Hey, my Chashnis! 🤎

Leave reality at the door. Your story starts now.

Tara paused outside the carved wooden door, her heart thudding beneath layers of crimson silk that suddenly felt too heavy, as though the fabric itself sought to bind her to a fate she was not yet certain she could accept.

She looked every bit the royal bride everyone had admired throughout the day, her jewelry catching the corridor candlelight and scattering it across the walls like fragments of captured stars. A delicate veil rested over her face, concealing the nervousness that trembled in her eyes, though nothing could hide the faint quiver of her lips or the way her henna-darkened fingertips clutched the edge of her dupatta until her knuckles turned pale.

Aarohi stopped beside her and smiled with a warmth that felt like it belonged to a different world.

"This is your room, Bhabhi Sa."

She gave Tara's hand a reassuring squeeze before stepping back into the shadows of the corridor.

"Good night."

With that, Aarohi disappeared down the hallway, her footsteps fading until Tara stood alone in a silence that pressed against her ears and made her own heartbeat sound like thunder.

For a brief moment, she simply stared at the door, her breath shallow and quick, as though the carved mahogany held some answer she was too afraid to read.

Taking a slow breath that did little to steady her, Tara pushed the door open and stepped inside.

The room welcomed her in a soft glow where jasmine and rose garlands draped from the canopy of the grand bed, their fragrance clinging to the back of her throat. Candles flickered across the room, casting warm light over cream-colored walls and polished marble until every surface seemed to breathe with living flame. Rose petals lay scattered across the bed like whispered promises, while moonlight slipped through the sheer curtains and blended with the candlelight in a silver-gold haze that made the room look almost dreamlike.

Tara stepped inside, the tiny bells of her anklets chiming with every hesitant step. The weight of her bridal attire seemed heavier than ever, yet it was not the lehenga that made her movements slow but the realization that from this moment onward everything had changed.

She closed the door behind her, the click resonating through her chest as her fingers tightened around her dupatta. She stood in a room that suddenly felt too large, too filled with expectation.

She did not know what she was supposed to do.

Should she walk to the bed and sit in the middle, as the elderly women had instructed with knowing smiles? Or should she peel away the layers of performance until only her fear remained?

Her gaze drifted around the room. The decorations were unmistakably for the wedding night, arrangements too perfect to have been made by anyone but professional hands. But beneath the flowers, the room belonged to someone else entirely.

Someone who preferred order above ornament.

Every piece of furniture sat exactly where it belonged, aligned with a precision that spoke of a mind that tolerated no deviation. The room carried a faint scent of sandalwood, cedar, and something unmistakably masculine that clung to the air like a signature, familiar enough to suggest it had settled into the walls over time.

There was not a single unnecessary thing in the room.

No photographs to hint at memories or family. No decorations that spoke of sentiment or history. No clutter that might suggest the comfortable disarray of daily living.

Just clean lines, muted colours, and a quiet stillness that made the room feel lived in rather than prepared for guests.

She tried to imagine it without the flowers and candles.

It would still be beautiful.

Just... darker.

She walked to the bedside table and reached for the glass of water, carefully settling on the edge of the bed, the silk of her lehenga pooling around her as she lifted her veil just enough to raise her nath and took a few slow sips. The cool water slid down her throat, but her heartbeat refused to slow, maintaining its frantic rhythm as though it alone understood the magnitude of what tonight meant.

She placed the glass back and lowered her gaze to her hands. Her fingers lingered over the mehendi until they found the tiny name hidden within its patterns.

Ekansh.

A name that now belonged to her husband, a man she barely knew, existing in her understanding only through fragments others had offered. Whatever she knew had never come from him but from other people, their voices dropping to whispers when they spoke of his wealth, the empire he had built, and above all the quiet intimidation that followed him.

She had met him only once.

Their roka.

A room full of people, their curiosity palpable in the air. Endless rituals that blurred together into a single overwhelming sensation of being watched, being judged, being claimed.

They had not spoken a single word.

For one brief moment, their eyes had met across the distance. There had been no smile to offer comfort, no annoyance to suggest he resented this as much as she did, no warmth to promise that everything might somehow be alright.

His face had revealed absolutely nothing, a mask so perfect she wondered if anything existed beneath it at all.

And yet the intensity of his gaze had unsettled her, simply feeling as though he was looking straight through her, past everything she presented to the world, searching for something she was not certain she possessed.

She had looked away almost instantly, her cheeks burning with a shame she could not explain.

That silent exchange had lasted only a heartbeat, but she remembered it more clearly than the rituals themselves.

She did not think Ekansh was cruel.

But she could not say she felt at ease when this was not a marriage born of love but an arrangement between two families, a transaction dressed in silk and gold.

Still... she hoped this unfamiliar beginning would lead her somewhere gentler than her fears had allowed her to imagine.