My Fiancée Hates Me
Chapter 31: Painted Memories P.4

[Past Life]

I woke up to a familiar ceiling. At my side was a sleeping Erik holding onto my hand.

"E-Erik..."

He suddenly woke up.

"Ari, you are awake," he said as he hugged me.

"How long have I been asleep for?" I asked as Erik helped me sit up.

"Two days..."

Erik had informed me that Garett along with five other men had been captured and held captive by the Balik Empire. The ransom was the Book of Ruth Chapter 313, a book about how to make superior mass killing weapons.

"Just give up the book!" I told Erik.

"We deciphered the book with the decoding formulas your family provided. Someone from our side leaked our deciphering techniques to the other side. Anyone can read it if they have the book. The contents are...It is not a book meant to be seen in the light. Is Garett's life worth more than the life of millions?"

If it was my life, surely Erik would not hesitate to give up the book...

"...Are we supposed to let him die?"

"I am ready to do that," Erik said resolutely.

I placed my hands over my eyes as I began crying.

"...I hate you, Erik."

Erik pulled me into his embrace and continued holding onto me for what seemed like hours.

More than hating him, I hated myself for agreeing with Erik's decision...

About a day later, Garett's head along with the heads of five other soldiers arrived at the front gate of the fortress. I broke down crying at the scene of seeing Garett's decapitated head skewered and stuck onto a long wooden stick in the ground alongside with the other five soldiers.

For the next three days, I locked myself in my room at the capital without any contact from the outside. I simply just lied in bed without eating or sleeping. I continuously wished that someone would bring me news that everything was just a ruse and that Garett was not actually dead.

I eventually got back on my feet and began pulling all-nighters and overworking myself day in and day out. The war with the Balik Empire was imminent from how they killed off a relative of royalty and began attacking our trade ports. This meant that I had to undergo war campaigns and make do with preparations to gather rations as well as soldiers for our cause. There was nothing but more work to be done. Being sad was the least of my worries.

Before I knew it, six months had passed me by. When I finally had a day of rest, I used my time to just lie in bed without doing anything.

Erik had crawled over me while I was napping and woke me up. It had been a while since we last shared a bed awake together. Our schedules did not align. When it did, we would just sleep side by side without exchanging so much as a word to each other.

"Erik?"

"Ari, let's have a child," Erik said suddenly.

We had not tried anything again since that incident...

"Let's not..." I said as I turned my head away from him.

"It has been six months."

"The preparations for war will not get done by themselves."

"Leave it to other people."

"No..."

"... You are so stubborn. Is it because of Garett?"

"...How could you ask me that?"

Bringing his name up in this situation?

"The reason you refuse to do anything with me is because of him, right? Why is it a curse?"

"...Can you still hold me if you knew I slept with him?" I asked as I turned my body away.

Erik straddled me and pinned my wrists down.

"You are smart, Arielle... That's why I know you are lying to get me to hate you."

"...We kissed, hugged each other with our bare bodies and...."

"Arielle!"

"When you found me, you could smell all of my unfaithfulness all over my body," I said as I began crying. "I am filthy. I do not deserve to be held by you."

"I know you better than yourself...When you lie, you claw yourself in the palm of your hand just like what you are doing right now."

I gasped.

Erik knew me too well...

"N-No...I really did accept Garett..."

I never copulated with Garett. He respected my feelings and never took it that far with me even though he could have easily done it with his strength.

I had prepared myself in case I would be forced to go along with Garett's desires, but his love and respect for me prevailed over his lust.

"You never accepted him...That is why you feel so guilty, but I don't. I don't regret my decisions. He chose that path for himself a long time ago as well. That is why I will make our dream come true," Erik said as he ripped my nightgown. "For you, for Garett, and for myself...I am going to make you have my child right here."

"Wait...Stop!"

I was forced to accompany Erik under several passionate nights until my strength would give out and repeat the process the next day.

Even if my heart was not ready, my body was always willing to respond...

Rather than using the shared act for love, all I felt was a heavy burden of being forced to make an heir.

Erik disregarded my complaints and continued on with his path to dominate me fully no matter how cruel he was.

The psychological burden of my heart not being ready added onto my daily stress and eventually distorted my memories.

Within a few weeks, I became pregnant with newly implanted memories I had created along my forgetfulness of Garett's death...all to protect myself.

Erik was cruel in his ways. Even so, he achieved the results he wanted at the expense of my mental stability. The child in my stomach became surprisingly a source of happiness for me despite the cruel process it was first formed in. Had he not done so, maybe the weight of my feelings would have surely destroyed me...

Garett died early in my first life because of this book. The book contains information on how to make several weapons on how to decimate a large amount of people. It was used as a bargaining chip for Garett's life when he was being held hostage. The Balik Empire had been provided information that Arundel was holding this book and had obtained information on how to decipher Asmarian language from a spy in our territory.

However, the person I blamed the most in all of this was myself as the person who released the deciphering techniques of the ancient language.