uncertainty and genuine fear flickering in his faded eyes. ‘Our trade agreements, our relationships with the Bedouin tribes...everything is built on the bedrock of a stable monarchy. Alazar is a traditional country. They cannot have a sultan who acts like a Western playboy. If you do anything to make people doubt or wonder...’
Malik nodded, a terse assent of all his grandfather had both said and implied. He knew his duty, and he would fulfil it. He would not shame either himself or his country by chasing after a slip of a woman, even if she had possessed more life and given him more joy than he’d ever known. ‘I will not, Grandfather,’ he said quietly. ‘I will never.’
* * *
Rome had lost its magic. Back at the youth hostel where she’d left her bags what felt a lifetime ago, Gracie showered and changed. She shouldered her backpack and paid for her accommodation before heading out into the sultry, suffocating heat of a summer’s day. What had been beautiful and wondrous a day before now looked dirty and crowded.
A moped sped by her in a gust of diesel and someone pushed her shoulder hard. Gracie stumbled back a few steps before righting herself. Taking a deep breath, she hefted her backpack more securely on her shoulders and started walking towards the Termini rail station.
By mid-afternoon she was in Venice and had secured a place in a new hostel. She wandered along the Grand Canal, wanting to be captivated by the magic of the beautiful, crumbling city with its many canals of blue-green water and yet utterly unable to. Inside she felt both leaden and numb, filled with the memory of how Malik had pushed her away from him, told her to leave, his expression so cold, almost contemptuous...
There had been no connection. He probably used that line on every eager woman he saw. And as for his confession that it had been his first kiss? Laughable. She should have seen through that immediately. He’d kissed her with far too much expertise and assurance to be as inexperienced as she was. He’d known how to touch her from the first.
Added to all that, he was the heir to a kingdom. A man of some significance, he’d called his grandfather. As if. Clearly he’d been doing nothing but amusing himself with an American bumpkin. She was so stupid. Stupid and naïve.
Gracie trudged through another few weeks of travelling, but the joy and sense of adventure she’d had when she’d started out had left her completely. All she wanted to do was hightail it home, to a place where people knew and loved her. But then the thought of all the triumphant I-told-you-sos from friends and family who hadn’t seen the point of her going at all was enough to stiffen her resolve. She would get over Malik al Bahjat, heir to the throne of Alazar. It wasn’t as if her heart had been destroyed. Just her pride, she assured herself, along with her innocence.
Then, in a tiny village in Germany, with rain sleeting down over the Black Forest, she threw up her breakfast. She rested her head on the edge of the toilet, her stomach still heaving, the noisy sounds of the hostel echoing around her. Cold sweat prickled on her scalp and she closed her eyes. The last thing she needed was the stomach flu while backpacking through Europe.
Then she threw up the next morning, and the morning after that, and her breasts started feeling tender, fatigue crashing over her at every opportunity. It took another week for Gracie to realise the appalling, obvious truth: she was pregnant.
Ten years later
‘I’M SORRY, YOUR HIGHNESS.’
Malik looked up as the doctor entered the examining room and he narrowed his eyes. ‘Pardon?’
‘The results of the test were conclusive.’ The doctor, a dour-faced man who had been medical consultant to generations of royalty, lowered his head. ‘You are infertile.’
Malik’s expression did not change as the words reverberated through the emptiness inside him. ‘Infertile,’ he repeated tonelessly. The doctor looked up.
‘You had a sustained high fever while you were out in the desert. It is a situation that can unfortunately, in rare cases, cause infertility.’ He lowered his head again, as if waiting for Malik to pass sentence.
But there was no sentence for him, only for Malik. A life sentence, or lack of one. He was the only heir to the sultanate of Alazar, and he had no heir to succeed him. No way of getting an heir in the future. His engagement to Johara Behwar, a young woman of virtue and suitably elevated background, had just become a pointless sham. And the stability of his country, a country that had teetered on the edge of civil war for the last ten years, was once again in jeopardy.
Underneath all those political concerns was a deeper, more personal sense of loss that he could not bring himself to probe. Malik turned away from the man to compose himself and gather his thoughts. ‘You are quite sure?’ he asked after a moment, the words clipped and terse.
‘Quite sure, Your Highness.’
Briefly Malik closed his eyes. He’d spent two weeks with the Bedouin in the bleak and arid deserts of Alazar’s interior, trying to unify and encourage his people, and keep the peace that had threatened to topple into chaos and destruction. He had succeeded, but the cost had been high. Too high.
In truth he barely remembered the fever that had stolen his future from him. He’d been delirious, kept in a rough tent and administered to by a Bedouin Hakim, whose knowledge of local herbs and natural medicine had not been enough to lower the fever. Eventually the Bedouin had moved him to a nearby settlement where his grandfather had arranged transport to a medical facility in Teruk. By then he’d had the fever for four days. Long enough, it seemed, to render him infertile.
For a second, no more, Malik allowed himself to experience the grief of knowing he would have no children. No heirs. No children to follow him, no hearts and minds to shape.
The second passed and Malik steeled himself. He had no space in either his life or heart for such useless sentiment. He hadn’t for a long, long time. Love was weakness, and he could not afford to be weak.
‘Thank you for telling me,’ he said with a nod of dismissal. The doctor left, and Malik strode from the room. He would have to tell his grandfather.
He found Asad in one of the smaller throne rooms, dealing with some paperwork. For a moment Malik stood in the doorway, noting the many wrinkles in the old man’s weathered face, the way his hands shook a little as he handled some papers. Asad was eighty-six years old and he showed every year in his body and on his face.
Over the last ten years Malik had assumed more and more responsibility for the running of Alazar; Asad had been unable to cope with the travel and diplomacy that the country’s wavering instability had required. Malik had spent much of the last decade on horseback or in a helicopter, travelling through arid deserts and unforgiving mountains, living in rough conditions and negotiating with people who had the power to cause major civil disruption. Slowly but surely he was dragging Alazar into the twenty-first century while still attempting to respect the old ways and traditions. His marriage to Johara, along with his future heirs, would have cemented his power and the security of the sultanate as well as the whole of the Arabian Peninsula.
But now? How would the traditional Bedouin who controlled much of the country’s desert and mountain regions react to an infertile sultan, the line of succession passed to some distant relative who had no training or reputation? His stomach cramped just thinking about it.
‘Well?’ Asad demanded
