She went to the bathroom and showered for a long time, longer than she needed to, standing under the water until it ran cold. She scrubbed at her skin like she could scrub away the night before. It didn't work, but she came out anyway.
She walked to her closet and chose something plain. It was a dress she owned before she became the Jogra maharani.
She dressed slowly.
By the time she was ready, she knew what she was going to do.
It was 9:01. Sunlight spilled across the dining hall, lighting up the tall windows that framed the snow-capped mountains.
Yamini paused at the threshold.
For weeks she had walked into this room willingly. Smiling. Sitting beside him. Not caring that the staff saw them together when she fed him pieces of buttery paratha or took sips of the pink-hued noon chai from his teacup.
The memories made her chest ache.
Bharat was already seated.
He wore a dark blue shirt, sleeves folded once at the wrist, a tablet open in front of him. His tea sat exactly where it always sat. The fruit was arranged in clean lines.
He didn't look up immediately when she walked in.
The small detail cut deeper than anger.
He looked exactly the same as he did every morning. As though last night hadn't happened at all.
She took the seat across from him instead of beside him.
His eyes lifted then.
His golden-brown eyes were calm and assessing.
The staff finished placing the dishes and left, the doors closing behind them.
It was just the two of them now.
The silence stretched.
She didn't touch the food.
“I'm leaving Jogra Palace,” she said.
There was no shake in her voice.
His gaze held hers for a moment. Then he closed the tablet and set it aside.
“You cannot.”
It wasn’t a question but a decision he'd already made.
Her jaw tightened. “I refuse to stay married to a man who plans to get me impregnated by another. And how did you plan it? Was I supposed to visit that man at his place? Or were you planning to have him come to my room when I’m ovulating?”
Something flickered in his eyes. “No other man will touch you,” he said.
She stared at him.
“The procedure will be through discreet IVF,” he continued, his voice steady.
The words came out clinical. Sterile. As though he were describing a factory expansion.
