Chapter 151
Thalia kept her gaze fixed on Varkas’s eyes and pushed downward.
A sensation rushed over her as if a boulder were crushing her pelvis.
Every sweat gland in her body opened, and cold sweat streamed down her.
She gathered even the strength she had used to suckle as an infant.
But she did not feel as if anything was progressing at all.
She felt as if she would burst into tears.
How long did she have to keep doing this?
Just as the unbearable pain made her want to let everything go, someone let out a short scream.
Thalia lifted her eyelids, drenched with sweat and tears.
Below her knees, which had been covered with linen, the priestess was looking between her legs with a grave expression.
Thalia parted her split lips with difficulty.
“Why... What is it?”
“B-Blood...”
The maid standing beside the bed mumbled with a terrified face.
The head maid seized that maid with a sharp hand and pushed her back.
Before Thalia could even wonder about that sight, the labor pains that had subsided began again.
Thalia clung to Varkas’s neck once more.
How long did the pain last, as if her bones were being forced apart and the organs and bundles of nerves inside her body were being crushed?
Her vision turned white, and then something blocking her below slipped out.
The sensation was so intense that her neck bent back on its own, and a sharp scream burst from her vocal cords.
Thalia sagged like a corpse in Varkas’s arms, struggling to breathe with the air caught up to her chin.
Her eardrums felt muffled as if she had fallen into water, and her vision was blurred.
It also felt as if some part of her body had been seriously torn.
But she could no longer feel the fierce pain that had seemed as if it would burn her brain.
Is it over now?
As she thought that blankly, a strange sense of wrongness suddenly swept over her.
The room was strangely quiet.
Thalia struggled to lift her heavy eyelids.
In her unfocused vision, she saw a neck with veins standing taut.
With a trembling hand, she tugged at the clothes of the man who seemed distracted by something.
“Varkas... why...”
Only then did Varkas look at her.
Thalia strained her eyes to see his expression clearly.
But her focus would not settle.
Staring at the man, who looked like a pale ghost, as if clinging to him, she barely forced out the rest of her words.
“Why... isn’t the baby... crying?”
“......”
“Varkas, why is the baby...”
He gave no answer.
Have my ears gone deaf?
She looked around the room with confused eyes.
The maids were gathered in one place, wrapping something in a swaddling cloth.
When she tried to raise her upper body to see it more clearly, Varkas tightened the arms around her.
“You must not move yet.”
It was a rough voice she had never imagined she would hear from him.
Thalia blinked blankly.
As if trying to stop her from turning her head, Varkas gripped her head tightly with a cold hand whose tendons stood out and let out a frighteningly low voice.
“Has the bleeding stopped?”
“Not yet...”
“Then what are you doing instead of treating it at once?”
“Regrettably, there is nothing we can do.”
Thalia could feel the body enclosing her completely stiffen like stone.
She could tell that he was terribly furious about something, but she did not clearly know why.
A fierce voice mixed with a metallic rasp rang out beside her head.
“Where is the high priest, and what is he doing? Bring him here at once!”
“T-That is an unreasonable demand! A male priest can never enter the birthing room. It is strictly forbidden for them to see a woman’s primal form...”
At that moment, there was the sound of something shattering loudly.
Thalia barely held on to her fading consciousness.
Only a beat later did she realize that he had thrown something.
“Go and tell him at once. If he does not come running here right now and treat my wife, I will lock him in the chapel and burn the entire thing down with him inside.”
Only after hearing those words did Thalia realize that her condition was serious enough to require treatment.
But she felt no fear about it.
It was as if all her senses had gone numb.
Blankly staring at the firm line of Varkas’s jaw, Thalia was pulled by some intense impulse and tugged at his sleeve.
“Varkas... I’m all right, so... our baby...”
Without even clearly understanding what she was saying, she moved her lips with difficulty.
“Our baby... help.”
Varkas did not answer.
She knew he was looking at her, but she still could not see what expression he was making.
Tears kept welling up without end.
“You... promised me...”
She glared at him as if blaming him for not moving, then turned her eyes again in search of the baby.
But Varkas was holding her head tightly, so she could not move at all.
She wanted to push him away with all her strength, but her arms did not move, as if they had become lumps of lead.
Thalia trembled, overwhelmed by helplessness.
“It’s all right. Nothing will happen.”
The man holding her upper body painfully tight pressed his cold lips to her temple and murmured.
A lie.
Thalia murmured.
It was all a lie.
Nothing was all right.
Nothing would be all right in the future either.
She could feel her body growing colder and colder.
It felt as if she were slowly sinking into icy water.
She was terribly cold and tired.
Why had she ended up in this situation?
A faint question spread through her mind as it slowly emptied into whiteness.
Clearly, even during the day, she had been happy.
Yes.
She had been in terrible pain and suffering, but still, she had been happy.
She did not think she had ever been that happy in her life.
She remembered what had made her so happy.
And then, squeezing out the last of her strength, she pleaded.
“Varkas... the baby... give the baby to me.”
Even to her own ears, her voice sounded faint, like a candle flame about to go out.
Afraid that he would not hear her properly, she lifted fingers as heavy as a thousand pounds and tugged at his cold coat.
“I... want to hold... my baby...”
Varkas did not move as he held her.
At that moment, resentment filled her to the marrow.
If she could, she wanted to scream.
You said you would do anything I wanted.
Why are you not keeping the promise you made to me?
She spoke as if sobbing.
“I... I’m begging you like this. Please...”
Then she felt the area around her grow noisy.
But every sound came to her indistinctly, as if thick walls blocked her on all sides.
Varkas’s head turned urgently.
She heard him shout something, but she could not understand what he was saying.
Soon, Thalia lost all strength and let her limbs go limp.
Her vision gradually darkened.
She could no longer tell whether her eyes were closed or open.
Would she never wake again like this?
If so, she wanted to see him one more time at the end.
Thalia desperately tried to put strength into her eyes.
But all she could see was pitch-black darkness.
Tears kept surging up.
She felt as if she might drown in those tears.
Thalia opened her mouth to say something.
But even that did not go as she wished.
Only after swallowing back her shattered breath did Thalia realize that what she had failed to say was his name.
With that sorrowful realization as her last thought, she sank down as if drowning into a cold, dark place.
***
The drizzle that had been falling since dawn finally began to subside little by little around noon.
Leaning his upper body against the battlements and wetting his lips with wine, Lucas spotted three or four women placing flowers beside the small grave that had appeared a few days earlier and let out a complicated sigh.
The child who had come into the world after leaving its mother half-dead had been buried in the wet soil without even properly taking its first breath.
Only after the Grand Duchess, who had been hovering between life and death, showed signs of improvement was a modest funeral ceremony held for the stillborn child.
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