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“Are you comparing me to a foal right now?”
Deciding to be offended, Talia laced her voice with venom, but Varkas only gave a low sigh.
“Stop picking fights and finish eating.”
This time, he brought over a bowl piled with apricots. Talia glared at it as though it were a sworn enemy before wrenching her head aside.
Varkas watched her in silence for a beat, then pulled a chair beside the bed and sat down. As if it were the most ordinary chore in the world, he picked up a small fruit and pared away the delicate skin with a paring knife.
Watching him steadily carry out work usually left to chambermaids, Talia raised her voice in sheer disbelief.
“Stop it. Who asked you to wait on me hand and foot? Just leave a high-maintenance creature like me be and go tend to your own duties—!”
Her nagging was cut short with a sharp wince, her face twisting as soft fruit was shoved into her mouth.
Having silenced her in one motion, he wiped his juice-stained fingers on a napkin and spoke with infuriating calm.
“If Your Highness would stop skipping meals, I could dedicate myself solely to my duties.”
Talia glared daggers at him around the slice of apricot wedged in her mouth.
She wanted nothing more than to snap back and ask what concern it was of his whether she ate or starved, but doing so meant she first had to swallow.
In the end, she bit into the tender flesh. Sweet, tongue-tingling juice burst across her palate alongside a clean fragrance. To her surprise, it was not unpleasant.
“Would you like another?”
The man, who had been studying her every chew, picked up another piece.
After a reluctant pause, Talia gave a stiff nod.
Varkas went right to peeling the apricot. The steady care he brought to carving the fruit made him look like an artisan handling an exquisite antique. Before that bizarre sight, her rancor drained away.
She peered at him sideways, as though observing an unfamiliar beast.
Perhaps from lingering guilt over having forced medicine down her throat, Varkas had begun tending to her meals with obsessive vigilance. At first, he had merely verified whether she was eating, but somewhere along the way, it had evolved into feeding her with his own hands. The dire reality of her condition seemed to have struck him only after seeing how pitiably little she could keep down.
“Here. Eat.”
He held a trimmed slice of apricot to her lips.
Talia parted her mouth as if surrendering. Along with the sweet fruit, his rough fingertips brushed the tip of her tongue.
The instant heat rushed to her cheeks and she moved to recoil, Varkas cradled the nape of her neck and rested his other hand lightly over her mouth. He seemed to assume she meant to spit it out.
Talia narrowed her eyes, appalled.
Did he take her for a toddler throwing a tantrum at the dinner table?
“Just eat this much. I won’t force you after.”
His tone was coaxing. Talia kept her narrowed eyes fixed on him, working her jaw with mechanical precision.
Only after she swallowed the soft fruit did he take his hand away.
“Would you care for a brief stroll today?”
Having cleared away the bowl, Varkas offered the suggestion without warning.
Talia, wetting her mouth with lukewarm water, looked at him wide-eyed.
“I’m allowed outside?”
“The healer said fresh air and sunlight would aid your recovery.”
Varkas fetched a cloak and settled it over her shoulders.
Talia knit her brows.
“I never said I was going.”
“Do you not wish to?”
He tilted his head slightly.
With a sullen scowl, Talia swung her legs over the mattress as though yielding to the inevitable. Yet before her soles could graze the rug, she was swept into the air.
Flustered for a moment by the ease with which he lifted her, she soon let her shoulders drop. She lacked the strength to stay angry anyway.
“Are you cold?”
Varkas asked, pulling the hood over her head as he stepped outside.
Talia shook her head. The garden held the crisp chill of mid-autumn, but the sun was still warm.
His boots crunched over the dry grass as he followed a narrow path. A scattering of blackbirds picking at seeds among the withered flowerbeds took flight in a flurry of wings.
Talia watched them listlessly before turning to his face. The pale sunlight silvered his fair blond hair. She remembered the day Varkas had first stepped into her detached palace.
Back then, she could never have imagined this man nursing her like this.
Yet looking back, Varkas had always shown mercy to fragile things.
He had nursed a dying bird and taken in a feral foal that was starving because it refused human touch.
Nor was that all. He had shouldered the role of guardian to Gareth and Ayla after they lost their mother young, and he had even wed a woman he despised because he could not turn his back on her shattered state.
Had the priests not broken him with abuse, he might well have grown into an uncommonly gentle man.
While she lingered in those thoughts, he came to a stop.
She understood why a moment later. In a forgotten corner of the parched flowerbed, an autumn rose had opened its petals. Talia glanced up at him, surprised.
“Do you care for flowers?”
“I neither like nor dislike them,” he answered flatly.
Then why…
The question rose to her tongue, but she swallowed it. She realized only then that he had halted simply to show it to her.
On an impulse, she blurted out, “Pick it for me.”
He reached toward the stem without hesitation. She saw sharp thorns bite into the flesh of his fingers. Varkas did not so much as flinch.
With an impassive face, he snapped the rose free and stripped the thorns away with his fingertips. Once the stem was smooth, he offered it to her. An unnameable feeling surged inside her chest.
He was a man who had borne even Gareth’s insolence with quiet forbearance, who had served the Emperor with unfaltering loyalty, and who had played the flawless fiancé to Ayla.
And now, he was carrying out the duties of her husband without a single murmur.
Did he truly intend to spend his whole life answering only to the expectations and demands of others?
For the first time, a question about his existence took root in her mind.
“Do you… intend to give me everything I ask for?”
“If it is within my power,” Varkas replied noncommittally, looking mildly puzzled.
Talia stared at him, stripped of words, before lowering her eyes to the pale petals.
To him, it was a trifle of no account. A worthless blossom yielded merely because she had asked. Yet she would likely cherish this rose until her dying breath.
In that instant, she understood the true name of the feeling taking shape within her.
Resignation.
Never in this life would she receive in return the love she had harbored for so long.
The feverish madness that had ravaged her would never touch this man. Even so, he would fulfill everything expected of a husband.
Perhaps that was enough.
“If you dislike it, I will cut another,” Varkas offered, noticing the shadow across her face.
Talia shook her head.
“This is plenty.”
As she cradled the large yellow rose with both hands, he began to walk again.
Wisps of cloud were drifting across the bright blue expanse. With the sunlight thinning, he turned back toward the main citadel.
Just then, a voice called out loudly from behind them.
“Your Grace!”
Talia looked back, her blood running cold at the sight of Daren racing across the garden. The sheer gravity on his face was enough to warn her of dire news.
As she feared, he reached them out of breath, his tone grim.
“You must return to Raedgo Castle at once.”
A flicker of sorrow shadowed the knight’s eyes. Catching his breath, he delivered the heavy words.
“The Grand Duke… A dispatch has arrived stating your father is in critical condition.”
END