Chapter 141: The Mirage in the Midnight

Three days had crawled by, each one heavier than the last. The air within the Lucron estate had turned frigid, a biting winter that had nothing to do with the season outside.

​Between Mathias and Olivia, a wall of glass had been erected—invisible, yet impenetrable. They shared the same roof, the same corridors, and even the same table, yet they inhabited two different worlds. Not a single word had passed between them since that night.

​The dining hall, once a place of strained civility, had become a battlefield of silence.

​Every evening was a repeat of a haunting ritual. As soon as the rustle of Olivia’s silk gown announced her entrance, the heavy thud of Mathias’s chair against the floor would cut through the quiet like a gunshot. He never looked at her. He didn’t have to; he could feel her presence in the very marrow of his bones.

​He would rise, leaving his plate largely untouched—a mockery of the lavish meal prepared before him. To the servants and the family watching in bated breath, his departure was a clear statement: Your presence is my hunger’s end.

​Olivia would sit, her back as straight as a blade, staring at the empty seat across from her. Her pride was her only armor, a cold shield that kept her from screaming. She wanted to speak—the words were there, clawing at the back of her throat, tasted like copper and regret. She wanted to explain the “hell” she saw, to tell him that it was her own reflection she feared, not him.

​But her tongue was leaden. To speak first was to surrender, and Olivia Lucron had forgotten how to wave a white flag.

​Across from her, Mathias was no different. His silence wasn’t one of indifference; it was a fortress of wounded ego. Every time he felt her gaze linger on the back of his head as he walked away, a part of him wanted to turn back, to seize her by the shoulders and demand the truth. But the memory of her words—looking into your eyes is like looking into hell—acted as a tether, pulling him back into the darkness.

​The tension was so thick it was suffocating. The staff moved like ghosts, afraid that even the clatter of a silver spoon would be the spark that ignited the powder keg.

​They were two stars collapsing under their own weight, drawn together by a gravity they both hated, yet too stubborn to prevent the inevitable crash. They were waiting—waiting for the silence to finally break, or for it to finally break them.

The clock struck midnight, its hollow tolling echoing through the silent corridors. With held breath and ghostly steps, a pair of slender legs moved with practiced caution, crossing the threshold into Matthias’s private sanctuary.

She settled onto the edge of his bed, a silent specter in the dark. Her gaze remained fixed upon his sleeping form, heavy with the weight of memory. She recalled their last encounter—the way he had offered nothing but solace, and the cruel, jagged manner in which she had repelled him. Driven by a quiet, desperate hunger to see those eyes once more, she leaned closer. As she descended, a curtain of shimmering silver hair tumbled forward, brushing against his skin like a silken veil.

Matthias stirred, a heavy lethargy clinging to his limbs from the grueling trials of the past few days. He hadn’t even heard the door creak. As his eyelids drifted open, he was met by two piercing cerulean orbs staring into his own with unnerving intensity. He blinked, expecting the vision to dissolve, but the gaze remained—unchanging and profound, as if those eyes were peering directly into the recesses of his soul.

“Damn it,” he whispered, his voice thick with exhaustion. “Why must you invade my dreams too, Olivia? Why do you look at me with such eyes? It is a special kind of cruelty to exile me from your waking world, only to haunt my sleep.”

“What?” Olivia breathed, her voice a mere tremor.

Ignoring her confusion, Matthias reached out, his hand cupping her cheek with a tenderness he had long suppressed. “You look breathtaking tonight,” he murmured, his thumb tracing her skin. “Perhaps it is only because I have been starved of the sight of you.”

Olivia froze, the reality of the moment blurring at the edges. She did not pull away; instead, she remained still, allowing him to speak to her as if she were nothing more than a beautiful, fleeting mirage.

Olivia didn’t answer. She held her breath as she felt the rough texture of his palm against her cold skin. His touch was painfully warm—a strange, searing heat she hadn’t felt for days.

​”You are always so silent in my dreams,” Mathias whispered with a bitter smile. His thumb traced the curve under her eyes, wiping away invisible tears that only he could see, as if trying to erase a sorrow he never witnessed in reality. “You stare at me with such bitter silence, and then you vanish before the sun rises… leaving me alone in my hell.”

​She wanted to tell him she wasn’t a dream. She wanted to say she was right there, and that the “hell” she saw in his eyes was merely her fear of her own regret. But she remained frozen, mesmerized by the broken tone of his voice—a vulnerability he never dared show her in the light of day.

​Mathias leaned in closer, gently pulling her face toward him until their jagged breaths mingled. “Why are your eyes so sad, even in my imagination?” he asked in a raspy, hollow voice. “Are you regretful? Or did you come to ensure my heart is completely shattered? Did you come to inspect the wreckage your words left behind that night?”

​His grip tightened slightly. “If my eyes are what make you hate me… then you can tear them out.”

​Olivia’s tongue felt like lead. She hadn’t expected her words to hollow him out like this. This wasn’t the sharp-tongued man she knew; this was a man begging for penance.

​His thumb descended to her lip, prying it open before his fingers traced the sensitive inner lining. Before she could process the touch, his hand surged behind her head, crashing her lips against his with a sudden, violent intensity.

​It was a kiss born of catastrophic hunger and thirst. One after another, without pause, without mercy, and without a second to breathe. It was desperate—a drowning man clawing for air.

​With a surge of strength, Olivia shoved his chest, pushing herself away as she gasped for oxygen. “Man! Are you trying to choke me?”

​Mathias’s body went rigid. The breath was too warm, the touch too solid, and the familiar scent of her perfume too real for a dream. His emerald eyes widened, the fog of sleep vanishing to make way for a piercing, terrifying clarity. His hand, which had been caressing her face, paused before pressing firmly against her skin to verify her existence.

​”Olivia?” His voice cracked, a plea for reality. “Are you… truly here?”

She responded with a sharp, familiar edge of sarcasm. “No… I am her shadow. Who else would I be?”

​Mathias froze, the lingering warmth of the ’dream’ evaporating instantly. He stared at her, the realization of every vulnerable word he had just uttered crashing down on him. The emerald of his eyes turned to ice.

​”What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice now a flat, dead monotone.

​Olivia tried to dodge the weight of his gaze, masking her discomfort with a smirk. “I didn’t know you were quite this sentimental… how pathetic.”

​”Then shut up,” Mathias snapped, the words cutting through the air. “If you’ve finished saying whatever you came here to say, leave. I wouldn’t want you to have to endure the ’hell’ of my presence a moment longer.” He spat the word ’hell’ back at her like a curse before turning his back to her, pulling the sheets as if to wall her out.

​Olivia stood frozen. Usually, a single word from her would have him at her mercy, but this… this was a stranger. This was a man who had finally had enough.

​”Are you… angry?” she managed to ask, her voice smaller than she intended.

​”Olivia, spare me the effort of answering that and just get out,” he muttered into the darkness of the room, his back a rigid barrier. “I don’t even know why you’re here. Go. Please.”

She didn’t leave. Instead, she lay down beside him, her presence a cold flame in the dark room. She looked at him, her gaze unwavering. “I know you’re angry. That’s why I came to you.”

​Mathias didn’t offer a word of comfort. He simply stared at her with a chilling detachment, letting her voice fill the hollow silence.

​”It’s difficult, Mathias,” she began, her voice trembling with a rare, raw honesty. “To spend your entire life chasing the wrong person, only to realize you’ve spent that same time hurting the only one who stood by you until the very end. It’s hard to look into your eyes as if I’ve done nothing to you. Do you even understand?”

​A sardonic, hollow laugh escaped his throat. “Olivia Lucron is… regretful?” he mocked, his eyes flashing with a cold fire. “This is a moment that truly deserves to be etched into history.”

​”Shut up and listen, man!” she snapped, her frustration flaring.

​”You might find it easy to judge me,” she whispered, the fire in her eyes fading into a haunting sorrow. “But no one—not even you—can understand the weight of what I’m feeling right now.”

He didn’t look at her. His gaze was fixed on the ceiling, his jaw so tight it looked like it might shatter. The silence stretched, thin and fragile as glass, until he finally spoke, his voice no more than a jagged whisper.

​”I understand better than you think, Olivia. I understood every time I stood behind you while you looked at him. I understood every time I reached out for a hand that was already reaching for someone else.”

​He finally turned his head, his emerald eyes boring into hers—not with anger, but with a terrifying, exhausted honesty.

​”You feel the weight of your regret? Good. Because I have been drowning in the weight of my devotion for years. So don’t ask me to make this easy for you.”

​Olivia felt a lump form in her throat, a physical manifestation of the words she couldn’t say. She didn’t move. She didn’t apologize again. Instead, she did the only thing her pride would allow. She closed the distance between them, resting her head against his shoulder—not as a queen, but as a woman seeking shelter from her own storm.

​Mathias stiffened. Every instinct told him to push her away, to protect what was left of his heart. But as her silver hair spilled across his chest and her warmth seeped through his shirt, his hand acted on its own.

​He didn’t embrace her. Not yet. But his fingers twitched, hovering just inches above her waist, caught in the agonizing space between forgiveness and self-preservation.

​”You need to leave, Olivia,” he muttered, his voice breaking. “Before I forget that I’m supposed to be angry with you.”

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