THE CROWNED

SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS

Ira was sitting near the bar while her friends were on the dance floor, she sat there, tapping her foot against the floor to the beat but couldn't lift herself up. She was tired, mentally and physically. She was busy assessing and admiring her friends when somebody coughed besides her.

"Hi-"

"No.", she looked him dead in the eye.

"What?", the guy slightly smirked and cocked his eyebrows.

"Hi, hello. Want a drink? Want to dance? Want to go to my place? No. I saved you time, there.", she went up on her toes, grabbed her drink and started walking to somewhere else. She was about to take a sip from her drink, she felt a tug on her elbow and then was pulled into a kaleidoscopic room. Decorated with lights and tinted glass windows, it was like an abstract painting had come to life. Somebody grabbed her glass and emptied its contents.

"He had roofied it.", spoke Veer's baritone voice.

"What? And What are you doing here?"

"You're standing here in my club and as for how i know how, I saw it from up the gallery."

"Whatever."

"Not even a thanks?"

"You should be doing me a thousand favours a day to even it out."

"Oh come on! You're gonna make me out to be the bad guy for loving someone else then. For disliking you for lying to me and hiding things from me?"

"You think I am mad at you because you loved her and you didn't love me? You really think of me like that? Oh wait! That's exactly what you thought of me then and exactly what you think of me now. That i am jealous of you loving Shama. I loved you and loved her as a friend. I was happy for you guys no matter how sad i was for myself. You cannot control who a person loves and I know that. I am not mad at you for loving her, I'm mad at you for being a terrible friend. I'm mad at you guys for throwing me under the bus the first chance you got, I'm mad at you for breaking my trust. I'm mad at you for ruining my whole life.", she screamed into his face as she let it all out, so much so that her head and chords started to her. Her vision slowly became cloudy and the voices she heard turned to gibberish and she felt herself loosing control before all went black.

SINDHUJA'S POV

I woke up with a jolt.

"Wake up! Don't you want to go for hunting with brother ?", my little sister joyfully shrieked. "It's dawn already, sister.", I shrugged off my remaining sleep and stretched my limbs out. Lavanya, my sister, jumped around me in circles crying out in excitement about all the stories of the wild animals she had heard from mouths all around our village.

"Please remember everything, so you can lay it out to me all in detail. Will you, sister?"

"Anything, princess."

"If you guys are done with the jumping and shrieking, we are going to be late!", came the annoyed voice of brother.

"Coming.", i answered and followed brother out of our house.

We mounted our beautiful horses and set out into the jungle. It was my first time doing this, hunting I mean. After much persuasion and insurance, brother had agreed to take me hunting, on the condition that i stay put and act according to his word, not slipping a word out of his commands. I knew he wouldn't let me do too much, but it still was something.

We had been hiding near some bushes to camouflage ourselves on the outskirts of the forest, when brother heard some rustling and crunching of dried leaves from inside it. He aimed for the barely visible body of a supposed tiger and shot his arrow. The tiger let out a growl and started running deep into the forest. Brother tightened the reins around the horse's neck and charged forward while screaming, "Don't move an inch from there, you will be safe ."

It hadn't been long since brother had gone off after the maimed tiger when I saw something coming my way through the bushes. I could make out it's outline, it wasn't an animal, rather a human. My hands had started trembling by then.

"Step back or I will have to use force! ",I cried and pulled out my sword from the sheath.

"You would dare kill a prince!", the voice boomed as it got closer and closer. The face that emerged struck me like a thunderbolt. The most beautiful man I had ever seen in my entire life, like the gods had sculpted his face themselves, bestowing the most beautiful features on him, so much so that even the heavenly nymphs would be jealous of him. The man seemed like a very familiar face but his disheveled hair cover his face prevented me from making any further conjectures. I quickly brushed off such thoughts from my mind and said, "You think I'd be swayed by this tomfoolery? What proof have you of being a prince?"

The man cried out in annoyance and started coming towards me with a fastened pace.

I swung my sword across with great agility but the man ducked and avoided the blow liked a trained soldier. He saved himself from another oncoming blow and within the blink of an eye was behind me. He had caught my neck and was gripping my other hand. After much of my fruitless tries the man snatched my sword from me and whispered into my ear, "You're still the same, Sindhuja."

"Kunwar Sa!"

***************************************************************************************

PRECAP

There was Kunwar Annirudh , the man I had once liked, once wanted to hold just my hand, still do in some form or the other, smiling gleefully at a his probable bride to be, will there always be some obstruction? Kunwar Sa, am I really that invisible to you? Can you look at me like, just for once? Grace my presence with your beautiful grey eyes and make me feel like the most special in this whole wide world? If not, can you be always this happy, whoever you're with?

HELLO EVERYONE! SO YEAH THIS IS WHERE THE STORIES JUMPS 500 YEARS BACK INTO THE PAST AND WILL BE TOLD THROUGH MAINLY SINDHUJA'S POINT OF VIEW, DONT WORRY THE CHAPTERS WILL CONTAIN BOTH SCENES FROM THE PAST AND THE PRESENT, SO THAT YOU GET THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS!