Shefali sat on the warm carpet in the corner of the room gazing blankly at the moon through the net-covered window.
The fourth sigh in a row left her lips.
Her stomach had started twisting as the night kept growing.
Every little noise around the door made her soul almost leave her body.
Not to mention the words Chote Chauhan whispered into her ears in the evening were troubling her more.
Tell him you are mine.
Her hands clutched the lehenga that fell on her knee involuntarily.
"Why would he say that... to me?"
She said looking back at the moon in a sheer whisper.
Men who come to the brothel do not know what love means. They come here out of thirst and leave as soon as they are pleased. They have nothing to offer other than pain and hurt. Life will give you several reasons to make decisions that will soon ruin you but try to stick to what you think is right not what you think is fine - She clearly remembers what Gitanjali had told her about two months ago.
It had somehow engraved itself effortlessly in her heart.
But what did I ever have to offer him anyway? She asked herself with shady eyes.
This is all pointless... She shook off this uneasy feeling.
"May I come in?"
Shefali's heart almost jumped out of her body when she heard a voice from the door frame.
She stood up and the maid, with a plate of food in her hand, came inside, her head held down.
"Should I keep it here?"
The maid asked standing in front of her.
"Sure"
Shefali agrees.
The maid put it down and turned around to leave.
"Umm"
Shefali says and the maid turns around.
"Is... Is the sultan here?"
She hesitated.
The maid looked at her with slight disgust.
"No, he is probably in the royal palace"
She replied and walked off quickly.
Shefali smiled for the first time today.
She had not yet realized how the women in the brothel or even anyone in the whole estate would feel disgusted about her, about how she was to serve the Sultan.
They preferred to die than give in but was it really as easy as it sounded? And most importantly did Shefali know any of it yet?
No one realized she was just a seventeen-year-old girl unexpectedly thrown into the wilderness of society.
Shefali sat down and hummed a tune with her lips closed while she had her dinner.
The fear suddenly hit her back when she thought what was going to happen to her the next day, or the day after that. Will they take her somewhere else? She swallowed the dry food down her dry throat.
She set the plate out of her room because she knew she would not want to face anyone outside.
She sat on the bed, slowly set her hair free, and put the flowers on the table at the side. Only if she had the mood to admire how beautiful this place was. The only thing she could think of then was to run away somehow.
YOU ARE READING
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...
