Bonded

Chapter Forty Six

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Ronin

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It is not often that Kavya and I have to excuse ourselves from each other or from India... But tonight it was has been draining for us both I think, and a little alone time with our sweet future lover's blessing is just what we need to take the edge off of the sharpness that has come with the day...

Walking hand in hand... Kavya leading the way as the last streams of sunset sparkle through his dyed hair...

It feels peaceful in a way that it truly has no business to be... The honest truth of nature as it surrounds us somehow engulfing us both as we wind our way out of the rose garden and onto the familiar path that we've walked so many times before... The river our destination... Our favorite tree just waiting for us to hold each other underneath it...

The earth feels soft along the well-worn path... And my soul feels more at ease as we wind our way away from the obsidian palace and the volatile ruler that controls us all...

I feel disgusting held so right in his grip sometimes... But I understand that if we were not here under King Xiang's employ we would not have discovered the scholar that makes us both so delightfully happy and worked up...

I feel as if we truly owe him some kind of debt now... Even if we do need to fear him... And what he might do to any one of us on a whim... Or a simple turn of his favor for doing something as small as blinking the wrong way in his presence.

"What are you thinking of that is making you so broody, my Love?" the way Kavya asks me makes my heart feel so very warm... The caring in his voice obvious as he holds my hand just a little bit tighter than he was before.

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Kavya

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"The King... And of India... And how the palace has felt lately..." Ronin's answer shouldn't surprise me since the two of us have such a tendency to be so similar in our thoughts during periods of silence between us...

What I had been thinking of earlier he is busy thinking of now instead of thinking about the chill currently trying to fill the air as the sun drops lower and lower in the sky... And it is what is making him walk a bit slower than normal... It is what is causing such a distressed look to appear on his face every time I turn to look at him...

It both warms my heart and puts wariness in my soul... And I cannot help but wonder if there is a reason it is on both of our minds.