Page 89 of Scars and Crowns

I've carried that chain with me for seven years.

He's carried this. In his wallet. For seven years.

A place people open every single day without thinking. My eyes stay fixed on the photographs, and I hear my own voice before I even realise I've spoken. “Why?” My breath stutters as I stare at the photo longer than needed. " . . . Why do you have that?" The question comes out quieter than I intend. Almost afraid. I lift a finger toward the wallet still resting in his hand.

He follows my gaze. For a second, he doesn't understand what I'm looking at. Then he does. I watch the realization spread across his face, slow and unmistakable.

Confusion. Recognition. And then . . . Something very, very close to being caught.

His composure slips for one tiny heartbeat. Only a heartbeat. Anyone else would probably miss it. I don't. I never have. People insist Yuvaan Jadeja is impossible to read.

Cold.

Controlled.

Unreadable.

The council says it. The ministers say it. Half the state believes it. I've never understood why. Even when we were children, I could always tell exactly what he was feeling. He'd insist he wasn't excited about the polo matches while leaning so far forward I worried he'd tumble over the railing.

He'd tell everyone his father's lectures didn't bother him, then quietly disappear to find me afterwards because jalebis somehow made difficult evenings feel survivable.

Even today, watching him laugh over a rigged ring toss, I could still see the little boy who'd learned far too young how to hide every feeling before anyone noticed it. Whatever mask he wears for the rest of the world . . . It has never quite worked on me.

He closes the wallet gently. Not hurriedly. Not like he's trying to hide it now. Just . . . carefully. His fingers rest against the worn leather for a moment before he looks back at me. "Why do you think, Daisy?" His voice is soft enough that I almost don't hear it over the noise around us.

The fair keeps moving. Children run past us. Someone nearby cheers as a game is won. Music crackles through old speakers. A Ferris wheel groans somewhere above our heads. And somehow all of it fades into the background until it's only him standing in front of me, a paper cone of steaming chilli fritters in one hand and that old wallet in the other.

My heart is beating so loudly I'm almost certain he can hear it.

Does this mean . . . Did he . . . All those years . . . The questions arrive faster than I can sort through them. While I was stumbling through Mumbai, building a life from whatever scraps I could gather, learning how to survive, convincing myself every single day that he'd forgotten me...Was he carrying me too? Did he open that wallet every day and see my face? Did he keep us with him the way I'd kept that silver chain tucked safely away wherever I lived?

My throat feels strangely tight. "Why?" I ask again. Quieter this time. Because I need him to explain it away. I almost want him to. Tell me it's nostalgia. Tell me you forgot to remove them. Tell me you found them recently. Tell me anything that doesn't make my heart feel like it's trying to escape my chest.

He doesn't. He doesn't look away. Doesn't laugh. Doesn't soften it into something easier. He simply looks at me with that same steady gaze I've known since we were children and tells me the truth. "Because you are . . . " His voice is barely above a whisper. “ . . . and you have always been . . . my soulmate, Anamika."

Everything inside me stops. Not dramatically. Not all at once. It simply . . . stills.

Like someone has reached inside my chest and pressed pause on every thought I've ever had.

Soulmate.

No one has ever called me that. Not even in my own imagination. I stare at him, trying to make that one impossible word fit inside everything the last seven years have taught me.

It doesn't fit anywhere.

"I know it's an impractical thing to say," he continues, a small smile touching his mouth, almost apologetic, almost amused by himself. "Maybe even an old-fashioned thing to believe." He shakes his head once. "But I've never been particularly practical where you're concerned." The smile reaches my own lips before I can stop it.

He notices. Of course he notices. "You've always been my person, Daisy." His eyes never leave mine. "Long before either of us knew what to call it."

Something cracks open inside me so suddenly it almost hurts. I think about Mumbai. About tiny rented rooms. About hospital corridors. About nights when Sara finally fell asleep and I sat alone beside a window, convincing myself over and over again that what I'd felt for him had only been childhood affection. That everyone falls a little in love with their best friend at fifteen. That it passes. That he'd surely married someone beautiful and suitable by now. That princes don't spend years thinking about housekeepers' daughters. I repeated those things until they sounded true.

Built an entire life around believing them.

And now . . . He's standing in front of me with my missing-tooth smile tucked inside his wallet. Seven years. Seven whole years. Not hidden away in a drawer. Not packed inside an old album. In the place closest to him. The place he carried every single day.

I suddenly remember my own purse. The faded photograph folded carefully inside it. The one I've carried through every rented apartment. Every hospital visit. Every new beginning.

I thought I was foolish. I thought I was the only one.