"I've waited a hundred years
But I'd wait a million more for you
Nothing prepared me for
What the privilege of being yours would do"
~ Turning Page - Sleeping At Last ~

My father asked to speak with us on the eighth day.

He said it at breakfast. Casually. "Aadyant, Kashvi—this afternoon, if you're free. My study."

Maa's hands stilled briefly on her cup.

Aadya, beside me, went very carefully still in the way she did when she was keeping her expression neutral.

Kashvi, across the table, noticed none of this because she was looking at me.

I kept my face easy. "Of course."

"What was that?" she asked, the moment we were in the corridor.

"What was what?"

"Your mother's hands. Aadya's face. What do they know that you don't?"

I stopped walking.

I had not been lying when I said I didn't know. But I also wasn't entirely without suspicion.

My father had been—different, this visit. More present. Watching me and Kashvi in a way that felt less like assessment and more like calculation. And there had been a meeting with the family's senior advisors two days ago that I'd been excluded from, which hadn't happened in years.

"I honestly don't know," I said. "But I don't think it's anything bad."

"That is not the most reassuring sentence you've ever said."

"I know. I'm sorry."

She looked at me for a moment.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. This afternoon."

~

~That Afternoon~

Aadhir Rathore's study was the most formally Rathore room I'd entered.

Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A large desk positioned to face the door. The fort visible through the single tall window, always present, always watching. Photographs on the walls, but also documents—framed letters, official seals, things I didn't look at closely but understood to be the paperwork of a lineage.

He was standing when we came in. That felt deliberate.

"Sit," he said. Warm but formal. We sat.

He sat across from us.

There was a silence that he clearly felt no urgency to fill.

I sat with it. I'd learned, from Dadu, that Rathore silences were working silences. You let them finish.

"There is something I need to tell you both," he said finally. "Something that should have been told to you—" his eyes went to Aadyant, "—somewhat sooner. I accept that. The delay was—partly intentional, partly hoping circumstances would make it less relevant."

"Baba," Aadyant said. Very quiet. "What is it?"

Aadhir Uncle set his hands flat on the desk. The gesture of a man presenting something he's been carrying for a long time.

"In the Rathore line, there is an old provision. It predates my grandfather. It was established as a condition of the formal transfer of the crown—a measure, in its original context, of stability. Of continuity."

"The crown prince," he continued, "must be married before the age of twenty."

The room went very still.

I looked at Aadyant. His jaw was set. His eyes on his father.

"Married," Aadyant said. The word was careful and flat.

"Yes."

"That's—is that still legally binding?"

"The state recognizes it as a ceremonial requirement. It cannot compel, legally speaking. But in terms of the formal transfer of the crown, the recognition of succession within the heritage registry—yes. It holds."

"And you're telling me this now because—"

"Because you're eighteen. Because you turn nineteen in August. Because—" He looked at me, briefly, and then back at his son. "Because it is no longer theoretical."

Silence.

I was aware of my own heartbeat. Of the quality of Aadyant's stillness beside me—not the calm stillness, the one that meant he was processing. The held-breath stillness. The one that meant something had hit him and he wasn't ready to show where.

"You said you were hoping circumstances would make it less relevant," Aadyant said. "What circumstances?"

His father looked at him for a long moment.

"I was hoping, when you came to California, that you would stay—unattached. For longer. That the requirement would remain abstract until you were closer to nineteen. That there would be time to introduce the concept gradually, perhaps arrange—"

"Arrange," Aadyant said.

"Aadyant—"

"You were going to arrange it."

"I was considering options. And then—" Aadhir uncle's eyes went to me again, not unkindly, "and then circumstances changed. And the arrangement became—unnecessary."

A very particular silence.

I understood, suddenly, what he meant.

He had been prepared to find someone. And then Aadyant had found someone himself.

"How long do we have?" I asked.

Both of them looked at me. I realized it was the first thing I'd said.

"Before twenty," he said carefully. "Aadyant turns twenty. That gives—"

"Fourteen months," Aadyant said. His voice was very even.

"Approximately. The summer window would be the conventional—

"I understand." Aadyant stood. Then, with the controlled deliberateness of someone managing something large: "Thank you for telling us. We'll—we need some time."

His father nodded. "Of course."

Aadyant looked at me. I stood. We left the study.

In the corridor, we walked without speaking. Through the main hall. Through the inner courtyard. Through the garden gate.

We stopped at the far end of the garden, where the bougainvillea was thickest and the fort was a presence above everything, unmoving and enormous.

I waited.

Aadyant put his hands on the garden wall and looked at the fort for a long time.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

A pause. "I'm—processing."

"Take your time."

He turned to look at me. His expression was the most open I'd ever seen it—no performance, no management, just everything showing at once.

"Kashvi."

"Yeah."

"I need you to know—whatever you feel about this, whatever you decide, it does not change anything between us. I am not asking you for anything right now. I would never ask you to do something because a decree requires it. If you need to walk away from this—"

"Aadyant."

"I mean it. This is not a pressure. This is just—information."

"I know."

"And whatever you—"

"Aadyant." I stepped closer to him. "Look at me."

He looked at me.

"What do you want?" I asked.

Something shifted in his face.

"I want you," he said. Simply. Without hesitation. "I have wanted you since the first week of college when you refused to move your bike and looked at me like I was an inconvenience you intended to manage. I've wanted you every day since. That has nothing to do with decrees or crowns or anything else."

"Okay," I said.

"Okay?"

"Okay. That's what I needed to know first." I held his gaze. "Now give me a few days. To think. Not because I'm unsure about you—I want to be clear about that. I'm not. I just—this is big. And I want to make sure when I give you an answer it's mine. Completely mine. Not fear or pressure or anything else."

He exhaled. Something eased in him that had been wound very tight.

"Take whatever you need," he said.

"Thank you."

He opened his arms.

I walked into them and stood there, in his family's garden, with the fort watching and the bougainvillea loud with color and thought about the future for the first time without flinching.

~
LIKE AND COMMENT...