Читать книгу To Defy a Sheikh - Maisey Yates - Страница 8

CHAPTER TWO

“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.”

“A shame then that we must live our lives as individuals and not causes.”

“Do we?” he asked. “It doesn’t appear to me that you have. And I certainly don’t. That is why I’m proposing marriage to you.”

“That’s like telling me two plus two equals camel. I have no idea what you’re saying.”

He laughed, though he still found nothing about the situation overly amusing. “The division between Khadra and Jahar has long been a source of unrest here. Violence at the borders is an issue, as I’m sure you well know. This could change that. Erase it. It’s black-and-white. That’s how I live my life. In a world of absolutes. There is no room for gray areas.”

“To what end for me, Sheikh Ferran? I will never have my rightful position back, not in a meaningful way. The royal family of Jahar will never be restored, not in my lifetime.”

“How have you lived since you left the palace?”

“Poorly,” she said, dark eyes meeting his.

“This would get you back on the throne.”

“I will not marry you.”

“Then you will enjoy prison.”

The look on her face nearly destroyed what little was left of his humanity. A foolish thing, to pity the woman who’d just tried to kill him. And she could have succeeded. She was not a novice fighter. He had no illusion of her being a joke just because he was a man and she a woman. He had no doubt that the only thing that had kept him from a slit throat was her bare moment of hesitation. Seconds had made the difference between his life and death.

He should not pity her. He should not care that he’d known her since she was a baby. That he could clearly picture her as a bubbly, spoiled little princess who had been beautiful beyond measure. A treasure to her country.

That was not who she was now. As he was not the haughty teenage boy he’d been. Not the entitled prince who thought only of women and what party he might sneak into, what trouble he might find on his father’s yachts.

Life had hit them both, harsh and real, at too young an age. He had learned a hard lesson about human weakness. About his own weaknesses. Secrets revealed that had sent her father into the palace in a murderous rage…one that had, in the end, dissolved a lineage, destroyed a nation that was still rebuilding.

She was a product of that, as was he. And her actions now had nothing to do with that connection from back then. He should throw her in a jail cell and show her no mercy.

And yet he didn’t want to.

It made no sense. There was no room for loyalty to a would-be assassin. No room for pity. Putting your faith in the wrong person could have a disastrous end, and he knew it well. If he was wrong now…

No. He would not be wrong.

This was not ordinary compassion leading him. There was potential political gain to be had. Yes, Jahar had suffered the most change during that dark time sixteen years ago, but Khadra had suffered, too. They had lost their sheikh and sheikha, they had been rocked by violence. Their security shaken to its core.

The palace had been breached.

Their centuries-old alliance with their closest neighbors shattered. It had changed everything in a single instance. For him, and for millions of people who called his country home.

He had never taken that lightly. It was why he never faltered. It was why he showed her no mercy.

But this was an opportunity for something else. For healing. One thing he knew. More blood, more arrests, would not fix the hurts from the past.

It had to end. And it had to end with them.

“Can you kill me instead?” she asked.

“You ask for death?”

“Rather than a prison cell?”

“Rather than marriage,” he said.

Her nostrils flared, dark eyes intense. “I will not become your property.”

“I do not intend to make you my property, but answer me this, Samarah. What will this do to our countries?”

“I almost bet it will do nothing to mine.”

“Do you think? Are you a fool? No one will believe one girl was acting alone.”

“I am not a girl.”

“You are barely more than a child as far as I’m concerned.”

“Had I been raised in the palace that might be true, but as it is, I lived on the streets. I slept in doorways and on steps. I holed up in the back rooms of shops when I could. I had to take care of a mother who went slowly mad. I had to endure starvation, dehydration, the constant threat of theft or rape. I am not a child. I am years older than you will ever live to be,” she spat.

He hated to imagine her in that position. In the gutter. In danger. But she had clearly survived. Though, he could see it was a survival fueled by anger.

“If you kill me,” he said, “make no mistake, Khadra will make Jahar pay. If I imprison you…how long do you suppose it will take for those loyal to the royal family to threaten war on me? But if we are engaged…”

“What will the current regime in Jahar think?”

“I suppose they will simply be happy to have you in my monarchy, rather than establishing a new one there. I suspect it will keep you much safer than a prison cell might. If you are engaged to marry me, your intentions are clear. If you are in jail…who knows what your ultimate plans might have been? To overthrow me and take command of both countries?”

“Don’t be silly,” she said, her voice deceptively soft. “At best, I’m a lone woman. Just a weak, small ex-royal, who is nothing due to her gender and her gentle upbringing. At worst…well, I’m a ghost. Everyone believes me dead.”

“I am holding a knife that says you’re far more than that.”

“But no one will believe otherwise.”

“Perhaps not. But it is a risk.”

“What do you have to gain?” she asked.

It was a good question. And the main answer was balm for his guilt, and he had no idea where that answer had come from. The past was the past. And yes, he had regretted her death—a child—when he’d thought she’d been killed. But it had not been at his hand. He would have protected her.

He would protect her now. And in the process, himself, and hopefully aid the healing of a nation too long under a shadow.

“Healing,” he said. “What I want is to heal the wounds. Not tear them open again. I will not have more blood running through this palace. I will not have more death. Not even yours,” he said, a vow in many ways.

Sheikha Samarah Al-Azem was a part of a past long gone. Tainted with blood and pain. And he wanted to change something about it. He wanted more than to simply cover it, and here she presented the opportunity to fix some of it.

Because it had not been her fault. It had been his. The truth of it, no matter how much he wanted to deny it, was that it was all his fault.

It was logic. It was not emotion, but a burning sense of honor and duty that compelled it. He didn’t believe in emotion. Only right and wrong. Only justice.

“What’s it to be, Samarah?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Prison,” she said.

Anger fired through him, stark and hot. Was she a fool? He was offering her a chance to fix some of this, a chance at freedom. And she was opting for jail.

She was not allowing him to make this right. And he found he didn’t like it.

“So be it,” he growled, throwing the knife to the side and stalking to the bed, throwing her over his shoulder in one fluid moment.

She shrieked. Then twisted, hissed and spit like a cat. He locked his arms over hers, and her legs, but she still did her best to kick his chest.

“I think, perhaps, habibti, a night in the dungeon will cool your temper.”

He stalked to the far wall of his room and moved a painting, then keyed in a code. The bookshelf swung open. “We’ve modernized a bit here in Khadra, as you can see,” he bit out, walking through the open doorway and into a narrow passageway. “Though these tunnels are quite new.”

“Get your hands off of me!”

“And give you a chance to cut my throat? I highly doubt it. You were given another option and you chose not to take it. No one will hear you scream, by the way. But even if they did…I am the sheikh. And you are an intruder.”

He knew every passage that ran through the palace. Knew every secret. A boy up to no good would have to know them, of course, and a sheikh with a well-earned bit of paranoia would, naturally, ensure the passages were always kept up. That he knew the layout of the castle better than anyone, so that the upper hand would always be his in the event of an attack.

He had lived through one, and he was the only member of his family who had. He felt he had earned his feelings on the matter.

In any case, he was well versed on where every dark, nondescript tunnel in the palace led. And he knew how to get down to the dungeon. It wasn’t used. Hadn’t been in ages, generations. But he would be using it tonight.

Because if he left her free, she would no doubt kill him in his sleep. And that he could not have. Either she formed an alliance with him, or he put her under lock and key. It was very simple. Black-and-white, as the world, when all was in working order, should be.

“I will kill you the moment I get the chance!” she spat, kicking against his chest.

“I know,” he said. “I am confident in that fact.”

He shifted his hold on her, his hand skimming the rounded curve of her bottom as he tried to get a better grip on her. The contact shot through him like lightning. This was the closest he’d been to a woman in…much too long. He wouldn’t count how long.

You know just how long. And if you marry her…

He shut off the thought. He was not a slave to his body. He was not a slave to desire. He was a slave to nothing. He was ice. All the way down.

He took them both down a flight of stone steps that led beneath the palace, and down into the dungeon. Unused and medieval, but still in working order.

“Let me go.”

“You just threatened to kill me. I strongly doubt I’m letting you go anytime soon.”

He grabbed a key ring from the hooks on the back wall, then kicked the wrought iron door to the nearest cell open. Then he reached down and picked up a leg iron and clamped it around her ankle.

She swore, a violent, loud string of profanity that echoed off the walls.

He ignored her, slung her down onto the bench and moved quickly away from her range of movement before shutting the door behind him.

“You bastard!” she said.

He wrapped his fingers around the bars, his knuckles aching from the tight grip. “No, I am pure royal blood, Sheikha, and you of all people should know it.”

“Is the leg shackle necessary?”

“I didn’t especially want to find myself overpowered and put in the cell myself.”

She closed her mouth, a dark brow raised, her lips pursed. A haughty, mutinous expression that did indeed remind him of Samarah the child.

“You do not deny you would have.” He walked to the side of the cell so that he could stand nearer to her. “Do you?”

“Of course not,” she said.

“Come to the bars and I will undo the leg shackle. It is unnecessary now that you’re secured.”

“Do you think so?” she asked.

He stared at her, at those glittering eyes, black as midnight in the dim lighting of the dungeon. “Perhaps I do not now. You truly need to work on your self-preservation. I would have made you more comfortable.”

Her lip curled, baring her white teeth, a little growl rumbling in her chest. “I will never be comfortable in your prison.”

“Suit yourself. Prison is in your future, but you may choose the cell. A room in the palace, a position as sheikha, or you may rot in here. It is no concern of mine. But you will decide by sunset tomorrow.”

“Sunset? What is this, some bad version of Arabian Nights?”

“You’re the one who turned back the clock. Pursuing vengeance in order to end my bloodline. Don’t get angry with me for playing along.” He turned away from her, heading back out of the dungeon. “If you want to do it like this, we will. If you want to play with antiquated rules, I am all for that. But I intend for it to go my way. I intend to make you my wife, and I doubt, in the end, you will refuse.”