Page 78 of Scars and Crowns

He immediately catches the attempt. Thankfully, he lets me have it. "When you organise something worth travelling for."

"So never?"

"Probably."

He chuckles. "Though I hear a five-year-old has taken over your household."

"That rumor is accurate."

"I'd travel across three states just to watch her negotiate with you."

"You'd be disappointed."

"Why?"

"She'd win."

"Obviously she'd win." He laughs again. "You never stood a chance."

Probably not. "Take care of them," he says quietly.

"I will."

"I know." That's all he says. No lectures. No grand farewell. Just quiet certainty.

The call ends the way it always has. No proper goodbye. Just silence. I lower the phone onto my desk and sit there for a while, listening to the palace settle into its nighttime quiet. Friendships like ours are strange things. We've never been the sort to say we care. Never needed to. Ten years have taught us other languages.

Showing up. Telling uncomfortable truths. Sitting in silence without needing to fill it. Trusting the other man to carry what he's capable of carrying.

Whatever Anamika is still holding inside herself . . . I'll wait. As long as she needs.

I only hope, for her sake more than mine, that one day she decides she doesn't have to carry it alone anymore.

KURTAS AND TALKS

ANAMIKA

Sara announces after dinner that she's sleeping with Amma Saheba tonight.

Not asks. Announces.

She plants both hands on her hips, informs us that she and her grandmother have "very important things to discuss," and marches off with all the confidence of a queen claiming territory. Amma Saheba looks delighted. Yuvaan looks thoroughly betrayed for exactly three seconds before Sara loops her tiny hand through his mother's and disappears down the corridor without so much as a backward glance.

Neither of us manages to stop her. Not that either of us truly tries. Which is how I find myself standing alone in a bedroom that belongs to both of us for the night, staring at an empty luggage rack where my suitcase should have been.

I fold my arms across my chest and glare at it as though the bag might suddenly appear out of guilt.

It doesn't.

I sigh under my breath.

The room itself is beautiful in the effortless way old royal guest wings always are. Beige walls softened by age, carved wooden furniture polished until it gleams, long curtains swaying gently in the breeze drifting through the balcony doors. It's the sort of room people travel across the country to stay in.

Right now, I couldn't care less.

My suitcase is missing.

I hear Yuvaan's voice through the adjoining sitting room, calm and measured as he finishes a work call, and I continue staring at the empty rack, somehow convinced glaring hard enough might solve the problem.