“I’m fine. I’m seeing the doctor every week.”
He knew that to be the case. He’d been getting the reports, and yet nothing had been said of Sophia’s health – only the babies’.
“I feel like you are about to snap in two. You cannot be eating.”
Her eyes showed pure disdain. “I’m doing the best I can, Malik.”
“You are doing too much, then. You must scale back on your duties and focus only on this.”
“This is my duty,” she pointed out scathingly, swallowing, and he recalled saying that to her when he’d left her, after the first ultrasound appointment. “And it’s almost discharged. Your heirs are almost here. You have nothing to worry about.”
“I don’t care about that, Sophia. I care about you. I care about your health. And it’s so obviously failing…”
“I’m fine,” she wiped her palms on her stomach and turned away from him. “The twins are taking up too much room. They’re pressing on my stomach. I can’t eat, even if I… even if I wanted to feast, I couldn’t. Awan makes me juices and smoothies. I have more success with them. I’m doing my best.”
His heart pulled, because he believed her. He had to believe her. This wasn’t some kind of self-sabotage. She wasn’t so miserable that she was hunger-striking her way out of this marriage.
Only she was miserable. He knew that to be the case. He saw the light inside of her had been extinguished and his body flooded with anger. Self-directed anger.
“I want you to stay here. I want to help you until this is over and you are back to normal.”
Her laugh was hollow. “No.”
“Why not? I am your husband.”
“My husband?” She shook her head angrily. “You are no such thing.” She moved towards the door, pulling it inwards. “Out there, we can pretend, but when it’s just us, let’s call a spade a spade. You’re my sperm donor, and I’m your womb, and very soon you’ll have the only thing you care about. So just leave me alone to do this.”
Her words pressed down on him like an enormous weight. He heard them in his dreams – nightmares, more like – and he felt them in his mouth like acid when he was awake.
But why wouldn’t she feel that way? At every point, he’d made it obvious he wanted her for one reason only.
The line of succession.
Babies.
The future of the palace.
This wasn’t about them. It wasn’t about the way his heart soared when he thought of the children she was growing. This was… it was s
uch a mess.
He told himself he couldn’t upset her again, not while she was pregnant. Once the babies were born, he would talk to her. He would find a way to bring her spark back, to make her smile. Not like Addan had, but like he – Malik – could. He would find a way to bring lightness to the dark.
“It is too hot to walk, your highness, and you are eight and a half months pregnant.”
Sophia flicked her gaze to Awan’s. “Thank you, I’m very aware of that.” She took a sip of her water and grabbed her hat. “I’m only going to get some rosemary. I won’t be long.”
“Then I’ll come with you—,”
Sophia reached out and put a reassuring hand on Awan’s forearm. “I want to be alone. Please.”
She didn’t tell Awan why. No one else seemed to remember that today was Addan’s birthday, but she did.
She’d felt the tug of his memories since she’d woken and now, with dusk approaching, she could bear it no longer. She had to be alone. To think of him, to sit quietly and feel his absence. To honour his memory.
The kitchen garden had the best collection of rosemary, but there were servants there – always tending to it, collecting its spoils for the palace kitchens. And so she chose the pomegranate grove, where wild rosemary could be found in clumps.
And on autopilot, she made her way to the single bush in the corner, where she and Addan had been playing that one hot day – much like this one – so many years earlier. She’d pricked her finger and he’d wound a bandage to stop it from bleeding. And eight year old Sophia, who had yet to learn anything of loss and life’s cruelties, had smiled into a pair of kind eyes, and they’d smiled back, and she’d felt like she’d come home.