Blood Orchid

By Likyabeni Kikon

Rain slithered down the glass panes like remorse refusing to let go. Flashes of light from a dozen media cameras lit up Ashvik’s soaked silhouette as he was led, hands cuffed, through the corridors of the Delhi High Court. His jaw was clenched, face blank. Beside him, officers muttered under breath: “Can’t believe he did it.” “What a shame, such a beautiful girl.” “The CM’s daughter, no less...”

A reporter shouted: “Why did you kill Lydia Kon?”

Ashvik didn’t flinch.

Behind the interrogation glass, the Commissioner watched in silence. Ashvik’s lawyer, seasoned and sharp, leaned forward. “Say something, Ashvik. Anything. The press thinks you snapped. Murdered her in cold blood. You’re branded already.”

Ashvik’s eyes drifted to the dusty fan whirring above. His voice came low, steady.

“She wasn’t supposed to suffer that long.”

Chapter One: First Bloom

Delhi, one spring morning.

The smell of brewing coffee and old paper lingered in the quiet library café where Lydia sat with her poetry journal. In a soft white kurta, hair in a lazy braid, she looked like a page out of a forgotten sonnet. Across the room, Ashvik noticed her.

They shared a glance. A smile. A beginning.

Their next meeting came at a poetry club reading. Lydia spoke a verse on memory. Ashvik read one on time. She laughed at his dry wit; he admired her stillness. Numbers were exchanged. One café date led to another. Touches became kisses, words melted into laughter, and soon Delhi became their cocoon.

To Ashvik, Lydia was light. To Lydia, Ashvik was warmth.

They spoke of stars and of storms.

They never saw the one coming.

Chapter Two: Fracture

Shimla. A group tour. Mist hung low as laughter echoed through the resort corridors.

Eve handed Lydia a drink. “Just relax, it’s a cocktail.” Lydia trusted her.

She woke the next evening.

Naked. Broken. The room reeked of sweat and betrayal. Blood stained her thighs. Her throat ached from silent screams.

She staggered into the shower and let it run until her skin turned red.

Then she called Ashvik.

She couldn’t say the words. He flew in. Held her. Cried with her. She did not go to the police. Couldn’t face her father. Couldn’t bear the pity in Eve’s eyes.

She vanished for months. Into silence.

And then she returned. With fire behind her eyes.

Chapter Three: Petals and Poison

They never found Benjamin’s body.

He went missing after a friend’s wedding. His mother received a gift basket two months later—sausages wrapped in wax paper. A note: “Your son loved these.”

Inside a derelict estate on Ashvik’s far property, underground, were steel cages. Each had a man once smirking, now starving.

Omar sobbed on the third day.

Anish screamed on the fifth.

Their nails bled scratching walls. Lydia hummed lullabies as she cooked stew in a brass pot. She fed them only when they begged. Sometimes she read them poems. Sometimes she played recordings of their drunken laughter from Shimla.

But when she spoke, it was soft. “Does your mouth still laugh the way it did that night?”

One day, she poured boiling water over Omar’s foot. His howl echoed. She didn’t blink. “That’s just steam. Imagine fire.”

She tied their hands with barbed wire, so even struggling meant bleeding. Left meat just beyond their reach for days. When they cried, she wiped their tears gently—then made them drink saltwater.

She cut away their hair, then their dignity. Made them crawl for water. Starved them until their minds broke.

To quench their thirst, she handed them a flask—filled with blood. When hunger clawed, she served minced meat from a covered tray. “Guess who this used to be,” she whispered.

She played lullabies on an old tape recorder. Forced them to sing along.

One evening, she forced Benjamin to eat a page of poetry soaked in his own bile. When he retched, she held his head and hummed. “Don’t waste it, love. Art is meant to be consumed.”

She drilled words into the walls: “Mercy,” “Memory,” “Mothers.” Then beat them when they forgot what each meant.

She painted Omar’s back with acid strokes, in calligraphy. He begged for death—she kissed his cheek and said, “Not yet.”

She crushed their toes one by one with a mallet—while reciting haikus.

The lights never stayed on. Screams punctuated the dark. They begged to die.

The cellar reeked of blood, metal, rot, and faint lavender. Lydia walked barefoot through the dark corridors, her anklets softly chiming. The men cried louder when they heard it—her calm descent, her soft-spoken horror. “Let’s play,” she would say sweetly.

She burned poetry into their skin. Branded verses with iron. When they whimpered, she smiled. “Feel the stanza settle in.”

Ashvik came at midnight, gloves on, bleach ready. His face was tired. “Lydia, this is enough.”

She smiled, wiping blood from her apron. “They’re still breathing, Ashvik. That’s mercy.”

Months passed.

When she finally ended it, she made it clean. Dissected. Dried. Ground. Packaged.

Gifts were sent.

Chapter Four: The Spiral

Lydia no longer saw faces—only shadows, only mouths that once laughed. The rage now needed no names.

She slit a shopkeeper’s throat for leering. The blade sang. Blood sprayed the rack of sweets. She wiped it away with a tissue and smiled at the CCTV.

A blogger once commented “slut” on her college post. His house exploded. Gas leak, they said. But Lydia watched from across the road, chewing gum.

She poured acid into the tea of a distant cousin who joked, “She’s still single, must be high maintenance.” He screamed into eternity.

Each kill became more elaborate. She painted a woman’s bedroom with her own intestines. Left a poem scrawled in lipstick on the wall: “You called me sweet.”

She buried a talk-show host alive in concrete, whispering, “You get one last exclusive.”

Ashvik begged her to stop.

“I’m fixing the world,” she whispered. “You can’t stop me.”

He followed her. Cleaned every scene. Hid every print. Buried every scream.

He watched her sleep next to him—peaceful, radiant. Then watched her light another fire.

His love for her split him in two.

Until she smiled at him one morning. Innocent. Delicate. With blood behind her fingernails.

He realized she was gone.

Chapter Five: With Love, Always

Ashvik tried once more.

"Lydia, please. Stop this. You’re not this person."

She looked at him, eyes wide, distant. “I miss home,” she said softly. “I miss my father. The hills, the clouds... it was so bright there. It’s dark here, Ashvik. It’s so dark and scary.”

Her voice cracked for the first time in months.

“I can’t stop,” she added. “The urge—it’s louder than everything else now.”

Ashvik dropped to his knees, hands trembling. “Then let me save you.”

She smiled, gentle as ever.

That night, as twilight fell, Lydia stood in their kitchen humming.

Ashvik walked behind her, knife shaking in his hand.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

She turned.

The blade slid in clean. Her eyes widened—not with anger, but with peace. She placed her hand on his cheek.

“Thank you,” she said, tears streaming. “You set me free. I’m sorry, love.”

She collapsed in his arms. Ashvik held her until her body cooled.

He scrubbed the blood, erased the files, burned the tapes. Every trace of Lydia’s wrath was wiped. Every crime buried with her body.

He called the police.

“I killed her,” he confessed.

And that was all the world ever knew.

The media called her a victim. A kind girl, betrayed by her lover.

Ashvik bore the blame. And said nothing.

Hidden Chapter: Eve

Eve lived freely.

She flourished in her career, walked red carpets, gave speeches on empowerment, and posed with the Chief Minister’s daughter’s portrait like a grieving friend. Her eyes glistened in interviews, voice breaking when she recalled Lydia’s laughter. “She was sunshine... and then one day, she was gone.”

But there are echoes that the living cannot silence.

One night, in her luxury high-rise, Eve returned from a gala to find a note on her bed:

“Remember the room?”

She froze.

The scent of lilies filled the air—Lydia’s favorite. Her hands trembled.

In the mirror, faint lipstick marks curled into a smile.

Eve’s screams were never heard. Her body was never found. Her apartment stood untouched, perfectly pristine, except for a single blood-red orchid on her pillow.

Some debts collect themselves.

Epilogue: Ashes and Orchids

Delhi Times | Headline:“Tragic Love Turns Deadly: CM’s Daughter Killed by Lover in Luxury Flat”Date: 10 june 2025Byline: Aastha V.

In a shocking turn of events, Ashvik Mehra, heir to the Mehra conglomerate, was arrested yesterday for the alleged murder of Lydia Kon, daughter of respected Chief Minister Aaron Kon. Sources say the two were in a romantic relationship for over two years.

Police say Ashvik confessed. No motive was given. No further comment has been released.

Chief Minister Kon, in a short statement, said only:"She was my child. That is all."

But beyond the newsprint and courtroom flashbulbs, the truth is a stranger thing.

Ashvik stares at the wall of his solitary cell. He hasn't spoken in weeks. No lawyer can crack him. No camera captures the screams he swallowed. He still hears her humming.

She had smiled when he killed her.

That last night — she’d been pacing barefoot, her eyes wide and shimmering, whispering of clouds, of her father, of warmth. "I miss home," she said softly, touching her heart. “It’s too dark here, Ashvik. I’m scared of what I’ve become.”

He had reached for her — trembling, broken — and she had walked into the blade.

Not a fight. Not a struggle. Just a sigh.Like exhaling a burden she’d carried too long.Her last words: “Thank you for setting me free. I’m sorry, love.”

The world will never know the things she did.He made sure of it. Burned her journals. Scrubbed the blood. Buried every horror with precision and devotion.To the world, she was a saint betrayed by love.He bore the infamy so she could rest in peace.

Now, he sits — branded murderer. Unrepentant.But some nights, he dreams of her smile.That soft, innocent smile that once lit up Delhi cafés.And he weeps like a child no one can console.

In Kohima, Chief Minister Aaron Kon drinks tea alone on the veranda. He still sets two cups. One always grows cold.

He never speaks of Lydia. But the staff say he sometimes walks to her room and stands at the threshold, whispering,"Are you home yet, my flower?"

Outside, orchids bloom violently red.

Afterword: The Bloom That Burned

Lydia Kon was never the villain she appeared to be—nor the saint the world remembered. She was the storm in the shape of a petal, the scream hidden beneath a lullaby.

Her journey was one of silence erupting into vengeance, of pain taking the form of precision, of a girl molded by love and shattered by betrayal. In her descent, she showed how trauma warps beauty, how sweetness can be laced with venom. That evil doesn’t always wear a mask of rage—sometimes it wears a soft smile and a flower in its hair.

Ashvik was no hero. He was a man broken by love, consumed by devotion, and damned by silence. His final act was not of betrayal, but salvation—an attempt to give her peace when the world refused to.

Their story ends not with justice, but with myth. A case closed, but never truly opened. Her crimes—erased. Her name—clean. And Ashvik, the only keeper of the truth, chose silence.

So when the wind howls through Delhi’s alleys and the orchids bloom a little too red, remember: some stories bleed quietly.

Some blooms are meant to die in the dark.

And some girls smile... even as they kill.

Short Synopsis:

When Lydia Kon—an innocent poet and the daughter of a powerful Chief Minister—falls in love with a Delhi heir, their romance blooms like spring. But one betrayal on a misty trip to Shimla turns her soft smile into a weapon.

Now, behind her gentle eyes lies something darker—calm, calculating, and bloodstained. And beside her, Ashvik, the man who loves her too much to let her fall… or live.

A haunting tale of love, revenge, and the quiet horror no one saw coming.

By Likyabeni Kikon