Talia let go of the threads of her consciousness with a willing heart.
Yet waking into eternal rest was not permitted to her.
Feeling a warm, damp cloth gently wiping her face and the nape of her neck, Talia drifted up from a light slumber and gazed blankly at the man, who loomed like a blurred shadow above her.
Carefully, he eased her nightgown down below her waist and drew the warm towel slowly along her spine.
It struck her then that this might not be the first time he had washed her body. Varkas’s hands were practiced, deft, and familiar with the task.
Sensing that she had opened her eyes, he paused and looked down at her face.
When she made no move to resist, he drew the linen tunic down past her legs and thoroughly cleansed her sweat-drenched skin.
Desperately as she had once tried to conceal her ruined body from him, Talia felt nothing now. She merely stared at him with hollow eyes, unable to fathom why he bothered with such a tedious chore.
After changing her soiled nightclothes for clean ones, he carefully trickled water steeped with herbs past her lips.
Talia allowed him to do as he pleased. It was faintly tiresome, but summoning the will to fight him off felt like a far heavier burden.
As though reading her exhaustion, he demanded no response. He simply held her in silence, now and then offering water or medicine.
And from time to time, he summoned a priest to cast restorative rites upon her.
Talia lay motionless, waiting for all these bothersome intrusions to pass.
She had no way of knowing how much time slipped away.
As she drifted along the haze between awareness and oblivion, someone entered the room and asked for a word with Varkas.
Talia thought the voice sounded familiar, yet she could not put a name to it.
The man finally rose from the bed and stood by the door, speaking with the visitor in hushed tones. She watched his broad back silhouetted against the dim light for a moment, then lost all interest and closed her eyes.
“I will be gone only a moment. I will return shortly.”
Just as she was sinking back into sleep, Varkas came back to the bedside, leaning over her pillow as he spoke.
Talia gave no answer. The man watched her for a long time before taking up his coat and leaving the room.
As he stepped out, three or four women slipped in. It seemed he had summoned attendants to keep watch over her.
One of them drew near the bed and murmured something, but not a single word registered in Talia’s mind.
It felt as though a thick, stifling caul had settled over her.
Talia stared for a moment at the blurred, ghostly shapes beyond that formless mist, then turned away as if even looking were too much to bear. She clung desperately to the thought of sleep.
Yet this time, slumber did not hold her long.
When she opened her eyes again, her mind was clearer, and she slowly took in the room steeped in shadow. Two young maids were dozing near the hearth, while Marisen and her nanny sat close beside the bed.
“Are you feeling more yourself, Your Highness?”
The healing sorceress, who had been decocting herbs, looked relieved the moment she saw Talia’s eyes open.
Talia parted her parched, cracked lips with difficulty.
“…What happened to my baby?”
Only after the words left her mouth did Talia realize she had been choking them down the entire time.
As she searched their faces, waiting for an answer to the question she had not dared whisper to Varkas even in her delirium, a heavy shadow of guilt crossed Marisen’s features.
When the sorceress cast her eyes down, unable to speak, the nanny, sniffling beside the bed, answered through thick tears.
“The stillborn child was laid to rest properly in the chapel grounds.”
Talia looked at her with vacant eyes.
The nanny clasped her limp hand—drooping like the wing of a dead bird—and went on falteringly.
“They say it was a boy. If only he had come safely into the world, he would have been such a beautiful child…”
Her shoulders shook as she sobbed, and she wiped her tears with her free hand, forcing a comforting smile.
“Please, do not let your heart break so, my lady. You are still young. You will surely be blessed with another lovely child.”
In that instant, it felt as though a blade had been driven into Talia’s chest.
She did not understand why those words brought such excruciating agony. Yet she felt a vicious tear, as though her very heart were being cleaved in two.
Had her senses not been half-dead, she would have screamed in sheer torment.
Trembling faintly, Talia struggled to pull her hand from the woman’s grasp.
“…I wish to be alone. All of you, leave.”
“But the Grand Duke gave strict orders never to take our eyes off you, not even for an instant—”
“Get up. Now.”
Marisen firmly pulled the nanny to her feet. Bewildered, the older woman took a hesitant step back from the bed.
The sorceress guided her toward the door and signaled the maids to follow.
When the young girls, after a moment’s hesitation, filed out as well, Marisen rested her hand on the latch and murmured softly,
“We will be in the adjoining room. If you need anything at all, please ring the bell.”
With the closing of the door, silence descended once more.
Talia buried her face in the cold bedclothes and squeezed her eyes shut. But her mind only grew sharper, cold and unyielding.
Fighting the tremors wracking her body, she suddenly remembered the slumber weed she had kept for emergencies, and forced herself upright.
Staggering to the shelves, she pulled open the cabinet doors to reveal glass vials and dried bundles of herbs.
Finding an incense stick fashioned from crushed herbs, Talia set it into a small brazier no larger than a fist. She tilted a candle to catch the wick, then waited for the smoke to curl upward.
Soon, a bitter aroma drifted into the air. She slumped onto the carpet and breathed it in deeply.
Before long, the raw edge of her nerves softened into a dull ache, and a heavy fog settled over her thoughts. She welcomed the fading of the world. Everything had been far too sharp; she wished it all would dissolve into faint smoke like this.
Resting her back against the bedframe, she inhaled the acrid haze even deeper.
How long had she sat there?
Just as the world began to warp into an unrecognizable blur, a strange sound drifted in from somewhere beyond.
Talia slowly lifted her heavy, unfocused gaze.
Within the bedchamber, the light from the hearth and the candelabras flickered violently. But the faint ringing in her ears grew clearer and clearer, sharpening into a distinct cry.
She stumbled to her feet and drew near the rattling windowpane. A view of the rain-drenched garden filled her sight. Far out in that ink-black expanse, someone was weeping piteously.
Standing still and listening to that wail, Talia turned her steps as if drawn by a pull she could not resist.
She opened the door and slipped out into the silent hallway. In the murk, the distant silhouettes of guards on watch could be seen standing at their posts.
Wanting nothing to do with them, she moved toward the narrow servant stairs on the opposite side.
She could not remember how she managed to descend those steep stone steps. Wandering on, taking step after step, she found herself standing in the castle garden, soaked through by the driving rain.
Talia furrowed her brow, bewildered. As the cold bit into her skin, a quiet question surfaced in her mind.
‘Why did I slip out of my room like a thief?’
Gazing blankly up into the black sky as the rain poured down, she heard that faint, reedy cry once more.
As though led by an invisible thread, Talia resumed her unsteady march.
Cold mud clung wet and heavy to her bare feet.
A sharp sting pierced her sole, as if she had stepped on something jagged, but her feet moved beyond her control, carrying her relentlessly forward.
How long she drifted aimlessly through that drowned, sodden world without knowing her path, she could not tell. Suddenly, she found herself standing before the chapel.
She looked up at the pale, sickly stone with hollow eyes, then stepped into the dim entryway. Passing through the empty nave and out the rear exit, she was met by bare, skeletal trees, tangled briars, and a tiny mound of earth that lacked even a simple wooden marker.
She stumbled toward it.
At last, the ringing cry in her ears fell silent.
Talia blinked her stinging eyes, staring down at the little mound where a few wilting wildflowers had been strewn.
Only then did she understand the true nature of the sound that had drawn her here.
It was the cry of an infant.
Without warning, a faint, dry laugh broke from her lips. She could not comprehend why she was laughing.
Clutching her belly as her shoulders shook, Talia collapsed to her knees, her fingers clawing into the freezing mound of earth.
Hot rain fell incessantly over the backs of her mud-caked hands. No—it was not rain.
Only when her vision dissolved completely into water did she realize she had not been laughing at all, but weeping.
A thick sob caught in her throat like bile. Talia gripped her neck as though hands were strangling the life out of her, and then vomited out a ragged, desolate wail, retching as if bringing up muddy water.
The despair she had held in reserve came bursting forth all at once.
The world beyond the opaque film shattered into jagged shards, stabbing deep into her frozen skin. She slumped forward, draping her upper body over the small grave.
Just then, the sound of wet, hurried footsteps cut through the downpour.
Through her blurred, tear-filled gaze, a shadow like twilight appeared.
She lifted hollow eyes to the man standing in the rain. A faint steam rose from his massive frame, clad only in a drenched shirt. His chest heaved heavily as he slowly closed the distance between them. Then, a pale hand reached out to her.
Talia knew that hand. It was the hand that had pulled her from death, and the very hand that had cast her down into the abyss.
When she recoiled, shrinking back as though he were brandishing a blade, the man froze in his tracks.
Freezing rain streamed down his cold, bloodless face. Beyond the curtain of water, she saw the two eyes that had once mirrored a silver crown—now holding nothing but desolate ruin.
END