Chapter 100: ​A Sacrifice

They both looked up at the shadow looming over the grave’s edge, frozen in a state of paralyzed disbelief. It was Isabella—but not the Isabella they remembered. She was a specter born of the dark, her silhouette jagged and her presence heavy with the scent of iron and earth.

Leon surged out of the pit with the grace of a predator, catching her in a desperate, bone-crushing embrace. His hands shook with a primal terror he could no longer hide, his breath hitching against her neck. But Isabella remained stiff, a statue of cold marble in his arms. She could not return the gesture; his arrival was the one thing she feared most. It meant the veil had been torn, her secrets exposed to the light. Her eyes, wide and haunted, darted past him to anchor on Olivia.

The fear that had consumed Olivia only moments ago had vanished, replaced by a gaze as sharp and frigid as a winter frost. Even without words, Isabella read the expression clearly: it was the stinging look of disappointment. Olivia had warned her.

Leon pulled back, cupping Isabella’s face in his calloused palms. He traced the splatters of dried crimson on her cheeks and the shredded silk of her gown with frantic precision. “Isabella, speak to me! Are you hurt? Whose blood is this?”

She swallowed hard, her throat tight with a terror that rendered her mute. She had no lies left to offer under the searing weight of his silver gaze.

Olivia climbed out of the hollow earth, brushing the graveyard soil from her skirts with a chilling, clinical detachment. “This is no time for a reunion,” she cut in, her voice a dry rasp. “Let us leave this godforsaken place first. Only then will the truth bear fruit. I am… truly exhausted.”

Leon sighed, finally taking in the full measure of Olivia’s state. Her hands were raw and bleeding, her face a ghostly, unbearable shade of ash. He realized she was moving on nothing but sheer, jagged willpower. “You’re right. We leave now. We will bury the questions until we are behind closed doors.”

The three of them drifted from the cemetery like ghosts fleeing their own fate. Leon signaled a passing carriage, ushering Isabella into the dark sanctuary of the cabin first. As he stood outside with Olivia, she leaned in, her voice a low, lethal murmur.

“Send someone back,” she whispered. “Dispose of the man in that grave. Properly.”

“As you command, Your Grace,” Leon replied, his voice carrying a newfound, somber weight of respect.

Olivia let out a sharp, cynical bark of laughter that lacked any warmth. “What is this, Leon? Are you mocking me now?”

“Hardly,” Leon replied, his voice a low grate. “But consider this a reminder: you will owe me an accounting for every shadow you’ve hidden, every drop of blood spilled tonight. Later.”

Inside the carriage, the silence was broken by Isabella’s ragged, hitching breath. She stared at her blood-stained hands in pure, unadulterated horror, her voice coming out in a broken whisper.

​”That man… the man in the grave. I… I killed him.”

​Leon and Olivia didn’t flinch. Their silence was a heavy, frozen weight; for them, the revelation wasn’t a shock, but a grim confirmation of what they had already sensed the moment they saw her standing over the pit. To a Norman, blood was a familiar currency, even if it was a new language for Isabella.

​”He tried to kill me,” Isabella choked out, the tears finally breaking through. “I… I truly didn’t have another choice.”

​Leon reached out, folding her trembling hands into his own with a gentleness that felt out of place amidst the scent of death. “It’s alright,” he murmured, his voice a soothing anchor. “You did what you had to do. Don’t let your mind wander there now. We will talk about everything once we are home. Agreed?”

​Isabella nodded frantically, clinging to his words like a lifeline. In the corner, Olivia watched the exchange, a sharp, cynical glint in her fading eyes. She didn’t offer a word of comfort; she only watched their “sentimental display” with a look of pure mockery, as if she found their sudden grab for morality offensive.

As the first sickly gray threads of dawn began to unravel across the horizon, the carriage groaned to a halt at the back entrance of the estate.

They dismounted like ghosts returning to their graves. Olivia was struggling; the world had begun to tilt and blur as the toxic aftermath of the elixir devoured the last of her strength. Her vision was a hazy smear of dark and light.

“Now,” Leon whispered, his jaw tight as he scanned the perimeter, “we are truly in trouble.”

“What do you mean?” Isabella breathed, her voice trembling.

The answer came not from Leon, but from the shadow waiting for them. Mathias stood there, his arms crossed over his chest, his presence a wall of cold, unyielding iron. His eyes swept over their tattered, blood-stained clothes with a look of pure, concentrated fury.

“Your appearances do not suggest a polite visit to the family estate,” Mathias said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, jagged register. He leveled a searing glare at Leon. “And you… I find you entangled in every mess these two create. All of you, follow me. Not a single word. I want an explanation, and I want it now. No more of your pathetic lies. To my office.”

Leon attempted a flash of his usual, reckless charm to thin the tension. “At least let us change our clothes first, Mathias. We smell of the pit.”

Mathias’s gaze didn’t flicker. “I said now. Or do you want me to drag you by your hair in front of the servants?”

The walk to the office was a funeral procession. Once inside, they sat like prisoners before a tribunal. Mathias paced the floor, his boots thudding against the wood like a drumbeat, before he stopped to survey them.

“Isabella,” he began, his voice laced with a bitter disappointment. “I took you for an innocent lamb. It seems I was catastrophically mistaken.”

He turned his focus to Leon. “And you. Do you have a single shred of logic to explain what you were doing in the dead of night?”

Finally, his eyes landed on Olivia. She sat in a terrifying silence, her face a mask of wax. “And you, Olivia,” he sneered. “I won’t even exhaust myself by asking you. I know exactly whose hand stirred this cauldron of filth.”

“It is all because of me,” Isabella choked out, her voice trembling like a leaf in a gale. “Leon and Olivia… they have nothing to do with this, Your Grace.”

Leon opened his mouth to intervene, to shield her, but Mathias silenced him with a sharp, cutting gesture. “Continue, Isabella,” Mathias commanded, his eyes boring into her. “I want to know everything today.”

“I… I…” Isabella stammered, her hands shaking so violently she had to clench them into white-knuckled fists.

Olivia, watching the girl’s unraveling from the corner of her blurred vision, cut through the tension like a scalpel. “The Duke of Tharron murdered her father,” she stated, her voice eerily flat. “He killed him because Isabella refused to leak this Duchy’s secrets to him.”

The room fell into a stunned, deafening silence. Isabella’s breath hitched; she stared at Olivia, paralyzed. She knew, better than anyone, that Olivia was weaving a masterful lie—a tapestry of half-truths designed to protect her.

Leon’s expression shifted to one of profound sorrow as he looked at Olivia. “Olivia, what is it that you imply? What in heaven’s name are you raving about?” Is that why her father’s home is a ruin, Olivia? Is that what happened?”

“Exactly as I told you; her father has passed away. More accurately, he was murdered.”

Isabella’s tears began to fall—hot, heavy drops that burned her cheeks. She wasn’t crying for her father, nor for the terror she had endured. She was weeping because she realized that even now—after Isabella had doubted her, betrayed her trust, and failed her—Olivia was still standing as her iron shield.

Olivia pressed on, her voice growing thinner as her strength ebbed. “Yes. He was killed some time ago. And my father… he tried to dispose of Isabella as well.” She turned her gaze toward Leon, her eyes glassy but piercing. “He tried to bury her alive. That is why I told you she was there. I went to save her, and we ended up in this state.”

She pressed her hands against her temples, as if to stifle the throbbing pain surging through her veins, desperate to bring this harrowing conversation to a close.

“Frankly, too much has happened to recount in one sitting. Don’t you think it’s best we rest? I hope this… brief summary… provides enough of a glimpse into the nightmare.”

Mathias and Leon turned their gazes toward Isabella, their faces softening into expressions of raw, aching pity. They saw a grieving orphan, a victim of a monstrous Duke, while Isabella herself sat there, sobbing with a scorched heart, crushed by the weight of a debt she could never repay to the woman sitting silently beside her.

“Leon,” Mathias spoke, his voice heavy with a newfound, somber gravity. “Take your wife and tend to her.” He turned to Isabella, his expression softening into a rare display of genuine remorse. “I am truly sorry for your loss, Isabella. I offer my sincerest apologies for my past treatment of you.”

“There is no need for apologies, Brother-in-law,” Isabella whispered, her voice sounding hollow, as if it were coming from a great distance. “I shall take my leave now.”

Leon guided Isabella out of the room, leaving Mathias and Olivia alone in the suffocating silence of the office.

The door hadn’t even fully latched behind Leon and Isabella before Mathias’s voice cut through the silence, cold and precise.

​”A beautiful lie, Olivia,” he said, his footsteps echoing as he moved closer to her. “Or perhaps, a half-truth wrapped in silk. I looked into her eyes—the girl was mourning, that much I know. Her father is indeed dead. But how? And when?”

​He stopped just inches from her, his shadow falling over her vacant gaze.

​”I only let it slide because of those tears. I chose to ignore the inconsistencies because the stench of blood on your clothes was too loud to ignore. But do not mistake my mercy for blindness.”

​He let out a dry, bitter breath.

​”I am certain you and that girl are still harboring shadows I haven’t touched yet. How he died, what truly happened in that pit… I don’t know if I can trust a single word that leaves your lips anymore, Olivia. Especially not now.”

Olivia didn’t offer him the satisfaction of a defense. She remained motionless, her head slightly bowed as she stared down at her own hands—hands she knew were stained with grime and iron, yet hands she could no longer see.

“Mathias…” she spoke, her voice suddenly trembling, losing its iron edge.

“What is it?”

“I… I cannot see.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

Olivia lifted her head, her gaze drifting aimlessly. Her head swayed slightly from side to side, her eyes wide but vacant. “I cannot see anything but the dark, Mathias. I can’t see anything at all.”

Mathias lunged toward her in a panic, his heart leaping into his throat. He waved his hand inches from her face, his movements sharp and frantic. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t blink. Her bleu eyes remained fixed on a void he could not perceive.

The realization hit her like a physical blow to the chest. The elixir—the price of her survival and her lies—had finally claimed its toll.

Olivia was blind.

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