The second child was born in silence.
There was no celebration this time. The palace still prepared as custom demanded, but the rituals felt restrained, as though even the priests had learned caution. Shantanu noticed it in the way servants spoke softly around him, in how congratulations came measured and brief.
He accepted them all the same.
The child was healthy. Strong-limbed. Loud. A son again.
Shantanu held him once, only once. The weight was familiar now, the warmth no less dangerous for that familiarity. He did not linger. He returned the child to the nurse and left the chamber without looking back.
Ganga watched him go without comment.
On the seventh night, she came to him again.
The child was in her arms.
"I am going to the river," she said.
The words had lost their novelty.
Shantanu felt the familiar tightening in his chest, sharper now because it was expected. He did not reach for his cloak this time. He did not argue. He only nodded.
The vow stood between them like a wall neither acknowledged.
She returned alone.
The palace learned the truth before the king spoke it. Servants whispered. Guards avoided his eyes. The river ran high, swollen from distant rain.
Shantanu told the court the same thing he had before.
"There was a complication."
It became a phrase people understood without understanding.
The third child followed much the same course.
Then the fourth.
Then the fifth.
Each birth was quieter than the last. The celebrations shrank. The rituals shortened. By the fifth loss, the court no longer asked questions. The king's silence had trained them well.
Only Shantanu counted.
He counted the days. The nights. The pattern.
Birth. Waiting. The seventh night. Absence.
He stopped sleeping fully. When he did, his dreams were shallow and filled with the sound of water moving over stone. He stopped riding to the river. He stopped looking at it from the terrace.
Ganga did not change.
She neither mourned nor hardened. She moved through the palace with the same calm certainty, her presence steady, her gaze distant. Sometimes Shantanu wondered if this was what restraint looked like when perfected. Sometimes he wondered if it was something else entirely.
Once, after the sixth child, he almost spoke.
She stood near the door, the child held close, her expression unreadable. Shantanu felt the question rise in him like breath drawn too deeply.
Why?
The vow tightened around the thought.
Not in thought.
Not in word.
He turned away instead.
The seventh child was born as dawn broke.
The sky outside was pale, undecided. The palace stirred reluctantly, as if unwilling to mark the moment. Shantanu did not go to see the child at all this time. He remained seated, hands resting flat on the table, listening.
When Ganga came for him that night, he did not look at her.
"I will not come," he said, his voice steady in a way that frightened him.
She paused.
"That is your choice," she replied.
She returned alone.
When the servants came, their faces said everything.
Shantanu nodded once.
He did not address the court that day. There were no words left that could soften the truth. The rituals were carried out without him. The kingdom continued.
By then, the river no longer felt like an external force. It had become a measure of time. A marker of loss.
Seven children.
Seven silences.
Shantanu stood on the terrace that night, looking out at the water he had once trusted.
He wondered, for the first time, whether restraint was wisdom or merely fear dressed in patience.
The thought lingered.
The pattern had been established.
And it was not finished yet.