If You Take the Enemy Prince as a Knight

"Be my sword."

Sasha, sixth princess of an empire, preparing a coup against her own tyrant father.

Sasha encounters Regen — a captive prince of an enemy nation, and her first love — and offers him a bargain he cannot refuse.

She will restore his power. In exchange, he will swear himself to her as her sworn knight.

He will stand with her through the Imperial Trial — the succession contest she must survive if she means to live past a mad tyrant bent on killing his own daughters.

"Sasha saved my life. I don't know how I'm meant to repay that."

"There's no need to repay it."

"Why not?"

Live. Just stay beside me. That alone is fierce enough.

But she can't let a love that's still very much alive show on her face —

so she sold him a lie about one of her sixty-seven dead brothers.

"It's because you… resemble the brother I lost."

---

"Shall I take it off for you?"

Thinking it over, this seems right.

It's my responsibility to confirm — shouldn't it cost me some effort, with my own hands?

"…Ha. Sasha."

Regen let out something long — a sigh, or something closer to a groan, she couldn't tell which.

He looked at her without a word, then suddenly pressed his lips to her crystal glass on the table.

A murmur, threaded through with doubt, brushed against her ear.

"This is supposed to be non-alcoholic."