‘Maybe you should ask her why she wouldn’t talk to you.’
Tahir checked for a moment on the threshold. ‘The subject is closed,’ he growled. ‘I’ll hear no more.’ He exited, leaving the door hanging open behind him.
He prowled the corridors and courtyards, the antechambers and audience halls. Yet Tahir couldn’t shake the words haunting him.
Your mother loves you.
His strides ate up another wing of the palace.
He’d given up believing such platitudes years ago. It no longer mattered. He was a grown man. Had survived on his own—totally, completely on his own—for years.
He didn’t need love.
He barely believed in it any more. He’d never had it from his father. And from his mother? He shuddered to a stop. He recalled her warm hugs and tender smiles when he was small. Only when they were alone together. As the years had passed she’d become distant.
Who could blame her? He’d striven to make his father proud. But when it had become clear nothing he did would earn the old man’s approval, that in fact his father hated him, Tahir had plunged into excess with an abandon that rivalled even his sire’s. Better that than driving himself crazy trying to fathom why the old man detested him.
Had he seen too much of his own weaknesses in his son?
Tahir scrubbed a hand over his face.
He wasn’t the sort who inspired or sought love. That was a fool’s game. Sentimental folly.
Annalisa imagined things. She was sweet and innocent enough to believe families were about caring.
What stunned him was the way, just for a moment, he’d wanted to believe her. He’d craved it with every fibre of his body and what passed for his soul.
He! Tahir Al’Ramiz! The dissolute son of a dissolute father. A man who cared for no one.
Except, he realised, a feisty girl with tender eyes and an indomitable spirit.
He put out a hand to steady himself as the realisation rocked him back on his feet.
He cared…
How long he stood there, unfamiliar sensations swirling through him, he didn’t know. He cared!
Finally, shaking his head as if clearing it of a waking dream, he looked around and realised he’d stopped outside the dowager Queen’s apartments.
Chance? Or a subconscious decision?
Something in his chest gave a queer little jump and his pulse settled into a jagged, staccato beat. He turned to leave, then stopped.
Annalisa’s words rang in his ears.
She’d confronted him with a story too unbelievable to countenance. Surely it was unbelievable.
Yet eventually he lifted his fist and rapped on the massive door. A voice answered and he forced himself to push the door wide.
His mother looked up from a book. Her eyes met his and just for an instant he saw them sparkle with pleasure. Then, swift as a door slamming, her expression cleared into the familiar one of calm detachment.
Tahir swallowed hard. He stepped inside, his mind whirring.
‘Annalisa’s not here, I’m afraid.’ Her voice was crystal-cool, like the fountains tinkling in the exquisite courtyard outside her chambers. ‘If you come later, I’m expecting her for tea.’
’I know.’ His voice held an unfamiliar rough edge. He cleared his throat. ‘It’s you I came to see.’
Hours passed and Tahir was still in Rihana’s rooms.
He felt odd—something like the sensation he’d experienced the first few times his father had used him as a punching bag. As if someone had rearranged his internal organs.
His mother smiled up at him from one of her photo albums and he felt the warmth and wonder of it embrace him.
The albums were filled with photos he hadn’t known about. Him on horseback. Him striding down the beach. Him stepping from a four-wheel drive after speeding over the dunes, a rare smile on his teenage features.
Annalisa was right. His mother had cared all along. He’d been too caught up in his bitter struggle against his father to understand how the old man’s hatred had affected Rihana and why she’d had to hide her feelings.
He returned her smile, enjoying what he saw in her face and the way it made him feel.
He tried to analyse the sensations and couldn’t. He felt too…full, as if all those emotions he’d learned to repress in childhood now pushed too close to the surface. As if it would just take one more tiny scrape of his skin to set them free.
‘Mother, I—’
A crash of sound, a deafening boom, rent the air.
Tahir was on his feet before its echo died away. In slow motion he processed the sight of the walls and ceiling dipping and swaying. The decorative lanterns swung impossibly wide.
Memories of a day in Japan that he’d rather forget crowded his brain.
‘Earthquake!’ He hauled Rihana to her feet, taking in her dazed eyes. ‘Quickly, this way.’ He half carried her out into her private courtyard.