I will be the perfect wife this time-Chapter 135: A Chalice of Crimson Vows

Olivia felt a violent, rhythmic jarring—a force trying to tear her out of the visceral abyss of her nightmare. Kyle’s voice sounded distant, muffled as if he were shouting from beneath a fathomless ocean of lead.

​"Olivia! Wake up! What have you done to yourself? Are you even breathing?"

​She forced her eyelids open, the world splintering into blurred, fractured shards. Kyle’s silhouette doubled and tripled before her disoriented gaze. With fingers that felt like carved ice, she reached out, trembling, to touch the warmth of his face—a desperate confirmation of life.

​"Kyle? You’re... you’re breathing. I saw you cold. I saw the hollow in your chest... the blood... so much blood..."

​Kyle recoiled, his features draining of color until he looked like a marble bust. "Dead? Olivia, what madness are you whispering? I am right here!" He caught her hand, pressing it against his skin as if to ground her. "Are you ill? Why were you collapsed here in such a state?"

​The agonizing weight of reality finally settled.

The taste of old pennies and dried blood clung to her tongue, "I am fine," she stammered, her voice a hollow rasp. "I only... I only fell into a deep sleep."

​But Kyle’s gaze drifted to the vanity—to the chaotic wreckage of scattered pills and the dark, bruised crimson of the wine bottles. He reached out, his fingers trembling as he snatched up a single opium pearl. He brought it to his nose, and his voice fractured with a sudden, devastating realization.

​"This is impossible... this is poison," he breathed, his eyes wide with a mixture of horror and betrayal. "You’re taking opium, Olivia? Have you completely lost your mind?"

A dry, skeletal laugh—barely a ghost of a sound—escaped her pallid lips. "Perhaps I am truly mad," she whispered, her voice thinning like smoke. "Maybe the world is just a joke I’m too tired to laugh at."

​With a slow, deliberate motion, she snatched the pill from his fingers. "Why are you even here, Kyle? My sanctuary is not a stage for your curiosity. What I ingest is no concern of yours."

​Kyle lunged forward, his hands shackling her shoulders in a desperate, bruising grip. "This is wrong! Whatever hell you are navigating, it gives you no right to dismantle your soul like this! Does Mathias know of this depravity?"

​Her lips curled into a jagged, vitriolic smirk, her gaze anchored to the hollow void beyond him. "Oh, yes... he is well aware of my ’affinities.’ He is the quintessential husband, isn’t he? He accepted my descent into the fog eons ago."

​"What?" Kyle’s eyes widened, a fractured mixture of horror and profound grief washing over him. This version of Olivia—this hollowed-out vessel—was a stranger to him. "How could he leave you to rot like this?" he bellowed, his rage igniting as he turned to storm out of the chamber. "I will go to him. I will make him explain how he stands by while his wife sinks into this absolute gutter!"

​With a sudden, predatory speed that defied her drug-induced lethargy, Olivia seized his wrist. Her grip was frail, yet it carried the decisive weight of an executioner. She tilted her head back, her eyes devoid of any spark—just two black holes reflecting the encroaching nothingness.

​"Do not cast the blame on him for a sin that belongs solely to me," she rasped, her voice a lethal, frozen warning. "Mathias is my husband, not my governess. Leave him be. I have no appetite for further conflict with him... and neither should you."

​A sudden, sharp stillness settled over her. Olivia leaned in, her voice a frozen whisper that sent a violent shiver down Kyle’s spine. "You truly wish to aid me, Kyle? Beyond the hollow words of siblings?"

​Kyle swallowed hard, the air in the room feeling like ice in his lungs. "Yes... I would do anything. Just... stop this. Stop wandering through the halls like a madwoman."

​She leaned closer, her breath cold and ghostly against his skin. Her words were a rhythmic, terrifying chill. "I need your blood, Kyle. Not a drop—a cup. If you want to save me, bleed for me."

​Kyle recoiled, his face contorting in a mask of sheer disbelief. "What? Is the opium still clawing at your brain? After all this time, are you still drowning in delusions? What madness is this?"

​"I am as lucid as the grave," she stated, her eyes anchoring to his with a predatory, unblinking steadiness.

​Kyle didn’t answer. He stood frozen, staring at her as if she were a monster wearing his sister’s skin.

​The weight of her own words finally crashed into her. The fog of the drugs seemed to recoil in shame. Olivia turned away, throwing herself onto the bed and burying her face in the pillows, seeking to hide from the sunless depth of her own depravity. "Forget it," she muffled into the fabric. "Forget every word. Just leave. I want to be alone in my rot."

​Then, the silence of the room was punctured by a new sound.

The only sound in the room was the rhythmic, hollow thud of droplets hitting the silver. One. Two. Ten. A crimson pool rising to meet her madness."

Olivia bolted upright, her eyes wide as the opium fog evaporated from her veins in an instant. The sight before her was no lingering nightmare; it was a screaming, crimson reality.

​A dark, iron-rich red was cascading from Kyle’s wrist, flowing into the waiting chalice.

​"What are you doing? STOP!" she shrieked, her voice regaining its lethal, frantic edge.

​But Kyle didn’t move. He stood with a haunting, pale grandeur, even as the color began to desert his face. His gaze was an unbreakable iron chain. "You were the one who asked for this, Olivia," he said, his voice a low, steady echo of a martyr. "Why should I stop now, when you’ve finally told me the price of your soul?"

As the silver chalice brimmed, Kyle’s strength finally buckled. He swayed, his body teetering on the edge of collapse. Olivia lunged toward him—not with the predatory hunger of the dream, but with a raw, visceral panic. She forced him into a chair, her hands trembling as she tore open her cabinet to retrieve bandages. Her movements were a frantic, blurred staccato of white linen and shaking fingers.

​"Have you lost your mind?" she hissed, her voice a jagged whisper as she cinched the cloth tight against his skin. "You’ve bled enough to invite the grave! What possessed you to do this?"

​Kyle exhaled a long, bitter sigh, leaning his head back against the cold bedpost. A weary, sacrificial peace settled over his features. "It is only blood, Olivia," he murmured, his voice thinning. "If this is the currency required to buy you back from those filthy pearls of opium, then I would give you every drop currently warming my veins."

​He looked at the full chalice with a faint, haunting smile. "I do not know why you demanded this macabre gift, nor do I care. Is it enough? Or does your hunger require more?"

​Olivia swallowed hard, her throat constricting as she stared at his face—now as pallid and translucent as a ghost’s. "Kyle... go. Rest. You’ve lost far too much."

​He caught her hand with a frail, desperate strength, his eyes pleading through the rising haze of his own exhaustion. "Promise me first... no more pills. I cannot endure the sight of your soul rotting in that fog, sister. I truly cannot."

​For a fleeting second, the darkness in her eyes receded, replaced by a flicker of genuine, aching tenderness. She patted his hand softly, her touch a fragile benediction. "Do not fear... I will not touch them again. Go now. It is a promise."

​Once the door clicked shut, leaving her in the heavy, airless silence, Olivia turned toward the table. Her hands shook as her gaze anchored to the dark, iron-rich liquid.

​"He gave it to me," she whispered to the shadows, her voice a mix of awe and self-loathing. "He surrendered his very life-force so easily... while I harbored such vile, murderous thoughts toward him. What a wretched creature I am."

​She leaned closer, the scent of the blood invading her senses, primal and intoxicating. "Mmm... I wonder. Is this truly enough? Will this bring her back? Or will the altar demand a greater sacrifice next time?"

​The silence of the room offered no answer, only the rhythmic, terrifying echo of her own heartbeat.

​A series of soft, hesitant taps punctured the heavy silence of the chamber.

​"My Lady... may I enter?"

​"Come in," Olivia’s voice was a dry rasp, barely more than the rustle of dead leaves.

​Kira stepped inside, her head bowed in a swift curtsy, but her gaze could not help but scavenge the wreckage of the room before anchoring to her mistress. Olivia sat amidst the chaos, her face a map of absolute devastation. The kohl had bled beneath her eyes in dark, jagged tracks like black tears; her platinum hair was a matted shroud, stained in patches by the visceral crimson of the night’s transgressions.

​"My Lady... are you... are you well?" Kira’s voice was thin, vibrating with a raw, unmasked terror.

​Olivia didn’t answer immediately. She felt the weight of Kyle’s lingering concern and the sharp edge of Kira’s panic. She rose unsteadily and moved toward the tall pier glass, forcing herself to look—truly look—at the specter staring back. She looked like a corpse that had clawed its way back to the surface, a derelict who had traded her sanity for a seat in the city’s darkest alleys.

​"Kira..." she whispered, her eyes locked on the blurred image in the silvered glass. "Do I look mad to you?"

​Kira swallowed hard, her throat working visibly as she struggled to maintain a stable, subservient tone. "No... no, My Lady."

​Olivia erupted into a laugh that was as dry and bitter as hemlock. "Liar... your flattery is as transparent as it is skilled. Regardless, why did you allow Kyle entry? You should have turned him away. Told him I was occupied, or adrift in sleep."

​"My Lady..." Kira stammered, her hands twisting in the fabric of her apron. "That was his third visit. He insisted that you could not possibly be sleeping for such an eternity. He said he would breach the door whether I gave him leave or not."

Olivia’s brow furrowed in a sharp, disjointed confusion. "What? I don’t... how could he have come three times? The moon hasn’t even traversed the sky yet!"

​Kira’s head sank lower, her voice a hollow, terrified thread. "In truth, My Lady... you have been adrift for an entire cycle. We are already deep into the following night."

​"The following night?" Olivia’s voice fractured. "That... that is impossible! How could the sun have risen and set without my leave?"

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