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

found her, surged inside her. For the first time in her life, she felt she wanted to, could share her secret.

      She took the leap. “When I was six, my teachers couldn’t interest me in anything in school, couldn’t even get me to sit down. I was always listening to voices and seeing whole worlds inside my head and telling everyone who’d listen—and even anyone who wouldn’t—about them. I was almost diagnosed as autistic, but I was too curious and could talk anyone under the table. Therapists had to label my condition so they settled on ADHD.”

      Distress crept into Anna’s face. “This is my fault…you inherited those tendencies from me. I was always too hyper, too awake, too quick, too something or other. It was what drew Atef to me, and I think what ultimately put him off—apart from the fact that he had to marry for his kingdom.”

      Aliyah shook her head. “I bought into the psychobabble for a long time, but I no longer do. Who’s to say what’s ‘hyper’ and what’s not? What’s ‘too much’ of anything? We’re individuals who can’t be quantified. They wanted me to conform, and when I didn’t they decided there was something wrong with me, tried to fix me and almost ruined me for life. They misdiagnosed me, put me on prescription drugs, kept increasing the dose to get the effect they were seeking until, for the next ten years, I was a zombie.”

      Anna gasped. “Oh, my God…oh, Aliyah, I’m so sorry.”

      “Yeah, me, too. I feel like I missed my childhood, that it passed before me while I watched it from behind a distorted barrier.”

      “Didn’t your—your parents realize that?”

      “Yeah, but not for many years. At first they were so relieved when my teachers—the ones who’d started the whole thing—started saying I’d become an exemplary student, citing that as proof of their insight into my so-called condition. Later my parents kept attributing my subdued state to puberty. By the time I was fourteen, they could no longer fool themselves and tried to wean me off the drug. I went ballistic. I don’t remember what happened exactly, but I think I tried to commit suicide. They gave up, put me back on it. I didn’t know what was going on. I trusted them and took my medicine like a good girl. Then when I was almost seventeen I overheard a very enlightening conversation. They’d long realized I’d been misdiagnosed, or at least that I had a severe reaction to the drug—to both taking it and trying to get off it. And I decided to take matters into my own hands, kick the habit that I realized had been controlling me all my life.”

      A tear raced down Anna’s cheek. “How did it go?”

      “To hell. The mental and psychological version. I was an addict, and I went through every kind of withdrawal. I think I went totally insane for a while.”

      Aliyah fell silent as her heart stampeded as if she were in the throes of one of those episodes again. Putting her ordeals into words was both cathartic and exhausting.

      A long time later, Anna hiccuped, whispered, “But you’re okay now. You have been for many years.”

      The urge to comfort her surged within Aliyah, came out on a fervent “I am.” Then she felt compelled to be as honest about the rest. “Though I can’t call getting shoved into a marriage of state to the last man on earth I ever wanted to see again ‘okay.’”

      The tear trailing down Anna’s cheek became a stream that splashed on the hands upturned helplessly in her lap. “Oh, my God…it’s all my fault again. Everything I am, everything I did affected your life so profoundly. It’s still hurting you, changing the course of your life where you don’t want it to go. I kept thinking maybe I don’t need to feel so guilty, since everything was turning out great for you, especially since I saw your g-groom and thought him incredible…”

      Aliyah huffed the breath she’d been holding. “You and every female on the planet, Anna. That doesn’t make him human.”

      Anna looked as if she might have a heart attack. Aliyah wanted to reach out and comfort her. She curled her hands on the urge for a second then exhaled. What the hell. She was what she was. And one thing she’d never stop doing was comforting others in distress.

      Anna jerked when Aliyah reached out and squeezed her shoulder, her eyes widening on such a mixture of surprise and hope that Aliyah groaned. “It’s not your fault, okay? I may have thought that when I was still in shock and having an internal tantrum, but that’s just too far-fetched. You didn’t make the Aal Shalaans into grabby bastards, and you didn’t make Kamal a ruthless one.”

      “You’re making me feel even worse, being so kind.”

      “I’m just honest.” Aliyah smiled, prodding her to smile back, to lighten the mood. She had enough heartache in her future, she couldn’t take any now. “One way to look at things is that it’s a good thing you had me, or two kingdoms would be on the brink of civil war right now. I’ll go down in history as the chess piece that defused the whole mess. Not many women can boast such a pivotal role, even if it is, alas, a passive one. Still, most women marry for far, far less and do nowhere as much good. We can even say that your relationship with—let’s call him King Atef, since I can’t get around to calling him Dad, either—has been preordained, so you’d have me and I’d be the peace chip.”

      Anna’s smile trembled, as did her voice. “That’s certainly one way to look at things.”

      “Makes everything sound so much better and worthwhile, doesn’t it? How about we sanction it as the official version?”

      Anna nodded, her eyes filling with a jumble of pain, relief and anxiety. “I never dreamed I’d cause anything like this. I didn’t know who or where you were, then Atef found me and I let him think Farah was his daughter, when she’s my…my…”

      “Your adopted daughter. Your real daughter, really. Being your biological child doesn’t make me that. I always believed a child is raised, not born.”

      Anna’s gaze faltered. “And you don’t want us to have any more than a biological link?”

      She surged forward, put her hand on Anna’s knee. “Oh, I do. Though I don’t know if I can come to think of you as my mother. I already have one, whom I love, even though she let so-called experts mess with my life. But I know she did it out of an almost pathological need to see me healthy and normal.”

      Anna gave her a sad smile. “Then that is something besides you that I share with Bahiyah. I almost messed up Farah’s life with the same pathological need.”

      Aliyah’s lips twisted whimsically. “Hmm, another thing I have in common with Farah. Wow. I can’t wait to meet her.”

      “She can’t wait, either. But she doesn’t want to impose on you.”

      Aliyah gave her a mock-wicked glance. “Oh, I’ll impose on her. I have three days to get ready for the wedding of the century, as the list my ‘groom’ gave me indicates. I need all the eager-to-please people I can lay my hands on.”

      The sounds of powerful cars gliding to smooth stops tickled her ears as she spoke.

      Kamal’s cavalcade. She knew it. The king had come home.

      She quirked an eyebrow. “Say—how about we stretch our legs?”

      Anna nodded, swayed to her feet, smoothed her sky-blue skirt suit and fell in step with Aliyah as they exited through huge French windows to the enormous veranda leading to a dozen thirty-foot-wide stone steps and the wing’s garden, an explosion of flowers and rare plants.

      Anna, still bent on elaborating on the main issue eating at her, didn’t seem to notice the cavalcade drawing to a stop at the palace’s main entrance. “You’re so willing to deal with the most awkward things, with your pain, so openly, and I have the feeling you can take on the whole world and come out the winner. Yet, with all your pragmatic approach, you haven’t accepted this marriage as you claim, have you? You’re feeling…trapped.”

      Pragmatic? This lady had way too much to learn about her still. But she’d gotten