Page 28

Chapter Seventeen

Z ynara pulled off the highway and up to a rocky bluff with a spectacular view—not of sand, as Lottie expected, but a sea of glass.

Ain Zargiers’ famous solar fields.

They stretched as far as Lottie could see—miles and miles—though as she looked, she realised it wasn’t one monotonous expanse of solar panels. There was diversity and experimentation here too.

Zynara was watching her sideways with a curious look on her face, like she was anxious for Lottie’s reaction.

“I didn’t think it would be beautiful,” Lottie breathed. “It shines!”

The Qasira huffed. “You don’t have to pretend just to impress me,” she said. She sounded dry, as if being patronised for her vision was her lot in life. “Some people think they’re ugly. You’re allowed to say so.”

Lottie squeezed her hand. “Is this all you?” She gestured at the vast fields that burned with the sky, that captured the very sun and crystallised it into power. “Did you build all this?”

“My father started the work. I expanded it. This is less than a tenth of our capacity—”

“Show off.”

“—but this is where it started.”

Zynara was clearly getting better at ignoring her sass. Lottie felt warm at the thought.

The Qasira pulled up at a building overlooking the fields and got out of the car. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll show off properly now.”

Showing off properly meant a flight in another of those fantastically futuristic passenger drones, the AlTair logo and the royal crest on its door. But first, there was a sea of nerds to get through.

The building was nothing at all like the functional service buildings that might accompany any other kind of power plant.

This was architecturally designed, surrounded by palm trees and landscaped gardens, the inside cool from a combination of traditional design aesthetics centred around a fountain, and exceptionally effective air conditioning.

The Qasira swept past security guards she greeted by name and waved cheerfully to other staff who eagerly popped out of offices to say hello.

The international diplomat act fell away completely.

Here, Zynara was a scientist and engineer just like the rest of them, and Lottie found herself watching with an affectionate smile as staff shared secret science business on screens filled with graphs and pages of statistics.

When Zynara actually high-fived an older man wearing a lab coat over his traditional djellaba, and the man grinned like his world couldn’t be more perfect, Lottie knew she was in love.

The Qasira in her natural habitat was absolutely, endearingly geeky and wholly adorable.

Until she clocked Lottie watching. Then she hitched a beautifully proud arrogance onto her face again and lifted one smouldering eyebrow.

Lottie nearly melted into a pool of lust at her feet.

The gaggle of scientists followed them out to a terrace where the flier sat waiting for them, scientific Arabic and English still bouncing between them all.

Zynara held open the door for Lottie and handed her into the pod as if she was the princess and waved to the team as she strode around to the other side.

The machine awoke to her touch, and they sprang into the air.

From the air, the solar fields were even more mind-blowing.

“This was my father’s first field,” Zynara said, her voice quiet as the drone hushed them over.

“He built it in the early 80s and we used to picnic out here when we were kids. We used to run between the rows and annoy the engineers. You can’t see it from up here, but the condensation that forms on the panels at night drips to the ground and there are hundreds of wildflowers.

” She paused. “My mother used to pick them and make us each crowns.”

Lottie gave her a soft smile. “Love to see you in a crown,” she breathed.

Zynara’s eyes were heavy for a moment, then they flicked to the view again.

“Of course, the field was much smaller then. What you’re looking at now is a combined park of seventeen different generation projects.

Mostly photovoltaics, but wind was integrated a few years ago” —she pointed to a distant ridge where gleaming white turbines spun lazily on the breeze— “and a heliostat system came online last year.”

“Sexy,” Lottie murmured.

“It’s called Noor,” Zynara said. “My mother was a poet.”

Light . Of course.

“And your father is a scientist?”

Zynara shrugged. “Oh no. Baba was always a king first. He wanted to do what was best for his people. Did you know the first solar field in the world was in Egypt? It was just before the first world war. My grandfather was interested, and there was British involvement too. The war put an end to all that, of course, and then they discovered oil in Bahrain, Saudi and Qatar and here in Ain Zargiers and it was all over for renewables before they’d even begun. ”

Lottie shook her head, and flapped a hand at the vast array beneath them. “This is not all over,” she said.

Zynara eyed her shrewdly. “This first project powered every home this side of the mountain. Free, clean power for everyone. Now, Ain Zargiers is almost wholly renewable and we export power to Europe, but there is still… that. ”

They flew over a small rise, and in the valley on the other side was an oil refinery.

Its ugliness punched her in the stomach.

The refinery squatted in the sand, a filthy parasite of tangled pipes, corroded tanks and towers that belched gas into the sky.

It was monstrous—a festering wound in the desert, bleeding toxins across the land and pumping it into dollars.

Everything Lottie had just seen—the clean, shimmering solar fields, the pristine mirrors worshipping the sun—twisted into poison.

An acrid tang seeped through the flier’s air-conditioning and made Lottie’s throat tighten.

Almost instinctively, she held her breath, as if she could feel the petrochemicals settling in her lungs, as if her body wanted to keep the horror her eyes were seeing out.

This was Malik’s dream. This is what he would multiply, drilling stupidly for more. If he got his way, Ain Zargiers wouldn’t be a world leader in green energy—Zynara’s country would be a choking, burning sacrifice on the altar of oil and greed.

Lottie couldn’t let that happen.

Next to her, Zynara watched her, but said nothing. She didn’t have to. Lottie could feel the sadness—the confusion, the resentment, the impatience and exasperation, the indignation, the tiredness, and the resignation rolling off her like a storm. She sighed.

Lottie’s rage erupted out of nowhere. “Someone should blow it up,” she blurted.

Zynara gave a weak chuckle. “Will it always come back to explosions with you?” She tapped at the controls and the flier skirted the refinery and flew beyond it, deeper into the desert.

“I’m serious.” Lottie thought about it. “Your country is what percent renewables?” She didn’t wait for an answer.

“How many of Malik’s oil refineries are still online?

I would be more than happy to take them offline for you.

And I can do far more damage than he did to your hydrogen facility.

I could level that thing. Melt it into the ground. ”

“That’s very tempting.”

“Then why don’t we? I mean, you. I mean, me. Why don’t we destroy it? Ain Zargiers doesn’t need it. You don’t need its products. It doesn’t bring wealth to anyone in the country except Malik. Why do you insist on playing fair when he’s—”

“I didn’t bring you out here to blow up an oil refinery.”

There was a warning in Zynara’s tone but Lottie wasn’t in the mood to hear it.

She was surprised at how outraged the refinery was making her feel.

She craned her neck to look back at it. Even at a distance she could pick out four—no, five—critical points where a few well-placed charges could send the whole monstrous thing sky high.

She was already mapping out the detonation sequence in her head, picturing the chain reaction, the glorious destruction.

“Just a few explosives,” she muttered, tapping her fingers against the armrest. “Nothing clever. Structural weaknesses, maximum impact—clean, efficient, incredibly satisfying.”

“No.”

Lottie ignored her. “You’re telling me that thing deserves to exist? It is a toxic boil on the arse of the planet. Malik wants more of them!”

“And you think turning it into a fireball of pollution is the answer?” Zynara’s voice was amused and dry, but there was still a tick of tension in her jaw.

“Well… yes! Okay, the pollution is less than ideal, but do you know how many hundreds of millions it would cost to rebuild that— No, don’t tell me, you brainiac!

My point is Malik would be bankrupt just trying to sweep up the rubble, and the political fallout.

Your brother would need months to recover—”

“And if he had a convenient eco-terrorist attack to rally his right-wing buddies against?”

Lottie opened her mouth. Then shut it.

Crap. That was a good point.

“You’re no fun,” she muttered.

“Not what you were saying last night.” Not having to pilot the flier meant the Qasira could leer at Lottie as much as she wanted. Her gaze was suddenly ridiculously heavy.

Lottie laid on the drama and turned up the cunning. “Fine. No destruction of oil refineries before lunch. You’re the Q’sar.”

Zynara’s smile set like cement and Lottie felt like a dick for ruining the moment.

“You know I’m not,” Zynara whispered.

“You should be.”

“I could leave you in the desert and make you walk home.” The princess sounded resigned.

“And miss our playful repartee?”

“You mean your cheek, your insolence, your absolutely intolerable disrespect for—”

“Please Qasira. That contract you made me sign this morning included a freaking fortune for this intolerable disrespect.”

“ Made you sign—?” Zynara swore under her breath in Arabic. At length.

Lottie watched her gleefully. She giggled.

The Qasira sighed. “We’re nearly there. Can you shut up? For five more minutes? Please?”