“Amma, where did Mama go…?” Abhirami whined as her wet hair was being dried with the scented dhoopam by a maid, and her anklets were being fitted by another. “He has not met me even yesterday!”

“Abhirami, stop wiggling—” Lalita gripped her daughter’s chin, trying to apply the tilakam smoothly on her forehead. 

“Amma, I am ready!” Dhruva came running in from the other side, followed by Vidya. He pressed a kiss to Lalita’s hand and skipped off towards the garden through the balcony, even before Lalita could acknowledge his presence.

“Thanks, Akka…” Lalita smiled gratefully at Vidya for the help with Dhruva, who nodded back before leaving for her duties at the medical ward. However, diverting her gaze for that brief moment was the perilous mistake Lalita committed. Abhirami shook her head fiercely as a maid brought an earring close to her ear, and the liquid she had painstakingly prepared herself the previous day, with a mix of musk and vermillion, was now smeared all across Abhirami’s face. The young girl began to wail. The maid, petrified at the sudden outburst, dropped the earrings. 

Lalita sighed. She politely dismissed all the maids and signalled them to wait outside. Picking up a small silk cloth lying somewhere on the desk before the mirror, she carefully wiped Abhirami’s forehead. “It’s okay, Abhi… Amma is right here.”

“Is Mama sad?” she pouted. “The other night, I told him I was so angry at him, and he hasn’t seen me since. But I promise I wasn’t angry at all… It was just a joke, I—I’m sorry…”

“Shhh… Mama is just busy, Abhi,” Lalita began in a soothing voice as she reapplied the tilaka in a shape that resembled her tilaka in her dancer’s costume, just how Abhirami liked it. “He has a few… competitions.”

“Competitions?” Abhirami’s eyes grew large in wonder. “Games?! But he always plays with me and Dhruva. Why didn’t he take us along?”

Lalita was finally done with the tilaka and set the applicator aside, picking up the comb next, to brush through her hair and give a few final touches. “It’s not a game, exactly… it’s the boring adult competitions I mentioned to you a few days ago. Remember?”

Lalita was referring to her attempts to explain the complex terms of inheritance laid out by Sivagami. There was going to be a series of trials for Baahubali and Bhallaladeva that would test their valour and intellect, and the one who emerged victorious would be crowned as Emperor of Maahishmati.

“Yes, and you said we could visit him today!” Dhruva exclaimed, suddenly reappearing. Lalita sighed, looking at Dhruva’s clean feet, thankful that her previous lecture about cleanliness had not gone unheard. “And Uncle Bhalla too!”

Lalita froze. “Wh—what?” She let the elder Crown Prince of Maahishmati be a mere mysterious shadow to her children until then. Baahubali and Sivagami, though disheartened, had respected her wish to not let him near the young twins. But now her son stood before her, bouncing with excitement with the desire to meet Bhallaladeva.

“Vidya Peddamma told me, when I asked her to tell me about your childhood!” Dhruva grinned. “She told me he was really strong and that he was your friend and that you played together all the time! I want to play with him too, Amma. You will take us to him, won’t you?” the young boy flashed his puppy eyes at her.

Mildly agitated at what Vidya had done, she dropped the comb, causing Abhirami to jump in her seat. Lalita hadn’t done anything against her intuition when it came to raising her children, and her gut had always screamed at her to keep them away from Bijjaladeva, Bhallaladeva, Sethupathi, the whole lot. While she had many reasons to keep them away from the openly cold Bijjaladeva, her ammunition had run out when she thought of Bhallaladeva. She wondered if she was being too harsh to her own cousin sometimes, and keeping her children away from a bond they would cherish.

Dhruva picked the comb up and handed it back to Lalita, snapping her out of the daze.

“Thank you, my sweet boy,” she ruffled his hair gently. “And about your uncle—”

“Vidya Peddamma also told me he also joined in on your plans whenever you pranked Kattappa Thatha!” Dhruva cut in. “Why doesn’t he join us?”

“W-well, Dhruva… Bhalla was mean to him sometimes. So I stopped bringing him along,” Lalita hadn’t lied—Bhalla had never cared for Kattappa’s feelings the same way she and Baahu had.

“He was mean to Kattappa Thatha?!” Abhirami, being her fiercely protective self, shrieked. “I am never talking to him, then.”

“Well, we were all young, but…”

Lalita was interrupted again by a messenger who informed her that Kattappa was waiting outside. 

“Oh look, he’s going to have a lifespan of a hundred years,” Lalita chuckled, relaxing slightly at the familiar presence, letting Abhirami and Dhruva run outside. She followed them. The look on his face made her stiffen. The warrior let out a gruff chuckle as the kids ran around him in circles, but that did not distract her from the worry concealed in his eyes. “Mama?” she whispered, pulling them back. 

“Lali,” Kattappa’s face turned explicitly grim. “I come bearing some… unfortunate news.”

Every time there was a message, Lalita could only think of one man’s name—and desperate prayers filled her mind as she begged all gods to keep that man safe. “You… you tell me the news first, let me decide if it is unfortunate or not.”

“It’s not about him, Lali.”

Lalita’s shoulders dropped, her being filled with a strange mix of relief and disappointment; relief that the bad news was not about him, and disappointment that there was no news from him. 

“Saketa has fled the city, and he has taken with him confidential military information.”

Lalita frowned, eyes widening simultaneously in bewilderment. “Wh—what?! How could he have gotten past those pathways, what were the guards doing—”

“Some were drugged, some were diverted, and some lay dead when we found them.”

She exhaled sharply, shaking off the bewilderment. This was no time to be stunned into inaction. “When do we leave?”

“Not us, Lali. We stay back to handle the security concerns here. The Crown Princes have been alerted, and they will be going on the mission to find the traitor.”

“Baahu, without you?! Mama, you know how reckless he is—” the kids stopped giggling to each other the moment they heard Baahubali’s name. Lalita immediately lowered her voice. “How can you let him go alone…?”

“Bhalla is with him, Lali.”

“Like that’s supposed to make it any better,” she muttered quietly and scoffed.

“Amma, what happened to Mama?” Dhruva asked hesitantly. 

“Nothing happened to him, little one,” Lalita immediately knelt to match his level, cupping his and Abhirami’s cheeks. “He just has to go outside the city… for some work. For a few months.”

“Months!” Abhirami gleefully gasped. “We get to go outside the city for months!”

“No…” Lalita began carefully. “We can’t go with him. It’s dangerous.”

“Then he can’t go either,” Abhirami cried. “No fair!”

“How can Mama be without us for months? He will miss us too much.” Dhruva added, evidently disturbed as he caught on to the tension in Lalita and Kattappa’s conversation. 

Lalita winced, bracing herself for the storm that was going to follow. But fortunately for her, help arrived just in time, and the children’s tensed bodies immediately relaxed when they recognised the familiar, firm footsteps approaching from behind their mother.

A/N - Sorry for the boring update😭😭

I was just trying to catch up with all the missing details and figuring out how to describe the general dynamic, but in retrospect it feels like a filler chapter. The next update will be very soon, though, so stay tuned 🥰