Never Too Late to Return

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.