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Rihad stayed where he was, gazing down at her sweet face, all those dark curls and the eyes that he’d seen earlier were a liquid black that reminded him of his brother, and tried to make sense of the wild tumult within him.
Like an earthquake, when he knew he wasn’t moving and neither was the ground beneath him. It tore him apart even so, even while he felt little Leyla’s sweet new breaths beneath his hand.
Or perhaps it was because of her.
And he’d been furious for such a long time now. He’d been in a dark, black, consuming rage since he’d gotten that call from the Parisian police. Since he’d had to bury his younger brother so many years before his time. He’d understood it was grief, mixed up somewhere in that terrible rage inside of him, but understanding such a thing hadn’t done much to soothe him or stop the fury. His anger—that Omar had been lost so tragically, at this woman who had twisted him into unrecognizable pieces, at the marriage he’d felt he had no choice but to insist upon no matter how little he might have wished it—had been a living flame, hotter by the day, and he’d stopped wondering when or if it might go out.
It had been so easy to focus it all on Sterling. His brother’s whore, Rihad’s new wife—
But here, now, it was gone. Extinguished completely.
That was what he felt, Rihad realized then. That internal earthquake ripped away his fury and left him with no one to blame. There was only the darkness of fate, the sheer, spinning horror that was his brother’s pointless, untimely death.
And this tiny, perfect child was all that remained of Omar on this earth. This little scrap of life, so new she still bore the wrinkles from the womb, was all that was left of the brother Rihad had only ever wished to protect, from his own debauchery as from anything else.
“I will not fail with you, little one,” he vowed then. “No matter what.”
And it was only when he spoke that he felt the dampness of water on his face. He made no move to wipe it away. Not here in this dark place where no one could see him. Where he could not see himself. Where there was nothing but his grief and this brand-new life he held in his hands.
He felt stretched out taut between the two, the dark and the light. Perhaps he always would.
“I will not fail you again, brother,” he whispered into the night. To Omar, wherever he was now. To the little baby that was all that remained of his brother. To the woman his brother had held above his own family, however little Rihad might understand that. None of that mattered any longer. “I will not fail the family you left behind. This I swear.”
* * *
Sterling woke that first night again and again, jolted awake by some internal panic that had her jackknifing up in her bed in alarm each time. But she found Leyla right there beside her, more beautiful each time she kissed her sweet cheeks or held her surprisingly hot little body against her own skin.
Those first days were a blurry sort of cartwheel through time, when all she could see or hear or focus on at all was this perfect little creature she’d somehow been chosen to bring into the world, and the astonishingly steep learning curve required to take care of her as she deserved—even in the Bakrian palace, where she had all the help she needed. That didn’t alter the weight of the responsibility she felt to this creature she found she loved bigger and wider and better than she’d imagined it was possible to love anything.
Her world shrank down to Leyla, only Leyla, and through her a connection to Omar again, who felt a little bit less lost to her when she held the daughter they’d made in her arms.
Beyond that, there was nothing save the dark, surprisingly quiet man who kept watch over her in his own way, moving in and out of the periphery of all that wasn’t Leyla until Sterling was as close to used to him as she imagined anyone could be around a man as intense and nerve-racking as Rihad.
She’d even dreamed she’d seen him in her room while she slept, watching over her like some guardian angel. She knew it was absurd. She’d given up believing in guardian angels a long time ago, and Rihad was more warrior than angel anyway, but the notion was warming all the same. It made her feel something like safe—and perhaps a woman who hadn’t so recently given birth might have questioned that. Investigated her own feelings, looked for reasons why a man like Rihad felt like safety when she knew perfectly well he was anything but.
As it was, Sterling merely accepted it, forgot about it, and kept her attention on Leyla.
Who, despite that unfurling of love and hope that had swamped Sterling from the moment she’d first seen her, was not gaining the weight she should have in those crucial first days. And for the first three weeks of her life, it was nothing but panic and worry and a terrible battle, no sleep and too many tears, as Sterling tried to breastfeed her and failed.
