One More Bite
"Since this whole mess started because of the Sheorkan family's healer, this much is only fair."
Lucas's expression darkened. The thought of Tiuran, confined to solitary confinement, left a heavy weight in his chest.
"What kind of sentence do you think they'll give Tiuran?"
"Hard to say. Now that Her Highness has woken up safely, it'll probably stop at detention."
Daren answered in a flat, indifferent tone.
"That woman got lucky. If the Grand Duchess's condition had been any worse, she'd have been climbing the gallows."
Lucas frowned, unsettled by the remark.
Tiuran had served the Sheorkan family with unwavering loyalty for more than a decade. Hearing Daren speak so casually of her death stirred a quiet resentment in him.
"It happened because that woman was so frail to begin with. Does she really need to be punished that harshly?"
"Young Master Lucas."
A note of warning entered Daren's voice.
He tossed a leather pouch of silver coins to a traveling merchant as if discarding it, then pulled Lucas off to one side of the hall.
"I'm well aware that Your Lordship harbors ill will toward the Grand Duchess. But I must ask you to stop displaying that hostility so openly."
"I don't particularly—"
"You're fretting more over the fate of some healer than over Her Highness's health."
He spoke as though scolding a child.
"She is His Majesty the Emperor's daughter, and the mistress of this eastern duchy. By all rights, merely causing her harm should warrant the extreme penalty. That it ended at disciplinary confinement is already an act of considerable mercy."
Lucas stared hard into Daren's face.
"So you accept the Second Princess as the mistress of this house?"
"What does it matter whether I accept her or not? It's already done."
Daren shrugged his massive shoulders.
"It's not as though we can undo a marriage arranged by His Majesty at this point. Like it or not, we have to live with it. Right now, strengthening the East's cohesion is the more pressing concern."
Lucas met Daren's earnest gaze with a heavy look of his own.
Traveling the eastern territories at Barcas's side, he had come to the same conclusion himself.
The local magnates cared only about consolidating their own power and neglected public order, and as a result, marauders thrived across the East. There were capable administrators among them, but even those men seemed more inclined to quietly check the new Grand Duke than to offer him unconditional loyalty.
Just as Tyron had warned, the order of the East was crumbling in silence. Perhaps they ought to be grateful that a strong new leader like Barcas had emerged at all.
Having arrived at that unwelcome conclusion, Lucas forced his rebellious eyes downward with difficulty.
"I know that much."
Still unwilling to be treated like an obedient child, he added with a surly edge,
"I just have to behave while my brother is whipping the eastern nobles into line, don't I?"
"Please do exactly that."
Daren growled like a bear.
Lucas refused to yield, flashing a smile laced with mockery.
"I'm already doing it. Haven't you seen me dodging that woman like a sewer rat, weaving this way and that so we don't collide? I even keep my head down flat in front of my brother."
Daren raised a thick eyebrow, clearly unconvinced.
Crossing his arms over his chest, he bent forward and fixed Lucas with a threatening stare.
"That alone is not enough. You will show proper respect to the Grand Ducal couple even in official settings. If Your Lordship continues to bandy about such insolent remarks, the discipline of the East will—"
"Fine. Fine. Just stop nagging already."
Lucas climbed the stairs in a hurry, thoroughly fed up.
Beyond the railing, he could see Daren glaring at him with a murderous look.
He snorted deliberately for the man to see, then broke into a run down the corridor — only to stop short when he spotted a cluster of maids.
The Grand Duchess's attendants were carefully carrying trays laden with dozens of dishes.
Playing the queen, are we?
Lucas twisted his mouth in a cold sneer — then suddenly frowned.
He couldn't understand why he harbored such hostility toward that woman. If he was being honest, wasn't he the one who had crossed the line first?
He raked his fingers through his hair in irritation.
Lucas was perfectly aware of how base he had been. And yet, whenever he recalled the moment of their quarrel, irrational fury rose before any sense of guilt. Perhaps it was the look in her eyes when she had stared at him.
…Like she was looking at a bug.
The instant he met those eyes — eyes that seemed to regard the most loathsome thing in the world — he had been seized by an ugly impulse he had never felt before in his life.
He had wanted to break that haughty woman. Wanted to make her cry until she was a wreck.
That vile desire had boiled up through his blood until he could no longer control himself.
Retracing that fierce impulse, Lucas felt a wave of revulsion and turned away. A terrible realization brushed through his mind: that he was avoiding her for reasons that went beyond Barcas's warning.
If he drew close to that woman, he would be forced to confront something filthy inside himself — something he never wanted to face.
As if to shake off that uneasy premonition, he hurried out of the dim corridor.
"Just one more bite."
Thalia stared at the man holding out the spoon as though he were a two-headed monster.
Could some wicked incubus have slipped into Barcas's skin and taken his place?
Whether or not he noticed the suspicion with which she was studying him, the man pressed her in that characteristically flat tone of his.
"Why aren't you eating?"
"…I'm done. I don't want any more."
"Just one more spoonful."
"I said no."
She jerked her head aside to escape the spoon hovering near her mouth like an annoying gnat — and he caught her chin with his other hand.
Forced to face him, Thalia glared up with flushed cheeks.
Barcas didn't so much as blink.
"Finish this, and I'll have them bring the fruit Your Highness likes for dessert."
"Hilarious! I don't want this or that or any of—!"
The spoon slid between her parted lips before she could finish the protest.
Thalia's eyes flew wide with sheer disbelief.
He pressed the tip of her tongue with the spoon, as if telling her to swallow.
In the end, she gulped down the mushy mouthful. The horrible sensation of slippery gruel sliding down her throat made her face crumple of its own accord.
She shot him a venomous look.
Unbothered, Barcas rose from his seat with a leisurely expression and cleared the bowls away.
The naturalness of the gesture raised a different suspicion this time.
This was a man who had spent his entire life being waited on by others. A man who had never bowed his head to anyone outside the imperial bloodline — so how was he so practiced at something as menial as feeding someone?
"Have you… fed someone before?"
Thalia narrowed her eyes and suddenly pressed him.
Barcas, arranging the dishes on a tray, cast an indifferent glance over his shoulder.
His reply came, dry and unadorned.
"More times than I can count."
Thalia went rigid with shock — then, in the next breath, her eyes sharpened to a blade's edge. Every scrap of food he had forced into her stomach felt ready to surge back up.
She forced a smile onto her convulsing face.
"How unfortunate. After all that devotion, abandoning your fiancée only to end up playing nurse at the side of a woman like me…"
"Her Highness the First Princess was never this high-maintenance."
Barcas set the tray by the door and spoke without a trace of feeling.
"The one I fed wasn't a person. Torc, as a pup, was far more trouble than Your Highness."
Thalia's face went blank with incredulity.
She couldn't decide whether she was supposed to feel relieved by his words — or furious.