Disclaimer: I do not own The Wrath and the Dawn. It belongs to Reneé Ahdieh. The dialogue and action in the Khalid/Shahrzad scenes are from the book.
A/N: Thank you all so very much for reading this fic! Cookies and cupcakes to you all!
So, as mentioned at the end of the last chapter, some Khalid stuff happens in the book for this chapter, so I now present you with a recap of what has happened before this:
Khalid speaks with Jalal about the assassins and is ready to snap from his extreme exhaustion. Jalal also lays it on Khalid for risking his life and kingdom for one girl. Jalal also tells him it's time to tell Shahrzad everything. When Khalid returns to his chamber where Shahrzad is sleeping, he has a freakout moment, imagining that something is in his room. Shahrzad calls for the general when she sees that Khalid clearly is unwell. The general brings the faqir to the room, and Khalid demands that Shahrzad stays.
Hope that jogged your memory!
Chapter 14: Khalid's Secrets
(Corresponds with Chapter: Ava of The Wrath and the Dawn, pages 332-341)
It was time she knew everything. Jalal was right in that he had to tell her.
He hated to admit it...and hated that she would discover what a true monster he really was. He had wanted to shield her from these burdens that shouldn't become hers.
But every time the mention of his secrets came up between them, Shahrzad threatened to leave the room. If he kept denying her, she might threaten to leave him altogether…Even though there was still a chance she would leave him after hearing of his egregious errors, he knew he had to tell her. She was becoming more and more agitated with him the longer he kept his secrets under lock and key. It seemed there was a better chance of her staying if he told her, and he couldn't lose his air to breathe.
She had already seen the results of his agonizing headache that evening, probably filling her with even more questions.
So when the faqir arrived with the general that night, he allowed her to stay in his room to show her he was willing to be more open with her, and so she could begin to understand. He would not allow her to walk away from him as she had threatened to do multiple times that evening. He needed her by his side.
"Sayyidi," the faqir said as he approached Khalid, lifting up his hands.
As usual, Khalid bowed his head and closed his eyes as the faqir placed his hands on the sides of his face. He felt the mystic's power and warmth flow from his fingertips to his head, bringing him instant relief.
Letting out a deep breath, he was able to relax his body. The pain had subsided.
"Thank you," Khalid said quietly.
"Thank you," he heard Shahrzad say across from him. Looking up, he noticed the faqir was staring at her.
"Sayyidi -" the faqir began to say in a warning tone.
Khalid knew what he would say. Knew that he would tell him that he wouldn't be able to go on without sleeping much longer.
"Your counsel is always appreciated. I'm aware of your concerns."
He eyed him warily. "It's getting worse. And it will only continue to progress in this fashion."
"Again, I understand."
"Forgive my insolence, sayyidi, but you do not. I warned you before, and now my worst fears are coming to fruition. You cannot maintain this farce for much longer. If you do not find a way to sleep - "
He didn't want to hear it. He couldn't hear it. Couldn't face the truth of the situation.
"Please," Khalid interrupted as he stood up.
The faqir moved back and bowed.
"Again, I thank you," Khalid said with a bow.
"Do not thank me, sayyidi," he stated as made his way out of the room. "My service is to the hope for a great king. See that you grant him the chance to prove me right." The faqir's stare lingered on Shahrzad before he exited the room.
If only he understood that eliminating Shahrzad was certainly not an option.
Once he was gone, Khalid went and sat on the edge of his bed, where Shahrzad joined him.
He kept his eyes pointed to the floor. It was time to tell her...It would hurt to tell her, see her reactions, and have her also live with this constant worry and anxiety…
Taking a deep breath, he finally looked up at her. "Before -"
"You can't sleep?" she whispered.
"No."
"Why?"
He looked back down at the floor. It would be so difficult to recount all that occurred…
Shahrzad reached out her hand. "Tell me."
He looked at her again, while he drowned in his anguish.
"Please, Khalid," she said as she took his left hand into both of hers.
He could not refuse her pleading hazel eyes, so he nodded.
"Before I start, I need you to know how sorry I am."
"For what?"
"For everything. But mostly for what I'm about to tell you."
"I don't - "
"It's a burden, Shazi," he expressed in a strangled voice. "This secret is an encumbrance I never wanted for you. Once you know it, it can't be taken back. Whatever happens, its cold certainty will remain with you. The fear, the worry, the guilt - they become yours."
He heard her take a deep breath. "I won't say I understand, because I don't. But if it's your burden - if it causes you to suffer - I wish to know."
Khalid stared off into the room as his mind drifted to his first meeting with a young woman who had a kind, demure smile and warm, innocent eyes at the time. "Her name was Ava."
"Ava?"
"My first wife. I married her not long after I turned seventeen. It was an arranged marriage. One I arranged to avoid what I considered a far worse fate. How wrong I was."
He needed Shazi's strength to speak of his tumultuous mistakes. He reached for her hand and interlocked their fingers.
"I was never meant to rule Khorasan. My brother, Hassan, was raised to take the throne. When he died in battle, it was too late for my father to rectify the years he had spent punishing me for my mother's perceived transgressions. There was no relationship between us - nothing but memories of blood and dreams of retribution. Upon his death, I was as unprepared to rule as any boy filled with hate would be. As you once said - I was predictable. Predictably angry. Predictably jaded.
"I was also determined to be everything my father despised in a king. Before he died, he had wanted me to marry Yasmine - to unite the kingdoms of Khorasan and Parthia. Following his death, his advisors continued to push for the match. Even Uncle Aref felt it was a wise, albeit unfortunate, decision. I was adamant in my refusal - to the point where I dismissed my father's remaining advisors and sought my own counsel."
She gave him a puzzled expression. "You despise Yasmine that much?"
"Yasmine is not without her merits," he said while shaking his head. "But I never felt any real affection for her. More than that, I could not willingly join my family with that of Salim Ali el-Sharif. When my mother was alive, he treated her like a rich man's whore, and he never failed to exploit any opportunity to speak ill of her after her death. Even as a boy, I remember longing for the day when I would be strong enough to punish him for the things he said."
For most of his life, he chased vengeance against his uncle. It all seemed so fruitless now.
"Revenge isn't what you expected, is it?" Shazi asked him.
"No. It's not. And it never will be. Revenge won't replace what I've lost."
"Salim must have been very angry about your refusal to marry Yasmine."
"I never refused. It never went that far. When the pressure to marry Yasmine grew - to embolden the ties between our kingdoms and solidify my weak stance as a young caliph - I decided the best way to avoid the insult of an outright refusal was to marry someone else. Ava was from a good family in Rey, and she was kind and smart. Once we were married, I tried to be attentive, but it was difficult. I still had many things to learn about being a king, and I didn't know how to be a husband. Like me, Ava was not the type to readily share her thoughts and feelings, and the moments we spent with each other often drifted to silence. She started to grow distant...and sad. Yet I still did not invest the time necessary to learn the reasons. After a few months of marriage, she had withdrawn a great deal, and our interaction was rather limited. In truth, the awkwardness made me even less inclined to seek her out. On the rare occasions I tried to speak with her, she had always appeared elsewhere - lost in a world I never sought to understand.
"Everything changed when Ava found out she was pregnant. Her entire demeanor shifted. She began to smile again. Began planning for a future. I thought all would be well, and like a fool, I was glad for it."
He had to shut his eyes for a moment. Would he be able to go on? In the few weeks of knowing of Ava's pregnancy, he had slowly gotten used to the idea of becoming father. He had fretted over the possibility that he wouldn't be a better father than his own, but that fear evolved into a determination to use the opportunity to prove he was different from his father. And he finally had hope that he and Ava could make their marriage work in having this baby...
The memories of his unborn baby's death followed by his wife's came crashing over him…
"We lost the baby a few weeks later. Ava was inconsolable. She stayed in her room for days on end, eating only enough to survive. I would visit her, and she would refuse to speak with me. But she was never angry. Always just sad, with eyes that tore at my soul. One night when I came to see her, she finally sat up in bed and engaged me in conversation. She asked me if I loved her. I nodded because I couldn't bring myself to lie outright. Then she asked me to say it. Just once, because I'd never said it. Her eyes were destroying me - such dark wells of sadness. So I lied. I said the words...and she smiled at me."
That smile haunted him in his nightmares for months after. The memory of it still made him tremble, knowing that was the last time he saw her alive. Khalid brought his and Shazi's interlaced hands up to his forehead, once again requiring Shahrzad's closeness for the courage to carry on.
"It was the last thing I ever said to her. A lie. The worst kind of lie - the kind shrouded in good intentions. The kind cowards use to justify their weaknesses. I didn't sleep well that night. Something about our exchange unnerved me. The next morning, I went to her room. When no one answered the door, I pushed it open. Her bed was empty. I called out for her, and still I heard nothing."
As the gruesome image of what he saw next appeared in his mind, he took a deep breath and continued.
"I found her on her balcony with a silk cord about her throat. She was cold and alone. Gone. I don't remember much else about that morning. All I could think was how she'd died alone, with no one to offer solace, no one to grant her comfort. No one who cared. Not even her husband.
"After we laid her to rest, I received an invitation from her father to meet at his home. Out of guilt and a desire to show her family a measure of respect, I went to see him, against the counsel of those around me. They did not know what her father could possibly want to discuss with me in private. But I dismissed their concerns." He exhaled slowly. "Though they were right to have them."
He removed his hand from Shahrzad's. Here would come the part that would bring her a feeling of guilt...
"Khalid -"
"One hundred lives for the one you took. One life to one dawn. Should you fail but a single morn, I shall take from you your dreams. I shall take from you your city. And I shall take from you these lives, a thousandfold."
He could distinctly visualize Ava's father reciting those words as if it were yesterday. His mind had replayed the memory each day since. He would never be able to forget how those words altered the course of his life forever.
"A curse? Ava's father - cursed you?"
"He gave his life to this curse. Before my eyes, he ran a dagger through his heart, paying for the magic with his own blood. To punish me for what I had done to his daughter. For my rampant disregard of his greatest treasure. He wanted to make sure that others would know his pain. That others would despise me as he did. He ordered me to destroy the lives of one hundred families in Rye. To marry their daughters and offer them to the dawn, just like Ava. To take away their promise of a future. And leave them without answers. Without hope. With nothing but hate to keep them alive."
Shahrzad started rubbing her eyes and wiping away the tears that were falling down her face.
"I refused to comply at first. Even after we realized he'd sold his soul to the darkest magic to enact this curse, even after nights without sleep, I couldn't do it. I couldn't begin such a cycle of death and destruction. Then the rains ceased. The wells dried up. And the riverbeds vanished. The people of Rey fell to sickness and starvation. They started to die. And I began to understand."
"I shall take from you your city," Shahrzad stated quietly, recalling Ava's father's words.
Khalid nodded and added, "And I shall take from you these lives, a thousandfold."
"How many dawns are left?" she asked.
"Not many."
"And what if - what if we fail to comply?" she questioned him hesitantly.
"I don't know."
The whole curse was a mystery to him, but he figured its result would eventually lead to the destruction of his kingdom and himself. Since he could only tell select people he trusted about the curse to prevent his enemies from discovering it, he couldn't contact those with the gift of magic to find out if it was possible to put an end to the curse.
"But - it rained. It's rained several times in the two months I've been at the palace. Perhaps the curse has weakened."
His Mountain of Adamant...so optimistic. He wasn't so sure himself. The rain did provide him with much hope the past several weeks.
He gave her a small, reluctant smile. "If that is the case, there is little else I would ask of heaven."
After a pause, Shahrzad spoke again. "Khalid, what if -"
"No. Do not ask what you are about to ask," he told her sternly.
Absolutely not. There no way he would ever have her killed. It would destroy him.
"Then you have not even considered -"
"No. I will not consider it. There is no situation in which I will consider it," he said while placing his hands against the sides of her face. He looked into her hazel eyes, thinking about what life would be like each day without being able to see the delight in those eyes when she was incandescently happy with him, or their frustration when she was cross with him, or their fire when she was standing up to him.
He wouldn't survive a day without looking into her eyes.
She shook her head back and forth at him as she curled up her hands into fists. "You are ridiculous, Khalid Ibn al-Rashid. I am just one girl. You are the Caliph of Khorasan, and you have a responsibility to a kingdom."
"If you are just one girl, I am just one boy."
She shut her eyes. Was she even listening to him? Didn't she understand?
"Did you hear what I said, Shahrzad al-Khayzuran?"
She wouldn't respond and was still shielding her eyes from him. He needed to see her eyes. Needed to make her understand.
He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. "Look at me," he pleaded.
She obeyed, and he pressed his forehead against hers. "Just one boy and one girl," he told her.
"If that is the case, there is little else I would ask of heaven," she said with a sad smile.
Leaning back against the cushions, Khalid pulled Shahrzad down with him. She laid against his chest as he wound his arms around her. And the two laid there quietly for the remainder of the night.
Even though he had wanted to avoid telling her of his past, it brought him comfort that she didn't run away from him...that she didn't despise him for his heinous actions and mistakes…
That he'd be able to have her strength to face whatever the curse could have in store for him next.
A/N: So one thing I don't understand about The Wrath and the Dawn is how many dawns Khalid has to complete the curse. Because he's clearly already been through over 100 dawns...he explains he didn't start abiding the curse immediately. Plus Shahrzad has been with him at least two months, and she's the 72nd wife. So that's well over 100 dawns so far...does anyone understand this part? I'm guessing these details just haven't been revealed, haha.
Anyway, moving on. So in writing this fic, I always write one or two chapters ahead of whatever I post. So I already have the rest of this fic typed up! I just have to go back and do major editing before I post. There are only two chapters left, so expect these final updates in the next few days! The next chapter is probably my favorite and looks to be the longest one of this fic. I'm very excited to post...so I better get to editing!
Thanks so much, my readers! Please review!