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‘You were hurt. Your entire family condoned a marriage between your brother and your first love. Of course you acted out,’ she said, desperately grasping for justifications for his terrible behaviour.
‘Acted out? Is that what...?’ He ground his teeth together, hating the way that her words ran through his head and heart. Her understanding, her belief in him crucified him, made a mockery of every single choice he’d made since, tearing him in half between what he so desperately wanted and what he felt he needed to do.
And he was furious. In that moment, he wanted to bring down the palace, smash and burn everything—anything to make the questions stop. So he did the only thing he could do.
‘I know you think being a prince means that—’
‘Don’t,’ she said, the single word a plea. ‘Don’t use that—’
‘I know you think being a prince means that magical adventures await and love comes with singing birds and talking clocks,’ he said, looking away from the tears brimming in her eyes. ‘But it’s not. It’snot, Star,’ he insisted. ‘It’s constantly putting the country first. It is making a marriage that is strategic and for the good of this country.’
‘And there is nothing strategic about marrying me?’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘There just isn’t.’
‘Your happiness is not strategic? It doesn’t count?’
‘No. It never has,’ he said with the same sense of acceptance that had descended the moment he’d realised he was to take the throne.
‘If you allow that feeling, that anger and resentment about Samira marrying Faizan to shape everything you do, the choices you make—’
‘Don’t say her...’ He couldn’t finish the sentence so instead he bit off his words, his tongue. It had been cruel, and he knew it. The hurt on Star’s features was two red slashes on her cheeks.
‘You can attack my dreams but I can’t challenge your fears? Is it yourself that you’re punishing by refusing to listen to your heart, or someone else? Why would you damn yourself to unhappiness?’
Why wouldn’t she stop? Why was she pushing him like this?
‘Is it because,’ she pressed on, ‘if you can have a happy marriage, ifyoucan choose who you marry, then so could Faizan? Then it would mean that your wonderful, incredible brother made the wrong choice and it hurt you?’
‘Wow, you’re really going for it tonight, aren’t you?’ he scoffed bitterly, wondering what else she was going to drag him through. Because being angry with her was easier than feeling the truth of her words.
‘Of course I am. My heart is on the line. My love for you. Can’t you see that?’
White-hot pain slashed across his chest, a death blow that wouldn’t end his life but could still stop his heart. Because only in the moments when his heart wasn’t beating could he find the strength to be cruel enough to force her to go.
‘Love? In two weeks?’ he taunted. ‘That reallyisa romance,’ he said, forcing scepticism into his tone that burned all the way down. ‘Then again, it’s easier to fall in love when the fantasy can never live up to the reality, isn’t it? You hide in your romances, preferring them to reality. But I don’t have that luxury, Star.’
She looked as if she’d been struck and the only decent thing he could do was bear witness to it. He hated himself more than he ever had done before, but her words had taken hold and weren’t letting go. He couldn’t follow them, not now, not yet, and he greatly feared what would happen when he did. He felt like a bull, head down and ploughing forward, because anything else meant that he had to confront his feelings, her feelings.
Confronther.The way she was always challenging him, demanding of him, expecting him to be better when he couldn’t.
‘You’re right. I do have choices. And I’m sorry that the one I need to make causes you pain.’ His words were mechanical, forced. She knew it, he knew it, but there was also, inevitably, a truth beneath them. ‘But I would make this choice every time. I choose Duratra.’
She wiped at a large, fat tear that escaped down her cheek, the action reminding him of what he’d seen when he’d first come onto the balcony. And he realised in that moment that she’d been crying before they’d talked. Before he’d said the horrible things, because she’d always known how the conversation would play out. She had known, before she’d even told him that she wasn’t pregnant, what his reaction would be.
As she walked from the balcony, out of the suite and the palace, he realised then that he’d got it so terribly wrong. She was not a coward, hiding in romance. She was strong enough and brave enough to face reality. Stronger and braver than him.
The blow to his stomach and heart was doubly hard, physical and emotional, and he collapsed to the floor, his back against the cold, unyielding stone balcony that both held him up and anchored him while everything in him wanted to run after her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ATAROUNDTWOin the morning Khalif found himself in one of the larger family suites, looking for whisky. He’d not had it in his quarters for three years. He’d not even had a drink in three years. But tonight he needed one.
He opened the door to the alcohol cabinet his father kept for visitors, retrieved the weighty cut glass tumbler and poured himself a satisfyingly large couple of inches of whisky. He swirled it around the glass as he sat, letting the peaty alcoholic scent waft up to meet him, his taste buds exploding with expectation and his conscience delaying the moment of gratification as punishment.
What had he done?
He was about to take a sip when the door to the living room opened and he looked up to find his father surveying him with something like pity.
