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CHAPTER 16
VEER
Isha couldn’t fool me. She didn’t want a proper wedding because she had no intention of seeing it through beyond a year. She probably had an exit plan already in place in connivance with fucking Ranvijay Rathore.
Well, I wasn’t just a pretty face. I was going to tie her to me in ways that were even more binding than a court marriage. I was going to bind her to me with the seven wedding vows in her family’s own temple. I was going to turn this fake, temporary marriage into something more meaningful, I swore to myself.
I had to give it to the Mom brigade. They put together a simple but beautiful ceremony in the Bhawani Mata temple in a little village on the outskirts of Trikhera, where every ruler had bowed his head before the majesty of the goddess.
Dheer and Diya gave Isha away, and I was spellbound by her beauty in an amber-coloured lehenga, with a translucent veil over her head. The picture of absolute femininity. I couldn’t take my eyes off her as she walked to the mandap.
“You’re catching flies,” murmured Ranvijay in my ear. “Close your mouth.”
“Piss off,” I retorted, as I stared at my gorgeous bride.
“You’re in a temple, Ranveer,” whispered Ma disapprovingly. “Save those looks for later.”
I ignored them all because I had eyes only for Isha as she sat down next to me. She blushed deeply when she finally looked up at me.
“Everyone’s staring at us,” she hissed. “Look away.”
“I can’t,” I said simply. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“I’m going to kick you hard if you make me cry and ruin my makeup,” she said shakily.
“No, I will,” said Diya, who was sitting behind us in a chair. Her doctor had given her permission to get out of bed for today, but she wasn’t allowed to lift a finger. “Because I spent ages nagging the make-up artist to get her makeup just right because our Yuvarani Sa couldn’t be arsed to even pick the colours of her eye shadow.”
“She doesn’t need it,” I said firmly. “She looks amazing even without anything on her face.”
Diya gave me a slow, approving smile.
“Be good to her, Veer,” she whispered in my ear. “She deserves nothing less than absolutely everything.”
I nodded once, ignoring the lump in my throat. I didn’t know where this journey would lead us, but I knew that I was going to see it through to the end. When the priest asked us to garland each other, I bowed my head willingly vowing I would never play hard to get. Isha stared at me, her eyes full of conflicting emotions. I saw her anger, her pain, and her desire for me, and maybe I was deceiving myself, but I could swear I saw something else. Something that was reflected in my eyes because she couldn’t take her eyes off me either.
I could hear our families cheering in the background, but I didn’t register their noise or the chanting of the priests any more. Isha was all there was. She was everything.
The head priest narrated the meaning of the seven wedding vows and I meant each one of them as we went around the agni. At the end of the saptapadi, the earth didn’t move. The universe wasn’t shaken. Everyone and everything around us were the same. But I felt changed. I felt bound to Isha in a way I couldn’t explain. I only wished she felt the same.
After the wedding, we returned to the palace for a lavish wedding lunch at Trikhera Palace. The mahurat for Isha’s bidai was quite late in the evening, and as we got ready to leave, Diya sobbed openly about losing her best friend.
“We’re not moving to the other side of the world,” I said, with an exasperated eye roll.
Dheer trod on my foot hard and glared at me, daring me to complain.
“My wife will cry if she wants to,” he snarled. “And the next time you roll your eyes at her, I’ll pluck them out and play ping-pong with them.”
“Randheer! Apologise to Jamai Sa at once,” yelled his mother, and I smirked at him.
He growled under his breath and apologised reluctantly.
“It’s okay, Saale… Sahab,” I said, with a grin.
“Likewise, asshole,” he replied and hugged me tightly as he whispered in my ear. “Take care of my baby sister or I’ll hunt you down and skin you alive.”
“You can try, loser,” I said, rolling my eyes again.
“Enough with the bromance,” said my bride. “I want to go home.”
