Against the Wind

8.1 || Raya

The rice was going cold. Raya carved twin divots into the heaped grains with her fork, stirring slow circles, her stomach twisted in a nauseating array of knots. A steamy flavour clouded the air, lingering in the wake of Yasmin's cooking. She ran her tongue over her lips, searching for comfort in the pleasant smell, but it had little effect.

Her attendant's stare only blended in a fresh, skittering wave of nerves. Her concern hummed in Raya's ears. "Is everything okay, Rayanah? Is the meal not to your liking?"

Setting down her fork, Raya rolled her tongue around her mouth in search of a suitable excuse, but Hariq pounced on the pause first. "How much has she eaten?"

"She's barely touched any of it."

Hariq's frown pressed low enough to sink a crease into the cloth covering his eyes. He shoved aside his own almost-empty plate and folded his arms on the table opposite her, leaning in, his lips set in a grim, serious line. "Raya, you need to eat. Depriving yourself will only worsen how you feel."

Raya wedged the heel of her sandal against her ankle, twisting it in abrasive motions she was careful to conceal beneath the ornate cerulean tablecloth. Her smile was horrendously strained. She flashed it at Yasmin regardless, polite yet firm, imagining her shoulders were tied to strings and allowing them to be reluctantly hoisted upwards. "I'm fine, really. The meal is lovely." She sucked in a steadying breath, smoothing the hesitancy from her voice. "I simply have a lot of tasks to attend to which are busying my thoughts. Do you mind if I take this up to my room so I can eat while I work?"

She was already halfway out of her chair by the time the question peaked, folds of her skirt rubbing against the tablecloth as she freed herself. She clamped a hand down on the filled plate and lifted it, towing it close to her chest to hide the tremble in her fingers. Her heart refused to stop pounding.

Suspicion was a mossy whirlpool in Yasmin's gaze, rocked by uncertain ripples. She shot to her feet in tandem, then went still, fiddling with the crescent drape of her headscarf. Her smile was even jerkier than her nod. "If you're quite sure?"

"I am." Guilt bittering the back of her throat, Raya gave a short bow, loose ends of her hair dipping in front of her eyes. "Thank you kindly for the food, Yasmin. I'll return later."

Later was a purposefully malleable word, one she hoped would stretch out so long that the worry would be forgotten and she could slip by unnoticed. Being looked at was uncomfortable at the best of times, but now every blade-edged glance pierced her spine, trickling icy disquiet into her bones, and her thudding pulse doubled the unsteadiness in her limbs with every step she took closer to her bedroom. All would be fine once she escaped, but getting back there felt like fighting a sticky maze of a web. She wished she'd feigned sickness this morning and refused to leave at all.

That wouldn't have worked either, though. Yasmin would've barged her way in sooner or later, cloaked in a cloud of worry even thicker than the veil that hung over her now, and then there would've been nowhere to hide.

She hated making them worry. Her chest ached like it was caught in a vice.

As she placed a foot on the bottom stair, wincing as its creak cut through her, Hariq caught up. His hand snagged her sleeve. "There's something you're not saying."

Raya's heart felt raw. She listened to it quiver, a bell-like rattle cascading through her bones, tinkling far too loud to mock the silence her paranoia craved. She breathed in as quietly as she could, the air hardly fighting its way through the tightness in her throat. "I just said I'm busy. Isn't that enough reason not to pester me?"

Hariq's sigh granted his presence a stern air, the epitome of elder brother. His grip was startlingly firm. He loomed over her shoulder, a statuesque, azure-edged shadow warmed by concern. "You're being evasive." His fingers curled in tighter, and she recalled the fierce way in which he fought.

She swallowed, hardly daring to peek back at him. Her drumming heart begged her to wriggle free, but she was afraid that if she moved, he'd follow. "Sorry," she mumbled. "I..."

The breath of a word wrung itself out and scattered, empty. In the corner of her eye, she saw his shoulders sag.

"Sorry." It did no good to repeat it, but the word scraped out easier than anything else. "I'm... not really in the right frame of mind to talk about it."

His heaved sigh washed past her ears in a tickling wave. "You never are."

She hung her head, teeth digging into her lower lip. The plate in her hands dug hard enough into her chest to hurt.

Silence swallowed them, tied in a hundred cords and tripwires, warning electricity sizzling in the air that kept her painfully tense. She did her best not to flinch when he squeezed her shoulder—reassuring, not threatening, but even care felt like a threat with guilt so dark and writhing inside of her. "If you won't talk," he said, his voice soft as the gentlest raindrops, "we can simply sit together. It might help you to try meditating alongside me?"

Meditation was a greater trap than any other. She'd made that mistake before, fallen into convincing herself that calm would find her in the muffled darkness and simplified focus of the activity would put a gag over her worries, but the quiet was an amplifier. An empty mind set the stage for her most terrible thoughts to run rampant. Hariq would have some wisdom or some sage advice to counter that argument, no doubt, yet she craved escape too much to find the will to listen. This situation was different, anyway. No amount of swaddling her fear in winding words would fix the very real problem that waited at the top of the stairs, so dangerously, wrongfully close.

She longed to be honest with her brother more than anything, but not even he would understand this choice. Far from it; he was their god's follower, through and through, above all else. Above life, above family.

If he knew what she'd done, he would hate her.

Willing back the sudden ache of tears, Raya lifted her chin and twisted free of his grip, stumbling onto the bottommost stair as she turned to face him. One hand retreated behind her and snatched at the bannister. "No," she said, trying to be firm, desperate to look okay, to be seen as a woman who was capable and not a girl coming apart at the seams. "Thank you, but perhaps some other time. It will serve me better to work on my day's chores alone."

His hand remained hovering in the air, fingers feeling at the empty place where she'd been. "If you're sure?"

A wavering crack split his voice. It was a fissure in the air between them, a splinter in her skin, a shard of glass wedged in her heart.

"I'm sure," she forced out. "We'll speak later."

Before he could say anything more, she finally gave in to her heart's thumping urge and darted up the staircase, though her feet dragged as if she were cutting through water. At the top, she paused and listened. Light dizziness paled the world around her, funnelled into the noise of her own panted breaths, but no footsteps lurked beneath that. All she heard was the faint creak as Hariq walked away.

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