The First Morning and a Visit from the Matriarch

The morning after was not filled with the gentle glow of a new dawn, but with the cool, unfamiliar silence of a life that was no longer her own. Anika woke in a massive, four-poster bed, the silk sheets a stark contrast to the familiar, well-worn cotton of her own mattress. The room was vast and intimidating, with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto manicured gardens and a distant skyline that felt a world away from her bakery. She was a bride, a wife, but she was utterly alone in this gilded cage. The weight of the mangalsutra felt foreign and heavy around her neck, a physical symbol of the vows she had made—not of love, but of war.