The Royal House of Karedes: Two Crowns: The Sheikh's Forbidden Virgin / The Greek Billionaire's Innocent Princess / The Future King's Love-Child

The airport was only ten kilometres away, but Aarif noted the darkening smudge on the horizon with some dismay. How long would it take to load all of the cases, make any arrangements? He knew well enough how these things could drag on.

As if to prove his point, the cars slowly drew to a halt. Aarif rolled down his window and peered ahead, but through the dust kicked up by the line of cars he could see nothing.

A minute passed and nothing moved. With another muttered oath, Aarif threw open his door and strode down the barren road to the princess’s car.

He rapped twice on the window and after a moment Kalila’s nurse, a plump woman with bright eyes and rounded cheeks, rolled down the window.

‘Prince Aarif!’

‘Is the princess well?’ Aarif asked. ‘Do you know why we are stopped?’

‘She felt ill,’ the nurse gabbled. ‘And asked to be given a moment…of privacy…’

A sudden shadow of foreboding fell over Aarif, far more ominous than the storm gathering on the horizon. He thought of his conversation with Kalila only moments ago in the church, her talk of independence, her apology for troubling him, and the shadow of foreboding intensified into a throbbing darkness.

‘Where is she?’ he asked, and heard the harsh grating of his own voice. The nurse looked both alarmed and offended, and drew back. Aarif gritted his teeth and tried for patience. ‘This is not a safe place, madam. I do not trust her security in such an inhospitable location.’ He glanced up; the smudge on the horizon was growing darker, wider. Makaris was at least five kilometres behind them, and rocky desert stretched in every direction, the flat landscape marked only by large, tumbled boulders, as if thrown by a giant, unseen hand.

The nurse hesitated, and Aarif felt his frustration growing. He wanted to shake the silly woman, to demand answers—

‘She’s over there.’ The woman pointed a shaking finger to a cluster of rocks about twenty metres away. A perfect hiding place.

Aarif strode towards them, his body taut with purpose and fury. He didn’t know why he felt so angry, so afraid. Perhaps Kalila did indeed need a moment of privacy. Perhaps she was ill. Perhaps this was all in his mind, paranoid, pathetic. Remembering.

Yet he couldn’t ignore his instinct; it was too strong, too insistent, a relentless drumming in his head, his heart.

Something had gone wrong. Something always went wrong.

Still, as he approached the rocks he hesitated. If Kalila was indeed in an indelicate position, it would not do to disturb her. Yet if she was in danger, or worse…

What was worse? What could be worse than danger?

Yet even as Aarif turned the corner of the rocky outcropping, he knew. He knew just what nameless fear had clutched at him since Kalila had apologised in the church, or perhaps even before then, when he’d heard her unhappy sigh in the garden.

For on the other side of the rocks, there was nothing, no princess. But on the horizon, riding towards the storm, was a lone figure on a horse.

Kalila, Aarif realised grimly, was running away.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_be73600e-4580-5d5a-9279-c784b51599aa)

KALILA knew where she was going. It was that thought that sustained her as the wind whipped the headscarf around her face and the gritty sand stung her eyes. She pictured the scene behind her, how quickly it would erupt into chaos, and felt a deep shaft of guilt pierce her.

How long would it take Aarif to realise she had gone? And what would he do? Even with her brief acquaintance of the man, Kalila knew instinctively what the desert prince would do. He would go after her.

The thought sent a shiver of apprehension straight through her, and she clenched her hands on the reins. Arranging her disappearance had not been easy; the plan had crystallised only that morning when she’d looked down at the courtyard, seen the dismantling of her life, and realised she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t ride like a sacrifice to Calista, to marry a man she didn’t love, didn’t even know. Not yet, anyway.

Yet even as she rode towards a grim horizon, an uncertain future, she knew this freedom couldn’t last for ever. She couldn’t live in the desert like a nomad; Aarif would find her, and if he didn’t someone else would.

Yet still she ran. That was what fear did to you, she supposed. It made you miserable, sick, dizzy. Desperate. Willing to do anything, try anything, no matter how risky or foolish, how thoughtless or selfish.

So she kept riding, heading for the one place she knew she’d be safe…at least for a little while.

Two kilometres behind her Aarif grimly wound a turban around his head to protect himself from the dust. Already the wind was kicking grit into his eyes, stinging his cheeks. What was she thinking, he wondered furiously, to ride out in weather like this? He’d warned her of the storm, and surely, as a child of a desert, she knew the dangers.

So was she stupid, he wondered with savage humour, or just desperate?

It didn’t matter. She had to be found. He’d already sent an aide back to fetch a horse and provisions from the city.

The aide had been appalled. ‘But King Bahir must be notified! He will send out a search party—’

Aarif gestured to the darkening sky. ‘There is no time for a search party. The princess must be found, and as soon as possible. I will go…alone.’ He watched the aide’s eyes widen at this suggestion of impropriety. ‘Circumstances are dire,’ he informed the man flatly. ‘If the princess is not found, it will be all of your necks on the line.’ And his. He thought of Zakari, of Bahir, of the countries and families depending on him bringing Kalila back to Calista, and another fresh wave of fury surged through him.

‘Prince Aarif!’ A man jogged up to his elbow. ‘There is a horse, and some water and bread and meat. We could not get anything else in such a hurry—’

‘Good.’ Aarif shrugged into the long, cotton thobe he wore to protect his clothes from the onslaught of the sun and sand. He’d exchanged his shoes for sturdy boots, and now he swung up onto the back of the horse, a capable if elderly mount.

‘Drive to the airport,’ he instructed the aide, ‘and shelter there until the storm wears out. Do not contact the king.’ His mouth curved in a grim smile. ‘We don’t want him needlessly worried.’

The man swallowed and nodded.

Turning his back on the stalled motorcade, Aarif headed into the swirling sand.

The wind was brisk, stinging what little of his face was still unprotected, but Aarif knew it could—would—get much worse. In another hour or two, the visibility would be zero, the winds well over a hundred miles an hour and deadly.

Deadly to Kalila, deadly to him. It was the princess he cared about; his own life he’d long ago determined was worthless. Yet if he failed to bring the princess back to Calista, if she died in his care…

Aarif squinted into the distance, refusing to let that thought, that fear creep into his brain and swallow his reason. He needed all his wits about him now.

The old horse balked at the unfamiliar terrain. She was a city animal, used to plodding ancient thoroughfares before heading home to her stable and bag of oats every night. The unforgiving wind and rocky ground were terrifying to her, and she let it be known with every straining step.

Aarif had always been kind to animals; it was man’s sacred duty to provide for the beasts in his care, yet now his gloved hands clenched impatiently on the reins, and he fought the urge to scream at the animal, as if she could understand, as if that would help. As if anything would.

Where was Kalila? He forced himself to think rationally. She’d had a horse hidden behind the rocks, so someone had clearly helped her. She’d had a plan, a premeditated plan. The thought caused fresh rage to slice cleanly through him, but he pushed it away with grim resolution. He needed to think.

If she had a horse, she undoubtedly had some provisions. Not many, perhaps not more than he had, a bit of food, some water, a blanket. She was not an unintelligent woman, quite the contrary, so she must have a destination in mind, he reasoned. A safe place to shelter out the storm she knew about, the storm he’d told her about.

But where?

He drew the horse to a halt, scanning the horizon once more. Through the swirling sand he could just barely see the outlines of rocks, dunes, the ever-shifting shape of the desert. Nothing seemed like a probable resting place, yet he knew he would investigate every lone rock, every sheltered dune. It was his duty.

His duty. He wouldn’t fail his duty; he’d been telling himself that for years, yet now, starkly, Aarif wondered when he hadn’t failed. He shrugged impatiently, hating the weakness of his own melancholy, yet even now the memories sucked him under, taunted him viciously.

If you hadn’t gone…if you hadn’t said Zafir could come along…if you hadn’t slipped…

If. If. If. Damnable, dangerous ifs, would-have-beens that never existed, never happened, yet they taunted him still, always.

If…your brother would still be alive.

Aarif swore aloud, the words torn from his throat, lost on the wind. The horse neighed pitifully, pushed already beyond her limited endurance.