Amjad’s smile grew more provoking. He was clearly spoiling for the fight Shaheen had denied him. “That’s how you get your kicks nowadays, Kamal? You can’t win against the lady who has you whipped, so you pick fights to win her lenience? Shaheen just finished attempting the same thing, by the way.”
“You know, Amjad, I’ve been wanting to deck you for a long time. Now is as good a time as any to finally act on the impulse.”
As the two men squared off, Johara found herself absently thinking they could have been brothers, too. And it wasn’t just their height and looks. Kamal had more in common with Amjad than Shaheen did. There was the same harshness about him, chiseled into his face and carved into his being. This man could be ruthless. Must regularly be so, to be able to govern Zohayd’s big sister kingdom so well, to be obeyed so completely in this volatile region.
Aliyah pushed the two men apart, one hand perpendicular to the other. “Okay, testosterone timeout. In your corners, boys.”
Johara blinked at the transformation that came over Kamal as he looked at Aliyah. It was a shock to see softness melting him, love and devotion possessing his every feature and move. Johara recognized the emotions that she and Shaheen shared. She had no doubt Aliyah was everything to Kamal, that he’d die for her. And vice versa.
Kamal gave Aliyah a loving squeeze. “Just because you wish it,
ya rohi.
But next time you want to shred him, let me know.”
Amjad snorted. “So apart from airing the fond fantasies you all have of beating me up, can I hope you’re here on an undercover mission to save Shaheen from his stupidity, too?”
Kamal’s lips twisted. “Maybe I’m here to show him some youngest-brother solidarity, sharing my expertise in swatting off nuisance older brothers.”
“You mean Farooq and Shehab?” Amjad huffed. “Those softies who left you the throne to be with their sweethearts? I almost feel it’s my duty to coach them in how to make your life harder. You have it way too easy.” At Aliyah’s jab in his gut, Amjad rolled his eyes, exhaled. “Fine. Keep your regal secrets. For now. I’ll leave you foursome to your sickeningly sweet double date.” He nodded at Johara as a parting shot. “I’ll be watching you.”
The other three bristled. Johara almost blurted out that he wouldn’t have to, not for long. But Shaheen hugged her closer to him, his protective gesture deepening her muteness.
As soon as Amjad was out of earshot, strolling nonchalantly to the door, Kamal gave a heavy exhalation. “We came here for an update on the progress of your plan and to give you our input, but…” He paused, looked apologetically at Aliyah then Shaheen. “I know I promised, and Amjad is a world-class and probably one-of-a-kind pain, but he’s an extensively powerful one, not to mention he’s got a major stake in this. Though I agree secrecy is paramount, I do believe he and Harres should be brought in now, not later. We need them.”
Shaheen’s eyes flared with alarm. “I need more time. My plan is working. I’m gathering more information every day.”
Kamal shook his head, emphatic, final. “It’s not working well enough or fast enough, Shaheen, and you know it.”
“What plan?” Johara clutched Shaheen’s arm, her heart thudding with dread. “What’s going on, Shaheen?”
Shaheen looked down at her, entreaty setting his eyes ablaze. “It’s nothing to concern yourself with,
ya habibati.”
Aliyah placed her hand on his other arm. “No, Shaheen. I now believe Johara has nothing to do with this. And since she doesn’t, she needs to know. This involves her, too, as much as or even more than it does any of us.”
Johara’s heart almost uprooted itself as she watched Shaheen close his eyes for a long moment, confusion and worst-case scenarios crashing through her mind.
Then he let out a ragged exhalation. “Fine. Call Amjad back.”
In moments, Kamal walked back with Amjad. Before Amjad could voice the speculation evident on his face, Shaheen began to talk.
Johara could only stare at him as he revealed shock after shock. The jewels. The Pride of Zohayd. Stolen. Replaced by fakes. She filled in the blanks he left out with all present intimately aware of them. The projected consequences.
After he finished talking, the only thing that could do the ominous revelations justice descended on their quintet. Decimating silence. Even Amjad was lost for words.
It was she, who’d been practically mute since Shaheen had walked in, who finally found her voice, a chafing whisper. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Shaheen cupped her cheek, concern seizing his face. “I didn’t want to burden you with this before I discovered the culprits.”
“Give me a break!” Amjad erupted. “I can forgive you being blind when it’s your own life at stake, even if your actions could cause an internal crisis. But civil war pales in comparison to what this could mean to the whole region. Can you even imagine the instability a coup and a new ruling house in Zohayd would cause? Can you even project what could be far worse, a new ‘democratic’ dictatorship sprouting in the middle of the kingdoms? Are you totally out of your mind? What culprits are you trying to discover? One is standing right before you, the only one who had the opportunity and the means to carry this out. What more do you need? A Dear John videotaped gloating confession from her after she’s destroyed us all?”
“I swear I
will
knock you down, Amjad,” Shaheen growled.
“Have at it, Shaheen.” Amjad threw his hands in the air, calculation gone, agitation taking hold. “I thought Johara’s return was the plot of a woman out to get all she can out of the royal family she grew up among. But this is far worse. It’s clear how it all happened. Berj summoned her to help him stage his plan and faked his heart attack as motive to call her back. He must have sent her after you to guarantee that no one would think to question her return, not with her double-pronged alibi of being the distraught daughter and hopeless lover. It would have worked spectacularly if Aliyah hadn’t discovered the theft.”
Shaheen slammed both palms flat into Amjad’s shoulders, shouted at him, “You see betrayal everywhere, Amjad. You’re so poisoned by it you can’t hear how your suspicions cancel each other out. One moment you think Berj and Johara are so stupid they’d do something like this when they’d be the first the fingers point to, the next you accuse them of being consummate manipulators.
You’re
the one who’s so blind you don’t see how flimsy the circumstantial evidence against them is, and the frame up it all reeks of.”
“That makes the most sense,” Aliyah agreed. “Someone thought Berj and Johara would be the perfect fall guys if the plot was discovered.”
“If Aliyah’s—and Shaheen’s—instincts say you and your father are innocent—” Kamal looked at Johara, a pledge glittering in his golden eyes “—then that’s my proof that you are. You have my word I’ll do everything in my power to defend you, to discover those who sought to frame you, and to punish them for it.”
Amjad put both hands up. “Since the voice of sanity is having no effect in breaking up this mutual admiration society, I’ll do more than any of you is willing to even consider. I’ll concede that I may have gotten it wrong. But in case I didn’t, consider the consequences you might be inviting, chasing fictional culprits while letting the real ones get away. With the jewels, the throne and the region’s stability.”
“Your concern is noted, Amjad,” Shaheen muttered. “And dismissed. Now give me your word you will not go after either Johara or Berj in any way.”
Amjad held his brother’s eyes for one last moment, before he shrugged. “I can only promise you this—once Harres is brought up to speed, if he believes the same as you, since you’re the one who has more to lose than any of us, I’ll let you steer this.”
Shaheen gave him a curt nod. “Good enough for me.”
Aliyah spoke then, in what felt like a summation. “Now that we’re not fighting amongst ourselves, I don’t think we can be careful enough handling this. Even though the thieves know we wouldn’t be able to conduct an open investigation if we did discover the fakes, giving them the false security of believing we haven’t will help us uncover them and retrieve the jewels before the Exhibition Ceremony.”
After that, the men and Aliyah determined the measures each of them would undertake in the investigation, with Kamal, as the most neutral party, chosen to be the one to inform Harres.
Johara stood by Shaheen, numb, as they departed.
After the last echo of Aliyah’s and Kamal’s helicopter and Amjad’s roaring sports car faded in the distance, Johara remained staring blindly into nothingness.
She’d thought she’d already imagined the worst that could happen, thought she’d done everything she could to protect Shaheen from any consequences. She knew nothing…
She jumped as Shaheen’s hands came down on her shoulders. “Come inside from the chill,
ya galbi.
You need to sit down and I need to help you digest it all.”
As she nodded, she heard another rumble in the distance. In seconds, she saw what it was. A procession of imposing stretch limos gleaming black in the declining sun, each flaunting Zohayd’s gold and emerald flag on its hood.
Shaheen stiffened. “This is all I need to top off this day. Father.” He turned to her. “Please, wait in our room. I’ll sort this out, whatever it is, as soon as I can.”
She could only nod and turn like an automaton to do his bidding.
In minutes, she was sitting on the edge of his bed—theirs for now—every nerve in her body jerking at each sound as she documented the cavalcade’s movements, the voices she distinguished to be Shaheen’s and his father’s rising, then the sound of urgent footsteps up the stairs, coming nearer and nearer.
The door to Shaheen’s bedroom burst open.
Shaheen stood behind his father looking like he might shove the king out of the way. Then King Atef, in full royal garb, advanced into the expansive room, dismissing his son’s protests.
She rose from the bed, feeling she was about to receive the ultimate blow. Then the king delivered it.
“Is it true, Johara? Are you pregnant with Shaheen’s child?”
And he got his confirmation.
Johara
was
pregnant.
He felt his heart spiral inside him, as if he were plummeting down a never-ending roller coaster.
From the moment he’d found her gone, he’d wondered if there’d been consequences to their surrender to passion without a thought for precautions. Thinking she could discover her pregnancy while she was alone had exacerbated his misery at her disappearance. But she’d said nothing since they’d been together again, making him certain she wasn’t pregnant. Then after that first time when she’d stopped him from using precautions, making him believe she’d taken her own, they’d made love again and again through the past two weeks, and he’d believed there was no chance of their passion bearing fruit.
But she hadn’t taken precautions because she was already pregnant. And she hadn’t told him due to her seemingly unwavering decision to never compromise him or impose on him with demands she believed she had no right to make, and that he’d be incapable of meeting.
From what felt like the bottom of an abyss he heard his father’s voice, thickened with regret and apology. “I’m sorry,
ya b’nayti,
if I’m relieved to hear that. I couldn’t wish for a better woman for Shaheen, but as king, the last thing I can consider are my wishes. With the current situation and Shaheen’s commitment to defusing the brewing unrest, I am forced to consider only that, at whatever cost to myself and my family.”
Shaheen saw Johara nod, her golden hair a gentle wave of resignation around her face. And he moved, pushed past his father.
He stopped before her. Unable to touch her as his emotions mushroomed, he heard a bass rumble bleed out of him. “You didn’t believe me. When I pledged that we would be together, that I am yours and will never be anyone else’s. And this is why you never told me. You were planning on leaving me ‘to my destiny’ without telling me. You planned to have our baby on your own.”
She cast her eyes down, as if to misdirect him from the knowledge now coursing through his blood, as if he needed to look into her eyes to see through to her soul. “I s-said I’m not pregnant.”
He touched her then, just a finger below her chin, bringing up those eyes that he needed to look into to feel alive now. “Yes, because you’re terminally heroic and misguided and want to sacrifice yourself for my so-called best interests and those of Zohayd. Your eyes are still promising me freedom, when my only freedom is to be yours.”
His father advanced, confusion and foreboding warring over his weathered, noble face. “So, is it true?”
Johara held Shaheen’s eyes, the attempt to hide the truth trembling for one last moment before it fractured. And it came flooding out with a cascade of beseeching tears. “I’m sorry…”
He snatched her into his arms, crushed her to him. “Be sorry only for hiding this from me, for thinking of denying me not only you, but our child, too. Don’t you understand I’d rather die than be without you?”
“I would, too.” She sobbed in his chest. “But I never wanted to cause you trouble. Now I’ve caused you nothing but. Oh, Shaheen, I shouldn’t have come to that party…”
He held her away to scowl his exasperation down on her. “And what am I? A boy with no will of my own, who didn’t realize the consequences of my actions? Everything I did, I’d do again in the exact same way. The only thing I’d change would be to tie you to my wrist so you wouldn’t leave me for my ‘own good,’ so I’d be there to celebrate the discovery of your pregnancy with you.” Anger at her efforts to protect him frothed on a new surge. “You slept in my arms every day, told me everything…but
that.
Would you have ever told me?”
“No.”
Her eyes melted with entreaty. “I never wanted to keep this from you, but I can’t think beyond the moment with you, can’t imagine a time when you’ll no longer be part of my life or that you won’t be part of our baby’s. All I know is that my pregnancy will do what the king is saying it will. I can’t even imagine the damages if people know you have an heir on the way.”
“And the damages to us, to our baby? You didn’t imagine those?”
A rumble penetrated their cocoon of agitation. Shaheen turned to look at his father, winced at the mess of love and regret and finality that congealed on his face.
Then in a voice heavy with them all, the king said, “I am beyond happy that you have a woman you want—”
Shaheen interrupted him. “I
love
Johara. Always have, always will. There will be no negotiations about that.”
His father continued, a king who wouldn’t let even his son, or his pain on his behalf, stop him from seeing his duty through. “That this woman is Johara makes it infinitely better. But there is no stopping the chain reaction this will set off.” He turned to Johara, gaze heavy with the remorse of being unable to put her before everything. “News of your pregnancy came to me through servants, so it must be all over the region by now. All we can do is rewrite history and hope for the least possible consequences.”
Johara darted a look into Shaheen’s eyes before her gaze went back to his father. “What do you mean?”
His father exhaled raggedly. “I will announce that you’re already married in a
zawaj orfi.
Even if it is a secret marriage and frowned upon—and in royal circles in Zohayd, unprecedented—it remains binding. We’ll say this is why you followed Shaheen to Zohayd after such a long absence. It will legitimize your baby, and we’ll have a marriage ritual to make the marriage public and fully legal.”
Shaheen felt Johara tremble in his arms, saw hope quiver on her face before doubt snuffed it out again. “What about the marriage of state Shaheen is required to enter? How will this affect your negotiations and peace in Zohayd?”
His father’s shoulder slumped lower. “I’ll try to convince any tribe to consent to giving their daughter as a second wife.”
Shaheen had known what the condition to his father’s damage control solution could be. It still outraged him to hear it. “They can consent all they like.
I’m
not taking a second wife.”
“Don’t be so quick to dismiss this option, Shaheen.”
“I never intended to marry anyone but Johara. I was only biding my time until—” Shaheen stopped. He’d almost blurted out the reason he’d appeared to be going along with the negotiations “—until I found a way out with the least repercussions. But now that I’ve seen the price I could have paid for not confronting this, I’m no longer pretending.”
“What choice do we have, Shaheen? If you don’t meet them halfway at least, there will be fallout into the next century. I would have given anything apart from the kingdom’s peace for you to have Johara. But no matter what happens now, you’ll at least have your child, raise it as your own, and not be deprived of it as I was deprived of Aliyah until lately.”
“Are you even listening to yourself, Father? You sacrificed your one true love and ended up thinking your daughter was your niece, and only because
Ammeti
Bahiyah rescued her from a life of anonymity. But what did your sacrifices ever gain you, or the kingdom? You’ve been battling one potential uprising after another ever since, the last one two years ago when only Aliyah’s and Kamal’s marriage defused it at the last moment. And here they are, threatening another, and you think sacrificing me will appease them? For how long? They’re like tantrum-throwing brats and the more you give them the more they’ll demand and the louder they’ll scream for it. You can never placate them. So I’m marrying Johara now, not later as I was determined to. And not as a damage-control measure, but because being with her is the one thing I’ve ever wanted for myself. And I will be with her for the rest of my life. You and the rest of the tribes must deal with it.”
Johara clung to him. “I can’t let you do that to yourself and your father and kingdom, Shaheen. Not on my account—”
“It’s on all our accounts—yours, mine and our baby’s. Trust me,
ya joharet galbi.
I will resolve this.”
Her fingers dug into his arms, her eyes unwavering with determination. “Then promise me…if you can’t, you’ll let me go.”
“I promise I never will.”
Before she could protest more, his father spoke, his voice like a knell of doom. “Don’t make promises you can’t afford to keep, Shaheen.” Before Shaheen could interrupt, his father forged on. “Now you will come back to the palace with me. Your marriage ceremony must be arranged at once.”