THE TRUE KING OF DAHAAR(3)

                Nikhat nodded, trying to keep the anxiety his words caused from her face.

                He sucked in a deep breath. “Azeez is alive, Nikhat.”

                For a few seconds, the meaning of his words didn’t sink in.

                It felt as if the world around her had slowed down, waiting for the buzzing in her ears to pass. The tightness in her chest morphed into a fist in her throat as she saw the truth in his eyes. A stormlike shiver swept through Nikhat and she fought to hold herself together, to fight the urge to flee the palace and never look back.

                How many times was she going to flee?

                She had worked so hard to realize her dream, had waited all these years to see her family again and she couldn’t let anyone stop her now. Not even the man she had once loved with every breath in her body.

                Letting herself breathe through the panic in her head, she forced calm into her voice. “I haven’t heard a word about this.”

                “Because no one other than a few trusted servants and my parents know. Until I can be sure that revealing that he’s alive doesn’t have a negative effect on Dahaar, I have to contain it.” His voice shook and Nikhat reached for his hand this time, even as she fought her own alarm.

                How could he be alive after all these years? How was he now?

                “I found him four months ago in the desert and I still have no idea how he survived or what he did these past six years. He refuses to see our parents, he barely tolerates my visits. The true prince of Dahaar is now my prisoner.” Utter desolation spewed into his words. “I have managed to keep it a secret until now. It would crush the people of Dahaar to see him like this. They…”

                “They worshipped him, I know.” He’d been their golden prince, arrogant but charming, courageous, born to rule his country. And he had loved Dahaar with a passion that had colored everything he had done.

                His love, his passion…they were like a desert storm, consuming you, changing you if you came out alive.

                “I’d hoped that he would get better, that sooner or later, he would decide to rejoin the living.” Powerlessness colored his gaze, his words raw and jittery. “But with each passing day, he…”

                Azeez is alive.

                The words rang round and round in her head. But with the dizzying of her emotions also came the control she had developed in order to flourish in her career. “Ayaan? What’s wrong with him?” she demanded, forgetting propriety.

                “He is little more than a breathing corpse. He refuses to talk, he refuses to see a doctor. He’s refusing to live…Nikhat, and I can’t lose him all over again.”

                A knot of fear unraveled in her stomach now. “What exactly is this favor that you want to ask me?”

                “Spend some time with him.”

                No. The word rang through her. Shaking her head, she stepped away from Ayaan. “I’m an obstetrician, Ayaan. Not a psychiatrist. There’s nothing I can do for him that all your specialists can’t.”

                “He won’t let anyone see him. You…you he won’t refuse.”

                She felt brittle now, as if her calm was nothing but a facade, as if she would fracture under it. But she couldn’t fall apart, she refused to let pain and powerlessness wreak havoc on her again. “You don’t know what your brother will do if he sees me.”