“I sleep very little.”
A small laugh escapes my lips. “Because you’re so tough and macho, you don’t need something as dull as sleep?”
To my surprise, he smiles – a smile that is genuine and makes his eyes spark with mine. Warmth floods my body; I sway forward. Magic surrounds us.
“When my father was…sick,” he pauses a little before describing his father’s state. “I took to sleeping in his room. I made a bed on the floor, but I spent most of the night lying there with one eye open, listening to changes in his breathing, anything that might indicate he’d worsened.”
Sympathy runs through me. “He died a long time ago?”
He nods slowly, a look tightening his features that expresses a deep sense of grief. “I was nine when he got ill, and eleven when he died.”
I shake my head sadly. “So young.”
“In some ways, but not in others.”
“And your mother?”
“She died in childbirth.”
A blade presses to me chest. For a moment, I see him as the young boy he must have been, robbed so cruelly of two parents, and with every expectation on his shoulders that he would be able to command and rule a country.
“You didn’t come to the throne until you were eighteen?”
“There was ostensibly a caretaker government, though I took control of that when I was thirteen.”
“What an unusual childhood,” I murmur.
He tilts his head to the side. “It is the only childhood I have experience with.” His smile draws something from me, a concession I don’t understand. I feel my lips curving into an answering gesture. “So not unusual for me.” He pauses a moment. “Yours was hardly ordinary, as well.”
The moon disappears behind a wisp of cloud, casting us in darkness. “Why do you say that?”
“You were raised by your father in a country that wasn’t native to either of you.”
I nod slowly. “I’m a lot like my mom, and she’s American.”
His eyes probe mine and I sigh softly. “But you’re right. I never really felt like I belonged. We left Qabid when I was only a little girl. I don’t remember much except the heat, and the smells of the markets.” I feel the pull of the past. “English isn’t my first language, though I knew a little because of mom. But it took me years to feel confident amongst my peers, and I never forgot that I wasn’t like them. I always felt…different.”
He’s quietly watchful.
“I came to realise that our sense of place is intrinsically a part of who we are. I saw that through my father – his grief, at having been exiled, was ever-present. I began to believe that same yearning to be here, in Qabid, was responsible for my own sense that I didn’t belong.”
“And now that you’re back?”
“I’ve only been here a few days,” I hedge quietly.
“Long enough to know if there’s something inside of you that yearns for this land.” He gestures to the desert and when his hand comes back it inadvertently brushes my hip. I close my eyes, unconsciously responding to his touch, my nerve endings firing to life.
“I do feel it.” The words are barely a whisper, an admission I think I’m afraid to make, even to myself. I’m surprised, because I think a part of me wanted to believe this marriage was a temporary move – a solution for dad that would have little impact on my life.
But having returned to Qabid, it’s like my soul is being stitched back into shape.
“I love my home,” I say, but the words are hollow; they don’t ring true. “And yet there’s something about this place…” I look to my right. The bird is still sitting there, watching us, his eyes shining. “I can’t explain it.”
He nods slowly. “I am the last person you need to explain it to.”
Silence falls. His hand lifts, his fingers curling hair behind my ear, his eyes hooked to mine.
“The legends of Qabid believe the first Sheikh was cast from the stone in the mountains, each piece being sculpted by a different element. Fire gave him heat and purpose, water gave him sympathy and kindness, the wind shaped him to be nimble and flexible, and the earth sacrificed its matter for his creation, giving of itself so that the Sheikh would always honour the elemental gifts and protect the people of this land with his whole being.”