The distant, melancholic wail of the shehnai had finally faded, leaving behind a hollow silence that was somehow louder than the day’s cacophony. The bidaai was over. Sheetal was gone, her tear-streaked smile imprinted on the inside of Shivangi’s eyelids every time she blinked. The air in the hotel corridor was thick with the scent of wilting marigolds and residual sorrow.

She leaned against the wall, the heavy silk of her lehenga feeling less like finery and more like a cage. Her body, however, hummed with a completely different energy, a live wire of anticipation that had nothing to do with her sister’s departure and everything to do with the man whose heat she could feel radiating beside her.