## THE FORGOTTEN FIELDS (NOVEL) - Chapter 153
Talia surrendered her thread of consciousness of her own free will, but she did not awaken in a world that brought her comfort.
She felt a warm towel gently pass over her face and neck, and she opened her eyes slowly to see the man sitting in front of her, like a blurry shadow in the middle of the fog.
Varkas looked after her with extreme wariness; he pulled up her nightgown a bit and slowly wiped the sweat from her back, as if it were not the first time he had done so. His touches were painfully calm and familiar.
When he realized that she had awakened, he stopped and looked at her in silence. Seeing that she showed no rejection, he finished wiping her exhausted body, put a clean dress on her, and carefully gave her boiled water with herbs to drink.
Talia let him do everything. She had no strength to oppose him; in fact, she felt that resistance itself was more exhausting than surrender.
He remained by her side in silence, giving her medicine and water from time to time, and sometimes he called a priest to pour healing magic over her. She, for her part, merely lay there quietly, waiting for the end of those dense days without knowing how much time had passed.
While she sank into the border between consciousness and unconsciousness, a visitor arrived asking to see Varkas. The voice sounded familiar, but her exhausted mind could not manage to remember whom it belonged to. The man stood up with difficulty, went toward the door, and spoke with the visitor in a low voice. Talia stared for a moment at his broad back illuminated by the lamp light, before losing interest and closing her eyes again.
—I will go out for a moment —he said, leaning over her as if asking for her permission.
She did not understand the reason, so she merely opened her eyes for an instant and then closed them again. Immediately after, he took his coat and left the room.
At that very moment, several women entered the room, apparently to take charge of her care. One of them approached the bed and spoke to her in a soft voice, but her words reached Talia as if they came from behind a dense wall of fog. The world around her remained pale and confusing.
After a long period of intermittent sleep, she finally regained some lucidity. She opened her eyes slowly in a room submerged in shadows; two maids were dozing near the fireplace, while Marisen and the healer were sitting beside the bed.
—Do you feel better now? —the healer asked her with a small smile as soon as she saw her open her eyes.
Talia moved her dry lips with difficulty and whispered:
—... What happened to my baby?
The question came out of her without being conscious of it, as if she had been hiding it inside herself all this time.
Silence took over the room.
A heavy look of guilt appeared on the healer's face, but she could not answer. Then, the nurse spoke, her voice trembling with tears:
—We buried the child... in the backyard of the temple.
Talia looked at her with empty eyes.
The nurse took her limp hand and whispered sadly:
—It was a boy... If he had been born healthy, he would have been a very beautiful child...
Then she added, trying to comfort her:
—You are still young. You will be able to have another child.
At that moment, Talia felt as if a knife were plunged into her heart. She did not know why those words were so painful, but she clearly felt that something inside her was being violently torn apart. If her senses had not been half-dead, she would have screamed from pure pain.
Her body trembled slightly, and she withdrew her hand.
—... I want to be alone. Everyone leave.
The nurse tried to reply, but Marisen forced her to leave, and the rest of the women went out in silence until the room was completely empty.
Silence returned.
Talia covered her face with the cold blanket and closed her eyes, but her mind began to regain clarity little by little, and with it, the pain returned completely.
While trying to stop her body from trembling, she remembered the sleeping herbs she kept for emergencies. She stood up with difficulty, went toward the wardrobe, took out an incense made of herbs, and lit it. Soon, the room filled with a bitter, thick aroma.
She sat on the floor inhaling the smoke deeply, until her nerves began to calm down and the world around her gradually faded away.
"The world is too sharp... I wish everything would become blurry like this smoke."
She lay back on the bed and kept inhaling more, until everything became confusing and distorted.
It was then that she heard a strange sound.
She raised her head slowly. There was nothing but the flickering firelight in the room, but the sound became clearer near her ear.
The sound of crying.
She stood up, staggering, and walked toward the window. Behind the glass, the palace was submerged in rain and darkness, and from some distant place, it seemed that someone was sobbing with deep sadness.
She opened the door and went out into the silent hallway, dodging the guards, then went down the narrow stairs with clumsy steps until she found herself in the backyard under the heavy rain.
She did not know why she had gone out. Nor where her feet were taking her. But the sound of crying kept drawing her like an invisible thread.
She continued walking through the mud and the rain until she arrived in front of the temple. She crossed the dark hallway and went out through the back, where the dry trees and thorny bushes were located...
And there she saw a small grave without a tombstone.
She stopped in front of it, staggering.
Only at that moment did she understand what the sound that had been guiding her all this time was.
It was the crying of a baby.
Suddenly, a faint laugh escaped her, though she did not know what she was laughing at. Soon she collapsed to the ground and began to feel the cold earth with her trembling hands. The rain mixed with the mud and the tears on her hands.
And when she realized that her face was soaked with weeping, she finally understood that she was not laughing... but that she was falling apart.
The sob got stuck in her throat like something suffocating her, and then the crying burst out of her with violence, as if she were vomiting all the despair she had kept locked inside.
The world around her finally collapsed.
She rested her body over the small grave while she wept, and at that instant, she heard the sound of approaching footsteps in the rain.
She raised her tear-soaked eyes to see a man standing in front of her. His huge body was completely drenched, and his breath rose like steam in the freezing cold.
He extended his hand toward her slowly.
She knew that hand very well. It was the hand that one day gave her hope... and that later taught her the meaning of despair.
She shrank back as if he were offering her a deadly weapon, and he stopped in his tracks.
The cold rain fell on her pale face, and behind the curtain of water, she saw his eyes, those that had once shone like a silver crown.
But now... nothing was left in them but ruin.
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