Beholden to the Throne

‘They are treated like the princesses they are!’ Emir flared. ‘They have everything—’

‘They have nothing!’ Amy shouted. ‘They have the best clothes and cots and furniture and jewels, and it means nothing because they don’t have you. Just because they’re gi—’ Amy stopped herself from saying it, halted her words, but it was already too late.

‘Go on.’ His words invited her but his tone and stance did not.

‘I think that I have already said enough.’ There was no point saying any more, Amy realised. Emir was not going to change at her bidding. The country was not going to embrace the girls just because she did. So she picked up her scarf and replaced it. ‘Thank you for your time, Your Highness.’

She turned to go and as she did his voice halted her.

‘Amy …’

So he did remember her name.

She turned to look at him, met his black gaze full on. The pain was still there, witness to the agony this year must have been for him, but even as she recognised it, it vanished. His features were hardening in anger now, and the voice he had used to call her changed in that instant.

His words were stern when they came. ‘It is not your place to question our ways.’

‘What is my place?’

‘An employee.’

Oh, he’d made things brutally clear, but at least it sounded as if she still had a job—at least she would not be sent away from the twins. ‘I’ll remember that in future.’

‘You would be very wise to,’ Emir said, watching as she bowed and then walked out, leaving him standing for once alone in his sumptuous office. But not for long. Patel walked in almost the second that Amy had gone, ready to resume, for there was still much to be taken care of even at this late stage in the day.

‘I apologise, Your Highness,’ Patel said as he entered. ‘I should never have allowed her to speak with you directly—you should not have been troubled with such trivial things.’

But Emir put up his hand to halt him. Patel’s words only exacerbated his hell. ‘Leave me.’

Unlike Amy, Patel knew better than to argue with the King and did as he was told. Once alone again Emir dragged in air and walked over to the window, looking out to the desert where tomorrow he would take the twins.

He was dreading it.

For reasons he could not even hint at to another, he dreaded tomorrow and the time he would spend with his children. He dreaded not just handing them over to the desert people for the night, but the time before that—seeing them standing, clapping, laughing, trying to talk, as Amy had described.

Their confrontation had more than unsettled him. Not because she had dared to speak in such a way, more because she had stated the truth.

The truth that Emir was well aware of.

Amy was right. He had got up at night to them when they were born. They had pulled together. Although it had never been voiced, both had seemed to know that they were battling against time and had raced to give Hannah as many precious moments with her babies as they could squeeze in.

He looked to his desk, to the picture of his wife and their daughters. He seemed to be smiling in the photo but his eyes were not, for he had known just how sick his wife was. Had known the toll the twins’ pregnancy had taken on her heart. Six months into the pregnancy they had found out she had a weakness. Three months later she was dead.

And while Hannah was smiling in the photo also, there was a sadness in her eyes too. Had she known then that she was dying? Emir wondered. Had it been the knowledge that she would have but a few more days with her daughters that had brought dark clouds to her eyes? Or had it been the knowledge that the kingdom of Alzan needed a male heir if it was to continue? Without a son Alzan would return to Alzirz and be under Sheikh King Rakhal’s rule.

He hated the words Hannah had said on the birth of their gorgeous daughters—loathed the fact that she had apologised to him for delivering two beautiful girls. His heart thumped in his chest as if he were charging into battle as silently he stood, gave his mind rare permission to recall Hannah’s last words. The blood seared as it raced through his veins, and his eyes closed as her voice spoke again to him. ‘Promise you will do your best for our girls.’

How? Emir demanded to a soul that refused to rest.

Any day now Rakhal’s wife, Natasha, was due to give birth. The rules were different in Alzirz, for there a princess could become Queen and rule.

How Rakhal would gloat when his child was born—especially if it was a son.

Emir’s face darkened at the thought of his rival. He picked up the two stones that sat on his desk and held them. Though they should be cool to the touch the rare pink sapphires seemed to burn in his palm. Rakhal had been a prince when he had given him this gift to celebrate the arrival of the girls—a gift that had been delivered on the morning Hannah had died.

Hannah had thought them to be rubies—had really believed that the troubles between the two kingdoms might finally be fading.

Emir had let her hold that thought, had let her think the gift was a kind gesture from Rakhal, even while fully understanding the vile message behind it—sapphires were meant to be blue.

Without a male heir the kingdom of Alzan would end.

Emir hurled the precious stones across his office, heard the clatter as they hit the wall and wished they would shatter as his brain felt it might.

He hated Rakhal, but more than that Emir hated the decision that he was slowly coming to. For it was not only Hannah who had begged for reassurance on her deathbed—he had held his dying father out in the desert. He had not been able to see the King dying because blood had been pouring from a wound above Emir’s eye, but he had heard his father’s plea, had given his solemn word that he would do his best for his country.

Two promises he could not meet.

Emir knew he could keep but one.

His decision could not—must not—be based on emotion, so he picked up the photo and took one long, last look, tracing his finger over Hannah’s face and the image of his girls. And then he placed it face down in a drawer and closed it.

He could not look them.

Must not.

Somehow he had to cast emotion aside as he weighed the future—not just for his children, but for the country he led.

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS too hot to sleep.

The fan above the bed barely moved the still night air, and the fact that Amy had been crying since she put the twins down for the night did not help. Her face was hot and red, so Amy climbed out of bed, opened the French windows and stepped out onto the balcony, wishing for cool night air to hit her cheeks. But in Alzan the nights were warm and, despite a soft breeze, there was no respite.

The desert was lit by a near full moon and Amy looked out across the pale sands in the direction of Alzirz—there, the nights were cold, she had been told. Amy wished that she were there now—not just for the cool of the night, but for other reasons too. In Alzirz a princess could rule.

There girls were not simply dismissed.

But even that didn’t ring true. In many ways Alzan was progressive too—there were universities for women, and on Queen Hannah’s death the King had ordered that a state-of-the-art maternity hospital be built in her name—not only with the cardiac ward he had mentioned but free obstetric care for all. Sheikh King Emir had pushed his people slowly forward, yet the royals themselves stayed grounded in the ways of old, bound by rules from the past.

The two lands had long ago been one, she had been told—Alzanirz—but they had been separated many generations ago and were now fierce rivals.

She had met King Rakhal and his wife, Natasha, on a few occasions. Natasha was always disarmingly nice and interested in the girls; Rakhal, on the other hand, despite his cool politeness, was guarded. Amy had felt the hatred simmering between the two men, had almost been able to taste the deep rivalry that existed whenever they were both in a room.

Still, it was not the rival King who troubled her tonight, nor was it the King who employed her.

It was her own soul.

She had to leave. She was too involved. Of course she was. Realising the toll her job was taking on her daughter, Amy’s mother was urging her to come home. But as Amy stared out to the sands she was conflicted—she simply could not imagine abandoning the twins.