the silence of the desert, to release the tension that was threatening to crush him in its grip, was overwhelming. But he could not. He was too tightly bound.
Now he would have a wife. A child.
A chance he’d thought lost to him. A chance he no longer wanted. Not anymore.
Another woman. Another time. Another baby. One that had never been allowed to take its first breath.
And Sura…
Sayid’s love for her had been unacceptable, his loss of control with her a weakness. And that was why, at sixteen, his uncle had ensured that the woman who held Sayid’s heart had been given to another.
Sayid could remember still, watching the armored car that carried her driving away. Taking her to the home of her future husband.
But she’s pregnant. The baby…
There is no pregnancy now, Sayid. Her father ensured that it was dealt with. And Sura is to be married to another.
Who? Where?
It is not your concern. She is not for you. She never could be. It is not what you were meant for.
He had longed to cut his own heart out in that moment, would have done it, gladly, because the pain would have been preferable to the loss, unending, searing, that he had felt then. He had been on his knees, broken.
Do you see, Sayid? Do you see the power she had? The power it would have given to your enemies? They would have used her against you. You cannot love like that. To feel like that, is to give your power to others.
Kalid had been right. Then, as ever. Had shown him the power such a weakness might give his enemies. And Sayid had taken the final step that day, purging himself of every emotion, leaving nothing more than the ideal he had been born to be. A symbol of the nation. Untouchable. Immovable.
He had given up on the thought of having a wife. Of having a child.
But Chloe would not be his wife. Not truly. And Aden would never be his child. Nothing had changed. Nothing would change.
He stood, carefully closing himself down again, shutting the doors against all the feeling he had just released, against the pain, against the feeling of being in bondage.
And the chains on his soul loosened, a numbness taking their place.
By the time he returned to the palace, he felt nothing again.
“Thankfully, we will be spared the circus that often comes with a royal wedding,” Sayid said, his eyes connecting with hers across the table.
He had requested, with some advance notice even, that she join him for dinner that evening. Everything in her had rebelled against the idea but she really couldn’t afford to follow the feeling. They didn’t have to play like a love-struck couple, but she could hardly seem afraid of him.
More than that, she couldn’t be afraid of him, she wasn’t going to spend her days hiding in the palace, trying to avoid him. She was stronger than that.
She would be stronger than that.
“Why is that?”
“I aim to have the wedding take place quickly, and a celebration so soon after the sheikh’s death would be distasteful.”
“Well, I can’t say I’m too sad to avoid the big wedding.”
“Neither can I.” Though she would be happier to avoid a wedding altogether.
“You have not touched your dinner.”
“I don’t think I’ll be hungry for a week at least.”
“You have to eat. You’ll get too thin.”
She looked down at her increased figure and back up at him. “Losing baby weight wouldn’t hurt my feelings.”
“You don’t need to lose any weight.”
She looked up at him and realized that his eyes were focused on her breasts. She fought a surge of heat that bloomed at her midsection and spread outward. She should be offended. Instead, she was intrigued.
She couldn’t remember having a man look at her breasts before. The men she interacted with were like her. Focused and driven, with tunnel vision when they were working on solving equations. Yes, there were obviously students and professors at the university who had relationships. Plenty of them. But while they were at school, they were at school.
And she chose to extend that kind of drive, focus and exclusion to the rest of her life. She’d never wanted a relationship and so had never really cared whether or not men looked at her breasts.
It was… interesting. And she really, really should be angry.
She cleared her throat but he didn’t adjust the trajectory of his gaze. “Well, that’s beside the point. The point is that in the space of a few days my life has changed completely.”
Now he looked at her face. “Your life started changing nearly a year ago. And again when Aden was born. This is just an extension of that.”
She bit the inside of her cheek. “I know.”
It was true. Her life had been taken over when she’d gotten pregnant with Aden. The pregnancy had changed how she felt, how she looked, what she liked. Her body had been foreign to her, a stranger. Naively, she’d held on to the belief that after giving birth everything would be the same again.
She’d been so stupid.
“I’ll never know how it would have been if they were still here,” she said, her tone soft. “Would it have been easier to give him up?”
He shrugged. “Likely. You were confident that they would do a good job raising him.”
She nodded. “I was.”
“And are you confident that I would?”
“Not in the least,” she said, not seeing the point in lying.
He didn’t miss a beat. “Then I’m certain had Rashid and Tamara lived, you would have been fine.”
She wasn’t sure, though. Wasn’t sure if she ever really could have dealt with this the way she imagined she could.
“Probably.”
“It does no good to castigate yourself for things that will never happen.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“Naturally,” he said.
“You’re so arrogant.”
He shrugged. “As are you in the right setting. You have complete confidence in your abilities as a scientist, in your thought process and problem solving skills, I imagine.”
“Of course I do.”
