Morning arrived not with the thunder of drums or the hum of celebration, but with the quiet rustle of uncertainty.
The palace of Aryagarh breathed slower that day. Servants walked on muted soles. Courtiers exchanged glances instead of words. Somewhere, a single teacup shattered — and even that sound felt too loud. Suspicion was a scent on the wind, and Vivaan Vikramasena could smell it.
He had not slept. He had stood most of the night by the tall arched windows of his chambers, the city below bathed in moonlight, its secrets tucked under silence. Sitara's dance still lived behind his eyelids — the glint of her blades, the defiance in her posture, the way she looked at him like she could read the war behind his eyes.
But it wasn't her beauty or her talent that haunted him.
It was the letter.
Intercepted at dawn. Hidden in the folds of a dancer's robe at the eastern gate. Addressed to a name long associated with whispers and rebellion. Chandernagore. Ciphered in an ancient Sanskrit code. A code only a few in the entire kingdom knew how to write — and he was one of them.
The scroll bore a name. Her name.
Sitara.
The court reacted exactly as expected.
Ministers demanded her arrest. Nobles whispered of spies in silk. The Maharaj raised a hand and called for a quiet inquiry, careful to contain the storm before it reached the people.
Vivaan, however, said nothing. He simply requested the letter be brought to him — alone.
He unrolled the parchment and traced the ink with a gloved finger.
Too perfect. Too precise. It read like guilt written by someone who had studied innocence.
His mentor had said," When something feels too easy, it's usually a trap—or poetry. And both can kill you."
He stood for a long time, unmoving, before he whispered into the silence of his chamber:
"Someone wants her to burn."
The inquiries began, unofficial and quiet. Vivaan was not the kind of man who demanded loyalty with noise. He preferred silence — it made betrayal louder.
General Karun avoided his gaze when asked about the gate schedule. The librarian, old and frail, stumbled over his words when questioned about who had accessed the archives on battlefield codes. A court advisor flinched when Sitara's name passed Vivaan's lips.
But the most startling fracture came within the family he never thought to question.
The Queen.
The Maharani, veiled in grace and routine prayers, was not one to involve herself in politics. But that day, her fingers bore fresh ink stains. Not temple soot. Not vermilion. Ink — dark and deliberate.
In her chamber, tucked behind layers of folded religious hymns, he found it.
A letter. Unsent. Unfinished. In her hand.
Addressed to a woman named Padmavati.
He read the words aloud, voice shaking despite himself.
"The girl must never know the truth. If they learn of the switch, of what was done to protect them both — Aryagarh will fall from within, not by rebellion, but by its own blood."
He stared at the page until the letters blurred.
The switch. Them both.
His mother entered moments later. Her expression froze when she saw what he held.
he said in a quiet voice. "Padmavati, Sitara's mother?"
The Maharani said nothing.
"What switch?"
Her silence gave him more answers than he wanted.
"Some truths aren't buried," he thought bitterly. "They're hidden in plain sight, behind the people you trust most."
That night, he stood atop the western tower, watching the horizon stretch like a blade into the dark.
Beneath him, the palace stirred like a restless beast — still glowing from last night's celebration, unaware that something inside it had shifted.
Vivaan closed his eyes.
He could still hear her voice:
"If you ever want to know who I really am… you'll have to earn my trust."
He whispered to the wind, "Who are you, Sitara? A rebel? A ghost? A threat? Or…"
He clenched the edge of the stone balustrade.
"…the only truth left in this place full of lies?"
"I don't trust easily," he thought. "But gods help me — I want to trust her."
And that was the most dangerous part.
He declared no war.
He sent no soldiers.
He sent whispers.
Servants planted fake scrolls in empty rooms. Messages were slipped under doors. A name was mentioned in one corridor and traced in another. The traps he laid were not with steel, but silence.
And he waited — not for rebellion to break through the palace gates, but for the truth to bleed out of the walls.
Because Sitara — whatever she was — was not just a performer.
She was a cipher wrapped in fire.
A secret dancing on a sword's edge.
And he, perhaps, was no longer just a prince.
"You don't fall for people like her," he thought, watching the moon. "You collide. And when the dust settles, you're no longer the same man you were before."