Chapter 134: The Butcher’s Mirror

As Cedric stepped out of the chamber, he found Mathias waiting like a shadow by the door. A derisive, mocking smirk curled Cedric’s lips as he muttered, “I’m finished with her.”

His gaze raked over Mathias with blatant contempt, stripping away his dignity before he continued in a voice laced with venom. “You may have shackled her with a ring and a name, Mathias, but she has never loved you. Not for a single heartbeat. To her, you aren’t a husband—you are merely the cage she is forced to inhabit.”

Mathias felt the words like a physical blow; the bitter sting of truth was harder to swallow than any lie. Yet, instead of erupting in rage, he clasped his hands behind his back and offered a mocking, low bow.

“Duke Alister,” Mathias countered, his voice dripping with forced politeness, “I presume you know the way out without my guidance? If you’ll excuse me, I must return to my dear wife.”

Cedric’s only response was a hateful, jagged smile before he turned and vanished into the hallway.

When Mathias entered the room, he found her sitting there—a silent statue carved from grief. Her gaze was fixed on a void far beyond the walls, her knuckles white, nails digging so deeply into her own flesh that blood threatened to surface. She seemed oblivious to the pain.

He approached her slowly, reaching out to stop her from harming herself, but before his fingers could graze her skin, she struck his hand away with a sharp, resounding slap.

“What did that bastard say to you?” Mathias hissed, his voice trembling with suppressed emotion. “What poison did he pour into your ears for you to recoil as if my very touch were lethal?”

“Don’t touch me…” she whispered. Her voice was broken, sharp as an icy blade. “I am in no mood for your interrogations, Mathias. Leave me be. I am at my absolute limit.”

“Leave you be? What has possessed you, woman?”

She didn’t deign to answer. Without a single word or a backward glance, she rose and swept past him, leaving nothing behind but the suffocating chill of her silence.

Mathias let out a dry, hollow rattle of a sigh, the sound dissolving into the empty hallway. “Old habits die hard, don’t they?” he muttered to the void, his voice laced with self-derision. “Who am I even fooling? Cedric was right. She never loved me. Not even for a moment. And now, she’s slipped right back into treating me like the monster she believes I am.”

A frigid, mocking smile twisted his features. It was the crack in the dam he had built; the mask of the refined lord slipping away to reveal the grotesque beast beneath—the one he had tried so hard to starve, to suppress, all for her. Now, the beast was clawing its way back to the surface.

“Fine,” he sneered, the last remnants of empathy vanishing. “It’s not as if I expected her to run into my arms. Let her do as she pleases. I am done with her irrational tantrums. I am tired.”

Inside her chambers, Olivia’s world wasn’t just shattering—it was imploding. She didn’t just close the heavy oak door; she slammed it with a violence that resonated like a definitive farewell to her fleeting sanity.

She stumbled toward the washbasin, the movement raw and uncoordinated, and frantically began to scrub her face. The water was icy, but it didn’t cool the scorching heat beneath her skin. Turning to the ornate mirror, she stared at her sodden, panicked reflection, her fingers digging cruelly into her scalp. She grasped handfuls of her hair, tugging with enough force to tear it out, as if she could physically rip the tormented thoughts from her own skull.

Why? The scream tore through her mind, deafening in the silence. Why does this always happen to me? Why am I always the sacrificial lamb led to a different altar, forced to choose between the evil and the absolute worst?

She tilted her head back, her throat constricting as she gasped for air. Every breath was a battle, her chest a vise of unspeakable agony.

“KEIRA!”

The scream ripped from her lungs, primal and desperate. The heavy door creaked open, and Keira, her personal maid, rushed in, her head bowed low, her entire body trembling. “My Lady? What is it? What has happened?”

Olivia turned to her, her eyes vacant and dead—dark, hollow voids of synthetic stillness. Her voice was barely a whisper, a ghostly husk of its former self. “The pills… the opium. Bring them to me. Now.”

Keira gasped, the sound sharp in the quiet room. “But My Lady… you promised. You swore you were done with that… you said it was—”

“I said, bring them! NOW!”

The command erupted from Olivia like a long-dormant volcano, scorching the air. Keira flinched as if physically struck, vanishing for a few agonizing minutes before returning with trembling hands. When the vial was placed before her, Olivia didn’t hesitate for a heartbeat. She began to swallow the pills, one after another, with a frantic, desperate hunger.

“My Lady… please,” Keira whispered, “This is double your usual dose. It could—”

“If I wanted a doctor, I would have summoned one,” Olivia cut her off. Her gaze was locked onto her reflection—cold, unmoving, and predatory. “Leave me. And one more thing: bring the wine. The strongest vintage in the cellar. I need something to quiet my soul.”

Olivia moved with the cold precision of a woman performing her own funeral rites. She downed the pills in a rhythmic ritual of self-annihilation, then uncorked the bottle. The liquid inside was a deep, bruised crimson—the color of an old wound. She drained the first glass in a single, jagged gulp, feeling the burn clash violently with the creeping fog of the opium.

She leaned in closer to the mirror, her eyes bloodshot, her stare feral. “Look at you,” she spat at her reflection, her voice dripping with a lethal dose of self-loathing. “Pathetic. Truly, utterly pathetic.”

She poured another glass, her movements growing fluid yet dangerously erratic. “You said you’d be a good wife,” she mocked her own image, “and now your husband’s life hangs by a thread because of your very existence. You said you’d be a good sister, yet your brother’s life lies in shambles at your feet.”

Her voice faltered for a fleeting second as the name Siren pierced through the narcotic haze. A shard of raw grief sliced through her. “You promised her freedom, Olivia,” she whispered, her reflection blurring. “And yet, even in death, her soul remains shackled by your sins. You’re quite the woman of your word, aren’t you?”

She tilted the glass again, the bitter vintage a welcome distraction from the rot festering in her heart. She wasn’t just drinking; she was drowning the last version of herself that she could still stand to love.

“Perhaps…” Olivia whispered, her voice thickening as the fog of the opium began to claim her. “Perhaps the world isn’t the problem. Perhaps it’s you. You are nothing but a wretched, loathsome creature… unworthy of the breath you steal. If you just died, everything would fall into place. Everyone would finally be safe. You are alone, Olivia. You always will be… You… you…”

The words withered on her tongue. The seductive weight of the opium and wine finally crushed her consciousness. The glass slipped from her numb fingers, shattering the silence as it overturned. Crimson wine spilled across the vanity, bleeding into the scattered pills in a macabre pool.

Olivia didn’t move. Her head slumped into the sticky mess, surrendering to the terrifying, silent embrace of the darkness.

The world didn’t return in a flash of clarity; it seeped back in like a suffocating mist. She was awake, yet… she wasn’t.

The air in the room no longer smelled of vintage wine. It was heavy, metallic—thick with the scent of copper and iron. It was the unmistakable, cloying stench of a fresh massacre.

Below her, sprawled across the luxurious carpet like a discarded doll, lay a body. Through the blur of her vision, she focused on the gore-streaked face.

Kyle.

His limbs were twisted at unnatural angles, his eyes wide, frozen in a final mask of pure, unadulterated terror. A smear of dark blood stained his lips, his life force leaking in silence onto the floor. Beside him sat Leila, her body racked with bone-deep sobs—a jagged, grieving sound that tore through the stillness of the room.

Olivia stood frozen, a pillar of salt in a rising tide of blood and confusion. What happened? her mind whispered, like a terrified child lost in the dark. Where am I? What is this place?

Leila snapped her head toward her, her face a grotesque mask of fury, her eyes shot through with jagged veins of red. She lunged—not to strike, but to condemn. Her voice broke under the crushing weight of hatred and despair as she shrieked:

“You… You killed him! Why, Olivia? Why must you destroy everything you touch? He was your little brother! A piece of your own flesh and blood! How could you slaughter him like a stray dog?”

Olivia shook her head frantically, her breath hitching in a throat as dry as bone. “No… not me… I didn’t… I could never…”

“Does it please you to see him like this?” Leila continued, her fingers clawing at Kyle’s cold, lifeless chest. “Does this satisfy that rotting heart of yours? Tell me!”

Driven by a sudden, sickening dread, Olivia looked down at her hands. They were stained a deep, visceral crimson. Clasped firmly in her grip was a silver-hilted dagger. The blood—Kyle’s blood—was slick upon the metal, seeping slowly and methodically into the ivory fabric of her gown, blooming like a dark, poisonous flower.

“No… no… NO!”

The fragile thread of her sanity snapped, erupting into a harrowing scream that tore from the very depths of her lungs.

“NO! NO! NO! I didn’t do it! I could never! I am not the monster in this world! I DID NOT KILL HIM!”

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