CHAPTER 475: AGAINST ALL ODDS

In the next afternoon, the golden sunlight filtered through the high windows, pooling faintly on the floor like melted honey. The chamber was quiet, save for the faint scratching of a quill against paper and the soft rustle of pages turning. Arabella’s nose was buried deep inside her book, her focus so intense that the world outside her parchment and ink seemed to cease existing.

Then came the faintest aroma, the warm, inviting, and almost sinfully sweet in its delicacy, a smell she would never mistaken. The scent of butter and milk, sweet and savory, wound its way toward her like a wisp. It was so sudden that she blinked, lifted her head, and there he was.

The brown haired maid in disguise. Despite being disguised, he still show his usual characteristic with his current image, sharp -eyed, neat, and his red eyes gleaming with that habitual hint of dry sarcasm. He stood beside her table, calmly placing the plate down with smooth precision, his back never once failing to straighten, almost too elegant for a mere servant.

"Even if you are busy, to eat is to nourish the body and mind. It will keep you healthy, and that’s the one thing you must always do, besides protecting yourself."

His expression didn’t change as he spoke, so coldly composed, as if stating a fact rather than offering that act of kindness.

The words were plain, but the care buried inside them was not. Cassius realized too late how his manner might sound to her now— blunt, detached, and almost commanding. It wasn’t his intention, but softness had never been his strength. In days where he was brought further away from her, his tone became even more demanding and he didn’t want to talk to her like a King to his subject, he didn’t want to be seen as someone cold by the new Arabella.

If it had been the old Arabella, she would have smiled easily, perhaps even teased him for his tone. Now, with the uncertainty between them, he hesitated and showed, just a flicker of unease in his crimson eyes, quickly masked but not quick enough as she could see through it and his perfectly concealed reservation.

Her lips curved into a small, genuine smile that warmed the space between them. "Has anyone ever told you that you are like a cat?"

Cassius blinked, surprised by the strange comparison. Before he could answer, she reached for the bread, still steaming, and flinched as the heat pricked her fingers. Without a word, Cassius reached out, and took the knife and fork from the tray, slicing the bread into small pieces for her.

He did it without looking at her, yet there was tenderness in every motion and watching his action only softened the corner of her lips even more.

"I’m more of a tiger, if I have to choose," Cassius said at last, his voice filled with that amusement, almost teasing. "Maybe a black panther."

Arabella watched him with quiet curiosity. She still couldn’t remember the memories that tied them together, but something in her soul responded to him instinctively, as if an invisible thread had once bound them and was now tugging faintly between their hearts. His voice, his presence, even the way he cut her bread, all of it felt hauntingly familiar.

It wasn’t the first time he had done this for her, to serve her with such care, to look after her like he was taking care of himself, or perhaps he even treated her better than how he would towards himself.

"A cat," Cassius repeated, glancing up from the plate with a faint smirk. "Why do you think I could be a cat?"

Arabella hummed softly before shrugging her shoulders, a nostalgic gleam in her eyes. "I once wanted a cat. It was beautiful, sleek black fur and bright golden eyes. But every time I came near, it would hiss at me. It never once warmed up to me, never."

Cassius tilted his head slightly, a small spark of amusement in his eyes. "But for you to be so fond of it, to remember it until now, must mean that it did warm up to you in the end."

Arabella shook her head slowly, her eyes staring far ahead without a certain point. "Hardly. It never once warmed up to me. It bit and scratched me, but I couldn’t find it in myself to hate it. Though the cat always appeared strong, it would walk with a slight limp in its left foot. It was an old wound that had healed badly. And maybe because of that, it was always on guard, ready to bite anyone it thought was a predator. So how could I ever hate it? Even if it did hurt me, all I can think of was how pitiful it was."

Cassius looked down at his own legs, one corner of his lips twitching upward. "I don’t think I’m carrying a limp."

When he looked up again, her gaze was already on him— a knowing smile playing on her lips, quiet and delicate. It wasn’t a wound she was speaking of. Not the kind that bled. The kind that scarred deep within and never quite healed.

"A wound isn’t only superficial," she said softly, her tone carrying a wiseful note. Then she turned back to the bread, taking a small bite as if to hide her eyes behind the simple motion. "Then one day I went too deep into the wrong side of the mountain. It happens often, especially when your parents aren’t there to warn you whether there had been an attack from wild dogs the day before. I walked toward the mountain without knowing, and was immediately caught by two wild dogs who seemed to be starving. Guess who helped me then?"

"The limping cat," Cassius answered, his tone carrying both fondness and irony. "But with that limp, how could it help you?"

"I don’t remember anymore. It was a bloody scene," she said softly, her voice trailing like a faint breeze brushing past forgotten tombs. Her gaze drifted downward, unfocused, as if she were staring through the pages of memory that refused to turn. "Maybe I couldn’t retrieve the memories because a part of me feared recollecting the missing pieces. But the wild dog was driven away eventually, though it didn’t come without a cost, as the cat died protecting me. I tried hugging it before it died. I spoke to it and thanked it. The cat didn’t answer me—his eyes were still so fierce even when he was about to disappear."

Her voice faltered on that last word, and the silence that followed seemed to draw the air out of the room. The afternoon light dimmed behind a cloud, softening the edges of everything. For a long moment, Cassius simply watched her.

Arabella looked so heartbreakingly sad that Cassius felt his chest tighten. A subtle frown pulled between his forehead, the kind that came from a sense of helplessness. He wondered, absurdly, if those wild dogs were still alive. The thought slithered through his mind as he doubted their existence now, yet the dark part of him still longed to destroy something—anything—that had ever made her cry like that.

"But you know," she continued after a pause, "the cat didn’t warm up to me even in the end. It pushed me away with its little paw and left quietly."

Cassius inhaled deeply. He could picture it— the creature’s defiant stare, its final act of resistance even in its dying breath. There was something painfully familiar in that—something that mirrored himself far too closely.

Then, as if realizing how heavily the story had hung between them, Arabella blinked, shaking herself gently from her trance. Her tone shifted eagerly, "Of course, I don’t mean that you will give up your life for me."

Cassius’s lips curved into a slow smile. "Oh, if only you know."

The words were teasing, his tone carrying that dark lilt that always came naturally to him—but beneath it lingered something else. A shadow of truth, the quiet, dreadful sincerity of someone who already had and would again.

Her heart leaped before she could stop it.

Something in his voice—something in the way he looked at her—made her breath stumble. Cassius’s eyes caught hers and held them prisoner, their scarlet depths burning with a vow she couldn’t quite comprehend. There was an oath there, an oath that seemed to cross Heaven’s will.

He didn’t need to say that losing his life wasn’t much a bargain or that he would choose it anytime over losing her. His silence said it for him and he could tell how that shook her heart even with the forbidden magic that had been casted to turn her heart cold for him.

"So," he said at last, his voice mellowed into velvet, "why was I similar to the cat?"

Her lips parted slightly, but no answer came.

And Cassius smiled—satisfied, faintly cruel, and deeply, hopelessly enamored. Watching her caught in that daze of memory and confusion, he thought, not for the first time, that Morpheus’s greatest failure had been his own arrogance. The man had turned to forbidden magic to chain Arabella’s heart, but he never understood that spells fade, while souls do not.

Her soul had always belonged elsewhere. Bound not by words, nor by will, but by her soul.

To him.

"I just thought that you two carry something so pure beyond words could explain, no matter how violent you would appear to other’s eyes," she confessed. "Or am I reading too much?"

"Oh no," he answered, "Perhaps you’re correct. You have always known me better than myself. I felt like I could love myself, the me that your eyes had seen, a side of me you know I possess when I don’t even see it myself."