Her face twisting into a furious snarl, Talia struck his cheek with all the strength left in her.
“You insufferable bastard! You just can’t bear it unless you’re getting in my way at every turn!”
In the darkness, his blue eyes flickered ever so slightly. Yet the face looking down at her remained as chillingly still as ever. That unshakeable composure turned her stomach.
Talia dug her nails in and raked them down his cheek. Without a flinch, Varkas caught both her wrists in one hand and surveyed the wrecked campsite.
His icy gaze swept over the pale, horrified maids, the bewildered knights, and at last the woman curled on the ground, weeping into her blistered face.
A dry sigh left his lips.
“Take her to the healer.”
With a curt nod toward the maid, Varkas turned on his heel.
Talia thrashed wildly in his grasp, letting out a raw shriek.
“By whose authority?! That woman is a criminal! Take her head this instant!”
From the corners of her eyes, she caught soldiers and servants rushing toward the uproar, murmuring among themselves as they watched her. But she had no breath left to preserve her pride. Her scream tore through the night, loud enough to shake the entire camp.
“You goddamn piece of filth! What kind of knight are you?!”
Varkas did not even blink.
Cutting through the rows of tents in absolute silence, he carried her straight into his quarters and dumped her onto the wide cot.
Talia, oblivious even to where she had been brought, remained trapped in her white-hot fury.
“You’ve never protected me, not once! Always! Every single time, you leave me to be torn apart! You had no intention of saving me this time either, did you? You hoped I’d die! That’s why you left me behind! That’s why you took your sweet time coming for me! I know everything!”
Deaf to her frantic shouting, he pinned her wrists against the mattress and forced her curled fingers open.
Fluid and blood oozed from her blistered palms, raw and charred from the log. A slight frown crossed Varkas’s brow, and he reached for a glass vial on the small shelf beside the bed.
Seeing him tip an unfamiliar draught toward her open skin, Talia shrieked.
“No! Stop! Just leave me alone!”
Ignoring her completely, he smeared the salve over her wounds, then bound them tightly in clean linen bandages pulled from his kit.
Talia, who had been pounding his shoulder with her free hand the entire time, finally spent the last dregs of her strength and went limp. Varkas stared down at her with empty eyes, then slowly straightened his back.
“I will fetch a sedative.”
Her face half-buried in the pillow as she dragged in ragged breaths, Talia dragged her gaze up to him.
Varkas stepped away with unhurried strides, lifting another vial from the shelf to inspect the label.
Superimposed over that straight, unyielding back was the memory of him sprinting toward Ayla. A searing agony, hotter than flame, flared through her chest.
Talia’s voice curled with spite.
“You’re disgusted that I’m still breathing, aren’t you?”
His hand, reaching among the bottles, froze.
After a long stillness, he turned his head with excruciating slowness.
Staring into that immaculate face, drained clean of any human feeling, something deep inside her fractured and crumbled away.
A jagged smile pulled at the corners of Talia’s mouth.
“What a pity for you. It was such a rare chance for the thorn in your side to vanish forever.”
Tears finally breached her eyelids and tracked down her burning cheeks. His impassive face warped, blurring as if submerged beneath water.
He walked over and dropped to one knee before her, pressing the cold rim of the vial to her lower lip.
“Drink. It will ease the pain.”
“I don’t want it.”
· · ·
“I don’t want anything from you ever again.”
Varkas lowered the bottle.
At that moment, the oil lamp flickered and dipped, casting a heavy shadow across his features.
Not that it mattered. She knew precisely what look was carved into his face without having to see it: the same numb indifference he always wore, or perhaps a faint tinge of irritation and exhaustion.
Talia turned her back on him.
He lingered in the quiet room for a long beat before walking out into the night.
Listening to his footsteps fade into the distance, Talia slipped a trembling hand down to touch her legs. The dead, wooden stiffness beneath her palms made the blood run cold in her veins.
‘Cripple.’
She violently shoved the word from her head.
It was impossible. Nothing more than vicious slander from wretched people who hated her.
The Imperial Palace was filled with the continent's finest healers. And her mother had sorcerers at her command who practiced the most forbidden arts.
Her mother would mend her, no matter the cost or the sacrifice required.
When she was whole again, she would parade her pristine body right in front of every last one of those sneering faces.
Clutching her throbbing knees, Talia squeezed her eyes shut.
The grand pilgrimage procession that had marched out from the capital had degraded into a grim funeral cortege.
The court attendants wore black robes over their red livery, and the knights had draped dull mourning banners over their armor.
The freight wagons that had once carried rare vintages, fine silks, and gold were now weighed down by thirty-four embalmed corpses, accompanied by the low, dragging dirges played by the royal musicians at set hours.
Listening to the monotonous brass from inside her carriage, Talia felt the dull ache in her shattered limb flare up anew, and she fumbled blindly for the incense censer.
The brass bowl was cold, filled with nothing but cold, gray heaps of ash.
Spitting a quiet curse, Talia dragged herself upright from the heap of cushions, unlatched the wooden box beneath the bench, and retrieved a fresh stick of incense.
It was a dark, brittle stick made of dried Frost Grass, Evening Primrose, Mandrake root, and crushed Red Shard Flowers.
She set it into the ash and struck a firestone, watching the thick, bluish smoke billow upward.
As the heavy narcotic fog crept into her mind, Talia slumped back into the blankets.
Ever since the retreat had begun, she spent nearly every waking moment drowning in pain-killing stupor. Steeped in the biting fumes, tomorrow became today, and today melted into yesterday.
Through the haze, she was dimly aware of an imperial mage coming in to inspect her injury or an attendant pestering her to swallow a few bites of broth, but none of it sank past the surface of her mind.
The only person capable of ripping her back into the agonizing reality was Varkas.
Watching the tall silhouette darken the open carriage door, Talia squinted with glassy, unfocused eyes.
For reasons unknown, her carriage, which had trailed behind the very tail of the line, had been moved directly behind the vanguard, held under the suffocating guard of the Captain of the Imperial Knights himself. Perhaps he thought she needed his personal supervision to keep from starting another riot.
Stepping inside, Varkas loomed over her where she lay sprawling like limp kelp across the floor.
She felt the chill of his fingers as he swept a damp tangle of hair from her sweat-slicked forehead.
“Do not burn the incense so often. You will build a tolerance too quickly at this rate.”
· · ·
She stared at his face as though examining some tedious, long-overdue chore.
When she gave no reply, the man waited a beat, then let out a quiet sigh.
“We camp here for the night.”
The sun was down and the wheels had stopped turning; of course they were stopping for the night.
She could not fathom why he was spouting words that needed no saying. This was a man who stayed mute even when speaking was his absolute duty, was he not?
END