Prologue - The Day I Stopped Being a Girl

The day I became Lyra Vashisht Singh…

was the day Lyra Vashisht died.

The wedding was nothing less than a ..trade...

People called me lucky.

But fate doesn’t feel like cold fingers tightening around your wrist.

It doesn’t sound like a man twice your age saying, “You belong to me now.”

Yashvardhan Singh didn’t look at me like a bride.

He looked at me like something he had acquired..

a deal signed, sealed, and displayed.

And I…

I smiled.

Because that’s what good wives do, right?

They don’t tremble.

They don’t fight.

But something changed that night

Something… quietly broke.

Days later, in a house that didn’t feel like home,

I met the only mistake fate ever made in his perfect world.

Zayden Singh.

He wasn’t supposed to look at me the way he did.

Like he could see through the silk, touched me when i was in need, somehow become my alone night shadow.

But

“You don’t belong here,” he said once..low, almost amused.

And for the first time…

I didn’t feel owned.

If dad was, "minister"

His son was the thief to steal his own dad's wife.