“He was so eager to know me, seemed so happy to have found me, and I started to open up. But I still felt like a yo-yo. One minute I’d get excited about finding him, the next I’d feel guilty, as if I were betraying Dad’s memory. Then he came to meet me and told me I had to leave my life behind to marry a prince I’d never met as part of a political pact. And I knew that his friendliness had all been another setup. He wasn’t happy to know me, had only been saying whatever would get me to go along with his plans. I couldn’t listen to a word he said after that, told him to just leave me alone.”
“And so, thinking your feelings were the only thing to consider, you refused to marry me. That’s why all this happened.”
She stared at him, another layer of misery suffocating her.
He glowered back. “But since you’ll regrettably be Zohayd’s princess and Judar’s future queen, you should know how things stand. I’ll pretend your question indicated interest, or at least curiosity.” He paused, as if expecting her to comment. When she kept staring at him, desolation deepening, he exhaled.
“The Aal Masoods have sat on the throne of Judar uncontested since they brought all feuding tribes under their rule and founded the kingdom six hundred years ago. But our king, King Zaher, has no male heirs. And then, both his brothers, one of them my father, died, leaving only his nephews to rise to the succession. With the direct line of succession broken for the first time in six hundred years, the Aal Shalaans, the second-most influential tribe in Judar, felt it was time for their turn on the throne, and their demand was accompanied by threats of an uprising that would end Judar’s reigning peace.
“Offering them settlements didn’t work, and options dwindled to a forceful solution-a solution that would lead to civil war. A war the Aal Masoods will do anything to prevent. Even if it means losing our throne, which would still mean tearing Judar apart. Then Judar’s neighbor, Zohayd, was dragged into the crisis, for another branch of the Aal Shalaans form the ruling house there.”
“So King Atef is an Aal Shalaan?”
“As you are. You didn’t even know his full name?”
“I-I didn’t want to know anything more. I didn’t know-I didn’t think-I…” Her defense stifled under the mercilessness of his gaze, which before had been sympathetic, empathic. But he was done acting. She choked out, “So what happened after that?”
It was a long moment before he continued his account, his voice grating her raw. “The Zohaydan Aal Shalaans pressured King Atef to support their tribesmen’s rise to Judar’s throne. But he wouldn’t support such madness. The Aal Masoods are his biggest allies and the reason behind Zohayd’s prosperity, not to mention that losing our throne would destabilize the whole region. He was willing to side with us in a war against anyone, kinsmen or not. But that would have plunged Zohayd into civil war, too.
“After intensive negotiations, the Aal Shalaans in both kingdoms decreed that the only peaceful solution was for the Aal Masoods’ future king to marry the daughter of their most pureblooded patriarch so that their blood may enter our royal house. Things calmed down as disputes lengthened over which patriarch in their extensive tribe had the purest Aal Shalaan blood, with Farooq, my older brother, then Judar’s crown prince, poised to marry his daughter. But that patriarch was determined to be King Atef himself, who didn’t have a daughter.
“It was then we all realized we’d fallen into a trap, realized who’d been behind the conspiracy. It was my cousin Tareq, the outcast would-be crown prince. He stirred old hatreds, cornered us until we had no way out but to fight for the throne. Or to let it go. Either way, Judar and Zohayd would be destroyed in civil wars that would drag the whole region into chaos. He plotted a perfect revenge on the royal house that had cast him out, and the kingdom that was its biggest ally. Then a miracle happened. King Atef discovered he had a daughter from an American lover. You.” His eyes blazed down her face and body, razed her. “And a pact was struck between the two kingdoms, thwarting the conspiracy, appeasing all involved. But my brother Farooq loved his wife so much he couldn’t contemplate taking another wife, no matter the cause. So he stepped down. Now it’s my responsibility to save the throne of Judar.”
And there was silence. For what had to be hours.
So he had a legitimate cause for destroying her. She was what the military liked to call collateral damage. But then, what did she matter in something of this scope? The fate of a whole region hung in the balance. And he’d been forced to do whatever was necessary to bring the stupid goose who’d unwittingly been about to tip everything into hell in line, to fit into the critical slot haphazard fate had placed her in.
“King Atef…m-my father should have insisted on explaining…”
His teeth clapped together before scraping a sound that made her nausea surge. “He must have conveyed the exigency of the crisis. But as you confess, you didn’t listen. Why would the fate of two kingdoms you can’t find on a map matter to you?”
She raised those eyes that belonged to someone else, beyond hurt or pain now, praying she’d remain in that dead zone forever. “I’ll marry you.”
Something terrible flared in his eyes. She would have cringed if she’d had a life to fear for.
He finally grated, “And of course that noble decision has nothing to do with knowing that it’s your only option now that you’ve lost every bet you made.”
She shrugged. “You won. What else do you want?”
He lowered his eyes, his spectacular eyebrows drawing together as if on a spasm of pain. Then his gaze shot up, slammed into her, hostile and enraged. “I want you.”
“No, you don’t.”
Shehab heard Farah’s deadened dismissal and wondered if this was how men broke, under the weight of agony and disillusion so vast, they just buckled.
He’d already known they’d come to the point when he had to force her to marry him, by any means necessary. There was no other option left. This was far bigger than either of them.
But she’d consented, without further pressure. As if she were consenting to an amputation.
Memories of her first consent, the ecstasy of it, gored his mind. To know she would marry him now as a capitulation, a compromise, was crippling.
But what made this beyond his ability to withstand was what he’d confessed. To her. To himself.
He damned himself for feeling anything-everything-for her after she’d smashed his heart, his faith, but there was no escape for him. There never would be.