The food remained untouched on the table, growing cold while Sanskriti lay on the bed staring at the ceiling.Her body was there,but her mind had drifted far away,back to the people she missed without ever saying it aloud.

Her family’s faces came to her one by one,the warmth of their voices,the ease she had once lived with before this palace and its quiet humiliations became her world.

For a moment,her thoughts slipped further back to Ved.

The memory came without permission,soft and sudden,and it undid something inside her.His presence,his gentleness,the version of herself she had been around him… all of it rose in her chest like a tide.

A tear escaped the corner of her eye and slid into her hair.

She didn’t wipe it away.

It was well past midnight when Atharva returned to the palace.

Sanskriti heard him from her room the distant echo of footsteps in the corridor,the muted sound of a door opening somewhere far away. She didn’t move.She already knew he wouldn’t come to her room.

She lay there in the dark,staring at the faint outline of the ceiling,her body still and her mind restless.The food tray sat untouched on the table beside her,the smell of dinner long gone cold.His arrival didn’t bring comfort.It only reminded her how close he was and how far.

After a few moments,another door closed.

His.

And that was that.

Sanskriti turned onto her side,pulling the blanket closer around herself,the silence settling heavier than before.In the same palace, under the same roof,they were living in two separate worlds.

And tonight,like so many others,she felt the distance more than ever.

A week passed,and nothing truly became better.

Life in the palace went on as if nothing had happened,but for Sanskriti everything felt suspended in the same uneasy stillness.

Atharva had started coming around again, appearing in the corridors and shared spaces more often,yet the distance between them remained exactly where it was.

They spoke to each other now,yes but only in that careful,casual way people use when they’re afraid of touching something fragile.

Their conversations stayed on the surface, polite and controlled,and somehow that thin connection felt like the only relief either of them allowed themselves.

There were misunderstandings between them, small ones that quietly piled up,shaping the way they looked at each other,the way they interpreted every silence and every word. Neither of them realized it yet.

They just felt that something was off and didn’t know how to name it.

Sanskriti went on living her life inside the palace following routines,doing what was expected of her,moving through the days with practiced calm.

From the outside,she looked composed again, but inside,a slow,unfamiliar restlessness had begun to settle in her,the kind that changes the way you see things without asking your permission.

It was almost eleven at night when the quiet outside Sanskriti’s chamber began to break.At first,she tried to ignore it,telling herself it was just the palace settling into its usual late-hour movement,but the soft clatter of metal and the low murmur of voices kept drifting in through the windows.

Finally,restless and unable to concentrate, she rose from her bed and walked out to the balcony.

From there,she could see the garden clearly. Her chamber and Nandini’s were close,and the stretch of lawn between them lay open under the moonlight.What she saw made her stop.

Servants were moving carefully among the flowerbeds,stringing lights from tree to tree, fixing lanterns along the pathways,arranging fresh blossoms in neat,deliberate patterns.

The garden was being transformed into something beautiful soft,glowing,and full of intention.

Sanskriti stood still,watching.

Then she remembered what Chanda had mentioned earlier in the day that tomorrow is Nandini’s birthday.

So this is for her.

A quiet understanding settled in Sanskriti’s chest.All of this effort,all this care,had Vikrant’s presence written over it.

He was the kind of man who noticed things, who planned,who made sure his wife felt special without being asked.

The contrast hurt more than she wanted to admit.

Her own husband didn’t ask her how she was.

Didn’t notice when she was quiet.Didn’t care enough to stop and wonder if something was wrong.

He spent his nights elsewhere  in clubs,in noise, in a world where she had no place.

Sanskriti stayed on the balcony for a long moment,her hands resting on the railing, watching the lights come alive for someone else’s happiness.She told herself she wasn’t jealous.She told herself she didn’t mind.

But the truth was sitting heavy in her chest.

Seeing Vikrant care for Nandini so openly had reminded her of everything she wasn’t receiving.

And that was what hurt the most.

She was still standing on the balcony when headlights swept across the garden.

Sanskriti looked up instinctively.

A familiar car rolled through the gates and slowed near the driveway.Even before it stopped,she knew.Her chest tightened as she watched Atharva step out,his posture relaxed, his expression untouched by anything that had happened inside these walls.

Something sharp rose in her.

The sight of him,arriving like nothing mattered, made the anger she had been holding in all evening finally surface.She hadn’t wanted to admit how furious she was,but in that moment she felt it clearly.

For a few dangerous seconds,she wanted to call out to him from the balcony,to demand that he look up,to ask why he never asked her if she is in problem.

She didn’t do it.She stood there gripping the railing,her breath uneven,forcing herself to stay quiet.

It wasn’t her fault that she felt this way.She was only twenty years old already married before she had truly healed from the love she had once given to someone else.Her heart still carried the echo of that first attachmentand now she was experiencing something she had never known before the slow,confusing ache of wanting to be seen by the one person who seemed determined not to see her.

She remained on the balcony until his footsteps faded into the palace and the night swallowed the sound of the car door closing.

Then she turned back inside,carrying that ache with her.

As Atharva stepped inside the palace,his eyes lifted briefly toward the upper floor out of habit. For a moment,he thought he saw a familiar figure standing on one of the balconies,still and quiet against the light from the room behind her.

He slowed,as if to be sure,but the angle shifted and the figure disappeared into shadow.He didn’t stop.He told himself he was imagining things and continued inside.

On his way up the stairs,music and soft laughter drifted in from the garden.He glanced down and saw Vikrant dancing with Nandini beneath the lights,the entire lawn glowing with flowers and lanterns.

The celebration was in full bloom, warm and alive.Atharva registered it without emotion,

neither surprised nor moved,and turned away toward his own corridor.

His chamber was cold when he entered.The night air had settled deep into the walls.Still, he went straight to the bathroom and turned on the water.The chill bit into his skin as he stood under it,but he didn’t flinch.

He let the cold run over him until his thoughts dulled and the noise in his head finally quieted.

Afterward,he changed into his nightwear and stood for a moment in front of the mirror, adjusting the collar without really looking at himself.

Then,as if deciding something he hadn’t fully thought through,he left his room and walked down the short corridor to Sanskriti’s door.

He paused outside it.And then he opened the door.

Sanskriti was sitting on the sofa with a book in her hands,the lamp beside her casting a quiet glow over the room.She didn’t look up when he entered.She didn’t even pause.She turned a page with slow,deliberate care,as if he were nothing more than a sound passing through the air.

But inside her,everything was burning.

The fury she had carried all evening hadn’t cooled at all.It had only sharpened.She had been humiliated,ignored,and left alone with too many thoughts, and now he stood there as if his presence alone should fix what his absence had broken.

Atharva waited for her to speak.When she didn’t, he took a step closer.

“You’re awake,” he said while sitting beside her.

Sanskriti smiled faintly,without warmth. “Ap dekh hi sakte hai.”

She kept reading.

That was the first blow.

Atharva’s brows drew together. “You could at least look at me while answering.”

Sanskriti didn’t lift her eyes immediately.She turned a page deliberately before speaking, her voice quiet but sharp.

“Were you roaming through clubs again and just decided to come home when it suited to  ask me if i'm awake?”

For a moment,Atharva froze.Her tone,her audacity,the way she had dared to speak to him like that.It caught him off guard.

Slowly, a faint smile began to form on his lips, an almost reluctant amusement at her bold, almost childish defiance.

“So this is the new way to greet your husband?” he murmured,his voice quiet,almost casual,but carrying a hint of mischief.

Sanskriti looked up, finally meeting his eyes, and froze for a heartbeat.Her words,the fire she had carefully held in them,didn’t seem to register with him at all.

Instead of frowning,he was smiling softly,

almost amused,as if her sharpness had been a playful joke rather than the anger she had poured into it.

For a moment,she didn’t know what to do. Surprise flickered through her mingling with a sting she couldn’t name.

He wasn’t reacting the way she expected,he wasn’t offended.He was simply… smiling.

she leaned slightly forward, her voice low but edged with all the frustration she had been holding in.

“Why would I greet you?” she asked quietly, though something wounded trembled beneath her calm.

“You don’t come home tired from work.You just wander wherever you please… laughing, flirting, playing around with girls as if nothing here matters.So tell me what exactly am I supposed to welcome you for?”

Her words,sharp as they were, carried a confidence that surprised even her.She leaned slightly forward,meeting his gaze directly, unaware of the effect it was having.

Atharva’s heart raced not with anger,but with something entirely different,something raw and undeniable.

He felt a thrill he didn’t want to name,and the faintest smirk of amusement spread across his face.Whatever this was,he found himself enjoying it more than he should.

The space between them seemed to shrink naturally,almost imperceptibly,until Atharva was leaning closer,his hand resting behind the sofa.

Slowly,deliberately,he tilted toward her,letting the small distance between them shrink even further.

His gaze lingered, warm and teasing,as if trying to draw something unspoken from her. Sanskriti felt the shift,the quiet weight of his presence pressing against her awareness,but she didn’t look away.

Instead,she held his eyes,letting him see every bit of her restrained defiance.

“So,” he said softly,playful,teasing, “you only greet those who work?And what kind of work are we talking about,exactly?”

Sanskriti widened her eyes at his words,her lips twitching in the smallest,defiant smile.“Yeah, right,” she said,her voice steady but sharp.She thought that he didn't even mention the girl part.

“Hard work, I’m talking about hard work.”

He watched her for a long moment,amusement flickering in his gaze,appreciating her audacity more than he expected.

Then,letting the air between them thrum with tension,he leaned slightly toward her,lowering his voice playfully.

“So,” he murmured, “hard work, you say? And how exactly do I measure this kind of work?”

Hey beautiful Ladies ❤️

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Love_Qiana❤️