Page 33 of Scars and Crowns

Something in me cracks open at that. Not because it's dramatic—it isn't, he says it the way he says everything, short and unadorned—but because I know, all the way down, that he means every word of it exactly as it sounds.

"Will you always keep Mumma happy?" Sara asks, her small voice very serious.

"Always," he says, without a single second of hesitation, and then he looks at me, just briefly, something so steady in his expression that I have to look down at my plate for a moment to keep myself together.

"Then will you be my father?"

The table goes silent. I look up sharply, my heart lodging somewhere in my throat, and watch him absorb the question with a stillness that tells me it's landed somewhere very deep in him. "If that's what you want," he says finally, gently.

"Okay." Sara considers this for one more long beat, weighing it the way she weighs everything, and then she nods, decisive, final. "You can marry Mumma."

The playfulness comes rushing back between them instantly—he says something about needing her signature on an official document, she demands to know if that means she gets a crown too, he promises solemnly that she will absolutely get a crown—and I sit there watching the two of them, my eyes stinging in a way I can't blame entirely on the spices in the food.

I swore, a long time ago, in a hospital room with a newborn and no one beside me, that Sara would never have to look for a father figure, because I decided men weren't safe enough to let near her, not after everything one man had already taken from us both. I built an entire life around that decision without ever once questioning it. And now here she is, five years old, negotiating the terms of a crown with the one man in this world I have ever felt completely safe with, laughing in a way I haven't heard from her in longer than I can remember.

Am I allowed to be this greedy? Am I actually allowed to have this—the man I've loved since before I knew what the word meant, sitting across from my daughter and making her laugh like this is the easiest thing in the world.

"Yes," I say, when he finally turns to look at me properly, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel. "But I'll continue to work. I don't want to owe you anything."

Something flickers across his face—not surprise, more like recognition, like he expected exactly this from me and is quietly pleased to have been right. "I knew you'd say something like that." A small smile. "Is it alright if you work for me, then?"

I nod, and he holds my gaze a moment longer than the conversation strictly requires. "Thank you," he says.

The way he looks at me when he says it—steady, grateful, something else underneath both of those things that I don't let myself name—makes it very hard to remember all the reasons I spent the last week telling myself this couldn't possibly end well for my heart.

HERE WE GO

YUVAAN

If anyone had asked me as a child what my wedding would look like, I probably would've described something straight out of a history book.

The palace draped in flowers. Hundreds of guests. Television cameras. Priests chanting beneath a grand mandap built in the centre courtyard. The kind of spectacle generations of this family had always been known for.

Instead, I'm standing inside a government registrar's office with peeling baby blue walls, a ceiling fan that clicks every few seconds as it turns, and an old wooden desk that's witnessed decades of strangers promising forever.

And I wouldn't change a single thing. This room is too small for royal grandeur. Too ordinary for headlines. Too cramped for unnecessary people. Exactly the way I wanted it.

No politicians pretending to be family. No business associates I barely know. No endless ceremonies performed for photographs instead of memories.

Just the people who matter. Just us. Maa starts crying the moment we walk inside.

I knew she would.

What I didn't expect was for her to cry even harder less than two minutes later because Sara marched straight up to her, looked at her earrings with complete fascination, and announced, without introducing herself first, "I like these. Can I wear them someday?"

For one second Maa simply stared. Then she laughed through her tears and bent down to pull Sara into the tightest hug. Watching them together does something quiet inside me.

For five years I've watched Maa silently accept every proposal I turned down.

She never argued. Never pressured me. Never made me feel guilty. She only looked at me with that patient sadness mothers somehow carry without speaking. Maybe that’s not out of pure love, it may be out of guilt for how I was treated like a mission in my childhood, how she and Papa ensured I never sat with a bent back, how I didn’t show unnecessary emotions, how I knew from age ten that I am supposed to take over the throne next and how I need to buckle up and refuse to have a normal, carefree childhood. I don’t hold anything against her because I see she was just supporting her husband but . . . it doesn’t mean I should have been treated that way. I wonder if I never found Anamika . . . What would I have become?

I shake my head, clearing my thoughts, this isn’t something I need today. My eyes land on Kairav, who has spent the entire morning being completely insufferable.

He hasn't stopped grinning since breakfast. Every few minutes he leans toward me just enough to mutter something under his breath.

"I honestly thought you'd die single."

I ignore him. A few minutes later—"I should've taken bets. I would've made a fortune."