Her lips curve in the faintest smile, tired yet almost playful. “She had sent me a letter,” she murmurs, as if confessing something that’s been burning her tongue for too long.
There it is. The secret. The thing she’s been carrying like a shard of glass hidden in her palm. “So you’re finally telling me,” I reply, keeping my tone calm.
Her eyes go wide for a heartbeat, incredulous and something like relief. “You… knew?”
I nod. “I have known it for a while now.” The words taste heavier than they should. “I felt you didn’t trust me enough to talk about it.”
Her gasp is immediate, almost wounded. “It wasn’t about trust,” she breathes, shaking her head so fast a strand of hair escapes her bun and brushes her cheek. “I just… I didn’t want to be a burden on you.”
For the nth time, the same refrain. And for the nth time, I want to shatter it, burn it, bury it so deep it never touches her again. “Poorvi—”
“You are not a burden on me,” she mimics, pitching her voice like a trick. She is half-teasing, half-defensive, and the laugh that breaks out of her is small and bright. I find myself laughing too, the sound short and relieved, the car suddenly warmer.
“I don’t sound like that.”
“You do, Kunwar-sa.” She teases me with the title, reverent, mocking, and my heart does a strange little twist. I chuckle.
I let that moment sit between us, the absurdity of her mimicking my earnestness making my chest ache with something softer than anger—something like gratitude. She can laugh. She refuses to be shrunk tonight. Good. God, I have wanted that for her forever.
“So,” I say when the laughter dies down, because the room between us needs a bridge, “what do you want me to do?”
She looks down at her hands, at the way the light pools in the line of her palm. Her fingers worry the edge of her dupatta like a compass searching for north. “Rajmata says their proposal would be good for the Shekawats,” she says slowly. “But I don’t want you to—” Her voice breaks at the end, and there is a fragile, stubborn honesty in it. “I want you to ignore them.”
The first part of me—the old, territorial part that measures alliances and advantage—wants to protest on principle. The second part, the part that has learned her contours and her limits, simply wants to hold her close and say yes.
I slide closer so our shoulders touch. The contact is small, private, a punctuation mark to steady her. “If silence is the medicine you want to give them,” I say, voice low, “then silence is what they’ll get. But not because I can’t speak to them—I can, and I will if needed. Because the voice I care about most is yours.Because the only voice I listen to in this world is yours, meri jaan.”
She looks at me, searching, as if scanning for a wrinkle that might tell her I’m joking. I am not. The truth of it sits in my throat like a taste I don’t want to waste on anything less than honesty.
“Listen,” I say, the city blurring past the window. “You don’t owe them anything. You never did. But you do owe yourself the mercy of being chosen, not tolerated. And I choose you, every day. That’s not a grand gesture or a line; it’s a fact.” I let the fact rest between us. I can feel her breathe differently, as if something inside her unclenches.
Her lips part, and I can feel her breath catch. That familiar rush stirs in my chest—the heady awareness of what she does to me, of how much power she holds without even realizing it.
She blinks, then narrows her eyes in mock severity. “Besides,” I say, trying to lighten the air, “I hope you don’t get offended but… your family sucks.”
She swats me lightly on the arm. “How dare you.” She frowns, scandalized, and folds her hands against her chest. “My family is the best!”
I stop, frowning. “Wait. I thought you didn’t like them.”
She bursts into laughter, clutching her stomach, her face lighting up in pure amusement at my confusion. “Because you are my family, Vihaan,” she grins, eyes sparkling. “You, Meher, Sitara, Bhai-sa, Veeraj Kunwar-sa—you guys are my family.”
The car feels too small to contain what rises in me. It’s not just pride. It’s not just love. It’s a fierce, almost desperateprotectiveness, a vow I want to carve into stone. She has no idea how much I’d give, how much I’d fight, just to keep that smile on her face.
I swallow hard, letting my hand slip over hers. Her fingers tremble but then tighten around mine. She doesn’t need to say anything else. Neither do I.
Because in this moment, I know—we’ve crossed another threshold. She’s let me in, just a little more. And I’ll guard that piece of her with everything I have.
CHAPTER 48
Framed In His Eyes
POORVI
The morning sunlight spills into the corridor like melted gold, dust motes floating in the beam as if even the air has dressed up for today. My hands are clasped in front of me, fingers tugging at the edge of my dupatta, while Vihaan walks just a step ahead, his stride calm, steady, as though he belongs everywhere he goes. I don’t.
At least, that’s how I feel when we stop before the heavy wooden doors of a chamber I’ve never been inside.
I glance around, half in awe, half in discomfort, at the giant gilded frames hanging across the high ceilinged gallery. Each one shows someone who looks untouchable, frozen in time with their chin held high, eyes trained on something distant, like they were too grand to ever look at the person standing before them.
