The Desert King / An Affair with the Princess: The Desert King. Michelle Celmer

blood feuds erupt to spread devastation for centuries? When our whole prosperous region turns into another war zone that breeds anger and hunger and intolerance and spreads its infection to the rest of the world? Or would you even then say, sorry, not my business? Just because you are a woman scorned, you’d send millions, entire countries, to hell?”

      The images he painted, his conviction, suffocated her. She raised her hands as if to ward off a barrage of blows. “Please…stop. I—I—God…are you telling me the truth?”

      “No, I project death and destruction for millions of people because it’s fun.”

      “God…” She couldn’t speak for a long moment, her throat feeling as if it were clogged with thorns. Then she looked at him through the film of moisture that manifested her dissolving control. “I didn’t know—didn’t realize the situation was anything like that. My unc—my fa…King Atef…he—he…Dammit! That medieval throwback! He said nothing like that. I know Zohayd and Judar are still tribal beneath their ultraadvanced veneers, but this is taking the entrenched stupidity of not including women in matters of state too far. He told me only that it was a political marriage, gave me the impression it was something personal between the two of you, as two monarchs. I…h-had no idea w-what was at stake…”

      Then she could say no more.

      Every muscle in Kamal’s body bunched, pulled, contracted, until he felt as if his spine would snap and his skull would cave in.

      Tears. Gathering in those eyes, rippling like ponds shaking from nearby explosions, magnifying the moon’s beams, shooting them out in erratic flashes to blind him.

      As she struggled to contain the weakness, stem the weeping, he felt her every tremor shudder through him, shaking him.

      Ya Ullah, how could the sight of her distress disturb him this deeply, disarm him this totally, still? Had nothing changed? Was her spell unbroken? Or was it unbreakable?

      B’Ellahi. What kind of king would he be if on his first and foremost act on behalf of his kingdom, he let his only vice, his clearly uncured addiction, take hold of him again, steer him?

      He had to remember the times she’d wept for him when she’d been lying to him with every breath. The months her unbridled abandon had snared him when it—and the warnings that she was nicknamed Alley as in alley cat—should have cautioned him.

      But he’d heeded nothing and no one, had thrown himself into an inferno that raged higher every day. If her mercurial nature and evasions had bothered him, she’d overwhelmed his reason with the pleasure she’d given him in every way, with her fervent protestations of love. She’d even had him agreeing that what worked—and spectacularly—was for them to keep on stealing scorching times together out of their busy and conflicting schedules.

      Yes, she’d manipulated him to perfection. Until he’d showed up unannounced at her condo, unable to wait to see her and had been let in by one of the girlfriends who seemed to use Aliyah’s place as theirs. And he’d discovered her stash of a drug he knew was abused for appetite suppression and as a stimulant.

      It had all made sense then. Her hyperactivity, her thinness, her insistence on keeping her distance, and the hundred other details of unexplained reticence and secrecy.

      But fool that he’d been, though anguished at his discovery, he’d still tried to make her confess her problem so he could offer her his strength, his support. But she’d denied drug use, ever.

      Even with the blatant lie, he’d been so deeply under her spell, he’d only wanted to save her, though he knew from agonizing experience that addicts only plunged deeper into addiction until nothing of them was left, while they dragged everyone who loved them right along with them to hell. For a month he’d struggled to decide how to proceed, the indecision infecting him with reticence, too, which had made her even more eager for him—and increasingly more volatile. At last, with his decision set—to confront her and break the vicious circle she was prisoner to by any means necessary—he’d gone to her condo again. This time, he’d found a man there.

      He still couldn’t believe how far in her power he’d been that he’d refused to jump to conclusions. He’d told himself she hadn’t been there after all, and this man could have been one of the friends she gave free run of her place.

      But the man, Shane, had introduced himself as one of her American cousins…and lovers. He’d still accused Shane of lying. Shane had scoffed. With his barbaric ways and views of women, did Kamal think that a woman like Aliyah, free and capricious like the wind, could settle for him alone? Kamal might be an all-powerful prince, but Aliyah valued her sexual freedom above all. Why did he think she never agreed to enter his gilded cage, even fleetingly?

      Kamal had left before he killed the man, but sensing Shane was jealous and probably trying to drive him away, he’d called Aliyah to get her side of the story, giving her every opening to tell him about Shane without accusing her of anything. She’d said only that she was spending the night at a sick girlfriend’s bedside. Almost convinced that she’d given her backstabbing cousin the use of her place for the night, he’d still waited in his car, to make sure that she didn’t come back. But she had.

      Everyone had been right. She’d been a promiscuous lost cause.

      Then she’d walked in here today, and he’d forgotten that. Had wanted to forget. Still wanted to. As he couldn’t.

      He had to brace himself against her influence. He wouldn’t sweep her into his arms and comfort her even if his heart was bursting from the holding back. Now he had to get on with his plan.

      He inhaled. “I’ll suppose what you’re saying is true. But if you didn’t know before, you know now.”

      “B-but how? Why? What could be so important about a marriage between the Aal Masoods and Aal Shalaans all of a sudden?”

      He gave a bitter huff. “It’s heartwarming how involved you are in your region’s internal affairs. I beg your pardon, your half region. I bet your abundant…roomies know far more than you about the situation between Judar and Zohayd at the moment.”

      Those mystic eyes glittered their indignation at him. “And that’s another piece of misinformation in the sea of misconceptions that form my character in your mind. I live alone as I always have. I only ever helped friends by giving them a roof over their head when they needed one. And I’m a hermit when I’m preparing for a show with most of its paintings commissioned. I haven’t been following the news and as I told you, nobody chose to enlighten me. Must have been their misguided way of being kind. Rather than dropping all bombs on me at once, they decided to space out the explosions for prolonged suffering.”

      She sounded so convincing. But then when had she ever not?

      He exhaled his frustration at how she kept snatching resolve out of reach, made him struggle to grab it back.

      “I’ll pretend that’s a good enough excuse for your obliviousness.” He paused to gather the threads of the situation that had lead to this point. He hated recounting it, and to her of all people. But she’d asked. She didn’t know. And she had to, as his future queen. He exhaled again. “When my father, the crown prince of Judar, died, and with our late king having no sons, leaving the succession to his nephews, the Aal Shalaans in Judar demanded their turn on the throne. They threatened an uprising if they didn’t get it. An uprising that would drag Judar into civil war.”

      Though reddened and wounded, her eyes stained with disdain. “If you care for peace so much, why don’t you just give it to them?”

      “You think giving up the throne in a country that’s made up seventy percent of Aal Masoods and tribes loyal to them would promote peace? Wouldn’t exchange an uprising by the Aal Shalaans for one by the Aal Masoods, leading to the same end? Spare me your insights into a better solution for this catastrophe. If there’d been one, I would have gone to the ends of the earth, would have, as you so theatrically said, laid my life down for it. But there isn’t. The one thing that will maintain peace now is introducing the