Ch#156
At that moment, the crying that had briefly subsided drifted in again. Talia, flinching as she withdrew her hand, looked toward the window with distorted eyes. That frantic, shrieking sound felt increasingly unbearable. She wanted to make it stop somehow, and the realization that there was nothing she could do felt like her insides were being torn apart.
Clutching her belly, which ached as if a blade were embedded in it, she fumbled over the flat skin of her stomach. In that instant, a maddening thought suddenly surfaced.
‘…I can just start over from the beginning.’
She felt a vague sense that her thoughts were spiraling in an abnormal direction, but she couldn’t control herself at all. As if drawn by something, she reached out.
When she pulled up his rumpled tunic, his waist, tight as a hawser, and his firm abdomen were revealed. She slowly slid her fingers over them.
She grabbed the loose-fitting trousers favored by Easterners and pulled them down slightly, revealing the taut tendons leading to his groin and the hard protrusion of his iliac bone. However, they wouldn’t go down any further because of the tightly fastened leather cord.
She fumbled at the leather cord to undo it. Under her clumsy touch, the knot only tightened further. Feeling her nerves fraying, she pulled at the cord somewhat hysterically, when a large hand with bulging veins snatched her wrist and gripped it.
Raising her head, she saw his face reflected in her eyes, wearing a look of confusion. His unfocused blue-gray eyes narrowed as he forced out a voice mixed with a rasping sound.
“What… are you doing right now?”
Talia replied calmly, without a hint of fluster.
“I… want to have a baby again.”
The sleepiness vanished from his eyes.
Turning away from his face, which looked as though he couldn’t believe his own ears, she reached for his waistband again. Then, like someone possessed, she muttered.
“Give it back to me. I’ll give birth to a healthy one this time.”
Then my baby will stop that sorrowful crying.
With a sense of desperation, she slid her fingers into his slightly loosened clothes. At that, Barkas, who had been stiff as stone, suddenly bolted upright and constricted both her wrists like a snare.
At the touch intended to push her away, something in her mind snapped.
Talia cried out in a voice that sounded as if her entrails were boiling.
“Why… why are you refusing me?”
The man’s eyes slowly distorted. She could see his blackened, dilated pupils twitching minutely.
Everything else was a blur, so why was this man so vivid?
Feeling a sense of loathing toward herself, she twisted her wrists violently.
“You said you’d do whatever I wanted! You said you’d grant me anything I wished for! Give me my baby back! My baby, who you wouldn’t even let me hold… give it back to me!”
In that moment, she saw something crumble in his eyes.
Muttering words that couldn’t be understood, the man grabbed the sheet and wrapped it around her.
Talia struggled even more fiercely, like a fish caught in a net.
“Liar! You’re nothing but a liar! You said you’d protect my baby, but you didn’t even look at it! You threw away your promise to me like a piece of trash!”
A voice like a scream, which sounded horrific even to her own ears, burst out continuously. It was as if she were possessed by an evil spirit.
Unable to withstand the surging resentment, she struck and scratched at his body recklessly.
The man remained motionless while holding her. As if he would take in all the filth she poured out, he simply breathed heavily while holding her convulsing body tight in his arms.
Because of that, she felt herself sinking into something even more despicable and miserable.
Blame me instead. Just like I’m doing.
I was the one who tried to have a baby with this body, and I was the one who couldn’t protect that child.
I know it too. So say it. Say it’s all my fault, that I brought this on myself. Say that I killed our child.
Fall into this abyss with me and roll in the mud. Be ruined and broken along with me.
She looked up at him with eyes full of longing and curses.
In her tear-blurred vision, his face was captured, hideously distorted. Yet, he was a being who could never fall to the rock bottom where she resided.
It was always only herself who became pathetic and miserable. A man who made her feel infinitely shabby and worthless….
Finally, she lost all will to fight and let her limbs go limp.
A dry wind blew through her heart, where everything had burned away, leaving only ashes. She finally let the thick dust billowing in her stomach spill out of her mouth.
“…I will never trust you again.”
She felt his body, pressed tightly against hers, go rigid. But in the end, he didn’t utter a single word. He only leaned his body against the headboard as if exhausted, keeping his arms tight around her.
A ruin-like silence settled over their heads.
Before she knew it, she realized the baby’s crying had stopped, but Talia could feel no sense of relief.
Before long, rumors began to circulate in Raedgo Castle that the Grand Duchess was suffering from madness.
The iron-willed head maid kept a sharp eye on the maids to silence them, but the whispering showed no signs of subsiding.
It was because the woman, who had done nothing but sleep like a soul-less person since regaining consciousness, started throwing all sorts of fits against the Grand Duke from a certain day onward.
It was more than once or twice that her desperate words of resentment and curses crossed the door and echoed down the hallway.
Sometimes, the sound of things breaking and cloth being torn could also be heard.
When they rushed into the room upon being summoned after such a commotion, the sight of the fainted Grand Duchess and the room in shambles unfolded before their eyes.
In the midst of it all, the Grand Duke seemed to be the only thing intact.
The man, with a face as cold as ice as if nothing had happened, ordered them in a chilling voice to bring a priest. The maids, who had been frozen in shock, immediately obeyed the command.
Such incidents were repeated several times.
Since the Grand Duke didn’t budge, the woman’s outbursts grew more severe by the day. It reached a point where the voices of sympathy for the Grand Duchess gradually faded.
There were not a few who whispered criticisms, saying that while it was unfortunate to lose a first child so vainly, it was too much to pour all that resentment onto the innocent Grand Duke.
However, even those who whispered behind her back had no choice but to fall silent once they actually faced her ravaged countenance.
This was because the woman who had roamed the garden with flushed cheeks and a dreaming expression throughout last autumn and winter had lost all vitality and transformed into a ghost.
Those who witnessed her occasionally slipping through the Grand Duke’s ironclad surveillance to escape her room and wander the castle could not help but understand the Grand Duke’s heart as he endured all those outbursts calmly.
The woman, who continued her precarious steps as if searching for something with a hollow expression filling her eerily beautiful face, looked as if she might scatter like smoke at any moment. No one could see that sorrowful sight and not feel pity.
However, regardless of the servants of the main castle harboring sympathy for the Grand Duchess, the dissatisfaction of the vassals seemed to grow day by day.
“Is the Grand Duchess still the same?”
Brisa, a maid passing through the hallway with a laundry basket, discovered Daren Drew Sherkan climbing the stairs and hurriedly bowed her head.
The man, leading knights as he approached her, asked back pressingly.
“I asked about Her Grace the Grand Duchess’s condition.”
“Her, Her Grace is… currently taking her medicine and resting.”
Even though she knew he was asking about the Grand Duchess’s mental state, Brisa feigned ignorance.
The man, after sending a cold gaze for a moment, soon let out a heavy sigh and held out a parchment scroll sealed with red wax.
“Deliver this to His Grace the Grand Duke.”
Brisa quickly set the basket on the floor and took it. As if his business was done, the man immediately went up the stairs.
Glancing at his retreating back, Brisa turned toward the Grand Duke’s bedroom to carry out the instruction she had suddenly been entrusted with.
“Your Grace, may I enter?”
Upon knocking cautiously on the door, permission to enter was soon granted. Brisa entered the dimly lit bedroom, taking care not to make a sound.
The Grand Duke was in the middle of changing his clothes, which had become a mess from dealing with his wife’s rampage.
The man, who was folding up the sleeves of his black velvet tunic, cast an indifferent gaze over his shoulder.
“What is it?”
“While I was passing through the hallway… I received an order to deliver this to Your Grace….”
Brisa, bowing politely, held out the parchment scroll in her hand. The man took it, tore off the wax, and unfurled it.
Brisa could tell that whatever was written in that document made the Grand Duke extremely displeased.
The man, whose brow furrowed deeply as his eyes moved quickly, crumpled the parchment and threw it into the fireplace.
Soon after, a bleak voice rang out.
“I will be away for a moment. Do not take your eyes off her.”
