Page 58 of The Desert King's Kidnapped Virgin
But here, in the unforgivingly clear glare of the desert sun, he knew it was. He felt it deep in his bones, that had not crumbled. He heard it like a song that he was no longer afraid to sing.
And more, he reveled in it, because of Hope.
He strode to meet her. And when she was within reach, he stopped. Turning slowly, there before his people, he stretched out his arms, inviting them all to look upon him.
“I stand before you, Lord and King,” he said, and all of his people murmured the appropriate words in reply, bowing their heads. Hope stared back at him, her head unbowed. “But first, I am a man. A husband. And soon enough, I will be a father.”
He turned fully, back to Hope.
And then, holding her gaze, he sank to his knees before her, smiling when he heard the mutters that ran through the crowd. “I kneel before you, the mother of my child. I kneel before you because I grant you that power over me that some call weakness, but that you and I know is far stronger than thrones or armies or ancient tales whispered down through the ages.”
“Cyrus...” she whispered then, her golden gaze wide. “What are you doing?”
“This is the love of a king,omri,” he said. And he used that word deliberately now, here in public where it could not be taken back.Omri.My life.So that all who heard it would know he meant it. So that she would. “I will always do my duty to my people, to my land. But my life, my heart, my soul—all of these are yours, Hope. There will always be a Lord of the Aminabad Desert, as long as there is sand to dance beneath the desert sun.” All his people murmured theirhallelujahswhen he said this, as was tradition—but he kept going. “But as long as that lord is me, I will love you. As long as there is breath in my body and blood in my veins, I am yours.”
He waited as she stood there, looking something like stricken as she gazed at him.
So Cyrus let his mouth curve, and did not quite incline his head. “If, that is, you will have me?”
And for a moment, he thought all was lost.
That he had taken this too far, with plots and harems and his regrettable reaction to the news he should have known was coming, that of course she would fall pregnant if he did not one thing to stop it—
I suspect you wanted not to think about it, his mother had said, too wisely.So that you could force the issue. You are an Aminabad king, Cyrus.And she had smiled.You like a choice to feel like an inevitability. Preordained, if possible.
But that didn’t mean that Hope had reached the same conclusion. Or would.
She shook her head and stepped back, breaking his heart into pieces.
He thought of his own mother, who had loved long beyond any hope that it would be returned. Who had told him, in all seriousness, that even if he had never come back to her, she would have loved him forever.Love is not about what does or doesn’t happen, she had said.Love is about love, and I know you don’t understand this, my darling boy, but it is its own reward.
But here, in this moment, he understood.
Loving Hope had taught him what it was to be alive.
Not simply the brutal creature his father had insisted he become. He was a man grown, and he could make himself in his own image. There were already too many cracks in the stones his father had placed around his heart.
For one thing, Cyrus could not imagine caring at all if the child Hope carried was a daughter or a son, so long as it was healthy.
So long as he and this woman who had given him everything already could care for it together.
Cyrus knew he would still feel these things, because she had taught him how to feel in the first place, no matter what she said next.
He accepted this.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t try to sway her.
“I love you,” he told her, and he did not care if the whole of his kingdom heard him. “I love you like the sun loves the earth and I will continue to love you, even if you cast me aside. I loved you before I met you, building you up in my head. I loved you when I brought you here, when you defied me at every turn and confounded me because you would not cower and you would not become every wrong thing I imagined you to be. You would not bend, you did not break, and in so doing, you have taught me that there is no shame in either. You have taught me strength and you have taught me hope itself, like the beacon of it you have been and always will be. I was wrong about you in every possible way, and I am so glad you loved me anyway. And all of this will be true,omri, no matter what you say next.”
And for a moment there was only the sun all around, the sky up above. The desert outside these walls where the sands were always shifting. Always waiting to take back what belonged to them. Filled with the ancient knowledge of the thousands of lives that had come and gone before his. And thousands more that would come after, then blow away again, sand into sand again.
All of those lives meaningless, he thought, without love.
As his father’s had been.
Just as his had been without Hope.
“With, of course, some draconian custody arrangements, I assume,” she said at last. “Should I decide that I prefer less sand, on balance, than you have shown me thus far.”
