The Cursed Princess of Suryagarh: Book 1

37. Into the fire

The piece of jewellery was getting closely examined by Radha and Jagdish in Agni Bhawan's courtyard. The Holy Fire was raging once again, and this time, the magicians had taken extra care to have the blue dome of fire encompassing them, leaving the five humans with a tickling sense of warmth engulfing their skin as the flames of the dome lapped against each other along the circumference and led to the slight rise in temperature in the surroundings.

But Radha was highly piqued. They had sanctified the necklace using the powers of the moon and the water, but due to all the commotion that took place later on, the relic was no longer ready to be hurled into the fire directly. They needed to purify it all over again.

Hence, Jagdish was back at the task with Radha watching closely. Mumbling chants under his breath, he allowed the brightest beams of the moon to land on the piece of jewellery after the rays got reflected off the surface of the estuary. The artefact was imbued with the brilliant glimmers of the moonbeam, and the ritual was nearing completion.

Shreya shivered when she saw the determination on Jagdish's visage. He was as ready to kill as Aarush had been to see the end of the immortal, and this time, she was more resolute than the previous round as well. A small part of her heart did bleed upon hearing the morose tale of the man, but the brutality with which he responded to the injustice meted out to him was plain problematic. Perhaps he needed counselling or probably he never recovered from the loss of the man he had loved so ardently, but whatever the case was, Shreya Awasthy was not going to be affected by the loss of love in yet another anecdote of Suryagarh.

Aryan's palm clasped around her. "You okay?"

She sniffled and despised herself when tears stung her eyes. "I hate that immortal. I do."

His hands went to caress and pat her back. "He will meet his end soon."

She was surprised at the perseverance in his voice. Almost as if he had also made it his personal mission to get rid of the man who couldn't be killed. Her voice shook slightly. "Yes." Her gaze went to how Adya was hugging herself a certain distance away with a grimace on her face. The princess was highly worried about her brother. As much as Shreya was. And a murmur slipped past her lips, "Be safe, Princey. And keep your promise, okay?"

***

"Be safe, Princey. And keep your promise, okay?"

Aarush let out a rash breath when he heard the soft and gentle murmur, as delicate as a mild winter breeze, waft into his ears. He didn't know how he was able to sense her angst despite not having any link like Radha had with her. He couldn't comprehend why he was able to hear her when she was nowhere in the vicinity. He didn't understand how on earth could he feel the tremulous beating of her heart thrumming against his chest. But then all of it was indeed transpiring to the extent that had he not known better, he would've started shouting at her for not heeding him and staying back in the clearing. However, the steely determination he could sense in the rhythmic respiration of the girl conveyed that they had successfully retrieved the relic from whichever depths of hell it had gotten lost in, and the five of them were on the verge of finishing the ritual.

Sighing, he perched himself on a smooth expanse of a boulder at the base of an overlarge banyan tree. His gaze went to the human figurine lying near another tree in a pool of murky blood. The immortal hadn't regained consciousness yet, and Aarush hoped the status would remain the same so that the ritual could be completed without a hitch and the man be rendered to ashes at long last.

However, much to his chagrin, he saw the immortal's hands stir in the feeble illumination of the moon.

A groan escaped his mouth as Adhyayan snapped his eyes open. Extreme agony shot through his body. His cheeks burned because of the gash he had received when the girl flung a knife at him, and most of his bones were on fire because of the cracks they had developed upon getting banged against the rough and thick trunk of the tree before a very nasty collision with a mass of fire. He could clearly recollect how the flames lashed against his skin and seared him in a way he had never experienced before. Almost as if each of his organs would melt and form a puddle of tissue and blood.