“When you learned of your condition, I was terrified of what you would do.”
“You knew?”
“Of course I knew. I read every report, and it broke my heart. Once again, I was afraid of what kind of future you would have in Dahaar. But you shocked me with your strength. And suddenly, I saw that you had the perfect solution. You were destined for greater things, and Dahaar and I, we would do nothing but curtail you. Prince Azeez would bring nothing but pain to you.
“So I insisted you not return. For your own good and for your sisters’.”
He had given her so much thought and she…she had thought him hard-hearted, uncaring about anything but tradition. A tear rolled down her cheek. It was apparently the day she had to walk through fire. “I had a good life in New York, Father. But I needed you and my sisters, too.”
“Forgive me for not realizing that, Nikhat. When you came back and when I heard the rumors, I thought history was repeating itself. And your sisters, they are not like you.”
Her heart bursting, Nikhat hugged him hard, even as she felt him stiffen against her. He was not used to such blatant gestures or displays of emotion. He had never been, would never be.
And she had to accept him this way, accept that he had loved her in his own way, and had tried to protect her the only way he knew.
This was why he hadn’t met her eyes since she had returned from the palace, why he had banned her sisters from voicing their incessant questions about the coronation.
And that small fact gave her a fierce strength.
She pulled back, her heart racing faster and faster. She smiled at him as he looked at her quietly. “I have to go to him, Father. I have to show him my heart. I have to hope that he will accept my love, see that I’m ready for him.”
That old intractability swept into his gaze, but this time she saw it for his concern. His shoulders a tight line, he nodded. “Are you ready for the consequences, Nikhat?”
Nikhat nodded, battling the fear that knotted her stomach.
Had Azeez already made his decision that last night they had spent together? Was that why he had been so ferociously cruel with her? She hadn’t realized she had presented him with a choice, that she had only wanted him if he could be anyone but himself; but the king.
Her love or his duty?
And after everything he had gone through to find himself again…
She had to believe that he still loved her. She couldn’t bear to think of a future without him now. And if he did love her…if she wanted to share her life with Azeez, she would have to face the fact every day that she might never have children. Everyone would question her eligibility, a whole nation would wonder about her inability to conceive.
But he…he would never resent her. She had loved him before there had been guilt and shadows in his eyes and she loved the honorable man he was now. To imply that he didn’t feel the same for her was calling into question his very honor, his very nature, the very thing that made him Azeez Al Sharif.
All along, she had thought she had accepted her condition, she had thought she had forged herself a life, went after her dreams despite it.
But she had robbed herself of her biggest happiness, run far from the one man she had loved more than life itself. Her strength had been nothing but a mirage, an illusion.
For the first time in her life, she felt as if she was ready to choose her own happiness, as if she was worthy of the man she loved.
“I’ve always been his, Father.”
* * *
Ten more days.
There were ten more days before his coronation and he didn’t know how long before he took a wife. He had met a couple of the “eligible candidates” this morning. He couldn’t remember their names, much less their faces.
Nodding at his mother and her aides, he had said any one of them was acceptable to him. He knew, in the back of his mind, that he was being more than cruel to the woman in question. None of this was her fault. But seeing them was all he could manage before his gut churned with a vicious force.
None of them was the woman he wanted with every breath in him.
They knew what they were getting into, he reassured himself, walking back into his bedchamber and dismissing his three assistants and two aides with one command.
His physiotherapist lingered, a flash of anxiety on the younger man’s face. Azeez signaled for him to leave, too, even knowing that he couldn’t afford to miss any sessions, not the night before the public statement was going to be made by his father.
He walked to the middle of the room and tried to move his hip joint in the way Nikhat had taught him.
But instead of that, all he could see was her face. Her lush mouth pinched, her heart in her eyes, breaking, shattering, her body gathered into a tight mass as if she braced herself against him, against his cruel words.