Mathias woke with his muscles locked, a residual tension that made his body feel like a weapon left out in the rain to rust. His first sensation was the silk of her gown under his palm. It wasn’t a comfort; it was a jolt of nausea. He realized he had surrendered control, sinking into a void he hadn’t authorized.

​He lifted his head with a slow, pained deliberation. His eyes, webbed with broken red veins, found Olivia. She sat there with the terrifying stillness of marble—one hand gripping a book, the other buried in his hair like a handler keeping a tether on a caged animal. She didn’t look like a wife waiting for her husband to stir; she looked like a sentry watching for the first sign of a relapse.

​"Olivia...?" Her name left his throat like a dry rasp, a sound he barely recognized.

​She didn’t smile. She didn’t flinch. "Finally," she said, her voice stripped of any warmth. "I was beginning to wonder when you’d stop trying to crush my ribs in your sleep."

​Mathias recoiled. He threw himself off the bed as if the sheets had turned to white-hot coals, his feet hitting the cold floor with a heavy thud. He sat on the edge of the mattress, back turned to her, lungs burning as he fought for a steady breath. Cold sweat broke across his forehead, slick and stinging.

​"How long?" he managed, his voice low. "How long was I... like that?"

​"Hours," she replied. The sound of her book closing was sharp, final.

​He stayed silent for a moment, the shame of his vulnerability weighing more than the curse itself. He forced his shoulders to drop, trying to piece together the fragments of the Duke he was supposed to be.

​"I’m sorry for troubling you, Olivia," he said. The words were quiet, devoid of his usual jagged edge. "I didn’t intend to make you bear the weight of my sleep."

Olivia studied him for a long beat, her gaze stripping away the frozen layers of his composure. "Don’t apologize," she said, her voice steady but searching. "I just... I feel like you’re burying something heavy. Are you actually alright, Mathias?"

​He offered no verbal defense. Instead, he closed the distance between them with a slow, deliberate stride. He placed a hand on her shoulder—his touch surprisingly light—before leaning down to press a quiet, lingering kiss to her forehead. The movement was so foreign that Olivia blinked in stunned silence, her mind struggling to categorize this new species of "attack," one that carried no malice.

​Before she could retreat, he pulled her into a brief, tight embrace. He leaned in, his breath warm against her ear as he whispered, "I promise you, things will get better. Don’t worry."

​"Oh... alright," she managed to stammer, her voice sounding small and confused even to her own ears.

​She slipped from his arms and left for the washroom, the sudden intimacy lingering like a phantom heat. When she returned a short while later, drying the damp edges of her gown, she found him exactly where she had left him—staring into the hollow space of the room, lost in a trance.

​She paused, her brow furrowed in genuine confusion. "You’re still here? I assumed you’d be rushing off to meet the commanders. Or Leon."

​"I don’t want to work today," Mathias replied. He slumped back into the chair, the sheer exhaustion etched into the lines of his face. "I’m tired. So, I’ve decided to spend the day with you."

​Olivia’s eyebrows shot up. "With me? Me? Why?"

​Mathias stared at her, taking in the clinical seriousness of her expression. It wasn’t an act; she truly couldn’t fathom why a man would choose her company over the cold logic of war rooms and maps. He let out a sudden, jagged laugh—a short, bitter sound that echoed against the stone walls.

​Olivia’s frown deepened. "Is something funny?"

"It’s nothing," Mathias said, brushing a hand over his eyes, though a ghost of a smile lingered on his lips. "It’s just the irony of it. You’re a prodigy when it comes to orchestrating a man’s ruin, Olivia, yet when it comes to us, you can’t seem to grasp the simplest of things."

A maid entered then, moving with a practiced, hushed efficiency to begin the morning rituals. She started on Olivia’s hair, pinning the strands into place and readying her gown. Mathias remained in the corner, watching in a strange, heavy silence. He didn’t look at her with the casual gaze of a husband; he looked at her with a raw fascination, as if she were a riddle that years of tactical warfare had never prepared him to solve.

Once the maid departed, they moved to the small dining table. The room was quiet, save for the rhythmic clinking of silver. Olivia was unnervingly still, her spoon idly tracing circles in her cup without her ever taking a sip.

"I’ve done something you might consider reckless," she said abruptly, her eyes fixed on the steam curling from her tea. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

Mathias looked up, his movements halting. "What is it?"

"I told Kyle... everything. I told him that the blood in my veins is the same as his. That we share a father."

A thick silence fell over the room, the kind of silence where you could hear the frantic thrum of a heart against ribs. Mathias set his fork down with a slow, deliberate care, as if any sudden motion might shatter the fragile atmosphere. "You told him you’re his sister? Just like that?"

"I didn’t want him to hear it from someone else’s mouth," she replied, her voice cooling. "And Kyle... he’s the only one I share blood with that I actually, in a way, appreciate."

Mathias took a long, steadying breath, trying to calculate the magnitude of the storm this confession would stir. "And if Kyle knows... what of the Emperor? Do you intend to claim your place beside him? Will you tell him you’re his daughter?"

At that moment, Olivia’s clinical mask slipped, replaced by a hollow, haunting void. "The Emperor?" She let out a faint, soulless laugh. "That man is nothing to me but a bloodline I refuse to acknowledge. I have no desire to complicate my life with the title of ’Imperial Daughter.’ I only want to be... myself."

Mathias didn’t argue, but he felt his chest tighten. He wasn’t looking at a master strategist anymore; he saw a child standing in the center of a dark room, refusing to reach for her father’s hand because she already knew he wouldn’t catch it. He felt the phantom ache of her longing for a real family—for a father who would protect her without conditions, not an Emperor who would view her as a fresh pawn on a golden chessboard.

Olivia set her spoon down with a slow, deliberate click, staring into the empty space as if her bitterest memories were manifesting before her. "I’ve spent my entire life as a doll with Roland pulling the strings, Mathias. I cannot risk becoming a toy for the Emperor as well. Not while he worships that wife of his, and not while I am nothing more than a ghost of a woman he’d rather forget."

A knot formed in Mathias’s throat. Her words were as sharp as a razor and painfully honest. She wasn’t rejecting a father; she was rejecting a new jailer.

He rose from his seat, desperate to fracture the suffocating atmosphere. He glanced toward the window, where the first threads of sunlight were beginning to brush against the leaves of the trees. He turned back to her, his voice uncharacteristically soft.

"Do you want to go out?"

Olivia blinked, her brow furrowing as she studied him. "Out? Didn’t you just say you were too exhausted to move?"

"I am," he replied, reaching his hand toward her. "But I’ll rest in the back garden. That’s all. We’ll walk among the trees for a while—away from these walls."

Olivia rose slowly, suspicion still pooling in her eyes as she searched his unusually relaxed features. "You are strange today, Mathias."

He didn’t offer a defense, only a faint, weary smile. He knew, deep down, how bizarre his behavior was; here he was, a man of violence, begging for a single moment of quietude with a woman who didn’t even know how to love.

They stepped out into the back garden, where the air was thick with the scent of damp grass and wild blossoms. The silence between them had shifted—it was no longer charged with the electricity of fear, but anchored in a rare, fragile tranquility. They walked beneath the heavy shadows of ancient trees, and in the unfiltered sunlight, Olivia looked softer, as if the jagged edges of the palace had been blunted for a fleeting moment.

Mathias reached out and took her hand. She didn’t pull away. It was a quiet, uncomplicated moment, as if the world had ceased its rotation just to grant them these few minutes of humanity. He looked at her and felt a desperate, irrational urge to freeze time right there, far away from the blood and the weight of the curse.

"I wish this peace would last," Olivia whispered, her voice barely carrying over the breeze.

"Yes," he replied, his grip tightening slightly. "I wish for that too."

"I’m tired of all of it," she continued, her gaze fixed on the horizon. "The blood, the pain. I just want to be normal. To be a woman living a normal life, where every day isn’t lived in fear."

Mathias stopped and turned her to face him, his hands resting on her shoulders with a sudden, grounding intensity. "Even if it isn’t now," he promised, his voice cracking with the weight of a vow he wasn’t sure he could keep, "I promise you, I will make your days peaceful."

The sound of swift, confident footsteps shattered the stillness of the garden, as if fate itself were mocking his vow. Olivia turned first, her eyes narrowing with sharp irritation as she caught sight of the tall silhouette and the all-too-familiar cloak.

"The nuisance has arrived," she whispered coldly, the fragile peace of the moment evaporating like mist.

Mathias watched his brother’s approach, a shadow of annoyance crossing his own face. "The spite between you two is escalating to a suspicious degree."

Leon heard the remark, but he didn’t fire back with his usual venomous wit. His face was uncharacteristically pale, his features set in a mask of gravity so severe it made Mathias’s chest tighten. This wasn’t the hedonistic, reckless Leon they knew; this was a commander carrying news that could rewrite history.

Leon came to a halt before them, his gaze sharp and unblinking as it locked onto Mathias. "Mathias. A word. In private."

"What is it?" Mathias asked, his fingers slowly letting go of Olivia’s hand as he felt the first cold prickle of dread.

He stepped away with his brother, putting distance between them and Olivia. Leon leaned in, his voice dropping to a low, jagged whisper that Mathias had never heard from him before.

"An imperial decree just arrived. Things are worse than we imagined."

Mathias’s entire frame went rigid. "And...?"

Leon looked directly into his brother’s eyes, delivering the words like a death sentence.

"The Emperor has summoned you to the capital, effective immediately. You are officially charged with high treason against the throne."