Reginald's heavy footsteps faded down the hallway, leaving a silence that felt louder than his shouting.
Cassandra stood frozen, staring at the empty doorway where her husband had just disappeared.
She didn't move. She couldn't. Her skin was still burning with a phantom heat... not from Reginald's anger, but from Jonathan's indifference.
She felt... dirty.
The sensation crawled over her skin like insects. Jonathan hadn't just rejected her; he had wiped her away. He had treated her touch like a stain, her beauty like a nuisance, her entire existence like a smudge of dirt on a pristine suit.
She needed to be cleaned.
But water wouldn't do it. She needed a mirror.
She needed to see herself reflected in a man's eyes... not as a desperate failure, but as a goddess. She needed to be scrubbed clean with raw, unadulterated lust to prove that the failure wasn't in her beauty, but in Jonathan's blindness.
Slowly, she turned.
Her eyes landed on Arthur.
