I’ll go. The words hung between them, fragile but unbroken. She set the tea down, her voice soft. “Why?”

He finally looked at her, the sunset painting her face in hues of amber and resolve. “Because you asked.”

A silence stretched, thick with unsaid things. Then, quietly: “And because I need to.”

She nodded, her eyes glistening. As she left to inform the doctor, Vihaan opened the locket one last time. Her photo smiled up at him—a girl frozen in sunlight, her joy eternal. He closed it gently and set it on the bedside table.

A wave of warmth cascaded through her—a tidal wave of emotion so potent it threatened to dissolve the fragile dam holding back her tears. She inhaled sharply, the sterile hospital air burning her lungs, and clenched her fists until her nails bit crescent moons into her palms. Don’t cry. Not here. Not yet. "That’s... that’s wonderful," she whispered, the words fluttering like caged birds in her throat. To steady herself, she traced the constellation of cracks spider webbing the ceiling, each fissure a roadmap for the words she dared not speak. Three cracks by the vent. Five near the light fixture. Twelve in the shape of a star. Anchored by this silent arithmetic, she slipped from the room, her heart a wild, hopeful thing. 

Outside, the world blurred into a dreamscape. She closed her eyes, and Cadencea bloomed behind her eyelids: 

The amphitheatre rose like a crystalline citadel beneath a velvet sky, its walls alive with the whispers of a thousand echoes. Moonlight fractured through prisms of quartz, scattering rainbows over the crowd. Vihaan stood at the periphery, a statue hewn from shadows, his ribs bandaged but his posture rigid. Her voice—smoke and silver—spilled over the throng, weaving through the air like a melody spun from liquid starlight. She stood bathed in a pillar of light, her golden hair a cascade of molten sunlight, her gown shimmering like the scales of some celestial creature. For the first time, he saw her not as the woman shackled to him by ink and obligation, but as a force of nature, a storm cloaked in silk.

The crowd roared, a thunderous tide, but the world narrowed to the space between their locked gazes. Her song shifted, the notes softening into a lament—

“Where shadows kiss the breaking dawn, 

The lost and found are reborn…”

His breath caught. In that moment, the locket around his neck felt less like an anchor and more like a key.

The Illusion of Calm—

The days that followed were a delicate ballet. She moved through their marble-walled home like a ghost in daylight, rehearsing melodies under her breath, folding his shirts with military precision, simmering broths fragrant with turmeric and ginger. Each meal she placed before him was a silent sonnet—carrot coins like gilded petals, rice grains pearled with care, chai steeped with cinnamon and unspoken hope. When he was discharged, she allowed herself a single, giddy leap in the privacy of her studio, her laughter muffled into a silk pillow. He’s coming. He’ll hear me. He’ll see me. But the veneer of control began to fissure.

 That evening, as she set a tray of poha beside him—golden flakes of rice dotted with emerald peas and crimson pomegranate seeds—he stiffened. “The maid can handle this. Stop doing things like this and focus on your concert.”

Her spine straightened, eyes narrowing. “Why should I stop?”

He scoffed. “Because this—gestures at the tray—isn’t duty. It’s delusion.”

She stepped closer, her voice a blade honed by years of silence. “I cook because I hoped, someday, you’d taste something besides regret. That you’d see me, not her ghost in every room!”

His laugh was jagged, a serrated edge. “You want me to see you? Then stop playing wife and speak the truth.”

“The truth?” She leaned in, her breath hot with fury. “The truth is you mistake neglect for nobility. You think carrying her death like a crown makes you righteous? You killed her. Not the thugs, not fate—you. You buried her in your thorns and called it love!”

The words hung, a guillotine’s blade. Vihaan’s face drained of color, his hand flying up as if to strike—but froze mid-air, trembling.

She didn’t flinch. “You were late that night. You chose vengeance over her. Now you wear your guilt like armor, but it’s just a cage. And you’ll cage me too, won’t you? Until I’m just another ghost in your tomb of thorns.”

The room plunged into silence, the poha cooling untouched between them. Vihaan’s hand fell limp. For a heartbeat, his mask slipped—eyes raw, lips parted in a silent scream. Then he turned, storming out with a slam of the door that shook the walls. She sank into his abandoned chair, fingertips brushing the tray. The pomegranate seeds gleamed like bloodstains.

In his room, Vihaan gripped the locket, the chain biting into his palm. “You killed her.” Her words coiled around his throat like a noose. He hurled it against the wall, glass shattering—her smile fracturing into a hundred shards. Outside, rain hammered the windows, a relentless echo of that night: Too late. Too late. Too late.

She stood at the mirror, wiping smudged kohl from her eyes. Cadencea’s concert loomed in two days. Sing for yourself, she thought, tracing the bruise-like shadows under her eyes. Sing for the ghosts he can’t release.