TFM 125

Chapter 125

***

A withered leaf fell to the ground.

The bare, skeletal trees twisted violently as they were buffeted by the fierce wind, and icy rain poured down upon the hills, which were fading to a grayish-brown hue.

Sitting on the windowsill and gazing out at the ashen landscape, Talia spotted mounted warriors entering the castle courtyard and pressed her face against the cold glass.

Through the curtain of splashing rain, she watched Varkas riding on a massive gray warhorse. She watched as he dismounted with an elegant grace.

Handing the reins to a servant, Varkas pulled back his rain-soaked robe, revealing a fresh, white face as sculpted as marble. He looked so cool and dignified that it was hard to believe he was the same barbarian who mercilessly pushed her to her limits nearly every night.

Talia, who had been staring intently at him while wiping the fogged-up windowpane with her palm, hurriedly drew the curtain shut the moment Varkas turned his head in her direction.

Just that fleeting exchange of glances caused her body temperature to spike and her heart to race erratically. Biting her lip anxiously, Talia stepped down from the windowsill and curled up in front of the fireplace. But even in the glow of the blazing fire, her trembling would not subside.

She wrapped her arms around her legs and buried her face in her knees.

She had absolutely no idea how to deal with Varkas. Ever since she’d spent the night with him, everything she’d believed to be clear had become a tangled mess.

At times, the man in the bright light and the man in the darkness felt like completely different people.

By day, he treated her with his usual demeanor, his expression impassive, as if he had never known desire in his life.

But the man in the darkness was different. Existing only as a faint silhouette, he was fierce and primal, like the king of the Eastern pagans who had once struck terror into the ancient kingdoms.

Feeling a throbbing ache in the spot where he had relentlessly penetrated her the night before, she pressed her thighs tightly together. Her cheeks grew hot, as if on fire.

She had never expected Varkas to be so proactive in their lovemaking. Wasn’t he a man as ascetic as the priests?

Considering that their lovemaking had begun at her insistence, his passionate response felt almost inexplicable.

This was especially true when she recalled how all the women in the imperial palace, who had tried every trick in the book to seduce him, had ultimately tasted bitter defeat.

‘………Did he treat Ayla that way, too?’

Her thoughts immediately took a self-deprecating turn.

Previously, she had firmly believed he was the kind of man incapable of burning with passion for anyone, so she assumed he was merely fulfilling his duties as Ayla’s fiancé.

But perhaps their relationship was more than that. Wasn’t he the kind of man who would pour out such intense desire onto her, only to put on a calm face the next day as if nothing had happened?

He might have been pretending to be a proper fiancé all along, even after subjecting Ayla to all sorts of explicit acts. No, that must have been the case.

She could never be anyone’s special person. It was a fact she had realized long ago.

If he could feel desire for her, he could feel it for someone else as well. Even if he had married another woman instead of her, he would surely have reacted in exactly the same way.

‘So, stop reading too much into his actions.’

“Oh, come on! Stop biting your lip.”

A flippant voice cut through her deep thoughts. Talia startled and looked up.

She didn’t know when the nanny had entered the room, but there she was, a large basket tucked under her arm, glaring at her.

“If you get a cut, it wont heal…”

“It doesn’t matter. Anyway……………"

Varkas won’t be able to see me anyway. She was about to snap that back, but clamped her mouth shut.

It was the nanny who fussed over dressing her up every evening. It was obvious that once she realized all her efforts were in vain, she’d become even more of a nuisance than she already was.

Talia hid her bloodstained fingernails under the hem of her skirt and rested her forehead on her knees. The nanny, who had been watching her with a disapproving gaze, clicked her tongue and set the basket down on the table.

“Don’t look so miserable—have some of this. The healer has freshly brewed the herbs sent by Her Majesty the Empress.”

Talia scowled as she looked down at the mysterious decoction.

Ever since returning to the imperial palace, Senevere had begun sending all sorts of elixirs said to aid pregnancy. It was unspoken pressure to comply with her wishes. And the wet nurse was faithfully carrying out her duties as the Empress’s loyal servant.

She held the bowl filled with a pitch-black liquid right in front of Talia’s face and nagged her.

“Come on, drink it up. Her Majesty the Empress specifically instructed that you must take this every single day without fail.” 

Reluctantly taking the bowl, Talia downed the potion in one gulp.

It felt exactly like swallowing hot mud. Desperately suppressing the urge to vomit, she hurriedly rinsed her mouth with water.

Suddenly, Varkas’s taunt—that she seemed perfectly fine with being treated like a mare—echoed in her mind. She pressed her blood-stained lips together and swallowed her humiliation.

I simply made a choice for myself. There’s no need to feel ashamed.

As she repeated this to herself and roughly wiped her wet lips with the back of her hand, the nanny’s excited voice pierced her ears.

“You’re going to get ready now, aren’t you?”

Talia turned her head over her shoulder and frowned as she watched the nanny take clothes out of the trunk and lay them out. It seemed the nanny assumed, as usual, that she would be spending the night in his bedchamber today.

She shifted her gaze back to the window. Since he’d returned soaked from the rain, Varkas must be taking a bath by now. After that, he’d likely attend to the official business he hadn’t yet had time to handle. His workload seemed to have increased significantly lately, so he probably wouldn’t retire to his bed until sunset. Even as she thought this, her legs were already moving of their own accord away from the bed.

Talia undid her tightly braided hair and walked over to the bathtub the maids had prepared in advance. As she immersed herself in the lukewarm water scented with essential oils, her nurse approached from behind and began washing her hair.

Surrendering herself to those rough hands, she looked down at her own body.

Wherever his lips had brushed against her skin, marks like fever blisters remained. As Talia ran her fingers along the crimson marks—as if she were suffering from a fever—she felt a faint dizziness and closed her eyes.

What she had assumed would be a sporadic, obligatory act had, at some point, become a natural part of her daily routine.

At first, she knocked on his door about once every three days. Then, before she knew it, she found herself coming and going from his bedchamber almost every day.

She tried to justify it by telling herself she’d simply given in to her nanny’s nagging, or that she just wanted to have a child and find some peace as soon as possible, but a part of her knew that was a lie. With each passing day, it was becoming harder and harder to pull herself away from his embrace.

Whenever she pushed Varkas away and lay alone on the wide bed, a sense of emptiness would wash over her, and every time she washed away his traces, she felt a strange sense of longing.

She hated herself for it, but she simply couldn’t control herself. It was clear that the loathsome fever that had tormented her since she was nine had flared up again.

‘No. This isn’t that at all. I’m just using him.’

She hastily dismissed the thought.

She couldn’t drive herself into that quagmire again.

Pulling herself together, Talia stepped out of the bathtub with a resolute expression. She then dried herself with a soft towel and slipped into the blue velvet dress she’d brought from the imperial palace.

She knew Varkas wouldn’t be able to see her clearly, but even so, she didn’t want to face him looking disheveled.

Talia gazed at her reflection in the mirror—a face that bore an uncanny resemblance to Senevere’s—then stood up.

As she opened the door and stepped out, the sight of the candlelit hallway caught her eye.

She took a few steps across the carpet, the light flickering on its surface, then turned her gaze to the window, where rain was splashing against the glass. Just then, a golden flash split the ink-black sky.

After glancing briefly at the rumbling sky, Talia continued on her way.

When she finally reached his door, a servant who had been waiting there opened it for her as if he’d been anticipating her arrival.

Talia stepped cautiously into the room, which was shrouded in deep darkness.

At that moment, a flash of light illuminated the silhouette of the man standing by the window, bathing him in white.