Peace did not come to Rajgarh like a triumphant army.
It came softly.
Like dew gathering in the quiet after a storm.
The proclamations had been read in bazaars. The streets, once heavy with whispers, loosened like strings cut from a bow. Merchants smiled again. Children ran between temple pillars, chasing shadows of pigeons. The Benefactor was declared gone; the Queen Regent's will had prevailed.
And yet—
in the palace, beneath domes that glowed with evening lamp-light,
peace felt fragile.
Like a glass bowl balanced upon a sleeper's breath.
Anushka Devi walked through the garden of champa blossoms with deliberate grace, but every step seemed weighed by something unseen. Her veil fluttered. Her bangles sounded faint and far away to her own ears, as though her body had become a temple where the bells no longer knew when to ring.
She told herself she must not falter.
Not now.Not when the final pieces were almost in place.Not when three moons remained.
But the body is not ruled by strategy.
Sometimes it answers to deeper laws.
Sometimes it answers to grief that has not yet reached the mind.
A Flicker of Pain
It began as a tightening behind her navel.
A small cramp — sharp, then gone.
She ignored it.
Too many duties rested upon her hands. The festival had ended, yet the aftermath required order, letters, and endless audiences. Servants approached her with scrolls and inventories. Priests asked about temple donations. Guests from outlying provinces waited for formal farewells.
Her smile remained flawless.
Again the pain came.
This time deeper, pulling downward.
She steadied herself against a pillar and waited for the world to stand still.
Her breathing slowed. She counted silently, the way she used to before battle practice in Bengal court:
One… two… three…
The child within her — that quiet secret — seemed suspended in her thoughts like a lamp flame too near the wind.
"I am fine," she whispered to herself.
She moved again.
It wasn't until evening, when she returned to her chambers and dismissed her attendants, that she noticed it.
A dark stain, blooming slowly upon her inner garment.
Her hand trembled.
Not a flood. Not agony.
Just blood that should not be there.
Her mind reacted before language could.
Not fear for herself.
Fear for the tiny heartbeat she had not yet heard.
The one she had dared not speak aloud.
The one she had sworn to protect even while planning to leave.
For a strange heartbeat of time she simply stood there, feeling the world tilt around her like a slow-spinning wheel.
Then she folded the cloth and hid it in the chest beside the bed.
If anyone saw—If the Queen Regent guessed—If the British Resident learned—
everything would unravel.
She swallowed.
"They will think it is my cycle," she told herself.
And that was exactly what happened.
The word passed gently through the women's quarters. The senior maid whispered. The junior maids nodded knowingly. The old nurse muttered a blessing and lit camphor. No one asked more.
The palace went on breathing.
Only one person did not believe it.
The Queen of Bengal did not rule Rajgarh.
But she ruled the storm in her heart.
She had borne children. She had watched life stir and tremble and nearly vanish. She had read the language of a woman's face the way scholars read manuscripts.
She watched her daughter walking across the marble floor the next morning, too pale, lips too pressed, arms too still.
This is not a cycle, her heart said.
This is danger.
That night she went to Anushka's chamber, dismissing maidservants with a gesture that brooked no refusal. Once the doors closed, her voice lost its royal iron.
"My child."
Anushka did not turn immediately.
If she turned, she would break.
Her mother walked forward and took her by the shoulders.
"You will not lie to me," she said softly. "You already told me the truth."
Anushka's composure quivered like a mirror struck by wind.
For the first time in weeks, she let herself be a daughter.
"It hurts," she whispered. "And the bleeding hasn't stopped."
Her mother drew in a sharp breath—controlled, but sharp.
Silence curled around them like night around a lamp.
Then the Queen of Bengal gathered her daughter into her arms, the way she had when Anushka scraped her knee at five and when she first bled at twelve and when she left home as a bride at eighteen.
"You are not alone," she said. "And I will not let anyone gamble with your life… or your child's."
The word child fell like a sacred thing between them.
No court.
No conspiracy.
No Benefactor.
No treaties.
No thrones.
Just life.
The Queen of Bengal acted before dawn.
She sent a trusted attendant — one who had crossed borders and wars — to summon a Bengali physician who had served their household for decades, a man whose loyalty was to lives, not crowns.
He arrived in silence, like prayer.
No announcement.
No drums.
No court record.
He bowed to the Queen, then to Anushka, his gaze kind but firm.
"I will speak honestly," he said after the examination, after listening to pulse and breath and watching the faint tremor when she moved.
"There is risk of miscarriage."
The words seemed unreal in the air.
Anushka did not cry.
She had endured more dangerous sentences: execution orders, political threats, imperial demands. But this one pierced where swords could not reach.
"Is it already lost?" her mother asked, voice cracking despite her strength.
"No," the physician said gently. "Not yet. The child still holds on."
Hope flickered — fragile, sacred.
"But," he continued, "if she continues to exhaust herself, remain in stress, or stand long hours in heat and ritual… she may bleed again, and heavier. Rest is not a suggestion. It is her only shield."
He looked into Anushka's eyes, not as a subject to a princess, but as healer to human being.
"You must choose life now. Yours and the child's."
Anushka closed her eyes.
Duty screamed inside her like caged thunder.
Rajgarh needed her.The Benefactor needed her.Samrat needed her.Her letters to Bengal, her networks, her maps — all hung from her hands.
But she also felt within her a softer voice.
Little heart. Little flame.
Do not go.
She nodded slowly.
"I will rest."
The physician bowed.
"I will return quietly," he said. "Few must know. Stress is also an enemy."
He prescribed herbs for strength, cool compresses for fever, and — most importantly — stillness.
Then he left the way he had come.
Unseen.Unsung.Necessary.
The court saw only calm days ahead.
The Maharaja's fever had eased.
The British Resident pretended to admire elephants.
The Queen Regent held councils that ended in measured applause.
Nobles returned to their provinces.
Markets reopened.
The drums of trouble faded.
They called it peace.
But for Anushka, peace was a bed she was forbidden to leave, a ceiling she learned by heart, the sound of her own blood rushing in her ears while the world outside prepared for destiny without knowing it.
She slept more than before.
Some blamed grief. Some blamed weakness.
She blamed none.
She lay still, one hand resting protectively over the gentle curve beneath her silk.
Sometimes she dreamed of rivers.
Sometimes she dreamed of leaving quietly at dawn.
Sometimes she dreamed of Samrat's hand in hers,
warm and strong and terrified of losing her, if he knew.
He did not know.
But he felt something.
He came often, pretending only to speak of minor matters, sitting longer than necessary, refusing to leave even when she closed her eyes. He never saw the blood-soaked cloth hidden away, but he saw the pallor.
"Are you unwell?" he asked finally, voice hoarse.
"I am only tired," she said softly.
He brushed a strand of hair from her cheek and believed half the lie, because he wanted to.
The Queen Regent stood at the jharokha one evening, looking over the lit courtyard
Anushka absent.Resting.Paler.
She only said, "Watch her."
But servants watched, and saw only a quiet princess sleeping longer than before, praying more, fading like a lamp near dawn.
They saw nothing else.
They did not see maps folded into silk,
or codes committed to memory,
or the determination hardening behind gentle eyes.
The Benefactor had not vanished.
The Benefactor was learning to move with less light.
The bleeding slowed.
The pain did not leave entirely, but softened, like a warning now whispered instead of screamed.
On the fifth morning she woke to birdsong and the realization that she still carried life.
She pressed her palm there and whispered thanks to gods whose names she knew and gods who existed only within courage and survival.
She promised:
"I will protect you."
Even from myself.
Even from my plans.
Even from my duty if I must.
The return of peace in Rajgarh was not the end of conflict.
It was the silent interlude.
The breath before a scream.The stillness before monsoon rain.The moment between two heartbeats where anything can happen:
death,or life.
Anushka chose life.
But fate had not finished testing her.
And the world had not yet seen what happens when a gentle princess,
a hidden revolutionary,
and a mother in secret
become the same woman.