The Forgotten Field
Her heart sank like a stone, and she gripped the windowsill tight.
Riding at an easy pace onto the training grounds, Varkas swung down from his mount. Even beneath the harsh late-summer sun, his face looked as cold as frost as he slowly tilted his head upward.
She shrank instinctively behind the curtains. A strange sensation seized her, as if the blood in her veins were scalding while her spine froze solid.
Leaning back against the wall to catch her ragged breath, she could not master the urge to look and peeked out the window again. Before she realized it, Varkas had already crossed half the grounds.
As he passed through the inner castle gate into the courtyard garden, the sharper planes of his face—thinner than when he had ridden out months ago—came into stark view.
Forgetting even to draw breath, she watched him exchange words with the vassals who had hurried out to meet him. His sharp, deep-set eyes showed through hair grown slightly longer than when he had left.
She could not tell how long she stood there, gazing fixedly at eyes that seemed almost silver in the daylight, before a knock sounded at the door.
“Your Highness, the Grand Duke has returned. Will you go out to receive him?”
It was the Head Maid’s voice.
Talia flinched, her shoulders drawing tight as though she had been struck from behind.
When she gave no answer, another knock followed.
“Your Highness, are you well? May I come in for a moment…?”
“Stay out!”
Talia snapped.
“I am unwell and must rest in my quarters. Give the Grand Duke the same message!”
After a brief lull, the Head Maid let out a soft sigh.
“As you wish. I shall take my leave.”
Presently, the sound of her footsteps receded.
Releasing a long breath of relief, Talia caught Khan staring up at her and gave a dry, awkward laugh. The pup could never understand what troubled her, yet a flush of shame crept in for letting him witness such frantic disarray.
Feigning composure, she gathered Khan into her arms and walked to the window.
“Your father is back. Look down there.”
Leaning against the frame, Talia pointed down at Varkas.
“That is him.”
Turning toward her outstretched finger, the wolf stared down at Varkas. Talia’s lips curved into a faint smile, pleased that Khan, who had remained indifferent to everything in the world except her, was taking an interest in him.
Kissing the pup’s prick of an ear, she whispered with a chuckle,
“He is handsome, isn’t he? Even more so up close.”
His ears twitched, and the wolf whipped his head around to stare up at her. He seemed to plead to go down at once, coaxing a helpless, sheepish laugh from her.
“We cannot go near him now, though.”
The wolf’s ears stood higher still. Looking into wide eyes that seemed to ask why, Talia murmured bitterly,
“I was cruel to him before he departed. He likely… does not wish to see my face.”
Pleading ill health, Talia shut herself in her bedchamber and did not set foot outside.
He watched her with troubled eyes as she sat motionless for hours, her gaze pinned to the pages of a single book.
Anxiety and unrest clung to her every breath. The sight of it pressed heavily against his chest, crushing him like a leaden weight.
In those days, he had been convinced that his wife wanted nothing to do with him, and so he had kept his distance. He had feared that intruding upon her recklessly would shatter the fragile calm she was only just beginning to regain.
Yet Talia had read that withdrawal as cold disillusionment.
What if he had reached out to her first?
The thought haunted him without end: how much might have changed if only he had made an effort to understand a woman so absurdly frightened and deceitful about her own heart.
Watching her with pained eyes, he began to pace the floor. By his own hand, he might yet alter the ties between her and that other self. Yet whether he truly desired such a thing remained an agonizing question.
‘Do I truly want Talia by his side?’
He halted before the mirror, looking upon his own reflection. A sharp pang twisted inside him at the beast’s face he still could not bring himself to accept.
“Is it so stifling in here?”
Seeing his flattened ears, Talia closed her book and slipped from the bed.
“Shall we go catch some fresh air, then? Varkas will be locked in council by now, so we won’t cross his path.”
Draping a summer robe around her shoulders, Talia gathered him up gently and stepped out of the bedchamber.
Perhaps because preparations were under way for the evening banquet to welcome the master of the house, the hallways were more deserted than usual.
With a brief tilt of her chin, she dismissed the maids trailing behind her, descended the stairs, and made for the quiet rear garden.
“There. Run about as much as you like.”
Taking a seat on a stone bench, Talia set him down upon the grass.
Pretending not to understand, he leaped onto the bench and pressed himself close against her side. He refused to leave her, even for a single breath.
Though the day would come when he had to surrender her to that man, in this moment, she belonged to him alone.
“Do you like me that much?”
Giggling softly, she folded her pale, tender arms around him in an embrace.
As he buried his snout into her warmth, breathing in the dizzyingly sweet scent of her skin, a long shadow fell across the corner of his vision.
He turned his head slightly toward the end of the stone path.
Looking upon himself from another’s eyes was an uncanny, chilling sensation. The fine fur across his skin stood on end as he stared blankly at a face both intimately familiar and foreign.
The man he had once been seemed devoid of anything human.
An icy gaze that chilled the late-summer heat, unmoving lips that looked as if they had never known a smile, and hollow, inanimate eyes…
He could not fathom what could possibly draw her to a cold-blooded wretch devoid of all feeling. The man looked like a pale, ink-stained wraith trespassing upon a vibrant landscape.
“What is it?”
Sensing his tension, she lifted him higher into her embrace.
He hesitated. A small stir, a slight movement, and he could draw Talia’s eyes to the man standing there.
Yet would that truly salvage her fate?
Even if some miracle brought them together, that man would eventually ride north again. She would be left stranded in this castle once more, nursing wounds deeper than the ones she already bore.
In the end, he stayed his paws.
When he licked the curve of her chin as though nothing were amiss, a clear, ringing laugh broke from her. Looking up into her pleased eyes, he cast a cold glance back at the man.
The figure, which had stood as rigid as stone, finally turned away. Silver-sheened hair caught the light and drifted on the breeze. The long, dark shadow of that colorless man stretched along the damp ground.
As the night deepened, the castle, once ringing with the clamor of the banquet, subsided into graveyard quiet.
Watching her closely until the potent sleeping draught took firm hold, he crept off the bed and moved toward the door.
Rearing up on his hind legs, his front paws reached the handle. Having grown considerably over the past two months, lifting the latch gave him little trouble.
With the latch raised, he nudged the door open and slipped into the corridor. A faint creak slipped from the hinges, but she did not stir, lost in deep, untroubled sleep.
After looking back at her once more, he pushed the door shut with his snout and padded cautiously toward the stairs.
The watch was sparse tonight. Evading their eyes with ease, he soon arrived outside the door of the study that had once been his own.
END
