Chapter 96: Forgotten princess

Olivia ascended the grand staircase, her footsteps echoing with a chilling, newfound confidence. The servants parted like a silent tide, none daring to obstruct her path. They watched her with hollow eyes, knowing that whether they spoke or stayed silent, Elvira would sense the intrusion soon enough. Olivia scanned the familiar corners of the estate, her predatory gaze finding no trace of her father or her sister.

She came to a halt before a massive black door. To an outsider, it looked like the entrance to a sanctuary of luxury, but Olivia knew it was a gilded cage. She pushed it open slowly.

The room was opulent, adorned with the finest silks and gold, yet it breathed an air of suffocating melancholy. Her eyes locked onto the figure huddled upon the gargantuan bed—the Duchess. She was a specter of her former self. Her unkempt hair fell in a tangled shroud over her face, and her eyes, wide and glazed with the onset of madness, had been fixed on the door since the moment Olivia entered.

Olivia crossed the room with a phantom-like grace and sat beside her. Her gaze dropped to the bedframe, where heavy, ornate iron chains coiled around the woman’s wrists and ankles. The Duchess looked less like a noblewoman and more like a broken doll discarded by a cruel child.

Gently, Olivia reached out and brushed the matted hair away from the woman’s face.

“You look utterly desolate, Duchess of Tharron,” Olivia whispered, her voice a mix of pity and cold steel. “What have they done to you? Once a princess of the realm… and now, bound in iron like a common beast.”

A single tear carved a path through the grime on the Duchess’s cheek, and for a fleeting second, the fog of insanity cleared from her eyes. “Olivia?” she rasped, her voice a ghost of a sound. “Is it truly you?”

“Yes,” Olivia replied. “It is I.”

The Duchess’s shackled hands trembled as she reached out to cup Olivia’s face. “Oh, my little one… I have missed you so.” She pulled Olivia into a desperate, crushing embrace, but the moment she felt the dampness of Olivia’s clothes, she recoiled in terror.

“Is this your blood?” she pleaded, her voice rising in a frantic pitch as reality came crashing back. “You must go! Roland is away, but Elvira… Elvira is here. She will break you, Olivia. You must fly from this place! Run!”

But Olivia remained as immovable as the stone walls themselves. She looked down at the crimson stains on her sleeves with a detached, terrifying calm.

“First,” Olivia said, her voice devoid of warmth, “this is not my blood. And second, I cannot leave. They have taken something that belongs to me, and I do not intend to depart without it.”

“Olivia, have you lost your mind?” the Duchess hissed, her eyes darting to the shadows of the room. “Leave! Before it’s too late!”

Olivia’s gaze remained fixed, unyielding. “Forget Elvira,” she said, her voice dropping to a low, cold hum. “Look at yourself. Worry for your own soul before you waste another breath on mine.”

Serene lowered her head, a movement so heavy with sorrow it seemed to pull at the very air. “It does not matter. This is my fate until the grave claims me. Do not weep for me, Olivia. You were given a chance to flee this purgatory—take it. I have loved you as my own blood, but you cannot defeat them. They are hollow, Olivia. They possess no weakness.”

Olivia reached out, her fingers acting as a comb through Serene’s matted hair, her touch deceptively gentle. “My Lady, I appreciate your fear,” she whispered, her eyes narrowing as she scrutinized the broken woman before her. “But you are wrong. They do have a weakness. It’s you honey, And I intend to exploit it.”

“Exploit… me?” Serene’s voice was a frail thread of confusion.

Without a word, Olivia drew her blood-slicked dagger and pressed the hilt into Serene’s trembling palm. The cold steel looked alien against the Duchess’s pale skin.

“You said you were weary of this life, and you wanted to be free,” Olivia murmured, her eyes dark with a terrifying resolve. “You said I was like a daughter to you. I want to make them suffer, Serene. I want to tear the world from beneath their feet.”

“Yes… and?”

Olivia’s expression flickered, a momentary shadow of grief crossing her face before it vanished behind a mask of iron. She swallowed hard, her voice cracking for the briefest of seconds. “And, the only way to freedom here is death, unfortunately. I know this better than anyone.”

A memory of Isabella’s father flashed through her mind; although the situation here is different, it remains the only solution for both parties to benefit.

“So…., can you die for me? No…” She corrected herself, her gaze piercing through Serene’s despair. “Can you become free for me?”

The silence that followed was shattered by Serene’s ragged sobs. She wept with a heat that seemed to burn through the gloom of the room, a sound of profound, agonizing release. Olivia stood abruptly, the weight of her own cruelty suddenly heavy in the air.

“Forget what I said,” Olivia muttered, turning away. “You have every right to live. I was wrong to ask such a hollow thing of you. I’m leaving.”

But as she moved toward the shadows, a shackled hand shot out and caught her wrist. Olivia turned to find Serene looking up at her, tears streaming down her face, but her eyes—for the first time in years—were clear and steady.

“It’s alright, my little one,” Serene whispered, clutching the dagger to her chest like a holy relic. “I was only preparing myself. I think… I think I am finally ready to be free.”

Olivia stared at her, a profound sadness carving deep lines into her expression. But Serene reached out, taking Olivia’s hand and curling her fingers back around the hilt of the dagger. She smiled—a fragile, radiant thing that looked out of place in such a tomb.

“Free me now,” Serene whispered, her voice a soft plea. “It is a mercy to have your face be the last thing I see. My only regret is that I could not raise Elvira to be whole, to be good… I pray that one day, she finds her way.”

Sereen held the dagger high until it gleamed, while Olivia watched steadily, and plunged it straight into her heart with force.

“Aaakh…”

The sound was a soft exhale of a life long-overdue for rest. “Farewell, Mama,” Olivia whispered, the word trembling on her lips.

A spray of crimson escaped Serene’s lips, but she used her remaining strength to tilt her head forward. She pressed a final, warm kiss onto Olivia’s forehead, her eyes shining with an uncanny joy. “Mama,” she gasped through the blood. “At last… I hear that word from your lips. At last, I am free. Thank you.”

The ragged gasps slowed, the rattling in her chest faded, and the tension left her body forever. As the Duchess’s weight slumped, Olivia caught her, gently laying her back against the silken pillows of the oversized bed. She pulled the dagger free and gazed at the woman’s peaceful face.

In all her years within these suffocating walls, Olivia had never seen this woman smile—not once—until the moment she realized she was leaving them. Olivia reached out, her fingers trembling as she closed Serene’s eyelids and pulled the heavy duvet up to her chin. She leaned down, pressing her lips to the cold forehead.

“Rest in peace, forgotten princess,” she murmured.

It was the cruel title the world had given her after Roland had claimed her by force; the Imperial family had discarded her, erasing her name as if she were a stain on their lineage.

Olivia walked toward the door, pausing at the threshold for one final, somber look. She lowered her head and offered a deep, respectful bow to the quiet room.

“Goodbye… Mother.”

Olivia emerged from the Duchess’s room, her hands still trembling with the phantom heat of the blood she had just spilled. The hallway was a tomb; no servant dared breathe in this wing, lest they witness the slow rotting of the woman Olivia once called mother. She didn’t head for the exit. Instead, she climbed the stairs, her boots striking the floor with a rhythmic, lethal intent toward Elvira’s quarters.

As she reached the door, the air grew thick with the sounds of a hollow, desperate carnal heat. Guttural moans and the rhythmic friction of sweat-slicked skin echoed through the heavy wood.

“Ah… ah…”

Olivia kicked the door open, the wood slamming against the stone wall with a violent crack. She leaned against the frame, a twisted, jagged smirk carving its way across her face as she took in the filth before her. “Are you quite finished, little sister? Or do I need to wait for the grand finale?”

Inside, the chamber reeked of expensive perfume and raw lust. Elvira was a vision of manic depravity, her pale skin flushed a violent rose as she straddled her latest gigolo—a muscular, hollow-eyed man kept for the sole purpose of her pleasure. At the sound of the intrusion, Elvira’s head snapped back, her expression shifting instantly from the height of ecstasy into a chilling, high-pitched giggle.

With a casual, bone-chilling indifference, Elvira reached down. Her slender, delicate fingers wrapped around the man’s throat, and with a sudden, explosive surge of strength, she wrenched his neck. A sickening crunch of snapping vertebrae filled the room, silencing his gasps forever.

The man slumped, his lifeless body a discarded heap of meat beneath her. It was Elvira’s favorite post-coital ritual—slaking her thirst with her paid playthings, only to slaughter them the moment the heat left her blood.

She stood up, naked and glistening with sweat, stepping over the fresh corpse as if it were nothing more than a discarded garment. She caught a silk kimono from a nearby chair, sliding it over her shoulders as she sauntered toward Olivia. Olivia didn’t flinch, nor did she look away; she was a creature of the dark now, and Elvira’s filth could no longer stain her.

“Mmm, you certainly took your sweet time getting here, didn’t you?” Elvira purred, her voice dripping with a poisonous levity. She adjusted the silk over her breasts, her eyes dancing with lethal malice.

“I expected you much earlier. I thought you’d be more eager to see your little green-eyed bitch before I finished breaking her.”

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