Chapter 231: A Beautiful Inferno
Deep within the subterranean bowels of the Imperial Palace, the air was a stagnant, freezing weight, thick with the stench of damp stone and centuries of buried secrets. The dim torchlight between them didn’t just flicker; it writhed, casting monstrous, distorted shadows of the two men against the weeping walls.
"Your Majesty, what is the meaning of this?" Mathias demanded.
His voice hit the stone walls like a strike of steel—sharp, echoing, and entirely unbroken. He wasn’t on his knees. His posture remained rigid, but a dangerous, intense perplexity narrowed his eyes. "Why am I here? Under what law do you intend to cage me?"
Lucius did not answer. The Emperor held his gaze in an absolute, crushing silence that felt heavier than the mountain of stone above them. Looking at the young man before him, Lucius’s mind was suddenly flooded with the sickening, visceral details Olivia had unraveled—the phantom memories of this very man being slaughtered like a dog in a timeline that had been bled dry and erased. For a fleeting, agonizing second, a wave of profound, suffocating pity washed over the tyrant’s cold heart.
"Answer me, Your Majesty," Mathias pressed, taking a slow, heavy step forward. His knuckles whitened against his leather gauntlets, his patience snapping against the dead quiet of the cell.
"It was a request," Lucius finally spoke. His voice was hollow, dragged from some dark, weary depth. "A request from my daughter. And I found myself utterly stripped of the power to refuse her."
Mathias let out a sharp, cynical bark of laughter, his jaw clenching as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place with a sickening click. "Ha. I should have known Olivia’s claws were in this. You are the Emperor; since when does the crown bow to the whims of a woman’s manic paranoia?"
Lucius looked at him, his imperial eyes swimming with an ancient, unyielding sorrow that quickly hardened back into iron. "Listen to me, boy... I have been just and fair to an entire empire, yet I failed to be fair to her even once. So, at the very least, allow me this one sin. Allow me to choose her over the world."
Mathias exhaled a long, measured breath, his shoulders dropping into a stance of lethal, deceptive confidence. He looked at the iron bars, then back at the monarch. "You are well aware that if I so desire, I possess the strength to shatter this entire cage and walk out of here over the bodies of your guards. Correct?"
"I am aware."
"Then... are you leaving the door unlocked for me?"
Lucius closed his eyes, the brutal gravity of his crown pressing visibly into the lines of his face. "I am the Emperor. My curse is to maintain order, otherwise, I would have fed both Roland and Cedric to the crows a long time ago. Any reckless move I make will plunge the realm into a bloodbath." He snapped his eyes open, locking them onto Mathias like a vice. "But you... you are outside that order. I need you to destroy them. Especially Roland. Because I know Olivia—she will fling herself into their jaws before this is over."
Mathias shook his head, a wry, dark smirk cutting through his tense expression. "Of course she will. That madwoman has a sickness for danger. Even if she swore on her own life to stay away, she would still dive headfirst into the fire."
"Then we understand each other," Lucius muttered, a grim, predatory glint returning to his gaze. "I shall fulfill my promise to my daughter by locking you away... however, I never promised her that I would guard the wolf’s cage. Therefore..."
Mathias tightened the straps of his leather gauntlets, his eyes burning with a sudden, pitch-black resolve. "That sounds perfect for me, Your Majesty." sounds perfect for me, Your Majesty."
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The grand, echoing corridors of the palace had long faded behind her, but Olivia’s mind remained chained within their suffocating shadows. Ever since her return, an unnatural, detached stillness had settled deep into her bones. The world moved around her in a blur of useless motion, but her thoughts were spiraling backward, obsessively clawing at the terrifying truth of her own existence.
Two children. One regression.
The math didn’t hold. The numbers were bleeding.
"You’re drifting again, Olivia."
The sharp, familiar voice broke through the fog of her delusion. Olivia blinked, her vision focusing on Leon, who was watching her from across the room with a deep, suspicious furrow in his brow. He had been tracking her for the past hour, noting the uncharacteristic emptiness in her stare—a hollow look that belonged to someone haunted by ghosts no one else could see.
"What is rotting your mind so deeply?" Leon questioned, leaning his weight back against the table, his eyes boring into hers, searching for the crack in her armor. "You’ve been miles away since you stepped through the gates."
Olivia forced her features to smooth out into a cold, flat mask, offering a dismissive wave of her hand. "It is nothing. Merely a few peculiar, fleeting thoughts." She swiftly shifted her posture, pulling herself back from the precipice of her own sanity. "More importantly... have you executed what I requested, or did you fail me?"
A smug, confident grin broke across Leon’s face, though the tension didn’t entirely leave his shoulders. "Of course I did. Do you truly harbor doubts regarding my capabilities? The carriage is hidden, and the private letter has been delivered straight into his hands."
"Good," Olivia replied. A faint, genuine smile touched her lips, though it did absolutely nothing to warm the calculated frost in her eyes.
Leon chuckled softly, though a sudden, playful nervousness flickered in his posture. He rubbed the back of his neck, swallowing hard. "You know, dear sister-in-law... Mathias will absolutely skin me alive, layer by layer, if he ever discovers that I’ve entangled you in my reckless endeavors."
Olivia let out a dry, huffed breath, her smile turning sharper, laced with that familiar, biting irony. "Let him go to hell for all I care. Besides," she added, her tone dropping into a smooth, terrifyingly assured purr, "I have a feeling the Emperor will be taking exceptional care of him from now on. In any case, we must depart. I cannot afford to be late for my romantic rendezvous with Cedric."
Leon froze. He stared at her as she turned on her heel, the fabric of her dress snapping in the quiet room. She moved with an unshakeable, chilling confidence, her posture as straight as a queen marching toward a guillotine. He watched her retreating figure until the heavy doors slammed shut behind her.
A cold sweat broke out on the back of Leon’s neck. He swallowed the dry lump in his throat, letting out a weak, defeated groan into the empty room.
"Yes... Mathias is absolutely going to murder me. There is no doubt about it."
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Far from Olivia and her cold calculations, Cedric stood before the grand, gilded mirror of his private chambers. His fingers moved with practiced, agonizing ease as he adjusted the stiff, suffocating collar of his shirt, though his attention was repeatedly stolen by the single, fragile piece of parchment resting on the velvet expanse of his bed.
He had spent hours reading it. Reading and re-reading those few words until the ink felt burned into his retinas, memorizing the sharp, elegant slants of her handwriting.
It was signed simply Olivia—no titles, no house names. Just her.
"Lord Cedric Allister, I would love to meet you soon, should you find yourself unburdened with duties this evening."
"Our brave, gallant knight fails to show up for our scheduled duel," Cedric murmured, a dark, cynical amusement dancing in his predatory eyes as he glared at the parchment. "And suddenly, out of nowhere, I have a secret rendezvous with my beautiful Olivia instead? How glaringly suspicious... yet utterly entertaining."
He let out a low, gravelly chuckle that vibrated in his chest. It was obvious—disgustingly obvious—that she did not seek his company with pure intentions. She was setting a trap.
But who cared? If she was dragging him to hell, he would be more than satisfied to burn into ashes within her inferno, so long as he held her tight while they smelled of smoke. After the planned rebellion succeeded, neither the ruined House of Lochan nor that bastard Mathias would be able to shield her from him.
He picked up a crystal vial of heavy, expensive cologne, misting it over his throat before smiling at his reflection with a sharp, lethal malice. Since this was to be a clandestine meeting, he would ensure it was an affair she would feel in her bones for as long as she drew breath.
"You will return to this Duchy with me, my love... whether you consent to it or not," he whispered.
Turning away from the mirror, he strode toward his massive wardrobe and flung the carved doors wide open. Hanging in the very center, bathed in the dim candlelight, was a gown of striking, blood-red silk. It was a masterpiece of tailoring, designed to captivate, to possess, and to enslave anyone who looked upon it.
Cedric reached out, his fingertips tracing the smooth, costly fabric with a slow, obsessive hunger. His mind was already weaving a vivid, sick hallucination of her body trapped inside it, dyed in the color of his devotion.
"This will look utterly magnificent on you, my sweet," he murmured into the dead silence of the closet, his grip tightening on the silk until it wrinkled. "It won’t be long now before I see you bleed into it."