with the same deadness. “Don’t worry. I think it’s time I detoxified my life of your presence.”
Haidar stared into nothingness long after Jalal had disappeared. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
Jalal should have told him he’d never trespass on the sanctity of his relationship with his woman. Roxanne should have denounced his doubts as ludicrous.
He should have had his twin back and his lover forever.
Those he’d thought closest to him shouldn’t have walked away from him. But they had.
Trust no one.
His mother’s words reverberated in his head. She’d been right.
He’d ignored her wisdom at a cost he might not survive.
Never again.
One
The Present
It wasn’t every day a man was offered a throne.
When that man was Haidar, it should have been a matter of never.
But the people of Azmahar—at least, the clans that made up a good percentage of the kingdom’s population—had offered just that.
They’d sent their best-spoken representatives to demand, cajole, plead for him to be their candidate in the race for the vacant throne of Azmahar. He’d thought they were kidding.
He’d kept his straightest face on to match their earnest efforts, pretending to accept, to brainstorm his campaign and the policy direction for a kingdom that was coming apart at the seams.
When he’d realized they were serious—then he’d gotten angry.
Were they out of their minds, offering him the throne of the kingdom that his closest maternal kin had almost destroyed, and his paternal ones had just dealt the killing blow? Who in Azmahar would want him to set foot there again, let alone rule the damn place?
They’d insisted they represented those who saw him as the savior Azmahar needed.
One thing Haidar had never imagined himself as was a savior. It was a genetic impossibility.
How could he be a savior when he was demon spawn?
According to his estranged twin, he amalgamated the worst of his colorful gene pool in a new brand of bad. His recruiters had countered that he mixed the best of the lofty bloodlines running through his veins, would be Azmahar’s perfect king.
“King Haidar ben Atef Aal Shalaan.”
He tried the words out loud.
They sounded like a premium load of bull. Not only the “king” part. The names themselves sounded—felt—like lies. They no longer felt as if they indicated him. Belonged to him.
Had they ever?
He wasn’t an Aal Shalaan, after all. Not a real one like his older brothers. Without the incontrovertible proof of their heritage stamped all over Jalal, he’d bet cries would have risen that he didn’t belong to King Atef. From all evidence, he belonged, flesh, blood and spirit, to the Aal Munsoori family. To his mother. The Demon Queen.
The ex–Demon Queen.
Too bad he could never be ex–demon spawn.
His mother had besieged him from birth with her fear that her abhorred enemy, the Aal Shalaans, starting with her husband and his older sons, would taint him, the “true part” of her. She’d made sure they had no part of him. Starting with his name.
From the moment she’d laid eyes on her newborn sons, she’d seen that he was the one who was a replica of her, hadn’t bothered thinking of a name for his twin. Their father had named Jalal, proclaiming him the “grandeur” of the Aal Shalaans. Jalal was doing a bang-up job proving their father’s ambitious claims right.
She’d named him. Haidar, the lion, one type of king. She’d been plotting to make him one that far back. When she’d known it was impossible. Through non-insurrectionist means, that was.
As a princess of Azmahar, she’d entered into the marriage of state with the king of Zohayd knowing her half-Azmaharian sons would not be in line to the throne. As per succession rules, only purely Zohaydan princes could play the game of thrones.
So she’d plotted, apparently from day one, to take Zohayd apart, then put it back together with herself in charge. She would have then been able to dictate new laws that would make her sons the only ones eligible for the throne, with him being first in line.
Two years after her conspiracy had been discovered and aborted, he still had moments when denial choked him up.
She could have caused a war. She would have, gladly, if it had gained her her objective.
She’d stolen the Pride of Zohayd jewels that conferred the right to rule the kingdom. She’d planned to give them to Prince Yusuf Aal Waaked, ruling prince of Ossaylan, so that he could dethrone her husband and claim the throne. Having only a daughter and being unable to sire another child, he would have named her sons his successors.
Haidar imagined she would have gone all black widow on Yusuf right after his sitting on the throne in the joloos, intimidated her brother—the newly abdicated king of Azmahar—into abdicating then, and put him, her firstborn by seven minutes, on the throne of a new superkingdom comprising Zohayd, Azmahar and Ossaylan.
She’d had such heartfelt convictions for such a heartlessly ambitious plan. When he’d pleaded with her to tell him where she’d hidden the jewels, to save Zohayd from chaos and herself from a traitor’s fate, she’d calmly, lovingly, stated those convictions as facts.
After heavy initial damage, her plans were for the ultimate good. For who better than he to unite these kingdoms, lead them to a future of power and prosperity instead of the ruin they were heading for under the infirm hands of old fools and their deficient successors? He, the embodiment of the best of the Aal Munsooris? She was certain he’d one day surpass even her in everything.
He’d heard that before. According to Jalal, he already had.
But no matter what he’d thought her capable of, what she’d done had surpassed his worst predictions. And as usual, without obtaining his consent, let alone his approval, she’d executed her plans with seamless precision to force his “deserved greatness” on him. She’d been positive he’d come to appreciate what she’d done, embrace the role she’d tailored for him.
And she could have so easily succeeded.
Even Amjad, his oldest brother and now king of Zohayd, who suspected everything that moved, hadn’t suspected her. As queen of Zohayd, she had seemed to have as much to lose as anyone if her husband was deposed. Ingenious.
He recognized that convoluted, long-term premeditation in his own mind and methods. But he consciously confined it to business, driving himself to the top of his tech-development and investment field in record-breaking time. His mother used her intricate intelligence with every breath.
