He took the plunge. “They would because it would be the mahr of your sister, Princess Jala.”
Kamal rose to his feet in perfect calmness. It screamed instantaneous rejection more than anything openly indignant would have.
“No.”
The cold, final word fell on Mohab like a lash. As Jala’s rejection once had.
He resisted the urge to flinch at the sting. “Just no?”
“Consider yourself honored I deemed to articulate it. That you dared to voice this boggles the mind.”
“Why?”
Kamal glared down at him. “I’ll have my secretary of state draw you up an inventory of the reasons.”
“Give me the broad lines.”
“How about just one? Your bloodline.”
“You’d condemn a man by others’ transgressions?”
“We do inherit others’ mistakes and enmities.”
“And we can resolve them, not insist on regurgitating hatreds and spawning warring generations.”
“The Aal Masoods aren’t angels, but there is good reason why we abhor you, why all attempts at peacemaking fell through for centuries. Surely you remember the last marriage between our kingdoms and what your great-grandfather did to my great-aunt. I’m not letting my sister marry a man who comes from a family where the men mistreat their women.”
“My great-grandfather and uncle don’t represent the rest of us. I am nothing like them. You can investigate me further. And then consider the merits of my proposal. Once I claim Jareer, my uncle can retreat from his warpath. We’d appease his pride while going over his head in forging peaceful relations between all sides, to the benefit of all our people.” Mohab rose to his feet to face him. “What I’m proposing is the best solution for all concerned, now and into the far future. And you know it.”
After a protracted stare, Kamal finally exhaled. “We can forge peace with other kinds of treaties. Why bring marriage into this? And more important, why Jala? If you want to solidify the new alliance in the oldest way in the book, and the most enduring in our region, the Aal Masoods have other princesses who would definitely be more acceptable to your stick-in-the-mud family.”
“My family has nothing to do with it. Jala is my choice.” Kamal’s astonishment made Mohab decide to come clean, as much as it was prudent to. “I had a...thing for Jala years ago, and I thought she reciprocated. It didn’t end as I hoped. Now, years later, with both of us still unattached, I thought it might be fate’s way of telling me I had to make another attempt at claiming the one woman who captured my fancy...and wouldn’t let go. So while resolving our kingdoms’ long-standing conflicts would certainly be a bonus, she’s always been my main objective.”
Expecting Kamal, as Jala’s brother, to be offended—or at least to grill him about the nature of the “thing” he’d had for Jala—Kamal surprised him again, a hint of a smile dawning. “You mean discovering oil in Jareer and the crisis that ensued just presented you with the best bargaining chip to propose? And you didn’t propose before because you never had enough leverage?”
Mohab shrugged, tension killing him. “Do I have enough now?”
Kamal’s smile became definite. “If I disregard the stench of your paternal lineage and consider you based on your own merits, this might be a good idea. A perfect one, even. Knowing Jala, she’d never marry of her own accord and I hate to think she’ll end up alone. And you, apart from the despicable flaw of having the Aal Ghaanem blood and name, seem like a...reasonably good match for her.”
“So you’re saying yes?”
“A yes isn’t mine to say. I can’t force her to marry you and wouldn’t even if I could. Clearly this marriage quest of yours is hardly a done deal, since you require my intervention to even reach her. I won’t ask what earned you a place on Jala’s viciously strict no-approach list. Ullah knows I’m the last man to go all holier-than-thou on you for whatever transgression you committed to deserve this kind of treatment.”
What would Kamal say if Mohab told him he didn’t know exactly why he’d deserved that till this day?
Kamal gazed into the distance as if peering into a distasteful past. “I once did unforgivable things to the one woman who’d captured my fancy and wouldn’t let go, and it took the intervention of others to give me that second chance with her.”
“So you’re paying it forward.”
Kamal’s eyes returned to his, the crooked smile back. “I am. But if she agrees to marry you, I’ll take sixty percent as her mahr. If she refuses, the whole deal is off—and we’ll draw up another treaty that saves your king’s face so he can go sit in his throne and stop throwing war-agitating tantrums.”
Mohab’s first impulse was to kiss Kamal on both cheeks. This was beyond anything he’d come here expecting.
He extended his hand to Kamal instead, his smile the widest it had been in...six years. “Deal. You won’t regret this.”
Kamal shook his hand slowly. “You were wrong when you said you don’t know much about business. You know nothing. You could have gotten me to agree to thirty percent. You’re holding all the cards after all.”
Mohab’s smiled widened more. “I’m not so oblivious that I don’t know the power I wield. But I would never haggle over Jala’s mahr. If my decision didn’t affect millions of people in both Saraya and Jareer, I would have given you the whole thing.”
“You got it that bad?” Kamal drilled him with an incredulous gaze. “Do you love her?”
Love? He once had...or thought he had. But now he knew it hadn’t been real. Because nothing real could ever exist for a man like him. He only knew he couldn’t move on. And that she hadn’t moved on, either. He was still obsessed with their every touch, had starved for her every pleasure. Love didn’t enter into the equation. Not only was it an illusion, it was one he couldn’t afford.
But the pact he’d struck with Kamal was real. As was his hunger for Jala. That was more than enough. In fact, that was everything.
Kamal waved his hand. “Don’t answer that. I don’t think you can answer. If you haven’t seen her in years, whatever you felt for her back then might be totally moot once you come face-to-face with each other again. So I won’t hold you to this proposal for now. But since Jala is the most intractable entity I have the misfortune to know and love...” At Mohab’s raised eyebrow, Kamal sighed. “Aih, she takes after her older brother, as Aliyah tells me.”
Mohab did a double take. It was amazing, the change that came over Kamal’s face as he mentioned his wife and queen. It was as if he glowed inside just thinking of her.
Kamal went on. “But for this to have a prayer of working, I need to give you much more of a helping hand than putting you in the same room with her. I need to give her a shove. I’ll make it sound as if refusal isn’t an option. Of course, if she really wants to refuse, she will, no matter what.” His lips spread into a smile again. “All I can hope is that if I make things sound drastic enough, it’ll give you that chance to make your approach. The rest...is up to you.”
Two
“You...what?”
Jala stared at Kamal, her shrill cry ringing in her own ears.
Staggering, she collapsed on the nearest horizontal surface, gaping up at Kamal who came to stand over her.
“I lied.”
Ya Ullah. She had heard right the first time.
Another cry of sheer incredulity scratched her throat raw. “How could you do this to me? Are you insane?”