CHAPTER FOUR

      ‘COME in.’

      Amy’s smile wasn’t returned as the bedroom door opened and Fatima walked in.

      ‘I’m nearly ready.’

      ‘What are you doing?’ Fatima frowned, her serious eyes moving over the mountain of coloured paper scattered over Amy’s bed.

      ‘I’m just wrapping some presents to take for the twins. I hadn’t had a chance before.’ She hadn’t had a chance because after a night spent tossing and turning, wondering if she’d misread things, wondering what might have happened had she not told Emir to leave, Amy had, for the first time since she’d taken the role as nanny, overslept.

      Normally she was up before the twins, but this morning it had been their chatter over the intercom that had awoken her and now, having given them breakfast and got them bathed and dressed, five minutes before their departure for the desert, she had popped them in their cots so she could quickly wrap the gifts.

      ‘Their time in the desert is to be solemn,’ Fatima said.

      ‘It’s their birthday.’

      ‘The celebrations will be here at the palace.’ She stood and waited as Amy removed the gifts from her open case. ‘The King is ready to leave now. I will help you board the helicopter with the twins.’ She called to another servant to collect Amy’s case.

      ‘You need to take the twins’ cases also,’ Amy told him.

      ‘I have taken care of that.’ Fatima clearly did not want the King to be kept waiting. ‘Come now.’

      Perhaps she had imagined last night, for Emir barely glanced at the twins and was his usual dismissive self with Amy as they boarded the helicopter. Amy was grateful for Fatima’s help to strap the twins in. The twins were used to flying, and so too was Amy, but what was different this time was the lack of aides—usually at the very least Patel travelled with them, but this trip, as she had been told many times, would be different.

      Amy could almost forgive his silence and his lack of interaction with the girls during the flight, for she was well aware that this was a journey he should have been making with his wife. Perhaps he was more pensive than dismissive?

      Emir was more than pensive: he looked out to the desert with loathing, and the sun glinting on the canyons made him frown as he stared into the distance. He remembered the rebels who’d used to reside there—men who had refused to wait for the predictions to come true, who’d wanted Alzan to be gone and had taken matters into their own bloody hands.

      ‘It’s beautiful,’ Amy commented as they swept deeper into the desert. She’d said it more to herself, but Emir responded.

      ‘From a distance,’ Emir said. ‘But the closer you get …’

      He did not finish. Instead he went back to staring broodily out of the window, replaying battles of the past in his mind, hearing the pounding hooves and the cries, feeling the grit of sand rubbed in wounds, history in every grain. Yet above all that he could hear her, reading a book to the twins, hear his daughters laughing as they impatiently turned the pages. He wanted to turn to the sound of them, to forget the pain and suffering, to set aside the past, but as King he had sworn to remember.

      The heat hit Amy as soon as she stepped out of the helicopter. Emir held Nakia, while Amy carried Clemira and even though the helicopter had landed as close as possible to the compound of tents still the walk was hard work—the shifting soft sand made each step an effort. Once inside a tent, she took off her shoes and changed into slippers as Emir instructed. She thanked the pilot, who had brought in her suitcase, and then Emir led her through a passageway and after that another, as he briefly explained what would happen.

      ‘The girls will rest before we take them to the Bedouins. There is a room for you next to them.’

      They were in what appeared to be a lounge, its sandy floor hidden beneath layer after layer of the most exquisite rugs. The different areas were all separated by coloured drapes. It was like being in the heart of a vibrant labyrinth and already she felt lost.

      ‘There are refreshments through there,’ Emir explained, ‘but the twins are not to have any. Today they must eat and drink only from the desert …’

      Amy had stopped listening. She spun around as she heard the sound of the helicopter taking off. ‘He’s forgotten to bring in their luggage!’ She went to run outside, but she took a wrong turn and ran back into the lounge again, appalled that Emir wasn’t helping. ‘You have to stop him—we need to get the twins’ bags.’

      ‘They do not need the things you packed for them. They are here to learn the ways of the desert and to be immersed in them. Everything they need is here.’

      ‘I didn’t just pack toys for them!’ She could hear the noise of the chopper fading in the distance. Well, he’d just have to summon someone to get it turned around. ‘Emir—I mean, Your Highness.’ Immediately Amy corrected herself, for she had addressed him as she had so long ago. ‘It’s not toys or fancy clothes that I’m worried about. It’s their bottles, their formula.’

      ‘Here they will drink water from a cup,’ Emir said.

      ‘You can’t do that to them!’ Amy could not believe what she was hearing. ‘That’s far too harsh.’

      ‘Harsh?’ Emir interrupted. ‘This land is harsh. This land is brutal and unforgiving. Yet its people have learnt to survive in it. When you are royal, when your life is one of privilege, it is expected that at least once a year you are true to the desert.’

      Where, she wondered, had the caring father gone? Where was the man who had rocked his tiny babies in strong arms? Who even last night had picked up his sleeping child just to hold her? Maybe she really had dreamt it—maybe she had imagined last night—for he stood now unmoved as Clemira and Nakia picked up on the tension and started to cry.

      ‘We will leave soon,’ Emir said.

      ‘It’s time for their nap now,’ Amy said. She was expecting another argument, but instead he nodded.

      ‘When they wake we will leave.’

      ‘Is there anyone to help? To show me where they rest? Where the kitchen …?’

      ‘It’s just us.’

      ‘Just us?’ Amy blinked.

      ‘There is a groundsman to tend to the animals, but here in the tent and out in the desert we will take care of ourselves.’

      Oh, she had known they would be alone in the desert, but she had thought he had meant alone by royal standards—she had been quite sure that there would be servants and maidens to help them. Not once had she imagined that it would truly be just them, and for the first time the vastness and the isolation of the desert scared her.

      ‘What if something happens?’ Amy asked. ‘What if one of the girls gets ill?’

      ‘The Bedouins trust me to make the right decisions for their land and for their survival. It is right that in turn I trust them.’

      ‘With your children?’

      ‘Again,’ Emir said, ‘I have to warn you not to question our ways.