Her features froze as if someone had pressed cold glass against her face. Her mouth fell open in a silent, astonished O.
"Wait — Maela, wait," Olivia begged, voice splitting. "What is this nonsense you're spouting? I know you want me to mend fences with the Empress, but do you even understand the weight of what you're saying?"
Maela's hands trembled; she did not look away. "I understand every word I say," she answered, and then, as if the suddenness of the confrontation had robbed her of breath, she stopped. "Why did you cut me off? I haven't finished. Sit. Sit down and listen — with calm, with focus."
Olivia sank onto the edge of the chaise as if the air itself had grown heavy, willing herself to obey. Maela, who had always been the steadier of the two, leaned forward, the lamplight shaving pale lines into her face.
"You were like me once," Maela said softly. "You know that helplessness — the disbelief that sets in when the world rearranges itself without your permission. I was shattered. Utterly. But do you know what stunned me more than that night? When I tried to press her for the truth, she would slip away, as if the memory had become a wound she could not touch without reliving the pain."
She paused; a brittle laugh escaped her and then fell silent. "I told her — I told her you are not to blame, that you are nothing like the Duke. I tried to make her see that. And she answered me with tears. 'That is why,' she said — 'because she resembles me. She is a copy of me.'"
"That is why," she whispered, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. "Because she looks like me. She is a mirror of my face, a copy of my very being. I do not even know… if she is his daughter… or—"
I seized her shoulders, shaking her as though the truth might spill free if only I rattled it loose. "What are you saying? Speak plainly!"
Her answer struck like ice water against my skin.
"I do not know if she is Roland's child… or Lucius's. I cannot tell whose blood runs in her veins. I only know she is truly mine. I cannot love her."
The silence that followed was a tomb. She looked away, as though the admission had carved a wound too deep to expose again.
"That day," she murmured, her voice low and weary, "and even now… I have never been able to open the subject with her again." A long sigh slipped from her lips, heavy with resignation. Then, turning her gaze back to me, she spoke with quiet insistence.
"I only want you to understand one thing, Olivia. Your mother bears no fault. You cannot lay blame on her for what happened."
"That's all you have to say?" Olivia's voice climbed, edged with incredulity.
Maela flinched as if struck. "What?" she cried. "Is that truly all you can offer?"
Olivia's laugh was steel and salt. "Is that all?
Olivia, your mother — she was a victim."
Her words came quicker now, a flood. "Be silent. I do not want to know the past of that—that courtesan. You come to me and tell me she was assaulted and expect my sympathy? She who threw me away? I am a victim too. If that is your only consolation, then I am leaving."
She rose, the motion a knife through the charged air. Maela reached out and gripped her wrist, an unexpected gentleness in the hold.
"I'm sorry, Olivia. About the things I said of her. Sit. Please — not like this, not our last words." Her voice faltered on the last syllable and Olivia's laugh — if it could be called that — was hollow.
"Last words?" Olivia echoed. "
I have decided to leave the duchy. To leave everything."
Olivia's palm tightened as if to stop something more than a departure. "What do you mean, leave everything? Have you forgotten who Tharon is? He will have you killed if you try to walk out without his leave, if you demand a divorce. You are a bargaining chip in his hands. He will not let you go."
Maela looked at the small leather case she had packed and then back at Maela with a cold, steady gaze. "I know that," she said simply. "Which is why I came today under an assumed name. Because I've made up my mind. Tonight I run. I came to bid you farewell."
"Farewell?" Olivia's voice was barely more than wind. "Have you lost your mind? Tharon will see to it. What of Vira? She is your daughter, after all." A shadow passed across Maela's face, mournful and tender.
"Yes," Maela whispered. "She is my child." The confession seemed to cost her a physical exertion. "But the monster she has become — I cannot call her my daughter anymore. Not after what she did to you… and to her siblings."
"Her siblings?" Olivia said, and then — a pause, thick as a held breath. "Do you mean the rumors are true? Did ElVira really…kill her infant siblings?"
Maela's eyes filled and the room hummed with the sound of the clock. "I could not protect you. I could not protect my children," she said, voice breaking. "My child — born of me — I never imagined she would become so cruel. I tried to keep you all safe; I soothed your wounds in secret when I could. But ElVira… she became a thing that was not mine. She began to reflect Roland in every way; she became something horrible. I cannot bear to meet her gaze."
"Calm down," Olivia murmured, reaching for the trembling woman in front of her, trying to be the shore against Maela's tempest.
Olivia's shoulders sagged as if she were letting down a fortification she had kept for years. "There was nothing you could do while everything happened under the Duke's watch," she said, voice small. "I never blamed you for what was done to me. You always came — in secret — to bind my wounds, to wash away the marks of their cruelty. If not for you, I would be dead. As for your other children… my condolences." Her words were blunt, honest in a way that hurt.
A sound tore out of Maela — a raw, animal sound that was half-wail, half-laugh. "Maybe I am not your mother," she whispered, the admission like a stone dropping into dark water. "But I have loved you as my daughter. If things had been kinder, if the winds had blown another way, I would have kept you close. Now I am powerless."
They sat like that for a long while, the two women caught between accusatory histories and the thin, desperate necessity of love.
She exhaled, the tension in her shoulders loosening just enough for her to speak without breaking.
"It's all right," she said, her voice gentler than before, though still weighed with weariness. "I understand, and I accept your apology. "
The quiet between them lingered for a moment, thick as velvet. Then her gaze shifted, suddenly sharper, solemn, as if she had remembered something urgent and dangerous.
"Olivia," she whispered, almost as though someone might be listening beyond the walls. "Do not meet with Elvira at the end of this week."
Olivia's brows knitted, her breath catching in suspicion. "What are you saying? How could you possibly know about our meeting?"
"I overheard her," the woman admitted, the confession tumbling out with visible strain. "ElVira… she is planning something. A snare, a trap, I cannot tell its shape, but it reeks of malice. She has aligned herself with a man named Sebastian. I heard her instruct him — to watch you, to stay close. Whatever she intends, it will not end well for you."
Olivia saw the tremor in her hands, the flicker of dread in her eyes. She hesitated, then decided to ease her. "Very well. Very well. I won't meet her."
"Promise me."
"You have my word."
Relief softened her features; the tension that had carved lines across her brow seemed to ebb away. With a practiced gesture she drew her veil down once more, concealing the storm in her expression.
"Forgive me, Olivia. I must go at once — Roland will notice my absence soon."
But before she could turn, Olivia's hand darted to a drawer. She pulled out a diamond necklace that caught the lamplight like frozen fire, along with a pouch heavy with coins. She pressed them into the woman's hand.
"You cannot travel with nothing. Take these. The money will last for a while, and the necklace — you can sell it when the need grows desperate."
The woman froze, staring down at the unexpected gift. Her lips quivered into a smile, fragile yet luminous, like the break of dawn after a long night. She stepped forward and wrapped Olivia in her arms. At first Olivia stiffened, her body resisting the closeness; but slowly, her defenses faltered. She returned the embrace, resting for one rare instant in the warmth of another.
"I will write to you when I arrive," the woman whispered against her ear. "Under the name Celine."
Olivia managed a small nod. "As you wish."
And then — like a shadow slipping from one room to another — the Duchess was gone, leaving no sound but the faint echo of her steps in the corridor.
Silence returned. Olivia sat alone, her mind a storm of revelations and confessions she wished she had not heard. Her chest tightened, and words spilled bitterly from her lips as though they had been waiting for years.
"Does the world hate me so much? As if it weren't enough to be the daughter of a madman, condemned to suffer his shadow all my life. And now — to learn I am the child of violence, a daughter of shame…"
She pressed her fists against her temples. Rage and despair twisted together.
"Damn it. What did she mean, that she doesn't know which of them was my father? Roland? Lucius? I should have let her finish. I should have heard the truth."
Her voice cracked into silence, and the room seemed to lean in on her, heavy with secrets. The necklace still gleamed on the table, mute witness to a farewell that had raised more questions than it had answered.