The Healer's Warrior (16 page)

Jem’ya’s heart filled with appreciation, swelling with bittersweet affection toward the edge of soreness. Her attachment to Tareq became permanent in that moment. She hardly knew him in the ordinary sense, but, in a mystical sense she couldn’t grasp, her heart knew his. Jem’ya smiled, doing her best to hide her infatuation and her nervousness. He’d won her regard so easily. What else could he take from her? “Thanks,” she answered softly.

Tareq smiled at her, faintly, though his light eyes were intense with a caged sentiment.

Jem’ya was captivated by his striking eyes. His black full lashes contrasted with his hazel eyes, conveying equally a bright sense of curiosity and a shadowy seductiveness.

Soon Tareq was eyeing the stars again, quiet, his mouth relaxed into a pensive pout.   

Jem’ya wrestled with the urge for a moment, but finally reached her hand out for Tareq’s. His arm was lying at his side. She slid her palm into his and closed her fingers around his warm hand. She squeezed it in a friendly, gentle manner. Tareq jerked his hand away from her grasp so suddenly it frightened her. Jem’ya looked at him, her face burning with humiliation, her eyes full of questions, but he’d turned his face to hide the answers.  She looked at the leaves of the tall palm tree at the side of her house but she didn’t see them. The leaves were a dark, fluttering blur with no meaning. Her mind was swarming with criticism.
Why did you do that, Jem’ya? You’ve made a fool of yourself. He’s your patient. He’s a man. Know your boundaries, for your own safety.

Her neurotic contemplation was muted abruptly when Tareq’s hand took hers. His hand was heavier and larger, and his fingers were thicker than hers but soft and very warm. Her body and her heart sighed, surrendered. His touch made the stars amongst the darkness above seem brighter. Jem’ya smiled and lightly squeezed his hand, ignoring her impulse to admire his face, afraid to lose the moment if the emotion in her gaze should scare him away again. Her sight remained on the sky while her attention was focused on appreciating the masculinity and strength of Tareq’s hand and recognizing the vulnerability in his gesture of reaching out to her after initially pulling away.   

The moment quickly became too much for Tareq. After fifteen seconds he had to release Jem’ya’s hand. He sat up and stood. “Good night, Jem’ya,” he said in a falsely empty voice just above a whisper as he walked across the roof to the ladder. He climbed down and went inside to
sleep,
hoping he would wake up in the morning and the intensity and complexity of his attraction to her would subside.

On the roof, Jem’ya pressed her hand against her face, letting the heat Tareq had left in her palm warm her cooled cheek. She wanted things to be simplified into ‘Tareq warms the places that are cold’, but her feelings couldn’t be made simple, or even articulated. Beneath the surface of their rapport lie so much more. Yet it would always be less, because Tareq wouldn’t allow it to grow and because Jem’ya was never completely certain that Tareq felt as she felt.

After the night on the roof, Tareq became more and more open, Bahja was right. He talked more often, was more playful, was flirtatious, and comfortable with Jem’ya. He touched her and kissed her in a friendly way, a kiss on the hand or a light squeeze of her shoulder, but that was a rare thing. Jem’ya remembered Tareq’s lips from yesterday’s kiss and the weight and strength of his arms around her waist. Month after month at the Coast she secretly wished for that kiss and that embrace. Shamefully, some days, her body outright screamed to join with his. Pride had stopped her from doing anything that could be considered seductive.

She would ask herself:
How can Tareq stand it if he feels the same way?
Any other man would have stolen a kiss by now.
The fact that he restrained himself was impressive,
if
he did desire her, but it was also frustrating. It didn’t matter, though. That’s what kept Jem’ya quiet. It didn’t matter that she wanted him. He was an Arab and a Muslim, he was from a wealthy family, she didn’t want to end up being his secret lover, marriage was preposterous, their families didn’t know each other, and she didn’t want to give up her life on the Coast. If Tareq ever decided to claim her as his, he’d want her to sacrifice her interests in order to be devoted to him, as most men required.

When the months grew eventually into a year, Jem’ya had to accept that he would never claim her the way she hoped. Looking back, that explained why she had sobbed the day he left after giving her the earrings. No matter how beautiful his gifts were, her heart remained unfulfilled. He wasn’t going to go beyond their friendship to give her the gift of being loved. Now, suddenly, he had. He’d stepped over that boundary and held her, kissed her. She was spinning.

Tareq had done the most horrible thing he could do to her and her family, committing an act that could never be righted. And then Tareq had given her a solace with his words and his caress that calmed her to the depths of her soul. It had been a harmony she’d never felt before with any other person. How it was possible to find such serenity with him despite the whirlwind of suffering that he’d caused her was something she couldn’t begin to fathom. Somehow during those seconds that she was in his arms, he gave her the gift of love for which she’d been yearning.

Bahja had implied that Tareq was keeping Jem’ya imprisoned because he loved her. With the childhood Tareq had lived through, Jem’ya was convinced Tareq didn’t know what love was. Tareq himself had explained that the reason he was keeping her was due to his selfish desire to be forgiven. Guilt was his motivation, not love.

She’d lost her brother.
Her best friend.
Maybe if she spoke with Tareq in a way that was not accusatory, in the benevolent way that she used to talk to him, she could convey what losing her only full-blood sibling felt like, and explain that if he wanted her forgiveness she needed the freedom to mourn with her family in
Tikso
,
Rwuja
.

Tareq’s hands clenched the metal bar as he pulled his body upward. Sweat dripped down his temple and his chest as he challenged his muscles to bring his face above the bar for the fiftieth time. The palace gymnasium was quiet and empty. He was the only one who used it besides his combat trainer. Qadir had perused the gymnasium once or twice after Tareq’s badgering, but he was too pampered for exercise to be appealing to him. Tareq liked the privacy of the gymnasium most of the time. Other times, like this morning, it was ultimately lonely. That was the good and bad of Tareq’s reclusive disposition; he was untroubled, but he was alone.

The thick muscles of Tareq’s misted arms, chest and back strained as he raised his chin to the height of his grip on the bar. His fair skin was reddening in places. A drop of sweat traveled down a curl of his black hair and stung his eye. He carefully let go of the bar and fell to his feet as he blinked and wiped at his eye to soothe it. The servant standing at the door took Tareq by surprise. It was his father’s assistant. The short, sloped-shouldered man with the deeply wrinkled forehead and a shock of gray and black hair stood there with his gaze on his feet, waiting to be acknowledged.

“Yes,” Tareq beckoned as he picked up a towel to wipe his face.

The assistant lifted his gaze and with a brisk pace crossed the gymnasium, almost tripping over his long white tunic. He stopped to bow before Tareq, bending for longer than Tareq was comfortable with.

“Such a greeting is not necessary,” Tareq said.

The assistant straightened and nodded with enthusiasm. “Yes, King Tareq.”

Tareq paused wiping the sweat from his chest with the towel. He frowned at the servant. “What did you just call me?”

“Your Highness, I am here to bring you the news of your father’s passing. He lost his battle with his illnesses sometime during the night.
My deepest condolences, King Tareq.”
The assistant bowed deeply.   

Tareq stared down at the assistant’s balding head as reality trickled into his consciousness. The day Tareq had pawned years of personal freedom for was finally upon him. He’d always imagined that his father’s last moments would be loud and violent, his father screaming and fighting off the cloak of death as long as possible and then stripping Tareq of his right to the throne with his last bitter breath. But, instead, it was quiet; easy. “So he had no last words?”

The servant stood straight and shook his head. “No, King Tareq. There is his written will, of course, stating his requests for his burial, and bequeathing his properties to whomever. The will can’t be read until after he is laid to rest. We have a lot of work to do now, your Highness, and a lot of information to go over. My name is
Asif
. I was your father’s assistant for eleven—frankly,
long
—years. Now I am yours. As your assistant, I am responsible for making this a smooth transition for you. You’ve lived in this palace all of your life, yet there is a lot you don’t know. I will get answers to any of your questions and make certain that your demands are met by the appropriate subordinate. You have a funeral procession, a kinghood ceremony, and a régime committee meeting on today’s agenda, all of which must go without any stumbles because this is your first impression to the public as their new leader. I encourage that we get started as soon as possible.”

Tareq heard everything, but felt nothing. He was free of his father and was now the ruler of Samhia, yet this day did not feel as joyous as he’d anticipated. For some reason he wasn’t sure how to react. “Does Qadir know about our father?”

“Yes,
your
Highness. He’s being informed.”

“Excuse me. I would like to speak with my brother now.” Tareq took a clean shirt from a shelf and pulled it on.  

“Yes, of course. I will have someone bring Prince Qadir to you while we see the royal tailor for a fitting before the chief political advisor briefs you on the inner workings of Samhia, followed by your meeting with the royal speechwriter, all of which we must do in the next 25 minutes.”
Asif
quickly guided Tareq out of the gymnasium. “Your Highness, the first lesson on being a king is learning how to multitask,”
Asif
smiled. They walked through the door out into a hall buzzing with more noise and activity than Tareq had ever witnessed in the palace before. Servants, guards, maids, florists, porters, and councilmen were running in all directions down the passageways, brimming with excitement. Tareq saw a familiar face in the crowd.

“
Saidah
!
Good morning.”

Saidah
and the six maidservants in her group, as well as every other person in the hall stopped in their tracks. “Your Highness,” she grinned, and bowed, followed by everyone else. “
Your
Highness,” they echoed. Most of them were smiling, he noticed. He hadn’t seen anyone walk through the palace with a smile on their face since before his mother was gone. Tareq finally felt a sense of relief. This was not a dream. His father was really dead.

Except for
Saidah
and the maidservants with her, the crowd dispersed and continued racing to their duties and destinations.

“Where are you headed?” Tareq asked the young ladies.

“We’re going to the capitol plaza,”
Saidah
answered. “There are a lot of preparations to be made in the square and at Commander’s Hall.”

Tareq nodded. “I see. Thank you all.”

Saidah’s
gray eyes widened in surprise.
The other women fidgeted in their white burkas, shy and uncomfortable with his acknowledgement.
Saidah
spoke up. “Um, no need to thank us. You are our king.” They all bowed in unison. “Pardon us.” They smiled and scurried away, receding down the hectic hallway.

Tareq was finally hit with the excitement and anxiety of his new title. All these people were running around for him. Every man, woman and child of Samhia was now under his wing. He had the power to make the kingdom the prosperous paradise he’d always imagined, a country his mother had hoped for when she was queen.

Asif
directed Tareq onward into the fast paced, demanding routine of the reigning king. Tareq rushed through a
thobe
and
keffiyeh
fitting, a meeting with the chief advisor who revealed the kingdom was in so much debt that the palace had only enough funds to run at full capacity for ten more days—a fact never brought up in any of the council meetings Tareq had been diligently attending—and a brief chat with the speechwriter who Tareq was amused to discover was under the impression that he could tell him what to say to his people. King Tareq corrected the speechwriter and told him what the major points of his address needed to be: reform, community, and justice.