He had not, however, said even a word to her since his arrival.
Lost in her own grief, she hadn’t minded. His silent presence had been enough for her. She had borrowed strength from it, knowing that he would catch her if she fell, even if he didn’t put it in so many words.
She had been so grateful for his presence that she hadn’t realized when something began to fester between them, something she couldn’t identify even as she racked her brain. She could feel the connection they had found slipping from her fingers like sand, could feel him retreating but had no way to stop him.
So she had come to his bed, despite the fact that he had forbidden her to be near him at night. And just hours ago, she had been ecstatic that he had slept next to her, hadn’t asked her to leave.
But now, the same silence stretched taut around them, deepening the chasm between them, dragging him further and further away from her. She must have made a sound because he looked up. And sprang to his feet as if she were an explosive that could detonate any second.
Even in the meager light of the table lamp, she could see the dark color that rode those sharp cheekbones. “Zohra, you are...I...I lost all control.”
Heat pumped to her own cheeks now. She struggled to hide the questions that shot at her from all sides. “I am fine.” She shoved the fear that was clawing at her and smiled. “Everything you did, I wanted, Ayaan. Was I not vocal enough?”
His gaze burned brighter, hotter, the sharp angles of his face reflecting the tightly reined in emotion within him. “Ya Allah, I behaved like an animal. I...”
She covered the distance between them and practically fell into his arms. She couldn’t bear it if he became a stranger again. “I am definitely sore, though.”
His curse should have turned the air blue. His hands stayed on her shoulders, his entire body stilling in that way of his.
She kept her arms around his waist, and found comfort in the fact that he hadn’t pushed her away.
“I am sorry you didn’t get a chance to speak to him, Zohra,” he said, piercing the heavy silence, his embrace a safe haven of warmth.
The storm of regrets and grief she had kept at bay while shouldering her responsibilities for the first time in her life broke through at the tender concern in his words. He held her as she cried softly, for her, for her father and for her mother, for everything she had lost through sheer pigheadedness.
She met his gaze, and smiled through the tears. “He left me a sheaf of letters that told me everything I wanted to know.”
“Letters?”
She nodded. The truth had hurt, but it had also freed something inside her. “Letters from my mother to him, even after he had left us for Siyaad. With pictures of me. Letters she wrote him until the day she died.”
Ayaan frowned. “Are you saying she knew?”
Zohra nodded again, seeing the same confusion she had felt mirrored in his gaze. “She knew everything about him. She knew that there might come a day when he would have to leave her for Siyaad, to do his duty. And he did, just as they had known he would have to. He left us but they kept in touch. They argued, even in the letters. He asked to see me, and she refused, again and again. Said she didn’t want me to pay the price for the happiness she found with him, didn’t want me to be caught between them. I guess I was never supposed to know that he was alive. Except something happened that neither of them foresaw. She died. And....”
Her throat seized as Zohra realized once again what it must have cost her father to learn of her mother’s death and to bring her to Siyaad.
“I can’t believe King Salim could have been so selfish, so reckless,” Ayaan said, pulling her out of the pit of regrets.
Zohra frowned at the anger that simmered in his words. “I was angry when I read those letters, angry that neither of them told me the truth. Even after I was old enough to understand. But not anymore.
“They took a chance on love, Ayaan, they grabbed their happiness while they could, decided whatever short time they had was still worth it. Knowing that they had loved each other, knowing that my father had never deceived her, knowing that he loved me enough to bring me here—” Tears ran over her cheeks again. “—it fills me with joy. How can I hold the fact that they loved each other so much that they risked such unhappiness for the rest of their lives against them?”
Her body stilled as Zohra waited for his answer. Her heart pounded as his silence gave the answer his lips didn’t, and one she didn’t want to hear at that.
She ran her fingers over his jaw, over his cheekbones, traced the scar above his eye, as fear held a visceral grip inside her chest.