“I am glad that you do.” Dhadi smiled. She reached over and pinched Durkhanai’s stomach. “Do I need to have Doctor Aliyah send you more vitamins? You’re too thin.”

Durkhanai let out a startled cry. “Dhadiiii,” she replied with a pout. “I am more than healthy.”

“I’ll have the cooks make you halwa drenched in ghee, that’ll do you good,” Dhadi replied, unbelieving. “And I won’t hear anything more.”

“Acha, okay, Dhadi,” Durkhanai agreed, releasing a little laugh. Her grandmother looked at her closely. Heart beating fast, Durkhanai called on every ounce of willpower she had not to look away—doing so would surely raise Dhadi’s suspicions.

Instead, Durkhanai smiled reassuringly. Dhadi pinched her cheeks, dark eyes warm.

“Acha, chiriya,” her grandmother replied. “Now I’m off. Go, gudiya, continue your wandering. Let your heart lead the way; you’ll find what you’re looking for eventually.”

Her grandmother left her to attend to some important matters, not taking Durkhanai along with her.

She released a long breath. Durkhanai pressed a hand to her heart, trying to steady its rapid beating. Guilt needled through her to be deceiving her grandmother, but what choice did she have?

Taking measured breaths, Durkhanai went to the window. The wind sent her open hair into a frenzy of honeyed curls around her face, and she let it, inhaling the fresh air.

A little while later, another joined her.

He rested his hand on the sill beside her legs, and she noticed his beard had grown in longer. The setting sun made his face glow golden, his eyelashes casting long shadows onto his cheeks.

He said nothing. Neither did she. They just kept one another company, and any unpleasantness she had felt that day drifted far, far away. Zarmina’s worry and Saifullah’s disappointment, it all faded away, like clouds after losing their rain.

Asfandyar turned to look at her, and when he smiled a soft smile, her heart felt full like she had just drunk the sweetest cup of chai on a cold afternoon.

She had read about love: the all-consuming kind. She had always been in awe of it, sort of like it was magic, almost like it wasn’t real. And she so desperately wanted it to be real.

Later that night, standing on her balcony, the night air was a warm embrace. May brought with it the sweet and endless days covered in a soft rose gold sheen. Leaning on the railing, a sigh escaping her lips, Durkhanai wondered.

She wondered and wondered and wondered, looking up to the stars, sprinkled across the horizon like raw sugar, and she plucked them from the sky, let them melt in her mouth.

If she stuck out her tongue, would it be stained gold with starlight or navy from the night sky?

Chapter Twelve