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.

I rose. The silk of my skirt caught on the stone lip, tore with a sound like breath, and I didn’t care. Three steps brought me under his shadow. This close I saw the faint tremor in his right hand, the one that used to steady arrow shafts, and the small burn mark on his collarbone where a coal had popped from a campfire years ago. I had kissed that scar once, tasted wood-smoke and salt.

“They said you married the Panchala princess.”

The words left my mouth flat, almost bored, as if I were asking the price of grain. Inside, the storm kept battering, waves against rock, but I had learned to keep my face still when everything else broke.

His throat moved. “I did.”

No apology, no softening. Just the two syllables, dropped between us like a blade. I studied the place where his beard began, darker than the hair on his head, the way his pulse beat visible beneath the thin skin of his temple. He smelled of horse sweat and something sharper—panic, maybe, though his body stayed motionless.

“Convenient,” I said. “Dead men rarely find brides.”

His eyes flicked to the torn edge of my skirt, then back. “I thought it kinder.”

“Kinder.” I tasted the word, found it bitter. “To let your mother light lamps for a ghost? To let my brother burn your name with the dead? You thought that kind.”

He didn’t flinch, but I saw the muscle jump in his jaw. “There were oaths. Exile. I couldn’t—”

“Couldn’t write? Couldn’t send a whisper with a trader?” I stepped closer, the silk of my bodice brushing the rough hide across his chest. “You were dead, Arjun. I mourned. I cut my hair. I pressed your bowstring into my palm until it bled. And you were—what—shooting for a dowry?”

His nostrils flared. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Then speak plainly. Tell me what it was like.”

The wind lifted the loose hair at his nape; I felt it brush my cheek, the same strand that used to tangle with mine when we lay on the riverbank counting stars. He didn’t move, didn’t reach, but his voice dropped to the rough register I remembered from nights when thunder threatened our tents.

“I won her hand in front of every king. My family survives now. We have allies, grain, armies. One shot bought us a future.” His gaze held mine, unblinking. “Love was never part of the bargain.”

Something inside me twisted, sharp and bright. “How practical. A marriage without love to save a family you let believe you were corpses.”

I turned then, skirts snapping, intending to leave him watching my back the way he’d watched me walk away years ago. His hand closed around my upper arm before I cleared the alcove arch, fingers hot through the thin silk, and every nerve in my body lit at once. I stopped breathing. He didn’t speak, just held on, the pressure exact, as if he were gauging how much force I could take before I broke.

I stared at the place where his thumb pressed the silk into my skin. The heat of him travelled straight to the hollow beneath my ribs, the same place that had ached every dawn since the messenger first said his name. I made myself breathe once, twice, before I spoke.

“Let go.”

He didn’t. Instead his grip shifted, palm sliding down to bracket my wrist, pulse to pulse, as if he needed to feel how fast my own heart was racing. I could have twisted free—years of sparring had taught me that—but the contact paralysed us both. Seven years collapsed into the inch of flesh where we touched.

“You want me to apologise for living?” he asked, voice so low the river almost carried it away.

“I want you to apologise for dying without warning.” I tugged; his fingers tightened. “For letting me carry your corpse in my head while you aimed at another woman’s target.”

His eyes narrowed. “You think I wanted her?”

“You married her.” The words cracked like a whip. “You stood in front of kings, nocked an arrow, and won a bride. Don’t tell me the thought never crossed your mind that someone else might still be waiting in the dark.”

Something flared in his face—grief, maybe, or guilt—but it vanished as quickly as it came. “I thought of you every day.”

“Then your memory is poor,” I snapped. “Because if you had truly thought of me, you would have found a way to send word before you bedded her.”

The muscle in his jaw jumped. “I haven’t touched her.”

The admission shocked us both into stillness. Wind rattled the jasmine creeper overhead; petals drifted across the stone like small white accusations. I searched his face for the lie and found only exhaustion.

“She is wife to all of us,” he said finally. “A pact. A survival. Nothing more.”

“All of you?” The repetition tasted obscene. “Five brothers share one woman and you expect me to believe the marriage is chaste?”

“I expect nothing.” His thumb stroked the inside of my wrist, an involuntary caress that sent heat straight to my knees. “I came only to see you. To explain.”

“You explained.” I pulled again; this time he released me so suddenly I staggered. The absence of his hand felt colder than the night air. “You explained that duty mattered more than truth. Enjoy your alliance, cousin.”

I spun away, skirts snapping like banners, and had taken three strides before his arm hooked my waist. He hauled me back against him, front to front, the hard length of his body a blunt reminder that this was no longer the boy I used to pin in the training yard. His breath scorched the shell of my ear.

“I am not asking forgiveness,” he growled. “I am asking you to stop walking away before I have finished speaking.”

“And if I keep walking?” My voice shook; I hated it.

“Then I will follow,” he said, the words hot against my neck. “All night. All the way to your brother’s gate. I have already lost you once to silence. I won’t lose you twice to pride.”

His arm stayed locked around my waist, the buckle of his belt pressing the small of my back, and for a moment the only sound was our breathing—his ragged, mine shallow. Then he loosened his hold just enough to turn me. My breasts brushed his chest; the silk did nothing to dull the heat coming off him.

“I did not bed her,” he repeated, softer. “I strung a bow, shot a mark, and was declared the victor. The moment the arrow left the string I became the key to my brothers’ survival. That is all.”

I stared at the hollow of his throat, the place where sweat gathered. “You could have refused.”

“Refusal meant watching them starve.” His fingers spread against my spine, urging me closer until our foreheads almost touched. “We were skeletons in rags, Subhadra. Draupadi brought grain, troops, legitimacy. I traded one shot for our lives.”

The words were simple, almost clinical, but the tremor in his voice cracked them open. I felt the echo in my own chest: the memory of my mother bargaining dowries, my brother counting spears, the cold arithmetic of royal blood. Duty, always duty, wearing different faces.

I lifted my hand, not quite a caress, and laid my palm over the pulse hammering beneath his jaw. “And love?” I asked. “Where does that fit in the ledger?”

His eyes closed. “Love was the price.”

Silence pooled, thick as the river fog. I became aware of individual sensations: the scrape of callus on his thumb as it circled the bare skin above my sash; the dampness where my own sweat gathered between my breasts; the faint tremble in my knees that threatened to spill me against him.

He spoke into the quiet. “I have no right to ask anything of you. But I will not lie again. I am bound to her, and to my brothers, until death or victory releases us. That truth is uglier than the lie you carried, but it is mine.”

I traced the line of his lower lip with my thumb, felt the hitch of his breath. “So you stand here offering me scraps—your body for a night, your name for nothing.”

“I offer you what I have left,” he said. “It is little, and it is yours.”

The confession settled over us like damp wool, heavy, clinging. I wanted to rage, to slap the stoic mask from his face, to force him to choose in front of every ancestor watching from the palace eaves. Instead I felt the old, familiar ache rise: the need to shield him, even from myself.

My hand slid from his jaw to the nape of his neck, fingers threading the sweat-damp hair. I tugged once, not gentle, until his mouth hovered a breath from mine. “Then give me what you have,” I whispered. “But know it will never be enough.”

His answer was a shudder that traveled through both our frames, a surrender without movement. We stayed like that, suspended, sharing air, the future pressing against our locked bodies like an arrow still waiting to be released.