Chapter Seven #3
‘I’ve never been in here before,’ he confessed.
His gaze still on his surroundings, he missed the way a slight frown puckered Hana’s brow.
‘They belonged my father,’ he admitted on a ragged breath.
‘My mother and I were never allowed to visit. She was given a suite in the west wing,’ he said, remembering how he would wait outside her door as a young child, hoping to see her. Waiting.
‘Is she still here? I’d like to meet—’
‘No.’ Malik swallowed, the word harsher than he’d intended. ‘She hasn’t been at the palace for years,’ he explained before Hana could misunderstand him.
Just then, searing agony tore through his shoulder. His breath caught in his lungs, and he blinked in shock. He wanted to cry out, but wouldn’t, couldn’t, let the sound escape.
He wasn’t even aware that she had left, until she returned with a bowl and a towel.
He frowned at it, still struggling to contain the nauseating pain.
He wanted to tell her that he was fine, that he just needed a minute…
but the ache radiating out from his shoulder was such that he thought if he opened his mouth to speak, more than words would come out.
The sound of a wounded animal.
He slammed his mouth shut so quickly he bit his tongue and tasted blood.
‘Sit,’ she commanded. Swift, decisive fingers unbuttoned his thobe and slipped the shirt from his shoulder. ‘This will help,’ she said gently.
He shook his head in denial, but she still didn’t give in.
‘It will. Trust me. Please?’
He clenched his jaw. The problem was that he did trust her.
Careful fingers and warm hands pressed carefully against his shoulder.
‘Can I?’ she asked, nodding to the cloth.
He hated that she was seeing him like this. He nodded past the sharp heat in his chest.
After wringing out the wet cloth she placed its warm wet heat over his shoulder and back and he let out a gasp that hissed out of his mouth into a sigh.
She knelt beside him, making sure that the cloth didn’t cool against his skin, reheating it whenever she thought it might.
Slowly, inch by inch, his muscles started to unclench.
‘Where is she now?’ Hana asked.
‘Her father’s estate in the north. I haven’t seen her since my father’s funeral,’ he bit out through the pain.
He felt a little movement come back into his shoulder, the pins and needles retreating from his fingers on his left hand.
‘Why did she leave?’ Hana’s gentle question echoed in his mind and he thought about not answering it, about ignoring it and her and stalking from the suites now and never coming back. But that wasn’t working any more, was it? Not with Hana, not with his brother’s medical adviser…
‘Her position in court changed after they diagnosed my seizures. My father couldn’t risk having another deformed child,’ he said, parroting the argument he’d overheard many, many, times. ‘So she was sent away.’
The fury in Hana’s gaze at his words, it did something to him, shifted something. She was angry. For him. Not because of him.
‘How old were you?’ Hana asked.
‘Nine.’
‘I don’t… I don’t understand,’ Hana said hotly.
Malik swallowed. ‘I didn’t either,’ he confessed, knowing she was struggling with the extent of his father’s negative response. ‘Which was why I asked Ishmail to record one of my seizures.’
His brother hadn’t wanted to, but Malik had begged and pleaded.
He needed to know what he looked like, what his father saw during the episodes.
It was…horrible, watching this thing that was him; broken and twisted, grunting, dribbling, making terrible guttural noises.
Humiliating didn’t even begin to cover it.
Shame and embarrassment scoured his insides even now.
But that was when he knew why his father called him monster.
Beast. Terror. His brother had tried to counter him, and as an adult, Malik should know better, but nothing would ever make Malik forget seeing himself in his father’s eyes.
‘It made sense after I saw the video,’ he said for Hana.
‘No, Malik. It doesn’t,’ Hana said, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. Tears that were for him. ‘Would you feel that way if it was someone else? If it was your nephew?’ she demanded, impassioned.
Malik looked at her, unmoved. ‘But it wasn’t, Hana. It was me. And it was my father,’ he said simply.
‘What about your mother?’ Hana asked, wiping away her tears as though she knew how much he couldn’t bear to see them.
‘She was already gone,’ he whispered.
His mother had left him without saying goodbye.
‘We shall stay somewhere else,’ Hana asserted.
He flinched at the word ‘we’, and she noticed.
‘You can stay. I’ll have my things moved back out in the morning,’ he said, forcing himself to look her in the eye.
‘I would like to stay where you stay,’ Hana said, her voice quiet, nervous, and a blush on her cheeks.
He was shaking his head before he could even say the word ‘no’.
She bit her lip and for an awful moment he thought she might cry. He saw the hitch in her inhale, the way it shuddered in her chest, and the mask that fell over her expressive features was a blow to his conscience.
‘I understand,’ she said simply. ‘I will be fine here.’
Apologies and excuses thickened his throat but couldn’t come out. Because that was when he realised how truly unworthy he was. Not to be in the suite or to be ruling Al Surrahin, but to have taken her as his bride.