Chương 100: 40-2.Mental Torture

The corridor outside wasn't wide, but it was wide enough to see immediately who was waiting, who had been listening, and who was pretending they'd simply happened to be passing by. Olivia von Eisenberg stood closest to the door, spine straight, as though even the act of waiting could be performed with impeccable composure. She hadn't pressed her ear to the door. She hadn't fidgeted. She simply stood, quietly, as though keeping an invisible boundary around whatever had been happening inside.

Jessi was crouched at the far end by the window, having apparently attempted to look like she was admiring the garden—until Alvira glanced at her, at which point she immediately retracted her gaze.

"I wasn't listening," she said preemptively, in a lowered voice.

"I just thought it was very quiet in there. Quiet enough that the young master might already be buried." Alvira was leaning against the pillar with her arms folded, still carrying the pallor of the morning after. She didn't take the bait.

"If you were actually worried," she said coolly, "you wouldn't still be crouching here."

"I call it concern." Jessi pulled a face.

"Besides, that was the princess. Right there in the middle of the hall, she just—" She started to make a gesture that was extremely asking to be hit, got it halfway up, and had it pinned back down by a single look from Alvira. Olivia spoke then, for the first time.

"That wasn't impulse." Her voice was calm. Calm enough to be describing the weather. Jessi blinked.

"Isn't that obvious? Impulse doesn't pick that location, that timing, with that kind of precision."

"What I mean," Olivia said, still looking at the door, "is that she wasn't confessing." The corridor went quieter. The amusement in Jessi's expression faded, partially. Even Alvira looked up. Olivia finished the thought.

"That was settlement." Jessi frowned.

"Settlement?"

"Gratitude," Olivia said.

"And severance." She turned her face slightly, gaze resting on the light and shadow beyond the corridor window.

"She owes Cedric. The mountain monastery. The road afterward. Everything in and around Angel City. She knows it. But she also knows that's where it ends. Since seeing each other again will be difficult, and saying anything true if they do will be even harder—she settled it all before leaving. What needed returning, returned. What needed cutting, cut." Jessi opened her mouth. For once, she didn't immediately reach for a joke. She was quick-tongued, but she wasn't slow.

"So that kiss wasn't asking him to come after her?"

"Precisely the opposite," Olivia said quietly.

"She was telling him not to." The words fell, and even the air in the corridor seemed to pause. Alvira, leaning against the pillar, let her fingertips tighten slightly. She didn't speak. But her silence had too much weight in it. More than speaking would have. Jessi looked at her, then at Olivia, and clicked her tongue softly.

"The princess looks like she's carved from ice, but her hands are sharper than anyone's."

"People who survive in that position can't afford to be anything else," Olivia said. Alvira finally spoke.

"She's also hurting him." Both of them turned. Alvira moved her gaze away, her voice level—the level of someone stating a principle that had nothing to do with herself.

"Doing that in front of that many people—regardless of whether she meant it as gratitude or severance—it becomes other people's material. The palace will remember. House Eberhart will remember. Even the ones who haven't found solid footing yet, the dangerous ones, they'll remember." She paused.

"She's cutting. But she's also leaving a mark." Olivia looked at her. Not with disagreement. With something quieter—something close to acknowledgment.

"Yes," she said.

"Which is why I called it settlement. She's not only accounting for what's in her heart. She's accounting for the cost as well." Jessi's expression had gone complicated. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"Is this what it's like when people of your station talk about feelings?"

"You think that was about feelings?" Alvira said coldly.

"That was using the last blade she had, and putting it exactly where it needed to go." Jessi was, unusually, silenced. The corridor held its quiet for a moment. Then she muttered, with just a trace of discomfort:"Still. The young master's face just now was genuinely, spectacularly stupid." This time, even Alvira didn't immediately correct her. Olivia added, quietly:"He probably hasn't realized yet that the kiss isn't what he should be most afraid of." Jessi tilted her head.

"Then what is?" Olivia looked at the closed door.

"That he's going to keep turning it over. Wondering whether it was gratitude or farewell. Whether it was release or severance. Whether it was—" She didn't finish. But Alvira had already understood. Her expression went still, and she turned her face away—as if she'd decided she didn't want to hear the rest. Jessi blinked, and for once was smart enough not to supply the ending herself. Because some sentences, said aloud at a moment like this, made the corridor considerably harder to stand in.

Then a faint sound came from behind the door. All three women looked up at once. Alvira was the first to loosen her folded arms—just slightly—then, as if catching herself, pulled them back tight. Jessi gave up crouching entirely and stood, looking like someone waiting to find out whether the person in the coffin was walking out or being carried. Olivia said nothing. She simply fixed her gaze on the door. The next moment, it opened. I got back to my room while the sky was still light.

But I felt like I'd lived through two full days. It wasn't physical exhaustion. It was that my mind had been stripped back one layer by my sister, then scorched through another by that kiss, and whatever was left of my functional thinking capacity was somewhere around the point of giving notice. I closed the door behind me, stood with my back against it for a moment, then slowly let out a long breath. The room was quiet.

Quiet enough that I could finally hear my own heartbeat clearly, and the dull, persistent ache of the uncleared hangover tapping against my temples. I'd intended to wash my face first. Instead, I made it to the edge of the bed, sat down, and didn't move. Didn't even take off my boots. Too much had happened today. Enough that when I closed my eyes, the first thing that surfaced wasn't Angel City, wasn't the ledger, wasn't the iron-cast face of the Commander of the Tideguards.

It was Erina, in the moment she stopped walking and turned back. Not the moment of the kiss itself. Earlier than that. The look in her eyes when she turned around—the look of someone who had already decided, and therefore had no hesitation left. That was the part that wouldn't leave. Because it meant she hadn't been pushed by emotion. She had chosen. I pressed my hand over my forehead, and it didn't stop the image from cycling back. She walked toward me. Grabbed my collar. Pulled me down. And kissed me.

Fast as a blade. Short enough that she hadn't left me room for response, or question, or even reaction. She hadn't left a single word. That was the sharpest part. Because she said nothing, I had no choice but to supply everything myself. How much of that moment was gratitude. Whether she had been quietly keeping that debt in her heart since the mountain monastery. How many times, while we were running and fighting and crawling through the mud together, she had already understood that this was as far as it could go.

How she had known there was no future in it, and still chosen the most irreversible possible method to close the lid on something that should never have grown at all. And— Whether she had already calculated, in advance, exactly how hard it would be to see each other again. At that thought, I laughed—low and quiet. The sound irritated even me.

"You really know how to pick your moment." I wasn't sure whether I was talking to her or to myself. If she'd kissed me last night, drunk, in the chaos—I could have blamed the wine. If she'd simply said thank you before leaving today, I could have managed to pretend I hadn't understood. But she left nothing. Only that. And she did it in front of everyone. So now there was nowhere left to pretend. I fell back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling beams. My sister's words circled back, one after another.

Don't turn her farewell into your own disgrace. She was writing you into other people's minds. If you chase after that blade, that isn't devotion. That's getting her killed. I wanted to roll over, but the moment I moved, something else surfaced behind my eyes. Alvira. I closed my eyes and cursed under my breath. As if today hadn't already finished me off thoroughly enough. Erina's kiss—I could almost make sense of it now. Gratitude, severance, a last mark that couldn't be undone.

Even if there was something else layered underneath it, I knew it wasn't an invitation to follow. But Alvira's expression was different. She hadn't said anything. Just looked at me for a moment, then looked away very quickly. And precisely because it was so quick—quick enough that it looked like something she hadn't had time to put away—it was more unsettling than anything deliberate.

If she'd called me an idiot in her usual way, or fixed me with that stare that made my scalp prickle, I'd at least know how to respond. But she hadn't. Which was exactly why I couldn't bring myself to touch it now. My sister was right. The best thing I could do right now was absolutely nothing. Erina's blade had just fallen. If I reached blindly toward another edge, that wouldn't be confusion—that would be actively courting death. I raised my hand and covered my eyes. The room dimmed slightly.

But the warmth on my lips didn't fade at all. It had been brief as a misread signal, yet somehow it remained perfectly, stubbornly clear. I was genuinely impressed with myself. Today had contained a criminal ledger, royal orders, a princess being recalled to the palace, my sister's full interrogation—any one of those should have dominated my thoughts. And yet here I was, lying on my bed, with only that single instant cycling through my head. It was stupid. It was maddening. And I couldn't shake it loose.

Outside, the sky slowly pressed toward black. Some time later, a maid knocked softly with dinner. I had no appetite—managed two bites and set the rest aside. Later still, scattered sounds drifted from the corridor: shift changes, cleaning, water delivery, windows being secured. The Blackwell townhouse maintained its steady rhythm, as though today's spectacular absurdity had been nothing more than a draft through the main hall. But I knew it wouldn't dissipate that quickly. At least not for me.

I rolled over and buried my face in the pillow, trying to force myself toward sleep. The moment I closed my eyes, my uncooperative mind immediately replayed the scene. She stopped. Turned around. Walked back. Grabbed my collar. Kissed me. Then walked away without looking back. Clean and decisive—as if she feared that hesitating for even one breath would give her room to regret it. Or because she absolutely refused to allow herself that possibility. I exhaled into the pillow.

Somehow, I understood that getting to sleep tonight was going to be harder than breaking into Angel City again. But I had to sleep. Because tomorrow, the capital would still be the capital. The ledger still needed managing. My sister wasn't going to grant me leave because a princess had kissed me. Olivia von Eisenberg wasn't going to suddenly develop charity and pretend she hadn't witnessed anything. As for Alvira— I forced myself to stop there. Don't touch it. At least not tonight.

So I shoved the entire tangled mess down—like smothering embers you know haven't gone cold, pressing your hand over something still burning underneath because there's nothing else to do with it. The wind brushed past the window. Only when the room settled into complete silence did I finally begin to sink, slowly and unevenly, into that chaotic exhaustion.