* * *
Zohra Katherine Naasar Al-Akhtum slowly made her way through the lighted corridors toward the guest suite that was situated in the wing farthest from the main residence wings of the palace.
Her feet, clad in leather slippers, didn’t make a sound on the pristine marble floors. But her heart thumped in her chest, and with each step, her feet dragged on the floor.
It was half past eleven. She shouldn’t be out of bed, much less roaming around in this part of the palace where women were expressly forbidden. Not that she had ever heeded the rules of the palace. She just hadn’t needed to be in here until now.
Now...now she had no choice.
She straightened her flagging spine and forged on.
The fact that she hadn’t encountered a guard until now weighed heavily in her gut instead of easing her anxiety. It had been easy to bribe one of the maids and inquire which suite their esteemed guest was staying in.
Suddenly there she was, standing in front of centuries-old, intricately carved, gigantic oak doors. Zohra felt as if cold fingers had clamped over her spine.
Behind those doors was the man in whose hands her fate, her entire life, would lay if she didn’t do something about it. And she couldn’t accept that. If she had to give offense for it, take the most twisted way out of it, so be it.
Sucking a deep breath, she pushed the doors and stepped in. The main lounge was quiet, the moonlight from the balcony on the right bathing it in a silvery glow. But the bedroom in the back, the sounds of a...soccer game boomed out of it.
Was the prince having a party while she was getting cold sweats just thinking about her future?
Straightening her shoulders, Zohra set off toward the bedroom. Flashes of light came and went, the sounds so loud that she couldn’t distinguish one from the other.
She neared the wide entrance, crossed the threshold and came to a halt, her gaze drawn to the huge plasma screen on the opposite wall. It took her a moment to see through the flashes of light, to realize that there was no crowd in the room.
Scrunching her face against the loud noise from the speakers plugged in overhead and around the room, she searched for the remote. It was enough to give a person a pounding headache in minutes.
Flinching every time another roar went up, she walked around and found the remote on the bedside table. She quickly muted the television, the light from the bright screen casting enough glow to let her see the outline of the room.
With silence came another sound she hadn’t heard until now. A sound that turned her skin clammy. The hairs on her arms stood up. It began again. A low, muffled cry, tempered by the sheets. Like a scream of utter pain, but locked away in someone’s throat. She shivered, the agony in that sound crawling up her skin and latching on to the warmth.
Every instinct she possessed warned her to turn around and leave. She half turned on the balls of her feet, her neck cricking at the speed of it.
But the next sound that came from the bed was pure suffering. This time, it wasn’t locked away. Neither was it loud but more gut-wrenching for the accompanying whimper it held.
The sound ripped through her, breathing the anguish of an unbearable pain into the very air around her.
She wanted to curl up, brace herself against it. Or at least run far from it.
And yet the agony in that cry...she would never forget it in this lifetime.