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But something about the whole conversation had started to ease the fierce, stabbing pain under her breastbone that had been there ever since her showdown with Kamal.
‘I still don’t understand how you got pasthavingto get married because of me,’ she said, her curiosity getting the better of her.
‘Well,’ her mother replied, considering. ‘Firstly, we discovered a lot of things about each other. For example, I discovered the extent of the abuse he had suffered,’ her mother added, her expression sobering.
Liah knew her grandfather, the previous Sheikh of Narabia, had been a cruel ruler and a worse father—she knew he had kidnapped her father as a teenager from his mother in LA and had also disowned her uncle Raif when his mother had died in childbirth. But, because Sheikh Abdullah had died before Liah had been born, and her father had never spoken of him, she’d never really considered what that had all really meant.
Her mother continued. ‘I discovered, because of his father’s abuse and his mother’s neglect, Zane had been forced to protect his feelings at all costs. Letting me in was incredibly painful for him, something it took me a while to appreciate.’
‘That’s so sad,’ Liah murmured, her heart breaking for both of them.
‘Yes, but the point is we figured it out. Eventually.’ Her mother laughed, the soft, musical sound making Liah’s sore heart pound. Her mother gripped Liah’s hands and rubbed her thumbs across the skin. ‘People can heal, Liah, but only if they want to enough, and if they are given the tools and space to do so.’
Liah met her mother’s gaze, feeling oddly ashamed. Had she simplified and romanticised everything? Made too many demands on Kamal? She’d run away from him and as a result he might lose his throne. She’d thought he was judging her, but had she given enough consideration to what he had been through in his life before he had ever met her?
‘From everything you’ve told me about Kamal, and the things he said to you, he sounds quite similar to your father in those early days,’ her mother said softly. ‘I’m not saying you should marry him, not even to help him keep his throne—that’s not a reason to marry anyone. And your father is absolutely right, he should have told you the situation from the outset. But maybe you shouldn’t write him off completely. It’s obvious that, despite everything Kamal’s said and done and the things he hasn’t done or said, you still love him... What you have to ask yourself now is, do you want to throw those feelings away, or is it worth working on them with him? Because, make no mistake, marriage and relationships are hard work, especially the ones that last.’
She sighed. ‘Love really is just a word, you know, he’s right about that. It’s what’s behind it that matters. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve wanted to strangle your father because he was obtuse, or hot-headed or uncommunicative... But I never stopped wanting to do the work. And neither did he.’
Liah felt hope bubble in her chest again. But this time it felt so much more painful.
‘But I’m not sure Kamal does want to do the work,’ she said, still desperately unsure. Maybe she had been naïve, maybe she had over-simplified things, but how much evidence did she really have that Kamal saw her as more than a means to an end? ‘He told me he didn’t require love.’
Catherine nodded. ‘It sounds to me like he’s terrified.’
‘Kamal? Are you joking?’ Liah spluttered. ‘He’s even more overbearing and intimidating than Dad. I don’t think he’s ever been scared of anything in his life.’
‘Are you certain of that?’ her mother said, her gaze probing.
And suddenly Liah recalled the flicker of shame in his eyes when she had mentioned his scars. Was there still some of that boy inside him, who had been taught from such an early age he would always be alone, that he wasn’t worthy of love, that he would never be cherished?
What if her mother was right and it wasn’t that he couldn’t love her...it was that he was terrified of loving anyone? Of trusting anyone to love him?
‘Oh, no, I may have made a terrible mistake,’ she murmured, the bubble of hope becoming a balloon.
Just as a confident smile tilted her mother’s lips, Kaliah’s aunt Kasia—the Princess of the Kholadi tribe—burst into the chamber, holding the hands of her two-year-old twins, Khalid and Sami. ‘Liah, you need to come to Zane’s study. Someone just arrived by helicopter and Zane’s having a tough time preventing him from charging through the palace in search of you.’
‘Kamal?’ Liah murmured, that bubble of hope pressing against her larynx.
‘If he’s six and a half foot, and even more scarily intense than my husband when he’s freaking out about me getting pregnant again, then that would be the guy,’ Kasia replied with an easy smile. It was a running joke in the family—given Kasia and Raif had had three sets of twin births—that Raif was not in a good place whenever his petite wife became pregnant.
Liah rushed past her aunt and her cousins, unable to think about anything but the painful pressure in her chest. It didn’t take her long to catch the sound of her father and her fiancé shouting at each other. She followed the commotion, pushing her way through the palace staff who had amassed by the door to the study, clearly eavesdropping. She burst into her father’s study to see Kamal and her father going head to head.
She’d thought she would never see him again. Why had it not occurred to her until this moment, as he stood glaring at her father, his robes swirling around his long legs, his stance rigid, that it was the thought ofneverseeing him again which had hurt most of all?
‘Kamal?’ she gasped, breathless and stupidly euphoric.
He swung round, his gaze bright but also awash with pain. ‘Kaliah, you must come back to me,’ he rasped. He looked distraught, she realised, as she crossed the room towards him. His stance was so rigid, his eyes shadowed and so intense. This wasn’t arrogance, this was fear. Just as her mother had said.
‘You’ll do no such damn thing, Liah,’ her father interceded. ‘This bastard has no right to—’
‘Dad, stop talking!’ She cut off her father’s tirade, unable to detach her gaze from the man in front of her, the man she loved.
‘What the...?’ her father began.
‘Dad, please, this isn’t your business,’ she said, finally managing to stop staring at the man who had come to mean so much to her in such a short space of time. ‘Kamal and I need to talk in private.’
‘How can it not be my business?’ her dad demanded, temper replaced with confusion. ‘He made you cry.’
