Love is a strange thing but limerence is so vivaciously painful sometimes it's hard to decipher which one it is one has fallen into the pit of. She couldn't tell if she'd been crazily infatuated with him or had fallen in an unrequited love with him over the past many years. He used to pass her gleaming smiles whenever they passed by each other. His smiles were so heart fluttering, she begged herself to believe it meant something. Something more than just a nonchalant greeting. She was pathetically in love with the man whose family had been delighted with the marriage alliance sent by her family after a silent yearning and openly declaration of her being their future daughter-in-law of several years. She was happy with the alliance and he seemingly looked the same, or so she believed. They had been neighbors for as long as she could remember being alive. They'd grown up in the same community, were barely a few months apart in age and had been declared husband and wife since they were children by pretty much everyone around them. She had been living in the daydreams decorated with fairy lights and fragrant flowers that were benevolent for her wait and ecstasy over the upcoming years of togetherness with the man she'd loved since she was just sixteen years old. Unbeknownst to herself, she had fallen in love with the wrong person. The alliance wasn't that of a convenience between their families until it'd become one just a week before their marriage. She was left with nothing but loneliness, a crave for companionship and longing for a husband who had been in love with someone else for just as long as she'd been once in love with the eldest son of the neighbor, his brother, once upon a time. __________________________________________ Find out more in the prelude. :)

[Scrollstack Exclusive.] Marriage, they said, was sacred. But for Gauryansh Trehan and Vamika Sehgal, it was anything but simple. Born from a promise between old friends, one now gone and the others left behind holding onto memories. This marriage was arranged long before either of them had even been born. Gauryansh never asked for this alliance. Stoic, emotionally restrained, and haunted by expectations, he grew up knowing Vamika would one day be his but knowing it didn't mean accepting it. And certainly not welcoming it. So he pretended and acted like she didn't matter, like her presence didn't mess with the order he had created around himself but Vamika had always been there. Laughing a little louder than the rest. Lingering in every corner of his life. Trying too hard to be seen. Hoping too deeply to be loved. She never confessed, but her eyes and actions did. Her silences screamed it. Her every attempt to make him acknowledge her was drenched in an ache she tried desperately to hide. While Gauryansh, cold and controlled, kept pushing her away. Perhaps to protect himself, perhaps to punish them both for a love he refused to name. They were engaged when they were twenty-one and then everything collapsed soon afterwards. After a bitter argument, Vamika had done what Gauryansh never thought she'd do. She'd set him free and walked away. She'd called off the wedding and broken the engagement quietly. She'd left and with her, the version of her that used to chase after him, that waited for him and that believed in him were gone too.