Page 73 of Scars and Crowns

Sara nods thoughtfully. "I don't believe you." Neither do I. The afternoon slips away almost without any of us noticing. Every page holds another story. Another memory. Another piece of a childhood I'd almost convinced myself I'd imagined.

A photograph of the two of us feeding stray dogs outside the market gates despite repeated instructions not to.

Apparently Amma Saheba caught us halfway through and, judging by the expression on Yuvaan's face in the picture, had delivered quite the lecture afterwards.

Another shows us sitting through one of the palace's endless formal dinners. My head is resting against his shoulder. Fast asleep. I stare at it for a long moment. I don't remember falling asleep that evening. But I remember feeling safe enough to. What catches my attention isn't myself.

It's him.

He's looking down at me. Not at the camera. Not at anyone else. Just . . . Me.

There's something so open on his face that it almost hurts to look at now.

Peace.

Contentment.

A kind of uncomplicated happiness I don't remember fully appreciating back then. "Mister!" Sara tugs impatiently at his sleeve.

"Tell me another one."

He laughs. "What do you want to hear?"

"The funniest."

So we do. The stories come easily. Easier than I expected. He remembers details I'd completely forgotten. I remember the parts he never noticed. Together they somehow become whole again. We tell Sara about the afternoon I accidentally opened the wrong latch and released every ceremonial pigeon the palace owned.

She laughs so hard she nearly slides straight off Yuvaan's lap.

Without looking away from the album, he catches her automatically with one arm, settling her securely against him before continuing the story as though he'd been doing it his entire life.

I find myself watching him instead of listening. The careful, reserved Maharaja disappears page by page. The man sitting beside me now looks younger somehow.

Lighter.

Every photograph strips away another layer of responsibility until, for a little while, all that's left is the boy I grew up with.

I don't realise I'm smiling until my cheeks begin to ache.

Then . . . I see it.

The photograph.

My breath catches.

My eighteenth birthday. The same photograph. The one hidden carefully inside my wallet all these years. The corners of mine have long since softened from being folded and unfolded too many times. In this version, untouched by years, he's laughing.

Properly laughing. His head tipped back. His eyes squeezed shut.

I . . . I'm not looking at the camera. I'm looking at him. Entirely. There is something written across my face that eighteen-year-old me never would've admitted. Adult me recognises it instantly.

Love.

Quiet.

Uncomplicated.

Already there long before I found the courage to call it by its name. Something twists painfully beneath my ribs. For one impossible second . . . I wish I'd never boarded that train. I wish I'd stayed. I wish there were another version of my life. One where those seven years simply . . . Never happened. Where I never learned how lonely survival could become. Where I never had to discover how much of myself could disappear simply trying to make it through another day.