IWJACM Chapter 10

Rezet held down his irritation and spoke through it.

"I've told you time and again—marry or not, getting an heir out of me won't be easy."

"Women. I'll feed you as many as it takes."

"Whether there's a human woman alive who could carry a yon'gyn's seed to term—I couldn't say. And even if she conceived, she'd be dead before her belly ever swelled."

"Try, at least. I'll pick out sturdy enough women and send them myself. Send every last one back again, and I won't just sit on it this time."

Noyre would not bend his stubbornness. Rezet swallowed down the sneer that threatened to surface.

That man was his liege. The high emperor of Van Yela, a brother who shared half his blood, and his benefactor besides.

And, in equal measure, a genuinely greedy man.

"Our mother managed it, didn't she."

"……."

"My own mother bore you, Rezet. Doesn't that prove it isn't impossible?"

"By rape."

In the end, a sneer he couldn't hold down surfaced on Rezet's face. Emellia. Their mother, and the late emperor's concubine—the two of them knew well enough what she went through, and how she died, in the year after she vanished without a trace.

Noyre's mouth clamped shut like a clam. Rezet gave a light shrug.

"If you want it that badly, I'll try. Just don't blame me if it comes to nothing."

Rezet bowed to the emperor with flawless etiquette and left the audience chamber. Noyre, glaring at his stubborn retreating back, shouted after him.

"The celebration for the Northern Alliance's victory begins this evening! Whatever else you skip, you will attend that, Rezet!"

But the Grand Duke had vanished from the audience chamber before the sentence finished. Noyre struck the throne's armrest with his fist in irritation.

"Hate marriage that much, then die alone and rot! Damn it, the man's impossible to handle!"

Rezet couldn't hold back a short laugh as he cleared the palace corridors. Behind him, from the audience chamber, came the unmistakable sound of the emperor venting his temper on some hapless attendant.

The emperor's outrageous demands—same as ever, tiresome, irritating, no matter how many times he heard them.

Petty feeling barely touched him—and even so, Noyre's fixation was starting to wear on him.

Have a child, and soon? As if that were his to decide.

Rezet knew well enough the wretched end waiting for any woman who carried a dragon's seed and bore a yon'gyn. He needed no other story than his own.

His and Noyre's mother, Emellia, had been an ordinary human woman. The concubine of Van Yela's late emperor, she had vanished after giving birth to Noyre. Rezet alone knew how she had died.

That woman died a wretched death.

Rezet remembered every last moment of his own birth. Not one piece missing. His mother's body never managed to push him out, no matter how the labor dragged on and tore at her—so he tore open the womb that caged him, with his own two hands, and clawed his own way into the world.

That is how every yon'gyn who ever took difficult root in a human womb was born.

That is how every woman who ever carried one, died.

Rezet clicked his tongue shortly. Even for him, it was not something he wished to witness or endure more than once.

So the only yon'gyn Van Yela would have, this generation—was him. Him alone.

'Stop by. Just once?'

The princess had been swept up by the palace's own knights the moment she set foot in the capital—pulled clean out of his hands.

Rezet stood where he was and took a moment to sort through his thoughts.

While he stood there, the eyes of the nobles drifting in and out of the palace crawled all over him—countless of them. Most, fear. Disgust and contempt mixed in besides.

The look you give something beneath you.

Partly, it was just how yon'gyn were treated the continent over. Partly, it was because he was lowborn. Why else would the man who'd near doubled Van Yela's territory be called the war demon, and not the war hero?

Familiar reactions. Rezet spared them no thought at all. He was thinking instead of the moment the Argan princess had lain burning with high fever.

More precisely—the words she'd gripped his hand and whispered, desperate, in that state.

'Once we reach the capital, my lord.'

'Please… don't be too upset with me….'

'Call it my last struggle.'

'Think me mad, if you like….'

That voice, trailing off mid-breath, kept leaving some unnecessary residue in his mind.

Rezet mulled it over for a few more seconds before reaching a decision.

See her face once more—nothing changes.

His mind had reached its perfect judgment. He moved, exactly as reason commanded.

It took less than an hour for the horse carrying the commander-in-chief, and the knights following him, to clear the main palace entirely.

Three days had passed since Elise was thrown into the dungeon beneath the Van Yela palace.

Noise—loud, ceaseless—shoved its way in day after day through the narrow slit cut into the outer wall. She guessed the army dispatched south had returned bearing the Northern Alliance's victory, and that some kind of celebratory feast was now underway.

Elise wrapped her arms around her drawn-up knees and rested her head against the stone wall. The cell was cold and damp.

Three days ago, the Van Yela army under Grand Duke Kyrstan had handed her over to the palace knights. Elise had been dragged straight down into this dungeon without so much as a chance to see the emperor's face. Unlike the Duke, Van Yela's Emperor clearly felt no need to spare her any courtesy at all.

Somewhere, a rat gnawed at the iron bars. The cell she had been placed in was relatively clean, at least, but a foul sewage stench rose up from beyond the bars all the same.

Elise had never once in her life set foot anywhere near conditions this wretched. Thanks to that, these past three days, she'd felt with perfect clarity just how much luxury she'd enjoyed under the Duke's protection—protection, if that's what it was.

She spent the whole day pressed to the bars, eavesdropping on the guards' conversations. She had learned a great deal that way.

'Once the festival's over—an execution.'

The scaffold, they said, had been erected in the square at the heart of the capital.

The instant Argan's last royal head swung from the noose, Argan's age would close for good. An execution that closed out an era, no less.

'Three days gone. Two left.'

That was how much time Elise had left before she would be dragged to the scaffold.

Footsteps echoed down the cold, warmthless corridor. A servant entered, laden down with parcels. Elise forced her weakened body to move, dragging herself as close to the iron bars as she could manage.

Nearby, two men had met and fallen into idle conversation.

"Here—chef said hand out whatever's left to the help. Grabbed you some too."

"Heh, that victory bash really was something, huh?"

"Was. Eyes had a feast, gut had a feast, ears got theirs too."

"What were the lords yapping about this time?"

"What else. Argan princess—the one the Duke hauled back. Locked up right in there."

Elise held her breath beneath her hood.

"That barbarian prince all but strong-armed His Majesty into it—wants her held in the Ughel camp till the execution. Camp, they call it—Ughel lot's holed up in the annex palace, aren't they? Man alone with a woman in a private room back there—what else is he gonna do?"

"Filthy."

The guard mimed retching, like the thought turned his stomach. Elise's face went pale.

The servant glanced toward the interior of the cell to gauge the mood before tossing out a question of his own.

"…So she's really that pretty? The princess."

"No clue, man. Hood's been clamped over her mug since they hauled her in. Never once takes it off. All I've seen's the hair. Poor fragile little princess, hasn't had a proper wash in god knows how long, been through who knows what—and even so, her hair looked soft as silver thread."

The guard clicked his tongue, still itching to know more.

"Dying to know, but can't just order her to strip the hood off…."

"Why not? Princess or not, she's dying anyway—what's it matter?"

"Not that. His Highness the Duke laid it down himself before he left—nobody's to lay a hand on the prisoner."

Elise's heavy hand had risen halfway to the front of her hood—and there it stopped.

'Had that man given an order like that…?'

Heavy iron chains hung down beneath her wrists.

Before handing her to the palace knights, Duke Kyrstan had locked the manacles on her with his own two hands.

The cuffs—far too big for her thin wrists—pulled a low sigh out of him. He drew out a handkerchief and, in one motion, bound it around her wrist and the manacle both. Then he had handed the length of chain trailing from the manacles to the knight.

Elise looked down blankly at her bound wrists. Every time she moved, the raw iron knocked against wrist bone and left it throbbing.

But it wasn't pain past bearing.

To the eye, the handkerchief looked like nothing more than a tie between manacle and wrist—but in truth, it was wound twice around her bare wrist and the back of her hand. That was why her skin stayed this whole—not one scrape, not one tear.

Had he done it on purpose?

That much, she couldn't say. He wasn't, to begin with, a man whose face ever gave much away.

Elise fingered the knot resting against her hand. Because of that man, she'd been spared this much too—becoming something for the guards' eyes to feast on.

'So that's why nobody's said a word about me keeping the hood on like this….'

Was that just how the Duke was made? Elise found herself curious. Only a little.

What did he actually think of her? Did he know—that the favors he tossed her way, offhand, with that face empty of all feeling, kept planting hope in her, again and again?

If she told his lord a bald lie through and through—would he ever forgive her for it?