Garima was not sure when she had stopped being fully awake.
The carriage had been moving for some time. Hours, possibly. The first hour of travel she had spent watching the city disappear behind them through the small carriage window.The second hour she had spent with her eyes closed because a shearing pain had started on one side of her head.
After that she lost track of time.
She was not asleep — More in a kind of limbo .Everything blurred at the edges. Sounds made her head throb. At some point Zihan had said something to her from across the carriage and she had not answered, she might have been asleep by then. She could not tell.
She stirred awake occasionally. Noticed the day changing. The scenery changing.
Then she drifted off again.
By the time they were close enough to Domnur for the walls to show in the distance, Garima was beginning to hate the inside of the carriage. She felt suffocated.
She had spent most of the day in it because everyone else had insisted it would be easier. More comfortable. Less exhausting.
What nobody had mentioned that long-distance carriage travel was miserable. Expensive carriage or not.
The road had been uneven for most of the journey. It wasn't disastrous. Not comfortable either. By midday the inside of her head had begun to throb more. By afternoon she was nauseous. The swaying had gone from irritating to unbearable.
At one point she had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion, cheek pressed against the cushioned side, only to wake with her neck aching and her nausea somehow worse than before.Apparently her migraines had followed her in another world too.
So when Domnur finally came into view in the distance, she pushed the carriage door open before anyone could object.
Duke Ruslan, riding beside it, turned immediately. "What are you doing?"
"I can't sit still," Garima said, climbing down.
"You are not riding the rest of the way."
"I am," she said. "If I stay in there any longer I am going to throw up in your very expensive carriage."
"It is not my carriage."
"Then I am going to throw up in someone's very expensive carriage."
That made Zihan laugh. Even Renya smiled faintly.
Ruslan did not.
Garima ignored him and asked one of the soldiers to bring a foldgrazer for her. Back in India she had once taken beginner horse-riding lessons because she had wanted to know how. At the time it had felt like one of those random hobbies she would never use again.She had ridden enough by now not to embarrass herself getting into the saddle and foldgrazers were tame and gentle compared to horses.
She settled into the saddle carefully and exhaled once it started moving.
The difference was immediate.
The nausea did not disappear, but at least the air helped. So did being able to look at the road. Her head still hurt. But it was manageable.
Renya fell into step on one side of her. Zihan rode on the other.
Ahead of them, Domnur rose out of the late afternoon haze in layers of pale stone and red-brown rooftops. It was larger than Garima had imagined. Bigger than the capital in some ways, though not as polished. The outer walls were high and old, patched in places with newer stone. Watchtowers broke the skyline at regular intervals. Beyond them she could see dense buildings packed too close together.
"It's compact," she said.
Ruslan glanced back at her.
Garima squinted at the city again. "Not small. Just… compact."
"That," Ruslan said, "is an accurate description."
Entering into the city was easier than she had expected. Ruslan's soldiers handed over some papers at the gate and they were allowed through without much trouble.
They made their way towards the Duke's Mansion.
The closer they got, the less she liked the atmosphere around it.
Even before they reached the district, the road had grown crowded. Not with merchants or ordinary traffic, but with people standing in clusters and talking too loudly. Wagons waited off to the side. Men in work clothes sat on sacks and crates. Two women were arguing near a handcart piled with household things—blankets, pots, a chair missing one leg.
The atmosphere was wrong. And restless.
At the junction of three roads, Duke Eren's men were already waiting.
Garima noticed the crest first—silver stitched on dark cloth, worn on the shoulders of the guards and stamped onto the breastplates of the soldiers near the entrance, much like Ruslan's men with a different symbols. The moment Ruslan's company approached, the guards straightened.
There were more of them than she had expected.
Not just a welcoming party. An escort.
One of the men stepped forward and bowed first to Ruslan, then lower to Garima.
"Your Grace, Your Holiness. The Duke had sent us to meet you at the gate."
Garima looked past him into road.
The main avenue beyond the road was crowded enough to make her stomach tighten for a completely different reason.
"What happened?" Ruslan asked.
The guard hesitated.
"People have gathered near the mansion," he said carefully. "There were… some disturbances in the lower market this morning. Word spread that the Saintess was coming. It has made things worse."
Garima stared at him.
"What do you mean, worse?"
The man glanced once at Ruslan.
"People want to see you," he said at last.
Ruslan swore under his breath.
Garima looked at him. "That doesn't sound like a problem."
"The situation can easily turn ugly."
She would have liked to say something sharper than that. Unfortunately, the guard turned out to be right.
The city streets narrowed the deeper they went, and the noise got worse with every turn.
Domnur was not quiet even in ordinary circumstances, Garima thought. It was a place built around movement—market traffic, dock traffic, carts, shouting, trade, people living on top of each other in too little space. But whatever ordinary noise the city might have had was buried under a harsher now. A strain she could feel in the air before she fully understood it.
By the time they reached the district leading toward the Duke's mansion, the road was almost blocked.
Not by wagons. By people.
A crowd had gathered across the broad avenue in front of the gates, it was so large that Garima could not even see past it. Some carried signs she could not read from this distance. Some were simply shouting. Others looked like they had come because everyone else had. The guards had formed a line in front of the main entrance, but it was a thin one.
Garima stared.
"Oh," she said.
Renya muttered something under her breath Garima did not catch.
"What are they doing?" Zihan asked quietly.
"Protesting," Ruslan said.
"About what?"
"I can think of several reasons."
The crowd noticed the soldiers before it noticed Garima.
Heads turned. The sound changed—more focused, like a current redirecting.
Then someone saw their robes.
A woman near the front pointed.
"Saintess!"
It spread instantly.
In a rush.
People started shouting over one another. Some pushed forward toward the escort line. Others began trying to shove past the guards. Someone dropped to their knees. A man raised both hands toward her.
"Your Holiness—"
"Please hear us—"
"My children are hungry—"
"Saintess, look at us—"
"They won't let us inside—"
"Please, you have to help us—"
Garima's foldgrazer jerked beneath her.
The line of soldiers tightened immediately, but it did almost nothing to stop the pressure of the crowd. Too many people. Too close. Too desperate and too angry to care about courtesy.
"Move," Ruslan snapped.
His soldiers pushed forward, trying to carve a path through the front of the crowd.
It only half worked.
Garima saw the first person break through the line before she fully processed what was happening—a woman with wild hair and tear-streaked cheeks stumbling between two guards with enough force to nearly fall at her mount's feet.
"Please," she said. "My family will die of starvation—"
Someone else shoved in behind her.
Then another.
And suddenly it was too close.
The foldgrazer sidestepped hard. Garima caught the reins tighter.
Hands reached for her.
It wasn't violent at first. Just grabbing and pulling at her sleeve. Catching the edge of her stirrup. Trying to get her attention, her touch, her clothes—anything.
"Back!" one of the guards shouted.
No one listened.
Another hand caught her wrist.
Garima jerked back instinctively. Nails dragged across the skin near her thumb. Not deep, but enough to sting.
Her heart kicked hard against her ribs.
She hated this.Not the people. The crowd.
The closeness. The noise. They were not looking at her as a person. Only as something useful and powerful. An object they could use.
"Garima."
That was Zihan.
He had dismounted at some point. She had not seen him do it. He was beside her foldgrazer now, one hand on the bridle to keep the beast steady while it tossed its head and shifted in place.
"Get down," Ruslan said.
Garima looked at him. "No."
"If that grazer panics, you'll be on the ground anyway. Get down."
Ruslan moved his grazer closer, blocking one side of her, while two of his men forced space open on the other. Renya was already on foot, sword half drawn.
It worked on some of them.
Not enough.
The front of the crowd kept pressing in, shouting over each other now.
"There isn't enough food—"
"My husband works in the lower market—"
"They're taking grain for the army—"
"Saintess, you have to do something—"
Garima barely heard where one voice ended and another began.
Someone shoved from behind. The woman nearest her stumbled and nearly went under the grazer's shoulder. Zihan caught her before she hit the ground and pulled her back.
That was when Garima realised this situation could get worse.
Not because the crowd wanted to hurt her.
Because it didn't matter whether they wanted to or not. She would be swallowed whole by them or worse die in a stampede.
Ruslan reached up, caught her by the leg and practically dragged her out of the saddle before she could protest. Her boots hit the ground hard enough to jar her knees. Immediately he shoved her behind him and one of the palace guards closed ranks on the other side.
"Inside," Ruslan said.
"What?"
"Inside the gate. Now."
The crowd surged again as if realising they were losing access to her.
Someone caught at the edge of her sleeve and it tore.
Garima flinched.
Renya swore, turned and physically shoved the nearest man back with her free hand.
"Move," she said. "Before I lose patience."
That, at least, made a few people step back.
Only a few.
Garima could feel the crush of bodies even from behind the line of guards. Hear the panic under the shouting. Smell dust and sweat and the sharp edge of fear. Somewhere a child was crying. Somewhere else two men were screaming at each other about grain.
It was chaos.
And she hated that part of her understood exactly why.
These were not people gathered to glimpse a holy figure.
These were people who had heard the Saintess was coming, and had decided that if the nobles would not listen then perhaps the divine would.
She had never wanted to be the kind of person strangers reached for in desperation.
"Garima."
He was in front of her now, still steady and infuriatingly calm, one hand on her elbow to guide her through the moving line of soldiers.
"Come on," he said quietly.
She went.
There was no dignity in it.
She was half walked, half shoved through a gap in the palace guard line while Ruslan's men forced the crowd back just enough to make space. Renya stayed close on one side, Zihan on the other. By the time they reached the palace gates Garima's pulse was still pounding in her throat and there were red scratches across the back of her hand and wrist where people had caught her skin.
The gates shut behind them with a heavy, final sound.
For a moment Garima just stood there in the entrance, trying not to look as rattled as she felt.
Ruslan looked at her once and exhaled through his nose.
"What," Garima said, still breathing harder, "is wrong with this city?"
Ruslan gave her a flat look.
"You mean besides the protest at the mansion, the political situation, the market unrest, the food problem, and the crowd nearly dragging you off your grazer?"
"Yes."
"That."
Garima glared at him.
He looked entirely unimpressed.
"You still think people seeing the Saintess is harmless," he said. "It isn't. Not here. Not when people are desperate."
"I noticed."
"No, you didn't. Not until they were already grabbing at you."
"That was not my fault."
"I did not say it was." Ruslan's voice sharpened. "I said you were careless."
That annoyed her.
"I was inside a carriage with a throbbing headache and nausea for most of the day," she said. "Forgive me for not planning crowd control in a city I have never visited."
"You were visible," Ruslan said. "That was enough."
Garima looked away.
Annoyingly, he was right.
One of the palace servants approached carefully, clearly unsure whether he was interrupting something dangerous.
"Your Grace," he said to Ruslan, then bowed to Garima. "His Grace Duke Eren is waiting."
Garima looked down at her sleeve where the fabric had torn near the cuff. Then at the scratches on her wrist.
"Give me a minute," she said.
The servant looked uncertainly at Ruslan.
Ruslan ignored him and looked at Garima instead.
"You can fix your sleeve on the way," he said. "Eren has already been waiting long enough."
Garima stared at him.
"I dislike you," she said.
"Yes," Ruslan replied. "Come inside."
She wanted to argue. Instead she followed the servant across the courtyard toward the inner palace with Zihan and Renya beside her, Ruslan just ahead, and the noise of the crowd still echoing behind the closed gates.
As they climbed the palace steps, Garima looked back once.
From inside the gate the city was mostly
hidden by stone walls and banners and distance. But she could still hear the shouting beyond the gates.
The city looked worse up close.
That was probably not a good sign.