Leaning against the table by her side, he folded his hands. “Would you like to leave?”
She blinked. He was smiling. It was a wacky, coconspirators kind of smile that barely curved his mouth. And yet it was there. The beauty of it was enough to scramble her already frazzled wits. “I...You are here to bestow all these people with the gloriousness of your exalted presence.” She looked around the hall. “Leaving now would hardly accomplish that goal.”
He turned away from her and she took the chance to study him greedily.
He wore black jeans and a white, long-sleeved tunic with a Nehru collar, handspun with the utmost care by the craftswomen in a small village near Dahaara specifically for their prince. The sleeves were folded to just below his elbows, a gold-plated watch adorning his wrist.
The collar was open at the neck, giving her a view of a strip of golden bronze skin. Feeling a flush creep up her neck, she turned away.
He was the most casually dressed man in the hall and yet a thrumming energy vibrated around him. It was a cruel joke indeed that he didn’t realize the sense of power he wielded with his very presence. And it had nothing to do with being a prince either. From all the stories she had heard from his mother, Zohra knew he had once been laid-back, the one who had made everyone laugh, the one who had been the palace staff’s favorite.
But he was more than that boy had ever been. Whether it was the torture he had been through or the responsibilities that lay on his shoulders now, Prince Ayaan was a formidable force in his own right.
He extended his hand toward her, palm up, cutting through her thoughts. She stared at the long fingers that always felt sinfully abrasive against her skin. “Princess?”
She raised her head and his gaze drank her in hungrily, as though he had been just as starved for the sight of her as she had been of him. “What is the point of being the Mad Prince if you can’t at least postpone meeting the people you dislike?”
She laughed. The exaggerated arrogance in his gaze, the to-hell-with-it attitude of his words, it was knee-buckling. This was how he must have been before he had been captured.
A cocky, fun-loving prince who had been loved by everyone.
He straightened, his gaze unmoving from her face. “Why didn’t you shut his filthy mouth?”
What could she say? That being amid her father’s family made her feel like a lost and heartbroken thirteen-year-old girl again? That they had a way of punching her in the gut with the saddest truth of her life?
She didn’t belong anywhere.
“You’re the daughter of a king, wife to a crown prince. And more than that, you are...” Her heart crawled into her throat as he raked his gaze over her, “...you, Zohra.”
You are...you, Zohra.
He hadn’t mocked her or called her princess.
His words washed over years of hurt, warming the cold, hard pain that had become a part of her. Her heart swelled, even the shadow of Karim’s words, the bitterness of being here couldn’t dilute what Ayaan’s simple words meant to her.
Blinking back tears, she placed her hand in his. Her steps faltered, the strong clasp of his fingers around hers felt incredibly good, in more than one way.
She held her head high. It was borrowed courage, she knew that. But in that moment, she took everything the man next to her lent her.
The aunts and uncles and cousins were people who were related to her by blood, who should have been a source of comfort to a grieving girl but saw nothing past the circumstances of her birth. She finally had a chance to turn her back on them.
The moment they entered the corridor, the walls lined with portraits of the esteemed ancestors of the Al-Akhtum family, he stopped her. “I want an answer to my question, which you very cleverly evaded.”
She shrugged. “They have called me names for eleven years, much nastier than today. Nothing I say or do today is going to change that. My stepmother’s family hates me because I represent the pain my father caused her. And now they think I have stolen Saira’s chance to be the queen of Dahaar. To my father’s family...I am nothing but a taint on their lineage, a taint he dared bring to Siyaad. My father is responsible for whatever I face today.”
“Does he know how they speak to you?”
“What would he do even if he did? Go back in time and stop having an eight-year-long affair with my mother? Change his mind about walking out on her when it was time to be king? Change his mind about taking custody of his bastard?”
His fingers tightened over her arms. “Stop referring to yourself as that.”
She felt a hot sting at the back of her eyes. She was not going to cry just because someone finally had a glimpse into what eleven years of her life had been. She didn’t need his pity. It only weakened her. “Powerful as you are, you cannot change the truth.”