Page 55 of A King's Oath

“Go,” she smiled. “And don’t forget tonight.”

“Promise. Texting one hundred percent. Video call I am not sure. Papa is here and…”

“And you spend your nights in his bed talking. I know. Now go. Bye.”

“Bye!”

Samarth pushed his phone into his back pocket and ran. He ran down the stables and the shed, around the palace acreage and the gardens that were dried up in winter.

“The main gate?” He asked Harsh who was running beside him. He nodded.

Samarth quickened his pace, the voices and noises growing louder as he neared the turning of the palace.

“Samarth kyaa chhe?”[17] His Papa’s excited voice caught him.

“Aavi gayo, Rawal,”[18] he went barreling around the palace and skidded to a stop in front of his father. In his usual white kurta-pyjama, a shawl around his neck, his father looked just as he always looked in Nawanagar — the Rawal. He grinned. Samarth had wanted to be here to welcome him. They had informed him that he would be landing by 7.

“Kshama, Rawal,” he folded his hands and bent down to touch his feet. His father grabbed his arms and pulled him into his chest, thumping his back. Samarth embraced him tight.

“I thought you are coming in at 7, Papa…” he pushed back.

“I took a flight instead of the road. Now, do you have to go back to practise or you are coming inside?”

Samarth grinned — “Inside, of course. Dada Sarkar is going to be so happy to see you and I want to seethat.”

————————————————————

Samarth lay sprawled sideways on his father’s bed, mobile in hand. He had promised to text Ava but every time he tried to say bye and set his phone down she would start a new story. The current one? About the bougainvillaea garden around the swimming pool in her palace that had burst with the strangest lilac flowers. He was in awe of his girl’s typing speed. He would type four words —talk to you later, and she would have hit send on a whole paragraph in that interim.

“Your father has come home after a treacherous expedition and you can’t stop looking at your phone,” Papa nudged him.

“Yes, Papa,” he glanced up, his fingers still typing to tell her that she looked pretty standing under those lilac flowers. She thought she looked like an elf with her yellow nails posing over the lilac flowers. Samarth partly agreed with her, but what kind of boyfriend would he be if he said that out loud? And truth be told, her nails looked elfin, not her face. Her face was all fairy. He began to type that out.

“What are you doing?”

His head was buried back into his phone.

“Samarth?”

“One minute, Papa. Done, one minute,” Samarth consoled, still typing, now frowning.

AVA

Also, FYI: If I keep eating like this I will become Winnie the Pooh

SAMARTH

Get rid of sev and try to eat some poha for a change

AVA

You hit below the belt. This is war, my friend.

SAMARTH

I am not your friend. And bring it on.

AVA

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