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

taste and affluence permeating the royal palace—roused the artist in her. It also sort of distracted her from the quiet, desperate feeling that she was sinking deeper into the quicksand of her situation, of Kamal’s plans and decrees and existence.

      She handed Anna the cup and held her eyes as they both drank in silence, her thoughts turning inward, going over the past two days.

      Everything Kamal had said would happen had and was still happening like clockwork. She’d been delivered to her condo after their showdown, with that royal guard duet coming up to help her pack. She’d resorted to threats to make them refrain from folding her underwear and alphabetizing every item, had tossed them out only for them to ricochet back to her doorstep before the crack of dawn to accompany her to the Judarian equivalent of Air Force One.

      Kamal was giving her the royal treatment all right. Imposing it on her more like. He’d sent her a clipped voice mail driving home that this was what she should expect from now on as his future queen. He’d elaborated on how she should receive her dues, mete out her responses with the poise, benevolence and grandeur befitting her impending majesty. Yes, he’d used those very words. And was evidently still conscious and in the best of health.

      Finding no energy and no point in resisting his incursion she’d let herself be swept away to her so-called future kingdom and installed in so sumptuous and extravagant a guest wing that it could have housed forty princesses. Then the list of things to be done that he’d provided for her had started to roll on.

      First thing this morning was to have leisurely communications with three of her parents, informing them of her acceptance of the marriage of state and assuring them she’d play her part. With utmost attention to decorum, of course. As if.

      She’d never treated those three in any way that wasn’t grounded in love and respect, even when their actions had almost messed her up for good, but she was damned if she’d stand on ceremony with any of them. Kamal had to be satisfied with what she was letting him have—control over these countdown days.

      She’d finished her conversations with her parents—who’d all been mighty relieved, she should add—and without missing a beat had headed to her dictated afternoon tea with her fourth parent.

      Kamal had had Anna flown in from King Atef’s court, where she must have been cause for some serious domestic disturbance. The queen—the woman who’d turned out to be Aliyah’s stepmother—was a master of dissatisfaction, unreasonableness and conflict. Aliyah could only imagine her attitude now that she had real strife material on her hands.

      And here they were. An hour into the long-awaited meeting. A twenty-seven-year-long wait on Anna’s side, a two-week one on Aliyah’s, which still felt like a lifetime. Aliyah thought she would have recognized Anna if she’d met her on the street. And it went beyond the resemblance. There was this unmistakable…connection.

      She bet Anna had felt the same from the first moment, but they’d both reached an instant and unspoken agreement to test the waters first. She’d felt that Anna was agitated within an inch of her sanity at the enormity of the situation. She, on the other hand, was…comfortably numb. Too many enormous shocks could do that.

      So they’d talked about Judar, Zohayd, compared royal palaces, weathers, customs, currencies, reminisced about L.A., which they’d both lived in and now seemed to have left behind permanently.

      Then Anna had blurted out that fraught statement.

      Seemed she was ready to wade in deeper.

      Not that she was finding it easier. She let go of Aliyah’s gaze, hers brimming as she stared down into her cup, choked out, “This sounds like so much exaggeration, like lip service, but I—I…I don’t know what I can say that won’t sound like…like…”

      Aliyah put down her cup, invited Anna to look back at her with a gentle touch on her knee. “How about you say exactly what you’re thinking? Feeling? It would save a lot of confusion. We’ve run out of small talk so I guess it’s time for something big.”

      Anna nodded, her eyes reddening even more. Then she inhaled, whispered, “Do you resent me…too much?”

      Aliyah plopped back on the couch and glided both palms over the cotton-silk pastels damask as she considered her answer.

      Then she sighed. “Okay, I won’t say I didn’t resent this. I did. I do. But it’s not you I resent. I don’t presume to judge you. I can only imagine what drove you to the decisions you made, and that it couldn’t have been easy or made your life better. When all is said and done, I can only say thank you.”

      Anna blinked. She couldn’t have looked more stupefied if Aliyah had just told her she could turn into a bat at will.

      Anna finally breathed. “You’re thanking me? What for?”

      Aliyah shrugged. “For not aborting me. It would have been the far easier, clean-cut route to go. And though my life hasn’t been a bed of roses and doesn’t promise to be, I’m still real fond of it. I wouldn’t exchange it for oblivion. So…thanks.”

      Again, those blue-gem eyes surged with tears that tugged at the ones lying too close to Aliyah’s surface now.

      “I never dreamed…oh, God, that you would feel that way….” Anna stopped, panting, then burst out, “Do you really feel that way?”

      Aliyah gave her a tremulous smile. “One thing you will find out about me soon enough is that I go around saying exactly what I really think and feel. A very objectionable practice, I’m perpetually told, but at least you know exactly where you stand with me.”

      Anna seemed to lose all tension, melted back in her armchair. “I can never tell you how…how it makes me feel, hearing you say that, that you really feel it. I’ve lived with the guilt, the pain for so long. Then I find out you’re alive, near your father, well and loved, and that I can see you. I would have settled for seeing you from afar, for being deservedly hated by you…but you…you…You’re wonderful, so full of light and life.”

      “Full of light and life, huh? Now that’s a new spin on things. To everyone else, I’m full of erratic energy and instability.”

      Anna looked genuinely taken aback. “How can anyone think that? I can’t think of anyone who’s less erratic and unstable.”

      Aliyah threw her head back on a self-deprecating laugh. “Oh, postpone your verdict until you’ve known me longer than an hour.”

      “I won’t change my mind a year or ten years from now. Things like that are the first thing one feels from others. You’re energetic, vivacious and from what I’ve heard, incredibly creative, truly independent and have the strength of your convictions. And yes, you’re unpredictable, but I don’t need more than the past minutes to realize it’s in the best of ways. You clearly do what’s right rather than what’s accepted.”

      Aliyah lips twitched. “Wow, that’s quite a testimony. Can I call on you next time I have to fend off accusations of irrationality? Hmm…I do what’s right rather than what’s accepted. I think that will be my new slogan, Anna….” She stopped, bit her lip. “Uh…is it okay if I call you Anna? I’d feel weird if you wanted me to call you Mom or something.”

      Anna surged forward, eagerness spilling from her tremulous smile. “As long as you call me at all, I’m happy for you to call me anything that feels comfortable to you.”

      Aliyah’s smile grew. “Anna feels comfortable.”

      In answer, Anna’s smile faltered. Aliyah felt she could see into the older woman’s mind, that she thought she wasn’t entitled to this level of ease with the daughter she’d given up.

      “Listen, Anna, as you said, time isn’t an issue here. What happened is in the past, so let’s leave it there and move on. Now. I don’t want to observe a period of appropriate awkwardness. If you want to know me, if you want to be a part of my life, then let’s start now. What do you say?”

      Anna looked like