Zavian knew her secret now, Gabrielle thought, as she descended the stairs to attend the breakfast she’d been summoned to. There was nothing else he could do other than accept her reasoning. It sounded simple in her head, but as Zavian rose to greet her, alone once more, she knew it would be anything but simple.
“You slept well, I trust?”
She nodded warily. “Yes, thank you.”
He indicated she should take the seat opposite him. “Then why do you look so tired?”
She shot him an annoyed look. “No more than you.”
He didn’t appear perturbed by her response. He’d seemed to have shed his kingship the moment he’d set foot inside the desert castle. “I had things on my mind, as I’m sure did you.” He beckoned staff to step forward to serve them breakfast.
As the head steward exchanged a few words with Zavian, Gabrielle looked around. It hadn’t changed at all since she was last here. Then there’d been only Zavian and herself, which was just as well as neither of them had any thought for anyone else.
She took a sip of coffee and closed her eyes as the thick, fragrant brew took her back to that time, a few months after she’d returned from completing her degree at Oxford, when she and Zavian had made love for the first time. It had been here, in this castle, in the room in which she was staying. She’d lost her virginity that night to him, as well as her heart. She blushed at the memory of how completely and utterly she’d given of herself and how her surrender had been rewarded with Zavian’s generous lovemaking. That was the real reason she hadn’t slept. When she opened her eyes again, Zavian was staring at her with an easily-read expression. It was the reason he hadn’t slept either.
Her blush deepened as his eyes swept over her face. It took in the delicate shadows which had formed over the nights since she’d been told she had no choice but to face this moment, down to her lips which she instinctively moistened. Only then did he look away.
“I see you aren’t eating,” he said. “You should.” He leaned forward, his eyes hot. “We are leaving this morning.”
She put down her coffee cup. “So that was it? We come here to have the truth extracted from me, and now you know what happened, we return to the capital, I complete my contract and return home.”
“You appear to have grasped entirely the wrong idea of what is about to happen.”
She frowned. “What other outcome is there?”
“What you don’t appear to have grasped is that you’ve told me nothing I didn’t know, or at least guess, already.” He leaned back in his chair and took a long sip of coffee. “That is not the reason for us being here.”
“Then why go to all the trouble of leaving your work to bring me here?”
“It was the first step. I needed you to know that I knew.”
“Surely there were far easier ways of telling me.”
“The telling was not the objective.”
She shook her head in confusion. “You’re talking in riddles.”
He leaned forward, and her senses were filled with him. “This isn’t about me telling you anything. This is about you needing to understand.”
“I think you underestimate my powers of comprehension. I know you, Zavian. I know how you think, what you like, what you want.”
His lips twisted into a disbelieving hint of a smile. “And what is it that you think I want now?”
“You hate that I left you, and you want to reignite our relationship before your impending marriage—which is everywhere in the news—and then drop me when you’ve had enough and humiliate me in the process.”
He shook his head, no trace of a smile now. “For all your education and intelligence, you have no idea how a man’s mind works.”
“Then enlighten me. Because I’m dying to know.”
“We’re only here to further your education, to make you understand, not me, not the desert or the country, but yourself. To be clear, and it seems I must be, I’ve brought you here to understand the truth about yourself.”
His explanation hadn’t come close to any of the things she’d anticipated he’d say.
“Myself? You want me to know myself? That’s a bit arrogant, isn’t it? To imagine I don’t know myself? Or, as I suspect, because my thoughts don’t agree with yours, you intend to change mine, under the guise of ‘education’.” She sat back and huffed out an unfunny laugh. “Such autocratic arrogance.”
He rose. “Possibly, but that doesn’t mean to say it’s not true.” He tossed down his napkin. “Continue, finish your breakfast because you’ll need all the energy you can find.”
“What now? Have you got me on an assault course to assist me in sorting my muddled thoughts?”
“Something like that. The horses are being readied, and we’ll be leaving in an hour.”
Gabrielle hadn’t wanted to enjoy the horse ride so much. It had been easier to begin with, when she’d been able to keep her anger at the downright arrogance of the man close to her, guiding her feelings. But with each rolling canter of her horse—a sensitive Arab mare who responded to her every movement—she settled into the ride and the landscape. If it weren’t for the thud of the horse’s hooves vibrating through her body, and the astringent heat of the desert filling her lungs, she’d have thought she was dreaming. Each night of the past twelve months, she’d gone to bed with images of the country she loved so much filling her mind, hoping they’d come to life in her dreams. But this was no dream. A shout from Zavian proved it.
“We’ll ride on ahead. Come.” He gave his horse free rein, and they galloped off. Her mare could hardly contain herself, and she also charged off and was soon flying to one side, out of the cloud of sand Zavian’s horse churned up.
Gabrielle suddenly felt free of the sadness that had dogged her steps ever since a year before when she’d made that fateful decision to leave Zavian. Free of the control that had kept her focused on her work in Oxford, and free of Zavian’s control in the palace.
Exhilaration—pure and white-hot—coursed through her veins as they galloped across the desert toward a rocky outcrop in the foothills of the mountains—a place they both knew well.
Finally they slowed, picking their way up and over the outcrop and descended into the oasis where the Romans had enjoyed the hot spas.
Zavian jumped off his horse and walked around to Gabrielle, and she jumped off into his arms. She stepped away abruptly and looked around the clearing. It was exactly as she remembered it.
“It’s just the same,” she said in surprise, tethering her horse to a bush. “I thought there were plans to commercialize it.”
“Not my plans. My father’s. I stopped it.”
This made her look at him. “But it could—”
“Have brought in income and been a great tourist attraction? Yes, I know. But some things are sacred and easily damaged. The very things the people would have been coming here to see would have been destroyed.”
She walked toward the water, an emerald green under the overhanging palms. In one corner, the fan-like leaves rose and fell on the current of warm air rising from where the hot springs bubbled up, driven by the geothermal activity far below ground.
She sensed Zavian standing behind her.
“Do you remember?” he asked quietly.
Of course she did. How could she not? She nodded. Without meaning to, her gaze shifted to where her grandfather’s tents had once stood as they’d excavated in the place where, decades earlier, he’d found the Qur’an. There was nothing there now, of course. But she found what she was looking for, the dark entrance to the cave.
Zavian was about to speak when the sound of vehicles approaching broke through the charged silence, and he sighed and walked off to meet his staff. They were soon following orders, erecting tents for both themselves some distance away, and the main one in the prominent position overlooking the pool, in front of the cave wall. Gabrielle knew from experience that the tent would be connected to the cave and would be an extension of it. She’d slept there after all—before, when she and her grandfather had been working on the site, and then after. When there had been no one except Zavian and herself, and she’d fallen for him physically, just as she had emotionally.
She cleared her throat, trying desperately not to think of those times. They were gone. Whatever Zavian was trying to do, he’d fail because she knew she was doing the best thing. They could have no future, because his country would have no future if they were together. It was as simple—and as complicated—as that.
Soon the formality of the palace had been replaced by the traditional customs of the Bedouin. Food was being prepared, and the camp readied for the night. She smiled as she watched Zavian’s people, free of the formal clothes and actions of the palace, sit cross-legged as they prepared the food while listening to one man talk.
She sat, too, and listened to the man who told a story of a journey across the desert. The story emphasized the meaning of family, brotherhood, and belonging to their people. Before she knew it, Zavian had seated himself beside her and joined her in listening to the man’s story.
After the story ended and the men relaxed to drink and talk, Zavian leaned back against the palm tree’s rough bark. “These stories are old. They should be updated. Life isn’t like that anymore.”
“But it is. For these people, anyway. And they are the people who matter.”
He looked at her thoughtfully. “I have a favor to ask, Gabrielle.”
She swallowed. “And what’s that?”
“Please, show me what you refused to show me the last time we were here.”
“I promised grandfather never to show anyone.”
“I know. But the place is well controlled now. No one can ransack this place. It is secure in a way that it never was before.”
She bit her lip. On the one hand, she felt terrible betraying her grandfather’s confidence. But then she was the last one with the knowledge.
She nodded and looked toward the cave. “It’s this way.”
He followed behind her, so close that she felt as if she were in orbit, a moon to his earth, earth to his sun, aware of him and the pull of him to her.
She stopped before the cave opening, now half-hidden by the adjoining tent. But, instead of going inside, she walked along a narrow ridge behind it. Zavian followed her.
The undergrowth had grown rampant since she’d last been there. She and her grandfather and a few trusted servants had ensured the path to the site wasn’t obvious and that it would re-grow and hide the precious site within months. And it had. Now, years later, it was impossible to imagine that the narrow ledge led anywhere. Certainly, from the frown on Zavian’s disbelieving face, he had no idea that what he was about to see existed.
They had to get on their hands and knees and crawl the last little way. When she emerged, her bare arms were scratched from the thorny scrub, but she didn’t feel a thing as she jumped down from the ledge onto the tiled surface covered with sand and dust. It was instantly apparent from the lack of footprints that no one had been there in years. It had remained a secret.
Zavian emerged from the bush, equally scratched, and equally uncaring, and stepped into the space beside her. “What the hell?”
She grinned. “That’s not a very kingly thing to say.”
He strode out into the center of the tiled area and turned 360 degrees, absorbing the towering trees, the cliff face on one side, and the sharp drop down to the plains far below on the far side. Ancient hot pools were carved into the cliff face with steps leading up to them. The remains of columns dotted the enclosure, nearly enveloped in trailing plants, lush under the thermal steam. Rock faces which hid the place from the world bore the traces of paintings, groups around a pool, men and women in various stages of undress. It had been a secret escape from the desert to the abundance of everything. Fruit trees, offspring of long-ago planted fruit, still clung to the rocks, watered far below the surface by underground water. Their vines were thick and ancient, grown into the rock for support, their fruits hanging lush and plumply purple, attracting both animals and birds.
“It’s the place of which the ancients used to speak,” said Zavian. He turned to face her, his expression serious. “Isn’t it, Gabrielle? The Havilah of old when the three kingdoms were one.”
She nodded. “It is. Grandfather discovered it but swore all of those who came with him to secrecy. He’d intended to return to finish excavating. But it never happened, and—”
“And those who he’d been with perished in the same accident,” continued Zavian.
“Yes.”
“Leaving only you.” At last, he turned to her, and his gaze settled on her. “Would you ever have revealed its existence, if I hadn’t insisted?”
“Honestly? No. I thought it better to remain secret. A part of history. I couldn’t bear the thought of it ruined by looting.”
“But that might have happened anyway. If I’d known about it, I could have secured it.”
She plucked a fruit, brushed it, and bit into it, the juice dribbling down her chin. “Maybe, maybe not. I decided to leave it alone and let it take its chances without me.”
“And are you not fearful of what I might do?”
She shook her head. She should have been, but she wasn’t anymore. She didn’t know why. “No, it’s time, and it’s only right.”
He reached out his hand, and she took it. Again, it felt right.
“So this was where my forebears came for sensual pleasure. The rumors and legends were correct. It is a fitting place. No wonder it has gained such a reputation.”
The air, redolent with abundance and sensuality, seemed to enter her pores. “Yes, a strange place to find the Khasham Qur’an.”
“So, are you going to show me?”
“The place where my grandfather found the Qur’an?”
His eyes nodded.
“Of course. This way.”
She led him through a narrow gap, past another pool fringed with palm trees, out to a part of the desert far from the nomad’s tracks, where there was nothing, at least to most people’s eyes. But Gabrielle knew each and every contour of this land. She could walk it in her sleep and often had done.
The sun was beginning to set by the time they’d made their way to the site of the original dig, now covered by a decade of sands, which had shifted and peaked and obliterated any trace of excavation.
Gabrielle stopped and looked across at the craggy hillside above the secret oasis, then at another oasis, which shimmered in the distance. She walked a few more paces forward and then retrieved her compass from her pocket to make sure. She nodded in satisfaction and dropped to her knees. She patted the ground. “Here.”
She lifted the sand in the palm of her hand and let it sift through her fingers, the lowering sun turning the sands orange, a sharp contrast to the dark blue sky. She suddenly realized Zavian hadn’t moved.
He stood rooted to the spot looking down at her, and then at the ground before her, and then around at its setting. He shook his head. “I never imagined it would be here.” He pointed to the oasis. “Our people pass through that oasis on their way to the mountains.”
“Unaware that this ever existed, apart from the songs and poems,” she added.
“Which describe it as it was, but not where it is.”
He dropped down beside her, squinting into the lowering sun.
“So,” he said. “What is the story which you will write to go with the Khasham Qur’an?”
“I’ll write of how it was created long ago when this land was at the heart of the world’s economy and learning and religion. I’ll write of how the inks were ground from pigment brought from far and near, of how the parchment was made, and of how wondrous the palace and buildings were which once stood here.”
“The fabled land of Havilah, indeed,” murmured Zavian. “And what else will you write?”
“Of how the Qur’an passed from hand to hand. Of how both its beauty and its contents bound these communities, making sense of their world.”
“But that’s not enough.”
She looked at him sharply.
“I want the personal. That’s what touches people.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Try.”
She swallowed and looked straight ahead at the dying sun, now strangely swollen, its colors muted into eerie tones of burnt umber. “When my grandfather showed it to me”—she looked at him with an embarrassed smile—“I told him my tears were because of the sun. But they weren’t.”
“That’s better.”
“I’ll write of how it was found.” She needed to be precise.
“But not where.”
“No, not where.”
She refused to look at him because she felt the effect of his proximity already. “He shouldn’t have done it. It was against all his professional ethics, to cover up his tracks.”
“He left a myth surrounding it, instead of the facts.”
“The facts would have destroyed this place. Taken its soul away.” She couldn’t resist. She looked at him. “That’s what he believed anyway.”
His eyes narrowed with curiosity. “And is that what you believe? That places have souls?”
She nodded briefly, her eyes straying to his lips before returning to his eyes, which revealed an even more intense curiosity. He lifted a lock of her hair which had fallen across her face and tucked it behind her ear, stroking the length of it briefly before dropping his hand once more. “I know that’s a strange thing to believe,” she said softly.
He shrugged. “Many people in this world believe many things, and who am I to judge whether they are strange?”
She smiled. “You sound almost humble.”
“You mistake strength and purpose for arrogance.” He inclined his head closer to hers, and she gave a sharp intake of breath, which brought his scent into her lungs. “Don’t confuse things, Gabrielle. I’m a man who knows what he wants, and I intend to get it.”
She swallowed with a sudden stab of fear. “And how exactly do you intend to do that?”
A smile flickered on his lips, the first she’d seen in a long time. “Through something you once showed me… subtlety.”
He leaned closer, lifted her chin with his finger, and kissed her gently on the lips. He’d withdrawn before she could react. The kiss had been fleeting, but the effects were far from it. It brought something to life deep inside, something she didn’t want.
She jumped up and stepped away from him, pushing the back of her hand against her mouth as if to wipe the kiss away. She shook her head. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
He was beside her in an instant, taking her hand. “Don’t tell me that you don’t want my touch, that you don’t imagine the feel of my lips upon yours, because I don’t believe you.”
“It might be true, but it doesn’t mean that I’m going to act on it.”
She tried to tug her hand away, but he kissed it, holding it to his face and closing his eyes. “Gabrielle, I know why you’re resisting me. It’s because you feel you don’t belong, but you do. You talked of this land having a soul. No one who was not a part of this land would sense such a thing.”
“I know what you’re saying, Zavian, but it doesn’t matter. What people believe is what matters.”
“Which is why the stories are so important. We have to make them see. But before that, I have to make you see.”
“And how do you intend to do that?”
“To make you feel again.”
He tugged her to him, and she couldn’t stop herself. He caressed her shoulders, holding her close to him, searching her face, as if for signs of resistance. There were none. Her power to stop the inevitable was blown. And then his lips were upon hers, but the kiss was no tender glancing meeting of the lips. This time his mouth was hungry for passion, searching out her tongue until her stomach flipped with desire. He drew her closer to him, and she could feel every inch of tension, every contour of muscle, and his increasing arousal.
Her blood raced with desire, her sex was wet with it as she pushed herself against him. His heartbeat exploded under the palm of her hand, which had somehow slipped beneath his shirt. She wanted him as she’d never wanted him before—with a raw passion which bypassed any thinking or feeling. She simply needed him.
He pulled away first and pressed his forehead against hers. Their breathing came in jagged pants as desire—hot and intense—gripped them both.
“I could have you here, now, Gabrielle.”
“Then do it.” She caressed his hips, urging him with another kiss to surrender to the lust she knew he felt.
But he pulled away again, brushing his thumb against her swollen bottom lip. “No, habibti.” He turned his head to one side, looking out over the horizon. “Look.”
And she did. But what she saw wasn’t what she’d expected to see. The sky was dark, but not a natural dark, it was bruised with the rising cloud of sand as it swirled in winds which they had yet to feel the full strength of.
“Khamseen…” she said.
He nodded. “We must go now.”
He took her hand, and they ran back toward the trees, the wind suddenly coming upon them, lifting the palms up and down, as if urging them to move faster. The wind tugged at their clothes, swirled her hair around her face, plastering it against her cheeks and eyes until she couldn’t see anymore. She could only follow his lead, only respond to the grip of his hand over hers as they ran for their lives.