In Defiance of Duty (13 page)

completely disappearing into him until she did nothing at all but smile politely and wait for him, forgetting that she had ever wanted more than that for herself. She’d felt that like a noose around her neck by the time they’d reached Washington—her own eradication happening all around her with every state dinner, every smile she aimed at a different dignitary she had to be so careful not to offend. What would be left of her? Anything at all?

Her mother had said as much before Kiara left.

“When will you be back?” Diana had asked from the door of Kiara’s bedroom. Kiara had started, and then had wondered just how long her mother had been standing there. If she’d seen, for example, how emotional Kiara was valiantly attempting not to be.

“I’m not sure,” she’d said, frowning down at the clothes she’d laid out before her as if it required fierce concentration to put together a small suitcase. As if, after all those years of constant travel, she couldn’t do this sort of thing in her sleep. “I’ll let you know as soon as I have a reasonable estimate, of course.” She had been speaking to her boss, not her mother. She’d been assuming that Diana had wanted that information so that she could continue to monitor Kiara’s workload in her absence. She should have known better.

“Kiara …” Diana’s voice had trailed away, uncharacteristically, and when Kiara had looked over at her, she’d been shocked to see a strange sort of expression on her mother’s face. As if Diana had been lost for words. Or simply lost. It had made Kiara feel knocked off balance. “You don’t have to go with him. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. You can stay here as long as you like. Stay a ghost, even. Until you work out whatever it is you need to work out.” There was a part of her that had yearned to accept that invitation—that had seen it as the olive branch it was undoubtedly meant to be. And it was even a good, short-term solution. Let Diana chase Azrin off while Kiara hid in her room like a child and licked her wounds. It certainly held great appeal. She’d already been doing it for a month.

But the rest of her had been far too wary of what it meant to give up control to Diana—and what Diana herself would have made of it if she did. Diana had never ceded control to anyone. Diana had created an empire out of sheer bloody-mindedness. Why couldn’t Kiara do the same?

Not to mention, there was that stubborn core of her that couldn’t bear Diana to think ill of Azrin, even by implication.

“Do you think so little of me that you think Azrin is bullying me into leaving with him?” she had asked, more sharply than was fair. “That I’m letting him?” Guilt swamped her as soon as she said the words. She despaired of herself. It was easier to give in to her anger; it masked how truly conflicted she felt in her mother’s presence and always had. But that didn’t make it right.

“Of course not,” Diana had said impatiently. “He’s certainly an intimidating, formidable man, but you’ve never seemed remotely overwhelmed by it. I rather thought that was one of the things you liked about him.”

“He’s my husband,” Kiara had said, fighting to keep her turbulent emotions under control. “I like a great many things about him.” Diana had sighed. “I was eighteen when I met your father,” she’d said quietly. Too quietly. As if this was not the same old story she trotted out to reestablish their roles—to underscore her sacrifices and Kiara’s failure to live up to them. “Only twenty when we had you. Before I met him I’d had all kinds of different dreams. I wanted to paint. I wanted a degree. I thought I’d travel. I had an enduring fantasy of running a bed-and-breakfast somewhere desperately remote, where I could go weeks without seeing another living soul.” She’d shifted where she stood, smiling slightly, as if at her own memories. “I’d never thought twice about wine. I don’t think I could have picked out a vineyard if I’d been lost in one, much less the difference between the grapes. But I loved your father, and this was where he had to be, so this is where I came.”

Kiara had stopped pretending that her clothes were so difficult to pack, that they’d required her full attention, and had turned to face her mother then, crossing her arms as she did it. As if she’d expected some kind of body blow. She’d never heard this before. She’d never heard Diana express anything even remotely approaching regret.

“It was hard,” Diana had said softly, her much too similar brown eyes meeting Kiara’s. “Much harder than I expected.” Kiara had shaken her head, refusing to give in to the confusing emotional storm that pounded through her then, making her question everything. Her mother.

Herself.

Anger was easier. Safer.

“You’ve always said that the two of you were happy,” she’d pointed out, fighting to keep that harsh edge from her voice. “Wildly happy, in fact.”

“I’m not saying we weren’t,” Diana had countered. “I’m saying it was hard. More for me than for your father. He simply led the life he’d been raised to lead, while I had to learn how to be a part of it. But I still had my own dreams. Even after you were born. I thought I’d leave the winery to your father and pursue them on my own.” She’d looked at Kiara for a long, uncomfortable moment. “But then he died.” Kiara had felt as if something had reached straight into her and had wrapped impossibly strong hands around her heart, her lungs, her stomach. And then had started to squeeze. She’d felt a surge of something she wanted to call fury, but it had been far too dark for that, far too edged with a deep current that felt too much like misery. And she’d refused to explore any of it. She’d understood with cold certainty that she didn’t want to know.

“Let me see if I can parse this one out,” she’d said instead, all of that anguish inside of her sharpening as she spoke, making her stand there like an ice sculpture and glare at Diana. “Either this is an anecdote about the perils of loving a man and moving with him into his predetermined life, or it’s a rather more sentimental story about the need to follow my hopes and dreams despite my marriage. Which is it?” As usual, Diana had seemed completely impervious to any show of temper. Or any insult. Also as usual, that had had the direct result of making Kiara feel like a toddler in midtantrum.

But that had been far preferable to what lay beneath. It always was.

“What I’m telling you is simple,” Diana had said instead, with a little laugh that had sent Kiara’s blood pressure skyrocketing. “After your father died, there were times that I looked around and wondered how on earth I’d ended up hip-deep in all of this wine when I’d never wanted anything to do with it. I’m lucky in that I’ve found that I’m quite good at it, but that’s not always how this kind of story ends.” She raised her elegant shoulders and then let them fall. “I know that becoming the Queen of Khatan is a role you took on as the price you had to pay to be with Azrin. I don’t want you to look back on the choices you make now and find you regret them, Kiara.” She’d shrugged again, but there was something so sad about it that it made Kiara’s throat seem to close. “That’s all.” Kiara had felt a great wave swell in her then, and she’d been terrified it might be a sob, or the start of a great many sobs. It had rolled through her body and made her come much too close to shaking. Or worse. She’d hugged herself, hard, her fingers digging into her own flesh, and managed somehow to keep her eyes steady on Diana’s.

“You make a lot of assumptions,” she’d managed to say in a voice that was a good approximation of normal, even as it had been laced through with a lifetime of never feeling good enough for this woman, no matter what she did or didn’t do. Of always falling short of Diana’s endless sacrifices. And of the despair that lay like a thick pool beneath. “For all you know, the wine business was the price I had to pay to make you treat me like a daughter every once in a while, instead of just another employee.”

Needless to say, Kiara thought now, staring broodingly out the window as the small convoy kept on moving past the pretty little village and along the barely perceptible trail that hugged the base of the towering cliffs, that exchange had not improved her relationship with her mother. It had only made her feel terrible about her own capacity for cruelty.

Kiara was forced to face the unflattering reality that she’d reacted as strongly as she had because Diana had managed, as ever, to push the hottest of Kiara’s buttons. A simple story about losing her dreams in favor of her husband’s, and Kiara had gone off like a rocket. Wasn’t that why she’d left Azrin in Washington?

Because she’d felt trapped, claustrophobic and muted in her new role? Because she’d been terrified that if she didn’t leave, she would lose the will to try, and would be stuck forever in a position she hated, empty and useless, a figure standing always behind her husband with nothing of her own at all?

She felt the panic beat at her again, making her pulse race. She looked around the inside of the Jeep, taking in Azrin, the armed guards in front, the tinted windows that concealed them from the outside world. She should not have agreed to this foolishness. It was one more case of her thinking she could have her cake and eat it, too. She couldn’t. She’d tried.

It didn’t matter how much she loved Azrin, or how much he loved her. None of that changed anything. None of that even mattered, not really. None of that made him less a king, or made her any more suited to being the kind of queen he required.

She turned her head to tell him so, once and for all, and found him smiling a sweet, almost nostalgic smile. Not at her, she realized almost at once, even as her heart hitched in her chest. No, his gaze was directed out the window, at what looked to Kiara like a shadow in the great rock face that loomed above them.

As if he felt her gaze on him, he looked over at her, and Kiara felt something clutch inside her again. He looked … carefree, she thought, with some amazement.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen such light in his fierce face, such uncomplicated joy.

It made her want to cry.

“This is my favorite part,” he said, which didn’t make any sense to her at all.

But before she could ask him what he meant, the Jeep in front of them took what should have been an impossible, suicidal right turn. Directly into the cliff.

Instead of smashing into rock, it disappeared as if it had been sucked straight into it, and Kiara only realized that the shadow was the entrance to a narrow canyon as their own Jeep took the same turn.

“Just wait,” Azrin said calmly, as Kiara realized she must have gasped. “It gets better.” The narrow road twisted and zigzagged, hardly seeming wide enough for the Jeeps that very nearly scraped the jutting rock on either side as they performed a series of turns at speeds that indicated they were very familiar with this route. Or completely insane. Kiara craned her head around to look up, to see that there was only a faint ribbon of sky visible far above, the sheer walls of the canyon almost closing them in.

She should have felt trapped. Perhaps she did. She took a breath, then another, and still they drove on, heading deeper into the rocks, into what was surely the heart of the cliffs themselves. Were they headed underground? Into some kind of bunker? Did he want to attempt to date her, as he put it, in some kind of medieval Khatanian jail?

They drove on and on. It was gloomy this far inside the rocky cliffs, this far away from that sliver of sunlight far above them—gloomy and cold. And still they drove, the mountain seeming to loom all around them, the road they followed hardly deserving of the name.

“Azrin …” she began when she couldn’t take it another moment, when she thought the immensity of the rock, its implacable weight and the relentless chill on all sides, might actually send her into a panic from which she’d never recover.

He reached over and took her hand, taking it to his mouth for a kiss that seemed, she registered, almost absent, even if the touch of his lips slid through her like the brush of velvet across her skin. He kept his eyes trained ahead, and after a long moment, then another, he smiled.

“It’s only scary the first time,” he told her, that indulgent tone too buoyant with that same joyfulness for it to grate, and then he nodded toward the window.

“Because every other time, you know that the ride is worth it.”

Kiara frowned at him, but she turned as he’d directed her, and lost her breath all over again.

Kiara frowned at him, but she turned as he’d directed her, and lost her breath all over again.

Because on the other side of the window, spreading out before her as the tiny canyon widened and sunlight poured down from above, was paradise.

The narrow little canyon opened up into a wide gorge, where palm trees and other vegetation clustered and beckoned over a series of inexpressibly beautiful aquamarine pools. The glorious waters seemed lit from within, as well as from the sunlight pouring down from high above. Here, inside the protected valley, the sun warmed the rocks— the forbidding chill of the narrow approach an immediate distant memory.

Kiara hardly knew where to look first, and found herself sitting up and leaning forward like an overawed child.

The pools lay in a straight line along the floor of the canyon, each one larger than the one before it, seeming to dead-end at what appeared to be the farthest reach of the great hidden valley. And that was when Kiara actually let out a gasp, amazed. What could only be some kind of palace seemed to hang in the very air, as if carved from the rock itself, a five-story fortress garnished with balustrades and terraces, balconies and delicate arches, all of it jutting out over the water of the farthest, largest pool as if it had sprung full-grown from the side of the mountain.

As if it had always been there.

“It is called the Palace of the Ten Pools,” Azrin told her, pride and a kind of reverence in his voice. “It was considered a holy place for many ages, and then became the favored summer retreat of my great-grandfather. Very few know of it.”

“It’s beautiful,” Kiara whispered, though she could hardly speak past the sudden lump in her throat.

It was more than beautiful. The impossible, nearly belligerent thrust of the palace out from the rock cliff made her chest feel tight. It was a fierce, implacable building that shouldn’t exist. It called to mind some warrior’s mixture of gingerbread houses and medieval keeps, all jumbled together into what looked like a series of vertical rock sculptures, piled haphazardly on the side of a dizzyingly sheer cliff.