CHAPTER 43
The Sundress and the Two Chits
POORVI
The mirror gives back a version of me I don’t always recognize.
My hair tumbles in loose waves over my shoulders, dark and glossy where the light catches it.
The sundress Sitara insisted I wear—pale, soft cotton with tiny blue flowers—makes my collarbones look fragile in a way that makes my stomach flip.
There’s a faint dusting of kohl at my eyes, a touch of color on my lips, something I painted on because Sitara said I had to “step out of princess mode” for a night.
Sitara has opinions about everything; tonight, hers involved me looking like a girl who might laugh in sunlit courtyards instead of someone who camouflages herself in the palace shadows.
I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, one leg tucked under me, the other hanging off, and there’s an odd newness to the way the fabric brushes my knees.
The dress feels airy and too intimate at once, like a borrowed identity.
I like the way it makes me look—softer, perhaps—but like most parts of this life, softness brings vulnerability.
It’s one thing to be kind, to smile, to be pleasant in a gathering where there’s noise and distance and the anonymity of public faces.
It’s another to be small and unarmored in front of someone I know will see all the pieces I usually hide.
Sitara had been merciless. “You have been living in lehengas or kurtis forever. Tonight, you’re experimenting.
No one is forcing you to wear a fourteen-yard garment.
” She had pinned a tiny paper flower to my hair like a conspirator and dragged me to Meher’s room for a quick pep talk.
Meher had been calm and practical as always—“A sundress is fine. Wear what makes you breathe easier, Poorvi.”—and the two of them had sealed the deal with a shared look that made me feel both ridiculous and loved.
I should be able to shrug this off. I should be able to walk out the door and not turn into a spinning top.
But there is a nervous coil in my belly that tightens every time I imagine the evening ahead.
He hasn’t said where we’re going. He hasn’t given any hint, not even a tiny one.
Part of me liked that unpredictability—it meant he had planned something—and part of me wanted the safety of knowing.
The pond, a small café by the palace gardens…
or some restaurant with too-bright chandeliers and too-much attention.
I picture all of them and then crumple the images like paper boats.
I am lost in this half-worry when the gate clicks and the room seems to arrive late to reality. The door opens; a sliver of corridor light slips in.
He fills the doorway without ceremony. Vihaan stands like he always does—composed, a little deliberately casual, a tailored kurta that fits him like it was stitched to the exact lines of his bones.
My breath stumbles. It always does, even after weeks of sharing a bed and a life where whispers of “I love you” have been said and received.
There is something about him that rearranges the air.
He pauses at the threshold and his whole face changes—like someone tuned a soft light and it landed exactly where he needed it.
He looks at me the way someone might admire a painting they didn’t know they needed.
He closes the distance in three effortless steps.
I am suddenly aware of every thread of fabric between us, as if clothing were the last reluctant barrier.
I’m aware of myself even more when he doesn’t say anything, I fumble around with my sleeves. I laugh—a short, embarrassed sound. “I… Sitara…”
Before I can finish with any dignified rebuttal, his hand is at my face.
He takes my spectacles, which are on the table, lifts them gently, and there is tenderness in the motion that makes the world narrow to two hands and one face.
He kisses the bridge of my nose —a soft, proprietary kiss—then, with a small theatrical smile, he puts the glasses back on me.
His fingers linger at the temple. “There. Beautiful,” he says, and the word is so easy and so sure that my heart doffs a miniature salute.
I want to protest. I want to tell him he’s ridiculous to fuss over something so small. I want to say that it’s just a dress. But instead, I feel heat rise in my cheeks and I find myself fumbling with the hem, unable to find the right words that aren’t all ridiculous and human.
He moves to stand behind me and the world tilts. For a brief, private beat he presses his forehead to the back of my head, hums something like a laugh I feel more than hear, and murmurs, “You look like spring.”
“Spring?” I frown.
He smiles gently. “Yeah. Spring.” He strokes my cheek with the back of his hand, “Spring… not just because of the dress. It’s the way you walk in and suddenly everything feels lighter.
Like the air gets softer, like I can breathe easier just by looking at you.
You know how the first day of spring makes you believe maybe the world isn’t as cruel as winter made it seem?
That’s what you do to me. You make me feel like life still has warmth in it…
like I don’t have to carry the cold alone. ”
Spring. Of all the metaphors. It is honest and bright and quietly devastating. I let myself be cheered by it despite the protest in my chest that tells me to be practical, to keep my heart armored.
He draws two small chits from his pocket, folded slips of paper so ordinary they’re almost silly. He holds each one delicately, one in each hand, like a magician about to reveal a trick. “Pick one,” he says, soft and pleased at his own mischief.
A beat of me is stubborn. “Why?” I ask.
He smiles that coy half smile he has. “Just pick, Poorvi.”
The room seems to tilt a bit toward him. Maybe it’s the way he asks; not demanding, not coercive, just inviting. I huff—demonstrably, theatrically—and reach out. His hands aren’t cold at all. When I choose—the right-hand chit—he snatches it away before my fingers have fully closed around it.
“It’s not for you to read,” he teases, but there’s a quick, possessive gleam in his eyes that has nothing to do with mischief. He presses my hand to his lips and kisses my knuckles, careful and reverent. Then he grins, a foxish, utterly vulnerable-to-him grin. “Close your eyes. No peeking.”
He guides me to the doorway, and for a moment I sense a ridiculous, childish thrill: he’s creating suspense for me as if I’m a child at a fair. I hate that it makes me feel like smiling even when I fight it.
“Ready?” he asks, his breath warm in my ear.
“Yes.” My voice comes out small.
He guides me with a hand at my elbow, gentle, the movement deliberate and careful. I trust him entirely in matters small and large. That trust is still a bright, trembling thing in me; I cradle it, worried I might crush it if I fuss too roughly.
He leads me through a corridor that smells faintly of sandalwood and papers. We pause at the threshold and his fingers dance in my palm for one heartbeat. “No peeking,” he reminds, and the mischief in his voice is a soft drumbeat that thrills me.
I stand in the dark for a moment, my lashes resting against my cheeks. The world narrows to his steady chest near my back, the quiet air in my lungs, and the tiny flutter of anxiety in my belly that translates into a ridiculous, hopeful kind of giddiness.
Then he draws me inside.
When I open my eyes, I’m breathing too quickly — not from exertion but from the sudden, exquisite impossibility of what I see.
The room is a private library carved out of a wide study, the walls lined floor to ceiling with books.
The light is soft, warm, amber-glow, and an armchair sits by the window that frames the palace pond like a living painting.
A low rug cushions the floor. Small cushions are scattered as if people had just gotten up a moment ago.
There are two reading lamps, shelves labeled in neat little script, and—my breath catches—the very books I’ve been reaching for for weeks: psychology texts arranged within arm’s reach, and alongside them, a small selection of literary fiction I’d whispered about in passing.
My entire body loosens and tightens at once. Someone has done this. Someone has listened. Someone has given my scattered, battered library of broken hopes a home.
He watches me with an expression that has surrendered the last of his theatrical mischief.
“I shifted all the psychology books you ordered,” he says quietly, and his voice trembles a little with something like pride.
“And most of the literary fiction, too. I didn’t want you spending your time trying to walk in the old wing. ”
I am stunned into silence. For a moment my mouth cannot make the shape of thank you. My chest is a balloon on the verge of bursting with things I haven’t learned to say cleanly. The space between us is warm and full and terribly intimate.
It is absurdly small, and yet it frees the part of me that needed permission to breathe.
“You did this?” I ask, not sure I’m asking or telling the room I’m in.
He nods, stepping closer until his hand skims the small of my back.
“I did,” he says. “I thought it might be easier if the books were here. If the place you needed was nearer. If being with knowledge could feel like safety and not a trap.” He watches me carefully.
“But I also thought—later—if you feel brave, we could go together to the old library. If you want to.
“If not, we can make this one our little corner.” His smile is a fragile, secretive thing that makes my eyes sting.
I haven’t planned this—none of my life has made room for gestures like this.
He did not move the whole library (thank god for smaller pragmatic reasonableness), but he moved the books that mattered for me, into a room that belonged to us tonight.
It feels like a bridge built across the thing I feared.