Riaan didn't sleep.
Again.
His body was trembling—not from cold—but from the feeling of a thousand eyes inside that house. Eyes painted on old canvases. Eyes that watched from behind silks. Eyes that whispered:
You're next.
He had spent the night locked in his room, barricading the door with a chair. The tape from Aarav still echoed in his mind. His voice, breaking. Pleading.
A man Devika had loved once.
A man she had erased.
And maybe not the only one.
---
Morning came with gold light and the sound of bangles.
Meher.
She was standing at his threshold, a shawl wrapped tight, her lips pale.
"You went down there," she said. Not a question.
"I had to."
"What did you find?"
"A voice," he replied. "One that never left."
She stepped in. Closed the door softly. And for the first time… she reached for him.
Not with the shyness of a girl.
But with the fear of someone trying to save a man already falling.
"I don't want her to break you," Meher whispered. "She ruins every man who touches her. She feeds on what they feel."
Riaan cupped her cheek gently.
"I'm not sure I can still feel."
Her lips brushed his.
Slow.
Trembling.
Real.
It wasn't heat.
It was oxygen.
A breath stolen from drowning.
They kissed like two people who had nothing left to believe in—except each other.
But as their foreheads touched, a voice cut the air.
"Beautiful."
Devika.
At the doorway.
Uninvited. Undisturbed.
Draped in white this time. Silk, sheer, spectral.
"You make a lovely pair," she said, stepping in. "It's always fascinating… who people run to when they think death is near."
Riaan stood between them now.
Protectively.
"What happened to Aarav?" he asked, voice flat.
Devika blinked.
Then smiled.
And in that smile… was fire.
---
Three hours later, Inspector Raghav returned.
With two constables.
A sealed warrant.
"On charges of disappearance and suspected homicide—pending forensic retrieval from beneath the estate."
But Devika stood calm in her foyer, offering tea to the officers.
"I've buried nothing," she said sweetly. "They all chose to stay."
She turned to Riaan with that same velvet smile.
"Didn't you?"
Before he could answer, Meher grabbed his hand.
"Tell him about the diary," she urged. "Tell him what she did."
But Riaan's eyes were fixed on something else.
The oil painting on the far wall.
A new one.
Wet paint. Still drying.
It was him.
But with blood on his collar.
And fire behind him.
He staggered backward.
"Why did you paint me like that?" he whispered.
Devika's voice was honeyed poison.
"Because I saw your end the first day you arrived."
---
And then—
flames.
From the east wing.
Screams. Shouting. Crackling wood.
The Haveli was on fire.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
The music room.
The place where secrets slept.
The past was burning—and it wanted to take someone with it.