She had never known why he had helped her all that time ago, but he had. Why he had been willing to whisk the errant Princess away from his Prince she would never know. But here he was once more, allowing her what she needed.
She left her soft thank you in the corridor behind her and pushed through the glass doorway, stepping out on to the balcony.
It was darker than before. The twinkling lights of London had dimmed, as if they too were hiding in shame. Once again she was struck by the sight. She had been so long away from England that she could see the beauty in it as if she was merely a visitor and hadn’t been born and raised there.
She thought of all the time she had spent being dragged along on her father’s diplomatic postings throughout the Arabic states. Countries where she and her mother had been installed and requested to perform. Her heart ached at the memory of those years. Her skin ached at the memory of all those false smiles.
In spite of those years Farrehed had seemed like an exotic faraway place—a desert kingdom after the three years she had spent at university in England. But instead of finding freedom in her studies, like the freedom she had tentatively come to believe that she’d found in Zurich, she had felt only a sense of postponement. A last-minute reprieve before her father’s final act of dominance fell upon her.
It was there on the balcony, her mind straddling two worlds, the past and the present, that Odir found her.
‘You can’t keep running.’
It was testament to the hold of her memories that she had not noticed the presence of her husband before then.
She let a bitter laugh escape her lips and be carried away on the wind into the night sky. She felt a thick heavy blanket about her shoulders and sank into its warmth, not having realised how cold she was.
The sound of the outdoor heaters came from behind her as Odir’s guards lit them one by one. She hated that he was so comfortable with their presence that he was ready and willing to have such a personal conversation with them present. The kind of personal conversation they should have had before she had left for Switzerland—before he had busied himself with his country’s needs.
Before they were married.
She heard the sounds of the glass door sliding shut behind them and knew that they were alone.
‘I want to know what you mean. About sacrifice.’
She smiled ruefully into the night air.
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘More secrets?’ he said, but this time without the sting of his previous statements.
‘No. I literally can’t tell you.’
He seemed amused by this, and somewhere deep down within her a small sense of humour—ironic humour, admittedly—rose within her. It tainted in a tone that sounded strange even to her own ears.
She shrugged. ‘There’s a non-disclosure agreement binding my access to my grandfather’s trust fund.’ She watched as her quick-minded husband absorbed this. ‘My father put it on the trust the day I agreed to marry you. If I break the agreement then everything I have worked for these last six months will be for nothing. Everything.’
‘I am your husband. I am your King.’
‘You’re above the law?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he said arrogantly, as if she should have known that. ‘Here, I am. And as my wife so are you. Members of the royal household are immune from arrest in civil proceedings. Of course if you really do want that divorce then you will not be part of the royal household any more...’
He was taunting her, but not with malice. If she had not known her husband so well she might have thought there was a trace of that humour she had seen glimpses of earlier—traces of the humour that she remembered from the period of their engagement.
But still, she wondered if Odir was right. Perhaps, once again, she had simply taken her father’s words as the truth, as gospel. Perhaps her father had known that she wouldn’t question it. Had it only been a piece of paper that she had signed, she might more easily have given in. But it wasn’t. It was the promise she had made to her mother.
‘I don’t like to break my promises,’ she said.
‘But what of the promise you made to me?’
‘It’s not that easy, Odir.’
She had not once spoken about her family. To anyone. But the choice not to speak now wasn’t out of habit—it was about so much more than that.
‘How do I know you won’t use this against me to get what you want? To keep me by your side?’
‘Is that not sacrifice? To give up something for someone else?’
‘No,’ she argued. ‘It’s not about sacrifice. It’s about giving away a piece of my soul to a man who views love as something to be feared, something to be avoided at all costs.’
‘Love makes you weak, Eloise. Perhaps you know something of that?’
‘I know that it’s a sentiment you hold about you as if it were your very last defence. But I’m not so sure that you are right about it.’
She looked at her husband through the veil of secrets that had built up between them—some her fault, some his—and even though they disagreed she began to feel as if there was something between them. Something woven in the darkness of this night. Something that had been missing from their interaction even during their engagement.
Odir might be slightly misguided—zealous even—in his pursuit of ensuring the success of his country, but she knew, despite her accusations, that he was an honourable man. And, despite what he thought, he did love his people, he did love his country. He loved his brother, too, or he would have turned his back on Jarhan the moment he’d thought him guilty of pursuing his wife, or the moment he’d discovered his
