His expression was impossible to interpret. Dark eyes met and held hers, and he said nothing for so long that her stance began to weaken, one hand dropping to her side, a feeling of loss spreading through her.
‘It’s impossible.’
‘There would be difficulties,’ she corrected. ‘But what we have is worth fighting for.’
‘If things were different,’ he said quietly, his hands lifting to catch her face, cradling her cheeks as he held her so he could see everything that crossed her expression, ‘I might want that too.’
It was both the bursting of light and hope within her and the breaking apart of it too. ‘Things don’t need to be different. I’m here with you now. Does it make any sense for me to be elsewhere?’
His eyes swept shut. ‘There’s no future for us, inti qamar. We’ve always known that.’
Her heart was in pain. ‘Don’t you see what I’m trying to tell you?’
He moved a finger to her lips. ‘Don’t say it.’ His Adam’s apple jerked as he swallowed. ‘Please don’t say it. I don’t wish to hurt you by not answering with what you would hope to hear in return.’ He padded his thumb over her lower lip.
‘So then say it,’ she whispered. ‘I know you feel it.’
‘You’re wrong.’ He shook his head. ‘I fought this. I fought you.’ He had. When she’d first come to Ishkana he’d tried so hard to stop any of this from happening. ‘I should have fought harder.’ He stepped back from her, and again she had the sense that he was ending the conversation, making an arbitrary decision that there was no more to say.
It violated everything she felt and wanted. She stamped her foot as he crossed to the door. He was leaving.
‘I love you, Amir.’ He stopped walking and stood completely still. ‘I have fallen so completely in love with you, and not just you—this damned country of yours. I want to stay here with you as your wife, to live my life at your side. Whatever the risks, I want to be here with you.’ His back was ramrod straight. ‘I love you.’
She felt as though she were paused mid-air, waiting to have a parachute pulled or to drop like a dead weight towards earth. She didn’t move. She waited, her lungs burning with the force of breathing, her arms strangely heavy.
‘Loving me is—’
She held her breath.
‘I don’t want your love.’
She flinched.
‘I will never return it.’ His eyes bore into hers, the seriousness of what he was saying eclipsed by a look that showed her he meant every horrible word he said.
‘Then what exactly have we been doing?’
He clamped his lips together, his jaw pressing firm. ‘Not falling in love.’
She shook her head; she couldn’t believe it. ‘I have been.’ She swallowed past a wave of bitterness. ‘And nothing you say will make me change my mind on that.’
His response was to walk away from her, across the room. At the door, he turned to face her. ‘Forget about me, Johara. Go home to Taquul, live your life. Be happy. Please.’
The helicopter lifted from the palace, and he watched it take off into the dawn sky. With one call he could have it summoned back to the palace. A word to a servant and the pilot would respond, bringing the helicopter—and its passenger—back to him. I want to stay here with you as your wife.
It was impossible.
If this morning’s outbreak of violence had demonstrated anything it was that the people of Taquul and Ishkana would never tolerate anything of the sort. Detain the Princess.
If he weren’t Sheikh? And she weren’t a princess?
No. He wouldn’t lose himself in hypotheticals. He was Sheikh Amir Haddad of Ishkana and his allegiance was—and always would be—to his country.
He wouldn’t think of her again.
‘It makes sense, Jo.’
She sat very still, listening to her brother, her eyes focussed on the spectacular view framed through the windows of this room. Desert sand, the crispest white, spread before them, meeting a sky that was a blisteringly bright blue.