Raffa was surprised by the description, for it was so insightful, so correct, and so sad. “He was a fool to push you away. He spent a lifetime punishing you for your mother’s failings.”
“And then he died,” she said crisply, pulling away from him, stepping out of the bed and walking towards the window. The dawn light was a glistening gold and it caught her hair so that it sparkled as if it were a crown. “My point is, you get to say goodbye to your father, you get to fix whatever is broken between you.” She turned to look at Raffa and he was watching her as though she were a drug he couldn’t fight his addiction to. “Real peace for your father will come from knowing you forgive him.”
Raffa’s spine was straight and he took great care to give nothing away. But his blood was raging, and there was a ringing inside his ears. “Forgive him for what?”
Chloe tilted her head to one side. “For forcing you to marry me.”
The room was silent, the air filled with heavy, reverberating accusation.
“What are you talking about?”
“I know there’s something between you.” At his look of uncertainty, she ploughed on. “Oh, he never spoke of it directly, but I know him well. I understand him. There’s an estrangement between you both. And it’s easy to guess at the cause.”
Raffa’s laugh was not one of humour. “I’m thirty four years old. You think my marriage to you might be the only bone of contention in my relationship with my father? You don’t think that something else in these thirty four years might have caused us to argue?”
Chloe’s frown showed she hadn’t considered it, and deep inside of him, something like sympathy began to swirl. For her to be so quick to blame herself for a state of affairs that had lasted a great many years spoke of her insecurities, yet he couldn’t address that.
“I just presumed…”
“I love my father, Chloe. I admire him, respect him; I am immeasurably proud of him. He was a great king, but he was not always a great man.” He found his eyes couldn’t hold hers. He came to stand beside her instead, looking out to the desert. “He made many mistakes. Then again, who hasn’t?”
Beside him, his wife bristled. He felt the stiffening of her spine, the angling of her face.
“Elena,” she exhaled softly, and the name had him jerking his gaze to her.
“What?”
“You were in love with Elena, and despite the fact she fell pregnant, you weren’t allowed to marry her. That’s what you argued about?”
“I was never going to marry Elena,” Raffa said thickly, the words weakened by his surprise, and his unwillingness to discuss his ex at all, let alone with his young wife. “My father didn’t approve of our relationship, but that is not why I left her.”
“You left her?”
Raffa nodded. “My father and I were estranged for years before that.” He ground his teeth together, the truth of his family relationships something he had held tight to his chest, discussing with no one. Not Apollo, not Kalim, not a soul.
But now, an invisible gossamer fibre was spreading from Chloe to Raffa, wrapping around him, pulling him closer, so he found he wanted nothing more than to tell her everything.
“I was raised to emulate him.” He frowned, his eyes clouded with recollections he tried his hardest to ignore.
“Yes?” Chloe prompted, her expressive gaze lifting to his. Something shifted between them, something that almost took Raffa’s breath away.
It was the two of them; Chloe and Raffa, alone in this grand palace on the edge of an ancient desert, the shifts of sand moving only for them, the morning sun their only intrusion.
“I told you my parents married for love,” he said grimly, after a moment, wondering at the words that seemed to be coming from his lips without his consent. “But they did not love for long.” His mouth twisted in a harsh imitation of a smile.
Chloe furrowed her brow. “I’m sorry. I don’t know much about them but I presumed they were happy together. Any of the photographs I’ve seen have shown a couple who seemed…in love,” she finished weakly.
“People would no doubt say the same about us,” he responded darkly. “But photographs can be easily faked, no?”
“I guess so.” Her eyes shifted back to the morning view. “What happened?”
“Does it have to be anything in particular?”
“No. But for you to still be angry about it, I gather it was something important.”
He expelled a sigh, frustrated with her perceptiveness, and her unfailing ability to read him. She was unique in this way, and he wasn’t sure he liked having someone with such an insight to him in his life.
“He cheated on her,” Raffa said finally. “When I was five years old.”
Chloe’s jaw dropped. “Malik cheated?”
Raffa rubbed his palm over his jaw, his chest squeezing. It was strange that even having revealed this, he could feel defensive of his father at the same time as angry. “My mother suffered after my birth. Post-natal depression, only it was not as well understood then as it is now. There was a lot of shame for her, a lot of judgement from all those around her, including my father. People expected her to be able to shake her head and feel better, but she couldn’t. It swallowed her alive.”
“I’m so sorry,” Chloe murmured, and the hand she placed on his forearm was gentle.
“It was a long time ago,” the words were gruff. “She moved to the southern provinces and lived her life quietly. Away from the palace, away from my father.”
“Away from you,” Chloe said softly, her expression full of sympathy.
Raffa hated it and somehow, on some level, needed it too. “I was too busy to notice.”
“Liar.” She shifted her body, angling herself
