I can’t say I enjoyed it,” Tarek said.
“Flying is terrible. I hate it. Why are you here?”
“I came here to get you, you foolish woman.”
Her heart scampered up into her throat. “I told you. I can’t live with you in a one-sided relationship. I just can’t. For so many reasons.”
“You said you needed to be loved.”
Her throat tightened around her heart, strangling her. “I do. I hate to try to explain what it was like to be married to Marcus. Because in many ways I hate to compare the two of you, because you’re so different. Because what I feel for you is so different. Also, Marcus is dead and I can ask no more of him. He didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t disappoint me. He didn’t deny me. But I didn’t love him. Not like I love you. It was easy to be with him. We never had to know each other. Neither of us were interested in sharing or being shared with. It gave me companionship without having to make myself vulnerable. Without putting my feelings in any danger. Which you... I can’t do that with you. I want all of you. I want to open myself up and make you understand me. I want you to open yourself up to me. You make me so unbearably aware of how isolated I’ve been. And now that I know, I can’t go back to that.”
He closed the distance between them, cupping her cheek, his dark eyes blazing into hers. “I cannot go back. I can’t go back, either, nor do I want to. I was so alone. I stripped away every desire. Every emotion. Because I so desperately didn’t want to remember. I so desperately didn’t want to feel pain.” He laced his fingers through her hair, his eyes never leaving hers. “We are so much the same, Olivia. And when you first walked into my throne room I never would have thought so. But we were both protecting ourselves. I tried to protect myself to the end. I blamed love, because somehow I understood it had the power to devastate the most. It was easy to focus in on my torture, on the pain. On all the hate. Because then I could pretend it was the most painful part of what I had been through. It wasn’t. It was the loss of my parents. The loss of their love. And I wouldn’t even let myself remember it, because I wanted nothing to do with the pain. And so I rid myself of every emotion. I focused solely on my goal. So that I could survive.” He shook his head. “And then you came. You made me desire. You made me want. You did exactly what you’ve accused me of doing to you. You opened me up. Demolished the walls. And I was frightened. But after you left I realized that love was never the enemy. Yes, it hurts. It has the power to devastate. I was devastated by the loss of you.” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “I remembered my parents. Remembered words my father said to me. That hurt, too. But there was so much good in it. I realize now that you can’t have the good things without the pain. I was all right with that for a long time. But I’m not now.”
“What did you remember about your father?” she asked, her throat aching.
“That he loved Tahar. That he loved my mother. That he loved us. And I know for a fact Malik loved none of those things. If he loved any one thing, it was himself. It is the absence of love that hurts. That wounds beyond repair. If there is no love, every action is empty.” He pressed his forehead against hers. “I am tired of being empty.”
“You aren’t. You never were. Being with you... Seeing your strength... It’s what made me find mine.”
* * *
Tarek looked down at the woman he was privileged enough to call his wife. And he could no longer hold back the words that were bursting to be released from him like a torrent of water. He had used his words so sparingly over the years. Preserving them as though they were precious things. Perhaps he had saved them for such a time as this. Perhaps he had saved them for her.
Those things he’d hoarded inside him. His splintered humanity, the things that made him human... Perhaps they had all been saved for her. She made him feel as though he might not be splintered at all.
She made him feel as if he was whole.
“When I speak of love, I speak of love in general. But it is not love in the general sense that made me realize this. It was my love for you.” He pressed a kiss to her temple, everything inside of him shaking. “I love you, Olivia.”
He felt her sag in his arms, her whole body trembling. “Oh, Tarek. I love you, too. I love you, too. I’m so glad you love me.”
“Love is powerful. We have good reason to fear it,” he said, smoothing her hair. “Like any weapon, you must wield it well. And then it is an asset. Even if it is still dangerous.”
“That makes sense. Since I first met you, you told me you were a weapon.”
“And you told me you were a genteel, cultured queen. You did not tell me that you were, in fact, much more deadly than I.”
A smile curved her lips. “I didn’t know.”
He recalled the first time he had seen her. He had thought her frail. A white lily who would dry quickly in the harsh desert heat. But she had not been changed by the desert. Rather, the desert had been changed by her. He had been changed.
“Be my wife, Olivia,” he said, his voice rough.
“I already am.”
“You became my wife for politics. Stay my wife for love. When I ask you now, I ask you for no other reason than that I cannot live without you. I have lived without a great many things, but I could never survive without you.”
She drew a shaking breath, and pressed a kiss to his lips. “I will be your wife.”
“Do you remember, that first day, you told me you needed to be with me because there was no other place for you?”
“I remember,” she said, her words a whisper.
“You have made a place in my heart. And you will always have it. I swear this to you.”
A tear rolled down her cheek, a smile tugging at her lips. “More vows?”
“Yes. And I may yet make more. I’m new at this after all.”
“So am I. But that’s okay. We can learn together.”
TAREK DID MAKE more vows to Olivia. He made several every night, often while he was lost in her body. He never could get enough of being so close to her. Of being so connected, so loved, when he had spent so many years alone.
With her, he relished a great many things he had forgotten to want. Soft beds, good food. Birthday cakes that were never thrown away, and always shared together. Smiling. Olivia gave him so many reasons to smile. And less than a year after they were married she gave him yet one more.
Olivia walked into their shared bedchamber. They had not spent one night apart since he had come to get her in Alansund all those months ago. And, not coincidentally, he no longer had nightmares. There were no more ghosts in the halls of the palace. They had all been laid to rest by her.
“I have some news for you,” she said, her tone serene. But he was not fooled, because it was the same tone she had used when she had first come to the palace and proposed a marriage agreement between them. It was the tone she often used when she was about to broach something quite monumental and was
