dug her elbow in Amjad’s gut, her smile so radiant as she looked up, asking Rashid to share the joke. He only wanted to poke Amjad’s green eyes out.
Turning to Amjad, she asked, “Is my father here?”
“You expected him to be?” Amjad scoffed. “That deadbeat? And I thought you were above such sentimental tripe. If you haven’t yet, it’s time to face it already, Laylah. In that generation only one apple didn’t turn out rotten. My father is all we got in the way of a parent around this place.”
An incensed step brought Rashid slamming into Amjad chest-first. “Even if she knows the truth about her father, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt her. You don’t have to be cruel.”
“Oh, I assure you, I have to.” Amjad’s eyes suddenly smoldered with something besides mockery. Fury. “It’s called tough love, and she’s better off considering both her parents as dead as my mother or your parents. Just remembering my uncle makes me want to kick his useless ass, or anyone’s who mentions him.”
Before he could punch Amjad’s lights out, Laylah growled, “I swear, one more word out of either of you, and I’m putting each of you in a corner at the ends of this palace. Ya Ullah—now I remember why I left. I was drowning in male posturing and hormones. Are there any buffering women around here?”
“All the women who’ve invaded the Aal Shalaan male maze will be here tomorrow,” Amjad said. “For today you can seek the feminine amelioration of my Maram, of course, and Johara.”
She whooped. “I can’t wait to meet the phenomenon who’s put a collar around your neck. And see Johara again. And the children. You know, some sensible, age-appropriate-behaving individuals.”
Amjad pulled another of those inciting expressions in his arsenal and shooed her away. “Skip along, then. Rashid and I have more juvenile silliness scheduled before we’re through. I have to drive him to within an inch of his sanity before I even look into his application to acquire our last remaining—if long-stored and fraying around the edges—Aal Shalaan treasure.”
Laylah grinned up at Rashid. “Guess you were right about my code name here.” She turned her best demolishing glance on Amjad. “Not that anyone can accuse you of knowing how to hang on to your treasures, as evidenced by what happened to the Pride of Zohayd, your foremost one. So hang on to your sanity, Amjad. Rashid is a world-renowned authority in sanity extraction, among other… extractable things. I leave you to his not-so-tender mercies, taal omrak.”
Amjad let out a spectacular snort at her tagging the king’s hail of “may you live long” to her irreverence. Then she stood on tiptoe and pressed a clinging kiss to Rashid’s lips.
Before he forgot Amjad and the watchful eyes of the palace dwellers and crushed her to him, she drew away with a smile that lit his existence before almost dancing away.
Feeling bereft already without her, his gaze clung to her as she receded. And he registered where they were for the first time.
The royal palace of Zohayd was right up there with the Taj Mahal in splendor and intricacy of design, and even more extensive. The mid-seventeenth-century palace that had taken more than three decades and thousands of artisans and craftsmen to build had once been his playground and domain along with Haidar and Jalal from age eight to twenty. He’d taken as much pride and pleasure in it as they had before his stays here had declined until they’d stopped altogether, around ten years ago.
It felt so strange to be back after everything that had happened since to pollute his memory. Nostalgia was like a wave that crashed down on him as he walked through this place again, felt its history and the grandeur saturating its walls, permeating his senses with bittersweet memories. On account of its being Laylah’s home, not the stage where chunks of his life had been played. It had been mostly here where he’d seen her and dared not dream of her. Now she was here with him. It made being here again so… poignant.
Amjad, the self-appointed poignancy disperser, flicked a hand at Laylah as she disappeared around a bend. “Are you as viciously intelligent as you look? Did you latch onto Laylah when you thought you were ‘worthy’ of her for the right reasons? Do you realize what a miracle she is? The product of Medusa and Narcissus should have been a man-eating gorgon, not the most sensitive, selfless being to walk the earth. That she’s female, too, makes her a veritable impossibility.”
Now that Amjad was singing Laylah’s praises, Rashid no longer felt like wiping the palace floor with him face-first.
Still looking where Laylah had disappeared, as if to bask in her echoes, he sighed. “Just what I was thinking. Before your insufferable, inflammatory intrusion on our privacy.”
“Insufferable, inflammatory intrusion? Can you say that five times in quick succession?” Amjad suddenly slapped him on the back. “So how did you do it?”
Struggling not to rearrange the king’s well put-together face, Rashid gritted, “Not choke you for all the insensitivities you poured on Laylah’s head? You’re only still breathing because I need you to do some talking on my behalf.”
Amjad’s guffaw was all enjoyment now. “I may like you yet.” Another back slap. “And by do it, I mean Laylah.” At Rashid’s growl, Amjad held up his hands. “To quote Laylah, ‘down boy.’ I mean—apart from her sharper-than-I-remember tongue—that was a woman fathoms deep in love. I know the symptoms well. My Maram looks and sounds like that around me.”
“It must be the era of impossibilities.”
Amjad laughed again. “Yeah, I still can’t figure out why Maram loves me. But I always figured Laylah’s obsession with you stemmed from your unavailability. Now you’re all over her, not to mention a far deteriorated version of your younger self. What’s keeping someone like her interested in someone like you?”
“If you mean my scar…”
“Please. That’s your one interesting feature. Provides you with character. Also proves you’re human, since there have been major doubts about that. Nah, it has nothing to do with what you look like, and everything to do with what you are like. You’re one dour, ruthless, unstable son of a bitch. Don’t get me wrong, it makes you my kind of guy, but how can Laylah, that perpetual ray of sunshine, stand you?”
He forced out a breath. “How does your Maram stand you?”
“She does because we’re alike. When you take away all the human traits I lack, she’s got a razor for a mind and a scythe for a tongue, too. I don’t believe in this opposites attract thing.”
“Laylah and I are not opposites. We’re very much alike, too.”
Amjad snorted again. “Now I’ve heard it all.”
“Think about it. As you pointed out, she is practically as parentless as I am. She has felt alone and out of place all her life, as I have. She’s felt responsible for other people’s crimes and punished herself for them.”
“Her mother’s crimes and your guardian’s, huh? Now that you point it out, yeah, I can see the resemblance in all the major stuff.” Amjad gave him an assessing glance. “So what’s your real plan?”
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