The morning after the banquet, Anaya woke alone.
Again.
Aryan was an early riser—military habit. But today, the sheets were colder. His absence lingered longer. And so did the silence.
She stretched beneath the soft ivory silk, the ache between her legs a dull reminder of the night before—a night that had started with performance and ended with something far too real.
For the first time, she wasn't certain who had won.
---
By the time she made it to the breakfast terrace, Aryan was already there, dressed in charcoal grey, scrolling through classified documents with a black coffee steaming beside him.
He didn't greet her.
She sat across from him, deliberately slow, deliberately elegant.
"You could've woken me," she said, pouring herself mango juice.
"I needed to move early."
"For state duty or to avoid me?"
He didn't answer.
She arched a brow. "You're brooding. Or plotting. Which is it?"
Still silence.
She leaned forward, voice softening. "Something happened last night. Not just at the palace. Between us."
He finally looked up. His eyes were unreadable.
"I'm trained to endure deception, Anaya," he said. "I'm not trained to forget it."
Her lips parted. "That again?"
"You drugged me. You used me."
"And you married me," she shot back. "You could've refused."
"Refusing would've made me weak."
"Then what does *this* make you?" Her voice cracked. "This... silence. This coldness. What is it?"
He stood abruptly, the chair scraping back.
But before he left the terrace, he said one thing—just one.
"She wasn't supposed to choose him."
---
Later that afternoon, while rifling through her husband's library in search of distraction, Anaya found it.
Not the distraction.
The secret.
A single photograph—tucked into the pages of a dusty royal history journal.
Meher.
Smiling. Sunlight in her hair. Her hands wrapped around Aryan's arm as they stood beside a wounded soldier in some remote outpost. The background was dated, the uniforms older, the lines of Aryan's face less hard—but the expression?
*Softness.*
Something she'd never seen on him. Not once. Not with her.
---
She slammed the book shut, rage a wildfire beneath her skin.
So it had been true.
That ridiculous rumor Meher had once confided in Veer. That there had been *something* between her and Aryan before the prince. A connection. A heartbeat. A man with feelings.
Anaya had mocked it. Mocked *her*.
But now...
Now she felt like she was suffocating.
---
That night, she didn't wait for Aryan to come to bed.
She locked the door. Bolted it. Slept alone, arms curled around a pillow she refused to admit smelled like him.
She dreamed of nothing.
And that terrified her more than anything else.