Chapter 129: Eyes of the Hound

Mathias let out a breath that sounded like a fractured lung. He slid down the cold stone until he hit the floor, his regal posture collapsing into a heap of expensive silk and raw, unadorned grief. The madness had evaporated, leaving behind a man who looked suddenly, terrifyingly hollow.

​”Truly, Olivia?” he asked, his voice barely a tremor. “Is that all I am in your eyes? A mindless beast who only values his wife for the heat of her bed and the fruit of her womb?”

​Olivia didn’t answer with words. She moved with a ghostly stillness, sinking onto the floor beside him. The space between them was charged with the static of a thousand unspoken tragedies. She raised the dagger—the very blade that had tasted her lifeblood—and with a flick of her wrist, sent it skidding across the marble. It clattered into the shadows, a discarded relic of a war they were both losing.

​”It’s fine,” she murmured, her gaze fixed on a distant, invisible point. “I can endure it. Bring a mistress. You deserve to be a father, Mathias. I will not drag you down into my hell; I will not let you be buried alive with me.”

​A dry, jagged laugh tore from his throat as he leaned his head back against the wall, then slowly, hesitantly, let it fall onto her shoulder.

​”Then let me burn with you,” he whispered, the words vibrating against her skin. “I would rather rot in your hell than thrive in another woman’s paradise.”

​The words pierced through her, sharp and uninvited, but Olivia didn’t flinch. Her heart had become a fortress of ice.

​”If this is your attempt at comfort, don’t bother,” she said, her voice flat. “Just live your life. Letting you fulfill your dream of fatherhood… it’s the only way I can begin to repay the debt I owe you.”

​Mathias stiffened. He pulled back just enough to look into her obsidian eyes, his brow furrowing in genuine, sharp confusion.

​”Debt?” he echoed, the word tasting like poison. “What debt are you talking about, Olivia?”

​”Nothing,” she whispered, her voice a hollow echo of its former rage. “Just… don’t shackle yourself to your enemy’s daughter like this.”

​But Mathias didn’t listen. His hand moved across the cold stone, a blind predator seeking its mate, until his fingers interlaced with hers. The grip was firm, possessive, and terrifyingly warm.

​”I’ve told you a thousand times,” he murmured, his voice thick with exhaustion. “You are Olivia Lucron, and you will remain so. You are not a Tharon. I would rather embrace death than have children who do not carry your blood.”

​The words hit her like a battering ram, splintering the frozen ramparts of her heart. For minutes, the only sound was the jagged rhythm of their breathing. Olivia swallowed the lump in her throat, forcing a dry, mocking laugh to the surface.

​”How romantic,” she sneered, though the bite was gone from her tone. “Wow. Are you finally falling for me, Mathias? Or have you just become a poet in your old age? Answer me.”

​She turned to look at him, a retort dying on her lips. His eyes were closed, his lashes casting long, weary shadows over his pale cheeks. He had fallen into a sleep so deep it looked like a trance—a total surrender to the bone-deep fatigue that had been hounding him.

​Yet, even in the depths of unconsciousness, his hand never let go of hers. He held on as if she were the only thing keeping him from drifting into the void.

Olivia attempted to pull her hand away, to rise and distance herself from the suffocating warmth of his presence, but Mathias’s grip only tightened. Even in the depths of his exhaustion, he held on with a desperate, fractured strength, as if he were a drowning man and she was his only anchor.

​She looked down at his hand—the same hand that had once been cold enough to send her to her grave—and felt its heat seeping through her skin. In this vulnerable state, the mask of the ruthless Duke had shattered, leaving behind a man who looked like a child clinging to the hem of his mother’s gown. He wasn’t a monster now; he was simply a soul broken beyond repair.

​Drawn by a magnetic, painful pull, Olivia leaned down until her forehead pressed against his. The world outside this blood-stained room vanished as she whispered into the silence, her voice a ghost of a sound that only the dead could hear.

​”If you had loved another woman… if you hadn’t shackled your fate to Roland’s daughter… perhaps you’d be rocking a cradle of a laughing child right now,” she breathed, her heart aching with the weight of what could have been. “Instead, you’re here, clutching my hand in the middle of a slaughterhouse, sleeping like a vagrant on a cold stone floor.”

​A bitter, self-deprecating laugh bubbled in her throat. She realized then that it wasn’t just Mathias who was clinging; she was gripping his hand back, searching for a shred of safety in the very man who had once been her executioner. How cruel was destiny, that the hand that ended her life was now the only thing making her feel alive?

​As his head grew heavy against her shoulder, Olivia didn’t push him away. Instead, with a trembling, lethal hesitation, she raised her free hand. Her fingers, stained with the shadows of their shared past, brushed through his disheveled hair. It was a touch of pure, unadulterated tenderness—the first she had granted him in years—a silent truce signed in the dark, over the cooling embers of their mutual ruin.

While Olivia and Mathias drowned in the wreckage of their own souls, Killian moved through the children’s wing like a lethal, silken toxin.

​He reached little Anne’s bedside. The child’s breath was rhythmic, soft—a rhythmic innocence that felt like a deliberate provocation to a man like him. Killian unsheathed his silver instruments; scalpel blades that possessed no concept of mercy, honed to a razor’s edge. As his massive frame loomed over her, his hand reaching out to steady the small, fragile skull… the very air in the room died.

​Killian heard no sound, but he felt the sudden, jagged frost of a blade that didn’t just bite into his flesh—it pierced his very soul. Before he could even begin to turn, the world collapsed into an absolute, suffocating void.

​In the Eastern Wing, Alisha sat enveloped in her habitual silence, waiting for the “Light.” She had no need for candles; the darkness was a kingdom she was finally preparing to abdicate.

​The door groaned on its hinges…

​Alisha’s lips curled into a smile—a wide, predatory stretch that revealed an ancient, gnawing hunger. “Oh, Killian… I knew you wouldn’t fail me. Have you brought them? Have you brought me little Anne’s stars?”

​There was no verbal reply. Only the sound of heavy, labored footsteps and a rhythmic, wet cadence… shlick… shlick… the sound of thick droplets colliding with the cold marble floor. Alisha didn’t recognize the source, assuming it was the fresh, hot blood of the child. The thought sent a jolt of ecstatic electricity through her veins.

​The shadow loomed over her. She felt the mattress groan and sag under a sudden, immense weight as he sat beside her. Without warning, a pair of rough, familiar hands—familiar in texture but alien in their brutal force—clamped over her eyes.

​This was no delicate “harvest” of the optic nerves. This was an evisceration of the dark.

​Alisha let out a muffled, strangled shriek as she felt the frigid intrusion of metal tunneling into her eye sockets, followed by a searing, unnatural heat flooding her nervous system. The agony was absolute, a white-hot flare that paralyzed her lungs. In the center of that swirling vortex of pain, she felt him place something heavy, wet, and pulsing with a dying warmth directly into her lap.

The agonizing heat behind her eyelids began to recede, replaced by a violent, kaleidoscopic explosion of colors and jagged light. For the first time in years, the veil was torn away.

​Alisha forced her eyes open. The ambient light reflecting off the vanity mirrors stabbed at her fresh retinas like glass shards, but she didn’t flinch. Her heart hammered against her ribs, fueled by a sick, desperate greed. She wanted to see her “treasure.” She looked down at her lap, expecting the glittering stars of a child’s innocence resting upon the pristine white silk of her gown.

​Her breath hitched, then died in her throat. Her eyes stretched wide, reflecting a brand of horror she had never imagined. There were no jewels. No stars.

​Resting in the cradle of her thighs was Killian’s severed head.

​His skin had already turned the dull, waxy gray of wet ash. Those golden eyes, once overflowing with a hound’s mindless loyalty, were now fixed in a hollow, necrotized stare that seemed to pierce right through her. Fresh, thick gore continued to weep from the jagged ruin of his neck, soaking through her silk skirts and spreading across the bedsheets in a hot, viscous lake of crimson.

​A primal, jagged scream tore at Alisha’s throat. She lunged backward, her hands trembling as she tried to shove the heavy, decapitated mass off her body. But a voice—low, steady, and sharp as a barber’s razor—froze the blood in her veins from the corner of the room.

​”Now that you’ve finally regained your vision, courtesy of your loyal dog’s eyes…” The figure emerged from the shadows, his movements casual as he wiped a blackened dagger with a strip of white linen. The contrast was insulting. “I believe it’s time we had a very long, very thorough conversation… Your Imperial Majesty.”

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