wouldn’t make a successful queen, and you probably won’t have much time for a child in your schedule.” She put on a smile that she didn’t believe. “It’ll be simpler just to co-parent.”
“I’m afraid not.” Zayid wore an unreadable expression. “Royal babies must be born in wedlock. We’ll have to extend our marriage to cover that time period. It’s the same law that’s requiring my brother to marry in the first place.”
“Sure, then.” God, he was so clinical and robotic about this—why? Why did he have to be this way? How could he be so stoic, so flat, in the face of being told he was about to be a father? “I guess the timing isn’t as important as the fact that we’ll be getting divorced. Your schedule simply won’t accommodate a child, so I don’t expect you to play a hands-on role in this situation.”
Laila saw the first sign of fight in Zayid’s eyes, as if he was snapping back into reality. “I will be in the child’s life.”
“Pardon me if I don’t believe you.” Her face went hot, then hotter, and tears threatened at the corners of her eyes. Laila blinked them away with hard, fast blinks. She was not going to melt down in front of Zayid. “But I don’t.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Zayid’s eyes narrowed, and he set his jaw in the way he did when he was irritated. “You don’t believe that I want to be in the life of my child?”
“I believe you might want to be, but you’re not even in my life except for in bed and state events. Even the museum trip—that was to smooth any ruffled feathers with the sultan after the trade negotiations, wasn’t it?” His lack of denial told Laila all she needed to know. She felt like she was holding an ocean of feeling at arm’s length, and not very successfully. “How are you going to be there for a child?”
Zayid let out a short bark of a laugh. “You don’t understand how important my work is.”
“No, I do. I do.” She couldn’t imagine what it was like to spend most of her life waiting to be in charge of an entire country. Waiting to be in the spotlight like that. But she could imagine that it was daunting, and the pressure was high. That didn’t change the fact that she felt wounded, cut open by Zayid’s dismissal. “I just overestimated how important I am.”
“I don’t take you for granted. You’re an incredible asset at every state dinner. Everyone loves having you there.”
Frustration burned as if she’d swallowed fire. How? How could he not realize he was only making her point for her? Laila wanted to shout at him, wanted to take his shirt in her hands and shake him until he heard her, but instead she swallowed the painful lump in her throat. “Just make sure that you add all those appearances to my calendar. I’ll see you there.”
She left his office without a backward glance, pressing her lips together hard to keep a scream of frustration in. Laila didn’t pay attention to where her feet were taking her until she found herself at her studio. The potter’s wheels sat silent, waiting, and she took the two steps down into the room and let the door fall shut behind her with a heavy thunk. Let the guard come and bother her now. She wouldn’t jump at all.
Laila went through the steps, filling a bucket with water and gathering clay, and then she sat down at the foot-powered wheel and threw it on.
The machine hummed to life underneath her foot, and the clay gave way beneath her hands. She could control clay. She could shape it into anything she wanted. She could curve it this way and that, and it would rise beneath her fingers, she could dig her thumbs in and make the lip into this shape or that, a dance under her hands that would make it perfect.
She let the wheel stop.
The pot she’d made was perfect, the flawless representation of Raihani style she’d worked so hard on but never achieved until now.
Laila looked at it for a long moment, memorizing it.
Then she brought her hands down on it once, twice, again and again until it was returned to a lump of clay.
15
Laila sat at the potter’s wheel and tried to focus on what Talif was saying despite her burning eyes and heavy heart. She’d called him for the morning class late last night,