Page 44 of Her Vow to Be His Desert Queen

‘My grandfather changed it so that the fight was more ritualistic and no longer to the death.’ He held her gaze. ‘Again, I did not tell you to stop.’

She flushed then lifted her hands again, running the tips of her fingers along his collarbones. ‘Yes, you told me about the fight, too. How your half-brother was injured.’

‘He was not injured,’ Khalil said flatly. ‘Just before the fight, my mother had intelligence that Yusuf intended to kill me. He wanted the crown, and he was going to take it. He’d been planning insurrection and already had an army of followers waiting for his call.’

Sidonie’s face paled, her eyes widening, and that tension inside him made him feel as if he was made of iron. He didn’t understand why. His decision had been correct, the only one he could have made.

‘He had brought a knife with him, so my mother secretly passed a knife to me so I would not be unarmed.’ He remembered the weight of that knife too. ‘It was important that I win the battle. Yusuf was...too much like my father. He took pleasure in cruelty, and he wanted power. It would have been a disaster if he’d won the succession.’

Sidonie had gone white. ‘Khalil...’

‘Yusuf was not as good a fighter as I was,’ he went on, making the words hard and cold, just as he himself was. ‘Though he tried very hard to kill me.’

Her gaze darkened. ‘But he didn’t kill you. And obviously you won, since you’re King.’

‘I did win. But there was a cost.’ The word ‘cost’ sounded ugly to him, as if a life had a monetary value. ‘Only one of us was going to come out of that fight alive and I made the decision that it would be me.’

Sidonie stared up at him for a long moment, her gaze searching, and for once in his life he couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

His heart was beating far too fast, all his muscles tense. He wished she hadn’t had to hear this. He wished he hadn’t had to tell her the truth. Everything about it had been dark and ugly, and he hadn’t wanted her to know, because he hadn’t wanted her to see him differently back then. He’d loved the way she saw him as just an ordinary person. But ordinary people didn’t kill other people for their country’s sake, not if they weren’t soldiers.

‘I killed him, Sidonie,’ he went on, so there could be no doubt. ‘I did it for my country. I had to. But that does not make what I did any less terrible.’

She contemplated him for a moment, then slowly she leaned into him and pressed a kiss to his throat, her lips warm and soft. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she breathed. ‘I’m so sorry you had to make that decision.’

Her kiss should have relaxed him, should have made him burn with desire, and yet every muscle was rigid. Sorry. She was sorry. He didn’t know what to do with that.

‘You do not need to be sorry.’ His voice was somehow rougher than it should have been and his grip on her hands had tightened. ‘It was the correct decision.’

‘This was before you came to Oxford, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes. I was eighteen.’

Sidonie’s face was full of a terrible sympathy. ‘You were so full of shadows back then. I used to wonder what haunted you, but you never talked about it, and I didn’t want to push.’

‘It did haunt me,’ he said. ‘But it does not now.’

Yet her gaze was very steady, looking at him as if she could see things he couldn’t. ‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘Yes, I think it still does.’

Shock went through him like a lightning strike, shaking something inside him. ‘Why would you say that?’

‘Because I can see it in your eyes.’ Her green gaze held his, that sympathy still shining there. ‘You didn’t want to tell me, did you? You wanted me to keep on believing that Yusuf had only been injured.’

‘I did not want to tell you because—’

‘You brought me here, Khal. You wanted me to know your past. And you wanted me to know, because no matter how you deny it, it does haunt you.’

Another shock hit him, harder this time. ‘That is not true.’

‘Isn’t it?’ Sidonie pulled one hand from his grip and touched his face gently. ‘You don’t have to pretend. I’ve known you for ten years and besides, I’m your wife. You can be strong for your people, but you don’t have to be strong with me.’

For some reason her touch hurt, shaking that thing inside him, the lump of rock that he’d turned his heart into. That rock he’dhadto turn his heart into because he couldn’t allow it to be anything other than stone.

He gripped her wrist, wanting to pull her fingers from his cheek and yet for some reason not being able to. ‘A king cannot afford doubts,’ he said harshly. ‘A king cannot be haunted by anything.’

Yet you still have those doubts. You didn’t want to take his life, just as you didn’t want to take the life of your dog.

She didn’t speak, just looked at him, her gaze full of a tenderness that stopped his breath.

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