It had not even been fifteen days since she left the Taren family estate to enter the Imperial Palace.
Her mother rejoiced, boasting that her daughter’s name would finally be inscribed in the imperial genealogy, but Talia felt nothing but resentment at being dragged to such an unfamiliar place. Her anxiety only sharpened as Senevier grew entirely consumed with refurbishing the palace.
Contrary to what her mother had promised, the Imperial Palace was a bleak, terrifying place. Sharp, judging gazes trailed her wherever she walked, and the servants waiting on her were colder than the staff back at the estate.
She felt like a lost child. Whenever the chance arose, she would slip out of her quarters and wander around the grounds of the Separate Palace.
She frequented the rear garden most of all. Because Senevier had ordered every flower and tree in the grounds torn out to erase every trace of the former Empress, the garden was a barren wasteland.
At least near the entrances to the Main Palace and the Separate Palace, rosebushes and colorful shrubs were beginning to take root in the empty earth. In the rear garden, however, where the landscaping had yet to finish, mounds of overturned dirt still lay scattered in heaps. Thanks to that, no one ever came near it.
Whenever Talia grew sick of the hushed whispering and the stinging stares, she would retreat to a corner of that ruined garden, lost in a daze.
That day was no different. She had slipped into the back garden of the Separate Palace to escape her nagging nanny and the maid who deliberately dug sharp comb teeth into her scalp under the guise of styling her hair.
Not a single groundskeeper was in sight, driven away by the rain that had set in around noon. Talia crouched in a corner of the deserted garden, staring blankly into the falling mist.
She did not know how long she sat there before she caught a faint, whistling cry carried on the air.
After looking around in confusion, Talia rose and walked through the drizzle toward the edge of the grounds, drawn by the sound. Where a massive, ancient tree had stood that very morning, nothing remained now but a deep, scooped-out pit.
Talia approached the high mound of displaced dirt and looked down. A tiny bird was floundering in the slush, letting out pitiful cries.
‘Did it fall from the tree?’
The creature looked on the verge of death.
Raindrops relentlessly battered its sodden brown body, and dark red mud, thick as tar, was swallowing its fragile legs and scrawny wings. Its persistent chirps gradually dwindled to a faint shudder.
Watching it while hugging her knees, Talia found herself stepping down into the pit before she realized what she was doing.
It was a foolish mistake. However carefully she tried to tread, the ground had soaked up so much water it had turned into a mire, swallowing her shoes in an instant.
She twisted her body to yank her foot free. The sudden movement threw her off balance, and she went skidding into the mud.
Talia slammed face-first into the puddle. The foul taste of muddy water flooded her mouth, and she jerked her head back in revulsion.
The green dress her nanny had just tailored for her was ruined, and thick mud caked her neatly plaited hair.
A surge of sheer irritation swept through her.
She pushed herself up on her hands, muttering a curse under her breath.
“Who cares about some bird? Why did I do something so stupid…”
As she grumbled and tried to scramble back out, the faint cry sounded again. It was a noise so weak one would miss it without straining, yet to Talia, it rang out like a desperate shriek.
In the end, she waded through the dark mire toward it. There lay the sodden brown wings, half-submerged in the slush, beside a tiny, drooping head.
‘…Is it dead already?’
When she reached out and gingerly lifted the fledgling, she felt its drenched body pulsing with a faint, fragile beat. It was still alive.
She cupped the cooling body in both hands and breathed warm air over it. The limp bird twitched its tiny brown beak and feebly stirred its scrawny wings. It was fighting with every scrap of strength it had left to cling to life.
Watching it, something tightened painfully in her chest.
Talia could not name the feeling. She could not comprehend why it tore at her heart to see this fledgling—cast out from its home, abandoned by its mother, floundering in the filth—finding rest in the palms of her hands.
She cradled the bird against her chest, nestling it against the warm hollow of her neck. Then she looked up the steep, slick slope of mud with despairing eyes.
The mounds of earth had grown softer in the steady downpour. She tested the slope with a few tentative steps, but walking up was out of the question. To escape this pit, she would have to crawl up on all fours like a beast.
Talia bit her lip hard. She could not bring herself to abandon the little creature she had just saved, nor could she throw away her dignity as an Imperial Princess and crawl through the mire like an animal.
So she simply stood there for a long time, shivering in the cold drizzle.
It was then that a boy emerged through the hazy curtain of rain.
He was tall, clad in a hooded black mantle reminiscent of a monk’s robe. Yet even through the white veil of the downpour, Talia could clearly see his pale, glowing blue eyes. They were strikingly, terribly beautiful.
“What are you doing down there?”
The blue-eyed boy asked as he peered down over the edge. It was a chilling voice, cold beyond his delicate features, which still bore the softness of childhood. A shiver ran down Talia’s spine.
At the time, she assumed she was merely trembling from the cold. But looking back now, she wondered if she had sensed it the instant she heard his voice. That the boy staring down at her with that detached expression would eventually drag her life down into a living hell…
If she had truly recognized that faint foreboding that day, Talia would have hurled the gasping bird back into the mud and crawled up the slope on all fours like a swine that knew neither filth nor shame.
Then she would have run far, far away from that blue-eyed boy. She would have scraped the very memory of having ever laid eyes on him from her mind forever.
Yet the eight-year-old Talia had no way of knowing that the boy standing in the rain would become her despair. And so she merely looked up at him and snapped in her usual sharp tone.
“Can’t you see? I fell into this pit and I can’t get out.”
The boy’s eyes narrowed slightly, as though he wanted to ask why she had climbed down into it in the first place.
Yet without a word of inquiry, he slid down the bank into the hollow where she stood, entirely unconcerned as the mud ruined his tailored trousers and fine leather boots.
Talia stared at him in astonishment. She had never expected such an act from someone whose face looked too cold to bleed even if cut.
He trudged through the waterlogged mire toward her. Up close, he was even taller and leaner than he had appeared from above, standing at least a full head over her.
Closing the distance with long, measured strides, the boy reached out a hand.
“Take it.”
END