Heir to a Desert Legacy

“It will likely have to be deferred, but that’s fine, as well. You’re a well-liked student.”

“Most everyone at this level is. If you’re pursuing physics this far, it’s a passion.”

“And you are… passionate about it?”

The way he said “passionate” made her stomach curl in slightly, and she wasn’t sure why. “Yes.”

“What about it do you find so fascinating?”

She looked down at Aden. “I like to know why. The why of everything.” She looked back at Sayid. “Though, I’ve discovered there are things in life that simply aren’t explainable. I know about the building blocks of life, but I haven’t exactly figured out how to make everything make sense yet.”

“Not everything can be explained,” he said.

“But it’s my great quest to see if it can be.”

He shook his head. “I can tell you right now, there is too much in this world that does not make sense and never will. Greed makes men do terrible things, desire for power. The desire for control.”

“Survival of the fittest,” she said.

“Sure. But I’ve seen it. I’ve seen what people are willing to do. It does not make sense, trust me.”

She did. His voice rang with a depth of understanding that echoed inside of her. Images of violence flashed behind her eyes.

Sometimes there really was no reason.

“To the best of my ability,” she said, trying to shake off the memories, “I try to make sense of it all. To find the absolutes, the things that can’t be argued or denied. Theoretically, it should make my life feel more ordered. More in control.”

“How is that working out?”

“Like hell, actually.”

He nodded slowly. “Yes, that has been my experience, as well. In particular, in regards to recent events.”

“Common ground,” she said. “Unexpected.”

“Perhaps not quite so unexpected,” he said. “I see things in much the same way you do. Black or white. Yes or no.”

She looked at Aden, love, pain, filling her. “I used to see things that way. More than I do now.”

Sayid looked away from her, his dark eyes scanning the room. The moment of connection was broken. “There will be two other nannies in my employ while you are here. One to work in the night, the other to help handle him while you study.”

“And I’m the… wet nurse. Part of the prince’s team?”

He looked back at her and for a moment, she thought she saw a teasing light in his eyes. “A prince needs a team. Calling you another nanny would do, though, no need to be dramatic. Or medieval.”

She looked back down at Aden and the enormity of what he would face filled her, overwhelmed her. It was unfair, she knew, because even if his parents had lived, his future would be the same. He was, as Sayid had pointed out, born to rule.

But right then it didn’t seem fair. Didn’t seem fair that the expectations of a nation should rest on the shoulders of this tiny baby.

“Why can’t you just do it?” she whispered. “You were going to rule. Can’t you take it from him?”

She chanced a glance at him. His eyes were trained on the wall, distance. Dark. “I would do what had to be done, but I am not the man to lead this country.”

“But you’re doing it until Aden is old enough to—”

“I will do what must be done.”

“Nothing more?” she asked, not bothering to keep the bitterness from her tone.

He looked at her then, and she studied the hard lines of his face, the light that filtered through the windows deepening the grooves by his mouth, making the line between his brows appear deeper. It revealed his cares, his pain, the marks, the age, the world had left on him.

“Attar needs hope. A future filled with endless possibilities. With me, they will not get that. Death follows me, Chloe James. I will not bring that on my people, but on their enemies.”

He turned and walked back out of the room, and Chloe just watched, tension releasing from her slowly with each step he took away from her, until she was left feeling like wrung-out jelly. She hadn’t been conscious of just how tense she’d been until it had started to ease.

She let out a breath and clenched her hands into fists, trying to stop her fingers from shaking. His words echoed in her head, so dark, so certain.

She shook her head, focusing her mind back on Aden. There was too much going on for her to adopt Sayid’s issues, as well. And anyway, she imagined he would say he didn’t have any. She wandered back into her room, sitting down at the laptop that had already been set up at a corner desk for her. She could at least do some course work, study for her tests. She pushed the on button and waited for it to boot up, scanning the room, the view of the gardens from the double doors.

Today, everything had changed. Again.

“Sheikh Sayid,” Sayid’s advisor, Malik, walked into the dining room, his eyes fixed on the ground in front of him. It was not the person he’d been expecting. He’d been expecting Chloe, spitting hellfire and brimstone about him taking over her schedule and demanding she have dinner with him. He was not so lucky. “We need to discuss the matter of the press conference that is planned for tomorrow.”

“What is there to discuss?” Sayid asked, annoyance coursing through him. He didn’t want to talk about the press conference. Didn’t want to do anything but eat dinner and treat himself to a punishing workout. Something that would numb him and leave him utterly exhausted. After a day locked inside of an office, trapped behind a desk, he felt it was deserved. Necessary.

It was like prison. Even if it was a more comfortable cell. It was also too opulent, too busy. He longed for the simplicity of a desert tent, or at the very least, the whitewashed walls of the seaside palace he had spent time in as a child.

His aide kept on avoiding his eyes. “You know that the people are… they are restless.”

“They do not like me,” Sayid said. “That is the crux of the issue.”

“You are not… personable.”

Sayid laughed, the sound void of humor, his body void of humor. “Am I not?”

“It has been said, Sheikh.”

“Not by you, certainly,” he said, eyeing the man who had served Rashid so faithfully.

He did meet his eyes this time. “Certainly not.”

“It is of no consequence. I am not the permanent ruler of this country. Soon enough, my nephew shall take over and I will go back to my more palatable position outside of the public eye.”

“In sixteen years. That is a reality you cannot ignore.”

It was the truth. It wasn’t like submitting to physical torture. As a ruler he had to lay open pieces of himself, show personality. Be nice. At least when his hands were bound, when he was being whipped, burned, he could shut down the pain, allow it to rest on his skin like armor, recede inside of himself and simply endure. Survive.

But that was not what was required of a ruler. And he knew nothing else.