Stale odor of sweat and diesel wafted around the grimy hotel room, its peeling walls, trembling under the roar of a monsoon. Rain lashed at the tin roof as he ran a jagged shard of glass down her spine, blood beading under the kiss with delicate lines of red flesh. "casstte, my breath, we are stitched together by cruel fate," he murmured, voice a velvet blade. "Every scream I carve out there is a knot tying us tighter." Her eyes burned into his, fierce and unyielding. "Then let's bleed as one," she said, her lips crashing into his and tasted of salt, rain, and iron.
The door splintered as her father's men stormed in-five shadows armed with guns and chains, their boots thudding like drums of war against a floor distorted with age. He moved like a monsoon wind, snapping the neck of the first man with a wet crack; the man immediately crumpled into a rag-doll heap on the stained mattress. "You thought you could rip her from me?" he snarled, lunging at the second. His thumbs sank into the man's eyes, popping them like ripe fruit, blood and jelly oozing down his wrists as the man moaned and gurgled. "She's my sky-touch her, and I'll blind the world!"
A third charged, gun drawn, but smashed a broken bottle into the man's belly, glass shredding flesh in a crimson spray. Intestines spilled from it, slick and steaming, coiling on the ground like a lover's embrace. "You came to chain her," he roared, twisting the bottle until the man's screams died in a wet choke, his body slumping against the wall. The fourth swung a chain, its glinting, jangling links caught mid-air and drawn into a closer position for smashing the man with a chair leg on the chest. Ribs cracked like brittle twigs, blood splattered as the heart ruptured beneath the blow across the cracked mirror. "Her freedom's my hymn: I'll kill until it echoes!"
She wasn't idle. The fifth man caught her with one arm so hard that he left remnants of bruising on her skin, but she managed to stab a rusted hairpin into his throat, blood pooling for a hot second in a huge arc as she twisted it deeper, her hands steady despite the tremor in her breath. "For you, mera deewana," she gasped, voice hoarse with love and rage. He did pull her into his embrace as the world went awash with blood, the warmth and stickiness of his blood dripping from his chin down onto her face. "casstte, fire , pulse yearning, I'd drown the earth in red to keep you burning."
But after the last body hit the floor, a shadow loomed in the doorway-a woman clad in black, with cold steel eyes, and with rain dripping from her hood. He stuttered in his heart. "Who's this?" she whispered, gripping his bloody kurta, nails digging into its fabric. He did not answer, tension coiling taut as his gaze remained locked on the figure. Was this a new enemy, or a specter from his past?