chance to talk about this. I don’t...I don’t like to talk about the past. I don’t have a lot of happy things there.”
He raised his brows, his dark eyes full of something...understanding, maybe? Which was so strange she could hardly stand it. “I have some idea of what that might be like. Will you tell me?”
“My sister was ill. She is ill. She’s had a terrible autoimmune disease since we were children. My parents spent years of their lives in hospitals. Even now, she’s very fragile. Truthfully, she’s lucky to have lived as long as she has. But that meant that my life was solitary. Very often I was at home while they attended clinical trials. While Emily was hospitalized. It’s just one reason I felt so suited to palace life. The house was always full. I quite like that. And Marcus had a way of making everything feel easy. Fun. Bright. I didn’t have much experience of that. I’m afraid of being alone. I don’t like it. I don’t like feeling displaced. Like I’m an incidental. Because I’ve had too much of it.
“Emily can’t help it. I hate even saying any of this. It isn’t her fault. It isn’t my parents’ fault. And I found a way to fix all of that. It’s just that...Marcus died. And there isn’t a place for me there anymore, and it’s nothing but that yawning, horrible feeling of being extra. I tried to... There was this man who was a diplomat for Alansund and I tried to make things work with him, but it barely got past hello. I felt... I hate feeling like I failed in my duty. Like I didn’t hold up my end.”
She thought of that horrible moment. The birthday party. When she’d yelled at her parents for not caring. When they’d looked at her as though she’d failed in her unspoken duty. To be content with neglect, because she had health. She had never felt so broken. “So when Anton suggested this as a solution, I jumped at it. That’s why I’m here. At least here I matter.”
She couldn’t quite fathom why all of that had come spilling out. She had never even talked to Marcus about it like that. Oh, he had known about Emily’s condition, but she had never spoken to him about how it made her feel.
But Marcus had never asked.
Tarek put his hand on her cheek, the gesture so shocking she froze, her eyes wide. “You are needed. Know that.”
With that, he lowered his hand, continuing to walk with her down the corridor. The ache in her chest deepened, widened, a crack in a wall she hadn’t been aware of until recently.
She didn’t have time to ponder it too deeply. They entered the dining hall to find it glowing from floor to ceiling. The chandeliers were lit; candelabras lined the room. Flowers wound around everything. There was nothing restrained about any of this. It was an explosion of joy, of color. And since Olivia couldn’t muster up any of her own joy, she appreciated it blooming around her.
At the head of the low table were cushions in red, gold and blue, awaiting herself and Tarek.
“This is beautiful. I’ve never been to a party like this,” she said.
It reminded her very much of that birthday party again. But people were here. And it was glittering and full. So she would focus on that.
“Nor have I.”
She followed him to their positions, taking a seat beside him. Questions formed in her mind, hovering on her lips. She had just shared some of herself. And she wanted very much to try to get him to share his own experiences.
“How is that possible? Why were you out in the desert?”
Guests began filing into the room, more than had been in the ceremony. She had known this would be the case, too. There was also a feast outside the walls of the palace, food being given freely to the citizens of Tahar to celebrate the marriage of their sheikh.
Along with guests, musicians came in, music filling the space, echoing off the ceiling and the jeweled walls. In time with the music, platters of food came next, and her question was lost in the noise and shuffle.
She picked at a bit of spiced lamb on her plate, unable to muster up any appetite.
She looked over at Tarek, who was sitting with one leg curled beneath him and the other bent at the knee, his elbow resting on top of it as he made quick work of the food on his plate. He trained dark, serious eyes on her. “I was in the desert because my brother feared what I would become if I was here.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was not until recently that I realized just who he was. What he was doing to our country. It was not until recently I realized that he was very likely the one who’d orchestrated the assassination of my parents.”
His hard blank words hit her like bricks. One after the other. And she was barely able to recover from the first blow when a second arrived.
“I think he was afraid I would know. I think he was afraid of what I would do. So he broke my will. Filled my head with his teachings. His truths. Sent me away where I could be of no threat. To guard the borders. To protect his evil empire while he reduced it to ash from within.” He took another bite of food. “I have been slowly coming awake for years. Slowly coming into understanding.” He looked at her, his gaze so cold it sent a shiver down her spine. “He turned me into a creature. Tortured me until I knew nothing but pain and his words. I am what I was made to be. I doubt I will ever be anything else.”
THE REST OF the reception passed in a fog for Tarek. He had not intended to speak to Olivia with such honesty. He saw no point in infecting her with the darkness that lingered in his past. He scarcely saw the point of infecting himself with it. However, the longer he stayed here in the palace, the more he remembered. The more often he woke, naked and reaching for his sword, his entire body burning with memories of what it had been like to be subjected to the physical and emotional torture visited upon him by his own brother after the death of their parents. It had all been under the guise of strengthening him, but he saw it now for what it was.
The only thing that had gotten him through had been the vision of his people swimming before him. The idea that he might be the perfect weapon raised up to protect them. To prevent what had happened to his parents from ever happening again. It had not then occurred to him that the threat had come from within the palace. That it had been his own brother who had orchestrated their demise. He had only the scribbles of a prince in a private journal, and shattered pieces of memory that sometimes pushed to the fore, piercing his brain with painful, vivid replays of conversations he’d heard. As a boy? During his torture, he couldn’t be sure. They were too broken.
And they were not what he intended to focus on now. But Olivia had shared pieces of herself with him, and he had felt obliged to do the same. Now, though, it was time for them to return to their chamber. It was time for them to become husband and wife in every sense of the word.
A sense he feared he still did not fully understand.
I am what I was made to be. I doubt I will ever be anything else.
His own words, the truth in them, reverberated through him as he and Olivia left the hall to raucous applause and cheers from the guests in attendance.
His body did not know how to feel pleasure. His hands did not know how to give it.
He thought back to the fantasy he’d had a week before, looking
