Fidgeting awkwardly with her hands, Talia spoke in a dry, raspy voice.
“If you… if you break even a single strand of my hair, I won’t let you get away with it.”
He did not answer. Still, his touch grew slightly more cautious. Talia swallowed hard as his fingers carefully shifted, feeling almost as though he were stroking her hair.
Through the open collar of his shirt, she could see the prominent curve of his throat and collarbones that spread as elegantly as a bird’s wings. The taut muscle of his forearms rippled with every slight shift, and she was acutely aware of his long legs, clad in wool trousers, bracketing her thighs.
Talia ducked her head low to hide her burning face.
“Will… will it take much longer?”
Could freeing a few caught hairs really take this long? Or had her nerves simply stretched every passing second into an eternity? Her palms grew slick with sweat.
She wiped them against the heap of gowns on the floor. Seeing a faint flush creeping even across the inside of her wrists, she flinched.
Had she turned red all over? How pathetic she must look. Irritated, she raised her voice.
“Enough! Just cut it!”
Varkas, normally swift and decisive, had been hesitating for a while. Now, his hand moved to his waist.
She stiffened as he drew a dagger. When his arm reached behind her back again, her hand caught his sleeve of its own accord.
“Wait, don’t cut too much… my hair…”
Before she could finish, a faint snip sounded, and the dull tug on her scalp vanished. Fearing he had sheared off a massive clump, Talia whipped around.
Fortunately, no severed strands lay on the floor. Instead, a single gold button sat by itself against the carpet.
She picked it up and held it close. The crest of the Roem Knight Order was delicately engraved upon its face.
She looked back up at him. Varkas was already rising to his feet, sheathing the dagger at his belt.
“How long do you intend to sit there?”
His tone was flat as he smoothed his rumpled uniform.
Talia stood up with lingering hesitation. An odd, uncomfortable stiffness hung between them. Clearing her throat, she held the button out to him.
“Here. This.”
“I do not need it. Throw it away.”
Varkas brushed it off and looked toward the window. Without her noticing, the evening sky had deepened to a blood-red dusk.
He turned back to take in the disheveled room and let out a weary breath.
“May I take my leave?”
Talia nodded without a word. With a brief bow, he turned and walked out of the room.
She stood motionless until his footsteps faded down the corridor, then rushed over to her bed and retrieved her jewelry box. Opening it, she hid the button at the very bottom.
That night, a restless flutter in her chest kept sleep far from her. An unfamiliar ache coiled behind her ribs.
She replayed his words, his movements, the look in his eyes, turning them over and over in her mind.
Maybe. No. There was no way. But maybe…
Disjointed thoughts swarmed until her head felt ready to burst. Even so, a smile broke across her face.
She tossed and turned until dawn, wrapped in an intoxicating warmth.
Yet those foolish girlhood daydreams did not survive long. Only days later, news of Varkas’s engagement to Ayla arrived.
It was like waking from a dream. No, worse than that—it felt like floating among the clouds only to be cast violently onto the stone below.
She sprinted from the Separate Palace straight for the training grounds. He was scheduled to attend to his guard duties at noon, but she could not bear waiting until then.
Crossing half the Imperial Palace without pausing for breath, Talia burst into the wide training yard where the knights drilled. The wary eyes of those she passed pricked her skin, but she paid them no mind.
Her eyes darted desperately, searching for that pale ash-blond hair. But when she realized the figures filling the yard were only trainees, she turned around. If he was not on the grounds, he had to be attending to paperwork in his office.
She hurried over to the guard headquarters beside the grounds. As expected, Varkas was inside his office. But he was not working.
Reaching for the handle, Talia froze at the faint sound of weeping. Through the crack in the door, she saw Varkas standing against the window, while a woman wept with her face buried in his chest.
As Talia stood paralyzed by a sight she had never imagined, the woman lifted her tear-stained face, looking up at him with pleading eyes.
“You don’t love her, do you?”
Her voice was wretched enough to make one’s stomach twist. She clung to him as if begging for her life.
“It’s only a political marriage. Please, tell me that’s all it is.”
Talia’s throat constricted. The realization that there was a woman who could plead with him like this struck her like a blow to the head.
Her heart raced as she watched his face. At last, his firmly set lips parted.
“I fail to see what difference my answer makes to you.”
His voice was chillingly devoid of emotion.
Talia shrank back without realizing it. Looking down at the woman with a face as impassive as a wax doll, Varkas tilted his head slightly, as though genuinely baffled.
“Whether it is political or not, what does that change? I have agreed to take Her Imperial Highness the First Princess as my wife, and I intend to fulfill that promise.”
The woman’s slender back went rigid. She looked as though her heart were being ripped from her chest.
Yet he did not stop.
“I do not know what expectations you harbored, but I made it clear from the beginning that I have no intention of returning your affections.”
The color drained from the woman’s neck. As if the sight of her was not even worth pitying, he added with a weary sigh:
“I hope we will not have to repeat such awkward encounters. Now that the engagement has been made official, I prefer to avoid needless scandal.”
The woman stumbled back, collapsing as if all strength had deserted her limbs. A fleeting flicker of annoyance crossed Varkas’s face.
Talia went cold looking at that unfeeling expression, completely stripped of sympathy. That face, that cold detachment… it was all terrifyingly familiar.
She turned and fled.
Had she arrived only a few moments sooner, it would have been her on her knees weeping on the floor, not that woman.
Just imagining it made her skin crawl. If Varkas had looked at her like that while she begged for his love, she would have died on the spot. Truly, completely died.
From that day on, Talia feared him. She was terrified of a man who could destroy someone so utterly with a few casual words.
Inevitably, her guard against Varkas rose higher than ever.
He was no longer the object of a secret longing, but a natural predator. Unless she buried these feelings until not a trace remained, the years ahead would be nothing but agonizing pain.
END