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CAIROHADTAKENto pacing the halls at night. He was in no fit state to go to Ariel’s bed, and he knew it. And yet he craved her. With all that he was.
Tonight, as he roamed around sleepless, he heard footsteps. They were not hers. They were hard and heavy. Decisive.
“Riyaz?”
His brother seemed to appear from the shadows. “Yes.”
“You don’t sleep either?”
“Not conventionally.”
His brother offered no explanation for that cryptic statement, and so Cairo did not ask.
“Perhaps it is this place,” Cairo said. “Perhaps there are too many ghosts here.”
“This is the only place I’ve been, for sixteen years. This is the only place I have been. And it is the only place I will ever be. For now I am the sheikh. So where will I go?”
Guilt assaulted Cairo. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“It feels wrong. That I spent all those years out there. And you spent them in here.”
“It’s not as if you chose it, any more than I did.”
“Still...”
“Do not play the part of regretful younger brother now. You were happy to make the decision to marry Ariel.”
“You don’t want her.”
“No. I don’t.”
“Then why bring it up?”
“We’ve been separated for sixteen years. And I’ve been alone in a dungeon. I had no one to tease.”
He looked at his brother. “Are you teasing me?”
“I think so. I spent a great many years not able to smile or laugh. But sometimes now I do. It is interesting.”
And he knew then that what he really wanted for Riyaz was for him to leave all those years behind. He also knew that it was probably functionally impossible for his brother to do so. There had been so much pain. So much abuse.
So much solitude. And yet, he was speaking better now.
“I heard that you did not sleep in a bed. Have you now?”
And there was a slight grin on his brother’s face.
“Yes. I have.”
“But do you. Routinely?” It was clear by the look on his brother’s face that when he was in a bed he was not alone.
“Sleep? No. But I have not learned to enjoy softness. I don’t know that I ever will...fully be comfortable in it though.”
“We should have traded places,” he said, his voice rough.
Regret rose up inside of him. If he hadn’t have told Ariel’s father where that door was...
