The Forgotten Field
Talia caught her breath. Even though she had believed it herself all along, hearing those words from someone else’s mouth stirred an overwhelming ache in her chest. Tiuran carefully wiped the tears from her cheeks and went on, her tone quiet and measured.
“Do you remember the story I told you before?”
“…The one about how a child who dies unbaptized is reborn as a beast?”
A faint smile touched the healer’s lips.
“In truth, baptism never mattered. That legend was passed down long before the Imperial Faith ever reached the East.”
Her gaze drifted toward the wolf, whose ears stood pricked.
“The ancients of the East believed that those who died tragically would take the form of beasts to return to the ones they loved in life. Perhaps Khan, too, missed Your Grace so deeply that he returned in the body of a beast.”
“…Do you truly believe that?”
Tiuran nodded slowly.
“I believe every meeting in this world has its reason. In the depths of your grief, there must have been a purpose for Khan coming to your side.”
Talia looked down at Khan through blurred eyes. As though he bore no lingering grudge for the wound she had dealt him, the wolf looked up at her with clear, unchanging devotion. Before that pure gaze, the knot tightening in her chest finally gave way.
She drew him into her arms, pressing her face against his soft, warm fur. Watching in silence, the healer gently stroked her back.
From that day on, Talia began to trail after Tiuran like a chick trailing its mother hen.
Whenever she walked Khan, she brought Tiuran along; she spent long afternoons in the kitchen chatting and cooking beside her. At times, she even followed her down to the cabin, watching the woman brew draughts or helping her trim roots and leaves.
More than a few cast disapproving glances at the Grand Duchess of the East occupying herself with chores fit for servants, but she paid them no mind. The joy of having found someone who understood her outweighed everything else. What the world whispered behind her back did not matter at all.
“Why not move your quarters to the main castle? I can have a spacious room readied for you.”
Talia sprawled across Tiuran’s bed with Khan, blurting the thought aloud.
Tiuran, seated at her desk writing in her journal, looked back with a conflicted smile.
“I am comfortable here, Your Grace.”
“Why? In the main castle, you would want for nothing. I will provide whatever you need.”
“There is truly no need for that.”
Tiuran closed the journal with a faint, quiet laugh.
“This cabin is filled with memories of my late grandmother. I have lived here since I was very small, and unless there is a grave reason, I have no wish to leave.”
Talia, studying the woman's face with searching eyes, asked without thinking,
“What of your parents?”
“They both died of illness when I was very young.”
Answering placidly, the woman took a dried bunch of herbs from the shelf, set it upon the table, and began measuring and blending the sprigs against a brass scale.
Watching her quiet, steady hands, Talia pressed the question she had wondered all along.
“What about your husband?”
The pestle grinding herbs in the stone mortar hitched for a breath.
A self-deprecating smile settled on Tiuran’s lips.
“I was never married.”
Talia, who had instinctively sensed that the woman had lost a child just as she had, looked taken aback. Tiuran offered a faint, unbothered smile.
“Though there was someone I promised myself to.”
“Did he break his word?”
Talia knit her brow, her tone turning sharp. Tiuran gave another soft, dry chuckle at her sudden anger.
“He did. He left me and the child in my womb, and went far away.”
“Tell me the bastard’s name. I will have the guards track him down and kill him.”
Talia fumed, breathing hard.
“If you wish, I can have him dragged to your feet to beg on his knees. You took care of me; I will deal with him however you desire.”
Tiuran looked at her with an unreadable gaze.
“Does it not disgust you that I bore a child out of wedlock?”
“Did you forget I was born a bastard myself?”
Talia let out a cold, incredulous snort.
“Blaming you for that would be spitting in my own face.”
“…You are not someone anyone has the right to point a finger at, Your Grace. Your father is His Imperial Majesty, and your mother is Her Majesty the Empress.”
“Even so, a bastard remains a bastard.”
A bitter smirk curled the edges of Talia’s mouth.
“To my father, I am only proof of a filthy mistake, a perpetual reminder of what he wishes never happened. To my mother, I was merely a game piece she discarded once I outlived my use. The servants are no different. They bow their heads low and call me ‘Your Grace’ or ‘Your Highness,’ but behind closed doors, they whisper that I was born of an affair.”
Noticing how dark Tiuran’s expression had grown, Talia wiped the smirk away. A sudden, sharp unease pricked at her chest, as if she had laid bare far too much of her pathetic underbelly. To gloss over it, she deliberately pitched her voice into harsh melodrama.
“Just tell me who betrayed you. I will hang him upside down from the gallows—”
“He died long ago as well.”
At that calm, flat statement, Talia faltered and went quiet.
Tiuran added, the corners of her mouth curving gently as though none of it mattered anymore,
“You do not need to wear such a face. It all happened very long ago.”
Talia stared at her, mystified.
How could someone who had lost her parents, her lover, and her child still smile with that kind of serenity?
When she lost her own child, the world had shattered around her. Even now, her chest tightened to the point of suffocation whenever she remembered the phantom kicks beneath her skin. How could this woman have endured all that grief and remained whole?
“Does the pain… ever stop, after enough time?”
At that small, hesitant murmur, the healer’s smile faded. She set down the pestle and slowly shook her head.
“There are wounds in this world that never close, no matter how much time slips by.”
· · ·
“Yet I can promise you this much: even the agony that cuts to the bone will wear down, grain by grain, year after year… until one day, it shrinks to a weight you can carry.”
Blinking in silence, Talia whispered,
“How long did it take for you?”
“A very long time.”
“…I see.”
Talia looked down, murmuring faintly to herself,
“A long time.”
A warm wetness brushed her cheek.
Talia turned. Khan was licking away the stray tears running down her face. Meeting those blue eyes that seemed to ache with her own sorrow, she bowed her head and kissed his soft brow.
That evening, Talia returned to her bedchamber and opened her diary. She had begun keeping it only because Tiuran had insisted, claiming that writing down honest thoughts would help keep the hallucinations at bay. Yet contrary to Tiuran’s hopes, the pages had mostly turned into a record of Khan’s growth.
She traced idly over the lines she had written before, then began setting down on a clean leaf the conversation she had shared with Tiuran.
Rather than merely recounting events, she wrote down the emotions that had stirred within her.
Could something like this truly stitch together a torn mind?
Looking down at the diary with lingering doubt, she gathered Khan into her arms and lay back on the bed. Whether it was simple coincidence or that the tangled knot in her chest had truly loosened, she fell into a deep sleep that night, undisturbed by nightmares or hallucinations.
Having rested properly for the first time in memory, Talia rose with a lighter heart.
Khan, curled beside her pillow, sprang up and gave his tail an eager wag. She kissed his snout, then slipped behind the folding screen to wash. Just then, a trumpet call echoed faintly in the distance.
Talia stiffened and looked out toward the courtyard. Dozens of men on warhorses were filing through the castle gates in strict formation.
The moment she recognized the face of the man riding at their head, her blood ran cold.
Varkas had returned.
END
