Bharat had never felt suffocated before in his mother's chambers. It was his solace from the world outside, where the sun lit up just the right spots and whose threshold melancholy did not dare cross.
It was where he was almost always sure to find his father when he was not holding court or was otherwise occupied, talking with his mother or simply sitting beside her.
But the windows were closed now, the curtains drawn, and his father was nowhere in sight.
Instead, his mother sat in a corner, almost curled into herself. Bharat could not make out her face clearly, not at this distance, but his heart hammered in his chest for reasons unknown.
"Maa," he called out to her. "Where is my father?"
He could understand the man not being here, things could come up. But what about the things he had kept in the room for his use, scattered around because he spent so much time here?
His mother slowly walked to him, and then, as if he had not said a word, asked, "How is Kekeya? How are your grandfather and uncle?"
Bharat blinked in surprise. Had she not heard him? Did she not want to answer? Had they quarelled?
But his mother had asked him a question and he didn't want to be disrespectful by ignoring her.
"Kekaya was beautiful," he answered honestly. "Grandfather and Uncle are well enough. Uncle taught me a lot of things about war and governance."
She nodded in approval. "Good. You will need it now."
"I don't understand," he muttered. The thumping in his chest was growing worse by the second. "Tell me, where is my father?"
A glimpse of something he couldn't quite place crossed her features for a second, and then it was gone like a trick of the light.
"My son, know that unfortunate things happen to all, such is life. We must accept them and work towards the future instead of dwelling in the past."
"Maa," he pleaded, "Don't speak in riddles. You're scaring me. Tell me what happened, please."
"Your father passed away before you came here. He died with Ram's name on his lips."
Agony burst in his being, and a splitting ache made him double down tearfully in pain, dragging him in and out of his consciousness.
No no no. Not his father. Not when he was so far away.
"Where is my brother?" He asked, still crumbled up on the floor, begging for the one refuge he still had.
His brother would make it all right. His brother would tell him it was all a mere misunderstanding, and that their father was alive and well and ready to welcome him home.
His mother sat near him but looked away, "He is not here, Bharat. Your father exiled him."
No. It could not be. Why would his father exile his saintly brother?
"What crime could he even have committed?"
"No crime, Bharat," she said, even as she threaded her fingers through his hair. "Your brother is too good to commit a crime."
"Then why?" He screamed without thought, and for years after, he would wish he had never asked her that. "Why is my brother away? How did my father die?"
"I asked him to grant me the boons he had promised me so long ago," her lips parted in a thin smile as she spoke, and without meaning to, his gaze was drawn to the stub that remained of her thumb. "It hurt him too much to grant them."
He couldn't have heard that right. He must have misunderstood something. How could his mother's wishes hurt his father, when his own dearest wish was to grant all of hers?
"What.... What did you ask of him?"
"Two wishes," she said simply. "I asked him to exile Ram, and make you his heir. Ram left, and Sita and Lakshman went with him."
His brain refused to keep up.
"Maa," Bharat whispered softly, "do not jest. I am scared. Tell me what happened, Maa. Please."
His mother held his face gently in her hands, and the love in her eyes wounded him more than all the arrows that had ever pierced his skin could.
"I told you," she said. "I did it for you."
Bharat would forever remember that moment as when he had been orphaned. His mother must have died with his father, and some hellish creature impersonated her, for her to utter those words as he did. The woman who had let her thumb get crushed in the chariot wheel to save her husband's life, could not have asked him to exile the son he loved more than life itself. And the mother who had fed her brother before him, who had taught him to forever walk in his brother's footsteps would not have taken his birthright to give to Bharat.
No, his mother was gone, and whatever had taken over her body had taken his father too.
Or perhaps she had always been that way, and he had loved her too much to notice.
The bubbling specks of anger in his chest finally boiled over, spilling out of him as white- hot rage.
He threw himself as far from her as he could.
"You wretched woman," he cried, "You did this! You gave my father so much grief that he died! You sent my brothers away to the forest! Because of your greed, my sister- in- law has to live bereft of the luxuries that are her due."
"Bharat!" She reached out to him, hands outstretched as tears marked her face with every word he spoke. "Is that how you speak to your mother?"
The pain in his mother's voice would have hurt him once, and he would have run to apologise.
But this was not the mother he had loved and revered. This was the woman that had taken all his shelters from him, and left him to wither through the storm alone.
"You are not mother of mine! You have destroyed my dynasty, you have taken my father, you've taken my brothers. What else do you want?"
His father would have stopped him then and there. His brother would have chided him for speaking to their mother so.
But they were not here to stop him. And Bharat had never experienced such rage before. It flowed out of him without a check, a dam that had been let go for the first time.
"I never wanted it!" Bharat snarled. "I don't want what belongs to my brother by right. I will not usurp the man who has done nothing but loved me all his life."
She only stared at him, resolved and unrepentant. "You say that now. But what would happen when he became the king? I would not stand as he made you a slave. I did what I had to."
He let out a choked laugh.
"Slave? Had you asked him, he would have given you the kingdom for me on a platter. And had you asked me, you would have known I would kill myself a hundred times over if you took the kingdom from him to give to me. "
The wrath would not melt from his bones, nor would his relentless tear bring him any relief. The senseless ire threatened to swallow him whole, burn through his skin and bones till the inferno had consumed her too, when he spoke.
"Cursed be your tongue that dared demand those boons! And cursed may I be, born from your womb!"
He left the queen on the floor, drowning out her entreaties for him to stay.
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