Desert Heat

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: LOST

Four days later,

Lily was heading back to the palace after another day of meeting with high-profile men and women in Hamidin. The kingdom was growing and thriving, and the best of all was that Aziz was getting better and was even standing up on his own.

She could no longer contain her happiness, and it seemed as though the driver could not drive any faster. In less than half an hour, she was home, and before the driver could unlock the door for her, Lily jumped out of the car and ran into the palace.

Once again, the palace seemed strange, as though something terrible had happened, but that did not bother her because the palace had been off since the day her husband had been poisoned. As she walked towards her chambers, something kept bothering her, but she could not place her finger on it. She entered her chambers, and her husband stood there, looking right back at her.

The smile on Lily's face faded as she saw that her husband looked beyond furious, and she wondered why. She walked closer to her husband, and she tried touching his face.

"Touch me, and it will be the last time that you ever use those hands again," King Aziz let out; the anger in his voice was clearly evident as he spoke to her. Lily searched her husband's eyes as she tried to find the man that she once fell in love with, but she could not find him. This man in front of her was not her husband; he was different; he looked mean, evil, and not like her loving husband.

"What did I do?" Lily asked her husband, or the man who looked like her husband but acted like her enemy.

Aziz studied his wife and walked around her until he stopped and looked at her.

"You had this all figured out, didn't you?" King Aziz asked Lily, who could still not piece together what Aziz was talking about.

"My husband, I don't understand what it is that you are trying to say." Lily tried explaining, but it seemed as though King Aziz was in no mood to listen to a word that she had to say. Lily dropped her bag onto her bed as she tried to stop the tears from falling. Her husband had changed, and it was evident. Today was the day that she would reveal to him the evidence that Tom had given her, but she first had to calm her husband down.

Placing his hands behind his back, he walked towards her until Lily could feel his breath on her face, and her husband looked like a crazed murderer.

"If anyone had told me this, I would never have believed a word that they had said. I will not stand her and argue with you; I want you in the throne room in the next five minutes," King Aziz informed Lily, and this surprised her. Normally, her husband would request for her to come to him, but this sounded like an order.

"But my king—" Lily tried to argue, but she stopped. King Aziz lifted his hand, a sign for her to keep quiet. Without another word from her husband, King Aziz walked out of the room, leaving Lily to guess what had just happened.

She had to find the underlying cause of her husband's anger, so she hurriedly ran towards the throne room. Before she could unlock the huge, heavy doors, the guards unlocked them for her. The scene she saw shook her; instead of an empty throne room, the room was filled with almost everyone she knew and even some she did not know.

Be a queen; do not let this scare you. She mentally reminded herself, living in Hamidin for more than five months, that the queen had thought her to be strong. She knew just how much people did not approve of her being queen, and they would gladly eat her up the very moment she showed any signs of weakness.

Lily gathered the last bit of courage she had left and entered the throne room, flashing a smile at the people as she walked towards her husband's throne. Deep down, Lily knew that something was wrong; the looks she was receiving from everyone were ones of disgust. Lily stopped right in front of the throne. She looked into her husband's eyes, and there was hate in them.