Innocence, or Lack Thereof ✔ [Completed]

Chapter 4: Dark Come Soon

Vansh had been dreaming. It was a pleasant dream, one in which he and Riddhima were talking the way they had taken to the last few nights she was with him. He touched her face and she smiled and turned into his palm. Her eyes were alight with the fire he had come to adore. How he wanted to kiss her. And he was going to, he realized, he was going to touch his lips to hers when a sound startled him out of his sleep and he nearly fell out of bed. Someone was banging on his door, hard, loud enough to wake the dead. Vansh stumbled out of bed and went to the door, and found the doorway filled to the brim with a man he had not expected to see for a very long time.

"Angre, what are you doing here in the middle of the night?" Vansh inquired groggily, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. Angre took a deep breath. And the pause between Vansh's question and his answer, the melancholy in his eyes, was enough for Vansh to understand. Something was wrong, and that something had to do with Riddhima.

"What…happened?" he asked quietly, almost as if he did not want to know. He had brushed it off when Riddhima had mentioned the danger of her assignments, not had a second thought to when she told him she didn't know if she would survive the next few months between then and when they could see each other next. It had not occurred to him so fear much for her safety, because Riddhima was, in his opinion, not in danger. She was not a woman; she was a force of nature. She had nothing to fear because death could not touch her. She was far more than any person ever was; why should he fear for her safety when she could take on the world and be the victor?

But now there was a sick feeling in his stomach, and he knew he had been wrong, all wrong, to think she was above her mortality, even if she seemed to be a goddess housed in a mortal body. No matter how highly he thought of her, no matter her fighting prowess, her superior intellect, beauty, grace, fortitude or bravery, he had forgotten the danger that she faced. She was not immortal, and he felt sick at the sudden revelation that the woman he loved was somewhere, not well.

"We were ambushed," Angre explained. "We were with Aryan, Vyom and Sameer's forces. Our night watchmen fell asleep. They invaded camp. Riddhima, in true form, woke up before they got to her and started rousing the rest of the troops to try and fight back. She was so brave, Vansh, you should have seen the way she went after the bastards."

Angre paused again, and Vansh saw as a single tear slid down his face, which he hastily wiped away. Vansh froze, his breath caught in his chest and he felt his heart become tight.

"Is she…dead?" the last word came out in a tiny whisper. Vansh's throat closed after it, and he focused on filling his lungs with oxygen to breathe and make it through another moment. Angre, blessedly, shook his head and for the first time, in the dim moonlight he saw a bruise on the side of his face, and a gash in the middle of it, beginning to heal.

"She's hurt. Badly. We don't know…if she is going to recover. And she just keeps asking for you."

Vansh closed his eyes. Relief and panic spread through him in equal measure. She wasn't dead, and for that he was more thankful than he had ever been in the whole of his life. But she was badly injured. She might die. And he was wasting time thinking about it when he should have been going to see her.

"Let's go," he said without hesitation. Angre said nothing only back out of the doorway and Vansh followed him out. He passed his sisters in the hall, who looked as though they already knew what was happening. Sia was pale, her skin ashen and sickly in appearance. Ishani was more stoic, but her usual casual demeanor was broken when she looked at Vansh. She did not weep, but she turned her face from him. Vansh didn't have to wonder why. She didn't want to show him how upset she really was, whether it was grief for Riddhima herself or Vansh.

"I…have to go to her," he said to them. Sia nodded and Ishani said nothing.

"We will be fine here, Vansh. Go."