“I might have hidden some truths—”
“Some truths?” Najeeb scoffed. “You hid every truth. All the time we’ve been dealing with a total fabrication.”
“This is the real me. I only had to settle things with you first before I told her everything.”
“About that.” Najeeb flicked him a contemptuous look. “I sat in there wondering why you revealed your truth now, and I realized it’s because you’ve reached the point in your meticulous plans when it suited you to do so, when you were ready to strike. But when you looked so shaken by Jenan’s arrival, and so anxiously asked me to stay inside, I realized this was one thing you didn’t account for. For us to meet at this delicate point, exposing everything to her prematurely. According to your plans, she would have been the last to know the truth, right? When it was too late for her to do anything about it.”
Unable to act on his rising dread and aggression, Numair said, “You have this all wrong, Najeeb.”
Until this moment, Jenan had been mutely gaping at them. Now she came between them, her voice a brittle tremolo. “What plans? What truth?”
Before Numair could try to mollify her again, Najeeb ended any hope for containing this disaster.
“That his name isn’t Numair, but ironically, a synonym of that, what I’m sure he meant. It’s Fahad. Fahad Aal Ghaanem.”
After seconds of nonreaction, the widening of Jenan’s eyes said that she recognized the name. The confusion that flooded them right after said she couldn’t process, or believe, the connotations of that name.
Najeeb ended her uncertainty. “Yes, that Fahad Aal Ghaanem. The cousin we all thought long dead.”
It took frozen moments before Jenan shook her head, her bewilderment deepening, not lessening. “How?”
In answer, Najeeb succinctly recounted the story he’d told him. As he spoke, Jenan’s eyes were riveted to Numair, as if struggling to superimpose the new truths on what she’d known of him, what she’d had with him, till now.
When Najeeb fell silent, she asked shakily, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
It was Najeeb who answered again. “This was another thing I sat in there trying to understand. Then I worked it all out. You see, right before you arrived, Numair—or should I say Fahad—told me he was here to exact revenge. On my father, whom he accused of having his father killed. The other reason he mentioned was to reclaim his birthright. And it all became clear. He had a convoluted plan to come here, hurt my father as much as possible until he had solid proof of his lineage. Once he did, he’d accuse my father of murder, deposing him in a scandal and of course getting rid of me as the current crown prince, and claiming the throne for himself.” Najeeb turned to Numair, arctic challenge in those eyes that had been all warmth such a short while ago. “Did I miss anything?”
“It’s not like that anymore...”
“What about me?”
Jenan’s voice, so smothered in trepidation, drove a jagged edge in his gut, cutting short his protestations.
“Jenan, I said I’ll explain everything later...”
“Will you?” Najeeb’s words cut through his entreaty like a knife. “Why not do it now? She’s asking a very simple question after all. Why did you approach her in the first place? Or should we say, target her? That was the other thing I sat in there trying to figure out, until I finally realized that your heritage isn’t only in Saraya, but Zafrana. Your mother was Princess Safeyah Aal Ghamdi, and half of your blood is royal Zafranian blood. Being the powermonger that you are, and with the state the kingdom is in, you must consider you’re the one who has both the right and the power to rule it. But since you don’t have a direct claim to the throne as you do in Saraya, you concocted a more convoluted plan. You weren’t saving Jenan from my father, or even trying to hurt him by decimating his power over Zafrana and the massive resources he’d expended to gain it. You wanted Jenan only to use her in the exact same way he intended to.” Najeeb turned his pained gaze to Jenan. “Claiming you, having an heir from you, would make him control Zafrana’s throne during your father’s life, then after his death, until his heir, your father’s heir, comes of age.”
Jenan turned her gaze toward Numair. There was no shock or pain or accusation in there. Just emptiness.
As everything collided inside him, the vacuum in her eyes intensified, as if her essence had totally departed his body. A body that had nothing more to prop it up, and collapsed to the ground in a boneless mass.
“Jenan!”
Lightning-fast reflexes honed through decades of merciless training kicked in, fighting off the paralysis. He caught her before she hit the ground. But Najeeb had also charged to save her.