"Sonh teri main kasam yehi khaunga
Keetey waadeya nu umraan nibhaunga
Tujhe har vaari apna banaunga
Main tera ban jaaunga
Main tera ban jaaunga"
~Tera Ban Jaunga: - Akhil Sachdeva, Tulsi Kumar~

I was in the haveli garden at six in the morning when Devika Aunty found me.

She was doing the rounds she did every morning—checking on the garden, speaking briefly to the staff, moving through the day's beginning with the quiet ownership of a woman who knew every corner of her home.

She didn't seem surprised to find me there.

She sat on the stone bench beside me without invitation and without explanation and looked at the garden with me for a while.

"He told me what happened," she said eventually. "Aadhir, I mean. Not Aadyant."

"I know Aadyant hasn't told anyone. He's waiting."

"He's very good at waiting for you specifically."

I looked at my hands. "Did you know? About the decree?"

"Yes. I've known since before we had children. It's part of the history of this family."

"Were you worried? About telling us?"

"I was—not worried. Cautious. I wanted it to come at the right time. I don't think Aadhir entirely succeeded at that, but—" A pause. "He tried.

"He thought Aadyant would come home unattached. That there'd be time to arrange something."

"Yes."

"And then there wasn't."

"And then," Devika aunty said, "there was you."

Silence.

"Can I ask you something?" I said.

"Anything."

"If I say yes—if I choose this—am I becoming something? Entering into something that will change who I am? The way the family—the way all of it works—"

"Yes," she said. Simply.

I looked at her.

"It would be dishonest to tell you otherwise. You would be entering a world with weight and history and expectations. There would be things asked of you that are not asked of other women your age." She met my eyes. "But—it would also be dishonest to tell you that the weight is heavier than the belonging. That the history is heavier than the love. I entered this family twenty-one years ago and I have never once regretted it."

"Not once?"

"Not once. And I was younger than you are now. And I had less certainty than you do."

"How do you know I have certainty?"

"Because I watch you with my son," she said. "And what I see is not a girl who stumbled into something she doesn't understand. I see someone who has chosen, carefully and deliberately, every step of the way. You are not swept along. You decide."

I stared at the garden.

"I'm scared," I said.

"Good."

"That's the second time someone in this family has said that to me."

"We're consistent people."

I almost smiled.

Devika aunty stood. Smoothed her saree.

"Whatever you decide," she said, "you are already part of this family. The decree doesn't create that and the absence of it wouldn't undo it. So let that not be the weight you carry. The only question worth asking is: what do you want?"

She left me to the garden.

I sat there for a long time.

~That Evening~

I called Bua.

She picked up on the second ring, the way she always did when she'd been waiting for the call.

"Beta," she said. Just that.

"Bua, I need to tell you something."

"Tell me."

I told her. Everything. The decree, the meeting, Aadyant in the garden, the days of thinking that had felt less like crisis and more like standing very still and listening to myself.

Bua was quiet through all of it.

When I was done, the silence on the line was warm and close, the way her silences always were.

"Say what you're thinking," I said.

"I'm thinking," Bua said carefully, "about an fourteen-year-old girl who arrived at my door three years ago with two bags and very careful eyes. Who wouldn't let anyone touch her. Who flinched at loud sounds and spent the first three months barely speaking."

My throat tightened.

"And I'm thinking about the woman on the phone right now. Who is calling me from a palace in Jodhpur because she has a big decision to make. Who is thinking about the future not as something to survive but as something to choose."

"Bua—"

"Let me finish."

"Sorry."

"In three years, I have watched you rebuild yourself. And I have been so proud of you, every day, in ways I don't know how to say properly. But this—" Her voice was very steady. "This is the part I didn't dare hope for. Not just that you'd heal. But that you'd trust someone enough to build something new."

"I'm still scared."

"I know. But beta—are you scared of him? Of the future with him? Or are you scared because you want it so much and wanting things has always felt dangerous?"

I let that question sit in me.

Let it settle all the way to the bottom, where I kept the things I had learned to be honest about.

Wanting things has always felt dangerous.

Yes. That was it exactly.

"The second one," I said.

"Then you already know what you want, beta. You're just working up to saying it."

I put my face in my hand. Pressed my eyes against my palm.

"What would you think? If I said yes? If we got married?"

A pause. Then, in a voice that was not steady anymore:

"I would think that my niece finally chose something good for herself. And I would think that I'll need a new saree for the occasion. And I would—" She stopped. I could hear her composing herself. "—I would be at that wedding if I had to walk there."

I was crying. I wasn't sure when I'd started.

"I love you, Bua."

"I love you too, Kashvi. My brave, brilliant girl."

We stayed on the call for another hour. Not talking about the decision. Just talking. About nothing. About everything. The way we did when I'd first arrived at her house, back when talking had been the only safe thing.

When I finally hung up, the haveli was quiet around me.

I sat on the edge of my bed in the room that was mine for two weeks, in a palace two hundred years old, in the city that had made the person I loved.

And I let myself want it.

All of it.

Without apology.

~

~The Next Morning~

She found me on the rooftop terrace, where I'd been going every morning since we'd arrived because the fort was most itself in the early light—golden and specific and impossible to misread.

I heard her footsteps on the stairs. Knew it was her before she appeared.

She came and stood beside me. We looked at the fort together for a moment.

"I talked to Bua last night," she said.

"Yeah?"

"And your mother, the morning before."

"I know. Maa told me she spoke with you. Not what you talked about."

"Good."

A pause. The city was beginning its morning below us—sounds filtering up, the first calls to prayer, the distant movement of a market waking.

"I've been thinking," she said.

"I know."

"About what it means. What I'd be choosing. The weight of it and the belonging of it and all the things that come with your name and your family and—all of this."

I said nothing. She'd said to give her time and I had given it. Whatever came next was hers to say at her pace.

"And I've been thinking about what I want. Not what makes sense. Not what the practical answer is. What I want."

"What I want," she said, "is this. You. The terrible morning moods and the two cups of coffee and the way you come to my studio at midnight to make sure I've eaten. The way you learned how my anxiety works before I knew you were doing it. The way you made space for me, in your life, in your home, in your family, like I was someone worth making space for."

She turned to look at me.

"I want Jodhpur and the palace and whatever the future looks like from here. I want your family, who are already mine. I want Aadya as my actual sister and Ivaan demanding rematches for the rest of our lives and Ziva texting me about fabric forever. I want all of it."

"And the decree—I'm not saying yes because of it. I want to be clear. I'm saying yes because I was always going to say yes, I just needed to get here without being rushed."

"And here means—"

"Here means I'm not scared of wanting this anymore. I'm just—" she let out a breath that was almost a laugh, "I'm just—ready."

I stared at her.

She looked at me steadily, both hands wrapped around her coffee mug, standing on my rooftop in the early Jodhpur light, looking more like herself than I had ever seen her.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

I crossed the distance between us in two steps and held her face in both hands and she let me, which she always did now, which still felt like the most extraordinary thing that had ever happened to me.

"June," she said against my hands. "Let's get married in June. Quietly. Just people who matter."

"June," I said. "Anything you want."

"That's all I want. Just that."

I kissed her. Slow and certain.

Below us, Jodhpur was fully waking up, loud and blue and uncontainable.

When we pulled apart, her eyes were bright.

"We should probably tell your family," she said.

"In a minute."

"Aadyant—"

"One more minute." I put my forehead against hers. "Just let me have this first."

She settled. Let me have it.

The fort watched us from its rock, six hundred years patient, unhurried.

Below, somewhere inside, I could hear Ivaan arguing with Rishvik about something and Aadya's voice cutting across both of them and Maa telling everyone to come for breakfast.

The whole family, loud and present and entirely themselves.

Our family.

"Okay," I said finally. "Let's go tell them."

Kashvi smiled.

Full. Unguarded. Completely hers.

"Let's go."

~
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