Chapter 213: Love That Turned Cold
The Dowager’s composure did not falter, but Osric caught the flicker in her eyes; the fragile space between truth and denial. He might have shielded her in the audience hall, but he was not blind. He could read her like a book. After all, he had raised her. She would never grow too clever for him.
"That key?" she repeated, lips tightening. "I’ve no idea how it ended up with them."
And for once, it wasn’t an act. Her plan had been meticulous: her men were to seize the boys and deliver them to her own in a neutral place. Only her guards held the key. Yet somehow, the key had found its way into mercenary hands.
But now that she knew Lorraine had been in the library, she could already trace the invisible threads, leading back to that single, inconvenient woman.
Osric gave a dry chuckle, tilting his head as though watching a fox discover its own snare.
"So," he drawled, voice smooth as silk stretched thin, "there is someone cleverer than you in this city."
Her brow twitched, quickly concealed behind the genteel lift of a teacup.
"She is exactly what I thought she would be," Osric murmured, a spark of admiration glinting in his eyes.
The Dowager scoffed softly. "I should never have wavered. I ought to have killed her when I had the chance."
Osric’s expression darkened. "Eager, aren’t you, to see the Vaelith name ground to dust?" His voice was low, but each word struck like a lash.
Her throat went dry. She had not seen that fury in him for years; not since the days when he stood between her and a world too cruel for a girl in love. He had guided her into the royal court, against his own misgivings, to wed the then Crown Prince, the great love of her life. He had pampered her, sheltered her, carved a path of power beneath her feet.
And in return, he had asked her for one thing. Only one. To protect the prophesied Oracle of their line, as their ancestors once protected the Swan Oracle. To honor the Vaelith oath.
"You speak of love as if it were your birthright," Osric said quietly. "Expecting hearts to bend toward you... Yet you give nothing back. You take and take, blind to the cost."
His voice frayed at the edges, shedding its usual authority. "There are nights I wonder if, in raising you, I nurtured my own deepest regret."
The Dowager’s breath caught. She forced herself to look away, but the sting in her eyes betrayed her. She had never seen him so quietly, devastatingly disappointed.
"In you," Osric continued, voice steady now, "hatred grows like weeds, while love starves like a flower in frost."
The silence that followed was worse than any shouted rebuke.
The Dowager gritted her teeth, and hot tears slipped down her cheeks. It had been a long time since anyone had held a mirror before her and forced her to look, truly look, at what she had become.
And she knew.
She was no longer the naïve girl who had glimpsed the Crown Prince walking through the autumn garden and, with a single foolish heartbeat, decided she would follow him for the rest of her life.
That realization, raw and cutting, did not emerge as sorrow. It came out as anger. "Love?" Her voice cracked. "What did love leave me with? I gave everything...everything! And all I got was..."
She rose abruptly, breath shuddering in her throat, tears threatening to spill faster than she could swallow them. She drew in a deep breath, struggling to cage the storm inside. It infuriated her how something that happened decades ago could still claw at her so viciously.
Osric’s gaze hardened, though his voice remained soft; terrifyingly so. "Love? Do not profane the word. I know what he asked of you as death took him; I stood witness. And you did not answer with love. Love is a fire that would see one torn limb from limb for the beloved’s joy. Yours, alas, has long grown cold."
The Dowager’s chest heaved. She saw it then... the condemnation in his eyes. He was blaming her for not loving her husband. For not loving him. And it wasn’t fair. She had
loved. She had tried. But how could any flame survive when starved of air? How could love live when met only with silence?"I tried, uncle," she whispered, her voice breaking. At last, she let the tears fall freely. "I tried my best to win his love... but he—"
Osric cut in sharply, though sorrow tinged his words. "He never vowed you love. He spoke plainly from the start. I blessed your union only because you agreed to his terms. You stepped into a one-sided marriage against my counsel. Do not lay the weight of your folly at others’ feet."
"Folly?" She laughed bitterly. "Is it folly to expect one’s husband to fall in love with his wife?"
She turned away from him and walked to the window, her silk skirts whispering against the floor. The evening air spilled in, cool against her heated cheeks.
"I almost had him," she murmured, more to herself than to him. "His heart... it was nearly mine." Her fingers drifted unconsciously to her lower belly, and a small, wistful smile curved her lips.
"When I carried my first child..."
Her gaze unfocused, pulled into memory. She remembered the gentle warmth of those days—the rare laughter, the way his eyes softened when they looked at her. She remembered the afternoon she nearly tripped in the garden, and how he caught her without thinking, his hand firm at the small of her back. From that day on, he held her hand whenever they walked beneath the trees, as if afraid she might slip again.
They were together then. Man and wife. Just them. For a moment, she had believed love was inevitable.
Osric’s brows twitched. He understood, all too well, where the rot had begun, why the then Crown Prince’s heart had hardened against her and the child she had birthed.
But for her, those years remained gilded in memory, the brief, fragile season of happiness she clung to. She had projected that warmth onto her eldest son, the boy who would one day become Emperor, the boy who had witnessed their fleeting love even when he was in her belly. By protecting him, she believed she could preserve the only time in her life when she had felt truly loved.
But after that child was born, everything shifted. Her husband began to stray. And Isabella... Isabella grew bitter.
Had she met his wandering heart with grace or cunning, she might have drawn him back. She might have held his affection. But she did not.
He found solace elsewhere, in the arms of a woman who offered him everything he craved, without bitterness, without demand.
And Isabella could never forgive that.
Osric’s voice cracked through the air like a whip. "Do not cloak yourself in excuses," he said, every word heavy as lead.