The journey back to her childhood village was a blur of swaying silk and the rhythmic thud of the palanquin-bearers' feet. Inside the doli, Pankhudi sat huddled, her body a battlefield of contradictory sensations. She could still feel the phantom weight of Nakul’s massive frame, the lingering heat of his final, tender worship at her core, and the dull, persistent throb of the brutal possession that had preceded it. She felt heavy—filled with his seed, marked by his touch, and suffocated by the heavy gold he had draped over her.

When the doli finally came to a halt in front of her father’s modest home, the familiar sounds of her childhood—the lowing of a cow, the clatter of steel vessels, the scent of parched earth—hit her like a wave.