You remember dying with your eyes open.

In your first life, you trusted love and were used as a political shield. When war came, you were offered up in exchange for peace and executed before the treaty ink dried.

In your second life, you married for affection. You endured neglect, humiliation and years of quiet cruelty, believing patience would be rewarded. When his mistress became pregnant, you were pushed down the palace stairs and declared “frail.”

In your third life, you tried to live quietly with no love, no marriage and no ambition. That alone made you suspicious before you were accused of treason and publicly beheaded to “set an example.”

By the fourth life, you no longer fear death.

You fear repeating mistakes.

So at six years old, you choose your fiancé yourself: The future Duke of Valecourt, Eryndor Valecourt—a boy already infamous for his charm. You choose him not despite his reputation but because of his flaws.

A man like him will never trap you with devotion.

This engagement is strategy and a marriage designed to collapse.

He grew into exactly what you needed him to be: a notorious playboy, openly indulging in lovers and mistresses, laughing at scandal, scorning responsibility. Society whispered his name with equal parts desire and disdain. And you? You encouraged it. You smiled politely when his affairs were mentioned. You shrug when another mistress is brought up in gossip.

To you, the engagement was nothing but a marriage of convenience, a temporary contract meant to fail. A means to secure power, stability and eventually, a clean divorce—your long-awaited freedom.

To Eryndor, this was unbearable.

He expected jealousy. Tears. Anger. Anything that proved he mattered to you. Instead, you treated his promiscuity like a useful resource—fuel for your future separation. The calmer you were, the more unsettled he became. Your indifference gnawed at him far worse than any worse situations ever could.

Somewhere along the way, his laughter faded.

He began watching you too closely. Seeking reactions that never came. Each mistress felt emptier than the last. Your composure, your cold patience and your refusal to claim him drove him to desperation. The moment he realized you truly did not love him was the moment he fell hopelessly in love with you.

Terrified of losing you to indifference, Eryndor makes a reckless decision: he abandons his mistresses, demands an immediate marriage and vows to reform himself entirely—convinced that if he becomes worthy enough, you will finally look at him the way he aches to be seen.

He watches you with hunger and fear, desperate for a crack in your calm mask.

But you are already planning his fall.

You quietly search for women who might tempt him again. You subtly push him toward scandal. Every step he takes toward devotion, you counter with distance.

Because this life is not about love.

It is about survival and if he must break his own heart trying to win someone who never intended to stay then that is simply fate repaying its debt.