The Maharaja's Scarred Crown

DEPARTURE OF MY HEART

YUVAAN

The station has a way of making every goodbye look ordinary.

People rush past us with overstuffed suitcases, vendors weave through the crowd shouting over one another, a child cries because his balloon has slipped from his hand, and somewhere above it all, a woman on the announcement system repeats the arrival of a delayed train in a voice so practiced it has forgotten what urgency sounds like.

Everything is moving. Everything except me.

I stand rooted to the platform, my hands buried deep inside my pockets, watching the girl in front of me wrestle with the strap of an old canvas duffel bag. The zipper catches halfway. She frowns at it, mutters something under her breath, and gives it another impatient tug.

I've watched those hands do a hundred different things over the years—smudge charcoal across paper, braid flowers into impossible little crowns, steal mangoes from the palace orchard, patch torn clothes because buying new ones wasn't always an option for her.

Today they're trembling. Barely. Just enough for me to notice. She would hate knowing that I noticed.

Anamika has always been like that. Fierce enough to carry the world herself, stubborn enough to refuse help even when the weight is clearly too much.

I almost smile. Almost. Because I know exactly why her fingers won't stay still. This is it. The train waiting beside us isn't just taking her to another city. It's taking her toward the life she's spent years building in scraps.

I've seen those scraps.

Crinkled notebook pages filled with her ambitious goals instead of lecture notes.

Business ideas jotted on pages she thought no one noticed.

Tiny sketches of storefronts she'd drawn during boring conversations.

Lists of people she wanted to learn from.

Cities she wanted to see. Dreams she guarded so carefully that she'd only ever let me read them.

She used to sit beneath the neem tree behind the old servants' quarters and tell me, with complete certainty, “One day I'll leave this place.”

Not because she hated it.

Because she refused to let it become the biggest thing that ever happened to her.

And now . . . Now she's actually doing it.

A part of me wants to laugh because she did it and I am so proud of her.

Another part wants to stop this train with my bare hands.

The feeling sits somewhere beneath my ribs, heavy and unfamiliar.

It isn't jealousy. It isn't fear either.

It's the quiet ache of realizing someone's dream has finally arrived .

. . and it doesn't have room for you in it.

"You've disappeared again." Her voice pulls me back before I lose myself completely. I blink. She's looking up at me now, one eyebrow raised, lips curved into the tiniest smile. The station lights paint soft gold across her face, catching loose strands of hair that have escaped her braid.

"You do this," she says, pointing a finger at me. "You go completely silent and then start staring into nothing like you're personally responsible for fixing the country's problems."

A laugh almost escapes me. Almost. Instead, I shrug one shoulder. "I was wondering how long it'd take before you lost your ticket."

"I am perfectly capable of taking care of one ticket."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"You checked your pocket three times in the last five minutes."

"I did not."

She immediately pats her jacket pocket. The rectangular outline of the ticket is still there. Only then does she realize what she's done. "Oh, shut up."

I can't help it. I laugh. It's quiet, but it's real. "There she is," I murmur.

"What?"

"The overconfident liar."

She rolls her eyes dramatically before bumping her shoulder against mine. "I'm not nervous."

"Hm."

"I'm excited."

"Hm."

"I'm ready." This time I believe her. Not because her voice doesn't shake. Because it does. Not because her eyes aren't glassy. Because they are. I believe her because I've known Anamika long enough to recognize the difference between fear and courage.

Fear makes you step back. Courage boards the train anyway. "You'll do well," I say quietly. She looks at me for a second, searching my face as though trying to figure out whether I'm saying it just to make her feel better. "I'm serious."

"I know."

Neither of us says anything after that.

Some silences don't ask to be filled.

My fingers close around the small box inside my pocket. I've been carrying it since morning. I must've taken it out ten times before coming here, wondering if this was stupid. Wondering if it would mean too much. Wondering if it wouldn't mean enough.

It isn't expensive. It isn't royal. It isn't even something anyone else would look at twice.

That's exactly why I chose it. No palace jeweller. No family crest. No reminder of who I was born as. Just . . . something from me.

I pull the tiny velvet box from my pocket. "Here."

She blinks. "What's this?"

"A good luck present."

Her forehead wrinkles immediately. "Yuvaan . . . "

"Just open it." She lifts the lid slowly.

Nestled inside is a delicate silver chain with a tiny daisy pendant. Nothing extravagant. Nothing loud. Just a flower.

For a long moment, she doesn't speak.

Her fingertips brush over the petals so gently that it almost looks like she's afraid they'll disappear.

A memory flashes through my head without permission.

Anamika at nine years old, sitting cross-legged in the palace gardens, making crooked daisy chains because she insisted roses were overrated.

"They're too busy trying to impress everyone," she'd declared with complete seriousness. "Daisies just exist."

I'd laughed so hard she'd thrown one at my face. I never told her I kept that flower pressed inside a book for nearly three years. "You . . . " she whispers, unable to complete the sentence as if it’s costing her something. Maybe it is.

I remember everything about you, I want to say. The first day you climbed the palace wall because you refused to use the gate.

The scar on your knee from falling off my bicycle. The way you scrunch your nose when tea has too much sugar. The birthdays you pretended didn't matter. The dreams you spoke about only after making me promise I wouldn't laugh.

I remember all of it. I just nod instead.

"Wear it," I say. "Or don't. Throw it in a drawer if you hate it."

She looks up so quickly I almost regret the joke. "I could never hate something you picked."

God.

She says things like that so easily. She has no idea what they do to me.

Before I can stop myself, I reach out and curl my fingers around hers, closing the little box in her hand.

"Just . . . " My voice catches for half a second before I steady it.

"Keep it somewhere safe. So you don't forget this town completely once you're off becoming someone important. "

She smiles. Not the bright grin she gives everyone else. The softer one. The one I've always secretly believed belonged only to me.

"I will."

The final whistle cuts through the station. Sharp. Merciless. People begin climbing into the train in a hurry. Porters shout. Doors slam. Someone calls out for their father.

Time, which had seemed frozen until now, lurches forward all at once.

Anamika looks toward the compartment before looking back at me.

Neither of us moves. Not immediately. Then she steps forward and wraps her arms around me.

The hug is quick. Far too quick. But it steals every coherent thought from my head anyway. She smells faintly of sandalwood soap and old books.

Home. That’s what she is to me.

"I could never forget you, Pretty Boy," she murmurs against my shoulder.

The nickname lands exactly where it always has.

Except today, instead of making me grumble, it breaks something quietly inside me.

I force myself to smile before she pulls away. "Go," I say.

If she waits another second, I don't know if I'll still be strong enough to let her. She nods once. Then she turns.

I watch her weave through the crowd, one hand gripping the duffel bag, the other still wrapped around the little velvet box.

She doesn't look back immediately.

She always looks back.

Just before climbing the steps into the coach, she pauses.

Our eyes meet across the chaos of the platform. She lifts the box ever so slightly.

A promise. A thank you. A goodbye.

Then she's gone.

The train jerks forward with a metallic groan. Slowly. Painfully. I stand where I am long after the last compartment disappears around the bend.

People brush past my shoulder.

The platform empties. Another train arrives. Another family reunites. Another goodbye begins somewhere behind me.

Life moves on with astonishing ease. Mine doesn't.

Because somewhere between the first whistle and the last glimpse of her disappearing through that train door . . . my heart left this station too.