He forced down whatever was boiling up inside his stomach and deliberately steadied his voice.
“I will pretend I did not hear what you just said.”
He spoke in an intentionally stiff tone and turned away to change his clothes, only to hear a rustling sound behind him.
When he looked back, he saw the woman slowly pushing her upper body upright.
As she lowered her legs from the bed, the blanket slipped from her slender shoulders, which looked fragile enough to crumble. Because of the nightgown that had been resized to fit her pregnant body, she looked even smaller and younger.
The woman staggered toward him with that delicate body like a glass sculpture and shot him a gaze so pale it was almost eerie.
“Why?”
Varkas, who had been reaching out to catch her, clenched his fist in midair. He felt as though touching her carelessly might shatter her.
“Why do I have to be here?”
As though testing that patience of his, the woman spat out,
“I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to be with you. Just seeing your face feels like it will drive me insane.”
Her voice trembled unstably, like the melody of a viola tightened to its limit. Her thin fingers clung to the hem of his clothes as though hanging on.
“So send me anywhere. The imperial palace, a convent, I don’t care!”
He lost his patience in an instant and pushed her down onto the bed. The harsh breaths bursting from between her cracked lips poured hot against his nape. Her dilated blue eyes blurred right before his face. As though driving each word into those wet holes submerged in water, he spoke with force.
“Say whatever you want. Nothing will change.”
The woman’s face twisted as though she could not understand. For some reason, that expression tore his insides up even more.
Following a {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} sinister impulse he had not even known existed inside him, he murmured in a low voice,
“You must spend your entire life within my domain. That is the fate decided the moment you swore with your own mouth that you would become my wife.”
He felt gooseflesh rise over the cold skin beneath his hand. A fragile light, mixed with confusion, resistance, and fear, spread across her eyes.
He quietly stared into it before forcing himself away from her and sitting on the edge of the bed. Then, as he struggled to gather his scattered mind, the woman finally drove a blade into something still lingering at the bottom of him.
“You...... How can you be so fine?”
Varkas, whose back had gone rigid, slowly turned to look at her.
The woman, shooting him a resentful gaze, began to sob violently.
“Our child is dead, so how can you stay so cold? I, I am suffering this much......”
Then she clawed at her chest as though she truly felt physical pain.
Looking down at her blankly, he asked himself.
Am I fine right now?
Perhaps he was.
He could not sympathize with the pain this woman felt.
Even when their first child could not even breathe, all he had been able to see was his wife bleeding.
He had even ignored her begging to be allowed to hold the child. He could not bring himself to permit it, afraid that if he showed her the dead child, she would let go of everything right then and there.
If only this woman was safe, he had sincerely thought that he did not care what happened to the child. Even now, all he wished was for this woman to forget the dead child as soon as possible and escape her grief.
Just as he was about to confess that, whether she found him even more terrible than she already did or not, the small face wrapped in swaddling clothes flashed behind his retina like a burn scar.
A face smaller than his palm.
A face that might perhaps have resembled half of himself and half of this woman......
When he thought of that tiny lump of blood buried beneath the earth without ever once being held in its mother’s arms, his tongue would not move, as though paralyzed.
Overcome by helplessness, he let both arms hang at his sides.
She was no longer looking at him.
He silently watched the woman trembling faintly with both hands covering her face, then rose to his feet.
If he remained there any longer, he felt as though he would say he would grant her anything she demanded.
Varkas fled the bedroom as if escaping, shut the door behind him, and leaned his body against it, heavy as a lump of lead.
Through his continually wavering vision, he saw a window spilling sunset light. Feeling his mind gradually stain red, he pressed down hard on eyelids that felt rough as sandpaper.
It was the end of an unusually long and turbulent day.
* * *
After that day, Talia began acting even more horribly than before.
She wanted Varkas to become sick of her.
She wanted him to abandon her without the slightest guilt.
She had already been thoroughly abandoned by everyone.
The Emperor’s offer to write a decree of divorce meant that Senevier, too, had given up on her. Having lost the child, she must have also lost the last faint expectation she had left for Talia.
When Talia first learned that fact, she had felt a stinging pain, but the shock was not as great as she had expected.
Mother no longer mattered.
Talia no longer thought about a way to live. Even if Gareth killed her right away, she felt it would not matter much. Right now, all she wanted was to get away from this man.
She looked at Varkas with eyes full of pain. He was changing out of the clothes she had ruined by throwing a bowl of porridge at him.
The way he remained calm, as though nothing had happened, made her feel suffocated. His patience was horrible. The fact that she became an uncontrollable monster whenever she stood before him was even more horrible.
She muttered in an exhausted tone,
“Shouldn’t you be sick of this by now?”
Varkas, who had been pulling a dark blue tunic down, turned his head toward her.
No emotion could be read from his face, which was faintly marked with fatigue. The man stared at her with eyes that seemed covered by an opaque film, then folded up his sleeves and spoke in his characteristically toneless voice.
“Shouldn’t you be sick of throwing childish tantrums by now?”
Talia let out a hollow laugh.
The fact that even the acts she herself was sick of were nothing more than tantrums to him filled her with futility.
“Most of your retainers don’t welcome me as Grand Duchess anyway. If I disappear, everyone will be happy.”
“Since when have you cared about other people’s happiness?”
With a dry laugh, Varkas brought the food the maids had newly prepared back to the bed.
Talia looked down at it with lifeless eyes. She had already caused a disturbance three times that day alone, so she did not even have the strength left to overturn the bowl anymore.
“Do I need to feed you myself?”
Pushed by the voice that rang softly beside her pillow, she finally picked up the spoon.
After she took a few spoonfuls of food and pushed them into her mouth, she saw faint relief pass over his face. She deliberately turned her eyes away from the sight, and then sensed a presence outside the door.
“Your Grace, guests from the capital have arrived. I believe you should come out.”
It was the butler’s voice.
Talia looked up at him, clutching the spoon. Varkas, who had been looking out the window with a crease between his brows, soon picked up his coat.
“I will be there shortly.”
Then he rang the bell to summon the maids, told them not to take their eyes off her for even a moment, and left the room.