Chapter Twenty-Five #2
Even in their last moment together, Riftan had not held her, nor looked her in the eyes to offer words of solace. He had not given her the chance to explain herself.
“Please, just go.”
Those had been his parting words. He could just as well have meant that he wanted her out of his sight.
Maxi glanced up at the cold sky before turning back to her chambers. Her gaze lingered on the bed where both her mother and stepmother had once lain withering to their slow, painful deaths. In the next moment, she found herself crawling into it and curling up like a kidney bean.
A part of her had known all along that this would happen.
Perhaps that was why she had been unable to bear being away from him.
The fear that her miraculous happiness would disappear like a mirage had gripped her whenever they were apart.
All the efforts she had made not to lose him had circled back to stab her and take her child.
Now she was right back to where she had started.
Maxi vacantly stared at the ceiling before closing her eyes. Around lunchtime, Joana entered the room bearing a tray with the usual bowl of porridge. No matter how many times Maxi heaved up the food, her nursemaid did her best to ensure she ate.
Thinking of Joana’s efforts, Maxi forced the porridge down her throat. A wave of nausea came on when she was halfway through, and she soon hurled everything back up.
Joana gazed down at Maxi with forlorn eyes. “Lady Arian was also too delicate for her own good,” she said, shaking her head. “She could not even keep water down whenever something bad happened. And to think you have taken after her…”
Maxi wiped her mouth with a trembling hand. “I-I’m sorry…I’ll eat the rest later….”
Joana let out a sigh as she set the bowl down. “You should rest while I bring you a new blanket.”
When her nursemaid left the room with the soiled sheets, Maxi staggered out of bed to wash her face and get changed. She had just slumped back into bed when a knock came at the door. Had Joana returned already?
Maxi looked up to see Rosetta, resplendent in a purple dress, glide into the room. Maxi stared at her sister in surprise. Forgoing any initial niceties, Rosetta pulled a chair next to the bed and sat down.
“You look terrible,” she said flatly.
Maxi propped herself into a sitting position, her face anxious. “What b-brings you here?”
“That senseless woman kept raving on about how you were dying, so I came to see if it was true.” Rosetta’s peculiar eyes, which were somewhere between green and blue, coldly swept over Maxi’s haggard form. “I guess she wasn’t exaggerating.”
Maxi bit her lip. “I-If that is all…I would like you to l-leave now.”
Ignoring her request, Rosetta asked abruptly, “Do you want to die?”
Dumbfounded, Maxi stared back at her. Her half-sister’s eyes were somber, incongruous with her vivid beauty.
“You won’t be able to last a year in this castle in that condition,” she said. “And I’m sure you realize that news of your death would mean nothing to our father.”
“Wh-What happens to me…is none of your concern.”
Rosetta’s face hardened at Maxi’s blunt response. “You are so pathetic that I simply can’t stand it. Just look at you, destroying yourself with self-pity. I’ve had it with your stupidity.”
Maxi clenched her fists. “I-I have no reason…to p-put up with your insults.”
“Then you shouldn’t have returned in such a pathetic state!
” Rosetta shot back. “Just looking at you infuriates me. You return battered and broken after foolishly following your husband to war and miscarrying your child, and now you’re trying to starve yourself to death.
Do you really think your husband will care?
Ha! He might even be elated at being able to avoid a troublesome divorce.
He will likely marry the princess before your corpse is even in the ground. That’s how men are!”
Maxi winced as Rosetta’s cruel words stabbed her. Fighting back tears, Maxi glared at her sister. “Do not…s-slander him when you d-don’t even know him. My husband…is kind to me. H-He truly cherished me. That’s why I—”
“So you gave him your heart just because he bothered to be nice to you,” Rosetta said sardonically.
Maxi was about to snap back when Rosetta’s lips suddenly curled into a bitter smile.
“Wake up. You fell for that man because he was nice to you, but kindness is not love,” she hissed.
“A man’s affection is no different from a coin.
It can flip at any moment when circumstances change.
Have you not learned anything from our father?
Men can be generous to women as long as they continue to please them and give them what they want.
Like how Father is with me. But you should know better than anyone how cruel a man can be when a woman fails to give him what he desires. ”
Maxi stubbornly raised her chin. “R-Riftan…i-is different from our father…. He is—”
“If he is so different, why are you here?”
Unable to think of a response, Maxi opened and closed her mouth in vain. Rosetta sneered at her.
“Don’t speak what you don’t believe. Deep down, you know your husband is the same. That’s why you came back. You might deny it, but you are as cynical as I am, if not more.”
“I-I…I’d like you to leave now. I-I no longer want…to continue this conversation,” Maxi muttered weakly, covering her bloodshot eyes.
Rosetta remained seated for a long while, a tense silence swelling throughout the room. Finally, she rose to her feet. “I truly wished for you never to return to this castle.”
Maxi looked up at her sister, her eyes full of hurt.
Rosetta strode over to the door, then whirled around. “You always disappoint me. Always…”
She walked out without a second glance.
The conversation with her half-sister pushed Maxi’s already addled mind into complete turmoil, and she began to question her own feelings. In retrospect, everything was swallowed in a vortex of doubt.
Why had she been so obsessed with Riftan?
What had made her so irrational? In a little over a year, he had shaken her life to the core, made her want to live, and then sucked all the vitality from her.
He had become her reason to live. But was that normal?
It was possible that she had blindly followed him like a newborn duckling would its mother.
The moment uncertainty gripped her, even the things she had thought clear became muddled, and she found it impossible to unravel the tangled strings of her heart.
Having returned to the bleak place where she had started, she looked back at everything—her memories in Anatol, the campaign, her ordeals in the war—and questioned whether it was real or a distortion of the mind.
The doubt that had taken root in the pit of her stomach grew by the day until it threatened to come bursting out of her throat.
“My lady, why don’t you take a short stroll?” Joana suggested. “There is no wind today, and it’s sunny in the garden.”
Maxi raised her head. She had been so immersed in her thoughts that she had not even noticed her nursemaid come in.
Joana drew back the thick curtain, letting in harsh silver sunlight. It was that single hour of the morning when her room received sun. After briefly gazing out at the dazzling autumn day, Maxi listlessly turned away from the window.
“I…d-don’t feel like going out,” she mumbled.
Joana frowned. “Do you know how pallid you look, my lady? You’ll end up like a corpse if you don’t get some sun. Please, enjoy some fresh air on days like this. Waste away any longer and your husband won’t take you with him when he comes.”
Her nursemaid’s last point finally roused Maxi out of bed. Even though she was uncertain of her feelings, Riftan was still the motivation behind all her actions.
Maxi had lost weight over the past few weeks, and she draped a robe over her now too-big dress. Joana helped her out of her chambers.
The annex was deathly silent. The vast, opulent building was devoid of people except for a handful of maidservants and guards the duke had posted to keep an eye on Maxi, but even they were hard to come by unless she deliberately sought them out.
The servants called this place the house of exile.
For years, the duke had confined the Croyso women he deemed incompetent to this residence to keep them out of his sight.
Maxi descended the chilly stairway and stepped out into the courtyard clogged with fallen leaves.
The red ivy twined along the walls glistened white in the sun, and the evergreen bushes rustled in the breeze.
Walking along the flower bed, Maxi vacantly gazed down at the dried-up vegetation. A few birds hopped through it, pecking hopefully at imaginary seeds. Her idle observation was interrupted when she noticed soldiers bustling about the path leading up to the main castle.
It was a baffling sight. Not even a single ant approached the annex around this time. Maxi was wondering if something had happened when one of the guards spotted her and strode over.
“You cannot be outside, my lady,” he said sternly. “The duke commanded that you were to remain in the annex.”
Maxi’s face flushed at the guard’s prison-warden-like attitude. Though they had made it clear that she was prohibited from entering the main castle, had they not allowed her to take strolls in the garden or visit the library until now?
She was rooted to the spot, flustered, when the guard said authoritatively, “Why aren’t you returning to your chambers?”
Joana had been uneasily standing at the back until then. At the guard’s tone, she swiftly grabbed Maxi’s elbow. “I will escort her ladyship back to her chambers.”
Like a helpless chick in her nursemaid’s arms, Maxi numbly returned to her room. Joana was beside herself, mumbling that she should never have made such a suggestion.