The cardboard lay torn and scattered across the floor like the remains of a desecrated shrine.
But the idol was still in his hands.
Small. Serene. Untouched.
Manu sat amid the wreckage, shoulders hollowed, skin pale, eyes red from hours of surrender but his grip was steady. He cradled the idol against his chest as though it were the last living thing in the room.
She had torn the box apart.
She had not taken this.
He looked up at her at last, not with anger, not with fear but only with distance so vast it frightened her more than any shout ever could.
"Quite egoistic," he said quietly, his voice hoarse but firm.
"For a person who's going to die."
A pause.
"I'm sorry," he added, without heat, without triumph.
"But I don't care."
The words landed like a collapse.
Smriti was panting now, breath breaking in shallow gasps, her body trembling from hunger, from exhaustion, from the slow realization that force had failed her. Her vision blurred at the edges, but she pushed herself forward anyway, crawling until her knees touched his.
All she could see was the idol.
That calm face. That unshaken stillness.
A sound escaped her throat, neither a laugh nor a sob, but something raw and ruined.
"Egoistic?" she whispered, her voice splintering like glass. "You think this is ego?"
Her hands hovered near his chest, trembling, aching to rip the idol away, to fling it into the dark hallway, to erase it.
"I call it survival, Manu," she said desperately. "I am fighting for my life. Because without you, I am nothing. A ghost in silk. A woman with power and no soul."
Her eyes locked onto the idol, hatred and terror twisting together.
To him, it was the Divine.
To her, it was theft.
"You say you don't care." she continued, her voice rising, cracking. "I don't care. So easily."
She laughed once, hollow and sharp. "I'm ready to turn this mansion into our grave, and you're looking at stone with more love than you've ever given me."
She grabbed his wrists suddenly, nails digging into skin stretched thin by fasting and prayer.
"If I'm going to die alone," she hissed, eyes wild, "then I'm taking your vision with me."
And then she lunged.
Not to hold it.
Not to understand it.
To destroy it.
Her hands shot for the idol, intent on smashing it against the marble floor, because in her unraveling mind, if Radha shattered, the space she occupied inside him would finally collapse.
"I will die." Manu said, his voice stripped of everything but truth, "but I won't let you destroy the idol."
He moved before the thought could soften.
He slapped her hard.
"Stop it."
The sound cracked through the suite like thunder against stone.
For a single, terrible instant, everything froze.
Smriti's head snapped to the side, the world tilting violently as pain bloomed across her cheek, sharp and burning. Her balance gave way. The floor rushed up to meet her.
And then...
Arms caught her.
Weak. Trembling. Certain.
Manu held her.