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…”

Cassian released me at once and turned to steady Sorrel.

Her body sagged, collapsing forward—straight onto me.

A sudden warmth spread down my legs. I looked down. A bright red pool was blooming beneath her. Sorrel clutched her stomach, her sobs piercing.

“I told you I wouldn’t fight you anymore! Why won’t you even spare my child? You stopped taking the medicine and pretended to have amnesia—just to take revenge on me today, didn’t you?”

The words detonated in Cassian’s mind like a thunderclap. His expression turned black, his voice sharp enough to cut.

“Search!”

The servants ransacked my room and dragged out a dust-covered box from under the bed. Inside lay the pills I had hidden away for years. Untouched.

Bang!

The slap threw me to the ground. Pain stung my cheek, but Cassian’s words cut deeper, spat through clenched teeth:

“So you’ve been lying to me all these years.”

“You never loved me at all!”

They locked me up. They pressed my fingerprints onto the divorce papers.

From the servant who brought me food, I learned the news: Cassian would marry Sorrel.

In the official statement, I was branded the mistress. My marriage had been nothing but a revenge ploy. The world believed everything was set right.

I was the one being sent abroad.

Even then, Cassian overdosed me with medication, clouding my mind until days and nights blurred together. He never stopped dosing me—because deep down, he still believed I would never love him.

The night before my flight, he came to my room. His hand stroked my face with a tenderness more frightening than his violence.

“If only you could love me.”

I smiled back at him, vacant, foolish.

At dawn, they bundled me onto the plane. My body wrapped tight, unrecognizable, I sat among strangers.

All around me, passengers whispered excitedly about Cassian and Sorrel’s historic wedding. Their voices buzzed with envy and admiration.

I only wondered absently—who was Cassian?

By the time the plane lifted into the sky, I had already let the question go. The affairs of strangers were none of my concern.

…

At the wedding, Cassian toasted from table to table, his smile polished and triumphant.

An old high school classmate—someone he had not seen in years—offered his congratulations. Like him, this man had once been humiliated by Elowen’s money.

After a few drinks, he asked lightly, “Is Elowen doing well?”

Cassian’s brows furrowed. “She humiliated you too. Don’t you hate her?”

The man gave a bitter laugh.

“She smashed what I treasured. It cost me three years of living expenses. But it also won me sympathy. If I hated her, wouldn’t I be ungrateful?”

His tone turned sharp.

“But you and I—our situations were different. She sympathized with me.”

The man’s gaze grew heavy, almost mocking.

“But she liked you.”