"I'll pretend I didn't hear what you just said."
He spat it out in a stiff tone, turned around, and heard a rustling sound behind his back.
When he looked back again, he saw a woman raising her upper body.
As she lowered her legs out of bed, the hem of the quilt slipped down from her slender shoulders as if they were about to crumble. Her pajamas, which were stretched to fit her pregnant body, made her look even smaller and younger.
The woman who approached her, swaying her delicate body like a glass sculpture, gave her an eerie and flirty look.
"Why?"
Barcas stretched out his arm towards his slightly trembling shoulder, and clenched his fist in the air. He hurriedly reached out and seemed to smash her.
"Why should I be here?"
The woman spat out as if testing his patience.
"I don't want to be here anymore. I don't want to be with you. Just looking at your face makes me go crazy."
Her voice swayed unsteadily, like the melody of a viola tightened to the limit. A slender finger clung to the hem of his clothes.
"So send me anywhere, it doesn't matter if it's the imperial palace or the monastery!"
"Nothing will change if you just talk as you please."
The woman's face twisted as if she couldn't understand.
For some reason, that expression only made him feel even more uneasy. He knew he had to be patient, but he couldn't seem to control himself.
A dark impulse he didn't even know existed inside him burst out, breaking through the veil of reason that had become thinner than a sheet of paper.
"You must spend your life within my domain, that is your fate, decided the moment you swore with your own mouth that you would become my wife,"
He felt goosebumps rise across the cold skin touching his hand. A delicate light, a mixture of confusion, antipathy, and fear, spread across her eyes.
He gazed at it intently, then forcibly pulled away from her and sat down on the edge of the bed. He clutched his forehead, which seemed to be burning with sparks, and tried to compose his distraught mind. But the woman, with a vengeance, plunged the blade into something that remained deep within him.
"How... How are you so fine?"
Barcas, his back stiff, slowly turned to look at her.
The woman who had been giving him a resentful look began to sob loudly.
"How can you be so cold-hearted when our child is dead? I, I am so tired..."
Then she clutches her chest as if she is in real physical pain.
He looked down at the sight from afar and asked himself a question.
Am I okay now?
Maybe so.
He couldn't empathize with the pain this woman was feeling.
Even as their first child struggled to breathe, he could only watch his wife bleeding.
He even turned away when she begged to hold her child. He couldn't allow it, fearing that if he showed her the lifeless baby, she would give up everything.
He sincerely thought that as long as this woman was safe, the child wouldn't matter. Even now, he just hoped that she would quickly forget her dead child and overcome her grief.
Just as he was about to confess whether or not he thought of himself more horribly than he did now, a small face wrapped in a blanket flashed like a burn mark on the back of his retina.
It was a face smaller than the palm of his hand. Perhaps it was half and half like him and this woman...
When he think of that little lump of flesh buried in the ground without even being held by his mother in her arms, he can't move at all as if hes paralyzed.
He threw up his arms in a state of helplessness.
She was no longer looking at him. He stared silently at the woman, who was trembling slightly, her face covered with her hands, and then slowly rose.
If he stayed there, he felt like he would give her anything she asked for.
Barcas ran out of the bedroom as if he was running away, closed the door behind him, and felt his body as heavy as lead.
He could see the window pouring out the sunset in his field of vision. Feeling his head gradually turning red, Barcas pressed down on his sandpaper-white eyelids.
It was the end of an unusually long and tiring day.
***
From that day on, I started to behave more viciously than before.
I wanted Barcas to be disgusted with me, so he could abandon me without any remorse.
I had already been completely abandoned by everyone.
The Emperor's offer to write the divorce papers meant that Senever had also given up on me. It was clear that, having lost my child, I had abandoned whatever hope I had left.
When I first learned of this, I felt a twinge of pain, but the shock wasn't as great as I thought. Now, Mom was fine.
I no longer considered my future. Even if I were killed by Gareth immediately, I wouldn't care. For now, all I wanted was to get away from this man.
I looked at Barcas with pained eyes. He was changing into his straitjacketed clothes, having been hit with the bowl of porridge I had poured into him.
His indifferent demeanor, as if nothing had happened, was breathtaking. His patience was appalling. Standing before him, I felt even more appalled, turning into an uncontrollable monster.
I muttered in a tired tone.
"Isn't it time for this to get boring?"
Barcas, who was pulling down the deep blue tunic, turned his head towards me.
The fever was so intense that no emotion could be read from his tired face. The man, who had been staring at me with eyes as if veiled with an opaque curtain, rolled up his sleeves and let out his characteristically flat voice.
"Aren't you tired of this childish denial?"
I gave a hollow laugh.
A sense of emptiness washed over me as I realized that even my own actions, which made me cringe, were nothing more than complaints to him.
"Anyway, most of the people who have gone won't welcome me as the Grand Duchess. They'll all be happy if I disappear".
"Since when have you cared about other people's happiness?"
Barcas, with a dry laugh, brought the food the maids had prepared back to the bed.
I looked down at it with listless eyes. I've already caused a ruckus three times today, and I didn't have the strength left to even overturn the bowl.
"Should I feed it myself?"
I was finally pushed by the soft voice echoing from my bedside and picked up the spoon.
As I shoveled a few spoonfuls into my mouth, I saw a look of relief cross his face. I deliberately averted my gaze, but then I sensed a presence outside the door.
"Your Excellency, we have guests from the capital. I think you should come and see them."
It was the butler’s voice.
I looked up at him, clutching my spoon. Barcas, who had been looking out the window with a furrowed brow, quickly picked up his coat.
"I'll be there."
Then he rang the bell to call the maids, told them not to take their eyes off me for even a moment, and left the room.
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