Without another word, he walked out, shattering her hopes.
Nikhat slid to the seat behind her, too shaken to even shed tears.
She had thought that she had molded life to suit her will, that she had survived through her biggest pain, that she could tackle anything life threw at her, and yet, back in Dahaar, when it came to the one thing that truly mattered to her, she was truly powerless.
Useless rage boiled over inside her, the urge to pack up and leave without looking back pounding through her blood.
She heard Azeez’s slow gait coming toward her. And for once, she couldn’t care to hide her desolation.
He came to a standstill on her right, leaning against the dark chaise her father had just vacated. “And here I thought Ayaan had convinced you to whore yourself out to me in return for your big clinic? A reunion with your family is the prize you’re going for?”
Anger burst through her, liberating and consuming, fraying the last rope of hope that had been holding her together. His words cheapened everything they had once shared, minimized everything she had become.
She shot to her feet, and reached him, adrenaline pumping through her blood. The force of her fury shaking through her, she slapped him hard.
The sharp sound reverberated around them, the impact of it jarring her arm, shaking her very breath.
He ran a hand over his jaw, an unholy light shining in his eyes. “Feel better?”
Her stomach folding on itself, she fisted her hand to stop the tremors. He hadn’t even tried to stop her.
She had played directly into his hands. His gaze burned with a fire that she knew not to go near. But she couldn’t step back, couldn’t break eye contact with him. “You provoked me on purpose.”
Pity and something indefinable danced in his gaze. “You looked like you would perish from the grief running through you, like you would never hope again. It was either I slap you or you slap me.”
She didn’t want to owe him more than she already did. “Now you know what we all see when we look at you.”
She thought he would laugh at her. Instead, a thoughtful look dawned on his face. “Is that why you are here, Nikhat? Because you pity me?”
Folding her arms, she faced him. “That’s the one thing I can truthfully say I have never felt for you, Azeez. You make it hard to pity you.”
Relief dawned in his gaze. With his hands gripping the armrest, he sank into the chaise. “Ayaan will order your father to let you see them. He will have no choice but to follow his orders. Having to choose between your family and your profession, or anything else, is not something anyone should have to face.”
Their gazes held, a wealth of memories fighting for breath in the air around them. He had spoken those words to her before too. He had made promises and he had kept every single one of them.
She…she had made one promise. And she hadn’t been able to keep it.
Shaking her head, she pushed those memories back to where they belonged. “My father’s right. I don’t know where I’m going to be in six months’ time. With a future so uncertain, it is better I stay away from my sisters.”
“Or you could simply leave. I will help you get out of the palace. Ayaan will not force you to return.”
“Are you so eager to be rid of me, Azeez?” She regretted the words the instant they were out.
“Yes, I would like nothing more than for you to leave,” he said with crippling honesty that had always been a part of him.
Taking the option he was giving her, going back to New York where she had unfettered freedom, where her every movement, small and big, wasn’t dictated by someone else, away from the man looking up at her with a dark fire that drew her nearer every day, it was the easiest thing to do.
She could save both of them from the misery of reliving a painful past because, try as she might, it kept rearing up its head.
And she wouldn’t feel this desolation at being so close to her sisters and still not seeing them. But the same loyalty that was in her father’s blood filled hers too.
“I made a promise to Ayaan. Whatever happens in the next few months, I want to live in Dahaara. I want to head that clinic. There’s a lot of good I can do here.”
He rubbed his forehead with long fingers. “Of course. You have goals, and plans to accomplish those goals. And if something fails, you dust yourself off and move on.”
“Why did you come here, Azeez?”
“I want you to help me convince Ayaan that everything is wonderfully perfect up here,” he said, poking himself in the head.
“So that you can leave the palace and get yourself killed?”
“I don’t have to leave the palace to accomplish that.” He said the words softly, slowly, as if he was crushed by a weight he couldn’t shake. He stood up from the chaise and walked toward the door, his frame tight with tension. When he met her gaze, the depth of pain in it shook her. And they all thought he didn’t care, that he had become a shell of his former self. “I cannot bear to be here, Nikhat. I have to convince Ayaan that leaving Dahaar is the best thing for me, for him, for our parents. I have to leave Dahaar. And it has to be done in such a way that Ayaan feels no guilt.”