Chapter 23 ✦ Madman And The Warrior Princess

「 ✧ 𝐊𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐤 ✧ 」

With those words ringing in the air, I kicked, my foot landing on his temple and his face whipping to the side. 

With an oomph, his hold on me loosened, and I tried to wiggle away.

The moment my body moved, his grip tightened, and he dragged me back.

He leaned in, his breath brushing my ear. "Tonight, Princess," he whispered, "you'll say yes."

I convulsed as the smell of gunpowder lingered in the air.

The blood in my veins was lava, and I was about to cry again. Because this Aryan, I did not know how to handle.

"And then, darling," he said in that husky voice, which only added to my discomfort. "You will watch the Phantom disappear."

I gasped at the name, freezing at the same time.

The fog of fear lifted.

My body turned cold.

The danger disappeared.

Memories I had locked away crashed to the surface.

My body stilled.

Aryan tsked. "Said the wrong name at the wrong time, didn't I, darling?" He asked, observing me.

I breathed deep, settling my racing heart and ignoring the different kind of fear that seeped into my blood. "How do you know that name?"

He smirked.

"My sincerest of apologies," he said.

"How..." I whispered and began pushing his hand away from my leg. "How do you know..." My voice broke.

He leaned forward and pecked the side of my mouth. "Did you really think I wouldn't find out?" He asked and replaced the muzzle of the gun with his hand and pulled me even closer.

The gasp that escaped my mouth was so loud, I could hear its echo travelling through the expanse of the forest. Tears spilt down my face, and my scalp was wet with sweat and tears.

"How?" I shivered as the name kept echoing in my mind.

"An ice cream truck as a disguise was smart, Princess," he said. I flinched. "But you should know that nothing, nothing, escapes my eyes," he said and began kissing my jaw.

A quiet, shaking sob clawed up my throat, which I tried to suppress. My heart felt hollow, scraped clean. My stomach twisted with a sick, gnawing fear.

Did he know?

Did he know what happened all those years ago?

Did he know who Phantom really was... and what he did to me?

Did he know the full, rotting truth I had buried so deep I sometimes convinced myself it wasn't real?

"No," I whispered. "No..."

The word fell from my lips like a prayer.

I shook my head, tears pouring freely now. He didn't know. He couldn't know.

Not him. Of all people, not him.

Please, God. Anyone but him.

Not Aryan.

He couldn't know what they did.

How they shattered me.

He couldn't know how I broke...

How they broke me.

Not Aryan.

Not him.

"No... You don't know..." I choked out, my voice cracking through the sobs.

He tilted his head, mock sympathy painted across his face. Then, he pouted. "Oh, but I do, Princess."

His voice dropped, soft and terrifying. "I know about the emails," he murmured. "The threats... everything."

My throat ran dry. 

This was torture.

He was torturing me.

"Don't tell.." I cried as shame rooted into my system. "Ah... Don't... don't tell anyone..."

His head tilted. "Of course, Princess." His voice was a low rasp as he leaned in, his breath warm against the shell of my ear. "All you have to do is marry me."

"You don't understand," I whispered, voice shaking. "You don't know what you're asking."

'I wish I could tell you, Aryan. I really do.'

'But I can't, because it's you.'

'I'd tell my family, the world, anyone... just not you.'

'You're too precious to me to know the truth.'

'To see what I did. Who I really am.'

"All I am asking is for you to stick to your decision, Princess." He nibbled on my ear. "Just follow through. That's it."

I shook my head, as my chest shook. "I can't." My voice broke.

"Why?" He growled in my ear, his nose, lips, and face digging into me more. "Why can't you marry me?"

"Because I don't deserve it!"

The only sound that followed my admission was the heaves that came from my lungs.

I felt his head turn to look at me, from the side of my face, his breath brushing my cheek. "Then what do you deserve?" He asked, gently, as if he hadn't pinned me down on the ground.

My eyes closed shut, as the word came out of me in a shameful whisper. "Pain."

The word echoed out, and the confession finally lifted a burden from my chest. And like a waterfall, the confession began spiralling out of me.

"I deserve hate!"

'I don't deserve my dreams coming true!'

"I deserve to suffer." My voice cracked, but I didn't stop.

"I don't deserve lo--" I choked. "I don't deserve peace or happiness. Not after what I did. Not after what I let happen."

Tears streaked down my cheeks, hot and relentless from the pain in my chest at my confession.

My skin was on fire from the friction, my mind had shut down, and nothing was there to stop me from confessing everything.

My chest heaved as I let the storm within me rage free.

"And I sure as hell don't deserve you!" I spat the last word like poison, like it would protect him from me. "You shouldn't even be standing here. You should be running as far as you can from everything I touch."

I could see the fire in his eyes at my words. I was confessing everything I had hidden from him for so long. Every clench of his jaw at my words escaped the storm that was in him.

"Why?" He asked again.

My face broke apart, crumpling under the weight of memory. "Because sixteen years ago," I choked, "I did something unforgivable."

I swallowed hard, bile rising in my throat.

"I sinned, Aryan. And sinners..." My voice broke. "...sinners don't deserve to be happy. We don't deserve peace."

My shame reached a new high, and my brain melted. "We deserve to be punished."

His eyes glowed.

He was getting the parts of me I had preserved and kept hidden from everyone. And the pleasure of it was evident in his eyes.

"You think punishment is what you deserve?" He growled in my ear and then licked it. "Good. Because I've spent a lifetime becoming the man who knows exactly how to deliver it."

I paused at his words. 

They terrified my soul.

"I am a madman, Princess," he whispered in his husky voice, and slowly my blood thrummed. "I will gladly fulfil all your depraved desires..." he paused and then moved to loom over me and continued, "even if you don't deserve it."

My mind registered what he claimed. How could he be my punishment when he was my salvation?

"Then let me be your executioner, darling." His eyes bore into my soul. "If you think pain is what you need... I'll be the one to give it to you."

My mouth fell open. I could hear my heart breaking through it all as it accepted what he said.

"I am your punishment, darling." His face was terrifyingly calm.

My chest felt crushed, my soul torn in two. It was as if he'd ripped my heart from my chest and shattered it beneath his feet.

"Marry me and repent."

I gasped as he grabbed me by my throat, cutting off my breath, and pulled me up.

"Atone for your sins under me."

I thrashed as I gasped for breath.

He was right. Marriage with him would have been a dream come true if he had only loved me back.

"Find your salvation through me."

My eyes rolled as my face and skin burned and froze at the same time.

"Marry me, Kanak Thakur," he declared, looming over me like a cruel god. "Marry me and surrender yourself to a lifetime of redemption." With that, he released me, and I fell on the ground, gasping.

A fit of coughing came over me, and I curled, my chest curving away from the ground as I heaved into the night, "Yes." I gasped and crashed and burned. My neck was aching. My chest heaved.

Jusy like that, I accepted his proposal. 

Because he was right. He would be delivering my punishment. He would be the one who gives me what I deserve. 

And he wouldn't even know about it.

"Submit." The word echoed through the night, and I looked at him through the tears of pain that swam in my eyes. I gulped, and my throat hurt.

"Yes," I moaned, accepting the sentence he decreed. And then sobbed, looking him in his devilish eyes. "Yes."

I deserved it, after all. A sad marriage was meant to be a punishment for my sins. Hate and cruelty at the hands of the man I loved. A lifetime of pretending to hate the man I loved with my every breath.

Maybe this was justice.

This was what I had earned.

To be touched by him, held by him, and yet never truly his.

To hear my name on his lips, not with tenderness, but with disdain.

So I'd wear my guilt like Sindoor.

I'd bury my shame beneath every smile I forced.

And I'd spend a lifetime pretending to hate the only man I had ever truly loved.

Because that was justice. That was redemption.

And sinners like me didn't deserve more.

"Good girl," he whispered, brushing the hair from my face. "Such a good girl."

I hiccuped.

My body was sore from his weight. My throat was sore from him choking me. My heart was sore from the lashes of his words. My soul from what was about to come.

"Look at the mess you've made of yourself," he tsked as he examined me from head to toe. "So much trouble for absolutely nothing."

My mind cleared.

"Move away from me," I rasped.

He raised a brow at my words. "Why? Don't you like your future husband so close to you?"

My jaw clenched. "Get. Away!"

He moved and, in one swoop, pulled me up, making me stand on the ground. The minute my feet touched the forest floor, my knees buckled. I collapsed, the cold earth biting into my skin as my knees slammed against the ground.

"Come on," Aryan said, voice devoid of tenderness. He grabbed my wrist and yanked me up before I could catch my breath. "We have to go."

I stumbled after him, barely able to keep up. My legs trembled beneath me, weak and spent, but he didn't look back. Not once.

"Where?" I rasped.

Silence.

We moved deeper into the forest. The only sound was the rustling of leaves beneath our feet and the soft jingle of my payal, eerily out of place in the stillness.

Then it happened.

My bare foot landed on a jagged pebble. A sharp, stinging pain bloomed instantly. I gasped, stumbling again, but Aryan didn't pause. His grip only tightened as he pulled me forward, like my pain was irrelevant.

Branches clawed at my arms, thorns scraped across my ankles and soles of my feet, but none of it compared to the ache growing inside me.

The ache of resignation.

I used to think I'd fight to my last breath to escape him. That no matter what, I would never let him win. But now?

Now, I didn't even know what winning meant anymore.

He led me through the dense trees until a clearing opened, and my heart burst at what I saw.

There stood, with moonlight spilling across it, a stone temple that looked like it had been forgotten by time. Ivy crawled over its weathered facade. The air here felt heavier, almost sacred.

He finally stopped, turned to face me, and only then did he let go of my wrist. My skin still burned from his grip.

"This is where I will execute your punishment, Princess," he said and gestured at me to walk into the temple. How did he even know of it? I didn't know.

His phone rang, and he pulled it out, answering it. "Have you reached?"

There was a voice, and then Aryan continued. "Just come to the location. You will understand." And then, he cut the call.

"I thought I told you to go in there, didn't I?" He asked, pocketing the phone.

All I managed to do was shake my head.

He rubbed a hand down his face, jaw clenched, exasperation flickering behind his otherwise unreadable eyes. "Not again," he muttered.

The silence between us stretched, thick and oppressive. Crickets chirped somewhere in the distance, unaware of the storm unfurling in the clearing.

I didn't move. My body refused. It was as if my soul had sunk into the ground, rooted by dread. That temple... it felt like the mouth of something cruel, waiting to swallow me whole.

His fingers found my chin and tilted it upward. I didn't want to meet his eyes, but I did. I always did.

"This," he said softly, "isn't the part where you get to disobey."

My lips trembled, but I bit them shut.

"You want pain?" he asked. "Obey me and you will actually enjoy it."

"And if I don't," I challenged him, knowing that it wouldn't change what he wanted and what I had consented to. What I was still consenting to.

I was fucked up.

He leaned in and whispered, "Then I will."

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