Zohra swallowed at the anguish in his words. “She thought all three of you were dead. She made peace with it until...suddenly five years later, she’s told you’re alive and...”
“Half-mad and haunted?”
“Your father had no right to lie to her.”
His gaze flashed at her daring. “My father was protecting her. For all intents and purposes, I was dead.”
“He lied because it would not serve Dahaar’s interests. This is what I hate about this life...about...” She had to stop to breathe through the tightness in her chest, to swallow the rage sputtering through her. This was not about her. “Resenting her for remembering your brother only makes you human. It doesn’t mean she—”
“You think I resent her for remembering her firstborn? My brother was the golden prince, the perfect heir. Passionate about Dahaar, smart, courageous, a man who was everything the future king needed to be.
“I’m not him. He should have been the one that survived. That’s what my parents think when they see me, that’s what the cabinet, the high council think when they see me.”
It was what he thought, why he was so isolated from everything and everyone, Zohra realized, shaking. How could anyone live with so much self-loathing, with so much pain tied into their very existence?
“Who gets to decide who should survive—”
He clasped her cheek, his hand gentle in contrast to his face, a stony mask. “You think I should be grateful that I’m alive? A broken man, a coward afraid of the dark? If it had been Azeez who had survived, he wouldn’t have lost his mind for five years and hid in some Swiss castle, leaving my father to deal with the catastrophe. He wouldn’t have regained his lucidity only to be haunted by memories.”
The bitterness in his words leeched every ounce of heat from the room. The hairs on her neck stood up, her gut gripped by the tight fist of pain.
His pain. She could feel it seep into her, enveloping her.
“My brother would have taken up the mantle of Dahaar instead of still hiding behind our father. He would have chosen a woman like you for his queen instead of being forced into it by duty.” His gaze swept over her mouth with a hunger that shocked her. “He would have been man enough to make you his wife in every way instead of hiding under a sham.
“Do you understand why I can’t bear to look at her, Princess, why I can’t bear to be near you? Because I’m not fit to be a son, or a husband, much less a prince.”
Pushing away from her, he left the suite, leaving the echoes of his anger and pain swirling around her.
With her knees buckling under the weight of his confession, Zohra slid to the seat behind her. He was like a tornado, and as much as she wished to stay out of his path, she had a feeling he would suck her into him.
His laughter and pain carved places inside her. The truth of his desire that she hadn’t been able to see until now thrummed through her. How could she have when she had been mourning Faisal’s loss, when she was nothing but a figurehead in Prince Ayaan’s life?
She needed to escape from him, from everything he unraveled within her by his mere presence.
CHAPTER SIX
ZOHRA TOOK A sip of the sherbet and forced herself to savor the cool slide of the liquid.
It was hard with a dozen pairs of eyes trained on her from every corner of the vast hall, each speculating why she was attending the first gathering in Siyaad after her wedding alone. If it had been up to her, she would have canceled it. But of course, the traditional Al-Akhtum gathering was even more important this year as her family needed to meet the crown prince of Dahaar and understand that he was now an integral part of Siyaad’s politics.
Only she had left Dahaara without waiting to know if Prince Ayaan could fit it into his busy schedule or not.
There was something about being near him, even for a limited time, that unsettled her. Something that had burrowed beneath her skin and refused to dislodge. And it wasn’t just the explosive desire that he had let her see.
By sheer force of will, she forced a smile as another of her father’s cousins took in her attire from top to toe and made his displeasure the known. Although she wore a designer pantsuit with a long-sleeved jacket that covered up every inch of skin, it was still not the traditional caftan that Siyaadi women wore.
She’d heard the whispers behind her father’s back, seen the sneers beneath the smiles, felt their snubs for eleven years. But her wedding the future king of Dahaar and the absence of her father today meant the claws that were usually sheathed were now out.
She could just imagine the whispers if Ayaan let her go in a few years. Whether her father was alive or not, whether Wasim was crowned the prince or not, her life would not change.