Page 4 of Forbidden to the Desert Prince

He didn’t need them sharp to fulfill his mission.

He knew who he was. He might have indulged himself in the pleasures to be found in the world. It had started as a way to gain access to parties and by extension, to people.

But he found that he had an endless capacity to work hard, and to pursue divine degradation even harder.

And so he had built himself an empire. One that allowed him to move freely between nations. Collect allies and data, and many other things that aided him in this overthrow of the overthrowers.

He’d also found himself in many rooms with men who were dangerous and lacked scruples. He’d saved a girl from one of those rooms.

Brianna Whitman.

He’d helped her escape the fate set out for her by her father, sent her to school, and she’d become an accomplished life coach for people who had come from difficult circumstances, and while he found all of that to be modern, soft nonsense...

It had seemed less nonsensical when he saw his brother for the first time in fifteen years. He’d hired Brianna then, to go and try to help him. Coax him back to the world, to the position of his birth. She was there now, trying her best to help him become the man he was meant to be, rather than the beast he’d been fashioned into through years of isolation.

Riyaz was free. But Riyaz was not... He was certainly not fit to rule. He was blunt and he lacked even basic manners. He had spent the years in the dungeon reading and honing his body into a war machine. He was a strange mix of things, his brother. Well-read, for he’d had nothing to do in the dungeon but read, and he’d done so to keep his language alive. He had also worked out exhaustively to avoid letting any part of him atrophy.

But he had no practice of applying these things in the real world. He could hardly hold a conversation, let alone engage in matters of global diplomacy.

Cairo’s taking of the palace in Nazul was a secret. To the nation, to the world. They’d power, but they continued to operate in stealth mode, particularly as he figured out when he could present Riyaz to the people.

They would have only one chance to do so.

Riyaz could not be seen as weak mentally. He could not be seen as affected by what he’d endured. The people would want a strong, triumphant return.

When Riyaz had been freed from the dungeon, Cairo had been there.

His brother had been dressed in near rags, his hair and beard long. Cairo had expected to find him weak and pale, but Riyaz had been built of pure muscle and rage. He refused to go outside. He refused to sleep in a bed. He spent much of his time in the dungeon still.

He had asked for two things upon his freedom.

A cheeseburger, and Ariel Hart.

Ariel...

The name had been a jagged, whispered memory to Cairo.

But he had known just where she was.

He had always known.

He had thought of going to her, many times. And yet he’d known there was only ever one circumstance under which he could see her again. If Riyaz wanted her.

And Riyaz wanted her.

So Cairo would do what Riyaz had asked. He owed him that.

“You had to know that I would come for you,” he said.

“I...”

She was beautiful. She was orange blossoms in a mosaic garden that he had not seen in more than a decade. She was rich, perfumed air. She was a moment in time he could never have back.

It was the impact of her that shocked him. For Cairo was dead to most things in the world. He felt rage, and he felt desire, he had felt something larger than himself when Riyaz had been freed from the dungeon.

But this... Her... She was incredibly beautiful. She surpassed that which she had promised to become. For she had always been lovely.

Her robin’s egg blue eyes were wide as she looked up at him. She was dressed as if she was ready to run. She had been warned.

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