For a suspended heartbeat, Isabella simply stood there.
As the phantom sting of the poison finally receded from her own veins, she remained motionless, a silent sentinel to the unfolding tragedy.
She had always promised herself that this moment would taste like victory—a cold, crystalline satisfaction.
Yet, as she watched Olivia's limp form sink deeper into the crimson-stained water, the anticipated relief never came.
Instead, a hollow ache clawed at her chest. Regret. It was a foul, uninvited guest.
Before logic could intervene, Isabella lunged.
She plunged her arms into the warmth of the bath, grappling with the dead weight of Olivia's unconscious body.
The sudden, sodden heaviness sent a jolt of ice through Isabella's nerves as she hauled her onto the cold tiles.
"Damn you, Olivia," Isabella hissed through gritted teeth, her voice trembling with a mixture of rage and desperation.
"Why must you always do this? You're a spiteful wretch, even at the end."
Her hands, usually steady as a surgeon's, shook violently as she scavenged for anything to stem the flow.
Spotting a discarded bandage, she pressed it against the wound with frantic force.
The copper-scented blood seeped between her fingers, warm and unforgiving, as she wound the cloth tight.
She cursed under her breath, a low, rhythmic litany against the encroaching silence.
Isabella was not a woman who panicked. She did not falter, and she certainly did not allow sentiment to blind her.
Yet here she was—heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird, hands stained in the life-force of her enemy.
The woman beneath her offered no sign of life. Olivia's breath was a shallow ghost, her body unnaturally still.
Isabella stared down at her, caught in a whirlwind of unrecognizable emotions. Was it pity? Annoyance? Or something far more dangerous?
"This doesn't mean I care," she scoffed, a sharp, brittle sound in the quiet room.
She said it quickly, a frantic attempt to convince herself. "I simply refuse to carry your corpse on my conscience."
She gripped Olivia's face, her fingers digging into the pale skin.
"Wake up, you miserable girl. If you die now, I swear I will never forgive you."
There was no reply. The silence was deafening.
Frustration boiled over into a raw, jagged edge.
In one swift motion, Isabella struck her—a sharp slap across the cheek. Then another. And another.
"Olivia! Wake up, damn you!" she screamed, her voice cracking.
A faint tremor stirred.
Isabella barely registered the movement before Olivia's fingers twitched against her arm.
Slowly, painfully, those heavy lids fluttered open, revealing eyes that were clouded and unfocused.
"Are you trying to... wake me?" Olivia's voice was a jagged rasp, barely a whisper. "Or finish me off?"
Isabella let out a sharp, jagged exhale, her strength failing as she slumped onto the cold floor beside her.
The adrenaline was fading, leaving only a hollow exhaustion in its wake.
"For a moment," she confessed, her voice barely a shadow of its usual self, "I thought you were truly gone."
Olivia, still sprawled across the tiles, turned her head with agonizing slowness.
Despite the deathly pallor of her skin and the trembling in her limbs, a ghost of a smirk pulled at the corner of her lips—faint, mocking, and entirely her own.
"Who would have believed it?" Olivia murmured, her voice laced with an unreadable cadence.
"That you would actually choose to stand by my side. I doubt I would have done the same had our roles been reversed."
Isabella scoffed, deliberately averting her gaze to the darkened corners of the room.
"That," she snapped, "is exactly what makes us different."
A soft, broken laugh escaped Olivia's throat—rattling and frail, yet undeniably amused.
"Haven't you heard the proverb, Isabella? Opposites... they have a way of attracting."
Isabella's jaw tightened. She turned away, shielding her face to hide the flicker of emotion that dared to surface.
She stood up abruptly, shaking off the last remnants of her hesitation like dust from a cloak.
"Now," she muttered, looking down at Olivia's motionless form with a mask of cold indifference, "it is you who is pathetic."
As she turned to leave, her hand already reaching for the doorframe, she paused.
She cast one final, lingering look over her shoulder, her brow arched in a practiced gesture of disdain.
"Why don't you get up?" she challenged.
"Or do you intend to spend the night crawling on the floor like the serpent you are?"
Olivia did not answer.
For the first time, her silence didn't carry the weight of cold indifference.
It was different—heavy, suffocating, and wrong.
There was something deeply unsettling about the way her body remained anchored to the floor, her breathing becoming a shallow, rhythmic struggle.
Her gaze, usually sharp enough to draw blood, was now glazed and wandering.
Isabella's frown deepened.
Since the beginning, Olivia had been a creature of calculated detachment—always measured, always in control.
But this? This was a shattering.
A strange, unnatural tremor had taken hold of Olivia's fingers, and a terrifying fragility seemed to be undoing her piece by piece.
A shadow of hesitation crossed Isabella's face before she moved closer, her steps cautious yet driven by a rising, frantic curiosity.
"Wait..." she called out, her voice dropping to a softer, more urgent register. "What is wrong with you?"
Still, there was no reply.
With her brows knit in concern, Isabella knelt beside her once more, watching her with clinical intensity.
Then, slowly, almost tentatively, she reached out. Her fingertips brushed against Olivia's cheek.
The skin was burning—a frantic, searing heat that scorched Isabella's touch.
In the pallid solitude of his study, Matthias sat hunched, a man buried beneath the crushing weight of scattered ledgers and even heavier thoughts.
Sleep had remained a stranger to him; the haunting echoes of the previous night's events refused to grant him peace.
The silence of the room pressed against his temples like a physical burden.
Finally, with a weary exhale, he rose.
There was only one destination left for his restless mind, one person who might offer a sliver of clarity amidst this labyrinth of confusion: Olivia.
Outside, the sky was a bruised charcoal, veiled in the early dawn fog—that fragile, liminal hour where the world hesitates between the dying night and the encroaching morning.
He did not care for the hour; the necessity to see her was a fever in his blood.
As he neared Olivia's chambers, a flash of movement caught his eye.
A maid was darting through the corridor, her face a mask of terror, clutching a bundle of white bandages to her chest with trembling fingers.
She vanished into Olivia's room without a sound.
Matthias froze. A cold, leaden weight dropped into the pit of his stomach. Something had happened.
Suddenly, the warnings of the butler from the night before resonated in his mind like a tolling bell.
Could she have finally struck? Had she done something to Isabella?
The thought hit him like a plunge into glacial water.
Though Isabella was little more than a fallen noble to him—a piece of social finery foolishly chosen by Leon to grace his arm—Matthias never wished to be the wedge driven between his brother and his wife.
But the time for delicate politics had vanished.
He threw the doors open, his voice a ragged thunder: "Olivia!"
The scene that met his eyes was so surreal it felt like a mockery of reality.
There stood Olivia, her silk nightgown sodden and clinging to her frame like she had emerged from a sea of pale roses.
Beside her, the maid and Isabella were locked in a desperate struggle, straining to hoist Olivia's limp, unresponsive body.
His body moved before his mind could process the horror.
As he lunged forward, a sharp, crystalline crunch echoed under his boots.
He looked down to see the floor shimmering with the frost of shattered glass—the jagged remains of vials, their labels torn, their dark contents seeping like ink into the expensive weave of the rug.
He recognized them instantly. Sedatives.
His hand shook as he reached out, his breath caught in the suffocating space between fury and terror.
He lunged toward her, his arms wrapping around her sodden shoulders as he pulled her closer, anchoring her limp weight against his chest.
His hand, usually so steady and cold, trembled as he cupped her face, his thumb brushing against her burning skin with a desperate, frantic fear he couldn't mask.
He didn't look at the shattered glass or the blood-stained floor. His world had narrowed down to the woman fading in his arms.
Turning his gaze toward Isabella, his eyes were dark with a terrifying intensity.
"Isabella,"
he rasped, his voice breaking.
"What happened to my wife?"