CHAPTER 26
Strokes of Silence
MEHER
The marble under my feet feels too cold for this hour of the morning. My slippers make the faintest sound against the polished floor, but in this place, even silence seems to echo.
The palace is strange on days when I don’t have to rush for school.
Those days are filled with routine—alarm, hurried breakfast, chatter with children, the noise of classrooms, and the comfortable exhaustion that follows.
But here, when nothing demands my time, the walls themselves feel too tall, too distant.
Like they’re watching me, reminding me I don’t quite belong.
I try not to think about that, so I keep walking.
My hands trail along carved wooden panels, glossy and dark with years of polish.
Outside, sunlight sneaks through the long corridor windows, spilling across the floor in golden patches.
The palace is alive with quiet—the rustle of staff at a distance, the faint clink of utensils from the kitchen, the low voices of guards exchanging shifts.
But where I walk, it feels still. Almost heavy.
My mind drifts where it always does lately—back to last night.
That hotel. The way he had looked at me when I teased him. Raja-sa. The chuckle that slipped from his mouth so effortlessly, as though he had let a guard down without realizing. His words—low, unhurried, deliberate—still press against my ribs, making me relive them like a song on repeat.
It hadn’t felt like duty or arrangement. It had felt like… a date. Just a man and a woman testing the waters of something unnamed.
I shake my head, pulling myself back. I cannot keep circling there; if I do, I’ll lose the fragile balance I have managed here.
My feet pause in front of a heavy wooden door, darker than the others. Its brass handle shines against the muted wood, though it looks like no one has touched it in years. The corridor bends here, leading elsewhere, but my eyes stay fixed on the door.
“What’s this room?” I ask softly, turning to the staff member walking behind me. She has been silent the whole time, following me like a shadow.
She hesitates, her hands tightening around the dupatta draped neatly over her arm. “This… this is Maharaj’s old room.”
Something shifts in me. “Old room?”
She nods, eyes lowering. “Before the coronation, before he moved to the royal wing.”
My fingers brush the handle. She takes a quick step forward, worry lining her face. “I don’t think you—”
I stop her with a glance, my voice steady. “I am his wife. If he has any issue with me opening this, it will be between us. Please don’t tell me what I should or should not do.”
Her lips press together, hesitation flickering, but she steps back with a small nod.
I turn the handle. It resists at first, stiff with time, and then gives way. The faint creak of the hinges splits the corridor quiet.
The air inside smells different—like dust and something faintly turpentine, the kind of smell that lingers in old art rooms. My heart gives a curious jolt.
The room is dim, the curtains half-drawn. Dust motes float lazily in the shafts of light that manage to slip in. Against the far wall, leaning tall and silent, are several canvases draped in white cloth. Rows of them, their shapes stiff and rectangular, like secrets waiting to be uncovered.
“What’s this?” I murmur, stepping forward.
“They are… paintings,” the staff says from the doorway. Her tone holds reverence, almost reluctance.
I don’t wait. My fingers catch the edge of one cloth and lift it carefully. The fabric slides down with a whisper, revealing what lies beneath.
I draw in a breath.
A painting of a lake, its surface brushed with delicate strokes of silver and blue.
The water looks alive, like a breath away from rippling.
In the center floats a small boat, a single lantern glowing on its bow, casting trembling reflections across the water.
The sky above is indigo fading into black, with stars scattered as though someone had flung a handful of light across the canvas. It is… beautiful. Almost haunting.
My hand lifts without thinking, grazing the edge of the canvas. The texture of the paint is faint under my fingertips, ridges of brushstrokes that someone once poured hours into.
“Who made this?” My voice comes out softer than intended.
“Maharaj did.”
I whip my head around. “He paints?”
She nods once. “He used to. In his childhood… and some years after. Before he was crowned.”
I look back at the painting. Something inside me stirs, unsettled. “He made this?”
“Yes, Maharani.”
The words sit heavy in me. Devraj—the man of clipped words, of duty, of controlled silences—had created this? This canvas of light and water and aching quiet?
My feet move on their own. I brush aside another cloth. And another.
One by one, they reveal themselves. A field of mustard under a stormy sky.
A young horse in mid-gallop, its mane caught like fire in the wind.
A child’s sketch of a woman smiling, unfinished at the edges, colors bleeding into one another.
Each canvas tells a different story, yet each feels like a glimpse into a part of him no one has spoken of.
He used to paint.
Before the crown. Before the burden of a title became larger than the boy who once held a brush.
“I wonder what made him stop,” I whisper, mostly to myself.
The staff lowers her eyes. “Perhaps, Maharani, only he can answer that.”
I hum in response, my mind loud with questions I cannot yet ask.
I pause before one canvas. A courtyard bathed in twilight, arches arching into the shadows, a lone diya glowing in the corner. Something about it tugs at me, familiar and foreign at once. I stare until I realize—I want it near me. I want to see it every day.
“I want to keep this one,” I say, my voice certain.
The staff looks startled. “In your chambers?”
“Yes. Please have it moved.” My hand lingers on the painting’s edge, as though claiming it. “I want this one.”