Page 37 of Scars and Crowns

My husband.

The word still doesn't belong to me. It feels borrowed somehow, as though I've picked up someone else's life by mistake and forgotten to return it.

I sit up slowly. The other side of the bed is empty. Sara's pillow lies abandoned beside mine, the blanket half folded where she'd kicked it away during the night.

I reach out instinctively. The sheets are cool. She's been gone for a while. A tiny thread of worry immediately winds itself around my chest. Yesterday comes back in scattered pieces while I rub the last traces of sleep from my eyes. Sara had refused to sleep anywhere except pressed against my side, clinging to my arm with the determination only she could manage.

She'd been brave all day. Too brave.

By bedtime, she simply wanted her mother.

I couldn't blame her. I'd quietly suggested that maybe . . . just for one night . . . I could take her back to our old room in the staff quarters.

Let everything settle. Let this enormous change happen a little more gently.

The words had barely left my mouth before Yuvaan looked at me as though I'd suggested something completely unreasonable. "No."

Just one word.

Calm.

Certain.

Neither of us would be returning to those quarters. Not while he had any say in it.

There hadn't been a discussion after that. He'd simply picked up an extra pillow, stretched out on the sofa without the slightest complaint, and left the bed for Sara and me. As though sleeping on a couch in his own bedroom on his wedding night was the most ordinary decision in the world.

The memory leaves a quiet ache somewhere inside me.

Part guilt.

Part gratitude.

Something warmer tucked carefully beneath both. I choose not to look too closely at that feeling.

Not yet.

The floor is cold beneath my feet. The bathroom mirror reflects a face still marked by sleep. I splash cold water over it, brush my hair until it stops looking entirely unmanageable, and pull on a simple cotton kurti. By the time I'm tying the drawstring, my thoughts have already shifted to Sara.

Which usually means trouble.

My daughter possesses an extraordinary talent for finding adventure in places specifically designed to prevent it. Within our first week in Mumbai she'd somehow knocked over a decorative vase taller than herself while trying to rescue a butterfly she'd become convinced was trapped.

I still have nightmares about that shop owner's expression. Leaving her unsupervised inside a palace feels significantly more dangerous.

God only knows what she could convince the royal kitchen staff to let her experiment with. Probably fire. Definitely flour. Almost certainly both. I'm halfway through tying my hair into a loose braid when the bedroom door opens before I can reach it.

I jump. A small gasp escapes me before I can stop it. Then relief arrives just as quickly. Yuvaan stands in the doorway balancing a breakfast tray carefully in both hands. Wrapped around one of his legs like an extremely determined koala . . . is Sara.

The sight is so unexpectedly domestic that I simply stand there blinking. He's dressed simply today. A plain white t-shirt, his tattoos visible, a soaring bird, a rising sun and a quote I chose for him: ‘Memento vivere’ meaning Remember to live. He had got them when he was eighteen out of rebellion I feel but I had always been so fascinated by them. I wonder if he ever looked at the quote and thought of me even for a second.

I feel the heat rise up my neck because why the hell am I ogling him like that? I look up, his hair refuses to stay neatly in place, falling across his forehead in a way that makes him look years younger than the composed Maharaja everyone else sees.

For a fleeting second . . . He doesn't look like a king. He just looks like . . . Yuvaan.

And my heart, the traitorous thing that it is, quietly melts.

"Oh no!" Sara's horrified little voice cuts straight through my thoughts. "Mumma!" She looks genuinely devastated. "Why are you awake?"