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“No, I don’t.” She turned away from him again, pacing towards the waterfall. How long had it stood there, washing over ancient rocks, washing over ancient feuds? “I just didn’t think you’d be capable of behaving like this.”
She wrapped her arms around her torso, inadvertently drawing his attention to her slender fragility so that he wanted to join her in heaping abuse at his feet. What he was doing was beneath him, and he knew it. It was despicable and unreasonable. But desperate times called for desperate measures and only the deepest love and affection for his father, the deepest respect for their family’s long tradition of keeping the peace in Ras El Kida, kept him to his course.
Goran represented a very real threat, and though Raffa knew he would triumph over it, there would be damage and loss in the interim. An heir was the only way to ensure the kingdom’s safety.
“Well, Chloe? I don’t have all night. What’s it to be?”
She didn’t move. Not even a little, so that Raffa was left wondering if she’d heard him. But finally, her head shifted just a fraction.
“I’ll move to the palace,” she said with a grim determination he understood. “But you will make time for me in your life. I’m not going to be ignored by you as well.”
Raffa was too relieved by her acquiescence to notice the bitter rejoinder that followed immediately afterwards.
“I’m pleased you are being reasonable.” Now that she’d agreed, he moved forward with plans. “I’ll have your servants bring your things, though much of your bridal trousseau has been installed in my dressing room already --,”
“Your dressing room?” She interrupted, whirling around. “I’ll have my own suite of rooms, though?”
“No.” His eyes glittered. “You are my wife and we are about to take a step forward – this marriage is about to become truth, not just a construct of our fathers’. So you will come to my apartment, my bed, my life.”
“But you surely don’t want that any more than I do?”
He shrugged. “I want an heir. And you being here gives us the best chances.”
“At your beck and call?” She snapped tartly, a shiver of anticipation and pleasure dancing up her spine. “You’re serious?”
“You either want this or you do not. You’ve just agreed to be my wife, to carry my child, so why are we arguing over semantics?”
“I don’t consider this semantics! I consider the question of my space and privacy to be an incredibly important one. I will have my own suite of rooms, Raffa, and you won’t bully me into anything else. You will come to me, but by prior appointment, at a time that suits us both.” She said stiffly, her tone loaded with an impressive degree of hauteur.
“There is no material difference between your plan and mine,” Chloe continued. “Making me move into your suite is unnecessarily cruel, and I hope I’m not wrong about you. I hope you’re not capable of that.”
The tension in the air could have been sliced with a knife.
“Fine.” It was an agreement given through gritted teeth. “Seeing as you’re being so reasonable. Use the suite that was given over to you for the wedding.” He stalked towards the door and pulled it inwards. The guards were still at their posts, as though nothing had changed. As though the whole universe hadn’t fallen into disarray in the last twenty minutes.
He spoke to one of the guards in his native tongue, fast and low, and despite being fluent in the language, Chloe couldn’t engage her brain to properly digest his words. Something about ‘her highness’ and ‘unwell’.
“I will see you tomorrow night, Chloe,” Raffa said as she moved through the door to his room. “Consider that a prior appointment.”
She opened her mouth to issue a harsh rejoinder but he slammed the door shut, stranding her between two guards, neither of whom would meet her angry blue eyes.
Chloe woke early after a restless night’s sleep, and battled a heavy fog of disorientation with each blink of her eyes. Her room was different – larger – with enormous windows that opened onto a balcony to one side. Different, but familiar.
And it hit her like a freight train, memories of the night before, the summons she’d received to attend the palace, her husband’s coldly delivered missive that she must bear his child, her refusal, his ultimatum, and finally, her agreement.
She planted her feet onto the marbled floor and wiggled her toes, staring at the pale pink polish that had been applied only a day earlier, when life had made so much more sense. She stood, frowning as she moved towards the windows that looked towards the desert.
How majestic this country was! Hot, yes, but in a way that had sparked life and enthusiasm back into Chloe’s blood. Without realizing it, she’d fallen asleep sometime during her teenage years, or perhaps she’d intentionally taught herself to be numb, to hold her heart tight, to avoid the pain that her father’s rejection inevitably inflicted.
Perhaps she’d taught herself to be numb to the pain that was endemic to the sight of her father with her half-brother – with whom he was always welcoming, warm and proud. To see them together was to see an example of what a healthy parental relationship should have been.
Yet with Chloe, the old man had barely acknowledged her. And when he had, it had been to commodify her in some way or other, to try to stick her into one of the pigeon holes he thought right. Was she excelling at school in any way? Was she smart enough for him to be proud of her? Was her wit as quick as Apollo’s? Might she be an asset to the business in the way Apollo had been?
No. Chloe was intelligent, but not given to academics, and mild dyslexia that had gone undiagnosed until her teenage years had meant she was almost too far behind to start trying in high school.
Was she beautiful, then? Beautiful enough to be sought after by men who her father might at least admire?
No. At least, she hadn’t been for many years. A gawky teenager who was as flat as a board long after her friends had started to grow curves and shoot up, she’d been mistaken for a child when she was almost able to obtain her drivers’ license.
