Jeremy gasped, a sharp, choked sound of pure dical horror that seed to echo against the stone walls. "What? Your Grace, that is... that is catastrophic! Why would you even ask such a—"
"Tell ," she growled. This ti, her voice wasn’t just cold; it was a low, lethal rumble, the sound of a predator losing its patience. "What happens to them?"
Jeremy swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing painfully in his throat. He forced himself to speak, his voice shaking with a clinical dread.
"In most cases, the mother might perish from the sheer magical shock. However..." he paused, his eyes flickering toward the floor. "Since the dose is magically calibrated to claim only one soul, it behaves like a heat-seeking gale.
It seeks out the weakest spark of life to extinguish. In such a case, the toxin would bypass the mother’s stronger constitution and concentrate entirely on the fetus. It would... it would wither the unborn life within the womb instantly. Like a frost killing a bud before it can ever bloom."
The room seed to tilt. Olivia felt a phantom chill bloom in her womb, It was as if the ghost of that stolen life was suddenly kicking against her ribs, demanding to be heard through the clinical horror of the physician’s words.
"I see," Olivia said.
Her voice was now completely devoid of emotion, a flat, terrifying void that was far worse than any scream. She sat perfectly still, a statue of a woman who had just heard the confirmation of her own damnation.
"That is all. Leave us."
The physician bowed, his movents frantic as he scrambled toward the exit, but her voice caught him one last ti, pinning him to the spot.
"Oh, and there is one more thing," Olivia added, her voice dropping to a haunting, lodic whisper that made the hair on the back of Mathias’s neck stand up. "Is it true what the old texts say? That on the grave of one poisoned by this specific alchemy... small, indigo blue flowers will bloom?"
Jeremy turned back, his face a mask of sorrow. "Yes, Your Grace. They are called The Mourner’s Petals. They bloom from the residual magic that the body could not absorb. It is a sign of a soul that... that never truly left."
She bit her lip, her teeth sinking into the sensitive flesh until the sharp, copper tang of blood filled her mouth, grounding her in the agony of the present.
"I see," she whispered against the tallic taste. "Go."
The physician didn’t need a second dismissal. He practically fled the room, his footsteps frantic on the carpet until the heavy door snapped shut behind him with a final, echoing thud.
Mathias remained motionless, sitting as if his soul had been hollowed out by a jagged blade, leaving only a shell behind. The color of his skin had transitioned from pale to a deathly, ashen grey, his eyes wide and unblinking.
"What was the aning of that, Olivia?" he asked, his voice sounding thin, as if it were coming from a great distance. "Why ask him those things? What do blue flowers and unborn children have to do with this... this nightmare?"
In response, she reached out. Her hand was trembling—a rhythmic, violent shaking she could no longer suppress—as she flattened the crumpled parchnt onto the table between them. She smoothed it over and over, her palm dragging against the rough fiber until the words scrawled there were stark, jagged, and undeniable:
The Lesser Death.
"I don’t understand, Olivia," Mathias rasped, his gaze fixed on the ink as if it were a serpent ready to strike. "Speak to . Please."
"Do you rember the maid?" Olivia asked, her voice eerily calm, "The one who stood before the council? The one who testified against with such practiced tears, telling you I had murdered your mother?"
"Vaguely," he choked out, his throat tightening. "There were so many lies then. What of her?"
"First, she is dead," Olivia stated flatly. "Second... she was never your servant, Mathias. She was a viper in our nest—a spy planted by Elvira the mont I entered this house. She served her faithfully, reporting my every breath, my every weakness."
Olivia paused,
"And..." she started, her voice fracturing. "Before she died, she confessed. She confessed to a sin so great it makes a simple murder look like a rcy. She told how she slipped into my chambers during those final weeks of my pregnancy... with Elias."
"Before she died, she confessed," Olivia continued, her voice gaining a haunting, rhythmic quality. "She confessed to poisoning . At first, I couldn’t place her face—the ti had blurred her features into a sea of naless enemies. But now... now the mory is sharp, like a shard of glass twisted in my mind."
She squeezed her eyes shut for a second, but the image was burned into her retinas. " She was the one who brought my tea, the one who smoothed my pillows while whispering sweet, lying comforts."
Mathias shook his head, a frantic, desperate denial taking root in his chest and spreading like a cancer.. "I don’t... I don’t follow. What are you saying, Olivia? You’re talking in riddles. You survived."
She turned her vacant, hollowed eyes toward him, and in their depths, he saw a void that had no end.
"Elvira used the sa poison on , Mathias. The Lesser Death. She didn’t need my consent to kill you, and she didn’t need my help to destroy this house. She simply chose a different target. A weaker spark."
"But you... oh, no. No, no, no. That’s Impossible."
Mathias reached for her, his voice a ragged, broken plea that lacked all his forr ducal power. "Olivia, tell you don’t an what I think you an. I beg of you! Look at ! The boy was cold... he wasn’t breathing... the doctors... the doctors said—"
Mathias’s hands clawed at the air, grasping for a logic that no longer existed. His ducal pride, his carefully constructed walls of hatred—all of it was being incinerated by the cold fire in Olivia’s eyes. He looked like a man watching his own ho burn while he stood locked inside.
Her lip trembled then—the very first crack in her perfect, porcelain mask. It wasn’t a graceful break; it was a jagged, painful splintering of her soul. A single, solitary tear escaped her deadened eyes, tracking a slow, scorching path down her pale cheek.
"The doctor just told us, Mathias," she whispered, the words shattering the heavy silence of the room like a death knell tolling in an empty cathedral.
"The poison doesn’t kill. It mimics death. It withers the life, but it doesn’t extinguish the soul imdiately. It waits. It lingers in that cold, silent slumber."
She leaned in, her face inches from his, her breath ghosting over his skin like a winter wind.
"I rember the blue flowers on his tiny grave, Mathias. I rember how they blood even in the frost. I think..." her voice broke into a dry, agonizing sob, "...I think we buried our son alive."
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