THE TRUE KING OF DAHAAR(13)

                It took everything in her for Nikhat to stay standing.

                “Do I need to have your case history checked?”

                “What do you mean?”

                “Princess Zohra is valuable to Ayaan and Dahaar.” This time, Dahaar was the afterthought to his brother. “Will you be able to keep your objectivity when the time comes? Or are you fighting a never-ending battle with yourself and trying to save your mother again and again?”

                She flinched, his words finding their mark. She could feel the blood leaving her face, but in this, she would not keep quiet. In this, she would not let him find fault.

                “Hate me all you want, Azeez, but don’t you dare insult my ability as a doctor or my reasons for it. I chose obstetrics because, with all the progress your family has made for Dahaar, there are so many things in women’s health that are still backward, so many antiquated notions that dictate a woman’s life.

                “My profession has nothing to do with the past. It’s my life, my future.”

                “As long as you are remember that, Dr. Zakhari. Because you paid a high price for that, didn’t you?”

                Nikhat sank back to the seat, her own lie coming back to haunt her.

                He still thought she had left him because her love for her dream had been more than her love for him. And crushed under the weight of the truth, she had let him believe the lie.

                She had paid a high price. She had paid with her heart, with her love. She had paid for something she couldn’t change. And she had meticulously built her life from all the broken pieces to let even the Prince of Dahaar shatter it.





                                      CHAPTER THREE

                AZEEZ LEANED AGAINST the wall outside Ayaan’s office and sucked in a harsh breath. Sweat trickled down his shoulder blades after the long walk from his wing to this side of the palace. Closing his eyes, he rubbed his palm over the right hip, willing the shooting pain to relent.

                But of course it didn’t. He’d spent the past four months drinking himself into oblivion, uncaring of if he ate or moved. His negligence was coming back to him in the form of excruciating pain. His hip was sore from months of inactivity, from lack of exercise. Breathing in and out through the dots dancing in front of him, he slowly sank to the floor.

                His brother had been right. There had been more than one occasion when he had wished himself dead. But he hadn’t actually indulged the thought of killing himself.

                His list of sins was already long enough without committing one against God, too. So he had carried on, uncaring of anything, uncaring of what a wasteland his life had become.

                But his self-loathing, his lack of interest in his life, his lack of respect for his own body—as long as it had been only him who faced the consequences, he had been fine with it. But now…

                Now it was beginning to fester into his brother and his wife.

                After everything he had gone through, after recovering from the blood loss because of the bullet wound he had taken during the terrorist attack, waking up amidst strangers with a useless leg, realizing what he had become, after the excruciating pain of keeping himself away from his family, he could not allow this.

                Whatever rot was in him couldn’t be allowed to spread, couldn’t be allowed to contaminate the good that was finally happening in his family. He couldn’t be allowed to take more from them, from Dahaar.