With the “gift” finally “wrapped,” I scavenged the desk for battle plans, straightened my clothes, and packed the crate with every piece of vital intelligence in his tent: British movements, troop counts, and attack strategies.
A wild transformation took hold of me.
My face surged with a chaotic cocktail of emotions, my lips twitching upward as blind fury hardened into a maniacal obsession.
My eyes widened, frantic and unblinking, as I strained every nerve to choke back a wave of euphoric laughter.
I let out a harsh, arrogant chuckle.
“Look at you…
the ‘mighty Commander of Central India.’
Not so great now, are you?
Did you honestly think you could take Jhansi?
From my Rani?”
Taking a slow, deliberate breath, I hoisted the heavy box onto my back and stepped out of the tent, intercepting his ADC just as he reached the entrance.
Maintaining an arrogant calm, I met him with a grand, formal salute. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
“His Excellency requested some quiet time to take in the air,” I told him.
“Do be gentle…
he’s completely breathless.”
The ADC relaxed, accepting the lie without a second thought.
I strode past the guards, my eyes wide and burning with euphoric triumph.
***********
Inside the trunk, the reality was agonizing.
Rose remained curled up, head tucked like a caged animal, helplessly watching himself being smuggled out of his own headquarters.
But the ultimate cruelty was my casual banter with his own man.
Trapped beneath heavy wood, Rose listened in frozen terror.
His ADC had been standing right there, one step away from saving him, and had suspected nothing.
Hearing me joke about his helpless state while hauling him past his own guards gutted whatever remained of his aristocratic pride. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
‘I am Sir Hugh Rose,’ his mind shrieked in silent, frantic agony against the suffocating pine.
‘Commander of the Central India Field Force, Knight of the Crown…
How in God’s name is this happening?’ Every breath in the pitch-black box felt heavy with the stench of his own humiliation.
A commander who had brought entire cities to their knees, who had dismissed these rebels as mere rabble beneath his boot, was now folded up like smuggled contraband.
Just inches away, separated by a fraction of an inch of wood, stood his own ADC, his guards, his grand army.
All he needed was to bark a single command.
But his throat was bound, his body paralyzed, and his empire utterly deaf to his plight.
The sheer horror of it ripped through his soul: he wasn’t dying on a glorious battlefield with honor; he was being wheeled out of his own headquarters like stolen brass by the very insurgent he had sworn to crush.
Through a sliver of a crack in the box, he watched me walk past his picket guards, head held high.
In that instant, his pride didn’t just crumble; it vaporized into absolute terror.