CHAPTER TWO
SHE WAS HIS betrothed.
Ayaan felt the world tilting at his feet as what he had guessed curdled into undeniable reality.
This slip of a woman, who had the nerve to climb onto his bed and hold him through a nightmare, this woman, who was even now meeting his gaze with an arrogant confidence, was the woman he had agreed to marry just a few hours ago?
He hadn’t given her a moment’s thought. She was nothing more than a bullet point in the list of things he had agreed to in the name of duty.
He stood unmoving, the need to vent his spiraling frustration burning his muscles.
Her light brown hair was combed away into a braid. Her eyes were brown, huge in her long face. A strong nose and mouth followed, the stubborn jut of it saying so much about the woman.
She wore a light pink tunic over black leggings, a flimsy shawl wrapped loosely around her torso. Her outfit was plain for a princess, giving no hint as to what lay...
With a control he had honed tight over the past few months, he brought his gaze back to her face. He had indulged himself enough. How the woman looked, or what kind of a body she had, held no significance to him.
Her mother had been American, someone had mentioned it to him. But she was a copy of King Salim. The same no-nonsense air about her, the proud chin, the dogged determination it must have cost her to be near him during his nightmare.
He had no doubt about how violent he could get when caught in one of those nocturnal episodes. It was the reason he detested having anyone even within hearing distance. And despite every precaution he took to hide the truth, to spare his parents, they had already earned him the title of Mad Prince.
If only the world knew what a luxury madness was compared to his lucidity.
He didn’t want to marry this woman any more than he wanted the mantle of Dahaar. The latter, he had been able to postpone. The former...?
The people of Dahaar need reassurance that all is well with you, they need a reason to celebrate. They haven’t had one in five years. And Siyaad needs our help. King Salim stood by me when I had no one else to rely on, when I was crumbling under the weight of Dahaar.
Now it is time we return the favor.
Ayaan wasn’t prepared for it. He would never be.
How could he be, when he didn’t trust himself, when he didn’t know what could break him again, when he was constantly hovering over the thin line between lucidity and lunacy?
But he couldn’t refuse his father, not after everything he had gone through to rule and protect Dahaar, after losing his eldest son and daughter, losing Ayaan to insanity.
His parents had lost everything in one night, but they hadn’t broken. They hadn’t failed in their duty. He couldn’t either.
But suddenly, King Salim’s profuse excuses at tonight’s dinner made sense. His daughter’s absence had been an act of defiance. Not that Ayaan had cared that she was absent. On the contrary, he had been glad that he didn’t need to give the concept of his betrothed a concrete form until that moment was absolutely upon him.
And now here she was, pushing herself into his mind in a way he couldn’t just undo. Within five minutes spent in her company, he already knew more about her than he wanted to learn in a lifetime. She was stubborn, she was brave and the worst? She wasn’t conventional.
“I understood you were too ill to be out and about, Princess Zohra,” he said, forcing utter scorn into his words. “And yet here you are, walking around the palace at night, disrupting a guest’s privacy, offering insult.”
“Do not call me a princess. I have never been one.”
He was too...irritated to even ask her why.
He was chilled to the bone, as he always was when he woke up from one of his nightmares. “Fine. Please tell me why you are in my bed, in my suite, in the palace wing that is strictly forbidden to women, at the stroke of midnight. What was so important that you had to—”
“You were thrashing in the bed, crying out. I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. Nor could I walk away and come back at a better time.”
“Are you deaf? Or just plain dense?” The words roared out of him on a wave of utter shame. He gritted his teeth, fighting for control over a temper that never flared. “Why are you here in the first place?”
The brown of her eyes expanded, her mouth dropping open on a soft huff. His uncivilized words chased away the one thing he couldn’t bear to see—her pity.
“If you think you can scare me into running away by behaving like a savage, it won’t work.”
He could have laughed if he wasn’t so wound up. Every inch of her—her head held high, the deprecation in her look, the stubborn jut of her chin—she was a princess no matter what she said. “If this were Dahaar, I would have—”
“But it’s not Dahaar. Nor am I your loyal subject dependent on your tender mercies,” she said, steel creeping into her words. “This is Siyaad. And even here, all those rules, they don’t apply to me.” Her eyes collided with his, daring him to challenge her claim. When Ayaan said nothing, her gaze swept over his features with a thoroughness that she couldn’t hide. Did she feel the same burn of awareness that arched into life suddenly? “I came to inform you that it’s not worth it.”
Ayaan had known only one woman in his life who had had the temerity and the confidence to speak to him like that—Amira, his older sister. A sliver of pain sliced through his gut. Amira had never let Azeez or him get by with anything. And it had been more because of her core of steel than because she had been born into an extremely powerful family.
He had a feeling the same was true of the woman who met his gaze unflinchingly.
“What is not worth it?”
“Marrying me.”
“Why are you telling me this instead of your father?”
She blinked but it didn’t hide the pain that filled her eyes. “I... He is not well. I could not...take the chance and risk making him worse.”
“Being here with me, persuading me why you are not worth it does not harm him?”
A shrug of those slender shoulders. “If you refuse me, he would be disappointed, yes. But not surprised.”
He frowned at her conclusion. “So you want me to do your dirty work for you?”
She took a deep breath and his curiosity mounted. “I’m not shy, willing, happy to be a man’s shadow—the kind of woman whose only mission in life would be to spew out your heirs every other year. I have never been and it’s not a role one grows into.”
Ayaan smiled, despite the irritation flickering through him.
The woman had gall. And even without her mission statement just now, it was clear she wasn’t a woman who could tolerate the traditional marriage their countries dictated.
Then why was King Salim pushing for this marriage? He had to know that Ayaan and his father would stand beside him without this marriage clause, and yet he had shown more enthusiasm for it.
“If you had attended the dinner and did your duty, I could have told you what I want in my wife.”
She shook her head, her breath quickening. “What is there to learn? The wives—they are nothing but bloodlines and broodmares. Even a harem girl probably has it better than the dutiful wife of the king. At least, she gets good sex out of the...”
He burst out laughing. His chest heaved with it, the sound barreling out of him. Even his throat felt raw in a strange way.
He couldn’t help taking