The mirror wouldn't stop lying to me.
I wasn't the girl in white. I wasn't the one meant to wear this heavy, stitched-up lie of a lehenga. The woman in the mirror had kajal smudged just enough to seem dramatic but not quite messy. Lips painted like a promise, eyes rimmed like a threat. My heartbeat wasn't mine, it belonged to someone else, someone missing.
"Just say yes, Alya."
My mother's voice rang in my ear even though she wasn't here. She'd been whispering versions of that sentence for years. Today, it came from someone else someone worse.
I turned away from the mirror, the shimmering blouse scratching against my collarbone. My nails were still bitten down from last night. I hadn't slept. How could I?
Because my twin sister, Anaya, had gone missing six hours before her wedding… and they expected me to replace her.
I wasn't a coward. But I wasn't a fool either.
"This is insane," I muttered under my breath. "Absolutely f-"
"Language," barked a woman in a navy pantsuit. She wasn't family. I didn't even know her name. Just another assistant of the Nightfall family sent to ensure the wedding went smoothly, with or without the correct bride.
The rich have this terrifying ability to bend reality like it's Play-Doh.
"You think he won't notice?" I asked her, clutching the dupatta so tightly I thought the sequins would embed into my skin. "She's his fiancée. He's seen her a million times."
"He hasn't," she replied with a bored expression. "Not properly. The marriage was arranged, long-distance. They've only met once. Briefly."
"What the hell kind of romance is that?"
"Who said anything about romance?"
Her eyes flicked down to the bangles clinking on my wrist, then to the tiny scar below my collarbone, one only Anaya and I had. It was the only reason this insane plan was working. That, and the fact that my sister and I were identical down to the mole near our right ankle.
No, not quite identical. She had ambition, confidence, everything I pretended to own. She was the twin everyone noticed first. I was the spare, the 'backup' funny how literal that had become.
"But… what if she comes back?" I whispered, the words barely pushing through my dry throat. "What if she just ran away for a bit?"
The assistant…no, the handler looked up from her clipboard.
"She won't."
And that was the moment something in me cracked.
They weren't searching for her. They weren't panicking. They knew something I didn't.
And now I was being walked down a rose-strewn aisle in her place, toward a man known as The Ghost Groom of Mumbai's richest family.
—
They said Aaryan Nightfall was cursed.
They didn't say it in polite company, of course. But the whispers were everywhere. He was rich, handsome, brilliant and completely devoid of warmth. His previous engagements had all broken off under strange circumstances. One girl moved to a monastery in Himachal. One faked her own death. One actually died in a freak accident.
But Anaya didn't care. She loved puzzles, and Aaryan Nightfall was her favorite one.
She told me once, "There's something hollow behind his eyes, like he knows he shouldn't be here. That kind of man either saves you… or destroys you."
Now that man was standing at the end of a glimmering aisle, wearing a sherwani so sharp it looked like it could cut through reality itself.
I tried not to choke on my own breath as I walked toward him.
My heels clicked against the marble.
Every guest smiled politely.
No one noticed the wrong sister in the dress.
Except one.
From the far side of the aisle, a man stared at me with wide, furious eyes. He was around Aaryan's age, maybe a bit younger. Messy curls, darker skin, a scar under one brow. His lips moved like he was cursing. His hands twitched like he wanted to stand up and stop the wedding.
But he didn't.
And I was too afraid to look back again.
—
The vows were in Sanskrit. I barely understood them.
My body went through the motions, bowing to fire and gods and a family that barely acknowledged me. Aaryan barely looked at me. His expression was stone, unreadable, beautiful in the most dangerous way.
It was only during the sindoor ritual that our eyes finally met.
And something shifted.
His hand hovered above my head for a second too long. His dark eyes cold, glassy and narrowed.
"You're not her," he murmured, barely audible under the chant of the priest.
My blood turned to ice.
He knew.
But then he painted the red line across my parting like a blade slicing down fate's middle.
The marriage was sealed.
—
Later that night, in the Nightfall mansion, more fortress than home I sat on the edge of a four-poster bed in a room that looked like it belonged in a Victorian nightmare.
He stood by the window, his back to me, one hand holding a glass of something amber.
I waited for him to speak. He didn't.
Finally, I whispered, "You knew."
"I'm not a fool," he replied quietly. "But you're braver than she was."
That stunned me. "You… think I'm brave?"
"No," he said, turning to face me. "I think you're desperate."
We stared at each other in the silence of the moonlight.
Then, without moving closer, he said, "You have 99 nights, Alya Verma. After that, you either die… or disappear."
"What?"
"The curse doesn't care who you are. If I fall in love with you… you die. And if I don't…"
He smiled, and it was the coldest smile I'd ever seen.
"You vanish like the rest."
I didn't sleep that night.
I just counted the seconds until dawn and wondered if my sister was still alive, or if she'd already been eaten by the curse wearing a groom's face.