Unable to contain her surging resentment, Talia swung her hand. A sharp slap rang out, and a stinging heat flared across her palm.
Expecting him to grab her wrist again, she flinched and drew her shoulders in. But the man she had struck showed no sign of agitation.
“I will count that as penance for having laid hands on Your Highness without leave,” he said, tapping his cheek with the tip of his gauntlet. The skin was smooth, unmarked by so much as a red line.
“However, I have no intention of indulging your fits any further. I suggest you remember that I am no longer your personal knight.”
With that, he stepped back and slammed the carriage door shut.
Talia sat pressed against the cushions, paralyzed with rage, before she finally forced herself to peer out the window.
Varkas was nowhere in sight; he had already walked away. There were only servants hauling crates off the baggage wagons and a flustered imperial knight barking orders at them.
She wanted nothing more than to storm out and punish the wretches ignoring her commands, but she knew Varkas would never allow it. He had never tolerated cruelty toward those beneath him.
Her fingers curled into fists as she remembered the glacial stare he had given her the day she sheared the hair from a maid who had buried her face in a coat he had left behind.
With a vicious jerk, Talia yanked the curtains shut. She pulled her knees to her chest on the seat, cradling her throbbing palm.
Before long, a clarion trumpet sounded the departure, and the carriage lurched forward. The journey that was bound to become the nightmare of her life had begun.
Talia glared at the single sliver of sunlight slipping through the crack in the window, then dragged the cloth tighter until the seam vanished. Sunk in the suffocating dark, she wished with all her heart that this procession would carry them straight to hell.
If they could all tumble into a grave together, if everything would simply end… nothing would bring her greater peace.
The imperial pilgrimage followed the path once walked by the founding emperor, Dorian, tracing the curves of the Silviska River from the north to the west, then wheeling north once more.
In the era when the continent was fractured into ten kingdoms—Weddon, Tristan, Balto, Guin, Osiria, Libadon, Arex, Valis, Dumnos, and Shearkan—Dorian Roem Guirta, a scion of the Guin royal line, had fled into the central plains to escape the invasion of Balto. There, he was taken in as the adopted son of Duke Vallender, the leader and maternal uncle of the Osirian people.
After uniting the tribes of Osiria, Dorian gathered formidable allies from every corner of the land and launched his great campaign. Through twenty years of relentless war, he bound the ten realms into one, forging a vast empire.
The grand procession issuing from the Imperial Palace was at once a sacred rite retracing his conquests and a vital display to parade the Great Emperor’s bloodline before the people. Its scale was, accordingly, magnificent beyond measure.
At the front rode the Crown Prince upon a massive golden courser, leading a hundred imperial guards through the heart of the capital with the imperial banner held high. Behind him came the carriage of the First Imperial Princess, Ayla Roem Guirta, surrounded by her retinue.
The populace packing the thoroughfares erupted into wild acclaim at the sight of Dorian’s true heirs.
Steeped in centuries of pride, the knights of Roem rode with solemn, unyielding expressions. They wore spotless white tunics blazoned with the imperial crest over armor wrought from Orichalcum, the divine metal. To their right, foot soldiers marched in rigid cadence, carrying silver shields engraved with the guard’s sigil across their backs.
The crowd’s fervor swelled with the thunder of disciplined boots. Women lining the streets scattered vibrant petals beneath the horses’ hooves, and troubadours raised their voices in hymns of praise to the imperial line.
As if honoring their devotion, the First Imperial Princess drew back her curtains and showed herself. A collective gasp rippled through the street.
Could any woman on earth embody the title of Imperial Princess more flawlessly than Ayla Roem Guirta?
Her posture was as straight and graceful as a lily, her complexion fair with a healthy blush, framed by glossy chestnut locks and wide, luminous emerald eyes.
Spectators craned their necks like tortoises to catch a glimpse of her radiant face. Some trailed after the carriage as though spellbound, and had the escorting knights not held the line, the throng would have engulfed the carriage entirely.
Carried away by adoration, the people showered the beloved princess with ceaseless prayers and blessings.
Then came the next carriage, gaudy to the point of vulgarity, and the celebratory warmth vanished as if doused in freezing brine. The knights along the flank stiffened, scanning the crowds with wary eyes.
Men and women who had been screaming with joy fell dead silent, murmuring urgently to one another. Word had clearly spread that the occupant inside was the notorious Second Imperial Princess.
The spectators who had surged forward shrank back, their eyes a mixture of morbid fascination and naked venom. A few made the sign of the cross; others spat into the dirt. The knights let out weary sighs. Such disdain was hardly surprising, for there was not a soul in the capital ignorant of Talia Roem Guirta’s vicious cruelty.
An emperor’s bastard who had brought shame upon the realm from the moment she was born, she had continued to churn the capital with sinister rumors even after receiving her title.
Servants who had crossed the threshold of her separate palace had been cast out broken and destitute, while others had simply vanished into untimely, violent graves. It was only natural that the people regarded her with undisguised contempt.
“Would Your Highness not open the curtains and greet the people?”
Unable to bear the sour atmosphere, Sir Edric Ruben drew his horse alongside the carriage and offered a tentative suggestion. Nothing came from within.
He frowned at the heavy, motionless velvet draped across the window.
Since the march had begun, the Second Imperial Princess had not shown so much as a strand of hair. Clearly, she was nursing a bitter grudge over her clash with Lord Shearkan.
Edric swallowed the heavy sigh rising in his throat.
‘She has the face for it. If she would only show a little grace, the crowd’s temper would soften…’
In truth, she seemed astoundingly blind to her own interests.
Were she to act even slightly sweet, men would line up to offer their very souls to her. Yet Talia Roem Guirta seemed determined to be despised. She lashed out at everyone near her with such spite that even the exquisite beauty inherited from her mother was tainted by it.
How many guards had broken and fled, unable to endure her venom? Lord Shearkan, who had endured seven full years at her side, seemed a living saint by comparison.
‘Though it seems he didn’t just endure it quietly, either…’
Remembering how his commander had slung the princess into her carriage like a piece of dead baggage, Edric glanced up the line. Up ahead, among the orderly ranks of horsemen, he caught the silhouette of Varkas, riding with his black hood drawn low.
Even that man had reached the end of his patience with Talia Roem Guirta.
It was almost terrifying to think about. How far must she have pushed him for a man so rigid, a soldier whose very marrow was steeped in duty to the throne, to resort to such roughhandling?
Edric would never have believed it had he not seen it with his own eyes. The Second Imperial Princess truly possessed a genius for making herself loathed.
END