Page 14 of Scars and Crowns

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.

BREATHLESS

ANAMIKA

I make it through three corridors before my body gives up pretending it's fine.

My feet stop moving without asking me first.

The silver tray feels unbearably heavy in my hands, my chest is tight enough to hurt, and every breath catches somewhere halfway—refusing to go any deeper.

I know this corridor.

Even before I properly look around, my feet have already brought me here.

A narrow stretch near the old library, tucked away from the main passage where the palace traffic rarely reaches. As children, this had been my hiding place. Whenever I cried after being scolded, whenever life inside these walls became too loud, whenever I needed five minutes where nobody expected anything from me, I'd slip into this little alcove and wait until my heart settled.

Apparently, even after eight years . . . My body remembers where it once felt safe.