Chapter 2: The Price in Flesh
The Afridi haveli, usually a bastion of controlled power, was now a house of raw, screaming grief. In the central courtyard, beneath a merciless sun, the white-shrouded form of Imran Afridi lay on a wooden platform. The cloth was stained in three terrible, rust-colored blooms.
Bushra stood a few feet away, a statue carved from ice amid the chaos. She did not wail. She did not tear her hair. She watched as the women of the house, led by a shattered Miana, wept around the body. Her uncles, Sohail and Yazan, paced like caged tigers, their faces contorted with a rage that demanded immediate, violent discharge.
"Where is the killer?" Sohail Afridi thundered, his voice shaking the jasmine vines. "Bring me Zaron Karani's head on a plate! I will feed his heart to dogs!"
"We will burn their haveli to the ground!" Yazan echoed, spitting the words.
Bushra let the storm of male fury rage around her. She was waiting. Her eyes, dry and aching, were fixed not on her brother's body, but on the grand iron gates. She was waiting for the Karanis to arrive. For the ritual of blame to begin.
They came not long after—a somber, fearful procession led by Waaris Karani, Zaron and Emaan's father. His face was ashen, the weight of his son's catastrophic crime bowing his shoulders. With him was his elder son, Jasim, who had just rushed back from Islamabad. Jasim's face was a tight mask of shock and calculation, his sharp eyes scanning the scene, immediately assessing the political fallout.
"Sohail Sahib," Waaris began, his voice cracking. "There are no words… my son has committed an unforgivable madness. He has fled. We are searching—"
"Your son is a dog who deserves a dog's death!" Sohail roared, cutting him off. "Your family's honor is shit beneath my shoe! You will produce him, or we will take our compensation from your flesh!"
This was the moment. The ancient script called for *khoon baha*—blood money. A negotiation of cash, land, perhaps a forced marriage of a Karani woman to an Afridi man to "blend" the blood and settle the score. The men would haggle over the price of a life.
Bushra stepped forward.
The movement was so deliberate, so out of place for a woman in this male arena, that a sudden, prickling silence fell. All eyes turned to her. Sohail glared, warning her to retreat.
She ignored him. She walked until she stood between her brother's corpse and the stunned Karani patriarch. Her voice, when it came, did not ring out. It was low, clear, and carried the finality of a judge's gavel.
"There will be no blood money."
A collective intake of breath hissed through the courtyard.
Sohail sputtered. "Bushra! This is not your—"
"It is *exactly* my place," she interrupted, her glacial gaze sweeping over the men. "He was *my* brother. My blood. And I will name the price for it."
Waaris Karani looked at her, confusion and dread warring in his eyes. "Bushra Begum… what… what do you demand?"
She turned her head slowly, her eyes finding and locking onto Jasim Karani. He stood straight, meeting her gaze with a challenging intensity. He was known as the modern one, the businessman, the heir with a mind as sharp as a razor.
Bushra pointed a steady finger at him.
"Him."
For a moment, no one understood. Then, the meaning crashed down.
"You… you want Jasim?" Waaris stammered, incredulous.
"Not his life," Bushra clarified, every word a shard of glass. "His freedom. His future. His dignity. I demand Jasim Karani in marriage. As compensation. As blood debt."
The courtyard exploded.
"This is insanity!" Sohail bellowed.
"A woman cannot make such a demand!" Yazan shouted.
The Karani men looked at each other in horror. This was unprecedented. This was an insult that twisted their traditions into a grotesque shape.
Jasim himself finally spoke, his voice dangerously calm. "You would use your brother's corpse as a ladder to climb into my life, Bushra Begum? I am already married."
Bushra's smile was a cold, thin curve. "To Hurma, the illegitimate daughter your family keeps hidden? A marriage of pity, not honor. It holds no weight here. My demand stands. Jasim Karani will marry me. He will live in this haveli. His life, his choices, his loyalty—they will belong to me until the real killer, Zaron, is brought to justice. This is not *khoon baha*. This is *khoon ka badla*—blood's revenge. And I will have it in flesh and bone."
The audacity of it left men speechless. She was not asking for wealth or a symbolic bride; she was demanding the rival family's proudest son as her personal captive. She was turning their patriarchal tradition against them, using the concept of a "compensation bride" and gender-flipping it with brutal precision.
Jasim took a step forward, his composure cracking for the first time, a fire igniting in his dark eyes. "You think you can tame me? You think you can own me?"
Bushra met his fire with her ice. "I do not want to tame you, Jasim Karani. I want to break you. Just as your brother broke my family. You will be the living, breathing monument to my brother's murder. Every day you spend under this roof will be a reminder to your father, to your fugitive brother, and to every man here of the price of Afridi blood."
She turned back to the elders, her voice rising to encompass them all. "Let the jirga be called. Let the tribal council hear my case. I will present my demand. And you will all witness what happens when a woman stops asking for justice… and starts taking it."
She then turned and walked back toward the main house, leaving a tectonic silence in her wake. She had thrown a lit grenade into the heart of their world. The rules had just changed. The war was no longer between families. It was now a duel between two wills: hers and Jasim's.
And as she passed her brother's body, she whispered a vow only he could hear.
"Your love was not a crime, Imran. Their hatred is. And I will make them pay for it in the currency they understand best: their pride."