CHAPTER 46
The Silence of Blood
DEVRAJ
The silence of the palace is unlike any other silence I’ve ever known. It isn’t peace, it isn’t comfort. It is the kind of quiet that presses down on you, makes you hear your own breath, your own pulse, your own guilt.
I walk down the corridor slowly, my boots clicking against the marble, echoing back like a taunt.
The walls are lined with portraits—my ancestors, men and women painted in their finery, their eyes following me as though I have already failed them.
Maybe I have. Maybe the weight of this crown, this family, this name… maybe I was never meant to carry it.
But Meher’s absence makes the walls of this palace unbearable.
I clench my jaw as I climb the last flight of stairs toward Rajmata’s wing.
Every step feels heavier than the last, because I know what waits for me there—truths I’ve avoided, a confrontation I can’t delay anymore.
She is my mother. She is also the woman who orchestrated the walls around my life.
And now those walls have crushed the only person who made me feel free.
I stop outside her chamber door. My fist hovers in the air for longer than it should. It shouldn’t be difficult—I’ve faced ministers, enemies, boardrooms full of men who wanted to tear me apart. Yet this? This feels harder.
Finally, I knock.
“Come in,” her voice calls, smooth, firm, laced with the same authority it’s carried all my life.
I push the door open. She sits at the carved desk near the window, draped in her ivory sari, her back impossibly straight. The sunlight streams in, catching the silver in her hair. Regal. Untouchable.
“Devraj,” she says, her lips curving in a faint smile, as if she’s been expecting me. “I was wondering when you’d come.”
I step inside, shutting the door behind me. “You knew I would.”
“Of course. You are your father’s son. You can’t keep anger bottled for long.” Her gaze lifts, sharp, assessing. “Sit.”
I don’t sit. Instead, I stand in front of her, arms folded. “Meher left.”
A flicker. Just a flicker in her eyes, but it’s enough. She knows. She probably knew before I did.
“She wasn’t meant for this life,” Rajmata says calmly, almost gently.
“She wasn’t given a choice,” I snap. The control I walked in with begins to fray. “You cornered her, just like you’ve cornered me all these years. You decided what was ‘meant’ and what wasn’t, as though you could play God with our lives.”
Her lips tighten, but her posture doesn’t falter. “I protected this family. You call it control, I call it duty. Without structure, without boundaries, everything your father built would collapse.”
I take a step closer, my voice low, steady. “Do you hear yourself? You talk about buildings, legacies, the damn palace—as if they matter more than the people living in it. As if they matter more than me.”
Her gaze hardens, but there’s something behind it now—something like a crack. “And what would you have me do, Devraj? Let love dictate everything? Love is fleeting. Duty lasts.”
My hands curl into fists. I remember Meher’s laughter echoing in my room, the way her eyes softened when she looked at me, the way she made me want to be… not just a king, not just a son, but a man. “You’re wrong. Love isn’t fleeting. Love is the only thing that makes all of this worth it.”
The silence stretches, heavy. My words hang in the air like a challenge neither of us can take back.
Rajmata rises slowly from her chair. Her movements are graceful, measured, but I see the tension in her shoulders.
“Your father loved me once, too,” she says, her voice low, almost lost to memory.
“But love didn’t stop him from drowning himself in ambition.
Love didn’t protect me from loneliness in this very palace.
So forgive me if I do not place blind faith in it as you do. ”
Her confession cuts deeper than her steel. For a moment, she isn’t Rajmata, the queen mother. She is just a woman who was left behind.
I swallow hard, my chest tight. “I’m not my father. And Meher… she isn’t you. She’s everything you’ve forgotten how to be. Honest. Alive. Human.”
Her eyes glisten, but she blinks it away swiftly. She won’t give me that victory. “Even if that is true, what then? She’s gone.”
The truth slams into me again. My throat tightens, but I force the words out. “Because she thought she had to leave. Because you made her believe she didn’t belong here.”
“Does she?” Rajmata challenges softly.
“Yes,” I answer without hesitation. My voice doesn’t shake. “More than anyone. She belongs here because I belong to her. And without her, none of this—” I gesture around at the grandeur, the weight of centuries, the palace itself “—none of this matters to me.”
The silence after my outburst is deafening. Rajmata studies me, her eyes searching, peeling me back layer by layer like she always has. Except this time, I don’t hide. I let her see it all—the rawness, the ache, the stubborn certainty that Meher is mine.
Finally, she exhales, the sound weary, almost human. “You sound like your father when he was young.”
I don’t know if it’s an insult or a reluctant admission.
“I am not asking for your approval,” I tell her, my voice calmer now, steadier. “I am telling you what I’ve already decided. I will find Meher. I will bring her back. And I will not let you, or tradition, or the weight of your fears keep me from her.”
Her chin lifts, regal again, but her eyes betray her—shining with something she doesn’t want me to name. “You think love will save you, Devraj?”
“No. I think she will.”
The silence swells again, but this time it feels different. Less suffocating, more… shifting. As though the walls of this palace might finally, after years, be ready to let some air in.
“And I warned you,” I announce, my back straightening, “I ordered you to stay away from her. You didn’t listen to my command, Rajmata.I gave you a chance because Meher is too kind; she would have blamed herself for taking you away from your children.
But you have left me with no choice. You will be sent to the Royal villa, and you will live your remaining life there. ”
I stop, my heart stuttering in my chest. “I don’t know what I did to deserve this treatment, Maa-sa.
I don’t know why you won’t love me like you love Vihaan and Veeraj.
I was your son, too.” A lump forms in my throat.
“I…I wish I could have at least one percent of love they got from you…but you just made me your expectation.” I shake my head, unable to form more words.
I bow in front of her. “However I would like to thank you for birthing me.” I straighten and look into her eyes.
They glisten with unshed tears. “Meher will always be my wife, whether you like it or not, but you are no longer my mother.” I smile sadly.
“You were never one for me, so…you will never be seeing me again, Maa-sa.”
I turn to leave, my hand already on the door. Behind me, Rajmata’s voice carries softly, almost too quiet to hear.
“Take care of yourself, Devraj.”
For a moment, I think I’ve imagined it. But I don’t turn around. I don’t need to see her face. I just hold on to those words, let them steady me.
And then I walk out.
Because for the first time in my life, I know exactly where I need to be—and who I need to fight for. And it’s not the crown, or the throne, or power, it’s my wife.