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Riyaz went down into the dungeon. And there was his brother, laid out like it was his.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
The voice came from the shadow. “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.”
He 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 simply didn’t know... What was there to be said?
“Do you want her?” Riyaz asked him.
“Ariel? Of course. I have done everything to have her. I betrayed you. Again.”
“What do you mean again?”
“You said that we should keep our demons to ourselves, Riyaz. But I think you should know about mine. I was in love with Ariel when we were children. And I used to sneak out with her. When we were fourteen we went out into the desert. And we were caught. I was. By her father. And he asked me a question... And I answered it. To keep myself from being in trouble. I gave him an easier way to get into the palace. I did not feel as if I could tell him no. Or he would... He would reveal what happened between myself and Ariel.”
“So you’re the reason they came into the palace.”
“Yes,” he said.
“That was a very stupid thing to do,” said Riyaz.
His words were cold. His heart was cold. Everything in him was cold. Cairo had been the one. He’d been responsible. He’d let his guard down, and he’d been...out with Ariel. Betraying Riyaz, betraying Nazul.
And yet....
What could be done?
If Cairo had been wrong, so had their father been. To let that man into their home in the first place. To trust him, to make an alliance with him.
