Page 35 of Her Royal Daddy
“What are you doing?”
Startling, I whipped away from yet another peek through the cracked door to find Jax coming down the hall with my father leaning heavily on his arm. Jax frowned at me, because apparently that was his job, and shooed at me with the hand not currently being used to keep my father upright.
“Go,” he said. “Speak to your guests. You’re a prince! What’s wrong with—ugh!” Giving up midsentence, he shook his head, but I didn’t care. I would rather have walked into a cage full of starving lions than to enter that room without first talking to Norah. I needed to get an answer from her. I wasn’t going to say so much as hello to Zahra until I knew which was my bride and whether the rest of my life was going to be happy or hell.
“Mazi,” my father called, waving me to him. “Come, help an old man to his throne.”
I went, grateful for something to help take my mind off the waiting, although in the end it would mean stepping foot inside the party and Norah was still nowhere in sight.
“She is coming, right?” I asked as I took up a position opposite of Jax and helped support my father.
“Come and sit with me,” was all my father said. As slow and shuffling as his steps were, we nevertheless arrived at the ballroom door much sooner than I would have liked. Jax knocked and a doorman inside the room promptly opened it for us.
Announcement that the king had arrived was met with cheers and applause. Some of that, I suppose, might have been for me as well, but it didn’t register that way and it didn’t make me happy. I helped my father to the head of the room and we climbed the three dais steps so he could be seated upon his throne, and all the while my gaze wandered the faces of those gathered there. Men in suits both modern and traditional; women in gowns much the same, brightly colored sequins sparkling in the overhead lights; it was all so regal and formal and I was way the hell out of my depth. Ezra’s club this was not, and Norah wasn’t here.
“Sit,” my father ordered as I swiped a hand across my mouth, sweeping the room yet again, searching for shades of violet hair lost in that sea of kufi and modupe hats, and headscarves all beaded and feathered to support the occasion. “Mazi,” he said, when I didn’t at first obey.
Feeling sick, I sank onto the smaller chair beside his massive throne.
“I need a drink,” my father told Jax. “Son?”
“Make mine a double.” At this point, I’d rather have the bottle, but a little liquid courage at this point was better than none. I was bereft. She wasn’t here. She wasn’t coming.
She had told me she loved me, and I didn’t for a second think she had lied. But she was also giving me the answer to my question. She wasn’t princess material. She wouldn’t marry a king. So she had removed herself from the equation, paving the way for Zahra.
“I have a confession to make,” my father softly said, as Jax made his way back from the bar with two tumblers in his hands. “Ms. Baxter came to see me last night. I spoke with her for almost an hour.”
My heart sank low in my chest. Try as I might, my brain didn’t want to make sense of what he was saying. “She’s gone,” I said listlessly. “She’s left me.”
“She asked me to help her go home. So, I put her on a plane.” With a nod of thanks, my father took the glass of water Jax handed him.
Mine was water too, but true to cantankerous form, he’d brought me a double.
“I like Norah,” my father softly admitted. “She said things to me that made me think long after her plane left Osei ground. I couldn’t sleep. Not for hours. Eventually, I realized I was making the second greatest mistake of my life.”
The water forgotten in my hand, I stared at him, still unsure if I was hearing him right.
“I should have gone after your mother.” My father looked at me with unshed tears in his eyes. “It is wrong for a husband to proclaim anyone higher than his wife, but I lied. Your mother was second to no one, and especially not in my heart. I should have gone after her. I should have at least tried. That was my first and greatest mistake. My second was forcing my son to take that same pain and make it his own.”
When exactly the room had gone quiet, I don’t know. I couldn’t look away. Distantly I was aware that Jax was addressing our royal guests, but everything inside me was locked upon my father. What Jax said, I haven’t a clue. What my father said was, “A king must have a wife, Mazi. Tradition demands that I make that choice for you. I only hope I have chosen well.”
The room was so silent I could hear the door to my family’s private entrance open and everyone turned, eager to catch sight of my newly announced fiancée. And that included Zahra, who hardly seemed disappointed when Norah walked into the room.
Her floor-length gown matched her eyes and the streaks of violet in her long blonde hair. She was right. She wasn’t princess material.
She was better. Especially when she started walking toward me, her eyes full of nervous apology, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth and wringing her fingers in the folds of her dress.
“Your future bride,” my father confirmed when I snapped back around to him.
I vaulted out of my chair, jogging down the stairs to meet her halfway across the floor.
“I—” was all I gave her the chance to say before seizing her face in my hands and kissing her, fiercely, in front of all these people.
She burst into tears before our lips had even parted. “You’re going to be so angry with me!”
“You left me,” I said, brushing at her tears with my thumbs and trying not to laugh.
She nodded.
