I will be the perfect wife this time

Chapter 188: The Unsent Reply

Olivia’s eyelids parted, and the morning light struck her as an affront. It filtered through the room with a hushed, golden serenity that felt entirely unearned, a cruel contrast to the jagged edges of her memory.

She lay paralyzed for a heartbeat. The silence was heavy and airless. In the quiet, a desperate, smaller version of herself tried to weave a lie: that the graveyard had been a mere fever dream, a trick of the midnight fog that would dissolve with the dawn.

But then came the breath—sharp and shallow—and the lie collapsed.

A rhythmic ache throbbed against her temples, keeping time with the frantic pulse in her throat. Her eyes felt scorched, weighted by the phantom salt of tears she didn’t remember shedding. When she moved her fingers, they fluttered against the sheets, unsteady and treacherous.

It was no nightmare.

The weight of it forced her upright. Her limbs were leaden, resisting her will as she navigated the expanse of the room toward the vanity. She moved as if wading through deep water, hauling an invisible anchor.

The memories didn’t return as thoughts, but as physical sensations: the smell of rain-slicked earth, the biting wind that had ignored her cloak, and the bruising pressure of Leon’s hand as he dragged her away from that patch of soil. He had forced her to leave, though she had wanted nothing more than to sink into the mud and stay.

She reached the mirror and stopped.

Olivia stared at the glass, but the woman staring back was a stranger. This wasn’t the Duchess—the woman defined by the sharp tilt of her chin or the weight of her title. This was a hollowed-out thing. A vessel that retained its form, yet possessed no substance.

Then—

His voice flooded the room.

It didn’t arrive as a memory or a distant echo from the hallway; it materialized from the very air, pressing against her skin from every corner of the silence.

*"I will return... I love you."*

Olivia’s lungs seized. The word *love* held no warmth. It didn’t soothe. Instead, it felt like a brand—something jagged and indelible carved into her marrow.

She had moved through the world in a state of starvation, never knowing the shape of the thing she lacked. Now, having finally touched it, the loss felt like an amputation. It had been granted only to be torn away, a violent theft that left her raw.

The pressure inside her reached its breaking point.

Before her mind could intervene, her arm swung. Her fist collided with the glass, and the mirror surrendered in a chaotic symphony of shattering crystal.

The sound was absolute—a final, definitive snap that seemed to echo the breaking of something internal. Shards erupted outward, scattering across the floor like frozen sparks. Her knuckles split, the skin blooming crimson, but she felt nothing. She didn’t even glance at the wound.

She remained motionless for a long beat, watching her fractured reflection.

Then, with a terrifyingly steady hand, she reached down. She retrieved a single shard.

The fragment was substantial, its edge honed to a merciless point. She gripped it, fascinated by how something so lethal could feel so grounding when the rest of her world was dissolving into smoke.

She turned away from the wreckage and walked toward the copper tub.

Steam curled lazily from the surface of the water. Someone—Kira, most likely—had prepared it with a quiet, dutiful grace. It was a small mercy, an act of mundane care that now felt utterly hollow.

Olivia stepped into the heat.

The water rose to meet her, but the warmth felt distant, unable to penetrate the cold that had settled in her bones. She raised the shard, the light catching its lethal edge one last time.

Then, she dragged it across her forearm.

There was no tremor in her hand, no instinct to recoil. She sought the sting as a distraction, a desperate attempt to anchor her mind to a sensation more manageable than the hollow ache in her chest.

The pain arrived—a sharp, white-hot line—cutting through the fog for a fleeting moment before the numbness rushed back to swallow it. Blood began to bloom in the water, uncurling in dark, lazy ribbons that clouded the clear surface.

She watched the transformation with a detached curiosity. She was so far removed from herself that she didn’t hear the heavy thud of the door hitting the wall. She didn’t notice Isabella.

Isabella stood paralyzed, the air trapped in her lungs as she took in the scene. Then, a strangled cry broke from her throat. She lunged forward, her fingers bruising as she clamped them around Olivia’s wrist, forcing the glass from her grip before the edge could find the vein.

"Olivia—stop! What are you doing?Oliviaaa" Her voice was a jagged wreck of terror. "Kira! Get help—now!"

Kira bolted into the room, but the sight brought her to a dead halt.

Olivia wasn’t weeping. She wasn’t trembling in shock or screaming in agony.

She was smiling—a thin, haunting curve of the lips that held no joy, only the terrifying relief of a mind that had finally let go.

It was a faint, spectral smile, one that seemed to belong to another world entirely—a look that had no business existing in that room, or on the face of a person who still drew breath.

The panic that followed was a blur of frantic, trembling motion. They hauled her from the water, their hands slick as they worked to bind the wound. The air grew thick with the sharp scent of medicinal tinctures as they fought to anchor her back to the world, pressing against time itself until the flow of crimson finally ebbed.

"Olivia, get out of the tub," Isabella commanded. Her voice was low, anchored by a forced stability.

For a long heartbeat, there was no sign that the words had been heard.

Then, Olivia moved.

She rose with a slow, mechanical grace, as if her limbs were being operated by invisible wires rather than her own will. She stepped onto the cold floor, her gaze fixed on a point far beyond the walls of the room. She looked at neither Isabella nor Kira; she simply existed in the space they occupied, a ghost in her own skin.

Kira dressed her in silence, smoothing dry fabric over her cold limbs. Olivia remained a statue, a hollow vessel that bore only a passing resemblance to the woman they once knew.

When the last fastening was secured, Kira lingered by the threshold, her eyes wide and haunting.

"Leave us," Isabella said softly.

The door clicked shut, sealing the two of them in a renewed, suffocating silence.

Isabella stood back for a moment, observing the ruin of her friend. The mask of her own composure slipped, revealing a raw, unguarded pity—a depth of sorrow she had never expected to feel for the Duchess.

Taking a tentative step forward, Isabella reached out and pulled the hollow woman into a tight embrace.

Olivia did not pull away. She did not lean in. She simply stood there, a body without a soul, offering no more resistance than the air itself.

She remained static, a statue in Isabella’s arms, as if the physical contact were a language she had long since forgotten how to speak.

"Olivia..." Isabella’s voice caught, muffled against the silk of her friend’s shoulder. "Please... you cannot do this. You are tearing yourself apart."

"I’m fine, Isabella."

The response was effortless. Her voice lacked the jagged edges of trauma; it was smooth, tranquil, and utterly terrifying. A ghostly smile returned to her lips, thin and misplaced.

"I truly am. I don’t understand why everyone is speaking in such a frantic manner."

"Fine?" Isabella recoiled, her head shaking in a desperate attempt to reject the reality before her. "You were just—you were trying to end your life!"

A silence stretched between them.

Olivia tilted her head with a curious, bird-like precision, as if she were weighing a particularly dull intellectual argument.

"No," she whispered, her tone light. "I was simply going to meet Mathias."

The air in the room seemed to plummet in temperature. The words hung there, cold and heavy.

Isabella lunged forward, seizing Olivia’s hands with a grip that bordered on painful, her knuckles white.

"Olivia, look at me. Listen to me. You cannot do that. That isn’t how the world works. You can’t just... follow him."

For the first time, the vacant stare shifted. Olivia’s eyes focused, dragging themselves back from whatever distant horizon they had been haunting, and settled directly on Isabella.

Her gaze remained untethered, drifting with a sort of detached curiosity that made the skin crawl.

"And how does it work, then?"

The question was so hollow, so devoid of the weight of the world, that Isabella’s composure finally shattered. Driven by a blind, panicked desperation to ground her, Isabella’s hand moved. The slap resonated through the room, a sharp, violent crack that seemed to startle the very shadows.

"Olivia. Wake up!"

The world held its breath.

Then, the transformation was instantaneous. The fragile, porcelain stillness of Olivia’s face fractured, and the dam finally broke. Tears erupted—not as a slow trickle, but as a torrential, suffocating force. Her breathing became a series of jagged, shallow gasps that threatened to choke her.

She recoiled, her hands clutching at her own arms as if she were a stranger inhabiting a collapsing house, terrified by the sudden influx of sensation.

"Olivia—answer me!" Isabella cried, her own voice trembling under the weight of her fear. "What is wrong with you?"

"I..." The word splintered in Olivia’s throat. She pressed a palm against her mouth, a futile attempt to stem the tide of her own unraveling. "I never replied to it."

Her chest heaved, the air catching in a painful hitch.

"The letter..."

Isabella’s brow furrowed, the urgency of the moment momentarily derailed by confusion. "What letter? Olivia, what are you talking about?"

But the connection was gone. Olivia’s eyes were no longer fixed on her friend; instead, they burned with a sudden, frantic lucidity. The fog of the void had been replaced by a sharp, manic clarity that cut through her tears like a blade.

"Yes... I shall reply now," she murmured, the words tumbling out in a feverish rush. She began to move, driven by a newfound, terrifying purpose. "He must be waiting. Mathias is waiting for my reply."

She pivoted with a jarring suddenness, her focus narrowing on the desk at the far end of the room.

Isabella moved to intercept her, but Olivia was already there, hovering over the surface where the letter lay. It was the final one he had sent—the ink still vibrant, the paper holding the ghost of a life that no longer existed.

As Isabella took in the sight of it, the reality of the tragedy seemed to sharpen, cutting through her own defenses. Her throat constricted, her voice thick with a grief she could no longer suppress.

"Olivia..." she whispered, then more forcefully, her voice splintering. "Mathias is gone. He is *gone*."

Olivia went rigid.

For a heartbeat, the words seemed to hover in the air, refused entry into her mind. Then she shook her head with a frantic, rhythmic denial.

"No," she insisted, the word coming out in a sharp, defensive burst. "No, he hasn’t gone. He’s waiting. He told me he would wait."

Her fingers clamped around the pen, her knuckles turning a ghostly white. She snatched a fresh sheet of parchment, pulling it toward her with an urgency that bordered on the religious. There was a desperate relief in her movements now—the frantic energy of a person who believed that ink and paper could bridge the abyss, that a written word could reach into the earth and pull him back.

She held the pen poised above the pristine white surface.

She waited.

But the silence of the room was mirrored by a silence in her mind. No words formed. No thoughts coalesced. There was only a vast, bleached void pressing against her consciousness, an emptiness so absolute that language withered within it.

Slowly, her fingers slackened. The pen grew heavy, sliding from her grasp. The fevered purpose that had animated her moments before drained away, leaving her hollow once more, as if the light in the room had finally, mercifully, gone out.

When her head finally lifted, her eyes found Isabella’s.

The frantic energy had vanished, replaced by a clarity so fragile it felt as though it might shatter under the weight of a single word. It was a calm that felt more dangerous than her previous madness—a cold, terrifying stillness.

"He is truly dead... isn’t he?" she asked. Her voice was barely a thread of sound.

Isabella couldn’t find her voice. The air in her throat felt like glass. She managed only a small, jagged nod, a single movement that felt like a betrayal.

"Yes."

For a long moment, Olivia was a statue.

There was no outward sign of the blow landing. Instead, she seemed to be imploding, her entire being folding inward into a central, dark gravity.

Then, the collapse became visible.

A sound tore itself from her throat—a raw, guttural keening that didn’t sound like it belonged to a human. It was the sound of something being uprooted. She doubled over, her breath escaping in ragged, impossible gasps as her shoulders began to heave with a violent, rhythmic force.

"I am still angry with him," she choked out, the words struggling to survive through her sobs. "He promised... he said he would make it up to me when he returned. How could he leave me while I was still so angry?"

Her voice splintered, the pitch rising with her desperation.

"He gave me his word..."

Isabella took a tentative step forward, her hands hovering in the air, useless. There were no words in any language that could bridge the distance between them now.

"How could he do this to me?" Olivia whispered. She was no longer speaking to Isabella; she was interrogating the void. She clutched the blank parchment so tightly her nails pierced the paper, as if trying to wring a response from the fibers.

"Olivia... please," Isabella urged softly, her own heart breaking. "Try to breathe. Just breathe."

But Olivia was gone, pulled into a landscape of her own making—a place where Isabella’s voice couldn’t reach, and where the light was failing.

"And I never told him," she whispered, her voice falling into a hollow, haunting register.

She stared down at the paper, her fingers trembling against the white surface.

"I never told him that I loved him."

She stopped. The room felt suddenly, impossibly quiet. Her breath hitched, a fragile, broken thing in the silence.

"I never told him... how much I truly loved him."