Her eyelids felt like leaden weights, peeling back to reveal a world fractured by a pounding, rhythmic ache behind her temples.
As she forced herself upright, the grim tableau of the previous night's violence sharpened into focus.
The room was a graveyard of memories and glass; crystalline shards littered the floor like fallen stars, glinting coldly in the dim light.
"Ah," she whispered, her voice a dry rasp against the silence. "I forgot I slept here."
A sharp, searing sting hissed through her palm.
Glancing down, she saw a jagged fragment of a broken bottle buried deep in her flesh.
She hadn't noticed the jagged neck of the carafe lurking beneath her weight; a second longer, a pound more of pressure, and the glass would have carved through muscle and sinew alike.
Crimson silk began to bloom from the wound, flowing with a relentless, rhythmic pulse that made her head swim with sudden vertigo.
With leaden limbs, she dragged herself toward the cabinet. Her movements were detached, almost robotic.
She retrieved a roll of gauze and wound it haphazardly around her hand—a careless bandage for a reckless wound.
The white fabric darkened instantly, but the torrential flow slowed to a sluggish seep.
She reached back into the shadows of the cupboard, her fingers closing around a syringe filled with an amber, enigmatic fluid.
With her other hand, she snatched a half-empty bottle of wine, slopping the liquid into a glass with practiced indifference.
Crossing the room, she leaned against the cold doorframe of the bathroom.
Her gaze fell upon the figure huddled on the floor. Isabella Lucron was a shadow of her former self, bound and broken in the corner.
"Isabella Lucron," she murmured, a jagged laugh escaping her throat. "You know, you look utterly pathetic."
Isabella lifted her head, the haze of the previous night's poison finally receding from her eyes.
Despite her bonds, her gaze burned with a defiant, caustic fire.
She looked at the blood-soaked bandage on her captor's hand and mirrored the mocking tone.
"I'm not sure which of us is the more pitiful sight," Isabella spat.
"Me in these ropes, or you... bleeding out like a wounded animal."
"Still a bitch, even on the doorstep of death," the woman replied, her voice dropping to a dangerous low.
Isabella let out a hollow, mocking cackle.
"Haha! So, has the Grim Reaper finally come to claim my soul? Is that what this is?"
"If I wanted you dead, Isabella, you'd already be feeding the worms beneath the soil."
"Then what do you want from me?"
The woman didn't answer.
Instead, she crossed the small space and sank to the floor beside her prisoner. Her movements were predatory yet weary.
With one hand, she clamped firmly onto Isabella's neck, pinning her against the tiles, while the other brandished the glinting needle.
"Hey! What are you doing? Stop!" Isabella screamed, thrashing against her restraints as the needle hovered over her skin.
Without a flicker of hesitation or a word of comfort, she plunged the needle into Isabella's vein.
"Shh," she hissed, her face inches from the other's.
"Shut up for once. You're always screaming; you'll burst my eardrums."
She finished the injection and ripped the needle out with a violent tug, tossing it aside.
As Isabella gasped, trembling from the shock, the woman took a long, slow sip of her wine.
"Don't act like a lunatic," she sighed, staring at the ceiling.
"It's just the antidote. I never planned on keeping you here that long anyway."
"What? Have you suddenly grown a heart?" Isabella spat, her voice trembling as the antidote burned through her veins like liquid fire.
She winced, the site of the injection throbbing with a dull, insistent heat.
Olivia took a slow, methodical sip of her wine, her eyes hooded and unreadable, as if weighing whether Isabella was truly worth the breath it took to speak.
Then, in a voice that seemed to drift from a great, hollow distance, she whispered:
"As Mathias said, you are family. It wouldn't reflect well on me if something… unfortunate happened to you."
A heavy silence settled between them, thick with the scent of copper and cheap alcohol.
"He was a good man," Olivia added softly.
Isabella knit her brows in stunned confusion. "What?"
"Your father."
Another sip. Another agonizing pause.
"He was a good man, and a magnificent father. I envy you for that."
The words struck Isabella like a physical blow, silencing her defiance.
She watched Olivia, who leaned her head back against the cold, unforgiving stone of the bathroom wall, her gaze lost in a memory Isabella could not see.
"Cell number fifteen," Olivia whispered, the number sounding like a funeral knell.
"That was where they kept him. Deep in the subterranean vaults of the Duchy of Tharon."
"Fifteen. That was his number. His only name for a very long time."
She turned her head slightly, her voice cracking with a chilling softness.
"He was so proud of you, Isabella. But at the same time... he was so profoundly sad for you."
A single, silent tear carved a path through the grime on Isabella's cheek.
Her bound hands tightened into trembling fists, the rope chafing her skin.
"Then why?" Isabella whispered, her voice fractured by an agonizing ache.
"Why did you kill him? He never did anything to you... did he?"
"No," Olivia replied, her tone terrifyingly flat. "He did nothing. Except exist as a weak man."
"His only sin was his frailty, and in this world, my dear, the weak are simply fuel for the fire."
Olivia turned then, her piercing blue eyes cutting through the dim light to lock onto Isabella's with a directness that made the air turn to ice.
"It is true," Olivia said, her words crystalline and cold. "I tore the life from him with these very hands."
The admission hung in the air, a jagged thing.
The grief in Isabella's expression curdled instantly, replaced by a darkness so sharp it felt like a physical weight.
Hatred flooded her veins, a wildfire consuming the last remnants of her fear.
"You say it so simply," Isabella hissed, her entire body shaking. "As if it were nothing."
"Do you feel no guilt? Does no remorse haunt your sleep?"
Olivia's expression remained a vacuum—an empty vessel.
"No," she said, her voice devoid of any resonance. "I do not regret it, not even by the breadth of a fingernail. Do you know why?"
Isabella's lip curled in a snarl. "Because you are a hollow, treacherous bitch."
"Wrong answer, sweetheart."
Olivia leaned in closer, the scent of wine and iron surrounding them both.
"I feel no remorse because I did nothing but what he begged me to do."
"It was he who asked for the end. He was the one who pleaded for me to kill him."