Chapter 109: mirror of guilt

Alisha swallowed hard, the bitterness of the truth catching in her throat as she desperately tried to weave a path away from the precipice. “You did the right thing, Lucius,” she murmured, her voice a fragile shield of lies. “Your sister was a woman in love; she took exactly what she desired. Do not forget the past. Please, let us never speak of this again.”

“ALISHA!” he roared, the sound echoing like thunder against the gilded walls.

“What?” she snapped back, her eyes flashing with a calculated fire. “Am I the only one to be blamed here? She loved him. She married him. Have you so easily forgotten the agony I endured because of their wretched affair? Why do you cast the weight of this guilt upon me now?”

The fire in Lucius’s eyes flickered and died, replaced by a hollow, haunted exhaustion. He collapsed into his chair, staring at her with a fractured gaze. “Yes… you are right. She chose him. She must bear the consequences of her own heart.”

“You see?” she replied, her tone softening into a terrifyingly simple nonchalance. “I told you that you were making far too much of this.”

But the silence offered no peace. Lucius rose again, gravitating toward the window like a man searching for a light that had long since gone out. “Still… it is strange. Everything that has happened, and now Serene ignores me entirely. It is true that we have been like strangers since her wedding day, but this silence… it is an omen. My heart finds no rest. Perhaps I should visit her myself.”

At those words, the Empress set her teacup down with a sharp, definitive click. She crossed the room with the grace of a stalking predator, sliding behind him to drape her arms around him in a deceptive embrace.

“Oh, my darling,” she cooed, her voice a silken ribbon of comfort. “You truly have a talent for turning a quiet day into a looming catastrophe. If you are so plagued by this worry, then I shall go. I will visit her myself and bring you word of her well-being. Does that put your troubled heart at ease?”

“This is madness!” Lucius erupted, his voice thick with a protective, jagged fear. “Have you forgotten what that wretch did to you? Have you lost your mind, thinking of stepping foot back into that den of vipers?”

Alisha offered him a smile that was all silken poise and iron resolve. “Lucius, please. I am the Empress now. How would he ever dare to lay a finger on me, unless he possesses a sudden, suicidal urge to be buried alive? I know how you loathe the sight of him, how you despise even the thought of that palace. Let me go. I shall visit my ’old friend’ and settle this. Agreed, my love?”

She leaned in, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to his cheek—a seal on her deceptive contract.

Lucius let out a long, weary exhale, the tension bleeding from his shoulders. “Fine. As you wish. But you will take the Imperial Guard with you. Every single one.”

“As you command,” she chimed.

He pressed a tender kiss to the crown of her head, his voice filled with a desperate, misplaced gratitude. “Thank you, my Empress. I shall rely on you. Now, I must return to my duties; my heart feels a little lighter knowing you are handling this.”

Alisha maintained that serene, loving smile until the heavy oak doors groaned shut behind him. The moment the latch clicked, the mask of the devoted wife shattered into a thousand jagged pieces. Her face contorted into a mask of frantic, razor-sharp tension, and she began to gnaw at her fingertip with a feverish anxiety.

“Damn him!” she hissed into the empty, opulent room. “What possesses that son of a bitch to stop the letters? Does he intend to drag us both to the gallows? My God…”

She began to pace the floor like a caged predator, her silk skirts hushing against the marble in a frantic rhythm. Suddenly, she stopped, her eyes flashing with a cold, desperate light.

“GUARDS!” she bellowed.

“Yes, Your Majesty?”

“Ready the carriage. I depart for the Tharron Duchy. Now. Immediately!”

Mathias blinked the sleep from his eyes, a sudden, heavy warmth anchoring him to the bed. Through the haze of his awakening, his gaze snagged on a spill of molten silver—the unmistakable cascade of her hair.

“What…?” he croaked, his voice thick with confusion.

It was Olivia. She was draped across him, her head pillowed against his chest as if he were the only solid thing left in her world.

“Hey… Olivia,” he whispered, his breath hitching. He reached out a hesitant finger, tracing the delicate contours of her face, his heart aching as he noted the faint, telltale puffiness of her eyelids—the lingering signature of exhausted tears.

“Before you consider doing anything shameful, just for your information… I am right here.”

Leon’s voice sliced through the intimate silence like a rusted blade. Mathias’s head snapped toward the sofa, where Leon lay sprawled, watching them with an insufferable, knowing smirk.

“Leon?! What the hell are you doing in here?”

The commotion stirred Olivia from the depths of her restless slumber. Though darkness remained her only horizon, touch and sound were the jagged maps she used to navigate. She followed the vibration of Mathias’s voice until she centered upon the heat of his face.

“Olivia!” Mathias began, his voice softening.

Olivia didn’t offer a single word of greeting. Instead, she calculated the distance with terrifying precision. Her hand rose in a sharp, silver blur and descended with a resounding crack against his cheek—a sting of pure, unadulterated fury.

Leon sat bolt upright on the sofa, a low whistle of genuine shock escaping his lips. “Oh… that had to hurt.”

Mathias winced, his hand flying up to catch her wrist, pinning it high above them. “Damn it, woman! What has gotten into you? Most people wake up to a prayer of gratitude for their safety—I wake up to a burning slap from my wife!”

“A prayer for my safety?” Olivia spat the words like venom, her voice trembling with a jagged, righteous fury. “You speak as though you actually care for your own life. You weren’t the one left in the suffocating dark, clutching a man on the brink of death, not knowing if the next breath would be his last. He nearly slipped away, you bastard! And yet you have the audacity to begrudge me a single slap? If I had my sight, I would have done far more than strike your cheek to bring you back to your senses!”

Mathias let out a harsh, sardonic bark of laughter, his eyes flashing with a dangerous, weary light. “Oho, listen to her! The very reason I’m in this state has the nerve to lecture me. You’re the one who charged out like a madwoman toward your own execution, escalating everything to the point of no return. Could you not have stayed inside and held that sharp tongue of yours for even a moment, woman?”

“I never asked for your protection!” she shريكed, her face flushed with indignation. “My safety is not your responsibility!”

“If it isn’t my responsibility,” Mathias growled, leaning into her space until their foreheads nearly touched, “then perhaps I should put on a dress myself. What use is a man if he no longer holds the duty of shielding his woman from the world?”

Leon watched them with a dry, jagged smirk, looking like a bored patron at a particularly chaotic theater. He cleared his throat, his voice dripping with a lethal, polished irony.

“Oho… watching the two of you argue is like sitting in the front row of a Grand Opera. The blood, the screams, the insults… it’s all so beautifully tragic. Why not seal the performance with a kiss now? It would make for a truly perfect epic, don’t you think?”

“What?” they barked in unison, turning their collective fury toward him.

“In the plays,” Leon remarked coolly, “couples always resolve their screaming matches with a kiss, and suddenly all is forgiven. It’s quite efficient, really.”

Olivia’s voice dropped to a low, lethal hiss. “Mathias… I am blind. So please, do me a kindness and throw that heavy vase beside your bed at his head.”

Mathias’s hand clamped around the ceramic vessel with terrifying enthusiasm. “With pleasure, my darling.”

He launched the vase with lethal intent, but Leon ducked with the practiced grace of a man used to being shot at. The vase shattered against the wall in a spray of porcelain shards.

“Get out!” Mathias roared. “Could you find nowhere else to sleep in this entire fortress besides my bedchamber?”

Leon rose from his seat, stretching his limbs with a slow, exaggerated languor. “Good grief. She’s the one scolding you, yet I’m the villain? I was the one standing guard over your pathetic hides all night! Fine, drown in your own hell for all I care. I’m leaving.”

A terrible, heavy stillness flooded the room in the wake of Leon’s departure, stripping away the heat of their quarrel and leaving only the cold, jagged edges of the truth. Olivia sat beside Mathias in a silence so profound it felt like a physical weight. Mathias watched her, his gaze falling upon her small, delicate hands. It felt impossible, a cruel trick of the mind, to believe that such fragile fingers had just taken a life.

“So…” he began, his voice barely a breath. “You killed your stepmother.”

He didn’t need an answer; he needed a confession. Her silence was the only confirmation the world required.

Mathias bit his lip, a sharp, nervous tension radiating from his frame as he looked at her. “Excellent. You’ve killed the Duchess of Tharron—the Emperor’s own little princess.” He wiped a bead of cold sweat from his brow, his voice dripping with a dark, manic irony. “Simply wonderful.”

“I liberated her,” Olivia finally spoke, her voice devoid of tremor or regret.

“You what…?”

“As I said. I gave her freedom. You wouldn’t understand my meaning—you haven’t lived the life she endured. So… I don’t expect your empathy.”

But his next question caught her off guard. It wasn’t a condemnation; it was a genuine, haunted inquiry. “Freedom from what, exactly?”

Olivia sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, her sightless gaze fixed on the hollow void beyond her silver hair. “I freed her from life. From my father. From the palace. From everything… even from me.”

“From you?” Mathias echoed, his brow furrowing.

“Yes, from me. Everything she suffered was for my sake. She stayed with a man like my father—enduring his obsession, his icy cruelty, his rot—only to protect me. She bore it all so I wouldn’t have to. I am truly grateful to her… and so, I killed her.”

Mathias swallowed hard, his throat tight. He remained silent, allowing her story to unfurl in the shadows. He struggled to comprehend a world where death was the only sanctuary—a mercy so difficult to attain that it required the hands of the person she loved most.

Olivia reached out, her slender fingers tracing the rugged contours of Mathias’s jaw with a haunting, tactile curiosity. Her nails grazed his skin—a sharp, stinging reminder of the predator beneath the porcelain.

“I granted her the only sanctuary my father could never reach,” she whispered, her voice a chilling melody of conviction. “The silence of the grave. I took the sin upon my own soul so that hers might finally take flight. I liberated her, Mathias. Can you not see? It was the ultimate act of devotion. I showed her the full measure of my love until her very last breath.”

Mathias stared at her, a profound sense of dread intertwining with a devastating, soul-crushing pity. He finally glimpsed the true depth of the abyss that lived within his wife. She was not merely a killer; she was a weaver of dark philosophies, bending the laws of morality until cold-blooded murder became a sacred rite.

A heavy, suffocating silence followed her confession. He sat there, absorbing the “mercy” she had bestowed upon the Duchess—the Emperor’s own flesh and blood. He looked at her—this delicate, sightless creature who viewed death as a crowning gift—and felt a genuine shiver of apprehension crawl up his spine.

“And what of me, Olivia?” he asked, his voice a low, raspy tremor that vibrated against her skin. “If the day comes where you decide that I, too, am suffering under the crushing weight of this Duchy… will you grant me that same ’freedom’?”

Olivia did not flinch. Instead, she leaned in until her forehead rested against his, her breath ghosting over his lips like a lethal caress.

“No,” she whispered, her voice fractured by a fierce, desperate possessiveness. “With her, I sought peace. But with you… I crave life. Even if that life is an agony, even if it is a slow burning in the coldest reaches of hell, I want you to breathe. I want you to remain.”

She slid her hand from the curve of his throat to the center of his chest, pressing her palm flat against the rhythmic thrum of his heart.

“Never imagine that my mercy for her means a desire to be alone,” she continued, her words trembling with an intense, dark gravity. “If the stars fall and the world ends, you must be the last thing to descend. If death comes for this house, Mathias, I pray it takes me first. I would rather be the one who attained ’freedom’ than the one left behind to haunt the silence of your absence.”

Her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt, anchoring herself to him with white-knuckled strength. “You are my only tether in this lightless void. If you die, there will be no world left for me to see—even if my sight were to return this very second. So live, Mathias. Live, so that I never have to face the hollow emptiness of a world without you.”

Mathias stared at her, mesmerized and shaken. Her words were an alien language to him; had he been a naive man, he might have mistaken this for a simple confession of love. But to him, it was something far more profound—a strange, jagged covenant. It was the most honest, bone-deep vow he had ever heard in his life.

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