Chapter 74: The Daughter of Doubt

The revelation hung in the air, cold and jagged. Celine leaned forward, her eyes pinning Olivia to the spot. “Olivia… Duke Tharon… he raped your mother.”

Olivia’s expression fractured, shock washing over her like a tidal wave of ice. “Wait… Your Highness… stop. What is this madness you’re whispering?”

She stumbled back, her voice rising in a frantic, desperate cadence.

“I know you want me to mend things with the Empress, but do you truly grasp the weight of the filth you’re speaking? My God, do you wish for your head to be severed for such an assault on the Empress’s honor?”

Celine’s hands trembled violently, but her gaze remained unyielding, locked onto Olivia’s. “I grasp every syllable,” she replied, her voice steadying through sheer will. “The Empress is my brother’s wife, and the Duke is my husband. I am more than certain of the poison I speak. And besides—why do you interrupt me? I am not yet finished. Sit… sit and listen. With clarity and focus.”

Olivia seized a glass of water, draining it in a single, ragged gulp as if trying to wash away the horror. Celine watched her with a heavy, mournful silence.

You were once just like me, Celine thought. Knowing that hollow feeling of helplessness—that denial that settles in when the world rearranges itself without your permission.

“I could not believe what she told me,” Celine whispered aloud.

Olivia fixed her eyes on her, her breathing shallow. “What do you mean there is a sequel to this nightmare? But wait—just one moment.” She let out a laugh, a sharp, bitter sound that bordered on hysteria. “Wait, wait, wait… This means… that I am the product of that act? That I am nothing but the consequence of his violence?”

Celine opened her mouth to speak, but the words of consolation died in her throat, withered by the raw agony in Olivia’s eyes. “Oh… Olivia, perhaps…”

“What do you mean, perhaps?” Olivia snapped, her voice trembling with a lethal edge. “Did she enjoy the violation so much that she decided to do it again of her own free will?”

“OLIVIA!”

Celine’s voice cracked through the room like a thunderclap, her aristocratic composure finally splintering. “Your tongue! How dare you speak with such filth in my presence?”

Olivia stiffened, the jagged edge of her hysteria receding as cold reality settled back into her bones. She straightened her posture, the mask of the Duchess clicking back into place with a hollow snap. “My apologies,” she murmured, her voice devoid of warmth. “I lost my grip for a moment.”

Celine let out a long, ragged sigh, her shoulders sagging under the weight of decades. “It’s fine. I was… I was just as broken when I first learned. I felt the same rot in my soul, realizing how cruelly I had judged her. But do you know what truly haunted me more than the revelation itself?”

“What?” Olivia asked, her eyes fixed on a distant point on the wall.

“When I tried to press her for the details, she fled from the words. It was as if the memory were a fresh wound, so raw that even the air touching it caused her to bleed anew.”

Celine paused, a faint, ghost of a laugh escaping her before she fell into a heavy stillness. “I told her—I told her that you weren’t to blame. That you carried none of the Duke’s darkness. I tried to make her see you, truly see you. And she answered me with tears that looked like shards of glass.”

Celine’s eyes shimmered with unshed grief. “She said: ’That is exactly why… because she is like me. She is a mirror of my face, a twin of my soul. I cannot love her.’”

The room grew unnervingly cold. Celine leaned in closer, her voice dropping to a haunting whisper. “She told me, ’That bastard touched me only days after Lucius left for the war. I don’t even know… if she is his daughter… or—’.”

Olivia’s hands shot out, gripping Celine’s shoulders with a strength that bordered on violence, shaking her. “What are you saying? Speak clearly!”

Celine met Olivia’s gaze with a look of profound pity. “She told me, word for word: ’I do not know if she is the daughter of Roland… or Lucius. I cannot tell whose blood flows in her veins. All I know is that she is truly mine, and that I cannot bear to love her.’”

The silence that followed was absolute—the silence of a tomb.

“From that day until now,” Celine whispered, “I have never possessed the courage to speak of it with her again.” She reached out, attempting to take Olivia’s hands once more. “I need you to understand one thing, Olivia. Your mother is guiltless in this. You cannot cast the shadow of blame upon her for what was stolen from her.”

Olivia recoiled, pulling her hands back as if burned. The ice returned to her eyes, harder and thicker than before. “Is that all you have to say?”

Celine blinked, taken aback. “What?”

“Is this truly the sum of your offering?” Olivia’s voice was a flat, lethal monotone. “Why should this earn her my forgiveness?”

“Olivia, your mother was a victim!”

“A victim?” Olivia stood, her presence looming like a dark omen. “Forgive me for what I am about to say, but please—shut your mouth. I have no desire to know the history of that woman. You come to me, tell me she was assaulted, and expect my sympathy? She was the one who cast me aside. I am a victim too. I was the infant thrown to a father who viewed me as a plague.”

Olivia’s voice grew colder. “She knew he was breaking me. I know you told her. He shattered me when I was a helpless child, and still, she turned her back. If this pathetic tale is your only consolation, then do not bother finishing it.”

Olivia surged to her feet, her movements sharp with the intent to flee the room, but Celine’s hand shot out, catching her wrist with an unexpected, fragile tenderness.

“I am sorry, Olivia,” Celine whispered, her voice fracturing. “Forgive me for what I said of her. Just stay… please. Let these not be our final words.”

Olivia froze, the air turning cold in her lungs. “Our final words?”

“I have made my decision,” Celine said, her gaze dropping to the floor. “I am leaving the Duchy. I am leaving everything behind. I cannot breathe within those walls for another second.”

Olivia turned, her eyes wide with a mixture of disbelief and genuine alarm. “What do you mean, ’leave everything’? Have you forgotten who Tharon is? He will butcher you if you attempt to cross that threshold without his leave. To him, you are a trophy, a political lever—he will never let you walk away with your life.”

Celine glanced at a small, weathered leather satchel she had hidden in the shadows, then met Olivia’s gaze with a chilling, hollow resolve.

“I am well aware. That is why I came today under a ghost’s name. I have chosen my path. Today, I vanish—perhaps beyond the borders of this Empire entirely. I came only to say goodbye.”

“Goodbye? You’ve lost your mind,” Olivia hissed. “Tharon will hunt you to the ends of the earth. And what of Elvira? She is your daughter, Celine. Despite the rot in her soul, you love her.” The words felt like ash in Olivia’s mouth, but she knew they were true.

“Yes… she is my child,” Celine whispered, the admission sounding like a physical blow to her chest. “But the monster she has become… I can no longer call her my daughter. Not after what she did to you… and to her brothers.”

The room plunged into a suffocating silence. Olivia’s breath hitched. “Her brothers? So the rumors weren’t just shadows in the dark? Did Elvira truly… did she murder the infants?”

Celine’s eyes overflowed, the tears tracing paths through her pale skin as the rhythmic ticking of the clock filled the void between them.

“I failed to protect you, and I failed to protect them. The child I birthed—I never imagined she could become something so hideous. I tried to keep you all safe; I tended your wounds in the dead of night, hiding the bandages and the blood. But Elvira… she began to reflect Roland in every twisted way. She became a nightmare. I cannot bear to look into her eyes anymore. I love her, even now, even this second—but I cannot stay and watch the horror continue.”

Olivia reached out, her fingers brushing Celine’s trembling shoulder. “Quiet now,” she murmured, a rare flicker of empathy softening her icy resolve. “Quiet.”

Olivia’s shoulders finally slumped, the rigid armor of her pride dissolving into a weary, hollow defeat.

“There was nothing you could have done,” she murmured, her voice a ghost of its former sharpness. “Not while it was all unfolding under the Duke’s watchful, predatory eyes. I never blamed you for the scars they carved into me. You were the only one who came—always in the shadows—to stitch my wounds and wash away the filth of their cruelty. Without you, I would be nothing more than a memory in a nameless grave. And as for your other children… you have my deepest condolences.”

The words were blunt, stripped of any decorative grace, and painfully sincere.

Celine pulled her into a fierce, desperate embrace, whispering against her hair, “I may not be the woman who birthed you, but I loved you as my own. If the fates had been kinder, if the winds had blown in any other direction, I would have kept you by my side forever. But now, I am powerless. A leaf caught in a storm.”

They sat like that for a long time—two women anchored to one another by a history of accusations and a desperate, starving need for love.

“It’s alright,” Olivia said, pulling back. “I understand. I accept your apology.”

But as the tenderness faded, Olivia’s gaze sharpened into something lethal and cold. Celine leaned in, her voice dropping to a panicked hiss

. “Olivia, do not meet Elvira this weekend.”

Olivia’s brow furrowed. “What are you talking about? How could you possibly know of our meeting?”

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