After dismissing the attendants and following him out of the cloister, a flower garden thick with marigolds, daisies, and rosemary came into view.
The plants, thoroughly soaked with water, gave off a strong grassy scent into the air.
Ayla breathed in that sharp fragrance deeply, then turned her head and looked up at Varkas.
“Did something happen last night?”
At the hesitant question, the man who had been walking quietly turned his head toward her.
Ayla stared straight into his eyes.
His pale-blue eyes, shining faintly, contained nothing at all.
As she faced those pale eyes, which seemed to reflect everything exactly as it was, her chest felt newly stifled.
Will the day ever come when I dwell inside those eyes?
While she was lost in that thought, Varkas’s tightly closed lips opened.
“It was nothing Your Highness needs to concern herself with.”
“...So something did happen.”
Varkas gave no answer and strode into the rain-soaked garden.
Heavy raindrops covered his broad shoulders and back in white.
Ayla looked at his unfeeling back ahead of her with a dissatisfied gaze, and then Varkas held out one hand toward her.
“The puddles are deep.”
Realizing what he meant, Ayla blushed and glanced at him sideways.
She did not want to throw herself into the arms of a man who had been unkind.
But she could not very well leave her fiancé standing in the rain, waiting for her to come to him.
After pretending to be distracted for a moment, Ayla approached him as though reluctantly giving in.
Varkas bent slightly, slipped one arm behind her knees, and lifted her lightly.
Ayla rested her head on his shoulder, just as she had when she was a five-year-old child.
“You know there are parts of you that are unfair, don’t you?”
At the contextless accusation, his eyebrow rose slightly.
Instead of explaining her complicated and subtle feelings at length, Ayla held him even tighter.
Varkas wrapped her body completely in his cloak and crossed the wide rear garden.
Ayla buried one cheek in his collar.
Varkas’s body carried the sharp scent of herbs, the faint metallic smell soaked into armor, and a distant scent like dry fallen leaves or hay.
As she became intoxicated by that cool body scent, her unpleasant mood softened as though it had been a lie.
Ayla let out a self-mocking laugh.
It was ridiculous that she became excited like a naive young girl over an action that, to him, was nothing more than an old habit.
This man was gentle to her only to keep the vow he had made to her mother.
Kindness born from duty.
Nothing more and nothing less.
Even though she knew that well, she could not stop her heart from aching.
Cruel person.
If only you would not be kind at all.
Then I, too, could have been satisfied with a political relationship...
She lowered her eyes sadly.
“I will instruct them to bring bathwater to your room. Please warm yourself and rest afterward.”
Varkas, who had crossed the rear garden in an instant, stopped at the entrance of the lodging and spoke.
Ayla nodded.
Varkas lightly climbed the stone steps and bent slightly as though to set her down.
At that moment, the sky flashed, and a loud clap of thunder rang out.
Ayla reflexively clung to the back of his neck.
A roar that seemed to shake the heavens rang out again and again, and a golden flash split the black clouds.
As she stared blankly over his shoulder at the sight, which looked as though the end of the world had come, she suddenly noticed a pale figure sitting by a second-floor window.
For an instant, she wondered if she was seeing a terrifying illusion.
Ayla blankly parted her lips.
The flashing light brightly revealed a face so beautiful it was almost grotesque.
The snow-white face atop that slender neck, which seemed as though it might snap, burned with chilling hatred.
It was not as though she had not known of her half-sister’s extraordinary beauty, so why was she so shocked now?
Thalia, whose eyes gleamed viciously in the storm, looked like an angel of death.
As Ayla unconsciously held her breath at that ominous sight, Thalia, who had been as motionless as a stone statue, picked up the vase by the window.
A moment later, the porcelain flew toward a pillar near where they stood.
Ayla screamed.
Thanks to Varkas shielding her, she avoided being showered with glass shards, but a small scratch appeared on Varkas’s face.
Ayla hurriedly took out a handkerchief and pressed it to his cheek.
Varkas, who accepted it with his usual indifferent face and covered his face with it, glanced upward.
Ayla followed his gaze and found Thalia still glaring at her, and her face hardened.
As if she felt not the slightest guilt over what she had done, Thalia, who was sending a fierce gaze their way, twisted her mouth.
Her bloodied lips looked like a crushed rose.
A fear greater than anger stirred in Ayla’s chest.
Her half-sister, whom she had always considered nothing, felt in that moment like the most ominous and threatening existence in the world.
It felt as though the evil spirit that had made her mother live in misery would drag even her down into a pit of grief.
Ayla shuddered at the chilling premonition.
***
The rain that had fallen all night only subsided at dawn.
Thalia, who had spent the night almost entirely awake, looked out at the garden lit by dawn with hollow eyes.
The grass blades that had once shone fresh and green were half-submerged in muddy water, giving off a thick fishy smell of grass, and the flowers that had decorated the flower beds in bright colors lay scattered like corpses with their necks broken.
Thalia looked down at the scene with dark eyes, then got down from the bed and approached the small table in front of the fireplace.
On a silver plate, the untouched food had hardened.
After sweeping her indifferent gaze over it, she picked up the small knife placed beside the tray.
It had been made for cutting food, but it looked as though it would have no trouble cutting human flesh as well.
Thalia touched the sharp tip of the blade with her fingertips, then pushed it into the pocket of her gown and left the room.
Damp moisture lay thick and sticky in the corridor.
As she walked as though swimming through the heavy, clinging air, she gripped the ice-cold knife tightly.
Her palm became soaked with cold sweat.
She could not tell whether it was because of nervousness or excitement.
Perhaps it was both.
She moistened her parched lips and crept up the stairs like an alley cat.
Ayla was using the room on the top floor.
When she reached the top of the stairs, Thalia pressed herself against the wall and looked down the corridor, which was thick with darkness.
Fortunately, no one seemed to be guarding the door.
Letting out a small sigh of relief, Thalia carefully stepped toward the door at the end of the corridor.
As she approached the wooden door bound with iron bands, a faint medicinal scent pricked her nose.
It was the smell of incense burned to calm the nerves.
Thalia twisted her mouth.
It seemed last night had not been entirely comfortable for Ayla either.
Remembering the face that had turned deathly pale upon seeing her, Thalia giggled.
But at the scene that surfaced afterward, her mood immediately plunged to the bottom.
Thalia’s face twisted violently as she slipped her hand into her pocket and gripped the knife handle.
Her whole body trembled.
The moment she saw Varkas carrying Ayla in both arms and walking out through the pouring rain, she had felt something she had barely managed to hold together collapse completely.
She roughly rubbed her eyes, which were growing misty, with the sleeve of her gown.
It was her one and only memory.
A memory she had buried in her heart for many years and secretly taken out to look at again and again.
Did they have to turn even that memory into nothing?
Could they not have left even one thing as something special that belonged only to us?
Her brain boiled with rage.
She knew it was an irrational emotion.
Even so, she could not possibly forgive the two of them.
She wanted to punish Ayla, who had stolen even the last sanctuary left to her.
She wanted to return to that man the same pain she had felt.
Thalia forced strength into her eyes, which burned as though on fire, and glared at the tightly closed door.
If she crossed this door, she would cross a river she could never return from.
Perhaps she would be recorded in history as an evil witch who stole the life of a pitiful princess who had done nothing wrong.
Even that did not matter.
She was already regarded as the worst villainess.
If she fell even lower from here, what did she have left to lose?
She gripped the doorknob with a trembling hand.
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