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Rayfa Padma Khura’in. Queen of Khura’in.
She’s not sure she’s ready for that. That title, that life. Her mother— … Her Emine— … her aunt had assumed that she’d always be the one in power. Queen Rayfa Padma Khura’in never seemed in reach, even when she would be old enough. Always Princess. Always leading the divination ceremony. Always at her mother’s side. Always with Mother and Father, overseeing only because she was there.
Never involved. Never allowed to be with them while they were making the important decisions that affected her country, her people.
And now she’s suddenly at the helm, steering the ship, making the decisions, leading a country. Hopefully to a prosperous, just, bright future. No matter where they all end up, it will be by her will. If they fall, it will be her fault.
But she’s only fourteen. Going on fifteen, sure, but still only a teenager. Only a child.
Laying in her bed, she rubs her eyes, sits up with her head in her hands. This is not productive. If she’s going to do this, she’s going to do it right. There is no other option.
Not like she has much of a choice. And it’s kind of weird, because she always thought she was excited to be queen. She can remember daydreaming about what she’d do when she finally got to sit on that throne, the orders she’d call out, the people she’d throw in the dungeons. Maybe they weren’t the most realistic fantasies, but they were wanted. They held something that she wanted.
Now she’s got it. It’s in her hands.
So why does she feel so bad about it?
There’s a quiet knock, and Rayfa jumps ever so slightly out of her skin. Just barely. It would be unbecoming of … whatever-title-she-has to be scared by the tiniest knock.
She clears her throat.
“Yes?”
“Sahdmadhi, Your Benevolence.”
She thinks about rolling her eyes, but stops herself. Unbecoming. And all that.
“You may enter, Braid Head.” And maybe she should stand up, greet them like a royal, like a queen. Unbecoming, unbecoming, unbecoming. She can’t bring her legs to move from the bed, onto the cold floor.
Crickets sing their mating songs as the world waits for her decision. Because it’s always waiting for her decision. And she’s always stuck in the second before the other shoe drops.
There’s a noise Nahyuta makes that she might’ve missed if the building wasn’t so … eerily quiet. Something like a sigh, only the tail end of it stifled. And then the door opens, dim light following behind her advi— … sibling.
That is also a strange thought. That she and Nahyuta are related. That she’s a Sahdmadhi.
Rayfa Padma … Sahdmadhi. Rayfa Sahdmadhi. Queen of Khura’in.
She feels midnight caressing her arms, brushing back her hair. The moon whispers her failures.
“Excuse my intrusion,” he says it like he’s walked in on a board meeting, except he’s in his night clothes, and his hair is up in something that probably started as a bun, but has since pulled itself mostly free from whatever tie restrained it. “I wished to check in on you.”
“For what reason?”
They take a step forward, then pause. “May I sit?”
“You may. After you answer my question.”
Nahyuta clears their throat, puts their hands behind their back. Royal business meeting. In their pajamas. “It’s been quite the hectic few months.” Rayfa might’ve put it more … crassly. Something pokes in the back of her brain, unbecoming.
“And?”
“ … And I simply wanted to see how you were doing with everything.”
There’s a beat, and then she makes a show of motioning for Nahyuta to sit, like she doesn’t want it. Like the closeness is stifling. “If you must.”
It’s all she wants.
So he comes and takes his seat on the edge of her bed, stiff and awkward. Like he doesn’t belong. Like he’s still carrying the weight of family secrets on his scrawny shoulders.
She pushes the thought away, pulls her knees up to her chin.
“Well?” She huffs. “Are you just going to sit there?”
And Nahyuta rolls their eyes. Rayfa wishes for the luxury. “Okay,” they start. “How are you doing, then? Since I came all this way to ask.”
Rayfa stares for a moment, at the blankets, her hands, her fingers. She’s not sure how to speak. She’s not sure how to say she’s not ready. “I … ” she swallows, breathes. Holy Mother, what’s wrong with her? “It’s silly.”
It’s quiet in the room. Of course, the bushes are rustling outside, the crickets trying to play a beautiful song over the leaves.
It doesn’t quite reach the inside. The quiet feels more like a weight. Something pressing into her, holding her down.
“It’s not like anyone will be around to laugh.”
“You’re here.”
“I’m not one to laugh.” Which is false and Rayfa knows it. She thinks she knows it. Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she doesn’t actually know anything about Nahyuta. She barely knows anything about herself.
Staring, breathing, she twists the words in her mouth, plays with them before they have a chance to escape.
“What if I’m not ready?”
“For what?”
“For … for this. For all of this—” she raises her arms, lowers them in a half-circle, then back to holding her legs. Everything. Everything. It’s all moving too fast. “I can’t be queen. I don’t … it wasn’t meant for me.”
She’s getting tired of the crickets and their mating songs and the way they never shut up. The way they’re bouncing around in her head while she’s trying to organize her thoughts. There are too many; they are too loud.
“What makes you say that?”
She groans, sways around. Dramatic. Unbecoming. “Mother—Ga’ran … ” She’s not her mother, she’s not her mother, she’s not her mother. “I don’t … she never said anything to me. But it always seemed like she’d always be in power. There was no room for me up with her and F— … Inga.” She closes her eyes, sees his body, opens them again. “And now … Well, why is it me? Isn’t Amar—Mother the rightful leader? Isn’t she supposed to take up the throne again?”
Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking. Maybe she’s just looking for something to latch onto, something to tell her that it doesn’t have to be her in this situation, that she can dump it all on someone else.
She doesn’t want to think of her mother as just someone else.
“Mother … does not believe she is in a position to run the country any longer.”
“And I am?”
“You are the next generation of us.”
“So are you!”
Tension zips through Nahyuta’s body. “Not exactly.”
Rayfa huffs, grabs a pillow to stick her face in. “You’re all so cryptic all the time! You never make any sense! No one in this family can just say what they mean! It’s driving me crazy!”
“I can’t imagine it’s a long drive.”
Rayfa removes her face from the pillow and looks up, confusion and disgust painted on her face. What is that? Who says that? “Huh?”
Nahyuta clears his throat, smile dropping for a moment as he reassesses. “Ah, just something my father would say. Implying it didn’t take much to drive someone crazy. Usually me or Apollo.”
Rayfa rolls her eyes. “You’re probably saying it wrong or something.”
There’s a moment of wistful remembrance. “Yes. Probably.” And then it’s gone, just like that. Like it’d never been there at all.
Rayfa kind of wants to know some things that could bring it back.
“What was Father like?”
Nahyuta blinks, shocked, apparently, that she would ask something like that. “Oh. Well,” they hold their hand, trace their thumb along the dragon that rests in the middle of their palm. “He was a strong man. Maybe not the smartest—” Rayfa snickers. “—But good. He did his best with me and Apollo.” Something stops him. “I wonder if Apollo resents him for never coming back … ” He says it quietly, like it was a thought that wasn’t supposed to slip, something just said aloud because he was already speaking. Rayfa doesn’t pry. It’s not for her to know, and it’s not for Nahyuta to tell her. Even if Rayfa really wants to know.
He comes back to himself in a moment, turning his palm over, placing the dragon against his thigh, put to rest. “You two would’ve butt heads constantly.”
“Me and Apollo?”
Nahyuta chuckles. “Yes, that too. But you and Father.”
She can almost imagine it, fighting with Dhurke constantly for no reason other than boredom. Holy Mother knows she did it enough with Nahyuta, even before this whole … family thing.
A new thought, somber and grieving. “I’m sorry for thinking he killed Mother.”
Nahyuta shakes their head. “It was the narrative. Nothing you are at fault for. Nothing you could’ve stopped on your own, even if you wanted to.”
“You’re saying I didn’t want to?”
They shrug. “Did you?”
All at once, Rayfa is angry. Or something akin to the feeling, bubbling in her chest alongside the fear and the doubts and the unbecoming, unbecoming, unbecoming. How can Nahyuta be so casual, so quick to fall into this role? How is it that they can step out of one line only to step back into another, one they purposefully took themself out of? How can they be so ready?
She hits them with a pillow.
“Wha—Hey!” Nahyuta braces themself for the oncoming attack.
“Why are you so good at this?” She feels it starting behind her eyes, something wild, untamed, unbecoming.
Nahyuta jumps off the bed, but Rayfa doesn’t stop, hurling the pillow at him, then another, then another. “What are you talking about?”
When she runs out of pillows, Rayfa breathes, ragged and heavy and wet. She doesn’t bother trying to wipe her tears. She doesn’t bother with apologies or slinking back into herself, cowering away after acting out. The anger in her is real and raw and ugly.
“You’re acting like nothing’s changed!” She hits the bed with the sides of her fist. “Like this is how everything has always been! I lost my family! I lost everything! And it’s all been replaced with strangers! And I’m lost! I have no clue what I’m doing or who I even am anymore!” There’s a strangled noise that claws its way out from her throat as she holds her head. It hurts. It all hurts. “And yet you can act like—like—like it was always this way! We’ve always been family! And it’s scaring me. I’m scared.” She bites her lip, shuts herself up.
The quiet creeps back in. When she closes her eyes, the crickets become cacophonous, screaming in her head.
“I’m scared…”
Nahyuta moves quietly, or maybe she just can’t hear him over the noise closing off her ears. Like being next to a waterfall, she can hear everything in a bubble. Outside of that, anything could be happening. So maybe it’s that. Or maybe it’s a learned skill, to walk so quietly that he can’t be heard. Make his presence known only when he wishes it to be.
And then they’re next to her, setting the pillows back down where they belong on her bed. She feels herself sniffle, struggle to take in the air.
For a second, she worries that the bed will shift and Nahyuta will be hugging her.
She doesn’t think she can handle that right now.
But then the mattress dips in the same spot that Nahyuta had been sitting earlier, before she assaulted them with a pillow.
She peeks over her arms at them.
“I apologize.”
“Don’t do this—” but he cuts her off with a hand. Slowly, he lowers it, stares at the dragon again.
“I think … While I wish it was under different circumstances, I believe I am happy that you’ve finally been made aware. It was very difficult for me to watch you grow all these years and keep this from you.”
“So you knew,” she mumbles into her arms.
The silence is answer enough, but it doesn’t make the verbal response any easier. “I suspected.”
“How much did you know?”
“Not much, admittedly. I knew that we were siblings. Or, I had a very strong feeling.” It’s like they’re still hiding. She thinks they knew more than they’re telling her now. Something in their face, the blank expression, maybe. But Rayfa isn’t sure what or why.
Rayfa doesn’t know what she’s supposed to believe anymore.
“I didn’t know that Mother was Nayna. I … ” He shakes his head, takes a breath. Like the words are hard. Like he still hasn't come to terms with them. “I thought they killed her. I was convinced she was dead.”
Rayfa’s anger drips away, bit by bit, as she looks at Nahyuta fully. And she realizes. He’s been acting all along. The whole time Rayfa has known him, he’s been fitting into a role. Seamlessly, effortlessly. Because he had to. So, of course when another monumental change happens, he slips into the role, lines already memorized.
He’s done this before.
She doubts this is the real actor behind the casting, just another version of the script. But maybe the lines are blurring.
Maybe he’s putting up the mask, high on a shelf, to collect dust. Not gone, but not active.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she admits, voice quiet, like she’ll scare this moment of vulnerability away. “But everyone expects me to have answers and be ready. My old father died and my new mother was led away and then it felt like everyone just … was ready to move on. Get the rites going. Start the celebrations. I feel like I’m still in that moment where the gavel fell.”
Nahyuta nods. Maybe part of him is stuck there too. Maybe there will always be something they both left there. “I’m sorry for making it seem easy.” For once, Rayfa doesn’t have to keep herself from making some snarky remark. There are none in her. None that seem worth the energy, anyway.
Rayfa mulls over what to say, if there’s anything to say.
“I’m sorry for hitting you with a pillow.”
Nahyuta breathes out a little laugh, the corners of his mouth ticking up in the smallest way.
“It was only a pillow,” they say. “And your frustration is understandable.” They finally turn to face her again. “Maybe we should get you a punching bag.”
“You just don’t want to admit that it hurt.”
“Oh, yes, those feathers can be deadly when wielded with the right hand.”
To make a point, she weakly slaps him with one of the pillows. They only laugh, though, and Rayfa can feel herself smiling.
“But, yes,” he muses. “I do believe I would like to avoid being on the other end of your rage for as long as I can help it.”
“A punching bag would only make me stronger,” she warns. “I’d put a picture of you on it, too. Training to beat your ass.”
Again, they laugh, fuller this time. “I’d like to see you try.”
And, well, she would right now. But she’s finally getting tired and her body feels heavy. “Just you wait, Braid Head.”
“I will.” Their smile softens as they stand. “Now, you really should be getting some sleep.”
Slowly, Rayfa untangles herself from the ball she’s made of herself, and tucks herself back underneath her soft blankets, watching as Nahyuta makes their way to the door.
She feels silly, really. If she had to put a word to it. Sure, for the worrying, but also for the connection to her old life that she still craves.
She misses her parents, even if they weren’t actually her parents. Even if they were the reason her parents couldn’t be present.
She misses Nayna. Even if Nayna is technically here because she was never Nayna to begin with.
She’s glad, though, that Nahyuta is still Nahyuta. And they might be the only one to really understand the weird separation that’s happening in her head, splitting between her old life and her new. Sure, they can’t get it completely; they weren’t lied to in the same ways that she was. But they’re the one connection Rayfa has between these lives.
He’s helping her bridge the gap.
“Braid Head,” she calls. Nahyuta turns, and on the doorknob, ready to leave. “Thank you.”
The smile they give back is nearly impossible to see, but it’s there. Even if only barely, Rayfa knows it’s there.
“Anytime.”
And Rayfa knows he means it.