her particularly persuasive. Given the way he’d referred to her mother already, however offhandedly, Lara suspected Adel believed a deeply skewed version of reality. He was King Azat’s chosen heir! She knew exactly what he believed: the story her father had told him.
But what if Marlena had made all of that up? a small voice asked. She swallowed. It didn’t matter any longer. It couldn’t. It was twelve years too late. She would have to go on believing what she’d always believed.
Something must have showed on her face, because his attention seemed to focus in on her then. Too intent. Too demanding. He exuded far too much raw power, even sitting there with his work in front of him, like some kind of common businessman.
Common, Lara thought, with a shaking deep within that she could not quite convince herself was panic, was something Adel Qaderi could never be.
“If you have negative things to say about King Azat, as I can see you do, I suggest you say them to me here,” Adel said. His voice was harsh, his gaze frankly condemning. “You are unlikely to find a receptive ear in Alakkul, where he has long been considered a hero as well as a monarch.”
“Perhaps,” Lara said, conscious of the edge in her voice, her skin prickling with the urge to slap back at that disapproving note in his voice, to defend herself and her mother, “he was a better king than he was a father or a husband.” She raised her brows in challenge. “For your country’s sake, I certainly hope so.”
“And you feel qualified to judge him as a man, as a father?” Lara did not mistake that silky tone for something soft—she could see the steel in his gaze. “You, who showed your daughterly devotion by pretending he did not exist for twelve long years? You, who were not even aware that he was ill, nor that he had died?”
“I do not need to justify myself or the intricacies of my family’s dynamics to you,” she snapped at him, surprised that his words pricked at her.
His eyes bored into her from across the cabin. Why should she want to squirm? Why should she feel something far too much like shame? “I witnessed, firsthand, what your abandonment wrought.”
“I can imagine how it must have pained him to lose two of his many interchangeable, nameless possessions,” Lara said sarcastically.
“Azat will raise you to be nothing more than a pet,” Marlena had told her. Repeatedly. “Meek. Easy. Forever owned and operated at his command, at his disposal. Is that what you want? Is that any kind of life?”
“Believe me, he knew your name,” Adel replied in that low, furious tone. His mouth twisted, and his gaze chilled. “And your mother’s.”
“My mother is the only hero I’m aware of being related to,” Lara threw at him, feeling a desperate, consuming need to defend Marlena. To avenge her. To fight for her, even now, even when she wasn’t sure she believed her story. “But that’s not something a man like you can understand, can you? The plight of a single mother on her own, forced to run from all she knew—”
“Forced?” Adel laughed, but it was a mirthless sound. “You must be joking. The only thing your mother was ever forced to do was face her own failings as a wife. But she could not handle that, and so she ran from the palace with you rather than deal with the consequences of her behavior.” His gaze hardened. “And when I say ‘consequences,’ let me be clear. I am speaking of her admitted infidelity.”
“Don’t you dare speak of her!” Lara cried, rising from her chair without knowing she meant to move. Her hands moved of their own accord, out in front of her as if she meant to strike him. As if she dared. And oh, how she wished she dared! “You know nothing about her, or me! You have no idea what our life was like!”
“No,” he said with a seething sort of impatience, and that hard gaze that seemed to arrow into her very core, “I know what your life should have been. I know what was stolen from you. And from the King. And from your people.” He made an abortive gesture with one hand. “I know that when the country needed you, you—the Crown Princess of Alakkul—were toiling away in some pedestrian job, in some life far beneath your station, acting as if you were nothing more than a