Chapter 156: Weight of Silence
"She’s out. For now," Matthias said. His voice was a flatline, offering no celebration, no smirk. "I’m not sure which of her own schemes backfired to cause this collapse, but the Empress has fallen."
A cruel smile cut through Olivia’s face, catching the cold glare of the chandelier. "I’d empty my coffers just to watch her face hit the dirt," she hissed, a dry, sharp laugh escaping her. "Power was her oxygen. Now, she’s suffocating, watching it peel away from her like rotting skin."
In any other world, Kyle would have swung at anyone insulting his mother. But he didn’t move. He stood there, his face a slab of unyielding stone, eyes vacant. "She earned this," he said, his voice sounding like it was coming from the bottom of a well. "Mother or not, she stepped over a ledge you don’t come back from."
"You’re right, Kyle," Olivia cut in. Her voice was too smooth, coated in a layer of empathy so fake it was insulting.
Matthias watched them, a ghost of a mocking smile haunting his mouth. "Look at you two... two sides of the same damn coin. It took a tragedy to finally get you on the same page."
Olivia didn’t even look at him. Her eyes snapped to Kyle with the sharpness of a predator scenting blood. "Reality is all that’s left, Kyle. You’re going back to the palace. The shadows are gone; you have nowhere left to hide."
"But—"
"Kyle!" she lashed out, her voice cracking like a whip. "Do you even grasp the stakes? A Crown Prince doesn’t just ’abandon’ his post. Not now. Do you have any idea who’s currently feasting on the scrap of support left for that empty throne?"
Kyle went silent. He stared into nothing, the air in his lungs turning to lead.
"Roland Tharon," Olivia spat, the name sounding like a curse. "The nobles are losing their minds over him, groveling at his boots like starved dogs. Is that the future you want? To kneel before him as your Emperor?" She leaned in, her whisper a jagged blade pressed against his ear.
"Wake up. Do you think Ann is safe here? We’ve been clawing at the Tharon Duchy’s throat for generations. She won’t just be a target, Kyle—she’ll be a trophy, the first thing they’ll use to break you. The Empress being gone isn’t a truce. It’s the first strike of the war drums for the throne."
"Kyle..." Olivia’s voice trailed off, but he was already gone. He dragged his weight out of the room, his steps heavy as lead, followed only by the violent slam of the door.
"Clinical," Matthias’s voice cut through the silence, thin as a shadow. "Though I doubt he’ll thank you for the wake-up call."
Olivia turned, her heels snapping against the hardwood like bone on stone, a sound that grated against Matthias’s raw nerves. "I don’t want his thanks," she snapped, the venom in her voice sounding frayed, thin. "I want him breathing. I want that throne locked down. Everything else is a luxury we’ve run out of."
"Babysitting is a miserable chore, isn’t it?"
Olivia locked her eyes on him, a sharp, cold gaze. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" The rest of her words died as she actually looked at him. The dark hollows beneath his eyes had bled outward—bruised, terrifying, like ink leaking under his skin. "By the way," she said, her voice dropping, "where were you? I woke up to an empty bed."
"Just around".
"Dealing with Amelia," he snapped, the mention of his sister’s name bringing a different kind of exhaustion to his eyes. "We had it out. Again."
Olivia’s brow arched. "Still?"
"Talia has done a hell of a job on her," Matthias muttered, a bitter edge to his voice. "The girl looks at me like I’m a monster from a bedtime story. I don’t know what to do with her anymore. She’s become a stranger in my own house."
"She’ll come around," Olivia said, though her mind was already calculating the damage Talia had inflicted. "Siblings are a special kind of nuisance."
"Clearly," Matthias shot back, his gaze lingering on the door Kyle had just slammed. "It seems to be the theme of the morning."
"Are you alright?"
"Fine enough. And you?"
"I’m perfect... assuming you can explain why the hell you’re hovering in the corner like a ghost." Her eyes narrowed, a jagged sliver of doubt slicing through her tone. "Did last night turn your stomach? Did what I said make you loathe me? Because if it did—"
Fear was eating him alive—not fear of her words, but of the rot inside him. He was terrified that if he moved, the "mist" in his veins would spill out and drown her. "No, Olivia," he cut her off, his voice dry and rasping, like dead leaves skittering on pavement. "Why would I? On the contrary... I’ve never respected you more. Why would I ever turn away?"
Olivia rose, closing the gap between them with a slow, predatory grace. He stayed anchored to the floor, a rigid marble statue, until she was mere inches away. Even through the heavy silk of her skirts, she felt it—an unnatural, biting chill radiating from him. It wasn’t just cold; it was a frost that bypassed the skin and settled deep in the marrow of her bones.
"What is it? What the hell are you doing?" he choked out, his breath hitching as if his lungs had forgotten their purpose.
She didn’t answer. She simply raised her hand, her cold fingers sweeping aside the stray locks of hair that tried to hide him.
"I want to see your eyes," she whispered. Her gaze bored into his pupils, watching as they began to warp, stretching into two lightless pits that threatened to swallow the light of the room. "Why do they look like that? What happened? I know last night was a confession of blood, Matthias, but... didn’t we agree? We bury our grief until the war is won."
"I am doing exactly that," he rasped. His voice vibrated like a wire stretched to its absolute breaking point, a single note away from snapping.
Olivia wasn’t buying it. Her fingers lingered at his brow, her eyes sharpening as she caught the rot—the unnatural darkness bleeding into his irises like ink in water. "But your eyes... Matthias, why do they look like—"
He was teetering on the edge of the cliff. One more word from her and he’d be stripped bare, his soul exposed as nothing more than a feast for the void. He saw no escape, no lie big enough to cover this. So he struck.
He lunged, silencing the truth with a violent, desperate kiss. His hands locked around her waist with a bruising force, pinning her against him as if he were a drowning man trying to anchor himself to the only living thing left in a world of ghosts.
Their lips met with a ravenous, ugly desperation, as if they were trying to strangle the scream of reason itself. The shock froze Olivia for a heartbeat, but it broke just as fast. She went under, drowning in a sudden, violent heat she had craved since entering the hollow chill of this palace.
When he finally pulled back, his breath coming in jagged, ruined shreds, she struggled to find her footing. "What was that, Matthias?" she whispered, her voice trembling.
"A kiss," he rasped. His voice was a wreck, and his eyes were still drowning in those lightless, obsidian rings.
"A kiss?" She looked at him, her gaze cutting through the haze. "Is that all it was?"
He shot her a wicked, splintered glance—half defiance, half agony. "Only? What more could you possibly want from me?"
The room was stripped bare of pretense. There was no poetry here, only two people trying to choke the life out of last night’s confessions, burying their raw honesty beneath the wreckage of desire.
His lips tracked a frantic, jagged path down her neck, burying one kiss after another into her skin as if he could purge the rot in his blood through her. Olivia locked her arms around his head, her eyes clamped shut—a desperate performance of blindness, refusing to look at the monster currently devouring the man she knew.
Then, in the heat of his desperation, she struck. She didn’t push him away; she kept him close, her voice a cold blade pressed against his ear while his lips were still against her skin.
"Why were your hands around my throat this morning, Matthias?"
Matthias didn’t flinch. He didn’t even stop. He let out a low, hollow laugh that vibrated against her throat—a dry, ghost of a sound.
"Your throat?" he repeated. He pulled back just enough to bridge her gaze, his eyes icy and thick with mockery. "You’ve always had a vivid imagination, Olivia. It’s what makes you a brilliant strategist. But don’t mistake a heavy sleep for an assassination attempt."
"Don’t lie to me," she snapped, her voice dropping to a jagged, lethal edge. She stayed pressed against him, forcing him to feel the frantic, accusing thud of her heart against his chest. "I felt the pressure. I felt the intent. You weren’t trying to wake me, Matthias. You were deciding whether or not to end me."
Matthias’s expression twisted, his lips curling into a thin, cruel line.
"And if I was?" he challenged, his voice dropping to a low crawl. He reached out, his thumb tracing the exact curve of the jaw he had nearly crushed hours before.
"You’re still breathing, aren’t you? If I wanted you dead, Olivia, we wouldn’t be wasting breath on this conversation. You of all people know I don’t miss my mark."
"That’s a pathetic lie, and you know it," she hissed. She didn’t flinch from his touch; she hunted for the truth in the lightless void of his pupils. "Something is eating you alive. Look at your eyes. Look at the way you’re shivering in a warm room. You’re hiding a monster—and that monster had its hands around my neck while I slept."
"What I hide is my business," he snapped, his voice turning into a serrated blade. He stepped back, breaking the contact so violently it felt like a physical slap.
"We agreed to bury the filth, remember? Or does that pact only count when I’m the one guarding your secrets? Don’t go digging in my head, Olivia. You won’t like what you find, and I might not be able to stop it from biting back."
Olivia’s smile was a sliver of broken glass—beautiful, jagged, and laced with pure venom. She took a step forward, reclaiming the space, making the air between them hot enough to ignite. "So, that’s the narrative now? You’re just waiting for the right moment to kill me?"
"Kill you?" The words dropped from his lips like lead weights hitting the floor. He forced a dry, jarring laugh, but it died instantly in the abyss of his eyes. "What is this, a nightmare? Have you finally lost your mind, Olivia?"
"Are you sure?" she countered. Her voice dropped to a lethal, velvet whisper, her gaze hunting for the lie she knew was rotting behind his teeth.
"I am sure." He said it too fast, too perfectly—like a polished blade that had been wiped clean of blood before the body was even cold.
She moved in until their breaths tangled in a frantic, uneven rhythm. "Then give me a reason to believe you, Matthias. Tell me. I bled my truths into your palms; I stripped my soul bare until the nerves were raw for you. But you? You hide. Why should I feel safe for even a second when I wake up with your thumbs pressing against my pulse?"
Deep down, she wasn’t asking because she feared for her life. She had survived two lifetimes with this man, had danced with his darkness until she knew every step. He had never broken her—not by his own choice. She didn’t need to save her neck; she needed to save him from the silent rot devouring him from the inside out. She didn’t want safety; she wanted the truth.
Matthias didn’t answer with words. He answered with the air itself, which suddenly grew heavy, charged with a predatory, suffocating gravity. He took a single, deliberate step forward, and the sheer weight of his presence forced her to retreat. He followed, his eyes locked onto hers with an ancient, terrifying intensity—as if he were no longer looking at her, but through her, into something eternal.
She backed away, one step at a time, until her spine collided with the unyielding, ice-cold stone of the wall. She was trapped, a bird paralyzed in the shadow of a hawk, yet she found it impossible to tear her gaze from the lightless void of his pupils.
"You want proof?" he rasped. "You want a reason why you’re still breathing?"
He leaned in, his silhouette swallowing the remaining light, carving out a private universe of shadows just for the two of them. His lips brushed the shell of her ear—not a kiss, but a rugged, broken caress. His voice sounded like it was being clawed out of his very soul.
"Because you are my wife, Olivia. My partner."
He choked, the words snagging in his throat as the final, fragile barrier between them disintegrated.
"...and because you are the love of my life, Olivia Luceron. Even when I am nothing but dust, my soul will still know your name as my woman."