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Only then did Anisah realize painfully that there was no ‘might’ about it, after all.
She was in love with Tarif Al-Atassi.
“P-Please.” Her voice threatened to break, and her heart along with it, but still she struggled to speak, needing this man she loved to believe her. “Listen to me, please. I did it for you, sheikh. I disabled the cameras because I knew there was a possibility my constant visits to the history vault could make the wrong person curious, and if that happened, stories about your childhood could surface and be used against you and the palace.”
She took a step towards him. “Please believe me—-” She reached for his hands, but the sheikh only caught her wrists, and his fingers curled around her – no longer like a bond of protection this time. Instead, his fingers held her like one would cuff a criminal.
Something inside of her started to crack.
“Let her go, Tarif.” The king’s voice held a note of warning.
“There is no need to make any rash judgment, brother.” The gravity of Altair’s voice held a similar tone, cautioning Tarif from doing anything he might regret.
“We can have her detained while we search for evidence to refute or prove her claims,” Rayyan said curtly. “But until then, we must not treat her like a criminal—-”
Tarif’s lip curled. “The way the whole kingdom didn’t treat my mother like a criminal until it was too late?”
A cry of hurt escaped Anisah. “I am not like your mother—-”
“Are you not?” he asked bitterly. “You have always been a staunch defender of the traditional regime, anisdi. How do we know if all of this is not part of a grander scheme to bring down the palace and have our king overthrown?”
Understanding came to her in a painful flash, and her heart ached when she realized where the sheikh was finally coming from. “Oh, s-sheikh.”
The sheikh’s fingers loosened in an instant, his whole body turning rigid at the sound of her voice and the countless words in it that he knew she only meant for him to hear.
My love is real.
My love is true.
My love is yours.
“Tarif—-”
“I don’t want to fucking hear a thing you say,” he snarled. All signs pointed to her betrayal. Did she not see that? Every fucking sign pointed to her making a goddamn fool of him, and still she dared to ask him to believe her?
The palace’s enemies demanded for a full-blooded Ramilian on the throne. Tarif was the only who fit the fucking description, and how fucking big a coincidence it was that he also happened to be the man she now claimed to love?
What if all those times she had resisted him were a mere ploy to keep his interest, and all along she had been planning to use him as a pawn – the way his own mother had?
“Tarif, believe me please—-”
Her eyes told him that he had the power to kill or save her, but to believe that, he might as well as kill himself.
“I love you.”
To believe her would be to enslave himself under a woman who only wanted him for what he could give—-
“Please...”
And so he chose...not to save her.
“How can I trust you,” he heard himself ask, “when you are your father’s daughter?”
Chapter Twenty
Tarif could not sleep.
He lay awake, minutes turning into hours, and no matter what he did, he could not get her silence – her goddamn silence – out of his mind.
