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

Or an edition of Domestic Bliss for Dummies?”

      Shehab threw his head back on a hearty laugh before his gaze turned penetrating. “I want you to be happy. You haven’t been for a long time, Kamal. I don’t have any information on the situation, but I do trust my instincts, my heart. Especially after they led me into what you so strongly object to, the deepest reaches of love with my incomparable Farah. I want the same for you.”

      Holding back his response, which would have been riddled with obscenities, Kamal picked up speed as they crossed the vast columned hall that sprawled underneath a gigantic dome. The transition from the glare and dry heat to the interior’s soothing light and the coolness achieved by the palace’s structure and building materials silenced him. That, and feeling that he was seeing everything through new eyes now that he would call the palace home. His and Aliyah’s.

      The sweeping spaces, the extreme opulence, the floors that looked like polished extensions of the palace’s beaches, felt as unreal as the whole situation. And the man who’d been the cause of it all was at his side spouting romantic nonsense.

      He finally shot Shehab a dagger of displeasure. “Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t want to be in the deepest reaches of anything. I’ll leave wallowing in the depths of blinding self-deception to you and Farooq. You especially, as a spare crown prince, have it really easy. No pressure, no demands. You threw the job of king in my lap, now leave me to do it right.”

      Shehab’s gaze lengthened until Kamal felt he’d given him a total mind scan, documented every thought and evasion and struggle. Then Shehab finally wagged his finger at him. “Attitude.”

      Before Kamal showed him some real attitude, Shehab’s gaze suddenly gentled. “Don’t take the past into your future, Kamal. It serves no purpose but to poison your views, your very life.”

      “Ah, talking from precious experience now, aren’t we?” Kamal scoffed as they halted in front of his stateroom and he sent guards away with a flick of a hand. “How preconceptions robbed you of appreciating to the fullest every moment of your plunge from the realm of sanity to life under your siren’s influence?”

      Shehab had the temerity to look moved. “Such an indescribable waste, yes. But a wise man learns from others’ mistakes. Don’t try them yourself just to find out for sure that they’ll yield the same result. For they will.”

      “Your situation,” Kamal spat, “as pathetic as it is, is nothing like mine, your mistakes in no way comparable to my alleged ones. You leave the past out of the future and bury your head in the sand. There’s nothing more around here.”

      Shehab’s gaze summed him up again, then he exhaled. “If you don’t think you owe it to her, or to yourself, you owe it to your subjects. Forgive and forget, or you won’t be the king they deserve. Or change your mind. Try it. It might turn out to be the best move of your life, letting go of preconceptions and bitterness.”

      “Watch it, ya akhi. You might one day overdose on optimism.”

      “I’ll take that over doing so on pessimism any day. If the end is the same, at least I’d have the journey. Think about it.”

      Kamal gritted his teeth. “Yes, sage older brother. I’m in your debt for this pep talk. How can I live without your wisdom?”

      Shehab looked around, then after making certain they were alone, smacked him on the back of his head. Hard.

      Before Kamal charged him, Shehab bowed deeply then turned and walked unhurriedly away, chuckling. “Anytime…ya maolai.”

      Five

      “So…you’re my sister, in just about every way, huh?”

      Aliyah cocked her head as she avidly examined the woman with the most artless, most infectious smile she’d ever seen.

      With hair in every gradation of bronze and gold, eyes the color of Judar’s emerald shores and the rest of her an unusual blend, Farah had an atypical beauty, another thing they had in common. And she wasn’t being smug here, about her own beauty.

      Personally she’d never seen what the big fuss was about. But the world had had another opinion, at least the world of Western media and advertisement. That had valued her exotic mix so much they’d paid big bucks for the privilege of plastering it on their campaigns and products, had made her able to support herself without her family’s money or power, and sponsor a dozen causes, too.

      Farah was also clearly of mixed ethnicity, though which ones, it was even harder to tell than with her. Was that why Anna had adopted her? To remind her of the girl she’d given up?

      Farah eagerly nodded. “Oh, yes. And I’m ecstatic about each and every one. Oh, God—I can’t begin to tell you what the last couple of months have been like. I was living this no-expectations life, then I met Shehab. And as if that wasn’t beyond dreams, this happens. It’s still hard to wrap my head around it all, when I spent my life wishing for any sort of family. Now I not only have a sister who’ll be my sister-in-law, too, but you’re American—well, half-American—my age and you’ll share the same residence.”

      “If you can call living in the palace a mile apart living in the same residence!”

      Farah chuckled. “Yeah, we’ll probably never bump into each other without a previous appointment.”

      Aliyah returned her smile, ignoring the spasm that constricted her heart. No reason to rain on Farah’s parade, inform her that within a year she’d be out of there, one way or another. It wouldn’t serve any purpose right now to say that her marriage to Kamal would have no resemblance to Farah’s marriage to his brother, Shehab, which had been born of love and the willingness to sacrifice anything for the other.