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His lips compressed into a thin, bloodless line. His facial muscles tightened grimly. ‘You cannot hurt me with your words,’ he said, his black eyes boring into her with hard and unrelenting intensity. ‘I admired and respected your cleverness, the quick facility of your mind at seeing through to the end of what was possible. But you have used it against me.’
He was hurt. Deeply hurt. The realisation slammed into Amanda’s heart and pumped a different perception through her mind. This was why he was so unyielding. He had let himself be vulnerable to her and he hated her for supposedly fooling him, and himself for being fooled.
‘All my thoughts and energies were directed to finding and bringing back a rescue team to get you out,’ she said quietly, hoping to reach into him again. ‘I couldn’t move that huge rock. I had no choice but to leave you there until...’
‘You had a choice, Amanda. I gave it to you in the caves...whether to reveal the existence of the neodymite crystals as your father wanted...or whether to leave Xabia the way it is,’ he reminded her savagely. ‘You did not give a reply.’
‘I needed time to think.’
It must have seemed to him...afterwards...that she had fobbed off giving a reply, but Amanda knew it wasn’t true. When he had kissed her and asked her to give herself to him, that had seemed more important than bringing up something she had already decided and was no longer an issue between them.
‘I had made up my mind to keep the secret and let my father’s dream die with him,’ she pleaded. ‘I would have told you so once we were outside.’
Even as she spoke the words she realised it was too late to say them. The wrong time and the wrong place. There would never be a right time now. For years she had worked towards the goal of clearing her father’s name and proving him right. That single-minded purpose was burned into Xa Shiraq’s memory, reinforced by what she had done and all she had poured out to him in the intimacy of their togetherness.
‘I showed you the crystal caves,’ he said simply. ‘And you betrayed my trust and left me to die in darkness.’
Amanda cracked. She lifted her hands to her face in despair. ‘That’s so untrue,’ she cried brokenly. ‘So untrue.’
‘You’ve had a taste of the choice you could have made with me. Now you can have a taste of the choice you made for me.’
‘You’ve got it all wrong.’ It was a desperate bid for understanding. She pulled her hands down, spreading them out to him in appeal. ‘Surely what we felt together meant as much to you as it did to me. How can you imagine I would sacrifice that for...?’
She faltered under the terrible look in his eyes...the pain...the dull, black emptiness that followed it.
‘You will be placed in the deepest cellar of the lowest basement within the granary that supplies the palace,’ he intoned, as though he had pulled a hood of judgement over any last twinge of feeling he had for her. ‘There are no windows. There is no light. You will be in darkness...as I was in darkness...when you left me.’
Amanda shivered, remembering the claustrophobic feeling in the tunnel. ‘I don’t like being alone.’
‘You will not be alone,’ he said with dark derision.
‘Who...?’ She swallowed hard and tried to correct the quaver in her voice. ‘Who will be with me?’
‘The cellar has another name. A sobriquet. It is more commonly known as...the rat-hole. The rats are huge. They are voracious. I hope you will enjoy your new friends and acquaintances.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
AMANDA stared at Xa Shiraq in glazed horror. Her skin prickled in revulsion. Her stomach turned queazy. Beads of sweat broke out on her forehead. Her hands went clammy. Her whole body shuddered.
‘You can’t do that to me,’ she whispered. It was the only defence her mind could construct against the terrifying picture he had drawn of the rat-hole. She would go insane in such a place.
The black eyes glittered with vengeful satisfaction. ‘Call the escort, Kozim,’ came the merciless command.
‘No...no!’ Amanda cried, turning a frantic look of appeal to Xa Shiraq’s personal aide. ‘I’m innocent of this charge. I swear it!’
Mr Kozim’s gaze determinedly evaded hers. He picked up a bell from his desk and rang it loudly. He obviously didn’t want to hear any more from her.
Amanda swung back to Xa Shiraq, her heart pounding in sheer panic. ‘You’re supposed to know everything. That’s what they say of you. Why don’t you know I couldn’t do what you accuse me of?’ she argued, hoping against hope he meant to relent.
He pointedly shunned her, walking off to a leather armchair on the far side of the library. He flung himself listlessly and dispiritedly into it without so much as a glance at her. His eyes focused on some empty spot on the ceiling.
Amanda heard the doors opening behind her, the tramp of military feet coming to take her away to the rat-hole. She couldn’t bear it.
Xa Shiraq waved a gesture of dismissal towards her.
He should know better, Amanda thought, her mind racing to find some solution. He would never do this if his emotions weren’t involved. But they were... they were!
‘Wait!’ Amanda cried imperiously, raising her extended arm above her shoulders.
