said without compunction. “Didn’t my brother warn you? You took the risk of visiting a savage animal in the middle of the night.”
“I’m not afraid of you, Azeez. I never will be.”
She took another step, bracing herself for the changes in him. He had lost weight and it showed in his face. The sharp bridge of his nose, and those hollowed-out cheekbones, they stood out, giving him a gaunt, hard look.
“Ayaan told me about you last night,” she said, opting for truth. One gut-wrenching lie was enough for this lifetime. “I couldn’t wait. I…couldn’t wait till morning.”
He fisted his hands at his sides, his fury stamped into his features. “And?” he said in a low growl that gave her instant goose bumps. He clasped her cheek with his fingers, moving fast for a man in obvious pain. His grip was infuriatingly gentle yet she knew he was holding back a storm of fury.
His gaze collided with hers and what she saw there twisted her stomach; it was the one thing that did scare her. His eyes were empty, as though the spark that had been him, the very force of life that he had been, had died out.
“Have you seen enough, latifa? Is your curiosity satisfied?”
She clutched his wrists with her fingers, refusing to let him push her away.
And it wasn’t for him. It was for her.
She hadn’t cried when she had learned the news of the terrorist attack and of his death. Her heart had solidified into hard rock long before then. And she wouldn’t cry now. But she allowed herself to touch him. She needed to know he was standing there. She touched his face, his shoulders, his chest, ignoring his sucked-in breath. “I’m so sorry. About Amira, about Ayaan, about you.”
With a gentle grip, he pushed her back. There was nothing in his gaze when he looked at her. Not fury, not contempt, not even resentment. His initial shock had faded fast and he looked as if nothing she said would ever touch him. “Are you, truly?” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“Why, Nikhat?”
She wasn’t responsible for the terrorist attack, she knew that. And yet, nothing she had said to herself had prepared her for the tumult of seeing him like this.
“You’re not responsible for what I’ve become. But if you want, you can do me a favor.”
The force of his request didn’t scare her. If she could do something to help him, she would. Ayaan had been right. She owed it to Azeez. “Anything, Azeez.”
“Leave Dahaar before the sun is up. Leave and never come back. If you have ever felt anything true for me, Nikhat, do not show me your face ever again.”
Nikhat stood rooted to the spot as he walked away from her. It seemed she was always going to disappoint him.
She couldn’t leave now, just as she hadn’t been able to stay when he had asked her eight years ago.
AYAAN PUT HIS coffee cup down on the breakfast table when he heard the sound that hammered at him with relentless guilt. The sound of his brother’s approach.
Catching his wife’s gaze, he saw the same shock coursing through him reflected in her eyes.
In the four months since he had practically dragged his brother to the palace, Azeez hadn’t stepped foot into the breakfast hall once. Despite Ayaan’s innumerable pleas. And today…
Ayaan signaled for the waiting staff to leave just as the sound of Azeez’s harsh breathing neared the vast table. He pushed his chair back and looked up. Suddenly, the morning seemed brighter. “Would you like some cof—”
He never saw the punch coming. Shooting pain danced up and down his jaw as it landed, his vision blanking out for a few seconds.
Her loud, abrasive curse word ringing around them, his wife reached him instantly. Ayaan rubbed his jaw and looked up just in time to see Zohra march around his chair and push his brother in the chest.
Azeez’s mouth was curved into a fiendish smile, and Ayaan was about to interfere, when Azeez stepped back from Zohra. He mocked a curtsy, his mouth curled into a sneer. “Good morning, Your Highness, you look…lovely.”
“You are acting like an uncivilized thug,” Zohra said, her gaze furious.
“I am an uncivilized thug, Princess Zohra,” his brother replied with a hollow laugh. “And it is your husband who is keeping me here.”
Flexing his jaw, Ayaan turned to his brother and froze.
Ferocious anger blazed out of that jet-black gaze he knew so well. The same gaze that had been filled with emptiness, indifference, for four months. The constant, hard knot in his gut relented just a little. “What was that for?”
“You are the future king of Dahaar, Ayaan, not of me. Keep your arrogant head out of my affairs.”
Settling back down into his chair, Ayaan took a sip of his coffee. “I have no idea what you refer to, Azeez.”
“I want her out of here.”
The vehemence in his brother’s words doubled his doubts. “Why are you so concerned about Nikhat’s presence?”
Leaning his hip on the solid wood, Azeez bent. “I think all this power is going to your head. Don’t manipulate me, little brother. Or I will—”
“What, Azeez?” Ayaan refused to back down. His cup clanged on the saucer in the ensuing silence, hot liquid spilling onto his fingers.
“You’ll shoot yourself? I fell for that until now, but not anymore. If you were going to kill yourself, you had numerous chances to do it over the past six years. You would have been killed by that bullet. And yet here you are, stubborn as ever and intent on destroying yourself the hard way.” Silence snarled between them. “Nikhat is not going anywhere. Not for at least six more months.”
Emotion flashed in his brother’s gaze but Ayaan had no idea which one.
“If your plan is to bring back memories that will suddenly fill me with a love for life, how about some good ones, Ayaan? Why don’t you invite one of the numerous women I slept with six years ago to the palace?” He slanted a wicked glance at Zohra before looking at Ayaan again. “There used to be a particularly sexy stripper in that nightclub in Monaco who could do the wildest things with her tongue. If you want to see me rejoin the living, send the starchy doctor away, build a pole in my wing and have that stripper on a…”
His words tapering off, his brother looked as if he was the one dealt a punch.
Nikhat stood at the entrance to the hall. Against the colorful, blood-red rug on the wall behind her, she looked deathly pale. Their gazes locked on each other, Azeez and Nikhat stood unmoving, as if they were bound to each other.
Tension coiled tighter and tighter in the air around them.
His brother recovered
