Page 328 of A King's Oath

“And you can keep my daughter? That’s fair game?”

Her eyes teared up.

“Are you crying?” He pulled her back. “Raje?” Samarth held her chin, wiping the tears she didn’t know had trickled down her cheeks.

“Nothing can happen to you. Ever. That’s one,” she ordered through her choked throat.

“Noted.”

“And… stop being this… goody-goody.”

“I came with this setting.”

“Pfft!” She rolled her teary eyes. He pulled her into his chest, rubbing her back. Her arms went around him, her hands fisting in the cotton of his shirt. “Shhh,” Samarth pressed his mouth into the top of her head, suffusing her with the discovery of more joy. She cried even more.

“Ava,” he warned.

“I’m good, I’m good.” She rubbed her cheek on his shirt.

“Then wipe your tears and get ready for court. My bench is waiting for my bench partner.”

She pulled out and glared at him — “Don’t sulk if I don’t give you the window seat this time.”

“I won’t if you don’t talk to the walls.”

She burst out laughing. And again her tears began to flow. He kept wiping them off, amused — “We married yesterday and you are crying today. What am I doing wrong?”

“I am also laughing. You are not as bright as they think you are,” she pushed her face into his hands that were cleaning it for her.

“It’s like monsoon in Badrinath,” he kissed her moist cheek, then the corner of her lips, where she assumed he had found those pops of dimples he loved.

“The sun shining bright,” Samarth declared, “while the clouds continue to drizzle. The most beautiful scenery of all.”

The sobs she had settled with this sparring erupted with a vengeance and she went on tiptoes, embracing him. His body curved over hers, squeezing her tight. He laughed, she laughed and cried, and her hiccups melded into wheezes. Their bellies shook and their bodies tightened into one another.

“I promise it will be like this, Raje.” His murmur sounded in her ear.

“You and your promises,” she snorted, hiding her face in the crook of his neck. He made space for her.

Joy.

This discovery of joy.

She knew now it was nowhere close to ending. With Samarth Sinh Solanki, it was an ongoing, evolving process. And now, thank god, eternal too.

Epilogue

— SAMARTH —

“He was so big!” Brahmi’s eyes blew up to big Os, her hand held tight in his. Samarth squeezed it, descending the steps of Badrinath.

“Now imagine how big Laxmiji must have become to protect him,” he lifted her up in his arms for Ava to fix her shoes into her feet.

“Like that,” Ava pointed to the ber tree in the distance. “Big and broad.”

“Is she still a tree?” Brahmi asked, twining her arms around his neck.

“She is a tree if you see her as a tree. You think she is still a tree for him?”

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