The dawn broke like a pale coin rubbed thin by too many hands. The light in the kingdom rarely felt hesitant, but this morning it came shyly, as though conscious of being watched. Even the peacocks on the upper terraces did not scream as they usually did; their jeweled feathers quivered silently in the breeze, heads turned toward the main road leading to the capital.
A hush had gripped the palace for days now, the kind of hush that forms not from peace, but from expectation sharpened into anxiety. From the servants' quarters to the marbled verandas, everyone whispered the same word with the carefulness one would use handling a blade:
"Angrez."The British.
They were not strangers anymore. They were rumors wrapped in uniforms, treaties woven into smiles sharpened like razors. They had arrived across oceans like guests who never planned to leave.
The great palace—red sandstone, ivory inlay, and towers that scraped the patience of the sky—had been scrubbed and polished until it seemed to glow from within. Newly painted banners fluttered above the gates, but beneath the surface sheen, the air trembled like a taut bowstring.
Inside the inner palace, Queen Anushka stood before her mirror.
She wore no crown yet—only a simple emerald-studded chain across her hair—but everything about her posture radiated sovereignty. Her eyes reflected neither fear nor curiosity, only calculation. The Green Queen was a strategist by nature. She believed in destiny, yes, but only the kind one wrestled into shape with bare hands.
Behind her, two handmaidens adjusted the folds of her green silk saree, woven with threads as fine as breath. Jasmine oil glimmered in her hair. She had ordered the drapes opened so the light could fall upon the map spread across the table nearby.
A map of her kingdom.A map someone else believed they had a right to redraw.
"Your Majesty," murmured her attendant Devika, bowing, "they have crossed the outer gates."
Anushka did not turn.
"The King?" she asked.
"In the Great Hall, already seated upon the Peacock Throne."
"Good," Anushka replied. "He must be seen. They must be reminded he exists."
There was no bitterness in her tone, only precision. The King was kind, noble, beloved—but kindness was a luxury that rulers rarely survived possessing. He had given his trust too freely to courtiers who fed him pleasant half-truths like sugared milk. He loved poetry, elephants, music. He did not love politics—and politics did not forgive being ignored.
So the queens had learned to govern in the shadows his gentleness created.
The Pink Queen, gentle yet steely in devotion.
The Green Queen, sharp as an unsheathed sword.
The seven courtyards.The twenty-two towers.The ten thousand eyes watching everything.
Beyond the palace walls, the envoy's procession entered the city.
Drums rolled. Trumpets blared. But it was not the music of celebration. It was the music of something inevitable.
The British carriages moved like beetles made of polished wood and iron. Horses snorted clouds into the morning air. Red-coated soldiers sat stiff straight, rifles gleaming on shoulders, the Union Jack tilting arrogantly in the light breeze as if the wind itself bowed to it.
The envoy, Lord William Ashford, sat with one gloved hand resting on a cane. He did not need the cane; he enjoyed the symbolism of it. Power disguised as fragility. Control disguised as civility. His mustache was trimmed with mathematical precision. His eyes were the pale gray of unfinished ice.
Beside him sat his interpreter, Captain Rao—Indian by birth, British by pay. He sat uneasily, aware of countless unseen eyes boring into him. Children clung to their mothers as the procession passed. Shopkeepers bowed, not in reverence but habit learned from fear.
Above them, women peered from carved jali windows like shadows trapped in lace.
Ashford spoke without looking at Rao.
"And this," he said mildly, "is their famed capital?"
Rao nodded. "Yes, my lord. The city of a hundred gardens and a thousand temples."
Ashford's lips curled faintly.
"How poetic. Let us see how many gardens survive after treaties are signed."
The palace gates yawned open.
The guards, resplendent in gold turbans, stood like carved guardians of myth. The elephants at the entrance had been adorned with silver bells and painted patterns, but even they seemed restless, stamping as if the ground itself whispered warnings through their feet.
When Ashford stepped down from the carriage, he paused—not out of reverence, but assessment.
He was a man who measured everything.
The courtyard.
The guards' discipline.
The weapons they carried.
The alliances carved into the stone by centuries.
He smiled.
"Pretty," he said softly.
Inside the Great Hall, the King sat waiting.
The Peacock Throne, carved over seven years and studded with diamonds like scattered constellations, rose behind him in impossible beauty. Golden pillars coiled with vines held up a ceiling painted with scenes from ancient epics—kings who listened to gods, kings who defied them, kings who vanished into ash.
He wore royal blue silk embroidered in gold thread and the weight of his crown seemed to pull gently at his brow. He was not weak; simply too kind in a world that had forgotten mercy was once considered strength.
Anushka entered and took her place behind the lattice pane reserved for royal consorts during diplomatic sessions. She did not sit. She watched.
The British envoy entered with a shallow bow that felt more like performance than respect.
The King smiled graciously. "Welcome to our kingdom, Lord Ashford. May your journey have been blessed and safe."
Ashford inclined his head.
"Your Majesty, your lands are as beautiful as rumors promised."
"And as governed as well, I hope," Anushka murmured under her breath.
This meeting was not ceremony. It was chess.
The British wanted a treaty.A foothold.Permission wrapped in friendship.
The King gestured to a seat.
"Tell us your terms."
Ashford smiled, teeth flashing like bone.
"My King, we come bearing friendship… and opportunity."
The word opportunity slithered through the hall like smoke.
Anushka's eyes narrowed.
Ashford continued.
"The Empire offers partnership in trade. Your salt. Your silk. In exchange, military protection, shared prosperity, and—let us not pretend—mutual advantage."
The King hesitated.
Protection.
From what?
Or from whom?
The hall seemed to exhale as one.
Anushka could almost feel history shift like sand beneath her bare feet. In that instant, she knew: this was not an arrival.
It was the beginning of occupation disguised as conversation.
And the palace itself seemed to lean forward to listen.