Recap:
The fragile truce between Ishita Sharma and Aarav Rathore had begun to shift. A smile over burnt tea. A touch over an old scar. But destiny, always cruel and watching, decides to strike before their hearts can soften.

Ishita’s POV

The scent of sandalwood incense still lingered from evening prayers, but the air around me shifted—heavy, unspoken, wrong.

Aarav hadn't returned my messages after the banquet. Not unusual. But my chest wouldn't stop tightening.

At 12:07 AM, I found him.

Collapsed beside his grand mahogany desk, a shattered wine glass near his hand. His breaths were ragged, his lips tinged gray. A cold sweat coated his forehead.

"Aarav!" My voice cracked as I dropped to my knees.

He barely opened his eyes, lips curving into a pained smirk. “Poison… clever bastards…”

“You absolute idiot,” I whispered, pressing my fingers to his pulse. Thready. Irregular.

My heart began pounding louder than any diagnosis. “Not here. Not now.”

Not when I’ve just begun to care.

Emergency Protocol: Activated

I called for Kabir. Ordered Ramu kaka to secure the royal wing. Turned our private quarters into an instant surgical chamber. No hospital. No media. No scandal. No time.

I cut through his bloodstained sherwani, cleaned the entry wound of the toxin injection on his neck, and injected an emergency stabilizer.

But this… this wasn’t any common poison.

His pupils fluttered like falling stars. He was slipping. Fast.

So I did what I had never done before.

I used both my worlds—science and spirit.

Aarav’s POV (unconscious)

Voices pulled me from the edge.

Her voice.

"You're not allowed to die, Aarav Rathore," she said, anger choking her prayers.

Fingers burned against my chest, stitching me to life.

I’d faced bullets. Betrayals. Even God.

But never her.

She felt like… fate.

Scene: 3:10 AM – Inside the Palace

I had never performed such a surgery outside a hospital. Never with holy ash and scalpel in the same hand. But my mother’s mantra echoed in my soul:

“Some lives require miracles stitched with steel.”

I flushed out the neurotoxin from his bloodstream with a mixture of modern saline and an ancient detox elixir I had learned at Ishwaranand Ashram.

He convulsed once.

And then stilled.

“Live,” I whispered, “You stubborn, arrogant man… just live.”

Dawn

He stirred before sunrise.

I was still sitting by his bed, my head resting near his chest, listening for rhythm. For life.

He coughed softly. “You’re crying, Dr. Goddess…”

“You nearly died, Mr. Devil King,” I snapped, wiping my tears.

He smiled.

God, that smile.

“I knew… you’d save me.”

I wanted to slap him. And then hug him. So I did neither.

I handed him water instead.

Later That Morning

Kabir came in, grim-faced. "Someone smuggled a custom-engineered poison—arsenic laced with a synthetic paralytic—into the diplomatic banquet’s wine. It was meant for Aarav."

I looked over at Aarav, now half-sitting in bed, pale but recovering.

His eyes locked with mine.

He didn’t ask who.

He only said, "Find them. Quietly."

I nodded. “They made the first move.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You’re talking war?”

I folded my arms. “I’m talking retribution.”

Private Moment

Before I left to prepare his follow-up medication, he caught my wrist.

“Ishita.”

I stilled.

“Thank you. For not hesitating. For not running.”

“I’m your wife,” I said softly. “And I don't run from my own patients.”

He smiled again, slower this time.

“And if I said you’re more than that now?”

I looked at him. Long and hard.

Then said nothing.

Because the silence between us had already begun to change.

Midnight Again – Ishita’s Journal Entry

“Today, I saved the Devil King. Not because he is powerful.
But because he looked human.
Because for the first time… he looked like mine.”
– Dr. Ishita Rathore