Talia stood with both feet planted on the floor, straightening her back as best she could.
A sharp, stinging ache shot from her knees up into her spine. She must have wrenched something when she fell.
Though she longed to collapse then and there, she feigned composure and stared straight at her biological father.
It had been nearly half a year since she last saw his face. Even then, she had caught only a passing glimpse of him from afar. Looking upon him now was no different from facing a total stranger.
The Emperor seemed to feel the same. A flicker of distaste crossed his features before he looked away.
“I hear you have suffered a great ordeal.”
His voice was flat, detached, as though he were speaking of another household’s affairs.
“And that your body has been marred.”
Talia fixed him with a look of pure hostility.
He was no more to her than any stranger in the street. Fury flared at the callousness with which he dragged her private ruin into the light.
“Is that why you summoned me? Idle curiosity?”
Talia let out a sharp laugh and smoothed her skirts with mocking care.
“Would you like to inspect me yourself, Sire? To see with your own eyes what flaws I bear?”
Virus Roem Guirta drew his thick brows together in a heavy scowl.
Yet instead of the fierce rebuke she anticipated, he fell silent, his eyes lingering on her face. He looked as if he were truly seeing his daughter for the very first time.
“There is no reason for me to inspect you.”
The Emperor spoke bluntly, turning his gaze toward Varkas. Watching his eyes darken with tangled thoughts, Talia felt an instinctive unease prickle along her neck.
Why had he summoned the two of them here together?
As she watched him with sharp suspicion, the Emperor broke the long silence with words of reproach.
“Varkas Raedgo Shearkan, I placed my trust in you and placed the safety of my children in your hands. And this is what has come of it.”
Talia felt the blood drain from her face.
Tapping his fingertips against the armrest of the throne, the Emperor continued in a weighty tone.
“Through your failure to protect her, the Second Princess suffered grievous wounds and sustained permanent harm. Do you acknowledge that the fault lies with you?”
Varkas glanced at her once, then let his eyes drift away.
“I do.”
There was no inflection in his voice.
Neither indignation nor remorse, nor any hint of an excuse held back. He spoke with the barren calm of a man reciting an undeniable fact.
“I will submit to whatever punishment you decree.”
Talia took a step forward before she could stop herself.
He did nothing wrong.
The shout rose in her throat, yet her lips remained sealed.
Had he truly done nothing wrong?
She looked down at her legs, which had begun to twitch faintly, then lifted her eyes back to his profile. The memory of him running from her superimposed itself over his composed face. It was that sight, branded into her memory for the rest of her days, that robbed her of all speech.
“Since you concede it so readily, this will not take long.”
The Emperor gave a low sigh.
“The match arranged between the count’s house and the Second Princess has been shattered by this disaster. Nor will it be easy to secure another prospect befitting the Imperial House, burdened as she is with so many flaws…”
The Emperor spoke as though she were not even standing in the hall. He cast a single, indifferent glance at her blanched face before continuing.
“You must assume the burden of that failure. Dissolve your betrothal to Ayla Roem Guirta, and take the Second Princess, Talia Roem Guirta, as your wife.”
Talia’s breath caught.
Unable to make sense of what she had just heard, she stared blankly at the Emperor, then turned toward Senevier.
A thin, predatory smile, like a viper coiled over its feast, rested on the Empress’s lips.
A chill raced down Talia’s spine, and cold sweat broke across her skin.
She dropped her head, lacking the courage to look upon Varkas’s face.
There was no conceivable way he would acquiesce to such madness.
He was the heir to a great house.
Emperor or not, no ruler held the authority to impose such a humiliation upon the heir of the East.
He would reject it as his birthright allowed.
Talia’s hands clenched into her skirts until her knuckles went white.
Moments dragged by like hours before he spoke.
“If it is also the wish of Her Highness the Second Princess, I will obey.”
Talia’s head snapped up.
His piercing gaze bored into her as he weighed each syllable deliberately upon his tongue.
“I shall take Her Highness as my wife.”
Her heart seemed to stop dead in her chest.
Talia stared at his lips in stunned disbelief.
Had those words truly come from him?
Could her hearing have failed her?
Yes. She had to be hallucinating.
There was no world in which Varkas would ever speak of taking her to wife.
“You hear his answer, Princess.”
The Emperor’s voice cut through the fog of her bewilderment, dragging her back down to earth.
“If you consent, the seat of Grand Duchess of Shearkan is yours. How do you answer?”
A bitter thread of cynicism ran beneath the words.
Only then did Talia understand: the Emperor was counting on her refusal.
He had put the decree into words under pressure from the Empress, but deep within, he had no desire to see an illegitimate daughter claim Ayla’s betrothed.
Perhaps Varkas had spoken with that very certainty, knowing she would recoil in disgust and throw a tantrum.
No. That had to be it.
A strange, hollow calm settled over her.
If she said yes, the man she had coveted all her life would be hers.
Yet was this what she truly wanted?
She glanced down at the ruined legs hidden beneath the silk.
The mere thought of baring this twisted body before him turned her stomach.
If she ever saw disgust or pity flicker across his features, she would lose whatever remained of her sanity. She would shatter completely.
Talia looked up at him once more.
This was a man who had always turned his face and his back away from her.
The man who had chosen to save Ayla, leaving her to the dark.
A man who would never love her, not even in death.
Could she endure a lifetime tethered to his side? Could she willingly crawl into that torment?
“I… I…”
Talia parted her parched lips.
She could not bear it. She refused to be broken any further.
The refusal trembled on her tongue—until her eyes caught Senevier’s face, stripped of its smile.
The Empress’s gaze carried a venomous, silent warning that disappointment would not be forgiven.
Her viscera twisted into a tight knot.
“I…”
She looked from Varkas to the Emperor, and then to Senevier. Their faces blurred and spun together in a sickening gyre.
A vicious wave of vertigo struck her, and she clutched at her temples.
Cold sweat bathed her forehead. She dragged her sleeve across her brow, but the stinging drops seeped into the corners of her eyes.
Irritation flared as she tried to wipe them away; then the world tilted violently, and her knees gave out beneath her.
Her breath was crushed from her lungs as her body struck the stone.
A shrill cry drifted from somewhere far away. Senevier’s maids seemed to be shrieking in alarm.
Sprawled against the cold floor, Talia forced her eyes open against vision as murky as frosted glass. Through the haze, she could vaguely make out Varkas’s face, white and frozen.
Was that sudden pallor real, or merely a phantom spawned by her foolish, lingering longing?
Yes. It had to be a trick of her mind.
He was a man who had shown no emotion even upon seeing her mangled state. Why would he ever turn pale for her?
A crushing weariness swept through her limbs.
Talia, who had strained with every scrap of strength to keep him within her fading sight, finally let go.
The news that the betrothal between the heir of Shearkan and the First Princess had been broken, and that the Second Princess would take her place, spread through the Imperial Palace like a wildfire.
END