DAISY?
YUVAAN
The report in front of me is about textile export margins.
I've read the same paragraph four times.
I still can't tell what it says.
The words blur together until they're nothing more than black ink scattered across expensive paper. My reading glasses slide halfway down my nose again, and I push them back into place with the practiced motion of someone who's done it so often his hands no longer think about it.
Once upon a time, afternoons were spent racing horses across palace grounds and climbing walls I wasn't supposed to.
Now they disappear beneath balance sheets, board approvals, legal documents, and files thick enough to make my desk disappear beneath them.
This is what thirty looks like.
A study that's never truly empty but somehow always feels quiet.
Outside the tall windows, the winter sun has already begun its slow descent, spilling warm gold across the gardens. The light stretches through the room, painting long shadows over the carpet and the stacks of files waiting for my attention.
Somewhere in the palace, a heavy door slams shut.
I don't even look up anymore. After years inside these walls, every sound has become part of the rhythm of my day. A knock breaks through the silence. Two quick taps.
Must be my coffee. "Come in." My eyes remain on the report. I hear the handle turn. The hinges shift softly and the door opens.
Then . . . Nothing.
No footsteps. No familiar click of the door closing. No quiet movement toward the desk. Just silence. A strange, suspended kind of silence.
The sort that doesn't belong inside this palace.
Over the years, I've learned about this place the way some people learn music.
Every corridor has its own echo.
Every staircase carries footsteps differently.
I know which staff shuffle when they're tired, which guards walk with military precision, which council members clear their throats before speaking. This silence doesn't belong to any of them. It settles beneath my skin before my mind understands why.
Slowly . . . I lift my head.
At first, I only see what my eyes expect to see. A member of the kitchen staff.
Grey uniform.
Silver tray balanced carefully between both hands.
Someone new.
Then something shifts. Inside me. Recognition doesn't arrive all at once.
It unfolds.
Quietly.
Cruelly.
The slight tilt of her head. The way she stands with her weight leaning ever so slightly forward, as though she's bracing herself for whatever comes next. The way her fingers curl beneath the tray—not nervous exactly . . . prepared.
My gaze reaches her face. Everything else disappears.
The hair is different. Time has touched her in ways it touches all of us.
But none of that matters. Because eyes don't forget.
And neither do hearts.
Those eyes . . . I've carried them with me for eight years.
In empty hallways. Across council meetings. In sleepless nights that stretched far longer than they should have. They're the same eyes that used to laugh at me before her mouth did.
The same eyes that looked at me as though I were simply Yuvaan . . . Never Hukum.
Never Maharaja. Just . . . Me.
My heart stumbles. One heavy beat. Then another. Then all at once it feels as though it's forgotten its rhythm entirely. Blood rushes so loudly through my ears that, for a moment, I can't hear anything else.
I don't remember standing. One second I'm sitting behind my desk. The next, the chair scrapes violently across the marble floor as it shoots backwards.
The sound tears through the silence. Neither of us moves. I can't. My body has forgotten how.
Seven years.
Seven years of imagining this moment in a thousand impossible ways.
At airports. At award ceremonies. On crowded Mumbai streets.
Never here. Never like this. Never with a silver tray between us.
"Daisy." The name escapes before I even realise I've spoken.
Soft.
Broken.
Barely louder than a whisper.
It isn't a choice. It's instinct. It's the name my heart learned before it learned how to let her go.
I haven't spoken that name aloud in eight years. I've written it. Hidden it inside journals no one has ever seen. Thought it on birthdays. On festivals. On nights when sleep refused to come.
But never aloud. Never into a room where she could hear it. Now it hangs between us.
Fragile.
Unprotected.
Real.
Her breath catches. I see it before I hear it. Her shoulders rise ever so slightly. The tray trembles. Only for a second. She tightens her grip before the porcelain cup can rattle again, pulling the tray closer to herself like it's the only thing keeping her standing.
Our eyes meet.
God.
They're shining. Not with happiness or surprise. With the exhausting effort of holding something back.
She blinks once. Then again. The way people blink when tears have reached the edge but permission hasn't.
Something inside me cracks. Not loudly. Quietly. Like ice giving way beneath too much weight.
I don't move toward her. Every instinct inside me screams to. To cross the room. To make sure she's real. To hold her before she disappears again.
But I know myself.
If I take even one step . . . I don't know if I'll stop.
Seven years. Seven years of teaching myself restraint. Seven years of becoming the man this palace needed.
Measured.
Composed.
Untouchable.
None of it survives the sight of her standing in my doorway.
Somewhere inside this room . . . The King disappears.
All that's left is the twenty-three-year-old man who stood on a railway platform with a silver daisy in his hand and watched the only person he'd ever loved board a train.
She gathers herself before I do. She always could. Even as children.
If we both fell, she'd stand first then offer me a hand.
She lowers her gaze. One careful step. Then another. She walks toward my desk with controlled, practiced movements, every bit of attention fixed on the coffee balanced in front of her.
Not on me.
She doesn’t look at me at all, and it . . . hurts. She places the cup gently on the polished wood. Steam curls lazily into the air between us.
"Your coffee, Sir."
Sir.
The word lands somewhere deep enough to hurt. I've been called Your Highness.
Hukum.
Maharaj.
Your Majesty.
Countless titles. None of them have ever bothered me. This one does.
Because once . . . I was Pretty Boy.
I was Yuvaan.
I was an idiot.
A nuisance.
Her favourite person to argue with.
Never . . . Sir.
The distance packed inside that single word feels greater than the seven years between us. I open my mouth. I don't even know what I want to say.
Her name.
Why?
Where have you been?
Are you alright?
Did you ever think about me?
Why are you here?
Why didn't you come to me?
A hundred questions rush forward together. None of them make it past my lips. Because she's already turning away. Too quickly. Far too quickly. She's holding the empty tray tightly against her chest now.
Not carrying it. Shielding herself behind it.
Her footsteps are careful.
Fast.
Not the pace of someone leaving after finishing a task.
The pace of someone escaping before she loses the strength to.
"Anamika—" My voice follows her. But she's already reached the door. The wooden panel closes between us with a soft click. The sound is barely audible.
It still feels deafening.
Silence crashes back into the room.
I remain standing exactly where I am, one hand half-raised toward a door that's already closed. The coffee sits untouched on my desk. Thin ribbons of steam rise from the porcelain cup, twisting slowly before disappearing into the afternoon light.
I stare at it without seeing it.
Years of convincing myself I had made peace with losing her if it brought her happiness. Years of burying myself beneath responsibilities until grief became another item on the day's schedule.
I told myself the ache had faded. That time had done what everyone promised it would. That some wounds eventually become scars.
Thirty seconds.
That's all it took.
Thirty seconds in a doorway . . . and every lie I'd spent years carefully building collapsed without putting up a fight.
She's here. Inside this palace. Wearing a kitchen staff uniform. Calling me Sir. Looking at me as though meeting my eyes might undo her.
None of it makes sense. None of it fits the girl who left for Mumbai carrying impossible dreams and a tiny silver daisy around her neck.
She was supposed to fly. She was supposed to build the life she'd planned beneath that old neem tree. She was supposed to come back one day victorious . . . Not like this.
Something happened.
I don't know what.
I don't know when.
But I know her.
Better than I have ever known another soul.
And the woman who stood in my doorway wasn't someone returning home. She looked like someone who hoped I wouldn't recognise her. Someone trying very hard not to be seen.
Slowly, I sink back into my chair. For a long moment, I do nothing except look at the closed door.
Then my eyes fall to the untouched coffee. Cold fear settles somewhere beneath my ribs. Not fear that she's back. Fear because of how she's back.
Whatever brought Anamika home . . . Whatever stole the light that once lived so effortlessly inside her . . . Whatever put that guarded silence in her eyes . . . I will find out.
Because seven years ago, I let the woman I loved walk away believing that loving her meant letting her chase her dreams.
I won't make that mistake twice.
Not when every instinct I have is telling me the girl who once carried sunlight into every room she entered . . . Has been carrying something far heavier all alone.
And this time . . . I'm not letting her go.