Our Vows Were Lies

“For the world, we were husband and wife—but in this room, we are nothing.”

The dress wasn’t meant for her.

It still smelled like her.

Lavender, old dreams, and the kind of love that was never hers to claim.

She stood before the mirror, a pale ghost wrapped in white. The lace sleeves were too long. The bodice is too loose. The veil, forgotten in a box, still held the imprint of her sister’s life.

But now her sister was gone.

Dead.

Buried.

And with her, the love he swore he’d never give to another.

The doors of the grand wedding hall had closed hours ago. Guests were long gone. Smiles faded into shadows. Laughter now echoed; she couldn’t silence it. The champagne had dried on the glasses, and so had her tears.

She sat on the edge of the massive bed, in a room not hers, beside a man who belonged to someone else, even in death.

He didn’t look at her when he spoke.

His voice was cold. Final.

“For the world, we are husband and wife,”

He said, undoing the buttons on his shirt like it was just another night in hell.

“But in this room... we are nothing.”

She swallowed her heart and looked away.

The silence between them had weight. It pressed against her chest, squeezed her lungs, and stole the little air she had left.

He didn’t say her name. He never had.

She had dreamed of this night once—of his hand finding hers, of whispered "I-love-you’s" under stolen stars.

But that was before the funeral. Before the pity in everyone’s eyes.

Before the wedding, she had never wanted.

Now, her dream lay beside him, —untouched, uninterested, and cruel in his quiet detachment.

And she?

She was a bride to a man who mourned another.

A placeholder.

A name on a certificate.

A vow wrapped in lies.

Elara didn’t move.

Not when Kael loosened his tie. Not when he disappeared into the bathroom and shut the door without a word.

She sat there, hands clenched tightly in her lap, still wearing the dress stitched for a woman no longer breathing.

Amara.

Her sister.

The golden one. The beloved one.

The one Kael was supposed to marry.

And he would have—if not for the crash that shattered their lives three weeks before the wedding.

Everything after that moved like a cruel dream: the funeral, the whispers, the pressure from both families, the burden of reputation.

The idea that Elara—quiet, obedient Elara—could salvage what was lost. That marrying Kael would somehow preserve Amara’s honour.

It wasn’t love. It adultutyy. Tradition. Grief, polished into ceremony.

And Kael?

He had never even looked at Elara before Amara’s death.

The bathroom door creaked open. Kael stepped out, his shirt unbuttoned, revealing the hardened lines of a man built on restraint and pain. His eyes, grey like a dying sky, swept over her briefly.

But they didn’t soften.

“You can take the bed,” he said flatly, walking toward the couch in the room's far end. “I’ll sleep here.”

Elara nodded, though her voice was lost somewhere in her throat.

She stood slowly, unsure of whether she should speak, move, or breathe. Her fingers brushed against the veil still pinned in her hair, and she quickly pulled it off, tossing it onto the nightstand as if it burned her.

Kael lay on the couch with his back to her. He didn’t say goodnight.

She changed behind the dressing screen, removing the gown that once belonged to Amara, sliding out of silk and sorrow, shedding borrowed dreams like a second skin. In the quiet, she could hear her heart crack. Not loudly. Just enough to know it was real.

When she finally lay on the bed—alone in every sense of the word—she stared up at the ceiling. The chandelier cast a cold light, like moonlight carved from glass.

She blinked.

One tear.

That was all she allowed.

Then Elara turned her back on Kael.

And to the woman, she would never be.

And to the love she would never receive.

But somewhere in the hollow of her chest, a voice whispered—

He was never mine to begin with.

Sleep never came.

Only silence—and the sound of a man breathing on the couch, a few feet away yet oceans apart.

Elara lay with her eyes open, staring at the shadows on the ceiling, remembering the day her world shifted.

It was raining.

Hard.

Not the kind of rain that softened the world, but the kind that tore through it like grief unspoken.

The phone had rung once. Just once.

And somehow… she already knew.

Two Weeks Earlier

“Elara, come quickly—Amara’s been in an accident!” her mother had screamed, clutching the phone so tightly her knuckles turned white.

Time warped.

Voices blurred.

Rain pounded on the hospital windows as if trying to get in, as if the sky itself wanted to witness the undoing of everything beautiful.

Elara had stood beside Kael in the ICU hallway. She’d never stood so close to him before. Not even during family dinners, not even when he and Amara got engaged. He smelled like rain and despair.

His hands were covered in blood.

Her sister’s blood.

The doctor’s words were muffled under the sound of Kael breaking.

“She didn’t make it. I’m… I’m so sorry.”

Amara was gone. Just like that. Her laughter, her glow, her future—all extinguished in a single breath.

Kael collapsed to the floor, head in his hands, screaming her name like it could bring her back.

Elara didn’t cry.

Not then.

She stood still, invisible in a corner of her own life.

Three Days After the Funeral

“Elara, listen,” her father had said gently, though his eyes held the weight of something unforgiving. “People are already talking. The press is circling. Kael is… shattered. His family—our family—they need this wedding to happen. Not just for business, but for Amara’s sake. To honour what she wanted.”

She hadn’t answered. Not that day. Not the next.

She only remembered her mother saying, “You’re the only one who can fix this. Please, darling. Just for a while. Until things settle.”

Elara agreed.

Not because she wanted to.

Not because she hoped it would become something real.

But because it was easier than explaining why her heart hurt in ways no one could see.

She had loved Kael in silence for years.

Watched him from behind, the smiles and shadows.

Clapped at his engagement with Amara with trembling hands and an aching soul.

And now… she was his wife.

In name only.

She turned her head slightly to look at the couch.

Kael was asleep, chest rising and falling slowly. In that moment, he looked human. Breakable. Not like the cold, sharp man he became every time he looked at her.

Elara closed her eyes.

This wasn’t love.

This was a burial in disguise.

And though she had walked down the aisle hours ago, dressed in her sister’s gown, surrounded by flowers and smiles—

—Tonight, she had never felt more alone.

To be continued…