“Tell me,” I pushed again, and linked my hand through his for comfort.
Zaal closed his eyes. I could see them moving behind his eyelids. His hand tightened in mine and I knew he was pulling images, fractured memories, from his mind. He’d told me he saw only pictures. Only felt certain feelings when remembering them.
But it was something. I feared with the drugs he’d been subjected to for years that he’d have no memories at all. We still weren’t sure about the damage to his body, his mind, but just having something to hold on to, it was a blessing straight from God.
Zaal’s eyes opened. He fixed his gaze on mine. “I remember I liked to lie in the sun,” he rasped, a small curl of his lip gracing his mouth. “I remember my brother coming to sit beside me.” His hand suddenly squeezed mine and his brow furrowed. “I remember us always being together. He was always at my side, I think. Papa’s two boys.”
I fought back the lump chasing up my throat. This man. This six foot six, 250-pound man spoke with such reverie about his lost brother. With such softness and affection in his husky deep voice.
“What else, baby?” I asked, still stroking through his hair.
His eyes crinkled at the corners as he pushed himself to remember. “I had a sister Zoya.” He sucked in a deep breath and his body tensed. “She … she followed me everywhere, called me her sykhaara.”
“What does that mean?” I asked soothingly.
Zaal’s lip lifted in a fond smile. “My sweetness.”
Adoration filled his eyes when he said, “She was five. She had long black hair, and such dark eyes they almost matched. A brown so dark it looked like coal. She would always be with me. Told me I would protect her when she was older, when me and my brother led the family.”
My soul splintered when the tiniest tear slipped from the corner of his left eye. His haunted stare searched for mine, and when it connected, he said, “They ripped her from my arms, Talia. The guards, our own traitor guard, ripped her from my neck.” He took a shuddering breath. “She cried my name, her hand reached out for me to save her.” More tears fell, and his hand trembled. “And when they fired their guns, and Jakhua forced me to watch, Zoya’s dark eyes were still watching me, like … like she expected me to save her.”
His voice broke. I shuffled down the sofa to take his face in my hands. “You were eight, Zaal. A child.”
He tried to breathe, his chest rapidly rising and falling. Then he added, “When their bodies were piled up, they were like slaughtered cattle. When they had all been killed and left outside to rot in the hot sun, I saw her arm on the ground. Zoya was trapped under my grandmama, her little dead body was hiding from view. But her hand was still reaching out for me. She’d wanted me to save her, expected me to, right until the end.”
Tears tumbled down his cheeks, but his face was unchanged. He looked up at me and the devastated expression in his eyes destroyed me. “I let her down,” he whispered. “I couldn’t save her. And I have to live with that forever.”
I wrapped my arms around his chest, squeezing him tightly. Zaal held on tight. He always held on tight. Like he was the Earth, and I was his sun.
“He killed them all, Talia. Killed them like they were pigs. My family.”
“I know, Zaal,” I soothed, and just held him in my arms.
A few minutes later, with Zaal’s fingers wrapped in my hair, I felt his chest move. I looked up to see a whisper of a smile on his lips.
I melted.
I stared at him waiting for him to speak, when he murmured, “Sykhaara.”
“My sweetness,” I said, remembering the translation.
“She did not even understand what it meant.”
“Then why did she call you it?” I questioned.
“My grandmama called me and Anri it. We were her favorites. Her Georgian princes, she would say.”
It made me smile. Zaal noticed. He tipped his head to the side in question. “Like I was close to my babushka, you were close to yours.”