Wounded Heart ✔

📖Prelude

She pressed herself into the shadowed corner, heart pounding with anxious hope and sharp dread. Every muscle tensed with a longing so fierce it burned, desire and fear swirling together. Her gaze locked on him, needing, desperate, as if the world beyond his silhouette had ceased to exist.

He was smiling—radiant, alive—his laughter swirling with painful brightness, sharp and oblivious. As he stood beside the other person, the brilliance in his eyes became a blade, not just shimmering with unreachable love, but also mocking her hope. She felt her chest tighten with envy, grief, and a desperate yearning, the happiness on his face splintering her composure from afar.

"How long will you let him haunt you?" her friend whispered, voice quivering, her eyes flickering with pity and exasperation. "He doesn't even see you tonight. Doesn't that break you?"

She drew a trembling breath, chest tight with grief and hope, forcing a fragile, defiant smile to her lips despite the ache splitting her chest and the helplessness beating beneath her bravery.
"He is the ache in every breath I take. Only when I draw my last. He will leave me."

Her friend's eyes flashed with growing impatience and concern, and her voice hardened, slicing through the air between them with frustrated urgency.
"He gave himself away tonight. You saw it—you heard his promises. He was never yours! Doesn't it hurt to keep loving a ghost?"

But the girl's smile returned, etched with sorrow and a fierce, quiet acceptance that bordered on resignation, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears and bittersweet resolve.
"Love doesn't beg for ownership," she murmured, her voice quaking yet steel-edged. "Every stolen glance, every word that knifes behind my teeth, every fleeting moment—those scorch my memory. He may belong to someone else, but the ache and the memory—those are chained to my soul forever. Sometimes, loving in silence burns hotter than shouting it to the world. It is enough. It must be."

Her friend shook her head, helpless before a devotion she couldn't understand—a love that bordered on heartbreak and obsession, something she saw as a beautiful poison. To the girl, however, this feeling was everything: love—merciless, unyielding, and eternal, both her greatest ache and her deepest solace.

*****

The room reeked of antiseptic and wilted flowers—a suffocating blend of hope and decay. Aashi lay propped on the pillows, each breath ragged and shallow. Her voice was a fragile shadow, but her eyes blazed—unyielding, fierce with love, anchoring him in the storm.

"Promise me something," she begged, the words quivering, each syllable thick with panic barely held at bay. "Please... before I'm gone."

He lurched forward, clutching her fragile hand with both his own, willing her to stay. His voice cracked with a mix of terror and love.
"I'll give you anything, Aashi. Anything. Just don't ask me to let you go."

Her lips flickered with a ghost of a smile, but her next words shattered the fragile calm.
"Marry her," she breathed, her eyes darting to the silent figure at the edge of the room. "She has always loved you, and I need to know you won't be alone. Let that be my last gift to you, and hers."

Silence swallowed the room. He recoiled, eyes wide in disbelief. The family gasped and sobbed, as if the ground had vanished.

"You... do you even understand what you're asking?" he choked out, voice strangled, staring at her as though she had driven a knife into his heart.

"I do," she whispered, her words trembling but resolute, as if she had lived this moment a thousand times in her nightmares. "Let it be my last wish. Before I close my eyes forever, let me see you both joined. It's all I ask."

"No!" he burst out, shaking his head wildly, clutching her hand as if he could change her mind by force of will. "Don't say those things. You're not leaving me, do you hear? What you want asks me to betray my own love for you. After all we've shared, I can't give myself to another just because you wish it."