LITMIR.BIZ

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stretching ahead of him Zakari considered calling her back. He actually missed her when she retired, missed those sparkling, lively blue eyes, and the way she blushed just a little when she laughed, but he stopped himself. Maybe it was cabin fever that was causing it, but Zakari was starting to realise that he spoke too much when she was around. Under her steady gaze, it was all too easy to forget the rules, to forget the discretion, the distance that was usually carved into every shred of his DNA.

      So, instead of calling her, he retired too, not to his luxurious bed, but outside, preparing a fire, then stretching out beneath the stars and listening to the call of the desert, remembering Effie’s place, because he could never, ever forget his.

      Yet on the sixth night, as he sat on the low cushions and the table was cleared and there was no reason for her to remain, he asked her to join him.

      ‘You do not live in the palace?’

      ‘I have a small cottage.’ Effie nodded, colour roaring up her cheeks as she tentatively took a seat on the cushion beside him. ‘Well, it was my mother’s.’

      ‘You said she was a palace maid, though—how could she afford it?’

      ‘She was a maid before I was born,’ Effie said, ‘but she saved her money well and invested it wisely. It’s only a tiny cottage, but with her savings, well, they lasted almost till she died. She never had to work again.’

      She was so naive. Zakari smothered a smile. The only single mothers who owned real estate in Calista worked extremely hard for their money! Still, it was sweet, Zakari reflected, that she genuinely didn’t seem to know that she believed the lies her mother must have fed her.

      ‘You miss her a lot?’

      ‘Terribly.’ He saw a sparkle of tears in her eyes that she rapidly blinked back. ‘You must miss your mother too,’ Effie said. ‘Or, rather, mothers.’ He didn’t scold her this time, just gave a curt nod at her observation. Losing his mother at the age of eleven had been hard, but losing Anya five years ago had been just as bad. Zakari had never been particularly close to his father; they had respected each other, but there had never been any real conversation, let alone affection. With Anya it had been different. She had doted on him as if he were her own flesh and blood, had helped him navigate the terrifying prospect that one day he would be ruler and King, as well as confiding in him as to her own fears and pain. Zakari was only half listening as Effie chatted on, but he frowned her to silence when next she spoke. ‘…and with what happened to your youngest brother too…’

      ‘That is not for discussion.’ This time Zakari did speak sternly. He wanted to hear about her, not to discuss how he might feel about things. ‘So, it is nice that you have your own home…’ But she wasn’t so receptive now. No matter how he tried to cajole her to freely talk, the easiness between them had gone as Effie answered with only the minimum of responses.

      Naive and sweet she might be, Zakari thought, but there was much more to her than just that. There was this intelligence in her eyes, this stubbornness within her, that over the days had entranced him—and never more so than now. Though she remained eternally polite, still she wouldn’t relent, refused to play the court jester just to amuse him. What was more, Zakari realised, after yet another monotone answer, Effie wouldn’t reveal anything more of herself if he did not grace her with the same.

      Without a word she demanded from him something he rarely bestowed.

      Real conversation.

      ‘You would make an excellent chess player…’ The edge of his mouth lifted into a smile at another monotone, polite answer as she forced him to ponder his next move. Zakari wondered whether opening up would box him in, or somehow release him.

      ‘I doubt it.’ Effie smiled softly. ‘I don’t play games.’

      After the longest hesitation, weighing up her kind, sympathetic face through narrow, mistrusting eyes, Zakari chose the latter.

      ‘Every day I think of him.’ It was Zakari who broke the endless strained silence. He had never admitted such things—even to himself—could hear the unchecked words coming from his usually guarded lips, only he did nothing to halt them. ‘Still now, in my heart of hearts, I cannot accept that he is dead.’

      ‘So you cannot grieve…’ Hearing his pain on instinct, she touched him, her hand reaching for his forearm, but the moment contact was made she realised the inappropriateness, pulled her hand back and bunched it into a fist, yet she could feel the tingle in her fingers.

      Zakari, in turn, was struggling. He had let her glimpse his pain, had shared enough that surely now she should continue, now she should talk, so that he might relax. Yet that brush on his arm, that mere hint of contact, had brought rare comfort. His black eyes pondered hers, acknowledging that lonely raw piece of his soul had, for just a fleeting second perhaps, been understood.

      He had never grieved.

      Had never been allowed to grieve.

      A prince who would one day be king could not cry.

      Anya had grieved. For a second his mind flashed back to Anya, sobbing on the bed. How he had wanted to weep with her, yet he had been sixteen—a king in training. As he stared at Effie, her sapphire eyes pooling with tears, his left shoulder tightened and he could feel again his father’s hand placed there.

      ‘Stay strong!’ His father, Sheikh Ashraf, had squeezed his son’s shoulder, when Zakari had wanted to be held. ‘It is not for us to demand answers.’

      He had never questioned it, yet under her gentle presence he questioned it now.

      ‘Can I ask what happened?’

      Her voice was as soft as his growling response. ‘You know what happened.’

      ‘I know what I read,’ Effie countered, ‘I know what I heard, but I don’t know.’

      ‘You know what you need to.’

      ‘It might help to talk.’

      ‘How?’ he asked, and Effie realised he truly didn’t know. Here before her was a man whose feelings had never come into things—who had been raised to act, rather than to feel.

      ‘It just might.’ She could have wept; not for his brother, but for the flicker of confusion in those guarded eyes. She could almost feel him relent and then recoil with every second that passed. What came so easily to her was unfathomable to him.

      And then he gave her the sweetest gift of all. Sheikh King Zakari Al’Farisi, with painful words, invited her into his world and, Effie realised, she would love him for ever for it.

      ‘Emir, my brother, was sick, he had the flu…’ His strong voice was reduced to a hoarse whisper as he continued. ‘I never played with the younger children. I was raised to be king—it was not my place to do childish things…

      ‘Aarif and Kaliq, the twins, were creeping off to build a raft…They were teenage boys, they should have known better, but they were silly, planning this adventure that they would build a raft and sail out on it to sea. Zafir found out about their plans…’ His voice caught for a moment, but she calmly sat, just waited till he was ready to continue. ‘He begged to go with them. They lost control; they were swept to sea…’

      She had heard bits about the tragedy that had happened when Effie was just four years old. She had seen for herself the scar on Prince Aarif’s face where he had been shot, and had read bits about it in the library, but hearing it from the King himself, from the brother who had lost so much, had the tears spilling from Effie’s eyes.

      ‘They were captured by diamond smugglers. Zafir was a proud little thing—he shouted to them who his father was. Of course, as soon as the smugglers realised just who it was they had captured they became greedy. They bound their wrists with ropes; Aarif and Kaliq still have the scars of the ropes that cut in as the smugglers debated the ransom they would demand…

      ‘On Calista, the palace was frantic. I remember the search

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