Vodka on the rocks

The Third Queen [ A Horror TS - Ft. Raghvi]

Raghav smiled lightly at his wife as Pallavi finished the worship with the loud gongs of the Bhavani temple. He was seated at the steps of the temple pond waiting for her as men for some reason weren't allowed inside the sanctum sanctorum. The waft of the mogra flowers in her long hair and the sandalwood and incense of the offerings in the big brass plate she carried made him instantly aware of her presence. 

"Here, take the prasad."

Pallavi gave him the aarti, touched his head and his chest in the universal gesture of transferring the blessings of the Supreme Goddess. 

"Is the worship over?"

Shakuntala Devi asked while walking over to them. She was the grand matriarch of the Sisodia Clan, the de facto rulers of the place. Raghav's client was the current Prince of the Royal Household of Bikaner and he had very kindly invited Raghav and Pallavi over for his anniversary. Pallavi and Raghav having being married in very weird circumstances had not even remembered about their pending honeymoon which for some reason Jaya Rao seemed very insistent on sending them to. 

So here they were in a business trip/honeymoon sorta trip in Rajasthan, as guests of the Royal Family of Bikaner. 

Both our central characters had reached a somewhat pleasant phase of their relationship after the entire fiasco that went down with the Deshmukhs where Pallavi had strongly rebuffed her so called former father in law, Vijay Deshmukh for trying to humiliate her husband in a completely inhumane manner. She was sick and tired of fighting for these people who didn't even hesitate for a second to throw her out, on a stranger's words. 

So she had given up on her former family and instead focussed on building her own dreams.

 Something which she found her new family surprisingly supported her, a lot in. 

Jaya had been more of a mother to her than she was to Raghav and Keerti, something which the other two loved to complain about but everyone knew, it was only in good humour. Her sister in law, Keerti had always been a very good friend but of late, she has proved to be a complete sweetheart. Pallavi had found someone she could share everything with.... someone without Manasi's superiority complex or Amrutha's juvenile immaturity or Krishna's somewhat reverential distance. Keerti had become her best friend. She had her brother's vivacious personality in addition to Jaya's calm wisdom and a mischief uniquely her own. 

Farhad had become such an intrinsic part of Pallavi's life that at this point she wondered whether she could survive a single day without her brother in law. Pallavi knew she could depend on her husband's secretary for anything and in any situation. He had, to some extent, become that younger brother she always wanted and the hole which Nikhil had left in her soul had slowly started filling. 

Raghav.... what could she even say about this man. Her husband was still a complete enigma. Whenever she thought she had him figured, he would go and do something so starkly different and shocking that all her carefully plotted perspective would blow apart like confetti in the wind. Pallavi had never felt the need for protection from anyone in all her twenty six years of existence. She had never leaned on anyone before and she had pledged that she never will in future. She hated dependency of any kind. And then came this man who within a flip second managed to upturn all her rigidly set boundaries. 

Her husband was a tornado which had engulfed her from all sides and whisked her away to a place which she had only seen in her delirium ridden fever dreams. After the death of her first husband, Pallavi had promised herself that she would never fall for any man ever. Love will only make her weak, will only break her more. 

But it seemed fate had other plans for our resident heroine. 

Raghav Rao thundered in like a gargantuan river and crashed with a splitting force, leaving everything disoriented and unbalanced, consumed by the literal wildfire that was his core.