Aayat froze in the glow of the corridor, her breath caught between fear and curiosity. His presence was overpowering even in silence, the firelight bending around him like he belonged more to shadow than flesh.
Then, his voice broke the stillness. Low. Rough. Commanding.
Anirudh: "You don't belong here."
Her lips parted, startled by the authority in his tone. Yet something inside her, something unexplainable, kept her rooted.
Aayat: "Maybe not. But neither do you… in this silence."
For a flicker of a moment, something shifted in his eyes — surprise, amusement, or perhaps recognition. He stepped closer, slow, deliberate, as though savoring each inch of space shrinking between them.
Anirudh: "You speak boldly for someone standing in my palace."
Aayat: "Boldness isn't a choice when silence feels heavier than words."
The corner of his mouth curved, not quite a smile, more a dangerous acknowledgment. He held her gaze a heartbeat longer — long enough to make her pulse race, long enough to make the air itself burn.
And then, without another word, he turned and walked away. His footsteps echoed against the marble, each one final, controlled, leaving behind the scorch of his presence.
Aayat exhaled only when he vanished into the shadows.
---
Anirudh's Perspective
Inside his chamber, Anirudh shut the heavy wooden doors behind him. The silence that followed was not peace — it was fire.
He pressed a hand against the window, staring out at the flickering candles that lined the courtyard. But he didn't see the palace. He saw her.
The girl with paint on her fingers, dressed simply against the backdrop of his world of gold and blood. She had looked at him without lowering her gaze — not like the others who cowered, not like the ones who flattered and feared. No, this one had dared to meet his eyes and speak as though she had the right.
Aayat.
The name tasted dangerous even in his thoughts.
Anirudh closed his eyes, recalling every detail: the tremor in her breath when he spoke, the way candlelight clung to her skin, the defiance laced with innocence in her voice. She didn't belong in his palace, in his world, yet she stood there as though the silence itself bent for her.
And he hated it.
And he craved it.
Obsession was not new to him — power had always been his first. But this… this was different. It wasn't desire that pulled at him. It was possession. A demand rising in his chest like a storm.
"Mine," he whispered into the emptiness, the word tasting final, inevitable.
He would not rush it. No — she would come to him, piece by piece, until she forgot the world she had before him. Until her silence, her laughter, her very breath belonged only to him.
Anirudh's eyes darkened, his jaw set. The palace may be celebrating his brother's union, but deep in its shadows, his own had just been forged.
Not love.
Not yet.
Something darker. Something inevitable.
And it had Aayat's name carved into it.