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He took hold of her meandering hand and placed it over his heart, keeping it there with his own.
“Do not worry for me when you meet the king on the morrow,” he said low, making her eyes widen at the sudden turn to seriousness.
“Do what you must for your kingdom, for our son.”
There.
He finally laid open claim to what they shared that night long ago.
Her eyes shimmered with a welling of tears. She didn’t gainsay him. She only kept listening to what he had to say.
“If…if you must take another husband…”
He swallowed the knot in his throat before he could go on, and she made a small sound of distress.
“…do it,” he forced himself to finish, his voice guttural with a storm of emotions.
“I will be your secret. Your whore. I will never forsake you. You will always have all of me. I—”
She crushed her mouth to his to stop his words, each and every one of them like spears stabbed into his heart, like blades cutting through his throat. His whole being rebelled at saying them. And his body locked against the prospect of ever making them real.
But he would do it.
He would be her secret lover if she wanted him. He would risk torture and death and public shaming to give her whatever she needed. He would lay down his pride and life to be near her.
And he would never show how it killed him to see her with another man. To know what they did together in the marriage bed. He would remind himself that the one she truly loved washim. It would be enough.
It had to be enough.
Her warm mouth devoured his sadness and pain, taking it inside herself. She wrapped her body tighter around him, clenching him deeply inside her.
Tears prickled behind Shai’s eyelids and stun his nose, but he wouldn’t let them slip free. He wouldn’t let her know how his heart was already breaking at the mere thought of her potential alliance.
But he couldn’t quell the shivers that coursed throughout his body. Like the sandstone cliffs of Thebes fracturing piece by jagged piece from deep within.
He would be strong for her. He would always stay true.
Even if it destroyed him. Even if it hurt so much he couldn’t breathe.
“Shai…”
She broke apart from his mouth to kiss his cheeks and eyes.
He kept them squeezed shut against the stinging tears. He breathed deeply to wrestle back control over his broiling emotions. He wouldn’t let her see him weak. See him break.
Not like this.
“Shai…” she murmured again, cupping his face, nuzzling her own against the long bristles of his lashes.
“Look at me, my love. I want you to see my eyes to know that every word I say is truth.”
Slowly, his breaths still ragged, he lifted his lids a sliver. The tears that had gathered on the lower threshold could barely be contained.
“I will never take a husband for as long as I live,” Heba vowed, staring straight into his very soul.
“Unless that husband is you.”
She said this with absolute conviction, making Shai dare to believe. Dare to hope.
