Page 37 of Sheikh's Secret Love-Child

It wasn’t what he would do to her, out on a marble balcony with the desert light like a caress upon her face. It wasn’t the water that coursed over her like the prayers she’d long since stopped saying. It wasn’t all the things they’d done in that wide bed of his or in that atrium made of mirrors. It was much, much worse than those things and it was already done.

It was her poor little heart, that beat as if he was the only reason for it to exist in the first place, in this pool and in this palace and in the chaotic streets of the French Quarter, too.

It was the pride in his voice when he talked to or about their son.

And it was the way he took her, masterful and sure, right there in that gleaming turquoise pool so that she sobbed out her need and his name against his wide shoulder, as if she’d remembered how to pray, after all.

Shona had never fallen in love with anyone—had never wanted that kind of torment in her life when she’d never seen anything but too many examples of it going wrong—but maybe that was the point.

This wasn’t falling, here with Malak. It was floating.

And she’d been doomed from the start.

* * *

After that night, Shona threw herself into all the things she’d ignored before, because if there was one thing she knew how to do, it was figure out how to make the best of things if there was no alternative.

Might as well fly if you’re already falling, she told herself, and she tried to do just that.

Shona shocked her tutors by paying attention in her lessons. She actually wore the clothes that Yadira set out for her and tried to at least pretend to be the sort of woman who was comfortable in such fine fabrics and shockingly elaborate costumes. She didn’t know the first thing about being a queen, but she knew how to pretend.

So that was what she did.

Because Shona also didn’t know what to do with a heart that felt four sizes too big, and more painfully raw with every beat. She didn’t know how to make sense of the things she felt, or the man who made her feel them. So she did what she could instead.

She told herself it was for Miles.

“You’re so pretty, Mama,” he told her one evening as they made their way to their usual dinner in the king’s private rooms.

“Thank you, baby,” she said, smiling down at him, aware that there were only so many evenings left that he would happily hold her hand as they walked. And only so many days left when she could snuggle his whole body with hers before he grew too big—and before he stopped allowing her to hold him that way at all.

“You’re much prettier here than you were before,” he told her with all that stout, four-year-old certainty. “It’s much better.”

Shona wanted to correct him, but she couldn’t, because much as it shamed her to think such a thing, he was probably right.

Miles had bloomed here. He was happier than he’d ever been. He laughed more. He was joyful and playful and bright. She couldn’t let herself dwell on it too closely or she was afraid she might lapse into some kind of retroactive depression...because the truth was, she’d thought they were fine in New Orleans. She’d thought Miles was fine. She’d thought they were absolutely doing their best—and they’d certainly been doing better than she ever had when she’d been his age.

Maybe all of that was true. But maybe her measure of these things was off. And more than a little sad. Because there was no getting past the fact that Miles was far better off here. He slept well, ate well and never acted out in the ways he had back home. If Shona was honest with herself, she had always felt so guilty she couldn’t spend the kind of time with him she had wanted to because she’d had to work so hard to pay their bills.

Here, if she wanted, she could spend whole days exploring the extensive palace gardens with her son if that took his fancy. They could spend hours watching movies in the middle of a Wednesday morning if they chose. She could do whatever she wanted with him. They could play, or if he caught a cold, he could snuggle up at her side and sleep it away. She never had to worry about picking up an extra shift. Or how she was going to make rent if she called in sick—or whether she dared do such a thing at all, no matter how sick Miles was, because she’d lose her job if she tried.

It shocked her how much happier Miles was here, without the weight of all that forever pressing down on them.

But she was equally shocked by how much happier she was.

For all of those reasons and more.

It was as if she’d had no idea how heavy all that weight was until she’d put it down. And now she couldn’t understand how she’d carried any of it in the first place.

“You look like a queen should,” Miles told her another morning when she came out of her dressing room to find that he was still sitting there, cross-legged on her bed, instead of off with his nannies the way he normally was after breakfast.

She still didn’t like that word. Queen. She still had to fight to pretend she thought it could apply to her. It still ate at her in ways she didn’t like, and it shocked her how deep that went. How dark it made her feel to look at herself dressed up like a stranger.

When all she wanted was to belong. In her own reflection. In these absurd clothes she wore now. In this fairy-tale palace she’d never dared let herself dream about.

Somewhere, the foster kid inside of her whispered. I just want to belong somewhere.

She wanted to growl something dismissive at Miles to make sure he never said anything like that again, but she didn’t. Because there was something about seeing pure love and pride on her baby’s face that kept her usual disparaging remarks inside her own mouth.