Chapter 10
Ektha found me in a crumpled heap at the base of the stepwell. I didn’t spare her a second glance as she descended the stairs without making a sound. She didn’t ask any questions as she moved my skirts and sat beside me. Without thinking, I put my head in her lap, and she gently stroked my hair.
Her fingertips brushed against my scalp, reminding me of the times she would massage oil into my hair.
After our mother died, it was Ektha who made sure I kept dreaming, especially in the dark when the nightmares came hunting.
She’d sneak to my room and warm oil over the fire as we whispered to each other, creating fantasies in the smoke.
As we’d stared into the flames and made sure not to spill, we’d giggle together and create our fantasy of the future.
Ektha would bring prosperity to Ullal as its rajkumari, and I’d be at her side, fighting for its glory.
We felled imaginary foes and whispered dreams of change.
We encouraged even the wildest hopes, vowing to support each other and bring them to fruition.
Inevitably, I would get carried away and start acting out my adventures on the seas, and Ektha would have to shush me and scurry back to her rooms. By then, I could sleep in peace and have the courage to face the next day.
But that time had long gone.
Somehow, we’d gone from sisters who shared, protected, and defended each other’s dreams to .
. . this. Instead of sharing her secrets, Ektha had kept them from me.
She had planned my future with Uncle Trimulya and Nikith and hadn’t bothered to invite me to the conversation.
She had agreed to send me to another nation, married to a fool of a man who didn’t even have the decency to have a hair out of place so I could hate him more.
But it wasn’t his fault, really. What hurt was that the people I loved the most wanted me to leave. They were convinced their lives would be better if I was gone.
I tried to stop the tears—to stuff them where they belonged—but there was no holding them back.
They came out in torrents, leaving me heaving for breaths in between my sobs.
I stuffed my face into Ektha’s sari, sullying the pale blue cloth with my tears and leaving behind a mask of my face.
Each sob pushed me farther down into the fabric until my nose brushed against the cold stone below.
Ektha lifted me by my shoulders and tried to bring us face to face, but I couldn’t see her through my curtain of tears.
I hated this. I needed to stop. But I couldn’t.
When I tried to inhale deeply, each breath was cut short by a sob that I couldn’t keep down.
Ektha wrapped me in a hug, and my tears soaked her shoulder as well.
“I am here,” she murmured as she stroked the back of my head. “I am here, and we will fix this.”
How could she say that? How could she even think that? Nothing she could do would change our uncle’s mind; the marriage was all but agreed upon already.
“Fix it for whom?” I asked through my sobs. “For me or for you?”
“I cannot be happy unless you are.” She kept stroking my head. “For us. We will fix this for us.”
Impossible. She wanted me to get married, and I didn’t want to leave. There was no way to fix it for us.
But she was offering to help, which was more than I thought she would do. Would it be enough? No way to know for now, but at least I wasn’t so alone. At least she cared.
The tears finally slowed, and my breath became calmer even though my heart still pounded. I gave Ektha a squeeze before sitting up from our embrace and wiping my eyes.
“I’m so sorry.” Ektha’s voice was thick and heavy.
“I tried to talk sense into Uncle Trimulya when Nikith told me the plan, but you know how he gets. Nikith tried to help too, but in the end, our uncle commanded him to go to Banghervari, and my husband had no choice. We wanted to tell you—I tried to speak to you alone, but you were always so busy . . .”
Her voice trailed off, and she looked down at her hands in her lap. Her lips trembled.
Memories of all the times Ektha had tried to talk to me floated in my head: the significant glances she gave me at mealtimes before I bolted out to do some errand or another, the worry etched into her face when I was shooting with Parushi, the clues she’d dropped in the hallway when we were summoned by our uncle.
I’d brushed so much off because I’d thought she wanted to talk about Samanth, but in reality, she’d been trying to warn me about this.
She had tried to reach out, and I hadn’t listened.
I took her hands and covered them with mine. “You tried. I should have made sure I spoke to you. I thought . . . well, never mind. But I was wrong.”
“Not entirely,” Ektha admitted, reading my thoughts. “I wanted to make sure you were giving yourself time to grieve too.”
“I’m fine.” It was a reflex by now.
“Clearly.” Her voice became very quiet. “I haven’t seen you cry like this in years.”
“Because crying is a waste of water.” I tried to give her a little smile and shrug it off, but the corners of my mouth remained stubbornly downturned.
“Abbakka.” Ektha cradled my face in her hand. “You don’t need to bury everything. I am here to help. I may not fight with a sword or a bow, but I will stand by your side and battle in my own way. You just need to talk to me so we can fight together.”
I rose and started pacing the periphery of the stepwell. “What is there to do about it? You said it yourself: Our uncle has made up his mind, and he has commanded me to marry Raja Lakshmappa.”
“And you don’t want to marry him.” It was a statement, but Ektha’s eyebrows asked a question.
I dipped my foot into the water and splashed it with a kick as I made my way back. “The man has no sense! It doesn’t matter how pretty his face is if there’s not a brain behind it!”
Ektha looked at me in wide-eyed surprise. “You’ve met him?”
“Um . . . yes,” I said, blinking. I would have laughed at Ektha’s bewildered expression if it hadn’t been so hard to figure out what I wanted to say. Why was it always so difficult to speak of the wretched man? “His horse was scared of the storm and ran wild in a field I was checking yesterday.”
“You found his horse in a field? How did you know it was his?”
“Well, he was riding it at the time.” I paced faster, as if it would force my mind to do the same. “Rather poorly. Completely destroyed the field before we were done. But today he said that he paid for the damage, so I guess I can’t be angry about that.”
“Today?” Ektha stood. Her voice had reached a shockingly high pitch now, and it echoed through the stepwell. “You saw him today?”
I stopped and gestured with my hands until I could find the words. “I came down here this morning to play my tambura, and he found me here. He said he’d paid for the fields, and he was sweet and funny and far too charming for his own good, but that doesn’t mean I want to marry him.”
Ektha looked from me to the tambura, which lay on the ground. She bit her lip. “Do you remember when we started to play the tambura?”
“Yes, I’m sure I don’t want to—wait, what?” I stopped as I realized what Ektha had actually asked me. “When we learned to play? We were just kids. Uncle Trimulya insisted we had to learn since Mother used to play.”
My sister nodded and picked up the instrument.
She rested the base on her leg, just as we’d been taught, so its long neck came up straight and pointed to the sky.
But she didn’t embrace it. Ektha and the tambura were settled side by side, like new acquaintances, instead of coming together to find the peace and comfort of an old friendship.
Ever so cautiously, Ektha strummed some of the exercises we’d learned as children.
The strings hummed as Ektha spoke. “From the moment our uncle said we had to learn, you hated the idea. You stomped and refused to even touch the instrument during our first lesson.” She laughed.
“You even turned away from the instructor as he played. You sat there cross-legged and facing the corner, while I was completely transfixed. I tried so hard to learn it all—I had dreams of going down in history as a rani who could charm even the toughest of Ullal’s enemies with my singing and playing. Don’t laugh.”
I did my best to suppress my smile.
Ektha met my eyes before she continued. “But when I went to practice later, it was all wrong. You heard me struggling, and you came and showed me. You played better than I could, and that was when you’d had your back turned the whole time.
I promised not to tell anyone how good you were, but eventually, you started to face the instructors when they taught.
Once you gave the tambura a chance, you found an instrument that you loved. That you still love.”
She handed the large stringed instrument to me, and I took it from her as I said, “You play better than you think.”
“You lie about as well as I play.” Ektha chuckled good-naturedly, then became solemn.
“But maybe you should consider getting to know Raja Lakshmappa. You’ve said many things about him, but the worst thing you’ve had to say is that he’s a poor horseman.
I know our uncle has commanded you to marry him, but don’t hold that against him.
Give him a chance. If you don’t want to marry him, I’ll find a way for you to get out of this engagement. ”
“But how?” I wrinkled my nose. “How could you possibly—”
“I am the next rani of Ullal,” Ektha said. She pulled herself up tall, and the winds picked up, brushing her hair off her face and lifting the long pallu of the sari hanging off her shoulder. “If you don’t want to get married, I will make sure it doesn’t happen.”
She grinned at my blushing face. “And if, by chance, you do love him, I will make sure it does.”
Words escaped me. How was it possible to lose the entirety of one’s vocabulary at the mere mention of a single person?
One day I would learn how to speak quickly about that man, and Spirits help them all when that day came.
For now, though, I stood in front of my sister and scrambled to find some words to fill the silence and wipe the smirk off her face.
But before I could respond, a chorus of horns rang out, cracking the silence of the skies with a hammer of sound.