Page 41 of Sheikh's Secret Love-Child

They had always had to think of Khalia first.

He had long assured himself that he was being unfair to imagine he should hold his parents to any kind of selfish, imaginary standard, simply because he might have liked some more attention. All the kingdoms of the world were littered with the ignored offspring of royal parents and yet, somehow, the kingdoms carried on.

Besides, Malak had always flourished in all that space he’d been given, with no one to pay the slightest attention to anything he did.

Except now Malak had Miles. He doubted very much that he was any less busy than his father had been, especially as his father had not inherited a throne in the midst of such turmoil with successive abdications. And still, Malak somehow managed to spend time every day with his son. His child, who had spent four years of his young life apart from his father already—something Malak had no intention of repeating as long as he drew breath.

It turned out he was less sympathetic to Tariq than he had been when he’d been single and carefree and hadn’t known what it was like to feel such a fierce love inside of him, to feel the kind of madness that told him he would do anything at all for his own child—except pretend Miles didn’t exist.

“Will you enter the room? Or stand there in the doorway forever?” his father asked mildly, his gaze still directed out the window where, Malak knew, the desert rolled and beckoned.

There was a time when it would have filled Malak with awe that his father knew he had approached when he’d made no sound. He had believed that his father was some sort of god who could see through walls. Clay feet were far less appealing than godlike powers and he thought, all things considered, he would have preferred the magic.

Especially when he felt so devoid of it himself.

But Malak only smiled and moved farther into the room. “I did not wish to disturb your reading.”

He wondered why he bothered to pretend at all. Why he bothered to produce a smile, simply because he was Malak and a carefree, easy smile was what he was known for. And at the end of the day, it appeared that no matter if he took the throne or not, he still behaved the fool when given the opportunity. It was some kind of knee-jerk reaction when speaking to members of his family, maybe. All of whom had pledged their support to him—but none of whom had ever thought he’d make any kind of good king, or any kind of king at all, before Zufar’s abdication.

Malak was the only available king. He never forgot that.

But when he looked at his father, who had been promised to the throne and to Khalia since the moment of his birth, he couldn’t help but think that might be for the best. Because Malak had lived the gift of his birth as the spare.

He thought perhaps he was the only clear-eyed king that Khalia had had in years.

Maybe that was why he knew exactly where the last two kings had gone wrong.

“My aides have told me you are to be married, after all.” His father closed the book on his lap and finally aimed that gaze of his at Malak. “There appeared to be some doubt, but I’m told it has now been settled.”

How funny it was, Malak thought, that he was now the king and his father nothing but an old man with family connections, and yet when Tariq looked at him in that particular manner Malak still felt like a rowdy teenager called to account for his behavior. Perhaps that never faded, no matter who called himself king.

Perhaps that had more to do with the fact this man was still his father.

Or the fact that he’d shown interest in Malak so rarely that it had always seemed like a grand occasion when he did.

“Marriage was always inevitable in this case,” Malak said, with perhaps a shade too much intensity. Then he shrugged it off. “But it is a major life change for Shona, of course. She has never been around royalty before. It’s not surprising she needed some time to get used to the idea.”

Maybe he’d given her too much time. Maybe that was the trouble. Maybe that was why she kept saying...that little piece of insanity. That sheer impossibility.

The thing that was precisely what he’d vowed would never taint his rule.

“She seems like a practical girl,” his father was saying. “Exactly what you need, I imagine.”

Malak found his hand on his chest, rubbing at his own heart as if the beat of it hurt him. He forced it back to his side. And opted not to examine why it was everything in him objected to hearing his father call Shona practical.

When she was so much more than that. When she was the only creature he’d ever beheld who could dim the desert sun when she smiled.

And more, why his father imagined Malak was the one who required a practical mate. When Malak was not the one who had given up a kingdom for the love of a woman who could barely contain her disdain for him in return.

But that was not something he could say to his father.

“You had a queen,” he said instead, before he knew he meant to bring up such a fraught topic at all. But he managed to keep himself from making any accusations. “Have you any advice?”

“On the care and feeding of the average Khalian queen?” His father laughed, and it was only when the sound echoed back from the books lining the walls that it occurred to him that it had been a long while since he’d heard his father make that sound. Or do anything even remotely joyful. Once again, he found that complicated sadness moving in him. Grief, he thought, for a man who had never existed. And would never exist. “I don’t think you need me to give you a dissertation about my failures in that arena. They are legion. And entirely public, to my shame.”

Maybe this was why Malak had come here today, when he was meant to be neck-deep in tedious discussions elsewhere. To finally have this exact conversation he had never dared to begin with his father. To clear this last bit of air before Malak took the final step that would make him just like the old man.

In more ways than one, he thought darkly, Shona’s voice in his head. Again.