Chapter 2 #4
Guilt lingered at the back of her tongue, providing a bitter taste.
Aicha didn’t know how to voice the fears she felt so viscerally that it followed her into her dreams. Marriage meant more than just the freedom to be together, it meant exposing a weakness to Duarte—because although the Sanhaji family were untouchable, Rachid was not.
It meant that the small, isolated world they had nurtured between them—where nothing else existed and every moment alone together was perfect—would cease to exist. And it meant the responsibilities of a wife, creating life and birthing children.
Like her mother had. That, above all else, drowned her in a fear so potent that it often choked her.
Sometimes it consumed her so thickly that she wanted to claw at her own throat, clogged and unable to inhale air.
Aicha stepped away, turning to face him once her wrap was straightened. “And I must reiterate that point.” She placed her hand on his chest as a signal of farewell and moved past him.
“There will come a day when you marry me, Aicha,” he said, spinning to watch her retreating figure.
“When the settlers have been pushed out of our docks, and back to where they came from, you’ll give me your hand.
” Aicha cast one last look of amusement over her shoulders, before she descended the stairs.
Aicha had been seventeen the first time she felt something beyond irritation for Rachid.
Three years had passed in what felt like seconds when she thought about it, pulling her hood up to conceal her face as she crossed the citadel to return home.
She’d prefer to avoid another run-in with the soldiers.
When she was younger, his presence within the Sanhaji household had doubled in frequency, and operating under Fouad’s tutelage meant he was often paired with Samira to lead training and sparring sessions.
After the execution of his parents, Rachid had gravitated towards Fouad.
Or maybe her baba had sought him out to absolve himself of some misplaced guilt when he couldn’t save them.
She didn’t know. Neither man spoke of it, and she had never asked.
That day on the beach, three years ago, she remembered feeling her blood pressure accelerate until her head threatened to burst. Rachid’s goading tended to evoke that reaction from her.
Not exactly anger, but an emotion just a slither less lethal—annoyance, irritation, whichever one that elicited the urge to only maim him.
He used to watch everyone with a creased brow and tense jaw, withholding his annoyance from anyone who bothered him in training.
He grunted responses, scoffed when he disagreed, and mostly smirked whenever she opposed him.
His hair had been longer back then, dark and soft, falling into his eyes and curling whenever his forehead lined with sweat.
He had no facial hair then either, instead, his jaw was prominent and a small scar was visible just beneath his lip.
His tunic fell open often, something that made her want to roll her eyes, because when in battle it was almost too ridiculous.
Why would you not wear correct padding when wielding a sword?
He possessed an overt confidence that—in Aicha’s opinion—was not necessarily warranted.
Yet, infuriatingly, she would notice that same drop of sweat cascade down his jaw, onto his neck and between his clavicles.
It caused his brown skin to glisten in the sunlight and, had there been more women around him at the time, Aicha was sure it would have elicited audible gasps.
She’d rolled her eyes, and yet desire still flared.
A current of electricity that she had yet to understand flowed through her veins to the tips of her fingers over that traitorous drop of sweat travelling over his muscles.
A truth that would take her years to confess.
Rachid goaded her in a manner that made her feel incapable of controlling her emotions, poking at the most sensitive aspects of her combat skills.
“Is this how you spar with your father? With reckless abandon and a lack of technique?”
Rage had engulfed her. Fury blazed in her eyes in a way that would have been almost comical in any other scenario.
Only in that moment, she felt the humiliation of never once defeating her father or her sister, of Fouad’s sigh at each of her losses.
Rachid’s amusement had scraped at an open wound, fresh and deep.
In a burst of anger, Aicha yelled out as she pulled back her dagger, her free hand clenched in a fist as she punched him head-on.
Pain sparked in her knuckles, rapidly spreading up her wrist until she let out a cry of agony simultaneous to Rachid’s.
He fell back into the sand, dropping his head back as if ready to sleep in it.
His nose poured with blood, though he didn’t seem particularly alarmed. His hands rested on either side of him.
Shaking her hand in an attempt to push the pain away, she scrambled forward and grabbed her dagger from the sand. When she reached Rachid, her dagger raised, she rested a knee against his chest. “Yield!”
“I yield,” he wheezed. “I yield, habiba.”
Confusion cloaked her anger as Aicha blinked down at him, the nickname new on his tongue.
Slowly he revealed a smile, wide and endearing in any other scenario.
She noted how grotesque it was when blood leaked into his mouth and mixed with his saliva, staining his teeth.
His eyes gleamed with pride, and involuntarily Aicha’s stomach burst with warmth and excitement. She hated the way it made her feel.
When he rose with a washrag pressed against his nose to stem the bleeding, he offered her one of her own.
She snatched it out of his hand, dabbing at her bottom lip where he’d clipped her with the butt of his sword, splitting it open.
It stung, but the coolness of the damp cloth helped soothe it.
He watched her closely, and she tried to ignore his presence, unwilling to acknowledge that the incessant beating of her heart wasn’t because she had just sparred aggressively with a man larger than her, but because of the flicker of pride she had found in his eyes when she had defeated him.
And the way his bloodstained smile had been directed just for her. No. It was neither of those.
“You did well,” he said eventually, breaking the silence between them.
She fought the urge to sneer at him, it would only hurt her lip. “Shut up.”
“I mean it.” He laughed, pulling the washcloth away to examine the bloodstains. He said his next words quietly, as if unwilling to let any of the sparring members that surrounded them hear him. “What you lack isn’t skill, habiba. It’s focus.”
There he went, using that term of endearment with her.
As if they were closer than acquaintances.
As if they were lovers. She couldn’t tell if he was doing it to taunt her; developing a new method of prompting a reaction out of her.
But something gave her pause, either the softness around his eyes or the lack of creases between his brows.
Had he always looked at her that way? Had his playful barbs and infuriating smirks been the only indication that she believed he found her just as vexing as she found him?
She brushed the thought away.
“How, exactly, am I lacking in focus?”
“You get too caught up in your head.” He tapped the side of his own.
“At first, you think too much about strategy, about counter-movements and how to behave outside of what is expected from you. So you can surprise your opponent. Then you second guess yourself, wondering if you’ve made yourself predictable, and the insecurity bleeds into how you fight. ”
Her tongue was caught on the precipice of denying it, but Aicha quickly realised she couldn’t.
Because what he said cut too close to the bone; it made her feel exposed, as if her entire mind was unravelled and on display for all to see.
As if he knew exactly what lurked in her chest, emerging whenever her temper flared too vibrantly.
When pain and fear and rage became difficult to untangle, and its voice became loudest. Like he could hear the same voice she did.
Her baba had never highlighted her weakness like that, but unlike Fouad it was a criticism free of contempt. He tended to be harsh, almost unforgiving in how he trained his daughters. With Rachid, he said everything with a slowness that belied his often offensive guard.
“Then how did I beat you?” Aicha countered, her curiosity besting her need to appear nonchalant.
“Because you acted on impulse. You got so irritated with me that you allowed instinct to guide you.”
An involuntary laugh escaped her. “The need to give you a beating consumed all my other thoughts.”
He’d given her a smile then, one void of antagonism and discordant to the moment, but it was nice.
Something stirred inside her, softer than whatever emotions he had drawn from her before.
Something shy, and tender, made to be coveted rather than explored.
In that moment, with a smile like that, Aicha found herself unable to deny the way it made her feel.
“If it makes you a better fighter, I suppose I should keep behaving that way.”