Her pov
I woke with a sharp breath lodged somewhere between my throat and chest. For a moment, I didn’t understand why.
The darkness of my chamber lay thick and unmoving, the oil lamps long burned low, leaving only faint shadows trembling along the carved pillars. The silence felt heavier than usual—almost watchful.
Then the ache settled into me fully.
It wasn’t just one place. It was everywhere.
My head throbbed as if something inside it pulsed too loudly. My throat burned—dry, sour, raw with every swallow. My chest felt tight, my limbs heavy, as though someone had replaced my bones with wet sand. Even the slightest shift sent a dull pain across my body.
A fever.
The realization did not come with panic, nor urgency, but with a quiet certainty that settled just as deeply as the ache itself. I lifted my hand, pressing my palm against my forehead, and the warmth I felt there confirmed what my body had already begun to confess.
Too warm.
A fragile breath slipped past my lips as I closed my eyes, if only for a moment, hoping to gather what little strength I could. But the darkness behind my eyelids felt heavier than before, pulling at me, urging me to sink back into it, to surrender to the exhaustion that clung so tightly to my limbs.
No.
The thought came sharper than anything else, and my eyes opened again, steadier this time despite the haze.
“Not tonight…” I whispered, my voice barely more than a breath.
Of all nights.
The negotiation.
The visiting prince.
The letter I had written—each word measured, deliberate, sharp. I had wanted to meet him. Needed to. To see if the mind behind the reputation matched the one that had read my words.
Every motion that followed felt deliberate, measured, as though I had to relearn the language of my own body step by step. When my feet touched the cold marble floor, the chill climbed sharply up my skin, and though it made me flinch, I welcomed it—for it kept me awake, kept me present, kept me from slipping back into that heavy pull of sleep.
The royal physician.
That was all I needed.
Medicine, rest, and just enough strength to stand through what tomorrow demanded of me.
A dull ringing filled my ears, but I forced myself upright anyway, gripping the edge of the bed until the room steadied.
I could not miss it.
I would not.
If I collapsed in the court tomorrow, that would be far worse.
I needed the royal physician. Slowly—carefully—I swung my feet to the cold marble floor. The chill bit into my skin, but it grounded me enough to stand.
One step.
Then another.
Each movement felt like dragging my body through thick water, but I made my way to the chamber doors. My fingers trembled slightly as I pushed them open.
The corridor outside stretched long and dim, lit only by a few earthen lamps placed at intervals along the walls. Their glow was soft, uneven, leaving shadows pooled in between. Too quiet. Under normal circumstances, there would have been guards stationed just outside—silent, alert, unwavering in their presence.
Tonight, there was no one.
The absence did not pass unnoticed. My brows drew together faintly as I stepped forward, the quiet settling differently now, heavier in a way I could not quite explain. It was not a small oversight, not within these walls, not on a night when the palace held a guest of such importance.
And yet, I let the thought slip, or perhaps I chose to.
Preparations, I told myself. Tomorrow must have demanded more than usual. It was a reasonable explanation, one I allowed myself to accept because anything else would require more strength than I had left to give.
I moved forward. The physician’s chamber was not far.
Just a little more.
Just—
My steps slowed.
At the far end of the corridor, where the light thinned into near darkness, something shifted—not dramatically, not suddenly, but enough to draw my attention in a way that felt instinctive rather than deliberate.
Someone stood there.
A figure, still and silent, positioned where the last of the lamps cast their weakest glow against the stone.
My breath caught, not sharply, but enough to still within me as I tried to make sense of what I saw. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if it was the fever—if my mind had begun to blur shadow into form, memory into presence—but the figure did not fade, did not dissolve.
It remained.
I tried to focus, my vision straining against the dimness, the edges of the world softening slightly with the heat that lingered in my body. And yet, there was something about that silhouette—something unsettlingly familiar—that refused to be dismissed as illusion.
My heart beat once, slow and uncertain.
And then, without permission, without reason—a name rose within me.
“Aaditya.”
The jungle returned to me in fragments—the rain, the echo of water, the way his voice had lingered in the quiet long after he had spoken—as though the memory had been waiting just beneath the surface for this exact moment to emerge.
My fingers tightened faintly against the wall beside me as I shook my head, the movement small, almost imperceptible.
No.
That was the fever speaking, twisting memory into something it was not, shaping longing into presence.
He could not be here.
He did not belong within these walls, within these corridors carved of stone and guarded by duty.
And yet I did not look away. He had told me he was going to his friend’s wedding, and that memory stood clear in my mind—real, grounded, untouched by the haze that now clung to everything else.
I exhaled slowly, leaning just slightly into the cool stone beside me as I forced my gaze away from the figure at the far end, willing my thoughts to steady, to return to something certain.
The physician.
That was why I had come.
Not for illusions, not for memories that had no place within these walls.
I stepped forward, then again, each movement still heavy, still dragging through the ache that had settled deep into my limbs, but now there was something else beneath it—something quieter, sharper, a strange awareness that followed me with each step, a pull I refused to name and yet could not entirely ignore.
The corridor narrowed as it curved toward the physician’s chamber, the air growing warmer with the soft glow of earthen lamps set into the walls.
And then I heard it. Footsteps. They came from the opposite direction—slow, measured, deliberate.
Moving toward me.
My breath stilled, caught somewhere between my chest and my throat, and for a fleeting moment I told myself not to look, that whatever I might see would only deepen the illusion I was already struggling against.
And yet, despite that, my gaze lifted—almost against my will.
He was closer now.
No longer a distant shadow, no longer something I could dismiss so easily, but a presence that filled the space between us in a way that felt unmistakably real.
The nearest lamp cast its light in fragments upon him—first tracing the outline of his shoulder, then catching in the dark fall of his hair, then sharpening along the line of his jaw.
My heart grew heavier, each beat settling deeper than it should, as though it carried more than it was meant to.
No.
It cannot be.
I tried to move past the thought, to keep walking, to reach the chamber that was now only a few steps away, but something within me resisted, slowing me, holding me suspended between one step and the next.
And in that suspended moment, the memory returned.
Not gently, not as a distant echo, but all at once.
The daldal—the thick, suffocating pull of it tightening around my legs, dragging me down no matter how desperately I struggled. I could feel it again, the panic rising sharp and choking in my chest, the mud swallowing sound, breath, thought—until there had been nothing left but the certainty of sinking.
And then—
His hand. Pulling me out.
Even now I could feel the force of it, the way my body had been dragged free from that suffocating grip, the way the ground had rushed back beneath me—and when I had fallen, it had not been alone.
We had landed together. On the damp earth of the forest. His arms around me. And for one reckless, fleeting moment, a thought had risen within me without permission, without caution—
He won’t let go.
The memory burned through me now just as fiercely as it had then, and just like then, I forced myself to pull away from it.
No.
I blinked, steadying my breath, forcing the present back into focus, refusing to let the past blur into what stood before me.
This was not that moment.
He was not here.
He could not be here.
My fingers tightened slightly around the edge of my lehnga, grounding myself in its weight, its texture, something real that I could hold on to when everything else felt uncertain.
Slowly, I lifted my head again.
The lamp beside us flickered, its flame shifting just enough to cast fuller light across his face.
And in that instant, everything within me stilled. There was no confusion left. No doubt. Only recognition.
His expression had not changed; it held that same quiet curve of his lips, not mocking, not exaggerated, but something softer, something that seemed to belong to him as naturally as breath itself, as though he had always looked at me that way, as though he had never needed a reason to.
And then, without warning, a voice rose—not from him, not from the present, but from memory, clear and unwavering.
She is my wife.
The words echoed through my mind with such clarity that for a moment it felt as though the corridor itself had whispered them back to me.
My breath caught sharply, and before I could stop it, before I could question or reason or pull myself back—
His name slipped from my lips.
“Aaditya…”
It was not loud, barely more than a breath, but in the stillness of that corridor it did not need to be.
And the moment it left me, everything else seemed to fall away.
The ache in my body, the heaviness in my limbs, the lingering fever—it all faded into something distant, something I could no longer feel or perhaps no longer cared to.
Without thinking, my hand gathered the front of my lehnga, lifting it just enough to free my steps—
And I ran.
I do not remember deciding to, do not remember the moment the thought became action. I only remember the space between us shrinking too slowly, my heart rising into my throat with each step, my breath uneven and sharp, yet unstoppable.
Only moments ago, I had struggled to walk. Now, nothing could have held me back. Not the pain. Not the doubt.
Not even the quiet voice that still lingered somewhere deep within me, insisting that this could not be real.
Because he was there. Each step echoed louder than the last, my breath uneven, my vision fixed only on him.
He didn’t move away.
Didn’t step back.
He simply watched me approach, that same calm steadiness in his gaze—as if he had known I would come.
As if he had been waiting. I came to a halt so abruptly that for a moment it felt as though the world itself had not yet caught up with me, as though everything—breath, thought, time—lagged a step behind while I stood there, suspended in something I could not name.
He was right there.
Close enough that I could see the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw, the quiet rise and fall of his chest with each breath he took, the steadiness in his eyes that felt almost unnerving in its calm—as though nothing in this world could shake him.
He had not stepped forward, had not closed the distance that I had crossed so desperately only moments before. He simply stood there, that same quiet smile resting on his lips, as though he had been waiting—not reaching, not claiming, just… waiting.
My fingers lifted before I could stop them, drawn toward him with a pull that felt inevitable, as if something within me had already decided long before I had the chance to question it. I reached for him slowly, uncertainly, until my hand hovered just inches from his face.
So close. Close enough to feel the warmth of him. And still, I did not touch him. Something held me back.
Not hesitation alone, not doubt alone, but something more fragile, more dangerous—the quiet, unspoken fear that he might disappear the moment I did, that this would dissolve into nothing the instant I tried to make it real.
My throat tightened, the question rising before I could contain it, my voice softer than I intended, almost breaking beneath its own weight.
“Are you real?”
For a single heartbeat, nothing moved.
Then he nodded.
Just that.
No words to soften it, no gestures to make it grander—just a quiet, certain nod that carried more weight than anything else could have. My hand dropped from the air, no longer hovering, no longer afraid, and came to rest against his chest.
The sensation grounded me in a way nothing else had, and my fingers curled instinctively into the fabric of his kurta, clutching it as though I needed to confirm it again and again, as though letting go even for a moment might take him away.
“Why…” My voice wavered, faltering as something deeper rose within me, tightening painfully in my chest. “Why didn’t you stop me?”
His gaze did not shift, did not soften into something evasive, did not harden into defense.
“Barkha…”
The way he said my name was slower than I remembered, more careful, as if each syllable mattered too much to rush, as if he held it with a kind of quiet reverence that only made everything inside me unravel further.
My grip tightened.
The tears came before I could stop them, blurring my vision until his face seemed to waver, though I knew it was only me.
“I was waiting,” I said, the words spilling out faster now, raw and unguarded in a way I had never allowed myself to be before. “Wishing… taking every step slowly—so slowly—because I thought you would stop me.”
My voice trembled, fragile beneath the weight of what I had held back for too long.
“That you would say something. Do something. Anything.”
He did not interrupt me.
He simply lifted his hand and wrapped it gently around my wrist where it rested against his chest, holding me there, grounding me in a way that felt both steady and unyielding.
“But you didn’t look back,” he said quietly.
The words struck deeper than I expected, cutting through the storm of everything I was feeling and landing somewhere I could not ignore.
“I couldn’t,” I whispered, my voice breaking under the truth of it. “If I had… I wouldn’t have been able to leave.”
The silence that followed was not empty.
It was heavy, filled with everything that had gone unsaid between us, everything that could not be undone. I lifted my gaze again, searching his face, almost desperate now for something that would make sense of it all.
“But you said…” My breath shook, uneven and fragile. “You said to the girl in the temple that you were patient.”
The tears slipped freely down my cheeks now, unchecked, unnoticed except for the way they blurred everything I tried to hold onto.
“Just with me,” I added more softly, the words carrying a weight I could not hide. “Only for me.”
My grip loosened, but I did not let go of him.
“Then why wouldn’t you stop me?”
For the first time, something in his expression shifted. It was not uncertainty, nor regret, but something deeper, something I could not fully understand. His hand lifted, coming to rest gently against my face, his thumb brushing beneath my eye, catching a tear before it could fall further, the touch so careful it almost undid me.
“I wanted to,” he said. There was no hesitation in it.
“But how?”
The question escaped me before I could hold it back, confusion tightening around the hurt that had already begun to take shape.
Because it did not make sense.
None of it did.
“How?” I repeated, pulling back just enough to look at him properly, my thoughts tangling into something sharper now. “You were right there. You could have—”
The frustration rose before I could stop it, and I pushed against him, not hard enough to hurt, but enough to break the fragile stillness between us. He stepped back, caught off guard for a moment, but steadied himself almost immediately.
I stared at him, my chest rising and falling too quickly, the ache inside me no longer something I could contain.
“You always have words,” I said, my voice sharper now, the edges of it breaking under everything I was trying—and failing—to hold in. “You always know what to say. So don’t tell me you didn’t know how.”
The corridor felt colder again, the silence heavier, pressing in from all sides.
“What do you mean ‘how’?” I demanded, my brows drawing together, frustration spilling over into something more vulnerable than I wanted it to be. “You think I would have refused? You think I would have walked away if you had just—”
The words stopped. My voice fell quieter then, but it carried far more weight.
“You let me go.”
It was not a question.
It was a realization.
And it hurt in a way I had not been prepared for, in a way that shifted everything between us into something I could no longer pretend not to see.
The words left me more quietly this time, but they carried a weight that made my chest tighten as soon as they were spoken.
“You should not have said that.”
For a moment, he only looked at me, as though trying to understand what I meant—not dismissing it, not brushing it aside. Then he took a step toward me. And another. Slow. Careful. Closing the distance I had created.
“Said what?” he asked, his voice low, steady, but searching.
My throat tightened. The answer felt simple, and yet it refused to come out easily. My gaze dropped for a fraction of a second before lifting again to meet his.
“That I’m your wife.”
The words trembled, not because they were uncertain—but because they were too certain.
He didn’t react the way I expected. There was no hesitation, no confusion. Only a quiet question that followed, almost immediately.
“Why?”
It broke something open in me.
I looked at him then—truly looked—through eyes that burned, through the tears that refused to stay contained. My voice softened, but it did not lose its truth.
“Because now…”
I paused, the rest catching somewhere between my heart and my breath.
“Now?” he prompted gently.
A faint, almost helpless smile touched my lips, though it didn’t reach my eyes.
“Now I don’t know how to forget this.”
The silence that followed was not empty. It held everything—every moment, every word, every unspoken feeling that had been building long before either of us had named it.
He lifted his hand, his fingers brushing lightly against my face, steadying me in a way I hadn’t realized I needed.
“Then don’t.”
It was simple.
Too simple.
And yet it felt like the only answer that had ever made sense.
I took a step closer to him, closing the small space that remained, my voice quieter now, but stronger.
“I want the story we built in the temple…” I said, my gaze not leaving his, “to come true.”
Something shifted in his expression then—not surprise, not disbelief—but something deeper, something that settled into certainty.
“Which part?” he asked, his voice just as sincere, just as steady, as if he needed to hear it from me.
This time, it was my hand that rose. I cupped his face, my fingers resting against his skin, no longer hesitating, no longer stopping short.
“Every part.”
For a moment, he simply looked at me, as though committing that answer to something far beyond memory. Then, with a sincerity that stripped away everything else—the palace, the night, the uncertainty—he asked,
“Will you come with me?”
There was no rush in it. No demand. Only a question that left the choice entirely in my hands. I nodded. The movement was small, but it carried everything I could not put into words. His gaze searched mine again, as if making sure, as if giving me one more chance to step back, to reconsider.
“Now?” he asked softly. I nodded again. This time, there was no hesitation at all. The moment settled between us, quiet and certain.
Then he moved.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Closing the last distance between us, his hand still resting against my face, his gaze never leaving mine—as though he was giving me time, space, the freedom to stop him if I wished.
But I didn’t.
I didn’t stop him.
Because somewhere between the doubt and the fear, between the memory and the present, I had already chosen.
And before he could reach me fully— I closed the distance myself. My lips brushed the edge of his so softly it barely felt real—and yet it sent a quiet shiver through me, something delicate and deep all at once.
My breath left me in a small, unsteady exhale.
That was all it took.
The answer.
The space between us disappeared.
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