Suppressing the need to run to meet her halfway, he watched her and Maram approach, weighed down by the worry that kept ambushing him—that it would be impossible for everything to keep going so smoothly, incapacitating him further with each attack.
Maram flowed into Amjad’s arms as if slotting into her other half. Then Laylah, flaunting tradition and inciting kingdom-wide wagging tongues, did the same with him. It was frowned upon for married couples to indulge in physical affection in public. It was unheard of between the unmarried.
Most likely presuming his stiffness was caused by his sense of propriety, Laylah grinned up at him. “Did those fossils agree to let you take me off the shelf or do I have to go in there and show them what the last remaining, if fraying around the edges, Zohaydan treasure will do if they snap her last decaying nerve?”
Maram groaned. “Those expressions reek of Amjad.”
Laylah giggled. “Discipline him for me, will you?”
“It’ll be my pleasure.” Maram chuckled. “Though I suspect it will be his, too. I think he misbehaves on purpose.”
Amjad pulled his wife deeper into his embrace. “Like any love-slave worth his salt, I live to provoke my next punishment.”
As Maram laughed her pleasure, Laylah prodded him. “Well? Any need for drastic action on my side?”
Before Rashid got his constricted throat to work, Amjad produced the phone his kabeer al yaweran—his head of royal guard—had handed him as they’d exited the hall.
He gave it to Laylah. “I thought you should have an audio memento of me kicking our family’s ass as I acquired for you the groom who’s going to save you from a fate worse than death.”
“You recorded the meeting?” Laylah exclaimed as she pounced on the phone and a chill assailed Rashid when she let him go. Then he once again heard the medley of abuse Amjad had exposed his family to. Amjad hadn’t even introduced Rashid’s proposal, had only pulverized everyone to their true size before announcing the upcoming marriage as a fact, and announcing that he’d be passing the royal decree documents for everyone to stamp with their house seal.
After gaping through the playback, Laylah squealed, “Amjad! You insane, incredible man, you!”
Amjad waved her delight away. “I don’t do presents, so consider this my gift for the duration of your dual lifetimes.”
Laylah gave him a squeezing hug. “Oh, Amjad, I love you!”
Amjad pushed out of her arms, a stern finger raised at her. “Don’t do or say that again. And I mean ever.”
Laylah winked at Maram. “Your mistress/owner will sanction the occasional hug from the universal kid sister around here.”
Amjad’s head jerk indicated Rashid, who’d taken an involuntary threatening step closer. “It’s someone twice her size and who packs the wallop of a weapon of mass destruction that I’m worried about. Explaining this kid-sister thing to that monolith you brought home might not work. Or it might, and he’d still take my head off just because I’m male and you came in contact with me.”
Laylah laughed, her whole face alight with elation as she looked up at Rashid. “Don’t worry. He needs you in one piece.”
Amjad tutted. “Not a good enough deterrent with that berserker. So let’s play it safe.” He pulled Maram back into his arms, shared with her that look of total allegiance that Rashid had unbelievably found with Laylah. “I have a wife and kids who’d like me around for half a century or so.”
With the trio indulging in more banter, Rashid walked with them to Amjad and Maram’s private quarters, still struggling with the ominous sensation settling deeper in his bones. It just didn’t seem right that everything would go so wonderfully.
When would the other shoe drop?
It did, partially, in the evening.
More Aal Shalaans kept showing up to congratulate them, with their delight and acceptance only setting him further on edge. Then he announced the wedding would be in Azmahar a week later.
It was then that everything went wrong.
Maram and Aliyah led the women in insisting there was no way they’d put together another royal wedding in a week, like they recently had Jalal’s. They’d take a month. And that was final.
When Amjad corroborated his wife’s desire, and Laylah herself didn’t protest for long, Rashid felt that if he did, they’d wonder why he was so nervous about postponement, and grudgingly succumbed.
From then on, he felt each moment as if it were counting down to an explosion that would go off and destroy everything.
Eleven
“You know, there’s this age-old invention. It’s said to have endless merits.”
Rashid gritted his teeth as Laylah whispered in his ear. It had been ten days since they’d come to Zohayd. All the wedding preparations on the Zohaydan side had been concluded. They’d move to Azmahar in a couple of days to start the preparations there, where the ceremony would be held. A couple of days when Laylah wouldn’t be with him.
She’d played a ruse on her companions to get him into her private quarters alone. Normally he would have objected, even refused. Not this time. He had to talk her out of her potentially disastrous decision.
He stiffened when her arms came around him from behind, her hair spilling its fragrant silk over his shoulder as she leaned over the couch where he sat in her old bedroom suite.
She nipped his earlobe. “That invention is called a smile.”
Unable to hold back, he swung around, took hold of her and swept her over the couch and onto his lap.
Giggling, melting in his embrace, her fingers traced his tight lips, tried to spread them. “You do it like that. C’mon, you can do it. I promise you, your face won’t crack.”
He caught her hands. “It’s not the right moment to ask me to try this trick.”
Her face lost its impishness as she sighed. “I’m going to visit my mother, not going on a suicide mission.”
“You mean there’s a difference?” he asked, feeling himself spiraling out of control.
“You were the one who insisted I bring my family into this.”
“I meant the nonvenomous ones only.”
She chuckled. “I am one-quarter serpent.”
“The gene bypassed you.”
“But it might be a good idea to keep in touch with its literal mother lode, just to keep abreast of how to manage it. Said gene might not miss the next generation.”
“It will. That gene stops with your mother and aunt.”