The walls of Toran Kota were never dull. It had been the first thing to annoy her about her new home when she had come in as the daughter-in-law of the place. There was no visible sign of imperfection, no space for shadow to breathe. The bright blue drapes adorned every possible corner they could find to decorate, the silver sewn into it in rows of miniature rings orbiting around each other in loops.

Mudhra had been the crown princess of Torni for a decade now and she still had moments when she wished she could add bits of holes or stains to them.

Tuhina wished she had such trivial urges back at Agapura. Her most common one involved fire and it was on a different level of darkly humourous, when the entire world believed that it had been a fire that had begun the ruin of her sanity. She didn’t care about correcting them.

As they sat facing each other, Tuhina rested her folded leg against the pale blue bolster at the end of her settee. It would take her niece a while before she made her move, she remembered from experience. Mahir said that she got it from his older brother, the dichotomy of caution and chaos.

Well, used to say, she corrected absently in her mind.

“I heard some news,” Mudhra said in that tone she once used to bring when she had seen her cousins hatch a plan to jump over the walls in the middle of the night. The rook moved on the board and Mudhra’s bangles clinked gently as she withdrew her hand, placing it back on her lap elegantly. Her azure dupatta had slid down to her shoulder from her hair and now sat against her embellished blouse with a butterfly’s touch away from drifting to the ground. Tuhina kept her glance on the board and took a sip from her glass of wine before placing it back on the wooden table beside her. The crown princess was smarter than she was before but she was still impatient, the restlessness of a domestic parrot with memory of the sky.

Tuhina had groomed her wings in golden cages for years now and was willing to out-wait the bait of her niece.

The knight slid through the board and Tuhina looked up with a practiced ease of calm. Mudhra’s brows creased at the move before she smoothed them out, offering her aunt a pleasant smile.

“You remember the gift I was supposed to receive from the hunters who had the favour from us a while ago?” she continued, bringing up her knee to rest her elbow on it, her sari moulding itself to the new position, “I got news yesterday that they were unable to bring it.”

“I’m sure they can make up for disappointing you,” Tuhina commented and Mudhra laughed, shaking her head as she leaned over to pick a grape from the pile of fruit beside her.

“It wasn’t disappointing,” the princess insisted, and Tuhina chose to ignore the blatant lie in favour of letting the news come out further, “I was actually glad that they hadn’t brought it. What would I do with an elephant?”

The same thing people did with unnecessary gifts. The older queen offered a hint of an agreeing smile instead.

“He said something interesting though,” Mudhra chewed on her grape as she perused her choices of moves, “Apparently it was an animal of Swatan that they had hunted.”

Tuhina had suspected something on these lines when she had been asked for the game. She had come to Torni to spend a month in ‘safety’ until they received news from Agapura of it being right for the Queen to return. She had initially been asked to stay with Mahir’s relatives but had refused, making an excuse of wanting to visit her niece instead. It was easy to make people listen when you were a new widow, grief making men weak to requests.

It hadn’t been a request but she wasn’t particular about fixing misconceptions as long as she got her peace. She would wait until Mogh returned and then -

And then the rest of their life.

Swatan wasn’t on the list of places she considered visiting in that life plan.

“They lost control of the beast mid-travel,” Mudhra spoke, either oblivious to the tension or acutely aware of it, “Weak tranquilisers, I suppose. When it went berserk, they were well into Jevadhi. What a disaster!”

“They came back alive to tell you the story,” Tuhina commented as she watched Mudhra make her move, a wave of her hand dismissing that interruption.

“Yes, yes, but they wouldn’t have if the animal hadn’t been stopped in time,” she insisted as she leaned back against her bolster, “By a single woman, apparently. She went up against the mad beast on her own and managed to calm it down. Well, there was an archer involved too, he said, but she didn’t do much.”

Tuhina knew who the person in question was and hummed appreciatively.

“Chief Ammashak must have been cross when she found out,” she suggested and noted the way Mudhra’s face pinkened a little. Ah, so her mother had said something about the crown princess of Torni. Tuhina knew her mother’s tongue well enough and the calculation of what the situation must have been like went clearly through her mind. She certainly hadn’t spared words when Mahir had been alive.

It was oddly amusing that she got along well with her granddaughter without much difficulty. She hadn’t once, a long while ago, when the entire world had found Agapura’s princess agreeable.

But even then, Minar had never been restricted from visiting Jevadhi. The same courtesy hadn’t been extended to both Mahir and Tuhina at different points of time.

It was regrettable that Mogh was more like Tuhina in that aspect now.

“We’re at a stalemate,” Tuhina said and Mudhra frowned before looking down at the board between them. It seemed like the younger woman had hoped to make this conversation last longer.

“I’m sure you’ll find some gift that’s more valuable than this, Mudhra,” Tuhina reached over to pat her hand once before getting to her feet gracefully, “I should get back to my chambers. I’m still in mourning, after all. Exceeding my limits of entertainment would be disgraceful.”

“It’s been ten years,” her niece spoke up as she was about to retire from the room, the voice laced with a nurtured regret and Tuhina knew that the regret wasn’t for her. It was for the sister that Mudhra yearned for again. They were all different, all the roles she had once represented to a family that was no longer the same.

“With uncle gone, can’t she -,” Mudhra paused, retracing her words among discarded suggestions, “Apparently the archer threw your hair-stick while deflecting an attack. It was still with her. I’ve retrieved it from him as compensation for the broken promise. My brother-in-law will be passing through that area a few days later, I could send it with him? We could return it to her.”

Return. Return what, Tuhina wondered. What could they possibly return to her daughter? A decade? Her father’s last days? Her reputation? All in the form of a measly stick of worthless silver?

“I hope you warn your brother-in-law of what Swatan is,” she said as reply, not giving in to the urge to face Mudhra as she said it, “He might not like those he meets. And I doubt they would too.”

“He’s but a child,” Mudhra persisted, knowing that the teenager wouldn’t know of anything close to the truth and was more perceptible to what he was told, “Besides, Yaali will be travelling with him and she could -”

Tuhina began laughing before the sentence could be completed, her voice harsh against the quiet of the echoing hall.

“Yaali?” she asked, shaking her head in continued laughter that wasn’t remotely in good humour, “Oh Mudhra, if you wish to invite trouble, there couldn’t be a better way to do it. But why should I stop you? No, please, do as you see right. As you said, it’s been ten years and maybe my memory fails me more after my husband’s death. Let the young Prabhat princess be your messenger and let her message be befitting her history with the one you send her to. I do not have any thoughts on the matter, just as I do not have any decisions to make in your land. Give my regards to your envoys and let there be the line of my regard for the journey. Anyone else, I do not know and do not care to know about today.”

Paher Mudhra Lamhan watched her aunt walk out the room without a hint of regret or struggle, no sign of hurt heart at the possible news of someone she had once held dear. Though Mudhra had been the oldest, she had still been Paher Mahir’s brother’s daughter, his foster responsibility after her parents had passed and she had been old enough to recognise that. Neither Mogh nor Minar did though, and despite their boundaries, Mudhra still had nostalgia threaten her when she thought of her cousins. Their better times.

She wondered what Tuhina Ammashak was made of, that she could feel none of it even though she was so close to someone who was probably her only family left.

After a moment Mudhra threw away the bitter curiosity and focused on moving forward with her plan to send an offer to her estranged cousin, hoping to ease her pain from her father’s passing. It would still be something, even if Tuhina herself would never go.

She was after all the Queen, the woman Mudhra could still remember raising a burning sword against her defiant but bruised daughter in the darkness of a screaming night.