Chapter 156
At that moment, the crying sound that had briefly subsided came again.
Thalia flinched and withdrew her hand, then looked toward the window with distorted eyes.
That piercing sound gradually became unbearable.
Her intestines felt as if they were being severed by the fact that she wanted to stop it somehow, yet there was nothing she could do.
She clutched her aching belly, which felt as if a knife had been driven into it, and felt along her flat stomach.
At that moment, a deranged thought suddenly surfaced.
I can start over from the beginning.
She vaguely sensed that her thoughts were flowing in an abnormal direction, but she could not control herself at all.
As if drawn by something, she reached out.
When she pulled up his wrinkled tunic, his waist, tightly drawn like a rope, and his solid abdomen were revealed.
She slowly slid her fingers over them.
When she gripped the loose trousers easterners liked to wear and pulled them down a little, she saw the taut tendons leading to his groin and the firm jut of his hipbone.
But because of the tightly fastened leather cord, they would not go down any further.
She fumbled to untie the leather cord.
Under her clumsy touch, the knot only tightened further.
Feeling her nerves gradually sharpen, she tugged at the cord rather irritably, when a large hand with protruding veins snatched her wrist.
When she lifted her head, his face, wearing a confused expression, was reflected in her eyes.
He narrowed his unfocused blue-gray eyes and let out a voice mixed with a metallic rasp.
“What... are you doing?”
Without any sign of embarrassment, Thalia answered calmly.
“...I want to have the baby again.”
Sleep vanished from his eyes.
She turned her gaze away from his face, which looked as if he doubted his own ears, and reached again toward the waist of his trousers.
Then, as if possessed by something, she murmured,
“Give the baby to me again. This time, I’ll give birth to him healthily.”
Then my baby will stop crying so sadly.
With a desperate heart, she slid her fingers into the slightly loosened clothing.
Then Varkas, who had been frozen like stone, abruptly raised his upper body and clamped down on both her wrists like snares.
At the touch trying to pull her away, something in her mind snapped.
Thalia cried out in a voice that sounded as if her insides were boiling.
“Why... Why are you refusing me?”
The man’s eyes slowly distorted.
She could see his blackened, dilated pupils tremble faintly.
Everything was blurred, so why was only this man so clear?
Feeling something like inflammation toward herself, she violently twisted her wrists.
“You said you would do anything I wanted! You said you would grant anything I wished for! Give my baby back to me! My baby, whom you wouldn’t even let me hold... give him back!”
At that moment, she saw something collapse in his eyes.
The man muttered something she could not understand, then snatched up the sheet and wrapped it around her.
Thalia struggled even more violently, like a fish caught in a net.
“Liar! You’re nothing but a liar with an empty mouth! You said you would protect my baby, but you did not even look at him, did you? You threw away the promise you made to me like an old shoe!”
A scream-like voice that sounded terrible even to her own ears burst out endlessly.
It was as if she had been possessed by an evil spirit.
Unable to withstand the surging resentment, she struck and clawed at his body wildly.
The man did not move as he held her.
As if he meant to accept all the filth she poured out, he only held her thrashing body tightly in both arms and breathed roughly.
Because of that, she became an even more base and miserable existence.
Blame me instead.
Just as I do.
I am the one who tried to have a baby with this body, and I am the one who failed to protect that child.
I know it too.
So say it.
Say it is all my fault, that I brought it upon myself.
Say that I killed our child.
Fall into this abyss with me and roll in the mud.
Break down horribly.
She looked up at him with wishes and curses.
Within her vision burning with tears, his horribly distorted face was held.
But he was a being who could never fall to the bottom where she was.
The one who became shabby and miserable was always her alone.
A man who made her endlessly shabby and insignificant...
At last, she lost all will to fight and let her limbs hang limp.
A dry wind swept through her chest, where everything had burned away and only ash remained.
The thick dust swirling in her belly finally spilled from her mouth.
“...I will never trust you again.”
She felt the body pressed closely against hers stiffen hard.
But in the end, he did not say a single word.
He merely held her tighter and leaned back against the headboard in exhaustion.
A silence like ruins settled over their heads.
At some point, she realized the baby’s crying had stopped, but Thalia felt no relief at all.
***
Before long, a rumor began to spread through Raedgo Castle that the Grand Duchess was suffering from madness.
The iron-like head maid controlled the maids’ mouths with sharp eyes, but the whispers did not easily die down.
It was because the woman, who had slept as if she had lost her soul ever since regaining consciousness, had one day begun committing all sorts of atrocities against the Grand Duke.
More than once, the words of desperate resentment and curses she poured out came through the door and rang down the corridor.
At times, the sound of objects breaking and pieces of cloth tearing could also be heard.
When they were summoned and rushed into the room after such a commotion, the unconscious Grand Duchess and a scene turned into chaos unfolded before their eyes.
The only thing intact within it seemed to be the Grand Duke.
The man, with a face as cold as ice as if nothing had happened, ordered in a chilling voice that a priest be brought.
The maids, frozen in shock, immediately obeyed the order.
Such incidents repeated several times.
Since the Grand Duke did not budge, the woman’s frenzy grew worse by the day.
To the point that voices of sympathy for the Grand Duchess slowly began to fade.
There were not a few who whispered criticism, saying that it was unfortunate she had lost her first child so vainly, but was it not too much to pour that resentment onto the innocent Grand Duke?
However, even those who gossiped behind her back could not help but fall silent once they actually faced her devastated face.
It was because the woman who had wandered through the garden all autumn and winter with flushed cheeks and a dreamlike expression had lost all vitality and transformed into a ghost.
Those who sometimes saw her escape the Grand Duke’s ironclad watch and wander the castle could not help but understand the Grand Duke’s feelings as he calmly endured all of her struggles.
The woman, whose chillingly beautiful face was filled with an empty expression as she continued her precarious steps as if searching for something, looked as if she might scatter like smoke at any moment.
There was no one who would not feel pity upon seeing that sorrowful figure.
However, apart from the servants of the main castle feeling sympathy for the Grand Duchess, the vassals’ dissatisfaction seemed to grow by the day.
“Is the Grand Duchess still the same?”
Brisa, the maid who was walking down the corridor with a laundry basket in her arms, hurriedly bowed her head when she saw Daren Dru Siarkan coming up the stairs.
The man who approached her with knights pressed her again.
“I asked about Her Highness the Grand Duchess’s condition.”
“H-Her Highness... is currently resting after taking medicine.”
Though Brisa knew he was asking about the Grand Duchess’s mental state, she deliberately played dumb.
After sending her a cold gaze for a moment, the man soon let out a heavy sigh and held out a parchment scroll stamped with red wax.
“Deliver this to His Grace the Grand Duke.”
Brisa quickly set the basket down on the floor and accepted it.
As if his business with her had ended there, the man immediately went up the stairs.
Glancing at his back, Brisa turned toward the Grand Duke’s bedroom to carry out the order suddenly thrust upon her.
“Your Grace, may I enter?”
When she carefully knocked on the door, permission to enter soon fell.
Brisa entered the dim bedroom, taking care not to make a sound.
The Grand Duke was in the middle of changing out of clothes that had become a mess from dealing with his wife’s rampage.
The man, who was folding up the cuffs of a black velvet tunic, cast an indifferent gaze over his shoulder.
“What is it?”
“While I was passing through the corridor... I was ordered to deliver this to Your Grace...”
Brisa bowed politely and held out the parchment scroll in her hand.
The man took it, tore off the wax, and unfurled it at length.
Brisa could tell that what was written in the document had made the Grand Duke extremely displeased.
The man, who had been moving his eyes quickly with his brow deeply furrowed, crumpled the parchment and threw it into the fireplace.
Soon after, a bleak voice rang out.
“I will be away for a while. Do not take your eyes off her.”
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