To Defy a Sheikh

“Again, we must work on your self-preservation.”

“Forgive me. I don’t quite believe I have a chance at it.”

Something in his face changed, his eyebrows drawing tightly together. “Samarah. Not a servant girl, or just an angry citizen. You are Samarah.”

He’d recognized her. At last. She’d hoped he wouldn’t. Not when she was supposed to be dead. Not when he hadn’t seen her since she was a child of six.

She met his eyes. “Sheikha Samarah Al-Azem, of Jahar. A princess with no palace. And I am here for what is owed me.”

“You think that is blood, little Samarah?”

“You will not call me little. I just kicked you in the head.”

“Indeed you did, but to me, you are still little.”

“Try such insolence when I have my blade back, and I will cut your throat, Sheikh.”

“Noted,” he said, regarding her closely. “You have changed.”

“I ought to have. I’m no longer six.”

“I cannot give you blood,” he said. “For I am rather attached to having it in my veins, as you can well imagine.”

“Self-preservation is something of an instinct.”

“For most,” he said, dryly.

“Different when you have nothing to lose.”

“And is that the position you’re in?”

“Why else would I invade the palace and attempt an assassination? Obviously I have no great attachments to this life.”

His eyes flattened, his jaw tightening. “I cannot give you blood, Samarah. But you feel you were robbed of a legacy. Of a palace. And that, I can perhaps see you given.”

“Can you?”

“Yes. I have indeed thought of a use for you. By this time next week, I shall present you to the world as my intended bride.”

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_267759f3-05b3-5aa4-a3ba-470e57bb35db)

“NO.”

Ferran looked down at the woman kneeling in the center of his mattress. The woman was, if she was to be believed, if his own recognition could be believed, Samarah Al-Azem. Come back from the dead.

For surely the princess had been killed. The dark-eyed, smiling child he remembered so well, gone in the flood of violence that had started in the Khadran palace, ending in the death of Jahar’s sheikh. What started as a domestic dispute cut a swath across the borders, into Jahar. The brunt of it falling on the Jahari palace.

It was the king of Jahar who had started the violence. Storming the Khadran palace, as punishment for his wife’s affair with Ferran’s father. An affair that had begun when Samarah was a young child and Ferran was a teenager. When the duty to country was served by both rulers, having supplied their spouses with children. Or so the story went. But it had not ended there. It had burned out of hand.

And countless casualties had been left.

Among them, the world had been led to believe, Samarah.

Was she truly the princess?

A girl he’d thought long dead. A death he had, by extension, caused. Was it possible she lived?

She was small. Dark-haired. At least from what he could tell. A veil covered her head, her brows the only indicator of hair coloring. It was not required for women in employment of the palace to cover their heads or faces. But he was certain she was an employee here. Though not one who had been working for the palace long. There were many workers in the palace, and he didn’t make it his business to memorize their faces.

Though, when one tried to kill him in his own bedchamber, he felt exceptions could be made. And when one was possibly the girl who had never left his mind, not ever, in sixteen years…

He truly had exceptions to make.

He was torn between rage and a vicious kind of amusement. That reckoning had come, and it had come in this form. Lithe, soft and vulnerable. The most innocent victim of all, come to claim his life. It was a testament, in many ways, to just how badly justice had been miscarried on that day.

Though he was not the one to answer for it. His justice had been the key to her demise. And yet, there was nothing he could do to change it. How could he spare the man who had robbed his country of a leader, installed a boy in place of the man.

The man who had killed his family for revenge.

They were two sides to the same coin. And depending upon which side you looked at, you had a different picture entirely.

Also, depending on which version of events you heard…

He shook off the thoughts, focused back on the present. On the woman. Samarah. “No?” he asked.

“You heard me. I will not ally myself with you.”

“Then you will ally yourself with whomever you share a cell with. I firmly hope you find it enjoyable.”

“You say that like you believe I’m frightened.”

“Are you not?”

She raised her head, dark eyes meeting his. “I was prepared for whatever came.”

“Obviously not, as you have rejected my offer. You do realize that I am aware you didn’t act on your own. And that I will find who put you up to this, one way or the other. Whether you agree to this or not. However, if you do…things could go better for you.”

“An alliance with you? That’s better?”

“You do remember,” he said, speaking the words slowly, softly, and hating himself with each syllable, “how I handle those who threaten the crown.”

“I remember well. I remember how you flew the Khadran flag high and celebrated after the execution of my father,” she said, her tone ice.

“Necessary,” he bit out. “For I could not allow what happened in Jahar to happen here.”

“But you see, what happened in Jahar had not happened yet. It wasn’t until the sheikh was gone, the army scattered and all of us left without protection that we were taken. That we were slaughtered by revolutionaries who thought nothing of their perceived freedom coming at the price of our lives.”

“Thus is war,” he said. “And history. Individuals are rarely taken into account. Only result.”