The Sheikh's Destiny (15 page)

“It’s so good to see being a harassed king and a henpecked husband hasn’t defanged you, Amjad,” Laylah said merrily.

Amjad continued talking about her as if she wasn’t there. “But then she’s been trying to catch your eye since she could toddle. Oh, yes, we all noticed. And cringed. It was excruciating watching her pant after you. Made me hyperventilate. So how did she suddenly succeed in curing
your
blindness to her splendor?”

The wily wolf was skeptical. Rashid had known he would be. Amjad had suspicion for blood. It was why he’d originally hatched this whole plan. To pass Amjad’s maximum-distrust inspection.

Amjad continued, “It
was
weird, how determined you were in not noticing her. It got so fishy, I asked Haidar and Jalal if they knew which team you played for.”

Against his better judgment, Rashid said, “There were years when speculation about
your
team loyalties ran rampant, too.”

Amjad’s grin grew more goading, delighted that he’d gotten a rise from him. “
I
didn’t have a smitten angel hero-worshipping me for years.”

“I hear Queen Maram did just that before you rethought your...predilections.”

Amjad’s eyes blazed greener. The bastard loved this. “Those were only put on hold after my monster bride slathered me in arsenic. That’s a good enough reason to swear off women for a few years, don’t you think? What was your excuse?”

It was no use. This would develop into a full-scale war.

So be it. And to hell with his alliance. “While you were getting over your self-pitying and preserving neurosis, I was serving my country and putting my life on the line for the region’s safety. I didn’t think it fair to involve a woman in a life that could end prematurely.”

Laylah’s convulsive dig into his arm transmitted how horrifying she found the what-if scenario.

He squeezed her hand, warding off the imaginary dread, reassuring her that he was here, would always be here, with her.

Amjad, not missing a thing, continued his inflammatory interrogation. “But that heroic existence came to an end a few years ago. What reminded you of my worshipping cousin all of a sudden? And made you not only look her way this time, but decide to take her off the shelf, and in record time, too?”

He decided to tell both of them the truth about this at least. “The reason I never looked at you—” he turned his eyes to Laylah, whose eyes filled with tears and wonder as she heard his confession for the first time “—wasn’t because I didn’t notice you, or wasn’t interested. I was, painfully so. But I wasn’t worthy of looking in your direction then.”

Amjad let out a deriding guffaw. “And you think you are now?”

Laylah stepped between them. “Are you two gigantic boys done chest-thumping, or do you need to release some more testosterone? Why don’t you just beat each other black and blue and get this ‘who’s the bigger, badder alpha’ thing out of your systems?”

Rashid watched as Amjad looked down with extreme amusement at Laylah, who cared not a bit that he was one of the most powerful men in the world, smacking him in chastisement, as if he was only her exasperating—and younger—relative and not her king.

Jealousy radiated up Rashid’s spine. Cousin or not, he wanted her to smack no other male, wanted no other male to revel in being smacked by her.

Amjad gave her a mock bow. “For knock-down, drag-out fights, and any other physically expressed stupidity, I’ll refer you to Harres. Or Jalal. Me, my wit is my lash, my tongue my sword.”

Fighting the need to shove him away from Laylah, Rashid said, “You imagine you wield such weapons, when it’s your status that stops people from showing you their real worth in a fair fight.”

Amjad pretended shock. “You mean you’re holding back in respect for my status?” He wiggled his eyebrows at him. “I hereby decree you’re free to do your best. Or is it only your worst?”

Again Laylah came between them, this time one palm flat on each of their chests, keeping them apart. “Down boys. In your corners.”

Amjad sighed. “Okay. Just because Rashid is an endangered species and we need him alive and able to breed. I don’t think we’d find you another mate if he expires.”

Laylah dug her elbow in Amjad’s gut, her smile so radiant as she looked up, asking Rashid to share the joke. He only wanted to poke Amjad’s green eyes out.

Turning to Amjad, she asked, “Is my father here?”

“You expected him to be?” Amjad scoffed. “That deadbeat? And I thought you were above such sentimental tripe. If you haven’t yet, it’s time to face it already, Laylah. In
that
generation only one apple didn’t turn out rotten.
My
father is all we got in the way of a parent around this place.”

An incensed step brought Rashid slamming into Amjad chest-first. “Even if she knows the truth about her father, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt her. You don’t have to be cruel.”

“Oh, I assure you, I have to.” Amjad’s eyes suddenly smoldered with something besides mockery. Fury. “It’s called tough love, and she’s better off considering
both
her parents as dead as my mother or your parents. Just remembering my uncle makes me want to kick his useless ass, or anyone’s who mentions him.”

Before he could punch Amjad’s lights out, Laylah growled, “I swear, one more word out of either of you, and I’m putting each of you in a corner at the ends of this palace.
Ya Ullah—
now I remember why I left. I was drowning in male posturing and hormones. Are there any buffering women around here?”

“All the women who’ve invaded the Aal Shalaan male maze will be here tomorrow,” Amjad said. “For today you can seek the feminine amelioration of my Maram, of course, and Johara.”

She whooped. “I can’t wait to meet the phenomenon who’s put a collar around your neck. And see Johara again. And the children. You know, some sensible, age-appropriate-behaving individuals.”

Amjad pulled another of those inciting expressions in his arsenal and shooed her away. “Skip along, then. Rashid and I have more juvenile silliness scheduled before we’re through. I have to drive him to within an inch of his sanity before I even look into his application to acquire our last remaining—if long-stored and fraying around the edges—Aal Shalaan treasure.”

Laylah grinned up at Rashid. “Guess you were right about my code name here.” She turned her best demolishing glance on Amjad. “Not that anyone can accuse you of knowing how to hang on to your treasures, as evidenced by what happened to the Pride of Zohayd, your foremost one. So hang on to
your
sanity, Amjad. Rashid is a world-renowned authority in sanity extraction, among other...extractable things. I leave you to his not-so-tender mercies,
taal omrak.”

Amjad let out a spectacular snort at her tagging the king’s hail of “may you live long” to her irreverence. Then she stood on tiptoe and pressed a clinging kiss to Rashid’s lips.

Before he forgot Amjad and the watchful eyes of the palace dwellers and crushed her to him, she drew away with a smile that lit his existence before almost dancing away.

Feeling bereft already without her, his gaze clung to her as she receded. And he registered where they were for the first time.

The royal palace of Zohayd was right up there with the Taj Mahal in splendor and intricacy of design, and even more extensive. The mid-seventeenth-century palace that had taken more than three decades and thousands of artisans and craftsmen to build had once been his playground and domain along with Haidar and Jalal from age eight to twenty. He’d taken as much pride and pleasure in it as they had before his stays here had declined until they’d stopped altogether, around ten years ago.

It felt so strange to be back after everything that had happened since to pollute his memory. Nostalgia was like a wave that crashed down on him as he walked through this place again, felt its history and the grandeur saturating its walls, permeating his senses with bittersweet memories. On account of its being Laylah’s home, not the stage where chunks of his life had been played. It had been mostly here where he’d seen her and dared not dream of her. Now she was here
with
him. It made being here again so...poignant.

Amjad, the self-appointed poignancy disperser, flicked a hand at Laylah as she disappeared around a bend. “Are you as viciously intelligent as you look? Did you latch onto Laylah when you thought you were ‘worthy’ of her for the right reasons? Do you realize what a miracle she is? The product of Medusa and Narcissus should have been a man-eating gorgon, not the most sensitive, selfless being to walk the earth. That she’s female, too, makes her a veritable impossibility.”

Now that Amjad was singing Laylah’s praises, Rashid no longer felt like wiping the palace floor with him face-first.

Still looking where Laylah had disappeared, as if to bask in her echoes, he sighed. “Just what I was thinking. Before your insufferable, inflammatory intrusion on our privacy.”

“Insufferable, inflammatory intrusion? Can you say that five times in quick succession?” Amjad suddenly slapped him on the back. “So how did you do it?”

Struggling not to rearrange the king’s well put-together face, Rashid gritted, “Not choke you for all the insensitivities you poured on Laylah’s head? You’re only still breathing because I need you to do some talking on my behalf.”

Amjad’s guffaw was all enjoyment now. “I may like you yet.” Another back slap. “And by do it, I mean Laylah.” At Rashid’s growl, Amjad held up his hands. “To quote Laylah, ‘down boy.’ I
mean—
apart from her sharper-than-I-remember tongue—that was a woman fathoms deep in love. I know the symptoms well. My Maram looks and sounds like that around me.”

“It must be the era of impossibilities.”

Amjad laughed again. “Yeah, I still can’t figure out why Maram loves me. But I always figured Laylah’s obsession with you stemmed from your unavailability. Now you’re all over her, not to mention a far deteriorated version of your younger self. What’s keeping someone like her interested in someone like you?”

“If you mean my scar...”

“Please. That’s your one interesting feature. Provides you with character. Also proves you’re human, since there have been major doubts about that. Nah, it has nothing to do with what you look like, and everything to do with what you
are
like. You’re one dour, ruthless, unstable son of a bitch. Don’t get me wrong, it makes you
my
kind of guy, but how can Laylah, that perpetual ray of sunshine, stand you?”

He forced out a breath. “How does your Maram stand
you?
”

“She does because we’re alike. When you take away all the human traits I lack, she’s got a razor for a mind and a scythe for a tongue, too. I don’t believe in this opposites attract thing.”

“Laylah and I are not opposites. We’re very much alike, too.”

Amjad snorted again. “Now I’ve heard it all.”

“Think about it. As you pointed out, she is practically as parentless as I am. She has felt alone and out of place all her life, as I have. She’s felt responsible for other people’s crimes and punished herself for them.”

“Her mother’s crimes and your guardian’s, huh? Now that you point it out, yeah, I can see the resemblance in all the major stuff.” Amjad gave him an assessing glance. “So what’s your real plan?”

Ten

R
ashid’s heart slammed against his ribs.

Amjad still suspected him? How, when he no longer
had
a plan?

He only had the truth to contribute. “I plan to dedicate my life to honoring her, to serving and championing her.”

“Not to loving her?” Amjad tsked. “Women are fond of this part almost to the exclusion of all else.”

And he did something he’d never thought he would: appealed to that maddening man. “You’re a man in love, Amjad. Look at me and tell me you don’t see
your
symptoms all over me.”

After another protracted glance, Amjad let out a laugh. “And how. The trappings of
eshg—
extreme and unremitting love, though they clash on you like a pink dress on a grizzly bear—
are
all over you. But you have something against saying the words, right?”

“The words don’t do justice to what I feel for her.”

Amjad huffed again. “Been there, done that. And you’ll invent new ways and words to transmit the enormity of your feelings. But those simple words, with the truth of your emotions behind them, have a way of transmitting exactly how you feel to your loved one. So word of advice—don’t leave it too long without saying them, or she might have trouble getting comfortable hearing or believing them when you finally do.”

It was Rashid’s turn to scoff. “Now
I’ve
heard everything. You, giving me romantic advice?”

“That’s for the cousin and sister who was the only beacon of brightness in this gloomy place for over two decades.” Amjad suddenly made a hurrying gesture. “C’mon. Grovel already.”

Giving Amjad a look that said he would make
him
grovel someday, Rashid said, “I ask that you gather the Aal Shalaan family tribunal to sanction giving me Laylah’s hand in marriage.”

A “gotcha” smile split Amjad’s face. “You really are stuck in some desert knight folktale, aren’t you? ‘Tribunal’, indeed.”

Rashid counted to ten. “It’s
your
family tradition.”

“Tradition bladition. I’m King of Zohayd, pal. I play chess with those tribunal members. Just wait until I’m making them jump three diagonal moves ahead then back.”

“So it’s your decision that counts.
Zain.
Make your demands.”

Amjad poked a finger at Rashid’s temple, rapped it three times. “
Any
rudimentary sense of humor in there?”

Rashid swatted his hand away. “I’ll snark your head off,
Ya Maolai,
as soon as Your Majesty approves my proposal. Or knock it off if you refuse it.”

Amjad raised his arms up theatrically. “He lives!” One of his arms suddenly came around Rashid’s shoulder, leading him toward the main palace hall. “Just because I now have hope that you won’t bore Laylah to the point where she’d plot to be rid of you, I’ll consider your proposal. But first, about those seven tasks...”