Page 51 of Her Vow to Be His Desert Queen

So it was she who strode past him, and went into the house without a backward glance.

Khalil didn’t want to stay while she was there. So he ordered a helicopter to be brought, and when it arrived he got on it.

He couldn’t bear to be near her. Couldn’t bear her fierce determination to love him. Or the way she’d flung that accusation straight in his face:you’re a coward.

It wasn’t fear that drove him away, couldn’t she see that? He had to protect himself. Walking away from her the last time had broken him so utterly that he’d had to destroy the person he’d been just to survive.

And he had to survive. For his nation and his crown. If not then everything he’d ever done—Dusk, Yusuf—would have been for nothing.

He couldn’t allow that to happen to him again. He couldn’t.

The helicopter finally landed and he got out, dismissing his servants and striding for his apartments. He needed time to think about what to do next, because for the first time in his life he didn’t know. He had no idea.

There, he tried to involve himself in work, but he couldn’t concentrate. None of the decisions he had to make seemed right and he doubted every one. He doubted everything, including himself.

She’d told him doubt would make him a better king, but he didn’t see how, not when he couldn’t make any decisions. It seemed impossible.

He poured himself a neat vodka, a taste he’d developed over the past couple of years, and threw it down, relishing the burn. Hoping for some clarity, even though he knew drinking wasn’t going to give him the kind of clarity he wanted.

Sure enough, after a couple of hours, he found himself sitting on the couch where he’d first taken Sidonie, the heavy, aching feeling sitting there like an elephant sitting on his chest. Making it hard to breathe, making it hard to even think.

His phone went off and he grabbed at it, staring down at the screen, wanting it to be Sidonie for some reason. But it wasn’t. It was Galen.

He didn’t want to answer it, but he did anyway. ‘What?’ he demanded gracelessly.

‘Hmm,’ Galen said. ‘You sound like you’re in a good mood.’

‘Did you want something, Galen?’

‘It’s about your marriage celebration ball... I was thinking—’

‘There will be no celebration,’ Khalil cut him off tersely. ‘I have decided it is a bad idea.’

There was a silence down the other end of the phone.

‘Any particular reason?’ Galen asked, his tone neutral.

And Khalil didn’t know why he said what he said next. Perhaps it was because Galen had been through this and he knew what it was to have a woman love him. And he’d found it difficult, too. ‘I do not know what to do,’ Khalil said bleakly. ‘She loves me, Galen. She told me so. But I cannot make her happy and she deserves it. She deserves it more than anyone I have ever met.’

There was another long silence. Then Galen said, ‘You married her, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And do you love her?’

‘I cannot.’ He took a breath, the memory of what he’d flung at her in desperation resounding in his head. ‘I...loved her before. But I could not have her and I...’

‘You what?’

He could feel it inside him again, that pain. The same pain that had torn him when he’d had to put Dusk down. The same doubt and grief that had fractured him after Yusuf. ‘It broke me,’ he said starkly.

‘Ah,’ Galen said. ‘I am familiar with that kind of break.’

Khalil shut his eyes, Sidonie in her green gown right there in front of him. Blazing with all that beautiful fury and passion. Telling him he was a coward and how dared he walk away from her a second time?

How could you? How could you break her heart again?

‘She called me a coward,’ he heard himself say. ‘She called me a coward and walked away from me. And she was right. I barely survived losing her the first time. I do not think I could go through it again.’

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