PROLOGUE

       1988

      IT WAS AS though Yasmine floated just ever so slightly outside her skin, so the sounds and smells of the maternity ward were muffled by the disconnect between flesh and spirit. Even the sensations of her body, the gritty pain each time she blinked her closed lids, the movement of the baby, the interminable heat, were distant things.

      The observation ward wasn’t full. Just her and one other lady, who was also alone. Neither of them spoke, although the curtain between their beds had been left open.

      She let herself drift, leaving the agonizing present to go back in time to the night she’d lain in her husband’s arms, and joy had been their only companion.

      The night she’d told him she was finally, miraculously, pregnant.

      Brian had been ecstatic, had shifted down in the bed so his face rested next to her belly.

      “My child,” he’d said. “My son or daughter. Prince or princess.”

      Her heart had leapt at his words.

      For thirty years he’d held fast to the rule: no one must ever know who they were. What he was. Not one lax moment was to be tolerated. Yet here he was, saying it out loud. It had given her a chill, and involuntarily her gaze shifted to the closed door of their room, as though expecting people to burst through to tear them apart.

      She’d had to stop herself from asking him not to say such things again, reassured herself he was using it in the North American way, as an endearment toward a child so longed for, it would be treated like royalty.

      And Brian had longed for this child. His disappointment as the years passed and Yasmine didn’t conceive was as acute as her own. Yet he never placed blame. Never suggested he should seek another woman who could give him an heir. Indeed, this baby would be heir to very little. Their need to keep a low profile had taken them to Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, where they’d remained.

      When asked where they were from, Brian always said, “Just outside Bombay,” because it was a city he’d once known well, and could make intelligent conversation about. They both had diverse ethnic backgrounds, including Indian ancestors, but in her opinion neither really looked as though they came from India. However, the Canadians they came in contact with didn’t seem to notice.

      Sometimes, as ethnic diversity stretched north, they got skeptical looks, but although Brian had thrown off all the trappings of royalty, he’d lost none of the confidence seemingly bred into his bones.

      No one really pressed him about it.

      Yasmine had simply kept her mouth shut most of the time, not completely trusting herself to maintain the fiction, should she get too close to anyone. She’d been homesick and heartsick for a lot of those years, secretly regretting not being able to go to university, having to work low-paying jobs, but having Brian made up for it all.

      Now he was gone, and Yasmine couldn’t find a way back into her body to mourn, or even to be angry.

      Four months before, his strange symptoms had started—arm pain, moments of disorientation and lack of balance, among others. He’d made light of it all, so Yasmine had never realized the seriousness of it until he’d collapsed with a seizure at the rail yard and had been taken to the hospital. After tests and scans he’d been transferred to Edmonton, where he’d had more of both. Then the oncologist had been glaringly blunt, although Yasmine thought the sympathetic glint in his eyes somewhat negated his directness.

      “It’s stage four colon cancer, which has already metastasized to your liver, lungs and brain. I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do, other than arrange pain management and hospice care for you going forward.”

      For the first time in their marriage, Yasmine had been the one to fight, to raise her voice, to insist there must be—must be—something they could do.

      Brian had sat there, as still as the statue of his ancestor in the center of Huban, which commemorated not just the first King but also repelling the French from their shores.

      The doctor had given him six months. He’d only lived three and a half. And every moment of the time he’d had left had been devoted to thinking about their child.

      “Take our child home, Yasmine,” he’d said.

      “To Fort McMurray? Of course.” Where else had he thought she would go? At least there she knew her way around, had a job, a few friends.

      “No, no,” he’d whispered, squeezing her fingers. “Home, to take his or her rightful place.”

      She wouldn’t say either yes or no. Her habitual fear may have been rendered distant and weak by the pain of watching him slip away, but it still held sway.

      Finally, wanting to understand, she’d asked, “Why would you put such a burden on our child, when you didn’t want it yourself?”

      He’d shaken his head. “I would have carried the burden, but my need for you was far stronger than the need to fulfill my responsibilities to the country.”

      He had been dying by then, so she hadn’t let loose the words gathering beneath her tongue, threatening to choke her if she didn’t spit them out.

      He’d hated it all. His unpredictable, forbidding, controlling and manipulative mother. The constant rounds of royal protocol and living in a fishbowl. When he’d told her he was taking off, it hadn’t been couched as, I can’t live without you: run away with me. No, he told her he was leaving and asked if she wished to go.

      Of course, she’d said yes.

      At sixteen, she would have done anything for him.

      Now he was trying to push her to take their child, her baby, back to a place where, if they believed Yasmine’s story, they’d take him or her away; probably imprison Yasmine too. Her father had some influence, but not enough to save her from the repercussions of that long-ago decision.

      Perhaps it had been the cancer that had made Brian