The Sheikh's Collection. Оливия Гейтс

it’s why Kadar has enjoyed so many years of peace.’

      ‘So you’re saying he got rid of his wife? And—and of you? So he could marry Hamidyah?’ Elena was gazing at him with an emotion he couldn’t decipher. Was it confusion, disbelief or, God help him, pity? Did she think he was deluded?

      ‘You don’t believe me,’ Khalil stated flatly. His stomach felt like a stone. He wasn’t angry with her, he realised with a flash of fury he could only direct at himself; he was hurt.

      ‘It seems incredible,’ Elena said slowly. ‘Surely someone would have known...?’

      ‘The desert tribes know.’

      ‘Does Aziz?’

      ‘Of course he does.’ The words came fast, spiked with bitterness. ‘We met, you know, as boys.’ Just weeks before he’d been torn from his family. ‘Never since, although I’ve seen his photograph in the gossip magazines.’

      Elena shook her head slowly. ‘But if he knows you are the rightful heir...’

      ‘Ah, but you see, my father is cleverer than that. He charged my mother with adultery and claimed I was not his son. He banished me from the palace when I was seven years old.’

      Elena gaped at him. ‘Banished...’

      ‘My mother as well, to a remote royal residence where she lived in isolation. She died just a few months later, although I didn’t know that for many years. From the day my father threw me from the palace, I never saw her again.’ He spoke dispassionately, even coldly, because if he didn’t he was afraid of how he might sound. What he might reveal. Already he felt a tightness in his throat and he took a sip of wine to ease it.

      ‘But that’s terrible,’ Elena whispered. She looked stricken, but her response didn’t gratify Khalil. He felt too exposed for that.

      ‘It’s all ancient history,’ he dismissed. ‘It hardly matters now.’

      ‘Doesn’t it? This is why you’re seeking the throne, as—’

      ‘As revenge?’ He filled in. ‘No, Elena, it’s not for revenge. It’s because it’s my right.’ His voice throbbed with conviction. ‘I am my father’s first-born. When he set my mother aside he created deep divisions in a country that has only known peace. If you’ve wondered why Aziz does not have the support of his whole country, it’s because too many people know he is not the rightful heir. He is popular in Siyad because he is cosmopolitan and charming, but the heart of this country is not his. It is mine.’ He stared at her, his chest heaving, willing her to believe him. Needing her to.

      ‘How can you be sure,’ she whispered, ‘that your mother didn’t have an affair?’

      ‘Of course I’m sure.’ He heard his voice, as sharp as a blade. Disappointment dug deep. No, a feeling worse than disappointment, weaker—this damnable hurt. He took a steadying breath. ‘My mother knew the consequences of an affair: banishment, shame, a life cut off from everyone and everything she knew. It would not have been worth the risk.’

      ‘But you would have just been a boy. How could you have known?’

      ‘I knew everyone around her believed her to be innocent. I knew her serving maids cried out at the injustice of it. I knew no man ever stepped forward to claim her or me, and my father couldn’t even name the man who’d allegedly sired me. My father’s entire basis for banishing both my mother and me was the colour of my eyes.’

      Elena stared at him, her own golden-grey eyes filled with not confusion or disbelief but with something that was nearly his undoing: compassion.

      ‘Oh, Khalil,’ she whispered.

      He glanced away, afraid of revealing himself. His jaw worked but he could not form words. Finally he choked out, ‘People protested at the time. They said there wasn’t enough proof. But then my mother died before he actually married Hamidyah, so it was, in the end, all above board.’

      ‘And what about you?’

      He couldn’t admit what had happened to him: those years in the desert, the awful shame, even though part of him wanted to, part of him wanted to bare himself to this woman, give her his secrets. To trust another person, and with more than he ever had before, even as a child. He suppressed that foolish impulse and lifted one shoulder in what he hoped passed as an indifferent shrug. ‘I was raised by my mother’s sister, Dimah, in America. I never saw my father again.’

      ‘And the people accepted it all?’ she said quietly, only half a question. ‘Aziz as the heir, even though they must have remembered you...’

      ‘My father was a dictator. No one possessed the courage to question his actions while he was alive.’

      ‘Why did Sheikh Hashem make such a strange will?’ Elena burst out. ‘Commanding Aziz to marry?’

      ‘I think he was torn. Perhaps he realised the mistake he’d made in banishing me, but did not want to admit it. He was a proud man.’ Khalil shrugged again. ‘Forcing Aziz to marry would make him commit to Kadar and give up his European ways. But calling a national referendum if he didn’t...’ Khalil smiled grimly. ‘My father must have known it was a chance for me to become Sheikh. Maybe that is just wishful thinking on my part, but I’d like to think he regretted, even if just in part, what he did to my mother and me.’

      ‘And do you think people would accept you, if you did become Sheikh?’

      ‘Some might have difficulty but, in time, yes. I believe they would.’

      He stared at her then, willing her to tell him she believed him. Wanting, even needing, to hear it.

      She looked away. Khalil’s insides clenched with a helpless, hopeless anger.

      Then she turned back to him, her eyes as wide and clear as twin lakes. ‘Then we really are alike,’ she said quietly. ‘For we are both fighting for our crowns.’

       CHAPTER FIVE

      KHALIL’S GAZE HAD blazed anger but Elena saw something beneath the fury: grief. A grief she understood and felt herself. And, even though she didn’t want to, she felt a sympathy for Khalil, a compassion and even an anger on his behalf. He’d been terribly wronged, just as Leila had said.

      She thought of him as a boy, being banished from his family and home. She imagined his confusion and fear, the utter heartbreak of losing everything he’d known and held dear.

      Just as she had.

      She’d been a bit older, but her family had been wrenched from her in a matter of moments, just as Khalil’s had. She was fighting to keep her rightful title, just as Khalil was.

      With a jolt she realised what this meant: she believed him. She believed he was the rightful heir.

      For a second everything in her rebelled. You believed before. You trusted before. And this man has kidnapped you—how can you be so stupid?

      Yet she’d heard the sincerity in Khalil’s voice. She’d felt his pain. She knew him in a way she hadn’t known anyone else, because they were so alike.

      She believed him.

      ‘How are you fighting for your crown, Elena?’ he asked quietly.

      She hesitated, because honesty didn’t come easily, and letting herself be vulnerable felt akin to pulling out her fingernails one by one. She’d hardened her heart in the last four years. She’d learned to be tough, to need no one.

      And yet Khalil had been honest with her. He’d told her his story and she’d seen in his eyes that he’d wanted, even needed, her to believe him.

      She took a deep breath. She thought of Andreas Markos and his determination to discredit her—her Council and country’s desire for a king, or the closest thing to it. Her own foolish choices.