Eshant's hand found its way to her mouth almost immediately.
"You have no idea what could happen if anyone else heard you say this"
He whispers looking back at the gate that was already vacated by now. Only the two guards roamed about without seeming to notice anything outside of the gate.
Shefali took a sharp breath at the sudden intimacy.
The Chauhan cleared his throat realizing his quick action was a bit too out of line to do standing on an open road.
"Where is she now?"
Shefali asks with clear concern.
"What will you all do to her?"
She adds immediately sulking while tightly holding the end of her odhna over her head against the wind.
Eshant felt something curl in his heart as soon as he heard her say 'you all' as if he was a part of a crime... as if he was guilty of something in her eyes.
It was disturbing how her words altered his mood.
"She is in the prison in the eastern zone"
He said moving away.
"An open court is going to be organized in the town today. Rana is going to give his verdict there and that is where she will be punished"
He informs.
He was not bound to tell her.
He could have easily outsmarted her and said he had no information about the girl he cared the least about.
He does not even know why is he standing here and answering her anyway but he does. He feels he must, as if something binds him to it.
Probably the moment he found her to be different from everyone, the day he, a Chauhan, promised to be her friend was the day he was bound by a certain type of relationship with this sagacious girl.
"Punishment?"
Shefali repeated in disbelief.
"Do you really believe she is a witch?"
She asks.
"Shhh"
Eshant immediately turned back at her and pulled her in with a warning hiss.
Shefali looked at him in surprise.
He held her elbow and took her towards the back of the palace which mostly remained empty in this time of the day.
"If you keep saying all that, they will assume you are her well-wisher and only a witch herself will trust another"
He says frustrated, having to explain something so silly to someone.
It is probably one of those rare times when the hot-headed chauhan keeps some of his ego aside to keep his calm.
He regrets every bit of it though but he can't help.
Shefali holds her odhna on her lips to hide her goofy smile.
Eshant looks at her in disbelief.
I swear if it was not her... he murmurs in his mind.
"These are just assumptions... how did the priest know that she is a witch?"
Shefali says repeating the statements her Dadu had once used in an argument when she was ten.
Sometimes Shefali thinks that if her Dadu had not narrated her different stories from his life and of the ones around him every evening while they sat on the open balcony... then would she have been like everyone else out there not bothering to stand out of the crowd? But then she thinks again, if he had not taught all of it to her brother then he would probably still be living with them. Maybe that would have changed her fate to some extent as well.
YOU ARE READING
𝟏𝟓𝟐𝟗: 𝐀 𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐑𝐚𝐣𝐩𝐮𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐚| Indian Historical Fiction
Historical Fiction𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐊 Ⅰ 𝐎𝐅 𝐑𝐀𝐉𝐏𝐔𝐓𝐈-𝐁𝐀𝐈𝐒𝐀 𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐋𝐎𝐆𝐘 Shefali Roy had lost her parents in a pandemic when she was just one year old. That was the first time she was orphaned. The next time she was orphaned was when she was seventeen. The army of...
