The Diamond King: A Tale of Love, Hate, and Diamonds by Vlad Kahany

Author:Vlad Kahany [Kahany, Vlad]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

36

YAMUNA

Andhra Pradesh, India

Drasko, 20-21

After little jaan passed, Drasko thought his heart would forever be buried in a tomb.

It was Yamuna, the daughter of the local scribe, who made his heart gasp and take in full breaths of life.

Yamuna was older than him by five years, her amber eyes full of kindness, her soft hands capable of healing his scars.

She was everything Drasko wasn’t—patient and full of love. Like the river she’d been named after, she filled the gaping hole in his heart, opened him up like a dry flower and breathed life into him.

He was twenty years of age when she first smiled at him during a local wedding.

“You dance so well,” she said then, “for a pardesi.” A foreigner.

She laughed so enthusiastically that Drasko, for the first time in a while, grinned and didn’t take his eyes off her the whole night.

He wanted to get lost in someone. What he didn’t know then was that for the first time, he would feel the need to anchor.

“I don’t ask anything of you,” Yamuna said when he had been visiting her by night for a month. “Off you run. To other women.”

But he didn’t. He came back for more, and she gave it freely.

“I don’t need anything in return,” she explained, having lost her husband and son to malaria only a year before. “I don’t make deals. Nor do I want promises easily broken.”

But Drasko never went to another woman and gave himself to her completely.

Only twenty, he felt like an old man. And Yamuna made him young again.

Careless days, full of laughter. Hot nights, spent in lustful fever. Her eyes shone with so much acceptance that when she undressed him the first night they were together, he blushed at the way she kissed his scars, healed them with her caresses, then worshipped his body like he was holy.

He told Elias then that he didn’t know what women were until her. Didn’t know what sort of man he was in bed until she taught him how to touch her.

Elias grinned at such words. “You know what they say. In this part of the world, they got the Kama Sutra down to a science.”

Drasko realized one day that he didn’t care much for the Mawr business. Suddenly, the money didn’t matter, and diamonds didn’t shine as brightly as his lover’s eyes. He wanted to stay in a happy world, void of grudges and rivalry and greed.

Then the Wollendorfs happened. That night, he knew everything would change again.

And it did.

The day they found Alfred Mawr’s body, Elias told Drasko, “Run.”

Drasko had never been afraid. Nor was he now. But he had to be careful because now he had Yamuna to keep safe.

She stayed silent for some time when he told her what he wanted to do. “I don’t think we can,” she answered.

But of course, they could!

And he didn’t listen to her, didn’t pay attention to her lingering gazes, a sad smile like she knew what life had in store for them.

He went to talk to Uriah.

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