Page 113 of A King's Oath

“Try.”

Avantika didn’t need to sniff it to know that it was mint shikanji — a staple of her home. She tipped the bottle to her mouth and took a long draught. Sooo good on a warm Parisian evening.

“How did you manage all this? I haven’t found an Indian restaurant that makes decent biryani, forget poha. Not even the Michelin star ones!”

He fisted sev and topped the poha, grabbed two spoons and held the container up for her. She dug in.

“My chef made it.”

“Your chef?” She closed her eyes as the first taste of tangy, savoury poha and sev hit her.

“He travels with me for long-haul tournaments. Otherwise, it gets very difficult to keep track of my nutrition.”

“I can see that,” she grabbed a moong dal bhajia and held it up to him. He got his own and nudged hers.

“My chef was near fainting that I ordered all this today. He thought I was messing with him,” he popped the bhajiya into his mouth. She opened her mouth to ask him more about his diet when her phone pinged with the loud, telltale email drop notification. With half-messy hands, she managed to unlock it. And groaned.

“What happened?”

“Now they want other options too! Why? Why? Why? Where were you three days ago when I marked you on three different emails plus Slacked you?!”

“Alright, so send it again.”

“I have to remake them. They rejected, and like the non-corporate fool I was — I deleted them.”

“Will it take time?”

“Not much, I just have to change the colour layers…” She dejectedly popped the remaining bhajia into her mouth, cleaned her hands on a wet wipe he offered, and grabbed her iPad and pencil.

“Ten minutes, huh…” she opened her mouth to inform him when it was stuffed with a bite of poha and seva. More of the sev. She looked up surprised. He was filling another spoon for her.

“You work,” his eyes nudged, while his hand brought her another bite. She hesitated.

“It’s hot, Ava. Eat it while it’s hot.”

“It’ll take ten minutes.”

“I know. Now eat,” he fed the bite into her open mouth and began to add more sev in the pit created in the poha.

“Work,” he commanded, eyes still down on mixing the perfect ratio of sev and poha.How did he know she was looking at him?

“Fine. I appoint you, Prince of Nawanagar, to feed me while I work. I wish you had brought grapes too,” She began to work, opening her mouth when he brought her a bite. “And could perform belly dancing…” she opened her mouth again. This time it was a bhajia.

“You didn’t get chutney, Kunwarji?” She switched the colour layer from lilac to linen.

“Kshama, Kumari.”

————————————————————

“This was such a good dinner,” Avantika moaned, throwing her palms behind her and leaning to look at the sun dipping below the city’s edge. The water had cooled the night down. People around them had thinned too, leaving the surroundings smelling and feeling cooler.

“When you came here to stay, hadn’t you planned on long-term food options?” He asked, mimicking her stance with his legs kicked out.

“No,” she sighed. “If I had stayed back home to plan all this, my mother wouldn’t have let me come at all. I had to show that I was ready to fly without any back-up landing options for her to believe that I really wanted to go.”

“Did you?”

“What?”

---