My Rival Came Back From the Dead... With a Wife

The drums had just quickened when the messenger stumbled through the archway, silk sash torn, dust on his forehead like a brand. I was laughing at something my brother had said, the sweet milk cool against my palm, when the man dropped to his knees and the words came spilling out of him.

“Princess—” he gasped, throat raw. “Arjun lives. He stood before King Drupada this very dawn and bent the great bow. He took the princess Draupadi by the hand before every court in Panchala.”

The silver cup slipped. Milk splashed across my knuckles, ran down the inside of my wrist, warm now, sticky. I didn’t move to wipe it away. Around me the festival kept spinning—girls clapping, boys leaping through the garlanded fire, ankle bells chiming—but the sound had turned hollow, as though someone had thrown a blanket over the world.

My cousin Satyaki caught the messenger by the shoulder. “Speak plainly.”

“Plain enough,” the man panted. “The exile is over. The Pandavas were hiding in disguise. Arjun pierced the target, won the bride, revealed his name. They are guests in Panchala tonight.”

I felt the carved cup dent under my fingers. Alive. Not dead in some forest fever, not ambushed by tribes or wolves, not swallowed by the years I had mourned him. Simply—elsewhere. Choosing another woman in front of every king we had ever known.

A laugh scraped my throat, ugly enough that Satyaki glanced at me. I set the ruined cup on the nearest tray, milk dripping from my nails like pale blood, and walked. People parted, faces blurring. Someone called my name; I didn’t answer. The courtyard gates passed, then the torch-lined corridor, until the music thinned and the night air hit my cheeks, sharp with river damp.

I stopped at the low stone balustrade overlooking the Yamuna. Moonlight laid a white path across the water, straight as an arrow shaft. I used to tell Arjun that if he ever loosed one true enough, it would follow that road straight to the moon. He’d grin, flex his fingers, say the moon wasn’t worth the effort—he’d rather hit something that could hit back.

Seven years. Seven years I had carried his absence like a second skin, touching it when I couldn’t sleep, whispering to it in the dark. Now the absence cracked open and inside was not grief but fury—hot, clean, astonishing. He had let me believe the worst because it was easier than sending word. He had stepped straight from death into another woman’s arms, and every court from here to the sea was already celebrating it.

I pressed my milk-sticky hand to the stone, tracing the groove Arjun’s shoulder had worn when we leaned here arguing about draw weight and wind drift, his voice low and certain, mine rising to meet it like a blade. The memory hurt so precisely I could have drawn a map of the ache: the angle of his wrist, the heat off his skin, the way he’d laugh right before he yielded—always right before, never sooner.

Behind me the drums swelled again, careless and bright. I stayed at the rail, watching the moonlit river, waiting for my pulse to slow, for duty to settle back over my shoulders like a familiar cloak. It didn’t. Instead, the courtyard hush shifted, a sudden pocket of stillness inside the music. I felt him before I saw him: a ripple in the dark, the particular way the air rearranged itself when Arjun entered a room—or a life.

I turned. He stood inside the gate, broader than the boy I remembered, hair longer, tied back roughly, eyes fixed on me as if the intervening years had been nothing more than a long day’s hunt. The space between us crackled, alive and dangerous. I didn’t move. Neither did he. The festival lights flickered across his face, painting gold over the bones I had once traced with my mouth, and the milk on my skin dried to a thin, invisible shell.

We stared, and the courtyard held its breath.

I left him standing there. The drums were louder again, or maybe my own blood was. I moved along the colonnade until the torches thinned and the jasmine vines swallowed the light. The alcove waited, unchanged: a curved seat cut into the stone, open to the river, the rail scarred by generations of idle knives and restless fingers. I sat, palms against the granite, and let the night air scrape the festival sweetness from my throat.

The Yamuna slid past below, black silk catching moon shards. I used to tell Arjun the current was a bowstring—pull it hard enough and the water would snap back upstream. He’d roll his eyes, call me fanciful, then spend the next hour proving why the metaphor collapsed under physics. I’d pretend to listen while watching the way his thumb rubbed the grip of the unstrung bow, the small callus at the base of his forefinger pale against the rest of him. That ridge of skin had felt like Braille to me: read it and you knew how many arrows he had loosed, how many lies he had told, how close he was to breaking.

Now someone else would know those things.

I pressed my forehead to the cool stone. The anger sat heavy, a heated weight just beneath my sternum, but beneath it pulsed a thinner, shameful current: relief. He breathed. His heart beat. The world still held the sound of his laugh. I hated the relief more than the rage; it made me complicit in my own humiliation.

A boat passed, lamp at the prow, two small oars lifting in rhythm. The woman in the stern wore bridal red, face hidden by veil. I watched until the light dissolved downstream, then dug my nails into the carving nearest my hip: a crude bow, child-deep grooves. We had carved it one dawn after a tournament, both of us sixteen, drunk on victory and lack of sleep. He had guided my hand with his, the edge of the chisel biting stone, his wrist against mine, pulse racing from exertion or proximity—I never asked which. When we finished he kissed the marble dust from my fingers, eyes never leaving mine, and I tasted granite and salt and the future.

The memory hurt so specifically I could locate every organ: stomach, lungs, throat. I drew a slow breath, then another, until the pain localized between my ribs like an arrowhead lodged too deep to remove. Somewhere behind me the festival continued—flutes, bells, the high laughter of girls who still believed tomorrow would resemble today. I stayed in the alcove, fingers on the worn bow, watching the moonlit water carry away every promise we never spoke aloud.

I didn’t hear footsteps. Only the hush that falls when a bowstring is drawn. Then he was there, half inside the gate’s moon-shadow, half in the spill of torchlight, the breadth of his shoulders straining the rough cloth he wore. No palace silk, no jewels—just dun-coloured antelope hide across his chest, a single sword belt low on his hips, the way he used to dress when we slipped out to hunt before anyone was awake.

He stopped when our eyes met. The distance felt both negligible and impossible, the way a river is narrow until you try to cross it without a boat. I stayed seated, spine against the stone, pulse hammering so hard I imagined the carved bow beneath my palm quivering in sympathy.

Seven years had sanded the boyish softness from his face; the cheekbones were sharper, the mouth thinner, a faint scar hooking the edge of his left eyebrow. But the eyes—black, unblinking, always a little too intense, as if the world were a target and he the arrow—those were exactly the same.

He took one step onto the courtyard flags, then another, slow, deliberate, the gait of a man who has learned that moving quietly keeps you alive. I didn’t stand. Let him cross the whole expanse. Let him feel the weight of every stone between us.

When he was ten paces away he halted. The river wind lifted the loose hair at his nape; I caught the scent of smoke and horse and something metallic, the smell of someone who has ridden hard through the night.

“Subhadra.”

My name sounded different in his voice—lower, rougher, the way gravel feels after silk. I had rehearsed a hundred replies on the walk from the hall: accusations, questions, a cool royal greeting that would put him back on his heels. None arrived. Instead I heard myself say, “You’re late.”

A flicker of something—amusement, regret—passed across his face. “I came as soon as I could.”

“Did you?” I let the doubt hang, tasting the bitterness, enjoying it. “The drums are still warm and already the bards are singing of Arjun the bridegroom. You might have sent word before the songs.”

His jaw tightened. “It isn’t what you think.”

A laugh scraped out of me, small and sharp. “I think nothing. I was told my cousin was dead. Then I was told he married a princess at sunrise. The gap between those stories is wide enough to swallow a kingdom. Fill it, if you can.”

He glanced left, right, assuring we were alone, then stepped closer, close enough that I had to tilt my head to keep his gaze. Moonlight slid across the scar, silver on bronze.

“I will,” he said. “But not here.”

I considered refusing. I considered standing, walking past him, letting the silk of my dress brush his leg just enough to remind him what he’d forfeited. Instead I stayed seated, heart battering my ribs, and waited.

He offered no hand, no plea. Simply stood, breathing the same thickened air, letting me decide whether to let the river of years keep rolling between us or to wade in and risk drowning.