The Last Prince of Dahaar(33)

                It was a low growl that made the hairs on her neck stand up. His lean frame trembled as though he struggled to contain his emotions within. “I can’t bear to look at her because when she sees me, she’s looking for Azeez. She’s remembering him, searching for something of him in me.”

                Zohra swallowed at the anguish in his words. “She thought all three of you were dead. She made peace with it until...suddenly five years later, she’s told you’re alive and...”

                “Half-mad and haunted?”

                “Your father had no right to lie to her.”

                His gaze flashed at her daring. “My father was protecting her. For all intents and purposes, I was dead.”

                “He lied because it would not serve Dahaar’s interests. This is what I hate about this life...about...” She had to stop to breathe through the tightness in her chest, to swallow the rage sputtering through her. This was not about her. “Resenting her for remembering your brother only makes you human. It doesn’t mean she—”

                “You think I resent her for remembering her firstborn? My brother was the golden prince, the perfect heir. Passionate about Dahaar, smart, courageous, a man who was everything the future king needed to be.

                “I’m not him. He should have been the one that survived. That’s what my parents think when they see me, that’s what the cabinet, the high council think when they see me.”

                It was what he thought, why he was so isolated from everything and everyone, Zohra realized, shaking. How could anyone live with so much self-loathing, with so much pain tied into their very existence?

                “Who gets to decide who should survive—”

                He clasped her cheek, his hand gentle in contrast to his face, a stony mask. “You think I should be grateful that I’m alive? A broken man, a coward afraid of the dark? If it had been Azeez who had survived, he wouldn’t have lost his mind for five years and hid in some Swiss castle, leaving my father to deal with the catastrophe. He wouldn’t have regained his lucidity only to be haunted by memories.”

                The bitterness in his words leeched every ounce of heat from the room. The hairs on her neck stood up, her gut gripped by the tight fist of pain.

                His pain. She could feel it seep into her, enveloping her.

                “My brother would have taken up the mantle of Dahaar instead of still hiding behind our father. He would have chosen a woman like you for his queen instead of being forced into it by duty.” His gaze swept over her mouth with a hunger that shocked her. “He would have been man enough to make you his wife in every way instead of hiding under a sham.

                “Do you understand why I can’t bear to look at her, Princess, why I can’t bear to be near you? Because I’m not fit to be a son, or a husband, much less a prince.”

                Pushing away from her, he left the suite, leaving the echoes of his anger and pain swirling around her.

                With her knees buckling under the weight of his confession, Zohra slid to the seat behind her. He was like a tornado, and as much as she wished to stay out of his path, she had a feeling he would suck her into him.

                His laughter and pain carved places inside her. The truth of his desire that she hadn’t been able to see until now thrummed through her. How could she have when she had been mourning Faisal’s loss, when she was nothing but a figurehead in Prince Ayaan’s life?

                She needed to escape from him, from everything he unraveled within her by his mere presence.