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“Riyaz,” she said. “I want to ask you something.”
“And so you have to tell me you want to ask? Can you just ask?” He moved his hand over her bare arm. But he found he would rather touch her bare breast, so he did just that.
“I can’t concentrate when you do that.”
“Well, the question is important to you, but I did not say that it was important to me.”
“Do you want any of this? Do you want to be king? Do you want to rule this country?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Has anyone ever asked what you wanted? Do you want to marry Ariel Hart, or is it just...? Is it just something that you were told you would do? And now that you’re back on the path...”
“You must understand, that when you are royalty... What you want is not part of the conversation. Not in the same way it is in these normal houses. I read about them too. Where they ask children what they want to be when they grow up. It is a thing that you choose. That is not true when you are a royal. When you are a royal, then it is all decided for you. Before your birth. There is a line that carries back thousands of years. In many ways, it made being a prisoner easier. My job is to endure. That is all. And so I did.”
“What about your happiness?”
“I have never thought about my happiness one way or the other. My appetites, certainly. But not my happiness. My job was to survive to take the throne. It is not about what I want. It never has been.”
“That is very... It’s very grim.”
“You have accused me of this before. Perhaps it is. And yet there are far worse things in the world than being born into a purpose that you are sure of. I have never had to question anything. All that mattered was the throne. It is about the symbolism, not who I am.”
“Is that how you managed to feel no... Embarrassment or shame? You’re so deeply rooted in who you are. And nothing that you say or do is ever going to take that away.”
“Exactly. I might have been in a dungeon,habibti, but I was not the imposter. I never could be. My family’s blood is in the stones of this palace. And I was always the Sheikh whether I was beneath the ground or on the throne. So asking me now...do I want to sit on the throne...? It is not really a question. I am the throne.”
“But there are moments, right?” she asked softly. “Moments of happiness. Happiness matters.”
“I will carry this one with me,” he said, touching her face. “I will remember this.”
She tightened her hold on him, clung to him rather fiercely, and he could not deny that he enjoyed that. There was not a more powerful feeling than that of having given a woman pleasure, he decided.
Yes, his own felt good. That could not be denied. But his own pleasure was easy enough to come by—the pleasure she gave him because she desired him, the pleasure that he was able to give to her, that was the sort of alchemy that created pure gold. And that was something far beyond sexual gratification.
He did not take it or her for granted.
Another thing she had taught him, he supposed.
He looked at her, and tried to imagine another woman in her place. It didn’t matter what he wanted. Not really. Ariel would be the appropriate symbol. Brianna was nobody. From nowhere.
Except that she was the sun.
There was that. But the sun would always shine. One did not have to keep it locked in the palace in order for that to be true.
“This was a good lesson,” he said.
She went stiff in his arms. And he realized that this was a case when honesty had not been the right choice.
“A lesson,” she said.
“Yes,” he responded. “Skills I will need...”
“I understood what you meant,” she said. “It is only that I found it offensive. I don’t need to be your lesson. And I don’t understand... How you could even say that. After what we shared with one another. Doesn’t that feel intimate to you?”
He wanted her. He could not imagine wanting anyone else. But she did not fit into his life, and could not.
Perhaps you could keep her. A concubine. A second wife.
