Kate Hewitt - The Forced Bride Of Alazar

‘Your Highness...’ An attendant hurried forward, and with immense effort Azim straightened, throwing off the servant’s arm. He couldn’t be seen as weak, not even by a servant.

‘I’m fine,’ he grated. Then he walked on leaden legs to his bedroom, and its welcoming darkness.

* * *

Johara stood in the audience chamber for a full five minutes before she felt composed enough to leave its privacy for the prying eyes of the many palace staff. The abruptness of her conversation with Azim had bordered on the surreal, and yet it had possessed the stomach-clenching realisation of hard reality. This man, who had not spared her so much as an introduction, who barked commands, whose smile seemed cruel, was going to be her husband.

She tried to find one redeeming quality in the man she was meant to spend her life with and came up empty. He possessed a strong sense of duty, she supposed, her thoughts laced with desperation and flat-out panic. He wasn’t bad-looking; in fact, if his expression hadn’t been so severe, his manner so terse, she might have thought him quite handsome. His form was certainly powerful, and even in the shock and tension of their conversation she’d noticed his muscled shoulders, the dark slashes of his eyebrows.

He had a compelling look about him, possessing the kind of bearing that made you want to both stare and look away at the same time. He was too much. Too hard, too cold, too cruel. He hadn’t offered her one simple civility in their first meeting. What on earth would their life together look like?

She couldn’t marry him.

Johara pressed her hands to her cheeks, distantly noting their iciness, as she gazed out of the arched window at the desert vista. A hard blue sky and an unrelenting sun framed the endless, undulating desert. Looking at it hurt Johara’s eyes, and made her long for the rolling hills and lavender fields of Provence, the dear familiarity of her book-lined bedroom, her kitchen garden with its pots of herbs, the stillroom where she’d pottered about experimenting with salves and tinctures, pursuing her interest in natural medicine. Made her wish, yet again, that everything about her meeting with Azim had been different. Better. Or preferably, hadn’t happened at all.

She dropped her hands and took a deep breath. What recourse did she have now? She was powerless, a woman in a man’s world, a sultan’s world. Her only option was to run to her father and beg him to release her. Hope flickered faintly as she considered this.

Her father loved her, she knew he did. Yes, he’d been planning for her marriage to the Sultan of Alazar for years, but...he loved her. Perhaps her father had not realised what kind of man Azim was. Perhaps when she told him just how cold and hard her husband-to-be seemed, he’d renegotiate yet again. Or at least ask for a delay, months or even years...

Taking a deep breath, Johara turned from the room. A palace attendant was waiting by the door as she came through. ‘His Highness wished me to show you your rooms.’

‘Thank you, but I’d like to see my father first.’

The attendant’s face was blank, his voice polite as he answered, ‘Many pardons, but that is not possible.’

The anxiety that had been coiling in her stomach like a serpent about to strike reared up, hissing. ‘What do you mean? Why can I not see my own father?’

‘He is in a meeting, Sadiyyah Behwar,’ the man answered smoothly. ‘But I will, of course, let him know you wish to speak with him.’

Johara nodded, the panic receding a little. Perhaps she was overreacting, seeing conspiracy or coercion at every turn. Her father would surely come to her when he was able. He would listen to her. He would understand. He might be ambitious and sometimes a little bit hard, but she had never, not once, doubted his love for her. ‘Thank you.’

She followed the man silently down a long marble corridor to a suite of rooms nearly as opulent as the audience chamber where she’d met Azim. She gazed round at all the luxury, the huge bed on its own dais with silk and satin covers, the sunken marble tub in a bathroom that was nearly as large as her bedroom at home, the spacious balcony that overlooked the palace’s lush gardens. It was lovely, but all she could see was a gilded prison, invisible bars that would hold her there for the rest of her life.

What would she do here, as Azim’s wife? Lie on a bed with her face to the wall, as her mother had these many years, trapped by her own endless despair? Johara resisted that with a deep, frightened instinct. She had long ago vowed never to be like her mother, had chosen a cheerful, optimistic approach to life as a matter of principle, because to give in to doubt or despair was no life at all. Yet optimism was hard to find now.

So then would she devote herself to her children, if they came, and try to forget the unending loneliness of being yoked to a man who had no interest in her beyond her bloodline? Would she be able to make friends, make a life? There was so much she didn’t know, so much she couldn’t imagine and didn’t even want to imagine. She wanted more for her life than what Azim was offering. She wanted more for her life than any arranged marriage could provide. It had taken a fleeting week of precious freedom to make her realise that.

She sank onto a divan by the window, her body aching with both emotional and physical fatigue. It had been a little more than twelve hours since her father had told her she was marrying Azim. And only a week until she would be forced to say her vows...unless she could find some way out of this disaster—seek her father and try to persuade him to end the engagement. He had to listen to her. He loved her, she reminded herself. She was his habibti, his treasure, his little pearl. He wouldn’t let her suffer a fate such as this.

* * *

Azim blinked in the gloom of his bedchamber, the migraine having finally lessened to a dull, endurable throb, the fragments of a dream still piercing his brain in poignant shards. He’d been back in Naples, hiding from Paolo, cowering and afraid. He hated that dream. He hated how it made him feel.

With determined effort Azim shook it off, banishing the memories of his confusion and fear. He was a sultan-in-waiting now, restored to his rightful place, a man of power and authority. He would not allow himself to be bested by his old nightmares, even if he’d had more and more of them since returning to Alazar.

He had no idea what time it was, but he noted the moonlight sliding between the shutters and knew it had been many hours. He closed his eyes, his whole body aching with the effort of having battled the pain—and won.

The headaches that had plagued him since he was fourteen years old had been getting worse since he’d returned to Alazar, no doubt from the unrelieved tension of being back in a place with so many bitter memories, as well as his legacy hanging by no more than a slender thread. He hated the fragility of his position, the powerlessness it made him feel. No wonder he’d had that old dream. He had no idea if the old tribes of the desert would accept him as a leader when he had been gone from his country, from his people’s memory, for so long. He had only been a boy when he’d been taken, an event he couldn’t actually remember. He had not yet had a chance to prove himself capable and worthy of command, no matter that his grandfather had been preparing him for it for years. Marrying Johara, as unwilling as she was, would help to cement his position as the next Sultan. He needed her compliance...or at least her perceived compliance. How she felt didn’t matter at all as long as she obeyed.

Sighing heavily, he rose from his bed, the room see-sawing around him until he was able to blink it back into balanced focus. It wasn’t only the pressures and tenuousness of his role that weighed on him now. It was the look of shocked hurt in Johara’s clear grey eyes when he’d issued his flat commands earlier that day. He had not attempted to soften them with the merest modicum of kindness or compassion; he’d been in too much pain as well as too angry at her own unguarded reaction, when she’d looked up at the palace and he alone had seen the truth in her face.