The dried leaves fell to the ground.
The gnarled trees with only bones left were swept away by the strong wind and twisted violently, and icy rain was pouring down on the grayish-brown hills.
Sitting on the windowsill, looking out at the gray landscape. I spotted the mounted warriors entering the castle's courtyard and pressed my face against the cold glass window.
I saw Barcas sitting on a huge gray warhorse over the rainwater splashing curtain. I watched as he dismounted from his horse with graceful movements.
Barcas, who handed the reins to the servant, lifted his rain-soaked robe and revealed his pure white face like a piece of marble. He looked so cold that it was hard to believe that he was the same person as the barbarian who was relentlessly pushing me almost every night.
I, who had been looking down at him as if I were piercing the blurred window with my breath, hurriedly drew the curtain when Barcas turned his head in my direction.
My body temperature rose rapidly, and my heart beat irregularly. Biting my lip nervously, I came down from the windowsill and curled up in front of the fireplace. However, even in the face of the blazing flames, the trembling did not subside.
I wrapped my arms around my legs and buried my face in my lap.
I didn't know how to treat Barcas. After spending the night with him, everything I believed to be clear was a mess.
Sometimes I felt like he was a completely different person in the bright light and the man in the dark.
During the day, he treated me with a casual face as if he had never felt a desire in his life, and treated me with the same attitude as usual.
But he was different in the dark. The man, who existed only in a faint outline, was savage and primitive, like the king of the pagan religions of the East, who terrorized the ancient nations. And it was as hot as steel on fire.
I felt the throbbing of the area he had been relentlessly digging into last night and clasped my thighs together. My cheeks were burning.
I never expected Barcas to be so active in sexual activity.
Wasn't he a man as ascetic as the priests?
Considering that it was a bedtime started by my compulsion, his enthusiastic reaction seemed a bit mysterious.
It was all the more so when I recalled that all the women in the imperial palace who tried every detail to seduce him tasted the bitterness of the past.
'...Was it the same with Ayla?'
I was almost habitually immersed in self-deprecating thoughts.
Previously, I firmly believed that he was a person who could not be swayed by anyone, so I also thought that he was just fulfilling his duties as a fiancé.
But maybe the two were more than that. Isn't he a man who pours out his desires so violently on me and then calms down as if nothing happened the next day?
It may be that after doing all kinds of primary acts to Ayla, he has been acting as a dignified fiancé during the day. No. It must have been.
You can't be a special person to anyone. It was a fact that I had already realized a long time ago.
If he can feel desire for me, he can do the same for someone else. I'm sure if he had married a woman other than me, he would have reacted the same way.
'So, stop giving special meaning to his actions.'
"Eh, really! Stop plucking your lips."
I, who was lost in thought, looked up slightly.
When she entered the room, a nanny with a large basket on her side was looking at me.
"If you get a wound, you won't eat well."
"It doesn't matter. Anyway..."
Barcas wouldn't be able to see me, so I, who was about to shoot at her to get rid of the useless nagging, quickly shut up.
She was a nanny who took care of me every evening to dress me up. If she found out that everything I was doing was in vain, it would have been even more annoying than it is now.
I hid my bloody nails under the hem of my skirt and rested my forehead on my lap. Seeing this, the nanny clicked her tongue and put the basket on the table.
"Don't be so arrogant, or have a bite. The healer brewed new medicine sent by Her Majesty the Empress."
I looked down at the bowl in the basket with cold eyes.
After visiting the East, Senevere began to receive regular updates on my situation through my nanny. It was to monitor whether her daughter was carrying out her instructions. And the nanny was playing the role of a loyal servant to the Empress.
She held a bowl of dark liquid in front of me and lit the torch.
"Come on, come on. Her Majesty the Empress told me not to skip a day and to take care of it."
I, who had a cold Impression, reluctantly took the bowl and drank it in one gulp.
It was as if I had swallowed hot mud. Desperately suppressing the attempt to come up right away, I hurriedly rinsed my mouth with water.
Suddenly, Barcas's sarcastic remark that I didn't seem to be a mare resonated in my mind.
I swallowed the humiliation as I crumpled my bloody lips.
I only made a choice for myself. There is no need to be ashamed.
As I ruminated to myself and roughly stealed the wet corners of my mouth with the back of my hand, the nanny's excited voice penetrated into my ears.
"Are you going to groom yourself now?"
Turning my head over my shoulder, I frowned as she took out some pieces of clothing from the box and spread them out. Today, of course, she thought I would go to his bed.
I looked back at the window. He came back in the rain, so he was probably taking a bath by now. After that, he will see official duties that have not been handled. It was still early, so he wouldn't have gone to bed. Still, for some reason, I couldn't shake off the feeling that he was waiting for me.
I fidgeted like someone about an Important appointment, and my thin lips were pursed.
How did an act that was thought to be obligatory to be repeated become a daily routine?
At first, I knocked on his door every three or four days. Then, at some point, I came to my senses and found myself lying in his bed every two days, and recently I came to see him almost every night.
I tried to make excuses that I just couldn't win the sanctification of my nanny, that I just wanted to have a child and be comfortable with it, but in my heart, I knew it was a lie. It was getting harder and harder to get out of his arms day by day.
When I shook him off and lay alone on the wide bed, I felt a sense of emptiness, and when I washed away his traces, I felt a strange sense of regret.
I was terrible for myself, but I couldn't control myself at all. The tiresome fever that has been bothering me since I was 9 years old is about to return.
'No. This is not like that. I'm just taking advantage of him.'
I hurriedly denied my thoughts.
I couldn't push myself into a quagmire again.
I, who had made up my mind, took off my loungewear with a determined face. Then I dressed up in a blue velvet dress I had brought from the imperial palace and spent several hours dressing up.
I knew that Barcas wouldn't be able to see me properly, but I still didn't want to face him in a shabby way.
I, who had been staring in the mirror at a face that looked eerily similar to Senevere, immediately stood up.
When I opened the door and left, I saw a scene of a hallway lit by candlelight.
I stepped onto the dimly lit rug and turned my eyes to the window where the rainwater splashed. Just in time, a flash of gold cut through the sky dyed in ink.
After staring at the roaring sky for a while, I resumed my footsteps.
When I finally arrived in front of his door, the attendant who had been waiting for me opened the door.
I, who was looking nervously into the dark room, took a cautious step.
At that moment, a flash of light illuminated the outline of the man standing by the window, white.
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