Since, I will be out for New year, I updated the chapter early.
The is a very eventful chapter.
This maybe the last chapter, or I will continue depending on the response I get.
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They must have felt each other up already.
Touch. It is touch that is the deadliest enemy of chastity, loyalty, monogamy, gentility with its codes and conventions and restraints. By touch we are betrayed and betray others ... an accidental brushing of shoulders or touching of hands ... hands laid on shoulders in a gesture of comfort that lies like a thief, that takes, not gives, that wants, not offers, that awakes, not pacifies.
Had they touched each other?
Her heart raced with questions, as her mind formed compromising images of her eldest husband which she tried to block out.
Her breathing got heavy, as she stood there, seeing no sign of no from her husband, who sat at her head, and she lay on his bed.
As she went closer, his warrior instincts suddenly kicked in as he turned to her and his face paled a little.
He turned to her as he gave her his signature calm smile, and somehow it got butterflies flying in her stomach, but she was mad.
"Pranipat Draupadi!" He greeted poignantly as she fumed, how could he greet her like that after being in a room with another girl. She just fisted her fists so tightly as it went white as she glared at him, biting her lip tight, she knew if she said anything now she would regret it later.
"Help me.." he bit out as her eyes widened.
"What do you mean. You just did infidelity." She said angrily holding back tears, as pin drop silence engulfed the room, she decided to scream and loose her mind, because holding it in would only increase the distance. Silence was the real crime against humanity.
He just stood there, how could she even think he would do that, he would not touch anyone else when he was married to her, even if it lacked the red rose.
"Your silence will not protect you." She said much calmer as her face blank. Yudhishthira wished for that rage in her to come back, because at least she felt some emotion then, now there was no sense of any emotion on her face, just numbness, he of all knew how numbness felt.
He had perfected the art of the fake smile. It's not so difficult when he was completely numb.
"It is not what you thought Draupadi, I found her near the gates of Indraprasth, after you confessed your love for Arjun, I was mad, I tried to control it in myself and smile, as I decided to go to roam Mathura for a while, near the gates I found her and I just could not leave her there, when I laid her here she fell unconscious."
She knew he could not lie, he was Dharmaraj, but her heart ached that he was comfortable with a another girl and not her.
"I would not touch her." He said softer this time as he got up and cupped her face, resulting his back face the unconscious girl.
"I acted like a prosaic little coward, I know we can never love each other, but I would not break commitment."
The girl who was laying unconscious shot her eyes open and smirked evilly, gandharraj was right. Yudhishthira was too naïve and trusting, she need not act unconscious anymore.
In one swift motion she got up and unsheathed her dagger and before either of them could do anything, she charged her dagger at yudhishthira as it hit him deep in the back as he fell to his knees, and before Draupadi or yudhishthira could turn to face her, she was gone.
Draupadi gasped as she saw her eldest husband struggling his breathe, on his knees at the floor as blood flew freely from his back. A sharp dagger was embedded deep in his back as he shut his eyes tight trying not to scream, his tolerance was renowned but this dagger was too deep as struggled to not show his pain but Draupadi knew better.
For a while, she tried to register what happened, it happened in a span less than a minute.
She went towards his bed as she leaned behind him and held the dagger tight.
She looked at him with love as his eyes watered but he still smiled as the dagger deep in his back reminded him of the multiple wars he had been in, as he remembered the specific words of one of the victims of his dagger had said, something he had pushed to the back of his mind, but he knew in all senses in wall utterly and completely true.
On that occasion when he had killed in the war, he later needed to see his victims' faces because, in some unlit corner of his heart, he half expected to find his own face looking up at him, ice-white and dead-eyed. "Deep down," the victim had said, "You know that you're already dead yourself, burnt out inside. You realize that you have far more in common with your victims after you've killed them than before.
He was pulled out of his trance as he felt Draupadi's mellifluous whisper "Brace yourself." And before he could understand it, he felt the dagger pulled from his back as a sharp surge out pain jolt through his body and his vision become blurry and teary due to pain.
That was when they heart a sharp scream from another side of the palace, nakula's blood curdling scream 'Bhrata Bheem' , as yudhishthira gestured Draupadi to leave him and run to nakula, panicked, and torn between her two husbands, she agreed and ran towards to source.
As soon she left the chamber, he endeavoured to stay deliberate, but he failed despondently. He heard some voice calling out in name in a baritone, laced with panic. Every second seemed hard to live, as he wished that this agony just ended, he could not tolerate the pain anymore.
He felt a set of pachydermous, satiny fingers with a warm palm hold his shivering hand. The tranquilizing breeze in his room felt like horrifying storms as he struggled to breathe, Stygian vision enveloped him along with phantasmagorical apparitions . As his face went paper white and his body went numb as a cadaver, hitting his head on the royal floor.
~~~~~~~'
Nakul was roaming in the palace with ease as he walked his spider, named webby as he cooed to it.
"Aww, webbie, come here." He called to his spider who was now on top of Bhrata bheem's plate of ladoos.
"No actually, stay there, it would be a nice surprise for him." Nakula said laughing evilly.
Webby hid behind a ladoo as if understanding what Nakula was saying, when they heard Bheem approaching with another plate of ladoos.
"Bharata Bheem! Here, you can have these ladoos." Nakula said sweetly as he handed the palte with webbie on it.
Bheem accepted it gladly as he crushed nakula in a bone crushing hug accidentally dropping the plate.
When they heard the thud of the plate as they both turned towards it, while Bheem's eyes widened due to the loss of his ladoos while Nakul's eyes widened due to a completely different reason. He bent down as he picked up a ladoo which immediately burnt his skin, and he threw it away. He saw a hole had been burnt on the royal carpet where the ladoo fell.
He saw bheem pick one and almost eat, as panic took over nakul as he lunged towards bheem and pushed the ladoo away from bheem's hand as blood curdling cream escaped his lips.
The ladoo went and hit webby was hiding on his head as that plate of ladoos also fell down and webby fell and died.
"That ladoo was poisoned with a poison which can kill you in seonds!" Nakul screamed in anguish as his eyes watered seeing webby dead.
"Webby." He whispered with throat choked as tears sprung in his eyes. Nakul bent down to pick his spider's dead body and he put his hand accidentally in the poisoned ladoo on the floor while picking webbie up as the poison went into his blood through the burn caused earlier.
The poison spread faster than anticipated as Nakul staggered and his head started spinning, his sense numb. Bheem's heart ached seeing his younger brother in pain, nearly dying in front of him and he could do nothing about it.
Seeing the first thing, Bheem threw water on his hand at the exact same time, stopping the poison from spreading further as he hugged Nakul tightly and sobbed.
"I almost lost you." Bheem said hugging Nakula softly this time, everyone knew that Bheem maybe be a hard person on the exterior but deep down, he was a big softie.
That was when Draupadi came their panting to the scene.
Seeing her confusion and fear, nakula explained the happenings as draupadi's heart did flips.
"A girl had gifted me these ladoos near the palace gates." Bheem added.
"Someone is after our lives, even Arya yudhishthira was attacked minutes back by a girl." Draupadi said as the other two felt their blood drain but before they could open their mouth.
A guard came, bowed frantically as he looked with panic at the 3 royals.
"He. He is. Maharaj Yudhishthira is dead." That was all the guard managed to choke out as he bowed.
Draupadi, nakula and bheem felt numb, yudhishthira could not be dead could he?
They felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo. They could not react. They felt dizzy - not with the kind of dizziness that makes the body reel but the kind that's like a dead emptiness in the brain, an instinctive awareness of the void.
Gathering themselves they walked to his chamber, the walk seemed to be the longest walk ever. They met Sahadev who was also rushing towards Yudhishthira's chamber.
"Did you also hear it?"" Sahadev said as he restrained himself, because he could never mention his elder brother's death.
They others nodded horrified. "This has to be a prank!" Bheem said angrily, shoving his insecurities of loosing his brother to a side.
When they reached there they found him sprawled on the floor in a pool of blood, his face showing no signs of life. Arjun was sitting beside him sobbing as his brother's hand was in his hand, he refused to let go of it. Karn was beside Arjun as he comforted a sobbing arjun.
They wanted to rush forward and check his pulse, but the pale look on his face did no job giving them hope that he might be alive. They stood there numb, their feet glued to the entrance of his chamber. Every ounce of them, pushed them to run forward and check if there was any hope of saving him but their body seemed like it was made of steel.
"I- I should not have left him in that state." Draupadi's choked voice came out as she put a hand over her mouth holding in the sobs. The mightiest power of death is not that it can make people die, but that it can make the people you left behind want to stop living.
A sudden, unanticipated death had a way of jolting them to their senses. Life as they knew, it will never be the same. It can be reinvented, reshaped into something different- but its never the same. If he was really dead, they had lost their purpose to live also.
But Nakula, sahadev and Bheem were in a different world, stories from their childhood playing in their mind. They wish they had paid better attention to him. They didn't yet think of their time together as finite. They didn't fully appreciate the stories he told them until they became adult, and by now they had to make do with snippets pasted together, a film projected on the back of their mind.
Was he dead? the only questioned resonated through their minds but they could not move.
~~~~~
Phew! Thank you everyone.
Yudhishthira is dead, who will be the next male lead of the story?
Was this an expected twist?
Why is the girl after their lives?
Nakul was also nearly dead. What will happen to arjun and sahadev now? Or will they not be attacked?
Should I end the story here or would you like to read further, since yudhishthira is dead?
Thanks everyone for the support till here!