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If he wanted a vessel, a symbol, then she could be that. And give him nothing of what she was.
And what will the point of your life be then?
She wished that she had an answer to that. She suddenly felt sad. Bleak. Because what had the point of any of it been? She had built her life up to a certain place, and now would have to abandon it. So what had been the point of building it up at all? Giving herself a taste of a life that she could not hold on to. A taste of the life that she could not claim or keep.
And apparently Riyaz wasn’t in his right mind.
“You’re afraid,” he said.
“You say that as if it’s a flaw?”
“Not at all. Simply an observation. I told you. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“You seem to think that the only way a person can be hurt is with a sword. I had a life.”
“So did I. And I abandoned it.”
“Have you sold all of your holdings? Are you releasing hold on everything that you’ve built?”
“Of course not. It is advantageous to my country to keep it. But it will not be my primary focus. My days of traveling around the world and doing as I please are at an end. I was always working to accomplish the goal of taking back Nazul, but I knew I would have to get back to my other life. The life from before. Which was also disrupted. We are not guaranteed the life that we plan, are we? You will forgive me for not feeling sympathy where perhaps you think I should. It is this... This generation. This modern world. You think that you can simply pursue your own selfish version of happiness, and that you are guaranteed such a thing, entitled to it. But we are entitled to nothing. I am royalty and I learned that. I learned that as I watched my parents died. As my brother was taken away from me. As I had to run, knowing that it was the right thing to do even though it felt like cowardice. I wanted to stay and fight to the death as my father did. That was what I wanted. Hero’s death. But I had to find a way to make a hero’s life, did I not? Because of Riyaz. And so... That is what I’m doing.”
“A hero’s life,” she said softly. And she knew that she would be revealing herself with her next words, so she chose them carefully. “And yet, for all that I have heard of you in the guise of Syed, you have chosen a playboy’s life. And as you admitted to me, you’ve had many mistresses. How does that match up with what you’re telling me? How does that equate to heroism? How do you look at yourself and see what you claim?”
“I did not say that I looked at myself and saw a hero. I am in pursuit of it. There is an inequality that I must balance. I had fifteen years of freedom while my brother was in chains. I had fifteen more years of life as my parents have laid in the graves. I can never wholly right this.” His eyes went blank. “But as of now, I live in service, in an attempt to make amends of some kind.”
“Where are we going?”
“I have a home in the mountains near my country. It was a way that I could sneak in with the enemy unaware. A compound that my brother does not know exists.”
“I’m confused. Are you doing things inserviceof your brother, or are youafraidof your brother?”
“I do not fear him. But I also do not know his frame of mind. I do not know how deeply his time in the dungeon damaged him. That, I await, before I go crashing in to his world.”
She looked at him, and then she saw the boy that he had been. The boy who had come and sat with her at the fountain. The boy who’d cared. He was worried about his brother. And she should not feel any sympathy for him. None at all. She should not feel... He had kidnapped her. What was the matter with her? Why was she finding ways to justify his behavior? To excuse him?
Was it because he was handsome?
No, it was because he was handsome that she wanted to fling herself out of the plane. Because for all these years no man had turned her head. For all these years she had told herself that the tied up, twisted up feelings that Cairo had once made her feel were locked away in the past. And yet, he was here. And she was tied up. Twisted up.
There was a syndrome for feeling sympathy for one’s captor. She was a modern enough woman to be aware of it.
Except he has been something more to you. And you can’t un-know that.
And your fatherdiddestroy his family.
Her father had claimed that he had not known that the men who were there to take over the country would kill the royal family. He had claimed that. But even at fourteen, she had not found herself to be that naive. She knew better. Her father could not possibly have believed that his betrayal would not have resulted in the deaths of the family. He had to know. And yet...
She wondered if he told himself that. She wondered if he told himself that there was nothing he could’ve done. That he had believed in good faith and done what he needed to do to keep his family safe. It was the narrative that he had told them. That he had been put in an impossible position where they were threatened.
It was only that... She had not believed it. Neither had her mother. What they had believed was that he had wanted that money, and it superseded the influence of the royal family, after all, the royal family would cease to have influence if they were deposed... And that was the issue. It seemed very much like he had known what would happen. And perhaps he had felt that it would happen no matter what, and there would be no gain for him at all if he didn’t help.
But there was no honor in it. And she could never respect it.
And that created a strange sort of responsibility inside of her for Cairo’s feelings. No matter that she had shouted at him that it wasn’t her sin, it was her father’s. Perhaps in the same way that he felt responsible for his bloodline, for Riyaz, she felt responsible for her father.
Not responsible enough to marry Riyaz. But...
“How much longer?”
