In Defiance of Duty (6 page)

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said.

He moved over to the chaise and dropped to sit at the opposite end. The terrace was alive with blooms, bright blossoms by day and the sweet scent of jasmine now that night had fallen. Up above, the stars began to come out. And for a moment, he thought, they could be anyone. Just a woman and a man and the whole night stretched out before them.

He did not allow himself to examine how much he wished that could be true—that they could fall back into that world of pretend they’d lived in all these years.

Hidden in, even.

Kiara shifted position against the back of the chaise, and Azrin took the opportunity to arrange her how he wanted her—draping her legs over his lap so he could hold the slender shape of them in his palms. She wore something airy and insubstantial, not quite a dress and not one of her silk wrappers, and her narrow feet were bare. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders, damp from a recent shower, and her face was scrubbed clean of cosmetics.

She was beautiful, and he couldn’t understand why she felt so far away when she was right here. When he was touching her.

“How were your meetings?” she asked. Her voice was neutral. Entirely too neutral. He was instantly on guard.

“Much too long,” he said. Carefully.

He thought of the bickering ministers, the arguments, the usual pointless intractability from the usual suspects—one of them, sadly, his father. He thought of the inevitable pandering, the concessions, the headaches that were soon to be his alone to deal with. It already felt thankless and dangerous, this relentless push toward progress that he sometimes thought only he supported, and yet there was no stopping it. He had given his word to his people when he was a brash and idealistic twenty-two. He couldn’t take it back now, simply because it was harder than he’d anticipated—and happening so much sooner than he’d planned.

And on top of all that was Kiara, with that odd note in her voice and that remote look in her gaze, as if he’d done something to her when all he’d wanted was to talk all of this out. To hear her perspective—to have someone else on his side. He told himself that he was not disappointed, that she had only just arrived. That there was time enough for the kind of conversations he envisioned. That there was no reason to feel so alone.

“Long and complicated,” he added, his voice more curt than it should have been.

“Your aide filled me in on your expectations when I arrived,” she replied, her voice noticeably less neutral. “At length. And then your sisters took up where he left off.” Something flashed in her dark eyes then, and she moved her legs against him, as if restless. “You think I need lessons in etiquette, Azrin? From a battalion of your sisters? Have I humiliated you in the eyes of all the world and you failed to mention it until now?” He felt as if he had suddenly found himself standing in the middle of a loaded minefield, a sensation he did not care for at all. He’d thought she would appreciate the advice his sisters could give her on how to comport herself like a Khatanian noble. He fought to keep his temper—too close to the surface, after having been sorely tested all day long—at bay.

“You have no formal training in diplomacy,” he said, forcing his tone into something reasonable. He’d been practicing this very same tone of voice all day long, hadn’t he? It should have been as familiar to him as a second skin by now. “My sisters are renowned for their impeccable manners. They are the obvious choice to help you.”

He searched her face, looking for the Kiara he knew, always so clever and amused, and seeing only those too-dark eyes looking back at him. Waiting for an explanation of his decision to send his sisters to her that should, he thought with a touch of asperity, have already been obvious to her.

“You will be the queen, Kiara,” he said. He told himself he sounded far more patient than he felt. “There are things you’ll be expected to know—ways you’ll be expected to behave. That’s all.”

expected to behave. That’s all.”

“What’s wrong with how I behave now?” Her brows rose, challenging him, but with an unfamiliar darkness there, too. “Is there some embarrassing photograph I don’t know about? Some tawdry incident I can’t recall?”

“Of course not.” He reminded himself that it wasn’t her fault that his government was an ancient dinosaur that creaked along, arthritic and demanding, and only he could change it—if it could be changed at all. It wasn’t her fault he was out of patience, his temper already frayed too thin. “But you will no longer be a princess who can, to some extent, do as she pleases. You will be the symbol of femininity for all of Khatan.” His lips curved. “No pressure, of course.” He wanted her to smile, but her gorgeous mouth remained flat, and he felt it like a slap.

“No pressure,” she repeated slowly, as if she was working it out in her head, “yet my current behavior is apparently so deficient you had to send your sisters to me the moment I set foot in the palace. When you’d never mentioned this to me at all. I felt ambushed, Azrin.” He sighed then, all the tension and weariness of the day flooding back into him, the exhaustion of every day since his father’s announcement swamping him.

“Will you be one more fire I must put out today, Kiara?” he asked, unable to keep the sharp edge from his voice. “One more problem I must solve?” She stiffened.

“I thought I was having a conversation with my husband,” she said, her voice tight. Like a stranger’s. “I didn’t realize this was an audience with the king.” His hands tightened around her calves when she would have moved her legs from his lap, but he checked his impatience, and let her go. He watched her as she stood, noting the way she brushed invisible lint from her front with angry hands. She didn’t look at him, and he hated it. He hated all of this. He thought of the last time they’d met after a separation, in Sydney.

How had they strayed so far from that night? And so fast?

“I assume there’s some dinner we need to get ready for,” she murmured.

And, of course, there was. There always was. He would have hated that inevitability, too, but it was futile. This was his life.

But Azrin couldn’t abide the distance between them—especially not now, when she was in the palace and would remain here. With him. Not just a musical voice on the telephone, a few funny lines of email to read between meetings. He reached over and snagged her wrist in his hand, tugging her toward him. She came without resistance, though her expression was serious as she gazed down at him. Troubled. He couldn’t stand that, either.

He brought her face to his, and kissed her as he’d wanted to do since the moment he’d received the news from his aide that she had arrived at the palace.

He teased, he toyed.

He caressed her and seduced her with every weapon in his arsenal. He licked and tasted that mouth of hers that had obsessed him for so long, kissing her until the tension in her body eased—until she was loose and pliable and she sighed against him. Until there was nothing between them but this heat, this unbankable fire, that he wished they had the time to fully explore. Here, now.

When he finally lifted his head she was sitting in his lap, and her face was flushed and warm.

“I need you to do this with me,” he whispered against her mouth fiercely. He pulled back, studied her face, wished he understood this need that raged in him.

This pulse of something like fury, something hot and intense. “I need your support, Kiara. Now more than ever.” Her gaze was still so serious, despite the heat that lingered there. He had the sudden, unpleasant notion that he was missing something—but he dismissed it. Kiara was open. Direct. She would simply tell him if there was something he needed to know. He was sure of it.

Her mouth crooked into that smile that he had loved since the first moment he’d seen it, so long ago now, in the midst of a wet Melbourne afternoon, and he ignored the lingering sense that there was too much reservation behind it tonight. There were too many other things going on around them, he thought. Too much else to do, and surely she understood that.

She would be fine. She always was.

They always were.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” she asked quietly, and he told himself it was what he wanted.

That it was enough.

Kiara became public property overnight. As if she, herself, ceased to exist now that she was meant to be queen in a matter of weeks rather than simply one day.

And the more she was regarded as something public, something belonging to anyone and everyone, she registered with a rising tide of panic that worsened every day, the more she seemed to disappear beneath the weight of Azrin’s crown.

And he wasn’t even king yet.

Every day that passed, every long day during which Azrin’s many sisters taught Kiara how ill-suited she was to this role of queen and every night which brought Azrin closer to his father’s nearly-relinquished throne, Kiara felt more and more as if an unseen hand was closing around her throat. And tightening.

The worst part was, she had no one to talk to about it.

Azrin was so tired, so distracted. Overwhelmed, she thought, and she told herself she understood it. She didn’t want to hear him heave another heavy sigh and tell her she was one more fire to put out, did she? She didn’t want to be another burden to him. She wanted anything but that, in fact.

And in truth, she didn’t know how to raise this sort of issue with him anyway.

They had always been on the same page before now, more or less. They’d fought, as all couples did, but they had always been the sort of fights brought on by stress and exhaustion and too much travel—a short tone or a snapped reply that bloomed into temper, and the resultant hurt feelings that could easily be soothed by a conversation and delicious, reconciliatory sex.

Kiara didn’t think that would work this time. What could she say? It hurts my feelings that you expect me to be your queen? Let’s see if we can solve that with a chat? Of course not.

She couldn’t contact the friends she’d become less close with over the years, when what little free time she’d had was filled with Azrin. Her friendships had become little more than the odd catch-up telephone call, a well-received email here and there and happy photographs in the usual online places. Kiara couldn’t imagine how she could turn that around now. She would hardly know where to start. And any coworkers she might think to confide in were far too likely to drop hints of any unrest to Diana, and Kiara couldn’t bear the idea that she might prove her mother right about her marriage.

hints of any unrest to Diana, and Kiara couldn’t bear the idea that she might prove her mother right about her marriage.

She wished she were less proud. More than that, she wished her stoic, loving grandmother were still alive and still able to make the world feel right again with a simple hug, no matter what might have happened.

Azrin had never felt further away, for all that he was geographically closer than he’d been in years. The bittersweet irony of that ate at her. And meanwhile Kiara felt as if she was disappearing under the onslaught of some relentless tide, bit by bit, until she wondered what would be left of her at all.

“It would be better if you were pregnant,” King Zayed announced one night, scowling at her from his place at the head of the table.

His words cast an immediate and total hush over the marvelous long table that commanded pride of place in the ornate room of the palace that was only used for private family meals, silencing all the members of the royal family who had gathered around it.

Who all, of course, turned to stare directly at Kiara, in case she was in any doubt about who the old king was addressing.

She was in no doubt. She simply felt sick.

Beside her, she felt Azrin tense, but he remained silent, though she could feel that dark current running through him, humming beneath his skin. She was afraid to look at him—afraid that if she did, she would see that he was as appalled as she was by this and would then be unable to govern herself appropriately.

And more afraid by far that he would not be appalled at all.

“That would be ideal,” one of King Zayed’s highest ministers, who was married to one of Azrin’s sisters, agreed at once, as if this was a plan he could launch into action with the force of his agreement.

“The country loves it when the royal family is expecting a child,” Queen Madihah chimed in. She aimed her usual calm smile at Kiara. “Especially when it’s the queen.”

Kiara managed, somehow, to keep from letting her fork drop from her nerveless fingers to clatter against the side of her plate. Or from throwing it at the king.

“Unfortunately,” she said when the silence dragged on, when it became clear that Azrin was not planning to speak to his father on her behalf, when she thought she might die if everyone kept staring at her like that and some part of her wished she would, “I am not.” She was so upset she shook slightly, even hours later when she and Azrin returned to their rooms together.

“Why didn’t you say something?” she asked.

It took everything she had not to scream at him. Not to simply scream out all the things she was feeling inside, that she was afraid to even look at too closely for fear that even giving them names would allow them to take her over and suck her under, never to be seen again.

“What was there to say?” He did not pretend he didn’t know what she was talking about. He shrugged, his expression almost forbidding. “He is still the king. He will always be my father.”

“This is my body.” Kiara shook her head, bewildered. Still feeling something very near to violated by all those eyes on her, all that attention to something that should have been hers and Azrin’s alone. “It’s private.”

He looked at her for a long moment, a certain hardness in his gaze that she had never seen before. It made a pit in her stomach open, then gape wide.

“No,” he said eventually. She had the impression he was choosing his words carefully, and that hurt too, as if they had become complete strangers to each other in a few short weeks. As if, something treacherous and terrified whispered deep within her, you never knew each other at all. “It isn’t.” She blinked. “What are you talking about?”