Chapter 59 Her side of storm
The door clicked shut behind Meher, and silence wrapped around Sana once again—like a shroud, cold and suffocating.
Sana didn’t move for a while.
She sat still on the edge of the bed, her hands in her lap, her eyes fixed on the window where the moonlight filtered through thin curtains. Outside, the palace buzzed quietly with life—but none of it touched this wing. This place was a corner meant for strangers.
And tonight, she felt like the biggest stranger of all.
Her gaze flicked toward the empty fireplace. No warmth. No life. Just a hollow frame filled with ashes that matched her heart.
Sana had thought she’d prepared herself for this moment—for seeing Hatim again.
But nothing could’ve prepared her for that version of him.
The Hatim who once chased her through palace corridors just to hear her laugh.
The Hatim who argued with the council to get her a proper seat beside him.
The Hatim who told her, “If anything ever happens, I’ll burn this palace down to find you.”
But he hadn’t burned anything.
He had forgotten.
Not just her name.
He’d forgotten their child.
Her fingers trembled as she reached for the drawer beside the bed.
Inside was a tiny piece of folded cloth—soft, white, embroidered with tiny blue stars.
It was the piece of fabric she’d once dreamt of wrapping their baby in.
The only thing she’d kept hidden all these years, pressed close to her chest, close to her soul.
She pressed it to her lips, eyes fluttering shut.
"Would you have loved him, Hatim?" she whispered into the night. "Would you have held his little hands the way you used to hold mine when I was scared?"
Her body shook as tears slipped silently down her cheeks.
She never got to tell him.
Never got to see his eyes light up with joy.
Never got to see him cry happy tears at the first kick.
Never got to see their child take a breath.
Because Roshni had decided that love was a threat to her throne.
That a child born of love was dangerous.
Sana’s grief turned into quiet fury.
Roshni might’ve thought she won. She might’ve erased Sana from Hatim’s memories, turned his heart against her, stolen their child’s future.
But she had forgotten one thing—
Sana was still breathing.
And she was not here to beg.
She was here to reclaim.
Not just her place in this palace, but the truth.
The truth of her love.
The truth of her pain.
The truth of her child who never got a chance.
Sana stood slowly, her legs still weak from everything that had happened. She walked to the mirror across the room—the same mirror that had watched her cry silently since she returned.
She stared at herself now. Not as the fragile, broken girl Roshni hoped to crush.
But as the mother who had lost everything.
And had nothing left to fear.
“I don’t care if he remembers me,” she whispered. “But I will make him remember what they did. What they took.”
Her fingers traced the reflection of her own face.
“I will tell him everything. Even if it kills me.”
She didn’t know when or how.
But she would make Hatim see the truth behind the lies.
Behind the poison his mother fed him.
Because love wasn’t a ghost.
It was alive.
And she carried it in every heartbeat.
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