His Greatest Conquest

The salt wind hit Arjun’s face as he stepped from the royal barge onto the marble quay, and he tasted Dwarka before he saw it—brine, sandalwood, and something metallic that might have been power. Trumpets blared. Garlands of lotus and saffron were looped around his neck so quickly the petals bruised his collarbones. Every gesture had been rehearsed since childhood: the slight bow that conveyed humility without submission, the smile that promised pleasure without commitment. He had performed it from Anga to Panchala, and still the crowd pressed closer, women holding up their children so they could say they had seen the Pandava who never missed.

Inside the gate the courtyard opened like a shell, white stone veined with lapis, fountains throwing silver arcs into air already warm with morning. Courtiers formed two living walls, their eyes cataloguing the cut of his coat, the torque of gold at his throat, the easy way his hand rested on his sword hilt. Arjun noted who stepped forward first, who held back, who smiled with their teeth while their eyes stayed cold. Information was currency; he had come to spend it wisely.

Krishna waited on the lowest terrace, leaning against a pillar carved into the shape of a rearing horse. He wore no crown, only a single emerald that caught the sun and threw it back like a challenge. His welcome was soft, almost private, as if the thousand people watching were an illusion. “Cousin,” he said, and clasped Arjun’s forearm longer than protocol required. “Hastinapur is far.”

“Farther when the road is watched,” Arjun answered, matching the quiet tone. He felt the pressure of Krishna’s fingers, the callus of bowstring on royal skin, and knew the assessment had begun.

They walked together beneath silk canopies while poets sang couplets comparing the two princes to moon and sun. Arjun’s face ached from smiling. Each time he turned, another platter appeared—betel leaf, crystallised ginger, wine the colour of pomegranate seeds. He took nothing. Hunger was safer when it belonged only to him. Instead he listened: to the ambassador who mentioned trade routes, to the priest who asked after his father’s health, to the woman whose veil slipped just far enough to reveal a mouth shaped like a question. Their voices overlapped, a net of sound drawing him toward the inner palace where the real negotiations would unfold.

When the formal procession finally halted in a mirrored hall, Arjun’s ears rang with silence. He saw himself repeated in every direction—tall, straight, armour polished until it reflected his own blank expression. He looked, he realised, like a man ready to be loved or hated on command. The thought irritated him. He loosened the collar that had seemed elegant in Hastinapur and found it garish here.

Krishna dismissed the retainers with a flick of two fingers. “You’ll want to bathe,” he said. “Tonight there is music. Tomorrow, business.” The words were courteous, the cadence final, yet Arjun felt the hinge between them, the place where courtesy could become something else. He bowed, letting Krishna see the top of his head, the posture of a fighter who chose not to fight.

Alone in the guest chambers he let the garlands slide to the floor. Through latticed windows he glimpsed the city descending in stepped tiers toward the sea, white walls blazing like chalk in sun. Somewhere below, his brothers’ futures were being weighed against grain shipments and marriage contracts. He had one task: keep Krishna’s favour without selling the little freedom they still possessed. The arithmetic was simple; the execution would not be.

He unbuckled his sword and set it on a table of carved rosewood. The steel caught a shaft of light and threw it across the ceiling like a crack in plaster. Arjun stared at the line until it blurred, thinking of nothing, preparing for everything.

The gardens lay beyond a moon-gate of black basalt, the threshold cool under his palm. Inside, the noise of the palace fell away like a cloak slipped from his shoulders. Gravel paths wound between beds of turmeric and holy basil, the air thick with bees and the green scent of crushed leaves. He walked without destination, letting the hush settle inside his ribs.

Ahead, a figure knelt beside a trellis of jasmine. A coarse cotton sari had ridden up to reveal calves the colour of wet sand, the skin stippled with earth. Dark hair was twisted into a knot that spilled a few strands across her nape, damp from the heat. She worked with the steady patience of someone who owned nothing but time, pinching off yellowed blossoms and dropping them into a clay bowl. The motion lifted her breasts against the thin cloth each time she reached; he registered it automatically, the way a bowman notes wind.

Arjun slowed. Servants, he had found, were easier company than nobles; they asked for nothing except the small thrill of being noticed. He shaped his mouth into the half-smile that had coaxed palace girls onto moonlit terraces from Indraprastha to Matsya.

“Your flowers are dying of shame,” he said. “They know they’ll never match the hand that plucks them.”

The woman paused, fingers still curled around a stem. Then she turned.

The face was oval, unpainted, eyebrows thick and straight above eyes the colour of river silt. No downcast gaze, no flutter of lashes. She looked at him as if he were simply another object in the garden—neither target nor prize. Recognition arrived a beat later: Subhadra, younger sister of the man who could decide whether his brothers ate or starved next year. The bowl rested on her thigh, stained with juice and pollen; her thumb kept working at a petal, slow, deliberate.

“They die because their season is over,” she said. “Not everything revolves around admiration.”

The words struck him like a slap delivered in the same tone others used for weather. He became aware of his own stance—weight on one hip, arms loose, the posture that usually drew laughter or shy mimicry. It felt suddenly theatrical.

“I beg your pardon, princess. I mistook you for—”

“A gardener.” She finished the sentence without emphasis. “There is no shame in tending life.”

Heat crawled up his neck. He searched for the easy retort that always arrived, found nothing. The silence between them filled with insect wings.

She wiped her hand on the edge of her sari, leaving a green smear. “In Hastinapur, do jasmine bloom past the first rains?”

The question was practical, almost academic, as if his answer mattered more than his name. He recalled the courtyard outside his mother’s rooms, the way the vines clung to stone until winter stripped them.

“They bloom longer,” he said. “The walls hold heat.”

She nodded once, filing the information away. A droplet of sweat slid from her hairline to the corner of her mouth; she ignored it. He felt the absurd urge to brush it off, to learn whether her skin tasted of salt or sap.

From somewhere above came the soft scrape of sandals on stone. He glanced up. Krishna stood on a balcony half-hidden by a frangipani, one hand resting on the parapet, face unreadable against the sky. Their eyes met for the length of a heartbeat. Then the king turned and vanished between silk hangings, leaving only the imprint of observation.

Arjun stepped back, the gravel sharp under his soles. “I should not disturb your work.”

“You haven’t,” Subhadra answered. She returned to the vine, snapping off another spent flower. The sound was clean, final.

He bowed—too formal, he knew, but the gesture had become a retreat. When he straightened, she was already absorbed again, her back a smooth curve that gave nothing away. He walked the path’s bend until the trellis hid her, yet the image remained: the calm eyes, the earth under her fingernails, the way she had spoken of seasons as if they were facts rather than metaphors. For the first time in years, he had no idea what came next.

He lingered, the path turning back on itself like a snake reconsidering its own skin. The gravel shifted under his sandals, a small sound, yet loud enough that she lifted her head again. Her eyes found his without surprise, as if she had expected the echo of his footsteps.

“The gardens are well kept,” he said, the sentence arriving too late, too flat. He tried to soften it with the smile that usually arrived ahead of him, the one that promised nothing and suggested everything. “Your touch, perhaps.”

Subhadra looked at the vine in her hand, the brown edge of a petal, then at him. “I only remove what is finished. The plant does the rest.”

Again, the refusal to step into the frame he offered. He felt the old lines drain of meaning, like dye bleeding out of cloth. A breeze moved between them, carrying the scent of bruised jasmine, almost sour.

He cleared his throat. “In Hastinapur we grow a white variety that opens at dusk. The petals are thicker—” He stopped, hearing himself describe a flower as though it were territory to be claimed.

“Do they lose their perfume quickly?” she asked. The question was quiet, practical, the way a child might ask whether rain hurts the sky.

He had to think. “By morning they smell only of dust.”

She nodded, filing the fact away. “Then they are honest. They give everything at once.”

The words settled on his skin like warm oil. He had never thought of flowers as honest or dishonest; they were simply there, like torches or wine cups, background to the real negotiations of flesh and alliance. Now he saw the spent blossoms in her bowl, their edges curled inward, and felt something close to shame.

She wiped her palms down the front of her sari, leaving faint green stripes across the cotton. “Do you garden in Hastinapur?”

“I travel too often.” The answer sounded like an admission. He tried to recover. “But I know the names of things—ashoka, champak, the red hibiscus my mother wears in her hair.”

“Knowing names is not the same as knowing how they grow.” She stood, the bowl cradled against her hip. The motion brought her almost level with him; the top of her head reached his shoulder, no more. “Soil, water, the hour to prune—those are quieter knowledge.”

He became aware of his own hands, empty, hanging at his sides like borrowed tools. Usually by now a woman would be laughing, touching her earring, asking if he remembered her from a spring festival. Subhadra simply waited, the silence between them open, patient.

He heard himself speak again, the voice smaller. “Would you teach me?”

Her brows lifted slightly, the first break in composure. “A prince asks a gardener to teach him weeds and watering?”

“I asked the princess,” he said, and meant it. The title felt strange in his mouth, heavier than gold.

She studied him, the streak of earth on her cheek a darker line against skin. Then she turned back to the trellis, fingers finding a yellowed leaf. “Perhaps. If you come without your garlands next time. They crush the stems.”

The dismissal was gentle, absolute. He bowed again, lower, the silk of his coat brushing the path. When he straightened, she was kneeling once more, the curve of her spine a quiet wall between them. He walked away, the gravel louder now, as if the ground itself were announcing his retreat. Behind him he heard the small snap of another blossom falling, the sound clean, final, already fading into the hush of leaves.

He felt the weight of Krishna’s gaze like a palm pressed between his shoulder blades. The balcony was high enough that the king’s features blurred, but the angle of his shoulders—forward, intent—was unmistakable. Arjun had stood on enough ramparts to know when a man was calculating range.

Subhadra was still kneeling, her thumb rubbing a smear of sap from the bowl’s rim. She had not looked up; perhaps she had not heard the faint scrape of leather against stone. He wanted to warn her, to say your brother is watching, but the words felt childish, as though they had been caught stealing fruit.

Instead he stepped back, gravel skittering. “I thank you for the lesson, princess.”

She lifted her face then, eyes tracking the sudden formality. A pulse beat visibly at the base of her throat, quick, curious. “You will remember what I said?”

“I will remember,” he answered, though he was no longer sure whether she meant jasmine or the slower knowledge of how things grow. He bowed, the angle exact, the way his tutors had drilled into him at thirteen: spine straight, gaze lowered, hands steady. The silk of his coat sleeve brushed the earth; he smelled crushed basil and his own sweat.

When he straightened, Krishna was gone. Only the frangipani swayed, petals loosening, drifting down like pale coins. The absence felt heavier than the presence.

Subhadra watched him, bowl balanced against her hip. “You leave quickly.”

“Courtiers gossip,” he said. The excuse sounded thin even to him. “Your brother’s patience is finite.”

“My brother’s patience is his own concern.” She rose, knees imprinted with the pattern of gravel. “But go, if you must.”

He hesitated, tasting the moment the way a man tongues a cracked tooth. The path curved behind a hedge of oleander; five steps and she would be invisible again, returned to the quiet commerce of shoots and soil. He discovered he did not want to be dismissed so easily.

“Tomorrow,” he said, the word arriving unplanned. “At dawn. I’ll come without garlands.”

A flicker—amusement, maybe—crossed her mouth. “Weeds have thorns. Bring patience instead.”

He bowed a second time, less steady, and retreated. The oleander leaves scraped his forearm, releasing a bitter milk that stung. Behind him he heard the soft clink of her bowl settling on stone, the small exhalation of someone returning to work.

The garden paths looped like a game designed by a bored god; he took two wrong turns before the basalt moon-gate appeared. Beyond it, palace noise rushed back—bronze gongs announcing the evening offering, a woman’s laugh fracturing against carved marble. He felt the walls tilt, reasserting their scale. Somewhere in that crush waited his brothers’ expectations, Krishna’s unspoken ledger, the future balanced on dowry chests and grain tariffs.

Yet the image that rode him was smaller: earth under her thumbnail, the way she had snapped a stem without looking, certain of the place where life ended and decay began. He realized he was still holding his sword-belt; he had carried it through the entire conversation like a farmer clutching a plough in a ballroom.

A servant bowed, offering a cup of tamarind water cooled in silver. Arjun drank, the sourness flooding his mouth, and understood that the city had already begun its measurement of him. Every corridor would carry echoes of this afternoon: the prince who knelt beside jasmine, who asked questions instead of giving compliments, who left with pollen on his cuffs. Krishna would have reports—how long he stayed, how low he bowed, whether the princess smiled.

He handed back the cup. The servant’s eyes flicked to the green streak on his sleeve, then away. Arjun felt the first thread of a new skin forming, tight, unfamiliar, shaped less by conquest than by curiosity. Tomorrow he would return, not to conquer but to be taught, and the knowledge unsettled him more than any battlefield ever had.

The great hall smelled of sandalwood smoke and heated silk. Courtiers drifted between pillars, their conversations a low surf of consonants that broke whenever someone laughed too loudly. Arjun entered at the hour when petitioners thinned and the queen’s musicians had not yet returned, the lull that made people drop their public voices a notch. He spotted her on the far dais, half-shielded by a lattice of carved rosewood, the princess with two attendants whose needles flashed as they embroidered the hem of a crimson shawl. Subhadra held the cloth taut across her knees, guiding the stitch line with one finger. The pose looked docile; the set of her shoulders did not.

He crossed the floor using the measured stride his tutors had beaten into him—never eager, never late—pausing to acknowledge a minor cousin here, a caravan steward there. Each greeting bought him seconds to settle his breathing. When he reached the dais he bowed, palms together, exactly the depth due a king’s sister. The attendants fluttered; Subhadra lifted her eyes without raising her head, the motion economical, almost wary.

“Princess,” he began, loud enough for the eavesdroppers, “I carry a dispatch from my brother King Yudhishthira concerning the new toll on salt carts. Your brother’s council asked for clarification.” A harmless sentence; every trader in the room would repeat it before sunset.

She released the cloth. “You may speak, Prince.” Formality wrapped her voice like wet cotton, impossible to read.

Arjun produced the sealed scroll he had prepared at dawn, the wax still perfect. “The numbers are here. But the matter is delicate—grain and salt travel together, and a rise in one levy affects the other.” He was improvising now, praying the metaphor would hold. “I hoped you might advise me on the temper of Dwarka’s merchants, since you observe the city from within while we see it only from the road.”

A flicker: surprise, perhaps approval. She accepted the scroll but did not break the seal. “Trade is best weighed in open yards, not parlours. Still, the council thanks you for haste.” The answer was correct, empty, and delivered past his left shoulder so the women behind them could hear.

He felt the old reflex rise—smile, tilt the head, let the dimple appear—and crushed it. “I also wished to ask,” he said, softer, “whether the jasmine you tend suffers here as it does at home. Our gardeners blame the wind; I blame the soil. Your thought?”

One attendant glanced up, sensing a shift. Subhadra’s fingers tightened on the scroll. “Plants reveal their own needs if one watches,” she said. “Patience is cheaper than advice.” The sentence carried a private echo—bring patience instead—and her mouth curved, barely, at the memory.

Heat climbed his neck. Around them the hall’s tide kept turning: a steward bowing to a moneylender, children chasing a hoop, the everyday machinery that ground every word to gossip. He leaned a fraction closer. “I would watch, if you allowed it. Soil, wind, anything.”

She met him full-on then, dark irises steady. “In public gardens everything is already seen,” she murmured. “Some sights exhaust the viewer before the plant.”

The reproof was so gentle he almost missed it. He stepped back, creating the polite distance his reputation would expect, and raised his voice again. “Then I thank you for counsel. I will convey your words to my brother.”

“May the road be kind,” she answered, formal once more, and bent over the crimson shawl as though the dye required sudden study.

Arjun retreated among the pillars, pulse hammering. He had entered intending to dazzle, and left carrying a lesson wrapped in merciless courtesy. Every courtier who had witnessed the exchange would report the same: the Pandava prince discussed tariffs with the princess for less than a hundred breaths, nothing more. No smile, no scandal. Yet inside his chest a smaller, private dispatch had already been sealed: she had answered him in front of the world and given nothing away, while he had offered, without realizing it, the first honest petition of his life.

He found her again at the hour when lamps were being lit, their flames catching on bronze reflectors and scattering gold across the marble. Subhadra stood alone beside a lotus tank, feeding the fish with crumbs of chickpea bread. The water’s surface trembled, breaking her reflection into bright shards. Arjun approached from the east so the light would strike his profile first; he had practiced the angle in a mirror of polished brass, knowing exactly where the cheekbone caught fire.

“Princess,” he said, pitching his voice low, “the court poets insist that longing is a wound. Yet I think they flinch from the real incision.” He paused, letting the silence stretch like silk, then recited:

“‘Night after night I lay my mouth to the spear-cut in your side, drinking the salt that would have killed another man. You laugh, calling it mercy, but I call it marriage of metals—my tongue to your blood, both sharpening.’”

He had used the verse before, in other cities, with women who leaned closer at the word “tongue.” He waited for the tell-tale hitch of breath.

Subhadra dusted the last crumbs from her fingers. “Bhartrihari,” she said, not a question. “The same collection that calls women ‘fields to be ploughed.’” She turned, water still rippling behind her. “Your wound drinks the speaker, that much is plain. Yet the poem fails the moment it claims equality. The spear-cut did not ask to be tasted; the tongue leaves with its own story intact. One body is altered, the other merely fed.”

The answer arrived so calmly that he felt the compliment curdle inside his chest. He had expected polite applause, perhaps a blush at the intimacy of the image. Instead she met his gaze with the same attention she had given the fish—curious, measuring, unwilling to flinch.

Arjun recovered by reflex. “You read the commentaries, then. Most hear only the ache of desire.”

“I read the scar,” she said. “A spear is not metaphor. It enters, it exits, it takes with it whatever it touches. The poet wants us to admire the drinker, but I keep wondering what happened to the one who was opened.”

Her voice never rose; the hall’s murmur continued unbroken around them. Yet each syllable stripped another layer of varnish from his performance. He became aware of his own stance—weight shifted to one hip, hand resting on the jewelled hilt of a dagger that had never seen battle. The pose felt suddenly obscene, a boy playing bandit.

He tried to pivot. “Perhaps the wound and the mouth need each other. Without the cut, no thirst; without the tongue, no healing.”

“Salt does not heal,” she answered. “It preserves. It burns. It keeps the injury recognizable.” She tilted her head, studying him as though he were a line whose scansion refused to scan. “Why choose that particular verse, Prince?”

The question was direct, almost clinical. He felt the old scripts crumble. Seduction required the other to stay inside the metaphor; she had stepped outside and was now holding the metaphor up to sunlight, showing the cracks.

“I thought—” he began, then stopped. I thought it would make you step closer. I thought the word “tongue” would flicker behind your eyes the way it does in every other woman’s. I thought intellect could be outflanked by audacity.

She waited, patient as stone. Around them the court kept moving, silk brushing marble, laughter ricocheting off pillars. He heard every sound separately, as if his ears had grown unnaturally sharp.

Finally he exhaled. “I chose it because it sounded dangerous. I wanted to sound dangerous.”

Something softened, not into tenderness but into recognition. “Danger is simple,” she said. “Listening is harder.” She gave a small, decisive nod, the way one closes a ledger, and walked on, her reflection reassembling in the tank once her steps had stilled the water.

Before he could shape a reply, a voice cracked across the marble like a whip.

“Ah, the conqueror of hearts strikes again!”

The words came from Lord Kritavarman of Martikavarta, a guest allied to the Yadus, wine-flushed and grinning. He stood beneath a lamp, one hand on the shoulder of a junior herald who had clearly been feeding him stories. Several heads turned; a low chuckle rippled outward. The epithet had followed Arjun for years, embroidered on every campfire tale, but tonight it rang against the stone like a cheap bell.

Arjun felt the sound hit the base of his spine. He watched Subhadra register it: the slight widening of her eyes, the moment her lower lip parted from the upper as though an invisible thread snapped. She did not look at Kritavarman; she looked at him, at Arjun, as if measuring the distance between the man and the story. The space was larger than he had ever noticed.

Kritavarman, oblivious, pushed forward. “Come, Prince, share the secret. My nephew here would trade three villages for half your luck.”

The herald guffawed too loudly, then caught himself and bowed. Arjun’s tongue felt wooden. He could usually parry such banter—deflect, wink, move on—but every practiced phrase crumbled against the quiet in Subhadra’s face. He heard his own past conquests clatter behind him like empty cups.

“Lord Kritavarman,” he managed, voice steady only because training took over, “poetry is cheaper than villages, and taxes lighter still.”

A polite answer, but his smile arrived too late; the jest landed awkwardly, a jug set down off-balance. Kritavarman sensed the chill and retreated with a muttered compliment, but damage hummed in the air like a cracked note from the musicians’ gallery.

Subhadra’s gaze dropped to the floor, then lifted—direct, unadorned. In it he saw neither admiration nor anger; he saw appraisal, and the verdict was disappointment, thin as a hair yet sharp enough to score bone. She inclined her head, the movement formal, final.

“If you will excuse me, Prince. The hour calls me elsewhere.”

She spoke softly enough that only he could hear the dismissal. Before he could offer to escort her, she had already turned, the end of her sari skimming the marble, disappearing between pillars where lamplight could not follow. The two attendant women trailed after her, needles and embroidery frame forgotten.

Arjun remained beside the lotus tank. Fish still nosed the surface, expecting more crumbs. He became aware of his own reflection: shoulders squared, jaw set, the famed archer standing alone beneath a bronze lamp that painted him gold and hollow at once. Courtiers drifted past, conversations resuming, but he felt as though a circle of quiet had been drawn around his feet, a stage after the play has ended and the audience departed, leaving only the echo of their laughter.

Conqueror of hearts. He had never noticed how martial the phrase sounded—how it reduced every woman to territory, every kiss to a flag planted. He wondered how many had heard the title and felt, as Subhadra just had, the door quietly close between them.

The hall seemed suddenly vast, its ceilings pressing down like the weight of every easy promise he had ever made. He pressed thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose, a gesture he thought no one observed, yet somewhere a pair of eyes catalogued even that, he was sure. Reputation was a second skin, stitched tighter each time someone spoke it aloud, and tonight it felt like armor lined with thorns.

He drew a slow breath, tasting sandalwood smoke and his own absurdity. Abandon the pursuit, a practical voice urged; she had shown no interest in being another conquest, and the court would gladly watch him fail. Yet the memory of her reading the scar in Bhartrihari’s verse refused to fade. She had looked straight through the performance and named the wound beneath.

He straightened, letting his hand fall. No, he was not ready to give up. But he would need to step outside the circle of laughter, outside the title, and find a language that had nothing to prove. The realization carried no romance, only the blunt certainty of work ahead—harder, riskier, and utterly unfamiliar.

Somewhere beyond the pillars a drum began, signalling the next course of the evening’s entertainment. He turned from the tank, each footstep deliberate, already planning the hour before dawn when the palace corridors belonged to sweepers and anonymous shadows. There, perhaps, he could learn to listen.

He walked the corridor without seeing it, the torch-flames smearing across his vision like oil on water. Conqueror of hearts. The syllables knocked inside his skull with every step, a war-drum he had once danced to and now could not silence. He passed a mirror; the man inside wore the same face, yet the curve of the mouth looked borrowed, the arch of the eyebrow a prop that had forgotten its purpose. He lifted a hand to the glass and felt cool reflection meet warm skin. Which of them had done the kissing, the charming, the leaving? He could no longer sort actor from audience.

At the archway to the inner courtyard he stopped. Night air carried the scent of bruised marigold and ghee from the evening lamps. He should return to the hall, circulate, drink, laugh at the right jokes. Instead he stepped into the dark, boots crunching fallen petals, and closed his eyes. An unfamiliar sensation rose through his chest: a fist slowly opening, joints stiff, reluctant. He named it shame, then anger, then shame again. The sequence looped until both words lost meaning and only heat remained, pooling beneath the breastbone like molten lead. He had never been refused, never been seen through; he had certainly never stood mute while a woman dismantled his best line and handed back the pieces. The memory of her gaze—steady, unimpressed—flashed again, and the heat surged upward, scorching the backs of his eyes.

He could leave. Ride out at dawn, rejoin his brothers, tell himself she was cold, bookish, unsuitable. The story would write itself: the prince who might have tasted another victory chose higher duty instead. People would nod, relieved that the world still ran along familiar grooves. He pictured the court poets composing the episode: “Wise Subhadra, too austere for love; valiant Arjun, untangled by prudence.” A neat stanza, no loose threads. His fingers curled against his palms. The fantasy tasted of dust.

He could stay and play the old game harder—poems at sunrise, jewels delivered by smiling servants, a procession of compliments until her resistance cracked under sheer weight. The strategy had never failed. Yet the idea sickened him now, felt obscene, like pressing a flower until the petals bruised and called it affection. She would see through that too, and the second dismissal would wound worse than the first. He exhaled sharply, watching the breath scatter a cluster of petals at his feet. They fluttered, settled, stayed broken.

A third path glimmered, thin and uncertain: stop performing. Approach her without anecdote or ornament, offer nothing but attention. The notion felt naked, almost indecent. How did one speak without premeditated cadence, stand without rehearsed angle? He realized he had no memory of his own unfiltered voice; every sentence he owned had been tuned for effect long before it left his throat. To abandon the script was to risk silence, stammering, a shapeless self spilling out. The possibility terrified him more than any battlefield.

From the distant hall came the tinkle of ankle-bells, a burst of applause. Life continuing, applauding itself. He lifted his face to the sky, seeking stars, finding only the smudged orange of torch-smoke. Somewhere behind that haze Subhadra moved through her evening, the wound-and-tongue debate already filed away, perhaps forgotten. He wanted to call the moment back, to answer her question—“Why choose that verse?”—with the truth: because I thought you would be easier to impress than to know. The confession lodged unsaid beneath his sternum, sharp as a splinter.

He pressed thumb and forefinger to his eyelids until constellations burst against the dark. When he lowered his hand the courtyard re-emerged, unchanged. The choice, too, remained: flee, perform, or stand unarmed. Each carried its own humiliation, but only one offered the slimmest chance of her unguarded gaze. He felt the decision settle, not like triumph, more like the click of a lock accepting a key. Tomorrow, before the palace woke, he would find the shoreline she had once mentioned in passing. He would go without armor, without poetry, and wait. If she came, he would listen. If she did not, he would keep waiting, because the title he had worn so proudly had finally grown intolerable, and the only way to shed it was to outstay its echo.

He turned back toward the guest wing, stride steady, the corridor no longer a stage but simply stone underfoot.