by Tara Pammi
Suddenly, a flicker of such unbearable pain filled his gaze and she lost track of her thoughts. He hadn’t been fully smiling before—he never did—but at least there had been a gleam of indulgent humor in his expression. Now, his features were frozen into a cold mask.
A servant approached them with a long, rectangular silver tray in hand, the contents of it hidden under the Dahaaran flag.
Zohra could see the gleaming silver hilt of a sword encrusted with emeralds peeking from under the cloth.
“It is yours now, Ayaan,” Queen Fatima said, her eyes filling up with tears.
Zohra turned toward him when no response came from Ayaan.
He looked at the sword as if it were something expressly sent to torture him. There was a deathly pallor to his skin while his gaze remained glued to the tray.
Unease fluttering in her belly, Zohra looked to her new mother-in-law. For once, she was irritated at her own decision all these years to learn nothing of rituals and culture.
“Queen Fatima, what is the significance of this sword?”
“It was my brother’s sword.” The answer came from Ayaan, who was still staring at it. “The one he was honored with when he was announced the crown prince of Dahaar.”
“I think Azeez,” the queen began, “would have been happy to see you take it for yourself, Ayaan. And what better occasion—”
“What Azeez would have wanted was to be alive. As he deserves to be.”
The words from Ayaan sounded like an anguished growl to Zohra. And she was sure she was the only one who had heard them.
In the next moment, Ayaan walked away without looking back, leaving a hall full of state dignitaries and distinguished guests staring after him with a mixture of curiosity and shock.
CHAPTER FOUR
AYAAN DRIED HIS hair roughly and threw the towel aside. He was bone-tired after his rigorous exercise regimen. It was the only way he knew of knocking himself out. Drown his body in so much physical strain that there was nothing for his mind to do but bathe him in sleep.
Sometimes it worked, sometimes he woke up screaming in the middle of the night.
At least he was in good shape. Khaleef, his bodyguard, a man he had known all his life, hadn’t let Ayaan run to fat and utter worthlessness in five years. His mind might be out of his control, but Ayaan intended to retain every ounce of control over his body.
He came to a halt, facing the doors of his suite. He hadn’t seen Zohra since he had stormed out of the Throne Hall.
He had been caught up in her beauty. But more than that, he hadn’t been able to stop himself from pushing past her prickly armor and boundaries. The same boundaries that he had forbidden her to cross with him. And yet with her by his side, the joy of the festivities had made a mark even on him, reminded him of who he used to be five years ago.
And then he had seen his brother’s sword. A stark reminder of why he was the one standing.
Several hours later now, the image of it refused to leave him alone. He pushed through the doors, came to the head of the bed and turned the light on. And stopped.
Wearing a gown made of the silkiest chiffon in the color of turquoise, Zohra lay sleeping against the pillows on his side. Instant heat swirled low in his gut. It was his wedding night, and his bride was sleeping in his bed. Even half the man that he was, he couldn’t remain immune to the breathtaking beauty of the woman.
She slept on her back, her hands raised above her head. The swirls of henna across her skin were beautiful and his gaze swept over her body.
Her delicately arched feet were also decorated in the same deep red intricate design disappearing beneath the gown at her calves.
The dress swirled around her slender form and yet managed to drape silkily over every curve and dip. Over her legs and her thighs, over the indentation of her waist and finally over her breasts.
Hundreds of golden threads were worked around the neckline, the weight of which pulled the fabric down. Giving him a view of the upper curve of one breast. They were small and rounded and he couldn’t move his gaze from the sight.
Desire ripped through him and even the simmering anger he felt at her presence couldn’t wash it away. He moved closer without knowing it. She smelled divine, like roses and attar and a rich, erotic fusion of both with her own scent.
In eight months of lucidity, he had never once felt so alive, felt desire as sharp and focused as now. And he couldn’t easily dismiss this sharp hunger at the sight of her, or view it with distaste.
Her long hair was fanned over his pillow, her mouth pink. Long lashes lent her an air of vulnerable femininity that was missing when her eyes were open. Because she was busy studying, assessing, challenging with that intelligent gaze.
Suddenly, her gaze flew open. It stayed unfocused, muddled with sleep. A slight flush lit her skin with a rosy hue. Her gaze traveled over him lazily. Ayaan felt the force of it down to his toes. For a second, all he could think of was to climb into the bed.
Irritation flickered hot inside him. But he waited silently for the heat of his desire to subside, even as he wondered what had brought that smile to her lush mouth.
Shock flickering through her brown eyes, she shot up and pushed her hair from her face. “Prince Ayaan, what are you doing here?”
He raised a brow at her indignation. “That should be my question. You’re in my bed, in my suite, in my wing again, Princess. If I were the jealous, possessive kind of husband, I would take offense at how often you end up in a man’s bed.”
Pulling herself up against the headboard, she looked around, her gaze wide. It swept over his suite. Pink crept upward from her neck. And the glare in her eyes went to full-blown anger. She half slipped, half jumped from the bed, her movements panic-stricken. “If you had been the normal, entitled, king-of-everything-I-survey kind of man like I had hoped, you would have rejected me and I would be nowhere near this palace or you.”
She turned around and started pulling the cushions and pillows here and there. Bent over the bed like that, she gave him a perfect view of the curve of her bottom draped by nothing but the sheerest silk. The woman was capable of pushing him over the last edge he was already standing on.
He grabbed his robe from the foot of the bed and threw it at her. “Cover yourself and get out of my chamber.”
Zohra clutched the robe out of pure instinct while, she was sure, mortification turned her face bright red. “You think I want to be here, half-naked and incoherent, laid out like a feast for you?”
His silence in the face of her mounting fury chafed at her. She shrugged into the overlarge silk robe, the sleeves doubling over past her hands. “This is all because of your mother and her army of...”
The roaring blaze in Prince Ayaan’s gaze, the concrete set of his jaw curbed her words. He took a menacing step toward her, his mouth flattened with fury. “Do you have no filter between your brain and your mouth, Princess?”
Mortification heated her skin like fire, but Zohra was damned if she left before she cleared his assumption that she wanted to be in his bedroom. “I have been awake since before dawn, going through a million rituals that mean nothing to me. I nearly fell asleep in that monstrous tub of perfumed oil before being led here,” she said, meeting his gaze.
His hands folded at his chest, he stood there like a block of ice, unwavering, unfeeling. As though nothing mattered to him except his imposed isolation from everyone around him, as if his very survival was hinged on it. Frustration and curiosity turned Zohra inside out.
“I have no interest in how you arrived here, Princess. I do not want to see you in my quarters ever again. Is that understood?”
Zohra nodded, her own anger coming to her aid. It was what they had agreed upon for their marriage. But his cutting attitude, as if she polluted the very air around him by breathing it, reminded
her of things she never wanted to remember. She lifted her chin, infused steel into her words. “I have no wish to remain here and bear the brunt of your uncivilized behavior. But I have no idea where I am supposed to go.”
Her legs shook beneath her, a gaping void opening up in her gut. But she refused to let him see the nagging hurt his words evoked. He was not the cause of it, she knew that, but his words were a reminder of the most painful fact of her life. Since her mother had died, she had not belonged anywhere. Her life felt as if it was a repeat telecast of the worst moments; indifference and resentment. “Unless you want me to make a spectacle of myself and roam around the palace at this hour of the night in the inconsequential gown underneath this robe, I suggest you get off your high horse and find yourself a different bed for the night.”
He reached her before she could blink, his hold on her wrist inflexible, leaving Zohra no choice but to follow. “As you might already be guessing with that smart head of yours,” he said, his jaw so tight that she wondered that she could hear his words, “not only is the man you married uncivilized but he is also a coward who loathes sleeping anywhere but in his quarters.”
Because of his nightmares?
Her chest tight, Zohra stared at his profile as he tugged her through the door. She swallowed the question, shrugging off the instant concern that stole over her.
She had no idea how far they had gone until they were standing in front of another set of doors. But by the thick silence around them, Zohra knew they were still in the same wing.
“This has to work for tonight.”
With that curt statement, he turned and left, leaving Zohra speechless in his wake. Tucking her arms around her, she ventured into the huge room. Now that she was awake, the scent of attar and rose that clung to her skin cloyed through her, the sensitive rub of her thighs making her aware of her state of undress.
Using the velvet-covered footstool, she lugged herself onto the antique bed and lay down. She shivered, even though the room was comfortably warm. Silver threaded white cotton sheets rustled as she settled in, the silence creeping into her skin.
She stared up at the canopy of the bed, shameful tears pooling in her eyes.
Hadn’t she lived through this same lonely moment too many times to be still weighed down by a stranger’s indifference to her?
Zohra had known what she was taking on for Saira’s sake and yet she couldn’t shake the loneliness that twisted inside her, the crippling fear that she was bound to spend her entire life alone.
* * *
Stepping over the threshold of the State Hall, Zohra smiled for the first time in the week since the wedding. She was wearing an extremely comfortable and stylish pink pantsuit thanks to her personal stylist, and, for once, Zohra felt she could handle the day ahead.
It was the first official public event that Ayaan was attending since the wedding. Her gaze focused on Ayaan who, Zohra had noticed, rarely met his mother’s eyes. Queen Fatima had walked them through every event that had been planned for the day. Even Zohra knew that it was a job for a political aide but she had a feeling the queen had taken it on so that she could spend some time with her son.
A small crowd had already gathered, including Ayaan’s parents. Clad in a slate gray suit that hugged his wide shoulders, Ayaan stood at the opposite wall. His jaw clean-shaven, the unruly waves of his hair combed back, he looked every inch a commanding prince who had come back to Dahaar and its people against all odds.
He stood near his father and two other suit-clad men, but the way he stood, slanted away from the group, with a smile that curved his mouth but didn’t touch his gaze, Zohra felt his isolation like a live thing, almost as if there were a fortress around him.
A hush fell around her as everyone noticed her entrance. Her skin prickled with awareness like a warning beacon just as those golden eyes landed on her. And she saw the infinitesimal tightening of his shoulders, the long indrawn breath, as if he were bracing himself.
Frowning, Zohra struggled with the overwhelming urge to turn tail and disappear. She already had a healthy amount of dislike for any state affairs, and Prince Ayaan’s long-suffering attitude toward her presence on top of that grated at her.
She reached his side and the group widened to include her. Her nerves tightened at the press of Ayaan’s hard muscle beside her and all she could hear was the amplified thud of her heart, the whistle of every hard-fought breath, as he introduced her.
Ayaan’s palm lay against her lower back. She shivered, wondering if there was a brand on her skin in the shape of his palm. Zohra couldn’t remember the names of the two men and their wives a second after they fell on her ears.
How could she react so strongly to his presence while he barely tolerated hers?
He turned her toward him slightly. “I hope you have recovered from the wedding, Princess.”
A stinging response rose to her tongue. Pulling a deep breath in, she looked around and checked her impulse to shout at him in a very unprincesslike way. “You are actually deigning to speak to me?” she whispered.
He blinked at the animosity in her tone.
“Of course, state functions. That was in the rule book, wasn’t it?” She was acting like a child, but she couldn’t dismiss the image of Ayaan bracing himself to face her. Indifference and resentment had wounded her more than she had thought. And facing the same again...
“One of the times you will sigh deeply and suffer my company instead of banishing me from your presence.”
His hands locked behind him, he studied her with an intense gaze as if he could drill into her head and read all her secrets and fears. His mouth flattened, his ire nothing but a spark in his golden brown gaze. “And here I was afraid that you were far too clever than I ever wanted my wife to be, Princess.”
Rooted to the spot, Zohra stared at his back and spent the next two hours wondering what he meant. The informal social gathering complete, they were led through a narrow entrance, flanked by uniformed guards dressed in Dahaar’s navy blue.
Surprised by the security measures, Zohra was about to ask Ayaan when huge, ancient doors opened in front of them.
It was a scene unlike Zohra had ever seen.
A roar went up instantly at the sight of Ayaan. They were in a marble-tiled hall, ten times bigger than the huge throne room with at least a thousand people standing upon the wide staircase on the other side and more falling into a single line behind security ropes around the perimeter of the hall.
With every cheer and greeting that came from the crowd, Zohra felt Ayaan freeze next to her, inch by painful inch as if someone was injecting ice into his very veins. She heard Queen Fatima whisper Ayaan’s name, saw the king’s concerned pat on his shoulder but Ayaan didn’t budge.
He could have been the statue of a centuries-old warrior for all the life she felt in him.
Seconds merged and a tiny ripple of shock spread through the group around them. The cheers from the crowd began to pale into something else. Zohra stole a look at Ayaan and her breath hitched in her throat. His face looked as if someone had poured concrete over his features, his nostrils flaring as he fought to breathe.
Was this what he faced every time he walked in front of a crowd?
Her throat tight, Zohra reached for his hand. He didn’t budge. She moved closer, clasped her fingers around his.
He turned and the distress in his gaze shook her insides. Shadows upon shadows flickered in the golden depths, mocking her petty insecurities and peevishness. She knew he wanted to leave, but she also knew he would castigate himself later.
Words came and fell away from her mouth, every one more trite than the previous. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what he saw, or felt at that moment.
She shook her head with a tsk-tsk sound, strove to fill her words with a lightness that she was far from feeling. She tugged at
his fingers, forcing him to focus on her touch, her words. “Is it because of my illegitimate birth or the fact that I lack a certain important organ that I have never been treated with half such enthusiasm in Siyaad?”
A lick of humor came alive in his gaze. “I would say a combination of both.” The tight lines around his mouth relented. His gaze swept over her, wide, intense. “And more importantly, what they show you or not show you is only a reflection of your own interest in them, Princess.”
Even with the black cloud of whatever it was that haunted him, he didn’t hold back his punches. She nodded, even though the truth stung. “Whereas you, they have known you your entire life.”
He nodded. She heard him release his breath, felt him move closer to her until their sides grazed. “Except for the last few years.”
“I thought turning back on something like this was nothing for a prince but it is not, is it?” she ventured.
She felt his gaze move over her, but stared straight ahead. Their fingers were still laced together, and yet there was no getting used to the feel of his rough fingers against hers. “No,” he said after a long pause.
“What about this...bothers you, Prince Ayaan?”
He clamped his fingers tighter around hers. She must have made a sound because he instantly loosened his grip. “I’m not the man they think I am. I am not the man I thought I was long ago.”
Zohra took in the eager anticipation on every face in the crowd. Standing so close to him, feeling the heat from his hard body, seeing him fight his fears with every inch of him, she had never been surer of a man’s strength. “I have spent many moments in the past week accompanying you to various state functions that hold no meaning or significance for me, I have witnessed their celebration in your name. And I have come to understand one thing. They know exactly who you are, what it takes for you to be here and they accept you, Prince Ayaan. Even I know how rare that is.”
