The Promised Queen

𝒻𝑜𝓇𝓉𝓎 𝓈𝒾𝓍

Flashback

The Palace of Suryagarh had always been vibrant.

It had once pulsed with life—carpets of red and gold unfurled across marbled floors, flutes and sitars filling the air at dusk, and the scent of mogra, sandalwood, and cardamom trailing through every corridor like a lover's touch. 

The courtyards had echoed with laughter—of children playing, of courtiers jesting, of Queen Gauri's lilting voice as she sang softly to the pigeons at dawn.

But now, silence hung from the rafters like heavy drapery. It clung to the pillars, pooled in corners, and crept through the hallways like mold on old stone. Every sound was a ghost of what it had once been. Even the birds had stopped singing.

Queen Gauri was gone.

The moment the funeral pyres had turned her silk-wrapped form to ash, something inside the palace had turned to ash, too.

King Dev, once known throughout the four provinces as Simhasan Singh—the Lion of the Throne—had withered like a flame left to the wind. The man who had once led armies across rivers, who had stood tall against storms both political and divine, now seemed hollowed out. 

His shoulders slumped under invisible weight. His beard grew untamed. He no longer carried the scent of sandal and saffron but of cold stone and wet earth.

He wandered the palace not as a king, but as a ghost draped in royal robes, his eyes chasing shadows that no longer took shape. Paintings of Gauri—her soft eyes, her peacock feather bindis—were veiled in black cloth. Her room had been locked, and yet, Dev would often be found outside its doors, sitting for hours, murmuring things no one could quite hear.

Meals were left untouched. Courtly meetings were missed. The throne sat colder by the day, its golden lions tarnishing as dust began to settle into the crevices.

And Prince Hruday Singh Tanwar—just fifteen years old and far too young to be fatherless in spirit—was left to grieve in the echo of his own silence.

His mother's presence clung to the drapes. The silken ones she had chosen herself, a shade of seafoam that caught the sunlight just so. Her perfume still lingered in the air—mogra and saffron and something distinctly her. 

At night, he would hear the faint chime of her anklets in dreams so vivid he would awaken gasping, reaching out for her as if she were only across the room.

She never was.

One night, weeks after the final rites, when the palace's sorrow was no longer loud but aching and constant, Hruday found the courage to approach his father.

He hesitated outside Dev's chamber, hand trembling before he knocked. When no answer came, he pushed the door open. Darkness cloaked the room like a shroud.

Dev sat hunched at a low table, his back to the door. A single candle stood before him, its wick blackened, long dead.

"Baba?" Hruday's voice broke through the gloom, unsure.

Dev didn't turn. He didn't blink. His eyes remained locked on the cold wax before him.

"You should be asleep," he said at last.

There was no warmth. No grief. Just a voice emptied of everything it once carried.

Hruday lingered in the doorway, desperate for something—an embrace, a word, even a glance.

But Dev didn't move.

That night, a quiet understanding fell between them—one far more painful than shouting or tears: they had lost her together, but they would grieve alone.