He stared at her without blinking, and she felt a hot flare of satisfaction that she had surprised him. But it didn’t last long, because a truth far more chilling than that suddenly clicked into place in her mind.
“That was why your lives had been sacrificed, wasn’t it?” she said, her words loaded with a shiver, with pain she couldn’t expel.
His answer was to turn into a block of ice next to her.
She clutched his hand and just as she had guessed, it was ice-cold, rigid. “I read about the history of your tribes but until now, I didn’t realize. That’s why the terrorists captured you and your brother and your sister.
“They wanted control over the tribes, didn’t they? They took you from this very place five years ago and held you hostage? That’s why you—”
“Yes,” came his gritted answer and even now, she was sure it was only to stop her from probing further.
A knot clawed up her throat, and tears stung her eyes. And this time, she couldn’t stem them. She didn’t even try. “And your father refused?” She posed it as a question but she already knew. In her heart of hearts, she knew what this life was, she thought she had made peace with it ten days ago, accepted it as her reality.
But the truth about Ayaan’s capture hit her like an invisible blow. Her chest was so tight it hurt to breathe.
Her father had walked away from her mother and her. Ayaan’s father had gone an extra step in the name of duty. He had refused to negotiate with a terrorist group, instead he had chosen to forfeit his sons’ and daughter’s lives.
Two had been killed, and one tortured to madness. But he hadn’t bent.
She shivered uncontrollably, and Ayaan’s hands wrapped around her shoulders, the heat from his embrace almost, but not quite, enough to thaw the chill in her blood.
“My father did his duty, Zohra. And if the same circumstances came to pass again and it was our child, the very same child who would be the product of the life you are so eager for, that was held hostage, I would be forced to do the same, too. I would probably go mad, take that final leap into darkness while doing it, but I would still do it.”
His arm pressed into her shoulders, the heat of his body a deceptively safe haven around her. But nothing could have tempered the chill in his eyes, or the cruel smile that played on his lips. “Are you still eager to belong in Dahaar, Princess, to be my wife in every way that matters?”
* * *
Ayaan laughed as he stood at the entrance to the abandoned stables about half a mile from the encampment. Five years of neglect showed in the decrepit structure.
From the moment he had stepped onto the desert floor, the structure had mocked him, jeered him, called to him with its very presence. To resist that call, to pretend that it didn’t exist, to pretend it wasn’t the cause for the very cold that pervaded his bones, filled him with a white-hot fury.
He had not even indulged the idea of sleeping tonight. So he had ventured out and found himself lingering outside Zohra’s tent. There was something to the acute disillusionment, the pain in her eyes that had tugged at him even as he had painted the cruelest picture of what life with him would hold for her.
He had wanted to go in, take her in his arms, do what he could to wipe it from her mind. He understood the loneliness that never left her eyes, understood how it leeched out the simplest of joys from one...
Apparently, his mind had more control than he had assumed because he had no idea when he had moved toward the stables.
He stepped over the threshold, the high dome-shaped ceiling giving it a cavernous feeling. It was a long, rectangular interior, giving a direct view of the empty stalls.
More than one lamp had gone out, the light from the remaining feeble ones just enough to prevent the whole area dissolving into utter darkness. He ran his fingers over his nape, feeling the chill in the air seep into his pores. Goose bumps instantly pebbled over his skin. The smell of the horses and the hay, the echoes of the soft whinnying of beasts long gone hit him with the force of a gale. Every hair on his body stood to attention, his core temperature quickly dropping.
Beware of your triggers. When you feel an episode coming, put yourself in a trigger-free zone.
The words of the trauma specialist reverberated through his skull.
He closed his eyes. Fear dug its claws into him, chipping away conscious thought.
He had loved horses and stables once, it had been his lifeblood. He had spent countless nights in the Dahaaran stables hiding from Azeez. That boy was, however, dead.
His legs struggling to keep him upright, he walked the perimeter of the stables.
He knew what was going to happen. And yet he couldn’t walk away. If he was damned to have these episodes for the rest of his life, then he would bloody well have them when and as it suited him.