Page 2 of Scars and Crowns

"I'm excited."

"Hm."

"I'm ready." This time I believe her. Not because her voice doesn't shake. Because it does. Not because her eyes aren't glassy. Because they are. I believe her because I've known Anamika long enough to recognize the difference between fear and courage.

Fear makes you step back. Courage boards the train anyway. "You'll do well," I say quietly. She looks at me for a second, searching my face as though trying to figure out whether I'm saying it just to make her feel better. "I'm serious."

"I know."

Neither of us says anything after that.

Some silences don't ask to be filled.

My fingers close around the small box inside my pocket. I've been carrying it since morning. I must've taken it out ten times before coming here, wondering if this was stupid. Wondering if it would mean too much. Wondering if it wouldn't mean enough.

It isn't expensive. It isn't royal. It isn't even something anyone else would look at twice.

That's exactly why I chose it. No palace jeweller. No family crest. No reminder of who I was born as. Just . . . something from me.

I pull the tiny velvet box from my pocket. "Here."

She blinks. "What's this?"

"A good luck present."

Her forehead wrinkles immediately. "Yuvaan . . . "

"Just open it." She lifts the lid slowly.

Nestled inside is a delicate silver chain with a tiny daisy pendant. Nothing extravagant. Nothing loud. Just a flower.

For a long moment, she doesn't speak.

Her fingertips brush over the petals so gently that it almost looks like she's afraid they'll disappear.

A memory flashes through my head without permission.

Anamika at nine years old, sitting cross-legged in the palace gardens, making crooked daisy chains because she insisted roses were overrated.

"They're too busy trying to impress everyone," she'd declared with complete seriousness. "Daisies just exist."

I'd laughed so hard she'd thrown one at my face. I never told her I kept that flower pressed inside a book for nearly three years. "You . . . " she whispers, unable to complete the sentence as if it’s costing her something. Maybe it is.

I remember everything about you, I want to say. The first day you climbed the palace wall because you refused to use the gate.

The scar on your knee from falling off my bicycle. The way you scrunch your nose when tea has too much sugar. The birthdays you pretended didn't matter. The dreams you spoke about only after making me promise I wouldn't laugh.

I remember all of it. I just nod instead.

"Wear it," I say. "Or don't. Throw it in a drawer if you hate it."

She looks up so quickly I almost regret the joke. "I could never hate something you picked."

God.

She says things like that so easily. She has no idea what they do to me. Before I can stop myself, I reach out and curl my fingers around hers, closing the little box in her hand. "Just . . . " My voice catches for half a second before I steady it. "Keep it somewhere safe. So you don't forget this town completely once you're off becoming someone important."

She smiles. Not the bright grin she gives everyone else. The softer one. The one I've always secretly believed belonged only to me.