“Place the bowl on the table by Prince Ayaan’s side, Princess Zohra.” His mother’s voice rang clearly in the deafening silence of a hundred and more curiously waiting gazes.
Her reluctance a tangible thing in the air around them, Zohra placed the bowl on the table next to Ayaan. A distinctive smell, sweet and...burned, wafted into the air around them.
His nostrils flaring, Ayaan glanced into the silver bowl. He gasped when he saw the contents, hearing the same sound fall from his mother’s mouth and his father’s cough. The dark brown, charred substance in the bowl looked like no dessert he knew.
His mouth twitched, and a sudden lightness filled his chest. Raising his head, he chanced a look at his mother. Her forehead tied into a frown, she was looking at the bowl with a shocked expression that had him clamping his mouth tight.
Whispers emerged from the staff around them, the more senior members even slanting a quick puzzled look at the bowl, but Ayaan couldn’t help himself. Clearing his throat, which felt really hard, he looked up and met Zohra’s gaze. “What is this, Princess?”
Her dark gaze fiery enough to burn him, she answered from tightly clamped lips, “Halwa, Prince Ayaan.”
He didn’t heed the warning in her voice. “You mean this is carrots and nuts?”
“Yes.”
Fidgeting in his seat, he met his father’s eyes at the head of table. Seeing the twinkle in his aged eyes, the tight set of his twitching mouth made Ayaan lose the tenuous hold on himself.
He laughed, the very act of it shaking his body from head to toe. And heard his father’s peal of laughter alongside his own. His throat raw, Ayaan covered his face with his fingers but to no avail. His jaw and stomach hurt, but in the best way.
His body had no memory of what it felt like to laugh. Every face around them, including his mother’s, watched him and the princess alternately, torn between the desire to laugh and bone-deep propriety.
Every time he looked at his father, it started again. He had no idea how long they laughed, but soon, he had tears in his eyes. “This is...” he choked, “Ya Allah, exactly like...”
His lean frame shaking with laughter, his father nodded, his mouth curled into a wide smile. “When Amira made—”
“When Amira made Awwameh on her twenty-first birthday,” his mother finished, tears in her own eyes. Swallowing at the sight, Ayaan nodded, glad that her eyes were full of remembered laughter rather than the familiar shadows of grief.
“She hated every moment of it, too,” his father said, looking at Zohra with a fond smile. “And Azeez and Ayaan teased her mercilessly for months.”
A smile still curving his mouth, Ayaan met Zohra’s gaze.
“Queen Fatima,” Zohra’s crystal clear tones rang through their laughter, laden with the promise of retribution, “who did you say tastes the new bride’s dessert first?”
His laughter cut short, Ayaan shook his head and met his mother’s gaze. “No.”
Her mouth was still compressed but a spark of something wicked lit up his mother’s gaze. “The husband, Princess Zohra,” she said, studying him with an intensity that twisted his gut.
Zohra reached for a silver spoon, and scooped up a little of the charred halwa with it. “Traditions, of course, have to be followed. Do they not, King Malik?” she said, throwing the challenge at his father across the table.
Chuckles and approvals rang around the huge room, followed by his father’s comment, “Of course, Princess Zohra,” laden with laughter.
Knowing that he was well and truly caught, Ayaan looked up at Zohra. And opened his mouth when she brought the spoon to his mouth, victory dancing in her beautiful gaze.
* * *
When was the last time the palace walls had heard laughter like that? The last time his mother had smiled even if it had been buried under affected displeasure? The last time they had remembered the past with a smile?
With his chest feeling amazingly light, Ayaan reached Zohra’s suite. The scent of scorched carrots and burned pistachios lingered in the air, bringing a smile to his mouth. He closed the huge doors behind him, suddenly craving the very privacy he usually avoided with her.
Leaning against the closed doors, he lost himself to the sheer pleasure of watching her. Cinched tight at her rib cage with a jeweled belt, the copper-sulfate-colored silk caftan she wore billowed from her tiny waist, highlighting the long line of her legs. The puckered sleeves showed off slender arms, the intricately designed diamond bracelets on her wrists twinkling in the light thrown by the lamps around the room.
She turned around, her hennaed hands tugging at the pearls threaded into her hair. The silky material cupped her breasts like a lover’s hands, her stark sensuality robbing his breath.