Chapter 150: a husband’s vow
The air in the room didn’t just feel thin; it felt poisonous, scraping against the back of his throat with every ragged breath. For a heartbeat, Mathias didn’t move. Then, a sound escaped him—not a cry, but a broken, guttural heave of a man whose world had just turned into a slaughterhouse.
He lunged up from his chair, the heavy wood screeching against the floor like a dying animal. His hands flew to his head, fingers digging so deep into his scalp it looked as if he were trying to peel back his own skull to let the memories out.
"I killed him..." he whispered, the words trembling and wet. "I killed my son."
Suddenly, a sharp, crystalline crack echoed through the room. The obsidian ring on his finger—the one forged to suppress his surging mana—began to spiderweb with glowing white fractures. The air around him distorted, vibrating with a chaotic, violent energy that mirrored the wreckage of his mind. The ring couldn’t hold it. The guilt was more powerful than the magic.
"Mathias, stay with me—" Olivia started, but he didn’t hear her.
He spun around and slammed his fist into the stone wall. THUD.
Again. THUD.
He wasn’t fighting an enemy; he was trying to punch through the reality of what he had done. He hammered his knuckles against the cold stone until the skin split, leaving thick, crimson smears against the gray surface. He didn’t feel the pain in his hand. How could he, when he could still feel the phantom weight of the small, cold casket he had lowered into the earth?
"I tore him from you!" he roared at the blood-stained wall, his voice breaking into a sob. "I stood there, Olivia... I stood there and watched them shovel the dirt. I heard the silence and I called it peace. But he was... he was..."
He choked on the words, his knees finally giving out. He slid down the wall, leaving a trail of blood behind him, his breath coming in sharp, shallow hitches. He looked like a fallen god, stripped of his crown and his sanity.
"The blue flowers," he gasped, staring at his bloodied palms as if they were covered in indigo petals. "They weren’t a blessing. They were his screams."
Just as the darkness in his eyes began to swallow the last of his reason, Olivia moved. She didn’t approach him with pity—she approached him like a soldier entering a fire.
She grabbed his face, forcing his vacant, bloodshot eyes to look at her, and then she swung.
CRACK.
The first slap echoed like a gunshot, but the second one—harder, fueled by years of repressed rage—was the one that finally dragged him back from the edge of the abyss. Mathias gasped, his head snapping to the side, his ears ringing with the violent finality of her strike.
"Are you awake now?" she hissed. Her voice didn’t sound like a Duchess; it sounded like a woman who had clawed her way out of a grave. "Did I hand you the truth just so you could shatter before me like a hollow shell? Did I risk everything just to watch you give up?"
"Olivia..." he whispered, his vision finally clearing.
Through the haze of his own agony, he finally saw her. He saw the way her shoulders were shaking, the way her knuckles were white from clenching her skirt, and the unshed tears that pooled in her eyes like glass about to break. She wasn’t just angry; she was fighting a war inside her own skin to keep from screaming with him.
He reached out, his hand bloodied and trembling, wanting to touch her cheek, to beg for a mercy he didn’t deserve. But he stopped. He looked at his crimson-stained skin and realized he was a monster who had no right to touch a saint.
"Mathias, I didn’t tell you this so you could lose your mind and leave me to rot in this hell alone," she said, her voice cracking for a heartbeat before she forced it back into a cold, hard iron.
"I told you because, for the first time... I chose to trust you. And you choose to break? Now? When the blood is finally on the table?"
"But I... I buried him... I put him in the dark..." His voice was a broken rasp.
Olivia pressed her finger against his lips, her touch icy. "Be silent. We buried our son an eternity ago. ’There is no use in reviving old sorrows’—weren’t those your words to me? Why are you weeping for the dead now, when the living are still standing in the fire?"
She turned away, her movements sharp and mechanical. She walked to the drawer and pulled out a small, amber vial. She didn’t look back as she approached him, her shadow looming over his slumped, broken form.
"For years," she started, her voice dropping to a haunting whisper, "I have been the only one swallowing these... these little lies in a bottle. I took them so I wouldn’t scream. I took them so I could look you in the eye every morning without losing my mind."
She reached out and grabbed his hand, turning his bloodied palm upward and pressing a single, small pill into the center of it.
"I thought we’d never share anything but our misery, Mathias," she whispered, her eyes burning with a dark, predatory light.
"But today, it seems we will share something new. Take it. It won’t fix your soul, but it will stop your mind from splintering until we finish this."
He swallowed the pill without a second thought, the chemical bitterness stinging his throat—a pale, hollow shadow of the bile rising from his gut. He didn’t care if it was medicine or poison; as long as it came from her hand, he would welcome it.
"It doesn’t matter what it is," she whispered, her voice a thin, lethal thread. "It will keep your mind from splintering. That is enough. I will permit you to break, Mathias—I will let you fall apart and never get up again—but only when we make that woman and her father pay for every soul they have harvested. Do you understand?"
He stared at her, He was just a man looking at the wreckage of his life. A short, hollow laugh escaped him—a sound of pure, jagged self-loathing.
"You’re right," he rasped, his voice sounding like the dry rustle of dead leaves being crushed underfoot. "This is no time for my foolish theatrics. Not when... not when you are standing there, bleeding in a silence I created."
He pressed a bloodied hand over his chest, his fingers digging into the expensive fabric of his tunic as if he could physically keep his heart from bursting out of his ribs.
"I will be your soldier, Olivia. I will be your weapon, your shield, or your footstool. Even if my heart feels like it’s exploding with every breath, I will not fail you again. Not this time."
Olivia watched him, her jaw locked tight. She had spent every ounce of her will to play the commander, to slap the madness out of him, but the cost was finally coming due. As he pledged his life to her, her legs—those steady, unyielding pillars—suddenly turned to ash.
She stumbled back, her knees buckling as if the very air had become too heavy to support her. She collapsed into her chair, her breath coming in a sharp, shuddering heave. Despite the mask of frost she tried to wear, the grief was leaking out through the cracks in her soul. She looked small. She looked tired.
She wasn’t a goddess of vengeance; she was a mother who had just realized she’d been mourning a son who might have been saved.
Mathias saw it—the way her body finally betrayed her, the way she withered into the seat as if her bones had turned to glass. Seeing her like that, bleeding from a thousand phantom wounds yet still trying to be his strength... it shattered the last of his pride. It was a ruinous, devastating sensation.
He didn’t just see his failure; he felt it like a physical weight crushing them both into the dirt.
With a ragged breath, he closed the distance between them. He reached out and caught her trembling hands in his own—his touch hesitant, almost reverent, as if he were handling something sacred and broken. Then, slowly, as if his ducal legs could no longer bear the staggering weight of his sins, he sank to his knees at her feet.
"Olivia," he rasped, his voice a low, vibrating growl of unspeakable promise. His dark eyes, once clouded with hysteria and confusion, were now sharpened with a dangerous, singular purpose. He pressed his forehead against her locked fingers, his breath hot against her skin.
"I vow to you... that woman will be on her knees at your feet tomorrow. Before the sun sets, she will beg for a mercy I have no intention of granting."
For a moment, Olivia could only stare down at him—the man who had once been the architect of her torment, now reduced to a broken supplicant. Then, as his warmth finally began to seep from his palms and into her own, she felt a flicker. It wasn’t forgiveness—not yet—but it was something like the first touch of heat returning to a frozen world.
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The sound of those footsteps approaching the Emperor’s office was louder than any whisper. The servants stared, their faces pale as if they were watching a ghost haunt the palace halls.
They bowed in frantic haste, the air thick with their hushed disbelief.
"Is it truly her? Impossible..."
She raised a single finger to her lips, signaling the guards to remain silent. A thin, dangerous smile played on her lips. "It’s a surprise," she murmured.
She tapped lightly on the heavy oak door. Knock. Knock.
"Enter," came the voice from within.
She stepped inside with a steady, haunting grace and bowed. "Greetings, Your Imperial Majesty."
Lucius was buried in paperwork, his quill scratching against the parchment, but the sound of that voice made the pen slip from his fingers, staining the page with ink. He lifted his head, his eyes widening as he looked at his aide to confirm he wasn’t dreaming.
The aide bowed low. "Greetings, Your Imperial Princess."
"Serene?" Lucius breathed out, his voice laced with pure shock.
He moved from behind his desk with a speed unbecoming of an Emperor, standing before her in a heartbeat. This was the first time she had visited him since her marriage. He had seen her at formal galas, a distant figure who never approached, never spoke, and never looked him in the eye.
Serene watched the doors click shut behind her.
"Serene... is it really you? My beloved little sister?" he whispered, his voice trembling with an overwhelming joy.
She looked at him with a soft smile and reached out, her fingers gently brushing his cheek. "Yes... it is me, brother."
Overcome with emotion, Lucius lunged forward and pulled her into a fierce embrace. "I’ve missed you so much. My God, how long has it been? More than twenty years!"
She let him hold her, but her arms remained at her sides, cold and unyielding. Lucius felt the lack of warmth, the stiff rejection in her posture, and slowly pulled back, his heart sinking.
"Sere—"
Before he could finish her name, a sharp, resounding slap echoed through the office.
"Serene!" he gasped, clutching his burning cheek.
She stared at him, her face a mask of immovable stone. "You deserved that, brother," she said, her voice dropping to a lethal chill. "In fact, it is far, far less than what you truly deserve."