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“What is it?” She demanded.
He startled, his gaze landing on his shirt. He stormed towards it, lifted it over his head and down his body. His face was implacable but she knew that deep emotions were stirring through him.
“Raffa?” She asked, moving towards him, putting a hand on his chest.
The look in his eyes made her heart split in two.
“My father,” he confirmed with a simple nod, stepping away and turning his back from her. “I must go to
him.”
“I’ll come too,” she said softly. “If you’ll just give me one minute.”
“No. I must go now.” The words were short and immediately discouraging. “You remain here. I will have a servant send you news when I have it.”
She opened her mouth to object but he was already at the door. He slammed it after himself, and she was alone in the suite.
But no way was she going to do as he said! If Malik had taken a turn for the worse – heaven forbid, if he had already met his end – she was going to be there. She was going to be there out of respect for the man who was like a second father to her, and she was going to be there for her husband. Because whether he realized it or not, he would want support and strength before the night was out.
She took a moment though to straighten her hair and apply the bare minimum of make-up. If she was going to defy her husband, the King, then she wasn’t going to do it looking like she’d just rolled out of bed. It wasn’t vanity, so much as respect for this ancient palace and the people who inhabited it.
Only minutes after her husband had left her suite, Chloe was doing the same. Her servants were waiting, as always, and fell into step behind her; it didn’t occur to Chloe to mind. She walked as quickly as she could without breaking into a run, but as she got nearer to her father-in-law’s wing, her heart was racing as though she’d sprinted a marathon.
The door was open, and inside was a hive of activity. Nurses, servants, a doctor, and in the middle of it all, her husband. He stood beside Malik’s bed, his face cast from stone, his eyes on his father. She couldn’t see Malik clearly, but she moved deeper into the room, and Malik was the first to see her. His lips parted and just for a moment, for the briefest instant, a weak smile crossed his face. He held a hand out to her, limply, but it spurred her forward.
She took it in hers and lifted it to her lips, kissing his aged, papery skin, then straightened. Her husband was looking at her and the intensity of his expression almost bowled her over. For once, she couldn’t have said what he was thinking or feeling, she knew only that something dark burned within his gaze. She swallowed and gave all her attention to her father-in-law.
“What happened?” She asked her husband, without looking at him.
Raffa didn’t speak, so Chloe lifted her gaze to his face.
“What happened, Raffa?” She asked with icy hauteur, and from the bed, heard a rattling laugh wheeze from Malik’s slender frame. His fingers squeezed hers.
“A heart attack,” Raffa said finally. “And you should not be here.”
She ignored him, purely because it felt safer than entering into an argument with her husband over the ailing frame of her father-in-law. But she stayed where she was, her head bent, her smile intended for Malik.
Activity swirled around them, with Raffa’s command of the situation apparent. From the way he spoke to the medical personnel and gave orders to servants, he was in charge of all that happened in the room.
“It’s going to be a long night,” he said eventually, and when Chloe lifted her head, their eyes met. “Nothing is served by you being here.”
It was cold, and it was hurtful, because he was shutting her out. He was drawing a line in the sand between them. He belonged here; she didn’t.
She bit down on her lip, hating that the foreign taste of salty tears spread through her dry, aching throat.
“I’m making trouble,” Malik said, his face alarmingly pale, kindness in his eyes.
“Yes, you attention seeker,” she teased, pushing her worries and hurt from her mind, smiling at him in a way that she hoped would assure him he would be fine. She didn’t want him to be afraid.
“Sheikha.” Her husband’s word was a warning.
She glared at him, then bent down and kissed Malik’s brow. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”
She didn’t see the way Raffa watched the interaction. The way the hint of a frown crossed his face, nor the way his eyes lingered on her body the whole way from the room. At the door, she looked back, but only towards Malik – so she didn’t realise her husband was still watching her.
It was the middle of the night, but Chloe wasn’t tired. She was restless, humming with an energy born of worry and anxiety and doubt and hope. She paced her room for a long time, walking restlessly from one side to the other, before picking up a book at random from the shelves of her room.
It was a book of ancient mythology, translated into English, which made it easier for Chloe to follow the elaborate tales. She lost herself in the story of an eleventh century beast, formed by sand and sunshine, that was as hot as the molten core of the earth itself, a beast that had been left all alone when his mate, a being of stardust and water had been taken into the heavens to float above the earth. The beast wandered the deserts of Ras el Kida, tormenting villages, sacking homes, smiting all that he encountered, purely because he couldn’t live without his mate. All day he raged, but at night, he was still, a huge shape held frozen to the spot, so that he could stand and look to the heavens, hoping to see his mate, hoping for her to see him.
