The scent of freshly fried puris clung to her hair, mingling with the faint trace of phenyl she had used to mop the marble floors an hour ago. Innaya tugged at the end of her faded yellow dupatta, using it to wipe the sweat off her brow. Her back ached. Her feet burned. But the worst pain settled in her chest, where the ache never truly left.

She stood in the corner of the lavish dining room, unnoticed — like always.

Nayantara laughed, a bell-like giggle that echoed across the chandelier-lit room. Her long, manicured fingers hovered delicately over her phone screen as she scrolled through pictures of her recent trip to Europe. Across from her, Aunt Reema sipped imported green tea, her diamond-studded bangles chiming softly with every flick of her wrist.

"Innaya!" barked Uncle Mahesh from his recliner, not bothering to look up from the news playing on the wall-mounted OLED screen. "Wipe the table properly. I can still see water marks. Are you blind or just lazy?"

"I'm sorry, Kaka," she whispered, rushing forward with a cloth, careful not to disturb the ivory centerpieces Nayantara had so 'graciously' arranged for her social media stories.

"Don't 'sorry' me. Use that brain of yours for once," Reema snapped, her eyes cold and sharp like the edge of the silver spoon she was using to stir her tea. "Or did all your intelligence vanish when we took you in out of pity?"

Innaya swallowed hard.

They always reminded her — she was the burden. The orphan. The unwanted leftover of a tragedy that no one had signed up for.

Her parents had died in a car crash when she was fifteen. And with them, her world — soft, warm, and filled with laughter — had ended.

Uncle Mahesh had taken her in, yes. But not out of love.

Only out of obligation.

"You should be thankful," Reema had told her countless times. "We let you stay. Fed you. Gave you clothes. Who else would want a fat, ungrateful girl like you?"

They'd stopped her education in the second year of college, claiming it was too expensive. That she had already wasted enough of their money. That studies were pointless for someone like her, who would never marry, never get a job, never be anything.

So now, at twenty-two, she cooked. Cleaned. Dusted. Ironed Nayantara's expensive lehengas. Washed the lipstick stains from her silk scarves. Learned to be invisible.

But at night — when the world slept and her chores were done — Innaya escaped.

With trembling fingers and a wildly beating heart, she would steal a few pages of the romance novels hidden beneath her mattress. The same pages she had read a hundred times, their corners worn, their spines cracked.

Stories of love. Of fierce heroes who chased after messy, clumsy, loud girls with crooked teeth and round bellies.

Girls who didn't look like Nayantara.

Girls who looked like her.

She knew better than to believe in them. Reality was cruel. Men wanted smooth curves and spotless skin, not thick thighs and anxious stutters. They didn't chase after girls who cried over burnt rotis or flinched at raised voices.

But still... she believed.

Not in princes or glass slippers.

But in the possibility of being seen. Chosen. Loved.

Maybe not today. Maybe not ever. But believing gave her strength to wake up the next morning.

To serve breakfast with a forced smile. To keep going, even when her heart whispered, What if this is all there ever is?

She looked at Nayantara now — glowing, perfect, posing for the camera as her parents praised her beauty, her charm, her brilliance.

Innaya clutched the edge of the tablecloth.

One day, she promised herself.

One day, someone will look at me — and not flinch.

She didn't know that day was already racing toward her... cloaked in shadows, wrapped in mystery, with a heart darker than any fairy tale villain and a desire more dangerous than love.

The world was asleep.

The mansion, with all its glittering chandeliers and designer silence, had finally gone quiet. Nayantara had gone out with her friends for some party. Reema had taken a sleeping pill, and Uncle Mahesh was snoring in his recliner in front of the TV.

And Innaya... she sat curled up on the cold tiled floor of the tiny storeroom that had once been called her bedroom. Her blanket — faded pink, patched with old sarees — clung to her legs as she opened the wooden box hidden beneath her bed.

Inside were memories. Small. Faded. Sacred.

A cracked photo frame of her parents — her mother smiling in a yellow saree, her father's arm protectively around them both. A paper flower she had made in school when she was eight. Her mother had kept it as if it were gold.

And a diary.

Not one where she wrote dreams or poems. Just... thoughts. Quiet conversations with people who were no longer there to answer.

She flipped to a blank page, pressed her pen to the paper, and whispered aloud as she wrote:

"Hi Ma... hi Baba."

Her voice cracked.

"I hope wherever you are... it's not like this. I hope it's warm. I hope it smells like your cooking, Ma. I hope Baba is still humming that terrible Kishore Kumar song in the mornings, the one I always rolled my eyes at."

Her eyes burned. She kept writing.

"I miss you. Every single day. I miss how you used to stroke my hair when I cried. How you made me feel like I was the most beautiful girl in the world, even when I had food on my shirt and oil in my hair."

Tears slipped quietly down her cheeks.

"They told me I was too fat for the college dance competition, Ma. But you still made me that blue dress and said I looked like the sky. No one has ever made me feel like that since you left."

Her shoulders shook as she pressed her hand to her mouth, holding back the sobs.

"Sometimes, I try to imagine you're still here. That you'll walk in and scold me for skipping dinner. That you'll wipe my tears and tell me I'm not too much — not too ugly — not too worthless."

She paused.

Then added softly:

"But they make me feel like nothing, Ma. Like I'm just the help. Just a shadow. I clean their mess, smile when they insult me, stay quiet when they raise their hands. I don't fight back anymore."

Her grip on the pen tightened.

"But I still read those books. You know the ones. The ones with love stories and impossible men and girls who are messy, and loud, and different — like me. I know it's silly. But they remind me of you. Of how you believed in magic. Of how you made me believe in it, too."

She lifted the photo frame and pressed it to her heart.

"I miss you," she whispered, finally breaking, her tears soaking the pages. "I miss you both so much that sometimes it hurts to breathe."

There was no reply.

Just the hum of the night, the creak of the fan, and the echo of her grief.

But somewhere in the stars above, maybe a mother's love stirred. Maybe a father's hand reached out to touch the daughter they left behind.

And maybe — just maybe — the universe listened.

Because fate was shifting.

And somewhere not too far from her, a man whose heart was colder than ice and darker than midnight had just heard her name for the first time.

He didn't know it yet.

But Innaya was about to shatter his world.

Next day,

By 1 PM, the mansion emptied of noise. Reema went for her afternoon facial. Mahesh Uncle dozed with his mouth open in front of the TV. Nayantara had vanished to a café with some boy whose name changed every week.

And Innaya — with the last of the dishes done, the floor swept, and the scolding over for the day — quietly slipped out of the back gate.

She walked fast, the heat prickling her skin, dust clinging to her dupatta. But her steps were light, almost happy. She carried a worn-out jute bag filled with old notebooks, second-hand pencils, and a few leftover sweets she had saved from last night's puja.

She stopped in front of the crumbling blue gate of the shelter.

It wasn't officially an orphanage. It wasn't even registered.

But to the women inside — it was the only place they weren't stared at with disgust or whispered about behind closed doors.

Some of them had been thrown out by their husbands. Some were raped by relatives and left bleeding in hospital corridors. Some had escaped brothels, still bearing the cigarette burns and nightmares.

All of them had one thing in common — they had no one.

No name.

No home.

No tomorrow.

And yet, when Innaya stepped inside that faded two-storey building with its peeling paint and uneven walls, they smiled.

"Miss Innaya is here!" cried Shanta, a girl no older than nineteen with burn scars trailing down her neck. Her voice was bright, her eyes shining.

Innaya smiled, her heart warming in a way it never did back in that golden prison she lived in.

"Okay, okay," she laughed, raising her hands playfully. "I hope no one forgot the vowels today?"

The women gathered, some on plastic mats, some leaning against the wall. There were no benches. No blackboards. Just notebooks with half-torn pages and a woman who still believed in the power of small things.

Today, she taught them basic math.

Tomorrow, she'd move to writing letters.

But more than anything, she taught them to believe they could.

"You're not stupid, Manju didi," she said gently as she corrected a mistake. "You just never got a chance to learn. That's not your fault."

A few heads nodded. One or two smiled.

"You don't need to be rich or perfect or pretty to matter," she added softly. "You just need to know your worth — and never forget it."

Words she herself struggled to believe.

But here... they listened. They held her hand. They hugged her without hesitation. They didn't care about her size or the oil in her hair. They saw her.

And she saw them.

Before leaving, she took out the sweets. Tiny orange laddoos in paper wrappers.

"They're from last night's puja. Not much, but..."

Manju broke into a toothless grin. "No one's given me prasad in five years."

Innaya blinked away tears. "You deserve it. You all do."

By 3 PM, she was back at the mansion. Back to the chores. The glares. The silence.

But inside her — there lived a little light. A room filled with broken women who cheered when she entered.

A small rebellion.

A quiet war.

And one day, someone would see that fire in her — and never look away again.