The Forgotten Field - Chapter 159

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 159
He forcibly swallowed something roiling in his gut and deliberately steadied his voice.
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear what you just said.”
He spat out the words in an intentionally clipped tone, then turned to change his clothes when a rustling sound reached his ears from behind.
Glancing back, he caught sight of the woman pushing herself upright with trembling effort.
As she lowered her legs from the bed, the blanket slipped from her fragile shoulders as though it might shatter. The nightgown, tailored larger to accommodate her pregnant form, made her appear even smaller and more delicate.
The woman swayed toward him with the fragility of spun glass, her eyes blazing with a sickly pallor that was almost unsettling.
“Why?”
Barcas reached out to steady her, but his arms clenched into fists in the empty air. He feared that even the slightest touch would shatter her.
“Why must I be here?”
The woman’s words seemed designed to test his restraint.
“I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to be with you. Just seeing your face makes me feel like I’m going mad.”
Her voice trembled like an overtightened viola string, unstable and fractured. Her slender fingers clung to his garment as though drowning.
“So send me away. Anywhere—the Imperial Palace, the Monastery, I don’t care!”
In an instant, his patience shattered. He pushed her back onto the bed. Cracked lips parted as ragged breath poured hotly against his neck. His pupils dilated, his blue eyes blurring inches from her face. He spoke each word with deliberate force, as though driving them into the humid depths of her consciousness.
“Say what you will. Nothing will change.”
The woman’s face contorted in incomprehension. For some reason, that expression only twisted his insides further.
He surrendered to a damp, primal impulse he didn’t know existed within him, and spoke in a low, measured voice.
“You will spend your entire life within my domain. That fate was sealed the moment you swore with your own lips to become my wife.”
He felt goosebumps rise across her cold skin beneath his touch. Confusion, resentment, and fear mingled in the fragile light that bloomed in her eyes.
He stared at it for a moment, then forced himself away from her and sat at the edge of the bed. As he struggled to compose his scattered mind, the woman drove her blade into something that remained in his depths.
“How… how can you be so composed?”
Barcas, his back rigid, slowly turned to face her.
The woman, whose gaze had been filled with reproach, began to pour out violent sobs.
“Our child is dead, and how can you remain so cold? I… I’m in such agony…”
She clawed at her chest as though experiencing physical pain.
Looking down at her from a distance, he asked himself a question.
Am I truly composed?
Perhaps I am.
He could not empathize with the suffering this woman felt.
Even as their firstborn lay without breath, he could see nothing but his wife bleeding.
He had even refused her pleas to hold the child. He could not permit her to see the lifeless infant, fearing she would abandon everything in that moment.
If only this woman remained safe, he thought with genuine conviction that the child mattered little. Even now, he merely wished for her to forget the dead child and escape her sorrow as quickly as possible.
Just as he was about to confess this, regardless of how terribly she would despise him for it, a small face swaddled in cloth flashed across his retinas like a burn scar.
A face smaller than his own palm. Perhaps it had resembled both him and this woman in equal measure…
As he recalled that small bundle of flesh, buried in the earth without ever having rested in its mother’s arms, his tongue became paralyzed, unable to move.
He was engulfed by helplessness, his arms hanging limp at his sides.
She no longer looked at him. He watched in silence as the woman trembled faintly, her face cradled in both hands, then rose to his feet.
If he remained any longer, he feared he would grant her whatever she asked of him.
Barcas fled the Bedroom, locked the door behind him, and leaned his leaden body against it.
My unfocused gaze drifted toward the window, where the sunset poured its crimson hues across the glass. I felt my mind gradually suffused with that same reddish tint, and I pressed my sandpaper-rough eyelids shut with force.
It had been an unusually long and tumultuous day.
* * *
After that day, Talia began to behave with even greater cruelty than before.
She hoped Barcas would grow sick of her. She wanted him to abandon her without the slightest compunction.
She had already been thoroughly forsaken by everyone.
The Emperor’s offer to write a divorce decree meant that Senevir had abandoned her as well. By losing the child, she had squandered the last glimmer of hope that remained to her.
When she first learned this truth, she felt a sharp ache, but the shock was less than she had anticipated.
Now the Empress mattered little to her.
Talia no longer contemplated the path of living. Even if Gareth were to kill her with his own hands at this very moment, it would scarcely matter. All she wanted now was to distance herself from this man.
She gazed at Barcas with eyes heavy with anguish. He was changing out of his ruined clothes after being struck by the porridge bowl she had hurled.
The way he carried on as though nothing had happened left her breathless with suffocation. His patience was abhorrent. And she—who became an uncontrollable monster in his presence—was even more abhorrent still.
She muttered in an exhausted tone.
“Shouldn’t you be growing tired of this by now?”
Barcas, pulling down his deep blue tunic, turned his head toward her.
His face bore only a faint weariness, betraying no emotion whatsoever. The man, whose eyes seemed veiled by some opaque membrane, stared at her fixedly as he rolled up his sleeves and spoke in his characteristic monotone voice.
“And you—shouldn’t you be growing tired of such childish tantrums by now?”
Talia released a hollow laugh.
The fact that even her own actions nauseated her, yet to him they were merely petulance, filled her with a crushing sense of futility.
“Most of the nobles don’t welcome me as Grand Duchess anyway. They’d all be delighted if I simply disappeared.”
“Since when have you concerned yourself with the happiness of others?”
Barcas let out a dry chuckle and brought the freshly prepared meal that the handmaidens had brought back to the bed.
Talia gazed down at it with lifeless eyes. Having already caused three disturbances today, she no longer possessed the strength to overturn another dish.
“Should I feed you myself?”
Urged by the gentle voice that resonated from the head of the bed, she finally picked up the spoon.
As she scooped up a few spoonfuls of food and pushed them into her mouth, I saw a faint relief wash across his face. I deliberately turned my gaze away from that sight, when I felt a presence beyond the door.
“Your Grace, guests have arrived from the Capital. It appears you should receive them.”
It was the Steward’s voice.
Talia looked up at him while gripping the spoon. Barcas, his brow furrowed as he gazed out the window, soon reached for his outer robe.
“I’ll be there shortly.”
He then rang the bell to summon the handmaidens, instructed them not to take their eyes off her for a moment, and left the chamber.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————