Olivia stood there, a statue of velvet and bone, the copper-stained locket still heavy in her palm. When Kyle reached out, his hand trembling with a need to offer so fragnt of comfort, she recoiled. Her hand snapped up, cutting through the air like a blade.
"Do not touch ," she commanded. Her voice was flat, devoid of the jagged edges of grief, echoing with a hollow, crystalline clarity.
She turned her back on the weeping servants, her gaze sweeping over them with the detachnt of a stranger. "Prepare for the funeral," she said, the words as cold as the morning mist.
Then, her eyes fell upon Leon. He was still collapsed in the dirt, a wreck of a man. "And you," she said, her tone unwavering. "Get up."
Leon looked up at her, his eyes bloodshot and swimming with a volatile mixture of agony and rage. He lunged toward her, a strangled cry tearing from his throat. "He is dead! Dead! Are you happy now? Are you truly this stone-hearted? Does this satisfy you?!"
He would have reached her, perhaps to shake her or wake her from this unnatural trance, but Kyle caught him. Kyle’s grip was firm, though his own expression was one of shocked disbelief at Olivia’s lack of a single tear.
Olivia did not flinch. Not a single strand of her hair moved, and her mask of frozen composure did not crack. Without another word, she turned and ascended the grand staircase, the rhythmic click of her heels the only sound in the suffocating silence.
She reached her chambers, and a mont later, Kira rushed in, her face a mask of sorrow. "My Lady, I... I am so—"
"Kira," Olivia interrupted, her back still turned as she stared into the void of her room. "Fetch the mourning clothes. And save your tears, please. I have no ti for them."
Kira moved with trembling hands, her confusion mirroring the whispers already snaking through the palace corridors. Everyone spoke of the Duchess’s cruelty, of the ice in her veins that seed even colder than the northern winds that had claid her husband.
When the task was done, Olivia stood before the mirror, a specter draped in black from head to toe. She stared at her reflection, unable to interpret the void within her—a numbness so deep it felt like a second skin.
The news of the Duke’s death, slain by a beast in the frozen wastes, spread like wildfire. By afternoon, the manor that had been preparing for a triumph was transford into a fountain of misery.
The funeral was a hollow affair, a ceremony for a man whose body was never recovered. Nobles sward the courtyard, offering rehearsed condolences to the Duchess, who stood like a marble pillar. She offered no tears, no tremors, only a vacant, haunting stare that left the mourners in a state of stunned disbelief. A simple, chanical nod was all she gave to those who spoke his na.
Kyle stood a short distance away, watching her with a bewildered intensity. He searched her face for a single spark of grief, a shred of the woman who had once looked at Matthias with hidden longing.
Beside him, Laila wept openly, her gaze fixed on the solitary figure in black.
"I lost my brother," Laila whispered through her sobs, "but I think your sister is truly not okay, Kyle."
"What do you an?" Kyle asked, his voice harsh with confusion. "She isn’t even crying."
Laila turned to him, her eyes red and weary. "I am simply telling you... she is not okay at all."
As for Isabella, the words she had spoken only a week ago—claiming Olivia truly loved him—seed to evaporate into the frigid air. She was caught in a whirlwind of confusion, torn between comforting her shattered husband, Leon, and reaching out to Olivia, who stood as unyielding as a monolith of stone. She couldn’t understand what was happening behind that frozen mask.
The condolences dragged on until evening, a relentless stream of hollow words, until those two finally appeared.
"Our deepest sympathies, Your Grace," Cedric said, his voice smooth and devoid of warmth.
"My sincerest condolences, Duchess," Roland added, his gaze lingering a second too long.
Olivia lifted her eyes. There was no sympathy in their voices; their words felt like a veiled mockery, a subtle celebration of their rival’s fall. She didn’t even grant them a response. Had it not been for their duty as nobles, she knew they wouldn’t have co at all.
Finally, the procession moved toward the family cetery. A headstone had been erected in the biting cold, placed directly beside his son, Elias. His na was freshly carved into the cold marble.
The nobles and soldiers stood in somber silence for a ti before they began to withdraw, one by one. Tradition dictated that the wife must be the last to leave. Despite Leon’s simring resentnt toward her apparent coldness, he respected the law of the house and departed with Isabella, leaving Olivia alone.
She stood there for a duration she could no longer asure. The sun began to dip below the horizon, and a cruel darkness started to shroud the graveyard, but she remained motionless. She stared at the na, over and over, as if the letters themselves were a riddle she couldn’t solve, her mind refusing to bridge the gap between the man who wrote her a letter and the stone before her.
Mathias Locron.
She was lost in that void until the silence was punctured by the sound of approaching footsteps.
Inside their chambers, Leon sat collapsed in a corner of the room, a shadow of his forr self. Isabella watched him, unable to find the words to bridge the distance; she had lost count of how many tis he had broken down since the news arrived. The oppressive silence of the room was suddenly shattered by a frantic knocking.
"Kira? What do you want?" Isabella asked, her voice weary.
"Lady Isabella... when will my Mistress return?" Kira’s voice trembled from the other side of the door.
"What? What do you an?" Isabella’s heart skipped a beat. "She must have returned after us. We left her at the cetery."
Leon stood up the mont he heard them. His movents were jagged, driven by a sudden, sharp realization.
"Where are you going, Leon? Olivia..."
"I know. I heard everything," Leon interrupted. He turned to look at Isabella, his eyes bloodshot and swollen from hours of weeping. The anger that had fueled him in the courtyard had turned into sothing more somber—a grim, painful clarity.
"I am going to get my foolish sister-in-law from the graveyard," he said, his voice a low rasp. He paused at the door, his hand gripping the fra until his knuckles turned white. "That fool... it’s obvious she’s burying her feelings alive."
The moon, obscured by heavy clouds, offered little light, leaving the rows of headstones to look like broken teeth rising from the earth. Leon approached slowly, his breath hitching in the frigid air. He saw her—a solitary, motionless figure draped in black, standing before the fresh monunt to his brother.
She looked as though she had been carved from the sa marble as the headstones.
"Olivia," he called out, his voice cracking.
She didn’t turn. She didn’t blink. Her gaze remained pinned to the na Mathias Locron, as if she were waiting for the letters to rearrange themselves into a different reality.
Leon stepped closer, his anger from the morning long gone, replaced by a terrifying realization. "The funeral is over, Olivia. The nobles have gone to their warm beds, and the fires in the hearths have been lit. It’s ti to go ho."
"Ho?" she whispered. The word was so faint it was almost swallowed by the wind. It was the first ti she had spoken since the afternoon, and the sound of her voice was like glass shattering.
Leon reached out, his hand hovering near her shoulder before he pulled it back, afraid she might crumble if he touched her. "Yes. Ho. You can’t stay here in the dark."
"There is no ho, Leon," she said, finally turning her head toward him. In the dim light, her eyes looked hollow, reflecting a void that no mourning clothes could hide. "There is only this stone. And the silence he left behind."
Leon felt a lump form in his throat. He saw the way she clutched the locket in her hand, her knuckles white, her skin turning blue from the biting cold.
"You’ve played the Ice Queen all day," he choked out, a stray tear escaping his eye.
"You’ve kept your dignity while I fell apart. But it’s enough now. You don’t have to be a statue anymore. You can hate him, or you can love him, or you can scream... just don’t stand here and die with him."
Leon seized her arm, his grip firm as he began to pull her toward the waiting carriage. Olivia struggled, her movents jagged and uncoordinated as she clawed at his hands.
"Let go of ! Release , Leon!" she scread, her voice no longer a cold blade but a raw, bleeding wound that tore through the silence of the cetery.
"What is wrong with you?" Leon choked out, his own heart breaking at the sight of her. "We have to leave!"
"I cannot leave him!" she cried. As Leon lifted her into his arms, her hands remained outstretched toward the darkness of the family plot, her fingers grasping at the empty air as if trying to catch the ghost of a cloak.
"It is just a stone, Olivia! Just a piece of marble!" Leon shouted, his voice thick with a desperate need to wake her from this nightmare. "Do you understand? He isn’t there!"
"He is my husband!" she wailed, the tears finally bursting forth in a violent, uncontrollable torrent. "I cannot leave him alone, Leon! The night is dark and so cold... he needs soone with him! Please, let go! Didn’t you see them? He and Elias, sleeping there side by side... please, I just want to lie down beside them. It hurts... it hurts so much to take away from them!"
Leon’s own tears fell involuntarily, hot against his cold cheeks. He watched her collapse into a state of near-madness, her grief so profound it had transcended reason. He couldn’t bear to see her like this—shattered, hysterical, and dying of a broken heart.
With a heavy heart, he placed his hand upon her forehead. He channeled a trace of his magic, a gentle, numbing wave that forced her consciousness to drift. Her frantic movents slowed, her screams faded into soft whimpers, and finally, she fell still in his arms, rcifully asleep for the journey back to the manor.
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