Ch#125
Withered leaves fell to the earth.
The skeletal, bare trees twisted violently, pushed by the fierce wind, and icy streaks of rain poured down upon the hills fading into grayish-brown.
Thalia, sitting on the windowsill and looking out at the ashen landscape, pressed her face against the cold glass when she spotted mounted warriors entering the castle courtyard.
Beyond the hazy veil of splashing rain, she saw Varkas mounted atop a massive gray warhorse. Thalia watched as he dismounted with elegant, fluid movements.
Handing the reins to a servant, Varkas swept back his rain-soaked robe, revealing a face as white as a marble sculpture. He looked so cool and dignified that it was hard to believe he was the same barbarian who drove her so relentlessly almost every night.
Thalia, staring down at him intently while wiping the condensation from the window with her palm, hurriedly drew the curtains when Varkas turned his head toward her.
Just that fleeting eye contact caused her body temperature to spike and her heart to beat erratically. Biting her lip anxiously, Thalia climbed down from the windowsill and curled up in front of the fireplace. But even before the roaring flames, her trembling did not subside.
She wrapped her arms around her legs and buried her face in her knees.
She had no idea how to treat Varkas anymore. Since the night she started spending with him, everything she once believed to be clear had become a tangled mess.
Sometimes, the man in the bright light and the man in the darkness felt like two completely different people.
During the day, he treated her with his usual demeanor, wearing an indifferent face that looked as though he had never felt desire in his entire life.
But the man in the darkness was different. That man, existing only as a faint silhouette, was as fierce and primal as the kings of the Eastern pagans who were said to have struck terror into the ancient nations.
She pressed her thighs together, feeling a dull ache where he had persistently delved the night before. Her cheeks grew hot as if they were burning.
She had never expected Varkas to be so active in the act of sex. Was he not a man as ascetic as a priest?
Considering that their time in bed had begun at her own insistence, his passionate response felt somewhat mysterious.
It was even more so when she recalled how all the women of the Imperial Palace, who had used every trick in the book to seduce him, had tasted the bitterness of defeat.
‘…Was he like that with Aila too?’
Her thoughts immediately drifted in a self-deprecating direction.
Before, she had firmly believed he was someone incapable of feeling passion for anyone, thinking he was merely fulfilling his duty as a fiancé to Aila.
But perhaps the two of them had been more than that. After all, he was a man who could pour such violent desire into her and then wear a calm face the next day as if nothing had happened.
It was possible he had performed all sorts of carnal acts with Aila while pretending to be a refined fiancé. No, he surely must have.
She could never be special to anyone. That was a fact she had learned long ago.
If he could feel desire for her, he could feel it for someone else. Even if he had married another woman instead of her, he surely would have reacted in the exact same way.
‘So, stop assigning special meaning to his actions.’
“Oh, honestly! Stop picking at your lips.”
A flippant voice broke through her thick reverie. Thalia looked up with a start.
The Nanny, who had entered the room at some point with a large basket tucked under her arm, was glaring at her.
“If you get a scar, the dye won’t take well.”
“It doesn’t matter. Anyway…”
Varkas won’t be able to see me. She was about to snap back but held her tongue.
The Nanny was always making a fuss, grooming her every evening. If she found out that all her work was in vain, she would undoubtedly become even more of a nuisance.
Thalia hid her blood-stained fingernails in the folds of her skirt and leaned her forehead against her knees. Looking at her with a dissatisfied gaze, the Nanny clicked her tongue and placed the basket on the table.
“Don’t act so miserable and eat this. The healer brewed a new batch of herbs sent by the Empress.”
Thalia grimaced as she looked down at the mysterious decoction.
Since returning to the Imperial Palace, Senebier had begun sending all sorts of elixirs said to aid in pregnancy. It was a silent pressure to follow her will. And the Nanny was faithfully playing the part of the Empress’s loyal servant.
She thrust the bowl filled with dark liquid in front of Thalia’s face and nagged.
“Now, hurry up and drink. Her Majesty strictly insisted that you must take it every single day without fail.”
Reluctantly taking the bowl, Thalia downed the medicine in one gulp.
It felt like swallowing hot mud. Desperately suppressing the urge to gag, she hurriedly poured water and rinsed her mouth.
Suddenly, Varkas’s sarcasm about how she seemed fine playing the role of a broodmare echoed in her mind. She crushed her bloodied lips together and swallowed her humiliation.
I only made a choice for myself. There is no need to feel ashamed.
As she repeated this to herself and roughly wiped her wet mouth with the back of her hand, the Nanny’s excited voice pierced her ears.
“Are you going to get ready now?”
Turning her head over her shoulder, Thalia frowned as she saw the Nanny taking clothes out of a trunk and spreading them out. She seemed to take it for granted that Thalia would go to his chambers tonight as well.
She shifted her gaze back to the window. Since he had returned soaked in rain, Varkas would be bathing by now. After that, he would attend to the official business he hadn’t finished. Since his workload seemed to have increased significantly lately, he probably wouldn’t go to bed until dusk. Despite thinking this, her legs were already moving away from the bed of their own accord.
Unraveling her tightly braided hair, Thalia walked toward the bathtub the maids had prepared in advance. As she soaked her body in the lukewarm water infused with fragrant oils, the Nanny stepped behind her and began washing her hair.
Entrusting herself to those rough hands, she looked down at her own body.
Everywhere his lips had brushed, marks remained like heat blossoms. Tracing her fingers along the reddish spots that looked as if she were suffering from a fever, Thalia felt a faint dizziness and closed her eyes.
The act, which she had thought would occur intermittently out of duty, had at some point become a natural part of her daily life.
At first, she knocked on his door about once every three days. Then, before she knew it, she found herself entering his chambers every single day.
She tried to make excuses—that she was just giving in to the Nanny’s nagging, or that she just wanted to have a child as soon as possible to be at peace—but a part of her heart knew that was a lie. As the days passed, it was becoming harder to pull herself away from his embrace.
When she left Varkas and lay alone on the wide bed, a sense of emptiness washed over her, and she felt a strange lingering regret whenever she washed away his traces.
She felt terrible for being that way, but she couldn’t control herself. That wretched fever that had tormented her since she was nine years old had clearly relapsed.
‘No. This isn’t like that. I’m just using him.’
She hurriedly denied her own thoughts.
She couldn’t let herself be driven into the quagmire again.
Pulling herself together, Thalia stepped out of the bathtub with a determined face. Then, she dried her body with a soft towel and dressed in the blue velvet gown she had brought from the Imperial Palace.
She knew Varkas wouldn’t be able to see her properly, but even so, she didn’t want to face him looking shabby.
After staring into the mirror at a face that looked hauntingly like Senebier’s, Thalia soon stood up.
Opening the door, she saw the hallway illuminated by candlelight.
She stepped onto the carpet where the light shimmered, then turned her eyes toward the window where rain was splashing. Just then, a golden flash of lightning split the ink-black sky.
After a brief glance at the rumbling sky, Thalia continued on her way.
When she finally reached his door, the waiting servant opened it as if he had been expecting her.
Thalia stepped cautiously into the room shrouded in darkness.
At that moment, a flash of light illuminated the silhouette of the man standing by the window in stark white.
