He walked in, swept them all in a careless gaze, before he focused on Jala. She looked pinched and drained, her beloved eyes extinguished. It nearly drove him to his knees, how much she suffered, how injured and scarred she was. He wanted to lay down his life so she’d be whole again, so she’d stop feeling any deficiency. But since he couldn’t undo the damage, he could only move heaven and earth, dedicate his very life to making it up to her.
He started talking at once. He told them the truth about the past, what he’d done, what he’d cost Jala.
Feeling her brothers’ rage boiling over, he went on, “I want you to know that I will accept, even encourage, any punishment you exact from me. But that isn’t why I called you here. I did so to inform you that no matter what you do, no matter what happens, I’ll part from Jala only when I die.”
His uncle heaved up to his feet. “But you have to. I only agreed to the treaty, and the marriage...”
“Shut up, uncle.” His roar made King Hassan sag back to his chair. “You didn’t agree to anything, I was just humoring you, trying to save your face and avoid your folly. But if you make any more trouble, or if you don’t sign the treaty, I will be the one to declare war on you.”
“You don’t even have an army,” his uncle spluttered.
“I’ll make one. Or I’ll borrow one if it’s faster. Jareer is far more important to so many powers today than Saraya, and they would do anything for me if I ask. I bet they’d help me depose you just to be rid of your nuisance. So enough, uncle. You’ve already cost us what your very life doesn’t begin to make up for. Take my clemency and never let us hear from you again except as a voice corroborating peace.”
His uncle looked shocked to his core. Najeeb, while looking at his father pityingly, seemed to wholly approve.
And he couldn’t care less about either of them right now.
He turned to Jala’s family. “My happiness, honor and all my hopes lie in whatever will make Jala happy, will honor her and fulfill her hopes. If she wants to try to have children, this is what we’ll do. If she wants to adopt...”
“You can’t adopt!” That was his uncle again. “It’s prohibited by law in our region!”
“Uncle, you are now tampering with the gauge of your life. I won’t warn you again. We will adopt as many children as she wishes, if she wishes it. I will give up my throne and two nationalities, and acquire one that will allow me to fulfill her every need.” He walked up to Jala, knelt before her. Her whole frame was shaking, her tears like acid in his veins.
“Jala, you are my life. I want nothing but you, need nothing but your love. I would only have wanted a child as one more bond with you. I lost our baby, too, but my pain is over your loss. And the only loss that would finish me is if I lose you. Nothing is of any importance to me—not my throne, not my homelands, not my very life—if I don’t have you.”
Kamal suddenly heaved up to his feet. “This is not for our eyes or ears. Everybody, out.”
Kamal’s barked order had everyone rushing out, everyone except his bewildered uncle giving Mohab bolstering, approving glances. Kamal was the only one who stopped as he passed him, bent to squeeze his shoulder.
Then, dropping a kiss on Jala’s shuddering cheek, he whispered to her, “I know when a man would die without his woman, ya sugheerati. You got yourself a prime specimen of that rare species. As only you deserve. So just take him back and keep him for life, if you don’t want to kill him.” He straightened, winked. “If you do want to kill him, then by all means, walk away.”
* * *
Everything that had happened in the past years, everything Jala had suffered, everything she’d shared with Mohab in the past months, everything he’d just said and offered, built inside her until she felt herself overloading. Then Kamal winked teasingly at her, and everything snapped inside her.
And she howled. With laughter.
Mohab’s jaw dropped. Kamal only bowed, as if he was taking applause for a job perfectly done, then with another wink, he walked out, too.
Recovering from the shock of her sudden transformation into a hyena, Mohab’s smile broke out as he surged up, enveloping her in his arms.
“Ah, ya habibati...how I missed your laughter, feared I’d never hear it again.”
A snort interrupted her howls. “You’re that desperate for me...you call this...laughter?”
This drew a chuckle from him before her raucous glee escalated it into laughter, then guffawing.
It was only when she sagged in his arms, still gurgling and sobbing at once, that he stopped, too, storming kisses all over her face, murmuring extravagant endearments and professions of worship before stilling her gasping lips beneath his.
Breathing life and certainty into her once more, he managed to quiet her down. Then, holding her face in his palms, he withdrew, his heart in his still-beseeching eyes.
“I am that desperate and more. I’m also desperate in case you will keep thinking you’d be doing me a favor by walking away, that I can forget you ‘in time.’ When I wanted you for over ten years, had you only for just over ten months out of those, and couldn’t forget you in between, that I never even thought of having anyone but you.”
Everything stilled, inside and out. “You mean...?”
“I mean just as you never had anyone else but me, I never had anyone else but you. I’m yours, whether you take me...or leave me. So will you have mercy on both of us and take me, and this time never leave me?”
This was just too...enormous. He’d always been hers, just the way she’d always been his.
Everything inside her crumbling, she threw herself at him, hugged him with all her might, until her arms and heart ached. “I—I never wanted to leave you. I just want you to have everything you need and deserve.”
He kissed one eye, then the other. “That’s you, and you.”
“Ah, ya habibi...I’ve loved you for so long.”
He suddenly bombarded her with kisses. “And she says it at last.”
Spluttering with laughter again, she gasped, “I made you wade in ‘I love yous’ in the past.”
“Then forced a years-long drought on me in compensation.”
“When I thought I would have to leave you, I didn’t want to compound the mess with revealing my emotions. And then ‘I love you’ was no longer adequate to describe what I felt for you since I became your wife. Ahwak wa abghak wa aashagak, ya roh galbi.”