Ishika snapped out of it, her chest heaving as reality crashed back in.

Her hands flew to his chest and she shoved him back with everything she had, her nails digging into his shirt like she could push him out of her life with force alone.

“Stay away from me!” Her voice broke, raw and trembling, caught between rage and something that felt dangerously close to breaking.

“You’re all the same! Don’t you get it? Do you really think you can trap me in your web like this? With force? With tricks?”

The words tore out of her, each one carrying years of buried hurt, betrayal, and sleepless nights. Her eyes burned, not just from the chili still stinging her lips, but from the weight of everything she’d been swallowing since the day she was dragged into this house.

She staggered back a step, then another, her heels slipping slightly on the wet tiles. Her breath came fast and shallow, like she was trying to outrun the memory of his touch. Without another glance, she turned and walked away, her steps quick, angry, desperate to put distance between them.

Veeransh didn’t move.

He stood there in the middle of the shattered bathroom, shards of glass glinting at his feet, the door hanging off its frame. He didn’t reach for her. He didn’t call out. He just watched her go, his jaw tight, his eyes dark with something that looked a lot like restraint.

When she was almost at the doorway, his voice followed her—low, steady, and absolute.

“The truth will never change, Ishika.”

“You’re mine. Whether you want it or not.”

The words hit her like a slap.

She spun around, her face flushed, tears threatening to spill but held back by sheer fury.

“*Never!*” she shouted, her voice echoing off the cold marble walls.

“ Do you think I’ll forget? Do you think I can forget what you people did to me? To my parents?”

Her chest rose and fell violently, each word laced with a pain too deep to name. The memories came flooding back—her mother’s silent tears, her father’s broken voice on the phone, the way her world had been ripped apart overnight.

“If you think one day I’ll stand here and call you ‘Veeransh’ like nothing happened, you’re delusional.

Get it through your head. Get it through your head right now.”

She spat the last words out like venom and turned on her heel, leaving him standing in the wreckage of the moment.

Veeransh didn’t follow.

He stood motionless, the faint metallic scent of blood in the air from where a glass shard had nicked his palm. His eyes never left the spot where she’d disappeared. His thumb brushed absently over his lips, the place where he’d made her swallow the medicine, where he’d felt her breath hitch against his.

A slow, humorless smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. It wasn’t victory. It wasn’t defeat.

It was a promise.

“Forgetting isn’t that easy, Ishika,” he murmured to the empty room.

“I’ll wait. However long it takes. Until you say my name yourself.”

From down the hall, Badi Maa’s worried voice echoed. “Veeransh? Beta, is everything alright?”

He straightened, rolling his injured hand into a fist to hide it.

“Yes, Maa,” he said quietly. “Everything will be alright.”

But his gaze was already fixed on the corridor where Ishika had vanished.

The war wasn’t over.

It had only just begun.

---

Badi Maa’s voice echoed down the hall again, softer this time, laced with worry.

“Veeransh? Beta… is she alright? Please don’t let her be alone right now.”

Veeransh didn’t answer her. Not with words. He just ran a hand through his hair, the glass cut on his palm stinging, and walked out without looking back.

Because if he stayed one second longer in that wrecked bathroom, he wasn’t sure whether he’d chase her or break down right there.

---

Ishika didn’t go to her room.

Her legs carried her on their own, past the silent corridors, past the whispers of the staff who pretended not to see her swollen lips and red eyes. She ended up on the terrace, the cold night air biting against her skin.

She gripped the railing so hard her knuckles turned white.

Below, the entire haveli looked asleep. Peaceful. A lie.

Her reflection in the glass door behind her looked foreign. Swollen lips, tear-streaked face, hair undone.

“This isn’t me,” she whispered. “This isn’t my life.”

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Arnab again. She ignored it.

Every time his name flashed on the screen, her chest tightened. Because a part of her still wondered—_what if he had been brave enough? What if he hadn’t let fear win?_

And then another voice cut through her thoughts, quieter but heavier.

“Ishika.”

She didn’t turn. She knew that voice. It had haunted her dreams and her waking hours both.

Veeransh stood a few feet behind her, his shadow stretching long across the marble floor. He didn’t come closer. Not yet.

“You’re shivering,” he said quietly.

“Don’t act like you care,” she shot back without turning. Her voice was hoarse, scraped raw. “You don’t get to act like you care after what you did today.”

He exhaled, slow.

“I know you hate me. I know you think I’m a monster. But I couldn’t just stand there and watch you choke on your own anger.”

Ishika laughed, bitter and broken.

“Anger? That wasn’t anger, That was survival. You don’t know the first thing about what it feels like to have your entire world ripped apart in one night.”

Silence.

Then his voice, lower now, almost careful.

“Tell me about that night.”

Ishika froze.

Her fingers dug into the railing.

“Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t you dare bring them up. Don’t you dare use my parents to manipulate me.”

“I’m not manipulating you,” he said. “I’m trying to understand why you look at me like I killed them with my own hands.”

That did it.

She spun around, tears finally spilling over.

“Because you might as well have!” she cried. “Your family… your name… everything that happened after that night… it has your shadow on it! You think I don’t see it? You think I don’t know who pulled the strings?”

Veeransh’s face didn’t change, but something in his eyes cracked.

“If you think I had anything to do with it, then you don’t know me at all.”

“Then make me know you!” she shouted. “Because right now, all I see is the man who forced me into this marriage, who calls me his wife like it’s some kind of trophy!”

The wind picked up, tugging at her hair, at the edge of his kurta. Between them, the air felt charged, dangerous, like one wrong word would shatter whatever fragile thing was holding them together.

Veeransh took a step forward. Then another.

“I forced you into this marriage to keep you safe, Ishika,” he said quietly. “Do you think I wanted this? Do you think I wanted to watch you hate me every single day?”

Ishika’s breath caught.

“What?”

He stopped just short of touching her.

“There are things you don’t know. Things I couldn’t tell you that day in court, that day in the mandap. Because if I had, you would’ve run. And if you ran, they would’ve found you.”

Her heart pounded.

“Them? Who’s ‘them’?”

Veeransh.