The room smelled of rosewater and rot.

Soft hands pulled threads through her hair, winding it into a braid that felt like a noose. Gold pins, red beads, jasmine tucked like apologies into the folds. The velvet lehenga lay heavy around her hips, clinging like dried blood. The embroidery scratched her skin. The veil was the color of betrayal.

Heer stared into the mirror, silent, still, and not quite real.

She was being made into a bride—like meat dressed for a feast.

The maids murmured about how beautiful she looked. That it was a shame. That she should smile. That some girls would kill for a marriage like this.

She barely heard them.

Her mind was elsewhere.

Buried under years of silence and screams.

Rudransh.

The name echoed like an old wound. The twin she hadn’t seen in over fourteen years. The boy who’d once held her hand in the dark, whispering stories of stars and forests to drown the sound of footsteps coming down the basement stairs.

“Don’t cry, Heer,” he would say. “Monsters can smell sadness.”

He’d been small like her, thin-boned and wide-eyed, but his voice had always been steady. Always braver. Always louder.

They used to sleep curled around each other like the world would swallow them if they let go. Together, they had counted cracks in the basement wall and made maps from the mold, pretending they were explorers lost in a ruined kingdom.

Until the night it ended.

It had rained, like tonight.

She remembered the slap of water against the windows, the thunder that masked the shouting upstairs. Then the door had opened. Adyant stood there, swaying slightly, a bottle in one hand and a belt in the other.

His eyes were red. His words slurred.

“Bastards,” he hissed, stumbling down the stairs. “Unholy little mistakes.”

She remembered shielding Rudransh, her back already raw from the last beating, and still he’d pushed her behind him like a shield. Always trying to be a knight with a wooden sword and no armor.

Then the next morning, he’d called them both to his office. Heer had never been allowed upstairs before. The carpet felt too soft under her feet. Her hands trembled as she held Rudransh’s fingers tightly.

There were men waiting. Foreign faces. Cold eyes.

One of them stood up, his hair silver, his coat darker than ink. He walked in a circle around them, silent.

Then he stopped in front of Rudransh.

“This one,” he said, tapping the boy’s chin. “He’ll do.”

Heer remembered screaming. Clinging. The panic. Rudransh being ripped from her fingers as he kicked and shouted her name.

She never saw him again.

Not even a goodbye.

Not even a lie.

Only silence.

The first crack in her heart had begun that day. It had never quite healed.

A hand brushed against her face, snapping her out of the memory. One of the maids was pressing kohl beneath her eyes.

“Your eyes,” she whispered, “they’re so sad.”

Heer blinked. The weight of the dress crushed her chest. She couldn’t breathe.

Then the door creaked open again.

Srisha entered like a blade in silk.

“Heer,” she drawled, eyeing her like prey dressed for auction. “How lovely you look. Fit for a monster.”

Heer stood shakily. “Why are you doing this?”

Srisha walked to the mirror, adjusted a piece of jewelry at Heer’s temple. “Because you’re all we have left to give.”

Heer swallowed hard. Her voice wavered. “Who… who am I being married to?”

Srisha smiled.

Cruel. Sharp. Victorious.

“Aryaveer Raizada.”

Heer’s heart stopped.

The name fell like a curse between them.

Srisha’s smirk widened. “Yes, that Aryaveer. The Raizada devil. The one whose sister your beloved brother just defiled.”

“That’s not true,” Heer whispered.

“Oh, it is. Mahira and Ayansh are married. Eloped. Left us to clean the mess with your skin.”

Heer’s knees buckled slightly. Her voice turned to air. “Please… don’t do this…”

She reached out, desperate, fingers clinging to Srisha’s arms like a child begging not to drown.

“I’m begging you… please…”

Srisha looked down at her hands in disgust and yanked away.

“Pathetic,” she spat. “Do you think begging will save you? Do you think tears will melt iron?”

Tears were already sliding down Heer’s cheeks, silent and slow, staining her face like ink.

Srisha turned toward the door. “Aryaveer will break you, girl. In ways we never could. And when he’s done, he’ll send your ashes back in an envelope.”

She paused at the door, looking back over her shoulder.

“You should thank us. At least you’ll be remembered for something.”

Then she left.

The room felt colder than death.

The maids didn’t move. They stood still, eyes downcast. No one spoke. Even the wind outside had gone quiet.

Heer sank to the floor.

The dress puddled around her like blood.

Her hands trembled. Her ribs ached. Her mouth tasted like iron and ash.

But somewhere—beneath the weight of grief, and fury, and the chains they had wrapped around her since birth—something stirred.

Not surrender.

Not yet.

She would go to him, yes. To the devil in a king’s coat. To the man whose wrath could set the sky ablaze.

But she would not go quietly.

_____________

Raizada Mansion—

The bang of the punching bag echoed through the Raizada estate’s private gym like a warning shot.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Aryaveer’s fists were wrapped in bloodied gauze, knuckles raw and splitting open anew with each brutal strike. Sweat slicked his hair to his forehead. The storm outside mirrored the one raging inside him—lightning splitting the sky like a war cry, thunder roaring like his grief.

“They took my mother,” he hissed through clenched teeth, each word punching the air harder than his fists did the bag.

Thump.

“They took my father.”

Thump.

“And now…”

He struck again, this time the bag jerked wildly on its chain, trembling under his fury.

“They took my sister.”

His breath came hard and fast, a predator pacing the cage of his own wrath.

“They think this ends with a wedding?” he spat. “No. This begins with one. I’ll carve my revenge into their bones.”

He paused, eyes gleaming like polished obsidian, feral and focused. Blood dripped from his knuckles, painting the floor in warpaint.

“I’ll break every Khanna, ruin every name they carry, turn their legacy into ash,” he vowed. “And I’ll start with the girl.”

The door creaked open.

Kavyan, his cousin and second-in-command, stepped in, holding a black sherwani jacket over one arm. He kept his distance—one didn’t walk casually into the eye of a storm.

“Your bride is ready,” Kavyan said, voice neutral but edged with something wary.

Aryaveer’s lips curled into a smile that had no warmth.

“Ready to be destroyed,” he said, wiping his hands carelessly on a towel, the blood smearing like war paint across white cotton.

Then, with the calm of a man heading to a coronation, not a wedding, he walked away.

___________

The air was thick with sandalwood smoke and silence. No music, no laughter. This was no celebration—it was a sentence.

Heer sat like a ghost stitched into red and gold silk, her hands trembling in her lap, fingers bruised and still healing. Her lehenga was heavy, the embroidery so ornate it felt more like chains than cloth. Her face was covered with a gauzy veil, the world a blur of crimson through it.

Men has stationed everywhere- Armed guarded. Their gaze sharp and precised.

The women who’d dressed her had whispered things—softly, carefully—as if she might shatter if they spoke too loud. Maybe they were right.

Her wrists bore fading marks of rope. Her skin still stung from scrubbed wounds. But none of it compared to the hollowness blooming in her chest like frostbite.

Adyant was dead.

And yet his shadows lived on—in her blood, in the legacy of pain, in this marriage that wasn’t hers to choose.

The doors slammed open.

Heer’s breath hitched.

Footsteps echoed like the beat of war drums.

And then she saw him.

Aryaveer Raizada.

Not a man. A storm wrapped in flesh.

He walked in, dressed in obsidian black, not a trace of ceremony in his stride. His shirt was open at the throat, a gun holstered loosely under his jacket—on his left side. A lefty. Dangerous. Precise.

Beside him dozens of armed guards stood.

Her heart pounded like it wanted out.

He didn’t stop at the threshold. Didn’t glance at the priests or the waiting witnesses. His gaze locked on her like a predator sighting wounded prey.

He walked to the mandap.

Stopped before her.

The silence cracked like ice underfoot.

And then—without a word—he reached forward and ripped the veil from her face.

The fabric fluttered to the floor like fallen wings.

Her eyes met his.

Blue.

But not just blue.

A stormy sea with streaks of gold at the edges—like something ancient had cracked open and spilled starlight into her gaze. It was the only part of her that hadn’t learned to hide.

And in that second—Aryaveer stilled.

He hadn’t expected her to look like that.

Not this soft. Not this broken. Not this... beautiful.

Not like someone who could still weep.

A single tear slid down her cheek, carving a path through her makeup like a river of quiet agony.

Aryaveer’s jaw clenched.

He lifted his hand—rough, bloodied—and brushed the tear away with his thumb. Not gently. Just enough to erase it. As if it offended him.

“Don’t cry,” he said lowly. “You haven’t even seen hell yet.”

________