At that moment, the crying that had briefly subsided drifted in again. Talia flinched, pulling her hand back, and turned toward the window with eyes twisted in distress. That frantic, shrieking sound was growing unbearable. She wanted desperately to make it stop, and the realization that she was powerless to do so tore at her inside.
Clutching her lower stomach, which throbbed as though a blade were driven into it, she fumbled over the flat skin of her belly. In that instant, a maddening thought surfaced.
‘…I can just start over.’
She had a vague sense that her mind was spiraling out of control, but she could not stop herself. Drawn forward as if pulled by an invisible thread, she reached out.
When she pushed up his rumpled tunic, it revealed his waist, corded tight as a hawser, and his firm abdomen. She ran her fingers slowly over his bare skin.
Taking hold of the loose-fitting trousers favored by easterners, she tugged them down slightly, baring the taut sinews leading to his groin and the hard crest of his hip bone. But the tightly tied leather drawstring kept them from sliding down any further.
She fumbled to undo the knot. Beneath her clumsy touch, the cord only pulled tighter. Her nerves fraying, she jerked at it with mounting hysteria—until a broad, vein-lined hand clamped down around her wrist.
She lifted her head to find his face clouded with confusion. His unfocused blue-gray eyes narrowed, and when he spoke, his voice came out hoarse and scraped.
“What… are you doing?”
Talia answered calmly, without the slightest hesitation.
“I… want to have a child again.”
The drowsiness vanished from his eyes.
Looking away from his stunned, disbelieving face, she reached for his waistband once more. Then, like someone possessed, she muttered,
“Give it back to me. I’ll carry a healthy one this time.”
Then my baby will stop that sorrowful crying.
Driven by desperation, she slid her fingers into his loosened clothes. At that, Varkas, who had remained stiff as stone, bolted upright and locked both her wrists in his grip like a pair of iron shackles.
The moment he tried to push her away, something in her snapped.
Talia shrieked, a sound torn straight from her gut.
“Why… why are you refusing me?”
His expression contorted slowly. She saw his dark, dilated pupils twitching.
The rest of the world was a blur; why was this man so vivid?
Swallowed by self-loathing, she twisted her wrists with violent force.
“You said you’d do whatever I wanted! You said you’d grant me anything I wished for! Give me my baby back! My child, whom you wouldn’t even let me hold… give him back to me!”
In that moment, she saw something crumble behind his eyes.
Muttering words she could not understand, he grabbed the bedsheet and wrapped it around her.
Talia thrashed wildly, like a fish trapped in a net.
“Liar! You’re nothing but a liar! You swore you’d protect my baby, but you didn’t even look at him! You tossed your promise to me aside like garbage!”
Screams poured from her, sounding hideous even to her own ears. It was as though a demon had taken hold of her.
Overcome by an unbearable surge of fury, she clawed and struck at him recklessly.
He did not move to strike back. As if prepared to absorb every scrap of bile she hurled at him, he merely breathed heavily, holding her convulsing body clamped tight against his chest.
His endurance only made her feel more wretched, dragging her deeper into degradation.
Blame me instead. Do it like I’m doing.
I was the one who tried to bear a child with this broken body, and I was the one who failed to keep him safe.
I know it too. So say it. Say it’s all my fault, that I brought this on myself. Tell me I killed our child.
Fall into this abyss with me and crawl in the mud. Be ruined and broken alongside me.
She glared up at him, her gaze laced with longing and curses alike.
Through her blurred tears, his face appeared horribly twisted. Yet he remained untouched, a man who would never sink to the rock bottom where she lay.
She was always the only one made pathetic, the only one brought to ruin. He was a man who reduced her to nothingness….
At last, every ounce of fight drained out of her, and her limbs went slack.
A dry wind swept through her hollowed heart, stirring the ashes of everything that had burned away. Finally, she let the suffocating grit rising in her throat spill past her lips.
“…I will never trust you again.”
She felt his body, pressed hard against hers, lock up. But he did not utter a single word. He merely rested against the headboard as though drained of all strength, keeping his arms locked firmly around her.
A silence like a wasteland settled over them.
Before she realized it, the infant’s weeping had faded into nothing, yet not an ounce of relief reached Talia’s heart.
Before long, whispers began to spread through Raedgo Castle that the Grand Duchess had lost her mind.
The iron-willed head maid kept a watchful eye on the maids to silence them, but the rumors refused to die down.
After spending days sleeping like an empty husk once she woke, the Grand Duchess had abruptly begun throwing violent fits against the Grand Duke.
More than once, her frantic screams of hatred and curses carried through the heavy doors and echoed down the corridor.
At times, the noise of shattering objects and tearing fabric leaked out as well.
Whenever the servants were summoned into the room after such a tempest, they were greeted by the sight of the Grand Duchess collapsed on the floor and the bedchamber in utter ruin.
Through it all, the Grand Duke remained the only thing left unbroken.
With a face cold as stone, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, he would order a priest in a chilling voice. The maids, paralyzed with shock, would scurry to obey.
Such scenes repeated themselves time and again.
Because the Grand Duke never yielded, the Grand Duchess’s outbursts grew more ferocious with each passing day. Eventually, even the sympathy the household had harbored for her began to dwindle.
A good few whispered critical remarks behind closed doors, saying that while losing her first child was a tragedy, it was cruel to heap all that venom onto the blameless Grand Duke.
Yet even those who spoke ill of her fell silent the moment they laid eyes on her ravaged form.
The woman who had walked through the garden through the autumn and winter with flushed cheeks and a distant, dreaming look had lost every spark of life, transformed into a ghost.
Those who caught sight of her slipping past the Grand Duke’s watchful eyes to roam the castle halls could not help but understand why he bore every one of her outbursts without complaint.
Stumbling forward in unsteady steps as though searching for something, a hollow expression blanketing her hauntingly beautiful face, she looked ready to dissolve like smoke at any second. No one could look upon her and remain unmoved.
Yet whatever pity the castle servants felt, the discontent among the vassals only festered day by day.
“Is the Grand Duchess still the same?”
Brisa, carrying a laundry basket through the corridor, spotted Daren Dru Shearkan coming up the stairs and bowed her head in haste.
Flanked by knights as he approached, he pressed her again.
“I asked about Her Grace’s condition.”
“Her… Her Grace has taken her medicine and is resting.”
Though she knew well enough that he was asking after the Grand Duchess’s mind, Brisa played dumb.
Daren held her in a cold stare for a moment, then let out a heavy sigh and extended a scroll of parchment sealed with red wax.
“Deliver this to His Grace.”
Brisa set her basket down quickly and took the scroll. His errand finished, the man turned and continued up the stairs.
Watching his retreating back, Brisa made her way toward the master bedchamber to carry out the task thrust upon her.
“Your Grace, may I enter?”
She knocked cautiously, and permission was granted almost immediately. Stepping into the dim bedchamber, Brisa took care not to let her footsteps make a sound.
The Grand Duke was in the middle of changing his clothes, which had been torn and disheveled from subduing his wife’s frenzy.
Folding back the cuffs of his black velvet tunic, he cast a cool glance over his shoulder.
“What is it?”
“I was passing through the corridor, and… I was instructed to deliver this to Your Grace….”
Brisa bowed respectfully and offered the scroll. Varkas took it, cracked the wax seal, and unrolled the parchment.
Whatever was written upon it clearly displeased him to no end.
His brow furrowed deeply as his eyes swept over the lines, and a moment later, he crushed the parchment in his fist and hurled it into the fireplace.
Soon after, his voice fell cold across the room.
“I will be gone for a short while. Do not take your eyes off her.”
END