Page 9 of Sheikh's Quarantine Triplet Baby Daughters

Samyar

The royal palace of Alraed was enormous. It spanned almost a full square mile, and that didn't include the grounds, which butted straight up against the coast. People got lost often enough that there were digital map kiosks in the public areas, and there had always been jokes about installing them in the private areas as well.

Samyar knew his home was enormous, to the point where one of his cousins had once disappeared into the depths and been lost for almost a full day. It was exasperating, impressive and sometimes downright funny how big the palace was.

Why, then, was it impossible for him to lose Diane in the size and scope of it?

It's just because you put in her a private guest room, he told himself. She's literally just a few doors down from your own quarters. Of course you would see her more often.

It wasn't just that, though. In the week since he had instituted the lockdown, Samyar had been busy. He had met with epidemiologists to figure out how best to craft policy for the pandemic, there was relief that needed to be sent to every corner of the country, and that was leaving aside the outcry from his countrymen who simply refused to believe anything was amiss.

He wasn't sleeping much, and he might have thought he was just hallucinating Diane when he passed her in the halls or when he went off for a ten minute walk in the greenhouse and found her sitting under the shade of an enormous flowering tree. That one had been particularly bad.

Diane was a vision under the branches weighted down with vivid purple blossoms. She sat on the bench with a luscious purple plum in her hand, and when she heard his step coming up the graveled walkway, she turned to look at him with eyes so dark that he thought he could fall into them and sleep forever.

For several long minutes, Samyar simply stared at her, his hands loose by his sides, taking in the curve of her cheek, the grace and confidence of her body. That was one of his favorite things about Diane, that she would never be anyone but herself. It was as if she had sprung into the world, realized that it needed her to be exactly who she was, and gone on from there.

"Are you all right?"

He blinked, startled from his reverie.

"Okay, I half expected you to disappear," he said, rubbing his eyes, and she gave him a quizzical look.

"You've made that kind of hard. Unless the travel ban's been lifted?"

"Okay, I sound like a lunatic. I just haven't been getting much sleep, and no, the travel restrictions are absolutely not lifted."

He braced himself for another fight, but she only laughed.

"I know. I've been keeping track of the news, and wow, there are some people who have nothing good to say about you, aren't there?"

There were, and they were by turns infuriating and deeply hurtful. Some of his father's closest advisers had all but shouted at him for the restrictions he had imposed, but he couldn't give way to them, not and still be the king that his country needed him to be.

"I find that I care less about what people have to say when I'm trying to prevent a great tragedy," he said wryly, and Diane made a sympathetic sound.

"You look like you've not slept in a week. Do you want the bench? I can move on. I think I saw an actual pond somewhere in here."

"There is a pond," he said. "We have imported koi in it. And you don't have to go anywhere."

"Then you come sit here," she said firmly. "Come on. You look like you're going to fall over."

He took a long breath, and then he came to sit next to her on the bench, tilting back against the backrest and spreading his legs in front of him.

They were silent for a while, and then Diane surprised him by speaking again.

"I wanted to say that I'm sorry."

He gave her a quizzical look.

"What in the world do you have to be sorry about?"

"I had no idea that things were this bad when I emerged from the museum wing. I guess I thought there was no way this was as bad as the emails made it sound, and I thought. Well. It doesn't matter. But thank you for protecting me."

Something about her words caught him square in the chest, and Samyar had to swallow against the tide of emotions it sent rocketing through him.

"That's what you've been doing this whole time, isn't it?" she asked with a slight smile. "You've been trying to protect everyone."

Samyar offered her a slight smile and he made sure his hands stayed very firmly on his thighs. If he let himself, he was going to grab her up in her arms, hug her, and then probably not let her go for a thousand years.

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