Talia twisted her wrists violently, trying to pull her bound hands free. At that, the man’s face, which had been as smooth as a mask, contorted cruelly.
“I asked where you were trying to go.”
Varkas, hauling her toward him with brute strength, spat the words into her face.
Talia glared at him with pure venom. Her cramped legs throbbed with sharp pain, but she used every ounce of her strength to maintain an icy composure.
“What does it matter to you where I go?”
In that instant, she realized his patience had snapped. A sound like a broken wind instrument tore from his thick throat, where the veins were bulging.
“Do you have any idea how dangerous what you did today was?”
Hard fingers dug into her skin. He clamped her shoulder with his other hand and ground out every word, as if carving it into her flesh.
“If a lowlife vagrant or a cutthroat had found you first… have you even imagined what would have happened to you?”
Talia fought not to flinch. As if to trample that effort, he pressed on without mercy.
“Rape, murder, plunder… It’s nothing short of a miracle none of that happened before I found you.”
“Don’t exaggerate. I was barely gone half a day—”
“Exaggerate?”
Thorns of fury sharpened in his gaze. The silver flecks scattered across his dark irises glinted like the bared teeth of a beast.
“Are you pretending, or are you genuinely too blind to see how the people out there look at you?”
He menaced her ruthlessly, determined to wound.
“Did you think you could survive even a single day outside this castle unharmed?”
“Let go of me!”
“Even if heaven pitied you and you lasted one night without disaster, what then? You, who can barely limp along for a few hours before collapsing crippled…!”
“I said let me go!”
The crack of a strike shattered the air, and her palm burst into fire. Only after the stinging registered did she realize she had slapped him across the face.
Talia stared blankly at his cheek, where the red imprint of her hand had risen, before her own face crumpled. A breath as rough as sandpaper scraped through her throat.
“A body that can’t even walk properly, just like you said… what difference does it make what happens to it?”
His grip on her arms tightened until the bone protested. A dark, predatory light flared in his fractured eyes.
It was the first time she had ever seen him this furious. Yet strangely, her terror drained away. She almost wished he would just snap her in two right there.
She spoke again, her words grinding jaggedly through her teeth.
“I don’t care if I end up broken beyond repair. Anything would be better than staying at your side.”
The fierce fire died out in his eyes, all at once. Looking at that suddenly drained, bloodless face, she poured out her disgust.
“So please, make it so I never have to look at you again.”
Those words seemed to tear away his last shred of will. The hands that had gripped her tight enough to shatter bone slid limply away.
For an agonizing stretch, the only sound in the suffocating silence was the snap of dying embers in the hearth. At last, a hollow voice drifted from his frozen lips.
“Is that truly what you want?”
Talia parted her lips to say yes. But as if a hand were clamped around her throat, she could not squeeze out a single sound.
Scalding tears blurred her vision. She looked down to hide them and nodded.
“Do you believe you will be fine if you never see me again?”
Her heart twisted at the low voice falling over her head. Talia forced open her locked throat and managed a ragged reply.
“Yes.”
He said nothing.
Talia turned a bitter gaze toward the motionless man.
‘Please, just stop. How much more vile do I have to become before you’ll cast me away?’
Talia stared at his hollow face, carved with exhaustion, as if branding it into memory. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and forced out cold, unforgiving words.
“You said you’d grant whatever I asked if it lay in your power, didn’t you?”
· · ·
“You’ve never properly kept your word.”
A knot in her throat forced her to break off.
Lacking the nerve to meet his eyes, Talia kept her gaze glued to her pale knuckles and forced the words past her lips.
“So do as I ask, just this once. I don’t want to see your face anymore. Even looking at you makes it hard to breathe.”
Another stifling silence settled over the room. After sitting motionless for a long time, the man finally spoke.
“…I understand what you mean. Clearly.”
With an expression as hollow as an abandoned shell, he slowly stood up.
Talia reflexively laced her fingers together, fighting the urge to reach out. When he opened the door, a rush of cold air scraped across her tear-streaked cheeks.
Moments later, he vanished into the corridor’s shadows.
The quiet latch of the closing door sounded like the fall of a guillotine blade.
Talia, frozen until that instant, threw herself from the bed as if possessed. She tried to chase after him, but her spent knees buckled beneath her.
Sprawled pathetically on the carpet, Talia let out a dry laugh as she looked down at her twitching legs.
What had she meant to do, chasing after him now?
Clutching her ruined limbs, she let out a broken, wheezing sob before collapsing face-first against the floor.
After that day, Varkas never showed his face again. Nor did he make any preparations to send her to a monastery or back to the Imperial Palace. He simply abandoned her to neglect, keeping her under what was effectively house arrest in her room.
Perhaps he had merely pushed her out of mind while drowning in backlogged affairs.
Talia sat on the deep windowsill, gazing out at the castle courtyard where rain fell through pale sunlight. One after another, the imperial knights who had been quartered in the grand duchy were mounting their steeds.
They had likely come to negotiate military aid. On one edge of the vast training grounds, she saw wagons loaded with arms and hundreds of mounted warriors of the East waiting in line.
After searching through the crowd for a long time, she finally caught sight of Varkas.
Talia leaned her forehead against the glass, watching the man standing out in the rain.
He looked completely unbothered.
Watching him issue orders to the knights with his usual flawless, distant authority, she felt a turbulent ache rise within her—whether relief or agony, she couldn’t tell.
Talia breathed against the glass, the pale mist erasing his silhouette. The broken man who had unraveled before her was gone. She didn’t even possess the right to mourn that fact. She was the one who had driven him away.
Talia pulled the drapes shut. Walking over to the shelf, she stoked the small brazier and scattered a pinch of dried herb across the coals. Feeling her thoughts blur into a warm fog, she lay on the bed and closed her eyes. The faint patter of rain outside drifted through her unmoored mind.
She lost track of how long she had drifted in that haze. Startled by a quiet rustle, Talia drifted back to consciousness and blinked her blurred eyes, spotting a maid placing something on the nightstand.
A sharp, fresh scent of cut stems cut through the stale air.
“…What is that?”
The young maid flinched, looking back at her with wary eyes. Ever since Talia had drugged the staff and slipped away, she seemed to have been marked as dangerous; the maids’ posture around her had stiffened considerably.
The girl took a tentative step back, answering timidly.
“It… it’s Thousand-Hand Flower. I was told it brings calm to the mind…”
Talia turned toward the table. A bunch of yellow blossoms, still damp with rain, stood in a clear glass vase. As she stared dumbly at them, the maid added with hesitation.
“The Grand Duke told me to bring them to you before he departed.”
Talia turned back, her eyes wide with shock.
“…Departed?”
END