The force of his request didn’t scare her. If she could do something to help him, she would. Ayaan had been right. She owed it to Azeez. “Anything, Azeez.”
“Leave Dahaar before the sun is up. Leave and never come back. If you have ever felt anything true for me, Nikhat, do not show me your face ever again.”
Nikhat stood rooted to the spot as he walked away from her. It seemed she was always going to disappoint him.
She couldn’t leave now, just as she hadn’t been able to stay when he had asked her eight years ago.
CHAPTER TWO
AYAAN PUT HIS coffee cup down on the breakfast table when he heard the sound that hammered at him with relentless guilt. The sound of his brother’s approach.
Catching his wife’s gaze, he saw the same shock coursing through him reflected in her eyes.
In the four months since he had practically dragged his brother to the palace, Azeez hadn’t stepped foot into the breakfast hall once. Despite Ayaan’s innumerable pleas. And today…
Ayaan signaled for the waiting staff to leave just as the sound of Azeez’s harsh breathing neared the vast table. He pushed his chair back and looked up. Suddenly, the morning seemed brighter. “Would you like some cof—”
He never saw the punch coming. Shooting pain danced up and down his jaw as it landed, his vision blanking out for a few seconds.
Her loud, abrasive curse word ringing around them, his wife reached him instantly. Ayaan rubbed his jaw and looked up just in time to see Zohra march around his chair and push his brother in the chest.
Azeez’s mouth was curved into a fiendish smile, and Ayaan was about to interfere, when Azeez stepped back from Zohra. He mocked a curtsy, his mouth curled into a sneer. “Good morning, Your Highness, you look…lovely.”
“You are acting like an uncivilized thug,” Zohra said, her gaze furious.
“I am an uncivilized thug, Princess Zohra,” his brother replied with a hollow laugh. “And it is your husband who is keeping me here.”
Flexing his jaw, Ayaan turned to his brother and froze.
Ferocious anger blazed out of that jet-black gaze he knew so well. The same gaze that had been filled with emptiness, indifference, for four months. The constant, hard knot in his gut relented just a little. “What was that for?”
“You are the future king of Dahaar, Ayaan, not of me. Keep your arrogant head out of my affairs.”
Settling back down into his chair, Ayaan took a sip of his coffee. “I have no idea what you refer to, Azeez.”
“I want her out of here.”
The vehemence in his brother’s words doubled his doubts. “Why are you so concerned about Nikhat’s presence?”
Leaning his hip on the solid wood, Azeez bent. “I think all this power is going to your head. Don’t manipulate me, little brother. Or I will—”
“What, Azeez?” Ayaan refused to back down. His cup clanged on the saucer in the ensuing silence, hot liquid spilling onto his fingers.
“You’ll shoot yourself? I fell for that until now, but not anymore. If you were going to kill yourself, you had numerous chances to do it over the past six years. You would have been killed by that bullet. And yet here you are, stubborn as ever and intent on destroying yourself the hard way.” Silence snarled between them. “Nikhat is not going anywhere. Not for at least six more months.”