The Marriage Deal Read online

  “I told you that we should not discuss him. I thought it was best.”

  “I find that arrogant and condescending,” I snap, brushing it aside. “I deserved to know the truth as much as you did.”

  His eyes spark with mine, and I feel a rush of awareness, an understanding that even when at loggerheads, our bodies arc with an uncontrollable electrical current.

  “Why? To what end? So you could hate him too?”

  I flinch at that and I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

  “Nothing good comes from you knowing. It changes nothing about the past, nothing about the future. It just saddens you and I didn’t need that.”

  “I’m a big girl; I deserved the truth.”

  “I told you I had my facts straight.”

  “You didn’t tell me anything about what they did to your father,” I whisper.

  His expression tightens. “Your father was not involved in that.”

  “He knew about it.”

  “Not at the time.”

  Zahir’s knowledge of the facts is incredible. I cannot believe he kept all this from me. I have spent our entire marriage falling in love with this man and he’s been holding so much information back from me, deciding what I should and shouldn’t know. I feel infantilised and mistrusted.

  “So they killed him? This group my father was a member of?”

  “Your father was the reason for the group – they wanted a Hassan ruler. As for my father, he was gradually poisoned, yes.”

  “Oh, God. I can’t believe this.” I reach around for a chair, feeling like my knees are about to give way. Zahir moves quickly, coming to me and putting an arm around my waist.

  “I did not want you to know this.”

  “Well, I do.”

  “I am furious that he told you.”

  “And I’m furious that you didn’t,” I say angrily. “I’m your wife, damn it. What kind of marriage can we have if you keep this sort of thing from me? I married you to bring my father to Qabid – a man who was complicit in the death of your own father. How the hell could you keep this from me?”

  A muscle throbs in his jaw. “My father would have understood. The necessity of peace in the eastern regions justified this.”

  “So marrying me was worth it, then?” I shake my head. “I guess it’s too soon to tell. After all, maybe there will still be dissent.” I feel physically ill. “All this time I’ve been thinking that I’m in bed with the enemy and really it’s the other way around.”

  “You are not my enemy,” he rebukes quickly.

  “Aren’t I?”

  I can’t see him properly. My eyes are misted, rage and sadness welling inside of me.

  “And nor is your father. A long time ago, he was involved in something, but it is yet to be seen if that threat persists.”

  “I don’t share your viewpoint,” I say. “I believe people should pay for their crimes and what he did is criminal. You exiled him not to save yourself but to punish him, yes?”

  “It was a precaution. Not one I undertook out of concern for my own life, but given the lack of safe heirs, any threat to me had to be treated seriously. There was no line of succession.”

  “There still isn’t,” I say, numb to the core.

  “No, not yet, but soon.”

  I shake my head, feeling rubbish. I pull away from him, bitterness creeping through me. “I’m not pregnant.” The words are wooden, despite the chip of pain in my heart. “I found out the other day. It’s why I went away. I couldn’t bear to tell you.”

  A sharp exhalation of breath is his only response.

  “I did not expect it to happen straight away,” he responds after a beat has passed.

  It’s such a rational response and somehow that hurts even more. Again and again, I am confronted with evidence that we are on completely different wavelengths. I have been heartbroken but he’s not, because he doesn’t have a heart. Not where I’m concerned. The only thing he loves is this damned country. Grief wells in my chest.

  “When we were first married, you said something along the lines of, we’ll always hate each other, but at least we have chemistry. Something like that. I thought you were just interpreting my feelings, my hate. I didn’t think, for one moment, you had a reason to hate me too.”

  He doesn’t say anything. My heart twists.

  I feel alone and I’m glad. I want to be alone. I feel let down and disappointed by the two men I love, the two men I’ve felt torn between I now feel a sense of disconnect from. It’s jarring and I ache all over.

  “I would never have agreed to this if I’d known.” I turn to face him, needing him to understand that. He’s very stiff, very straight, staring at me like I’m speaking in a foreign language. “I had no right to ask you to bring dad home.”

  “You did not ask.”

  “You know what I mean,” I wave his semantics aside. “And he had no right to come. How dare he? After what he did?”

  “Amy,” he sighs heavily. “He shouldn’t have told you any of this. The way you love and defend your father is an impressive trait. I have admired your loyalty.”

  “It’s loyalty that’s based on a lie! What an idiot I’ve been! Why didn’t I realise?”

  “Because you love him,” Zahir said. “And you hate me, remember?”

  My heart turns over. Hate him? How long has it been since I’ve felt that? A lot longer than since I’ve said it. “It’s all so messed up.”

  But it doesn’t have to be. Things that have been done can be undone.

  “I’m not pregnant.”

  His brows knit together. “We will try next month.”

  “No,” I feel certainty for the first time since leaving Thakirt. “I can’t.”

  My heart is empty. “This marriage, our deal, everything, was a mistake. I can’t stay here, and I can’t let dad stay here. We need to leave, at once.”

  He jerks his face away, physically rejecting my words. “That’s not possible.”

  “I’m not asking.”

  “You are my wife and the Emira of Qabid. A divorce is not a simple thing to grant.”

  “I’m not asking for a divorce. Not right now. I understand the political importance of our marriage and I would never let you down. Not after all my family has already done to yours. I will stay your wife in name, and if you need me to appear at events, I’ll fly back. I will do whatever you ask of me. But the marriage we’ve been trying to build can’t work. I can’t do this.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  The fact he doesn’t understand is all the proof I need. “Because I’ve been miserable,” I say, and it’s true. “And the only way to fix that is to leave.” It’s too cryptic, but I can’t tell him the truth about my feelings – I won’t burden him with that too. He doesn’t need to know that I’ve been stupid and fallen in love with him.

  I have been miserable. Torn between two men, one of whom didn’t deserve my loyalty and the other will never return my feelings.

  “Listen to me. You’re angry. You’re angry at your father for what he did, for lying to you, for all his decisions. You’re angry at me for holding details back, and for blackmailing you into marriage, and you have a right to be angry at both of us, for all these things, but do not react now. Give it a day, let yourself calm down, wait and see how you feel in the morning.”

  A half-laugh, half-sob catches in my throat. “I’m not going to feel better in the morning, I’m going to feel worse. I have to get away. I need to be alone to – process all this. All of it.”

  Tears sparkle on my eyes.

  “You have no idea what it’s like.”

  He nods, moving closer to me. I flinch.

  “I wanted our baby so much.”

  He stops in his tracks, staring at me with surprise.

  “Yes,” I answer his unasked question. “I wanted to be pregnant. Anything that would make this feel real. But it’s all a house of cards. Our marriage is fake. Our reasons for marrying – at least from my view
point – are false. It’s all wrong. And I can’t live like that. I need something real, and I need…I want…”

  “What?” He asks with urgency.

  “I just…” But I can’t do it. I can’t burden him with my love. “I wish you’d told me. You were so angry with me, when that note was found. No wonder! You had every reason to doubt me.”

  “No. You are not your father and I was completely wrong to cast you in the shadow of his acts. You would never do what he did.”

  His defence of me is so prompt and thorough that I feel something like relief burst through me, but it’s not enough. I know Zahir, and I know his moral absolutism. I know that he will always hate my father, and that after what my father did, he’ll always hate a part of me. I know he’ll never forgive me. How could he? All this time I’ve been falling in love with someone who will never, ever be capable of loving me back.

  “I know our marriage is fake, but if you care about me even a little bit, you’ll understand what I’m saying. I just need time to process this. Time to get over it all. Can you give me that, Zahir? Please?”

  Zahir

  It’s the way she says ‘please’ that does it. I hear her voice break and in that tiny word I hear her heart break too. I would give her anything it’s within my power to offer in this moment.

  “Yes.”

  I don’t see relief on her face though. Instead, there’s a thundercloud and then her eyes clamp shut, blotting me out.

  “But don’t go to America.” Before she can object to my tone or imply that I’m commanding her, I reframe my suggestion. “Stay here, in the city. There is a royal apartment only ten miles away. Go there. Be on your own for as long as you need. But stay close.”

  I can’t say why, but I need to know she’s here. On my time zone, in my country, within an easy drive. Not halfway around the world.

  I stand still, waiting, looking impassive even as every cell in my body is hanging on her response.

  “And my father?”

  I gentle my tone. “You forget, habibti, I knew what I was doing when I had him brought here. Nothing that has happened today changes my pledge. Leave your father where he is. He won’t cause any harm; my people are making sure of that.”

  17

  Zahir

  DO YOU REMEMBER THAT before you left, you offered to do whatever I needed?

  I send the text, staring at the phone for several minutes before pushing it aside. I wait for her reply, but a month after Amy’s departure from the palace, I haven’t heard directly from her once. Her staff has kept me informed of her movements, but there is nothing there that tells me how she is.

  I note that she rarely leaves the apartment. Aliya says they’ve come to an arrangement where Amy is given complete privacy within her bedroom, the kitchen and lounge room. She does not want staff attending to her.

  When she goes out, it’s only to grab essentials.

  I lie in bed that night with the same sense of absence perforating my gut that I’ve lived alongside for four weeks. Longer, if I factor in the time she was with her father.

  Her presence was something I started to take for granted, and now she’s gone and there is a crater in my life.

  Yes. Why?

  Her text buzzes into my phone close to midnight. Something bursts in my gut.

  There’s a state dinner on Friday. At the palace. It would be appropriate for you to accompany me.

  I am on tenterhooks. I don’t think I’ve felt this nervous since …ever. I half-expect her to send a teasing response. Something along the lines of, ‘Is there a question in there somewhere?’ but she doesn’t.

  Send Aliya the details.

  It’s a concession, I think, but hardly ringing with enthusiasm. Can I blame her? I have replayed our final conversation in my mind so many times, trying to understand her, trying to work out what I could have said or done differently to get her to stay. She was in shock. I get that. She had no idea that her father’s guilt was a fact. I’d told her so, but without the proof, she didn’t believe me. I knew that. We argued often enough. I should have prepared her better.

  But there was something else, something more.

  She was upset about not being pregnant. It was disappointing and surprising, but selfishly I’d relished the prospect of another month as just the two of us before the concern of pregnancy interfered, another month of trying to conceive, of spending nights in one another’s arms, talking until the early hours, making love, tangled in sheets and limbs. It doesn’t make sense, because the need for an heir is reasonably urgent, but I can’t deny how I feel.

  She wanted a baby.

  My baby.

  The thought fills me with a primal rush of pleasure, and reminds me of our earlier conversations, conversations in which she was adamant she didn’t want to conceive because it was a lifetime commitment.

  Did that mean she’d changed her mind? That she was now happy to be tied to me for the rest of her life?

  Something like hope bursts through me but I dismiss it. It’s irrelevant. She’s not pregnant.

  Does that alter her feelings, though? I understand nothing, and I hate that.

  Amy

  The dress is beautiful, chosen for me by Aliya. An emerald green, with a high square neckline, a long skirt and draped sleeves, it’s modest but flattering. She has arranged everything, in fact, and in a sign of where my head is at, I have let her. She organised a hairdresser, a make-up artist, removed a tiara and necklace from the royal vault, and I argued with none of it. I stood like a perfect mannequin as people fussed and primped, turning me into a perfect princess. I even smiled as she guided me to the waiting limousine, but her look of concern didn’t shift.

  “It is a state dinner, so expect it to be long and boring, full of ceremonial details,” Aliya confided, smiling kindly at me. She does that a lot lately. I think she’s decided she likes me after all.

  “You’ll sit beside His Highness throughout, but there is no need for you to speak. Afterwards, there will be a dance. You can stay if you’d like, or leave at this point. There is no protocol established.”

  “Thank you. I’ll want to leave as soon as possible.”

  Aliya’s eyes softened. “I’ll let the driver know.”

  “Thank you.”

  The valet doesn’t take me to the state rooms, though. Instead, he leads me to a separate area, a banquet room lined with golden walls and propped up with white marble pillars. It is stunning, its beauty only overshadowed by Zahir, standing at the end of the room, watching the door like a hawk. He’s dressed in a black robe with golden details at the cuffs and collars, his hair matching, black and thick.

  I thought I was prepared for this but the sight of him sends my pulse into overdrive. I almost miss my footing as I walk across the room.

  A month.

  A whole month.

  And I have thought of him, craved him, longed for him, the entire time. In the days I’ve wanted his counsel. I’ve wanted him to make sense of my father’s actions. I’ve wanted him to fix it, somehow. To make me feel okay but the fact is, my dad is a traitor. I haven’t spoken to dad since he told me the truth. I can’t. When I think what he was involved in, my blood turns to ice. The idea of anyone hurting Zahir, of anyone taking him from his position as ruler of Qabid – a role he performs with such ease and skill – I want to crumble.

  I want Zahir to make it all disappear, but he can’t. He’s powerful, but he’s not magical.

  Ours is an impossible relationship, my love for him something I must hold close to my heart and try to conceal. Nothing good can come from wanting more from him. All this time I thought we were fated to be together, but now I see: we are fated to be apart, enemies, whatever we might feel tarred by generations of ill will. Their decisions have demanded our actions.

  He dips his head as I draw near in a gesture of respect, but doesn’t reach for me and I’m glad. I’d expected some kind of embrace, a kiss on the cheek, a gesture of welcome not out of place with fr
iends or business acquaintances, but if he’d touched me, even lightly, I think I would have melted.

  “Zahir,” I murmur, pleased my voice emerges cool.

  “Amy. Thank you for coming.”

  My heart is pounding, it feels as though it’s travelled to my throat and is acting as an anvil there, hammering against me from the inside out. I dig my nails into my palms, trying to stay calm.

  “Of course.”

  His eyes bore into mine. Desire, awareness, love, lust, need, heat, pain all lash me. I offer him a tight smile.

  “Well, shall we do this?”

  For a second he looks poised to contradict me and I hold my breath, but then he gestures towards two enormous golden doors across the room.

  “The dinner is through here.”

  I nod, understanding why I was brought here instead of directly to the state room. So that we could arrive together. An illusion, to fool people into thinking we’re a committed, married couple.

  At the door, he lifts a hand, and I hear the unmistakable sound of footsteps behind me. A servant appears holding a silver tray, and on it a piece of pale blue fabric is folded neatly. Zahir lifts it from the tray, staring at it for several seconds before lifting his eyes to mine.

  “Will you wear this?” He pauses. “It’s appropriate for the occasion.”

  “Then of course I will. I told you, I’ll do whatever you need from me. I’m your wife.”

  The words ring with bitterness. I look away, unable to meet his gaze anymore.

  “What is it?” I ask, as he unfolds the fabric.

  “A military sash. It was my mother’s.”

  Pain cuts through me. I stand silent and still as he slips it over my head, careful not to dislodge the style or the crown, draping the sash across one shoulder and letting it land on my hip. His touch is light and impersonal, but that doesn’t matter. It’s enough to send scatters of awareness through my body, supercharging my blood.