"You are late," says Rama, when Kusha steps into his first council meeting. His father's brows are furrowed, a slight frown tugs at his lips. "Your brother...?"
"All is well," Kusha reassures him. Under his angavastra, the knife he hides is still wet with blood.
"Welcome then, prince," says Minister Sumantra, trying to steer the conversation away. "We were only getting started."
Kusha sits beside his father at the end of the table. On Rama's left is the empty seat meant for the queen, its gilded resident stowed away and out of sight from Lav's hysterics. In the silence of his own traitorous mind, Kusha is grateful for his brother, and his inability to accept this sick mockery of their mother. Alone, he would not have mustered the courage to protest, and perhaps the terrible golden imitation of their lovely mother would still have remained.
Alone, he could do nothing.
Lav could though.
Kusha listens to the council with only half a ear. They speak of granaries that are bursting with grain, and praise the generosity of the king in donating to the poor as if the rest would not have otherwise been thrown into the river and the sea. They speak of wealth and prosperity spreading through the kingdom like freshwater filling a well. They speak of the name of Rama, hailed from the top of the mountains to the sunlit sea, and beyond to Lanka's shores.
His brother is there too, quivering with quiet desperation. "I have to do it," he says, fever bright, "I have to do it; mother commanded so."
The knife in his hand burns.
