I MARRIED MY ENEMY FOR REVENGE

The First Push

The knock on the door started up again.

This time, he banged heavily, vibrating with a raw, restless energy that demanded a response.

I shut my eyes tightly, desperately trying to construct a wall against the wave of raw panic crashing over me, but it was a losing battle. My lungs felt entirely restricted, and my thoughts were swirling at a terrifying speed, completely out of reach.

Why had he come up here?

After years of total exile… why choose this specific moment to show his face?

Another heavy strike rattled the frame.

Before my brain could even map out a choice, whether to confront him head-on or leave him stranded on the other side, the handle turned, and the door opened inward.

And there he stood, framed by the doorway, unmoving and looming like a shadow.

For what felt like an eternity, the air vanished from the room.

He didn't say a word, his piercing gaze tracking through the dim lighting until it locked directly onto me, and the sudden shift in the room's atmosphere made my entire body go rigid.

Time hadn't changed a single thing about his composure.

He is still that same guy who's difficult to understand, as though he had built a wall around him, too high for anyone to look through, Seeing that complete lack of emotion pushed my irritation over the edge.

“You have absolutely no right to be in this room,” I said, the words forced through clenching teeth as I fought to keep my tone from shaking.

He didn't answer right away. He just stepped inside, closing the door behind his back with a quiet, deliberate click before fixing his eyes on my face.

“We need to clear the air.”

A sharp, unamusing laugh bubbled up in my throat.

“Clear the air?” I echoed, mocking him.

“You disappear for years, and now you suddenly want a chat?”

His expression didn't c***k, but my eyes caught the microscopic clenching of his jawline right before he closed the distance between us, stepping deeper into my personal space.

“I fully expected you to reject the proposal,” he admitted, his voice low.

There it was.

For some reason, I almost thought he was here to request forgiveness, not even a basic attempt to justify the past. He was simply surprised by the fact that I had agreed to bind my life to his.

Very laughable.

I jumped up from the bed, a surge of anger and fury swept through veins so rapidly that it caught me entirely off guard.

“And I fully expected you to have the decency to stay dead to me,” I spat, staring him down. “It looks like neither of us is getting what we wanted.”

For a split second, a genuine c***k appeared in his carefully constructed armour.

It wasn't a flash of irritation. It was something infinitely sharper, a shadow of an emotion I couldn't quite define.

“You are furious,” he noted quietly.

I stared at him, utterly stunned by his obvious observation.

“Are you actually serious right now?”

“Yet you gave your consent.”

“And does my consent ruin your little game?”

His response was a suffocating silence that lasted a beat too long.

That hesitation alone caused a sickening knot around my chest, and all of a sudden, the ground beneath my feet felt unstable.

I couldn't decipher the true motive behind this conversation anymore.

Wasn't this arrangement the exact outcome his family had engineered?

Wasn't he the one who entered my home demanding a union?

Then why on earth did he look so deeply thrown by my submission?

“You have absolutely no idea what kind of trap you just walked into,” he murmured.

I let out a harsh, dry sound that was supposed to be a laugh.

“That is hilarious, coming from the root of my ruin.”

His eyelids fluttered, his gaze narrowing slightly.

“You are still entirely convinced that you know the whole story.”

“I know what I witnessed with my own eyes.”

“No,” he shot back, his voice hardening into something unyielding as he took another step toward me.

“You only know the narrative that was handed to you on a silver platter.”

The room changed into a dead, absolute silence.

The quiet was deafening.

I could feel the fast, steady pounding of my heart against my ribs, but I would rather die than let him see a single tremor of weakness.

“The narrative?” I repeated, my voice dropping to a dangerous, measured crawl.

“Are you honestly trying to rewrite history now that it's convenient for you?”

“I’m trying to make you realize that the reality back then wasn't black and white.”

“Black and white?” My control slipped, my voice tearing through the quiet before I could reign it in.

“They stood there laughing while my letter was being read aloud. And you did nothing.”

The lines of his face shifted once more, the mask slipping further.

“Do you honestly believe I am blind to that fact?”

“Then why did you do it?”

The question ripped out of me, loud and sharp, carrying the weight of years spent marinating in my own anger. Years of tormenting myself with unanswerable questions.

And perhaps, beneath all of that armour, lay something far more pathetic. Because in the darkest corners of my soul, a desperate girl was still begging for an explanation.

He pulled his gaze away from mine, his fingers tracking roughly through his dark hair as he let out a ragged, weary sigh.

And for the first time since he had entered my room, he looked completely unravelled.

“It was never supposed to play out that way,” he confessed, his voice barely audible.

I froze, the air leaving my lungs.

The confession struck me with a physical force that made my knees weak.

“What are you even saying?”

“I’m saying you walked directly into an ambush you were never meant to see.”

A cold chill instantly settled deep within my chest.

The floodgates broke, and the repressed horror of that day came rushing back, suffocating me before I could push it away. The mocking, cruel laughter of my peers.

I remembered standing outside the auditorium with my heart pounding.

He had my letter in his hand.

"Listen to this," he had laughed.

The crowd laughed with him.

I searched for one face,

Shadric.

He was standing near the back.

He never stepped forward.

I swallowed hard, forcing the lump down my dry throat.

“You still stood there and let them humiliate me.”

His lack of a defence this time was a confession in itself.

The intensity of my anger burned back to life, hotter and more dangerous than before.

“Do you know I couldn't even look people in the eye for months afterwards?” I demanded.

My voice had dropped to a whisper now, but it vibrated with a lethal, quiet venom.

“Do you have even a fraction of an idea how many months it took for me to stop feeling like a pathetic joke every single time your name crossed my mind?”

His eyes snapped back to mine, locking onto my gaze instantly.

And for the first time in our miserable history… I saw it.

Remorse. Raw, unadulterated guilt.

“Do you honestly think I walked away unaware?” he whispered back.

The question caught me completely off guard, derailing my train of thought.

I hated hearing that.

Not because I believed him.

Because part of me wanted to.

I broke eye contact first, shaking my head anxiously as if the physical motion could vanish the suffocating confusion drowning my mind.

“No,” I rasped, stepping back. “No, I’m not doing this with you. Don’t do that.”

“Do what, Avalan?”

“Act like my pain suddenly matters to you after all this time.”

His look hardened, a grim intensity settling over his face.

“It never stopped mattering.”

The words struck a nerve so profoundly that I felt the breath leave my body entirely.

For a long, agonizing second, neither of us took a step. Neither of us dared to breathe. The air between us had grown entirely too dense, charged with a history that felt too intimate, too volatile, and too terrifyingly real.

That shift frightened me far more than my anger ever could.

Anger was a shield. Anger made sense; it kept me safe from the world. But this vulnerability? This was a direct threat to my survival.

Then, he closed the final bit of distance between us.

He didn't reach out to touch me, but he didn't need to. The sheer closeness was enough. I could feel the warmth of his breath, the undeniable, magnetic pull I thought I had successfully buried and cremated years ago.

“You are still blind to the real writer of this story,” he whispered, his eyes boring into my soul.

I forced myself to look up at him, my heart racing speedily, completely out of rhythm.

“What are you talking about, Shadric?”

His gaze held mine, unblinking, weighing the absolute gravity of the universe in the space between us.

Then, the final blow landed.

“The person who masterminded your public humiliation that day…”

He stopped, the words hanging on a knife's edge as the oxygen completely vanished from the room.

“…was never me.”