Chapter 227

Chapter 308: Then All Came Spilling Out

It was the morning of the next day.

Truth be told, of a most fatal day.

It began quite disastrously too. And it went about thus:

Kushi was sitting before the dressing table in their bed chamber, tying her hair in a bun. She watched in the reflection, her husband behind her, his side turned to her, intent on tucking his scarf under the collar of his shirt, readjusting it so that it was exposed merely at the neckline.

All these years, experience had taught her that keeping a secret bore ill-will, whether it be that of their forced marriage, the General's affinity with her family, his cursed background, Jiji's secret of being pregnant the first time...

Kushi sighed, knowing she should not keep anything concealed, at least not from her husband.

Resolved thus, she placed the hairbrush back on the dressing table and slid her tense gaze to the reflection of Lord Arnav in the mirror.

"Arnavji... there is something I wanted to tell you..."

"Is it important?" Lord Arnav asked, still fidgeting with the collar of his shirt around the scarf, "We are late for breakfast already."

Kushi hesitated and then clutched the hairbrush again, wanting to hold onto something.

"I met a man yesterday."

Kushi paused. That didn't come out right, she frowned.

Lord Arnav looked up, confused by her statement.

She tried again, "He came up to me actually. And asked me if I knew the name Chandraki."

Lord Arnav blinked.

He wanted to say, "Isn't that the name you asked me about last night?" but instead he asked, "And what did you say?"

"I told him I had not heard it before," replied Kushi and she noticed, through the mirror, Lord Arnav's shoulders relax.

He returned his attention to the scarf again while enquiring, "And he must have left, right? Realizing there was no use pursuing your knowledge of something you knew not of."

"Yes, he left," Kushi said, absentmindedly fingering the bristles on the hairbrush, "But my answer was not wholly true."

Lord Arnav paused and then looked at her reflection in the mirror, her anxious eyes gazing into his cautious ones.

"What do you mean it wasn't true?" he asked her pointedly, "Do you know someone by that name?"

"I think I do," mumbled Kushi contritely.

"Well, who is it?" Lord Arnav asked.

Kushi hesitated for a moment before finding the courage to assert, "It is I."

At her words, the air in the chamber stilled and the First Lord stared disbelievingly at his wife.

A long minute had passed before he finally found his voice to respond with a mere wonderstruck: "What?"

Kushi stood up, hairbrush in hand, and turned away from the mirror to look directly at his sceptical stare, "I believe my name, before Babuji found me from the river, was Chandraki."

Lord Arnav gaped, speechless at this revelation.

"But how...?" he blinked, and then he frowned, "This is a stupid thing, Kushi. Assuming something to be yours when it was merely asked of you by some passer-by."

"No, it wasn't the first time!" she replied, defensively.

Lord Arnav scowled, "You mean you've seen him before?" He could feel his blood begin to boil with envy, "Who is he? Where does he live? How do you know him-?"

"I've never seen him in my entire life!" Kushi interrupted vehemently, "Don't get your hot head reading into things before hearing the rest of what there is to be said!"

"Well, get on with it!" Lord Arnav crossed his arms before his chest, impatiently, "Where did you hear the name before?"

"I read it," Kushi stated, "From the book."

"Which book?"

"The one the Chinese Princess gave me!"

"This is preposterous!" Lord Arnav shifted on his feet, getting annoyed, "You think she gave you the book because she KNOWS you?!! No wonder, your head's in the clouds, Kushi!"

Something had greatly irked him, though he was not sure what, and it had set in motion a flurry of unconvinced accusations directed at her: "You seem to have this way of presuming everything in a fancy, imagining yourself to be someone who was acquainted with Chinese royalty and whatnot, just to make your obscure past pedestaled in grand mystery!"

Kushi was taken aback by his torrent of words and stared at him, "What is wrong with you?"

She couldn't believe her ears. Her heart, that had been set on greener ponderings, turned to darker thoughts. Infuriated, she attacked back, "You think you are the only one with a glorious past that needs a weeping story to it!"

"Don't you dare go there, Kushi!" threatened Lord Arnav.

"What's wrong?" dared Kushi, "I can't be the tiniest bit curious about who I was or who my family was but you get to keep your knowledge of yours like it's a sacred tomb that is never to be opened but must be in the centre of everything!"

In a fit of rage, Lord Arnav wrenched out the scarf he has so meticulously tucked into his shirt and flung it angrily to floor, "My past and your past are different! What I went through, you will never be able to understand or even come to equal terms with!"

"I never said I wanted to!" claimed Kushi and, in distaste, hurled her hairbrush furiously to the floor, "Do you know why you never change? Why you are still the way you always were? Ruthless and thick-headed?! Because you still cling onto your past, too weak to let go and move on!"

Lord Arnav froze, her words launched like a hard slap on his face. Blind wrath roared in his accursed blood and he stormed towards her.

Kushi firmly stood her ground, putting on a brave front but, with every step he made towards her, her heartbeat spiked to a frequency of near explosion.

He gripped her by her shoulders.

She kicked him on his knee but he only flinched, his steely grip still steady.

He pushed her to the wall and pressed his incensed chest against hers.

"Take back your words, Kushi," he warned her in a low, menacing voice.

Painful tears stung her eyes as she glared at him, "I will not detract the truth I have spoken!"

He thundered, "You know nothing of my past and think yourself to know the truth of it?!"

"Yes, I do!" her words sliced the air coldly, "I have seen and heard enough to deduce what has made you this way!"

"Then tell me!" he demanded hotly, "What has made me this way?!"

"That DAMN rosebush!!"

Blood shot in his face and he swung her violently in his arms, "What did you say?"

Kushi's hands gripped his sides, her fingers digging into his shirt, "If you want to feel real peace, tear down that rosebush and throw it away!"

Shocked, Lord Arnav pushed her away and withdrew a step from her, "I can't believe you said that. You, of all..." His words sounded hurt but Kushi was not to budge from her crude statement. Not after the way he'd come at her.

"Why? Should I feel sympathetic to that place because it was the venue of our Poeio-Eros?" She demanded, "I had always wondered what sense there was in choosing that place for our consummation!"

"KUSHI!" Lord Arnav's hands fisted at his sides, his frame trembling from an amalgam of anguish and anger.

But Kushi's utterance ran relentlessly, her jagged thoughts rushing maddeningly out of her mouth before she could stop them, "I didn't think too important of the momentary vision I had that night of seeing blood-dripped roses in the bush." He blinked confusedly but she didn't spare him a look and went on, "But when I saw you hurting yourself at the bush and realized you'd been doing that all these years, I knew right then and there. The rosebush was the enemy, the innocent-looking instrument that was tearing you apart and acting as your justified punisher!"

Lord Arnav was flabbergasted, "What are you talking about? That rosebush was my mother's favourite. I grew them because I love her."

Kushi swallowed tensely, as a new realization came upon her. Never had he associated the word love' with her, his wife. Only for his mother and his Di.

Fuelled, Kushi gritted her teeth and geared herself for crueller words, "There is no denying that you brought the roses along with you, just like that despicable cage of gold in which you imprisoned me for endless nuptial nights! Were they so crucial to your existence that you would take the trouble to haul them over miles of land and ocean, all the way from India to Arhasia?!"

His nostrils flared with ire, "That cage has nothing to do with my mother!"

She nodded, "Perhaps, but you dragged it along, just like you drag around everything that has to do with your past." Lord Arnav was about to repudiate but Kushi interjected, "You grew the rosebush here to keep the memory of your mother alive." Suddenly, her voice had turned a kinder tone, almost pleading him to understand, "But she is dead. She is gone. You have to move on."

Lord Arnav gritted his teeth, "If you are expecting me to forget my mother-"

"I am not asking you to forget her," entreated Kushi desperately, "I am asking you to cease clinging onto her memories in this dangerous routine."

Lord Arnav frowned at the floor, shuddering with misery and rage. Hot tears burned in his eyes but he wouldn't let Kushi see it.

Kushi was grief-stricken. Her mind had turned into a dais of images and thoughts, and she was startled by her own indictments against the rosebush.

She had, many a times, given it some thought despite being unable to connect them coherently. But here she was, blurting them all out in the heat of the moment; and what astonished her was how they made such complete sense, surprising both him and her.

Kushi exhaled and, feeling suddenly exhausted, dropped tiredly onto the chair behind her. The air in the chamber had calmed down and her heartbeat had gentled to its usual rhythm.

She clasped her trembling hands together and spoke serenely to the rug on the floor, "I will not pursue further into my past if you promise to not lose your head every time some reference is made about your past."

Lord Arnav didn't reply, only bent down and picked up the scarf he had thrown to the floor.

Pained but unperturbed, Kushi expostulated firmly as a final afterthought, "Know this, my lord: there will live an evil bitterness inside of you, as long as you hold onto your mother in the manner you do."

Frustrated and not bothering to don the scarf around his collar again, Lord Arnav thrust it into his pocket and stormed out of the chamber, offering no happy farewell to his wife while she sat on the chair, brooding over the wretched manner in which their morning had commenced.

What a way to begin the day! A fight with her husband, a furious close to her dreams of investigating her history...

Slowly, as guilt settled in her tempered heart, she realized she was worried of only one thing: Would he recover from the bruises she'd accorded him by her harsh dispute of things that mattered so much to him? How rashly she'd repudiated his love for his mother and the painful past he had submerged in oblivion!

Kushi fidgeted anxiously with her fingers. She was sour, bereft of the harmony of mind to entertain the desolate Di or anyone else in the family after her marital feud of the morning. Perhaps, it was long due: her need for a change of air, a break from this place.

Sighing, she arose from the chair, "It's been long since I paid a visit to Babuji and Amma. I could do with the change, and dear Babuji has always been expecting me to come visit the renovated Mill."

Little did Kushi know of the news which she would confront on her way to the Mill and what consequential twist of events lay in store for the beloved of Arhasia.