He smiles against my hair. “You’re welcome,” he says. “But there’s another part.” He steps back to meet my eyes, his own serious now in a way that folds the room into a quiet corner just for us. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to protect you from the library forever. I did it because I wanted to give you more options. And because… I want to give you a memory you can hold when you’re afraid. I want the memories near the pond to be ones you look forward to, not flinch from.”
My throat tightens; my mouth tastes of something like gratitude and awe. He brushes a thumb over my lower lip in the smallest of touches. “The anger I feel now when someone harms you? That’s real. Let me put it to use in keeping things right. Let me be there when you choose to go. And if you never choose, that’s fine, too. I’ll be here.”
The room breathes around us. For the first time in a long while, I feel permission to be small and scared and human in front of someone who doesn’t use those things to punish me.
Hot tears blur my vision unexpectedly; they come without warning, without gore or melodrama, and I laugh at the ridiculousness of my own softness. He looks startled and flustered in a way I have only ever seen when he’s trying too hard not to look tender. “Okay. I definitely didn’t mean to make you cry. That was not the plan.” He sounds almost—pleading? I hate that his immediate instinct is to be practical, to smooth the waves.
I laugh, more sincere this time. “You make me melt.” The words taste like confessions and too much honesty. He blinks, helplessly caught off-guard, and then pulls me into the most careful hug I’ve ever had.
He rests his chin on my head and the world contracts to that one small press of skin. “I’m with you,” he says simply. “Not only in facing this, but in all of it. Till my last breath.” His voice is quiet, and there is an absolute finality in it that settles into me like a vow. Not a flamboyant pledge—nothing for show—just a plain, terrible, wonderful promise.
I hiccup a laugh that breaks into a sob, ridiculous and human. “Please,” I plead, redundant and earnest. “Don’t make me cryagain. You’re ruining my makeup.” My voice cracks, but I mean it lightly, and he chuckles, shaky and relieved.
He isn’t going anywhere tonight. He had planned something small and exquisite—a room that smells faintly of lemon oil and old paper, cushions warmed by the golden light of the lamps, and a pond that glitters at a distance. He had thought of the books and of my fear and of how to stitch safety into both. He had placed himself between me and a dark corridor I’d been avoiding, but he had kept the option of walking through that dark corridor beside me. He had folded both protection and empowerment into one gesture.
I breathe it all in. The sound of the water beyond the windows, the leather-bound spines of books, his warmth pressed to my back. The evening has become a small, luminous thing where worry and tenderness are braided together.
“You’re really spoiling me,” I say, and he scoffs like it’s the best kind of sin.
He kisses my temple, and his lips are warm at a place that had felt like the exact center of my life. “Good. You deserve it.”
It feels impossible to describe how settled I am. Not fixed, not whole in a miraculous sweep, but quieter in the way a pond calms after a storm. I thought he would choose to erase the pain by shifting the world’s furniture. Instead, he built me a place to stand, choices to make, and the promise that he will stand with me when I finally choose to walk through the old hall.
That is love, I think. Not the sweeping gesture alone, nor the patient waiting alone, but the steady willingness to do both: to protect, and to encourage courage. To be both shield and companion.
I sink into an armchair with a book cradled in my lap and realize, with a small, astonished joy, that I’ve already begun to make a new memory. Vihaan settles beside me and picks up the other chit. “We’ll plan the old library,” he says casually, as if it were nothing, “when you say ready.”
My throat is too thick to speak the words I want—the ones that would make this moment bigger and more permanent—but I press my hand into his and let the silence say them for me.
He leans in, lowering his voice like it’s a secret. “And hey,” he adds with a grin that makes my chest ache, “remember you said you wanted to buddy-read? Tonight, we begin with whatever you want. After your assignment, mind you.” He winks.
The future is a small, manageable thing in that instant: a book on my lap, his hand in mine, the pond reflecting the sky, and the knowledge that I do not have to face shadows alone.
My heart answers in a whisper that feels like the truest thing I’ve ever said. “Okay.”
CHAPTER 44
Your mother…
POORVI
I lie on my side, watching her. Poorvi’s hair spills across the pillow like ink against cream, the dim lamp in our room catching strands of it. She’s been quiet for a while, tracing patterns on the blanket with her finger, her brows knit together the way they get when she’s in her head too much.
I reach out and catch her wandering hand, curling her fingers into mine. “Do you remember your mother?” I ask softly.
Her head tilts toward me, eyes widening a fraction, caught off guard. “My mother?”
I shrug, giving her hand a light squeeze. “You don’t talk about her much. I was just wondering… if you remember things about her.”
For a moment, her lips press together, and I think she’ll deflect. But then she nods slowly. “I do. Some things. Not everything.” She pauses, eyes flickering toward the ceiling as if the memory is projected there. “She used to braid my hair before school. And she smelled like jasmine. I still can’t stand to use jasmine oil because it makes me ache.”
Her voice is soft, almost reverent. I don’t interrupt.
“She wasn’t… perfect. Sometimes she’d forget my homework, sometimes she’d be late to pick me up from school. But she was there. And that mattered.” Her fingers tighten slightly in mine. “After she passed, it was like—like someone had turned off the lights in the small room we shared in the palace. I kept waiting for them to come back on, but they never did.”
She smiles faintly, but it’s a fragile kind of smile. “I was too young to really understand death. I thought maybe she was just away for a while. That she’d walk in the door again with sweets or with scolding. But instead… they acted like I’d vanished, too.”
Her words hit me like a punch.
