The god of love was burned to ash, and his wife went to work in a demon’s kitchen.

That is the strangest turn in Rati’s story. Not seduction. Not spring. Not even the divine sweat from which she is born. It is endurance: a love goddess disguised as Mayavati, raising the reborn Kama until the universe catches up with what she already knows.

Desire gets the arrows. Rati gets the long wait.