Page 255 of A King's Oath

“From the moment you walked away from me in Saraswati Crest you have given your life to me. I couldn’t cherish it, I couldn’t even hold it safe. Your resentment with me right now is my mountain to climb but I see it as the most legitimate mountain of my life. You can keep brushing me off all our life, you can keep taunting me, keep behaving any way you want, go hot and cold, use me and then throw me. And I would still not be in a position to even ask for your forgiveness at the end of it all…”

“Don’t be so good, Samarth.”

“This is me. I can’t help it. I am baked and ready. What I can help is how I use myself in service of you and my daughter. It would be a dream to be happy again with you, to have that house and that life we thought about in Paris. But even if I don’t have it for the rest of my life but have you both, it will be worth it.”

“You don’t want me to be happy?” Her face twisted in a scowl, tears suddenly beginning to track down her cheeks.

“No,” he pushed them away with his thumbs. “I want most in this world for you to be happy. I don’t know if I deserve it. But I am going to be a shameless man and keep mooching off wherever whatever little I can get.”

Her arms bounded around his neck and he recoiled when her head landed in the crook of his shoulder. Her body began to shake and soft sobs echoed in his skin.

“Ava…” he stroked her back, squeezing her tight. “Shhh.”

“You missed seven years of her life, I missed you, I missed you…”

“Shhh…” tears made their way down the bridge of his nose.

“Samarth she was so little and I wanted to call you and show you her sleeping in her crib, I wanted to send you a photo from a random number because you had blocked mine, I wanted to send you an email with her videos and photos on her first birthday, I wanted to always but I couldn’t. I was so angry and defeated. And you didn’t want an heir, you didn’t want any children to claim your throne. You didn’t want me. I hated the thought of never telling Brahmi about her father. I hated it when I had to make up those stories,” she sobbed. “I became brave and did it all, I asked god for strength to fight off whatever came my way instead of asking for good things to come my way, Samarth I don’t know how these years passed…”

“Shhh…” he croaked. “They passed,” he stroked the back of her head. “Ava, they passed.”

“I have so many memories of her growing up and yet it’s like I have no memory of myself.”

Samarth pulled her back and held the sides of her neck, nudging her face up with his thumbs — “I do.”

Her wet eyes gaped at him.

He rolled his thumbs under her eyes, pushing warm, fresh tears away every time they trickled. “I have memories of you growing these eight years because every morning you grew with me. I saw you, Raje, becoming more and more, wiser and wiser, prettier and prettier,” he pushed some wisps of hair behind her ear, a film of water blurring her to his eyes. “Every part of you ripened, your smile became deeper and settled — like the world had settled into it after all that you had seen. The innocence in your eyes used to make them shine lighter once, it still shone therebut only when you let it. Your face was once impish, the sweetest girl I ever knew. Now it was beautiful — a woman’s face. In my eyes you did grow a few inches too though…” he patted the top of her head and she sobbed, those tears now a deluge as her face crashed into the crook of his neck.

“Shhh,” he patted the back of her head, caressing his hand down the length of her hair. She cried harder, and he kept stroking her hair. It was like the draining of a wound and the rain after a decade of drought all at once. Cleansing, relieving, cathartic. He hated it and loved it. He wanted it to stop and let it run its due course in the same breath. He kept stroking her hair, feeling the sides of his own nose wet with trails. And then, slowly, her wracking body began to settle. He kept stroking her hair, holding her tear-drenched face under his jaw. Her hiccups vibrated into his and he was grateful to god for it. That he got to be the body her hiccups drained into.

“What if Brahmi was not between us today?” She asked.

He thought about it too. And had no answer except — “I would still be yours.”

“But would you have stayed?”

“Look at me, Ava,” he pulled her off him. Their eyes met. “You are that person in my life who has had the misfortune of being loved so completely by me, and loved me just as completely in return that you became a part of me. I sacrificed myself, and you were always a part of me, tossed into the fire I went into. Idid not want you toremain mine. Did not want to toss you into the fire I had chosen for myself. I had hoped you had moved one. I was at my worst to you that day in Nawanagar because I did not want you to again pause your life’s growth for me. But today, if I had found out you had paused it, even without Brahmi, I would have left behind everything to repent the sin I have been to you.Ava, my loyalty is to my kingdom and family but don’t you know it is to you too?”

She blinked, her throat moving; her cheeks wet with tears, her eyes so small.

“You never stayed long enough for me to know.”

Tears tracked down the side of his nose.

“I am staying now.”

“As what?”

“What do you need me to be?”

“Ours?” She asked. Didn’t demand, but asked.

He pulled her close and slammed his mouth over hers. It was breathless, that kiss, with nothing but years pulled and shovelled between them. One atop the other, layers and layers of wanting and missing and regret and repentance. He rose on his knees, his tongue shovelling more layers of need and desperation and the memory of who they were, not only to each other but to themselves. The people they had each abandoned — him for his family and his promises, her for his daughter.

“Raje…” he gasped as she pulled back, panting.

“Let me breathe,” she chuckled through her tears, her chest red and heaving under the tight cut of her spaghetti top.

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