Istanbul, 1966. The city pulses with a fevered hush, minarets needling a sky bruised with longing. I lose myself in the Grand Bazaar’s labyrinth—each stall a shrine to desire, each alleyway a confession. Grief has become the air I breathe. Ayla is gone, taken by a fever that consumed her body as I watched, helpless and hollow. She lingers in every glint of a stranger’s eye, every wisp of incense that curls through these dusk-lit streets. My world is drained of color, only shadows remain.

In the smoky sanctuary of a çayhane, I find a solace that tastes of anise and memory. The air is thick with sweat and cardamom. A sitar weeps in the corner, each note a sigh that slips beneath my skin. She is there—her fingers coaxing sound from silence, her hair a cascade of midnight. Her eyes catch mine, dark pools that promise oblivion. My breath snags in my throat.

I order raki, the burn of it a welcome torment. She plays as though her fingers know the secret shapes of sorrow. When she finishes, she comes to me, hips swaying with the languor of the Bosporus at dusk. Her gaze lingers on me as though she recognizes the ghost that inhabits my flesh.

“You look like a man who has forgotten how to live,” she says, her voice a velvet murmur.

“Everything,” I reply. My voice feels foreign, a relic of who I used to be. “You play like a woman who has loved and lost.”

Her smile is a flicker of pain. “Call me Leyla. And you?”

“Emre.” The word slips out, a confession and an invocation.

We speak in murmurs, our words melting into the warmth between us. She tells me how the sitar sings of what cannot be spoken. I tell her of Ayla, of the hollow that yawns beneath my ribs. Leyla listens, her fingers drawing circles in the condensation of her glass, her touch a promise, a threat. She leans closer, and the scent of her skin, musky and sweet, tangles with the ache inside me.

When the raki has loosened my tongue, I confess that I see Ayla everywhere—her laughter in the hush of night, her breath in the wind off the water, her absence in the black of my reflection.

“Come with me,” Leyla says, her hand a whisper against mine. I follow her into the night’s veins, through a city that trembles with secrets. Her door is a portal, opening into a world of shadow and heat. Inside, the air is thick with incense, the walls draped in red and black tapestries that seem to pulse with our breath. A sitar rests in the corner, its strings taut as my heart.

She pours more raki, and we drink without speaking. Her fingers trace the stubble of my jaw, and I shudder at the intimacy of it. “Let me paint your world black,” she says, her lips grazing my ear. I surrender to the dark in her voice.

Our kiss is a storm—tongues that tangle like silk, teeth that mark skin as if to claim it. She pulls at my shirt, and the buttons give way with a soft gasp. I slip the crimson dress from her shoulders, baring skin as pale as the moonlight on water. Her nails rake me open, pain blooming into pleasure. We fall to her bed in a tangle of limbs, her body arching to meet mine.

She is a map I trace with my mouth—her collarbone a whispered vow, the curve of her hip an invitation. Her sighs are music, each breath a note that burrows into my bones. I lose myself in her, thrust after thrust, each movement a prayer to the emptiness Ayla left behind. Leyla’s hands are both anchor and provocation, her eyes locked on mine—where grief and desire are one. She moans Ayla’s name, and in the candle’s flicker, I think I see her, haunting and alive in Leyla’s skin.

We collapse, slick with sweat, the scent of her on my lips. The incense coils like a funeral shroud around us. Leyla rises, draping the sheet around her, and lights a cigarette. The glow reveals the truth I had not seen before: the shape of her nose, the tilt of her lips—familiar, unbearably so.