REPLACEMENT WIFE (Short Story) [THE MARTYR WIVES BOOK 1]

Epilogue 1

SARISHA

Our revenge was taken by someone we have never known, but the reason why Amaal was dead had nothing to do with our existence or Shrushti's death.
The news felt unreal, untrue.

What was the possibility of death for a man I was planning to die? It felt like an indication, one that I wasn't ready to accept. Despite the evil my sister was in the life of all these royals, who I believe deserve the chaos they were invited into? She was still my sister.
Maybe hatred for her actions goes deep but my love for her before or after her death still didn't know any boundaries.

Years of togetherness with her. My misconceptions that I have known her, demand me to unalive her from my mind. But with that year of together, ness also came our sisterhood. It felt like her love for me was undying undoubtedly her deceased status.
Because her last words were my illusion to never be broken.

I stood across the woman who had helped and seen Shrushti in her last breath, who had noted down her last words for me and passed on to Vidyut. The woman Vidyut claimed he was searching for months, only to have her as an eye witness for the dead man Amaal.

She was probably an old woman by her saggy skin, her face hidden behind the long veil and her white bangle that held onto her forearms.
She gestured for me and Vidyut to step inside her mud house and offered us her best cot bed after she threw a thin shit on her bed. It's strange what I have come across in a life with Vidyut that things that were normal for me seem so struggling.

My family wasn't far better off than this woman, but what Vidyut never showed but offered me and my family for all this time? The reality finally broke when I felt just as royal as any woman, I once despised in front of this ordinary family.

I was the one dressed in extraordinary clothing, with my gestures so subtle and suffocating because of how uncomfortable I felt in this mud house. Watching the eldest daughter of this woman my mind rang with a question this was me someday?

The simple 19-year-old girl, who knew nothing, my head turned towards Vidyut who had to dip his head high to enter through the small door. "Look? The house of ordinary person demands a high-head man to bow when entered!" I said inaudible but loud enough for Vidyut to hear it. The woman came back with a tray serving us water but I instantly took the tray from her hand and smiled brightly.

Because whatever the clothes I wore, the actions I pretended, the words now I prefer to choose. My normalcy remained inside me, similar to Vidyut. Who had sat on a high stone but treated my parents with such kindness.

I kept the tray down on the little brick wall block in the old house. The woman asked for my permission before she took my hand in hers, and stared at me, "This? This is how your sister held my hand before she went to the rooftop and looked at me with extreme grief and suffering while she asked me, or I say, highly she sat but not mighty she behaved, and begged me that only pass one message to the groom, with the words she demanded me to write for you both. She spoke of you so fondly the seconds I attempted to write her said words, describing how precious you were. And that maybe no man can ever protect what your soul is, she said those words. And last before going she confirmed that maybe she might never return from that roof, the death was inevitable on that roof that day. And it occurred sadly," She explained to me, tears formed in my eyes and slid down, I closed my eyes, and she took her hands away, but Vidyut tethered the women to shift themselves and offer us solitude and instantly came to me, my wall.

For what this man had been, and for the guilt I bare inside my chest. I hugged him tightly, my tears crumbling on his kurta, but to admit his beautiful heart.
"Sarisha, she is-"

"I am sorry, Vidyut. First, you received what my sister did to you all. And later a broken person whose shoulder you have to be constantly!" I spoke under my tears and his laughter vibrated under my face.