Shaheen laughed at Amjad’s reminder that he’d called him an idiot then, and Amjad considered himself one now. “Happy idiots, though.”
Harres nodded, dreamy teasing lighting up his ruggedness. “Ecstatic morons.”
Amjad gritted his teeth. “Do turn down the blast of your bliss. It’s too abrasive when I’m in the category of inconsolable idiots and miserable morons for now.”
Shaheen tsked. “Man, you are potent, if you managed to demolish her obsession with you.”
Amjad exhaled heavily. “I was actually doing shockingly well until she found out about this trivial matter of kidnapping her.”
“I know you’re insane and all, Amjad—” Harres placed his arm on his brother’s shoulder, as if searching for a visible evidence of his madness “—but you told her?”
Shaheen whistled. “That comes under idiot for sure.”
Amjad’s lips twisted. “That comes under sloppy, actually. I was in no condition to be careful anymore.”
Shaheen shook his head in amazement. “And that’s an admission far bigger than jumping on a sofa and shouting you love her on TV.”
Harres gave him a firm tug. “But chin up, oldest and biggest idiot brother. She’ll forgive you.”
“She says she doesn’t want to see me ever again.”
“Wow, she loves you that much, eh?” Shaheen’s amazement deepened. “I wonder how she did it.”
Amjad sighed his dejection. “She isn’t doing it anymore.”
Harres waved. “Nah, she’s just hurt as deeply as she loves you. It’s like the saying ‘you’re the wound, and you’re the cure.’”
That was what Amjad lived in hope of.
On arriving at the royal palace in Ossaylan, officials stumbled around him, thinking he was there to enforce embargos in punishment for the emirate’s role in the conspiracy.
If only they knew he was here as a supplicant.
He demanded Maram’s whereabouts, and they were only too happy to offer their princess in return for their collective sparring.
He soon walked into Maram’s office. He found her standing by a sofa that echoed the color of her eyes, sorting through envelopes. Eyes that betrayed momentary shock, quickly replaced by realization and resignation.
He rushed to her and she put down the envelopes, turned to him. “Are marriage traditions in Zohayd the same as they are in Ossaylan?”
His advance faltered. She went on and it stopped.
Along with the whole world.
“Provide me with a list of differences. I want to know if there’s anything I should wear or not wear or do or not do for our wedding.”
Twelve
Our wedding.
That was what he’d heard Maram say.
Jubilation detonated…only to freeze in mid-explosion.
She’d said it as if she was mentioning a prison sentence.
“I should have known my father would run to you with the news. He’ll do anything to stack up any good points with you. I wanted to be the one to tell you, but…” She gave a resigned shrug. “Before you make your demands, I’ll state my own terms.”
Terms. She had terms. Her father had news. He had no idea what was going on.
“I wouldn’t have considered marriage as an option again, let alone between us, but what I want isn’t important now.”
It wasn’t?
“As for your own abhorrence of marriage, what you want isn’t important either. It all boils down to what’s best for our baby.”
Our baby?
“Even if you’re not father material, I’m not doing to my baby what my mother did to me. I won’t deprive it of its father.”
Father.
He felt his muscles loosen, losing tension, his mind flicker, his awareness following suit. The world blurred, dimmed.
Was he going to faint?
He couldn’t. He had to say something…even if he no longer found words or thoughts, had lost his voice, his coherence.
From a collapsing tunnel he heard a strangulated rasp. Had to be his. Only from the evidence that no one else was present.
“You’re…you’re pregnant?”
She cast him an irritated look. “You know I am. Precautions were no match for our combined fertility. That’s why you’re here.”
“I’m here to…to…” He shook his head, the revelation reverberating inside him in shockwaves.
Maram was carrying…his baby.
One of those times when she’d begged him to fill her, when he’d felt he wouldn’t survive if he didn’t, they’d forged more than a deeper bond of need. They’d made a miracle. Against all odds and intentions. But no. His intentions had been there. He’d evaded focusing on them, and not because he’d doubted he’d found the woman in whose love and happiness he wanted to invest all of himself. It had been because he’d had no right to wish it, with the deception he’d perpetrated bearing down on him.
Seemed he’d still wished it too hard, it had come true. Which she seemed desolate about, even as she tried to be pragmatic.
While that turned the knife in his guts, it was still far better than anything he’d come here hoping for. He’d feared that she might have kept eluding him until her wounds sealed on forgetfulness and he faded from her mind and heart.
Now he would have a lifetime of closeness, of chances…
She went on, destroying his hopes. “The marriage is only to legitimize the baby, to give it not only a father but an identity, a family, a background. I grew up without any, and I won’t let my baby suffer the same alienation. After the ceremony, I’ll leave. I won’t come back until it’s time to have it. We can divorce after it’s born, but I’ll stay close by so you’d have constant access to the baby, raise it with me, if you choose to.”
So there were more vitals to shred.
“My terms are nonnegotiable. You can make your own now.”
He stared at her, almost huffed with the irony.
Five weeks ago, if anyone had told him he couldn’t have something he wanted a fraction as much as he wanted Maram, he would have brought them to their knees with one of the retaliations that had gained him a reputation for being mad.
Funny how five days with her had transformed him into someone willing to go down on his knees, figuratively and literally, if only she would take him back.
But she wouldn’t. As long as it appeared she was nothing but a chess piece that had the misfortune of being vital to his coups, a catalyst he needed for its impact, not its own value.