Gold
(Part 1)

She had been waiting for a while now. Quite a while. It was past midnight and something told
her that he would not be here tonight.

Just like almost every night for the entirety of the past year.

Sometimes she wondered if it was a complete lost cause. If she should stop waiting altogether.

But then she saw the moon, how the cloud kept it covered for a very long time before gently
gliding away to expose its glory after a long wait, and she waited again.

It has been a whole year since Princess Valandhara's marriage to the mighty second Pandava -
the warrior whose name elicited boundless fear in the minds of his foes - Bheemasena. A whole
year of waiting.

She remembered the day she had first seen him.

It had been during his conquest of her homeland, her father's kingdom, and her father had
surrendered Kashi to the Pandavas at the sight of the glorious warrior. It had been natural, too.

The entire Aryavarta had seen what kind of a heaven the Pandavas had turned the hellish
Khandav into, and they wanted that same magic to work on their own kingdoms too.

At least, most of them did. Whichever monarch could put the welfare of his own kingdom abovehis own pride and ego, did.
Because, it was so much better to be the vassal of a great empire than to be the independent
monarch of a failing kingdom. Better for the citizens.

Her father had promised subordinate allegiance to Indraprastha and as a token of that promise her hand in marriage had been offered to the great Bheemasena. Her entire family had been over the moon with joy.

They had said that the mighty Bheemasena, despite his towering stature and the great might of a hundred elephants in his arms, his skin of molten gold and lotus eyes of sun-tinted honey, was wrapped around Draupadi's fingers. There was nothing he would not do for her.

Her giggly girlfriends had scoffed and scrunched their eyebrows at the thought. Her mother had made her go through a thousand different beauty regimes. Her tutoress had made her learn a
hundred different skills that she supposed an efficient lady of the house should possess. Her father had even introduced her to tidbits of the politics of Aryavarta.

All of this so that she could garner some of the mighty warrior's attention away from his second and most beloved wife.

And then only, after an entire month of grooming and the Pandava prince's rather restless stay in Kashi, had she been introduced to him, face-to-face. And she had just stood there in ossified silence.

The man was so tall that she had to crane her neck higher than ever before - standing a good
three hands distance away from him - to catch a glimpse of the sharpest jawline she had ever
seen.

She had been afraid that it could cut glass and crystals and diamonds.

Covered in light stubble, it gave way to a face that dared to redefine perfection, despite the scar that slashed down one cheek. His romanesque nose bridge challenged the sharpness of his jaw.

And she could not even get started about the rest of his physique, packed inch by tiny inch with nothing but solid, unadulterated muscle beneath the gold of his skin. Veins coiled up the hard muscles of his arms like snakes around tree trunks.

The man was composed of nothing but hard angles and a sculpted beauty that could put the works of the best of sculptors to shame.

A thick lining of lashes bordered the honey of his eyes, and contrary to popular belief regarding

how adorable thick lashes were, they only made his eyes look darker - his entire demeanor so
much more dangerous, along with the darkness of his dark eyebrows.

His dark, slightly wavy hair was tousled in a slightly messy way that spoke of this man's confidence in himself and his looks. He was glorious, and he knew it.

It showed on every bit of chiseled muscle that he was composed of.
And she could barely reach his chest. She had gulped, something inside her, some very human instinct, screaming at her to run. He was walking danger, ruthless and unforgiving , and she had been just as intimidated as anyone else in her place would have been.

But then she had felt the rough contours of his much larger, hot palm during the wedding, how
unyielding a simple touch could feel. How cold, despite the hotness of his skin. Yet, she had felt like she had touched the Divine.

She had seen the ruthlessness in his silence throughout her journey to Indraprastha, and in his eyes she had seen something else. Something that she could not read. Something that she had
been positive not many people could possibly read.

Because he was inscrutable, through and through.

Then she had arrived at Indraprastha.

If the man that she had been newly wedded to defined beauty, she realized, her thoughts had
been delusional.

For, everything in the City of The Gods defined beauty. From the architecture, to the general planning, to the general citizens' lives and conditions, the flourishing economy. She had been in awe of everything before even arriving at the gates of the citadel.

There was only one way to describe the fine excellence of Indraprastha's unique beauty -
agreeing that it was indeed the City of The Gods.

She had not had the courage or the opportunity to utter a single sentence to her husband in all
that while, and he had broken the ice of perpetual silence between them when he had finally given her an extended palm to hold on her way out of the carriage and had said in a voice cordial enough, "Welcome to Indraprastha."

Nothing more, nothing less. His hand had been gone once she was stably standing on her own
feet in front of the gates of the royal palace complex.

The complex was huge and consisted of multiple separate palaces with every facility of their own, which were further divided into personal or shared quarters.

Her lady-in-waiting had received a map from a royal maidservant where their destination had been circled in green. She had snuck a peek at it and realized that her quarter was situated in a palace - quite a large one by the look of its area on the map - close enough to the main residential palace of the core royal family.

She hadn't been surprised.

Word had it that the chief Pandava queen had a rule to never let a co-wife cross the Citadel gates, and had thrown a fit when the Yadava Princess Subhadra was brought to reside in Indraprastha following her marriage to the third Pandava.

This story had not gone well with the impression she had of Indraprastha and it's queen, that far.

That in no way meant that she had not held a grudge against the chief Pandava queen.

Just how much beauty could one behold to possibly have enchanted all the five Pandavas so much so that they could hardly let any other woman into their hearts?

Especially her husband. She had heard that he was not even the most handsome Pandava, and
he looked like a God. But he had barely even looked her way.

She had expected and hoped to catch a glimpse of the famed beauty of Panchala during her
formal welcoming ceremony, and could not help but feel slightly disappointed when the Dowager

Empress Kunti had arrived to welcome her instead.

And she had been struck by the beauty of the Pandavas' mother. Her complexion was of the
same molten gold as her second-born, and so were her honey eyes. And despite the subtle lines that age had left on her face, she was a radiant beauty.

Valandhara had watched with awe as she had witnessed her husband's handsome face - all
sculpted hard angles, till now - break into a smile so innocuous that it envied the beauty of the sun in the dusk. She had no idea that that face could do that.

The Dowager Empress had blessed her son and their eyes had met. She had witnessed some
sort of a silent question pass from the son's eager, searching eyes to the mother, whose smile
brightened and eyes lit up with raw happiness.

"It's a son. Arjuna is with her.", the Dowager Empress had gently whispered to her son and Valandhara had read her lips and eavesdropped in order to understand that her husband had been asking about Draupadi who had given birth to his younger brother's son.

The joy that had filled her husband's eyes had made her scrunch her eyebrows and her nose.

Questions had swarmed her mind as the Dowager Empress had done the welcoming rituals
with a smile whose reason was certainly not her arrival.

What kind of dynamics did the Pandava family, with its complicated polyamorous ways, have?

How could all five brothers love and live with the same woman as their wife and not have a single conflict based on it?

What kind of a woman did it take to keep all five of these heroes' hearts?

Were her sacrifices greater than her rewards, or was it the other way round?

Those questions had been answered gradually, during her stay in Indraprastha.

She had learnt that the popular rumour that the Pandavas had a one-year-each rule for rotation

husbands with Draupadi, was indeed only a rumour. And it has further bewildered her. She had
too many questions, questions that she could never ask her scarcely present husband.

She had met the other Pandavas, and only one glimpse could tell that they were brothers. Each
of them represented a uniquely sculpted masterpiece in their own way. While Sahadeva and
Yudhisthira had lighter complexions than Bheemasena, Arjuna and Nakula had darker ones.

She had realized that the bards who described Arjuna as a thunderstorm weren't very far from the truth.

She had met the other wives of the Pandavas, too.

Vijaya was almost as shyly romantic as she had described her husband as. Karenumati was a queer wonder to her - not in her personality or beauty, but in her birth identity. She could not
figure out the kind of feelings the Chedi Princess harboured regarding the fact that her father,
Shishupala, had attended the Swayamvar of her elder co-wife. It was almost tragically comic. Devika had an almost domestic beauty that could make even a stranger feel abruptly comfortable, and it went perfectly with her personality. Valandhara had wondered that it must have been difficult for her to be the wife of the emperor, but not the empress.

They all had come to attend the reception event and meet the newest Pandava wife. The thought had terrified her - living in Kashi and coming to visit her husband only for occasions like
this.

There had been no sign of either Subhadra or Draupadi all throughout the evening of the
reception event. It was almost as if they knew just how eager a stranger could be to catch a
glimpse of their famed beauty and therefore intentionally prolonged the torture.

However, the Empress's Lady-in-waiting had made a sudden, announced appearance and said something to Arjuna, following which he had disappeared.

She had not seen a single child of the Pandavas' either, till, finally, Queen Subhadra arrived with
her husband, who held a sniffling toddler in his arms. He had the exact same eyes as his father
- dark crimson - and instead of looking menacing with the red rim of tears in it, he looked like a
child of God. Achingly adorable.

Valandhara had immediately concluded that this kid would certainly grow up to be a heartbreaker - just like his father and uncles, both paternal and maternal.

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