"Oh! I am so excited for my Ram's coronation, it's going to happen in a few hours, isn't it?" cried Dasharath, clasping his hands together tightly, and his face turning a bright red. "Isn't it just wonderful, Sumant?" The minister nodded graciously, folding his hands together. He did not speak up so that he would not interrupt the king by accident, however, he too wanted to jump around. It was the moment! The awaited moment that he knew he would see since the birth of the dark-skinned firstborn prince. It was the awaited moment he knew he wanted to see when the child first spoke his kind words.

"Isn't it just amazing, Kaushalya?" wondered Dasharath, turning towards his queen. Kaushalya took a deep sniffle, dabbing at the ends of her eyes with the end of her cloth. How much she had worked towards this goal. She had nurtured the child, taught him about being the king, government policies, kindness and goodness towards all. She had ensured that he would be righteous and a follower of dharma. She had given birth to him, she had dedicated blood, sweat, and tears, but Ram was all worth it. Dasharath's happiness was all worth it.

"Isn't it just fantastic, Kaikeyi, wait, where is my queen?" asked Dasharath. Sumitra's head darted up, and she looked around. Her momentary flashback of Ram's childhood and adolescence was cut off by Dasharath's worried tone. Suddenly, one of Kaikeyi's servants walked up, and whispered something in the king's ear.

"What?" asked Dasharath in awe. "She is in the sorrow room? Whatever for?" When the servant just shrugged, he turned towards his assembled courtiers, and similarly shrugged, and they shrugged back. "You must excuse me, good sirs, I need to attend to the health of my rani." He received waves and goodwills as he raced down the corridors.

There was a room in the castle used just to cry, to be filled with sorrow, to be undisturbed. Kaushalya sometimes spent time there when she saw a particularly sad play in the theatre. Ram sometimes sat there when he fought with his brothers. If Bharat ever made a mistake in his painting, he would cry there. Lakshman and Shatrughan had each gone there only once, the former because he thought expressing emotion was a waste of time, and the latter was simply too happy to cry.

All Dasharath could think of was Kaikeyi. Kaikeyi, Kaikeyi, Kaikeyi. What could possibly be troubling her? Was it the stress of seeing her son being crowned? Perhaps the banners were troubling her again, yes that was most certainly a possibility. He bumped into a servant, whose shoulder he caught. "Hey, hey, could you please decorate the banners with lotus petals, and make sure all of them are straightened?" he implored, and the servant nodded. The lotus was Kaikeyi's favorite flower.

He caught another servant. "Give me that," And he snatched away the bowl of blueberries the servant was holding. "Sorry, I'll get you another one." The servant had never expected to receive an apology from the king, and squeaked, before quickly dashing away. Dasharath turned around to stare at his back. "Hmmm, what's gotten into them these days?" he brooded, brows furrowing.

Abruptly, Kaikeyi's image popped back into his mind, and he straightened his mustache and made sure not a hair was out of place out of his immaculate beard. Kaikeyi loved order. All he wanted for her was to be happy! Yes, after she told him what was troubling him, he would immediately fix it! He would dedicate all of his thoughts towards that!

He threw open the door grandly, expecting light to be flowing through the windows and Kaikeyi to be sniffling because her "little Ramu-babu" (a nickname she had used that was practically a treasure chest to Shatrughan) was all grown up, but his entire face turned ashen, grey and pale upon the sight of his wife. The bowl of blueberries clattered to the floor, shattering into shards, and the round fruits rolled all over the slick marble floors as Dasharath dropped to his knees, hands lying on the floors.

Manthara was right about one thing. Kaikeyi was exquisite. She was one of the most beautiful women in all of India, a fact stated by anyone who had seen her. She was from a western state of India, and her eyes were a light hazel. Her skin was golden like honey, and her fingers were long and pretty, and her brown hair had a shimmering sheen to it as if it were rubbed with gold. This was a reason that Dasharath was completely infatuated with her. Dasharath could not stand to see her sobbing.

Kaikeyi was sprawled on the ground, head down in her arms, and sobbing loudly. Her jewelry was strewn all over the place, her clothes awry and torn, pearl beads scattered around. The dagger she carried everywhere was held in her hand, dangerously close to her neck, and Dasharath wrenched it away before she could do any harm to herself. Kaikeyi blinked at the movement, and sat up.

"So you have finally decided to arrive, king." she croaked. Dasharath was stricken. She had not called him Dasharath. She had not called him dear. She had called him king, with such malicious loathing and regret in her voice that Dasharath felt stabbed in the back. "It was better that you had not, at least I could cry in peace. At least I would not be humiliated by your presence. What do you want from this lowly Kaikeyi, hanh?"

Dasharath tried to reach out his hand, but she pulled away. "What has happened, Kaikeyi? What has hurt you so? What makes you sob so much? What makes you unhappy? Everyone rejoices outside, and yet here you are? What saddens you, tell me! Tell me, and I will eliminate it!"

Kaikeyi turned away, wiping away a tear with one of her slender fingers. Dasharath grasped her hands in his, and Kaikeyi did not pull away this time. "You won't help me. You won't. All you will do is tell me that you can't help me, and you will leave me to my misery. No, better than that, you should go." Dasharath shook his head, tears drawn to his eyes like a magnet attracting iron filings.

"I-I c-can't, Kaikeyi! I can't leave you like that! Do you really think so terribly, so lowly of me?" Kaikeyi turned her head away, and Dasharath's voice strengthened. "Tell me, tell me what is troubling you. Tell me, and I will vanquish it. I will kill myself if you wish me to! I will do anything! And if I cannot, Ram will fulfill it for me." At the sound of Ram's name, Kaikeyi's anger and wrath resurfaced like a crocodile in a river.

"GO!" she cried. "L-LEAVE! I will die before I tell you, before you betray me! Leave, before you disgrace your clan with your disrespect! I WILL KILL MYSELF!" She wrenched her hands out of Dasharath's hopeful grasp and grabbed a dagger, holding it to her neck and closing her eyes tightly. Dasharath hesitated, and she drew a bead of blood.

"STOP!" cried the aged king, pulling the dagger away with the warrior-like instincts that he still possessed. "Stop! Stop uttering such preposterous things! Stop it Kaikeyi! I will never betray you! I would never! Say what you wish to say, and be free about it! I will not judge you." Kaikeyi shuddered and folded her hands, straightening her back haughtily.

"I warned you, my king. Now I shall speak under the protection of your oath. Remember when you granted me two boons on that battlefield? Remember that moment when I saved your life, and how you granted me the two boons, and I said I would take them later?" she looked at him expectantly, and Dasharath nodded eagerly, hands collapsed together, eager to do his wife's bidding like Lakshman often was to Ram.

"How could I ever forget?" he asked, urging her to continue with his hands, which waved widely all over the place. And after a wary look towards his excited self, Kaikeyi did continue, albeit hesitantly, and congested, wiping away some stray tears out of her emotional eyes and face delicately. "Take those two boons now! Take them!" he cried urgently. "I grant you the promise that whatever you say, I will fulfill! Go on!"

Kaikeyi's face suddenly seemed much more confident. Her lips curled into a malicious smile, and she straightened up some more, flexing her fingers and cracking her knuckles as if it were some gory task she had to get over with. "It is only under our oath of protection, Maharaj, that I speak today at this moment. You have promised, and now you will fulfill. I am glad at this heroism and trust you place in me."

"My first wish is that Bharat be crowned king instead of Ram." she declared loudly. Her words echoed back to her in the small room. How she wished, later, that she had not spoken them, how she should have burst into laughter, and said that it was a prank, how the loud, thumping beating of her heart should have signaled to her that something was wrong, just as it had when Manthara spoke to her, or when Dasharath was wounded. But she didn't.

Dasharath's smile disappeared, was pulled off his face by an invisible hand urged on by Kaikeyi. "You must be joking, woman!" he stammered. "You must be!" When Kaikeyi did not even bat an eyelash, he straightened like her. "I-I can't. I-I, well, alright. I suppose I have to, do I not? Speak. What is your second wish? What else do you wish out of this old man who can barely keep his emotions together?" Kaikeyi cleared her throat. More than the first, she regretted her second wish. She should not have spoken. She should have repealed her wish and stopped speaking. She did not.

"And my second wish is..." she toyed with her dupatta in an act of coyness that immediately sent alarm bells ringing in Dasharath's head. "...for Ram to be banished, to be exiled, for fourteen years." There was no echo. Even echo was ashamed to repeat the words Kaikeyi had just uttered. The sky suddenly turned stormy. The wind stopped blowing in alarm. The mountains did not move in a shuddering fury as they had done for her first wish. It was as if the Earth had stopped.

Dasharath's hands trembled. His heart beat. His brain continued functioning. And yet, they didn't. "No, no, I cannot do that, Kaikeyi! I cannot. Wish for something else, and I will grant, but this I cannot! I cannot be separated from my son! You can't do this to me! You can't!" Kaikeyi put a finger on his lips, and he recoiled as if having seen something disgusting and wanting to get as far away from it as possible.

"Ah-ah-ah. Nope. You know, the Raghu clan has had ages of a reputation, which has taken ages to build. A reputation for upholding truth, justice, and preventing anything of the opposite. Now, not fulfilling a promise which you took an oath to follow through with, would not that be the exact opposite of what the Raghu-Ikshvaku-Suryavanshi clan has followed?" Dasharath trembled, he shook his head.

"I cannot. I cannot! I cannot be separated from my son! He is my life! He is the center of my universe! He is my jeevan's purpose! Wish for something else, Kaikeyi. Anything else. Listen to a dying man's plea, I beg of you Kaikeyi." Not even Dasharath's most profound pleads appealed to Kaikeyi's nature. Her lip curled into a disgusted snarl as she turned her enchanted eyes to his.

"And not follow through with ages of tradition? Mark your clan's reputation with grease? Would you be the first, Dasharath, son of Aja, to tarnish your own name, I wonder?" Dasharath trembled. He could not do anything. He was helpless. For the first time in his life, he was utterly, completely, and truthfully helpless. The great king of Kosala, the envied king of Kosala, the victorious king of Kosala, could not do anything.

"What have I worked towards for my entire life?" Dasharath wondered with a trembling voice. "What have I accomplished during my stay on this Earth to be able to do absolutely nothing at this point in time when I need to do something, the most? To save my son's comfort, his innocence? To save my own? What is the meaning of my achievement, what is the meaning of conquering all the lands I have conquered, what is the meaning of extending my power, of evading death, if my son is to be snatched away from me? What did I do in my past life to deserve this, Lord, if you can hear me. What have I done to deserve this?"

His eyes turned towards Kaikeyi furiously. Had it been only minutes ago that all he could think of was her? Well, now it was the same. Kaikeyi, Kaikeyi, Kaikeyi. The haunted voice repeated her poisonous name over and over in his head. "You wretched woman. I welcomed you into my life. I gave you gold, and I gave you silver, and I gave you jewels. I gave you the position of the favored wife. What did you do with that power? You stole my son from me! It is not I that tarnished my clan's name." Dasharath collapsed, his loud laments going unheard from the soundproof door.

"Ram...oh Ram! My crown prince, my yuvraj. My son. I cannot leave you! But I cannot follow you! What a foolish father I am! I am exiling the own apple of my eye! I am horrible! The Gods must be frowning down on me with all of their wrath and fury. And I am glad for it. I deserve it! I am hopeless, and I am helpless. The witch that is my second, formerly favorite wife, she broke my heart and here I lament. Oh...Kaushalya. What pain this will cause your kind, selfless heart. Oh Sumitra! Not even your wiseness and goodness will cure my sorrow. Nothing can! NOTHING!"

He turned his trembling fingers towards Kaikeyi, chest heaving. "Y-you wretch! You and your nursemaid and all of your servants galore, and your son too, they must have all planned this together! I am not quick to lay blame on Bharat, perhaps he is blameless. I should have known, with the amount my heart was beating when I circled the 7th round around the agni with you. I should have known that I shouldn't have welcomed you into my house!"

Kaikeyi watched as Dasharath directed his wrath towards her, her malicious smile only increasing at his laments. This sadness, this anger, would mean that he would indeed fulfill her wishes. "Ram...oh Ram! I cannot live without you! You cannot leave me! I should have never offered you those two boons. I should have only given you one. He would either have not been king, or been going around the forest while being king! I should have given you none, just my deepest gratitude for saving my life."

Suddenly, his crazed eyes turned towards her again. "You must have been planning this. Ever since the battlefield, else why would you have gone to such lengths to save my life? Why, I ask? You would not have. You would have let me die, but you thought that you could get something out of this old man yet, and so you saved my life! You didn't save my life, as you think, you didn't. You just condemned me to die a little sooner than the best of fates would have ordained. Yes, you heard me right, I will die without my son."

He stared at his two palms, seemingly broken again, but he looked up as Kaikeyi stood. "Can't you make another wish, Kaikeyi?" he asked softly, pleadingly, his head tilted upwards towards her like he was imploring. Almost like a last resort. "Can't you make another wish?"

Kaikeyi looked down at him, and blinked. She had already done so much. She had gone through verbal abuse by the mouth of the king. She was this close to seeing Ram dethroned, Bharat being the king, all her wishes being fulfilled. Everything she ever wanted was at a finger's reach, so close. She was so close to living in heaven, having Kaushalya grovel at her feet like the chief queen had wanted her to. She was so close to restoring her power on Kosala.

"No."

Dasharath's hopeful eyes darkened, though they filled with sorrowful and somber tears, and he looked back down at the damp ground, palms splayed like a toddler. "Well alright then, Rani." A word he had never called her. It was always Kaikeyi. My dear. Darling. Sweetheart. Maharani Kaikeyi of Kekeya-Kosala, just not Rani. "I will instruct the guards to remove the portrait of you and I from your room. We are no longer coupled through the heart, only by the name, and that act of mercy is only because it is against my dharma to abandon a woman, and out of respect for your brother, Raja Yudhajit of Kekeya." He put his head back into his hands, and his shoulders shook with lament. "Ram..." he rasped desperately. "Oh Ram..."

Kaikeyi turned her sharp and commanding eyes away from him furiously and marched out of the sorrow room. That portrait was her favorite thing in the palace, perhaps even in the world. The sacrifices, oh the sacrifices she made to get her son a better future. A future at all.

A/N-Wow. She did it. She actually did it. I refused to believe that it would happen in my story until I proofread, but she actually did it. My goodness. This chapter was NOTHING like the amazing ones many of you will see in "The Inseparable Princes" by @Ramayana_lover or the "Broken Prince" by @Vaikarthana06 (both of which are amazingly fantastically marvelous). However, it is quite decent considering emotions are not my strong point. Pat on the back, Mochis4lifeq52627. Well done!

Poor Bharat. I'll try to make people not as bitter against him in this one, because poor Bharat. I've got a soft spot for the guy. Life must be pretty rough, for him.

YES, YESTERDAY I DID UPLOAD THIS INSTEAD OF THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER. TO COMPENSATE, I WILL DO A DOUBLE UPDATE IN THE NEAR FUTURE. THANK YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING.