With those final words, Elvira dissolved into the shadows, a specter returning to the void.
The soundproofing barrier she had cast over the room remained cruelly intact, trapping Olivia in a suffocating bubble of agony and silence.
Olivia's throat felt as though it had been lined with glass; her body was a map of tremors, and her blood seeped into the silk sheets beneath her like spilled ink.
Burned, branded, and broken—she lay there on the precipice of consciousness, her weakening arms still coiled around baby Anne with the desperate strength of the dying.
Then—a sound. A knock. It was soft, hesitant, a stark contrast to the violence that had just transpired.
"Your Grace?" a familiar, gentle voice drifted through the wood. "It is I... Isabella. May I enter?"
Olivia tried to answer, but her lips merely parted in a silent, jagged gasp. The door creaked open regardless, and Isabella stepped into the gloom.
The girl froze. The chamber, once a sanctuary of pristine elegance, had been transformed into a macabre ruin. Blood-stained linens clutched at the floor.
A shattered teapot lay in porcelain shards. And there, amidst the wreckage, was Olivia—a collapsed monument of pain, her flesh scorched and torn, curled protectively around the child.
The acrid, cloying scent of burnt skin and singed fabric hung heavy in the air, choking the very light from the room.
"Grand Dieu..." Isabella whispered, rushing forward.
She gently pried Anne from Olivia's trembling grasp, setting the babe safely upon the settee and swaddling her in a nearby shawl. When she returned to the bedside, her own hands were shaking.
"Olivia... what has happened?"
Olivia groaned, a low, guttural sound of pure torment as she tried to shift her weight. Each movement felt like a fresh flaying. Damn it, she thought bitterly, I shouldn't have provoked that bitch.
"What are you saying? Who did this?" Isabella's voice rose in panic. "Should I summon the Duke?"
At the mention of his name, Olivia's eyes snapped open. "Do not," she rasped, her voice cracking like dry parchment. "Do not call Matthius."
"I don't understand! Why keep this from him?"
"Damn you, Isabella!" Olivia hissed, the fire of her spirit flickering through the exhaustion.
"Did we not agree you were on my side? Just stay here. If we provoke her further, I don't know what she'll do. That woman is a lunatic, and she is untouchable."
"A woman?"
Isabella knelt beside her, paralyzed by the sheer scale of the injuries. As she reached for a cloth, her eyes fell upon it. A name. Carved into Olivia's very skin. Elvira.
Isabella's heart plummeted. "She... she was here?" she breathed, horror dawning on her face.
Olivia's eyes, dulled by trauma, suddenly flared with a cold, vengeful light.
"That madwoman... yes, she was here."
"You mean... your sister?"
A feral hiss escaped Olivia's cracked lips.
"Never call her that. Don't you ever call her that again."
Ignoring the white-hot needles of pain, Olivia tried to sit up. Isabella moved to support her, but Olivia waved her off with a wince of agony.
"Help me clean these wounds. Quickly. Before anyone sees me in this state."
Isabella blinked, bewildered. "What? No—no, you need a physician immediately. I don't see why the Duke shouldn't know—"
"Isabella," Olivia interrupted, her voice turning to iron despite her frailty.
"Help me. And be silent. If we move without caution, if we strike before we are ready, we are lost. What would telling Matthius change?
Is there a shred of proof she was here?
Could he even stand against them?
Elvira and my father... they hold power equal to the Emperor himself. If they didn't, do you think Matthius would have ever been forced to marry me?
Do you truly believe meddling with them now is in our favor?"
Incredulity washed over Isabella's features.
"Even so... he must know what your sister has done—"
Olivia looked her straight in the eye, the gaze of a woman who had looked into the abyss and survived.
"For the last time... I am not her sister. And I, better than anyone, know exactly what she is capable of."
Reluctantly, Isabella began to tend to the wounds. She applied rare magical ointments that caused the raw flesh to hiss and steam, dulling the sharpest edges of the pain even as the deeper ache remained.
As the salves worked their volatile alchemy, Olivia's mind drifted into the long shadows Elvira had left behind. She knew this wasn't over. Not by a long shot.
Isabella finished the treatment with her usual clinical precision. Without a word, she gathered little Anne into her arms to soothe her.
But the child would not be hushed; her cries were sharp and frantic, echoing off the stone walls with a piercing despair that seemed to make the very air ache.
Across the room, Olivia sat in a hollow silence, her mind wandering through a fractured fog of memory and trauma.
She watched the scene with hollowed eyes, as if viewing the world through a veil of heavy glass. Finally, she extended a hand that still bore a slight tremor.
"Give her to me," she murmured, her voice barely a ghost of a sound.
Isabella blinked in surprise. "Pardon?"
Olivia sighed, a weary, rattling sound.
"The child... give her to me. She doesn't recognize you in this state, and I want her to stop screaming. If only for a moment."
Hesitantly, Isabella surrendered the bundle. Anne fussed and squirmed at first, her small face red with exertion. But the moment Olivia's palms closed around the small form—the moment their eyes met—the world shifted.
The wailing ceased instantly, as if a spell had been broken. Anne settled against Olivia's chest as though she were a missing piece of a puzzle, quiet, still, and finally safe.
"You may go," Olivia said, her gaze fixed on the babe.
"We will speak of this later."
Isabella lingered for a moment, torn between duty and dread, before finally retreating into the hallway, leaving the Duchess alone in the wreckage of her room.
The hours that followed were a blur of feverish chills and the rhythmic throb of raw flesh.
Every time Olivia drifted toward sleep, the specter of Elvira's blade or the phantom heat of the scalding tea would jerk her back into a reality of white-hot agony.
She lay paralyzed, her skin weeping beneath the magical salves, clinging to the only anchor she had left—the steady, fragile heartbeat of the child against her chest.
By the time the first grey light of dawn filtered through the curtains, Olivia felt less like a woman and more like a hollowed-out shell, held together by sheer, bitter spite.
Her only focus was to erase the evidence of the night's violence; she sat before her vanity like a sculptor repairing a ruined monument, artfully layering powders and creams until the scars were hidden behind a mask of porcelain grace.
It was then she noticed it: one of her earrings was missing.
She touched her earlobe absently, but the loss didn't stir her—there were far greater ghosts to contend with.
Beside her, Anne stirred. The rhythm of the child's breathing shifted as a cacophony rose from outside the chamber.
The knocking was loud now, frantic and echoing. Before Olivia could even rise, the door was thrown open with a violent shudder.
"Kira! How dare you enter without leave?"
Olivia hissed, her voice a low, dangerous growl.
The young maid stood in the threshold, gasping for air. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes wide with a primal sort of panic. She bowed haphazardly, still fighting to find her breath.
"My Lady... I apologize... but the Duke... His Grace demands your presence immediately.
He is... he is in a terrible rage."
Olivia's blood ran cold. She stood at once, smoothing the fabric of her gown with a mechanical precision.
"Why? Has something happened?"
"I really don't know my lady," Kira whispered.
Olivia's eyes darkened like a gathering storm.
"Help me dress. Now."
The corridors felt unnaturally cold as the two women traversed them. A taut, vibrating silence stretched between them—a silence filled with a thousand questions Kira dared not ask.
When Olivia stepped into the Duke's study, she felt as though she had walked into the eye of a hurricane.
Papers were strewn across the floor. The morning sun cast sharp, unforgiving light upon a man who had clearly not slept. Matthius stood amidst the chaos, his expression a mask of tortured fury.
His hair was disheveled, his collar undone, and there was a wildness in his gaze that made even Olivia hesitate at the threshold.
Kira bowed hurriedly and retreated as the door clicked shut.
Matthius did not speak at first. He merely stared at Olivia, searching her face as if she were a riddle he could no longer solve.
Then, slowly, he moved toward her—not with aggression, but with a deliberate, haunting purpose.
When he reached her, he reached out and caught a strand of her silver hair between his fingers.
He rubbed his thumb over it as if trying to remember a dream. His eyes, usually so stoic and tempered, looked like shattered glass.
"Tell me," he said, his voice fractured.
"Please, Tell me it wasn't you."
Olivia stood frozen.
There was so much raw agony in his gaze that it pierced through her well-armored heart.
"Tell me," he pleaded now, his voice a ghost of a sob.
"Say you didn't do it. That it wasn't you."