"Just breathe," she muttered.

The words trembled on her lips before dissolving into a fit of hysterical chuckles. It clawed up from somewhere deep, twisted and manic, the sound of someone toeing the edge of sanity. A final flicker of rebellion in the face of the void threatening to devour her whole.

The air was heavy--metallic and stale. She knew this place.

Not by name, but by the ache in her bones.

Cold. Vast. Empty. The scent of long-abandoned purpose clung to every beam and bolt.

Another warehouse. Another cage.

The familiarity of captivity choked her, the steel chains biting deep into her skin like feral reminders: she was not a person here, not a soul--just a leverage. Just a means to someone else's end. A bargaining chip.

How many times now?
How many times has she woken up in places like this, body bruised, spirit fraying at the edges?
How many times had she clawed her way toward freedom, only to be dragged back into this grotesque dance of ransom and revenge?
They always wanted something--money, secrets power. But the desperate fools never understood the rules of the game they were playing.

Because taking her... was never just taking her. 

And yet... this time feels different. Her body ached, skin blistered beneath grime and sweat, but it was her soul that felt hollowed out. The pain no longer sliced clean. It lingered, dull and heavy. Maybe she knew how this ends. Maybe she no longer cared.

A sigh escaped her lips--ragged and dry. Her breathing flattered, uneven. Her skin itched beneath the suffocating layers of dirt, the scent of her own despair choked her. She lifted her head, her gaze scouring the darkness--not out of fear, but to answer a single, agonizing question:

Is this real? Or had she finally descended into the personal hell she'd spent her life outrunning?

She was becoming accustomed to everything she should never have had to endure.

Her thoughts splinter when--

A door scraped open.

The sound slices through the void like a blade. A sharp metallic clatter followed as it settled. Light--thin and sharp--bled into the room, crawling across the floor like an omen. It inched closer, reaching toward her with deliberate cruelty. She flinched as it touched her face, and the chains rattled with the jolt.

Footsteps. Heavy. Slow. Unhurried. They echoed with the confidence of someone savoring this moment. Someone who came not for conquest--but something far more intimate. 

Her breath caught.

Whoever was here wasn't just a captor.

This wasn't power or strategy.

This was personal.

A silhouette cut through the veil of light. It halted just before her, and her heart stuttered. At first, she didn't recognize him. But then--

A strange calm crashed over her after seven long years--unfamiliar in its tenderness. A ghost of warmth. A phantom memory. His presence demanded obedience, but then again, his presence was like a whisper from the past, a specter she never dared hope for, never dared mourn properly.

Her eyes slowly widened.

It can't be.

It shouldn't be.

Was it even possible?

And yet--

As if answering her disbelief, he crouched in front of her. Fingers--rough, unrelenting--grip her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. 

The touch was foreign.

But the echo it stirred?

Devastatingly familiar.

Her pain wasn't in his grip. It was in the ember flaring within her--a flicker of hope she thought long dead. It clawed at her chest, scorching every wall she built to survive. 

His eyes.

Hazel.

Her heartbeat stumbled.

Could those hazel eyes belong to him? 

The mansion. The fire. The betrayal. Flames dancing in the sky. Screams lost in smoke. She had watched it all collapse--everything she couldn't stop, couldn't undo. 

Yet here he was.

"Remember me, Lasha."

The voice sliced through her like a scalpel--smooth, venom-laced. A melody that once calmed her soul, now dripped with accusation.  

She could never forget his voice.

Even now, it slid down her spine like ice.

Her pulse spiked. She teetered on the edge of disbelief and something worse.

Hope.

"You... alive?" she whispered, the words trembling with something dangerously close to longing.

A smirk curled his lips--cruel in its beauty. "Shouldn't I be, Lashika Mauryavanshi?" His grip tightened. "Or should I say, crowned princess of the Mauryavanshi Syndicate?"

He spit the title like filth, and for the first time in years, it felt like a curse. Like chains heavier than the ones around her wrists. 

She wanted to scream--tell him she was never more than a pawn herself. But his voice, his gaze, made it clear.

He was not here for answers.

He was here for blood.

In that moment, warehouse lights flared on, flooding the space with sterile brightness. Her skin recoiled from it--from the clarity. It revealed everything--every bruise, every crack, every inch of her unraveling.

His presence was no longer a question. He was real. And the hatred in his eyes... it wasn't the man she knew. It wasn't the warmth she remembered.

It was fire, waiting to consume her.

Could you ever forgive me? Could you ever see me as more than a betrayer, more than a symbol of your loss?

Could you ever see past the ruins?

Could you ever love what remained?

Then came the dagger. 

"Did you really think you could burn my family away with that mansion?" His voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. The venom was in the quiet. "Well, you did."

A beat.

A slow, wicked smile.

"Guess what? Your destroyers survived. My brother. And me."

The air died in her lungs. 

His sardonic smirk widened as he leaned in, his breath brushing her ear. "Didn't think I'd be alive?"

The fog in her mind thickened. It was all too much--too real, too surreal. The line between hope and horror blurs until she didn't knew which side she was on. Everything felt right--as she wished it could be--yet twisted in misery.

This--this--was your redemption, Lasha. 

To be the final target... in his revenge.

But how do you destroy someone who's only ever loved you?

Was this the end? Her quiet, selfless devotion attracting deafening vengeful destruction? One that would burn her into ashes?

She wanted to plead, to reason--but she didn't even know which truth to cling to. Was she supposed to rejoice in his survival? Or mourn the death of everything they could've been?

He stood there-- Rudraj Khurana.

Alive. Magnificent. Ruined.

The crowned prince of the Khurana Empire.

Or... the prince of revenge. A man who didn't knew her. Who never would.

He was everything and nothing she ever dreamed of. And so terrifyingly distant from the boy she once loved. 

Her bone felt like ash. Her devotion, her silence, all of it was for him. But now he looked at her as if she was a corpse he'd already buried.

Yet she clung to the one unshakeable truth: she still longed for him. Her Rud. Despite everything--despite the anger, the betrayal, the destruction--she ached for him.

Though in his eyes, she saw nothing but a shadow.

"I'll avenge him through you, sweetheart."

His husky whisper, laden with dark promises, sliced clean.

Sweetheart.

The endearment tugged at her heartstrings as it landed like a blow. 

Her laugh cracked out--bitter and dry. "Do you think the crowned princess of the Mauryavanshi Syndicate would be left unguarded?"

Her voice shook, but there was steel in it now. She will not break. Not for him. Not for anyone.

Something shifted in his expression. Doubt. A fragment of something too late to matter. He saw it--the fire behind her eyes. The defiance.

The report said--A-ranked forces? No. No? This wasn't some low-tier mission. Then why--

"Should I reflect why in words?" she snapped.

He clenched his jaw, his knuckles whitening as his fingers twitched around her chin with restrained rage.

Something inside him cracked.

His hand slipped down to her throat.

She gasped as pressure built, crushing the air from her lungs. His grip was laced with years of grief--every memory that haunted him: his mother's screams, his father's lifeless body, his best friend's blood, his brother's cry for help, the fire, the fall.

And her.

This woman embodied every piece of that pain.

She was all of it. 

He had sworn to never hurt a woman. But right now, he couldn't tell where the past ends and the present began.

Her vision swam, but she didn't fight. Her eyes locked with his, calm.

Not with surrender. But with something worse.

Acceptance.

It terrified him.

Because she wasn't begging. She wasn't afraid. 

She was done. 

Unaware that, for her, death had always been a welcome escape she couldn't chose--a faint blessing to her cursed life.

And then--a whisper. Soft. Shattered. A prayer wrapped in pain.

"Rud..."

The sound was barely a breath. It crashed through him. It tugged at something buried beneath the rage.

Somewhere distant, a voice broke the spell. 

"Sir. You wanted her alive."

The voice had dragged him back to the present like a hook to the gut. His breath ragged. His fingers loosen instinctively, as if only now realizing they'd been curled around her throat. She stumped forward, coughing, dragging in air like someone clawing their way out of drowning.

He took a step back, shaken--not by her gasps for breath, but by the silence that followed.

Because she didn't scream. Didn't curse him.

She simply looked at him.

Like hands gripping the collar of a man mid-fall.

Not with fear. Not even with hatred.

Her eyes--wet, wide, unnervingly still--stared through him like a mirror he never asked to face. A reflection of something that stripped bare--past the rage, past the betrayal--down to the boy he once was. The one who used to dream, used to hope, used to believe in her.

And she saw it.

Saw him.

As if he'd already lost.

Like the boy she once knew was dead--and the man before her? Was just a ghost, dressed in a vengeance suit. It forced him to confront the one thing he refused to admit.

He almost lost her.

Again.

And this time, it was by his own hand.

A crack split through him before he could steel himself. She was trembling, clearly in pain, but it was not her body he saw--it's her unbroken spirit, wreathed in all the ruin he choked her to.

And somehow, she still saw him. Not just the man who stands before her, but the ghost of the boy she had ruined. The boy who never got to know the magnitude of her love for him.

Tears streaked down her cheeks--silent, unceremonious--and he knew he should look away. But he can't. Her gaze shackled him, pulled him to the precipice of something he didn't had a name for.

Ans then she spoke.

Softly, unshakingly.

"I am your... only escape."

Those words crawled into the room like smoke, thick and choking. His chest caved in for a breath he didn't want to take, a fleeting weakness he didn't dare to show. His fingers twitched at his sides before curling into fists, as if to crush the ache blooming in his chest.

Escape. He almost laughs. Almost. That word shouldn't belong to either of them. Not anymore. Not when it still burn vividly in both their veins.

There was no escape.

Not from what happened. Not from what she did. Not from the fire she had walked away from, while he remained in the ashes.

Her words should rung false--just another manipulation, another trap crafted by a woman raised in a world of deception. But they didn't.

Because she wasn't pleading.

She was offering truth.

And truth was more dangerous than lies.

Maybe it was because it didn't ask for his belief. Only his understanding. And that--that--he cannot give her.

A bitter smile ghosted across his lips, hollow and jagged. He stepped back, cold steel returning to his eyes as he severed the thread that briefly, foolishly, tied him to her.

"Naive of you, Lasha," His voice was razor-sharp, laced with something darker than rage--resentment. "Do you honestly think I came here seeking an escape?"

The temperature in the room dropped. The weight of his fury coiled  in the air, invisible but suffocating. His grazed his thumb over the ring on his finger--a small practiced gesture that its almost gets unnoticed.

His anchor, his torment. He shouldn't still wear it. But he did as a monument to all that was lost.

Though, to her, it was just a clenched fist, a silent scream in a room already drowning in ghosts.

Yet, she didn't flinch, didn't blink. "Two weeks before the coronation of their new queen," she said, her voice like silk stretched over the blades, "do you truly think the crowned princess of THE Mauryavanshi Syndicate would be left unguarded?"

The words dropped like oil in water--tainting the air, curling into the spaces between truth and threat.

His jaw tightened. 

You've walked into his vicious web. That's what she meant. And she didn't need to say it outright for him to feel the chill of realization slid down his spine. Her gaze coolly scanned him, calculating. There was no fear in her voice.

Her amusement was subtle. But it was there.

And that unsettled him far more than fear ever could.

Because this wasn't the girl he remembered. The one who danced barefoot in forbidden courtyards. Who argued like a tempest but loved like spring. The girl who spoke in laughter and wore emotions on her sleeve, was gone.

In her place stood something... hollow. Black fabric clung to her frail frame, concealing every inch of her skin, swallowing every trace of softness. Just a silhouette cloaked in shadows.

No colors, No jewels. 

All that remained was the outline of a woman who no longer wanted to be saved.

Did she suffer?

The though crept into his mind before he could bury it. He didn't let it take root. She didn't deserve the question or concern.

"Expect me to believe the daughter of a nefarious man?" he mocked, his voice like a broken blade dragged over skin.

Her lips twitched--not in anger, but something emptier.

"My father was Vardhan Mauryavanshi," she replied, and her tone was level, unshaken. "He died a fallen hero."

The name hanged heavy in the air, ancient and unrelenting, like a chain neither of them could break.

His eyes narrowed. "Don't play games, Lasha." His voice sharpened, serrated now, drenched in grief that didn't knew where to go. "You know who I mean. The man who loves you so much he destroyed my family."

His words were venom, a wound reopening, hurled to wound her. But she didn't shatter.

She didn't deny it.

But she didn't confirm it either.

She averted her gaze--not from shame, not from just guilt--but something heavier. A truth she couldn't unearth.

Because he must not know.

Not yet.

Maybe not ever.

And yet, when she looked back at him, her expression had shifted--barely perceptible, but enough. Her voice was barely a breath--soft, like an old melody seeping through the cracks of the memory.

"Rudraj."

Just his name. It landed like a chisel against stone. For a second too long, it lingered in the air--familiar, dangerous. He hated how it still sounded in her voice. 

Like home.

But he already knew what was coming. He braced for it.

"You want revenge," she said, her voice a careful balance of indifference and convincing. "I'm no use to you if you're holding me for him."

A heartbeat passed.

"But I can help you against him."

The silence that followed was no longer empty. It was watching. Every muscle in his body coiled. The air between them thickened.

Just one more blow.

She leaned forward, slow and deliberate. Chains rattled softly--a reminder of who held power, and who did not. 

"Power is the double-edged sword, Rudraj," she whispered. "Do I have to explain that to the future Royal King?"

His pulse hammered in his throat.

He pressed his thumb harder into the ring. It bit into his skin. Still no movement. Still no rescue. Her stepfather hadn't come. Why?  This entire territory was under his thumb. He should have been here by now. So why the silence?

What is he planning? 

But there was no time to answer that.

Because one thing was horrifyingly clear. She was right.

She was the key.

But whether she would open a door or a trap... he couldn't tell.

"Why would you help your abductor?" he asked, finally. And though his voice remained sharp, something darker creeps in--something far more dangerous.

Curiosity.

Hope. 

Fear.

She looked at him the way she once did when they were kids--like he mattered more than he should.

Because once, I loved you. Loved you with everything I had, with words left unsaid, and hoped I could share, beyond reason. Loved you in silence, never expecting it to be returned.

But that girl?

She died.

With the fire. With the betrayal. With the weight of the world that crushed the light out of her.

Because once, I craved to heal, to live, and for your love. But that was a dream, and she no longer belonged in a world where love existed.

Because maybe, I still love you, though I don't deserve yours. And she shouldn't.

But does that matter now? No.

Maybe, in another life.

Because love, in her world, did not survive.

And maybe... maybe she didn't want it to.

She stood straighter, shoulders squared despite her fragile frame. Her voice was low, final.

"If I can't have love," she said, voice steady, cold, "I want power."

The confession struck harder than any scream could, it split him. His breath hitched. The world halted. The air left the room.

He blinked, unable to comprehend the change in her.

And for the first time since he dragged her from the shadows of the abandoned factory, dread seeped into his bloodstreams.

This is not my Lash.

She was softness. She was defiance wrapped in light. She was--

Gone.

He blinked at her, again, chest heavy. His hands curled at his sides, useless.

He rubbed the ring harshly in agony, like a man possessed, it's weight heavier than ever. A mark. A memory. An anchor to a past that no longer existed.

The inscription mocked at him. A prayer turned curse. 

"Lash"

He whispered her name, and it slipped through the silence like a broken spell.

Not to reach her.

But to mourn her.

Because the girl he loved was dead.

Her face, once a beacon of innocence and hope, was now a mask of something far more dangerous, and he knew, the one standing before him was her ghost--elegant, hollow, and weaponized. A queen without crown, but with every intention to steal one.

But somewhere deep inside her, beneath the layers of pain, beneath the steel mask and measured words--he saw it. 

A fire.

The same fire that once lit up his world..

The same fire that could burn it all down.

She was no longer a person.

She was a choice. 

And Rudraj--broken, bleeding, haunted--didn't knew what he will choose.

Her salvation.

Or his destruction.

Will she save him? Or will she be the one to destroy him?

And for the first time in in his life, he wasn't sure which fate he needed more.

I hope you liked it.
I know, it's quite about emotions but it was necessary.
I promise that as the story progresses, it will become more interesting.

Pleased share your reviews on chapter and characters.

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