After that day, Talia was scarcely able to eat any food at all. She simply could not trust what might be hidden inside.
Her nursemaid grew frustrated, not knowing the reason. She only thought Talia was being finicky.
Without explaining anything, Talia survived on the fruits and honey the nursemaid occasionally brought her as snacks. Loneliness and isolation were no longer the issue. In the most splendid, luxurious place in the world, she was forced to fight against starvation.
On some days, when her hunger was unbearable, she reluctantly touched the meals the servants brought. But always, without fail, there was something foul hidden inside—bugs, rats, or sometimes twisted clumps of hair whose owner she could not imagine.
After suffering through this several times, she found herself unable to put anything at all in her mouth. Within weeks, she had grown pitifully thin.
By then, even her dull-witted nursemaid seemed to realize something was wrong. She immediately sought out the Empress and raised a fuss that her only daughter was going to die.
Thanks to this, Talia was able to see her mother's face for the first time in months.
"How on earth did you end up like this?"
It was the first thing Senevior said, when she finally visited the detached palace after acting as though she had forgotten her daughter's very existence.
Talia, frail and broken as she was, looked up at her mother, radiant as a summer blossom, and felt her eyes burn. That bright, guileless face only made her heart seethe with fury.
She had intended to yell at her, to demand how she could be so selfish, how she could think only of herself. But when she opened her mouth, what came out was a sob.
She cried like an infant, weeping as she poured out everything that had happened. The dreadful acts committed by the servants, the cruel ordeals she had endured—she confessed it all from beginning to end.
Senevior only sat at her bedside, listening silently until the story was done.
Talia thought her silence meant she was suppressing her rage—that she was struck speechless at what her only daughter had suffered.
So she shook her arm urgently, demanding:
"Mother! Stop them from tormenting me! You must act at once so that no one can ever hurt me again!"
"Why should I?"
Senevior tilted her head with a curious expression.
The unexpected answer left Talia dumbstruck. Her mother's face held only pure puzzlement, as if she truly could not understand why a mistreated child would come to her for protection.
"Talia, this palace is yours. The servants of this palace are your possessions. You are nine years old now. If you cannot even manage your own belongings properly, how can you whine to your mother?"
Talia was left utterly speechless.
Senevior cupped her cheek with one hand and sighed, as if genuinely disappointed.
"You are the Emperor's daughter. I truly cannot understand why my child should be passively suffering at the hands of mere nothings. It is almost embarrassing to think my daughter could be so clumsy and weak."
"M-Mother…"
Senevior gazed at the candle by the window with a thoughtful expression. Her chillingly beautiful face showed not the slightest anger at the abuse her daughter had suffered—only faint disappointment and vexation, and the deliberation of how best to enlighten a foolish child.
To Talia, it felt like facing an insect in human guise.
After a long silence, Senevior snapped her fingers.
"Let us do this. I'll leave you a suitable guard. A man I have trained thoroughly for a very long time. If you can handle him properly, he will be quite useful."
She rose, as if that settled everything.
Talia clutched at her skirts in desperation.
"I don't want such a person! I just want to be with you, Mother!"
At that heartfelt cry, for an instant a look of disgust crossed Senevior's face. Talia went pale with shock.
Her mother pried off her fingers one by one and bent down, clicking her tongue with pity.
"Talia, all of this began because of me. Yet do you know why no one ever puts rats in my soup?"
Talia froze like a mouse before a snake, unable to answer.
Senevior continued gently:
"Why my bathwater is always warm and fragrant, why my table is always laden with food… why no one even thinks of doing to me what they do to you. Shall I tell you the secret?"
Her blood-red lips brushed her daughter's ear.
"It is because they fear me. That fear alone keeps them from ever daring to do such things. Some of them even hold me in awe. Of course, there are countless others who despise and loathe me. Yet even they treat me as something to be wary of, not something to bully. Because I am a very dangerous being."
Her gaze locked on her daughter's eyes. In them, Talia glimpsed something coiled and foul, like a shadowy creature lurking.
Senevior straightened and gave her final counsel.
"Remember this. Strength and beauty become the objects of fear and admiration. But beauty without strength is always the object of plunder. Especially here in the imperial palace. If you don't want to be trampled mercilessly by the many beasts who will target you, you must at least never let them see that you are weak."
With that, she left, turning her back on her frail, broken daughter.
That night, Talia turned her mother's words over and over in her mind.
The weak are trampled. And Senevior had not the slightest intention of protecting her weak daughter.
So this must be the feeling of a defeated soldier abandoned by the last bastion. She trembled with fear, terrified of the greater horrors that might yet come.
Even if harsher treatment awaited her, no one would protect her. Not when even her mother turned away. Would His Majesty the Emperor spare so much as a glance at an illegitimate child who was little more than a stain upon him?
Huddled beneath her blanket, she gnawed her nails in anxious dread. She saw in her mind the feet of the servants moving around her when she had vomited on the dining hall floor.
Those indifferent feet passing her sprawled, wretched figure… It was easy to imagine them stamping her down like a worthless insect.
Her eyes burned hot with unshed tears. Her mother was right—sooner or later, she would be crushed to pieces.
And all of this had happened because she had branded herself a sinner. It was her guilt that had made her weak.
When she had begun to act as though she deserved whatever was done to her, the servants had sensed instinctively that she would not resist. In her shrinking posture, her timid gaze, her faltering words, they had seen weakness—and had grown ever more cruel.
At last, when dawn broke, Talia knew clearly what she had to do.
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