The Last Prince of Dahaar
She nodded without argument, her expression thoughtful.
“How long are you staying in Siyaad?” He hadn’t realized he even wanted to know until the words left his mouth.
She frowned. “I checked with your assistant and mine before I left. There were no state functions or ceremonies that needed my—”
He cut her short, irritated with himself. “It was a casual question.”
“Oh.” Her frown didn’t ease. “I thought you were flying back to Dahaara before...nightfall.”
Her unspoken concern lingered between them. She knew what new surroundings did to him at night. “I will leave early morning tomorrow.”
“Another night you will just forego sleep then?”
So she was aware that he had taken to skipping sleep for days together. He stayed silent, refusing to be baited into an argument.
The silence stretched between them.
“Was there a reason you summoned me here, Prince Ayaan? More interrogation about—”
He grabbed her arm and turned her toward him. “I never want him mentioned again, Princess, ever,” he said, enunciating his words through gritted teeth. “Is that clear?”
She nodded, surprising him again. She was definitely acting strangely tonight and he didn’t have to think too much to figure out why. “Why do you do that?” he said, fighting the flare of anger at her actions.
“Do what?”
“Call me Prince Ayaan? Address me as if we were...”
She quirked an eyebrow, the stubborn jut of her chin more pronounced.
“As if you were a stranger who hasn’t seen me at my worst, as if you are not the one person who sees past the prince to the co—” She halted his words with her finger on his mouth, shaking her head. He pulled it away, accepting the very fact he had been fighting for three weeks. “As if you were a lowly servant instead of my wife, my equal.”
Her eyes went wide, her mouth trembled. And his curiosity about her multiplied. Why did she look so surprised? “And I didn’t realize I needed a reason to see my own wife,” he said, uneasy with her uncharacteristic silence.
His gaze fell on her hair, and instantly the long, silky length of it draped over his pillow flashed in his mind. It was an image that teased him constantly. “Do I need one to tell her that she looks striking?”
She blinked, color seeping under her skin. She didn’t smile though and he wanted to be the one who put it there. For one evening, he wanted to pretend that there was nothing wrong in his life.
He picked up the thin envelope he had left on the table and handed it to her.
She looked at his hand as if he had sprouted claws.
“My mother reminded me of another custom I didn’t keep. The groom’s gift to the bride.”
She looked up at him, her gaze softening. “You spoke to her?”
He cleared the knot of emotion from his throat and nodded. “Mostly she did. But I said a few words, too.”
A quiet joy lit up her eyes, her mouth curving into a wide smile. “That’s...wonderful. She must have been ecstatic.”
She grasped his hands with hers, and a longing of the most intense kind swirled into life inside him. His gaze stayed on their hands, his throat dry.
She looked down at their hands and stilled. The tension around them could have detonated with the smallest spark. She slowly pulled her hands back as though afraid of just that, but he felt the tremor that went through her.
He leaned back against the wall, and after a second’s pause, she did the same at his side. “You like her,” he said, surprised. “Even with all the rituals she makes you go through.”
She stretched her arms across the wall, a thoughtful expression on her face. The movement stretched the white shirt tight across her breasts and he looked away guiltily. “It’s hard not to like her. She is so...strong. She bears so many responsibilities, she has been through so much and yet, through it all...” She cleared her throat. “She’s your father’s strength too, isn’t she? She doesn’t let him rule over her. With her by his side, I’m not surprised he was able to weather everything he has with such dignity.”
Ayaan had always thought of his father as the strong one. Not that he thought his mother weak. To Ayaan, she was a woman, a mother and nothing more. And yet no one would have been able to stay standing after what had happened five years ago, but his father had kept going.
Because he’d had his wife. And he had taken on immense pain by lying to her. Zohra might not understand it but Ayaan understood why his father had done it.
When you had something or someone so precious, you had to protect her from any pain. In a different reality, he...