ArHi FF:13: The BEASTS and the BLEEDING ROSES - Page 78

U have left me with no words to say further other than 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

The updates were amazing but the highlight is the chapter between Anjali and Shyam - for once there is some sense in their relationship. He is not a bad man - just one who wants to have a normal wife without the curse. ANJALI ROCKS 👍🏼

But I am heartbroken and completely befuddled by the kidnapping of Kushi and the kids AND chaining of Arnav - why is he not able to transform. Oh only if he could!!! All these guys would just run away and the kids could be freed too. Starving kids!!!😡😡😡 How much more inhuman can this man be?

OH plzzz put us readers out of our misery quickly dear

Chapter 323: Disgruntled Husband

The afternoon sun was bearing down on them and the General had resorted to bring their communal migration to a pause.

The equestrian nomad rested underneath the shade of a tree, while the General and Lady Anjali sat under a clump of trees.

Donning the hood of her fanciful robe over her head to shield herself from the powerful sunlight, Lady Anjali leaned back against the stone she was perched near and observed her detached husband.

He had not expressed any hint of shock or surprise on hearing of her searching for her missing daughter. The fact that their child had been kidnapped could not have left him entirely unshaken. Granted, he didn't regard the child endearingly, but he was not even remotely astonished to hear of her kidnap. Lady Anjali had come to deduce that perhaps his lack of surprise was owing to the fact that he'd already been aware of the absconding. It could also be possible that it was in the same direction that they were headed and hence his acceptance of being her escort.

But for whom would he be going there? For his daughter or for...

"Where are you headed?" she asked, wanting to sound clueless about his intentions she'd supposed so far.

He provided her a reply with another question, "What does it matter to you?"

"How could it not matter to me?" Lady Anjali opined cuttingly, "We may have gone our separate ways, but there is no denying we are still husband and wife."

The General shot her a look from under his hat, "Till death do us part?"

"Till death do us part," repeated his wife emphatically.

He chuckled in slight annoyance. "Maybe we ought to kill one of us, in that case," he joked rhetorically and then turned on his side, his back to her, and slid his hat over his face.

Lady Anjali frowned at his back, "You take everything so maladroitly!"

He gave no sign of having heard her and pretended to have drifted to sleep.

Frustrated, she pursed her lips and then, after a hesitant moment, asked, "Are you going to where they are?"

Once again, there was no response from his side.

Lightning, feeling sympathetic, looked from the wife to the husband and shook the mane on her head.

Lady Anjali bit her lower lip, reluctant to ask her next query but unable to stop herself, "Is...Is Kushiji your cure?"

Underneath his concealing hat, the General's eyes shot open but from his wife's vantage, he hadn't budged.

There was an almost pleading note in her voice, "It would hurt me but I would understand if-"

All at once, he shot up from the ground, angrily thrust his hat onto his head and sauntered off.

He inspected the trees that surrounded them, feeling their rough bark in furious urgency and then, with his wife watching anxiously from her perch on the rock, he broke a sturdy twig and, clutching it, strolled back to the spot where he'd been resting before.

Slumping down on the ground, he leaned his back against the nearest tree from where he could watch his wife and his mare from the corner of his eye.

Taking out a penknife from the scabbard in his boot, he began carving the wood by its length.

Lady Anjali's heart sank, seeing him frantically shape and smoothen the wood... to make her a bow so that he could get rid of her.

She sat silently, watching him work, afraid to speak. The remaining few minutes she would have with him, she wanted to cherish.

It still fascinated her, the way the strands of hair over his forehead danced in the frenzy of his rapt working, and how he pursed those hard, determined lips when he was focused on getting something done, how sometimes he would brush the back of his hand across the stubble above his upper lip...

A minute or two later, the madness that had driven him to carve the bow faded, and he kept his penknife and the halfdone wood aside to lean back and watch his mare graze the few tufts of grass that was to be found in that hapless wilderness.

Momentarily, he noticed from the corner of his eye, his wife take something out of her little knapsack. It was the clay bottle of water she'd brought with her on her voyage.

She took a sip from it and then held it out for him to drink.

He shook his head and, with his thumb, casually indicated to Lightning's saddle, implying that he had his own stock of water to drink from and wished not to share in hers.

Without a word, Lady Anjali returned her clay bottle to her knapsack and sat looking out into the open emptiness of lands that waited for them to cross.

Grief clenched at her motherly heart. How much longer, my darling, before I find you...

Anyways, what did Lady Anjali implied when she said that she understands if he would want to... what does she mean, that she is ok with him loving Khushi n making her fall for him... Is she that selfish that she won't mind her own brother loosing his happiness if the General wants to take Khushi away with him ? OR is she making this sacrifice for her daughter and that is the only one that matters to her. I think it is so... She will not mind as long as the General helps her save Anarkali, and if he takes Khushi away n gets cured then she would be happy for him, right ?

Chapter 324: Locus Discerned

Sucking her two fingers, Anarkali sat on the lowest step that led into the hapless Fortress pantry, as she watched Ram rummage through the crates for dinner edibles.

He had fished a wrapped slab of cheese and a loaf of bread so far but there was no sign of anything else.

He faintly remembered seeing an unopened crate of apples among them last night but it was nowhere to be found.

Those fat soldiers must have finished them overnight! he was inordinately certain.

Sufficed, he abandoned further search and picked Anarkali up.

Stepping out of the pantry, he scanned the area for any sign of the guard who had come with him.

Not finding him there, he smiled to himself.

That afternoon, when he had been allowed to hunt the pantry for lunch, the guard who had escorted him had left them to ransack the place by themselves.

Which led Ram to arrive at the happy conclusion: By two or three trips, he had convinced them that he could be trusted and that, as soon as he had finished with the food search, would promptly return before the permitted hour had ended.

In the afternoon, he had hence won the opportune freedom of not being scrutinized. This being so, he had spent the remaining half hour left for his return from the pantry, by searching the rooms on one of the floors.

None of those rooms had been open and, if they were locked with prisoners inside, no one responded from within when he knocked on them.

He wasn't sure how many floors there were in that Fortress but he had to try every one of them until he found the room where they kept Kushiji.

Thanks to there being only cheese and bread in the pantry, an estimate of forty-five minutes was left for him and he decided it was safe to set out on resuming his exploration.

Wedging the cheese slab and the bread loaf between Anarkali and him, he carried her across the corridor and headed for the stairs at the end.

Cautious to make no noise as his feet rushed about, he made down the stony flight of steps and into an unexplored floor.

Leaning against the corner wall, he peered from the edge and inspected for signs of guards.

Finding none, he turned down the unfamiliar corridor and made way through the dingy hallways.

He had barely turned the corner into the next corridor when he heard noises from the other end of it.

Hurriedly, he hid behind a wedge in the wall with Anarkali, and tried to listen closely to what the noise was about.

Some men, doubtless guards, were talking, but Ram wasn't able to pick any words at that distance.

Anarkali had begun gnawing the corner of the cheese and she smiled at him innocently when he caught her in the act.

He grinned in return and kissed her on the cheek, allowing her to continue with her gnawing.

Just then the ones who had been speaking at the end of the corridor where heard approaching the place where Ram hid with Anarkali.

Quickly, he shifted deeper into the shadowy niche of the wall. Anarkali too froze in wonder, sensing him tense.

Two guards were passing by, conversing in casual tones, their words getting clearer as they approached.

"I tell you, he hasn't touched a single morsel ever since we held him prisoner in that room," one was saying.

"I would rather die than be stubborn and risk missing my meals," remarked the other.

"Well, the Master doesn't care if the man eats or not. But the lady is important."

Ram perked up.

"Everyone seems to feel that," the other supported, "No wonder she's not been sent to the dungeon or chained to a wall."

"That dinning hall's the best standing room in this demolished hell house!"

The men continued their conversation but Ram wasn't paying attention.

The two truths that had excited his hopes echoed in his mind.

A man was held prisoner. A man who could only be someone who was given that verdict because he had come to save them. He would bet on his share of the bread and cheese that that man was none other than the First Lord.

But he was slightly doubtful about the premise of this hypothesis because Lord Arnav was not someone whom anyone could imprison or, least of all, put in chains.

Anyhow, what mattered was that someone had come to rescue them and, by some humour of ill-luck, had been captured and sealed in the very locus of the sought hostages.

And then there was the second disclosure: the whereabouts of Kushiji.

Ram felt like slapping his forehead at the laughable irony of the whole deal. He had spent every meal hour inspecting the rooms on all other floors for signs of Kushiji, while all along she had been right across the corridor from the pantry which was, understandably, where a dining room should be located... at a nippy walking distance from where the food comes.

Ram let out a sigh. His permitted hour was nearly in expiration. It would be treacherously risky if he let his exhilarated inspirations make headway of the hints he had obtained.

Holding Anarkali, he decided to return to his dungeon before the guards came searching for him.

As he turned the corner, he caught Anarkali's eye and he blinked at her. Tomorrow, you will be in Kushiji's arms. This I swear on my life.

Kushi was sleeping, weary at heart, when she sensed fingers caress her hair.

Startled, she awoke and sat up to find herself staring into the face of the man whose prisoner she was. His long hair still obscured one side of his visage but his green eye penetrated in its veneration of her.

Disgusted, she withdrew.

"Why do you shirk away from me?" he asked in a low, longing voice.

Kushi gritted her teeth, "Why should I not? You have tricked me, taken Anarkali and Ram, and have confined us all in this hell, keeping us away from our family."

The man leaned back nonchalantly, "What I do may make no sense to you but it will, in time."

Kushi eyed him disbelievingly, "What do you seek?"

His green eye glinted eagerly, "I seek the one I lost."

"And who is that?" Kushi asked in a note of caution, and then threw it to the wind with her next question, "Is it...I?"

His green eye shone amusedly and the corner of his thin lips curved slightly, "What a clever girl you are. You always had been..."

Kushi stared at him, realizing in all astonishing certainty that this man was referring to his memory of her in her past, a time that had turned obscure in her knowledge, a life before she had lost her real parents to the merciless waters...

The man saw it in her eyes and, leaning forward, he cupped her chin. His voice was suddenly warm and Kushi held her breath as he asked, "Where have you been all these years?"

Kushi could only blink. A moment later, she could hold her curiosity back no longer, "Are you... are you my father?"

The light vanished from his green eye and he stared at her as though she had badmouthed him. But instantly, his expression shifted to a kinder countenance, and he smiled, "I see you are eager to know all about your past but tell me first what brought you to Arhasia, many seas away from home."

Something about the reservation, which the man had hastily attempted to conceal, alerted Kushi's intuition and she veiled her curiosity with tact, "I will tell you about it myself, but first you need to let the children go."

His eyebrow dipped.

The manner in which they manoeuvred their negotiations, one would have assumed a chessboard were placed betwixt them.

"Would that it were so simple," he said, with a resigned look in his features.

"Let me at least visit them," she demanded.

He shook his head in response.

Kushi pursed her lips and exhaled deeply, "Then I have nothing more to speak with you."

The man eyed her for a long minute, a strange mixture of admiration and irritation in his regard of her.

Then, without another word, he left her to the solitude of her misery again.