Mathias let out a breath that sounded like a fractured lung. He slid down the cold stone until he hit the floor, his regal posture collapsing into a heap of expensive silk and raw, unadorned grief. The madness had evaporated, leaving behind a man who looked suddenly, terrifyingly hollow.
"Truly, Olivia?" he asked, his voice barely a tremor. "Is that all I am in your eyes? A mindless beast who only values his wife for the heat of her bed and the fruit of her womb?"
Olivia didn't answer with words. She moved with a ghostly stillness, sinking onto the floor beside him. The space between them was charged with the static of a thousand unspoken tragedies. She raised the dagger—the very blade that had tasted her lifeblood—and with a flick of her wrist, sent it skidding across the marble. It clattered into the shadows, a discarded relic of a war they were both losing.
