The Forgotten Field Novel - Chapter 7, 8
## THE FORGOTTEN FIELDS (NOVEL) – Chapter 7, 8
### Chapter 7: THE FORGOTTEN FIELDS (NOVEL)
His hand was very white. Almost as pale as hers. And its shape was elegant, beautiful.
Talia instinctively stretched hers out toward him; then she felt the bird tremble in her grasp. Its wings gave a faint flutter. She shook her head quickly.
“No. I am holding something right now.”
Underneath the slumped hood, with the rain dripping from the brim, the boy’s blue eyes narrowed. His gaze descended toward her hands, pressed against her chest.
“Is it important?”
Talia hesitated, then shook her head.
“Not really.”
“Then throw it away.”
“Even if it is not important, I cannot just throw it away!”
Her outburst caused a slight crease between the boy’s clear eyebrows. He seemed annoyed now, as if he were going to abandon her and leave. But instead, he did something completely uncharacteristic of his cold appearance. He leaned over her and, in a swift movement, lifted her muddy, rain-soaked body into his arms.
Startled, Talia let out a small cry. He tightened his grip around her back, muttering bluntly:
“Hold still.”
And she did.
She loosened her grip around the bird so it wouldn’t be crushed and protected it carefully while he carried her up the rain-softened slope. His stride was agile, like that of a cat.
But even so, his clothes were not spared. He looked down at his ruined trousers, his mud-covered boots, and the damp hem of his cloak. A frown appeared on his face.
“Terrible.”
“…That happened because you helped me, so I will compensate you. I can even buy you something much more expensive than what you are wearing right now. In fact, I am the daughter of a very, very important person. I will make sure my servants prepare a generous reward for you.”
She said it out of guilt, but somehow, he seemed offended. Passing by the mound of mud, he muttered dryly:
“Quite arrogant for someone so small.”
Talia’s face flushed. Normally, she would have slapped any boy who dared to speak like that to the Emperor’s daughter. However, this time the words would not come out. Even though the cold rain beat against her forehead and cheeks, her face burned.
The boy stopped under one of the few large trees that Senevier’s men had not yet uprooted. At that moment, the bird in her hands emitted a faint chirp. As he leaned down to lower her, his gaze flickered again toward her clasped hands.
“What are you holding?” Now, he was curious.
Talia hesitated, then carefully opened her palms.
“A bird?” he murmured, doubtfully.
And it was for good reason. The scruffy chick, with its wings matted with mud and its pink chest exposed, looked less like a bird and more like a sewer rat. Her cheeks flushed scarlet. The pitiful creature was ugly… but why did it feel as though she was the one being disparaged?
“It only looks like this because it fell in the mud. Originally it was…” perhaps prettier.
But she stopped. Even at its best, this brown, scrawny starling would have been nothing special, just a common bird seen anywhere.
Even so, the boy seemed moved to show kindness. Holding her with one arm, he drew her hand—the one holding the bird—toward the inside of his hood.
Talia’s eyes widened. His skin was warm, like the firelight from a hearth. The bird pressed itself against the hollow beneath his collarbone, seeking warmth.
“Your fingers are pure ice. How long were you standing out there?”
Without breaking his gaze from the bird under his chin, the boy turned his face toward her. Talia found herself looking directly into his eyes. Up close they were strange, unique; like a winter sky, dotted with tiny splinters of silver.
She whispered, almost without thinking:
“You know… there is a silver crown in your eyes.”
His eyes widened slightly. His lips parted as if to speak, then closed again. Talia realized that he was also looking into her eyes.
*What did he see in mine?*
While she wondered, a familiar voice echoed in the distance.
“Miss!”
It was her nursemaid. Unaccustomed to calling her “Your Highness,” the nursemaid still used the old form of address, earning frequent scoldings from Senevier and the maids. But the habit had not been broken. Her desperate voice echoed through the rain.
“I have to go now,” Talia whispered. For some reason, she hated saying it. Perhaps the boy also hated hearing it.
He remained motionless for a long moment, then, reluctantly, lowered her to the ground. When his arms let her go, Talia felt a chill pierce to her bones. Only then did she realize how warm his embrace had been.
Hesitating, she extended the bird to him.
“Will you take it with you? Because my hands are too cold and you are warm.”
She did not finish the words, but he leaned in and gently accepted the bird. Holding it against his pale cheek, he pulled his hood forward to protect it from the rain.
Looking at him, Talia asked:
“That bird… will it live?”
“…Yes.” The blue eyes—with silver crowns glittering inside them—settled on her face. “It will live.”
Although his expression remained stoic, she thought he had smiled.
She turned around and ran through the rain-soaked garden. Passing by uprooted roses, scattered bushes, and piles of earth heaped like graves, she finally looked back. Under the large tree, he was still there, motionless.
*Why doesn’t he leave?*
Perhaps he was waiting for the rain to subside. Or perhaps he was watching her leave. A sudden impulse assailed her: she wanted to run back. To take shelter from the rain with him. To sit together before a warm hearth, watching the bird recover.
But before she could act, her nursemaid came out of the building, her round face flushed from having searched for so long.
“Where have you been?! Do you know how worried Lady Senevier has been?” She took Talia’s hand and pulled her sharply toward the annex. “And look at the state you are in! You are going to meet His Majesty soon, how could you dirty your clothes like this?”
“…I slipped while walking.”
“Walking? In this weather?”
Exasperated, the nursemaid marched down the corridor that connected to the Annex Palace.
Dragged along the path, Talia looked back. But the boy had already gone.
—
THE FORGOTTEN FIELDS (NOVEL) – CHAPTER 8
Chapter 8
THE FORGOTTEN FIELDS (NOVEL)
After that day, Talia wandered through the back garden whenever she had the chance. But she did not see him again until a large elm tree was planted in the spot where she had once found the dying bird, and until the previously neglected garden was filled with brightly colored flowers.
Talia felt the loss as if she had misplaced a treasure she had stumbled upon by chance. She wished she had ignored her nanny’s call back then…
The father who was supposed to come see her never showed up that night, and her mother did not come looking for her either. Surrounded by cold and indifferent maids, Talia ate a tasteless dinner, choking on regret. She should have gone after that boy. If she had begged him, he might have pretended to resist and taken her with him. Now, lying under a cold blanket, she yearned for those large, warm hands that had held her.
Perhaps he was nothing more than an illusion born of her loneliness.
It was just as she was sinking into that doubt that the boy appeared before her eyes once again. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say that it was Talia who discovered him.
The seasons passed, and she left her eight years behind to turn nine. The skies no longer poured rain, but instead scorched the earth with the heat of midsummer.
As she walked down the long corridor leading to the Emperor’s private quarters, Talia’s attention was caught by loud shouts. She turned toward a large, arched window. In the wide courtyard, bleached by the summer sun, knight apprentices wearing black surcoats brandished wooden swords. Although there were nearly thirty apprentices, Talia’s gaze, like a moth drawn to a flame, instinctively flew toward him.
His faded, flaxen hair caught the intense summer light and shone with a faint silvery hue. It was the first time she had seen him without a hood, but she recognized him instantly. He was the boy who had appeared to her in the early spring rain.
She leaned over the window sill to get a better look. The blue-eyed boy moved with a clarity and precision that set him apart from the others. His long, supple limbs cut through the air with such elegance and strength that Talia imagined she could hear the sound of the wind being cleaved.
“Do you know who that is?” she asked.
The elderly servant walking beside her, tasked with escorting her to the Emperor, cast an indifferent glance at the training yard.
“They are knight apprentices training to enter the Imperial Guard. All of them are sons of noble families.”
He did not show the slightest interest in knowing which of them had caught the young girl’s attention. Then, showing clear disapproval at her hesitation, the servant added:
“His Majesty is waiting for you. We must hurry.”
Reluctantly, Talia pulled herself away from the window and walked down the corridor, which was as silent as a grave. It was the first time she would meet with her father since entering the palace, and yet, she felt no particular emotion. Even when the Emperor had once visited the Taren home, she had not thought of him as her father either. That man with the stern face had shown no interest in her, and Talia could only hate the man who had stolen her mother’s affection.
Even after being formally inscribed into the imperial family registry, nothing changed.
Inside a large, ornate chamber, Talia looked warily at the imposing figure standing with the light at his back. How long did the silence stretch? The man, sitting behind a desk that looked like a fortress, kept his eyes fixed on the parchment before him and finally spoke:
“From now on, you will learn the etiquette of the imperial court.”
He pressed a seal onto the document without raising his head. Talia waited for him to look at her. But his gaze never rose to meet hers. She could not understand it. Why would a man who claimed to love Senevier with such passion refuse to even look at the daughter who shared her very face?
As he scribbled something with a quill, the man spoke again in an indifferent tone:
“I have gathered excellent tutors for you. From now on, come to the main palace before noon to attend your lessons. You must do your utmost to catch up on the studies you have neglected.”
He did not require her response. The Emperor made a dismissive gesture with his hand, and thus, the reunion between father and daughter—after an entire year—ended in that manner.
As she retraced her steps down the corridor, Talia searched for the training yard through the window. But by then, the practice had already ended. Only the blinding, white light of the summer sun remained in the empty space.
From that day on, every time she went to her lessons, Talia looked sideways at the boy training in the courtyard. She liked seeing the beads of sweat pearled on his sculpted face, and how the vigorous exercise brought a delicate flush to his pale cheeks. Sometimes, she even spoke to him in her mind:
“Tell me… what happened to that bird? Did it die in the end? Did you bury it somewhere? Or did you set it free to fly far, far away once it healed?”
She wanted to look into his eyes again, just like that day in the rain, and speak with him. She wanted to see if the silver crown still shone in his gaze. The urge became so strong that she could no longer contain it. She was neglecting her history lesson, staring endlessly toward the training yard, when suddenly a dark shadow fell behind her.
Startled, Talia turned. Her mother—absent for half a month—was standing on the border between light and shadow. There was a time when her face was something Talia saw every day. However, at that instant, Talia’s heart almost stopped. Adorned to embody the full dignity of an Empress, Senevier seemed to hold all imaginable beauty. Even the elf mages who had often visited the Taren home would never have dared to compare themselves to her.
“What are you looking at?” Senevier asked, looking down at her daughter.
Snapping out of her daze, Talia quickly turned away from the window. For some reason, she did not want to speak about the boy. But Senevier seemed to understand immediately where her daughter’s gaze had fixed. Turning toward the window, the Empress looked at the tall, golden-haired boy and smiled significantly.
“Ah… the son of Grand Duke Sheorcan.”
Talia’s eyes widened. She had guessed that he belonged to some noble house, but she never imagined he was part of such an exalted family. The Empress’s deep blue eyes gleamed with complicity, as if she were reading her daughter’s thoughts.
“Do you want that boy?”
Talia’s face flushed a bright red, and she could not answer. But that alone was already answer enough. Senevier let out a soft, amused laugh, and then leaned down to kiss her daughter’s cheek.
“If you want him, I could give him to you as a gift.”
Her whisper was chilling, like the wind blowing through a dark forest at night. Straightening up, the Empress drew a crimson smile on her lips.
“But not for free. If you want a reward like that, you must first please your parents.”
Detecting the slight tone of reproach in her mother’s voice, Talia hurriedly clung to the history book she had abandoned on the window sill. Then she turned around and ran. She could feel her mother’s gaze stuck to the back of her head like a spiderweb.
Every night she had yearned for her mother. So why was she running away from her now? She had thought that if she saw her again, she would throw a tantrum: she would refuse to study, she would demand to know why they had neglected her, she would pour out all the resentment and pain she had held inside. But Senevier, now the Empress of the Empire, no longer seemed like her mother. She had become something strange, fearsome… someone Talia could no longer cling to.
That night, Talia tossed and turned in bed, unable to fall asleep. She had not been truly happy even at the Taren home, but at least back then she had Senevier. Her mother had been less of a maternal figure and more of a companion, a comrade-in-arms. Even if the entire world pointed their fingers at them, they could endure it as long as they had each other.
But now Senevier stood imposing as the Empress, and Talia was left alone in an unfamiliar place among strangers. Loneliness gnawed at her bones. She yearned for someone to be by her side, someone to hold her in warm arms and look at her with kind eyes. She felt that if such a person appeared, she could give them everything.
And so, she made a decision.
She would no longer merely observe that boy from a distance. She would go meet him.
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