Mayanshi had had the opportunity of travelling through hidden passages in the past. She knew what to expect.

She pictured cobwebs drawn in intricate patterns, layers of dust adorning the walls, while unlit torches lay broken here and there.

And hence when she descended the final stair and faced the pathway, she was nonplussed. 

The passage was-- there's no other word for it-- absolutely shabby. It looked like those who had cleaned it decades ago, forgot to collect the garbage and throw it out. They left it on both the sides.

"At least the torches are in working condition. The road's also evened out." Samarjit took a stick from the pile and attacked the cobwebs.

All in all, it looked good enough to accommodate six to eight people side by side. And that's what mattered.

"Did you ever...?" She breathed.

"Few months ago. After my father passed away." He gestured ahead with his head. "I didn't go any further than a few meters. I just had to see if this was still an option."

Mayanshi raised her eyebrows.

"There was a war looming over our heads. I had to make sure that everyone got to safety if things got out of hands."

"But you forgot to inform me when I arrived?" She raised her head a little, demanding an answer.

"It was my mother's job to lead you all here. There's one from her bedchambers as well." He looked slightly perturbed by her borderline accusation.

"I could have shared the load. I am perfectly capable. If only you had just tru--" she bit back a taunt, "showed me this."

"I agree. I should have. But would you have trusted me? The state of mind we were both in, before the war, would we have cooperated with each other? If I sought you out and asked you to follow me into an underground passage alone would you have agreed?" He picked an unlit torch and lit it with the torch they brought along.

"Maybe not follow you in here. But it would have helped to know of its existence." She stretched her hand to hold one of the torches.

"My sincerest apologies. I see it now. If something happened to my mother and she was in no condition to lead everyone here, my plan to use this escape route would have been futile." He admitted.

A few hundred feet ahead there was another staircase. "From your mother's room?" She asked. He nodded.

"Are we still moving eastwards?" The path looked more slant than straight from the first staircase.

"No. Slightly northeast. I'm glad you noticed."

Soon they reached a point where the path diverged into three. "Where do these lead to?"

"One of them is a dead end. Other one leads to the other end of the city, to the banks of the river. The third one takes you to the edge of the forest." Samarjit seemed oddly satisfied with his answer.

"Take me to the river then." She walked towards the middle one.

"Wait. How do you know that's the right one?"

"You said it yourself. We were moving in the northeast direction. And these three paths are inclined at forty five degrees. So the first one will take me north and the third one will take me east. The middle one will take me to the river. Because it touches the northeast part of the city." She concluded. "Did I get it right?"

Samarjit tilted his head and eyed her. She cleared her throat.

He stared at her adoringly. "You are a queen."

"I do look the part." She jested.

"You also act the part. Every waking moment. It's who you are... and you show it even without intending to."

She gently pushed him aside and walked ahead, tugging at her braid.

Of course she had always been regal. She had to be. It had been ingrained into her brain from the moment she could crawl.

But being a queen had it's own downside. It made people either hold her in high regard, or be wary of her.

She had to tone it down several notches just to look approachable.

Hence, it came as a suprise when someone looked genuinely smitten by this quality of hers.

She didn't need to stay on guard with him. She can unapologetically be herself and he would still like her the same.

In retrospect, it had always been like this with him. When others called her two faced for being manipulative, he called her quick witted. When others believed she was materialistic for her ambitious nature, he thought she was goal oriented. When her anger and suffering were dismissed as tantrums, he empathised with her.

He saw the real her. The part of her that would have driven anyone else as farther as possible. And he loved her.

She subconsciously moved a little closer to him as they both walked side by side.

---***---

"Finally!" Samarjit emerged breathless, from the hidden door under the centuries old tree.

"Have you been skipping your training sessions?" Mayanshi didn't even try to hide her look of bewilderment. "It's only half a prahar since we started walking, and you are already panting." She rubbed his back to steady him.

"It's not the walk. It's the lack of fresh air." He inhaled and exhaled noisily through his mouth a few times. That seemed to have worked. "You didn't feel anything?" He noticed that she remained unaffected.

"I have had experience being locked up in windowless rooms." She shrugged.

It was only after she saw the look of utter horror on his face that she realised what she had just spoken. "No! I wasn't captured or anything. It was a part of my training."

"Why?"

"You never know when you might get abducted and thrown into the dungeons. You have to be prepared." She explained. "We had to figure out how to escape with whatever was available in the room."

"Must have been traumatising." He empathised.

"It was initially. The moment I manage to open the door, I would run without looking back and stop only when I see the open sky."

"In that case, here you are, Maharani. I give you the clearest of skies." He gestured dramatically upwards.

"That's it? Our first night together and all I get is something I cannot even touch." She crossed her hands, pretending to be hurt.

"The night's still young, my love. We have a lot to look forward to." He led her towards the boats. She watched attentively as he quickly made a deal with the boatman who bowed twice before giving him a medium sized boat.

"Shall we?" He offered her his hand.

She took it and got into the boat, amused.

She closed her eyes taking in the cool breeze, that had kissed the waters a few moments ago, caress her face. The mild aroma of the water lilies compelled her to part her lips in an unrestricted smile.

She felt a gaze on her, that turned her smile into a smirk. "Focus on rowing, husband."

"The distraction is so beautiful that focusing is impossible."

She shook her head in fake exasperation.

"Hope the gift is to your liking." He gestured towards the river. "Something you can touch." He added in a pride tinted voice, while effortlessly plucking a water lily from its natural habitat and setting it down onto his wife's lap.

"But not something I can own." She improvised her demand.

"I can propose to change its name to yours if you would like."

"Misuse of authority, Maharaja." She raised her eyebrows. "Besides, renaming won't make it mine."

"Would you like to buy the river then?" He sounded like he slightly dreaded the answer.

"Something simpler, Maharaja. I want something that stays with me for the rest of my life."

"Like what?"

"Like a promise. A memory. A declaration of love."

Samarjit's eyes widened at the dawning comprehension. Before he could respond Mayanshi took his hands in hers and kissed them. She grabbed one of the oars. "Let's share. Bliss and burden."

"We journey together. Always on the same path." He nodded.

---***---

"If the king wanted to use the secret passage to get somewhere he would have told me." Venu shook his head in disbelief.

When Mayanshi took longer than usual to attend the morning prayers, the maids thought their queen had a... long night. They giggled among themselves and made a few jokes.

But almost half a prahar later when she still hadn't arrived they appointed Devika for the fearsome mission of checking inside the bedchamber.

She stumbled upon a note in Mayanshi's handwriting that didn't offer much explanation.

"Of course. The king definitely would have asked his wife to wait till he told his advisor. During his first night. No less." Devika retorted.

Venu gasped. Before he could laugh they heard footsteps. "Someone's coming."

The visitor announced herself. Vaishali's personal maid.

They quickly hid the entrance to the secret passage. Venu whispered something to her. She looked at him incredulously.

"Maharani! May I come in?" The maid asked again.

Venu stood behind a pillar. Devika sat in front of the mirror muttering a thousand apologies to her queen. "Come in!" She tried mimicking Mayanshi's voice.

The maid entered to find a thin veiled curtain drawn and a woman seated at the dressing table, getting ready. "The Queen mother sent me to check on you, Maharani."

"Send a message to the Queen mother that I find myself under the weather. I hope she doesn't mind doing the pooja without me." Devika hoped it was a passable impression of Mayanshi.

Vaishali's maid bowed to her and left. Devika blew out a long sigh of relief.

"I hope it was convincing."

"Convincing? That was amazing." Venu marveled. "For a moment even I believed it was the queen herself."

Devika felt heat rising against her cheeks. She laughed it off. "It was your idea, though."

"With perfect execution by you."

She raised her head to face him. They stood in a comfortable silence staring into each other's eyes when someone cleared their throat loudly.

They leapt apart and turned their heads towards the intruder in unison.

It was Mayanshi. And if her scrutinizing gaze was anything to go by, she was unimpressed.

---***---

Enough romance for these two. Let's get onto the serious part. Going to end it in some 15 chapters.

I am on a writing spree. I have started a new story titled 'Legacy of The Fractured Crown'.

A sneak peek:

"Being a king has it's own pros and cons." Adhiraj flashed a grin at the camera that floated few feet away. "Pros first. I never have to pay taxes. Doesn't sound like much. But imagine filling out the entire tax returns form with your details and clicking on continue, only for it to say server error... try again later. Fortunately, I never had to deal with that. Does that make me a tax evader? I'm--"

He was interrupted by his stepsister, Veda, who snorted juice through her nose. They chortled together for a second before he magically cleaned the juice stains on her dress with a simple wave of his hand.

"Moving on." He faced the camera again. "I also get to coin new terms. Last month I had a meeting with marine biologists. I kept referring to lobsters as mermaid scorpions. By the end of the week the phrase was already included in the dictionary." He bowed dramatically.

"Can we just ship him off to Mars and pretend he never existed?" Adhiraj's stepbrother, Rajiv, suggested from the other end of the room.

Veda burst out laughing once again. "Morons!" She shook her head.

Adhiraj's grin grew wider, showing as many teeth as a human possibly can, while smiling. "Now coming to cons. I went to watch a movie. Altered my appearance, of course. But then... there was nail biting suspense. I lost focus and Bam! I was back to my original face. Within seconds I had all the people in the theatre rush towards me. I mean, it was 400th movie in the Star Wars franchise. Show some respect!"

At this point Rajiv tore his eyes away from the hologram of weekly reports he was viewing. "What are you making that video for?"

"My therapist says I have to maintain a journal. So I'm making a Vlog." Adhiraj made a hand gesture and summoned the floating camera towards him.

"In what world is a Vlog same as a journal?"

"They're both a medium to express myself."

"Please tell me you won't post it. If you do I will have to make an announcement claiming you have been hacked." Rajiv sounded like he was warning and pleading simultaneously.

Before Adhiraj could continue their banter, Veda, who finally accepted that the boys wouldn't let her have breakfast in peace, stood up and walked towards him. "You okay?"

He ran his hand through his hair in response, messing it up. "I don't know. Big day today."

"Nervous?"

"Yes. My court is full of traditionalists. No amount of logic can drill a tiny little bit of change into their thick skulls." Adhiraj subconsciously snapped his fingers altering the colour of the flowers in the vase, standing next to them, to bright orange.

Veda smoothed his hair. "Present your ideas with conviction. We are there to support you." She tapped her hand against the vase to return the flowers to their original colour.

"She's right. We won't be giving up just because some rich guys, who refuse to get out of their estates and see the real world, don't like our proposal." Rajiv joined his siblings.

Adhiraj nodded feeling a little more confident.

The blurb:

"I'm not like the others who work for you." She declared.

"Good," he smirked. "I wouldn't know what to do with someone who is predictable."

---***---

Shaped by the uneasy alliance of five great magical sects, the peace of the nation Suryavarna, balances on a blade's edge, under the watchful eye of their young ruler, Adhiraj, the most powerful mage of their country.

Until a mysterious and hilarious Akshara Raghuvanshi arrives to tilt the scales.

Having walked away from her powerful magical bloodline, Akshara lives a quiet life as a scientist. But during a national emergency she is forced to make an appearance to save lives, thus quickly gaining prominence and being noticed by none other than the king himself.

He sees through the walls she built. She sees the secrets he hides behind a crown. As they're pulled together by crisis, suspicion, and the stirrings of something old and evil, they can neither ignore nor afford the growing romantic tension between them.

In a land where loyalty is a weapon and love maybe the greatest betrayal, will Akshara and Adhiraj's interests and ethics ever align? Or will they have to put their love on the line and choose diametrically opposite sides?

Please do read and comment if it sounds interesting. Thank you.