A/N: A late update asks for a longer chapter! ENJOY<3
Shefali sat on the carpet looking at the open door of her room and the strangled bed.
It took her some time to recall everything from last night.
She stood up with a palm on her mouth scanning the whole room in sudden recognition.
"Where did Jiya go? Did they take her away while I slept?"
She almost shouted to herself, running out of the room.
Most of the rooms besides hers were open with girls moving around, doing their respective chores.
Shefali stumbled upon Gitanjali on her way who was coming back from her bath.
She knew she woke up late today as soon as she saw Gitanjali with her fresh wet hair soaking in front of the window of the corridor.
"Did you see Jiya?"
Shefali asks breathing heavily.
"Didn't she sleep with you?"
She asks instead with a slight notch in her eyebrows.
"She did but... She is not there anymore"
Shefali confronted racing her mind.
Gitanjali gasped and ran towards the house door in the distance, rain slipping down from her hair.
"Kaki! Jiya is missing"
She shouted on her way and Shefali leaned against the wall.
She secretly wished Jiya to run away without getting caught, a part of her knowing that the judgment in the king's court would probably not be based on humility but on significant rituals that have been going on everywhere around the country so brutally without a halt.
'The day everyone tries to dig out the reasons and not just accept the rituals will be the real challenge'
Her grandfather once read this line from the book he wrote as a youngster.
He was criticized back then.
But Shefali found it fascinating even as a kid, even when she did not understand any of it, she simply liked the idea of being able to write something that sounded so good.
She understands each of the words now, she likes it even but she knows it was not as pretty to make it happen as it sounded.
Shefali ran outside of the house behind Gitanjali knowing she herself was going to be blamed for this endeavor.
"What?"
Abhilasha said from the chair, soaking under the warm sun.
"Probably she ran away..."
Shefali adds hesitantly.
"And what were you doing? Cheering her to do so?"
Abhilasha stood up with daggers flying Shefali's way from her eyes.
"Why would I? If I knew the way out, wouldn't I have run away from here too? I do not fantasize about living here"
Shefali says with a calm tone indirectly trying to calm Abhilasha down.
"What do we do now?"
Abhilasha says sitting down, a drop of sweat running down her temples.
Gitanjali brings her a glass of water.
"What if Kedar comes enquiring? What if the Raja (king) asks him to bring her to the court? What will we answer? This will bring new trouble our way"
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𝟏𝟓𝟐𝟗: 𝐀 𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐑𝐚𝐣𝐩𝐮𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐚| Indian Historical Fiction
Historical Fiction𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐊 Ⅰ 𝐎𝐅 𝐑𝐀𝐉𝐏𝐔𝐓𝐈-𝐁𝐀𝐈𝐒𝐀 𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐋𝐎𝐆𝐘 Shefali Roy had lost her parents in a pandemic when she was just one year old. That was the first time she was orphaned. The next time she was orphaned was when she was seventeen. The army of...
