Page 7 of Her Vow to Be His Desert Queen

‘We can discuss that later. You made me a promise, Sidonie, and you will honour it.’

‘And if I don’t? What? You’ll take me to court?’

Each word was spiked with something serrated, falling like an icy-edged little snowflake, cold against his skin, and Khalil felt something stir deep inside him.

He stilled, a ripple of shock arrowing down his spine.

It had been years since he’d felt that part of him stir. The hunger that had helped him win his crown, the old blood that ran in his veins, a poisonous gift from his father. After his coronation he’d buried that part of himself and he’d thought it had stayed buried.

Apparently not. Apparently all you need for it to wake is a challenge.

That may be, but he was done with challenges now. He was the King, he had nothing to prove, and certainly not where Sidonie was concerned. The cost was too high should that part of himself wake again. It had to stay frozen. Ithadto.

Khalil stared at her. He couldn’t afford resistance. He needed a wife and heirs, and his people needed a queen untainted by the labyrinthine politics of his father’s reign. He could go back to the list of potential candidates his advisors had put forward and choose one of them. Or, if he wanted to find a woman from outside Al Da’ira, he’d no doubt find one—he’d never had any issues with finding women who wanted him.

But he didn’t want just any woman. He wanted the woman who’d taught him what happiness had felt like, because if she could do that for him, then she could do it for his people.

‘Yes,’ he said coolly. ‘That is what I said.’

She didn’t flinch, another sign of the steel she’d somehow acquired. ‘So, you’re going to force me to marry you. Is that what you’re saying?’

She is not the same Sidonie you knew.

No. But still, it had only been five years. She could not have changedsomuch in five years.

‘It will not involve force.’ He kept his voice level. ‘You wanted to marry me, remember? If you had not found a husband by the time you were thirty, you would marry me—that is what you said. You were very, very definite.’

‘But I wasn’t—’

‘You wrote that promise yourself,’ he went on relentlessly. ‘You insisted. Because you wanted me to hold you to it when the time came.’

She opened her mouth then shut it again, her gaze flickering. The flush in her pale cheeks had crept down her lovely white throat.

She remembered that night as well as he, about how they’d been talking of him taking the throne and what it would mean for his country. He’d mentioned that he’d have to marry at some stage, and that was when she’d said that if he couldn’t find someone he liked, and she was still unmarried by thirty, he could marry her.

He’d thought it was a joke at first, but there had been something intense in her eyes as she’d said it. Then she’d pulled out her cocktail serviette and had written her promise to him, signing it and getting him to sign it too.

He’d wanted to tell her that she didn’t need to make him sign some ridiculous promise. He would have married her right then and there. He knew how lonely her childhood had been and how much she’d wanted a family of her own. He knew all about the awful aunt who’d brought her up and resented every second of it.

But he was the heir to the throne of Al Da’ira, not the ordinary man he’d wished so passionately he could be in that moment. And he couldn’t give her that future.

He’d loved those years in England with her, but they were never going to be anything more than an idyll. A brief moment of sunshine between storms.

He had a country to rule and a crown to wear, and the king he’d been brought up to be had nothing to do with the man he’d become in England. The two were incompatible. She deserved more anyway. He wasn’t capable of giving her the kind of life she needed, and he didn’t want to be Hades to her Persephone, dragging her down into his Underworld.

Yet because she was his friend, and he would have given her the moon if she’d asked for it, he’d signed her serviette. And he’d never thought he’d return to make good on his promise, yet the needs of his people outweighed all other concerns.

He had to convince her somehow.

‘Well, I didn’t mean it,’ Sidonie said now, still cool. ‘So you can take that ridiculous contract and—’

‘Sidonie,’ he interrupted, because he was tired of sitting in this sticky, musty English pub. They could have this argument later, in cleaner, nicer surroundings, when the shock of his sudden arrival had worn off. ‘You must consider my proposal. I insist. Perhaps there is something you need from me that I could give you in return?’

‘I don’t need anything—’

‘Think on it. In the meantime,’ he gestured at the cupcake, ‘eat your birthday cake and then we will leave.’

There were tiny green sparks in her eyes. ‘Leave? What do you mean, leave?’

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