She accepted the offering with a murmur of thanks, aware of Adeettiya watching her—not intently, but curiously. Not the gaze of a prince weighing a subject, but of a scholar observing a rare and untranslatable script.

She picked up a piece of the soft pitha, dipped it lightly in the creamy sweet beside it, and tasted.

Warmth. Subtle jaggery. A whisper of cardamom.

Her lips curved.

Adeettiya's voice came again, quieter now, as if asking between conversations, not within one.

"Is it... familiar? Or foreign?"

Urvashi looked up once more. Her answer, when it came, was measured, thoughtful.

"Neither," she said. "It is something I didn't know I was waiting to find."

For a second, silence lingered like the final note of a temple bell.

Then the King spoke, drawing the room gently back into motion.

"Devi Urvashi, I believe the gods weave the destinies of those who walk between two times. Let us eat. You have much to learn of our world... and we, of yours."

Urvashi nodded once, her heart strangely steady.

She lifted another piece of pitha and joined the first morning of her new reality.

The air in the hall remained light with the occasional sound of silver clinking against gold  and gentle sips of warm herbal water. The King, though calm in demeanor, carried an air of quiet authority—like a river that seemed still until one stepped into its depth.

After a few minutes of pleasant murmurs, he dabbed the corner of his mouth with a fine muslin cloth, set it down with deliberation, and looked across the low dining arrangement at Urvashi.

"My ministers," he began softly, "say you appeared as if conjured by the monsoon wind: sudden, swift, and unrooted. A presence without a past."

Urvashi placed her fingers delicately over the edge of her silver tumbler. The words weren't a challenge, only observation. Still, they made something twist within her ribs.

"I..." She paused. How did one explain being pulled through the folds of time? Her eyes flicked briefly to Adeettiya, whose expression had gone still, unreadable.

"I woke up to find the world changed," she said at last. "I don't know how or why. But I've stopped asking, for now. I can only try to understand what stands before me."

The King nodded slowly, his face showing no judgment. "Then you are wiser than many who are born knowing their place and still struggle to belong."

That brought a small, genuine smile to her lips.

"You speak with elegance," he added, resting an arm on his knee. "Have you studied or performed in the arts of court?"

She chuckled softly, shaking her head. "No, Mahārāja. In my world, I was... on a different path. My days were filled with books, wards, clinics—"

"Clinics?" the King asked, brows gently lifting.

"Places where the ill are treated," Adeettiya answered for her, his tone unusually attentive. "She was training to be a doctor. A healer, but of a kind you and I have only heard of in theory, Father."

The King leaned forward slightly, a flicker of interest igniting in his aging eyes.

"A woman of healing?" he mused. "And you say you were not yet one?"

"I was just months away from becoming a surgeon," Urvashi answered, steady but humble. "One who performs precise treatment through cutting, repairing, stitching the human body. It's... delicate work."

The King grew still, his fingers curling slightly over his palm.

"Then perhaps," he said, voice lower now, "it is no accident that the winds brought you here."

She stilled, gaze sharpening.

The King swirled the last of his spiced drink in a silver cup, his aged fingers steady, his gaze thoughtful as it lingered on the marbled floor before lifting to meet Urvashi's eyes once more.

"You must forgive an old man's indulgence," he said quietly, "but I've lived long enough to know that the heavens never toss stones into the river without watching where the ripples go."

Urvashi's breath caught faintly. The implications of his words wasn't lost on her.

"The knowledge you carry," he continued, "the language, the precision of your words, your manner—it is not just rare. It is dangerous."

She looked down then, not in shame, but in contemplation. "Because I don't belong here," she said. What does this king want from me?

"No," the King corrected gently. "Because you do—but your mind was shaped elsewhere. That is a power kingdoms would burn for."

He leaned back, but his voice deepened. "Imagine, Devi. In the wrong hands, your wisdom could arm a desperate king with ideas far ahead of his time: metal birds, fire carts, strategies not even our wisest have dreamed of. There are those who would not invite you to dine but seize you in the night, lock you in stone towers and drain your mind until nothing remains."

Urvashi felt a chill crawl beneath her skin despite the warm air of the hall.

"They will not understand your existence as a miracle," he said, "but as a weapon."

Adeettiya had fallen utterly silent beside his father, but his sharp gaze was firmly fixed on her, unreadable yet fiercely alert.

"I do not speak to frighten you," the King added. "But to tell you that I see you. And I will not let your presence become a battlefield, in my peaceful and independent territory."

The heavy silence that followed was not uncomfortable, it was reverent.

Urvashi slowly raised her head again, her voice soft but unwavering. "And if I refuse to share what I know with anyone who demands it?"

The King gave a dry smile. "Then you'll be the first wise soul to remain unbroken in a court of lions."

Adeettiya's voice entered then, quieter than usual, yet with a faux hint of cheekiness, "You may not realize it yet, Devi... but you may very well alter the balance of Bharatvarsha just by existing here."

Her heartbeat echoed against her ribs. She looked from father to son, her lips parting slightly, then pressing shut again.

"I did not come to rule. Or change dynasties."

"But you might," Anantha said. "Even unwillingly."

She closed her eyes for a breath, then opened them with a new resolve.

"Then I will tread carefully," she whispered. "For my steps are not mine alone anymore."

Anantha inclined his head with the respect of an equal.

"In that, you show wisdom beyond your years." 

Adeettiya passed Urvashi some water, seeing as her tumbler was empty. His father looked at them with an unreadable expression, waiting for his son to finish pouring water for the lady. "Then let us not pretend, Devi Urvashi," he said at last, his tone lower now, laced with the weight of deliberation. "The world beyond these walls will stir. Whispers already travel faster than horses. What we speak of now must be veiled in caution and decided in clarity."

Urvashi's fingers gently touched the rim of her warm tumbler, waiting.

"I propose," the King continued, pausing only to ensure she was listening, "a treaty."

Her brows lifted slightly, but she said nothing.

"You will be under the protection of the royal family of Kalinga. No voice will be raised against you without answer from my throne. No hand will reach for you without consequence."

Urvashi's throat tightened with unspoken gratitude—but she did not speak yet. She was waiting to hear what they demanded from her. She knew promises like these never came without a price. 

"In return," he said, voice now gentler, "I ask something not as a ruler... but as a husband."

That struck a chord. The air shifted with the sudden vulnerability in his tone.

"The Queen Mother, Rajmata Devika, has been ill for many moons. Our finest vaidyas have tried every root, every chant, every purification. But her strength dwindles. Her spirit wanes. They ease her suffering but cannot restore her vitality." He looked into Urvashi's eyes—not demanding, not begging...merely offering her a truth, his gaze momentarily softened with something deeply human. "If the gods have sent you to this land, perhaps it is not for war, but for healing."

Urvashi's lips parted, the words catching in her chest. A healer. A doctor. Even here... the same calling. "You want me to try," she murmured, "to treat her?"

"To observe her, to understand what your kind of medicine may see where ours has failed," the King replied. "No forced miracles. No blasphemy. Only... hope."

She could feel the silent pulse of her heartbeat in her ears. The enormity of it all—the world she'd left, the world now at her feet, and the weight of this request—folded over her shoulders like a silken shroud.

And yet, something in her spine straightened.

"Mahārāja," she said, her voice as soft as silken thread, "I cannot promise anything beyond effort. But if I may see her... if I may observe and learn of her condition, I will do everything I can. I will try," she said. "With what I know, with all I have."

Adeettiya looked at her then, not as a prince, but as someone seeing her through a new lens entirely. King Anantha Padmanabhan's gaze remained steady on Urvashi, even as the golden light from the latticed jharokhas cast shifting patterns across the polished floors of the Purva Mandapa. "Then let it be so," the King said, his throat choking with emotion. "Your arrival, Devi Urvashi, may very well be the blessing we did not know we needed.