I was too tired to go down for dinner, so I stood under the shower until my skin turned red as a lobster, and threw on my most comfy pair of pyjamas before I got under the covers. I was sure my friends would excuse me from being the perfect host for one day. And to be honest, I wasn’t in a state to even care if they didn’t.
There was a knock at the door, and I raised my head in surprise.
“Come in,” I called out, and Isha entered the room with a tray in her hands.
“Samrat asked the kitchen to send you some hot chocolate because you’re feeling slightly unwell,” she said, as she set the tray down on the coffee table in my room, and bent to pour out the hot chocolate in my favourite mug. “I decided to bring it in so I could check on you. Are you okay, babe?”
“Thanks, Ish. I’m just really tired,” I lied.
“Okay, I’ll let you sleep. But make sure you drain that mug, otherwise your army boy will karate chop me into outer space,” she joked.
I smiled at her absently, and she left. But her words kept ringing in my ears long after she left. I stared at the mug on my bedside table in confusion.
“Samrat has sent you some hot chocolate. I decided to bring it in so I could check on you…”
Why were those words familiar? I had heard them before. But where?
I sat up with a gasp as I remembered exactly where and when I’d heard them.
It was eight years ago. On that fateful night, at Samrat’s palace.
Nilanjana!
She was the one who brought me the hot chocolate. And she’d stayed in my room to chat while I drank it. I had found it super weird because she and I weren’t on any terms, let alone friendly terms. Her obsession with Samrat creeped me out. I remembered drinking the hot chocolate, but I remembered nothing after that.
Wait! She had come to my room, which meant Ihadgone to bed in my room that night. So how did I end up in Sanjay’s room in the middle of the night? I got out of bed hurriedly and ran across the corridor to Samrat’s room.
I banged on his door, and he immediately called me to enter.
I burst into the room, barely noticing that he was working on his laptop, with a lot of papers spread out around him.
“It was Nilanjana,” I said loudly. “She had something to do with what happened to me that night.”
“What?”
Samrat came around the coffee table and grabbed me by the arm.
“Say that again. And slowly,” he ordered.
“Samrat, I genuinely have no memory of how I came to be in Sanjay’s bed that night. I could swear I went straight to bed after you left me outside my room. Everything else that happened after that is a blur. I knew I’d had some hot chocolate late at night, but until now, I couldn’t even remember where I got the hot chocolate. But I remembered it just now. It was Nilanjana.”
Samrat led me to the sofa and forced me to sit. He held my hands as I recounted the incident to him.
“I trusted her because she said you had sent over the hot chocolate and that she was just delivering it,” I said, and he frowned.
“I didn’t send you anything that night.”
“It was just an excuse to enter my room, and…and… drug me,” I whispered. “That is what she did, right?”
“Sounds like it,” he said grimly. “She probably roofied you and got you into Sanjay’s bed.”
“How did you come to be there the next morning?” I asked curiously. I had never asked him why he had walked into Sanjay’s room so early.
“She told me Sanjay wanted to speak to me about something urgent, and like a fool, I followed her to his room,” he replied,” sinking his face into his cupped hands.
“Wow! The two of them really played us,” I gasped.
“But why?”
