This is actually a birthday gift to one wonderful friend, beautiful soul lucky03m. I'm planing to end Vajra on this run. Therefore expect some regular updates until we reach the end destination.
Happy birthday Lucky!

🎄....🎄

Odor of death lingers in the lavish chambers maintained in Anjani Queen's name. It is prominently decorated in red, gold brocade hanging from the large bed which does nothing but highlight how frail and degenerated the woman lying among several feathered pillows looked.
For some reason this Aunt she has never met seemed to have anticipated this meeting much more than Swara would have expected to. Taking help from a shrewdly gray eyed older lady the Queen sits back as they approach.

"Where is he?" She asks, and ignoring her reaches out a frail bony arm to Megha, her eyes brim. "I never thought.... I didn't dare hope to see you once before I die. My boy! My child!"

Megha drops to his knees by her side, holding that hand. Collapsing more from the shock of this sudden revelation than anything else. The Queen looks at Swara noticing her surprise only after she has had her fill of her first born.

"I've been contacted by the Crown Prince of Vajra. He is a man of such precise words. That is how I knew."

Swara nods, taking the seat offered to her, watching as Megha fumbles with his words.

"How do you - how can you be certain that I am -"
The Queen caresses his face.

"Don't you feel it?" She asks softly. "Our powers singing to each other?"

Megha closes his eyes to her touch, and the woman hums gently. Swara looks away, her throat closing as she tries to swallow the longing that swells up within her. They shared more than powers that sang to each other. One only had to look at them, to note the similarities in their features. The same noses, same foreheads, hair that curled the same way.
She notices only belatedly that the Queen's attention has shifted to her. The older woman reaches out her free arm, the one not embracing her son and beckons her.

"Come here, child," she says gathering Swara into an unfamiliar soft hug. It brings out a thick, suppressed sob out of her. Swara burrows herself into that bony embrace and allows those tears to burn her eyes.

Megha puts a hand on her head, patting gently.

"Hush child," the Queen murmurs. "You've done good. You've done well. You have made your mother proud." She presses a kiss thickly scented of herbs on her crown and turns to her son. 

"You must pay her back," she tells her son then. "For restoring you - you must restore her. Give her, her proper place as a princess of Padmapeeta."

Swara pulls back from her hug and stares at her aunt, understanding dawning upon her.

"You made a deal with him." She states, finality of her voice making the Queen smile.

"Nothing means more than seeing my child..." Then she moves suddenly, clapping her hands to signal her ladies in waiting who had vacated the room previously to give them some privacy. 

"Help me dress," she tells them, her voice firm. "I must look my regal best, for this last appearance."

"Your majesty..." both Swara and Megha protest much to the older woman's amusement.

"I have made a promise. I must hold good on my end of it. And you - my son - beware your sister's ambition. I may give you a throne, but keeping it is something you must learn on your own. And your sister has more of your father's ambition than you would ever do."

"As for you, dear niece, you have brought us invaluable links from both Nagas and Vajras. Yuvraj of Vajra promises you a place beside him. Do remember you shall always have family within Padmapeeta- with your cousin. I breve he will be a king you could keep your faith on unlike what my husband has been to your mother. It is the condition I've been set by your - fiance?"
Swara nods briefly.

"He has asked - yes - but I didn't think -"

"Silly child! It is not everyday that a vajra royal proposes matrimony. Anyway, you shall put that right immediately when you see him again. Megha would need you in a position of power if he is to survive his own. Both of you need to maintain a tentative balance. Be there for each other as you have done so far."

*

For witches of Noir it takes a while to master the art of Adyatma. It is a meditation that dissolves the boundaries of consciousness, making one seamlessly connect to the nature that surrounds them. Though hardly involving violence it is an art of war, and the sisters who master the highest levels of Adyatma makes formidable enemies in any context. What Suvanna knew of Adyatma she had taught herself. If on a self-appreciating day, she would admit that the art came to her almost instinctively, almost a second nature. The air sang to her, the earth growled low, there were whispers in the water and rustling leaves. Sometimes it was a secret of old, sometimes a recent event – sometimes it was the prickling sense of forbidding that warned of disasters to come.

The feast of roses was supposed to be an event to test the waters. To test the waters not to bring about storms and whirls. Yet the air thick with scent of melting vax and rose oil, foiled with muffled conversation and rustling clothes hid undercurrents of approaching trouble. Something was about to change. Someone was about to make an unanticipated move. A betrayal was coming.

"Ouch!" Suvanna hissed as the nearest flame licked her finger. Too fascinated by the warning she sensed in fire, she had not paid the attention that beautiful dangers often required.

A flame. A burn. A death.

The prickling unease continued to dance in the air around her. Yes a death. The air promised. Suvanna frowned in concentration. She couldn't predict what would force her hand into preponing her schemes. A death would happen. Yes. But not tonight.

Tonight. The flame seemed to promise. Here. Tonight.

"Princess?"

Suvanna turned to the maid with a seething snarl, incensed at having her concentration broken. The maid blanched, took a backstep and trembled between a half courtesy and a run.

"You are required to take a seat at the dais, your highness."

Involuntarily, the words drew her eyes to the seating arrangement made for the king's family. From where she stood in the rear of the hall Suvanna could only make out the glided high throne of Pratula. It made her scoff, evoking thoughts of how her father would not share his stage – his power – even with his kin. The maid had scattered away, leaving her to make her way towards the dais alone. Along the way more candles flickered, promising the same dark prospect.

Death. Death. Death.

They seemed to form an ominous chorus. Then, almost at the foot of the dais Suvanna stopped, surveying the seating arrangement with a little surprise. A step below the giant glided throne where she would share the tire of rank with the her new cousin Kalyaani, instead of two seats only one had been arranged. And the seat, adorned and elaborate could be nothing that her father would wish upon either of the princesses.

No. Suvanna held up a hand, beckoning anybody worth attending her questions. One of her terrified ladies in waiting answered the summons.

"Yes, my lady?"

"Is my mother attending the banquet?"

There's a beat and it is not her lady in waiting who answers.

"She is. Princess."

One of her mother's regal looking cronies peer at Suvanna from the dais, arranging cushions on the Queen's smaller, less magnificent throne with an air of all knowing.

"Tonight, my lady finds it imperative that she attends to her duties and discharges her powers as the lady of Padmapeeta. After all, there is a limit to what can be entrusted to children." She smiled, as if Suvanna is a toddler in need of pacifying. "Which gives you the happy opportunity of keeping aside the extra burdens of running the king's household and enjoying the feast as a young woman of your station is ought to..."

"Oh how much you think of me!" Suvanna simpered in a pretense of being pleased. However she doesn't care to perfect her act and allowed her eyes to flash in their blue malice. Shrugging, she makes a move to the third tire, trying not to consider this yet another banishment of sorts. Suvanna has little time for her mother's petty – death bed – schemes. And as for her ladies in waiting, they were nothing but crabs in hot pot, not knowing the water would boil over and boil them with it soon. The air around her prickles again and she turns to catch the sight of Lakshya making his entry to the feast hall. There were only three remaining champions in the emulations, one of whom will battle the king for glory or death in the arena tomorrow. That one, if all goes according to her schemes would be Lakshya and she would buy the loyalty of Aithne with the blood of Anjani king.

However the flames hummed in denial. The flames cackled at her ignorance. But then, there was someone else laughing.

"I think you should leave the center stage for your cousin sister today your highness," that old crony of her mother's has not yet left Suvanna alone. Folding her fingers over a particularly nasty curse Suvanna turned to the old woman.

"I have organized this feast. I have wasted days and nights over it," she said rather sweetly. "And I am not to receive any honor at all?"

The old lady bowed, somewhat mockingly.

"Of cause," she said, still employing that tone of an adult addressing a fussing infant. "But her majesty the queen is worried that your cousin sister's prospective fiancé might take things in the wrong way."

Suvanna frowned. It seemed Kalyaani had plans of bringing an entire army of relatives into Padmapeeta.

"Who now?"

"Have you not heard Princess?" The old lady seemed to take a wicked pleasure in seeing Suvanna excluded from her family's intimate affairs. Oh, the curse seemed to burn her palm now, waiting to be unleashed upon this miserable soul. Suvanna waited yet. "It was only a couple of hours ago that their majesties received the proposal. Maybe, the word doesn't travel fast enough."

"A proposal from whom?" Suvanna bites the words, trying to rein her temper.

"The crown prince of Vajras!" The woman exclaims waving her hands as if she herself has received such prospective marriage. Suvanna scowls at her.

Of cause, there goes the other plotter.

Suvanna bites back a smirk. How foolish were the Anjanis if they think there were bargains to be made with this particular prince?

"How foolish indeed," a voice said in her ear.

Suvanna did not appreciate being taken by surprise. The feeling that came over her once she turned and found the startling green eyes looking down at her (both figuratively and literally) was one of a bitter surprise. She had been stupid to think that Sanskar would forsake his brother or his politics so easily. The curse that was starting to hum low with anticipation, barely held in her folded fingers had suddenly found a new, far more loathsome recipient.

"I wouldn't do that," he was still grinning at her, still holding her gaze. For an onlooker nothing had changed between them. But his eyes turned a cool hazel and his face only a mask of pleasantness. Sanskar pressed his lips into a line of displeasure. "I don't think your half-baked noir tricks would suffice – princess."

"Why don't we find out?"

Sanskar arched a brow, daring her to keep good on those words and promising consequences at the same time.

"Don't the flames warn you enough already?"

Alarmed and uncomfortably bewildered Suvanna took an involuntary step back.

"How – on – earth?"

He took a step closer, candles around them flickering in a rippling movement of dimming and rising – something that could not be a coincident – as he walked. Though the man had dressed impeccably in blacks and golds and the sigils of Vajras, Suvanna catches the tanned skin and a fading bruise under his eye. How foolish had she been to think that emulations would stop him? That this annoying prince would not find a way in and out of the restrains of a death row game if he willed to?

"Adyatma is not a noir innovation," Sanskar explained lazily. "Nothing about their dark, crude arts is original. Go to a Naga who had lived couple of centuries – battled a couple more – they will tell you the true essence of it."

"Annoying half breed," Suvanna hisses.

Anger flickers in those eyes, sharp like a lash of a sword, but corners of his mouth turned upwards. Sanskar turns with a flourish, greeting the king of Anjanis who had just entered the higher pavilion, flanked by his guards and courtiers. Vajra guards of the prince, perhaps even a few Skia, take the positions behind their own master. There is nothing to be said in answer to that unwarranted insult Suvanna had uttered. Amidst the silent show of strength between two senior members of two reigning houses, Suvanna is all but forgotten. Pratula has eyes only for his old nemsis, having once tasted the rather unflattering consequences of being out mastered by the boy before him.

The boy was no longer a boy. And the memory of his defeat was not only that. Pratula tried to think of it as a lesson. As a step in future success.

Once again fate has opened him a door through which he could reach that pinnacle of power. If they were to have family ties with the Vajras, that one prospect which Arya had ruined for them – if Arya's daughter could achieve that – if then, perhaps, he could manipulate his way into Vajramandapa sooner.

He would not have seen it so. Pratula thought while extending a benignant smile to the younger man. There were things that he was reluctantly thankful to his queen for. Tactful mind, a true Anjani in schemes and plots – he would give his wife credit for that. The woman came up with most twisted and entangled schemes that he was still finding his way around the best of her efforts. But tonight, he would forgive her that.

She had approached him with the most tact, knowing and rekindling his old desire to be the Vajra. And she had asked nothing much in return of providing this opportunity. Just one last public event, one last opportunity to address his people as their lady, to take a queen's farewell – it was after all well within her rights. And now that he was half certain her efforts to drag him to death with her have been finally thwarted, Pratula saw no harm in indulging the dying woman a little. Perhaps one last taste of power was all she required.

One last taste of power.

"You are welcome," he said finally, opening his arms into a dramatical gesture of offering a hug. "Prince of Vajras!"

*