I Stole The Princess And Refused To Let Her Go

The hall smelled of sandalwood and overripe fruit, the same cloying sweetness that drifted through every palace I had ever been forced to endure. I kept to the carved screen that separated the colonnade from the main floor, one palm resting on the hilt of the dagger that never left my hip, and watched the woman who was supposed to save my kingdom.

Subhadra moved between silk-draped courtiers like a blade sliding through silk: no wasted motion, no hesitation. A prince of some minor house bowed too low, blocking her path; she tilted her head, offered a smile so precise it could have been measured with a calligrapher’s brush, and stepped around him before his greeting was half-spoken. The smile vanished the instant her face was turned away. I felt the loss of it like a small, unnecessary wound.

I had been in Dwarka three days—long enough to learn the angles of the palace, the rhythm of its guards, the moment each night when the tide drowned the lower quay stones and made the air taste of salt and iron. Not long enough to speak to her. That part came tonight, whether she wished it or not.

Krishna had warned me she would be difficult. “She reads people the way fishermen read weather,” he’d said, lounging on the terrace with his legs hooked through the marble balustrade like a boy who owned nothing and therefore feared nothing. “If she thinks you want something, she’ll hand it over just to watch what you do once it’s yours.”

I hadn’t answered. My wants were simple: get the girl, seal the alliance, ride home before the rains swelled the rivers. Simple, and already ruined by the way she flicked a glance toward the shadows where I stood, as if she could feel the weight of my appraisal across the width of the hall. Her eyes—dark, unflinching—met mine for the space of a single heartbeat. Then someone called her name and the moment snapped, but the imprint stayed under my ribs like an arrowhead lodged too deep to dig out.

A musician struck a new raga. Subhadra clapped politely, the sound soft against the marble, and retreated toward the fretted doors that opened onto the sea terrace. The set of her shoulders told me she intended to be alone. Good. I had no patience for the choreography of courtship, the exchange of compliments as hollow as dried gourds. Better to step from shadow into moonlight and speak the truth like a knife laid flat on the table: Your brother will trade you to Duryodhana before the next full moon. Come with me instead, or I will take you. Choose.

I waited until the last courtier turned his back, then followed the faint scent of jasmine and salt that drifted in her wake.

Krishna was already leaning against the outer arch, arms folded, looking as if he had been carved there to hold up the stone. He did not speak; he simply angled his chin toward the narrow stair that dropped to the private quay. Then he stepped aside, letting the torchlight fall across his face long enough for me to see the smile that was not quite a smile—curiosity, maybe, or simple mischief. I passed him without a word.

The stair was steep, salt-bitten. Halfway down I heard the slap of water against the pier and, beneath it, the small sound of metal on metal: bangles touching, then separating. She was pacing.

Moonlight laid a white strip across the planks. Subhadra moved in and out of it, her sari catching the wind, the end fluttering like a pennant that had forgotten which king it served. She stopped when my shadow crossed the light.

“I wondered which of them would send a lackey tonight,” she said, not turning. “Did my brother promise you a purse, or only the usual worthless grant of land?”

I stepped off the last stair. “Balarama has already promised you.”

Her shoulders stiffened. “To Duryodhana. Yes. The elders whisper it as if I were deaf.”

“Three days,” I said. “The envoys ride south at dawn.”

She pivoted then, silk hissing across her calves. Anger made her breathing shallow, the gold chain at her throat rising and falling with each inhale. “And you came to gloat? To remind me my value is measured in horses and elephants?”

“I came to steal you.”

The words landed flat, without ornament, the way I might have told an archer his mark was too far left. She blinked once, the courtly mask slipping enough for me to see the raw intelligence underneath, rapid and unsparing.

“You are Arjun of Indraprastha,” she said slowly. “The one who hides behind pillars and thinks no one notices. My brother’s alliance is already yours if you ask. Why play kidnapper?”

“Because if you stay, you will be Hastinapur’s hostage, not Dwarka’s princess. Because your brothers will pretend it is honor while they barter you like salt. Because I can put you in my chariot tonight and let the bards call it love tomorrow.”

She studied me, arms crossed beneath her breasts, fingers digging into her own skin hard enough to leave half-moons. “And if I refuse?”

“Then I leave alone and tell the world Subhadra chose Duryodhana’s bed. Your clan keeps its treaty, you keep its cage.”

The wind snapped her pallu against my forearm; neither of us moved to free it. For a long moment the only sound was water gnawing the pilings.

She lifted her chin. “You offer me a choice the way a wolf offers the lamb a shortcut through the forest.”

“I offer you the only one you’ll get.”

Her eyes—black, bright—searched my face for hesitation, for softness. Finding none, she exhaled through parted lips, the faintest tremor running across her jaw. Somewhere inside the palace a conch sounded the third watch, marking the hour when honest men slept and the dishonest began to work.

“Then steal me quickly,” she said, voice low, almost amused. “Before I change my mind and steal you first.”

I stepped forward until the hem of her sari brushed my shins. Salt wind flattened the linen against my chest; I felt her breathing through it, small, fast pulses that lifted the gold embroidery at her collarbone.

“Abduction,” I said. “The old way. I break the bolt on your balcony, carry you down the rope, and by sunrise the bards will swear you begged me.” My voice stayed level, the same tone I used to count arrows left in a quiver. “Your brothers keep their honor—no betrothal broken if a princess is stolen. You keep your name. I keep my alliance. Everyone wins.”

She didn’t retreat. “Except me. I win a husband who begins by lying.”

“A husband who begins by listening.” I lifted my hand, slow enough that she could have twisted away, and laid two fingers beneath her chin. The skin there was soft, still warm from the hall’s lamps. “I will not drag you in chains, Subhadra. I will not gag you. But I will not leave this quay alone.”

Her lashes flickered. “You’d force me in front of my own city?”

“I’d force the world to admit you chose.” I tilted her face until moonlight filled her eyes, black mirrors showing me my own unsm mouth. “Say no and I carry you anyway. Say yes and the story is yours to write.”

The water slapped the pier, counting heartbeats. Down the stair Krishna’s torch hissed once, then died—his promise that no guard would come. I smelled wet hemp, distant fish, the jasmine oil she wore at her pulse points. My thumb brushed the corner of her lip; I felt the small, involuntary parting of her teeth.

“You stand there,” she whispered, “and speak of choice while your body tells me I have none.”

“Bodies lie.” I slid my hand to the nape of her neck, fingers closing lightly around the braid coiled there. “Mine wants yours. Yours wants freedom. Tonight they can have both.”

She laughed, a sound like steel leaving sheath. “You think desire is currency?”

“I think it’s the only coin that spends in the dark.” I leaned in until her breath mixed with mine, until the space between us held only the promise of friction. “Decide.”

Silence stretched, taut as bowstring. Then her palm came up, flat against my sternum—not push, not pull, simply measurement. Heat soaked through the cloth into my skin. I felt her thumb trace the ridge of muscle above my heart, counting beats the way a warrior counts enemy paces.

“Very well,” she said, voice steady now, almost amused. “Steal me, Arjun. But remember—tomorrow the song will call me willing, and every time you hear it you’ll know I let you win.”

She rose on the balls of her feet and brushed her mouth across mine, dry, deliberate, the seal on a bargain neither of us trusted. Then she stepped back, arms loose at her sides, waiting.

I bent, scooped her knees, and lifted. Her weight settled against my chest like a quiver finally slotted home. Overhead the moon hung low, a silver eye that would witness everything and tell nothing. I carried her up the stair, past the dead torch, into the corridor that smelled of salt and escape. Behind us the sea kept its rhythm, indifferent to kingdoms, to futures, to the small, fierce pulse of a woman who had just chosen the wolf.

“Fine,” she hissed, the single syllable cracking like a whip across the quay. No tears, no tremor—just the sound of something snapping shut inside her.

I set her on the chariot floorboards. She stepped back until the rail pressed her spine, palms braced behind her as though ready to vault into the night. The horses stamped, impatient. I gathered the reins, snapped them once, and we lurched through the unguarded postern gate. Dwarka’s torches slid away; the road opened, black and empty.

For the first hour the only noise was iron rim biting grit, the creak of axle-wood, the measured huff of the team. I kept my gaze on the pale stripe of road, yet every part of me tracked her: the shallow lift of her breasts beneath the wrap of silk, the pulse flickering at the hollow of her throat, the way her sandalwood sharpened when the wind shifted. She stared west, jaw locked, as if the horizon owed her an apology.

When the moon climbed higher she shifted one hip, just enough to increase the space between us by the width of a finger. I felt the withdrawal like a bruise. My hands tightened on the reins; leather creaked.

“Say something,” I muttered.

“Why?” Her voice came out flat. “So you can pretend this was conversation?”

I swallowed the reply. Silence settled again, heavier, until even the crickets seemed to abandon us.

We changed horses at a moonlit caravanserai. I lifted her down; she flinched when my thumbs grazed her waist, then walked to the trough without waiting for help. While I negotiated fresh tack she stood apart, arms folded, watching the stable-boys as if memorising weaknesses. When I returned she took the water-skin from my hand rather than let me pour.

Back on the road she wedged herself into the far corner, knees drawn up, chin on the rail. The jasmine in her hair had faded, replaced by dust and horse-sweat. I found myself cataloguing the angle of her collarbone, the small scar at the edge of her lip I hadn’t noticed in torch-light. My body responded with steady, inconvenient insistence; I shifted the cloak across my lap and kept driving.

Dawn bled into the sky. She hadn’t slept. Neither had I. When the outpost finally appeared—a squat mud-brick box beside a dried well—I reined in and set the brake. Dust drifted. She stepped down before I could assist, boots hitting dirt with a sound of finality.

Inside the single room: a cot, a cracked lamp, a table scarred by knife-marks. I dropped my pack, unrolled my blanket at the threshold. She stood in the centre, looking at the cot as though it were an insult delivered in furniture form.

“It’s yours,” I said.

She didn’t answer. The door groaned shut behind us, sealing the two of us and the silence we had dragged across fifty miles of road.

I knelt to unlace my boots, the leather stiff with dust. Behind me her sandals whispered across the packed earth, once, twice, as she measured the room’s perimeter the way a prisoner tests bars. The lamp’s single flame threw her shadow large against the wall; it trembled when she stopped at the window-slit, a palm-sized hole plugged with rag. She pried the cloth loose. Gray evening light and cricket noise spilled in.

“You can bar it from inside,” I said. “The latch is yours.”

She replaced the rag without answering. I spread my blanket parallel to the threshold, close enough that any intruder would have to cross my body first. The cot creaked when she sat—no collapse, just the small surrender of rope mattress accepting weight. She eased one foot beneath her, silk riding to mid-calf. A bruise bloomed on the inside of her knee, purple from the chariot rail. I looked away.

Water sloshed into the tin cup I carried. I set it on the floor between us, halfway mark. She stared at it so long I thought she’d refuse, but thirst won. She drank, throat working, then placed the cup exactly where she’d found it, rim turned so the single dent faced me. A message: nothing given, nothing owed.

I broke flatbread with my thumbs, tore it in two. The piece I offered stayed suspended until her fingers brushed mine taking it. Contact lasted less than a breath, yet heat lodged under my ribs. We ate without tasting. Crumbs salted the blanket; she brushed them off her side onto mine.

Darkness thickened. I trimmed the wick. Flame shrank, intimacy enlarging with it. Her breathing grew audible, not anxious but awake—measured, considering. She lay back, arms crossed over her ribs like a guard. The cot ropes groaned again. I folded my cloak beneath my head, eyes on the ceiling beams. Every splinter felt knowable.

Minutes, or an hour. A scorpion scuttled along the wall. I rose on one elbow, sword half drawn, but she was faster: sandal in hand, she crushed it, then remained standing, barefoot inches from my chest. In the weak light her toes looked oddly vulnerable, nails trimmed short, henna faded at the tips. She returned to the cot without comment. The insect’s carcass stayed where it fell, between us and the door—a small corpse neither claimed.

When her breathing finally leveled into sleep, I watched the cloth at the window lift with night breeze, listened to horses shift in the corral, to my own pulse. The room smelled of crushed chitin, of extinguished wick, of jasmine struggling against dust. I did not close my eyes. Tomorrow the road would demand answers, but tonight the silence itself was the only honest thing we shared, thick as mud and just as hard to move through.

I woke to the sound of her pacing. The lamp had burned itself out; dawn seeped through the rag-plugged window, painting the mud walls the color of old blood. She moved barefoot, eight steps to the door, eight back, the cot ropes creaking in protest each time she turned. I watched through slitted eyes. The bruise on her knee had darkened overnight.

“You’re awake,” she said without looking at me. “Stop pretending.”

I sat up. My neck had stiffened from the packed earth; vertebrae clicked like dice. “Did you sleep?”

“Don’t.” She halted, arms folded so tight her knuckles blanched. “Don’t pretend concern.”

I rubbed grit from my eyes. “I asked a question.”

“And I’m answering the one you didn’t.” Her voice cracked like a whip. “You’re a brigand in prince’s clothing, Arjun. A delivery boy for your brother’s ambition.”

The words struck hotter than I expected. I rose; the blanket slid from my shoulders. “If I were a brigand you’d be gagged and tied.”

She laughed, sharp enough to cut. “You think this—” she flicked two fingers at the room, at the space between us, “—is better? You stole me like a goat from a market.”

“I offered you the story you wanted.”

“Story?” She stepped closer; jasmine and dust and female anger rolled off her skin. “You want a story? Here’s one: a man who can’t tell the difference between duty and desire convinces himself they’re the same thing. He calls it strategy so he can sleep at night.”

My jaw tightened. “You think I slept?”

“I think you lie even to yourself.” She spun away, then back, hair snapping across her shoulders. “Tell me, did Yudhisthir hand you a script, or did you improvise the noble abductor on your own?”

Silence ballooned, thick as the dust motes dancing in the gray light. I felt the words lining up behind my teeth, polished defenses every warrior keeps ready. I let them fall, useless.

“I did it for Indraprastha,” I said. “And for you.”

Her brows arched, mocking.

“I watched you dismiss six princes in the space of a song,” I went on, voice low. “You smiled, you bowed, you never let them see the blade. In Hastinapur that blade would rust. Duryodhana collects trophies, not partners. He would break you in a season.”

Color drained from her cheeks, then rushed back twice as hot. “So you decided to save me?”

“I decided the world was wrong.” The admission felt like stepping off a cliff. “I thought—if I could get you out, maybe the world could be less wrong.”

She stared as if I’d spoken in a foreign tongue. Her throat worked; the small sound she made wasn’t quite laughter, wasn’t quite protest. Outside, a rooster crowed, absurdly ordinary.

I took one step, no more. “I’m still my brother’s pawn, Subhadra. But I’m also the man who would not watch them cage you.”

Her eyes shone, angry or tearful I couldn’t tell. She opened her mouth, closed it, then turned abruptly so I saw only her profile, rigid as carved wood. The admission hung between us, pulsing like a fresh wound we’d both forgotten to bind.