INK OF A BROKEN VOW

Aleeyeh set the tray down gently, careful not to let the cups clink. She had learned these small precautions-how to exist softly around him, how not to disturb the silence he lived in.
Salman didn't look up.
She stood there for a moment, fingers twisting into the edge of her sleeve.
"I made it the way you like," she said softly. "Less sugar."
That was when he spoke.
"Aleeyeh."
Her name sounded heavy on his tongue, like something he had avoided saying for too long.
She looked up, hope rising before she could stop it.
"You don't have to do this anymore," he said, finally meeting her eyes. His voice wasn't angry. That almost hurt more. "The effort. The trying."
Her lips parted, but no words came.
"I see it," he continued, measured, distant. "And I don't want it."
A pause. Then, quieter-crueler in its honesty.
"I will never love you."
The room felt smaller.

"I understand," she whispered, though her chest burned with the lie.
As she turned away, Salman added, almost like a warning,
"Stop waiting for me to change. You'll only hurt yourself."
She walked out without another word, carrying her dignity like a fragile glass-unbroken, but trembling.

........

Aleeyeh was promised a marriage before she was old enough to understand what love meant.
Salman was twenty-five when that promise was made-already in love with another woman, already tied to a heart that was not meant to be his forever.
When duty binds them together, Aleeyeh enters the marriage with hope, patience, and quiet prayers. Salman enters it with silence. No love. No warmth. Only respect and distance.
Living beside a husband who does not see her, Aleeyeh learns how lonely marriage can be.
Ink of a Broken Vow is a story of patience, past love, and the quiet strength it takes to heal a heart bound by promises made too soon.