For a heartbeat, the room was swallowed by a deafening silence. Olivia stared at her own hands—pale, slender, and finally visible. She turned them over, watching the way the candlelight danced across her skin, tracing the lines of her palms as if they were a map to a world she had thought lost forever.
The realization hit her like a physical wave of heat. She could see. The void was gone.
In a rare, intoxicated burst of pure joy and unfiltered gratitude, Olivia forgot who she was. She forgot the man standing before her,
. " Like a child who had been handed a long-lost treasure, she lunged forward, throwing herself into Mathias’s arms.
"Thank you... truly, Mathias... thank you!" she breathed, her voice thick with a genuine, raw tenderness he had never heard before.
She clung to him, her face buried in his shoulder, oblivious to the tallic scent of death that clung to his cloak. She was drunk on the light, her usual sarcasm and icy walls lting away in the heat of her relief. For that one, stolen mont, she wasn’t a captive or a defiant duchess; she was just a soul returned from the abyss, hugging the man who had dragged her back.
But Mathias... Mathias froze.
The man who could face an army without blinking was paralyzed by the simple pressure of her arms around him. He stood rigid, his hands hovering awkwardly in the air, unable to even return the embrace.
The shock was a physical blow to his senses. He was used to her barbs, her biting wit, and her cold stares. This version of her—soft, vulnerable, and grateful—was a language he didn’t know how to speak.
She looked like a small girl running to her father after being gifted the doll of her dreams.
Then, reality struck like a bolt of lightning.
The warmth of the mont vanished, replaced by a jagged, icy clarity. She stiffened, the realization of what she was doing—and who she was holding—crashing down on her.
She scrambled backward, pulling herself out of his orbit with a frantic, desperate haste. Her breath ca in short, embarrassed hitches as she tried to reconstruct her crumbling walls.
Mathias, still standing in the sa spot, blinked slowly, his eyes wide and utterly bewildered. He looked less like a predatory Duke and more like a lost soul trying to process a miracle.
"You’re... welco," he managed to rasp, his voice sounding foreign even to his own ears. "...I suppose."
The air between them thickened, curdling into a heavy, suffocating awkwardness.
"I... I think I got a bit carried away," Olivia stamred, her voice small and brittle as she stepped further back.
"Ha... I think so too," Mathias replied, his tone devoid of its usual sharp edge.
Olivia stood frozen, her new eyes devouring him, searching for the man she rembered. It was Mathias—the sa jawline, the sa green eyes—but everything felt wrong. His movents were too fluid, too detached, and the gaze he leveled at her was a hollow abyss. He looked like a masterpiece carved from ice, beautiful yet utterly drained of warmth. It was as if she were staring at a stranger wearing her husband’s skin.
"You... you are Mathias, right?" she whispered, the question slipping out before she could catch it.
Mathias let out a dry, mocking laugh that didn’t reach his eyes. "You haven’t seen my face for a few days, and already you’ve forgotten it? What a terrible wife you are."
Olivia’s confusion flared into a spark of anger. "Mathias, stop it! You’re annoying . Stop talking in that strange way. What is wrong with you? Your face... you look... different."
"Hmm? Different?" He tilted his head with a lethal nonchalance. "You’re mistaken. I am as I have always been. I suspect the darkness has made you a bit senile, Olivia. Too much ti in the void, perhaps?"
Her angry glare shifted into sothing more piercing—a gaze of discovery. There was a glitch in him, a fractured piece she couldn’t quite na. She crossed her arms over her chest, her posture rigid.
"Where were you yesterday? And today? Answer ," she demanded, her voice gaining strength. "I need an explanation for this... for whatever this strange behavior is."
Mathias didn’t flinch under her scrutiny. Instead, he pulled a cigarette from his pocket and tucked it between his lips. With a slow, deliberate movent, he struck a match. The fla flared for a second, casting flickering shadows across his gore-splattered face, illuminating the emptiness in his golden eyes.
He took a slow drag, exhaling a plu of gray smoke that swirled between them like a ghost.
"I told you," he murmured through the haze. "I was choosing a gift for you. That’s why I was delayed. That is all there is to it."
"You always smoke when you’re on the edge of a collapse," Olivia whispered, her eyes narrowing as she watched the embers of his cigarette glow in the dim light. "So... you’re lying, aren’t you?"
Mathias paused, a ghost of an innocent smile playing on his lips as he exhaled a long, silver plu of smoke away from her. "Who knows? Perhaps I am honest, or perhaps I am a liar. Isn’t a lie just a fragnted piece of the truth, Olivia?"
Olivia felt a shiver of irritation mixed with a strange, haunting familiarity. It feels like I’m talking to a male version of myself, she thought bitterly. Since when did his tongue beco this sharp?
Before she could voice her frustration, Mathias moved. With a fluid, sudden grace, he reached out and scooped her into his arms.
"Hey! You—!" she gasped, her hands instinctively clutching his shoulders. "Have you finally lost your mind? What do you think you’re doing? Put down!"
Mathias began walking toward the door, his stride steady and undeterred by her squirming. "Your patience is the size of an ant, woman. Calm down and stop speaking to like that. I’m doing you a favor here."
"A favor? What kind of favor?"
"I’m taking you to et soone very special," he murmured, his voice dropping into a low, clinical tone. "Soone you desperately need to see."
Olivia’s heart skipped a beat. "What? Who?"
"Didn’t we just discuss patience two seconds ago? Be still."
He reached a heavy, ornate door at the end of the corridor and kicked it open. The room inside was cold, slling of lavender and antiseptic. Mathias walked to the center of the room and lowered her gently to the floor. With a slow, solemn gesture, he pointed toward the large, canopied bed.
"She’s resting there," he said, his golden eyes fixed on Olivia’s reacting face. "Go on... give her your greetings."
Olivia’s breath hitched. Her new vision, still sharp and terrifyingly clear, landed on the still figure draped in white linens.
It was Serene.
She lay there, pale and motionless, looking more like a marble statue than a living woman. The world seed to stop spinning for Olivia as she took a trembling step toward the bed, the reality of what Mathias had "retrieved" finally crashing down upon her.
Olivia couldn’t believe her own eyes. The world seed to tilt, the floor beneath her boots turning into shifting sand. "No... no, this is impossible," she whispered, her voice a fragile, broken thing. "She was supposed to be dead. What is she doing here? How is this even possible?"
Mathias leaned in from behind, his presence a cold shadow that draped over her shoulders. His breath, slling of faint tobacco, ghosted against her ear.
"Hmm... I suppose your father has a rather exquisite hobby," he murmured, his tone dripping with a terrifying, clinical amusent. "Embalming corpses... isn’t he quite the artist, Olivia?"
Olivia swallowed hard, a wave of cold fury and nausea rising in her throat. Her father—that monster. Even in death, he wouldn’t let Serene go. He wouldn’t let her find peace in the soil. He had turned a human being into a decorative puppet for his own twisted grief.
"He... he didn’t let her go. Not even in her last breath," she hissed, her fingers curling into tight fists. "He didn’t even let her leave this world in peace."
Then, a sudden, icy realization struck her. They were in a safehouse belonging to the Duchy of Locron. And the woman lying on the bed was the Duchess of Tharon—the Emperor’s beloved sister.
Olivia spun around, her new eyes wide with a raw, jagged terror as she stared at Mathias. He stood there, rigid and immobile, his face a mask of terrifying stillness.
"Mathias..." she breathed, her voice shaking. "Don’t tell ... tell you didn’t kidnap the Duchess of Tharon."
Mathias didn’t answer at first. Instead, a slow, predatory smile stretched across his lips—one that felt more like a baring of teeth. He reached out, his fingers cold as he caught her hand, dragging her back until she was standing right beside the edge of the bed, re inches from the waxen skin of the "sleeping" Duchess.
"I thought you would enjoy seeing her again," he mused, his golden eyes burning with an unholy, triumphant light. "Why the long face, Olivia? Don’t you like my second gift?"
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