Love was a currency Rudra never dealt in. Why? Because he was a dragon, and dragons only dealt in gold.
There was another reason he didn't deal in love. He couldn't.
For it was a curse to dragons.
But Rudra had never given it much thought. It was a simple transaction his family had made: no person would ever love a dragon, only the power it held. Rudra's father had assured him of this. "Love is a fickle thing, Rudra, and it doesn't matter! Your throne will be secured. Your life will be secured! What is love in the face of wealth, comfort, and everything you could crave in your life?"
"But, Father," he had asked, young and naive as he was, no more than an eight-year-old boy, "what if a dragon still finds love?"
His father had paused and given him an uncanny smile. "Then the dragon dies, Rudra, or the love dies."
And Rudra had taken his father's words for granted. Well, until he had sat amidst the crumbling structures of Parthan Castle, with flames licking everything he had ever treasured and Tish limp and pale in his arms.
Not the present Tish, though, the one who had stood atop the walls looking at Rudra like he was a monster. That Tish? Her, he understood. People should be scared of dragons. They should be repulsed at the thought of marrying one. The present Tish was just one among many. Someone predictable.
But it had been a different Tish. Someone who was both Rudra's past and his future now. Someone who had thrown herself in front of a golden arrow when Rudra was already bleeding and waiting for death, and had died for him. And when Rudra had asked her why...
Her mouth had opened. But instead of sound, blood the colour of rubies had poured out, and her eyes had gone glassy.
After that, even after that, Rudra still hadn't dealt in something as fickle as love. But he had realised he wanted Tish as close as possible, consequences be damned.
And marriage had been nothing but the cage he aimed to put Tish in, to stop her from flying away.
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Waking up was somehow worse than passing out.
Rudra found himself staring at an unfamiliar ceiling, his mouth dry, his shoulder burning with acute pain, the bed too soft, the air too hot.
He had been awake for almost five minutes now, but he couldn't sit up. Three days he had spent battling the Belovian soldiers, and the exhaustion from all of that was finally catching up with him.
Along with the humiliating sting of Tish's rejection.
It wasn't that Rudra hadn't expected Tish to reject his offer. Only a hopeless fool would have believed Teresa Williams would accept him after all the shit he had put her through when they were engaged, and a fool like that would have walked right into the Belovian Court with a white flag and tried to woo the girl into submission.
But Rudra knew Tish didn't just hate him. He was probably more repulsive to her than insects. Yet he had hoped she would at least hesitate a little, not out of non-existent love for him, but out of sheer fear for the lives of her countrymen.
He had been wrong.
She had flat-out rejected him in front of the entire kingdom of Belovia. And Rudra suspected it was partly because of that black-haired man, or probably entirely because of him. He vaguely recalled Tish declaring that she chose him... HIM?! Someone who looked leaner than the body-selling wenches who danced on his father's lap every Sunday. And Tish had chosen that poor excuse for a man to reject him!
The thought was so irritating that he wondered if he should start another war.
It was then that Nayan, Rudra's right-hand woman, walked in. Her eyes were hollow, and her once-glamorous, magically enchanted armour had been reduced to a few scraps of metal barely attached to the front of her body. She looked dead to Rudra, and she uttered, "You are fucked."
Rudra shrugged. He knew he was fucked. "Anything else?" he asked.
"Half of Belovia is baying for your execution. The other half is demanding a sum so hefty that Partha wouldn't be able to pay it in the next few centuries combined."
"Father—" Rudra started, clearing his throat, nervous for the first time.
"—is pleased," finished Nayan.
Rudra looked up, eyebrows raised. Nayan nodded. "He is willing to pay."
A suffocating silence fell over the room, so thick that Rudra could swear he could cut it with his blade. "But you said," he spoke slowly, carefully, "that Partha cannot—"
"It won't be paid out of the Partha Royal Treasury," Nayan hissed. "It'll be paid out of his own pocket."
Nayan looked pale. She looked panicked. And that was exactly how Rudra felt. "I'm... I'd better get—" he stuttered.
"—executed, yes," Nayan finished promptly. Eagerly, she moved to the foot of the bed and lifted the duvet off his legs. Rudra noticed the shackles there.
"They put me in chains?" he asked, offended. "They think those fragile things can hold me?"
Nayan rolled her eyes so hard it made Rudra's eyebrow twitch in annoyance. "It's a statement, you dumbass! It says you're a prisoner here!" She started fiddling with the chains. "It doesn't matter now. I'll escort you to the gallows myself. You can get executed, and I can go home to my wife."
Rudra gaped. "No loyalty, huh?"
Nayan looked up, irritated and angry. "So you want your creepy father to pay the amount and get you out of here?"
"No, thanks."
"That's what I thought."
Nayan produced a hairpin and started stabbing at every hole in the lock.
"Do you even know how to pick a lock?" Rudra demanded.
"You try it, genius!" she snapped.
Rudra took the pin. It was too small between his thumb and index finger. He poked at the keyhole, acting like he knew what he was doing.
"Oh, right," he suddenly recalled. "I can just break the chains! I'm strong enough for that!"
Nayan threw her hands in the air and muttered something under her breath. She looked like she was on the verge of tears.
Rudra ignored her. He gripped the chain and twisted. The metal groaned in protest, and then, with a sharp sound, it snapped. Rudra looked up at Nayan with a smug face.
Nayan stared for two seconds and then gave a nonchalant shrug. "Well, you had to make up for your lack of brain somehow."
"You little—"
The door fell open.
Nayan's demeanour changed from that of a slightly concerned (more for herself than for Rudra) friend to that of the Commander General of Partha. "This room is strictly prohibited—"
"I know which rooms are prohibited in this palace. You need not inform me."
It was Tish.
Her eyes bore into Nayan. "I live here," she reminded her. "I am one of the people who decide which rooms are prohibited and which aren't."
And then she looked at Rudra. She didn't look angry. She didn't look afraid.
She looked... disappointed.
And that was somehow worse, in Rudra's book, than fear or anger