The Last Prince of Dahaar

Feeling like a teenager getting his first sight of a beautiful woman, he pushed away from the door.

He would ensure she was all right—a small courtesy after the past two weeks—summon a maid, and leave. “Do you require help?”

She threw a quick look at the closed doors behind him and the slender line of her shoulders tensed up. “Have you not had enough fun at my expense, Prince Ayaan?”

He crossed the room and took her hands in his as she went to pull another pearl from her hair. Sensation skittered up his fingers, like a spark of fire. She wrenched them back right as he dropped them. “You do that a lot,” he said, before he could think better of it.

“What?”

“Take your temper out on your beautiful hair.”

It was a personal comment that shocked them both, instantly filling the air around them with tension. He had not intended to touch her, either.

“Why are you here?”

She had every right to question him and yet he couldn’t turn around and leave. “I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“I am fine.” Struggling with the clasp of the necklace at her nape, she glared at him. “Except for the small fact that I am now the laughingstock of the Dahaaran palace.”

“I will pass a law that enforces the strictest punishment on anyone who dares laughs at you,” he said, surprising himself again.

“Will it apply to the king and the crown prince?” she challenged. “Because as much as I would like to forget that image, it was your father and you that were laughing.” Her gaze stayed on him, surprise in it, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she had seen. “That sound is still ringing in my ears.”

She dropped onto a divan with her feet stretched in front of her. Scrunching her nose, she grabbed the sleeve of her caftan, sniffed it and made a face. Ayaan clamped his mouth shut and rocked on his heels. She looked up at him, her mouth turned down. “Oh please, go ahead and laugh. I know you are dying to.”

Ayaan laughed, the sound barreling out of him again. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t been sitting there. You should have seen my mother’s face when you put that silver bowl on the dining table. Centuries old, studded with intricate handwork, encrusted with rare gems and inside...” He hummed a dramatic tune.

Hunched over with her head in her hands, she groaned. “It was not that bad.”

He dropped down onto the divan, still smiling at the expression on his mother’s face, the twitch of his father’s mouth. Silence in the grand hall had never held that much repressed laughter. “It was black and it tasted like soot, Princess.”

She swatted him, her lower lip caught between her teeth, her beautiful brown eyes glimmering with laughter. “Have you seen the size of that palatial kitchen? How can anyone be expected to cook dessert for a hundred people? Of all the things I thought would make me unsuitable to be your wife...” Her eyes glittered like precious stones. “I...I thought I would be reduced to ash by Queen Fatima’s glare.”

“Even she cracked a smile at the end,” he said, and Zohra doubled over laughing.

“For thirteen years, the palace staff at Siyaad were shocked by what I did but I think the faces of the staff here today...this is what they are going to remember for the rest of my life, aren’t they?”

“I think it will be recorded as one of the most significant events in the history of Al-Sharifs.” He stretched his hands wide, announcing the title. “Princess Zohra and the Tale of the Burned Halwa.”

“As if this was the first humiliating ritual I have been forced to endure.” She slid lower on the couch. “Even the ritual where I have to spend a week with you in the desert is—”

Cold skittered down his spine and Ayaan looked away. He had lost everything in the desert the night they had been attacked. He couldn’t bear to go there again, not even for his mother and one of her rituals. “We are not going.”

Noticing the shadows that entered his gaze, Zohra wondered what it was that she had said. Standing up from the divan, she tugged the pearls again, cursing the elaborate hairstyle.

“Stop that,” came Prince Ayaan’s voice closer than she had expected.

“I need to—”

His hands were suddenly in her hair, and Zohra’s breath caught. The companionship of their shared laughter left the air around them and was replaced by something else. Her scalp prickled as Ayaan’s long fingers untangled her hair with sure movements. She held herself rigid, so rigid that her back ached. The heat of his body behind her became a beckoning caress.