Page 29 of Her Vow to Be His Desert Queen

‘Why did you go?’ she asked abruptly. ‘Why did you walk away from me that night?’

It was the very last question he’d expected and the very last question he wanted to answer. Though he should have known she’d ask at some point. And he had to tell her. She had to understand what he was now. Who he was now.

‘I had to.’ His voice was rougher than he wanted it to be. ‘I was always going to leave, Sidonie. I had a country to rule. Al Da’ira was my responsibility, and I could not walk away from it.’

‘But I told you I loved you, Khalil. And you just...left.’

The pressure inside him climbed. He knew he’d been abrupt, knew that his sudden dismissal of her had hurt her, but it was either that or drag her into his arms, which would have been equally hurtful.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘What you told me was a shock and I did not...know how to deal with it.’

Her expression was painful in its honesty. ‘Was me loving you so very bad?’

‘No, of course not.’ The tight feeling in his chest made him ache. ‘But... I could not love you in return, Sidonie, though I very much wanted to. All I could do was walk away.’

There was a kind of anguish in her eyes that felt like a knife to his heart, and some part of him was disturbed by it and the pressure inside him. She shouldn’t still have the power to affect him like this. She shouldn’t.

‘And that email?’ There was pain in her voice. ‘Did you really have to tell me not to contact you again?’

There was pain inside him too now, seeking the flaw in the stone, trying to crack him apart. But he was harder than that these days. Far too hard. He had tempered himself in the fire his mother had built for him, to protect him, and now nothing could get through. Not even her.

‘Yes.’ He held her gaze, letting her see who he was now. What he would always be. ‘I sent you that email because the friend I was to you, the friend you remembered... I could no longer be him. And I thought it was better that you forget me.’

Her green eyes darkened still further, becoming the colour of deep jungle forests, full of shadows. ‘I don’t understand, Khalil. You know, I wasn’t asking you to love me back. I just wanted to tell you how I felt. And I get that it was a shock. But dismissing five years of close friendship because...what? You didn’t want to be my friend any more? That I don’t get at all.’

The ache in his chest twisted. He didn’t know why he still felt it, why it was still there after all these years when it shouldn’t be. Memories, yes, he could do nothing about those, but that ache, that longing, thatfeeling...

Feelings were not allowed. They never had been. His mother had taught him that and he’d learned those lessons well.

‘It was not that I did not want to, Sidonie,’ he said flatly. ‘I could not. Love, friendship...they are not allowed for a king. Yes, I could have remained in contact. I could have continued to visit England. But I was not the man you remembered, and I thought... I thought that would hurt you.’

Her gaze flickered, her expression closing up and becoming for once unreadable. ‘I should never have told you that, should I? Never have said I loved you. That was my mistake.’

A brief flare of remembered agony went through him once again, at the memory of the painful hope in her eyes that night, and the pressure of his own terrible longing. A longing for a life that would never be his. A life with her.

He crushed the memory. Pain was another flaw he had cut out of his life. ‘It was not a mistake,’ he said roughly. ‘But it was why I sent that email, yes. I thought a clean break would be easier.’

She stared at him. ‘Easier for who? For me or for yourself?’

‘Sidonie...’ he began.

But she suddenly got to her feet and put out a hand, her palm landing on his bare chest, a starburst of heat crackling over his skin. He lost his breath, every muscle he had gathering tight.

‘I didn’t just lose a friend, Khalil,’ she said, looking up at him, searching his face. ‘Don’t you understand? That night you broke my heart.’

Pain twisted inside him, the flex of an agony he shouldn’t feel. Hurting her had never been the goal, but of course he’d hurt her. She’d told him she loved him, she’d revealed her heart to him, a heart that had been trodden on and walked over for years by her aunt, and he’d just...walked away.

You cannot let that matter. You did what you had to do.

He had. The decision to leave her, to cut her off, had been the hardest of his life, but that was what he’d been brought up to do: to make the hard decisions. To make them so people like her didn’t have to.

He did not regret that decision. He’d had to make it for both of their sakes. But...it was obvious that the wound he’d caused had been deeper than he’d thought. And it hadn’t healed. He could see by the pain in her eyes.

Apologies were the sign of a weak ruler, his mother had always said. A king made his decisions and he stood by them. He didn’t doubt and he certainly never admitted to his mistakes.

But this had hurt her, and he wanted to make it up to her, to make it right, and there was only one way he knew how to do that. Words got in the way, and he was tired of talking, so he put his hand over hers where it rested on his chest and then he pulled her into his arms.

CHAPTER SEVEN

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