socalfunplaces Chapter 214: Shorn of Royalty
Chapter 214: Shorn of Royalty
"She is hereby stripped of her imperial and noble titles," Lucius continued, his tone clipping the air with absolute finality. "And as a punishment for her treasonous actions—the details of which are a matter of state security and will not be discussed here—she will be stripped of every luxury she has ever known.
No jewelry, no fine silks, no ornaments. Even her hair will be completely shaved off. She will spend the remainder of her days working as an ordinary maid in the city’s care homes and orphanages, to atone for her sins."
The brutality of the sentence sent a shockwave through the room. A few nobles, historical allies of her faction, hurriedly rose from their seats to object.
"Your Majesty! Please, shouldn’t we bring Her Majesty here to speak for herself? Perhaps there has been a—"
"I have absolutely no desire to look upon that woman’s face ever again," Lucius cut them off, his voice dropping into a dangerous, growling octave that made the objectors instantly freeze. "She is no longer my wife. Our marriage is annulled. Why on earth would I waste my time listening to a commoner?"
Absolute silence filled the hall. Not a single person dared to breathe. Lucius was still the very same Emperor whose ruthless authority had terrified them for decades.
"See to it that the sentence is carried out immediately."
With that, Lucius turned sharply and swept out of the council chamber, his dark cape billowing behind him, while the nobility bowed deeply in absolute, trembling respect.
Mathias had been lingering in the shadows behind the heavy oak door, listening to the muffled verdicts of fate. The moment the Emperor stepped out, Mathias fell into stride behind him, his armored footsteps a disciplined echo in the vaulted corridor.
"Is your judgment not a fraction too lenient, Sire?" Mathias asked, his voice low, laced with a soldier’s blunt pragmatism. "I mean... she literally tried to take your life."
Lucius ground to a halt. He did not turn fully, but cast a sideways glance at Mathias—a look so heavy with sorrow it seemed to age him years in a single second.
"If Olivia had done the same..." Lucius murmured, the words scraping against the cold stone walls. "What would you have done?"
Silence descended upon the corridor, thick and suffocating. Mathias froze, the unspoken answer dying in his throat.
"That is what I thought," Lucius continued, his gaze drifting into the bleak emptiness ahead.
"You lived under the same roof as your enemy’s daughter and could never bring yourself to harm a single hair on her head. How then do you expect me to destroy the love of my life? I tried, Mathias. I tried to forge a heart of iron, but I broke. This... this is the absolute limit of my cruelty toward her."
Mathias let out a long, defeated sigh, the rigid tension leaving his shoulders. Beneath the cold visor of his helm, a faint, grim smile touched his lips. "I suppose I understand, Your Majesty. Regardless, I shall escort her carriage myself and ensure she reaches her destination safely."
Meanwhile, deep within the isolation wings of the palace, the head palace maids strode into Alisha’s quarters to execute the imperial decree.
"Let go of me! Unhand me this instant!" Alisha shrieked, thrashing violently as she tried to slip through the iron grips of the guards restraining her. "I demand to speak with His Majesty! Let me go!"
Ryan, the chief assistant, stepped forward, his face an unreadable mask of cold professional disdain as he looked down at her. "His Majesty has absolutely no desire to look at human trash like you, Alisha."
Alisha’s eyes widened in crazed fury. "Ryan! Do you wish to die?! I am the Empress of this Empire!"
"Yes, yes. In your dreams, perhaps," Ryan dismissed her with a hollow, mocking chuckle.
He gave a sharp nod, and the heavy-handed maids firmly pinned her down onto the wooden chair. They began roughly tearing the glittering jewels from her neck and ears, and ripping the expensive fabric of her gown. Alisha fought back like a cornered animal, twisting her head so violently that the sharp edge of a torn hairpin dragged across her cheek, drawing a thin line of crimson.
"My face!" she screamed, her voice cracking into a high-pitched, pathetic wail as she felt the warm blood. "My face! My beautiful face! How dare you touch me! How dare you!"
The maids didn’t pause. The cold glare of the shears caught the morning light as they began cutting away her long, prized hair, leaving it to fall in useless clumps onto the cold stone floor.
"Pack her up," Ryan commanded coldly, turning his back on her unravelling sanity. "Transport her to the poorest orphanage in the lower district. Let her serve the children there. This is the absolute bare minimum of what she deserves."
The carriage rattled to a violent halt in front of the designated care home, the heavy iron wheels digging into the mud. Alisha was roughly shoved out onto the damp ground. Shorn of her cascading hair, her bleeding, scratched face exposed to the biting wind, she looked up—and the breath completely died in her throat.
Standing beneath the shadow of the decaying stone archway, his arms crossed over his chest plate, was Matthias.
He wasn’t wearing his imperial mask anymore. His cold, unprotected face was fully exposed, and his dark eyes were burning with a cruel, unapologetic satisfaction as he looked down at the wreckage of the woman who had tried to destroy his family. Alisha’s teeth ground together. She already knew he was alive—the whispers had reached her before her fall—but seeing him standing here, in the flesh, looking down at her like a piece of discarded trash, fueled a mad, desperate fury in her chest.
"Oh, Your Imperial Majesty..." Matthias spoke, his voice dripping with venomous mockery. He tilted his head, a cold, ruthless smirk pulling at his lips. "Oops. My mistake—you aren’t that anymore, are you? Tell me, do you like your new estate, you worthless whore, Alisha?"
Alisha pointed a trembling, dirt-caked finger at him, her voice screeching with venom. "You... You are the one who poisoned His Majesty’s mind against me! You did this!"
Matthias let out a dark, looming laugh that echoed sharply against the old stone walls.
"You literally tried to murder him, and you honestly expected him to welcome you back with open arms?" He stepped closer, his imposing shadow completely engulfing her shaven, pathetic figure. "You are truly, utterly insane. Either way... make yourself at home. I must admit, seeing you brought down to the dirt like this... it deeply satisfies my pride."
Without another word, Matthias turned on his heel and strode away into the gray mist, leaving her standing in the courtyard.
"Take her inside," the guards grunted, roughly dragging her through the heavy wooden doors of the facility. They shoved her into the main hall and immediately stepped back, their heavy boots echoing as they retreated toward the exit.
Alisha stumbled, bracing herself against a cold stone pillar. She looked around, and a freezing wave of dread washed over her.
Something was deeply, terrifyingly wrong.
The building was dead. There were no voices of abandoned children, no footsteps of elderly residents, no caretakers, and no signs of human life. The grand halls were completely hollow, stripped bare to the rotting wood, and filled with nothing but drifting dust and suffocating, predatory shadows. The silence was heavy, thick enough to choke on. It wasn’t an asylum or an orphanage; it was a ghost house. A trap.
Panic seizing her chest, she whipped around toward the departing guards. "Wait! Where is everyone else?! Why is this place empty?!"
The guards didn’t even pause to look at her. They kept walking, their faces completely unbothered, and slammed the heavy iron gates shut behind them, the resounding thud sounding exactly like the closing of a coffin.
"Damn it! Was this his doing?!" Alisha shrieked, her mind fracturing as she realized the horror of her absolute isolation. "Damn it, it’s him! It’s Matthias!"
Driven by absolute terror, she threw her weight against the heavy doors, forcing them open just enough to scramble back out into the bleak courtyard. She ran frantically after the departing imperial carriage, her bare feet cutting deep into the jagged gravel, leaving small drops of blood behind.
"Take me with you! Please!" she wailed, tears mixing with the dried blood on her ruined face. "I beg of you! I need to see His Majesty! I have information—vital information! If I tell him about Roland and Cedric, he will surely pardon me! Let me see the Emperor!"
Her desperate, piercing screams were met with nothing but the mocking silence of the wind and the fading rumble of the carriage wheels disappearing into the distance.
She collapsed to her knees in the dirt, sobbing hysterically, clutching her shaven head as the cold reality of her doom settled in. Suddenly, a freezing draft brushed against the back of her bare neck, smelling faintly of old dust and dark intentions.
From the deep, pitch-black shadows of the doorway behind her, a slow, calculated footstep clicked against the stone.
"And what exactly... do you plan on telling him, Alisha?"