The silence of the Oberoi mansion tonight felt different. It wasn’t the heavy, suffocating silence of a tomb, but a soft, breathing stillness. As Kabir lay in the quiet dark, the fever finally receding from his bones, he felt a strange, lingering sensation. The air around him smelled of jasmine...a sharp contrast to the sterile, expensive scents that usually occupied his room. It was the scent of Suhani’s hair, left behind like a ghost after she had spent hours tending to him.

The warmth of her care, the way her cool hand had rested on his forehead, and the soft murmurs she used to coax him into drinking water began to pull him into the depths of a memory he had tried to bury. It wasn't just the fever breaking; it was the wall around his heart finally showing its cracks.