouthful of whisky.
‘Khalif, we are—’
He held his hand
up to ward off his father’s words but, though he paused, Bakir pressed on.
‘We are so very proud of you. The memorial is...’
‘Perfect,’ his mother concluded, her smile watery and her eyes bright with unshed tears. She sniffed and her husband handed her a handkerchief without breaking eye contact with his son. ‘Where on earth did you get the idea?’ she asked.
Khalif clenched his jaw before prising the words from his conscience. ‘A friend. She asked about Faizan and Samira, encouraged me to remember them. She suggested I talk to Nadya and Nayla about what they might like to have in the memorial.’
‘She sounds very clever,’ his mother observed.
‘She is,’ Khalif agreed.
‘Did she encourage you to do anything else?’ his father asked.
Through gritted teeth, he said, ‘To be myself. To stop trying to be you or Faizan,’ he confessed.
‘She really is a wise woman,’ his mother said, the smile in her voice evident. His father scoffed and Khalif’s head jerked up to stare at his parents. He wanted to yell at them, to say that it wasn’t a laughing matter.
‘That’s only because you said a very similar thing to me many years ago,’ Bakir groused.
‘And you barely listened to me,’ his mother complained.
Khalif’s head was swimming and it wasn’t from the alcohol. ‘What are you talking about? I thought you had an arranged marriage?’
Bakir cast a level gaze at his son. ‘Well, a lot of work went into making it look that way, so I’m glad it was successful.’
Khalif couldn’t work out whether his father was being sarcastic or ironic.
‘We had met before,’ his mother explained on a slightly flustered, and somewhat guilty, exhale. ‘Before the engagement.’
‘Your mother told me that if I couldn’t orchestrate a good enough reason for us to get married, how would I ever manage to run a country? So I found a way.’ Bakir shrugged. ‘She challenged me then, and has each day since.’