That everything she said—the words about being too old, about infatuation, about wanting to experience life—
It was all a lie.
She had been trying to protect him.
And he had let her go.
Aretha could feel the tension rising from the sheikh like heat from a flame.
Something had shifted. Something in his expression, in the set of his shoulders, in the way his fists had clenched at his sides. And when he slowly turned to look at her again—
No.
She knew that look.
She had seen it once before, years ago, when a servant had been caught stealing from the palace treasury. The sheikh had worn that same expression then—cold and terrible and utterly without mercy.
Heknew.
Somehow, impossibly, he had figured it out. Had pieced together the fragments and realized that she was the reason Aurora had left.
For a long moment, they simply stared at each other.
And then something inside Aretha snapped.
To hell with it.
To hell with getting back in his good graces. To hell with convincing him to honor their betrothal. To hell with becoming queen of Layla and ruling by his side.
None of it mattered anymore.
All that mattered was making him suffer.
“You’ll never find her.”
The words came out cold. Vicious. Nothing like the fragile, sympathetic woman she had been pretending to be.
Mik’hail’s blood went cold. “What did you do to her, Aretha?”
