The Desert King / An Affair with the Princess: The Desert King. Michelle Celmer

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СКАЧАТЬ with the guilt, the pain for so long. Then I find out you’re alive, near your father, well and loved, and that I can see you. I would have settled for seeing you from afar, for being deservedly hated by you…but you…you…You’re wonderful, so full of light and life.”

      “Full of light and life, huh? Now that’s a new spin on things. To everyone else, I’m full of erratic energy and instability.”

      Anna looked genuinely taken aback. “How can anyone think that? I can’t think of anyone who’s less erratic and unstable.”

      Aliyah threw her head back on a self-deprecating laugh. “Oh, postpone your verdict until you’ve known me longer than an hour.”

      “I won’t change my mind a year or ten years from now. Things like that are the first thing one feels from others. You’re energetic, vivacious and from what I’ve heard, incredibly creative, truly independent and have the strength of your convictions. And yes, you’re unpredictable, but I don’t need more than the past minutes to realize it’s in the best of ways. You clearly do what’s right rather than what’s accepted.”

      Aliyah lips twitched. “Wow, that’s quite a testimony. Can I call on you next time I have to fend off accusations of irrationality? Hmm…I do what’s right rather than what’s accepted. I think that will be my new slogan, Anna….” She stopped, bit her lip. “Uh…is it okay if I call you Anna? I’d feel weird if you wanted me to call you Mom or something.”

      Anna surged forward, eagerness spilling from her tremulous smile. “As long as you call me at all, I’m happy for you to call me anything that feels comfortable to you.”

      Aliyah’s smile grew. “Anna feels comfortable.”

      In answer, Anna’s smile faltered. Aliyah felt she could see into the older woman’s mind, that she thought she wasn’t entitled to this level of ease with the daughter she’d given up.

      “Listen, Anna, as you said, time isn’t an issue here. What happened is in the past, so let’s leave it there and move on. Now. I don’t want to observe a period of appropriate awkwardness. If you want to know me, if you want to be a part of my life, then let’s start now. What do you say?”

      Anna looked like she’d burst into tears before she nodded vigorously. “I do—I want all that. Oh, God…how could anyone ever think you erratic and irrational?”

      Aliyah stilled. The call of blood, Anna’s willingness to do anything to atone, to know her, be there for her now that she’d found her, surged inside her. For the first time in her life, she felt she wanted to, could share her secret.

      She took the leap. “When I was six, my teachers couldn’t interest me in anything in school, couldn’t even get me to sit down. I was always listening to voices and seeing whole worlds inside my head and telling everyone who’d listen—and even anyone who wouldn’t—about them. I was almost diagnosed as autistic, but I was too curious and could talk anyone under the table. Therapists had to label my condition so they settled on ADHD.”

      Distress crept into Anna’s face. “This is my fault…you inherited those tendencies from me. I was always too hyper, too awake, too quick, too something or other. It was what drew Atef to me, and I think what ultimately put him off—apart from the fact that he had to marry for his kingdom.”

      Aliyah shook her head. “I bought into the psychobabble for a long time, but I no longer do. Who’s to say what’s ‘hyper’ and what’s not? What’s ‘too much’ of anything? We’re individuals who can’t be quantified. They wanted me to conform, and when I didn’t they decided there was something wrong with me, tried to fix me and almost ruined me for life. They misdiagnosed me, put me on prescription drugs, kept increasing the dose to get the effect they were seeking until, for the next ten years, I was a zombie.”

      Anna gasped. “Oh, my God…oh, Aliyah, I’m so sorry.”

      “Yeah, me, too. I feel like I missed my childhood, that it passed before me while I watched it from behind a distorted barrier.”

      “Didn’t your—your parents realize that?”

      “Yeah, but not for many years. At first they were so relieved when my teachers—the ones who’d started the whole thing—started saying I’d become an exemplary student, citing that as proof of their insight into my so-called condition. Later my parents kept attributing my subdued state to puberty. By the time I was fourteen, they could no longer fool themselves and tried to wean me off the drug. I went ballistic. I don’t remember what happened exactly, but I think I tried to commit suicide. They gave up, put me back on it. I didn’t know what was going on. I trusted them and took my medicine like a good girl. Then when I was almost seventeen I overheard a very enlightening conversation. They’d long realized I’d been misdiagnosed, or at least that I had a severe reaction to the drug—to both taking it and trying to get off it. And I decided to take matters into my own hands, kick the habit that I realized had been controlling me all my life.”

      A tear raced down Anna’s cheek. “How did it go?”

      “To hell. The mental and psychological version. I was an addict, and I went through every kind of withdrawal. I think I went totally insane for a while.”

      Aliyah fell silent as her heart stampeded as if she were in the throes of one of those episodes again. Putting her ordeals into words was both cathartic and exhausting.

      A long time later, Anna hiccuped, whispered, “But you’re okay now. You have been for many years.”

      The urge to comfort her surged within Aliyah, came out on a fervent “I am.” Then she felt compelled to be as honest about the rest. “Though I can’t call getting shoved into a marriage of state to the last man on earth I ever wanted to see again ‘okay.’”

      The tear trailing down Anna’s cheek became a stream that splashed on the hands upturned helplessly in her lap. “Oh, my God…it’s all my fault again. Everything I am, everything I did affected your life so profoundly. It’s still hurting you, changing the course of your life where you don’t want it to go. I kept thinking maybe I don’t need to feel so guilty, since everything was turning out great for you, especially since I saw your g-groom and thought him incredible…”

      Aliyah huffed the breath she’d been holding. “You and every female on the planet, Anna. That doesn’t make him human.”

      Anna looked as if she might have a heart attack. Aliyah wanted to reach out and comfort her. She curled her hands on the urge for a second then exhaled. What the hell. She was what she was. And one thing she’d never stop doing was comforting others in distress.

      Anna jerked when Aliyah reached out and squeezed her shoulder, her eyes widening on such a mixture of surprise and hope that Aliyah groaned. “It’s not your fault, okay? I may have thought that when I was still in shock and having an internal tantrum, but that’s just too far-fetched. You didn’t make the Aal Shalaans into grabby bastards, and you didn’t make Kamal a ruthless one.”

      “You’re making me feel even worse, being so kind.”

      “I’m just honest.” Aliyah smiled, prodding her to smile back, to lighten the mood. She had enough heartache in her future, she couldn’t take any now. “One way to look at things is that it’s a good thing you had me, or two kingdoms would be on the brink of civil war right now. I’ll go down in history as the chess piece that defused the whole mess. Not many women can boast such a pivotal role, even if СКАЧАТЬ