The Wrath and the Dawn(83)
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Shahrzad paused before the calligraphy, studying the intricate dips and delicate flourishes in each of the artist’s brushstrokes. The many colors of the ink swirled across the parchment, giving life to the words on the page.
Above her, streams of gauzy light spilled through the dome of the Grand Portico from windows around a sunburst of silver and gold. The gilded rays stretched across the dome to nine cornices forming a halo of shelves that connected columns of sienna marble from the ceiling to the floor.
“This one is completely unreadable,” Despina complained, staring over Shahrzad’s shoulder.
“I think it’s another love poem.” Shahrzad smiled.
“What is the purpose behind learning to write so beautifully if no one can decipher your words?”
“It’s an expression of feeling. I suppose this is how the poem made the artist feel.”
“So this poem rendered him illiterate?”
Shahrzad laughed, and the lyrical sound carried up into the dome, bouncing from the cornices back to the stone at their feet.
“You laugh very loud—as if you are the only one in the world,” Despina commented.
Shahrzad wrinkled her nose. “That’s funny. My sister says something very similar.”
“I assume it makes little difference to you.”
“Why? You’d prefer I stop?” she teased.
“No,” Khalid said, as he strode into the Grand Portico. “I would not.”
“Sayyidi.” Despina bowed.
He nodded at her. “I cannot speak for Despina. But you do laugh too loud. And I hope you never stop.”
Despina tucked her chin to her chest and smiled as she hurried out of the Grand Portico without a word.
Shahrzad stared up at Khalid, warring with a resurgence of emotions. Her throat tightened, and the anger threatened to pour from her in a storm of words he did not deserve to hear.
Because he did not deserve to know her deepest thoughts. Her truest desires.
How much she cared for him. And how little it should matter.
May your secrets give you solace, Khalid Ibn al-Rashid.
For I won’t.
Shahrzad lifted her chin and turned to leave.
Khalid snared her elbow as she passed him.
“I knocked at your door last night,” he began.
Her heart shuddered to a stop. “I was tired.” She refused to look his way.
“And angry with me,” he said softly.
Shahrzad glared at him over her shoulder.
He studied her features. “No. Irate.”
“Let go of me.”
Khalid released her arm. “I understand why. I was remiss in not telling you about Yasmine. I apologize. It won’t happen again.”
“Remiss?” Shahrzad faced him with a caustic laugh. “Remiss?”
“I—”
“Do you know how foolish I looked? How foolish I felt?”
Khalid sighed. “She wanted to hurt you, and it troubles me to see how successful she was.”
“How successful she was? You miserable, unfeeling ass! You think I’m angry because of what she did? Because she danced for you? My God, Khalid, how can you be so intelligent and so inexcusably dense in the same instant?”
He flinched. “Shahrzad—”
“This has nothing to do with her. You hurt me, Khalid Ibn al-Rashid. The secrets—the locked doors I will never be given keys to—they wound me,” she shouted. “Time and again, you wound me and walk away!”
Her pain followed the same course as her laughter, striking against the cornices above and back to the marble at their feet.
Khalid listened to its echo and closed his eyes with a grimace. When he opened them again, he reached for Shahrzad.
She drew back.
I will not cry. Not for you.
Undeterred, Khalid grasped her wrists in each of his hands and lifted her palms to his face. “Strike out at me if you wish, Shazi. Do whatever you will. But don’t inflict the selfsame wound; don’t leave.”
He placed her hands on either side of his jaw, skimming his fingertips down her arms while awaiting her judgment.
Shahrzad stood frozen, a mask of ice and stone between her palms.
When she did nothing, Khalid brushed back the hair from her face with a touch that soothed and burned all at once.
“I’m sorry, joonam. For the secrets. For the locked doors. For everything. I promise to tell you one day. But not yet. Trust that some secrets are safer behind lock and key,” he said quietly.