Chapter 33
33
Dismissing her attendants, Aila followed him out of the cloister. Before them, a lush garden overflowing with marigolds, daisies, and rosemary revealed itself.
The plants, drenched in water, released a heavy scent of greenery into the air. Inhaling the sharp fragrance, Aila turned her head to look up at Barkas.
“Did something happen last night?”
At her hesitant question, the man, who had been walking in silence, turned his head toward her.
Aila peered intently into his eyes. There was nothing reflected in those pale, shining blue depths. Facing those eyes that seemed to reflect everything without letting anything in, her chest felt tight once again.
Will the day ever come when I find a place inside them?
While she was lost in that thought, Barkas’s firmly set lips finally parted.
“Nothing occurred that should concern Your Highness.”
“……It seems something did happen, then.”
Barkas offered no further reply and stepped out into the rain-soaked garden.
Heavy raindrops covered his broad shoulders and back in a white mist. As she watched his cold, retreating back with a dissatisfied gaze, Barkas reached out a hand toward her.
“The puddles are deep.”
Realizing the meaning behind his words, Aila’s cheeks flushed as she gave him a side-long glance.
She didn’t want to throw herself into the arms of a man who had been acting so unkindly. However, she couldn’t just leave her fiancé waiting for her in the rain. After feigning indifference for a moment, Aila stepped toward him as if giving in.
Barkas leaned down slightly, slid one arm behind her knees, and lifted her effortlessly.
Aila leaned her head against his shoulder, just as she had done since she was a five-year-old child.
“Do you know that you can be quite petty?”
His eyebrows twitched upward at the random accusation. Instead of explaining her complex, tangled emotions in detail, Aila simply held onto him tighter.
Barkas wrapped his cloak securely around her and strode across the wide rear garden. Aila buried one cheek against his collar.
He smelled of sharp herbs, the faint scent of metal from his armor, and a lingering fragrance reminiscent of dry fallen leaves or hay. As she became intoxicated by his cool scent, her unpleasant mood melted away like a lie. Aila let out a self-deprecating laugh.
It was ridiculous how she felt as giddy as a young girl over a gesture that was nothing more than an old habit to him.
The only reason this man acted kindly toward her was to keep the vow he made to her mother. Kindness born out of a sense of duty. It was nothing more and nothing less. Though she knew this well, she couldn’t stop her heart from aching.
‘Cruel man. You should have just been unkind. Then I could have been satisfied with a mere political relationship…’
She lowered her eyes sadly.
“I will instruct them to bring bathwater to your room. Please rest after warming yourself.”
Having crossed the garden in an instant, Barkas spoke as he stopped at the entrance of the lodging. Aila nodded.
Barkas lightly ascended the stone steps and leaned forward as if to set her down.
At that moment, the sky flashed, followed by a thunderous roar.
Reflexively, Aila clung to his neck.
A series of booms that seemed to shake the heavens rang out, and golden lightning sliced through the black clouds. As she stared blankly over his shoulder at the sight that looked like the end of the world, a pale silhouette sitting on a second-floor windowsill caught her eye.
For a moment, she wondered if she was seeing a terrifying hallucination. Aila’s mouth fell open.
The flashing light vividly revealed a face that was grotesquely beautiful. Atop a neck so slender it looked like it might snap, a snow-white face seemed to burn with a chilling hatred.
It wasn’t that she was unaware of her half-sister’s extraordinary beauty, but why did it shock her so much now?
Talia, her eyes glowing fiercely in the storm, looked like an angel of death. Aila held her breath at the ominous sight, and then Talia—who had been as still as a statue—picked up a vase from the windowsill. A moment later, the ceramic flew toward the pillar near where they stood.
Aila let out a scream.
Thanks to Barkas shielding her, she avoided being showered with glass shards, but a small scratch appeared on Barkas’s face. Aila hurriedly pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it to his cheek.
Barkas took it with his usual stoic expression and covered the wound himself, then glanced upward.
Following his gaze, Aila’s face hardened when she saw Talia still glaring down at them.
As if she felt not a shred of guilt for her actions, Talia, her eyes burning bright, twisted her lips into a grimace. Her blood-stained lips looked like crushed roses.
A fear greater than anger stirred in Aila’s chest. The half-sister she had always considered a non-entity felt, in that moment, like the most ominous and threatening being in the world. It felt as though the evil spirit that had made her mother’s life a misery was about to drag her down into a pit of sorrow as well.
Aila shuddered at the eerie premonition.
The rain that had fallen all night finally subsided toward dawn.
Talia, who had spent the night almost entirely awake, looked out at the garden in the morning light with hollow eyes.
The once fresh green leaves were half-submerged in muddy water, giving off a thick scent of wet earth, and the flowers that had colorfully decorated the beds lay scattered like corpses with broken necks.
Staring down at the scene with dark eyes, Talia got up from the bed and approached the small table in front of the fireplace.
On a silver plate, food she hadn’t touched had hardened. She scanned it with indifferent eyes before picking up the small knife lying next to the tray.
Though it was made for cutting food, it looked more than capable of slicing through human flesh.
Talia ran her fingertip along the sharp point before sliding it into the pocket of her gown and stepping out of the room.
Damp moisture clung heavily to the hallway. She walked through the sticky, heavy air as if swimming, gripping the ice-cold knife tightly.
Her palms were drenched in cold sweat. She couldn’t tell if it was from tension or excitement. Perhaps it was both.
Moistening her parched lips, she crept up the stairs like a stray cat.
Aila occupied a room on the top floor. Reaching the top of the stairs, Talia pressed her body against the wall and scanned the dimly lit corridor. Fortunately, no one was seen guarding the door.
Letting out a small sigh of relief, Talia stepped carefully toward the door at the end of the hallway.
As she approached the iron-rimmed wooden door, the faint scent of herbs stung her nose. It was the scent of a candle burned to calm the nerves.
Talia’s lips twisted. It seemed the previous night hadn’t been entirely comfortable for Aila either. Remembering the face that had turned pale with terror at the sight of her, Talia let out a giggle. But at the next scene that came to mind, her mood plummeted to the floor.
Her face contorted savagely as she reached into her pocket and gripped the hilt of the knife.
Her entire body began to tremble. The moment she saw Barkas walking through the pouring rain with Aila in his arms, she felt something she had been barely holding onto collapse.
She roughly wiped her blurring eyes with her sleeve.
It was her one and only memory.
A memory she had buried deep in her heart for years, taking it out to look at in secret.
Did he have to turn even that memory into nothing?
Could he not have left just one thing as something special between only them?
Her mind seethed with rage. She knew these were irrational feelings. Even so, she could not forgive the two of them.
She wanted to punish Aila for stealing her last remaining sanctuary. She wanted to return to that man exactly as much pain as she felt.
Talia focused her burning, stinging gaze and glared at the firmly closed door. Once she crossed this threshold, she would be crossing a point of no return.
Perhaps she would be recorded in history as the wicked witch who took the life of a poor, innocent princess. She didn’t care. She was already regarded as the worst of villains. What more was there to lose by falling even further?
With a trembling hand, she gripped the doorknob.
