INSEPARABLE II

XXIX

Thrown into yet another conundrum, Prem spent the entire night scrapping everything he had planned to say to Noor and realigning his thoughts. Little did he know, none of his plans would be worth anything before the forces of destiny.

Noor had spent the past couple days in the suffering she had learned to live in only too well over the years. Prem's distant behavior had absolutely broken her heart and yet she had nothing against him. She sincerely believed she deserved every bit of it.

Beginning to lose interest in life again, Noor walked aimlessly in the large front yard of the palace followed by Nihal.

The head of her security watched her back as she strolled. The Chief had not been seen near the Queen for over two days now and she was back to being herself again. This was the Queen he recognized. The perfect, the controlled, the reserved Queen. The one not everyone can just walk in and speak or laugh with. The Queen that intimidated almost everyone and was open with very few people. He liked her like this. He had missed her gravely.

Noor walked to the eastern end of the enormous yard and instead of stopping and turning she continued down the curved stone pathway deeper into the various courtyards of the eastern wing of the palace. When a garden full of bright colored roses under the morning sun caught her eye, she couldn't help but walk right into it. Studying the rows of flowers in detail, she bent down to touch a rose and spotted a child. Hiding between two rose bushes, the child sat quietly engrossed in the precious pearls of his necklace. His silk red kurta was dirt ridden, and his curly hair messy. He appeared to be a child of the Kurrali royal family, even from her limited side angle, she could see his overtly Dhaliwal features.

Placing a knee on the ground, "well, hello there." Noor spoke softly to get the boy's attention.

Responding to her voice, the boy looked up at once and turned his neck to face her.

Noor...was spell-bound. For a moment, she sat completely frozen, lost in the boy's round brown eyes. The boy did not just have Dhaliwal features, he had the features of the Chief himself. Noor's overwhelmed mind made an aggressive attempt to organize the countless thoughts and emotions suddenly whirling inside her head. Flashbacks of Prem's face from when they were children clouded her mind as she debated whether she was going insane or she truly was looking at a child that had a striking resemblance to him. A sharp ache instantly conquered her chest causing a tightening in her throat at the realization that every single time she thought of her own child, it was a version of this very face that crossed her mind. Her weight suddenly became too heavy for her folded leg to endure when she further registered that her own son would have been this boy's age if he was alive so she let herself fall to the side. Using one arm on the stone to support herself in the sitting position, a breathlessly shaken Noor stared ahead at the gorgeous child.

"Your Highness!" Nihal finally shook her out of it after she didn't respond to any of his verbal calls.

Noor looked up behind her at Nihal.

"Are you okay?" He asked concerned.

Noor nodded and then shifted her eyes back to the child utterly speechless. He was...angelically captivating. Beholding his perfect form so preciously in her tear bound eyes, she could not bring herself to even blink. Oh, how desperately she wished for a miracle in that moment – for her memory of the death of her darling son to somehow be declared false and for this child to named hers. She would ask no questions about its possibility, she swore to the universe, would need no explanations, just her child. How deeply she yearned for her son, to be able to hold him, press him against her chest, the hollow left behind by motherhood suddenly stretched against the inner walls of her body suffocating her. She needed to hold this child, right that second.