His For A Price |z.h|

15

It was another hour before Zayn returned. 

Niall had spent the time on tenterhooks, mentally rehearsing what he wanted to say. What he so desperately needed to know. 

But when he finally appeared to the waiting room doorway, the blonde took one look at his exhausted eyes, and the grey tinge to his skin as he halted, putting out a hand as if to steady himself against the door-frame, then jumped to his feet, spilling the remains of the coffee they'd brought Niall down his skirt. 

All the careful words were forgotten.  Niall said, "Zayn - about Shanaya. There's something I must tell you."

The  tanned Pakistani lifted a silencing finger . "I already know what you are to say, Niall. I have heard the whole story from Soula Karadis, no doubt in the vain hope that the truth would make me grateful enough to spare her." 

His voice was almost toneless."It would seem that my late wife hated me even more than I thought possible. She did have a lover before our marriage - but her pregnancy by him was just a figment of her imagination, invented to drive me away. Which means that Shanaya is indeed my daughter, born from the one moment of intimacy in our marriage. But brought into the world much too soon, when her mother decide to throw herself down a flight of steps to rob me of the son she believed she was carrying. Something else I did not know until now." 

He added harshly. "It is almost beyond belief. Yet, having known Perrie, even briefly, I find I can - and do - believe it." He looked at Niall. "And you have heard - what?" 

"Nothing like that," the blonde denied huskily. "Just that Shanaya was born at least two months premature, and they were afraid that she wouldn't survive," he ran the tip of his tongue round his dry lips. "But no one told you at the time because it was felt you had enough to bear with your - grief for your wife." 

"Ironic, is it not?" Zayn's smile was a slash of pain. "And yet I think I did experience an element of grief, if only for a young life cut off so suddenly and so harshly. Guilt, too." he added bitterly, "that I did not realize just how much she resented our proposed marriage and stop it for both our sakes while I had the chance. Although it is doubtful if that would have kept her alive." 

"But she had her revenge." His voice thickened. "She died leaving me with the hideous belief that my daughter was another man's child. Someone I could not even bear to look at. And by doing so Perrie robbed me of the right to love her - to enjoy her babyhood and watch her grow." His voice sank to a whisper. "And I might never have known. Never..." 

"But you do know now." Niall said fiercely. "So everything can change. That's what really matters." He looked away from Zayn, his throat tightening, longing to go to him and feel his arms close around his waist. But instead forcing himself to remain where he was. "It's all that can matter." 

"Except, " Zayn said. "that I owe this knowledge to you. If you had not gone to the house today..." He closed his eyes. "I do not want to think what might have happened." 

"Then think of something else," the blonde said.  "Like being beside Shanaya's bedside when she wakes up next time." He paused, trying to smile. "I hope she'll be more welcoming for you. She was cross and a little nauseous when she came around from the anesthetic, and demanded to be sung to." 

"Ah," Zayn said quietly. "That same song I first heard at the garden of the hotel." 

Niall stared at him. "You - heard me?" 

"I heard a baby crying," he responded. "And a girl singing a lullaby. So, I stood and listened for a while and wondered if the singer was as lovely as his voice. I did not know, of course - how could I? - that he was the beauty I had been earlier from the deck of Persephone, or the boy I planned to meet later that night across a poker table."