“Then why would you hide it from people?”
Gauri was silent for a few moments, and then she said: “Aasha.”
“Aasha doesn’t like it?”
“No, Aasha… Aasha has been reading people for me. Reading their desires. And spying too. No one wants to see me and think of a girl freshly in love. They want to see someone resilient, and it is too raw. They ask questions. Why the swords, why the sweets, and I do not owe anyone a piece of my heart.”
“Is it truly that bad to reveal that you even have one?” shot back Vikram.
Gauri scowled and strode forward.
“Don’t act as though you’re somehow better than me,” she said. “Have you forgotten that I’m a woman?”
“On the contrary, most nights that is a fact I usually savor.”
She scowled.
“You can wear your heart on your sleeve and be called benevolent. You can sing and dance and be called artistic. But me? No. If I show emotion, I am called weak. If I do not keep myself at a distance from my own court, then they will think they have power over me. I have done this before, and I know how it is. Just because I hide some part of my heart doesn’t mean that it means any less to me. I am notyou.”
“And I’m not you!” said Vikram. “I can’t act as you do, and I refuse to. I do not imagine your burdens as anything light, but you’re asking me to be someone I’m not.”
“Fine! Be yourself! But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
Whatever playfulness lingered in his gaze vanished. “So what you are saying is that you do not like me. Is that right?”
He raised his eyes to Gauri. His gaze held a challenge.
Fight me. Fight with me. Tell me that isn’t true.
But her eyes only hardened.
Vikram’s jaw clenched. After awhile, he sighed. He walked toward her. At the same time, Gauri rocked forward on her heels, longing plain on her face. She wanted this to be forgotten. She wanted to not explain herself, and instead have it assumed that of course that was not what she meant. But instead of reaching for her, Vikram snatched a pillow from the bed.
“Since my presence is so offensive, I’ll remove myself.”
He left.
And she did not follow.
***
The scroll with Vikram’s name seamed shut abruptly.
Gauri was left with the taste of that fight burning in her throat. It had not come to pass, and yet it was unquestionably real to her. This was a truth, and she was forced to look down its throat:
They would fight.
Then again, they had always fought. She wasn’t entirely sure that they could help it. In the end, they always caught fire. When they collided—thoughts and dreams or lips and limbs—those sparks didn’t just burn, but castlight.In the stateroom and surrounded by their courtiers, their fiery ideas burned down to the essence of each, combining along the way and gaining strength like some metallurgical alloy. And outside the stateroom… well. No inferno compared.
Yet, here was the underbelly of all that heat.
Here was the proof that they would not be invulnerable from their own flames.
And somehow… something marvelous reared up in the aftermath of her guilt.
Relief.
Even though their words were cruel. Even though the air crackled with unfinished fury. Even though she still felt the echoes of that anger… It had not stolen what lay beneath all of that, like some half-sunken jewel.
