IWJACM Chapter 2

He was a broad-shouldered man in a white shirt.

He sat on the cot in the far corner of the tent. His build alone was enough to make the air feel denser.

His black hair was slightly disheveled, pushed carelessly back from his forehead. Dark brows and long, horizontally-set eyes—exposed without apology.

He was loosening the tie at his collar. The unhurried ease of a beast that had been resting—and had just found unexpected prey.

With nothing but his gaze, the man quietly overwhelmed the space around him. Elise could not move—as though she'd been nailed to the ground.

She knew this man.

"A—"

A small sound slipped between her barely parted lips.

"Kyr—stan."

The Grand Duke Kyrstan. Half-brother to the Emperor of Van Yela, and master of Lothier—one of the few blessed territories left in the north.

She had definitely seen him before.

Three years ago, before Argan had begun to fall in earnest. He had come to Argan at the head of a goodwill delegation. She had seen him then.

Only from a distance, a glancing look—and yet the impression he had left was not the sort that faded easily. Besides, the Grand Duke with black hair and blue eyes had already been spoken of across the entire continent by then.

He was said to have appeared one day from somewhere, presented as a half-brother to what was then the fifth imperial prince—son of the late Emperor's missing favorite concubine and some vagrant she had involved herself with. By blood, not a drop of Van Yela's imperial line ran in him. And yet the fifth prince had claimed him as a brother willingly.

Six years after that, the fifth prince launched a coup and seized the throne.

The one at the center of that bloodshed had been this man—the half-brother of unknown origin.

The newly crowned Emperor promptly invested him as Grand Duke and granted him the territory of Lothier, known for its abundance.

Under an Emperor who pursued an aggressive policy of territorial expansion, the Grand Duke spread his infamy across the continent.

People called him the war demon.

"……"

A suffocating silence stretched between them. Elise could not produce a single word.

Would this man remember her?

Elise had been a princess of Argan—but Andrei had kept her carefully hidden, forbidden her from attending even imperial functions, and so her face and name were not widely known across the continent.

What was publicly established about her amounted to this: she was the twin sister of Argan's Emperor. And she was exceedingly frail.

Everything else was speculation. She couldn't stand in sunlight for long, they said. The Emperor doted on her so extremely that despite being of marriageable age she had not yet wed. She was, in truth, some manner of half-invalid with something irreparably wrong with her.

There had even been a filthy rumor going around that she and her twin the Emperor were involved in that way.

When Elise had learned of the rumor tainting Andrei's honor, she had begged her brother to let her attend his birthday banquet. She had thought that if she appeared publicly, perhaps that kind of slander would quiet down.

That was the first—and last—time Elizabetha had shown herself to the world.

The banquet that day had also been attended by delegations who had arrived from across the continent to celebrate Argan's Emperor's birthday.

She had seen him then. The war demon of Van Yela.

If he had seen her that day too. If he remembered her. If, in this very moment, he had seen through to who she was—

Then Elise's chances of leaving this place safely had just become very small indeed.

To this man, she was the princess of an enemy nation—one he was obligated to capture and have killed. On top of that, she had killed a knight who was almost certainly his subordinate and attempted to flee.

Her vision went dim.

Why, of all times, did she have to come face to face with this man now.

If the Grand Duke Kyrstan was here, he would almost certainly be the supreme commander overseeing this entire encampment.

Her life or death rested on a single word from this man.

Whether or not he understood the darkness rotting through her insides, the Grand Duke gazed at her without speaking.

From behind the door came an urgent voice again.

"Lord Kyrstan! Are you inside?"

This time he responded to the summons. The man spoke, at an unhurried pace.

"What is it?"

Lower and fuller in resonance than she had expected. Faintly roughened, as if he had only recently woken.

"Sir Roderick has been assassinated! An intruder has broken in. Your orders—"

The Grand Duke's pale blue eyes moved over her—more precisely, over her body. Over both hands soaked through with blood, over the shirt that had been torn so thoroughly it barely served as clothing, then down to the skirt hem stained dark with spreading blood.

Elise's heart beat hard. One word from him here and her life was finished.

In desperation, Elise scratched at the marking inscribed on the back of her ankle.

The magic circle at her ankle was the spell Andrei had told her to use only in the worst possible extremity. He had said there must never come a day when she needed it—and yet, in the end, had been unable not to inscribe it.. It was a spell that detonated the body of the one it was inscribed into.

Press this marking and call her brother's name, and Elise could vanish from the world without leaving so much as a dirty trace behind.

The Grand Duke's gaze came back to her face. He had been watching her with an unreadable expression—and then, without warning, he rose from where he sat. His steps fell.

One step. Two steps.

When less than three paces remained between them, Elise's face crumpled with grief she could not hold.

It was over. There was nothing to be done now. Only death.

At least let it be clean. Die as a princess should, with Argan's dignity. Andrei hadn't yet gone—he would be waiting for her on the other side of death.

'So I'm not afraid.'

"Andr—"

Elise was pressing the magic circle on her ankle, the name forming on her lips—when it happened.

"I present myself before Her Highness, Princess of Argan."

What?

The next thing the Grand Duke did stopped her mid-word. Her lips parted without sound.

The man knelt on one knee before her.

"This—what—"

Elise was swept through with confusion. For a moment she genuinely could not tell where she was.

Was this not the Van Yela encampment?

Was this man not the one they called Van Yela's Emperor's watchdog?

"Commander, permission to—"

"No. Stay out."

No rise or fall in his voice. Elise met the pale blue eyes that had not once moved from her, disoriented.

She couldn't look away from them.

"May I be permitted a moment of your time, Your Highness?"

He had clearly recognized who she was without hesitation. Only then did she understand that the courtesy he had shown was the one offered to imperial blood.

There was no one on the continent who could presume to look down upon the imperial family of the great empire of Argan. This had been the convention of more than a thousand years—upheld since Argan had first come to rule this continent, Grendel.

But now that Argan had fallen, it was nothing more than a stale old custom. There was no reason at all to address the princess of a defeated empire with the extreme honorific of Your Highness.

Was this man mocking her, then?

"That state of dress is not fitting to be seen in."

But there was nothing in the Grand Duke Kyrstan's expression or voice to suggest it. He did not sneer at her, nor did he pity her particularly, nor did he display hostility.

He was simply without feeling. As though he had taken the appropriate courtesy as a matter of course—but meant nothing beyond that by it.

Elise bit her lip. From outside the tent she could still hear the sound of someone shuffling with agitation, stamping in place. She gave a single nod.

"You may."

The moment her permission was given, the man rose. He lifted a clean piece of folded linen from the small camp desk, dipped it into the water bowl set beside it, and wrung it out completely. Then he brought it to where she stood.

He lowered himself before her again and asked once more.

"May I touch your person, Your Highness?"

Again Elise had no choice but to nod. The moment her permission was given, the man took both her wrists in one large hand and lifted them.

He wiped Elise's blood-covered hands with the damp cloth. Diluted pink-stained water ran down and spread across the hem of her skirt and the fabric at his thigh.

Elise had no choice but to watch his face, vacant, as he wiped the blood from her hands and arms and hair and then put her into some outer garment that did not belong to anyone she could name.

His black hair was slightly damp—he had washed recently. Beneath it, thin-lidded eyes set long and level across the face; a straight nose; a mouth pressed closed in a flat line. A handsome face, cool and impeccable.

"Anyone who presumed to lay hands on Your Highness without permission should receive the punishment appropriate to that transgression."

She could not read his intentions. One of his subordinates had just died, and it was not difficult to guess where the cause lay—and yet even so.

'Why is he treating me this way?'

But Elise soon came to understand that this was simply his nature.

He resembled Andrei. The sort that placed principle and conviction above everything.

But this man was not gentle the way Andrei was gentle. There was not a trace of warmth in the eyes that looked at her.

This was not an act born of goodwill. He was simply showing the courtesy owed to the imperial family of a nation. Nothing more.

The Grand Duke, having brought her appearance to perfect order, withdrew his hands. He stepped cleanly away from her—and then directed his voice toward the outside of the tent.

"Come in, Sir Ruben."

"Yes!"

The tent flap opened wide.

The Grand Duke Kyrstan gave the command in a voice without inflection.

"Escort Her Highness."

"I beg your pardon? What did you just—"

"She is the last surviving member of the imperial family of Argan. The journey to the end must be seen to with due respect."

The pale blue eyes that pronounced her death sentence were as cold as ever.