Chapter 125
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A dried leaf fell onto the earth.
The skeletal trees, with only bare branches remaining, were pushed by the fierce wind and twisted their bodies violently, while icy rain poured down over the hills fading into grayish brown.
Sitting on the windowsill and looking out at the ash-gray scenery, Thalia discovered mounted warriors entering the castle courtyard and pressed her face to the cold glass window.
Beyond the hazy veil of splashing rain, she could see Varkas seated atop a massive gray warhorse.
Thalia watched him dismount with graceful movements.
After handing the reins to an attendant, Varkas pushed back his rain-soaked robe and revealed a face as white as a marble sculpture.
He looked so cool and dignified that it was hard to believe he was the same savage who mercilessly drove her to the edge almost every night.
Wiping the fogged glass with her palm from her breath, Thalia stared down at him, then hurriedly drew the curtain when Varkas turned his head in her direction.
Just from briefly meeting his eyes, her body temperature rose sharply and her heart beat irregularly.
Anxiously biting her lip, Thalia climbed down from the windowsill and curled up in front of the fireplace.
But even before the blazing flames, her trembling did not calm.
She hugged her legs and buried her face on her knees.
She had no idea how she should treat Varkas.
After spending the night with him, everything she had believed was clear had become tangled into a mess.
At times, he in the bright light and the man in the darkness felt like entirely different people.
By day, he treated her as usual, with an indifferent face that seemed as though he had never felt desire in his life.
But in the darkness, he was different.
That man, existing only as a faint outline, was fierce and primal, like the king of the eastern pagans said to have terrified the ancient kingdoms.
Feeling the place he had persistently invaded last night throb, she pressed her thighs tightly together.
Her cheeks grew hot as if they were burning.
She had never expected Varkas to be so active in the sexual act.
Was he not a man as ascetic as the priests?
Considering that the intimacy had begun because of her coercion, his passionate response felt almost mysterious.
All the more so when she remembered that every woman in the imperial palace who had used all kinds of tricks to seduce him had tasted bitter defeat.
Was he that way with Ayla too?
Her thoughts immediately flowed in a self-destructive direction.
Before, she had firmly believed that he was someone who could not grow heated for anyone, so she had assumed he was merely fulfilling his duty as a fiancé to Ayla.
But perhaps the two had been in a relationship beyond that.
Was he not a man who could pour such fierce desire into her and then wear a calm face the next day as if nothing had happened?
He might have done all kinds of explicit acts with Ayla as well, only to pretend to be a proper fiancé.
No, he surely had.
She could never become special to anyone.
That was a fact she had realized long ago.
If he could feel desire for her, then he could surely feel it for someone else too.
Even if he had married another woman instead of her, he would undoubtedly have reacted in the same way.
“So stop giving his actions any special meaning.”
“Oh, really! Please stop tearing at your lips.”
A frivolous voice pushed into her sticky thoughts.
Thalia flinched and lifted her head.
At some point, the nanny had entered the room and was glaring at her while holding a large basket at her side.
“If a wound forms, the dye will not take well.”
“It doesn’t matter. Anyway…”
Varkas would not be able to see how I look.
She was about to snap that, but closed her mouth.
The nanny fussed over dressing her up every evening.
If she learned that everything she did was wasted effort, she would certainly become even more troublesome than now.
Thalia hid her blood-stained fingernail inside the hem of her dress and leaned her forehead on her knees.
The nanny, who had been looking at her with displeasure, clicked her tongue and placed the basket on the table.
“Do not sit there looking so pitiful, and drink this instead. The healer newly brewed the medicinal ingredients Her Majesty the Empress sent.”
Thalia grimaced fiercely as she looked down at the unidentified decoction.
After returning to the imperial palace, Senevier had begun sending all kinds of secret medicines said to help with pregnancy.
It was silent pressure telling her to follow her will.
And the nanny was faithfully playing the role of the Empress’s loyal servant.
She held the bowl containing the black liquid right in front of Thalia’s face and urged her.
“Now, hurry and drink it. Her Majesty the Empress repeatedly told me you must take it every day without missing even one.”
Reluctantly taking the bowl, Thalia drank down the medicine in one breath.
It was exactly like swallowing hot mud.
Desperately suppressing what was about to surge back up at any moment, she hurriedly poured water and rinsed her mouth.
Suddenly, Varkas’s sarcastic words, that she seemed perfectly fine with acting as a broodmare, echoed in her mind.
She crushed her bleeding lip and swallowed her humiliation.
I merely made a choice for myself.
There is no need to feel ashamed.
Repeating that inwardly, she roughly wiped her wet mouth with the back of her hand, and the nanny’s excited voice pierced her ear.
“Now you will get ready, won’t you?”
Turning her head over her shoulder, Thalia frowned when she saw the nanny taking clothes out of the chest and spreading them out.
It seemed she naturally assumed Thalia would enter his bedchamber again today.
She moved her gaze back toward the window.
Since he had returned soaked by the rain, Varkas would be bathing by now.
After that, he would probably look over the official duties he had not yet handled.
His workload seemed to have increased noticeably lately, so he would likely enter his bedchamber only around sunset.
Even as she thought that, her legs were moving out of the bed on their own.
Thalia loosened her tightly braided hair and walked toward the bath the maids had prepared in advance.
When she submerged her body in lukewarm water mixed with scented oil, the nanny approached from behind and began washing her hair.
Entrusting herself to those rough hands, she looked down at her own body.
Every place his lips had brushed had marks like heat rashes left behind.
Thalia slid her fingers along the reddish marks as if she had suffered a fever, then felt a faint dizziness and closed her eyes.
The act she had thought would continue only occasionally and out of duty had, at some point, become a natural part of her daily life.
At first, she knocked on his door once every three days or so.
Then, when she came to her senses, she found herself going in and out of his bedchamber every day.
She tried to excuse herself by saying she had merely lost to the nanny’s urging, that she simply wanted to have a child as soon as possible and become comfortable, but one part of her heart knew it was a lie.
As the days passed, escaping from his arms was becoming harder.
When she shook off Varkas and lay alone on the wide bed, emptiness flooded in, and whenever she washed away his traces, she even felt a strange regret.
She found herself horrible, but she could not control herself at all.
That tiresome fever that had tormented her since she was nine had clearly relapsed.
“No. This is not that. I am only using him.”
She hurriedly denied her own thoughts.
She could not drive herself into the mire again.
Gathering her mind, Thalia came out of the bath with a resolute face.
Then she dried herself with a soft towel and put on the blue velvet dress she had brought from the imperial palace.
She knew Varkas would not be able to see her properly, but even so, she did not want to face him looking shabby.
Looking through the mirror at the face that resembled Senevier to a chilling degree, Thalia soon rose from her seat.
When she opened the door and stepped out, the corridor lit by candlelight came into view.
She stepped onto the carpet where the light flickered, then turned her eyes toward the window splashed with rain.
Just then, a golden flash split the ink-colored sky.
After briefly looking at the rumbling sky, Thalia resumed walking.
At last, when she reached his door, the waiting attendant opened it for her as if he had been expecting her.
Thalia carefully stepped into the room where darkness lay thick.
At that moment, a flash of light illuminated the outline of the man standing by the window in white.
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