Chapter 139: Reflections of Hell

Mathias remained anchored in a terrifying silence, his gaze fixed upon her. Her cryptic confession of murder hung in the air—a riddle he could not unravel, for she was in no state to offer explanations.

He watched her eyes, vacant and haunting, as they looked not at him, but through him, piercing his flesh to settle upon some abyssal void. It was as if she did not see the Duke standing before her, but rather a specter from a forgotten life; a man long ago slain by the blade of her own remorse.

The agony of her absence, even as he held her, became a weight he could no longer endure. Reaching out, he caught her pallid face between his palms, forcing her gaze to meet his with desperate intensity.

“Olivia!” he commanded, his voice a jagged edge of insistence. “Look at me. Calm yourself… do you hear me?”

For a heartbeat, her breath hitched. It was as if his touch had summoned her wandering soul back from the shadowed alleys of the past. Her gaze froze, locked within the iron resolve of his eyes—eyes that betrayed not a flicker of fear nor a shadow of hesitation.

“Even if you have killed me, as you claim, then let it be so,” Mathias continued, his tone softening into a warmth that belied the grimness of his words. “If my end is to be written by your hand, I shall embrace it. I would welcome such a fate. So, I implore you… cease this tearing at your own soul. Stop mourning a sin I do not recognize.”

Olivia struggled against his grip, wrenching her face away. A bitter, heart-rending whisper escaped her lips:

“You do not understand, Mathias,” she gasped, her voice thick with a desolation that seemed to bleed into the air. “You cannot fathom the ocean of blood that stains my very soul.”

But he would grant her no sanctuary in retreat. His hands moved with a firm, relentless grace, capturing her face once more and drawing her so close that their breaths mingled in the narrow space between them. When he spoke, his voice was low and disciplined, vibrating with the controlled power of distant thunder.

“I meant every word, Olivia. If death comes by your blade, I accept it. So, I beg of you—cease this weeping.”

He fell silent for a heartbeat, his expression hardening into a mask of fierce, protective intensity as he addressed the secret that haunted her.

“As for your lineage—for being the daughter of Lucius—do not wrap yourself in the vanity of being alone in your shame. I, too, possess parents who vie daily for the title of the Empire’s greatest villain. You owe nothing to their blood. Let them all rot in hell.”

Then, his voice fractured, dropping to a whisper that bypassed her defenses and struck at her core—a rare glimpse of vulnerability he had never shown another living soul.

“Olivia… am I not enough for you?”

“Enough?”

A jagged, choked laugh escaped her, tangled with tears. His question was the final blow, the blade that severed the last cord of her restraint.

“You understand nothing! Your very presence tears me asunder. You are the mirror of my deepest sin. Every time I look at you, I am blinded by the ugliness of what I have done. You truly do not realize the agony that wrings the life from me whenever I meet your gaze. Looking into those green eyes… it is like staring into the abyss of hell itself. It is an eternal reminder of my own madness—of what these hands have wrought!”

In that harrowing instant, the light in Mathias’s eyes extinguished, eclipsed by a sudden, chilling darkness. His features settled into a macabre mask—a haunting blend of lethal detachment and a disappointment so profound it seemed bottomless.

“I see…” he whispered, his voice hollowed of all vitality. “So, the mere sight of me causes you such unbearable agony?”

She offered no reply, yet her silence roared louder than any scream could have.

His hands, once desperate and firm, slackened. He released her slowly, retreating as one might step away from a lifeless corpse. He rose from the bed with mechanical, heavy movements. Olivia remained submerged in her stillness, unable to protest or reach out; her mind was teetering precariously on the precipice of madness, and his presence acted only as a catalyst for her mounting disorientation.

Mathias crossed the room toward her vanity, his steps echoing with a grim finality. He reached out and retrieved a single pill—the very sedative he had so often warned her against. A dry, caustic laugh escaped his throat, a sound so bitter it seemed to chill the already freezing air of the chamber.

“A cruel irony,” he mocked, his voice laced with self-loathing. “I, who implored you to forsake this poison, now offer it to you with my own hand.”

He turned back to her, placing the small tablet before her with a gaze stripped of all warmth.

“But perhaps,” he continued with icy composure, “it will dull the edges of your ruin—if only for a fleeting hour. At the very least, it shall shield you from the sight of my face, since it serves only to remind you of hell.”

Olivia did not lift her head. She stayed buried within the shroud of her bedclothes, as if she were fading out of existence entirely. Mathias felt the weight of the unspoken message: he was no longer her sanctuary, but her sentence.

He turned and vanished from the room with a lethal, quiet grace. As he stepped into the corridor, he found Isabella standing by the door. She had been waiting there, anchored by her own anxieties for Olivia’s waking state, and she watched him now, her keen eyes tracing the jagged lines of turmoil etched upon the Duke’s face.

Mathias offered her a ghost of a smile—a pale, fragile thing saturated with sorrow and a weary sense of defeat.

“Go in and tend to her, Isabella,” he murmured, his voice sounding thin and frayed. “I suspect the sight of your face will be a far lighter burden for her to bear than mine.”

Isabella’s brow furrowed in bewilderment, her footsteps faltering. “What? I don’t understand… has something happened between you? Forgive my intrusion, but—”

“It is of no consequence, sister-in-law,” he interrupted, his tone turning brittle, almost like a final testament whispered to the wind. “I am simply placing her in your care. I trust no one else.”

He turned to depart, his silhouette heavy against the dim hall, but paused for one lingering moment. “Thank you for aiding her,” he added, his voice rasping with an uncharacteristic roughness. “I shall never forget the kindness you have shown her.”

Isabella slipped into the chamber, the door clicking softly behind her. She found Olivia propped against the pillows, a ghoulish pallor clinging to her skin as if she were a specter newly risen from the earth. Her eyes were fixed upon the void, hollowed out and bereفت of any spark.

Sinking onto the edge of the mattress, Isabella reached out, her voice a fragile thread of concern. “Olivia… what is this? What transpired between you and Mathias? I have never seen such a shadow upon his face as when he left this room.”

Olivia’s fingers tightened around the linens, her knuckles bleaching white under the strain. She drew a breath, fighting to stitch together a voice that sounded halfway whole.

“Nothing,” she lied, the word trembling despite her efforts. “Nothing happened. We were merely… speaking.”

Isabella noted the raw, red hollows traced around Olivia’s eyes—the unmistakable wreckage of a violent weeping. Recognizing that the woman before her was far too fragile for an interrogation, she let the pressure subside. A heavy, suffocating silence settled between them, broken only when Olivia let out a deep, bitter sigh that seemed to sap the very air from her lungs.

“I do not deserve to be his wife,” Olivia whispered, the words falling like lead. “Not after all that has come to pass.”

Isabella recoiled as if struck, leaning in with wide-eyed alarm. “What on earth are you saying, Olivia? What is this nonsense?”

“I cannot be the woman he desires, Isabella,” Olivia replied, her voice turning to ice as she stared intently at some invisible point in the distance. “He must find another. Someone… someone worthy of him.”

Meanwhile, Mathias retreated to his study, his footsteps echoing with the weight of a man walking toward his own execution. He felt as though an unseen blade had pierced his chest and lodged there, causing him to bleed out silently with every rhythmic throb of his heart.

He slumped into his high-backed chair, his movements purely mechanical. In a trance of quiet desperation, he reached for his silver case and began to smoke. One cigarette followed another in a relentless cycle, until the chamber was stifled by a thick, grey shroud of smoke—a haze that seemed to choke away every remaining spark of life in the room.

He whispered to himself with a searing, bitter irony, his eyes tracking the silver ribbons of smoke as they spiraled toward the ceiling.

“I am her hell,” he murmured, the words a jagged curse against his own existence. “Damn this wretched life. Every word Cedric uttered was the truth… I am nothing but a shackle tightened around her throat, a furnace so fierce she cannot even bear to look upon it. I am not her protector. I am her undoing.”

Slowly, his hand moved toward a private drawer, pulling out documents he had kept hidden like a forbidden sin. He stared at them for an eternity, losing all sense of time, until the rhythmic ticking of the clock felt like a countdown toward the final expiration of their life together.

“I cannot watch her wither in my shadow any longer,” he breathed, his voice brittle. “Perhaps… perhaps this is the only mercy left.”

His grip tightened around his pen until the wood groaned against his fingers, nearly snapping under the force of his agony. “Even if this decision hollows me out, even if it tears the very soul from my ribs… I cannot be the hand that strikes her anymore.”

The guttering candles on his desk cast a pale, sickly light over the bold heading at the top of the parchment—the final, devastating word in this tragic Chapter:

[[ DIVORCE AGREEMENT ]]

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