A sharp, derisive scoff escaped Isabella's lips.
"What did he ask of you? To end him?" She leaned in, her voice dripping with incredulity. "For heaven's sake, Olivia, do you never tire of these fabrications?"
Olivia did not flinch.
She sat draped in the shadows, lazily swirling the crimson liquid in her crystal glass.
"Do you truly believe," she began, her tone laced with a bitter edge of irony, "that I would strike down the only soul who ever offered me a shred of kindness?"
"I may be a wretch, Isabella, but I am not the monster you've painted in your mind."
She paused, watching the wine cling to the glass. "It was he who begged for the end. It was a mercy."
"Lies," Isabella spat, the word trembling with suppressed rage.
Olivia tilted her head, a cold, predatory curiosity flickering in her eyes.
"Your naivety is a marvel, my lady. Did you truly imagine him reclining in luxury behind those cold stone ramparts? Did you honestly believe they treated him as an honored guest?"
Her voice dropped to a chilling whisper. "That was the Duchy of Tharon. It was hell, plain and simple."
Isabella's hands began to betray her, a rhythmic tremor seizing her fingers.
Leaning forward into the candlelight, Olivia's visage darkened, her voice turning into a low, mournful toll.
"Every letter he sent, every soothing word etched onto those pages—they all had a price. Each time he defied them, each time he withheld what they craved, they tore into his flesh."
"They struck him, scorched him, and bled him dry. And yet, he endured it all. He bore the unbearable... for you."
Isabella shook her head frantically, her eyes wide with a dawning, horrific realization.
"No... no, that cannot be. I had an accord with the Duke. He gave his word that no harm..."
"But they did," Olivia cut her thin, her voice as sharp as a blade.
"The agony you feel tonight—that poison snaking through your veins? That is but a fraction of his suffering. A mere tenth of the torment they heaped upon him daily."
"Look into your heart, Isabella; you know I speak the truth."
Isabella's breath hitched, coming in ragged, shallow gasps.
Olivia's gaze dropped to the crimson blossoms seeping through Isabella's flimsy bandages, watching the slow, rhythmic leak of life.
"He refused to be the anchor that dragged you into the depths," Olivia concluded softly. "He would not let his existence be the architect of your ruin. And so, he made his choice."
A bitter smile curled Olivia's lips, sharp as a glass shard.
"Tell me, Isabella," she said, her voice dropping to a low drawl, "do you truly believe my father earned the moniker of 'The Devil' by accident?"
She let the question hang in the air, heavy and suffocating, watching as the gravity of that truth began to sink into Isabella's soul.
"I did not murder him," Olivia said with a terrifying calmness. "I granted him the mercy he so desperately craved."
She swirled the dregs of her wine one last time before setting the glass aside with a deliberate click.
When she spoke again, her voice had softened, taking on the ethereal quality of a distant, haunting dream.
"During our final encounter, when I told him of my departure, your father made a request. He asked for pen and parchment. I smuggled them to him in secret, pressing them into his trembling hands."
A flicker of an old memory crossed Olivia's face, a rare shadow of vulnerability.
"He wrote to you that night. His final letter—the only one that was ever true. Not the lines they forced him to pen, dictated while he bled out on the cold stone floors. This one was his alone."
"And then..." her voice faltered for a heartbeat, "he made a second request. One far stranger, and infinitely more cruel."
For a fleeting second, grief etched itself into her features before she masked it behind a cold whisper:
"He said... Kill me."
Olivia closed her eyes, and for a moment, she was back in that cell.
She could still hear the desperate rattle in his throat, feel his frantic, shaking hands gripping hers.
"Please, my little lady," she mimicked his broken plea. "I can endure no more. My very existence is the anvil crushing my daughter. If she continues to obey their whims for my sake, she will perish. Please, help me. Save her."
Olivia exhaled a long, shaky breath, shaking her head as if to dislodge the ghost of his voice.
"I told him no. I begged him not to ask that of me."
She stared down at her palms as if she could still feel the phantom weight of his grip, the way he had guided her hands toward his own throat.
"Then he took my hands..." she murmured, "and he placed them around his neck himself."
Isabella sat in a trance of profound horror, the world around her fading into a blur of grief.
"He told me: 'Choke the life from me. Please. and if you ever find my daughter... give her this letter.'"
Silence descended—the kind of hollow, aching silence that stretches between two souls when the weight of truth becomes too massive to bear.
Olivia finally looked at Isabella, noting how the shock had frozen the very tears in the girl's eyes.
Yet, Olivia's voice remained steady, an unwavering blade of honesty.
"So, I did it. I took his life with these hands. I will never deny it. But it was his will; he simply lacked the strength to do it himself."
She reached for her glass again, taking a slow, deliberate sip, seeking the bitter warmth of the wine to numb the memory.
Across from her, Isabella remained paralyzed.
Even as the phantom sting of the poison began to recede from her veins, no relief came.
Instead, Olivia's confession settled upon her chest like iron chains.
Six months.
Six months of deafening silence.
She had felt the shift in the universe then; her father had always written, no matter how brief or cryptic the notes.
And then—nothingness.
She had woven a thousand excuses to shield herself from the truth, but deep in the marrow of her bones, Isabella had always known.
Her voice was a mere ghost of a sound, hollowed out by a grief so absolute it had parched the very well of her tears.
"I do not know," Isabella confessed, her gaze fixed on nothingness. "I do not know if I should harbor a hate so black I could kill you... or if I should offer you my thanks."
For a fleeting second, the flint in Olivia's eyes softened—a momentary lapse in her iron mask.
But as quickly as it appeared, it vanished.
With a sharp, decisive movement, she began to unravel the stained bandages from her palm.
Isabella's eyes were drawn to the wound; it was raw and weeping, the crimson life-blood pulsing out in a slow, rhythmic cadence, dripping onto the floor like a ticking clock.
"What are you—" Isabella started, but the words died in her throat.
Olivia stepped toward the basin, a shiver racing through her frame as she made contact with the frigid water.
Without a word of hesitation, she lowered herself into the bath, her nightgown billowing like a dark cloud, indifferent to the biting chill.
"The cold," Olivia murmured, her voice laced with an enigmatic edge, "helps me keep the world in focus."
She looked up, her eyes locking onto Isabella's.
"You wonder why I have done this to you. You weigh my worth on the scales of your soul."
"Will you finally tell me why?" Isabella demanded.
"Because I want you by my side."
"By your side? To what end?"
"Mmm," Olivia hummed, a grim shadow of a smile playing on her lips.
"In war, one does not send the commander of knights into the fray alone and expect victory."
"No matter how many heads he claims, he will eventually fall. He needs a vanguard. He needs soldiers."
"And in my war, Isabella, I need a soldier fueled by the purest flame of all: the thirst for vengeance."
"So, I am to be your instrument? You wish to use me?"
"Do not diminish it so," Olivia countered. "It is a convergence of interests. You claim justice for your father, and I achieve my ends. We are two sides of the same tarnished coin."
"I do not trust you," Isabella spat.
A heavy silence fell, broken only by the soft lap of water against the basin.
"You said you did not know whether to thank me or hate me for what I did to your father, correct?"
Olivia turned her head slightly, her gaze piercing Isabella's defenses. "Then decide. Now."
It was a challenge—quiet, steady, and terrifyingly absolute.
"The poison has left your veins; you are free to move as you wish," Olivia continued, her tone turning teasing, almost playful.
"So, you may stand by my side... or you may simply watch me die."
"What?" Isabella gasped.
Olivia unfastened the last of her dressings, letting her mangled hand drop into the water.
She leaned back against the rim, watching as the blood bloomed through the water like a sinister flower, swallowing her reflection in a shroud of red.
"The choice is yours," she whispered, her voice fading into a silken thread.
"Do not fret—no one will cast a stone if you let me drown."
She let out a soft, mirthless laugh. "After all, I am the villain of this tale, am I not?"
The playful glint in Olivia's eyes flickered and died.
Her eyelids fluttered, her breath hitched in a shallow gasp, and within heartbeats, her body went limp.
She slipped into the depths of unconsciousness as the once-clear water transformed into a sea of scarlet, her blood swirling in slow, hypnotic patterns around her pale form.