Time to prove to her he could get cows to skate.
Time to make an official swoop on Azmahar’s vacant court.
* * *
The last rays of a blazing sunset were giving way to the dominion of a velvety evening as Haidar arrived at the edifice he’d been recruited to take over.
He pulled his rented Mercedes to a stop in the wide-as-a-four-lane-highway driveway and gazed up at it through the windshield. Twilight conspired with shadow-enhancing, detail-popping lighting to make it look like some colossal creature from a Dungeons & Dragons fantasy.
He exhaled, slammed out of the car. Qusr Al Majd—literally Palace of Glory—must have seemed like a good idea to Faisal Aal Munsoori, its builder and the founder of Azmahar’s now ex–royal family—the regrettable half of his genes. Back in the sixteenth century, overwhelming demonstrations of power, wealth and invulnerability were all the rage, after all.
And though the man’s descendants had managed to destroy his legacy, impoverish his kingdom and squander his throne, Al Majd remained one of the world’s architectural wonders. Or so it was touted by those who swooned at ostentatious constructions. It certainly gave the overhyped Taj Mahal a run for its money.
But the Taj was doing something useful besides look pretty. He’d certainly have tourists crawling all over this place if he ever became king. It should at least earn its keep.
As for him, should the dreaded day come, he’d frequent it only to keep up appearances and conduct power games. But to live, his—as of this morning—house had it beat by light-years.
He handed his keys to a gaping valet, took the hundred and one imperial white granite steps up to the entrance in twos. In moments he was striding through thirty-foot-high, elaborately carved and gilded doors, then crossing the suffocatingly ornate foyer, making a mental note to simplify and modernize the damn place if he ever became its keeper. And to do something about its patrons’ sense of style, too.
He swept a coalescing gaze over the loitering crowd, grim humor twisting his lips. Considering that most looked as if they’d stepped out of an Addams-Family-cum-Aladdin masquerade, they had a nerve, gaping at him.
Seemed his presence here really was unexpected. Most probably unwelcome. He might be right, after all, and his recruiters knew nothing about what the people of Azmahar wanted or would accept. That, or the openmouthed gawkers had heard of his escapade at Roxanne’s and were trying to imagine him spread-eagle on her bed begging to be used.
Not that either explanation mattered in the least.
He’d taken Roxanne’s challenge and would see this game to the end. And if this kingless kingdom needed his leadership, it was damn well getting it.
Without slowing, he headed to his destination. He hadn’t been here for over eight years, but he remembered well where all pompous, mostly pointless gatherings took place. In the Qobba ballroom, literally Dome, since it resided under a hundred-foot one at the heart of the palace’s main building.
Good thing he also knew the place well enough to have learned its secret shortcuts. He made a set of memorized turns leading to a deserted corridor. Once in its blessed peace and subdued lighting, he breathed in relief to be rid of the bustle and invasive eyes.
Suddenly, footsteps joined his in the muted silence.
They came from behind. Sure, steady. Single. In an alternating rhythm to his footfalls. No attempt to catch up to him, just keeping pace.
A chill crackled through his every nerve.
It wasn’t fury that someone was following him. Or even worry at the possibility of an attack.
It was a…presence that had engulfed him.
Immense. Potent. Ominous.
He stopped. So did the steps behind him. He turned slowly, felt the icy menace of that manifestation swirling around, hindering him like a straitjacket of chains. By midturn every instinct was shouting at him, Don’t look back! Just walk away!
It took all he had to overcome the unreasoning aversion, mostly out of burning curiosity.
Next moment, it was his turn to gape.
Twenty paces away, a man stood so still he might have stopped time in its tracks, so dark he seemed to absorb shadows, snuffing out light. Tall, taller than even him, as broad, in an abaya that opened over shirt and pants, falling to the ground like a shroud of night. He projected something far larger than his physical size, emitted a force Haidar had never felt from another human being. His stance was deceptively relaxed, arms passive by his sides, face slightly lowered, dark eyes leveled on him from beneath dense, winged eyebrows, transmitting a message, a knowledge. That it would be at his whim that he walked away from this confrontation. And it looked like…
Rashid?
Every muscle in his body went slack with shock.
But…no. It couldn’t be. The dimness was playing tricks on his vision, his imagination. He had been thinking of Rashid a lot lately, must be superimposing his memory on this man who resembled him—
“I heard you were pimping yourself out.”
A sickening sensation jolted through him. That voice…
It shared elements with the one he’d last heard over the phone. After they’d become enemies. It had been cold and dark then, nothing like the lively, expressive baritone of the man who’d once been his best friend, sometimes closer to him than his own twin. He’d thought the ugly conflict had been coloring it.
It was far worse now. Fathomless with terrible mysteries.
It was Rashid. Changed almost beyond recognition, yet undoubtedly him. Then he moved. With every step closer, it became clearer. The orphaned distant cousin who, through what he’d once thought a twist of magnanimous fate, had become the biggest part of his and Jalal’s life, had not merely changed.
He’d metamorphosed.
One of the most apparent facets of radical change was his hair. Rashid had always kept it long, to his guardian’s distress. It had once reached the middle of his back. Even when he’d joined the army, he hadn’t gotten the usual military crop.
It was now almost shaved.
But it was worse than that. As he came to a stop a few feet away, in the light from a brass sconce, he could see it. A bloodcurdling scar slashing its way from the corner of Rashid’s left eye down to the corner of his jaw, slithering down his neck, then lower…
“So tell me, Haidar, how long have you been hiding this burning desire to be tied, gagged and abused?”
That new voice, that predatory rumble, revved inside his chest with an oppressive sorrow. For the two-decade friendship that had ended and taken another chunk of his humanity with it.
But regret served no purpose. And his humanity, according to the best of authorities, hadn’t existed to start with.
Tilting his head, conceding that there would be no quarter given on either side, his huff was the very sound of bitter amusement. “Dominated. Abused is a whole different subcategory.”
“Just goes to show you can never claim to know anyone.”
The bile of confusion at how vicious Rashid had become in his enmity rose again. “So true.”
Those black-as-an-abyss eyes poured icy goading and burning scorn over him. “Word is you exiled yourself from Zohayd after your mother tried to roast half the region and serve it to you on a platter. I wonder how much effort you put into fabricating that ‘fact.’”
Rashid was one of the trio who could ever smash through his defenses, melt the layers of ice at his core. Boil his blood.
But a heated defense was exactly what Rashid wanted.
He’d long been done giving anyone what they wanted from him.
“You know me, Rashid. Such things come to me effortlessly. I leave it to…lesser men to exert themselves.”
Seemingly satisfied he had gotten the reaction he’d wanted after all, Rashid said, “So now that Zohayd has wised up and kicked you out on your ear, you’ve come to blight Azmahar with your presence. But if you knew anything about me, you’d know people leave it to me to…deal with discord and its sowers.”
Without the tinge of sarcasm in his tone, he would have thought Rashid was deadly serious. Deadly, period. This was the face of someone who would kill without mercy.
As he had before.
Not that it worried him in the least. Two more things he’d been born without were fear and the ability to back down.
He raised Rashid double his provocation. “I just thought I’d come see what I can do to save Azmahar from the dire fate of having to settle for someone with your…fundamental deficiencies. You know how charitable I can be.”
Something lethal slithered through the depths of Rashid’s eyes—not exactly an emotion, but a reaction. Haidar didn’t know why, but it forced his focus back to the scar.
Ya Ullah, how had that happened? When? Not during his army years. He knew that. What he didn’t know was why he’d never heard of Rashid having it, or how he’d gotten it. Did anyone know?
He had a feeling no one did. No one but Rashid himself.
“How much did you pay those clans to ‘choose’ you as their candidate?”
Rashid’s voice, harsher now, brought his eyes back to his. He didn’t want his scar scrutinized. Especially by him.
Haidar exhaled. “How much did you?”
“I was actually offered whatever I could ask for. A lot of people will do anything to stop you, or your asymmetrical half, from taking the throne.”