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Gauri, a young village girl holding firm views about morals a...
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{A/N: Chapter dedicated to Shreeyawaghmare20 for always saying good things and Happiest Birthday to my dear, Pari. nirmalkhardiya God bless you. Have a blast and live a little, you are still a teenager. Love you.}
"It was an accident?"
Silence prevailed as history unravelled. Gauri and Yagya sit still, unable to digest the facts, like deeply rooted trees at the shore of a river bearing strong currents, counting their days before being swept away. Vasundhara wipes her cheek, stroking the anguish in her soul with a gauntlet of ice.
"Yes.
To the eyes, it was, but the suspecting hearts ended up blaming the man obsessed. Only if he wasn't forceful that night, or had paid heed to her selfless decision, things could have ended differently. Maybe, Gauri and I wouldn't have ended up being a part of this cursed family, and other people might've resided in these palaces." The lost voice of Vasundhara reached them, and Yagya's jaw clenched.
A deep settled thirst for blood erupted in his gut and he shuddered beneath the influence of lust taking over his senses. The beast inside him wanted to kill whoever tried to harm his family.
"Mother, that woman died in an accident. There's no need to burden yourself with guilt. Even father wasn't a culprit. It just happened." He tried to justify, though it didn't work.
"If that was so, why hasn't she left? Why is she still here?" Vasundhara's inner tumult begged her to stay quiet, but the tsunami of emotions thundering in her chest didn't let her keep the voices in.
"What do you mean?" Yagya grumbled, failing to decrypt the biggest question that had Vasundhara on her toes since the moment she discovered the truth.
"Her ghost! Her soul lingers here, isn't it? How is that possible?" Gauri puts her insight and is greeted with a sad chuckle.
"If you find a dead body in the periphery of your home, which can impact the future of your entire family, what would you do with it? How will you handle such a situation?" The queen mother threw the question in cold tone and goosebumps rose on the couple's flesh. For a moment, Gauri swore the air around them stilled, comprehending their answer. Ramparts of Chhitrakoot Palace trembled, knowing an answer that had brought nothing but darkness in the past. From now on, the words of living should be calculated and careful to not offend the lingering otherworldly entities and the dead.
"You don't have any evidence to back up your claim!" Yagya gritted through a clenched jaw. The answer was at the tip of his tongue. Like most monarchs, he was known to deal with problems in whichever way possible. Immorality was a small price in the face of danger. A sick smile coated Vasundhara's lip. Her eyes looked lifeless as if she had been living through a nightmarish loop on repeat.
"I'm the biggest evidence for not remembering the parts of my life, and later finding them in your grandfather's journal proves the obvious. You can blindside the truth, but you can't bury the penalties of ignoring it. Men in this family thought the same until it came back and slapped them out of their deceitful stupor."
