Chapter 122 – That’s enough [2]

"Well," Cassius said with a crooked smile, looking at Isolde in front of him, "where should I even begin?"

"It doesn’t matter." Isolde said, trying to soothe him. Then, quietly, her thoughts travelled back to the moment when Cassius and she had been standing in her garden back at Amaris House, alone and peaceful, about to share their lives with each other.

They had been interrupted by Anesthesia and Emrys. But at that moment, it had felt right. Perfect, even, for a confession. She didn’t know what made it so, but Isolde had often heard that people found it easier to open up when they weren’t staring directly at each other.

The weight became lighter somehow.

With that thought, she softly pushed Cassius, making him lean further back against the headboard. He looked at her with puzzlement, unsure what she was doing.

She paid him no mind.

Instead, she let her head rest gently in his lap and closed her eyes.

"Could you... could you do something for me?" Her voice was small with embarrassment.

"Do... what?"

"Caress my hair." Isolde replied, her voice going quieter still. "I honestly don’t remember the last time anyone ever did that to me. But I have heard, Cass... I have heard that it feels quite relaxing. Like being at a beach with a salty breeze moving across your skin."

She paused, seemed to draw a slow breath to settle her heart. "I always wanted to know if that was true."

Cassius paused for a heartbeat, then smiled at her with quiet warmth.

His insides were still in pain, and every motion he wanted to make carried a stiffness from the poison. Even so, he didn’t hesitate.

He lifted his right hand slowly and somewhat awkwardly, and buried his fingers into her long, silky black hair.

In perfect sync, at the exact same moment, both of them exhaled a sigh of pure contentment.

Isolde immediately got the confirmation she had been looking for.

And in giving that to her, she gave Cassius enough comfort and calm for him to open himself without letting fear and hesitation drag him back down.

Just like that, the moment arrived.

Not because either of them had been waiting passively for it. But because each of them had done something and created, together the kind of quiet where Cassius Desdemona could finally say the words that weighed more than most things in the world.

"I am not, darling, what you might think of me." He began, fingers still moving through her hair, Isolde silent and listening. "I want you to truly know everything about me. But I am afraid I won’t be able to give you the unfiltered version of myself. I can’t promise I won’t unconsciously soften certain things out of fear...fear of your judgment, of how you might look at me afterward. I know I would do it without even meaning to."

He chuckled faintly. "So I want to propose something. Something only my goddess has ever done for me."

Isolde went still at those last words. Her voice carried a note of sudden displeasure. "So you mean... your goddess already knows what you are about to tell me?"

"Uh... yes?"

"And you are still hesitating with me?" She hissed. "Do you love your—!"

"Darling, please." Cassius cut in with a sigh. "It is nothing like that and you know it. And the fact that I hesitate more with you than with her, doesn’t that say more than anything? It means I am more afraid of losing you."

[You wound me, Cassius. Is this truly how little I mean to you?]

’Queen, I beg you. Have mercy.’ Cassius pleaded inwardly. But Ananke only scoffed, ignoring him entirely and privately vowing never to call him her beloved Blessed again.

His answer, however, had clearly pleased Isolde. She grinned, quietly delighted at having scored a point against a divine being. "Then what did you have in mind?"

"I will let you see my memories." Cassius said, drawing a deep breath. "Ananke will help. Through her, you will know everything about me, darling."

He paused and though they were not looking at each other, both of them could feel the seriousness that had settled over the entire room.

"Are you certain you want this?" He asked, more for himself than for her. "Sometimes, as my goddess once told me, knowledge is not a blessing."

"I want to." Isolde said. Her mind was already made up.

No further words were needed.

Cassius exhaled and spoke inwardly to his goddess. ’Would you, please?’

[Everything?] Ananke asked.

He nodded softly. ’Everything.’

At those words, Ananke moved.

With Sarah now a believer and Cassius — her Blessed — acting in ways that continued to affect the fates of a vast number of people, which was the very domain her Gate was built upon, Ananke now possessed a considerable reserve of GeumGeum.

Day by day, she found herself quietly proud of having chosen Cassius. She genuinely could not imagine anyone more perfectly suited to carry her Blessing.

Not even Emrys.

And the delightful thing was that at present, his actions only touched the Kingdom. But in the future...

What would her influence reach if her Blessed’s actions extended beyond his own empire and into the wider world?

’Heh.’ She chuckled inwardly. ’I may be able to climb the Ladder higher now.’

Satisfied with those pleasant thoughts, she activated her power and used Cassius as a medium. That was the only way for her to act outside her Gate, through her Blessed.

As it was for any god.

Through him, Ananke gathered all of Cassius’s memories into a single thread and injected that thread into Isolde’s mind, using Cassius’s right hand, still moving through her hair, as the pathway.

The effect was immediate.

Isolde’s breathing halted sharply. Her consciousness was transported somewhere else entirely.

And there, she began to witness.

It was a world similar to Sunu Gaal in many ways yet fundamentally, completely different.

A world where the world she was currently living in was nothing but a game people played for leisure, without deep attachment.

And there, Isolde Amaris saw something that made her heart leap.

She witnessed a young, brown-skinned boy — handsome and beautiful to the point of looking like an angel born into an ordinary world — moving through life with test after test placed in his way.

His family died in a vehicle accident. An event mundane and unremarkable enough to be forgotten quickly by the world, yet with consequences that shattered lives without mercy. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

She watched the young man grow up surrounded by the dead and those who tended to them, earning him a fond, uncertain nickname among the people who worked alongside him, all of whom had taken a liking to him.

It was always like that, Isolde noted as she watched, her heart beating fast. Noah was so easy to like. But the kind of love he wished to have was no longer something he could obtain, so he unconsciously turned away from all the care directed at him, and fell deeper into a quiet despair.

She continued, watching Noah grow into his love of villains, and enter the Mafia...

Fallen Angel.

’Oh...’ Isolde thought, the realisation arriving quietly. She understood now where the name of their sect had come from.

And she understood it even more when she watched the relationship between Noah and Katherine unfold.

Then Katherine died too.

Just like everyone Noah had ever allowed himself to love deeply. But he continued — steadfast, resilient — as though he had simply refused to be broken by whatever life threw at him.

There, Isolde grasped once more why Cassius carried a strength in him that had nothing to do with his body.

A strength that let him face almost anything head-on without shattering.

The memories did not stop.

Next came Kaden Lightbringer, Noah’s best friend. A man of strange, unshakeable calm. Looking at him, Isolde couldn’t help but feel that even if the world were ending, Kaden would not blink.

It was unsettling. But it was precisely that quality that helped Noah survive losing Katherine and learn again, slowly, how to smile.

The two of them had become friends quickly, and over one rather funny thing:

Noah loved reading novels with villain protagonists. Kaden was a small online writer who enjoyed writing selfless main characters who sacrificed themselves for everyone around them.

Admist tears she hadn’t realised she was shedding, Isolde let out a laugh when Noah bluntly called Kaden’s supposedly best novel complete trash after reading every Chapter.

His justification was childish at best:

"Why did you name your main character after yourself, arrogant bastard? That alone makes this book trash. But I like Pandora though. Better than Madness and Frost. Ah, Crimson Star isn’t bad either. Maybe Sun too, finally? Oh and Silence, my bebi! Only the female characters were any good! But the ending, Kaden...you damned bastard!"

Wounded by those words from his only friend, Kaden had ignored Noah for an entire week, before arriving one morning and handing him a game, telling him to play it.

A game that changed Noah’s life entirely.

A game where he came to love a family so deeply it bordered on insanity.

A game where he loved a Villainess so profoundly that his room filled with pictures of her, ones he had drawn himself and placed everywhere around him.

He loved her.

Oh...he loved her so deeply, so completely, that he played the same game three hundred and thirty-three times. Because he could never bring himself to harm a single hair on that Villainess’s head.

She was just that precious to him.

And so Isolde Amaris wept.

She wept and sobbed and wailed as she never had before. witnessing a man who had loved her even when they were worlds apart. A man who had chosen her three hundred and thirty-three times.

At that point, like salt dissolving into water, everything faded. Isolde returned to the real world, back inside Cassius’s room.

The memory transfer was not finished. There was still the rest of Cassius’s life in this world yet to be seen.

But Isolde no longer wanted more. She no longer needed it.

"Enough." She sobbed, gripping the fabric of Cassius’s clothes tightly in her fists, her hot tears soaking through to his skin.

Yes. It was enough.

More than enough.

"I don’t care." Her voice was full of something so profound, so deep, that words and metaphors and analogies could not have contained it. "I don’t care who you were, or where you came from, or how you arrived here. I only know one thing, husband. Only one thing..."

She cried harder.

And Cassius’s eyes began to rain as relief — a relief so overwhelming it had weight — washed over him.

"...you chose me every single time. Me, Isolde Amaris. Only me. You did it as Noah. You did it as Cassius. And you continue doing it now, at every passing second."

"That is enough."

She paused. Then, once more, softer.

"That is enough."

—End of Chapter 122—