The Forgotten Field - Chapter 50

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 50
Talia’s face contorted with vicious rage as she struck Barcas’s cheek with brutal force.
“You insufferable wretch! You won’t be satisfied until you’ve thwarted me at every turn!”
In the darkness, his blue eyes flickered faintly. Yet the gaze he turned upon her remained as cold and composed as ever. That unshakeable equanimity was terrifying.
Talia raked her nails across his cheek, drawing blood. Without flinching, Barcas seized her wrist and surveyed the chaotic campsite around them.
His icy gaze swept across the ashen faces of the Handmaidens, the bewildered Knights, and the woman weeping with her burned cheek cradled in her hands.
A dry sigh escaped his lips.
“Take her to the healer.”
With a subtle tilt of his head, Barcas indicated the woman and turned to leave.
Talia thrashed wildly, her screams piercing the night air.
“How dare you! That woman is a criminal! She should be executed on the spot!”
Those who came running at the commotion stared and whispered, though I barely registered them. I had no dignity left to preserve. She shrieked loud enough for the entire campsite to hear.
“You despicable bastard! What kind of knight are you!”
But Barcas didn’t even blink.
Without a word, he strode between the tents and carried her directly into his barracks, laying her upon the wide bed inside.
Talia didn’t even realize she’d been dragged into his bedroom, too consumed with unleashing her seething fury.
“You’ve never truly protected me! Never! Not once! You left me to be torn to shreds! This time too, you had no intention of saving me, did you? You wanted me dead. That’s why you abandoned me. Why you didn’t come rushing to my aid. I know it all!”
Ignoring her shrill accusations, he pinned her wrist to the bed and forced her palm open.
Blood and serum oozed from her severely burned hand. Barcas regarded it with a frown before reaching for a small glass vial on the shelf.
She screamed as he poured the mysterious liquid onto her wound.
“No! Stop! Leave me alone!”
He applied the medicine to her injuries in silence, then wrapped her hand carefully in white bandages.
Throughout this, Talia had been pounding his shoulder with her other hand, but her strength soon gave out and her limbs went limp. Barcas regarded her with an expressionless gaze before slowly rising to his feet.
“I’ll bring you a sedative.”
With her face half-buried in the pillow, breathing heavily, Talia lifted her eyes to look at him.
Barcas walked calmly to the shelf installed in one corner of the barracks and examined a medicine bottle.
Over his rigid back, the image of him rushing toward Aila overlapped in my mind. A burning pain seized me.
Talia’s voice emerged twisted and bitter.
“You find my very existence repulsive, don’t you? The fact that I’m still alive and breathing?”
His hand, which had been searching the shelf, froze mid-motion.
After standing motionless for a moment, he turned his head with deliberate slowness that seemed almost unnatural.
When I met his refined face—stripped of all emotion—something inside me shattered into fragments.
Talia’s lips curved into a desolate smile.
“How unfortunate for you. It was such a perfect opportunity for that thorn in your side to disappear from this world.”
Tears finally spilled over, wetting her cheeks. His cold face too wavered behind the thin veil of moisture.
He approached slowly and bent before her. The cold glass vial touched her lower lip.
“Please drink this. It will ease your suffering somewhat.”
“I don’t need it.”
…
“I don’t need anything you give me anymore.”
Barcas set down the bottle.
Just then, the lamplight dimmed, casting deep shadows across his face.
It didn’t matter. I could read his expression without looking—I always could. He wore that familiar impassive mask, or perhaps his eyes held that peculiar blend of exhaustion and irritation.
She turned away from him.
The man who had watched her in silence finally departed the tent.
As Talia listened to his receding footsteps, she lowered her hand and felt along her leg. The rigid, wooden sensation sent ice through her spine.
Disabled.
She frantically banished the word from her mind.
It couldn’t be. It was merely idle gossip from those who despised me.
The Imperial Palace housed exceptional healers in abundance. The Empress, if anyone, would know practitioners of forbidden magic.
Surely she would spare no effort to restore me to wholeness.
Then I would flaunt my perfect body before all those who had mocked me.
Talia clutched her throbbing knee as her eyelids fell shut.
* * *
The magnificent procession that had begun at the Imperial Palace had transformed into a somber funeral cortège.
The Imperial Family’s attendants exchanged their crimson surcoats for black robes, while the Knights draped their armor with drab-colored banners.
The supply wagons that once carried precious wines, silks, and jewels now bore thirty-four carefully prepared corpses, while Musicians played funeral dirges in measured intervals at a low pitch.
Sitting in the carriage, Talia listened to the mournful strains as the pain she thought had subsided flared anew, and she fumbled for the incense burner.
Inside the brass vessel, now cold and lifeless, only ashes remained.
Talia muttered a brief curse, then with difficulty raised herself from the cushions and opened the storage box beneath the seat, retrieving a fresh incense stick.
It was composed of dried frost-bloom, evening primrose, mandrake leaves, and crimson fragment flowers, tightly compressed together.
She inserted it into the vessel and struck it alight with a flint stone, and thick, billowing smoke rose in clouds.
Talia felt her mind enveloped in a damp haze as she collapsed back onto the bedding.
Since the return procession began, Talia had spent most of her time intoxicated by the pain-dulling incense. Lost in the acrid smoke, tomorrow became today, and today became yesterday.
In her semi-conscious state, she vaguely registered the occasional Mage checking her condition or a Guard Knight bringing food and fussing over her, but their presence always remained merely a ripple across the surface of her awareness.
Only Barcas could pull her back into painful reality.
As the carriage door opened and his silhouette appeared, Talia lifted her hazy, half-lidded gaze toward him.
Her carriage, which had occupied the rear of the procession, had somehow been moved to the front and now received the concentrated protection of the Imperial Knight Order’s commander. Apparently, he felt the need to monitor her directly lest she cause further trouble.
Barcas entered the carriage and bent over her sprawled form like seaweed scattered upon sand.
She felt cool fingers brush away several strands of hair from her sweat-dampened forehead.
“Use the incense more sparingly. At this rate, you’ll develop a tolerance quickly.”
“….”
She studied his face as though it were a long-neglected assignment.
The man, waiting for her response, exhaled a faint sigh.
“We will make camp here tonight.”
The sun had set and the carriage had stopped, so naturally we would spend the night here.
There was no understanding why he would elaborate on something that required no explanation—he who had maintained silence even when words were necessary.

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