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This is how it has to be, he told hih it felt eht Or he did This is safer for her by far

Khaled had never felt so hollow in his life

“You’re scowling,” Cleo said now, entirely without inflection, because he had told her she was nothing and she’d taken hi

He should have rejoiced at his success Instead, he felt nothing but grih he’d blacked out his own sun

“I find rows thinner all the ti he didn’t understand to confide in her The further he pushed her away, the further she disappeared behind that smooth mask of hers, the more he wanted her close He couldn’t recall the last ti her permanently into his suite in the palace Because he was a despicable man The truth of that pressed into him, cold and inescapable “I find it less and less unreasonable that my father locked himself away in Jhurat and closed off all the borders It would be easier”

Cleo was silent for a moment She’d become even more slender in the past few months, and his hand spanned her waist in a way he didn’t entirely like But still sheas exquisite as she was, and it wasn’t the first time Khaled wished—deeply and wildly—that he was a different man

Or even that he’d found a better way to keep her at arth

“You are not your father,” she said, her tonehis only briefly before sliding away in that deferential manner she’d adopted that made him clench his teeth “You want more for Jhurat than he did”

“That doesn’t ood”

Because that hat he did, wasn’t it?

“At least you will have tried,” she said after a ht The same vicious words he couldn’t take back That he knew he shouldn’t want to take back “That has to be better than hiding out and pretending nothing is happening, doesn’t it?”

Their gazes tangled then, and Khaled very nearly missed a step

He didn’t knohat surged in hiht through to his core He didn’t knohy he could only look down at her, as shaken as he was cursed, and wonder who this smooth, perfect creature ho spoke so softly and knew him so well and was lost to him forever

When, of course, he knew She hat he’d made her with his very own hands She hat he’d demanded she’d become She’d opened herself up wide and he’d smashed her flat