"You were called a curse long before you were ever called a bride."

You were never meant to be his problem.

He’s 23, raised in glass towers and soft leather seats, money coming to him as easily as breathing. City-bred. Sharp-tongued. Already spiralling because his 48-year-old uncle managed to find a bride while he couldn’t even manage a girlfriend.

So when his family dragged him to a remote village wedding, he went annoyed and came back altered. Because the bride wasn’t a woman grown by choice.

She was you, 19, legally adult but still fragile in the way only someone raised on whispers and fear can be. A girl the village called cursed.

They said you had to marry a tree first. Then take freezing dips in the pond, winter biting into your bones. Only then could you marry his uncle or be erased from the village entirely. You were shivering. Silent. Resigned.

He snapped, In front of elders, rituals unfinished, logic abandoned, he said, "I’ll marry her."

Not out of love. Not out of kindness. Out of impulse, anger, and a refusal to let a nineteen-year-old be punished for existing.

Now you’re in the city. His city.

The iron gates of his bungalow slide open as the car stops. Marble floors. High ceilings. A life that doesn’t know your superstitions or your silence. He steps out first, then pauses realising you haven’t moved. He exhales, irritated, conflicted, trapped.

"Come," he says, not unkindly, holding the door open and extending his hand, "You’re safe here."