A Secret Birthright - By Olivia Gates Page 0,57
the depths of Gwen’s chest, and his tension roared back.
His father spoke, his voice rough with emotion, “Ya Ullah, this is Hesham as an infant all over again.”
“That’s not true,” Fareed hissed. “Ryan is a replica of Gwen…of her sister, his mother.”
His father turned to him with dazed eyes shimmering with what suspiciously looked like tears. “His coloring is throwing you off and that dimpled chin. But I am the one who hung on Hesham’s every detail from birth. He has his same bone structure, the shape of his features. And wait until his hair grows out. It will be the exact color and curl as Hesham’s. He’ll also be like his father in many other ways. Isn’t that right, ya ebni?”
Ryan squirmed excitedly in Gwen’s arms as if he understood what the king was saying, and that he’d called him “my son.” Then the king reached out to him, and with one last look at Gwen and Fareed, as if he was asking their permission, Ryan reached back.
Fareed’s mind almost snapped when a tiny whimper escaped Gwen as she let Ryan go. He was about to snatch him back when her hand on his arm stopped him. He wouldn’t have stopped if he’d seen dread filling her eyes. But what he saw there…it was something truly feminine, knowing, almost…serene.
He stood beside her, confounded, watched his father caress Ryan, murmur things for his ears only, what Ryan clearly liked.
When the introduction between child and grandfather seemed concluded, and they seemed to have come to an understanding, Ryan made his wish to be held by Fareed clear.
Fareed took him, feeling as if he was returning his own heart to his chest.
Silence reigned for endless moments.
His father finally let out a shuddering exhalation. “I have been more than half-mad since I lost my Kareemah.” He looked at Fareed. “You might now realize how it was for me.”
Fareed grudgingly had to concede that. If he lost Gwen…
He couldn’t even think of it.
“Is that your excuse for what you did to her son and yours?”
“I thought I was honoring her memory, making her son my heir. But I wasn’t sane most of the time. Not when it came to Hesham. He had too much of her, inspired in me the same overwhelming emotions.” Suddenly his father seemed to let go of the invincibility he cloaked himself in, seemed to age twenty years over his sixty-five. “Now it’s too late to right my wrongs. I’m the reason he’s lost.”
Gwen took an urgent step toward him, her eyes anxious, adamant. “You may be the reason for many things, but not that, Your Majesty. Never blame yourself for that. The accident that cost you your son, cost Fareed his brother and me my sister, was an act of blind fate. But I want you to know Hesham and Lyn didn’t live in fear. While Hesham took hiding to unbelievable lengths, he and Lyn soon approached it all as an adventure, one they included me in. I never saw anyone more in love or delighted with every second they had together. The shadow of separation only made them appreciate every breath they had of each other. So in a way, you were to thank for the extraordinary relationship they had.”
His father swayed and reached for the nearest chair, only to collapse in it, dropping his head into his hands.
Fareed stood frozen, watching this unprecedented sign that his father was human.
He finally raised reddened eyes, looking at Gwen. “I wish I could have met your mother, ya bnayti.” Gwen started at hearing him call her “my daughter.” “She must have been a remarkable woman to raise not only you, a woman who possesses such generosity, you’d offer me this absolution, this solace, after the injustices I dealt you and yours, but to raise two women who had my most fastidious sons think their lives are a small price to pay to have them. That was the kind of woman my Kareemah was. I hope she had a man worship her as she deserved, as I worshiped my Kareemah.”
Gwen shook her head, her eyes as red. “Regretfully, no. Our father took off while she was still pregnant with Marilyn. She raised us alone until an accident in the factory she worked in left her paralyzed from the waist down. She died from the complications of a spinal surgery years later, with only me and Marilyn with her. We changed our names to McNeal, her maiden name, because she was our