The Last Prince of Dahaar

by Tara Pammi

  A pale, inch-wide scar stretched from his left shoulder all the way to his ribs on the right side and beyond to his back. What could wield such a painful-looking scar?

  Her empty stomach rolled on itself. How could a man withstand so much without...going mad?

  The thought swept through her like a fierce cold wave, and she shivered.

  His scrutiny as intent as her own, he said, “Hold out your hands,” in a tone that held raw command.

  Zohra sucked in a breath and tucked her hands behind her.

  He moved on the bed with lithe grace that would have been beautiful to savor if her heart hadn’t crawled into her throat. She was taller than the average Dahaaran woman and yet he towered over her.

  The scent of him had a tang to it that made her suck in a quick, greedy breath even before she knew it. He tugged her hands forward in a sudden move.

  Her skin stung where he had gripped her at even the slight friction of his fingers. He sucked in a deep breath. As though he was bracing himself. His fingers gentled as he pushed the sleeves of her tunic back.

  Dark impressions framed each wrist. A chill surrounded them, and she had the strangest feeling that his emotions were at the center of it.

  She tugged at her hands but he didn’t let go. “How long were you here before I woke up?”

  The tension emanating from him rendered her mute.

  “How long?”

  He didn’t shout the words yet they radiated with utter fury. “Five, maybe six minutes. I didn’t know what to do.”

  He let go of her hands with a jerk. “You were not supposed to be in here in the first place. And if you’re reckless enough to be, the minute you saw me, you should have turned around and walked out.”

  She shook her head. “I would loathe myself if I just walked away.”

  He ran a hand through his hair again, his movements visibly shaken. But he didn’t get off the bed, blocking her escape. “It is a quarter to midnight. I have asked you twice why you are here. If you will not answer me, I will summon the guard. Before you realize it, you will be out of a job, out of a livelihood. All for what? To get a little information on the Mad Prince? A quick photograph, is that it? Tell me who sent you here and I will show lenience.”

  He thought she was a servant paid to gather information about him? “No one sent me here, Prince Ayaan.”

  He became stiffer, if possible, the rigid line of his shoulders obvious in the feeble light. The bones at the crook between his neck and shoulders stood out in stark relief.

  She didn’t want to antagonize him any more than she already had. She didn’t want to ponder about his nightmare, his reaction to her being a witness to it. If she did this right, she wouldn’t need to see him ever again nor hear the gut-wrenching pain she had heard in his cries.

  “I...came here of my own volition. It was important for me to talk to you before you left tomorrow morning.”

  Slowly, the annoyance in his expression shifted to watchfulness. And she fought the need to shy away from it, to hide from his intense scrutiny.

  He knew.

  She could pinpoint the exact moment he realized—the watchfulness turned into realization, a flare of color in those beautiful eyes.

  That gaze moved over her in a slow sweep, lingering over her face for the longest time, seeing her with new eyes. This time, it wasn’t mere anger that colored it, but wariness, almost as if she had suddenly become dangerous to him.

  “Of course you’re not a servant.”

  He stepped off the bed as though he couldn’t breathe the same air for another moment. She stared at the broad expanse of his back. The scar streaked through his back too, like a rope bound around his body.

  He pulled on a T-shirt and stood by the foot of the enormous bed, his hands behind him, as though waiting for her to come to her senses.

  Heat spread up her neck and she gritted her teeth.

  She had nothing to feel guilty or ashamed about. She had seized the only opportunity available to her. She had seen a man in the throes of a violent nightmare and tried to help.

  She slid to her feet, the muscles in her legs trembling.

  “What was so important that it had to be said in the middle of the night?”

  This was it. This was why she had risked coming into his suite. And yet, her tongue felt as if it was glued to the roof of her mouth.

  “Should I send word to King Salim?”

  She stared at him, the sudden threat in his words, the raw command showing a different man. “There’s no need to involve my father in a matter that concerns me...us. I’m sure we can settle this between ourselves and come to a conclusion that is agreeable to both of us.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  SHE WAS HIS betrothed.

  Ayaan felt the world tilting at his feet as what he had guessed curdled into undeniable reality.

  This slip of a woman, who had the nerve to climb onto his bed and hold him through a nightmare, this woman, who was even now meeting his gaze with an arrogant confidence, was the woman he had agreed to marry just a few hours ago?

  He hadn’t given her a moment’s thought. She was nothing more than a bullet point in the list of things he had agreed to in the name of duty.

  He stood unmoving, the need to vent his spiraling frustration burning his muscles.

  Her light brown hair was combed away into a braid. Her eyes were brown, huge in her long face. A strong nose and mouth followed, the stubborn jut of it saying so much about the woman.

  She wore a light pink tunic over black leggings, a flimsy shawl wrapped loosely around her torso. Her outfit was plain for a princess, giving no hint as to what lay...

  With a control he had honed tight over the past few months, he brought his gaze back to her face. He had indulged himself enough. How the woman looked, or what kind of a body she had, held no significance to him.

  Her mother had been American, someone had mentioned it to him. But she was a copy of King Salim. The same no-nonsense air about her, the proud chin, the dogged determination it must have cost her to be near him during his nightmare.

  He had no doubt about how violent he could get when caught in one of those nocturnal episodes. It was the reason he detested having anyone even within hearing distance. And despite every precaution he took to hide the truth, to spare his parents, they had already earned him the title of Mad Prince.

  If only the world knew what a luxury madness was compared to his lucidity.

  He didn’t want to marry this woman any more than he wanted the mantle of Dahaar. The latter, he had been able to postpone. The former...?

  The people of Dahaar need reassurance that all is well with you, they need a reason to celebrate. They haven’t had one in five years. And Siyaad needs our help. King Salim stood by me when I had no one else to rely on, when I was crumbling under the weight of Dahaar.

  Now it is time we return the favor.

  Ayaan wasn’t prepared for it. He would never be.

  How could he be, when he didn’t trust himself, when he didn’t know what could break him again, when he was constantly hovering over the thin line between lucidity and lunacy?

  But he couldn’t refuse his father, not after everything he had gone through to rule and protect Dahaar, after losing his eldest son and daughter, losing Ayaan to insanity.

  His parents had lost everything in one night, but they hadn’t broken. They hadn’t failed in their duty. He couldn’t either.

  But suddenly, King Salim’s profuse excuses at tonight’s dinner made sense. His daughter’s absence had been an act of defiance. Not that Ayaan had cared that she was absent. On the contrary, he had been glad that he didn’t need to give the concept of his betrothed a concrete form until that moment was absolutely upon him.

  And now here she was, pushing he
rself into his mind in a way he couldn’t just undo. Within five minutes spent in her company, he already knew more about her than he wanted to learn in a lifetime. She was stubborn, she was brave and the worst? She wasn’t conventional.

  “I understood you were too ill to be out and about, Princess Zohra,” he said, forcing utter scorn into his words. “And yet here you are, walking around the palace at night, disrupting a guest’s privacy, offering insult.”

  “Do not call me a princess. I have never been one.”

  He was too...irritated to even ask her why.

  He was chilled to the bone, as he always was when he woke up from one of his nightmares. “Fine. Please tell me why you are in my bed, in my suite, in the palace wing that is strictly forbidden to women, at the stroke of midnight. What was so important that you had to—”

  “You were thrashing in the bed, crying out. I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. Nor could I walk away and come back at a better time.”

  “Are you deaf? Or just plain dense?” The words roared out of him on a wave of utter shame. He gritted his teeth, fighting for control over a temper that never flared. “Why are you here in the first place?”

  The brown of her eyes expanded, her mouth dropping open on a soft huff. His uncivilized words chased away the one thing he couldn’t bear to see—her pity.

  “If you think you can scare me into running away by behaving like a savage, it won’t work.”

  He could have laughed if he wasn’t so wound up. Every inch of her—her head held high, the deprecation in her look, the stubborn jut of her chin—she was a princess no matter what she said. “If this were Dahaar, I would have—”

  “But it’s not Dahaar. Nor am I your loyal subject dependent on your tender mercies,” she said, steel creeping into her words. “This is Siyaad. And even here, all those rules, they don’t apply to me.” Her eyes collided with his, daring him to challenge her claim. When Ayaan said nothing, her gaze swept over his features with a thoroughness that she couldn’t hide. Did she feel the same burn of awareness that arched into life suddenly? “I came to inform you that it’s not worth it.”

  Ayaan had known only one woman in his life who had had the temerity and the confidence to speak to him like that—Amira, his older sister. A sliver of pain sliced through his gut. Amira had never let Azeez or him get by with anything. And it had been more because of her core of steel than because she had been born into an extremely powerful family.

  He had a feeling the same was true of the woman who met his gaze unflinchingly.

  “What is not worth it?”

  “Marrying me.”

  “Why are you telling me this instead of your father?”

  She blinked but it didn’t hide the pain that filled her eyes. “I... He is not well. I could not...take the chance and risk making him worse.”

  “Being here with me, persuading me why you are not worth it does not harm him?”

  A shrug of those slender shoulders. “If you refuse me, he would be disappointed, yes. But not surprised.”

  He frowned at her conclusion. “So you want me to do your dirty work for you?”

  She took a deep breath and his curiosity mounted. “I’m not shy, willing, happy to be a man’s shadow—the kind of woman whose only mission in life would be to spew out your heirs every other year. I have never been and it’s not a role one grows into.”

  Ayaan smiled, despite the irritation flickering through him.

  The woman had gall. And even without her mission statement just now, it was clear she wasn’t a woman who could tolerate the traditional marriage their countries dictated.

  Then why was King Salim pushing for this marriage? He had to know that Ayaan and his father would stand beside him without this marriage clause, and yet he had shown more enthusiasm for it.

  “If you had attended the dinner and did your duty, I could have told you what I want in my wife.”

  She shook her head, her breath quickening. “What is there to learn? The wives—they are nothing but bloodlines and broodmares. Even a harem girl probably has it better than the dutiful wife of the king. At least, she gets good sex out of the...”

  He burst out laughing. His chest heaved with it, the sound barreling out of him. Even his throat felt raw in a strange way.

  He couldn’t help taking a step toward her.

  Pink stole into her cheeks, and she looked away from him, something unintelligible falling from her mouth.

  Her long lashes cast shadows onto sharply fragile cheekbones, her mouth—unpainted and pink. The slow burn under his skin gathered momentum. He had never liked the scent of roses growing up, it had pervaded the palace, his own chamber and sometimes, even his clothes. Yet the scent of her skin danced beneath it, teasing, tempting, coated with her awareness of him.

  “So you would prefer to be part of my harem instead of my wife?”

  Her gaze widened, her mouth opening and closing. “This is my life we’re talking about.”

  He came to a stop near her and leaned against the bed, enjoying the proximity of her presence. It didn’t fill him with the suffocating tension that everyone else’s did since his return. “You haven’t said a single word that would make me take you seriously, Princess.” She opened her mouth but he didn’t give her the chance. “All I see is a woman throwing a tantrum like a petulant teenager instead of doing her duty. What if someone had seen you come into my suite? You risk exposing yourself to ridicule and scandal, adding to your father’s burden.”

  She didn’t like that. He could see it in her eyes. “Of course, you wouldn’t want someone petulant like me to be the future queen of Dahaar, would you?”

  “So, this is all to prove a point?”

  “I don’t have any duty toward Siyaad. And nothing will make me feel anything more for Dahaar either.” She took a deep breath, as though bracing herself. “Marrying me will only bring shame to you and the royal house of Dahaar.”

  He covered the distance between them, knowing that she was baiting him yet unable to resist. “Why does that sound more like a threat and less like a warning?” he whispered.

  “I’m simply telling you the truth. Whatever expectations you have of your bride, I will fail them.”

  Ayaan frowned, regretting not learning more about her before he had given his word. “If this is about your expectations of this marriage, state them.”

  Zohra tamped down the scream building inside her chest looking for an outlet. He wasn’t supposed to ask her what she wanted out of this marriage. He was supposed to sputter in outrage, call her disobedient, scandalous...

  Any other man in his place would have called her behavior an insult. He would have gone straight to her father and broken the alliance.

  “The only expectation I have of you,” she said, feeling as though she was stepping over an unknown threshold, “is that you use the power you have to refuse this marriage.”

  A neat little frown appeared between his brows. “Unless I have a strong reason for it, it would be termed as an insult to your father, to you and to Siyaad.”

  “Isn’t it enough that you have zero interest in marrying me?”

  “I have zero interest in marrying anyone. But I will do it for—”

  “For your country, yes, I know that,” she spat the words out, feeling that sense of isolation that had been her constant companion for eleven years. She had never belonged in Siyaad, never felt as if she was a part of it. “But I’m not duty bound as you are. All I want is the freedom to live my life away from the shackles of this kind. And if it is a crystal clear reason that you want, then I will give you one.”

  “You have my full attention, Princess.” There was a dangerous inflection in his voice where it had been void of anything else before.

  She wet her lips, praying her voice would hold steady when she
was shaking inside. “I’m not future queen material. I don’t give a fig about duty and all that it entails. I’m educated and I’m smart enough to have my own opinions, which, I have been informed, are enough to drive a man up the wall. I’m a...bastard.” She had to breathe through the lump growing in her throat. “My father lived with my mother until I was seven but he...never married her. He became my guardian when she died.”

  Not even by the flicker of an eyelid did he betray his reaction. “Is that all?”

  Curse the man to hell and back. Desperation tied her insides into painful knots. “No, there’s one last reason—the most important of all.”

  “Don’t stop now,” he said, his voice laced with mockery.

  “I’m not a chaste virgin with an unblemished reputation.” Her chest was so tight she wondered if she was getting any air. “I would rather you refuse me now than claim that you’ve been cheated when you...find out.”

  He ran his forefinger over his temple, his expression betraying nothing. Her heartbeat ratcheted up. “When I find out that you’re not a virgin?”

  Fierce heat blanketed her, even as shock stung her. Why wasn’t the man throwing a royal fit even now? “When you find out that I was in love with another man, when you find out that I have spent four summers with him in a desert encampment...” She swallowed painfully, just the thought of Faisal slashing pain through her.

  “That is...a valid reason for me to refuse you,” he finally said.

  Zohra felt the most perverse disappointment. He had been unlike anything she had imagined until now.

  “So are you prepared for your father’s reaction when I present him with this...reason?”

  Her gut dropped to her feet. “What do you mean?”

  “I told you. I have no wish to insult your father after everything he has done to stand by mine. You might not feel any duty to your country. But are you so selfish that you would put your father through this? He will not only be shamed by his daughter’s behavior but he will be so in front of an audience.”

  She flinched at the distaste in his words. He hadn’t intended to back out for a second. Her gut churned with a powerless clawing. “I have no wish to weaken my father. I merely gave you the truth.”