She had paid with her heart, with her love. She had paid for something she couldn’t change. And she had meticulously built her life from all the broken pieces to let even the Prince of Dahaar shatter it.
AZEEZ LEANED AGAINST the wall outside Ayaan’s office and sucked in a harsh breath. Sweat trickled down his shoulder blades after the long walk from his wing to this side of the palace. Closing his eyes, he rubbed his palm over the right hip, willing the shooting pain to relent.
But of course it didn’t. He’d spent the past four months drinking himself into oblivion, uncaring of if he ate or moved. His negligence was coming back to him in the form of excruciating pain. His hip was sore from months of inactivity, from lack of exercise. Breathing in and out through the dots dancing in front of him, he slowly sank to the floor.
His brother had been right. There had been more than one occasion when he had wished himself dead. But he hadn’t actually indulged the thought of killing himself.
His list of sins was already long enough without committing one against God, too. So he had carried on, uncaring of anything, uncaring of what a wasteland his life had become.
But his self-loathing, his lack of interest in his life, his lack of respect for his own body—as long as it had been only him who faced the consequences, he had been fine with it. But now…
Now it was beginning to fester into his brother and his wife.
After everything he had gone through, after recovering from the blood loss because of the bullet wound he had taken during the terrorist attack, waking up amidst strangers with a useless leg, realizing what he had become, after the excruciating pain of keeping himself away from his family, he could not allow this.
Whatever rot was in him couldn’t be allowed to spread, couldn’t be allowed to contaminate the good that was finally happening in his family. He couldn’t be allowed to take more from them, from Dahaar.
And if the price was that he give up the last ounce of his self-respect, if the price was that he stop hiding and face his demons, face the reality of everything he had ruined with his reckless actions, then so be it. He couldn’t have escaped the consequences of his actions forever anyway.
“Azeez?” Ayaan’s question reached his ears, unspoken, guarded, with a wealth of pain in it.
Azeez licked his lips and cleared his throat. The words stuck to his tongue. He forced himself to speak them. “Help me up, Ayaan.”
For a few seconds, his brother didn’t move. His shock pinged against the corridor walls in the deafening silence. Gritting his teeth, Azeez strove to keep his bitterness out of his words. “Do you want to exact revenge for that punch I threw three days ago?” he mocked. “Will you help me if I beg, Your Highness?”
A curse flying from his mouth, Ayaan spurred into action. Shaking his head, he tucked his hands under Azeez’s shoulders. “On three.”
Azeez nodded, and took a deep breath. He gripped Ayaan’s wrists and pulled himself up.
Ayaan leaned against the opposite wall and folded his arms. “Is it always like this?” There was anger in his brother’s words and beneath it, a sliver of pain.
Curbing the stinging response that rose to his lips, Azeez shook his head. “It’s my own fault. The less mobile I’m, the worse the hip gets.”
“Why didn’t you just summon me then?”
“I never did that. You are the one forever coming into my suite for one of your bonding sessions.”
Frowning, Ayaan opened the door behind him and held it for Azeez. Azeez stepped inside and froze.
Smells and sensations, echoes of laughter and joy, they assaulted him from all sides, poking holes in his deceptively thin armor.
A chill broke out over his skin as his gaze fell on the majestic desk at the far corner. A wooden, handmade box that had been in the Al Sharif dynasty for more than two centuries. The gold-embossed fountain pen that had passed on through generations, from father to son, from king to king. And the sword on display in a glass case to the right.
The sword he had been presented in the ceremony when his father had announced him the Crown Prince and future King, the sword that had represented everything he had been. Now, it was his brother’s, and Azeez didn’t doubt for a minute that it was where it belonged.
A portrait of their family hung behind the leather chair.
The smiling face of his sister, Amira, punched him in the gut. He had killed her as simply as if he had done it with both his hands.
Enough.
He hadn’t come here to revisit his mistakes. He’d come to stop more from happening.
Shying his gaze away from the portrait, he walked toward the sitting area on the right and slid into a chaise longue. Ayaan followed him and took the opposite seat.
“Nikhat says it’s because of me,” he said without preamble. He needed to say his piece and get out. He needed to be out of this room, needed to be back in the cavern of self-loathing that his suite had become. Before the very breath was stifled out of him by broken expectations, by excruciating guilt.
Ayaan frowned. “What is because of you?”
“Zohra’s complications with the pregnancy.”
His mouth tight, a mask fell over his brother’s usually expressive face. Cursing himself for how self-absorbed he had been, Azeez studied him, noticing for the first time the stress on Ayaan’s face.
Dark blue shadows hung under his brother’s eyes. His skin was drawn tight over his gaunt features.
“I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” Ayaan spoke finally, with a sigh. “For reasons the doctors say they can’t speculate over, it’s been a high-risk pregnancy from the beginning.”
“Then what did Nikhat mean by saying it was because of me? I know she didn’t say that to manipulate me.”
“I thought you didn’t want to see her or hear a word from her mouth. Now you trust her opinion?”
“Nikhat wanted to be a doctor since she was ten years old. If there’s one thing that she would never betray, it’s her profession. So if she says I’m the reason for Zohra’s stress, then I am. What I don’t understand is why. I might be a cripple but I have a working mind.”
“Do you? Because, so far, I haven’t seen evidence of it.”
Azeez continued as though his usually even-tempered brother hadn’t just snarled at him. “I have watched your wife growl at me like a lioness, as if she needs to shield you from me. I don’t think she would crumble because her husband is dealing with his difficult brother. So what is it, Ayaan?”
A flash of utter desolation came alive in his brother’s gaze. Azeez stared, shock waves shivering through him. Ever since he had learned that Ayaan had returned after six years, Azeez had known that his brother would do his duty, no matter what.
