I held Ektha’s bangle so tight that my mother’s payal bells hardly jangled as we bumped along. Their memories didn’t give me enough strength to fight, but they did help me play the part I needed to. I was doing this for Ullal. For the people I loved.
Aru reached out and squeezed my knee three times.I love you.
I covered his hand with mine and squeezed it back reflexively.I’m trapped here.
The gesture reassured Aru, at least. He couldn’t feel my exhaustion through my fingers. I pulled my hand away, and he grabbed my wrist.
“You’re hurt!” Aru turned my hand up, revealing blood on my palm. It pooled in the imprint of Ektha’s bangle and my mother’s payal bells.
I blinked in confusion and then saw that the bangle right next to Ektha’s had broken. “It’s nothing?—I hadn’t even noticed it.”
That only made Aru even more concerned. He ignored my protests as he cut a strip from his angavastra and wrapped my hand. “You seem to make a habit of this.”
Memories of our meeting on the turmeric field rushed at me?—the splattering rain, the smashed orange roots, and his sea green eyes taking my breath away as he smiled shyly and wrapped my cut with a strip of his kurta.
It hadn’t been so long ago.
Not so long ago, my uncle was ruling Ullal, and my sister had held me close in the stepwell after the adaiman led Aru to me.
It was a lifetime ago.
“I’ll have to start carrying bandages with me,” he said, peeking up from his curls as he lifted my bandaged hand to his lips and gave it a gentle kiss.
“Thank you.” I pulled my hand back but stopped midair as the scent of salt filled my nostrils.
Aru smiled widely. “I’ve been working on something special for you. I know how much you’ve missed the sea.”
My heart leaped. I hadn’t been on a beach since I’d come to Banghervari. I longed to feel the warm sand between my toes, to see the endless blue above and below, and to hear the waves crashing onto the shore before they retreated in sinuous lines of foam. The knot in my chest began to loosen.
“That’s the first true smile I’ve seen from you for weeks!” Aru’s joy mirrored my own. “Welcome to Mangaluru!”
When we stepped out of the chariot, my hope evaporated. I looked out to the blue waves of the ocean, past the bustling port in front of us, and tried not to wish I was looking at the shores of Ullal.
But even the beach was different here. The cacophony of yells and bangs from the port and the nearby building site echoed through the air. People screamed orders at each other as they built white walls that reached from the sand toward the sky, drowning out the waves and the calls of the petrels flying overhead.
None of it was right.
Aru clasped my hand. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine.” I gave him a small smile, but Aru signaled to the servants that had accompanied us anyway.
One woman came and offered me water while another held out some plump purple figs. After a few sips of water, I took a fig and nibbled on it. Not even the explosive sweet flavor within the velvety flesh could awaken my senses. The dissonance of the port?—not just within itself but with my expectations?—had brought that fog back again. And I welcomed it.
Aru cocked an eyebrow at me as he waved away the figs and water that were offered to him.
Vishwajeet stepped forward. “I am sure the rani is just overwhelmed at the sight of such a thriving port. The one in Ullal is quite... different. To scale with the country.”
I didn’t even have the energy to fight with him about his aspersions at Ullal’s expense. “It is, indeed, very different from home.”
“Home?” Aru gave a crestfallen sigh. “You still don’t think of Banghervari as your home?”
Behind him, I could see Vishwajeet’s stinging glare and Nallini’s panicked expression.
“Of course Banghervari has become a home for me.” I reached for his hand, and he squeezed tight as soon as we touched. “But I think it’s natural for a woman to long for her mother’s home at a time like this.”
To my surprise, Aru’s face lit up with a bright smile. “Then I think you will especially like the first surprise I’ve arranged for you.”
Aru gestured toward a dock with a few people milling nearby. Two healers approached, one in a mustard yellow sari and one in a saffron robe, and their horses followed behind them. Their blurry faces were impossible to make out from so far away, but my breath caught when I saw the long silver braid of the petite woman in the sari. Once I noticed it, there was no mistaking her self-assured stride.
