Page 16 of Sheikh's Quarantine Triplet Baby Daughters

Samyar

Samyar meant to give Diane a night or so to cool off, and then he would invite her to a good dinner where he would apologize.

When she had first fled from him, Samyar had been indignant. She was the one who would never talk about anything permanent in Paris. She was the one who felt that a life lived without constraint was the best way to live.

It was only now, approaching thirty slowly but with gathering speed that Samyar could see how young they were in Paris together. They had spent so much time together, nearly obsessed with each other, and it had been perfect in a way he suspected neither of them could stand any longer.

Still, I would not give up that time for anything, he thought with a slight soft smile.

He had been doing a semester abroad, and she had been an art student at the Sorbonne. They had met when he had shooed off a man who been far too intent on following her home, and after her thank you, she had grinned up at him, her black eyes flashing.

"I had that handled though," she said, and she held up a long thin knife with a serrated edge.

"Why are you going about armed?" he had exclaimed, briefly wondering what kind of lunatic he had met, and she'd laughed. It was the first time he had heard Diane laugh, and even then, on the street with irritated Parisians dodging them, he had been enchanted. She had such an amazing laugh. She still did.

"It's just the tools of the trade," she said. "I'm helping restore a painting at the studio."

She tilted her head slightly, looking him up and down, and in his chest, his heart started to beat a wild tattoo that he could still remember if he thought about it. It was as if his heart recognized her, was happy to see her. He still wondered if that was the case.

"Do you want to come see?" she asked, and that had been history.

Logically, Samyar knew that they had only been together for seven months or so, but that time stretched in his head. It felt as if they had had forever to walk the wide boulevards of one of Europe's most beautiful cities, to experience both the world and each other. Her flat, tiny and in one of the poorer areas of the city, became a haven for them, and when he glanced out the tiny window, watching the city pigeons peck and coo on the rooftops below, he thought he had never been farther away from his home or who he was.

They had been perfect, but even as he wanted that time to last forever, he knew it couldn't. He knew that at some point, the responsibilities to which he had been born would rise up, and there would be nothing that either of them could do about it. He thought that Diane had known that about him, but when the time came, it was clear that she had not.

Sometimes, before he fell asleep and just before he awakened, Samyar imagined the look on her face when he had told her that he needed to return to his own country. There was the anger and hurt that came later, but what haunted him was how surprised she had been, as if he had done something completely unimaginable. She couldn't imagine him leaving her, and something about breaking that trust broke something inside him as well.

He had wondered off and on throughout the years if she had returned to that moment as often as he had. All he knew was that it lived inside him just like others, like the death of his parents from a car crash two years into his return, like he knew this pandemic would in the future.

So after all that, Samyar knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he needed to apologize. His offer hadn't been meant to dishonor her, but now he could see it through her eyes. He had thought he was merely giving them both something that they wanted, something that they both craved. Samyar had not thought about the price that would go with it, and now he was.

Sometimes, he hated being the person he was and what he had been born to.

However, the problem was that after their fight, Diane disappeared. At first Samyar thought it was just a coincidence, but then a full week went by without his seeing her in the halls or the gardens or the museum. There was a moment of panic where he thought she might have left the palace entirely, which should have been impossible. He pulled up the logs, and no, she was still in residence as far as security was concerned.

“We would know if she'd left,” said the head of security with a little bit of reproach in her voice, and Samyar nodded distractedly. He didn't tell her that if Diane truly wanted to get out of the palace, he would put some cash on her doing so, and instead he only thanked her and moved on.

Then there was some news about quarantining and the payout of funds to keep everyone at home that had to be handled. In the end, Samyar won that fight, but it was another week before he could go to find Diane again.

She wasn't wrong, I'm a busy man with a lot going on as the King of Alraed, he thought wryly.

It would have been the most simple thing in the world to have her escorted to him, but he flinched away from it. He would stand by his decision to lock down the palace until his dying day, but the idea of exercising his royal authority to have her brought to him, especially when he was the one that was meant to be apologizing, was too much.

Instead, when he ran into her, he wasn't expecting to do so at all.

Samyar had never much liked physicals, but Dr. Ramamurthy insisted that he show up every two weeks.

“It'll be very quick, but it is essential to ensure your continued health and function.” She'd given him a dire look. “Or do you want all of those social protection plans you've made up to get hung up when you're ill?”

That had done it, and ever since the pandemic had started, he had dutifully reported to have his temperature taken and to have a brief chat with the doctor about how he was feeling. A few times already, it had been a welcome break from the rest of the day, and while he still didn't like it, he could appreciate it.

He was just leaving the clinic, considering how costly it would be to look into exploring fast testing at self-operated kiosks, when he nearly ran flat into Diane walking in.

“Diane, I'm sorry, I didn't see you!”

He automatically reached out to steady her, and then he tilted his head at her odd reaction. Instead of pushing him away or hanging on to regain her balance, she strapped her arms around her torso as if she was preparing for a bumpy landing. Diane had always had more than a hint of recklessness to the way she moved. She threw herself into the world as if she was unstoppable, because, frankly, much of the time, she was.

“Diane... what's the matter?”

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