The deep voice hit her like a blow to the heart.
Because it wasn’t Rashid’s.
It was Haidar’s. Jalal was with him.
She staggered around to them, her eyes and hands rabid as she clung to them, shook them. “Did you find him? Is he okay? Tell me!”
Haidar scowled down at her. “What do you care? Don’t you hate him now?”
A huge sob tore out of her. “I—I could never hate him. I will always love him...no matter what...”
“That isn’t what you’ve made him believe. He believes you hate him so absolutely, he’s self-destructing in despair.”
Horror mushroomed inside her. “You—you mean...”
Jalal exhaled. “You need to sit down when we tell you this.”
And she wailed. “Laa...laa...ya Ullah...laa...”
“He hasn’t hurt himself.” Haidar’s assertion broke the rising wave of panic. It rose again as he exchanged a look with Jalal as if agreeing on divulging something terrible before pushing her down firmly on the sofa. “Though he swore us to secrecy, at peril of some creative retribution, you need to know everything.”
As they sat down, her soul seeped down her cheeks with the terror of anticipation.
“You know why Rashid joined the army,” Jalal started.
He’d joined to pay off his guardian’s debts. The army in Azmahar had been offering top recruits lucrative salaries and educational opportunities. Rashid had calculated he’d repay those debts in five years, get a better education than the one he’d been able to afford, and become a soldier, a career he’d always admired.
Haidar and Jalal had tried to dissuade him. Hostilities had been brewing between Azmahar and Damhoor and they didn’t want him joining the army in time to be sent to war. But he’d made up his mind. And war had broken out.
On one mission, his squad leader had led his troops astray in the desert. They would have perished if not for Rashid. Using what he’d learned alongside Haidar and Jalal in the harshest survival methods, he’d led his squad to safety. Laylah remembered those weeks when she’d nearly gone mad fearing for him. Zohayd and Judar had mediated peace. But that hadn’t been the end. She’d continued to go insane with worry as he’d fought in more armed conflicts.
But Rashid had survived them all, done all he’d set out to do, obtained one degree and promotion after another. Then he’d disappeared.
Haidar continued as if reading her thoughts. “You remember when he seemed to disappear? He’d started working in intelligence. And he discovered the threads of our mothers’ conspiracy.”
Her heart, having expended all its force, flailed feebly as she realized that the coming revelation would be worse than anything she’d imagined.
“He went undercover to get proof, told me he got a promotion and would be under the radar. Thinking he didn’t want to see me again, I told him I didn’t care if I never heard from him again.”
A skewer twisted in her chest. How hurt Rashid must have been at the apparent lack of caring from his lifelong friend.
Jalal exhaled. “But though we both treated his choice like brats who only cared they couldn’t have their friend around all the time, he was hoping that he was wrong about our mothers. Knowing what we do now, I’ll bet he considered you more in his efforts to find proof against the conspiracy. Instead, he only found incontrovertible proof against our mothers. He still decided to give us a chance to do something about it first.” Jalal dragged his hands down his face. “But on his way to see us, he was attacked and abducted.”
She fell back in a nerveless mass. She’d been right. That first night had been like déjà vu for him.
Haidar carried on. “His kidnappers were our mothers’ flunkies. They tortured him for the information he’d uncovered as well as for intel he had that our mothers’ needed to perfect their plans. At one point, he managed to call me. He was in such bad shape I thought he was drunk. He told me where he thought he was, begged me to help. I rushed over, but found nothing at that address. It was another of our mothers’ contingency tricks. They instructed his kidnappers to text me from that phone and apologize for calling me while drunk, before they destroyed it so that I couldn’t trace it.
“Rashid thought I didn’t come to his rescue because I, and Jalal, were in on the conspiracy. Even though he was almost broken in mind and body, that agonized him so much, he struck back. He killed his captors and crawled across Zohayd’s desert to Damhoor’s border. The injuries those monsters had carved in his body—which were sliced open every time they started to heal—were so badly infected, he almost died. After spending weeks between life and death, he was stabilized, but no surgery could fix the scars. And I think his psychic scars ran deeper.
“He couldn’t do anything about the conspiracy, since he’d lost all the evidence. When our mothers were exposed, he thought we’d pretended to abort their conspiracy so we could plot another day. Meanwhile he’d become friends with King Malek of Damhoor, and using his IT knowledge and intelligence techniques, Rashid developed an impenetrable defense system for him. King Malek offered him a ministry, but Rashid preferred to take his payment in hard cash to start his own business. And to pursue what had become his major goal—punishing us, by ‘assimilating our ill-earned achievements.’ He said he considered this a worse injury than exposing us, but I believe he was still unable to hurt us that badly. He’s far more mushy-hearted than any of us thought possible.
“Then the chain reaction happened in Azmahar, and he was pitted against us for the throne of what he considered his kingdom. He decided he would do anything rather than let either of us take it. The rest you know.”
Agony too great to find physical manifestation cleaved into her soul.
Rashid...Rashid...all this time...
“There’s more.” Her gaze slid sluggishly to Jalal. How could there be more? “There’s a reason he didn’t make it to his joloos.”
She’d forgotten about that. She wished she could forget who she was. The daughter of the woman who’d mutilated the one man she’d ever loved.
“He suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. He’d said it was under control, but he called us just now to say it’s back, making him unfit to be king. He told us to toss a coin to decide who will sit on the throne and who will be crown prince.”
Jalal stopped, looking uneasily at Haidar.