THE CONQUEROR'S CAPTIVE

THE PINK PALACE

Pranahitha's POV

I had a few hours until he would retire for the day. He still had to have dinner and then a few drinks with Jija ji. I wondered if he really got intoxicated or he just sat there while Jija ji drank. As he was a brahmin, all the royals who had visited us until then, were kind enough to not demand meat or alcohol in the palace. I knew that Jija ji could stay away from meat but not alcohol. That was one thing he couldn't live without. I did not want Maharaj to break his rules just because he was a king. I sat up and decided to concentrate on the book first for now and distance myself from him as much as possible for now. 

I sat down on the desk which was in the library of my chamber and opened the book I had borrowed from the royal library. I had bookmarked the chapter I had to read with my dagger and soon, I started to read the content written on it. 

Maharani Sri Durga

She was one of the wisest and most beautiful queens our kingdom had ever seen. She was born to the ruler of a princely state named Pranahita. She was known for her skill in sword fighting and dancing which had made her famous in the whole country. She was believed to defending her state from enemies all alone when they were attacked with no prior invite for a fight. She met the king of Rishabhapriya, Maharaj Hara Varadha, during his visit to their kingdom in his disguised form. 

She fell in love with him even after thinking he was a commoner and talked to her parents about him. It was only a day before their wedding that she realized who she was actually getting married to. After her arrival to the kingdom, she took in charge of many important sectors of the kingdom and started to develop it so well the the sectors which weren't under her had started to protest demanding her involvement in their sectors too. She was a people's queen who never disappointed her subjects and always put them first. Her famous works are the construction of the pink palace in eastern Rishabhapriya which is so structurally well built that it is believed to stand strong even during earthquakes and tsunamis without a crack, the commencement of trading with people from different kingdoms beyond Akhandadesh and also her very own school of performing arts, which was the first one to ever exist in this glorious kingdom. 

She suffered an injury from an enemy attack and died just days after the birth of her last son of her seven children. The kingdom suffered a huge loss that day and felt as if their mother had left them. Her memories lived on even after her death. 

I had written down a few things about the words I had just read. First of all, Pranahita. That was the name of the state she was from and concluded that Guruji had named me after that only after knowing about that. Secondly, Maharaj Hara Varadha. He was her husband who, according to Guruji, later cheated on her with the poisoned seductress. Thirdly, the pink palace. I wondered if I would get any answers from there.

But what made me believe that this book was written as per the wishes of the royal family of that time was the fact that the story written here was completely different from what I had heard about her from Guruji. And to back it, when compared to the other queens, who had many pages full of descriptions of their life and achievements and images to prove those, she had only one page and two pictures under her name. One was a painting of her and the other one was of the pink palace. This was quite common. The book was found in the royal library. So there was a great chance it was written for the favor of the royal family. But when my mind worried about where else I could learn about her, it kept going back to the pink palace in the east of Rishabhapriya.

I had to go there. I knew it from my intuition and it would also be relaxing to take some time off for myself. And it would put a distance from him. I walked to the part of the library where different kinds of maps of our country and kingdom was placed. I took the physical map of Rishabhapriya and sat down to track down this palace. My eyes searched the eastern part of the map and saw a mark on it locating the palace. I took a map of only the eastern part of Rishabhapriya and I got the exact location of the palace. I rolled up the map after noting down necessary information for my journey to there and placed everything back to it's place.