Meera adjusted the strap of her worn satchel as she stood outside Professor Arjun Rao’s private studio on the edge of the university campus. The late afternoon sun filtered through the tall windows, casting golden light on the canvases inside. At nineteen, she was one of the most promising first-year art students—talented with charcoal and oils, innocent in ways that made her blush at the mere suggestion of life drawing classes with nude models. Her long black hair was tied in a simple braid, and her salwar kameez clung modestly to her slender, untouched body.

Professor Rao, forty-eight, tall and commanding with salt-and-pepper hair and sharp eyes that seemed to see through every layer, opened the door with a warm smile. “Ah, Meera beta, come in. I’ve been waiting.”