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 affectionis 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 shakenher 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 comein.
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.
