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.

He stepped back first, the space between us cooling like iron pulled from forge to quench. Without speaking he took my wrist—not the grip of a moment ago, but a loose bracelet of fingers—and led me along the colonnade that skirted the kitchens. I knew the turns before he made them: the loose flagstone that clicked, the arch where jasmine spilled over brick. We had used this route as children, slipping out to watch boatmen pole rice barges by torchlight. Nothing had changed except our height and the fact he was now married to a woman I had never met.

The temple had lost its door years ago; moonlight lay across the threshold like a thrown bolt of cloth. Inside, the stone still held day-heat, but the air smelled of damp earth and petals beginning to rot. He released me and went to the small window slit, shoulders angled so the silver light caught the rim of his ear, the curve where helmet usually sat. I pressed my spine to the wall and listened to the river outside, the hush that came after festival drums.

“Start anywhere,” I said. My voice sounded older here, as if the stone returned it changed.

He rubbed a palm across the back of his neck. “We left in the rainy season. The roads dissolved into red muck. By the second month we were eating bark.”

I waited. He spoke slowly, choosing facts the way an archer chooses arrows.

“Yudhisthir would not let us beg. Said a crown-in-exile that begs loses the right to ask for loyalty later. So we hunted. Bhima can bring down a deer bare-handed, but game thins when you stay too long in one place. I learned to string the bow before dawn, fingers too cold to feel the string. Some mornings I missed on purpose so the others would have the last mouthful.”

He turned, letting the light catch the hollows beneath his cheekbones. “One night we boiled shoe leather. Draupadi laughed—actually laughed—because her own saree was already torn for bandages. That laugh convinced me we would live.”

I felt the anger in my chest loosen, not disappearing, but shifting to make room for the picture he drew: five brothers sharing a single grain, a woman trading silk for tourniquets, my cousin counting arrows to decide who ate.

He moved closer, boots scuffing dust. “When the invitation came to the svayamvara we were down to three bananas and a handful of cracked wheat. Win or die, basically. I stood on the line, looked at the target, and thought: if I make this shot, Subhadra will hear my name again. That was the only selfish part.”

His knuckles brushed mine. I didn’t pull away. The river kept speaking its slow language beyond the wall, and inside we were both listening.

His lashes cast two small shadows on the skin beneath his eyes; I watched them tremble while the rest of him stayed perfectly still. My thumb followed the angle of bone to the corner of his mouth, the place that used to lift when he teased me about my footwork. The boy was there, trapped under weather and responsibility, and the sight hurt more than the bruises he’d once left on my ribs during practice.

He exhaled through his nose, a quiet surrender, and the hand resting against mine turned palm-up, fingers opening. I fitted mine into the spaces, callus to callus, the way we used to check bow grips before a contest. No laughter came this time; only the sound of our breathing filling the small room like rising water.

I rose on the balls of my feet, erasing the last inch he had left between us. His free arm came around my waist slowly, giving me every chance to step back. I didn’t. Our mouths met with the scrape of skin pulled too tight, teeth clipping lower lip, the faint iron taste that made him inhale sharply. The kiss was neither gentle nor polite; it catalogued years—anger, hunger, relief—without words. He tilted my head, taking the angle he wanted, and I let him, let the pressure push me against the pillar, stone cold through the silk at my shoulder blades.

His other hand left mine to slide down the front of my bodice, palm hard over breast, thumb finding the nipple already drawn tight. I made a small sound into his mouth; he answered by pressing closer, thigh pushing between mine until the skirt rode up and bunched at my hips. Fingers tugged the drawstring of my antariya loose, cloth falling away enough for skin to meet skin. He was shaking, or I was; the tremor passed back and forth until I couldn’t tell who had started it.

I dragged his lower lip between my teeth before releasing him. “Say my name,” I said against his mouth, voice rough.

“Subhadra.” It came out cracked, reverent, nothing like the teasing drawl I remembered. Hearing it now felt like the string of a bow snapping after being held too long.

He lifted me, forearms under my thighs, and I locked my legs around his hips, feeling the buckle of his belt bite briefly before he shifted. My back scraped stone; I didn’t care. He paused, forehead to mine, asking without speaking. I shifted forward, taking the head of him inside in one deliberate slide, heat stretching me open. The groan he let out was muffled against my neck, breath hot, pulse racing under my palms where they braced on his shoulders.

We moved without grace, chasing sensation more than rhythm—deep thrusts that jarred me against the pillar, his pelvis grinding into mine each time he seated himself fully. Sweat gathered where our chests pressed, the scent of jasmine crushed between our bodies mixing with the salt of skin. I felt him everywhere: filling me, supporting my weight, the rasp of his beard on my throat as he mouthed words I couldn’t catch.

Pressure coiled low in my belly; I tightened around him deliberately and felt his knees buckle. He pinned me harder, pace turning urgent, breath ragged in my ear. When the climax broke it was sharp, almost painful, tearing a cry from me that echoed off the stone. He followed a moment later, hips stuttering, my name again on his tongue like something sacred and broken all at once.

We stayed locked together while the aftershocks faded, the river outside keeping its steady cadence, unaware that anything had changed.

He lowered me slowly until my feet touched the floor, the stone cold against my soles. My legs trembled, threatening to give way, but his hands stayed at my waist, steadying me. We stood there, foreheads pressed together, breathing the same air, his cock still half-hard inside me. I could feel the wetness of him beginning to slip from my body, the evidence of what we'd done trickling down my inner thigh.

"Don't pull out yet," I whispered, though I wasn't sure if I meant the words for him or for myself. The feeling of him there—connected, present—was the only thing keeping me from shattering into pieces.

He understood. His hands moved to cup my face, thumbs tracing the line of my cheekbones with unbearable tenderness. When he kissed me again, it was different—slower, deeper, his tongue exploring my mouth like he was memorizing the shape of me. I tasted myself on him, the salt-sweet evidence of our desire, and something in my chest cracked open.

My fingers found the lacings of his tunic, pulling impatiently until the fabric gave way. I needed his skin against mine, needed to feel the heat and weight of him without barriers. He helped me strip it away, then reached for the ties of my own disheveled clothing. The silk fell away easily, pooling at my feet until I stood naked before him, moonlight painting my skin silver.

"Look at you," he breathed, his gaze traveling over me with an intensity that made my breath catch. His hands followed where his eyes had been, palms sliding over my breasts, thumbs brushing my nipples until they hardened again. "Seven years, and you're still the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

I reached for him, wrapping my hand around the base of his cock, still slick from both of us. He groaned, hips jerking forward involuntarily. "And you're still mine," I said, the words coming out fierce and certain. "Even if you belong to her too."

The truth of it hung between us—not a question anymore, but a fact as solid as the stone at our backs. He was married, bound by duty and politics and promises I hadn't been there to witness. But in this moment, in this temple that smelled of jasmine and old prayers, he was mine in a way that transcended vows and ceremonies.

He lifted me again, this time carrying me to the stone altar where offerings had once been laid. The surface was cool against my back as he laid me down, his body covering mine. When he entered me again, it was with infinite slowness, each inch deliberate, our eyes locked together in the moonlight.

The stone beneath my shoulder blade had warmed with our body heat, but the rest of the temple floor remained cold, drawing small shivers from my skin where it touched bare rock. I shifted slightly, the movement making his arm tighten around my waist in reflex. My cheek rested against the steady rise and fall of his chest, the rhythm hypnotic after the chaos of minutes before.

His heartbeat sounded different than I remembered—slower, more deliberate, as if the years had taught it patience. I counted the beats: one, two, three, trying to match my breathing to his the way we used to synchronize our steps during training. The hair on his chest tickled my forehead, and I could smell the particular scent of his skin mixed with sweat and the faint trace of sandalwood from the festival.

Outside, the river kept speaking in its ancient language, water against stone, carrying away the debris of last night's celebrations. Somewhere in the palace, the musicians would be packing their instruments, the cooks banking fires, the world continuing its rotation as if nothing had changed. As if the heir to the Panchala throne wasn't lying naked with his cousin in a forgotten temple, both of us marked by teeth and nails, the evidence of our desperation cooling on our skin.

His fingers began to move, almost imperceptibly, tracing patterns along my spine. Not seduction—something gentler, exploratory. Like he was learning the new geography of me, the way my shoulder blades sat differently after years of practice, the tension I carried at the base of my neck. I pressed closer, my leg sliding between his, and felt him stir slightly in response. Not desire this time, but acknowledgment. Recognition.

"We should move," I whispered, though neither of us shifted.

"Not yet." His voice rumbled through his chest into my ear, deeper than the boy I remembered, textured with experiences I hadn't shared. "Let me have this. Just this."

I understood. Dawn would bring reality crashing back—the political marriages, the exile, the impossible web of obligations that had replaced the simple rules of our youth. But here, in the grey light before morning fully claimed the sky, we existed in the space between who we had been and who circumstance had forced us to become. His hand stilled at the small of my back, palm warm and steady, holding us suspended in that fragile moment before everything we weren't saying would finally have to be spoken.

His chest rose beneath my cheek as he drew breath, the way it always had before he released an arrow. “Draupadi,” he said, the name flat, almost clinical. “She is not only mine. My brothers share her.”

The words settled between us like thrown sand; I felt them stick to every patch of damp skin. I lifted my head enough to see his face. No mockery, no pride—just the same weary honesty that had made him confess missed shots when we were children.

“All five?” I asked, needing the cruelty confirmed.

“By decree of our mother, by necessity of exile.” His hand left my back to cover his eyes. “One wife keeps us united, keeps the alliance with Panchala intact. My life, my body, belongs to that arrangement.”

I listened to the river while the knowledge sank in. A political wife, a public marriage bed, a woman who held legal claim to the parts of him I had just reclaimed in secret. The unfairness tasted metallic at the back of my throat.

My fingers moved without permission, finding the first scar: a thin ridge slanting across his ribs. I traced it slowly, feeling the raised skin, and he breathed through his nose but said nothing. Another mark curved beneath his collarbone—deeper, puckered. Then a series of small dots, like constellation points, low on his flank.

“Bear?” I guessed, following them.

“Boar. During the year we lived on roots.” His voice stayed even, but the muscle beneath my palm jumped. “The scar tissue pulls when it rains.”

I mapped each line, letting the geography of pain replace the geography of jealousy. Here was a knife slash near his navel; here, a burn above the hip. My thumb brushed the hollow where his pulse beat visible beneath the skin, and I felt the tempo increase though his words remained steady.

“She knows nothing of these,” he said quietly. “She sees the prince, not the damage.”

My hand slid to the freshest wound, still pink, crossing the top of his thigh. I circled it twice, then leaned down and pressed my mouth there, tasting salt and the faint copper of residual infection. His breath hissed, fingers threading my hair, but he didn’t pull me away.

When I settled beside him again, the information no longer felt like sand; it felt like armor—heavy, inescapable, already molded to his shape. I rested my palm flat over his heart so I could feel the next sentence before it left his lips.

“I cannot offer you legitimacy,” he said. “I can’t offer you mornings after, or children who bear my name openly. I can only offer this—” his hand covered mine, pressing hard enough to hurt, “—and the truth that I am alive because I remembered the weight of you in my arms.”

The river carried his confession downstream while dawn crept across the ceiling. I said nothing, only traced the scar on his thigh once more, committing every ridge to memory, as if my fingertips could hold him more securely than any vow.

He shifted, rolling me onto my back with deliberate care, the stone cool beneath my shoulder blades now. His weight settled over me—not crushing, but present, real, the heat of his skin a stark contrast to the temple's chill. I looked up at him, at the way the pre-dawn light caught in his dark hair, turned his eyes to something unreadable and infinite.

Neither of us spoke. What remained to be said? Instead, his mouth found mine with aching slowness, the kiss deep and searching, as if he could taste the years we'd lost. His hands moved over me—not urgent now, but reverent, learning the curve of my waist, the slope of my breast, the way my breath caught when his thumb brushed my nipple. I arched into his touch, small sounds escaping me that weren't words, weren't anything but pure response.

When he pulled back to look at me, I nodded, understanding. This wasn't about hunger or desperation. This was about memory, about burning this moment into our skin so deeply that whatever came after couldn't erase it. I reached up, tracing the line of his jaw, feeling the scratch of beard beneath my palm, then lower, over the familiar planes of his chest, the unfamiliar scars.

He shifted, settling between my thighs, and I felt him hard against me, the heat of him making me gasp. But he didn't rush. His mouth found my neck, my collarbone, my breast, each touch deliberate, worshipful. When he finally entered me, it was with infinite slowness, inch by deliberate inch, our eyes locked together in the grey light.

I wrapped my legs around his waist, my hands finding his shoulders, anchoring myself to this moment, this man, this impossible love. We moved together with languid grace, each thrust deep and profound, our bodies speaking a language older than words, older than the vows that bound him elsewhere. The pleasure built slowly, steadily, like the river outside—inevitable, unstoppable.

When I came, it was with his name on my lips, my body clenching around him, drawing him deeper. He followed moments later, his release shuddering through him, through me, binding us together in a way that felt both eternal and impossibly fragile. We stayed locked together afterward, breathing the same air, our hearts beating in syncopated rhythm, knowing that when we finally separated, it would be forever.

I found my clothes scattered across the stone like evidence of a crime. The silk had gone cold, damp with dew and what we'd left on each other's skin. My fingers fumbled with the ties of my bodice—suddenly clumsy, suddenly aware of how naked I'd been under his gaze minutes before.

He sat against the opposite wall, knees drawn up, watching me dress with the same intensity he'd watched me undress. The early light caught the scar I'd kissed on his thigh, turned it livid against his skin. Neither of us had spoken since we separated, since I felt him slip out of me along with whatever illusion we'd been building.

The sash wouldn't cooperate. I'd tied it a thousand times—had dressed for festivals, for ceremonies, for battles—but now the fabric seemed foreign, heavy with meaning. He rose silently, crossed the small space between us, and took the ends from my shaking hands. His fingers moved with practiced efficiency, securing the knot at my waist, his knuckles brushing the hollow beneath my ribs.

"Don't," I said, though I didn't step away.

He finished the knot anyway, then let his hands drop. "You can't go back looking like you've been—"

"Like I've been what? Fucking my cousin in a temple?" The words came out sharper than intended, but I didn't take them back. "Everyone will know regardless of how tidy my sash is."

The muscle in his jaw tightened. "Subhadra—"

"No." I moved toward the doorway, needing air that didn't taste of him, of us. "Don't say my name like that. Don't say it like you still have the right."

Outside, the river ran clear and indifferent. I could see the palace roofs through the trees, could imagine the servants sweeping last night's debris, the cooks preparing breakfast, my mother probably already wondering where I'd disappeared. Everything continuing exactly as it had, as if the world hadn't shifted fundamentally in this small stone building.

He came up behind me, close enough that I felt his warmth but far enough that we weren't touching. "I meant what I said. About finding a way."

"There is no way." I turned to face him, taking in the full picture—his mussed hair, the beard burn along his neck, the way he held himself like a man already bracing for impact. "You're married. To five people. You're building something with them, something that doesn't include me except as this—" I gestured between us, "—as whatever this was."

"It wasn't just—"

"It was goodbye." The words hung there, true and terrible. "You know it as well as I do."

His silence confirmed everything. I stepped past him, back into the temple to collect the rest of my things, my feet finding the exact spots where we'd been joined minutes before. The stone held no warmth now. Nothing did.

The path back to the palace was littered with the remains of last night’s celebration—garlands trampled into the dirt, overturned cups sticky with fermented rice wine, the air still clinging to the scent of sandalwood and sweat. I walked ahead of him, my sandals crunching over wilted petals, the sound too loud in the morning quiet. My body ached in ways I didn’t want to think about, the ghost of him still between my thighs, a reminder of what I couldn’t keep.

He caught up to me just before the gates, his hand closing around my wrist—not rough, but firm enough to stop me. I didn’t turn.

“Subhadra.” His voice was low, urgent. “I’ll find a way. I swear it.”

I looked down at his fingers on my skin, the same ones that had traced my spine like I was something sacred only hours ago. Now they just looked like hands. A man’s hands. Not a god’s. Not mine.

“You don’t get to swear anything,” I said. “You gave up that right when you married her. Them.”

He let go, but didn’t step back. “I’m not asking you to wait. I’m telling you I won’t let this be the end.”

I turned then, slowly. His face was shadowed by the overhanging banyan, but I could see the tension in his jaw, the way his shoulders held the weight of something heavier than armor. He looked like a man who had already lost too much to stop fighting. But I wasn’t a battle he could win. Not like this.

“You want to find a way?” I said. “Then stop talking like a prince trying to manage his mistakes. Stop pretending this is something we can hide in temple corners and river shadows.”

His mouth opened, then closed. I stepped closer, the dust of the path rising between us.

“You want me?” I asked, voice steady. “Then come for me. Not like a brother-in-law with excuses. Not like a coward with a plan that depends on everyone else’s forgiveness. Come like the man I used to race through these fields. Come with a chariot. Come before the next full moon. And take me.”

The words felt dangerous in my mouth, ancient and reckless. I saw the moment they landed—his eyes widening slightly, the breath catching in his throat. He knew what I was asking. Not permission. Not patience. A claim. A scandal. A choice.

I didn’t wait for him to answer. I turned and walked through the gates, my spine straight, the sash he’d tied for me brushing against my hips with every step. I didn’t look back. I didn’t need to. The battle had already begun.

I watched his face shift through the calculations—political, moral, practical. The same face that had once tried to cheat at dice when we were children, then lied badly about it. Now he was trying to weigh me against his brothers, his new wife, his exile, his name.

"You know what you're asking," he said finally.

"I'm not asking." My voice carried across the empty courtyard, bounced off the stone walls where we'd hidden as children. "I'm telling you the only way this happens. You come for me. Publicly. Before the moon fills. Or you never touch me again."

The words hung between us like a drawn bow. I could see him processing it—the scandal it would create, the alliances it would shatter, the way it would bind us together beyond any legal ceremony. In our grandmother's time, women had chosen this path when their families refused consent. It was theft and consent both, a middle finger to every negotiation table.

"You'd be giving up everything," he said. "Your family. Your position. Any claim to legitimacy."

"I already gave up everything when I let you fuck me against that pillar." The crude words felt right in my mouth, honest. "This is just making it official."

His eyes darkened. "Don't reduce this to—"

"To what? To the truth?" I stepped closer, close enough to smell the temple dust on his skin, the river on his clothes. "You want to pretend this is romance? That we'll find some clean solution where nobody gets hurt? You married five people yesterday, Arjun. There's no clean left."

I reached up, grabbed a fistful of his hair, pulled his face down to mine. The kiss was brutal, all teeth and desperation, the kind that left bruises. When I pulled back, we were both breathing hard.

"Next full moon," I said against his mouth. "Midnight. Bring a fast chariot and don't stop for questions. I'll be waiting at the old watchtower beyond the eastern fields. If you're not there, I ride east alone and you never see me again."

I released him, stepped back. My hands were steady. My voice didn't shake.

"And Arjun?" I added, already turning away. "If you come, you better be ready to fight for me. Because I won't be some quiet wife you visit between campaigns. I won't share you with anyone. You take me, you take all of me, and you give up the right to ever lie to me again."

I walked away then, my sandals clicking against the stone, the sound sharp and final. Behind me, he said nothing. But I could feel his eyes on my back, could practically hear the war happening in his head.

Good. Let him fight it. Let him lose sleep and appetite and peace. I'd already lost everything else.

The gates loomed ahead, and beyond them, the life I'd known for twenty-three years. I didn't look back. Didn't need to. The next move was his, and I had a month to prepare for either victory or exile.

Either way, I'd be riding out from here before the moon turned. With him or without him. But I'd be riding free.