u/saritahsissy

The torchlight flickered across Khilji’s smirk as he lifted a single finger. Behind him, a soldier stepped forward, dragging a wicker basket by its frayed rope handle. The lid clattered open, and Padmavati’s breath hitched—inside lay a dozen severed heads, their faces frozen in expressions of horror, their matted hair still clinging to scraps of saffron cloth. Her maids. Her guards. The old priest who had blessed her wedding.

"An offering," Khilji said, nudging the basket with his boot. "But I’m feeling generous tonight." He leaned back, the throne’s carved lotuses groaning under his weight. "Dance for me, Rani. Strip yourself of those pretty silks, and I’ll spare the next hundred throats."

Padmavati's spine stiffened as if struck by lightning. Her lips parted—not to plead, but to spit defiance—until Khilji flicked his wrist again. The soldiers hauled Ratansen forward, his once-proud face swollen with bruises, his breath whistling through broken teeth. A blade kissed his throat, drawing a thin crimson line. Khilji's smile widened. "Shall I make him kneel too? Or would you prefer he watches?"

The air left her lungs in a slow, controlled exhale. Padmavati's fingers moved to the golden clasp at her waist, her gaze never leaving Khilji's. The silk pooled around her ankles like liquid sunset, revealing skin gilded by torchlight. A murmur rippled through the soldiers—half awe, half hunger—but Khilji merely arched a brow. "Dance," he said, gesturing to the space before the throne. "Not like a temple devadasi. Dance like a queen who knows her people's lives hang by the thread of your grace."

The veena player in the corner—a trembling old man dragged from the palace musicians' quarters—plucked a tentative note. Padmavati let her eyelids fall halfway, the way she'd done a thousand times before for cheering crowds and adoring nobles. Only this time, her lashes hid the calculations darting behind her gaze. She stepped into the first pose of Odissi, one foot arched, hands curling like blooming lotuses—but her hips swayed just a fraction wider than purity demanded. The veena's melody quickened.

The veena's strings quivered as Padmavati's body followed, her spine arching backward until her unbound hair brushed the marble. For a heartbeat, she hesitated—muscles tensed to freeze in defiance—but then Ratansen gasped as the blade pressed deeper. Her foot completed the step, toes curling against cold stone. She had danced this a hundred times before temple deities, her movements chaste as prayer. Now, she let her hips roll slower, her waist dipping lower, until the soldiers' breaths hitched. The veena player's fingers stumbled, then quickened—this was no devotional hymn, but the thrumming rhythm of a hunt.

Khilji's fingers stilled on the armrest. His smirk faltered for half a breath as Padmavati's palms skimmed up her own torso, her nails catching the torchlight like claws. She had studied the Kamasutra not for pleasure, but for power—every chapter on seduction memorized like battle strategy. Now, she let her hands linger at the curve of her ribs, her thumbs brushing the underside of her breasts in a mimicry of the text's seventy-third position. The veena's notes turned molten.

Khilji’s fingers tightened around the armrest, his knuckles whitening beneath the torchlight as Padmavati’s dance unfolded—not with the demure grace of a queen, but with the deliberate provocation of a woman who knew exactly how to weaponize her own allure. Her lashes lowered, not in submission, but to hide the way her gaze flickered to Ratansen’s slumped form, the dagger still pressed to his throat. The veena’s melody coiled around her movements, each note a serpent slithering between them, as she let her hands trail down her own body in a way that would have scandalized temple priests.

A soldier near the throne shifted, his armor creaking with restless tension. Padmavati caught the hunger in his eyes—the same look men had given her for years, though never so openly. She used it. Rolling her hips in a slow, undulating circle, she let her fingers graze the inside of her thigh, her touch lingering just long enough to draw a collective inhale from the room. Khilji’s smirk returned, but his grip on the throne didn’t loosen. "Faster," he commanded, jerking his chin at the veena player. The old man’s fingers faltered, then obeyed, the rhythm quickening into something feverish.

Padmavati let the veena's rhythm coil around her like a second skin, her hips swaying in time with the accelerating notes. The silk of her choli clung to sweat-slicked skin as she pivoted, deliberately turning her back to Khilji—a queen's calculated insult wrapped in a dancer's grace. Her fingers trailed up her own spine, unhooking the gold chain at her nape with a click that echoed louder than it should have. The necklace slithered down her back like a gilded serpent before pooling on the marble. She didn't turn to see Khilji's reaction. Instead, she arched backward, her hair brushing the floor as her hands skimmed the curve of her waist—slowly, so slowly—toward the clasp of her waistchain.

Khilji's boot tapped once against the throne's dais. "Faster," he repeated, but his voice had lost its lazy amusement. Padmavati smiled—not with her lips, but with the deliberate roll of her shoulders as she straightened, letting the waistchain dangle tantalizingly from one finger before dropping it. The gold links chimed against stone, a sound drowned by the collective intake of breath from the soldiers. She could feel their eyes like brands against her skin, but she kept hers fixed on the veena player—an old man whose shaking fingers betrayed his terror. His melody stuttered when she stepped toward him, her bare feet silent on the cold marble.

Boots scuffed behind her as the soldiers who’d dragged her in released their grip, stepping back with a deference they hadn’t shown when wrenching her arms behind her back. Padmavati inhaled sharply—the air smelled of sandalwood and iron, of spilled wine and something darker. Khilji, after seating himself on her throne, leaned forward, his chainmail clinking softly, and the torchlight carved his face into sharp planes of shadow and amber. "You look better on your knees," he mused, his voice like gravel wrapped in silk.

*PS: added multiple pics as per feedback*

Rani Padmavati’s breath hitched. She spun, her lehenga whipping like a saffron flame, and strode toward the hidden passage behind the statue of Durga—the one reserved for royal flight.

But the silk tapestry fluttered untouched as a foreign voice, thick with Delhi’s accent, slithered through the chamber: "The mouse tries to flee its hole." A dozen armored men materialized from the shadows, their scimitars glinting. Their leader—a hulking brute with a nose long since broken—grinned, revealing teeth filed to points. "Assalamuwaleikum Rani Padmavati, Sultan Alauddin sends his greetings."

The maharaja didn’t mince his words. "They’ve broken the eastern gate," he said, voice raw from shouting orders. "The archers are out of arrows. The elephants—" A muscle twitched in his jaw. "The elephants are burning."

Padmavati’s fingers curled around the balcony’s railing, her rings scoring tiny crescents into the wood. Below, the city’s once-lush gardens smoldered, their perfumes replaced by the acrid sting of flaming pitch. She could almost hear Khilji’s laughter riding the wind. "How long?" she asked, too softly.

"Minutes," Ratansen said, the word sharp as a blade between his teeth. His eyes flicked toward the palace gates—already echoing with the metallic clang of invaders breaching the inner courtyards

Padmavati's fingers stilled against the armrest of her throne—carved lotus petals biting into her palm. The messenger's trembling hands pressed into the cool marble floor, his forehead damp with sweat and dust. She let the silence stretch, thick as monsoon air, until even her attending maids stopped their nervous fidgeting.

"Tell Ratansen," she said at last, voice smooth as honeyed milk, "that his queen requests his presence. Immediately." The messenger scrambled backward, knees scraping stone, before vanishing through the arched doorway. Only then did she rise, the heavy silk of her lehenga whispering against her ankles, and move to the balcony where the horizon pulsed with distant fire.

Ratansen's armor clanked like a funeral bell as he strode into the chamber, his face streaked with soot and a shallow cut weeping at his temple. The scent of burnt leather and iron clung to him, sharp against the lingering sweetness of Padmavati’s abandoned almonds.

* disclaimer: completely fictional fantasy story for roleplaying. Suggestions, feedback and other story ideas welcome*

The last of the sugared almonds vanished between her teeth as the messenger collapsed at her feet. Padmavati didn’t rush—she licked the sweetness from her fingertips first, savoring the lingering trace of cardamom, before flicking her wrist toward the gasping man. "Speak."

Outside the palace walls, the scent of marigolds and crushed mint should have filled the air. Instead, smoke curled lazy fingers over the rooftops—not from cooking fires, but from the distant, deliberate burn of advancing torches. The messenger’s lips split around words like overripe fruit: "Khilji’s forces... they’ve crossed the Sipra River."

I have some roleplay ideas and story plots in mind and will add some content along these lines. Any feedback and comments welcome..