‘When a woman makes love…in that moment at least, she loves the man she is with.’
‘You know this, do you?’ Zakari sneered. ‘From your five minutes of experience.’
‘I know this.’ Her eyes dared to hold his. ‘It has nothing to do with experience—that is how women are. That is how I feel—trapped in a loveless marriage and supposed to turn it on like a tap. Tia would have loved him; so, please…’ still she dared to hold his gaze as she refuted his words ‘…I am asking that you consider being gentle when you speak with her.’
He didn’t respond and Effie sat as he stalked out, knowing he would not listen to her, knowing her words were probably already forgotten. She walked over to the window and watched the limousine that would deliver him to the runway and the royal jet that would carry him on the short flight to Aristo, and all Effie felt was relief.
Without Zakari’s presence she could breathe, could think more clearly, and Effie was determined to use every second that he was gone to get her head together.
‘It is time for your lesson, Sheikha Stefania…’ The words were delivered politely, but without respect or thought, in the same way her hair and clothes were attended to.
And Effie didn’t want to play Sheikha today. She just wanted some time alone—to somehow come to terms with all that had changed in her life.
‘Cancel the lessons,’ Effie said as her maid’s eyes widened. ‘I have a headache.’
‘But they are scheduled.’
‘Unschedule them, then,’ Effie snapped, cross and angry and scared, and just refusing to be a puppet today. Today, for a moment at least, she would pull the strings.
‘I want my boxes brought to my room.’
‘What boxes, Sheikha?’
‘The boxes that were brought from my home—have them sent to my quarters. Then, I am not to be disturbed.’ The maid was bowing as Effie swept out of the room, yet still trying to call her back.
‘We need to prepare you for tonight…’
‘Just have my things sent to my room.’ At that moment Effie couldn’t have cared less about a royal function that evening; she was having enough trouble getting through the next two minutes.
Her boxes containing her mother’s things were duly delivered to her room. Effie could almost feel the anxiety in the maids and even Hassan was hovering nervously, everyone unsure how to react to the usually docile Effie, suddenly asserting her authority, especially when the King had just left!
Well, let them worry, Effie thought, eyeing the boxes at her feet, ready now to face a task she had, for way too long, put off.
She wanted the truth—like it or not, she wanted to know the whole story!
Zakari was sitting in the back of yet another air-conditioned limousine, driving through the glitzy, modern streets of Aristo when he took the first call from a very worried Hassan, who informed him that Sheikha Stefania had not only cancelled her lessons, but was holed up in her room and demanding that they bring her mother’s things to her.
Despite himself, Zakari gave a rare smile at the mini insurgence Effie had created.
He had known it would happen.
With every silent day that passed, with every night they spent apart, Zakari had known this day would come.
The bird he had trapped and caged was fluttering her wings, and, though it unsettled him, somehow he was proud.
Of her.
‘You will obey her wishes,’ Zakari said curtly to a perplexed Hassan.
His PA poured him a glass of icy water, and Zakari downed it in one gulp, but despite the refreshing chill, despite the cool air-conditioning in the luxury vehicle, Zakari was sweating as the Aristo palace loomed into view. Effie’s words rang in his ears as the gates parted and the car swept along the impressive drive, and he saw Queen Tia standing on the steps to greet him, with some of her children at her side.
‘Be gentle with her.’
As he walked up the palace steps the only thing that worried Zakari was that without Effie it would never have entered his head.
He had loved her.
As Effie read the letters Aegeus had written to her mother, she felt as if her heart were being shaved layer by layer.
The agony, the impossibility, there on each fragile, time-wearied page. She read of the building pressure when Christos had died and the islands had been divided. When duty had called and Aegeus had been made King.
Read his private agony, revealed to her mother, as he had been forced to make the decision between his heart and his breeding and, reading on, with tears in her eyes she read his sad conclusion—for the sake of his people, breeding had won.
Yet—he had loved her.
Zakari had been right—Kionia was the royals’ getaway, the one place they could escape to without fear of being seen or glimpsed and, despite Aegeus’s marriage to Tia, they had made a pact and had met there on the eighteenth of May, each year.
Until she had been conceived, Effie realised, sad for both of them.
Sad for her mother who had chosen to raise her child alone rather than shame the King. Sad for her father who had never known of her existence.
Reaching into the box, pulling at a ribbon, Effie tried to locate her birth certificate, tried to tally up the dates…her face freezing as she realised it wasn’t a birth certificate she was reading…
Sweat drenched her as the full impact of what she held in her hands, with aching slowness, hit home.
Aegeus had married her mother.
On May the eighteenth nineteen sixty-eight, her mother and father had married—sixteen years before she had been born. Effie searched on frantically; scrabbling through letters and certificates, she tried to make sense from the impossible.
This hadn’t been some brief love affair; her parents had been married… On and on she searched, rummaging through the papers, sure that there must have been a discreet divorce, but when that search proved fruitless Effie read a fresh pile of letters, her heart stilling, her head pounding as she witnessed Aegeus’s increasing anxiety in his desperate words, first begging her to respond, then imploring Lydia to stay quiet, that no one, no one must ever find out that there had been no divorce!
Effie stared wide-eyed and unblinking at the marriage certificate; for how long she sat there, she wasn’t quite sure, but then, as if on autopilot, she picked up the phone.
Knew now what she would do.
It was like being pelted with tiny pebbles, while bracing for a rock. With every text, the message grew more urgent. Effie was now demanding designers and make-up artists to be flown in from Aristo. Yet, after a cursory glance, Zakari didn’t respond to the messages, talking instead with Queen Tia as he had never thought he would.
‘Excuse me, I am afraid that I have to take this call…’ Zakari said, when he could ignore the summons for his attention no longer. He had three numbers he could be contacted on—a private one that was used regularly, which he had turned off for today, one for Hassan’s and his top team’s use, which, given the irritating messages, he had switched off too, leaving just a number that he could be reached on in exceptional emergencies only—and it was trilling frantically now.
Queen Tia had long ago dismissed the maids, and a long conversation had ensued between them, but now, when it would be negligent to ignore it, Zakari offered his apologies to Queen Tia, who politely excused herself as he answered the call.
‘Your wife has requested the Stefani jewel be brought to her.’
Zakari didn’t respond at first, his tongue on the roof of his mouth, a long silence ensuing as he surveyed the private living room where he had spent the afternoon.
Instead of the more formal portraits that lined the other walls of the palace, in here the walls were filled with simple family shots. Aegeus and Tia and their children. Alexander, Andreas, Katarina, Elissa and Sebastian, the man who had been groomed to be King, but whose love for his new wife, Cassie, had caused him to walk away from his birthright.
But was it his birthright?
What if Sebastian had turned down love, and decided instead to be King? Where would he stand now?
He might have lost it all.
Alex was being groomed for the role now, except he didn’t want it…
Then there was Andreas, who had walked away from it all and now lived with the love of his life, Holly, in Australia…
He could feel the blood pounding in his temples as Hassan urged the King to react.
He had listened to Queen Tia today, just as he had listened to his wife.
Had seen the suffering in both women’s eyes this very day and it had made him feel ill. All this pain, all this misery—and for what?
Power!
The power to hurt, to destroy, to ruin lives and families, to separate the islands only to now demand they unite, but in a bitter, false union .
‘Of course, I have told her that it is impossible.’ Hassan’s voice was nauseating to Zakari’s ears. ‘I pretended that only you know the combination to the safe in the vault that contains the Stefani stone—’
‘Stones,’ Zakari corrected.
Two stones, two families, and all the agony that had been created.
‘As I said earlier…’ Zakari cleared his throat ‘…you will do whatever my wife wishes… Do not lie to her again.’
‘But, Your Highness,’ Hassan protested, which only served to inflame Zakari.
‘You will give her the respect the wife of Sheikh King Zakari Al’Farisi deserves. The respect Sheikha Stefania deserves, which is something none of you have done these past weeks. What my wife demands she is to be given—I am not to be disturbed with such trivialities again.’