Page 133 of Scars and Crowns

The only thing that matters is Yuvaan's arms are still around me, and the need to tell him.

GUILTY

YUVAAN

I hold her against me on the steps outside the ballroom and don't let go.

Her entire body is shaking. Not the kind of trembling that disappears after a few deep breaths, but something deeper, something that seems to have taken hold of every muscle at once. Her fingers are twisted into the front of my jacket, her forehead pressed against my chest, and every breath she manages comes out broken.

"Breathe with me, Daisy." I keep my voice low.

I don't know what else to do. So I breathe. Slowly. Deliberately. In. Out. Again.

My hand moves in circles over her back, the same motion over and over, because I need to give her something steady to hold on to while everything inside her is clearly coming apart.

"That's it. Just follow me."

She doesn't answer. That's all right. I don't need her to. The gala continues behind us. I can hear the faint music through the closed doors, the occasional burst of laughter, the movement of people who have no idea that my entire world has just changed on the steps outside their carefully planned evening. I don't care. I could leave the entire room behind without looking back.

Eventually, her breathing begins to slow. The gasps become uneven sobs instead, and somehow that feels like progress. Her shoulders still tremble beneath my hand, but she's no longer fighting for every breath.

I stay exactly where I am. I let her cry.

I don't tell her that she's all right when I don't know whether she believes it yet. I don't tell her to calm down. I don't ask questions she isn't ready to answer.

I just hold her.

After a long time, she whispers, "I need to tell you something." My hand stills against her back.

She doesn't lift her head. "I should have told you before." Her voice is scraped raw. "I think . . . " She swallows. "I think if I don't tell you now, I'm never going to."

I pull back just enough to see her face. Her mascara has smudged beneath her eyes. Her cheeks are wet. A loose strand of hair is stuck to one of them, and she looks so frightened of what I'm going to think that something inside me aches before she has even said the words.

I brush the strand away. "Tell me."

She looks at me. Really looks at me. And I watch her gather whatever courage has survived the last few minutes. "That man." Her voice catches. I wait. "He's Sara's father."

For a second, I don't understand. I hear the words. I know what they mean. But my mind refuses to put them together. "Sara's . . . " My voice dies. "Biological father."

Something cold moves through my chest. I look past her for half a second, toward the ballroom doors. The man is still in there. Then I look back at her.

She is already crying again. "Because I conceived her when he . . . " Her lips tremble. "When he raped me . . . when I was twenty one."

The world goes completely silent. Not the ballroom. Not the cars beyond the gates. Everything inside me.

I stare at her.

Twenty-one.

The number comes to me before I can stop it.

She was Twenty-one.

The same girl who used to sit beside me on the ramparts with her knees tucked beneath her chin. The girl who would steal jalebis from the kitchen and then deny it with the worst poker face I'd ever seen. The girl who left this palace carrying a silver chain around her neck and more hurt than I ever knew how to imagine.

Twenty-one. And alone.

My hands tighten around her without meaning to.