From afar - Madhavgarh is as much a royalty as any other small erstwhile princely states. After all, what could be different for a princely state in the 21st century. But the politics inside the palace and the evil lurking around the corner make thi...
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She dipped the paint brush in the colour palette and put it on the canvas. The deeply bright, earthy tone of the colour lent a vividness to the painting. Her fingers moved with an ease born of continuous practice but one look at her clearly revealed that her mind was elsewhere.
And it was natural for her to be worried, though her calm and composed face didn't give a hint of the turmoil raging inside her. She gave the air of someone who was deeply engrossed in thinking about her art, but only she knew how worried she was about the article in the newspaper. It was to calm this turmoil that she had picked up the brush and canvas - painting always calmed her down.
She stepped back a little to survey her work. Even though she was distracted, her work was progressing well. The dark turret projected vertically from the wall of the castle and rose straight in the sky, a dark contrast against the rising sun and accompanying reddish hue in the sky. She wondered if it would have been better to have added a dark, cold tone to the picture rather than the warmth that it carried, but shook her head at that thought. She was not going to let her mood affect her painting.
She had tried to meet Devraj several times in the morning, but each time she went to his room she found him sprawled on the bed, dead to the world. Finally irritated, she asked a maid servant to see to it that Devraj gets his food when he wakes up and left in a huff. Little did she know that Devraj was fully aware of her presence the last time she had been there.
It came later to her that maybe her brother was trying to avoid meeting with her, but she knew this talk needed to happen. Devraj might be older than her, but she owed it to her family to try and make this rash young man understand the folly of his actions.
~~~•~~~•~~~
The door banged shut behind her and Devraj peeked from behind his closed eyelids. He still waited for a few more minutes to confirm that his sister had actually left. When he was finally sure that Akanksha had left not just his room but the entire south wing as well, he stretched on his bed and finally opened his eyes. A look at the wall clock proclaimed that it was just past noon. So he had plenty of time before he met his sister. It was not that he was avoiding meeting her, but he just wasn't in a proper state to talk to her. Sweat soaked and mud caked dress which had dried on his body, the stench of liquor still on him, his tongue clogged with the after taste of the bitter drinks of last night - he never wanted to expose his baby sister to that.
With a final shake and sigh, he jumped up from his bed and caught his head as the room reeled and spun around him. He caught the bed post to steady himself and then slowly made his way towards his bathroom. He knew from previous experience that a nice long soak in the bathtub followed by a hot shower would do wonders for his headache. Slowly, he made his way towards his destination.
