His breath fanned over her nape, his hold on her tighter. “The three of us, we had always been close. But something had been eating at him for almost a year. He became a different person, not the brother we knew. It hadn’t escaped our parents’ notice either. His coronation was only months away, and he had been avoiding both Amira and me. So we thought it was the best chance.
“And before I knew it, we were surrounded on all sides by armed men. But the strange thing was that Azeez had been prepared, he surprised them by instantly going on attack. He was something to watch, the way he fought. And we had a good chance of getting out of there, too. I caught the gun that he threw at me, but then a bullet hit Amira and I...I just froze.”
If she hadn’t felt his chest rise and fall, Zohra would have thought he had turned into ice right in front of her eyes. He raised his hand and looked at it as though he still held the gun. His face puzzled, his mouth held the bitterest of contempt.
And she found no words to say to him that could break through the dark cloud of self-loathing that poured out of his every word.
“I could not raise my hand and shoot. I just couldn’t. To this day, I ask myself why not. When he needed me, when my sister needed me, I failed.
“I didn’t shoot or even move to cover him. He got shot in the hip, and a bullet grazed my head...but even then, I just stood there, staring at him, useless.
“When I woke up next, Amira’s body was next to me while Azeez...he couldn’t move.”
Zohra wiped her own tears, the deep chasm of grief beneath his monotonous tone ringing through her. She forced herself to ask the next question, even as she never wanted to hear it again. “Did he die in front of you?”
With a smoothness that startled her, he stood up. She saw the tremble in his hands as he pushed his hair back. He paced like a caged tiger, the fury rattling from him a tangible thing in the air. “No. They bound me but not him, because his leg was already useless. Blood...there was so much of his blood everywhere. He kept telling me to try to leave...until suddenly he just lay still and they dragged him out of there. They needed us for negotiation. I remember thinking he would get medical aid, thinking...
“I didn’t see him again, have no idea what they put him through.
“I remember every moment of that cursed day until then. I have no idea how long they held me, how I escaped, no idea where they buried him. It’s the question I see in my mother’s eyes when she looks at me and I don’t have an answer. I have racked through my mind, but I...”
“Shhh...” Zohra whispered, hugging him, her own tears beating a path down her cheeks. She was not sorry she had asked. Because this grief was a part of him and she wanted all of him. She only wished she could bear its weight for him, even if for an infinitesimal second.
“Every time I hear the word courage associated with me, I cringe, I fall deeper into the pit of my own shame. Are you disgusted by me now, Zohra?” His words whipped through the air around them, polluting everything they had shared just minutes ago.
She held his face in a tight grip, a lump lodging in her throat.
Her chest was so tight that it was a wonder she could breathe. It hurt to see him hurt, it hurt that she couldn’t help him, it hurt that he would never embrace the little happiness he found with her. It hurt so much that her stomach lurched, her breath halted in her throat as an image of her life, forever waiting for him, within reach but far away, stretched in front of her.
He would do his duty by her, stand by her, maybe even create a child with her—because this pull between them was stronger than either of them, but he would never look at her with happiness, never accept her love, never return it.