ebookland Chapter 195: the same exact cup
Chapter 195: the same exact cup
"Elvira...?"
The name left Olivia’s lips like a frozen gasp, hanging dead in the damp, freezing air of the vault.
Slowly, the shattered creature chained to the stone lifted her head. Beneath the matted, tangled strands of her ash-black hair, a pair of piercing yellow eyes locked onto Olivia. Though her body was broken beyond repair, the mere sight of her sister seemed to instantly ignite a twisted, malicious spark deep within her hollow chest.
Elvira’s gaze raked over Olivia’s appearance—the stark black mourning dress, the heavy dark veil, and the silver wedding ring catching the faint torchlight.
A sharp, hysterical laugh suddenly ripped from Elvira’s throat, a wretched, heartbreaking sound that echoed violently against the stone walls. She stared at Olivia, her lips curling into a hideous, triumphant smirk.
"He is dead, isn’t he?" Elvira rasped out, her teeth covered in grime. "Oh... that miserable son of a bitch is actually dead! Father did it... he truly did it!"
Before the echoes of that vile laughter could even fade, something snapped inside Olivia.
Driven by a sudden, blinding surge of pure, unadulterated rage, Olivia stepped forward and drove a vicious, powerful kick straight into Elvira’s face. The force of the impact cracked against the stone chamber, sending one of Elvira’s bloodied teeth flying across the cold floor.
Elvira spat a thick glob of copper onto the ground, coughing harshly, but that ugly, twisted smile never left her face. She looked up through her bruises, her yellow eyes dancing with absolute malice.
"Olivia, stop!" Leon reacted instantly, his heart hitting his ribs as he lunged forward, grabbing Olivia by her shoulders and pulling her back with force. "Control yourself! You are pregnant—how could you do something so reckless? You could hurt yourself!"
He held her tightly away from the chained creature, his breathing ragged as his eyes darted from Olivia’s pale face to her stomach.
"Dammit," Leon muttered, his voice trembling with a mixture of anger and regret. "I think bringing you down here was a terrible mistake after all."
Olivia stood frozen, completely frozen. Her lips trembled beneath her veil, but she was utterly incapable of speaking. She refused to let the words pass her lips—she refused to utter the statement that Mathias was dead. Because deep down, despite all her rigid posture and her hollow claims of accepting his demise, a desperate, irrational part of her soul just wanted to live in the illusion that he would somehow return.
"I am fine, Leon," she finally managed to choke out, her hands shaking as she pulled away from his grip. "Just... calm down."
From the shadows against the stone wall, Elvira began to laugh again. It was a jagged, broken sound, the laughter of a lunatic who had long lost her mind to the dark. She leaned what remained of her back against the damp stone, her yellow eyes gleaming with venomous delight.
"Oh... so you are pregnant again?" Elvira purred, her head tilting crazily. "And here I thought you wouldn’t dare to try it a second time. Ah, I knew it... I should have never left the job to that foolish, incompetent maid."
Leon froze, his gaze shifting sharply between the two sisters. His brows furrowed in deep, dangerous confusion as he tried to decipher the venom in Elvira’s words. Mathias had never told him about what had truly happened to Olivia in the past—it was her sacred, painful secret. But Elvira was clearly relishing the chance to torture her right in front of him.
Elvira shifted her mangled frame, adjusting her posture with a grotesque sort of pride.
"Tell me, sister..." Elvira whispered, her bloody smile widening until her cheeks split. "How exactly did he die? Was he buried alive... just like what happened to your child?"
Leon stood frozen, the air in his lungs turning to ice as he tried to process the horrific revelations. But Olivia... her expression didn’t flicker. She had already been broken once, shattered into a thousand pieces long ago; she didn’t have the luxury of falling apart again. She needed to be stronger than the pain.
A cold, confident smile played on her lips—a smile that didn’t reach her haunted eyes.
"No," Olivia said, her voice steady and devoid of warmth. "He didn’t die the way you said. But do you know who will?"
She stepped forward, her black skirts rustling against the stone like a warning. With a sudden, forceful movement, she grabbed Elvira by her tangled hair, yanking her head back to force those yellow eyes to look up at her.
"You, my dear sister."
"Father... Father will kill you if you touch me!" Elvira hissed through the blood in her mouth.
"Don’t worry," Olivia whispered, leaning in so close their foreheads almost touched. "Of course, our dear father must be present. He needs to see exactly how I’ve decided to treat you. I was patient with you only because we shared the blood of Serena... but you know? I think it will be wonderful to use you as a vessel to bleed out every single bit of darkness I feel inside me."
Leon watched them, a shiver running down his spine. The way Olivia moved, the way she spoke—it was a terrifying, ghostly reflection of his brother. She was becoming the very shadow Mathias used to cast. Instinctively, he did the only thing he knew how to do: he followed her lead, just as he had always followed Mathias.
"So, sister-in-law," Leon asked, his voice dropping into a dark, compliant tone. "Should I start preparing a coffin?"
Olivia let go of Elvira’s hair, allowing her head to thud heavily back against the stone. She turned to Leon, her eyes sharp, dark, and utterly unyielding beneath her mourning attire.
"You’re starting to grow on me, Leon," she murmured, her slender fingers deliberately smoothing out the wrinkles of her black leather gloves. "Yes. Prepare the coffin. We can’t keep our dear father waiting any longer."
A tense, heavy quiet settled between them, broken only by the ragged, wet breathing of the broken woman at their feet. Olivia turned her gaze completely away from the shattered creature, locking it onto Leon. Her voice dropped, soft, but carrying a suffocating, gravitational weight.
"You told me earlier that you would be my support. Tell me, Leon... will you truly stay by my side until the very end? No matter how deep into hell we have to crawl?"
Leon glared down at Elvira, a dark, mocking smirk twisting his lips. "I am a man of my word, sister."
Olivia’s brow arched slightly beneath her heavy lace veil. "Did you just call me sister?"
"No," Leon replied flatly, his cheeks flushing with a sudden, tense color as he cleared his throat aggressively. "I didn’t. You’re mishearing things under that heavy veil."
"I am cold, Leon, not deaf," Olivia countered, her voice dropping into a dry, unimpressed monotone. "You distinctly said ’sister’."
"I said sister-in-law, and the end of the word got caught in my collar," Leon shot back, his tone quickly shifting into his usual defensive, stubborn bickering. He crossed his arms, looking away with a scowl. "Don’t flatter yourself. I wouldn’t call you that even if Mathias forced me at swordpoint."
"Good, because hearing it from you makes my skin crawl," she murmured. "Now, bring this wretched curse with us, I want her to experience every single ounce of agony she once inflicted upon me. I want her to breathe the dirt."
Leon’s smile widened, a dangerous, psychotic glint flickering in his eyes. He understood her perfectly. "Is it exactly what I think it is?"
"And what else would it be?" she countered coldly.
Leon let out a low, grim chuckle that rattled through the narrow vault. He stepped toward Elvira, reaching into the heavy folds of his dark coat to pull out a massive, reinforced iron syringe filled with a thick, pitch-black sedative.
"Sweet dreams, you yellow-eyed scorpion," Leon whispered, his tall shadow looming over her like an executioner’s shroud.
Pure, unadulterated terror finally smashed through Elvira’s crazed facade. The realization of what was coming made her thrash violently against her chains, the iron rattling frantically against the stone slab. Her yellow eyes widened to the brink of tearing. "Stop... stop! Father will slaughter you all if he finds out! You ungrateful bastards will bleed for this! You can’t do this to me! Stop—!"
The heavy steel needle pierced her flesh. Her screeching voice began to crack, drowning in her own blood, as the dark fluid surged into her veins. Her frantic movements grew sluggish, her jaw slacking and her head lolling backward into the shadows until she fell completely silent, slipping into a forced, suffocating oblivion.
Leon pulled the needle back with a cold snap, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow as he looked at Olivia. "I’ll have my most trusted men handle the transport. Don’t worry, Olivia—I am not the Duke’s right hand for nothing. I know how to make a living person disappear."
Olivia gave a single, firm nod, her gloved hand resting protectively, almost instinctively, over her stomach. "Good. I am counting on you."
Leaving the suffocating, copper-scented darkness of the subterranean vault, Olivia walked back up the narrow stone steps alone. The freezing night air of Locron hit her face like wet silk, cutting through the numbness in her chest. She did not sleep that night.
From her high frosted window, she stood like a dark statue, watching the distant, flickering torches of Leon’s men down in the old, forgotten family graveyard. Through the howling northern wind, the faint, rhythmic, and brutal thud of shovels striking the frozen, unyielding earth echoed through the silent estate.
Every strike of the iron against the dirt felt like a beautiful, terrifying countdown.
Hours bled by with agonizing slowness, the darkness of the night reluctantly giving way to a bleak, gray dawn.
Miles away in his own duchy, Roland was losing his mind, consumed by a feral, unbridled rage as he searched for his missing daughter. Curses ripped from his throat, shaking the very walls of his castle, and his blade spared no one—servants and knights alike were slaughtered if they dared to cross his path or offer nothing but empty reports. He was tearing the world apart, entirely unaware that he was searching for a ghost.
Because deep within the silent, frozen grounds of Locron, the grave was already finished.
Olivia stood perfectly still at the very edge of the freshly dug pit, her black mourning veil swaying violently in the sub-zero wind. Beside her, Leon leaned heavily against his mud-stained shovel, his chest rising and falling with absolute, dark pride. Together, they stared down into the narrow abyss of the earth, right at the mangled girl trapped inside the tight wooden casket.
Beneath them, the suffocating fog of the sedative was finally beginning to clear from Elvira’s mind.
Slowly, her heavy eyelids fluttered open, blinking against the dim, gray daylight. Her blurred vision struggled to focus, her lungs gasping for air only to inhale the suffocating, claustrophobic smell of raw dirt and pine wood. The world was small, wooden, and cold. But as the shadows above her took shape, she saw them—Olivia and Leon, looming like twin deities of vengeance at the top of the pit, looking down at her as if she were nothing but dirt.
Leon offered her a mockingly cheerful wave, his smile dripping with pure malice. Olivia, however, didn’t move a muscle. She merely fixated her dead, frozen gaze upon her sister’s trembling, terrified frame.
"Are you ready, sister?" Olivia whispered, her voice dropping into the wooden depths of the coffin like dry ice. "Are you ready to drink from the exact same cup you forced me to swallow?"
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