Chapter 93: The End of Our Partnership

“Why did you do this to me? Have I ever wronged you?” Isabella asked, her voice as rigid as stone.

Olivia surged from her bed, rushing toward her, but Isabella’s cry halted her like a physical blow. “Do not come a single step closer!”

“What has possessed you, woman?” Olivia demanded, her brow furrowed in bewilderment. “Are you even in your right mind?”

Isabella looked at her, her eyes brimming with a profound, hollow disappointment.

“Regrettably, I am,” she whispered. Tears she had fought to suppress finally broke free. She swallowed hard against a tightening throat. “I trusted you. I, who trusted no one but my father—not even my own husband—gave my faith to you.”

“Isabella, what are you talking about? What trust?”

Isabella bit her lip in despair. “You’ve been exploiting me this entire time. You watched me tear myself apart, watched me bleed internally, and you didn’t care. You simply continued your performance, turning me into the puppet you danced on your strings.”

Driven by a desperation to understand, Olivia lunged forward and seized Isabella’s shoulders, shaking her. The night’s calamities had converged into a storm that threatened to paralyze her mind.

“You know exactly what I mean,” Isabella murmured, looking deep into Olivia’s eyes. Slowly, Isabella reached up and pried Olivia’s hands away. Her head slumped onto Olivia’s shoulder in a gesture of utter defeat.

“Olivia,” she whispered, her voice a ghost of a sound. “I truly thought you were a good person, merely born into cruel circumstances. I… I truly loved you. I thought, at least in my eyes, you were my only friend in this desolate fortress. And yet, you danced upon my tears without a second thought. You’ve proven to me that you are a creature unworthy of love—not mine, nor anyone else’s in this wretched world.”

Olivia, her nerves already frayed to the breaking point, felt Isabella’s words like salt rubbed into an open wound. In a flash of blind, defensive rage, she raised her hand and delivered a sharp, stinging slap across Isabella’s face.

Isabella stumbled back, her hand flying to her reddened cheek. She looked at Olivia with a sad, haunting smile. “Thank you for that,” she whispered. “I needed it… to confirm the monster you truly are.”

She stared at her with a final, lingering sorrow. “I hate you, Olivia. And I hope that no one ever finds it in their heart to love a soul as callous as yours.”

Without another word, Isabella turned and fled through the door, her shoulders shaking as she disappeared into the darkness, leaving Olivia standing alone in the suffocating silence of her room.

Olivia spoke, her voice a flat, dead chill that mirrored the emptiness in her eyes. “I do not know what madness has seized you, but mark my words—make sure they are etched into your mind. I do not wish to see your face from this moment forth. Not in my office, not in the halls, and certainly not at my table.”

A jagged, mocking laugh escaped Isabella’s lips. “Rest assured, Your Grace. You can be certain of that.”

The door slammed shut with a finality that felt like a tomb being sealed, leaving Olivia in a state of ruin deeper than any she had known. She turned toward the mirror, but the reflection staring back was that of a hollowed corpse, a ghost inhabiting a noble’s skin.

Her gaze drifted to the settee, landing on the doll—the small, innocent gift Isabella had once given her as a token of friendship. Olivia crossed the room and snatched it up. A bitter, twisted smile pulled at her lips, a desperate attempt to deny the suffocating knot in her throat and the raw agony shredding her chest.

“To hell with you, Isabella,” she hissed into the silence. “I will not waste another breath of care on you.”

In a frenzy of redirected rage, she began to claw at the doll. She yanked at the fabric, tearing the arm from its socket, ripping the toy apart piece by piece until stuffing lay scattered like snow across the floor.

Breathing heavily, she reached for a bottle of wine and set it upon the edge of the bed. One glass followed another, and then another, the liquid burning a path down her throat.

She drank until the world began to blur, until the wine finally numbed her frayed senses and dragged her down into a deep, hollow, and agonizing sleep.

——————–

Leon’s jaw dropped in stunned silence, the air in the room suddenly feeling thin. He hesitated, his voice barely a breath. “So… then, it’s true? You… you truly love her?”

Matthias shook his head in a state of profound confusion. “I don’t know. It is simply the only explanation left for this madness. I’ve become nothing more than a fool who defends her at the expense of his own soul. I would rather be stabbed a thousand times than see a single hair on her head harmed. It is maddening… I hate this.”

Leon took a deep, steadying breath and reached out, patting his brother’s shoulder with a newfound empathy. “Welcome to the club, brother. It’s alright… I understand exactly how you feel.”

“You?” Matthias looked at him, surprised.

“Well, of course,” Leon replied with a faint, self-deprecating smile. “You forget—I love my wife, while she treats me as if I am merely her lord or some distant authority. I don’t think she even sees me as her husband.”

Matthias let out a short, bitter laugh. “The saga of you and Isabella always managed to amuse me.” Then, his features hardened into a mask of grim gravity once more. “But Olivia and I… it is something else entirely. A different kind of shadow, Leon.”

“And… what does it feel like?” Leon asked, his voice low.

“It feels like bitterness,” Matthias whispered, his eyes fixed on the flickering embers of the hearth.

“You always told me that loving Isabella made you happy. But for me? It is only agony. She tears at my heart as if it were a scrap of waste paper. I want to rip this feeling out from the very depths of my soul, because I know—with a terrifying certainty—that she will continue to shatter everything I am.”

“I don’t know what words could possibly ease your mind, brother,” Leon said, his voice trailing off into the heavy air.

“Nothing will,” Matthias replied, his gaze fixed on the dying embers. “I will simply wait for these feelings to wither and fade into nothingness. Thank you for listening, regardless.”

“Always,” Leon teased, trying to lighten the suffocating atmosphere. “The resident expert in unrequited love is always happy to counsel his poor, miserable older brother.”

Matthias threw a cushion at him, a rare, tired laugh breaking through his grim facade. “Get out of here. I need to sleep.”

“Fine, fine. Goodnight, my lonely little lovebird.”

“I said get out!”

Leon always possessed a peculiar talent for coaxing a smile from Matthias, however fleeting. But the moment the door clicked shut, the silence returned, heavier than before. Matthias sat staring into the flickering flames, the image of Olivia in Cedric’s arms haunting him—a relentless, psychological flaying he couldn’t escape.

—————–

Days crawled by, shrouded in an atmosphere that could only be described as catastrophic. A wall of ice had risen between Matthias and Olivia; they moved through the castle like ghosts in parallel dimensions, carefully avoiding any intersection.

To make matters worse, the scandal of the fire had spread like a plague. Her reputation was no longer just in the gutter—it had sunk into an abyss from which there seemed no return.

Since that fateful night, Isabella had vanished from Olivia’s world. She followed the command with haunting precision, never appearing in the office, the corridors, or the dining hall. Whenever a document required Olivia’s signature, it was delivered by Leon’s hand, never hers.

Leon entered the office one afternoon, dropping a stack of parchments onto her desk. “Sister-in-law, these require your signature.”

Olivia signed them with a hurried, restless hand, her curiosity finally clawing through her carefully constructed indifference. “Why are you bringing these?” she asked, her voice tight. “Is it not Isabella’s duty?”

Despite the bitterness of their last encounter, the echoes of Isabella’s accusations—the talk of puppets and betrayal—still gnawed at the edges of her mind.

Leon gathered the papers, preparing to leave. “Oh, about Isabella… she’s gone to visit her father. I’ll be handling her affairs for the next few days.”

The quill slipped from Olivia’s fingers, clattering onto the desk. She stared at him, her heart skipping a jagged beat. “Visit her father?!”

“Is there a problem?” Leon asked, his eyes narrowing as he studied her sudden pallor.

“No… no problem at all,” Olivia replied, forcing her features back into a mask of regal indifference as she reclaimed her composure.

“Very well,” Leon murmured, though the skepticism in his gaze lingered until the door clicked shut behind him.

The moment she was alone, the mask shattered. “My God,” she breathed, her heart hammering against her ribs. “What does he mean, her father?”

Driven by a frantic, unthinking impulse, she found herself standing before the heav doors of Isabella’s chambers. “I am not doing this out of concern,” she whispered to the empty hallway, a desperate lie to soothe her own pride. “I am only here to uncover the meaning behind her venomous words that night.”

She pushed the door open. The room was a hollow shell, stripped of its occupant’s warmth; Isabella was truly gone. Olivia paced the floor, her footsteps silent on the thick carpets, until her eyes landed on a velvet-lined jewelry box.

To an untrained eye, it was a simple heirloom, but Olivia’s fingers moved with the practiced grace of one who knew the architecture of secrets. She pressed a hidden catch, and a concealed drawer slid open with a soft click.

Inside lay a letter and a small, intricate silver orb—a voice-recording device. As Olivia lifted the orb, it slipped from her trembling fingers and hit the table, activating automatically.

A voice filled the room—soft, melodic, and achingly familiar. It was a voice that should have been buried in the past, yet here it was, vibrant and filled with a tenderness that made Olivia’s blood run cold.

“I love you, my daughter…” were the final words that drifted into the silence.

Olivia stood frozen, her breath hitching in her throat. With a frantic movement, she snatched up the letter and unfolded it, her eyes racing to the signature at the bottom.

Edward Norman.

“This cannot be,” she whispered, the name tasting like ash and terror in her mouth. “This… this is impossible.”

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