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I slapped him. Hard, and full across his cheek, in front of the entire, breathless city of Banaras. His head snapped to one side with the force of it, the sound cracking through the air like something struck from a temple bell, sharp, final, undeniable. The whole marketplace fell silent in the space of a single heartbeat. Eyes widened around me. Someone's breath left their body in an audible gasp. I stood there afterward, drawing in long, ragged breaths, as though the act itself had cost me more courage than I possessed, because it had. For a girl like me, it had taken everything. I could have stayed silent. I could have looked away, the way everyone else in that crowd had chosen to. But I hadn't. Why? I still don't fully know. It was instinct, pure and unthinking, I hadn't planned to raise my hand, hadn't imagined myself capable of it. But watching him beat that old man with such brutal, mechanical indifference had lit something in me that refused to be reasoned with. Couldn't he see the man was old enough to be his father? This wasn't the reckless violence of a man who'd simply lost control for sport. He must have had his reasons, everyone always does. But reasons or not, couldn't he have spoken instead? Respectfully. Was that truly too much to expect of a man, even a gunda like him? Maybe it was. His face was still turned from the force of the slap when the sky itself seemed to answer me. Thunder cracked somewhere far above, low and rolling, and a hard gust of wind swept through the marketplace so suddenly that I staggered half a step. Moments ago we had all been drenched in sweat beneath a scorching afternoon sun; now the air had shifted entirely, cool and heavy, like the held breath before a monsoon storm. My dupatta caught the wind and began to lift and flutter wildly, and I fought to gather it back, right as I felt him turn. Slowly. Deliberately. His head came back toward me, and though I couldn't see his eyes yet, I could feel his gaze land on me like a physical weight. No one had ever looked at me with that kind of intensity before, not affection, not anger exactly, not even simple menace. It was something else entirely: a burning, confused fury, tangled with something I couldn't name. My skin prickled beneath it. The fine hairs at the back of my neck rose, my whole body flushing hot as though I'd been dipped in something molten, goosebumps rising along my arms despite the sudden cold in the air. I was scared. Genuinely, unmistakably scared, I won't pretend otherwise. There was something in the very air around him, some invisible current of danger, that silenced me completely. And not only me. The entire crowd had frozen where they stood, trembling collectively in the wake of whatever aura surrounded this man, unable to step forward either to protect me or to save themselves. Then his hand rose. I closed my eyes instantly, certain, utterly certain, that the return slap was coming, that this was simply how men like him settled things, using their hands against anyone smaller, anyone weaker, anyone who dared to challenge them in public. But I told myself, even in that frozen second, that I would not stay silent if it came. I would fight. Whatever happened next, I would not simply let it happen to me. But the slap never landed. I opened my eyes slowly, cautiously, only to find his fist closed instead around my dupatta, the very fabric the wind had stolen from my shoulder, now caught and gathered in his grip, forming a strange, fragile barrier between his body and mine. Carefully, almost deliberately slow, he pulled it downward, and in that motion, our eyes finally met. And they were familiar. Familiar in a way that stole the air from my chest, as though I had seen them somewhere before, though I couldn't place where, and my treacherous, forgetful memory offered me nothing useful, no name, no place, no dream to anchor the feeling to. His expression gave away nothing. His eyes were empty in the strangest way, not lifeless, but vast, a hollow, black stillness that felt like both a curse and an invitation, the kind of darkness a person could drown in and somehow not mind drowning. My mind stayed caught there, snagged on his eyes, even as his hand continued lowering the dupatta and the rest of his face slowly came into view. A jawline framed by a neatly trimmed beard. A long, straight nose. Cheeks shadowed faintly along the jaw where the beard thickened. And then, without my permission, my gaze slipped lower, to his lips. I stopped there entirely. They were, simply, beautiful, a deep, dark red, perfectly shaped, unfairly striking on a man who had just been beating someone senseless minutes ago. Whoa. What on earth was I doing? I had never once in my life caught myself fantasizing about a stranger's mouth, and yet here I stood, doing exactly that, in the middle of a street, moments after slapping him T R O P E S Gangster ร Historian He Falls First and harder Enemies to Lovers[Partial] Slow Burn Grumpy ร Sunshine Forced proximity The City's Most Feared Man ร The Girl Least Afraid of Him Fated Encounter Touch Her and Die Morally Grey Hero ร Kind-Hearted Heroine Fated Souls Forbidden love
