The Last Prince of Dahaar

by Tara Pammi

  Looking up at him, Zohra braced herself, knowing that the very ground that she was standing on was going to be pulled out from under her. “Weren’t you the one who understood the need to sacrifice your own child in the name of duty? My father did his duty but he also let himself love. He took a chance and found happiness even if it was for a limited time.”

  “He damned the rest of her life in the name of love. He made you pay the price.”

  “They both paid the price, Ayaan. It was a decision they made together.” She straightened herself, striving to fight the cold chill that was seeping into her. Every word felt like an effort. “You don’t agree with me?”

  “No. But what I think does not matter, does it, Zohra? What matters is what you think.” His voice roughened in texture, as though he had to catch a breath to continue. His fingers caressed her face, desperate, fierce. “What matters is, apparently, you are exactly like your mother. You have the brightest spirit, the biggest heart I have ever seen.”

  His words should have elevated her to a higher place, should have filled her with happiness, but they didn’t. The hard edge to his words only heightened her sense of something being very wrong.

  “But I am not like King Salim. I will not damn you to a life filled with unhappiness.”

  His words knocked the breath out of her, tilted the very axis of her life. And Zohra forced herself to ask the question that was quietly gouging a hole inside her. “What are you saying?”

  Ayaan fisted his hands behind him.

  She took another step in. “Answer my question.”

  “You deserve a better man, Zohra. You need a man who will love you, who will cherish you, not use you at night and then expose you to his insecurities the next day.” It was the hardest words he had ever spoken. “I do nothing but take from you, I have nothing to give you.”

  Her anger pulsed between them, just as sharp as the desire that suffused the very air around them. “Why do you not see what you have already given me? Honor, respect. You are my strength, Ayaan. I wasted thirteen years of a good life, lived it as if in a cloud, lived it with so much anger and hurt inside. I see you and I am ashamed of myself. I see your strength, your sense of duty, your honor, and I think this is what I want to be. You have not complained once at what you suffered. You push yourself every day to rise above yourself, physically and mentally.

  “I do not care that you froze in a fight when you were barely a man. You have proven yourself to the world a thousand times over. Do these not count toward something?”

  “It is not my strength or my lucidity that I doubt anymore, Zohra,” he said, once again struck aghast by how perceptive she was. He had pushed himself in so many ways with a raging need to prove his worth to himself. He had pushed himself to the breaking point, to the last frayed edge of his mental and physical strength.

  And he had emerged the victor but the hollowness in his gut had not faded. In the face of Zohra’s strength, in the face of his own guilt and recriminations, they counted to nothing. “It is what I cannot give you, ya habibati.”

  “You have no right to call me that.”

  “The sounds you make when you come are still ringing inside my ears. I will call you whatever I please.”

  She shook from head to toe, her fury a palpable thing. Her mouth curved into a sneer even as tears shone in her eyes. “Not if you break the vows you made to me, not if you banish me from your life. You will not touch me, you will not even utter my name on your lips, Ayaan. Are you ready for that?”

  He could not bear to see her like this—hurting, breaking. “I do this for you, Zohra.”

  “Don’t you dare tell yourself that. You do this for yourself, to satisfy the guilt beneath which you have decided to live. So what happens now?”

  “You will stay in Siyaad for an indefinite time. Your family needs you, Siyaad needs you. No one will wonder at your absence in Dahaar. And when the right time comes, I will let it be known that we have separated, that it is I who is lacking as a husband.”

  Her tears drew paths over her cheeks, bitter anger turning those beautiful brown eyes into molten rocks. “And the power to make that decision lies solely with you?”

  “Something inside me is broken, Zohra. All I want to do is to lose myself in you, hear my name fall from your lips, again and again, but...” He gripped his nape, struggling to find the right words. “It will always be followed by this emptiness inside, by this self-loathing that I cannot fight. Before long, you will be stuck in that vicious cycle too and I will corrupt everything that is good and beautiful about you.”

  Her arms around her waist, she swayed where she stood, the pain in her eyes shredding him. But he had to hold fast for her sake.

  “You have conquered so many obstacles, overcome so much for so long to become the man you are today, to become the prince that Dahaar needs. Can you not fight this last demon, Ayaan, for the woman who loves you with every breath in her body, with every—”

  Ayaan placed a finger across her lips, but not before her words blasted through him with the force of an explosion. His stomach tightened, his throat seized up. Time seemed to have frozen at that minute. Looking into her beautiful, giving eyes, he wondered how he could have been so blind.

  The love and acceptance there knuckled him in the gut.

  She pulled his hand off her mouth, her slender shoulders trembling. “Truth, remember? The truth doesn’t change because we don’t want to hear it. I am in love with you. And whatever you face, we will fight—”

  “I cannot fight it, Zohra. It is stronger than me.”

  She pummeled his chest, her slender shoulders shaking with the force of her anger. “It is not that you cannot fight it, Ayaan. It is that you don’t want to fight it.”

  “You think I want to forever be a man haunted by his past—”

  “Yes, you do.” Her words echoed around them, bounced off the walls, ringing with her belief. “You have judged yourself, found yourself guilty and you accepted this as your punishment. Not once in the time I have known you have you railed against it, not once have you resented it. You resent the fact that you cannot beat it but not the why of it. You cannot take a chance on us because God forbid you find happiness while your siblings are dead, right?

  “And if you cannot see that, if you want to live the rest of your life stifled under that guilt, then you are right. You are not capable of loving me, nor do you deserve my love.”

  Ayaan stood there, unmoving, unblinking as Zohra wiped her tears and left his suite, left his life. The same way as she had entered it—shifting the very foundation of everything he stood on.

  She was in love with him.

  That incredibly amazing, wonderfully strong woman loved him. Even with his heart splintering inside him, Ayaan felt the high of her words in a dizzying whirl.

  Of everything she had said, he knew one thing was for sure.

  He was already in love with Zohra.

  He was not surprised by the realization, or shocked. He simply, irrevocably, undeniably was. Maybe if he hadn’t fallen in love with her, they could have had a life together. A life free of any emotional complications, a life free of passion, a life dictated by duty and mutual respect.

  But it was the life-altering, heartbreaking love that flowed in his veins for her that made him question everything he was and he was not, that wished he was a better man for her.

  He sank to the sofa behind him, his shaking knees refusing to hold him up. The scent of her was etched into him, it surrounded him, intensifying the hollow ache in his gut. He had thought he had known the worst in his life. But he had been wrong.

  Nothing could be worse than the aching void in his gut. He would never look into Zohra’s eyes, never see her laugh, never feel her touch again.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE DEAFENING QUIET of the
desert snarled inside Ayaan’s mind, scratching its fingers up and down his spine. He forced himself to picture Zohra, laughing at him, challenging him, loving him. The fear didn’t recede but the thought of Zohra diluted it enough for him to not fall back into its pit.

  He could have left this matter to his security team but something he couldn’t shake had lodged in his mind. Something about this man niggled at him.

  It had taken Imran a month to unearth all the hidden sources of the recent terrorist intelligence and of course, it had been traced back to the same man who had fed them information the first two times.

  Which meant he had intentionally covered his tracks. And Ayaan had instantly known something was wrong. It had taken his team another two weeks to find his whereabouts, two weeks of hell, in which Ayaan missed Zohra with an ache that had become a constant companion.

  The whisper of harsh breathing, the sounds of footsteps, which he wouldn’t have heard on the gravel road except for the fact that the man’s stride was out of step, fell on his ears and Ayaan leaped from his crouching position behind the tent.

  He couldn’t have taken a breath before a blow came at him, grazing his jaw. Shaking off the jolt of pain up his jaw, Ayaan returned a blow, and pushed the man to the ground. The man’s leg shot out from under him, and Ayaan tackled him to the ground, his heart leaping into his throat.

  Moonlight flickered over features that were as familiar as his own. A deathly chill fell over Ayaan as he collapsed to the desert floor, his muscles quivering with shock.

  His throat choked with tears, his chest so tight that he thought he would explode. Shock waves paralyzed his mental processes as he stared at the man he had worshipped his entire life, the man he had held in higher regard than his father, the man who had taught Ayaan everything he knew.

  The man who had fallen in front of him five years ago while Ayaan had froze, had stood there like a coward.

  The desert wind howled around them as his heart pumped again. Surprise abated and a joy, unlike he had ever known flooded Ayaan.

  His brother, the true prince of Dahaar, was alive.

  * * *

  Ayaan dismissed the security outside his office in the main palace wing, closed the door behind him and ran a hand over his eyes. His head pounded as if someone had hammered away at it relentlessly. He had been awake for forty-eight hours straight, and sometime yesterday, right when his mother had started crying as though her heart was breaking—again, a twitch had begun behind his left eye.

  He knew that this was only the beginning of the hardest time of his life. And the fact that he had turned his back on the one woman who would have brought him solace, who would have understood his pain, who was the one shining point of his life, was an acrid taste on his tongue.

  Since he had returned to Dahaar two days ago, the hours had seemed endless, each blending into the next, the things he had to take care of unending, until he thought he would break under the weight of it all.

  He had kept Zohra’s face at the forefront of his mind through it all, drew strength from the image of her warm smile, rooted himself in her belief that he could beat anything.

  He had bent but he had not broken.

  Now he was exhausted, both physically and mentally, and he ached to see her, to hold her, to share this fresh grief with her.

  Ya Allah, he would give anything in that moment to hold her.

  Pushing away from the door, he walked past the sitting area into his office beyond.

  And as though he had conjured her out of his very imagination with sheer desperate craving, there was his wife, pacing the floor. Emotion knotted his throat, rooting him to the spot.

  He must have said her name aloud because she was hurtling toward him before he could blink. She hugged him tight, then stepped back, her gaze hungrily sweeping over him.

  “I heard the news. Is it...Is he...” She frowned. “How are you taking it? You look...exhausted.”

  Ayaan blinked, a host of emotions vying within him—the need to hold her tight against him was the strongest. He sucked in a deep breath, greedy for the scent of her.

  Until she had spoken, he hadn’t realized how good it was to be asked, to know that his state of mind mattered. Of course, it mattered to his parents too, but right now, they needed him more than he needed them.

  She was dressed in stylishly cut gray trousers and a light blue silk blouse. The delicate arch of her neck, the strong pulse thudding there, the stubborn jut of her chin, the flare of her arrogant nose—he was starving for the sight of her. Shaking his head, he tried to focus on what had bothered him about her statement. “Only four people know that he is alive.”

  “Khaleef told me,” she said, the concern in her voice fading back. “And before you bring down your wrath on him, remember this, Ayaan.” Her voice broke on his name, but she continued, her chin tilted high. Pure steel filled her words. “I care about Dahaar, about the king and the queen. I have every right to this information.”

  Despite the journey to hell and back in the past two days, Ayaan smiled. And in that very moment, he saw what he had been too blind to realize until now. This beautiful, amazing woman was a gift he had been given and due to his cowardice he hadn’t been able to accept it. “Are you done, ya habibati?”

  “No. And you can’t send me back to Siyaad either.” Her words reverberated with a confidence that brooked no argument, but her tight fists at her sides gave her away. “I refuse to hide, refuse to lick my wounds in private as I have done for so long, refuse to let someone other than me decide my fate, decide what I deserve and what I don’t.

  “Whether you want me or not, I am your wife. I have a right to live in Dahaara, a right to learn everything I need to be the Dahaaran queen, a right to your parents’ love. I have earned my place, Ayaan. And if you can’t bear the sight of me, then it is on your head. But you try to send me back and I will show you what a Siyaadi princess is truly made of.”

  It was the most magnificent sight he had ever beheld. His heart pounded in his chest. He moved closer and ran his fingers over the pulse beating frantically at her neck. “Adding to my nightmares, Zohra?”

  The resolve in her brown eyes melted, giving way to the cutting pain she hid. It punched him in the gut. “If that is how you see me, then so be it. But I have never wanted to be the cause for your—”

  “Shh...I meant it would be a torture to be near you and to not touch you, to not hold you.” He breathed into her hair. Tugging her toward him, he held her at her waist, loosely, striving for control over himself. “All I feel is joy when you are near, pure, freeing, like I have never felt before. How can you think you bring pain?”

  “I will kill you myself if you leave me again, Ayaan.” Fighting words, but Ayaan heard the pain in them.

  “Shh....” he said, and ran his palm over her back, up and down, more to soothe himself than her. She was so fragile in his grip, and yet inside where it mattered this woman he had had the good fortune to marry, this woman he had had the temerity to fall in love with, had a core of steel and a heart as big as the desert.

  And he would spend the rest of his life loving her as she deserved to be loved.

  He touched his forehead to hers, his heart lodged in his throat. “You brought light into my life. If not for you...” He shook as the grief he’d held at bay since the minute he had laid eyes on his brother burst through him. Tears he couldn’t stem, tears that needed to be shed, wet his cheeks.

  Her slender arms tightened around him, her body a cocoon of warmth. And everything she gave him was a precious gift. “Ayaan?”

  “I have seen what it means to be truly broken, Zohra.”

  Her heart crawling into her throat, Zohra clasped Ayaan’s chin and tugged it up. Fear beat a tattoo beneath her skin. Even in the most painful moments, even when he had been drowning in his nightmares, she had never
heard such stark desolation in his words. “Whatever it is, Ayaan, we will beat it together.”

  “You have already saved me, ya habibati. I was just too stubborn, too blind to see it. But he...there is nothing inside him, Zohra.”

  A ghost of a shiver passed over her at his words. “Your brother?”

  “If eyes were windows to the soul, then there is no soul left in him.” He tugged her hard against him, his arms steel vises that could snap her in two. Rising on tiptoes, Zohra held on, letting him take what he wanted from her.

  “I was so afraid, Ayaan. Khaleef said he was in bad shape. And my heart sank. I thought seeing him like that would mean—”

  “That guilt would claw through me once again? It does. It hurts so much to see him like this. But the worst is knowing that for God knows how long he has been aware of his identity and he has been in hiding. If I hadn’t followed up on that hunch, we would have never known he was alive. He doesn’t want to be here. And even in the state he is in, it took both Khaleef and me to force him to come with us. And my mother, Ya Allah—”

  “How is she?”

  Ayaan smiled and kissed her again, intense sadness still clouding his eyes. “He refuses to see her or my father, said he will put a bullet through his head if I bring her to him.”

  Shock waving through her, Zohra frowned. “You think he would?”

  “Whether he is bluffing or not, he knows I won’t risk calling him on it. He said he wants to be free of this family, he wants nothing to do with any of us. If I became mad, he...he has devolved into pure emptiness. Maybe my madness protected me from the worst.”

  Anger fired those words and Zohra stared at Ayaan. His family, his duty, his country—they had always come first with him.

  “For the first time in my life, I wish I could walk away from all this, steal you away, give you a life free of my demons, a life free of duty... All I want is to prove my love to you but all I see is more pain, more sorrow ahead. If you leave me...if you walk away, that is what I will become, too. And I don’t want to, Zohra.