The Return

DIVYA'S POV]

The phone buzzed against the mattress like it knew something I didn't.

Tanisha calling.

I picked up, smile already half-formed before her voice even hit my ear. "Hello..."

"Divya!" She was breathless, that particular pitch she only got when she'd been sitting on news she couldn't hold in. "Guess what?"

"You finally dumped the boy who takes six hours to reply?"

"No — better!" A laugh, sharp and bright. "My parents are sending me to the haveli. Udaipur side. And guess what else —"

"What."

"You're coming with me."

I sat up. Slowly. Like the bed itself had gone cold under me.

"Tanisha —"

"Don't say no before I finish!" she cut in. "It's summer. College doesn't start for a month. I am NOT spending six weeks alone with my dadi and her parrot. You're coming. Final."

I forced a laugh out, but something underneath my ribs had already started sinking, slow and heavy, like a stone dropped into still water.

"I don't know, Tanisha —"

"It'll be so much fun. Lakes, palaces, that rooftop café — you've been locked inside your house for months, you need this."

You don't understand, I wanted to scream. I can't go back there.

The words died somewhere in my throat.

"I'll... think about it," I said instead.

"Think fast," she sang, already laughing again. "I told Maasi you're coming."

The call ended. Her laughter kept ringing in my ear long after the screen went dark.

Rajasthan.

The word sat in my chest like a door creaking open — a door I'd spent three years nailing shut with my bare hands.

[DIVYA'S POV — The Living Room]

I mentioned it at dinner. Carefully. Lightly. The way you mention a wound you're hoping no one will press on.

Maa's face lit up instantly. "Rajasthan? Oh, that's wonderful, beta. You should go."

My fork froze midair. "Maa, I haven't even decided —"

"What's there to decide?" She kept serving rice without even looking up. "It's summer. You've been inside this house so long you've practically become furniture."

"Maa!"

"I'm serious. Go. See the palaces. Eat well. By the time you're back, you'll be buried in books again anyway."

My fingers curled around the fork. "I just... don't think I want to go this time."

Something shifted in my voice — I heard it myself — and for half a second Maa's eyes flicked up, sharp with curiosity. Then Papa's voice sliced through before she could say anything.

"Nonsense," he said, not even glancing up from his phone. "Last time you came back talking about that trip for weeks. The dunes, the fort, the puppet show. You wouldn't stop."

That was before, I thought. Before everything changed. Before him.

I smiled anyway. The kind of smile I'd gotten frighteningly good at faking. "I'll think about it, Papa."

Under the table, my hand had already fisted into my kurta. Knuckles white.

[DIVYA'S POV — Alone, That Night]

I didn't turn the lamp on.

In the dark, it was easier to let myself go back there — to a girl who'd boarded a train three years ago laughing, careless, whole.

And the girl who came home from that same trip in pieces.

I remember almost nothing of what actually happened. Just fragments, sharp enough to cut. A locked door. A pair of eyes I still saw behind my own eyelids some nights. A fear so total it took me a year to smile again without it shaking.

Nobody in my family knows the real reason.

I never told them. I couldn't.

Because some truths aren't just dangerous for the person who says them out loud.

They're dangerous for everyone who hears them too.

"I can't go back there," I whispered to the empty room, so quiet even I barely heard it. "I can't."

But some small, exhausted part of me — the part that hadn't slept properly in three years — already knew.

Running scared in silence for the rest of my life wasn't living either. It was just a slower way of disappearing.

[DIVYA'S POV — Breakfast, The Next Morning]

"Maa," I said, stirring my tea slower than necessary, voice arranged into something casual. "I actually have pending college projects. A research submission. I don't think I'll have time for Rajasthan."

Maa raised an eyebrow — the I birthed you, I know your lies eyebrow. "What projects? You never mentioned any."

"It's... a big one," I said quickly. "I really need to focus."

"Hmm." She studied me a second too long. Then, with the terrifying calm of a mother who'd already anticipated this exact excuse: "So work on it from Rajasthan. The haveli has Wi-Fi. Carry your laptop, sit on that balcony Tanisha keeps posting, finish your project there. Problem solved."

My spoon stopped moving.

"Maa, that's not —"

"No more excuses, Divya." Gentle. Firm. The tone every mother eventually perfects like a weapon. "You used to love that place. I don't understand this sudden fear. Tanisha is your closest friend. A change of scene will do you good. Discussion closed."

I opened my mouth.

Closed it again.

There was nothing I could say that wouldn't sound exactly like what it was — a girl hiding something with teeth.

[DIVYA'S POV]

Something in me went quiet. Unmistakably.

I stopped humming in the kitchen. Stopped cracking jokes at dinner. My sentences shortened. I left rooms earlier than I needed to. Every time Rajasthan came up — even as a joke from my brother — my shoulders locked and my smile cracked at the seams.

My brother noticed first.

"Why's is she acting so weird?" he asked, watching me vanish into my room the second Papa mentioned train tickets.

"She's probably just nervous about traveling again," Maa said. But her eyes lingered on my closed door a beat too long.

Mothers always know when the math doesn't add up.

[DIVYA'S POV — Midnight]

A soft knock.

"Divya? Can I come in?"

Maa was already sitting on the edge of my bed before I could answer, lamp throwing gold across half her face. I wiped my cheeks fast, not even realizing until then that I'd been crying.

"Maa, I'm fine —"

"Divya." Her voice cut through the lie before it finished forming. "I'm your mother. I've watched you since the day you were born. I know every version of your smile — and I know exactly when one of them is fake."

I looked away. Throat tight.

"You've been so quiet," she said, brushing hair from my face. "Every time Rajasthan comes up, you flinch like someone slapped you. Beta..." She paused, searching my face the way mothers search for splinters. "Is there something you're hiding? Something that happened on that last trip?"

My heart slammed once, hard, against my ribs.

Tell her. Tell her everything.

But the memory of those eyes rose up like a wall between us — the warning in them, the silence that followed me home and never fully left — and the words simply refused to leave my mouth.

"No, Maa," I whispered, forcing the lie to hold steady. "Nothing happened. I'm just tired. College has been a lot."

She looked at me for a long, long moment. The kind of look that says I don't believe you — but I'll let you keep the secret a little longer.

"Okay," she finally said, kissing my forehead. "But if you ever want to talk — about anything — I'm here. You know that, na?"

"I know, Maa." My eyes burned.

After she left, I sat alone in the dark for a long time, knees pulled to my chest.

And somewhere underneath the fear, a small, exhausted voice finally said the thing I'd been outrunning for days.

"Okay," I breathed, to no one. "I'll go."

Not because the fear was gone.

Because I refused to let it run my whole life for me.

[DIVYA'S POV — The Platform]

Chaos, the way only an Indian railway station can be chaos — vendors shouting over each other, a chai-wallah balancing his tray like gravity was optional, families squinting up at boards for platform numbers.

Maa fussed with my bag strap for the third time.

"Maa, I'm not five."

"You're never too old for your mother to worry," she said, finally pulling me into a hug instead. "Call the moment you reach. Eat properly. Don't fight with Tanisha over nothing."

"No promises on that last one."

Papa pressed his hand to my head in blessing. "Have fun, beta. You deserve it."

Shivaay spoke , predictably, didn't look up from his phone. " take care of yourself and don't roam without Tanisha , last time you was lost. You remember right , how much you became pain in my ass"

"Yeah Yeah... I remember I won't go anywhere without her," I shot back. Everyone laughed except him.

The whistle cut through the noise.

"That's my train," I said, lifting my suitcase. I turned back once — looking at my family standing there, ordinary, warm, safe — and something in my chest twisted painfully.

If only you knew where I'm really going.

If only you knew who's waiting on the other side.

"I'll call the moment I land, Maa," I promised, smile bright and fake and perfect. "Don't worry."

The doors closed with a heavy, final clunk.

As the train pulled away, I pressed my palm flat against the glass, watching my family shrink into the distance — completely unaware that with every mile, I was moving closer to the one person I had spent three years trying to bury alive in my memory.

Advansh Singh Rathore POV]

The haveli sat against the dying light like a wound someone had stitched in gold — sandstone walls glowing amber, the kind of beauty that hides exactly how much blood paid for it.

I sat by the open window of my study, a glass of wine untouched at my elbow, a cigarette burning slow between two fingers. Smoke unraveled upward into the warm desert air and disappeared, the way everything eventually disappears when I want it to.

My phone lay open on the table. One notification glowing.

Divya Verma — Train ticket booked. Destination: Udaipur.

I felt the smile before I saw it reflected in the dark window glass. Slow. Cold. The kind that never once reaches the eyes.

Dmitri stood near the door, watching me the way he'd learned to over the years — carefully, the way you watch weather before it turns. He knew which silences of mine were dangerous and which were just thinking. This one, he couldn't place. Lighter. Which, on me, is somehow worse.

"Queen is coming back, boss," he said quietly. Almost a question.

I lifted the wine, turning it slow, eyes fixed on the horizon swallowing the last of the sun.

"She never really left, Dmitri," I said. "She just forgot whose cage she belongs in."

A slow sip. The smile didn't move.

"Three years," I murmured, almost to myself, almost fond. "I let my bird fly far enough to think she was free."

I stubbed the cigarette out. Unhurried. Deliberate. The same way I do everything that matters.

"Now," I said softly, something colder than warmth catching in my eyes, "it's time to bring her home."

Outside, the desert swallowed the last light whole.

And somewhere on a train rushing steadily toward Udaipur, a girl who believed she was simply visiting a friend for the summer had no idea that fate — and a man who never, ever forgets what he considers his — had already written the rest of her story before she'd even boarded.

[Advansh'S POV — Later]

The train kept moving. I watched the dot crawl across the tracking map long after I should have looked away.

She had no idea every mile was dragging her back toward the nightmare she thought she'd buried.

In the dark of my study, I looked at her details one final time, and let the words leave my mouth like a vow nobody else was meant to hear.

"Welcome back, little butterfly."

Somewhere, deep in the marrow of the desert night —

fate smiled with my mouth.

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To be continued....