LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER THREE

      THE WEEK LEADING up to the wedding was the most torturous week that Zohra could remember, even though the wedding day dawned bright and sunny.

      Prince Ayaan had left the next morning while Zohra and her family had traveled to Dahaara the day after that, renewed vigor seeping into her father who had been ill for the past month.

      It was as though she could hear the ticking of the clock down to an unshakeable chain binding her to everything she hated.

      With each passing moment, her confidence in her betrothed’s words faltered, the midnight hour she had spent talking to him becoming fantastic and unreal in her head. Especially as Queen Fatima, Ayaan’s mother, spent every waking hour regaling Zohra about Ayaan’s childhood.

      The contrast between the charming, loving boy his mother mentioned and the dark stranger she spoke to in the middle of the night was enough to cast doubt over everything.

      Would he not expect anything from her? What kind of a man didn’t even want to lay eyes on his wife?

      She tugged the gold-and-silver bangles on to her wrists as the celebrations around the city blared loudly on the huge plasma-screen TV in her suite. The capital city of Dahaara had been decorated lavishly, very much a bride itself, albeit a much happier one, ready for a celebration unlike Zohra had ever seen or heard of.

      The gold-and-red-hued flag of Dahaar with the sword insignia flew on every street, from every shop. A holiday had been declared so that the people of Dahaar could enjoy the wedding. Gifts had been flowing in from every corner of the nation—breathtakingly exquisite silk fabrics, handmade jewelry boxes, sweets that she hadn’t heard of before—each and every gift painstakingly overflowing with Dahaar’s love of its prince.

      The telecast of the celebrations, the crowds on the roads, the laughter on the faces of adults and children alike revealed how much this wedding mattered to Dahaar. The whole world was celebrating. Except the two people who were irrevocably being bound by it.

      “Zo, look now. There he goes,” Saira exclaimed, looking beautiful in a sheer silk beige dress that sparkled in the sunlight every time she moved. Zohra couldn’t help but smile at the innocence in her half sister’s voice. “Wow, Zo. I didn’t realize he was so...handsome.”

      Unable to resist, Zohra turned and there he was.

      Displayed in all his glory on the monstrous screen. The cameras zoomed in on him, and Zohra’s breath halted in her throat.

      Handsome was too tame a word for the man she was about to marry.

      The motorcade transporting him and his parents weaved through the main street with ropes and security teams holding off the public.

      Shouts and applause waved out of the speakers. It was almost palpable, the din of the crowd, the joy in their smiling faces. King Malik sat with Queen Fatima by his side, Prince Ayaan opposite them, resplendent in a dark navy military uniform that hugged his lean body, the very epitome of a powerful prince.

      She could no more stem her curiosity about him than she could stop staring at him on the screen. Zohra shivered despite the sun-drenched room. He looked every inch a man who was used to having his every bidding done before it was given voice. Until she saw the detachment in his gaze.

      Even through the screen, she could see the tension in his shoulders, in the tight set of his mouth, in the smile that curved his mouth but never reached his eyes.

      He was standing in a crowd of people that loved him, next to parents who adored him, seemingly a man who had the world at his feet. And yet she could sense his isolation as clearly as if he were standing alone in a desert.

      The joy around him, the celebrations, the crowds—nothing touched him. It was as though there was an invisible fortress around him that no one could pierce.

      Did no one else but her see his isolation, the absolute lack of anything in that gaze? Would she have seen it if she hadn’t seen him incoherent, and writhing in pain?

      She swallowed and turned away from the screen. There it was—all the proof she had needed so desperately.

      The truth of what he had said to her—that this wedding was solely for the benefit of his people, for his parents, was all laid out on the screen to see. Nothing but his sense of duty was forcing him to stand there, as it was forcing him to marry her.

      The realization, instead of appeasing her, gave way to a strange heaviness that pervaded through her limbs.

      She turned around, just as her father stepped into the room, dressed in the dark green military uniform of Siyaad.

      She had done everything she could to avoid him once they had left for Dahaara. Busy as he had been in negotiations with King Malik and Prince Ayaan, it had been easy enough.

      But, suddenly facing him in her bridal attire, the knot of anger she kept a tight hold on threatened to unravel. “Have you come to make sure I have not run away?”

      Saira’s gasp next to her checked the flow of bitterness that pounded through her veins. Passing a worried look between them, Saira excused herself, having never understood Zohra’s antipathy toward their father.

      “I know you’re not happy with this alliance, Zohra. But I never doubted that you would do your duty.”

      There it was, that word again. It had broken her family apart, it had thrust her into an unknown world, and it had taken the life of her mother, who had done nothing but pine after the man she had loved.

      She stood up from the divan and met his gaze. “I’m doing this for Saira and Wasim. I don’t want Saira to be sacrificed in the name of duty, too.”

      He ventured into the room, and she braced herself for the impact of his presence. In the eleven years that she had lived in Siyaad, she had always stayed out of his way, made sure she spent the least amount of time with him.

      “Is that what this marriage is to you? Can you not view it as anything else but sacrifice?”

      “What else could it be? You didn’t

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