The monsoon wailed while they hid in a rickety shack by the sea, waves crashing like the fury of a lover against the jagged coastline. The tin walls of the shack rattled, leaking rain that mingled on the floor with blood. He knelt in front of her, bloodstained hands clasping a dagger against his chest; the blade glimmered in the flickering light of a kerosene lamp.
"Carve into me, casstte," he said, voice scratching with adoration. "If my love is not pure, then let it spill for you. My body, my soul, my blood belong to you."
Shaking, she picked up the blade, her breathing heavy, yet she dropped it and kissed him-salty rain and faint buoyancy of blood mingling with their taste. "You're my chaos," she whispered, her breath warm against his lips, sari-draped body clinging like second skin.
"And you are my serenity, meri casstte," he uttered, holding her close as blood from his hands smeared on his back. "I would drown the stars to keep you near."
That night, her uncle came-a sanctimonious fool who had tried selling her into misery-beating the deluge with the sounds of his voice. Dragged to the beach under a cold and wet sand, he was bound with fishing wire so that the strands sunk painfully into his flesh and blood dripped down like teardrops. The psychopath had opened up his uncle's belly, the knife ripping through fat and muscle with a wet *rip*. They came streaming out of his belly like a steaming pile of rotten guts, curling into the waves, which turned red with the man's screams, a high-pitched sputtered bail. He shoved the knife into his chest, twisting it until the heart burst and a wave of red drenching his hands. "You thought you could trade her!" he spat, with one last vicious swipe severing the head, the neck breaking with a dull *crunch*. "She's my casstte, my dawn-I'd gut the world for her."
She watched from the shed, her saree flying in the wind, eyes dark with heartache and something unreadable. "You didn't have to," she stammered as he staggered back, blood dripping onto the sand.
"I had to, casstte," he said, holding her closely in a feral embrace, the warmth of her body contrasting with the cold gore on his skin. "He had been your soul's chain-and I broke it so that you would shine." The waves roared, but on the horizon, a faraway flicker of light winked-was it a boat or a threat?