Chapter 159: A Vintage of Betrayal

Matthias stared at him, fury churning like a trapped beast behind those obsidian-ringed eyes. He wanted to scream, to lash out against the sheer, cold injustice of it all, but Kyle’s logic was a muzzle. It was all so perfectly, lethally rational—the kind of truth that didn’t just hurt; it paralyzed.

​”Fine,” Matthias choked out, the word scraping against his locked jaw like flint. “As you wish. Thank you for the ’warning,’ Your Highness. I’ll deal with it.”

​Kyle gave a single, stiff nod—the precise, hollow gesture of a stranger—and turned for the door. He left behind a silence so thick it felt like a physical weight, a stagnant air tainted by the bitter stench of betrayal and the slow, rhythmic crawl of the rot within Matthias’s own veins.

​”A rebellion, huh?” Matthias whispered into the gathering shadows. The panic was gone, replaced by a cold, murderous clarity that settled in his chest like a sharpened blade. “I know exactly which bastard is behind this. It seems a visit to my old friend is long overdue.”

​The hours bled into a grey, featureless smear, time losing its meaning until evening arrived with a silent, bone-deep chill that seeped through the cracks of the estate.

​”Olivia… Olivia…”

​The whispers dragged her out of a restless, grey sleep. She blinked, her vision finally locking onto a pair of bright green eyes and golden-brown hair that hung over her like a heavy, gilded shroud.

​”Isabella?” Olivia’s voice was a dry rasp, the sound of dead leaves on stone. She forced herself upright, her joints protesting with a stiffness that mirrored the iron-clad walls she’d built around her heart. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Isabella took a half-step back, her eyes narrowing into slits as she picked Olivia apart, her gaze as invasive as a vulture circling a wreck. “I’m here for a reason. But you… why are you sleeping on the sofa again? You look like a ghost of yourself. Did something happen with Matthias last night? Did the monster finally show his teeth like you feared?”

​”No. Nothing happened,” Olivia snapped. She began smoothing the creases in her gown with a frantic, mechanical precision, her fingers trembling despite the cold mask she tried to wear.

​”Are you sure? Because your face doesn’t exactly scream ’peace of mind.’ It looks more like a crime scene.”

​”We talked,” Olivia shot back, her eyes flashing with a sharp, lethal warning that promised silence. “I told him things he should have heard a lifetime ago. That’s the end of it.”

​”Things?” Isabella leaned in, her curiosity thick and suffocating, a physical weight that pressed against Olivia’s chest.

​”Isabella, your curiosity is an exhaustion I cannot afford. Mind your own business,” Olivia hissed, the words coming out like a serrated blade.

​”I was just asking! Stop biting my head off every time I try to act like a person who actually cares,” Isabella huffed, crossing her arms defensively. She fell silent for a heartbeat, her irritation suddenly evaporating, replaced by a tension so sharp it could have drawn blood. “Actually…”

​She reached into the deep pocket of her skirt and pulled out a letter. The parchment was thick, yellowed with a sickly age, and closed with a wax seal that made the oxygen vanish from the room.

​”This…” Olivia whispered, her pupils contracting. Her gaze was paralyzed, locked onto that stamp as if it were a poisonous spider.

​”Yes,” Isabella said, her voice dropping into a low, jagged tone that Olivia had never heard from her before. “I’m the one who received it. But the name on the front… it’s yours.”

Olivia snatched the parchment. It didn’t feel like paper; it felt like a shard of ice pressing against her palm, a cold that bit straight into her marrow. With a violent, jagged flick of her thumb, she snapped the seal—the sound echoing like a bone breaking—and ripped the letter open.

​Her eyes devoured the ink. Every stroke of the pen was sickeningly elegant, so precise and fluid that it felt like a calculated insult written in blood.

​“Dearest Big Sister,” the letter began, the words curling on the page like venomous vines.

​“Long days have passed in silence, and I find I truly miss you. I couldn’t help but notice you’ve severed the strings of the little doll I left in your care. What a pity! Perhaps I should send you some ’blue roses’? They might offer you a sense of ’security’. After your last visit, I believe a conversation is long overdue. I await your swift reply.”

​Olivia’s grip tightened until her knuckles turned a ghostly, bloodless white. The parchment groaned and buckled under the raw pressure of her fingers.

​”That wretched, parasitic girl…” she hissed, the words scraping against her throat like shards of broken glass.

​She turned toward Isabella, her gaze no longer weary. It shimmered with a sudden, predatory intent that made the air in the room turn razor-thin. Olivia flung the letter as if it were a poisonous viper. “Burn this filth. Burn it until not even the ash remains. And bring me my pen and paper.”

​Without a breath of hesitation, Isabella cast the missive into the hearth. Olivia watched with a grim, hollow satisfaction as the tongues of fire licked away Elvira’s taunting words, curling them into blackened, shriveled flakes that vanished into the soot. Her rage was a silent earthquake, rattling the very foundations of her soul, but her face remained a mask of unyielding stone.

When Isabella returned, the rattle of the writing materials on the table betrayed her. She set them down with a cautious, shaking hand, her eyes darting between the hearth’s embers and Olivia’s frozen expression. “What do you intend to do with these?”

​”I am writing a response,” Olivia replied.

​Her voice didn’t just drop; it plummeted to a terrifying chill. She dipped the quill into the inkwell with a sharp, decisive strike—not a movement of a writer, but the plunge of a dagger. The ink splashed against the glass like a dark, arterial spray. She wasn’t preparing to write; she was preparing to stab a heart.

​”What?” Isabella’s eyes widened, her breath hitching. “You cannot truly mean to meet that madwoman. Olivia, look at what she did to the maid! She isn’t inviting you to tea; she is laying a trap for your head!”

​Olivia lifted her head slowly. A smile traced her lips—a thin, elegant curve that was meant to look natural, but carried the lethal, shimmering edge of a razor.

​”Meet her? Oh, no. I am going to make her rue every stroke of the pen she dared to set to that paper,”

—————–

The tavern door groaned as Matthias pushed it open, a gust of the bone-deep evening chill following him inside like a silent witness. The air was thick with the stench of cheap ale, stale tobacco, and the unwashed desperation of the broken.

​Matthias scanned the room, his obsidian-ringed eyes cutting through the dim, amber light with a predator’s focus. It didn’t take long. There, tucked in the shadows of the far corner, sat his target.

​He moved with a lethal, fluid grace, the crowd parting instinctively before his cold aura. He pulled out the wooden stool and sat down, his presence hitting the table like a leaden weight. Without looking at the man beside him, he signaled the barkeep.

​”Two glasses of your oldest vintage,” Matthias’s voice was a jagged rasp, “one for me, and one for the ghost sitting next to me.”

​Only then did the man turn.

​Matthias offered a slow, serrated smile—the kind that never reached his eyes, which were still pulsing with that rhythmic, inky rot. “How are you, you bastard? I knew the smell of betrayal would lead me straight here.”

​The man met his gaze, a fake, practiced smile stretching across his lips. It was a mask Olivia would have recognized—perfect, hollow, and deadly. “He met his gaze with a faint, poison-laced smile.

“You took a long time to understand the game, Matthias. I thought the stench of your rotting trust in me would have drawn you here nights ago… but I suppose nobility always did make you a little blind, my old friend.”

​Matthias reached out, his hand settling on the man’s shoulder. His grip wasn’t a gesture of affection; it was a shackle, his fingers digging into the fabric until the knuckles turned white.

​”I was just reminiscing about the last time we sat here,” Matthias whispered, leaning in until their shadows merged against the stained wood of the bar.

“Back when I was a fool. Back when I sat in this very spot, pouring my heart out about the woman I loved, while you laughed and promised to be the first to bless us.”

​He tightened his grip, a low, murderous chuckle vibrating in his chest.

​”Ah… those were the days when I was a magnificent idiot. When I actually believed that a rat like you could understand the meaning of trust.”

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