Perhaps her grandparents were right: perhaps she had been bewitched. She felt hollow. Empty. Alone.

“Why are you telling me this now?” Durkhanai asked. Her voice was quiet, deflated.

“So you understand what it means to be Badshah,” Agha-Jaan replied, taking her hand. “Sometimes you must swallow the bitter peel to access the sweet fruit inside. You must let whatever you think you feel for Asfandyar go. You must know there is no future for you and him.”

“No,” Durkhanai said, voice hard. She was full of grief, everything crumbled to dust, heart frozen, but she would fight them on this. “You did not hold Rukhsana-sahiba to trial when she poisoned our people,” she said. “You cannot hold Asfandyar to trial for a lesser crime.”

Durkhanai couldn’t bear seeing Asfandyar sent to trial. Even if she was absurdly angry with him, even if she doubted him, and he had a long way to go before she would trust him again, she didn’t want to see him torn apart by a lion or married off to another.

Despite everything, she was his, as he was hers. She would not give up so easily.

“We will not allow for that boy to ruin you,” Dhadi snapped. “You are to be the Badshah. You must focus on your duties and your people. They would never accept a foreigner. Already, the people are doubting you due to your association with him. What good is a Shehzadi if she is not loved by her people?”

Durkhanai understood, of course she understood.

Logically, he wasn’t good for her. Long-term, perhaps it would lead to nowhere but heartbreak, worse that it already had. It was selfish, her love for him, and made her like her father, who abandoned everything for his own conceited reasons.

But she couldn’t erase how she felt. Despite everything, at least there was somebody who didn't shy away from her thorns, somebody who saw her strengths and her weaknesses and understood her.

Someone who didn’t coddle her and took in seriously and pushed her to be better. She liked who she was with him. He made her better. The people would see that, wouldn’t they?

Did she not know her people? Better than Agha-Jaan or even Dhadi? It was Durkhanai who visited them, Durkhanai who played with the children. It was Durkhanai who distributed medicine, Durkhanai who quelled their qualms.

She was a queen, whether her grandparents saw it or not. She would not be cast aside.

“You cannot claim I am not beloved by the people,” Durkhanai said, voice strong. “You cannot. Not when I have been intimately involved in their lives for years whereas you hardly visit, and even then, just to pass by and remind the people of your presence. You may wear the crown but it is my face the people recognize. Not yours.”

“Perhaps,” Agha-Jaan said. “But the decision still lies in the crown.”