Page 217 of A King's Oath

“Yes. Lucky for you, she is a girl and not in line to claim your stepmother’s precious throne. Now don’t make this what it is not…”

“What it is not?”

“Some soap opera reunion. You helped me this afternoon as an old friend, thank you. Forget you saw any of this and go back.”

“Go back?” He pronounced. “Forget I saw any of this… sawher?”

She began to open her mouth and he scoffed, on the verge of breaking into a sob or a laugh, he didn’t know. He had never been so out of control of himself. His head dropped back and the sky came into view — the perfect fleecy clouds and fairytale birds pitying him too.

“I have a daughter.”

Birdsong.

“She is… so grown.”

Wind.

“I did not get to know her.”

The sound of her laughter from inside the house.

His head shot straight and bent to get eye to eye with her — “I have so much going on inside me that I haven’t been able to move from this place all afternoon,” he pointed to the chair. “I held her for a fraction of my life. She is mine and I got to hold her for a second. She rides like me, better than me at that age. She stands like my Papa and commands like my Dada Sarkar. She looks like you. She feels like everything I have ever adored in my life rolled into one…” Samarth choked. “She grew up just like that? Not knowing…” a realisation dawned. “Does she have somebody?”

She did not respond.

“A… father?” He stuttered, the words like poison on his tongue.

Ava blinked slowly, her mouth pursed. His body plunged into panic. What if she had? What if she had and he had lost that chance? What if she called another man her father and slept on his chest and held his shoulder…

“No.”

“She knows about her father?”

“Listen” Ava sighed. “She thinks her father is a very big horseman who needs to take care of the horses far away in South America.”

Samarth’s eyes squeezed shut.

“Does she never ask why he doesn’t come home?”

“No. She knows it’s just the two of us. It’s ok if she has to let her father go to care for the horses.”

He turned his back to her, his face screwing up as a tearless sob rattled his body.

“Not here, Samarth.”

“Mama!”

“Yes, baby?”

“Naniji wants to talk to you!”

“Coming!” She hollered back. Then to him in a low whisper — “I understand this is a shock for you. But you have a life. Go. Don’t mingle with her now. It’s better this way.”

He did not turn. Heard the noises. Her retreating footsteps. The opening and shutting of the door. The bolting of windows. Cutting off of Brahmi’s little sounds. And then silence. Samarth broke into a run. Away from her house, her and…her.

He ran, ran, ran, then walked. Then broke into a run again. Through the idyllic lanes of that small town he ran. His oath.The kingdom. His promise. The throne. His debts. His life of nothing but strengthening the throne for Sharan. All the milestones plotted for his colourless life now bursting into these fuchsia bougainvillea and lavender shrubs, blue skies and multi-coloured butterflies. All the dreams he had annihilated with his own bare hands after Paris having lived a life of their own for eight years. Everything he had ever held on a pedestal now dust in front of a tiny hand on his chest.

Where was justice now? In holding on to Nawanagar and his promise or leaving it all behind for a little girl who had given up her father for the horses of South America?

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