It must have been a few months before her sixteenth birthday.
Anxiety over the fact that she would soon become an adult had made her cling to him even more than usual, pestering him endlessly to choose dresses and accessories for her. It was a pitiful attempt to draw his attention.
Even Varkas, who normally would have ignored such demands outright, eventually began obediently offering opinions, perhaps worn down by her relentless nagging.
Maybe he had simply grown more lenient because he believed that in a few months he would finally be free of her.
The thought made her want to kill him.
And yet, if she could only keep Varkas bound to her side, it felt as though there was nothing she would not do.
Because the end that had once seemed like it would never arrive was now drawing near.
“How about this one? For my coming-of-age ceremony.”
Wearing a lavish silk dress imported from the South, she deliberately leaned her upper body toward him as though flaunting herself.
As always, Varkas merely cast a dry, indifferent glance her way.
Under that calm gaze, her face gradually began to burn.
By then, he was moving from nineteen toward twenty, and the body that had only recently shed the last traces of boyhood had hardened beautifully into manhood. If not for those dead, emotionless eyes, he might have looked like an angel descended from heaven.
Talia deliberately raised her voice to hide the foolish trembling in her chest.
“I asked what you think!”
“......It looks like a child stole an adult woman’s clothes.”
At last, those tightly sealed lips parted.
Her eyes narrowed sharply. The man added another sentence, sounding thoroughly irritated.
“It suits you terribly.”
Her face flushed crimson as she glared at him. But she had been the one who asked for his opinion in the first place, so there was little she could say in rebuttal.
Fixing him with a venomous stare, Talia stomped behind the dressing screen. Then she began rummaging violently through the mountain of clothing piled there.
She was determined to make that corpse-like man blush no matter what.
After a long while, she selected something even more daring.
It was a scandalously revealing dress with a neckline cut dangerously low. Talia hesitated for a moment, wondering if it might be excessive, but soon steeled herself and hurriedly slipped it on.
When she looked into the mirror, an unbearably beautiful girl stared back at her.
She examined herself from every angle with satisfied eyes.
The body that had once been as thin and bare as a birch branch had begun slowly changing after she turned fourteen. Her flat chest had budded softly before swelling into the size of small apples, and little by little her narrow hips had begun to fill out as well.
Talia was strangely proud of those changes.
The thought that she was gradually approaching the flawless beauty possessed by Senevier filled her with endless excitement. Once Varkas realized what she possessed, surely he would begin seeing her differently.
Soon, she would become the most beautiful woman in the world.
Bursting with hopeful anticipation, she hurried out from behind the screen.
“How about this one?”
Varkas, who had been staring out the window with a bored expression, finally turned toward her.
For the first time, something that resembled emotion surfaced on his face.
Unfortunately, it was not a positive emotion.
His brow furrowed as his gaze swept over her, and he spoke with faint impatience.
“The very first dress.”
After taking a deep breath, he added bluntly,
“Wear that one.”
There was not even the faintest trace of admiration or agitation in his dry voice.
And yet, merely realizing that he remembered the very first dress out of the dozens she had shown him made Talia feel as though her heart might burst.
She deliberately curved her lips into a suggestive smile.
“What’s this? Pretending to be uninterested, but apparently you were paying close attention?”
He gave no reply.
Whatever he was thinking, he merely looked eager for this exhausting fashion show to end as quickly as possible.
For a moment his arrogant attitude irritated her, but Talia decided to be generous and let it slide. Had she not resolved to show him, little by little, that she was changing?
Humming to herself, Talia picked up the first dress she had worn.
It was a delicate and elegant velvet surcoat embroidered densely with fairyfolk stitching.
This dress would never leave her wardrobe for the rest of her life.
Because it was the one that had caught Varkas’s eye.
After quickly changing back into it, she emerged and spun around proudly in front of him.