Flick.
Her eyes flew open.
“Ah…”
The moment she died, Cassia opened her eyes, like someone waking up from sleep.
‘Am I in heaven?’
After being diagnosed with a terminal illness, she imagined many times what heaven would look like. She always believed that if heaven and hell existed, she would definitely go to heaven. Who deserved it more than someone like her?
But the first sight of the afterlife, which she assumed would be heaven, resembled hell far more. Cassia had always thought that the ceiling of her room, which she faced every day upon waking, looked like hell, and now, that very ceiling was what greeted her. If she didn’t remember dying, she could’ve mistaken this for just another ordinary morning.
Carefully, Cassia pushed herself up.
As the wool blanket covering her slid off, her pale, naked body was revealed.
‘I guess I really am dead.’
It was different from her final moments, when her body had been gaunt and wasted away. Her skin was now pearly and milky, her figure full and curvaceous, like how she had been before the suffering began in the Greze territory.
‘They say you come to heaven and leave everything behind… I must be in God’s arms, back to my original appearance.’
Cassia was genuinely moved. She was ready to pour her heart out to God, tell Him how hard and painful her life had been, and beg Him to let her live just a little more happily in her next life.
Surely a God who had watched her entire pitiful life would grant her such a simple wish.
“Dear God.”
She gently closed her eyes and pressed her hands together in prayer.
“God? When are you coming?”
Cassia peeked one eye open. Her room that she considered hell remained exactly as it had always been.
Sensing something was wrong, she unclasped her hands and looked around. Her eyes immediately landed on a naked man asleep next to her bed.
His dark red hair and sun-bronzed muscular body were beautiful.
The man she had never wanted to see again after death, the very one who had ruined her past life.
Her husband, Baron Zester Greze.
“Uwaaaaah!”
Cassia flailed in shock. The bed was narrow, and as she twisted away, her body toppled off the edge. With a loud thud, she landed on the floor and pain shot up her spine from her tailbone.
“Ow, ow, ow…”
The pain was so sharp that she didn’t even register the fact that she was stark naked, sprawled on the floor. Rubbing her sore tailbone, she groaned.
“…Are you alright?”
An all-too-familiar voice spoke above her head. Cassia’s mind froze in an instant.
Looking up, she saw Zester peering down at her with a slightly startled expression. Their eyes locked, and Cassia shrieked.
“What are you doing here?!”
Zester’s brows furrowed.
“What do you mean?”
“Why, why?! Was it not enough to torment me in life, that you had to follow me after death?! Please! I‘ve had enough of your face! I’m sick of it! I hate it! I don’t care how handsome you are, just go away!”
Zester’s expression turned strange at her vehemently sincere outburst.
This was something she would never have dared to do while she was alive. But now she was no longer his wife, she screamed as much as she wanted.
Just seeing him made her want to cover herself. Their marital relations had been so rare that undressing always felt awkward and embarrassing.
It was futile, but Cassia desperately crossed her arms over herself and squeezed her eyes shut. Once again, she began to pray.
‘Is this some pre-heaven hell trial? Please, just take me away already!’
Perhaps God heard her plea, because suddenly something soft fluttered down and landed on her head, a wool blanket. Her vision went dark. Moments later, she felt herself being lifted.
She wasn’t naive enough to think, ‘God must be carrying me to heaven’. She knew exactly whose warmth this was. It wasn’t God, it was Zester.
As soon as he laid her back in bed, Cassia threw the blanket off. As always, Zester stood above her with his usual indifferent expression. Her gaze, unintentionally, landed between his naked legs.
Cassia yanked the blanket over her head again and began chanting like a spell.
“Dear God! Please save me from this hell!”
If this was meant to be a final taste of hell before entering heaven, then congratulations, it had succeeded. Seeing the face of the man she hated most, that thing she found disgusting every time, and waking up in the same bed as him, this was a triple dose of torment.
Cassia was now swearing under her breath as she continued calling for divine intervention. But oddly enough, nothing happened. God, it seemed, was off duty.
“You must be the type to express your dislike late after the fact.”
Zester’s voice was heavy, like a wet cloth. He sounded almost disappointed, maybe even angry. Cassia slowly peeked out from under the blanket.
Zester was no longer in the room. Perhaps realizing how much she hated, even despised, him, he’d left quickly, not even bothering to dress, just throwing on a winter robe.
The door shut behind him with a loud slam. Cassia stared blankly at it for a long time.
***
It didn’t take long for her to realize that this wasn’t heaven, nor even hell, but a return to her living hell.
“O God, if you have any conscience, please, spit out everything I’ve donated to the church over the past ten years.”
Cassia looked around the room again after completing her 25th prayer with closed eyes. The prayer, which had clearly started as a pious and earnest appeal, had changed into irreverent and furious tirade by the tenth time.
Instead of granting her a heavenly afterlife, God had given her ten-years of regression in the form of hell. It was maddening.
The table and windowsills were decorated with candles. A few bottles of wine remained, suggesting a drink was shared the night before. Cassia had never once shared such moments with Zester in her past life. The only time she remembered this level of decor and mood-setting was their wedding night.
The sharp pain in her lower back, which was obviously not just a result of falling, helped her also understand this hellish situation. Maybe it was because it was her first time or because Zester’s body was more like a weapon, she vividly remembered her lower back hurting so much that she thought it was going to break.
In other words, Cassia was back to the winter she was seventeen, when she had practically been sold off to the Greze territory.
It was absurd. God had clearly never pitied Cassia’s life. If he had, he wouldn’t have sent her back to the very day her misfortune began. To force her to repeat those ten nightmare years again.
If he really wanted to turn back time, why not go 20 years back? Or 27, when she was still in her mother’s womb? Or even 30, before she was even conceived?
Screaming inside, Cassia shook her head. No matter when she returned to, she was always destined to become Baroness Greze. It wasn’t a marriage she or her father had chosen, rather, one forced by the emperor, the most powerful man in the Empire.
No, if anyone was to blame, it was her cold and oblivious husband, Zester.
When Cassia was 14, war broke out between her homeland, the Simone Empire, and the Bert Empire. In this great war that lasted a full year and a half, Zester, a commoner mercenary hired by the imperial family, achieved incredible feats.
Cassia had been too young at the time to understand the details of his exploits. What she did know was that he performed so well that the emperor almost wanted to hail him as a god.
In the capital, and even in Ruberno territory, Zester was hailed as a national hero. The emperor granted him a title of ‘Baron’ and a fief. It was said that the emperor wanted to grant Zester an even higher title but was met with opposition from several high-ranking nobles.
In any case, the emperor obviously felt that wasn’t enough, so he suddenly turned his eyes to Cassia, who had been living quietly in Ruberno territory. Since the new hero has no bride, he subtly pressured Cassia’s father, Count Ruberno, to offer Cassia for this glorious position.
The Ruberno territory was vast, fertile, and rich in sights, plus it was also swimming in profits from agriculture and tourism, which meant that Count Ruberno was one of the wealthiest men in the Empire. With a strong bloodline and political influence, the Ruberno family was firmly at the center of power, both in-name and in reality.
Cassia Ruberno was the daughter of such a prestigious Earldom, and she was a young lady of marriageable age. As if God had worked some kind of harmony, she possessed a beautiful appearance which added to her already excellent background, and at that time, hundreds of marriage proposals flooded the Earldom daily.
There were many other young noble misses besides Cassia, but the emperor wanted to bestow what he felt was a fitting reward upon the war hero. And Cassia Ruberno fit that bill perfectly.
Looking back, it was utterly ridiculous. If he was so eager to celebrate his hero, why not choose from among his own daughters? He had three princesses! What? He was okay giving up someone else’s daughter but his own was off limits?
Cassia added the name of that worthless emperor to the long list of reasons her life had been so miserable.
In any case, it was because of the emperor’s greed to give Zester the best bride of the Empire that Cassia ended up in this position.
On their first night together, Zester, her ever-cold husband, gave Cassia, who was in a new environment and new to everything, the worst first night of her life.
He sat down with his young wife who was very nervous, and after sitting in silence for an hour, he finally tried to leave the room. She tried to stop him, and he opened his mouth to say:
『I’m not aroused.』
He was seven years older than her and surely in his prime. The misery she felt hearing such words from the mouth of a man who was obviously virile was unspeakable.
That day, even as her cheeks flushed with shame, Cassia held on to her husband.
『If you leave like this on our wedding night… people will think little of me. I know you don’t like me but…』
Trying desperately with the little knowledge she had, she held Zester back and after that, things proceeded at lightning speed.
It was so scary and animalistic that Cassia struggled to hold back tears from the pain and sadness. He showed no consideration for his wife, who was experiencing it for the first time. Perhaps his remark about not being aroused was just an excuse he made because he didn’t like Cassia, or maybe he gave in to instincts. Either way, he didn’t let his young wife go until dawn.
It remained one of the top five worst days of Cassia’s life at the Greze Castle.
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