Clear tears streamed down the woman’s face.
He stared down at her with hollow eyes, then lowered himself to one knee before her.
“As you said, I cannot begin to fathom Your Majesty’s pain. But I still remember the vast desolation a child feels when they have nowhere left to turn.”
A faint glimmer slowly returned to eyes that had been empty as abysses.
He reached inside his coat, drew out a handkerchief, and gently wiped the tears from her cheeks, just as she had once wiped his face.
“For the sake of the Crown Prince and the Princess, please hold on.”
Guilt and shame shadowed the Empress’s features.
Her gaunt shoulders trembled faintly, and her head dropped, limp.
“Forgive me. I should never have said such things to you….”
He patted the shoulder of the Empress as she wept like a frightened young girl.
A little while later, he lifted her gently after she lost consciousness from pure exhaustion and laid her onto the bed. Slipping out of the room with hushed steps, he found Gareth leaning against the wall down the corridor.
“Follow me.”
With bloodshot eyes glinting malevolently, the boy seized his arm without a word of explanation.
He followed silently behind the Crown Prince.
“Look down there.”
Gareth hauled him up into a watchtower adjoining the main palace, leaning hard against the parapet and pointing outward.
He stepped up beside the boy.
Down in the garden of the detached palace where the Emperor was meant to rest, a man and a woman were lost in a secret tryst.
The Emperor’s dark hair and bold features were unmistakable. Thick, curly hair spilled over broad shoulders forged from heavy bone and muscle; the man leaned back lazily in a chair, hands idly roaming over a woman’s waist.
He studied the slender figure pressed against the Emperor. Except for long, pale hair and proportions so flawless they felt eerie, nothing about her stood out.
What in this woman could drive the ruler of an empire to shatter sacred vows before God and discard his very honor?
As he watched, questioning, the woman tilted her head back as though feeling his gaze.
A cold prickle ran down the nape of his neck. His skin chilled, gripped by an instinct warning him of lethal danger.
Looking straight up at him, the woman narrowed her eyes in a derisive smile. Then she caught a fistful of the Emperor’s hair and yanked him down roughly. She handled him not as the sovereign of an empire, but as a trivial plaything.
Under those brazen hands, the ruler who had seemed wrought of iron crumbled like sand. Their bodies, vibrant and full of life, tangled beneath the brilliant sun as their lips met greedily.
“Filthy beasts.”
Gareth’s voice was a low, guttural snarl.
“He brought that woman to the detached palace a week ago to carry on like that. And that wench dared set foot in Mother’s garden to spit on her face.”
Veins bulged across the boy’s bloodshot eyes as he glared at the embracing pair.
He gripped the stone railing until his knuckles went white, spitting out the words.
“That’s why Mother took the poison. Because of that filthy whore…”
Shaking violently, Gareth lashed out in a blind fury and kicked a nearby cabinet, sending it crashing over. He began stomping on every scrap of debris scattered across the floor.
The explosive rampage subsided only after every piece of furniture in the watchtower lay in splinters.
“I will become Emperor. No matter what. And when that day comes, I will drag that woman before me on her knees and pour the very poison Mother swallowed down her throat.”
Panting amid the ruins, the boy turned tear-stained eyes toward him.
“When the time comes, your job is to drag that whore to me and force her down. I will be Emperor of this realm, and you will rule the East at my side as my right hand. We will make them pay for every ounce of humiliation our mother suffered.”
He turned back toward the parapet and looked down. Over the image of the two lovers entwined beneath the afternoon sun, the frail, wasting form of Bernadette overlapped.
She was the one who had pulled him from a cage no better than a prison and raised him like her own flesh and blood for seven years.
Why couldn’t he feel the burning fury consuming Gareth?
All that stirred in him was pity for the Empress and a quiet disgust for the foul spectacle below.
Gareth grabbed his collar in a sudden jerk.
“You will help me, won’t you, Brother?”
Varkas looked down into Gareth’s erratic, trembling eyes.
Though he could not share the boy’s burning wrath, he knew full well he owed the Empress a debt he could never repay.
He reached out and gently smoothed Gareth’s tangled curls. Just as he parted his lips to answer, the boy’s figure dissolved like dry sand. The surrounding chaos washed away into a dull, muddy haze.
In the next breath, he found himself standing in a dimly lit corridor wrapped in heavy shadows.
The faint sound of weeping drifted through the air. Turning, he saw maids stifling their tears.
One of them bowed low to him.
“You have arrived, my lord.”
The maid’s voice cracked with sorrow.
“Please, go in. Her Majesty has been waiting for you all this time.”
He walked down the corridor without hesitation and stepped into the Empress’s bedchamber.
Inside the candlelit room sat Marquis Oristein, close relatives, and a high-ranking priest. Their dark eyes snapped toward him before drifting back to the bed at the center of the room.
He took in their faces for a brief moment, then quietly crossed the floor.
“Varkas!”
A little girl who had been collapsed over the sheets threw herself toward him.
He wrapped an arm around the young princess and patted her back, just as the Empress had taught him long ago.
The girl clung to his neck with thin arms, weeping hot, bitter tears into his shoulder.
“Varkas, Mother is… Mother…”
He looked toward the bed as he stroked the hair of the weeping girl.
In mere months, the Empress had withered beyond recognition. A fragile, empty smile flickered across her lips. She was so lifeless it seemed impossible she was only thirty-one years old.
She lifted a skeletal hand toward him.
“Come here.”
Setting Ayla down, he dropped to one knee beside the bed. The girl ran straight to her twin brother and threw her arms around him. Gareth held his sister tight, desperately biting back his own tears.
He glanced at them briefly before turning his gaze back to the Empress. She stroked his cheek with fingers cold as ice.
“You’ve grown so tall these past months. When you are a man, you’ll be as broad as your father.”
· · ·
“Strange, isn’t it? Though you look nothing like the Khan, whenever I look at you, I remember the eastern plains where I rode as a child. Perhaps that is why I kept you so close.”
The faint warmth on her face vanished, replaced by a chilling stillness.
Her eyes, pitch-black in the dim light, fixed on him as her hand fell back to the bed.
“I did not call you here to reminisce. I sent for you urgently because there is a favor I must ask of you.”
“…Tell me.”
Words seemed to fail her.
After a long, agonizing silence, her eyes drifted to her children by the bedside. Only then, with steady resolve, did she find her voice.
“Protect my children.”
His brow furrowed.
He could not understand why she felt the need to make such a plea.
She belonged to the Shearkan line, and the twins carried its blood. Protecting them was already his bounden duty.
Placing his hand over her frail fingers, he spoke in a measured tone.
“Even without your asking, I intend to defend them with everything I have. That is the will of the Ducal House of Shearkan…”
“I am asking for an oath from you. Varkas Raedgo Shearkan.”
She clutched his hand with every ounce of strength she had left.
“Can you swear before God that you will protect Gareth and Ayla until your dying breath?”
He stared at her in silence.
What she demanded went far beyond the rational duties expected of the future duke.
It was an oath binding his entire life.
Knowing the terrifying weight of such a vow, he could not answer lightly.
Yet even that hesitation felt foreign to him. Had his life not been reduced to a simple habit of breathing?
For the past seven years, he had felt no joy, no grief, no rage. What value was there in this hollow cycle of eating and sleeping that made him hold back?
He glanced toward Ayla and Gareth.
The twins looked back at him with terrified eyes. Protecting them would not be an impossible task. And wasn’t it something he was meant to do anyway?
Having reached his decision, he spoke evenly to the woman who had dragged him out of the abyss, only to place him in new chains.
“In the name of God, I swear. I will protect them both until my life comes to an end.”
END