EPILOGUE
YUVAAN
"If one more person asks me whether I'm craving something sweet, I swear I'm going to throw that entire fruit bowl at their head."
I look up from the report I've been pretending to read for the last ten minutes and find my wife standing in the doorway of my study, one hand braced against the frame, the other resting protectively over the enormous curve of her stomach.
She's seven months pregnant, exhausted, uncomfortable, and apparently at war with a bowl of perfectly innocent mangoes. "I haven't asked you anything," I point out carefully.
"You were thinking about asking."
I lower the report. "How exactly can you hear me thinking?"
"I've known you since I was a child. And we have been married for three years. I've developed the ability."
She makes her way into the room with the slow, careful steps she's been taking lately, lowering herself into the armchair opposite my desk with a sigh so dramatic that I have to bite back a smile.
"My back hurts," she announces. "My feet are swollen. I can't sleep properly. I can't bend down without reconsidering every decision I've ever made. And this morning Sara told me I waddle like Kairav Chacha's goose."
I make the mistake of speaking before thinking. "She isn't entirely wrong."
Silence.
I look up. Anamika is staring at me. I immediately put the report down. "I meant that affectionately."
"You have approximately three seconds to recover this conversation."
"You look beautiful."
"Better."
"Radiant."
Her mouth twitches.
"Pregnant in an extremely dignified and regal way."
"Keep going." She hums.
I smile, “I love you, and you are quite literally the love of my life.”
She tries to hold on to the glare, but the corner of her mouth gives her away. "I'll allow it."
"Thank you."
She settles deeper into the chair, one palm slowly moving over her stomach. The irritation drains from her face as quickly as it arrived, leaving behind the tiredness I've been noticing more often lately. "I'm sorry," she murmurs. "I don't mean to snap at everyone."
I come around the desk and crouch in front of her. "You don't have to apologize."
Before she can protest, I take one of her feet gently into my hands.
She exhales.
"There." I press my thumbs carefully into the arch of her foot, and her eyes close almost immediately. "You're learning."
"I've had three years."
"Still.” I emphasize, “Also," I add, glancing up at her, "I happen to be very invested in keeping my wife happy."
"Your wife is currently being held hostage by a watermelon."
I chuckle lightly. "I've been meaning to have a word with our child."
She laughs softly, and I feel something in my chest loosen at the sound. "Don't you dare blame the baby," she says. "They haven't even been born yet."
"Then we'll start negotiations early."
She shakes her head, but she's smiling now.
I keep massaging her foot while she leans back, eyes closed, and for a few minutes neither of us says anything.
Three years.
Sometimes I still catch myself thinking the number doesn't make sense.
Three years ago, I was still learning how to say I love you without feeling as though I'd handed someone the most vulnerable piece of myself I owned.
Now I know exactly how she takes her tea now, which side of the bed she prefers when she's exhausted, which kind of silence means she's thinking and which means she's upset.
I know the way she presses her lips together when she's trying not to laugh and the tiny crease that appears between her eyebrows when she's worried about someone else.
And now I know exactly how she looks when she's carrying our child. I never imagined I'd get to know any of this.
"Where's Sara?" she asks, opening one eye.
"In the garden."
"Doing what?"
"Reading."
She gives me a suspicious look. "Actually reading?"
"She has a book."
"That wasn't my question."
I smile. "She is actually reading."
"Good." She closes her eyes again.
"She's decided she needs to finish all the books in the children's section before the baby arrives." I laugh under my breath. "She has also made a schedule."
Anamika opens both eyes. "What schedule?"
"For after the baby is born."
"Oh, no."
"She showed it to me yesterday."
"And?"
"I was told very clearly that I would be responsible for following it."
Anamika groans. "Of course."
"Apparently she is Chief Supervisor."
"Of course she is."
"And she has assigned herself the first holding shift."
"She'll have to negotiate with me."
"Good luck."
Before Anamika can answer, the door opens without a knock. Sara walks in with a book tucked underneath one arm, looks at me, looks at her mother, and immediately takes in the fact that I'm sitting on the floor with her mother's foot in my lap. "Mumma's being difficult again?"
Anamika doesn't even open her eyes. "I am sitting right here."
"I know." Sara walks over and climbs onto the arm of the chair. "I asked Papa because he tells me the truth."
I look at my daughter. "That sounds like an accusation."
"It's not."
Anamika mutters something under her breath that sounds suspiciously like "traitor."
Sara ignores her. Instead, she reaches behind her back and produces a mango. It is bruised. It is slightly misshapen. It also has a very clear thumbprint pressed into one side. She holds it out to her mother with both hands. "I brought you this."
Anamika opens her eyes. She stares at the mango. Then at Sara. "But I said I didn't want anyone asking me if I wanted something sweet."
"I didn't ask." Sara's expression is completely serious. "I brought it."
For a second, Anamika simply looks at her.
Then she starts laughing. Not the polite little laugh she gives at formal dinners.
Not the soft one she uses when she's trying not to wake Sara.
A real laugh. Her shoulders shake, her eyes squeeze shut, and she reaches up to pull Sara into her arms. "You are impossible. "
"I know."
"And I love you."
"I know that too."
I watch them, and the feeling that moves through me is so familiar now that I almost don't notice it anymore.
Almost.
There are moments when I look at them and remember the palace before they were here.
How quiet it used to be. How every room felt larger than it needed to.
How meals were eaten with perfect posture and very little conversation.
How the gardens were maintained flawlessly and yet somehow never felt alive.
How I once convinced myself that the silence was simply what came with responsibility.
I didn't understand then that a house could be beautiful and still feel empty. Now I can't imagine how I ever mistook the two.
"Papa?" Sara's voice pulls me back.
"Hm?"
"When the baby comes, will you still give me a flower every day?" The question is casual. Almost careless.
But I know my daughter well enough to understand what sits underneath it. I reach for her hand. "Of course."
"Even when you're busy with the baby?"
"Especially then." She studies my face for a moment. "And the baby gets flowers too?"
"Every day."
She nods. "Okay."
Apparently, that settles the matter. She returns to her book. Anamika's fingers find mine a moment later. She doesn't look at me when she says, "She worries."
"I know."
"She'll worry that she'll be replaced."
"I know."
I squeeze her hand. "She won't be."
Her thumb moves slowly over my knuckles. "I know."
There is something about the way she says it that makes me turn toward her. She isn't looking at me anymore. She's looking at Sara. At our daughter. At the little girl who once called me Mister and now asks whether I will still remember her flowers after her sibling arrives. Anamika smiles.
It's different from the smile she wore when she first came back to Devgarh. There is no apology in it. No hesitation. No glance around the room to see whether she's taking up too much space. She simply smiles.
I think about Daisy's Books.
It has grown far beyond the little shop she first opened with more hope than money. The children's corner is always crowded now, especially on weekends, and Sara insists that every new child who walks in needs to be shown the "good books" personally.
Anamika pretends to be annoyed by this. She secretly loves it. And then there is the foundation.
The work she started after everything she had spent years keeping buried finally came into the light has become something much larger than either of us imagined.
Legal support. Counseling. Emergency accommodation.
Women who arrive frightened and uncertain and leave with paperwork in their hands, somewhere safe to sleep, someone willing to listen.
She never calls it hers. The letterhead carries her name because the board insisted. Whenever someone praises her for it, she redirects the praise toward the women who walk through those doors.
I have watched her do it more times than I can count. I have watched her sit across from women who remind her of herself at twenty one and speak to them without pity.
You are not ruined. You are not alone. You still have a life.
She never says those words as though she's preaching them. She says them like someone who has finally learned to believe them herself.
I look at her now. Seven months pregnant. Barefoot. Hair falling messily over one shoulder. One hand still holding mine. The other resting over the child growing beneath her heart.
And I think about the woman sitting on the floor of my study years ago, surrounded by a wooden box filled with things she'd once given me, asking me what could possibly be left in her worth loving. I wish I could take that girl by the shoulders and bring her here.
Not to show her the palace. Not the title. Not the wealth.
This.
Her daughter laughing beside her. A husband sitting at her feet. A second child on the way. A bookshop that belongs entirely to her. A life she chose. A life she built. A life that doesn't require her to apologize for existing inside it.
"Papa." I look at Sara again.
She's watching me over the top of her book. "Yes?"
"Are you thinking too much?"
I smile. "Probably."
She nods wisely. "You do that."
Anamika laughs. "She gets that from me."
"No," I say. "You worry too much. I think too much. There is a difference."
She turns toward me. "Is there?"
"No."
She smiles.
Outside the study windows, the afternoon sun has begun its slow descent, spilling gold across the garden. Somewhere beyond the glass, birds are making a ridiculous amount of noise in the trees. Sara turns a page. Anamika shifts in her chair and winces when the baby moves.
I immediately look up. "What?"
"Nothing."
"Was that a kick?"
"Yes."
I stand. "Can I—?"
She smiles and reaches for my hand. I kneel beside her again, placing my palm carefully against the curve of her stomach. For a few seconds, nothing happens.
Then—A tiny movement beneath my hand.
I stop breathing.
Anamika looks down at me. "Did you feel that?"
I nod. I don't trust my voice. No matter how many times I experience this, it still leaves me a bit speechless. Another small kick comes beneath my palm. And somehow, after everything, it still feels impossible. There is a child in there. Our child.
Someone who doesn't even know our names yet. Someone who has never seen this palace or the garden or the bookshop. Someone who hasn't met Sara, hasn't been given their first flower. But they are already loved.
Completely.
Before we've even seen their face.
"Do you think they'll look like me?" Anamika asks softly.
"I hope so."
She raises an eyebrow. "Why?"
"Because then I'll get to fall in love with your face all over again."
She rolls her eyes. "That was terrible."
"You smiled."
Sara looks up from her book. "Are you flirting again?"
Anamika covers her face.
I laugh. "Apparently."
"You're both weird."
"Go back to your book, Chief Supervisor."
She does. Anamika leans her head against my shoulder. I keep my hand against her stomach. For a while, nobody speaks. And I think this is what I never understood when I was younger. I thought happiness would feel bigger.
More dramatic.
Something I would recognize the moment it arrived. Instead, it feels like this. My wife's head against my shoulder. My daughter's voice turning pages beside us. A tiny foot moving beneath my hand.
The afternoon sun warming the floor. A mango sitting abandoned on the table. A report I will probably never finish.
Nothing extraordinary.
Everything extraordinary.
Once, this palace taught me that love was a dangerous thing to want.
Now every corner of it seems to prove the opposite.
There are flowers in the garden because Anamika likes them.
There are books stacked beside Sara's bed because she refuses to put them away.
There are crayons in rooms where crayons absolutely should not be.
There are photographs on walls I once kept empty.
There is laughter at breakfast. Arguments over mangoes. Small shoes left in hallways.
A child's voice calling me Papa as though the word has always belonged there. And soon there will be another voice. Another pair of footsteps. Another little person who will make this house louder and messier and somehow even more ours.
I look at Anamika. She catches me staring. "What?"
"Nothing."
She narrows her eyes. "You're thinking again."
I smile. "I'm just thinking that I got very lucky."
Her expression softens. "You did."
I laugh.
She nudges my shoulder. "Don't let it go to your head."
"Too late." She shakes her head, but she laughs. I take her hand and bring it to my lips, pressing a kiss against her knuckles. Three years ago, I thought getting her back would be the end of the story.
I was wrong.
Getting her back was only the beginning. The rest has been built slowly.
A woman who learned she could be loved without earning it first. A little girl who chose me and never once looked back. And now a baby waiting to join us.
She came back. She stayed. And somewhere along the way, without either of us noticing exactly when it happened, we stopped rebuilding the life we'd lost.
We built a different one.
Ours.
I look around the room again. At Sara reading. At Anamika beside me. At my hand resting over the tiny life moving beneath hers.
And for the first time in my life, I don't feel like I'm waiting for the next thing I have to protect, the next decision I have to make, the next responsibility the crown is going to place in front of me.
I am simply here.
Exactly where I want to be.
And when Anamika reaches for my hand again, I lace my fingers through hers and hold on. Not because I'm afraid of losing her anymore. Just because I can. Because she's here. Because we're here. Because this is home.
And because, after everything it took to get us here, I intend to spend the rest of my life making sure she never has to wonder whether staying was worth it.