IWJACM Chapter 11

The victory celebration attended by the Ughel prince and his retinue proved less than pleasant.

Not only Rezet, but every noble of Van Yela present—the Emperor and Empress included—felt the same.

The barbarians' conduct was, in truth, thoroughly graceless and coarse. Dozens of emptied wine cups lay scattered across the table the Ughel party had all but seized for their own. However much they claimed to belong to the same Northern Alliance, no noble present wished to be lumped together with men like these.

Of course, to Rezet's eyes—long accustomed to contempt—one side looked much the same as the other. Victory's architect—he couldn't very well skip it. So he kept his seat. But his mind was elsewhere, entirely.

'I've left the territory too long.'

Lothier, relatively far south within Van Yela's borders, was Van Yela's breadbasket—one of the few lands in the north warm enough and fertile enough to be counted among its treasures. Naturally, it was also difficult to manage.

When he'd first taken his title, Rezet had gone out of his way to pick a small patch of land at the northern edge no one bothered with—nobody watching it, nobody visiting. But the Emperor forced the choicest cut of Lothier on him instead. The intent—to keep him closer to the capital, however slightly—had been transparent.

On top of that—under the excuse that Lothier was too important a territory to leave unwatched—he had to hand in management reports every quarter, without fail, and the instant the smallest gap turned up in one, Noyre pounced on it, that same tired lecture every time.

That the estate had no proper mistress. That if he'd just produce an heir, a little slack in the management could be overlooked.

Noyre's nonsense came in every flavor, corner to corner—and the result, fifteen years into his dukedom, was a Rezet who turned in reports with not one error, not one gap, anywhere.

And now, thanks to this campaign, he had already been away from his territory for nearly a year. Once he got back, he'd have to throw himself into work brutal enough to feel half-mad, right up till the harvest festival.

Even as a matter of courtesy, remaining in the capital for three days was more than enough. He intended to set out for Lothier by tomorrow morning.

Only one thing snagged in his mind.

The Argan princess's execution.

'Go and see it?'

Unlike three days back, Rezet hesitated this time—if only for a moment. Watch it or not, either way sat wrong.

Fretting over something this pointless, right to the end, no less. A woman who took no small amount of handling, and no mistake—he'd just landed on that very thought, when it happened.

"So then—lord of the brother-nation. You truly mean to keep the Argan princess to yourself, is that it?"

As though he had read straight through Rezet's thoughts, the Ughel prince called loudly across the table.

"Might be good sport, dragging her out right here, right now—what do you say?"

"The princess's execution is scheduled for two days from now."

Noyre said it mild as milk, papering his displeasure over with a warm smile.

"You'll get to go home with the princess's head, just as you wanted."

A warning, plain: push no further. Rezet watched as Yanok Sihat muttered something in the Ughel tongue that could only have been a curse.

That one had been sniffing after the princess for days now, and too much of it.

Not satisfied with just a public hanging in the square?

Or maybe it wasn't her corpse he was after, but something else. Something like—what?

That lovely face? A body pale and full as powdered pearl? Or maybe whatever scrap of magic still clings to her?

Rezet watched him with sharp attention. Sure enough, as the celebration reached its height, Yanok Sihat slipped away from the table, avoiding notice. His steps, loosened with drink, were sloppier than usual.

A crude man, dead drunk, off to do to a locked-up beauty whatever it was he meant to do.

"Uh, Your Highness? Where are you going?"

Ruben blinked in confusion at his commander, who had abruptly risen from his seat. Rezet, without a word of answer, turned and walked out of the hall.

Elise woke to the sound of someone's unsteady footsteps.

She'd been lying on her side on the unforgiving stone floor, and her whole body screamed, every muscle at once. The hood she had not once removed since being locked away still blocked her sight.

She shook her head and the hood slipped back. Her mind snapped awake, all at once. Elise lifted her head in alarm and found herself staring straight into a pair of bloodshot eyes.

"……!"

In the middle of yellowed, bloodshot whites, two black pupils held her own terrified face, reflected back at her.

The man, seeing her face laid fully bare under the moonlight, went blank a moment.

Only a moment. Then the corners of his mouth curled up, grotesque.

"So it's true…."

He said it like he was almost impressed, then shoved his hand through the bars without warning. Elise scrambled back in shock. A stranger, but she knew instinctively who he was.

Yanok Sihat. The fourth prince of the Kingdom of Ughel.

The same man who had come three days ago to take her away himself.

He shoved his fur-covered hand through the bars.

"Even the Emperor's got a decent enough mug, for a man—but you, you're not even the same breed of thing."

"Don't. Touch me."

Elise gritted her teeth and glared at Yanok Sihat. Her pride wouldn't let her cower, pitiful, in front of her homeland's own enemy.

The man's eyes crawled over her, greedy, while she fought with everything she had not to break.

"You're the real one, aren't you, you little bitch?"

"What?"

"Don't play stupid with me. Think we don't know the Emperor bled every drop of his own mana into you before he snuck his sister out?"

Poured his mana into her? Elise had never heard such a thing.

Was he talking about the magic circuits Andrei had inscribed on her body? But how could this man possibly know about that? The invisible circuits marked on Elise's body were a secret known only to her and Andrei.

Yanok Sihat rattled a ring of keys, chuckling low in his throat.

"Gotta check, before we kill you. Whether you're really a mage, or not. Empty husk, we just lop that pretty head off and go. Princess's head makes for a fine enough bait, after all."

The key slid into the keyhole, a perfect fit. The bolt's turn sent a chill crawling over her skin. Elise squeezed her eyes shut.

But the cell door did not open.

Instead, a dull, wet thud.

It landed with enough force that something—bone, surely—had given way. In that same instant, the lamp lighting the cell guttered out, all at once. Darkness swallowed whatever had happened.

Elise opened her eyes, but the dark had devoured her sight; she could see nothing at all.

"Gkh! Who—who's—"

Somewhere in the blackness, Yanok Sihat let out a choked, strangled sound, thrashing where he stood. He was being dragged off, somewhere. His pained groans faded, little by little, alongside another's heavy, unhurried footsteps.

Elise's lips parted before she could stop them.

"L-Lord Kyr—stan…?"

Why that man's name had come to her lips, she could not have said.

Only that the footsteps sounded similar.

A presence too large to miss, yet not a threatening one—one that felt, somehow, familiar. Or maybe—

Because in all this land of Van Yela, that man was the only one who'd shown her even the smallest scrap of kindness.

But no answer came back to her out of the dark.

The footsteps, stopped a moment, started again. No hesitation, no wavering—even, measured.

Yanok Sihat's dying gasps shrank smaller, smaller—then stopped, entirely.

Elise lifted a hand shaking with tremors and gripped the iron bars, rattling them. The door remained firmly locked. A cold silence settled once more over the cell.

"……."

The man answered her call with not one word.

Elise still could not read his intentions.

Was it some part of the Emperor's order—see the wrists of a prisoner soon for the gallows don't get hurt, clear out anyone with foul intent the night before she dies? Or was it only that helping the weak falls under a knight's duty?

Or perhaps—was it possible that he pitied her?

Please, let it be that. More than anything, she hoped so.

She stood there a while longer, frozen, gripping the bars—then, belatedly, murmured.

"Thank you."

Only stillness answered, still. Elise swallowed back the rest of what she hadn't yet said.

And I'm sorry.

Ever since the Duke had taken her, Elise had thought, and thought again, of how she might survive.

However she turned it over—only that one man. A man who never once answered when she called—and even so, the one soul in all Van Yela who showed her any mercy at all.

Elise leaned her cheek, wet with tears she hadn't noticed falling, against the cold iron bars. Rezet Kyrstan.

She could not let him go. Not him.

Morning came on the day of the execution.

Elise sat in the middle of the cell, in a beam of sunlight no wider than the slit-window it fell through, and steadied her heart.

Today might be the last day of her life.

She bit down on her lip and tasted blood. Elise prayed, desperately, that today's absurd, half-mad plan would somehow succeed.

Thin sunlight fell over her bowed head as she pressed her hands together, eyes closed, murmuring a prayer. Light-dust drifted down over hair soft as silver thread, over thin, fragile shoulders. For that moment, she looked like something out of a holy painting.

At last, Elise opened her eyes.

She turned her hoarse voice toward the guard who had been staring, transfixed, from outside the cell.

"Could you have word sent that the Princess of Argan requests one final audience with His Majesty the Emperor of Van Yela?"

She did not think the Emperor of Van Yela would refuse such a request. Enemy nation or not, this was still a request from the last of the royal line of a country that had once stood shoulder to shoulder with Van Yela, ruling an age side by side. Had their positions been reversed, Elise herself would have granted it.

Her prediction landed true. The moment approval came down, the dungeon door—shut fast five days running—swung wide.

Elise followed the knight who held the end of her manacle's chain out of the cell. She walked down an endless, unfamiliar corridor within the Van Yela palace.

She walked, and thought. Already, she'd drifted impossibly far from any honorable death.

But then—maybe she'd never been close to dignity, not since the day she was born.

Elise had never been a strong one, among the imperial line—she'd lacked even the pride that should have come with royal blood. From the moment of her birth, she had lived hidden away, always in her twin brother's shadow. Argan's people had adored a princess whose face they'd never once seen—worshipped her, nearly, like an article of faith—and she'd never once accomplished a thing worthy of it.

No one had ever wanted her brought before the world, to begin with—so maybe her parents, and Andrei, had understood it long ago.

That Elise wasn't the kind of royal that Argan, splendid Argan, deserved.

So she could do anything—anything at all—if it meant staying alive.

Not just surviving, and having that be all—but living, so that someday, without fail, she could go back to the land of Argan….

Because she had to raise a gravestone for the twin who'd died there, alone.

Because she had to go and comfort the souls of Argan's people, ground underfoot by barbarians after their king was lost to them.

So I can tell even a lie this absurd, without a shred of shame.

Elise gathered her trembling hands together with effort.

To live, she had to prove her worth here, in Van Yela. In the most shocking way there was—and the most effective.

'I Can do this. Have to.'

Over the past month, she had imagined this very moment hundreds of times.

Crossing the splendid halls of this foreign palace, kneeling at last before the Van Yela throne, she'd tell the enemy emperor:

"I carry the Grand Duke Kyrstan's child."

One sentence. Meant to overturn her whole fate.