“It does not concern your brother or his treatment.” Ahmed met Tarek’s gaze, and held it. “It is about the doctors.”
He might as well have said,the unicorns.
Tarek blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“The doctors, Sire. They were picked up eight months ago after an illegal border crossing in the north.”
“What sort of doctors?” But even as Tarek asked, a vague memory reasserted itself. “Wait. I remember now. It is that aid organization, isn’t it? Traveling doctors, moving about from one war zone to another.”
“They are viewed as heroes.”
Tarek sighed. “Release these heroes, then. Why is this an issue?”
“The male doctors were released once you reclaimed your throne,” Ahmed said without inflection, another one of his strengths. “As were all the political prisoners, according to your orders at the time. But there was one female doctor in the group. And because she was a Western woman, and because there are no facilities for female prisoners in the capital city, she was placed in the dungeon.”
Tarek found himself sitting forward. “The dungeon.Mydungeon? Here in the palace?”
“Yes, sire.” Ahmed inclined his head. “And as you are aware, I am sure, prisoners cannot be released from the palace dungeons except by your personal decree.”
Tarek slowly climbed to his feet, his blood pumping through him as if he found himself in another battle. Much like the ones he had fought in his own halls on that bloody night Rafiq and his men had come. The ones he wore still on his body and always would.
“Ahmed.” The lash of his voice would have felled a lesser man, but Ahmed stood tall. “Am I to understand that after the lengths I went to, to show the world that I am a merciful and just ruler of this kingdom...this whole time, there has been not merely a Western woman locked beneath my feet, but adoctor? A do-gooder who roams the planet, healing others as she goes?”
Ahmed nodded. “I am afraid so.”
“I might as well have locked up a saint. No wonder an otherwise pointless girl, who should have considered herself lucky to be chosen as my bride, has instead thrown herself on the tender mercies of the Canadians. I am tempted to do the same.”
“It was an oversight, Sire. Nothing more. There was so much upheaval. And then the trial. And then, I think, it was assumed that you were pleased to keep things as they were.”
The worst part was that Tarek could blame no one but himself, much as he might have liked to. This was his kingdom. His palace, his prisoners. He might not have ordered the woman jailed, but he hadn’t asked after the status of any state prisoners, had he?
He would not make that mistake again. He could feel the scars on his body, throbbing as if they were new. This was on him.
Tarek did not waste any more time talking. He set off through the palace again, grimly this time. He bypassed graceful halls of marble and delicate, filigreed details enhancing each and every archway. He crossed the main courtyard and then the smaller, more private one. This one a pageant of flowers, the next symphony of fountains.
He marched through to the oldest part of the palace, the medieval keep. And the ancient dungeons that had been built beneath it by men long dead and gone.
The guards standing at the huge main door did double takes that would have been comical had Tarek been in a lighter mood. They leaped aside, flinging open the iron doors, and Tarek strode within. He was aware that not only Ahmed, but a parade of staff scurried behind him, as if clinging to the hem of his robes that towed them all along with the force of his displeasure.
He had played in these dungeons as a child, though it had been expressly forbidden by his various tutors. But there had never been any actual prisoners here in his lifetime. The dungeons were a threat, nothing more. The bogeyman the adults in his life had trotted out to convince a headstrong child to behave.
Tarek expected to find them dark and grim, like something out of an old movie.
But it turned out there were lights. An upgrade from torches set in the thick walls, but it was still a place of grim stone and despair. His temper pounded through him as he walked ancient halls he hadn’t visited since he was a child. He tried to look at this from all angles, determined to figure out a way to play this public relations disaster to his advantage.
Before he worried about that, however, he would have to tend to the prisoner herself. See her pampered, cared for, made well again. And he had no idea what he would find.
It occurred to him to wonder, for the first time, what it was his guards did in his name.
“Where is she?” he growled at the man in uniform who rushed to bow before him, clearly the head of this dungeon guard he hadn’t known he possessed.
“She is in the Queen’s Cell,” the man replied.
The Queen’s Cell. So named for the treacherous wife of an ancient king who had been too prominent to execute. The King she had betrayed had built her a cell of her very own down here in these cold, dark stones. Tarek’s memory of it was the same stone walls and iron bars as any other cell, but fitted with a great many tightly barred windows, too.
So she could look out and mourn the world she would never be a part of again.
This was where he—for it was his responsibility and no matter that he hadn’t known—had locked away a Westerndoctor, God help him.