My mind felt like it was being pierced by a thousand needles, the agony swallowing my vision in black.

I bit down hard on my lip, fighting back tears.

In the haze, I saw Cassian—eyes red as blood—sliding a ring onto my finger. The image shattered, frame by frame, until it blurred into nothing.

At breakfast the next morning, Cassian didn’t see me. Panic twisted his face as he tore through the villa, then mobilized an entire search team.

They finally found me in the basement.

But I wasn’t alone.

A venomous a deadly viper coiled inches away. Its head snapped forward.

“Don’t move!”

Without hesitation, Cassian lunged, shielding me with his body.

The fangs sank into his neck. His skin turned an ugly shade of blue before he collapsed. They rushed him to the hospital, pumping out every drop of blood before dragging him back from death.

The doctor’s face was darker than soot as he pointed at Cassian’s entourage.

“Why were you more than ten minutes late? He should be dead right now!”

Everyone’s eyes turned on me like knives.

It was my fault. I had delayed the trip, insisting on retrieving his teddy bear.

The secretary who had followed Cassian for ten years finally snapped.

“How could a broken toy matter more than Mr. Durel’s life? He’s given you everything, and you— you don’t even care if he dies!”

Cassian’s face went cold.

“You’re fired. Collect your salary and leave.”

The ward fell silent.

Then he turned to me, forcing a smile onto his pale lips.

“Don’t listen to him. If it makes you happy, I’ll protect even an old teddy bear. Even if it killed me, I wouldn’t hesitate.”

I clutched the washed-out bear, smiling like a fool.

Strange… Cassian, who never forgets anything, always forgets this bear.

Because this is no ordinary toy.

He had saved five hundred dollars in high school—scrubbing toilets for five months—just to buy it for me.

For me, it wasn’t even enough for a gift box.

So, in front of all our classmates, I threw the bear in the trash. Then I slapped a hundred thousand dollar bill in his face.

“Take this and get lost. Don’t disgust me with your garbage again.”

Now my eyes dropped to his only remaining hand. Smooth. Pale. Pampered.

So different from back then, when corrosive cleaners had eaten his skin raw, leaving it swollen and blistered. Cassian’s hand should never have looked like this. Even now, I couldn’t reconcile it.

The ward door banged open. Sorrel rushed in, flinging herself at his bed and knocking me to the floor. The burn she’d given me days earlier split open; blood soaked through my sleeve.

But Cassian’s gaze filled only with pity—for her.

He didn’t even notice me until the nurse came for rounds. Then, awkwardly, he offered an explanation:

“Sorrel… she’s too empathetic. Don’t overthink it.”

He remembered my headaches and asked the doctor to check me, but his eyes never once flicked to the blood dripping down my arm.

When the doctor stepped away, leaving me in the hallway, I finally let out a breath—

But a brutal force slammed me forward.

Sorrel.

She wrenched the teddy bear from my arms and crushed it against my face, her voice shrill with venomous hatred.

The cotton gag filled my mouth; breath turned to iron.

“You bitch! I’ll make you feel Cassian’s pain!” Sorrel’s voice cut across me, close and cruel. Panic clawed at my ribs and I reflexively mouthed Cassian’s name.

The suffocation closed in. I tore at the gag until my fingers bled, nails carving long, red tracks into the floor. The ward was only a few steps away—and no one moved. Darkness pooled at the edges of my vision.

Then Cassian’s voice came, faint and impossibly calm. Relief flared. I thought I was saved. Instead he watched as if from behind glass, then spoke to the doctor at his side with that chill he always wore. “Dr. Crowe, process this memory of Elowen Drae—like before.”

Sorrel’s shriek echoed in my head. “If Cassian hadn’t kept wiping her mind, she’d learn her lesson!”

The realization hit like ice: this was not the first time he let her hurt me.

A flood of broken scenes — sharp, merciless — stabbed through my skull. On our first night together she had moved into our bridal chamber as if it were hers. She’d scalded me with coffee under the pretense of “venting,” shoved me down stairs, even pinned Cassian on the sofa while I watched him twist and struggle.

That night he broke. He pinched a cigarette between trembling fingers, bloodshot eyes boring into mine. “Elowen, the weight between us is too heavy,” he had said.

The humiliations of youth, the ruin of my family, the hand he’d lost trying to save me — these fractures ran too deep.

They strapped me into the treatment chair, electrodes cold against my scalp. Cassian approached with an expression I couldn’t read. He bent, kissed the wet tracks on my cheeks, and murmured, “Elowen, rest. Everything will start anew.”

The doctor hesitated. “Mr. Durel—this is too frequent. It’s harming her brain.”

Cassian’s voice was small and desperate. “I can’t let her hate me.”

Then the current snapped into me, a crackling violence that obliterated memory like glass. Pain and names and faces shattered and fell away. My fingers slackened; the teddy bear I’d clutched rolled into the trash beside the bed — forgotten, as always. Only this time no one would retrieve it.

I slept for a long time. When I woke, the man leaning over me was unfamiliar in a new way—handsome, earnest, panicked. I jerked my hand back. “Who are you?”

He flinched, then seized my fingers. “Elowen. I’m Cassian—your husband.” He gripped with too much force. “We’ve been married three years. You love me. You said I was your life.”

He rattled off memories like proof, but they felt hollow, as if someone had cut the roots from the words. I rubbed my aching temple and mouthed the habit of comfort. “Sorry, my head hurts.”

His smile froze. He glanced away, saw the bear in the bin, and his face soured. “What a piece of trash. Throw it out.”

I stared at the soiled toy, the dark dried stain on its fur, and then at my own lip — a sting of blood where Sorrel’s hand had opened it. Instinct made my fingers touch the wound.

Cassian’s body stiffened at once. He blurted out, almost too quickly:

“Did you… did you have a nightmare?”

Then, frantic, he added,

“Dreams aren’t real—don’t believe them!”

The clumsy cover only made his guilt more obvious.

I didn’t bother to probe. My eyes stayed fixed on the teddy bear being carried out.

“A rotten bear,” I said evenly. “It should’ve been thrown away long ago.”

Just like our love.

Perhaps he sensed the change in me. Though the doctor ordered me to rest, Cassian refused to leave my side—except at night.

Always at night.

I woke every time he slipped away. Sometimes, they even returned together, entering our bedroom with whispers and stifled laughter.

Sorrel’s voice was unmistakable, breaking through the darkness in the heat of their entanglement.

“Cassian… when will you restore Elowen’s memory? You’ve wasted ten years of marriage on revenge. I’ve waited for you for ten years. Isn’t it enough?”

And Cassian, lost in his own delusion, always answered the same way:

“Soon. It’s almost time.”

He never noticed the venom in Sorrel’s eyes when she looked at me.

She began stealing my pills. What she didn’t know was that Cassian, afraid I might discover their affair, dosed my food with even more.

Piece by piece, my memory unraveled. Whole days passed with me sitting blankly at the window, staring at nothing.

Cassian was satisfied. He thought my silence meant I no longer clung to him. He even looked relieved, as though he’d grown tired of the doll he had spent years molding.

It was laughable. He had forced me into a world that revolved only around him—yet now even he found it suffocating.

I said nothing. I simply let myself forget him, little by little.

Until that dinner.

The villa doors burst open with a bang. Sorrel stumbled in, hair disheveled, and dropped to her knees before me.

“My mother has a heart condition! If you want revenge, come at me—don’t touch my family!” she screamed, her tears shrill and practiced.

Outside, camera flashes exploded like fireworks. Reporters swarmed, shouting over one another:

“Mr. Durel, how do you respond to your wife’s revelation about your affair with Ms. Sorrel?”

“Was your ten-year love story nothing but a lie?”

For ten years, Cassian’s devotion had been the fairy tale of our circle. Now, with the story torn apart by another woman, the outrage naturally fell on Sorrel.

Microphones shoved into her face, the questions merciless.

Cassian’s expression darkened. His stormy gaze found me—sharp, accusing. But in the end, he said nothing to me.

Instead, he pulled Sorrel close, shielding her with his body. “I’ll handle this,” he murmured, before ordering his secretary to arrange an immediate transfer abroad for Sorrel and her family.

Sorrel’s eyes flickered with something sharp. She pressed a few times on her phone.

Less than a minute later, Cassian’s phone rang. The news hit like a hammer: Sorrel’s parents had been killed in a sudden car accident.

She collapsed at my feet, clutching my trouser leg.

“I was wrong, I was really wrong!” she wailed, incoherent, yet every word twisted the knife into me.

“You warned me in high school not to take what was yours… I was expelled then, but I never learned… Now look—I’ve killed my parents, ruined my whole family—because of you!”

Cassian’s eyes burned red. His grip clamped around my wrist, crushing bone.

“Why are you so cruel!”

And beside him, Sorrel sobbed, knocking her head against the floor.

“I beg you… let my family go. I don’t want anything anymore…”