Chapter 157: Scraps of Compassion

​”I love you.”

​The words didn’t ring; they collided with her. Olivia felt the heat of his breath, a sickeningly real reminder that this wasn’t a hallucination. It was a reality she wasn’t prepared to handle.

​Matthias pulled back, his body rigid, a silhouette of fractured glass against the stone. He looked at her, those emerald eyes now almost entirely submerged in that ink-like rot.

​Love. Her mind rejected the word instantly. To Olivia, love wasn’t a sanctuary; it was a fairy tale told to children to hide the world’s jagged teeth. In her past life, “love” was the prefix to a slap, the justification for a betrayal.

It was a liability she had spent years cutting out of her soul with a dull knife. She searched the black abyss of his pupils, desperate to find a lie, a strategic trap—anything but that raw, naked sincerity.

​”How long do you intend to stare at me like that?”

​His voice was a rasp, the sound of metal scraping against bone.

​Olivia flinched. The trance broke, leaving her feeling exposed, as if he’d peeled back her skin. “Right. Fine,” she stammered. The words were hollow, pathetic. A strategist’s failure.

He backed away, putting a deliberate, cold distance between them. The vulnerability he’d just shown was gone, replaced by a thin, bitter line where his lips met.

“Don’t wear that expression,” he snapped, his voice reclaiming its clinical, razor-sharp edge. “I’m not forcing a debt on you. This… feeling… it belongs to me alone. I only wanted to make one thing clear: I would never dare to harm you. Do we agree?”

​”We… agree,” she managed. The word felt brittle. Her voice trembled—a rare, infuriating crack in a suit of armor she had spent lifetimes forging.

​”You may leave,” he said, dismissing her as if she were a mere subordinate and not the woman he’d just claimed to love.

​Olivia didn’t argue. She turned and headed for the door, her movement a mix of predatory grace and sheer desperation. She needed to get out. She felt stripped bare, as if the heavy silk of her gown had been shredded, leaving her nerves exposed to the freezing air of the room.

​But as her fingers brushed the cold brass of the handle, the strategist in her clawed its way back to the surface. She stopped. Enough, she hissed at herself. The war for the throne doesn’t stop because your heart skipped a beat.

She turned back.

​Matthias hadn’t stirred. He remained anchored in the center of the room, his shadow stretching long and jagged across the floor. He was still watching her with those obsidian-ringed eyes—a predator that had tasted blood but decided, for now, to let the prey run.

​”Matthias,” Olivia’s voice sliced through the silence, hard and authoritative. She was reclaiming her territory.

“Don’t do anything stupid. Especially not with my family. Leave Elvira to me. I’ll handle her.”

​He didn’t fight her. He didn’t even point out the absurdity of her warning after the chaos of the last hour. Instead, he simply bowed his head, a synthetic, practiced smile stretching across his face—a mask so familiar it was insulting.

​”Of course,” he replied, his voice as smooth and hollow as polished glass. “As you wish.”

​”Good. Then… I’ll see you later.”

​He dismissed her with a stiff, mechanical wave. “Later.”

​The second the heavy oak door clicked shut, the mask didn’t just fall—it shattered. The fake warmth evaporated, leaving behind a void of bone-chilling cold. Matthias collapsed back against the wall, his breath catching in a throat that felt like it was filled with broken glass.

​”Damn it… damn it, damn it.”

​The words were a jagged hiss, a spray of self-loathing directed at the empty room. Matthias leaned his head against the stone, his voice a wreck of its former self.

“Stupid. What have I done?” He’d offered up the truth to bury a darker one, and in doing so, he’d stripped himself bare. “These wretched, pathetic feelings…”

​He exhaled, a breath that felt like lead dragging through his lungs. His whole frame shuddered. He looked down at his hands—the same hands that had been clamped around her throat just hours before. He could still feel the phantom heat of her pulse against his palms, a tactile ghost that made his skin crawl.

​Perhaps it’s better this way, he thought, his eyes tracking the shadows that crawled across the ceiling like living ink. She won’t love me back. Not in this life, not in the next. Never. He closed his eyes. At least the word was out. He had unburdened himself of the secret, even if the rot in his blood remained untouched.

​Outside, as Olivia retreated toward her chambers, the word love chased her down the hallway. It echoed against the marble, relentless and mocking.

​Love. Love. Love.

​It wasn’t a foreign concept; it was a weaponized one. With every step, the phantom sting of past slaps burned her cheeks. She could almost feel the blunt force of blows she’d suffered in another life, a cold shiver vibrating through her bones. She had spent a lifetime begging for a drop of affection from her bloodline, only to be met with a harvest of agony.

The heavy door slammed shut, cutting off the world but failing to silence the noise inside her head. Olivia sank into a chair, her chest heaving with shallow, jagged gasps that felt like glass in her lungs.

​”Love doesn’t exist,” she whispered to the shadows. Her voice was flat, a dead thing in the empty room. “It’s pity. He’s tossing scraps of compassion at me the way you’d feed a starving dog in the gutter.”

​Her eyes narrowed, the strategist in her clawing for a logical exit. It was easier to believe in a conspiracy than in a heart.

“No… it’s a shroud. He’s using that word to veil whatever filth is rotting behind his eyes. It’s a distraction. A trick.” She paused, her grip tightening on the armrest. “Besides… who the hell am I to be loved?”

​A bitter, jagged smile twisted her lips. Love was a luxury for the pure—for souls that hadn’t been dragged through the mud and stained with blood. It wasn’t for her. Not for a woman who had already died once and crawled back to life with a heart made of flint and ice.

​”Burn it,” she snapped, standing up with a sudden, violent grace that nearly knocked the chair over. “Get it out of your head, Olivia. Focus on the breathing. Focus on the war. Everything else is just a mirage in this godforsaken hell.”

​Back in the other room, the echo of the slamming door had barely died when the handle turned again. Matthias didn’t look up. He expected Olivia—expected more accusations or perhaps a final, lethal word. But the heavy, hesitant footfall that followed was not hers. It was Kyle.

Kyle stopped mid-stride. His eyes narrowed, cutting through the dim light to dissect Matthias’s state—the bone-rigid posture, the faint, rhythmic tremor in his fingers, and the shadows beneath his eyes that looked like fresh bruises.

​”What the hell is wrong with you?” Kyle’s voice was raw, laced with a suspicion that bordered on an accusation.

​Matthias didn’t move. He kept his gaze anchored to the floor, his face a mask of stone. “Nothing.”

​”You don’t look like ’nothing’. You look like a man waiting for his own execution.”

​”Why are you back, Kyle?” Matthias snapped. He finally lifted his head, and the sight was jarring. The vibrant emerald of his eyes was almost gone, drowned in those ink-black rings that seemed to pulse with a life of their own.

​”I was here to see you in the first place,” Kyle replied, crossing his arms over his chest—a defensive wall. “It just so happened that Olivia walked in first. We ended up… talking.”

​Matthias let out a short, hollow sound that might have been a laugh if there were any air left in his lungs.

“If you’ve finished your little investigation, it’s time you went back to the palace. Using the Empress’s collapse as a hall pass was clever, but the nobility won’t stay quiet forever. Your throne is getting cold, Kyle. Go sit on it before someone else does.”

Kyle exhaled, the invisible weight of the crown seemingly crushing his spine. “You’re right, Matthias. Besides… Olivia will have my head if I linger here any longer.”

​A ghost of a mocking smile twitched on Matthias’s lips—a flicker of the old, arrogant duke. “You fear Olivia more than you fear the Emperor himself. It’s pathetic, really.”

​”I don’t need your commentary,” Kyle shot back, his silence on the matter acting as a confession. He took a step forward, his shadow looming over Matthias, his expression turning stone-cold. “But since I’ve wasted my day here, I should tell you what I’ve dragged out of the gutters.”

​”And what is that?”

​”There are groups planning a rebellion; that much is obvious,” Kyle said, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous whisper that barely carried across the room. “The capital is suffocating with it. But do you know what puzzles me the most, Matthias?”

​Matthias’s eyes sharpened, the emerald slivers within the black ink narrowing. “What?”

​Kyle leaned in until they were inches apart, his gaze boring into Matthias’s darkening, unnatural pupils.

“Everyone I question—every rat in the alley, every spy in the court, every disgruntled noble—they all sing the same chorus. They say that Matthias Lecron is the one holding the leash. They say you are the leader of the rebellion.”

Silence stretched between them, thick and suffocating. Matthias didn’t move, didn’t blink. Then, a dry, hollow sound escaped his throat.

​”Me?”

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