about Ashkaraz abounded—about how it was ruled by a tyrant who kept his people living in fear, banning all international travel both out of and into the country. All aid was refused. All diplomats and journalists turned away.
There had been one journalist reputed to have smuggled himself into Ashkaraz a couple of years back, escaping to publish a hysterical article full of terrible stories of a crushed people living under a dictator’s rule. But that was it.
Basically, no one knew what went on inside the country because no one—bar that journalist, and plenty doubted that he’d even been there anyway—had ever been there and come back.
Charlotte hadn’t listened much to the stories, or worried about how close to the borders they were. Mainly because she had been enjoying spending time with her father and was more interested in the archaeology they were doing than in rumours about a closed country.
Now, though, she wished she’d paid more attention. Because if the people approaching her weren’t assistants from the dig, then they were people from somewhere else.
Somewhere frightening.
She squinted harder at the group on horseback. Oh, goodness, was that a...a person, slung over the back of one of their horses? It seemed to be. A person with distinctive pale hair...
Her heart constricted, recognition slamming into her. She’d recognise that hair anywhere, because her hair was exactly the same colour. It was a family trait. Which meant that the person currently slung over the back of that horse was her father.
Fear wound around her, as cold as the sun was hot. He must have got lost, like she had, and they’d picked him up. And now they’d found her too...
A tall figure in the middle of the group swung down off his horse—and it had to be a he, given that women weren’t generally built like Roman gladiators—the sunlight catching the naked blade thrust through the belt that wound around his hips, and the chill that gripped Charlotte intensified.
He came towards her, moving with the fluid, athletic grace of a hunter despite his height and build and the shifting sand under his feet. She couldn’t see his face, he was covered from head to foot, but as he came closer she saw his eyes.
They weren’t so much brown as a dense, smoky gold. Like a tiger.
And all at once she knew that her doubts had been correct. That this was definitely not a search party come to rescue her. A group of men draped in black with swords at their hips could only mean one thing: they were Ashkaraz border guards and they were not here to rescue her. They were here to take her prisoner because she had almost certainly strayed into the wrong country.
The man came closer, looming over her, his broad figure blocking out the hammer-blow of the sun.
But even the sun wasn’t as hot or as brilliant as the gold of his eyes. And they were just as relentless, just as harsh. There was no mercy in those eyes. There was no help at all.
You fool. You should have told someone where you were going. But you didn’t, did you?
No, she hadn’t. She’d just gone to find her father, thinking she’d only be a couple of minutes. It was true that she hadn’t been paying attention to where she’d been going, as she’d so often done as a child, lost in whatever daydream had grabbed her at the time, since that had been better than listening to the screaming arguments of her parents as they’d battled each other over her head.
Even now, as an adult, she found it difficult to concentrate sometimes, when she was stressed or things were chaotic, her mind spinning off into its own fantasies, escaping reality. Though those moments of inattention didn’t usually have such terrible repercussions as now, when she was left with the choice of either turning and running away from the terrible man striding towards her across the hot sand, or falling to her knees and begging for her life.
What did these guards do to people who strayed over the borders? No one knew. No one had ever escaped. She and her father were going to be taken prisoner and no one would ever hear from them again.
Running was out of the question. Not only was there nowhere to run, she couldn’t leave her father. Wouldn’t leave him. He’d had no one else but her since her mother had moved to the States nearly fifteen years ago—and, though he wouldn’t exactly win any father-of-the-year awards, his career and all the digs he’d taken her on had instilled in her a love of history and ancient peoples that the dreamer inside her found fascinating.
She had a lot to thank him for, so she’d follow him the way she’d always followed him.
Which meant that she was going to have to throw herself on this man’s mercy—if, indeed, he had any.
Fear gripped her tight, and darkness crawled at the edge of her vision. Her lips were cracked, dry as the desert sand drifting around her feet, but she fought to remain upright. She was an idiot for wandering away from the site, it was true, but she wasn’t going to compound her mistake by collapsing ignominiously at this man’s feet.
She would be polite and reasonable, apologise calmly, and tell him that she hadn’t meant to wander into his country by mistake. That her father was a professor and she only a lowly assistant, and they hadn’t meant any harm. Also, could he please not kill them, or throw them into a dungeon, or any of the rest of the things her over-active imagination kept providing for her?
A hot wind kicked at the black hem of the man’s robes, making them flow around his powerful thighs as he came to a stop in front of her. He stood there so still, as if he was a mountain that had stood for millennia, as enduring and unchanging as the desert itself.
Charlotte held tight to consciousness and something about his merciless golden gaze hardened her spine, making her square her shoulders and straighten up.
She tried to get some moisture into her mouth and failed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she forced out. ‘Do you speak English? Are you able to help me?’
The man was silent a long moment, and then he said something, his voice deep enough that she felt it in her chest, a subtle, sub-sonic vibration. But she didn’t understand him. Her Arabic was rough, and the liquid sounds bore no resemblance to the minimal words she knew.
She felt very weak all of a sudden, and quite sick.
The man’s golden eyes seemed to fill her entire vision, his stare hard, brutal, crushing utterly her hope of rescue and of mercy.
She would get neither from him and that was obvious.
‘I’m so terribly sorry,’ Charlotte whispered as the darkness gathered around her. ‘But I think the man you have on that horse is my father. We’re quite lost. Do you think you could possibly help us?’
Then she fainted dead away at his feet.
Tariq ibn Ishak Al Naziri, Sheikh of Ashkaraz, stared impassively at the small body of the Englishwoman collapsed on the sand in front of him.
Her father, she’d said. Well, that cleared up the question of who the man was.
They’d found him unconscious on one of the dunes. After finding him, Tariq and his border guards had then spotted the woman, and had
