| 𝔉𝔢𝔞𝔱𝔲𝔯𝔢𝔡 x 17 |
Book 1 in the SURYAGARH ROYALS series.
Suryagarh Fort.
In the heart of the desert state of Rajasthan, a 900-year-old fort, a 500-year-old family feud, a 300-year-old portrait, and the thirty-year-old crowned prince await t...
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Shreya didn't know why she felt so, but she was garnering a strange sense of foreboding and doom from his countenance. There was a void in her stomach, pronouncing utter danger to her. Alarm bells were again ringing in her head, and she was getting cautioned by her sixth sense. Warned not to ask too many questions and rather keep her head down, help them, and get the hell out of there. Warned not to immerse herself too much in the finer details of the prince and princesses of Suryagarh. Almost as if it was too unsafe for her. As if it was going to spell destruction for her and everything dear to her.
A slight draft of wind blew past, alerting them, breaking her out of the reverie she was in, and extricating him from the chasms of the trance he was in.
"Uh..." He chortled and raked his hands through his hair. "Meera was... weak, soft, delicate. She was never the witty kind. You, on the other hand," he motioned at her, "are stubborn, feisty, aggressive. She could never stand up for herself as you do. She could never fight for herself as you can."
She forgot her woes for a moment and giggled, flipping her hair again. "I am the best, and I know it." She frowned at him. "Do you know about Meera from all the fables communicated down the family tree?"
A humourless chuckle came out of his mouth. "Fables? There is no dearth of fables surrounding Suryagarh. Not all of them are true, yes, but the true ones are the tales no one knows of. Lost in the depths of this magnanimous fort, faded with time..."
She puckered her lips and plopped herself on the sill of the railing. "Yeah, you talk in riddles. I don't understand half the things you say."
He noticed where she was perched and precariously so. The narrow barrier was low-lying, and she could topple backwards if she were to be a bit careless, plunging a good thirty feet below. "Do not sit there. You will fall."
She waved her hands in dismissal and commenced swinging her legs as her palms rested on the horizontal platform. "Tell me all about these fables of Suryagarh."
The sparkle of curiosity in her eyes made him smile. "You come down first. You will fall."
The insistence in his tone made her tummy giddy with exhilaration, but she chose to shake her head. "I am fine. I am not a child. You answer my queries."
Exasperated he was due to her obstinacy, but he managed to keep his facade neutral and calm. "Meera's tales have been orally carried down through generations, yes."
She drummed her fingers on the stone barrier. "And why do you speak so fondly of her? Even in the museum, you were gazing reverentially at her portrait. Is she such an important piece of Suryagarh's history?"
"Hmmm."
She was unhappy with it—one of his classic curt answers. "From what I have read, she was restricted from going out of the chambers because her clandestine affair came out in the open. She fell in love with a commoner and earned the ire of the family. She was imprisoned, and then she was found dead. Is it true?"
