Gauri rolled her eyes. So many of Bharata’s wedding traditions seemed foolish to her, although there was no harm in their fun. Besides, the test of the sharp-eyed bridegroom was far better than Ujijain’s wedding traditions.
As Gauri was yet unwed, her unoccupied bed had become a matter of scrutiny. Many of their joint councils were curious. Just how, exactly, had she spent her time with the emperor of Ujijain while she had been away on her “mythical” adventure? To solve the problem, her council had suggested that different ladies-in-waiting would sleep alongside her, an Ujijain pre-wedding custom among royalty. Abiding another court’s custom might have been fine had itnot been for the fact that each wife of a courtier selected for that evening insisted on furthering her husband’s agenda. The night before the henna ceremony, one woman could not help but talk in her sleep about the value of divesting treasury funds to a building project where her husband had played chief investor. She spoke… all night.
Maybe it was the sleeplessness that was affecting her so. In the past two days, something restless had grabbed hold of her between morning and night. There was a needle-sharp panic in her chest, something that she was not sure belonged to the anxiousness of a new bride or something… worse.
Ever since they had come back from Alaka and fought in the Tournament of Wishes, Gauri imagined that sometimes she could stillseemagic. A ripple in the air, like staring above the flames of a great fire and watching the sky warp from its heat. Or a rip, at times. A door where there should have been a wall. A glow in the trees that did not belong to the strange shine of creature eyes blinking open in the dark.
Perhaps it was exhaustion, she thought.
For the past three months, fatigue had sunk its teeth into every bone. Aasha and Nalini assured her that it would pass after the wedding, but judging by her planning experience, she doubted it. She was a girl pressed beneath glass. Even her dreams felt thin and transparent. She could keep nothing to herself, not even sleep. Every day, she and Vikram were placed under more scrutiny. Even in the moments where they could steal away from everyone else, the overwhelming emotion she felt was exhaustion. Not ecstasy.
Just last week, they had stolen a rare hour together. One precious sunlit afternoon where the music of the fountains and the birdsongfrom the menageries might have muffled out other sounds. Vikram had kissed his way down her jawline only to start snoring once his head dropped to her neck.
“In my defense, you are very warm and soft and inviting,” he had said once Gauri had shaken him awake.
“You make me sound like a bed.”
“If you were a bed, I would not wait a week to marry you.”
She smiled at that. But even that smile set her nerves alight.
Would it always be like this? Would he always know what to say, and would she always know what to do? She had watched enough couples around her to know that there was a secret choreography to love. She was newly in love. Loving Vikram was startlingly easy.
It frightened her.
That afternoon, the rest of their hour together had not been unpleasant. He had tucked her against his chest, and even though she had loudly insisted that she was not tired, she had fallen asleep the second she closed her eyes. She could not remember when she had last slept so well.
Which was how she found herself here, running through the military drills on the eve of her wedding. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes as she felt around the grooves of her old practice sword. The tip was blunted. Rust striped the steel. It was the same sword that her father had caught her practicing with when she was a child. Back then, it had been so heavy that her fingers would cramp for hours and her whole body would feel bruised and tender after a day of practice. Eventually, the weight lessened. Her body adjusted. When she returned from Alaka with a glass hand, her body had adjusted again.
Gauri breathed deeply, slashing the sword out with her left hand.When she breathed out, she forced out her fears… this weight upon her. These whispers that seemed to creep in from another world and fill her with a sense ofwrongness.It was all just a weighted sword. Her body was merely untested. She would adjust. For the next hour, Gauri spun through the empty army barracks. There was no chance of someone coming inside because the entire militia was outside, participating in a pageantry of joined armies. This space belonged to her.
When she had finished running through her drills, she threw the sword across the arena. Sweat ran down her back. Her hair had unraveled from her braid and her lungs ached from breathing. But she smiled as she dragged her arm across her mouth. She was physically exhausted. Her limbs smarted, thighs burned. It was the kind of exhaustion that seemed to bring clarity to all her thoughts. Whereas the exhaustion she felt at the hands of the court made her thoughts resemble blown-out candle stubs.
Behind her, she heard the air part from the low whoosh of a blade.
Instinct took over. Adrenaline snapped through her veins, and Gauri felt all her senses buzzing. She stilled, gaze flying to the practice sword she had thrown just out of arm’s reach. She could get to it in less than half a minute. But what if the intruder had an arrow? Without turning, Gauri cast about, looking for something,anythingthat could be turned into a makeshift weapon when she heard a low, familiar laugh.
Vikram.
He whistled, dragging a sword behind him. A dark blue silkkurtahad been thrown over his night tunic and pants. He must have tumbled out of bed and come straight here.
Her heartbeats tripped and tangled at the sight of him.
“You smile when you see me, do you know that?” he asked, strolling toward her.
She had not noticed. She tried to pull back her grin, but a single smile from Vikram just tugged her lips into a wider crescent. He bent down to kiss her, but Gauri stepped out of the circle of his arms, looking about her.
“Someone could see us,” she hissed.
“Who cares?”
“It is not proper.”
He raised an eyebrow, gaze flicking from the practice sword, to the henna on her hands, and then to her face.
“That’s different,” said Gauri primly.
“It’s the day before our wedding, my beastly princess. After that you will be my beastly wife, and then it doesn’t matter who sees us.”
