Chapter 117: The Altar of False Mercy

Lucius stood paralyzed, his breath coming in jagged fragments like shards of shattered glass. His gaze was anchored to the parchment at his feet, fixed on the Imperial seal he knew better than his own reflection—the mark of Serene, his gentle, innocent little sister.

How? When? A silent scream echoed through the hollows of his mind. He wanted to shred the paper, to call his own eyes liars, to roar that Serene could never love a sadistic wretch like Roland. Yet the evidence shrieked back with terrifying clarity. He recalled Serene’s hollow stares, her prolonged silences, her withdrawal from the world… was it all because she was pining for the man he loathed?

Guilt began to gnaw at his insides like a starved wolf. Alisha was enduring a living hell because of his decisions, and Serene was suffering the agony of a forbidden love because of his pride. He had razed the lives of the two women he had sworn to protect.

Amidst this psychological wreckage, Alisha lifted her pallid face. Tears tracked down her cheeks with poetic precision. She whispered in a fractured voice that shook the very foundations of his heart:

“Lucius… no, Your Majesty… I will consent to the divorce. I will leave Roland, but on one condition.”

Lucius swallowed a bitter lump of grief, his voice rasping and raw. “Anything. Name it. I will do anything, Alisha.”

Alisha closed her eyes as if bearing the weight of the entire world’s suffering. “Grant Serene and Roland the right to live their lives together,” she pleaded. “I cannot live with this crushing weight on my conscience any longer. I beg of you, Lucius.”

Lucius gasped, the air leaving his lungs in a sharp wheeze. But Alisha wove her web of lies with demonic brilliance: “I have hidden their love from you for so long. Serene is my dearest friend; I knew the rhythm of her heart, and I could not betray her by telling you. And now, look at us… we are all paying the price for this silence. This is my only condition: free yourself from your guilt, and let me be free from my prison.”

The words fell upon Lucius like hammers upon an anvil. He did not realize that Alisha was systematically shackling his hands and his authority. By forcing him to “bless” the union between Roland and Serene—a union she had orchestrated—she was donning the mantle of a martyr. She was ensuring Roland would be bound to Serene and kept away from her, while Lucius would remain eternally indebted to the woman who “saved” his sister’s happiness.

Lucius looked at her with a daze of reverence and awe. He did not realize he was walking, eyes wide and heart open, into the abyss she had dug with her tears.

Alisha’s gaze snapped to his, her face a masterpiece of practiced horror. “Lucius?” she breathed, her voice a fragile reed. Her eyes darted to the parchment in his trembling hand, and with a sudden, desperate lung, she snatched it from his grasp.

“It’s nothing, Lucius! Please… forget everything I said!” she cried, collapsing to the marble floor in a flurry of silk, frantically gathering the scattered letters as if trying to bury a shameful secret.

Before she could retreat, Roland surged forward. He seized her golden tresses with a sickening brutality, jerking her upward until she gasped in pain. “Who gave you the right to touch Serene’s letters, you filthy creature?” he spat, his voice dripping with a dark, possessive venom.

The world tilted on its axis for Lucius. The fragments of reality were shattering around him—the impossible image of his sister, his innocent Serene, entangled with this sadistic wolf. But the sight of Roland’s hand tangled in Alisha’s hair, the raw violence of the act, snapped the final thread of his restraint. Every whispered lie, every drop of spilled tea, and every hidden bruise culminated in a single, transformative roar of agony.

“Get your hands off her, you bastard!”

Roland turned his head slowly, a mocking, jagged smirk playing on his lips. “Your Majesty,” he drawled with lethal nonchalance, “I suggest you stay out of this. This is a private matter between a Duke and his wife. It is none of your concern.”

At those words, an aura of violent, suffocating power erupted from Lucius. A golden pressure, dense and divine, radiated from his frame with such intensity that the marble floor beneath his boots began to spiderweb and crack. The Emperor’s shadow elongated, looming over the room like an ancient god of war demanding a blood sacrifice.

“None of my concern?” Lucius’s voice was a low, guttural vibration that made the stained-glass windows shudder within their leaden frames.

He took a step forward, the air itself groaning under the weight of his wrath. “You laid your hands on the woman who was meant to be under my protection. You turned my love into an instrument of torture. To me, Roland… that makes her the only concern I have left in this world.”

With a roar of distilled, primal fury, Lucius lunged. He moved not as a mortal man, but as a bolt of golden lightning. His fist connected with Roland’s jaw with a sickening crack, the impact hurling the Duke backward until he collided with a massive oak bookshelf that splintered like dry kindling beneath his weight.

Roland rose, spitting a thick glob of crimson onto the marble, a twisted, manic grin stretching across his face. His own aura—a dark, suffocating miasma—began to bleed into the air. “She is my Duchess!” Roland hissed, wiping the blood from his lip with chilling, jagged confidence. “By law, and by bed, she is mine! What I do behind these closed doors is my sovereign right, Your Majesty. Or have you forgotten the very crown you wear?”

The words were a poisoned dagger that found its mark in the hollow of Lucius’s pride. The Emperor’s eyes ignited with an obsidian flame. He unsheathed his blade in a silver blur, and Roland mirrored the movement, his hand flying to his hilt. For one terrifying heartbeat, the room was filled with the frantic, lethal dance of clashing steel.

“CLANG!”

Sparks erupted as their blades locked in a violent embrace. They stood chest to chest, their breath coming in jagged, desperate gasps.

“I will kill you,” Lucius promised, his voice a low, guttural vow that vibrated in the very floorboards. “I will tear this Duchy down stone by stone until the very memory of your touch is erased from the earth.”

“Lucius! No!”

The sound of a body hitting the floor shattered the momentum of the kill. Alisha had flung herself onto her knees amidst the scattered letters, her golden hair a disheveled halo, her face a masterful mask of sculpted terror. She looked small, fragile, and utterly ruined.

“Stop… I beg of you, stop!” she wailed, her voice breaking in a way that made Lucius’s heart bleed. She crawled toward him, her fingers clawing at the hem of his imperial cloak. “Do not do this, Lucius! If you kill him here, it will be a catastrophe. The scandal… the blood… it will destroy you! Your crown, your legacy… please!”

Lucius looked down at her, his white-knuckled grip on his sword trembling with the strain of his restraint.

She whispered, looking up at him with eyes that carried the weight of a thousand tragedies: “Do not let your hands be stained by his filthy blood. He is not worth it. I am already destroyed… do not let him destroy you as well.”

Before he could offer a word of comfort, Alisha wrenched her hand from his grasp. She looked at him with a gaze drowning in a hollow, haunting sorrow. “No… I will not do it, Lucius. I am am sorry, but I cannot leave with you.”

Lucius stood paralyzed, the blood draining from his face until he was as pale as the marble surrounding them. “Alisha? What are you saying? This man has violated your soul, he has—”

“And what did we do to them?” Alisha interrupted, her voice rising in a masterful crescendo of grief and false conviction. “We robbed them first! You and I… we are the reason Serene and Roland were denied their love. We broke them to satisfy our own desires. How can you demand justice now, when our hands are as stained as his?”

With a trembling hand, she pointed toward the scattered letters that carpeted the floor like dead autumn leaves. “I live in this hell because I deserve it. This is my penance for what we did to your sister. We cannot claim a happy ending atop the wreckage of their lives.”

Lucius felt the world tilt beneath his boots. Every word she spoke was a poisoned needle, stitching the fabric of his guilt tighter around his throat. He looked at her—kneeling, broken, and offering herself as a martyr for their “sins”—and felt a crushing, agonizing impotence.

How? When? A silent scream reverberated through the hollows of his mind. He wanted to shred the parchment, to call his own eyes liars, to roar that Serene could never love a monster like Roland. But the evidence shrieked with terrifying clarity. He suddenly remembered Serene’s hollow stares, her withdrawal from the world… was it all a yearning for the man he loathed above all else?

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep