She told herself that he was a barbarian and his opinion didn’t matter. Unfortunately those words didn’t stop the sting of tears or the lump in her throat. She hated that people judged her based on a few reports in newspapers or magazines. It had happened to her all her life. Very few people took the time to find out the truth.
“Did it ever occur to you that sometimes the media gets it wrong?” she asked.
“Sometimes, but not in your case. You have lived most of your years in Los Angeles. Picking up that lifestyle was inevitable. Had your father kept you here, you might have learned our ways, but that was not to be.”
She didn’t know which charge to answer first. “You’re making it sound as if my father letting me go was my fault,” she told him. “I was four years old. I didn’t have any say in the decision. And just in case you forgot, Bahanian law forbids a royal child being raised in another country, yet my father let my mother take me away. He didn’t even try to stop her.”
She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. All her life she’d had to live with the knowledge that her father hadn’t cared enough about her to keep her around. She didn’t doubt that if she’d been a son, he would have refused to let her go. But she was merely a daughter. His only daughter, but that was obviously not significant to him.
She felt her frustration growing. It wasn’t fair. It had never been fair and it was never going to be fair in the future. One day she would figure that out. Maybe on the same day she would cease caring what people thought about her. Maybe then she would be mature enough not to worry when they formed opinions and judged her before even meeting her. Unfortunately that day wasn’t today and she hated that Kardal’s low opinion stung more so than usual.
“You can say what you want,” she told Kardal. “You can have your opinions and your theories, but no one knows the truth except me.”
“I will admit that much is true,” he said, his deep voice drifting around her and making her wonder what he was thinking.
“Relax now,” he continued. “We will travel for much of the day. Try to rest. You didn’t sleep much last night.”
She started to ask how he knew, then remembered they had been tied together. Although she’d fallen asleep right away, she’d awakened several times, tossing and turning until she could doze off again. No doubt she’d kept him awake as well. What with being kidnapped, blindfolded and left with her wrists tied, Sabrina wasn’t sure she was even sorry.
She drew in a deep breath and tried to relax. When the tension in her body began to ease, she allowed her mind to drift. What would it be like to be someone as in charge of his world as Kardal? He was a man of the desert. He would answer to no one. She’d always been at the beck and call of her parents. They were forever sending her back and forth, as if neither really wanted her around.
“Do you really live in the City of Thieves?” she asked sleepily.
“Yes, Sabrina.”
She liked the sound of her name on his lips. Despite her predicament, she smiled. “All your life?” she asked.
“Yes. All my life. I went away to school for a few years, but I have always returned to the desert. This is where I belong.”
He spoke with a confidence she envied. “I’ve never belonged anywhere. When I’m in California, my mother acts like I’m in the way all the time. It’s better now that I’m older, but when I was young, she would complain about how she wasn’t free to come and go as she wanted. Which wasn’t true because she just left me with her maid. And in Bahania…” She sighed. “Well, my father doesn’t like me very much. He thinks I’m like her, which I’m not.”
She shifted to get more comfortable. “People don’t appreciate the little things in their lives that show they belong. If I had them, I would appreciate them.”
“Perhaps for ten minutes,” Kardal said. “Then you would grow weary of the constraints. You are spoiled, my desert bird. Admit it.”
Her sleepiness vanished and she sat up straight. “I am not. You don’t know me well enough to be making that kind of judgment. Sure, it’s easy to read a few things and listen to rumors and decide, but it’s very different to have lived my life.”
“I think you would argue with me about the color of the sky.”
“Not if I could see it.”
“However you talk around me,” he said, “I’m not removing the blindfold.”
“Your attitude needs adjusting.”
He laughed. “Perhaps, but not by you. As my slave, you will be busy with other things.”