This love is like a curse (5)
Less than two weeks had passed since she left the Talen family estate and entered the imperial palace.
The mother rejoiced - her daughter’s name was finally inscribed in the imperial family tree. But Thalia hated everything here. Когда внимание Сеневьер сосредоточилось исключительно на переустройстве дворца, её тревога достигла предела.
The imperial palace turned out to be not at all what his mother had described. He was stern and intimidating. Wherever she went, she was followed by sharp glances, and the servants in the palace were much colder than the servants in Talen.
She felt like a lost child. Therefore, whenever possible, she slipped out of her chambers and wandered around the small palace.
She especially often looked into the garden - or rather, into what was left of it. Seneviere, deciding to erase all traces of the former empress, ordered all flowers and trees to be uprooted. Now the garden resembled a wasteland.
Only at the entrance to the main and small palaces did rose bushes and variegated ornamental trees begin to be planted, little by little filling the empty flower beds. But the backyard, where work had not yet been completed, was littered with disordered piles of dirt. That's why no one looked there.
When Talia got tired of the whispers and judgmental looks, she came to this abandoned corner of the garden and aimlessly whiled away the time.
That day she also ran away - from the pestering nanny and maid, who, under the pretext of combing her hair, tormented her with a sharp comb, painfully scratching her scalp.
Due to the rain that began at noon, not a single worker remained in the garden. Thalia squatted in a deserted corner of the garden and stared blankly at the falling drops.
She didn't know how much time had passed. A faint squeak was heard somewhere nearby.
Looking around in shock, Thalia stood up and, as if guided by an invisible thread, walked through the rain to the outer wall of the palace. Where there had been a large spreading tree in the morning, there was now a deep hole.
She walked over to the pile of dug up earth and looked down. A small bird floundered desperately in the sticky mud, emitting plaintive squeaks.
“Fell from a tree?”
It seemed like she could die at any moment.
Heavy drops of rain mercilessly lashed the brown body, wet to the bones, and the tar-red slurry clung to her thin legs and pitiful wings. The piercing cries of the bird gradually turned into a weak, barely perceptible trembling.
Talia, leaning over, silently watched this scene. Unexpectedly, she stepped into the hole.
It was stupid. Even careful steps did not save her - the soil, saturated with rain, instantly sucked her shoes like a quagmire.
She tried to pull her leg out, but lost her balance and fell into the mud.
Falling face forward, she felt sticky water with a taste of earth seep into her mouth. She shook her head irritably.
The new green dress that the nanny had sewn was in terrible condition, and her neatly braided hair was matted with dirt.
Anger boiled in my chest.
She stood up and swore, hissing:
- What difference does it make to this bird? I shouldn’t have climbed into this mud...,” she grumbled, trying to get out of the hole.
Suddenly that plaintive squeak was heard again. It was so quiet that it was almost lost in the air, but to Thalia it sounded like a cry of despair.
Eventually, she took a few more steps through the black sludge and noticed a pair of tattered brown wings and a tiny head submerged in the murky water.
“...Dead already?”
Carefully taking the chick in her hands, she felt a faint beating under the wet feathers. He was still breathing.
Talia gently squeezed it in her palms and brought it to her lips, blowing her warm breath. The chick weakly moved its beak and flapped its wings helplessly, clinging to life with its last strength.
Looking at him, she felt something painfully squeeze in her chest.
Thalia didn't understand what this feeling was. Why does the sight of this abandoned chick, desperately floundering in the mud without its mother and struggling for life in her arms, cut her heart so deeply?
Holding the bird close to the warmest part of her neck, she looked helplessly at the slippery muddy slope.
As the rain intensified, the ground softened even more. She took a few steps, but realized that she couldn’t just get out. To get up, you have to crawl on all fours, like an animal.
Thalia clenched her teeth. She couldn’t abandon the chick, but she also didn’t want to crawl through the mud, losing her dignity as a princess.
And so she remained standing in the cold rain, not moving.
It was then that a boy appeared in the whitish veil of rain.
He was tall, wearing a black monastic robe with a hood that hid his face. But even through the curtain of water, Thalia saw his pale blue eyes, incredibly beautiful eyes.
- What are you doing there? — he leaned over, and his cold voice, so incongruous with his young face, made her shudder.
Then she decided it was from the cold. But now, remembering, it seemed to her as if at that moment she already had a vague premonition that this boy with an indifferent face would one day turn her life into hell.
If she had clearly understood this strange feeling then, she would have thrown the chick into the mud and, forgetting about shame, would have crawled up like a pig. And then she would run away from those blue eyes, erasing even the memory of the meeting.
But eight-year-old Talia did not know that this boy in the rain would be her undoing. So she looked at him and, in her usual prickly manner, muttered:
-You don’t see it yourself, do you? I'm in a hole and I can't get out.
The boy's eyes narrowed. It seemed that he wanted to ask why she even went there.
But instead he simply stepped into the hole. His expensive trousers and leather boots instantly became dirty with mud, but he did not pay the slightest attention to it.
Thalia looked at him in amazement. She didn't expect that this ice-cold boy would suddenly do this.
He confidently made his way to her across the sodden ground. Up close he seemed even taller. Surely a head taller than her.
A young man with long, flexible legs confidently approached her and extended his hand:
- Hold on.