IWJACM Chapter 0

Prologue

Elise had not slept at all through the night.

Today was the day. The day she would leave this castle.

For the past three months she had watched ceaselessly for an opportunity, and three days ago she had finally understood that this—right now—was the only moment she would be able to leave.

Elise tried to press into memory the feel of the man's arms wrapped around her. The arms that held her: large and solid.

The precisely sculpted muscle rose and fell with his shallow breathing. A body powerful enough to crush her without effort.

She had been frightened of it at first—that thick, unyielding flesh carved as if from stone—but by now the suffocating weight pressing down on her had become familiar.

Even that cold sensation that swept over her each time she pulled herself free.

Because he had fallen asleep holding her locked against him, Elise had spent the whole night unable to move, aware of every inch of him against every inch of herself.

Last night he had been rougher than usual. Because it had been a while, no doubt.

'A while. To think that only two weeks could feel like a while.'

A dry, humorless laugh escaped her. Elise traced back over the days that had slipped away without her noticing.

There had been a time when his refusal to touch her had driven her anxiety to its outermost limits. The whole of the first three months after their wedding.

But from the moment they had finally consummated the marriage properly, he had acted as though there were nothing in his way. Even though she had been the one to seek that arrangement, Elise had struggled in those first weeks to fully receive him.

Yet he was skilled, and her body had been broken in easily.

In the three months since, Elise had learned that a human body could endure far more than she had ever imagined. She had learned, too, that sounds she would never have dreamed of making could emerge from her own mouth. Even last night she had groaned like an animal beneath the pleasure that struck through her entire body like lightning.

That was how Elise had come to accept Rezet Kyrstan.

But she would never see him again now.

The man's scent curled faintly at the edge of her senses—enough to make her chest waver—but only for a moment. Then the words he had spoken when this absurd marriage first began came tolling through her mind.

'It is nothing but a contract marriage. A mutual arrangement of use.'

That low, indifferent voice pulled her back to reality. He had used her, and she had used him, each with great efficiency.

If one were to measure who had gained more, it would be her, without question.

Elise had failed to fulfill the condition he had placed on their contract.

Without thinking, she brought her hand to rest just above her navel. The skin there felt like little more than a thin membrane stretched over flat muscle.

Was this fortune, or misfortune?

Emptiness and relief came to her in equal measure.

A week ago she had been examined by the attending physician. Still no signs.

He had taken a small amount of blood as a matter of course, and his expression had not been particularly hopeful.

She was managing, somehow, to accommodate this man—but she had been told again and again that her womb was not strong enough to take root from him, that his seed would struggle to find purchase inside her. Compatibility alone had not been enough.

'I will bear your child.'

Not knowing any of that, she had put forward those ridiculous terms.

Elise knew well that Rezet Kyrstan was not a man who made empty promises.

So by the terms of their contract, tomorrow—the exact six-month mark of their marriage—this man would report her lie to his sovereign, the Van Yela Emperor.

The furious Emperor would surely take her head and send it to the barbaric kingdom of Ughel.

And so she had to flee while the opportunity remained.

She gently pushed aside the arm that held her waist. This man—her false husband—slept more deeply than his appearance suggested, and extracting herself from his hold was not difficult.

Besides, he had particular reason to be exhausted today. He had returned from the field just last night. Even someone immune to the weariness of the body could not remain untired after fifteen days of continuous combat, day and night without rest.

If she had wanted to make things easier for herself, she should have left the territory before he returned. But she hadn't been able to do that.

Because if this was the last time, she had wanted to see his face at least once more.

For a long moment, Elise could not take her eyes away from his sleeping face.

He was a cold man. And yet the lingering attachment that kept catching at her was because of the incomprehensible things he had sometimes said and done—those sharp, blade-like moments of tenderness that he had insisted were not affection, which had confused her all the more for that insistence.

An aching hollow rippled through her chest.

Elise traced the line of his high-bridged nose and the mountain of his closed lips with the tips of her fingers.

Come to think of it, she had never kissed those lips. Night after night he had shattered her and reassembled her to his measure, but as though certain lines were never to be crossed, he had not kissed her once since the wedding ceremony.

He had been wise. Elise pushed away the feelings that boiled at the threshold of her heart.

'Thank you.'

'Now that this troublesome wife of yours has gone—be free, Rezet.'

Elise lifted her hand from his lips and rose carefully from the bed. She barely kept herself from crying out. Every part of her body ached, and her inner thighs were damp and uncomfortable.

She needed to clean herself—but there was no time to wash before leaving. Dawn was already breaking.

She wiped herself roughly between her legs with a clean cloth she had prepared in advance. Even that alone took her some time.

When she stepped into the sitting room, her maid Yvessa—who had come early to wait—hurried forward and helped Elise into her clothes.

"You must go now, Your Highness. Word came last night that imperial messengers from Van Yela have entered Kyrstan's borders."

Imperial messengers from Van Yela. If they found her now, in this state, it would truly be the end.

"Yes. Let's go now."

Elise set the note she had prepared on the table and slipped soundlessly out of the room.

The contract marriage that had begun with an outrageous lie was now at its end.

She did not look back.

⌜You told me that once the promised six months had passed, I could leave at any time.⌟

Rezet read the short letter in silence, again and again.

The bedroom was cold through and through. Not a trace of warmth remained.

Last night, the woman who for the first time in six months of marriage had embraced him without trembling had vanished without a trace by morning.

As if she'd never existed.

⌜It was nothing but a contract marriage, you said.⌟

Had he really said that? At the sharp, far-reaching line of the man's eyes, something red flickered briefly beneath the surface.

Below that were a few more lines—something about gratitude, something about being sorry for failing to keep her promise. None of it reached him.

Rezet turned abruptly toward the window. They had married in spring.

The estate, lush and green then, had somewhere along the way put on the rich gold of autumn.

Autumn. That's right. Autumn had come without him noticing.

Elizabetha Arzeika had—as if to make a point—neatly folded and left behind the very contract they had both signed six months ago.

The date was helpfully specified. The first day of October. The contract's term ended today.

Alfredo, Lothier Castle's chief steward, spoke with barely concealed agitation.

"Nothing is missing, Your Grace. She did not take so much as a change of clothes, which means there is almost certainly an accomplice. If we begin interrogating the household staff first—"

He wasn't listening.

Rezet thought of the woman who had clung to him desperately until dawn, eyes bright with unshed tears. The marks he left on her body during the night were not the kind that disappeared quickly.

And like that, she had fled? Without even time to put herself in order? With every trace of what she'd been doing plainly visible on her?

Rezet had barely managed to form a mirthless laugh when someone came clattering toward him with undignified haste.

"Your Grace!"

Lothier Castle's attending physician. The old man's face was overflowing with joy, apparently oblivious to the atmosphere that had settled over the castle like a stone.

In that instant, something like a thunderbolt of intuition split the top of Rezet's skull clean open.

There was no reason for the castle's physician to come running with an expression like that. He was a man who had always delivered only hedging, reluctant news about her health.

There was exactly one reason he could look that joyful.

"Your Grace, I bring you tidings of great celebration—!"

With so many eyes around them, the physician managed only those words.

But those words alone explained everything.

Rezet looked down at the beaming physician with no expression at all. His gaze moved slowly back to the contract and the small letter lying scattered across the table.

Facts that had seemed wrapped in vague haze suddenly materialized into terrible reality.

His wife was gone.

With his bloodline inside her.

His bloodline. His. A yon'gyn's….

At last, fractures began spreading across Rezet's face.

"Ha."

He let out a single hollow laugh.

Elise's escape. And her pregnancy. He could not discern which of the two facts was the graver.

The note she had left crumpled to ruin inside his large fist.

Leave?

Leave where. There were still more than half a day remaining on the contract's term.

So Elizabetha Arzeika could not flee anywhere except to his side. And that was before considering that she carried his—

The world went black before his eyes, then came back. A cold spark snapped to life in those blue eyes.

This was a breach of contract.

"…Find her."

Rezet's voice, when it came after a long silence, was uncannily low. The knight standing by in nervous suspense felt his shoulders jerk rigid.

"Seal the territory. With her constitution, she cannot have gone far."

From behind that turned back came the sound of teeth grinding. Rezet snatched his cloak with savage intent and swept past the knight in long, quick strides.

"From this moment, no one enters or leaves this territory. Divide the knights in every direction and comb through every last corner. Every road a person could travel—all of them!"

"Y-yes! Your Grace!"

No one dared ask whether he intended to go himself. No one dared remind him that within a few hours, the imperial messengers of Van Yela would arrive.

Because they had witnessed the thread of reason in their lord's blue eyes snap clean through.

The fine hairs at the napes of their necks stood on end.

"Oh, God above. Your Highness, the Princess…"

What does he intend to do about the aftermath!

A knight murmured the thought beneath his breath and hurried to follow him.

That day, a strange chase began between the vanished princess of Argan and the Grand Duke of Van Yela who pursued her.