Married To The Devil

No Hope For Uruvi...

Uruvi stepped through the door in the castle's curtain wall (the wall surrounding the castle) when Vikrant held it open for her and moved out onto the small bit of land between the stone wall and the edge of the cliff.

Her gaze slid over the empty, dark spot, but there was no sign of Sakshi.

Her attention then moved to the pile of stones that was Jaya's grave, but there were no flowers there to indicate Sakshi's recent visit.

She glanced back, frowning, to see Vikrant closing the stone door behind them.

"She's not here." The soldier shrugged as he looked around the area. "Maybe she's already on her way back."

"We would have passed her," Uruvi pointed out.

"No, there is more than one path. I just picked the quickest one. Sakshi might have gone another way." He shrugged again, then raised an eyebrow. "What do you want from Sakshi?"

Uruvi managed to smile crookedly.

All the way out here, she had been trying to come up with ways to explain to him what she had discovered and what she believed but she was just at a loss for words.

Uruvi guessed that it was a good thing Sakshi wasn't here since otherwise, she might have led the man blindly into a potentially dangerous situation.

"Girl?" Vikrant questioned. "What do you need from Sakshi?" Maybe I can help."

Uruvi smiled sarcastically, knowing he couldn't answer the questions she had for Sakshi, but after a moment, she asked, "Vikrant, what do you remember of her sister's death?"

"Jaya. " He said the name sadly. "Losing her was a severe blow to Sakshi. She loved her younger sister."

"Fond enough to kill the man who was responsible for forcing her to kill herself?"

Vikrant had been silent for so long that she didn't expect him to respond, but he eventually stepped over to the grave of stones and peeked over them. "You found the letter?"

Mouth suddenly dry, she asked, "The letter?"

"Yes. Shabbo found it several years ago. I should have destroyed it then, but these were Jaya's final words, and I didn't want to take it away from Sakshi."  

He shook his head and made a sad face at her. "So, I put it back into her chest, and she had no idea it was gone."

"Shabbo found the letter?" Uruvi asked softly, realizing she had made a huge mistake.

A foolish one when she really thought about it.

Sakshi wasn't a murderer; she knew that in her heart. She was also aware that Vikrant had romantic feelings for her and was capable of murder.

That was all he trained for as a soldier: defending his home and people by killing others. She should never have come out here with him.

"I don't know why you had to stick your nose in, girl."

Uruvi took a cautious step back as he started to move forward.

"If you had just let the past lie... Now I'll have to kill you, too, to protect Sakshi."

"To protect Sakshi from what?" she asked quietly, continuing to back away as he got closer.

"To protect her from anyone finding out that she shot the arrow at Daksh."

Aware that she was getting close to the cliff's edge, Uruvi started to move sideways instead of backward as she asked, "You have known all this time that she killed him and have been protecting her?"