“You’re not even listening to me, are you?” Aaliyah was demanding then, her hands on her hips and a distracting high color on her cheeks. “How dare you drag my son into this mess? In front of all those people and cameras? In this palace that isn’t fit for children in the first place!”“I was raised in this palace,” he said very mildly. “Though I’m guessing you won’t think that much of a draw.”He turned away from the view, leaning back on the rail so he could look at her instead. And also so he could practice that indolence that had once been such a part of him, because it no longer felt like second nature.That impossible prettiness of Aaliyah’s seemed to infuse everything, even the dusk settling around her shoulders like a shawl.That deep gold thread inside him pulled tight.That longing in him was something more like a roar—“Hear me,” she bit out, and whatever he might have been about to do disappeared, lost somewhere in the way she held her hands on her hips, her censorious gray

“This is real life.” And though her voice was quiet, he could hear the undercurrent in it that told him how deeply her feelings ran. But then, so did his. “It is Troy’s real life, Omar Farouq. This isn’t whatever game you think you’re playing with us. His life matters more than whatever dies are cast or whatever court intrigue is happening here. He has nothing to do with any of it.”“That is where you are wrong,” Omar Farouq replied, and he sounded almost regretful, there in the gathering night. Though he was not. There was nothing here to regret. Not when there was vengeance waiting in the coming night and, here between them, this same, simmering desire that had been there from the start. “You have had five years to enjoy being the sun and the moon and the whole of the stars for that little boy. That was not real life, Aaliyah. That was only ever a fantasy, and had I known sooner, it would not have lasted as long as it did. Because for all your talk of fairy tales and the things that

The palace wedding machine lurched into gear, starting early the next morning. Squadrons of smartly dressed and impeccably cheerful staff members descended upon her in shifts, all of them insisting that everyone—by which, they meant Aaliyah needed to pitch in to get her ready for the role they’d decided she must take.But Aaliyah refused to play along.No matter how brightly her attendants told her that she needed to turn up at this time or in this place, she didn’t. Instead, she and her aunt took Troy for long walks when it was sunny, out on the rambling palace grounds, which she was sure had to be bigger than her favorite park in San Francisco. When the weather was less cooperative, they raced up and down the grand marble halls, as if the palace was no more than a playground.And in many ways, it was better than any playground they had ever been to before. The palace not only had hallways stuffed full of antiquities, but many of them also featured suits of armor and sharp weapons th

He expected she might flinch at that, but if anything, she stood taller. And her gaze remained as it ever was, direct and steady. “You didn’t care about me. Why would it cross my mind that you’d care if I had a child? I’ve already apologized, Omar Farouq. And I’m sorry that you can’t accept my thinking on this. But that doesn’t mean I’m lying about it.”“And do you truly believe that I will ever let you leave my sight again?” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, his voice a dangerous throb. “Do you imagine for one moment that now, having finally met the son you kept from me, I would ever let him go again?”He watched that move through her and was glad of it. Glad that she might feel some small portion of what he did.“I told you that I’m happy to share custody with you,” she said very carefully. And perhaps not as steadily as before.“Do you imagine your happiness signifies?”“I saw how you were with him today. It was...” And he thought that the way she swallowed then—too hard, too l

Especially when she found her aunt sitting on a swing in the rose garden, watching Omar Farouq and Troy kick a soccer ball back and forth on the royal lawn.Her heart squeezed so tight she had to stop walking and fight to breathe. Aaliyah had to remind herself—sternly—of the six hard years she’d struggled through.Almost entirely alone.She found she had to do that a little too much as the days wore on.“Maybe it’s not all bad,” said Corrine on one of their walks through the extensive palace gardens.Back home in Tahoe: They had often tried to put in a bit of a summer garden in what summer there was so high up in the mountains. Unkillable geraniums seemed to be the height of their gardening prowess.It felt a bit like a metaphor that even the gardens here were unutterably lush.“There are worse things, of course,” Aaliyah allowed, trying not to sound disgruntled.When, in fact, she felt disgruntled. She’d woken from strange, dark dreams to find Omar Farouq in the shower. He had bid he