AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But she didn’t really think that was the problem either. She just thought it was fear. A feeling of not being enough. And she knew what that felt like. Because she... She had always felt like that. Her father had used her to maneuver politically, and her mother had sort of dropped out of her life.
She knew what that was like.
But being with him, experiencing the intensity of their connection, it made her feel more than enough. She was so brave when she was with him. So much more herself than she’d ever been.
She craved it. She wanted it back. She wanted to be with him.
But at the same time she knew that she would always take that forward with her. Wherever she went.
She might not be with him. But she would always be with him.
But she hoped. She truly hoped that he would come for her.
He had told her once that it took hope to save Riyaz.
And she needed hope now.
Badly.
The dungeon was where his brother found him. Laid out like a sacrifice to enemies who were no longer there.
“What the hell are you doing?”
He looked up into the darkness. “I am seeing what it was like for you.”
“Well. I still sleep down here. So you might ask before you enter.”
“Why do you sleep down here?”
“Because you don’t change immediately,” said Riyaz. “I hate it here. And yet for many years it was the only place I saw. There is a safety to it. But it is captivity.” He could hear his brother move toward him, sit down on the bench beside him. “But then. Everything is a cage of some kind. None of us are truly free.”
“No,” he said.
“I know that Ariel left. Why?”
“Because I told her to.”
“I see. And why would you do that? You want to keep her.”
“Look at where we are, Riyaz. We are in a dungeon. Do you really think it appropriate to keep a woman in the palace against her will? Even if it is in my bed and not a dungeon?”
“Did she say she didn’t want to be with you?”
“No. But, she didn’t have the choice to come here in the first place. Not now, and not all those years ago. She doesn’t even know what she wants.”
Riyaz laughed. “Is it her that doesn’t know what she wants? Or is it you?”
“And what about you? You are keeping a woman prisoner as well.”
“Have I expressed a moral difficulty with this?”
“I would think that you of all people would.”
“Why?”
He had nothing to say to that. His brother didn’t simply know... What was there to be said?
“Do you want her?” Riyaz asked him.
