Chapter 92
The deep scent of water and sharp mint fragrance pushed into her lungs.
Thalia looked up at him with trembling eyes.
Varkas lowered his head toward her and let a low voice flow into her ear.
“If Your Highness causes such a commotion, there is no meaning in sharing the same room.”
At his reproving tone, she snapped back to her senses.
She struck his hand away and hurriedly drew her body back.
When distance opened between them, his smoothly shining, sculpture-like body came into view all at once.
Thalia hurriedly lowered her gaze.
“Put on some clothes! Do you have no shame?”
When she snapped in a hushed voice as if scolding him, a faint crease formed between his brows.
Varkas shook his head as if dumbfounded, rose, and spoke dryly.
“That is not something a person who used to parade through the Imperial Palace dressed practically half-naked at every opportunity should say.”
“When did I…!”
Thalia raised her head with an indignant expression, then closed her mouth when she saw him take out a fresh shirt and put it on.
As Varkas pushed his arms into the sleeves, he threw out a pointed remark.
“From around the time you were approaching your coming-of-age ceremony, you began clumsily imitating the Empress, did you not?”
Thalia’s face twisted with humiliation.
When the days she had struggled desperately to draw even a little of his attention came to mind, sorrow surged up as well.
She snatched the pillow beside her head and struck his back with all her strength.
“Now I have a body that can’t even dream of wearing those clothes, so you must feel very relieved!”
Varkas, who had been buttoning his shirt, looked back at her with icy eyes.
Thalia, who had been fuming, flinched and stiffened.
Since the accident, Varkas had silently endured all the irritability she threw at him.
But it seemed even his patience was slowly beginning to run out.
The man sent her a merciless gaze and climbed onto the bed.
Thalia almost instinctively rolled toward the opposite side.
Just as she tried to escape, a firm arm wrapped around her waist.
Thalia, who was laid back down in an instant, looked up at him with rigid eyes.
He was a man who, whenever she lost control and went wild, would suppress her firmly even by force.
Because of that, even though his somewhat rough behavior was not particularly unfamiliar, her heart dropped.
Varkas brought his face close and spoke threateningly.
“You had better start fixing the habit of using your hands.”
Thalia looked up at him with frightened eyes.
His expressionless gaze dropped onto her lips, which stung from how much she had bitten them.
He slowly added.
“And the habit of hurting yourself.”
Her creaking heart began pounding as if it would explode.
She could not tell whether it was because of fear or some other emotion.
She tightly closed her eyes.
“M-move away.”
“……”
“Can’t you hear me telling you to move?”
Varkas did not budge.
Under his persistent stare, her lips dried out.
She hid her blood-scabbed lips inside her mouth.
Varkas looked down at that with narrowed eyes, then released the hand that had been gripping her wrist.
But before she could do anything with her freed hand, he caught her chin.
Thalia drew in a rough breath.
His calloused fingers forcibly pulled out the lip that had curled inward.
A damp fingertip brushed over the swollen membrane.
“Stop tormenting your lips.”
Thalia looked up at him with eyes mixed with anxiety and confusion.
If someone else had touched her in that way, she would have taken it as a sign of lust.
Had she not encountered countless men at Senevier’s banquets who were desperate to touch her body?
But his impassive face, where no desire could be found, blurred her judgment.
The contact that felt as if it were squeezing her heart seemed, to him, truly an action with no meaning at all.
Thalia released a suppressed breath.
“I-I understand, so… go away.”
At the voice that flowed out like a plea, his eyes filled with silver fragments rose upward.
His bottomless pupils seemed to steal away all reason.
Thalia instinctively stuck out her tongue to moisten her lips.
Then, when the tip of her tongue touched his thumb, her face flushed scarlet.
Varkas was observing her reaction carefully.
It seemed he was checking whether she truly disliked it.
Cold sweat rose on her forehead as if everything inside her had been exposed.
Unable to endure the silence any longer, Thalia urgently blurted out.
“My legs hurt.”
Varkas paused.
She turned her head to the side and repeated in a tightly locked voice.
“I woke up because they hurt. Call the healer.”
Only then did he finally move back.
Thalia scurried to the corner of the bed like an animal released from a trap.
Varkas looked at her with thoughtful eyes, then turned away with a short sigh.
“I received medicine in advance.”
“I don’t need medicine. Sleep herb works a hundred times better. If you call my healer, she will…”
At her blunt words, a cold gaze flew toward her once more.
Thalia trailed off and pulled the blanket up beneath her chin.
Varkas picked up a glass bottle from the shelf, opened the lid, and held it out.
Thalia glared at it like an enemy, then reluctantly accepted the bottle.
It was the medicine she had poured into a flowerpot every time after being forced to swallow it on her first day in the East.
She tightly closed her eyes and forced down the bitter liquid that seemed to burn her tongue.
He naturally accepted the empty bottle and laid her back down on the bed.
His plain attitude, as if handling a ten-year-old child, made her mind even more complicated.
What exactly had his earlier behavior been?
Had he been trying to frighten her?
Or…
“Sleep now. You will need enough rest to handle tomorrow’s schedule.”
Her train of thought was cut off by the hands arranging the blanket.
Thalia watched him as if staring at a viper that might turn on her at any moment.
Whether he knew she was wary or not, Varkas adjusted the lamp and lowered the light, then walked to the corner of the tent.
Then he sat at the table and opened what appeared to be a ledger.
It seemed he was examining the financial records of this place.
Thalia held her breath and watched that dry figure, wondering when he would lie down beside her.
But even as the night deepened, he did not move from the desk.
In the end, she was the first to grow exhausted and fall away.
At some point, Thalia drifted off, and the next day, she opened her eyes alone inside the empty tent.
It was a morning that made it feel pointless how tense she had been all night, worried about lying in the same bed with him.
Thalia looked around the dim tent soaked in morning light with eyes still heavy with sleep, then let out a hollow sigh.
He had promised from the beginning that nothing would happen.
Then what had she been so anxious about?
“Young lady, are you awake?”
As she carefully examined the spot beside her in case any trace of him remained, the nanny’s voice came from outside the tent.
Thalia staggered down from the bed.
“I’m awake…”
Soon after, the nanny entered the tent with quick steps, carrying a large tray on her head.
“Did you sleep well last night?”
She seemed to be in a rare good mood.
With a bright smile around her lips, the nanny set down the tray full of food and chattered.
“I brought breakfast. This time, Young lady will like it too. The manager here prepared plenty of food last evening, and everything tasted good.”
Thalia frowned and looked down at the gilded dishes.
There were porridge boiled with various grains, rough-looking white bread, musty cheese, and sticky jam piled high.
Just looking at it made her feel nauseated.
“Forget it and just bring me some honey wine.”
“No. His Grace the Grand Duke scolded me harshly and told me to make sure you eat properly. Would you be all right with me being punished by His Grace?”
Thalia, who had picked up a piece of bread and was examining it this way and that to see if anything like a tiny fly was stuck to it, glanced at her suspiciously.
The nanny firmly believed that somewhere in a corner of his heart, the Emperor cherished the daughter born as an illegitimate child.
This time, too, she was probably assigning excessive meaning to some passing remark.
Thalia spoke crookedly.
“Where did that His Grace the Grand Duke go so early in the morning?”
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