The night after Malik's poetry hung in the wind, the desert shifted its breathing.
Somewhere far beyond their throne of silks, the voices rose again … the villagers, unrelenting, their cries threading through the air like a distant storm.
They were softer now, yet stubborn, like a candle that refuses to die even as the wind batters it.
"Layla," they called, again and again, their words dragged across the dunes. "Come back to us. Come home."
The words were not knives, but they were hooks … trying to catch on to something inside her.
Malik heard them, and every sound was a pull on his own heart. He lay awake with her still pressed against him, the warmth of her skin against his chest the only anchor holding him in place.
He could feel it … the fear. The ancient, primal fear of losing the one thing the world had no right to take.
He had fought wars, he had endured storms of sand and fire, but nothing in his life had ever taught him how to fight the possibility of her absence.
His arm tightened around her. "Layla stirred"… her hair sliding across his chest in dark, silken waves.
She lifted her head slightly, her eyes catching the faint light that filtered from the open tent, where moonlight spilled like liquid silver over the floor.
"They will not stop," he whispered, his voice low and rough.
She traced her fingers over his jaw, slow and deliberate, as if memorizing him again. "Then let them call," she said, her voice calm, like the steady heart of a queen. "My home is here."
Her words were meant to soothe, but Malik's breath still caught. He knew the world had a way of testing vows. And love … when it burned as fiercely as theirs … was the kind of light that drew both worship and destruction.
He sat up, pulling her with him. The silks fell from her shoulders, revealing the smooth line of her collarbone, and for a moment, the call of the villagers became nothing but background noise…Malik cupped her face in his hands.
"Layla," he murmured, "I cannot… I will not let you go. Not to them, not to fate, not even to the gods themselves. If I lose you, the desert will mean nothing. The stars will be dust."
Her lips curved faintly, but there was no jest in her eyes. She leaned forward, pressing her forehead to his. "Then hold me," she whispered. "Hold me so the desert remembers us forever."
And he did…
The world beyond their tent vanished as he drew her into his lap, her knees folding against his sides. Her hands… slid into his hair, holding him as though she could answer his fear … with touch alone. Malik's breath… grew heavier, his heartbeat loud enough to drown… the faint voices outside.
Her gown loosened beneath his fingers, and the scent of her … warm, wild, familiar … wrapped around him like the night itself. She moved… against him in slow, unhurried waves, as if time was their servant now, forced to stretch and bend to their will.
The villagers might have been screaming for all he cared; their world had shrunk to the rhythm of breath and heartbeat, the rustle of silk, the press of skin to skin.
When Malik kissed her, it was with the desperation of a man who wanted to leave a mark not on her body, but on her soul … something no wind, no voice, no mortal hand could erase.
She answered with equal ferocity, her fingers curling into his back, her mouth opening beneath his as though she was giving him the very air she breathed.
It was not merely passion … it was an unspoken vow sealed with every movement, every sigh, every shiver between them.
She guided him down onto the silks, her hair falling over them both like a curtain shutting out the rest of existence.
"Look at me," she whispered.
And he did. He watched her as she moved above him, the moonlight painting her in silver and shadow.
Every line of her body was poetry he had not yet written, every movement a verse too sacred for paper.
The trust in her eyes was so complete that it shattered something in him … the last shard of fear melting away under the truth of her love.
He touched her as if to map her soul, his hands tracing the familiar yet ever-new territory of her. She leaned down, pressing her …lips to his temple, his cheek, his mouth, her whispers… falling between each kiss like prayer fragments.
"I am yours, Malik. Not theirs. Not the pasts. Not even my own. Only yours."
Her words undid him. The careful control… he always carried dissolved into the moment, into the unrelenting pull between them.
Their movements grew urgent, then slow again, a tide that refused to follow the rules of the moon.
The wind outside grew restless, carrying the villagers' cries, but Malik and Layla's world was sealed. Every brush… of her fingers, every press of her lips, every arch of her body told him the same thing: here, now, always.
When they reached that final crest together, it was not with shouts but with silence … the kind of silence that roars in the soul, the kind that marks the exact second the universe bends to two lovers and crowns them its rulers.
They lay tangled afterward, the desert air cooling their heated skin. Malik's hand rested on her stomach, his thumb drawing slow circles there.
Layla's head rested in the hollow of his shoulder, her hair spilling over him like the night sky.
"Malik," she said softly.
"Hmm?"
"If they call tomorrow, and the next day, and every day after… will you still be afraid?"
He was quiet for a moment, his eyes on the faint line of the horizon where the sand met the stars.
"I will always be afraid," he admitted. "Because loving you means knowing I cannot survive losing you."
She shifted, propping herself up on one elbow so she could see him. "And yet," she said, "you are the one I chose. Fear or no fear, I am not leaving."
He reached up, brushing a strand of hair from her face.
"Then let them call. Let the desert carry their voices until it tires. We will give it better songs to remember."
And so he did...
That night, as the desert listened, Malik spoke not to the villagers, not to the gods, but to Layla … verses born of love so deep that even the stars above seemed to lean closer to hear…
"You are the breath the desert holds,
The silence between its storms.
You are the shadow the moon keeps,
And the fire the sun fears to touch."
"If the winds come for you,
I will chain them with my hands.
If the earth calls you back,
I will tear open the sky to follow."
"You are not my queen because of a crown,
But because my soul kneels
Each time you look at me."
He kissed her after the last word, sealing it not on her lips, but in her very being.
And somewhere far beyond the dunes, the villagers' voices faded into nothing … not because they had stopped, but because the night itself had decided it would only carry Malik's words to eternity.
And thus, beneath the endless sky, Volume 4 ended not with the surrender of love, but with its absolute victory … fierce, unyielding, eternal.