10
After that violent upheaval, Talia spent all her time shut inside the detached palace.
Yet the maids, who gossiped incessantly as though they had never been mute at all, soon revealed the truth to her: the boy who had beaten her was the Crown Prince of the Empire, her half-brother. And the dark-haired girl she had seen that day in the birch woods was her half-sister…
She also learned that it had not even been six months since the two of them lost their mother.
Which meant Senevier and Talia had entered the Imperial Palace a mere three weeks after the late Empress, Bernadette, passed away.
On top of that, the moment Senevier arrived, she had erased every trace of the former Empress from the palace grounds.
It struck Talia that the small garden tucked behind the main palace might simply have been a remnant of Bernadette that her mother had not yet managed to destroy.
She looked out the window.
Summer rain poured over the garden her mother had so meticulously arranged. Soaked in moisture and reeking of heavy greenery, the plants looked to her like hideous monsters.
She drew the curtains shut. Curling up on her bed, she remembered the hatred burning in the Crown Prince’s eyes, and her half-sister’s face, drained white with horror. And the blue-eyed boy who had held that girl protectively, glaring at Talia…
“Varkas Raedgo Shearkan…”
She stared blankly up at the ceiling, murmuring his name aloud.
She had finally learned it, yet it brought her not a shred of joy. She knew he would never smile at her again.
The late Empress Bernadette had hailed from the Marquisate of Marquis Oristein, one of Osiria’s foremost noble houses, but her mother had been a daughter of the Shearkan family. That made the deceased Empress and Varkas distant relatives.
What was more, Bernadette had looked after Varkas with great devotion ever since he entered the Imperial Palace at a young age to undergo his grueling training. To him, Senevier could only be a mortal enemy.
‘And me, too…’
Remembering the icy gaze directed at her, she felt, for the very first time, a bitter resentment at being Senevier’s daughter. Even her own appearance, which she had always taken pride in for resembling her mother, now felt like a brand of shame.
Talia did not want to feel this way.
I was the one beaten so brutally. Why do I have to bear the guilt?
The Crown Prince was the one who did wrong.
I truly didn’t know anything. What did I do wrong? I’m not bad. I didn’t do anything wrong.
She repeated the words endlessly in her mind. But whenever she met the cold, hard stares of the servants, the defiance dissolved without a trace.
Talia understood all too well what their spiteful treatment meant.
Fetching freezing bathwater and scrubbing her skin until it turned raw and red; grazing her flesh with pins whenever they dressed her; raking brushes through her hair until her scalp bled; setting cold, congealed food before her at every meal… These were the quiet punishments they believed she deserved.
She knew she was despised. But life with the Taren family had not been much different, so at first she had tried to pay it no mind.
Whenever she used to shrink inward, Senevier would hold her tight, whispering that she was the fruit of true love and that she must never care what anyone said.
Talia had believed those words, trying her best to stand tall. But now her mother was nowhere near her, and all around her were whispers of how kind and virtuous the former Empress had been, and how much agony she had suffered before she died.
Talia visibly withered. Her neck, once held high and straight, shrank back like a turtle’s, and her eyes learned to search only the floor. Sensing this immediately, the servants grew increasingly cruel. With neither the Emperor nor Senevier paying her any mind, their fear of reprimand had vanished entirely.
To them, Talia was never an imperial princess. She was merely the thing that had broken the heart of the Empress they had faithfully served—the living proof of a sordid betrayal.
Every time she walked down the corridors, their whispers followed her. It felt as if she were losing her mind. Each accusation tore at her with a bitter sense of unfairness.
Yet hearing how much suffering her very birth had caused, she began to wonder if this misery was something she had to endure. But their cruelty eventually crossed a line she could not bear.
It was roughly two seasons after she had entered the Imperial Palace. When Talia went down to the dining hall for breakfast, a strange unease crept over her.
An unusually large number of servants were standing by that morning. Seeing the maids lined up along the wall gave her an ominous foreboding that something was about to happen.
Contrary to her dread, however, the servants were deferential, and the table was laid with an astonishing feast. Talia stared at the silver platters as though hypnotized.
Instead of stale, hardened bread, a kitchen maid set down freshly baked, golden loaves and butter. Soon after came roast quail, followed by a bowl of piping-hot stew.
She had eaten nothing but scraps and slop for months. Seeing a rich, steaming stew instead of thin, chilled soup brought a humiliating sting of tears to her eyes.
Talia glanced around at the servants. Dozens of eyes were watching her every move.
Perhaps they didn’t want to punish her anymore. Perhaps they had decided to forgive her existence and treat her with kindness.
Talia picked up her spoon. She ladled up the hot broth and brought it to her mouth. The rich taste of butter, milk, and tender vegetables spread over her tongue with a delicate sweetness.
The warmth of real food, tasted after so long, unleashed a ravenous hunger. Forgetting all decorum, she began to shovel the stew into her mouth.
A few spoonfuls in, an odd flavor struck her palate. It was a foul taint, far worse than any gaminess of meat that seasoning had failed to mask. Furrowing her brow, she peered down into the bowl.
Just then, a smothered snicker came from behind her.
Talia whipped her head around. The maids all kept their eyes lowered, faces blank. But she saw it plainly—the slight twitching at the corners of their mouths. A cold sweat broke out across her back.
Hesitating for a long moment, Talia prodded at the stew with her spoon. Pushing aside the thick chunks of vegetables, she found a heavy lump resting at the bottom of the deep bowl, like a piece of meat. No. It wasn’t meat.
Talia froze in horror as her spoon lifted the dark mass from the broth. A gray rat, bloated from the thick soup, lay limp with its jaw slack. She could not even draw breath to scream.
She tumbled out of her chair, throwing up the stew directly onto the floor. Even after spewing far more than she had swallowed, the violent retching would not stop.
The reek in her nostrils only sharpened. It felt as though the taste of the rotting rodent were welded to the tip of her tongue, never to be washed away.
She shoved her fingers down her throat, gouging at her tongue, desperately trying to wring out vomit from an empty stomach.
As she lay curled against the floor retching, her blurred vision caught the movement of feet around the table.
Talia lifted her head vacantly. The head kitchen maid was quietly clearing the plates as if nothing were amiss. Other servants bustled about, clearing the silver and wiping down the table, acting as though they could not even see her lying there, collapsed in her own vomit…
END