The King’s Vizier: Now Available for Pre-Order!

So, this story has kind of a weird origin. I actually came up with it before I even started writing books. Now that I think about it, it isn’t that weird because I was pretty used to coming up with story ideas for no reason. What sort of started out as a kind of biblical allegory turned into something, well… not biblical. Basically, if I’d stuck to my original concept this would be a clean romance. Picture me doing that, LolOloLolOLol…

I started taking on the task of bringing the story into the world sometime at the beginning of this year. I took a few months off, because 2020, and pecked and pecked at it until it was done.

This book was a collaboration between my initial vision and the creative muse, and the results are… muddled. I had to take something that was a free-standing idea and fit it into this world that I had created. I took something that was a lot more fantastical and tried to root it in some reality.

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I just purchased my first ever professional book cover for this book and I’m pretty durn excited about it. I might even have to do a cover reveal and make a big deal. It looks like a historical romance, but I literally don’t care, because it’s so close to what I want to convey with the story and bridges both my initial concept and the final product so well.

This book is about a king who goes to America to find a girl that to be his queen, one who doesn’t realize that she has royal blood. It’s a common trope, but it has a little twist to it, and I do mean little. But the twist influences the romantic plot of the book.

[image error]The King’s Vizier, Gabby/Queen Asha, King Khoury

In my mind, the hero was an instant cast. I knew that the King was going to be of African stock, and as he was going to be my first black hero. So you should already know. You gotta go Idris for the titular character. Since it’s a bit of a love triangle, I wanted to pick someone just as regal and statuesque, so I picked Mahershala Ali for the king character. For the heroine, she had to be someone young and princessy, with African lineage who had a “hidden in plain sight” type of vibe. Basically a black “Princess Diaries” mood. I had one little picture on my “Book Inspirations” Pinterest page that I’d saved long ago that fit the bill. I didn’t know who it was, and I didn’t know if I’d find any more pictures of her. But it turned out she was a model named Senait Gidey from Ethiopia.

Overall, I think it’s a cute, fun read. One of my longer books, but to me, it has a bite-sized feel because of its simple plot and story.

New Release The King’s Vizier: Sneak Peek

King Khoury of Manaf has come across an interesting piece of intel: the Princess of Ashwari has been hidden in America for 25 years. If the story proves true, the King would be able to form alliances with the war-torn nation, not to mention finally secure himself a bride. All he has to do is get the Princess to go along with his plan, which may be a challenge according to his good friend Belkacem Al-Malwali, King of his sister country Ghassan. The King decides to rely on his trusted vizier, educated in the States, to plead the King’s case and vet the young girl to see if she is truly King Otieno’s daughter. Will they be able to convince Princess Asha to leave the only home she’s ever known, and be the Queen of both her country and his? Or will the burgeoning relationship between the Princess and the King’s vizier complicate matters even further?

Chapter 2

“Mrs. Holderman hold still!” Gabby clenched.

“Get offa me, you black bitch!” Mrs. Holderman screamed.

Woooosah, Gabby thought in her head as she and another nurse helped restrain a squirming Mrs. Holderman. They weren’t wrong when they said service hours were when the real education starts.

Mrs. Holderman was Gabby’s twenty-sixth patient at Sunnyside Nursing Home. She wasn’t the most advanced stage dementia patient, but she was the most unpredictable. When she wasn’t being the kindest, sweetest soul on the planet, she was raging about the smallest thing and spitting directly in Gabby’s face.

She loved her job, but if it wasn’t for the fact that Mrs. Holderman wouldn’t let a single other nurse take care of her, Gabby would gladly skip this part of the day. At least it wasn’t hard ‘r’ n-words this afternoon.

“All done Mrs. Holderman,” Gabby announced when her body was cleaned and her shot administered.

“Well, that’s a relief. No thanks to you,” was Mrs. Holderman’s semi-coherent statement.

“I better not find any more empty honey packets between those sheets. Dinner’s at the same time every night, you know that.”

“Leave me alone, corn pone!” snapped Mrs. Holderman.

Gabby and Sara, the other CNA, left Mrs. Holderman’s door cracked as they quietly left.

“Another hellish day,” Sara sighed.

“Honestly, I’ve had worse days.”

“You know, Vicki told me we’re not even supposed to be administering medication as CNA’s?”

“Pretty sure we’re not supposed to be scrubbing the floors or making the pancakes, but here we are,” Gabby shrugged.

“I can’t wait until I’m done here. I already know long term care just isn’t for me,” Sara rolled her calico gray eyes. Sara was a smooth medium brown, a shade class lighter than Gabby’s with fuller lips and a prominent nose. She didn’t know much beyond her family’s descriptions of their old life in Ashwari, but Gabby knew enough to know that had Sara been born there, she would’ve been a queen.

“Really? Hospital nursing’s way worse to me,” Gabby insisted.

“How can you say that?”

“It’s a nightmare. All those people coming in and out,” she said, their soundless blue and green scrubs and sneakers squeaking down the fluorescent lighted hallway.

“Yeah, but at most you’re only juggling six patients a day. Not twenty-six,” Sara argued.

“It’s non-stop chaos and you’re expected to keep up with it all.”

“Gabby, I swear, some of the shit you say. You just described your current position,” Sarah chuckled, grabbing a chart at the station.

“Yeah, but you get to know the patients here, you get to be part of their routine,” rallied Gabby.

“Which is the very reason why I can’t with this job. How am I supposed to learn how to do this if I’m doing the same damn thing every day?” Sara complained in a hushed tone. “I did the math, you know. I’m paying $153 a day to be here, and I feel like I haven’t learned anything but the basics.”

“There’s something to be said for mastering the basics,” Gabby defended. Gabby grabbed a clipboard and a cart, heading up the stairs.

“There’s also something to be said for coming across every possible scenario so that you can be the best nurse you can possibly be.”

“I hear that. I guess I just feel this is like, the most impactful.”

“And I think it’s the opposite,” Sara made her point emphatically as she divvied out meds in plastic cups on the cart.

“Well then, I guess we each got our shit figured out.”

“We do,” Sara agreed with a sassy tone. “Plus, I’m tryna get this money.”

“Listen, I’m not gonna complain,” Gabby said, half distracted. She checked off the patients’ names carefully, double-checking doses. “$15.88 to cook and clean is more than my mama makes to do the same damn thing.”

“Girl, if you’re still at this raggedy-ass place when we graduate, I’m gonna break your legs,” Sara threatened.

Gabby felt a tinge of guilt leaving all the patients behind that she’d cultivated relationships with for the past six months. Who would take care of Mrs. Holderman while she was gone? She wouldn’t let the other nurses come near her.

“Here’s hoping Mrs. Holderman goes on to glory before I graduate,” Gabby sighed, knocking on the first door.

“My money’s on the other place,” Sarah muttered.

Gabby gave Sarah a smack on the arm as they politely entered the first patient’s room on the second floor. Delete Created with Sketch.

When their shift ended, Sara and Gabby parted ways across the parking lot, keys to the old gray Honda in Gabby’s hand. She’d finally convinced her parents to let her drive to school, work, and back. Her parents had been scared stiff to let her drive ever since she got her license.

In Florida, you were able to obtain a license as an undocumented immigrant, but that did not put her parents at ease who, even though they were legal, insisted on living life like a Tom Clancy movie.

At 25, she’d only been driving for three years, and before Uber that was embarrassing. You needed a car to get everywhere in Tampa. Her brother and sister didn’t mind driving her around, but having to rely on her younger sister— who was more popular and outgoing than she ever was— sometimes strained their relationship.

“Mom, I’m home!” Gabby announced from the front door. She couldn’t see her mom but she was most certainly somewhere in the house, wondering who’d just come from the front door if Gabby hadn’t just yelled it out. Her brother Faraj was on the couch watching the news of all things:

And in Washington today, White House officials met with King Khoury of Manaf to discuss diplomatic relations and the possible addition of a U.S. embassy to its nation. Manaf, border country to both Ghassan and Saudi Arabia, is one of only seven nations in the U.N. that does not yet have an American embassy within its borders…

“Since when do you care about current affairs?” Gabby teased.

“Shh…” was Faraj’s curt, distracted response. Faraj was older than her by three years and looked a bit like Peele from Key & Peele, but slim and slightly darker. At 28, he still wasn’t married yet, much to their family’s dismay. He must be here for dinner, Gabby deduced.

“Go help your sister in the kitchen,” her mother’s disembodied voice floated from the laundry room at the back of the shotgun-style house. “Your father will be home soon.”

“I’m hopping in the shower, I’ll be right there,” Gabby said to her sister on the way to her room.

“Convenient!” Mackenzie shouted from the kitchen, cutting up the last of the vegetables prepared to go into a boiling stew pot on the stove.

Gabby’s sister Mackenzie would be graduating high school this year. Going to the University of Central Florida. Gabby tried to let her happiness for her sister drown out her resentment and sorrow, and for the most part, succeeded.

Long before it was time for her to go, she’d been sending off for informational pamphlets from the universities of her choice. It was her own little obsession since she was thirteen. For her, college had been her jumping-off point, that catalyst that would take her out of her strict, close-knit community and get her noticed.

When she began applying, her parents finally caved and told her the real reason for their overprotective behaviors: that she was undocumented. Her life’s plans came crashing down in an instant.

There would be no college, no following her best friend Carmen to Florida State, no coming home on weekends and holidays. No finding a college boyfriend. No further education whatsoever.

That is, until Gabby bothered to do her research.

She offered to work for several years, save up enough money for community college, and go into a high demand field where there was an opportunity for an employer-assisted green card.

Thankfully, Florida was covered with such programs for nurses. Only then could she convince her parents that she was safe.

“Gabby!”

Before she could get on her pink shower cap with the purple flowers, her sister Mackenzie had come barreling through the door. Good Lord, she couldn’t wait until one of them finally left home for good.

“Mom wants to know if you invited Tek and Savaday to dinner,” was Mackenzie’s supremely un-urgent question. Savaday and Tek were two boys from their small Ashwari community that had formed in Tampa. The older generation was constantly trying to hook up all their offspring up with each other. And in a very boring turn of events, they’d mostly succeeded.

“What? Why would I do that?” Gabby echoed across the shower curtain.

“Mom says they’ve just pulled up.”

Weird.

“Savaday’s here to see you, not me. He gave up on me, remember?” Gabby sneered. “Maybe he’s here for you. Now that you’re 18 and all.”

“He better not be,” Mackenzie sucked her teeth. “Maybe he changed his mind. Why would he come here unannounced? Do you think he wants to propose?”

“Ew, get outta here with all that! And close the door, you’re letting in all the cold air!” Gabby huffed with her soapy eyes tightly shut.

Gabby was losing patience with her living arrangement, which troubled her because she honestly didn’t know what else she would do if she wasn’t living at home. Part of her didn’t even feel comfortable calling it “home” anymore. Ever since the truth about her illegal status had come out, her parents seemed more and more like strangers.

Even after they came to an agreement about community college, Gabby’s questions to her parents continued until it came to a head. She could no longer explain away the fact that she was illegal while her parents and siblings were not. How was it that she could not receive federal funding, that she would have to pay the out-of-state amount of tuition for a community college, and only get a non-compliant driver’s license?

The simple fact was that she must have been born in their native Ashwari, not here in America. And that the two people that raised her could not be her parents.

After the only shouting match of her life, her mother broke down and told her that they’d kidnapped her. But even that seemed like a lie.

Gabby stepped out of the shower, wiped off the mirror, and looked at herself with a sigh. She was now in her mid-20’s, and yet she still felt nothing like an adult. Unbelievably stifled. She distantly heard more than just her brother’s booming voice in the living room, but it hardly registered. She was too busy feeling overwhelmed.

The lifelong superstition and paranoia engrained in her made it hard for Gabby to even take the first steps toward legitimate citizenship without the threat of deportation.

While she was glad her parents allowed her to grow up without the burden of knowing her illegal status, she resented that they’d saddled her adulthood with it. Almost as if they didn’t have a plan. As if they’d been ready at any moment—

“Asha!”

Gabby jumped at the sound of her mother calling her by her Ethiopian name, which usually meant mortal danger. Or that she’d neglected her chores and Father was home.

But she resented the implication. She’d been at school all day and not yet home ten minutes. But she knew that she had exactly 3.5 seconds to show herself if she wanted to escape discipline.

“Yes, Ema!” she answered in Amharic, to show respect in lieu of her appearance.

She was still soaking wet, wearing her pink and purple shower cap, and couldn’t find something to cover up with fast enough. She settled on wrapping a towel around her tall, skinny frame and ventured barefoot out of the bathroom and into the hallway.

As steam barrelled out of the door and into the hall, Gabby could just make out the living room that suddenly seemed to be filled with an audience. Whatever her mother had beckoned her about, it wasn’t chores.

She hesitated, still trying to make out what she was seeing. Everything was deathly quiet and the air was that of reverence. Authority. She didn’t know who was here, but it sure as shit wasn’t Savaday. Or Tek.

Was it the police? Were they coming to take her away?

She stiffened. Oh no. Nononono.

If this were truly her last hour in this country, she would never forgive herself for forcing her parents to allow her more freedom.

She felt her mother grab her forcefully by the arms and pull her into the adjacent bedroom, which was her sister’s room. She slammed the door behind her and put her hand over Gabby’s mouth.

“Do…not… scream,” her mother said in a calm voice.

Gabby simply made a slow gesture with one hand as she furrowed her brow. Her mother removed her hand.

“What would I be screaming about, exactly?” Gabby asked.

“About who is here. About what I have to tell you.”

Gabby wrinkled her brow. “What do you have to tell me?”

Chapter 3

Gabby’s mother breathed as if vomitous, bracing herself.

“I am not your biological mother. And your father, he is not your father.”

“I know that,” Gabby replied unphased.

“Okay,” her mother nodded, not bothering to be surprised. She seemed as eager to air out the truth as Gabby was to hear it, which relieved her.

“I am… I was… your mother’s best friend,” she confessed, a solitary tear rolling down her cheek. “Your mother was like my sister. When you were a baby, she came here to visit us. And then she told us…”

Gabby’s “mother” couldn’t go on. She covered her mouth, tears streaming from her high dark cheeks. Gabby’s own eyes began to water. Whatever the truth was, it was bad. Worse than she could imagine.

“Ema don’t,” Gabby insisted, jarred by her mother’s emotion. “Just tell me who is here.”

She shook her head in protest. “You won’t understand. Until you know what happened.”

Gabby’s mood turned sober and dread blanketed her. Her heart thumped the more she entertained a new worst-case scenario.

“Are they here to take me away?” Gabby’s voice quaked.

At that, her mother actually nodded, which struck fear in Gabby. But oddly, her mother’s face was serene and smiling. Gabby’s breath quickened.

“Mom, what’s going on? Where are they taking me?”

“It’s good, mare. Listen to me. You cannot stay here—”

“Mom, please—”

“Your father and I, we have not told anyone about you. Not a soul. Our connection to Ashwari is dead. And yet, these men are here, do you understand what that means?”

“…No, I don’t.”

“It means that if they can find out, then he can find out,” her mother filled in cryptically. “The longer you stay here the more you’re in danger.”

“Who’s ‘he’? Why are you letting them take me?” Gabby began to panic.

The woman she knew as her mother was talking crazy. She wanted to hand her over to strange men. Would her father not fight for her?

Suddenly, she heard the unmistakable sound of him coming home.

“Baba!”

Gabby’s mom put her hand back over her mouth. Gabby began trying to squirm out of her grasp.

“Gabby listen to me!” she whisper-yelled over her struggling. “Your name is Princess Asha Gabrielle Otieno. Your father was King Otieno of Ashwari.”

When Gabby finally fell still, her mother removed her hand. Gabby stared at her and stayed quiet.

“My name is Gabrielle Ayenew,” she finally replied, confused.

“Your mother was Queen Aida Otieno of Ashwari. She came here to visit us, but when she got here she told me of her plan. She wanted to remain here, to seek asylum from your father, the King. When she could not get it, she left you with us and returned home. Where she died.”

Her mother? Was a queen?

Her actual mother had been here? In America?

And she left her?

“Why did she leave?” Gabby asked with a lump in her throat.

“Because the King expected her back.”

“Why? She would’ve been safe here. How would the King have even known to come here?”

“She told him plainly where she was going. That she was visiting family here, so the King would not try to chase her. And coming back without you bought her time. She was going to tell the King that we wished to keep you for a while. I assume that is what she did.”

“Stupid!” Gabby replied in Amharic. A tear of anguish fell. “No government would’ve let us go back there. Ashwari is in ruins even now. You said it yourself!”

“Harboring the Queen of another country would’ve certainly caused a war with your father in charge,” her fake mom explained. “Ashwari’s allies killed him! And now they back his traitorous army General, who betrayed him and staged a coup! And killed every living Otieno in the land!”

“Except us?” Gabby gulped.

“Except you,” her mother whispers, smoothing Gabby’s hair with her hands. “Do you know what this means, mare? You are a queen!”

A queen? Gabby’s brow knit even more and her eyes darted in confusion.

“I still don’t understand. Why are the police here?”

“Those men are not the police,” replied her mother.

“Then who are they?”

“Get dressed. I will let them explain.”

When Gabby finally emerged from her room in a black oversized sweatsuit from her sister’s closet, the hood hiding her hair, her mother frowned. Meanwhile, her father had a beaming smile of pride on his face.

Her siblings had also gathered in the living room and looked somberly in her direction as if they’d announced she was dying.

Finally, she laid eyes on the two black men sitting at the dining room table, elegantly out of place and impeccably dressed in long coats far too warm for a Florida spring. Both men eyed her intently before looking at each other in unspoken decision.

Gabby sat on the arm of the floral living room couch with arms crossed, waiting to hear the day’s bizarre events unfold. The man in the camel-colored coat spoke first.

“You are in the presence of King Ohaji Khoury, son of Kamau Khoury, King of Manaf. I am the king’s vizier. My name is Mazigh Chike. You can call me Max.”

Manaf… she’d heard the name of that country before. Recently.

Today, in fact.

“Weren’t you just on the news an hour ago?”

“We met with your President’s advisors this morning, so that is entirely possible.”

Gabby simply stared. She tried to recall that random nanosecond she’d stopped to watch the dapper figures walking across the White House lawn on the television, just before she got in the shower.

Both men were tall dark and handsome. And they seemed older, though they didn’t quite look it.

The king had a regal, West African handsomeness, but looked much too young to already be a king.

The vizier, Max, looked to be from another part of Africa. Perhaps Nigeria or Ghana. Tall even while he was sitting, and more built. He had a cleanly shaped goatee while the king was clean-shaven. His features were wide and full where the king’s were sharp and tight, including his dark gleaming eyes. Unassuming but much more imposing.

The king stayed silent, donning a severe, intimidating look. Max continued with his disarming black stare, a vulnerability meant to put her at ease. He spoke with the coiled, hyphenated trill of the Middle East.

“We’re here because we received news that the Princess Otieno, offspring of King Otieno, the former King of Ashwari, might be hiding in this country. And we believe you to be that offspring.”

“Okay,” Gabby simply replied.

“With your permission, we would like to test your DNA to make sure it is a match.”

“It will match,” Gabby assured them.

The king shifted in his chair, giving Max a look he was too busy watching her to return.

“If that is the case,” Max nodded patiently, then the king has a proposition for you.”

“The king doesn’t speak for himself?” Gabby asked.

She could only imagine the horror on her mother’s face behind her. Her father began reprimanding her in an Ashwari panic. Gabby quietly took her rebuke, half turning to face him.

These were not her parents. They couldn’t be her parents. The way they cowered so.

How had she missed it before today?

“…I’m sorry,” Gabby muttered, remorsefully. The king spoke something in Arabic to Max and it dawned on her that the King may not even speak or understand English.

“The king is interested in forming an alliance between your country and his.”

Forming an alliance?

With… Ashwari? With… America?

What the hell does that have to do with me? she thought

“I don’t understand.”

“Manaf is a prosperous country. Your father the King once sought an alliance with us, as well as his father before him.”

“Is Manaf one of the countries that let him be murdered by traitors? And my mother as well?”

Max lowered his gaze and spoke in Arabic as if translating. The king replied in measured, commanding syllables.

“Your father’s General lied to him, which in turn caused him to lie to my father,” the king replied through Max. “As a result, my father was killed in his own palace by traitors, shortly after your family was assassinated.”

Gabby swallowed, suddenly overwhelmed by the realities of countries outside the US.

“I still don’t understand what this has to do with me.”

“Your father and my father betrothed us to each other while we were very young,” Max continued to translate. “If you are the rightful Queen of Ashwari as you yourself believe, then I propose a marriage between us. Between my country and yours.”

Gabby shifted her weight on the arm of the couch, skimming her fingers across her brow in thought.

“So… if I leave my family, my home, my profession behind, to go with you to… Monat, is it?”

“Manaf.”

“Go with you to Manaf, and spend the rest of my life married to a strange man in a strange land, you promise to help a country that I have almost no connection to whatsoever, that’s not even the size of Tampa?”

“Asha!”

“No, Mom, this is crazy,” Gabby directed towards her. “Two Denzel lookin’ dudes come to the door speaking Arabic, and suddenly you’re willing to call me a queen and hand me off?”

The room was silent and Gabby sensed her parents’ embarrassment.

She was starting to doubt her confidence, but the growing frustration over her puppeteered life needed expressing.

“I can understand my mother actually being a Queen, like… that’s the only thing that you’ve ever told me that’s made any sense,” Gabby continued, “but let’s just pretend for a moment that I believe you guys are who you say you are,” she pointed with an outstretched arm. “I don’t have a birth certificate, I don’t have a green card or a visa, don’t have a social security card, don’t have a passport. And if I get caught leaving the country without it? I’ll be deported anyway. So, until you somehow manage to get me one or all of those things, I’m gonna have real trouble entertaining any of this.”

Max translated her rant in record time.

The king’s high, sable cheekbones raised and his laugh lines appeared like strings, his mouth in a slight grin. He huffed a little laugh and addressed her directly.

“If I do this for you, do I have your hand in marriage?” he asked in impeccable English.

Gabby shivered, feeling a bit sheepish. Every eye turned from the king’s black eyes to Gabby’s.

“I’ll… think about it,” Gabby squinted in disbelief. At the conversation, at the entire event.

The two men gave each other another wordless consultation that tonally seemed to amount to, “what choice do we have?”

Each of them raised from the table, the King giving her a nod as he headed for the door at a king’s slow pace. Max followed behind, buttoning his camel trench as his Majesty walked out without a word.

“We will be in touch,” Max faced the family with a slight bow.

“You must stay for dinner,” Gabby’s mother pleaded at the door. An Ashwari custom. Women of the house often pleaded for their guests to stay, whether they wanted them to or not, a familial sign of affection. In her case, she was probably serious.

“Another time,” Max politely grinned with his eyes. Neither of them took a second look at Gabby on their way out.

The entire family crowded around the large living room window as the pair walked back to the black SUV parked on their curb.

Gabby tried to stave off curiosity, but eventually caved and looked through the peephole at their departure. The king’s black coat floated in the wind as he got in on the driver’s side.

At least he was the kind of king that was willing to drive himself around town. She liked that. Delete Created with Sketch.

As the two men drove off back to their hotel in relative silence, the King finally caved.

“What?” the King asked, knowingly.

“Nothing,” Mazigh shrugged.

“You obviously have something to add.”

“You were charming.”

“I hardly said a word,” Khoury muttered.

“And it was charming,” Mazigh insisted. “It seems the intel proved to be accurate,” he broached the subject at hand.

The King let out a breath.

The information was exciting on its face. And then, there she was. Dressed like a commoner and making demands with complete confidence. She really was American.

But it suited her. Who she really was.

“Do you remember her mother?” the King asked.

“Vaguely. An Ethiopian woman. Also beautiful. She resembles her, no?”

He smoldered in thought. He remembered Ashwari’s Queen through the words of others more than remembering what she looked like. Everyone went on about her poise and supermodel looks, down to her tall, athletic body type. The princess obviously inherited that, but she had her father’s full lips and narrow eyes. And quite possibly his temperament.

“Perhaps. She certainly resembles the King.”

“In more than just the physical,” Mazigh smirked. “Shall I cancel the DNA kit?”

“Of course not. We’ll need the proof,” the King said.

“The girl has no country,” Mazigh raised his eyebrows, a victorious smile on his face. “This will be easier than we anticipated. Extraction could be done in a matter of hours.”

“Look into a visa for the girl.”

Mazigh adopted a quizzical look. “What? Why?”

“Because her requests are reasonable.”

“Not in the few days that we have.”

“We must improvise,” the King insisted. “We still need to conduct the exam and we need her compliance.”

“…Or we could take her now, and conduct the exam at home. It would pose no risk. She is clearly the Princess.”

“We stick to the plan,” the King nodded. “Belkacem warned me of the obstacles.”

“You rely on Belkacem too much,” Mazigh offered. “Only one of us has ever set foot in America before today.”

“And only one of us is King,” Ohaji shot him a look of warning.

Mazigh breathed through his nose as he chose his next words carefully. “Time is of the essence. If we give in to her demands we will be at her mercy.”

“We are at her mercy regardless,” the King reasoned. “Her mother’s friend has raised her well enough, but she has lived in fear of deportation. If I can grant her in a matter of days what her family hasn’t been able to in a lifetime, she will come with us willingly.”

“And if she looks you up on the internet in two days’ time?”

Ohaji answered with the hope of a man accustomed to forcing circumstances to adjust to his needs. “Let us hope she does not.”

“Eventually, she will find out the whole truth,” Mazigh warned.

“Of course. Hopefully, the three of us will be on a plane by then.”

His vizier’s silence overwhelmed the King again.

“You have more to say, Mazigh?”

“Simply that there are potential wives all over Manaf, your majesty. Younger than 25.”

“I want this one,” was his loaded response.

“The likelihood that she is still a virgin—”

“She is of royal blood. Which is worth a thousand spotless virgins.”

The silence of his vizier begged to differ, but he didn’t dare speak another word. Besides, he knew the King well enough to know his wheels were turning.

Mazigh was not “old-fashioned.” Marrying a virgin was simply the way of things. He would lose the respect of practically every man in Manaf if he did not.

He may be forgiven in this special circumstance. The King was positive that with her being raised across the world, he could keep her personal life under wraps. They stopped at a traffic light and a gentle rain started, pattering the windows.

“Find out what you can from the parents,” he finally said.

“How would they know?”

“They would at least know her friends. Her social life.”

“Everything about this evening tells me they probably haven’t let the girl too far out of sight. She seems a bit sheltered, particularly for an American.”

“We mustn’t rely on our stereotypes. Find out for sure.”

“Of course, your Majesty. And if she… has taken lovers?”

“She will have to be examined.”

Mazigh’s lips became tight as he shook his head. “She won’t like that.”

“Of course she won’t.”

“We can combine the DNA testing with the examination. Make it seem as arbitrary as possible,” Mazigh suggested.

“I am now wondering whether I even want to know.”

Mazigh gave him a nearly imperceptible smirk. “Only her attendants will truly need to know. Shall I keep his Majesty in the dark?”

“Please.”

“Even if the results are pleasing?”

Mazigh knew him too well. That’s what he gets for hiring his childhood friend to be his advisor.

The beautiful Princess Asha being a virgin was a longshot, but it would essentially make her perfect. Like a daydream. His own personal treasure that’d been hidden for him these senselessly hard, long twenty-five years. Waiting. Maturing.

He wanted her. Like he had never wanted anything.

He’d born the burden of ruling a nation for most of his life, but he had never known want. He’d always had to experience it vicariously, through his friend.

Princess Asha was close enough to touch, but he couldn’t. Not yet. The King dared to let his vizier observe his unmitigated thoughts.

“Especially if they are pleasing,” he muttered, facing the rain-soaked window.

The King’s Vizier is now available for pre-order exclusively on Amazon. Also in Kindle Unlimited!

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