AUTHOR'S POV

The garden was white and green, and silent the way only sacred things are silent.

Rows of lilies stretched in every direction, their petals almost translucent in the afternoon light, their stems holding them up like small dignities. The air smelled green and cool, faintly sweet. And through it all, running with the complete and reckless joy that only belongs to those who are three years old and unafraid of everything, was Kavya...

Round cheeks, puffed like she was holding the rasgulla inside them. Lips the deep red of cherries left on the branch too long. A white frock that billowed and swayed behind her as she darted from stem to stem, without a second thought, pressing her tiny nose directly into the open throats of flowers, inhaling them like they owed her something. Her fingers moved over each petal the way only a child's fingers move, learning the world through touch before language has a chance to explain it.

She was speaking to the lilies. No one was listening. She didn't care.

And then, satisfied in the way she was always satisfied, she plucked the most beautiful one she could find, held it above her head like a small trophy, and ran.

The wooden benches at the edge of the farm were her destination, her daily claim, her kingdom of one.

Except today, someone was already sitting there.
She stopped. Tilted her head.

Studied him the way children study things they cannot yet name.

He was a boy. Maybe eight. Maybe older, she couldn't tell. Blue eyes that didn't look at anything in particular. Lashes that seemed too long for a boy, too wasted. He was holding himself very still, which was the thing that confused her most, because no one she knew ever sat that still unless they were sleeping or unwell.

Nothing about him was extraordinary, not really. Just a boy. Just those impossible blue eyes staring at a middle distance no one else could see.

She recognised nothing about him.
He was none other than Kabir.

Kabir, who had learned silence before he learned to walk. Kabir, who kept everything he felt pressed down so deep inside himself that sometimes he forgot it was there at all. Kabir, who had been sitting in this lily garden for an hour now, not because he loved lilies, but because he had nowhere left to go and no one left to go to.

He had watched the little girl running through the farm earlier. Had said nothing. Had looked away. But hee smile stayed in his mind without welcome.

Kavya stared at his bench, then at him, then at his bench again.

She climbed up beside him, settling herself with the gravity of someone claiming territory that had always belonged to them. She placed the lily in her lap and looked down at it. Smiled. Turned it slowly in her hands, watching the petals catch the light.

A small, complete happiness.

Beside her, Kabir turned his eyes to look at her. At her smile.
Foolish! Happy with just a flower..
Then looked away again.

She was looking at him now. That much he could feel. The weight of a curious child's attention is unlike any other weight in the world.

She spoke. The words came out soft and slightly tangled, consonants replaced by her own versions of them, vowels stretched or swallowed.

"Ale you upset?"

He turned and gave her the sharpest look he had. Eight years old, and already his glare could make adults uneasy.

"That's none of your business." A beat. Then, with the cruelty that frightened children use when they want to be left alone, "You little rat."

The words hit a girl made entirely of softness, a girl who was essentially a flower that had learned to walk.

Kavya's lower lip came forward. She thought about this for a moment. Then she extended the lily toward him, her small arm reaching across the space between them as if it were the most illogical thing in the world.

"Gussa mat kalo," she said solemnly.
(Don't be angry.)

Then, gathering herself with the authority of someone delivering important medical information,

"Mumma kehti hai, gussa karne se brain burst ho jaata hai. Tum toh bahut chhote ho abhi. Bina brain ke kaise rahoge?"
(Mumma says when you get angry, your brain bursts. You're still very small. How will you manage without a brain?)

Kabir looked at her.
He looked at the lily.
He closed his eyes..
Sigh.

He was not angry at her. He had never been angry at her. He was angry at the universe, at God, at whatever force had decided that two days ago was the right time to take both his parents from him in a single stroke.

He had stood at their pyre yesterday and not cried, because crying felt like admitting it, and he was not ready to admit it yet. And tonight, by midnight, he was supposed to leave the city where he was born. Leave the house where his mother had sung to him. Leave the streets where his father had taught him to stand straight and look men in the eye. Leave every wall that still held the shape of the life he'd had.

He was eight years old.

He opened his eyes. Looked at the lily. Looked away. Did not take it.

But Kavya was patient with broken things, even when she was too small to know they were broken.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, settling the lily back in her own lap since he didn't want it. "I have never seen you before. I come here every day. Every single day." She paused, with great significance. "I love lilies." Another pause. Curious. "Do you love them too?"

Then, with no hesitation at all, "Will you be my friend?"

Silence.

She waited. Tilted her head a little more.

Then she reached out her lily again, a second offering. Her arm extended, steady, patient.

Something shifted in him.
He turned to look at her. Properly this time. That small face, round-cheeked and completely earnest, holding a flower out to him like it solved something.

He spoke, and for just a moment he sounded exactly his age.

"I don't know your name."

Her whole face lit up.
"I'm Kaya." The v somewhere in the middle of her name dissolved entirely when she said it, swallowed by her tongue before it could form. She didn't notice. She smiled her open, uncomplicated smile.

He nodded. Extended his hand toward her with a formality that was almost funny coming from him.

"I'm Kabir. Kabir Singh Oberoi."

She considered this. Counted the words.

"It's too big," she announced. "Can I call you Kar? It's easy."

"No." Firm as a closed door.

Kavya pouted and held up her fingers, one by one.

"Kabir." First finger. "Singh." Second. "Ob-" She stopped. Frowned. Looked at the third finger like it had betrayed her. "What was the last one? I forgot."

Kabir exhaled. The kind of exhale that is too heavy for an eight-year-old's chest.
He stood up.

"There's no need to remember it," he said. The composure was back, pressed tight. "I'm leaving this city tonight. This country. You'll never see me again."

"Don't say that." She shook her head with complete certainty. "Mumma says we always meet a second time. We just don't know the future."

He went still.
Looked at her face. At the absolute conviction sitting there, uncomplicated, unafraid.

She stood from the bench and walked up to him. Held out the lily one final time. Her small fingers steady around the stem.

"Keep this with you," she said softly. "And remember me. Always.."

He did not take it.
It fell. White petals against brown earth.

He just walked away...

"Kabir." Her voice came after him, small and clear as a bell struck once.

He did not stop.
He walked out through the gate and got into the waiting car without looking back. His PA, yes a PA for eight years old, he said nothing. The driver said nothing. As Kabir get into the car, it moved.

For five minutes. Then ten..

When something shifted inside him,
"Turn the car around," he announced. "Back to the garden!"

"Sir, we'll miss the-" the PA tried to give excuse.

"It's my order!" Kabir spoke with finality. The car turned.

He was running before the door was fully open.

Back to the bench. The lily was on the ground where it had fallen. And beside it, a few steps further, something else. Something small and glinting.

The tiara Kavya was wearing.

Kabir picked up the lily and the tiara. He looked up, looked around. The farm was quiet. She was nowhere.

"Kaya." He shouted his lungs out.

Nothing.

"Kaya!" His voice trembled. He ran all around the farm searching for the girl, he couldn't define what meant to him...

At the back of the farm, half-hidden, stood an old palace. Old stone, cracked and leaning, windows dark.

Inside it, three men stood in a loose circle.

And in the center of that circle, bound at the wrists, a white frock now grey with dust, her mouth gagged with cloth, her cheeks soaked, her eyes wide and wild with terror, was Kavya.

She couldn't scream. She was trying to.

The men were talking, low and unhurried, the particular ease of people who believe they won't be interrupted. One of them smirked. Took a step toward her. His habd raised to touch the small trembling girl.

When suddenly,

The back of his skull opened, blood pooling out.
He dropped at her feet, face-down, before the sound of the gunshot fully registered.

Kabir stood in the doorway.

Eight years old. A gun in both hands that should have been too heavy for him. He hadn't seen such thing in movies..it was a part of teaching a father gives to his son. Not any normal father, but the one who knows his son's life will be in danger always and always he'll have to save himself.

But Kabir raised the gun, shot for the first time..to save Kavya.

His small frame, trembling a little with the force gun has exerted on him. But his eyes, set on the man who kidnapped Kavya.
His PA and four guards standing behind him in the shadows.

The remaining two men did not have time to decide what to do.

It was over very quickly. The guards held them before any of their move.

Kabir crossed the distance in six strides and knelt before her, already working the rope at her wrists, his fingers fast and sure. The cloth at her mouth came away. Before she drew a ragged breath. She launched herself at him.

Both arms around his neck, her whole small body pressed against his chest, her face buried in his collar, crying the way children cry when the find comfort even in terror.

He hesitated.
One second. Two..

Then his arms came up and wrapped around her. Slowly. Like he was learning how..

"You're alright now." His voice was low. Certain. "No one will touch you."

She only cried harder.

He held her. Let her cry. Did not rush it, did not shush it, did not make it smaller than it was. Just held on, this boy who was leaving everything today, this boy who was also in pieces, held her as if she meant everything to him.

In a few minutes, her breathing slowed and the shaking in her shoulders quieted and the crying wound itself down to something bearable.

He pulled back. Looked at her face.

He wiped her tears with his thumb. Carefully. Like she was something that could be damaged by careless handling.

"I'm here now, Kaya."

Her lower lip came forward again. Trembling. The most heartbreaking thing he'd ever seen..

He stood. Held out his hand. She took it, and he led her out, through the cracked stone doorway, back into the light, back between the rows of white flowers.

When they were in the middle of the farm he stopped walking. Reached out and plucked a lily.

Turned to face her.
And tucked it behind her ear.

His face, which had been stone and shadow for two full days, changed. A small thing. A faint thing. But real.

He smiled..

He knelt in front of her, hands resting on his knees, eyes level with hers.

"Don't fall into trouble again," he said. "I won't be there to save you always.."

"Don't go, Kabir." A small request from her.

The smile disappeared.

He didn't want to go. For the first time in two days, he actually didn't want to go.
He looked at the ground for a moment, at the turned earth, at the white petals around them.

Then he looked back up.

"Remember to protect yourself, Lily." He extended his hand, palm up. "Promise?"

She looked at his hand. Then she held up her pinky finger. Tiny. Certain.

He looked at it for a moment. Then he hooked his own pinky around hers.

"Don't leave me," she whispered.

He opened his mouth. He wanted to say that he didn't want to go either..but then-

"Princess!" Her Nanny came running through the rows, breath ragged, face tight with worry. "You gave me a fright, where did you go, come come, Madam is searching for you, let's go home."

She grabbed Kavya's hand and pulled.

Kavya turned, fingers stretching back toward him, pinky still crooked, not ready to leave, not yet, her eyes on his face even as her feet were moved forward by someone else's urgency.

"We'll meet again." Her lips moved. A hope. A promise. Or god knows what it was.

Before Kabir could even register that,
The gap between them grew. Grew.

And she was gone. Her frame disappear from his eyes.

Kabir stood in the lily farm and looked at his own hand. The one she'd held. He uncurled his fingers slowly, looking at his pinky, at the invisible weight of a small promise.

His shirt was damp where her tears had been.

He looked at his PA. His voice had gone flat again, quiet and absolute.

"The men who took her. I want their bodies buried here. Right here. And a lily farm over every one of them." A pause. The words were too cruel to leave from even an adults mouth but it was from this eight year old boy, his mind gagged between pain, anger, loneliness and what not.
Everything that was unbearable for a child was beating inside him. He had the reason to show no sympathy to the world.

Someone took the life of his parents.
Someone he just met, a three year old was to face something too inhuman.
And he, himself was forced to leave the place he was born and spent eight years with his parents. The only place that held their memories.

Keeping the steel in his expression he completed his statement.
"Tell Dadu to buy me this entire land. All of it. That is the only condition on which I'll leave India tonight. Or else.. I'm not going anywhere."

He bent and picked up the lily from the ground. The one she'd offered him three times. The one he'd let fall.

He held it this time.

And walked to the car without looking back..

On the other hand, sitting inside her car, Kavya was looking out of the window towards the farm. She was holding the lily he gave her too tight that it may break.
Her lips curled, she looked at the Lily and said,
"Will I get to meet him ever? Will he ever give me Lily again?"

She looked out again. But the farm was too far. She has left the place. So he..

Not knowing..after 20 years their paths will cross again!

Twenty years later. Kabir's Villa.

The pendant was warm from where she'd been holding it.
Kavya lay on the bed in the night quiet, the ceiling above her blank and white, the lily he'd given her held up in her other hand. Dried now. Preserved. She'd pressed it between book pages years ago and kept it long after she'd forgotten which book, long after the color had gone out of it. It was pale gold and papery and still held its shape.
The book was her mother's, lying in that old house where she got lifetime trauma. And she had only picked it up, finally opened after she was married to the same man who once gave her that lily.

The memory moved through her like light through water.
The tucking of the lily behind her ear.

20 years ago. And then today.
She looked at the vass beside her filled with Lily. And on the night stand, the one fresh Lily he tucked behind her ear. She picked it up. And looked at it's petals. It was still fresh. But the one 20 years ago was dried. Just like memories must have dried..

"Did he forget me?" she said to the ceiling, soft and wondering. "I didn't even tell him my name properly. I said Kaya."

A small laugh, low in her throat. "I wish I could have told him. Kavya. My name is Kavya." She pressed her lips together. Looked at the pendant cradled in her palm, her fingers wrapping around it. "I wish I could tell him today. That I kept it. Twenty years, and I kept it."

She brought the pendant to her lips. Closed her eyes.

"Destiny," she murmured. "It really exists. Or I wouldn't have been married to the same Kabir I met twenty years ago." A pause. A smile in her voice, private and aching and warm. "Do you remember me, Kabir?"

The exact moment, In another room, in the same house, he heard every word through her pendant.

The pendant was not merely a pendant. It was designed for him. A micro camera. A microphone. Small enough to be beautiful. Sophisticated enough to betray nothing.

He saw what she saw. He heard what she heard, what she spoke.

He had listened to her talk to that lily and that pendant more times than she would ever know.

He leaned back. Set the live feed aside.
A smirk moved over his face, slow and private.

"Oh, really." He said it to himself, to the room. "My lily. For whom I bought an entire field just to bury her kidnappers."

A short, genuine laugh escaped him. Almost surprised.

"I didn't believe in destiny." He picked up the photograph from the table, her face caught mid-laugh in it, unguarded, lit by something warm. He studied it the way he studied everything, with the kind of attention that takes things apart to see what they're made of.

"Until you." He spoke dangerous in his voice.
His eyes went dark. Not cold. Something more complex than cold.

"Until you walked back into my life, Mrs. Kavya Kabir Singh Oberoi." His thumb moved over the edge of the photograph. "My wife. My life. My lily."

The smirk faded.

What replaced it was quieter. More serious. The expression of a man who has found something and is not yet certain..

"But there are things I don't know about you yet, Kavya Joshi...Things you're keeping." His jaw tightened, almost imperceptibly. "Don't worry."

He set the photograph down. Looked at it one last moment.

"Nothing stays secret from your husband. My Lily..."

His lips curled again. He looked up at the ceiling. The wall of his room, all covered by pictures of her.
Kavya. His wife. His Lily. His obsession..his possession..his everything. And all his...