“Then what did Nikhat mean by saying it was because of me? I know she didn’t say that to manipulate me.”
“I thought you didn’t want to see her or hear a word from her mouth. Now you trust her opinion?”
“Nikhat wanted to be a doctor since she was ten years old. If there’s one thing that she would never betray, it’s her profession. So if she says I’m the reason for Zohra’s stress, then I am. What I don’t understand is why. I might be a cripple but I have a working mind.”
“Do you? Because, so far, I haven’t seen evidence of it.”
Azeez continued as though his usually even-tempered brother hadn’t just snarled at him. “I have watched your wife growl at me like a lioness, as if she needs to shield you from me. I don’t think she would crumble because her husband is dealing with his difficult brother. So what is it, Ayaan?”
A flash of utter desolation came alive in his brother’s gaze. Azeez stared, shock waves shivering through him. Ever since he had learned that Ayaan had returned after six years, Azeez had known that his brother would do his duty, no matter what. And Ayaan had risen to every challenge.
Only now did Azeez realize what he had overlooked. His brother had fought his own demons for so long and Azeez had not given a passing thought to it until this moment.
“She’s worried about what this—” he moved his hand between Azeez and him “—is doing to me.”
A chilly finger raked its nail over Azeez’s spine. “What do you mean?”
“I have nightmares, vicious ones. I have had them every night ever since I… since I became lucid. Sometimes, they are minimal. Sometimes, I get violent. And…”
Azeez held his head in his hands, feeling his breath leave him. Guilt infused his blood, turning him cold from inside out. Looking up, he forced himself to speak the words. “They have become worse since you found me.”
Ayaan shrugged.
There was no shame or hesitation in his brother’s gaze. Only resigned acceptance. And in that minute, Azeez realized what he had been too blind to see until now.
His brother had lived through his own version of hell and had come out of it alive and honorable. And Dahaar was blessed to have him.
Unless he, Azeez, ruined it all again.
“I keep reliving that night and every time I see all that blood in the stable, your blood, I wake up screaming. And Zohra is right there with me, suffering through them, right by me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“When would I have told you? In between the punches you threw at Khaleef and me? When you refused point-blank to see Mother even though you could hear her heartbreaking cries on the other side of the door and informed Father to assume that his firstborn is still dead? Or in the few hours that you have been sober in the last four months?”
Azeez shifted in the seat restlessly. He wanted to run away from here. “Be rid of me,” he growled, his powerlessness eating through his insides. “All this will be solved in a minute.”
Ayaan rocked forward onto his knees, a fierce scowl on his face. “You think I can just wish away your existence as you have been doing?”
“Then send your wife away. Protect her.”
“I can’t,” Ayaan said, a sarcastic chuckle accompanying his words. “I am to be crowned king in two months, but I can’t dictate my wife’s behavior. I have ordered her to sleep in a separate wing, to go back to Siyaad for a few days. But, like you cleverly noticed, my wife has a will of her own. She won’t leave my side.”
From the moment he had met her steady gaze, Azeez had realized how much Princess Zohra loved his brother. Something he had wanted once, something he had thought he had once.
He swallowed back the surge of envy that gripped him. He would not envy the little happiness that Ayaan had. This had to stop today, now. “Fine. What is it you want from me?”
“What?”
“Tell me what you want me to do. Tell me what I can do to make this…make you better and take this stress off Zohra.”
“Why now, when you have all but thrown back my requests in my face?”
“Because there’s already too much blood on my hands and I don’t want more.”
Ayaan’s face tightened, his gaze filled with pity that Azeez didn’t want. “Azeez, that’s not—”
“This is your chance to protect your wife, Ayaan. Don’t waste it on useless matters.”
“Fine,” his brother said, standing up. “I want you to take care of yourself. I want you to have physiotherapy, I want you to see a psychiatrist, and I want you to see Mother and I want you at my coronation in a—”
“Don’t push it,” Azeez said, feeling the shackles of his brother’s demands binding him to Dahaar. Just the word coronation was like sticking a steel spike into his heart.
With his hand on the armrest, he pushed himself off the chaise. There was only one choice left to him, only one solution to stop the ruin he had begun again. And everything within him revolted at it. “I will do this, but I will do it my own way.”
“What do you mean?”
“I won’t see a team of doctors. Nikhat can attend to me in between attending to Zohra.”
“Azeez,” his brother’s voice rang with warning as Azeez walked toward the exit, keeping his gaze away from everything in the room. “Whatever you are planning to do, don’t. She is here by my request.”
“Exactly. You brought her into this, Ayaan. Now that I’m following your orders, don’t complain about it.”
Stepping outside his brother’s office, Azeez slowly made his way back to his own quarters. He still planned to leave Dahaar. For his own sanity, he had to.
But he would postpone it until things were right with Princess Zohra. And he couldn’t live the rest of his life the way he had been doing, either.
He would do what his brother asked him to do because nothing else would be enough for Ayaan. However, there was no point in a team of doctors poking through his head. There was nothing anyone could do to fix him.
But Dr. Zakhari, he had been mistaken to dismiss her so quickly. She owed him. And she would become his route to freedom from this palace, from a life that would slowly but surely do what a bullet hadn’t been able to do— kill him.
* * *
Nikhat finished her dinner and dismissed the maid from her quarters. Ten seconds later, she couldn’t remember what it was that had been served to her in the glittering silverware.
She only remembered looking at her reflection in the plate, rushing to the long, oval mirror in her bedroom and redoing her unruly hair.
She stood before it again now, going over herself with a critical eye. Her long-sleeved, high-collared caftan in unrelenting black was made of a stiff silk that instead of clinging to her breasts sat on her shoulders like a tent. Small diamond studs, a gift she had given herself for her thirtieth birthday, were her only jewelry.
Sighing loudly, she grabbed another pin and slapped it over one strand of hair that refused to sit back in her braid. Satisfied with how she looked, she pressed her temples with her fingers and massaged.
She was used to braiding her hair back tight for the operating room. But this time, she had done it so tight that her head ached.
She checked the pile of gifts she had spent hours wrapping, unable to sit still. Had she known that Princess Zohra would allow her father to come straight into Nikhat’s suite in the far-off wing of the palace that housed her, she