Chapter 68: The Price of Womanhood

​[CONTENT WARNING: This Chapter contains dark themes, including psychological trauma, depictions of attempted sexual assault, and gore. Reader discretion is advised.]

“Unlike the ghosts of my childhood and the cruel whispers of the servants, the passing of time has finally become a familiar companion.

My only creed now is survival—anything to avoid returning to that desolate cell. It was a place of hollow echoes and unspeakable pain.”

“Thus, I became a vessel of blind obedience. Had my father commanded me to sever my own hand, I would have done so without a tremor. I have carved his authority into the very marrow of my soul—not out of love, but out of a paralyzing, bone-deep terror.”

She paused, the silence stretching between them like a fraying wire.

“There is something you do not know,” she whispered, her voice brittle. “I succumbed to the haze of drugs for a long time. Mathias knows.”

Isabella leaned forward, her breath catching. “You… you were using?”

“Yes,” she replied, a hollow smile touching her lips. “I used them every time I was forced to share his bed. I needed to be elsewhere.”

Isabella stammered, “I… I don’t know what to say.”

“I tell you this only so you might grasp the weight of what comes next.” She swallowed hard, her throat constricting. “This didn’t happen in the fog of early childhood. I was perhaps fifteen? The memory is as vivid as a fresh wound.”

She rose from her chair, only to freeze. A dark, crimson stain bloomed upon the fabric. Terror, cold and sharp, seized her mind. Am I dying? she thought, her heart hammering against her ribs. God, I am bleeding out.

She scrambled to change her clothes, hoping to stem the tide of what she perceived as a fatal wound. But she was a child of ignorance; no servant had ever deigned to explain the mysteries of womanhood to her.

Instead, they found sport in her misery. They would snicker as she sat, mocking the stains on her silk dresses with curled lips. “Why must we be the ones to scrub after this monstrosity?” they would grumble, their voices dripping with disdain.

It was only later, after the incident, that their mockery turned to a trembling fear—a fear that the Duke might offer them up as fodder to appease her.

The day dragged on in a blur of panic and shame, until the shroud of night fell. A floorboard creaked. Someone was slipping into her room—an elder maid, her face etched with a forbidden pity.

“What are you doing here?” Olivia breathed.

“My little lady…” The woman spoke in a hurried whisper, glancing over her shoulder at the shadows dancing in the hallway. “Sit beside me,” the maid urged.

There, in the dim candlelight, she began to unravel the mysteries of the moon’s cycle, the nature of a woman’s body, and the harsh realities of the intimacy expected of them. Olivia sat in rapt silence, the pieces of her fractured understanding finally clicking into place.

“Thank you, Auntie,” Olivia whispered, her eyes shining with a newfound clarity. “But you must go. If they find you here…”

“You are the age of my own daughter,” the woman sighed, squeezing her hand. “Take care of yourself, My Lady.”

The maid vanished as silently as a ghost. Olivia sat alone in the dark, the weight of the revelation sinking in. “So,” she murmured to the empty room, “I have become a woman at last.”

By some fleeting mercy of fate, neither Elvira nor the Duke had been present during those first few days; otherwise, Olivia’s terror would have been absolute. Yet, the palace walls had ears, and the news of her transition travelled like a foul scent.

When Elvira finally returned, she wore a mask of playful exuberance. She threw her arms around Olivia in a sudden embrace that sent a violent shiver through Olivia’s frame.

“Congratulations, sister,” Elvira whispered against her ear, her voice a chilling caress. “You have finally blossomed into a woman.”

Olivia stiffened, her eyes clouded with suspicion. “Thank you, sister.”

Elvira began to prowl around her, a predator circling its prey. Her hands strayed, brazenly touching Olivia’s chest and hips. “Mmm, indeed. You’ve grown quite significantly in all the right places.”

Then, the playful mask shattered, revealing a gaze that was darker, colder, and infinitely more sinister. “I have a surprise for you, dear Olivia.”

“A surprise? What do you mean?”

Elvira’s lips curled into a wicked smirk as she snapped her fingers. The heavy doors groaned open, and four men entered. They were half-naked, their bare torsos glistening in the dim light, their presence a suffocating weight in the room.

Elvira tilted Olivia’s chin upward with mocking softness. “Since you are now a woman, it is only fitting that you experience the carnal world. Look at them—I’ve ensured you’ll have a night you will never forget. Four magnificent specimens…”

Panic clawed at Olivia’s throat. She shrank back, her voice trembling. “Elvira, please… not this. I’ll do anything! Anything you ask. Just send them away!”

But Elvira was deaf to her pleas. With a casual flick of her finger, she signaled the leader. “You. Strip her of those rags.”

Olivia fought with every ounce of strength she possessed, a frantic, desperate struggle. But her resistance was futile. Her clothes were torn from her body with brutal efficiency, leaving her exposed and shivering before their predatory eyes.

Elvira watched the spectacle with a glint of sadistic pleasure. “You are becoming whole, sister. Why resist so fiercely? You should enjoy this.”

The four men closed in, their shadows stretching long across the floor. Olivia tried to shield her nakedness with her hands, but they were quickly pinned. She felt their cold, rough hands upon her skin, their breath hot against her neck, as they began to mark her with unwanted touches.

Her screams tore through the room, jagged and raw. “Please… let me go! Enough! Please stop!”

The harrowing tale was abruptly severed by the sound of a knock at the door.

Isabella stared at Olivia, the blood having drained from her face. She felt a phantom suffocation, as if the air in the room had turned to ash. Olivia, drenched in a cold sweat, gasped out, “Who is there?”

Leon stepped into the room, his presence breaking the oppressive spell. “Forgive me, sister-in-law. I’ve come to retrieve my wife; there is a matter we must discuss.”

He turned toward Isabella, his expression shifting to immediate concern at her ghostly pallor. He rushed to her side, cupping her face in his hands. “Isabella? What is wrong? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

Isabella swallowed hard, the echoes of Olivia’s trauma still screaming in her mind. “Nothing… I am just… tired.”

Olivia cleared her throat, a forced, brittle sound. “Ahem. I am still here, in case you two had forgotten. Isabella, go with your husband. We shall finish our… discussion tomorrow.”

Leon took Isabella’s hand, pulling her toward the exit with suspicion. “We’re leaving now. Goodnight.”

He paused at the threshold, glancing back at Olivia. “Sister-in-law… are you truly well? You look quite pale yourself.”

Olivia forced a hollow, practiced smile. “Yes. Perfectly fine.”

The moment the heavy door clicked shut and the candles flickered into extinction, the shadows of the past clawed their way back into the room. Olivia turned, her heart freezing.

There, sitting upon the velvet sofa as if they had never left, were Peter and the Mercenary. Their hollow eyes were fixed upon her.

Peter’s voice, cold as a tomb, broke the silence: “Was I not enough for you, Olivia? Did you have to devour Ricky as well?”

She swallowed against a dry throat, her hands trembling. “You aren’t real,” she hissed into the dark. “Leave. Go back to the hell that birthed you.”

But they didn’t vanish. Instead, they stood behind her, their phantom breath cold against her neck. “Did we taste good? Did you enjoy the feast?”

Desperate to escape them, she felt the sudden, sickening scent of raw flesh filling the air—thick and metallic. She lunged for a bottle of perfume, spraying it frantically over her body, her clothes, the air, trying to drown out the smell of death.

She caught her reflection in the mirror, but they were there too, their hands heavy on her shoulders. “You ate us,” they whispered in a haunting unison. “You are a monster, Olivia. No scent in this world can mask the stench of what you are.”

With a cry of primal rage and fear, she hurled the glass bottle. It shattered against the mirror, silver shards raining down like frozen tears. “We are inside you now, savage girl,” the voices hissed from the broken glass. “There is no escape from your past—or your present.”

Olivia pressed her palms against her ears, pacing the room like a caged animal, trying to outrun the voices that lived within her skull. “Ugh… damn Leon,” she whimpered. “Why did he have to take her? I will lose my mind if I stay alone another second.”

Driven by a desperation she couldn’t name, she fled her chambers. She wandered the lightless corridors of the palace in a trance until she found herself standing before Mathias’s door.

As she lowered her hands, a strange, fragile stillness settled over her. The voices seemed to recede, held back by the mere presence of what lay behind that wood. A bitter, self-deprecating laugh escaped her lips. “I cannot believe what I am about to do.”

She pushed the door open with agonizing slowness and crept inside on silent feet. She stopped beside his bed. Mathias lay there, leaning on his side, his breathing rhythmic and calm.

“Hah… sleeping so soundly,” she whispered, her voice laced with envy, “while I am losing my mind.”

She moved to the empty side of the bed, lowering herself with cautious grace to avoid waking him.

But as soon as she lay down, the hallucinations flared again, sharper than before. Do you think he would ever accept a beast like you as a wife? You are a monster, Olivia.

In a final, desperate act of survival, she pressed herself against him, burying her face into the warmth of his chest. She reached for his hand, pulling his arm over her waist, draping it across herself like a shield.

She was using his body as a fortress—a sanctuary built of flesh and bone to guard her against the demons devouring her mind.

“I know you are angry,” she breathed into the dark fabric of his shirt, “but just endure me for tonight.”

“Olivia?”

His voice came suddenly, cutting through the shadows, low and clear. “Did something happen?”

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