"It's impossible! "a voice intruppted his roar. "he's your elder brother! The rightful heir of the kingdom. "He turned around furious. His eyes glowing red and his hands itching to silence that voice forever. "The king would never choose you as his...
"But first I require assurance that you are going to let my brother go and hold up your part of the bargain after I get married to your sister." He spoke unable to grasp the significance behind her empty expression. 'Was she going to accept? Or her hunger for revenge far greater than any love she had flaunted for her sister?'
But everyone want something and whatever that she may want, Roopak would give her, anything. If it means to save his brother. The silence prevailed for a long time, hanging like a thick curtain of uncertainty between them and Roopak almost came to believe that she was going to refuse when the acceptance came. "And what will you require as an assurance?" Her words were almost a murmur but he heard them anyway and a surge of relief went through him when at the same time another part of him was going through something he was unaccustomed in feeling. 'Dread' a foreboding angst for himself.
He had married once before, danced on that crazy tune and after how it had ended last time he thought he would never marry again and let Chandra's son succeed him when the time for it came and yet here he was , deciding to get married to an outcast yet again this time to save Chandra's life. An irony indeed!
But then most part of his life has been a series of ironies and this one he would accept with his arms open wide if it means to save his brother. "I want you to announce my crowning ceremony that is going to be held tomorrow because as long as you remain standing beside the throne playing the part of deranged wife of your beloved husband, I wouldn't be able to reach there and unless I am there neither I nor my brother is safe, so step down the throne....for you no longer remain the queen. And for your sake I hope that you enjoy playing the part of mourning widow." In a flash the queen looked at him with a gaze of incrudelity as if mocking him. "That is after you release my brother of course."
The queen scoffed. "You are not in the position to make such length demand and what do you take me for! A clueless, ignorant? Why would I let you have the throne tomorrow? So that you can have both me and my sister killed in our sleep?"
"You will let me be crowned tomorrow because I will marry your sister tonight....beside killing people in their sleep is more of your style rather than mine."
Yes, he knew who murdered his father and now she knew that he knew. Perhaps it were those chilling words, perhaps it was something else to push her forward but the dowager queen finally bowed down and caved in.
~~~
The ceremony was a hush affair, the rites and traditions taking place behind closed doors that night. The priest and the dowager queen remaining the only witnesses to the union. A ceremony that's arranged and celebrated with lots of pomp and fanfare even amongst the common folk remained a guarded secret between the royals.
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It was sometime around midnight when the priest announced them man and wife in front of the holy fire and Roopak had the first glance at his young bride and beyond the illness that had held her captive for so long now, she wasn't unappealing to the eye, it was quite the opposite in fact.
'Of course!' He scoffed internally. 'When had Chandra slept with anyone less than this standard of beauty?'
"Its done now, release my brother." Until his words shook her awake, the queen was dwelling in her own imaginative happiness watching her little sister taking the steps, that she had always wished to see her taking. But all those were drowned under his words, 'of course he was doing this all for that darned brother of his. Wasn't he?' But Sunayna didn't resent him for it. She couldn't. After all she did all this for her own sister too.
"Yes." She hummed a moment later ready to down yet another bitter pill.
"Guards!" She snapped her fingers. "Release prince Chandra from his cell."
The sweet of sleep that had evaded the palace for days now, returned to many eyes that night along with the first shower of rain of the season. The monsoon has come!
This is a short filler chapter. The next will be about the past of Roopak that you must all be confused about. If the chapter took your fancy do vote and comment.
