38
“Let go!”
Talia kicked him in the shin. But her brother was not one to fall for the same trick twice. Gareth shifted his weight, easily evading the blow, before seizing her arm and wrenching it back. A cruel sneer spread across his face.
“I had my doubts, but… to think the Imperial family’s great embarrassment had her heart set on the young heir of the East!”
Talia stared up at him, panic seizing her eyes.
The blood in her veins ran cold. Desperate, she scrambled to patch together her composure.
“Don’t speak nonsense. Who would ever—”
“Nonsense indeed. For an upstart bastard to covet the future Duke of Shearkan!”
Gareth shook with low, mocking laughter, savoring the leverage he had stumbled upon over the sister who had always been a thorn in his side.
He clamped a hand over her chin, breathing foul, liquor-heavy air into her face.
“Blood will always out. Then again, how could the whelp of a lowborn whore resist leering at another woman’s man?”
Talia glared at him, pure malice blazing in her eyes. Gareth met her spiteful glare with a smirk, giving her a rough shove before he drawled slyly:
“Wake up from your delusions. Varkas is far beyond the reach of a creature like you—”
“You forget one thing, Brother. In my veins runs not only the blood of a ‘lowborn whore,’ but also the blood of a man who toyed with an innocent girl while his wife was heavy with child.”
In an instant, the Crown Prince’s smirk vanished without a trace.
Watching his features twist into an ugly grimace, Talia let her words out slowly.
“Come to think of it, that shameless man’s blood runs thick through your veins too, does it not?”
She felt his broad, muscular frame turn rigid as stone.
Reason told her to stop there, but she could not bear to walk away while he held the upper hand. Talia offered him a cold, taunting smile of her own, right in his face.
“Since you’ve pried into my secret, Brother, shall I dig up one of yours?”
A flicker of unease darted through Gareth’s eyes. Holding his gaze with deliberate mockery, Talia leaned close and whispered against his ear.
“There is a whispered rumor among the maids. They say His Highness the Crown Prince beds only women with dark honey hair and sea-blue eyes.”
The color drained from Gareth’s sun-browned face.
Staring into his pale, murderous expression, Talia curled her lips into a smile drenched in spite.
“I find myself wondering… who was the woman haunting your dreams the night you first became a man and soiled your sheets? Shall I venture a guess?”
A violent tremor ran through his whole body as if he had been struck by lightning. Talia knew that if she pushed him any further, she might genuinely not survive the night. Yet, as she always did, she surrendered to the venomous voice urging her on.
“No need to tremble so. I am a devoted sister; I shall carry your secret to my grave. The secret that the Crown Prince inherited His Majesty the Emperor’s blood so very faithfully.”
Before the last syllable left her lips, a brutal blow snapped her head to the side.
Talia crashed to the earth, clutching a cheek that burned as if scorched by fire.
Her sight spun violently. As she struggled to push herself up through the sickening dizziness, Gareth threw his weight over her, pinning her to the ground with both hands wrapped around her throat. The pressure built behind her eyes until they threatened to burst from their sockets.
Talia fought back frantically. She clawed at his forearms with her nails and kicked at his unyielding frame, but in her frail state, her struggles amounted to nothing.
After thrashing like a fish hauled onto dry land, her limbs finally fell limp. Just as the crushing grip seemed about to snap her windpipe, the pressure abruptly fell away.
Talia curled inward, heaving convulsively as she drew in ragged gasps of air. Through a veil of tears, she saw Varkas gripping Gareth’s wrist.
Varkas looked down at her with a face carved from stone before turning his gaze onto Gareth.
Gareth was still glaring at his half-sister with unbridled bloodlust, driven mad by humiliation and rage. The sight of him playing the wronged victim was so pitiful that a rasping laugh broke through Talia’s dry coughs.
Gareth’s face flushed a deep crimson, and his fist drew back once more.
“You wretched little bitch…!”
The blow never landed.
Varkas held the man’s thick, corded forearm as effortlessly as if he were restraining a child, his sharp eyes fixed coldly on her. He looked thoroughly revolted by how she was still eager to bait her brother even at death’s door.
“Escort the Princess to her quarters.”
The command was thrown to the pale-faced guard who had just come rushing into the clearing.
The knight moved forward at once to help her up.
Talia slapped his reaching hand aside and pushed herself to her feet on trembling legs. Feigning utter composure as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, she brushed the dirt from her skirts. Gareth watched her with burning eyes, bellowing at Varkas:
“Unhand me this instant!”
“Stop this at once!”
Ayla, who had been watching from a short distance away, raised her voice. Her face was drained of color, as if this were the first time she had witnessed her brother’s violence so intimately.
Rushing over to Gareth, she spoke in a taut, strained tone.
“What in heaven’s name are you doing? You are the Crown Prince of this Empire! How could you commit such an outrage…!”
“Stay out of this!”
Gareth snarled like a cornered beast.
Ayla recoiled a step. It was plainly a shock to see the brother who had always trailed behind her like an obedient dog suddenly baring his teeth. Talia sneered at her half-sister.
“Quite right. Stay out of our affairs, Sister.”
Ayla’s emerald eyes flashed with sharp disdain, but when they took in Talia’s bruised and disheveled state, she froze. Talia touched her throbbing cheek with one hand, letting a strange smile curl her lips.
“It was merely a harmless squabble between siblings. Isn’t that so, Brother?”
She tilted her head, mockingly inviting his agreement, and heard the furious grinding of his teeth.
Talia took a step toward the seething Gareth. A knight moved to block her path, but she paid him no mind, locking her gaze directly onto her half-brother’s dark green eyes.
“After all, we are close enough to share our deepest secrets, aren’t we?”
Gareth’s face was engorged with blood, looking ready to burst. The murderous look in his eyes made it clear he wanted nothing more than to tear her apart where she stood.
Yet, terrified of having his vile secret exposed before Ayla, he forced his posture to slacken and ground out through tight lips:
“…Take your hands off me.”
Varkas, who had watched him in silence, finally released his grip. He must have applied tremendous force, for dark red welts were already rising on the bronzed skin. Gareth clutched his arm, his venomous gaze darting between Varkas and Talia before he turned on his heel and stalked off toward the camp.
A soft laugh escaped Talia as she watched his retreating, defeated back—until she felt the weight of a freezing gaze. Erasing the smirk from her face, she raised her chin. As ever, an unreadable, mask-like face looked down at her.
Yet beneath the icy veneer, Talia could clearly read the disgust and wrath smoldering in his eyes.
He clamped a gauntleted hand around her arm and gave a curt nod to the guard.
“Escort the First Princess back to her tent.”
With a brief, perfunctory bow to the rigid Ayla, Varkas began dragging Talia through the trees as if she were a criminal in chains.
Talia’s face contorted in fury.
Say what they would, she was still a Princess of the Empire. A mere vassal of the Imperial house had no right to drag the Emperor’s daughter about like a stray dog.
Talia violently jerked her arm from his grip.
“Insolent bastard! Let go of me this inst—”
The ground vanished from beneath her feet. A sharp scream tore from Talia’s throat as Varkas hauled her up and slung her over one shoulder like a sack of grain, striding briskly past the camp while paying no heed to the stunned stares around them.
Her face burning with humiliation, Talia thrashed like a trapped beast. Yet no matter how she rained fists upon his broad back and shoulders or kicked her legs wildly in the air, Varkas did not flinch.
END