He turned away. Coming here was pointless. He didn’t want to hear about the next queen, no matter how fine she might be, not when it could not be the woman he loved.
‘Prince Rafiq, before you go…’ He stopped and looked back to the woman on the bed. ‘Do not give up hope. Believe. Have faith. There is always an answer.’
Breath whooshed into his lungs as he took a step forward, his insides flushed with sensation. ‘How…? How is it that you see the things you see?’
And she smiled at him, a lifetime of wisdom shining forth from her green eyes. ‘Sometimes we look with our eyes and we see only that which is in front of us. Some people have perfect vision but will never see.’ She folded her arms and patted her chest. ‘For sometimes we must look beyond the pictures our mind presents as fact. Sometimes we need to see what is in our hearts. Only then do we see what is really true.’
He wasn’t sure it answered his question. He wasn’t sure he understood—but he held onto her words as they made their way back to the palace.
‘Sometimes we have to see what is in our hearts.’
Was that what Kareef had done? Listened to his heart and not to his brain? Believed what he felt, rather than what he saw as his duty?
He knew what his brain told him he must do. It was his duty, his responsibility. A king for Qusay.
And yet he knew too what his heart wanted. A black-haired woman with dark eyes and golden skin. The woman who possessed his heart.
Sera.
He had loved and lost her once before. Why should he lose her again?
But who would be king? Who would rule Qusay?
‘Believe,’ Abizah had said. ‘Have faith.’
He pushed back into the buttery leather upholstery and took a deep breath. The old woman was right. By the time the car pulled up outside the glistening palace he knew what he had to do.
‘Akmal,’ he said, stopping the vizier from alighting with a hand to his arm. ‘There’s been a change of plans.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HE RAN through the palace, along the long cloistered walkways fragrant with citrus and frangipani and a thousand exotic flowers whose heady scent perfumed the air. He ran up the steps to the wing that housed his mother’s apartment, scattering cooing pigeons in a flurry of feathers and flapping wings.
‘Sera!’ he called, banging on the door. ‘Sera. I need to talk to you.’
And then the door opened and she was there, her eyes confused, still puffy. ‘What’s happened, Rafiq? What’s wrong?’
He spun her in his arms. ‘Nothing is wrong. Everything is wonderfully, perfectly right.’
She laughed uncertainly. ‘What are you talking about? Have they found Tahir?’ For a moment he faltered, but only for a moment. ‘They will,’ he said, believing it in his heart, ‘but this isn’t about him. This is about you and me. We’re getting married.’
‘But, Rafiq, we can’t. You know we can’t. There is no way—’
‘There is a way, Sera. There is one way, and I am taking it.’
Shock transformed her face. ‘You can’t renounce the crown! Not after Kareef. You would be denying your very birthright.’
‘Is it my birthright? I have never once in my life thought about taking over the reins of Qusay. It was a thought as foreign to me as this very land became when I adopted another as my home. And now, to find that circumstances have thrust me into this position—how is that a birthright?’
‘But, Rafiq, you would be throwing away your future.’
‘No, Sera, I would be reclaiming it. For you are my future and always have been. Because from the moment we met we were meant to be together—as surely as the sand belongs to the desert and the mountain peaks to the sky. We are part of each other and always will be.’
‘Rafiq, think of what you are doing…’
‘I know exactly what I am doing. I lost you once before and I will not lose you again.’ He went down on one knee before her. ‘I love you, Sera. Marry me. Be my wife. Live my future alongside me.’
Tears welled in her beautiful dark eyes, but there was love there too, love that swelled his heart and gave him hope. For if she denied him he would be a broken man. A king with no queen. Adrift and alone.
‘Oh, Rafiq, I love you so much. You have given my life colour again when I thought there would be none. You have given me back my heart.’
‘Then you’ll marry me?’
And she nodded, her lips tightly pressed. ‘Yes, Rafiq—oh, yes, I’ll marry you!’
He was still kissing her when his mother bustled in, calling for Sera. She stopped, wide-eyed, when she found them, the excitement in her eyes masked by questions for no more than a second. ‘You’re both here, how wonderful. Have you heard the news? A helicopter’s been found in the desert. Akmal’s gone straight there. They think it might be Tahir’s!’ She wrung her hands nervously in front of her. ‘And to think that all this time we thought he just hadn’t bothered to come. Do you think…? Is there any chance…?’