href="#ulink_3d66677b-244c-5d67-8b66-2e394ed04fce">CHAPTER TWO
“A MEMBER OF staff will show you to a room.”
“Perhaps you might trouble yourself just long enough to show me?” Olivia didn’t know why she was pressing for any more time spent in Tarek’s presence. Perhaps it was simply her attempt at reclaiming control of the situation.
She didn’t like feeling out of control, and the past two years of her life had given rise to the feeling that she was nothing more than a rock hurtling through space, at the mercy of gravity’s pull. She hated that feeling. It was too close to what she’d experienced growing up with the specter of terrible illness hanging over the household.
Nothing highlighted your true lack of influence on anything important like death, or the threat of death. Olivia was far too familiar with both.
So you can wallow in it, or you can make a difference. It isn’t like Anton wants to send you on an unpleasant mission. But he has a country to consider.
And so did she.
This wasn’t the time to break down. This wasn’t the time to start making things all about her, and her comfort. There was a broader scope to consider.
“You assume I might know where a prepared guest room is. I assure you I do not.”
“You don’t know the layout of the rooms in your own palace?”
He stepped down from the raised platform the throne sat on, making his way toward her. “This is not my palace. It is my brother’s palace. That is my brother’s throne. I wear my brother’s crown. Metaphorically, of course.” Olivia found it impossible to breathe with Tarek advancing on her as he was. He was nothing like the men she was accustomed to. Nothing like her gentle, sophisticated father. Nothing like her cultured, amusing husband. Or indeed her quiet and steady brother-in-law. If she was focusing on space metaphors, Tarek was a black hole. Sucking the air, the sound, the energy from the room around him, internalizing it. Creating a void that he alone commanded. “None of this is mine. I was not meant for this. If you intend to make me your project, then you should be aware of that fact.”
“What is the solution, then? Because you seem to be here, whether or not you feel destined for it,” she said, not certain where the strength to speak came from. Apparently, though he had sucked the air from her lungs, he had not stolen her ability to speak.
“I suppose you are the solution. My brother’s advisers despair of me. Fair enough, as I despair of them. I feel they are weak-minded sycophants, trained to be so by a ruler who required mindless servitude. I do not. Nor do I want it.”
“Come now, most rulers enjoy a bit of bowing and scraping.”
Black eyes clashed with hers. “Only a man craves praise. A weapon wants nothing more than to be used. And that, my queen, is all that I am.”
She swallowed hard, trying to appear self-possessed. Trying to feel self-possessed. “Then, I will train you to fight. The way a king must fight.”
He began to pace, making a circle around her. A shiver ran through her, chilling her down to her bones. “I worry. I worry about the things I have left behind, untended.”
“Then, use what you have seen. I’m sure you know more about many things than your brother ever did.” She had no idea if that was true; she was simply trying to prove her worth. “Use that. And let me assist you with the rest. Interacting with diplomats is simply politics as usual. My husband excelled at that. As do I.”
“Well, then, I expect for you to prove that within the allotted time. Follow me.” He strode past her, his movements decisive, abrupt.
She snapped to attention, doing her best to keep pace with him. It was nearly impossible. The top of her head came to his shoulder, and that was with the aid of her high heels. She had to take three strides to his every one, sounding like a panicked baby deer as she clicked along the marble. “Where exactly are you taking me? Because you just said you didn’t know where you were going.”
“Give me a skin of water, place me in the middle of the desert and I could find my way back. And yet, I find this palace difficult to navigate. It is too dark. I depend on the sun for my direction.”
“Interesting,” she said, “except, are you leading me to my room or the middle of the desert? Inquiring minds want to know.”
Just then a servant girl turned the corner and began walking toward them down the long corridor, her eyes averted. “You there,” Tarek said, his tone commanding. “Are there guest quarters in which I might install the queen?”
The girl stopped, her eyes widening. “Sheikh Tarek, we did not know to expect a guest.”
“Yes, because I did not tell you we were expecting one. Though I assumed my impotent advisors might have done. It is extremely difficult to accomplish simple tasks here. In the desert each man asks for himself. We have none of this foolish bureaucracy.”
The girl looked at him, her expression blank.
“I’m fine with whatever is available,” Olivia said, attempting to inject some diplomacy into the exchange. “I’m certain it will be fine. So I will need my bags brought from the car.”
The girl nodded. “I can do that. The room nearest the sheikh’s quarters has a made-up bed. It will be the simplest room to prepare.”
Tarek went very still, and Olivia had the feeling he didn’t want her staying near him. “That will be fine,” Olivia said before he could protest. Her aim was to be in proximity with him after all.
“See that it is done,” Tarek said.
The girl nodded and scurried off.
“I imagine you know how to find the room,” Olivia said.
He nodded once. “Indeed. Follow me.”
They wandered down a maze of domed corridors, with silver walls inlaid with stone reflecting off the polished floor. The palace at Alansund housed the crown jewels of the royal family. This palace seemed to be made of them. It was ostentatious, a show of riches that awed even her.
“This is beautiful.”
He stopped, turning to face her. “Is it? I find it oppressive.”
He turned away again, continuing to lead them in their journey. He was such a strange man. Impenetrable as rock, and yet, at the same time, honest in his speech. Still, for all that honesty, she found she could not understand him.
“I suppose when you are used to open spaces, it might be difficult to become used to living behind stone walls.”
“I’m used to stone walls. I’ve spent much of my time inhabiting caves, and an abandoned village out in the middle of the desert. But I have no good memories here.” He let his words die there, and she sensed there would be no reviving them now, no matter how persistent she was.
She didn’t need him to go on. She didn’t need to know his story, didn’t need to understand him.
She simply needed him to marry her.
A wave of fear, of
