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.”