The healing sorceress stammered, her gaze fixed firmly on the floor.
Varkas watched her, one hand pressed to his temple, before speaking in a dry voice.
“Sit a moment. There is something I wished to ask you anyway.”
The woman looked up, her eyes wide with surprise.
“Are you speaking to me?”
“Yes.”
Leaning back into his chair, he gestured with his chin toward the seat opposite the desk.
The woman froze halfway between standing and sitting, then cautiously lowered herself onto the edge of the cushion.
“It seems you have grown rather close to the Grand Duchess lately. Is there a reason for that?”
Unprepared for such an inquiry, she offered him a bewildered look.
“There was no particular occasion. It is only that I helped her look after Khan… and I believe she has come to feel more comfortable around me than before.”
“I hear she spends a great deal of time at your hut. What does she usually do there?”
“She naps alongside Khan in my quarters, or brings books to read. At times she watches me prepare medicines. And occasionally…”
The woman hesitated, then clamped her mouth shut.
Varkas arched an eyebrow.
“Occasionally what?”
“Occasionally… she helps with my work.”
The words tumbled out like an uneasy confession.
He asked, unable to mask his disbelief,
“She does menial labor in your hut?”
“She… she showed an interest in the craft. Now and then, she trims herbs or helps prepare reagents.”
He let out a hollow laugh.
Talia had treated even him—the heir to the Grand Duchy—like a servant. The sheer absurdity of her doing chores for a common healer washed over him.
He had received regular reports concerning her, but wanting to spare her the feeling of being watched, he had ordered the men to focus strictly on her physical safety.
Since those reports dealt almost entirely with her health or whether she had faced any discomfort, he knew almost nothing about the small details of her days.
Pushing down the prickle of irritation rising in his chest, he continued in a stiff voice.
“How was she with the late healer?”
A flash of sharp tension crossed the woman’s face. It seemed she finally realized this was an interrogation.
Varkas leaned forward against the desk and added coldly,
“She did not appear particularly grieved by her death. Were they on poor terms?”
The healing sorceress swallowed hard, buying time before she dared to speak.
“Until last year, she got along well with Marisen. However… once the Grand Duchess elevated me from an assistant to her exclusive healer, some friction arose.”
“Friction?”
Hesitation shadowed the woman’s features. She seemed terrified of giving testimony that might harm the Grand Duchess.
After a long silence, she ventured carefully,
“Whenever Marisen’s prescriptions differed from mine, Her Grace began to favor my judgment. Marisen voiced her displeasure… and Her Grace took great offense. Naturally, the two of them drifted apart. It was around that time that Marisen suffered her accident…”
“And so the rumor spread that my wife’s pet wolf tore her apart.”
Varkas finished the sentence without inflection.
The woman rushed to defend his wife.
“She did not show it openly, but the Grand Duchess was deeply troubled by Marisen’s death. Losing someone close to her was enough of a shock, yet everyone began looking at her with quiet suspicion…”
“Are you entirely certain the wolf is innocent?”
Her face stiffened at the offhand question.
She looked down at the floor, paused, and raised her head with firm resolve.
“Yes. Khan is guilty of no crime.”
He stared into her dark brown eyes in silence.
Her voice rang with conviction.
“Khan is an extraordinarily intelligent beast. He understands that if he harms a person, he will not be permitted to stay by Her Grace’s side. He would never attack without cause.”
Varkas stroked his chin, lost in thought, before nodding slowly.
“That will do. You may leave.”
Relief washed over the healer as she rose to her feet.
Once the door closed behind her, his gaze returned to the desk. The vial of reagent she had left caught the pale light.
He took it in hand, watched it for a long while, and uncapped it. The bitter herbal scent drifted up to his nose, bringing buried memories rushing back.
As if to tear them away, he squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed the draft down in a single gulp.
Before long, the medicine began its slow crawl through his veins.
Feeling the exhaustion of the road give way to a heavy languor, he rested against the arm of his chair. Out the window, a glowing, blue-tinged full moon drifted into his blurred sight.
The moon had looked just like that the first night they lay together in the same bed.
The sudden thought cut across his chest like a blade.
He got to his feet, tugging at the collar that seemed to choke his throat.
For a fleeting second, the mad impulse to go to her seized him.
Not to demand anything from her. Only to hold her quietly beneath the moonlight and find sleep. Just as they once had…
A faint, bitter laugh escaped him at his own foolishness.
She did not need him. And he had no wish to disrupt the peace she had finally reclaimed.
He turned and stepped into the bedchamber connected to his study.
The room had been kept immaculate, prepared in advance by the servants.
Varkas let out a weary sigh and dropped onto the bed without bothering to change. He was bone-tired.
And once again, he found himself tallying the pieces of his past.
At some point in his life, dreaming had become nothing more than reliving old memories.
Wild illusions intruded at times, but beneath them lay the stubborn shape of what had already been.
Tonight was no different.
A younger version of himself sat in a stiff wooden chair, staring straight ahead.
Spread out over a long, plain table—the kind found only in a priest’s quarters—were yellowed manuscripts.
The priest standing behind him dug a broad, calloused hand into the back of his neck, forcing his face down toward the parchment.
“Look closely. This is the wickedness practiced by the Khan of old.”
Gruesome illustrations covered the ancient sheets in vivid detail.
A headless body hung suspended above an altar constructed from severed human heads, while dark-haired priests below caught the blood draining from its neck in golden basins.
“For generations, the savages of the East enslaved neighboring tribes and offered their lives to spirits. They took the heads from their bodies and hung them inverted to draw out every drop of blood, believing the earth spirit, Tiramer, gathered strength by feeding upon human vital essence. Until they were subdued by the Empire, they butchered thousands upon thousands in these abominable rites, gaining powers that defied the holy providence of God.”
The boy twisted his neck, glaring up at the priest with fierce defiance. Unmoved, the man met his gaze and spoke in a chilling, flat voice.
“That same foul taint flows through your blood. It is why you feel not an ounce of remorse after taking a human life.”
“I did nothing wrong.”
The words came out like the growl of a cornered beast.
“He laid his hands on me. He deserved to die.”
“If that is so, my brother’s soul will burn forever in the fires of hell,” the priest replied without warmth.
“Yet your sin remains. You battered the Dreiban brothers’ skulls until their faces were beyond recognition. No ordinary child could commit such savagery. Just as the Grand Duke feared, the brutality of the Khan tribe still runs through your veins.”
He bit his lip. He could not remember the scene clearly.
The moment that priest’s rough hand had slipped beneath his clothing, rage had dyed his entire world crimson. When his senses returned, he was staring down at the man’s limp form, gripping a bloodied candlestick in his fist.
Perhaps, as the priest claimed, a monster truly lived inside him. His father had seen it too. But he refused to concede to them.
He forced the words through gritted teeth.
“I did nothing wrong. And if anyone ever touches me like that again, I will crush his head too.”
“…Then I have no choice but to wait until you mend your ways.”
The man dragged him violently from the seat. Pinning his flailing wrists together, he hauled the boy toward the punishment room. He fought back with all the fury in his small frame, but he was nothing against the raw power of a former templar.
The priest shoved him into the narrow stone cell.
“Repent for your slaughter, and I shall open this door.”
The boy remained silent, his eyes gleaming fiercely in the gloom.
Under that unblinking, feral glare, a tiny fissure broke across the priest’s masklike composure.
“What are you glaring at?”
The boy searched his mind for the words that would wound the man deepest.
“Your end.”
The priest’s sunken cheek twitched.
A cold, deliberate smile stretched across the boy’s mouth.
“I see you hanging upside down with your neck cut open, draining into the dark.”
Looking as though he had laid eyes upon a demon from the pit, the priest slammed the heavy iron door shut with a deafening crash.
Alone in the black stone chamber, the boy let out a dry, triumphant laugh.
END