eyes widened, although with disbelief, confusion or simply surprise he couldn’t tell. ‘What—who was your father?’
He bared his teeth in a smile that was a sign of his pain rather than any humour or happiness. ‘Sheikh Hashem, of course.’
A hand flew to her throat. ‘You mean you are Aziz’s brother?’
‘Half-brother, to be precise. Older half-brother.’
‘But...’ She shook her head, and now she definitely seemed disbelieving. Khalil felt something that had started to unfurl inside him begin to wither. Good. It was better this way. She wouldn’t believe him, and he wouldn’t care. It would be easy then. Painful, but easy. ‘How can that be?’ she asked. ‘There’s no mention of you anywhere, not even in that book!’
He laughed, the sound hard and bitter, revealing. ‘So you read the book?’
‘A bit.’
‘There wouldn’t be a mention of me in it. My father did his best to erase my existence from the world. But the Bedouin tribes, my mother’s people, they have not forgotten me.’ He hated how defensive he sounded. As if he needed to prove himself, as if he wanted her to believe him.
She didn’t matter. Her opinion didn’t matter. Why had he even asked her to dinner? Why had he given her that dress?
Because you wanted to please her. Because you wanted to see her again, touch her again...
Fool.
‘Why would your father wish to erase your existence, Khalil?’
He gave her a glittering, challenging stare. ‘Do you know who Aziz’s mother is?’
Elena shrugged. ‘Hashem’s wife. Her name, I believe, is Hamidyah. She died a few years ago, Aziz told me.’
‘Yes, she did. And, before she was my father’s second wife, she was his mistress. She bore him a bastard, and my father claimed him as one. Aziz.’ He let out a slow breath, one hand clenching involuntarily against his thigh. ‘Then my father tired of my mother, his first wife, but Kadaran law has always dictated that the reigning monarch take only one wife.’ He gave her the semblance of a smile. ‘Not a moral stance, mind you, simply a pragmatic one: fewer contenders for the throne. I suspect it’s why Kadar has enjoyed so many years of peace.’
‘So you’re saying he got rid of his wife? And—and of you? So he could marry Hamidyah?’ Elena was gazing at him with an emotion he couldn’t decipher. Was it confusion, disbelief or, God help him, pity? Did she think he was deluded?
‘You don’t believe me,’ Khalil stated flatly. His stomach felt like a stone. He wasn’t angry with her, he realised with a flash of fury he could only direct at himself; he was hurt.
‘It seems incredible,’ Elena said slowly. ‘Surely someone would have known...?’
‘The desert tribes know.’
‘Does Aziz?’
‘Of course he does.’ The words came fast, spiked with bitterness. ‘We met, you know, as boys.’ Just weeks before he’d been torn from his family. ‘Never since, although I’ve seen his photograph in the gossip magazines.’
Elena shook her head slowly. ‘But if he knows you are the rightful heir...’
‘Ah, but you see, my father is cleverer than that. He charged my mother with adultery and claimed I was not his son. He banished me from the palace when I was seven years old.’
Elena gaped at him. ‘Banished...’
‘My mother as well, to a remote royal residence where she lived in isolation. She died just a few months later, although I didn’t know that for many years. From the day my father threw me from the palace, I never saw her again.’ He spoke dispassionately, even coldly, because if he didn’t he was afraid of how he might sound. What he might reveal. Already he felt a tightness in his throat and he took a sip of wine to ease it.
‘But that’s terrible,’ Elena whispered. She looked stricken, but her response didn’t gratify Khalil. He felt too exposed for that.
‘It’s all ancient history,’ he dismissed. ‘It hardly matters now.’
‘Doesn’t it? This is why you’re seeking the throne, as—’
‘As revenge?’ He filled in. ‘No, Elena, it’s not for revenge. It’s because it’s my right.’ His voice throbbed with conviction. ‘I am my father’s first-born. When he set my mother aside he created deep divisions in a country that has only known peace. If you’ve wondered why Aziz does not have the support of his whole country, it’s because too many people know he is not the rightful heir. He is popular in Siyad because he is cosmopolitan and charming, but the heart of this country is not his. It is mine.’ He stared at her, his chest heaving, willing her to believe him. Needing her to.
‘How can you be sure,’ she whispered, ‘that your mother didn’t have an affair?’
‘Of course I’m sure.’ He heard his voice, as sharp as a blade. Disappointment dug deep. No, a feeling worse than disappointment, weaker—this damnable hurt. He took a steadying breath. ‘My mother knew the consequences of an affair: banishment, shame, a life cut off from everyone and everything she knew. It would not have been worth the risk.’
‘But you would have just been a boy. How could you have known?’
‘I knew everyone around her believed her to be innocent. I knew her serving maids cried out at the injustice of it. I knew no man ever stepped forward to claim her or me, and my father couldn’t even name the man who’d allegedly sired me. My father’s entire basis for banishing both my mother and me was the colour of my eyes.’
Elena stared at him, her own golden-grey eyes filled with not confusion or disbelief but with something that was nearly his undoing: compassion.
‘Oh, Khalil,’ she whispered.
He glanced away, afraid of revealing himself. His jaw worked but he could not form words. Finally he choked out, ‘People protested at the time. They said there wasn’t enough proof. But then my mother died before he actually married Hamidyah, so it was, in the end, all above board.’
‘And what about you?’
He couldn’t admit what had happened to him: those years in the desert, the awful shame, even though part of him wanted to, part of him wanted to bare himself to this woman, give her his secrets. To trust another person, and with more than he ever had before, even as a child. He suppressed that foolish impulse and lifted one shoulder in what he hoped passed as an indifferent shrug. ‘I was raised by my mother’s sister, Dimah, in America. I never saw my father again.’
‘And the people accepted it all?’ she said quietly, only half a question. ‘Aziz as the heir, even though they must have remembered you...’
‘My father was a dictator. No one possessed the courage to question his actions while he was alive.’
‘Why did Sheikh Hashem make such a strange will?’ Elena burst out. ‘Commanding Aziz to marry?’
‘I
