IWJACM Chapter 21

There is such a thing as feminine beauty so extreme it turns to poison.

Every time the princess showed her face before a crowd, every eye that could be called an eye turned helplessly to her, and Rezet found himself certain of it all over again: Elizabetha Arzeika was, without question, a woman fated to reap more loss than gain from her own face.

That dazzling shell of hers would stain and rot whatever surrounded it, like poison—and eventually turn on her, too. A person with no power to protect herself, however formidable a weapon she happened to be holding, would only ever be robbed of it, trampled underfoot.

His own men were the immediate problem. They weren't Lothier's own troops, but the precedent already set by Roderick's death needed no further explanation.

"No matter how many times I look at her, she really is a beauty..."

"They said poets and painters and philosophers flocked to the square on the day of her execution. If the execution had gone through as planned, that would have been quite the sight, in its own way."

"Roderick's probably down there gnashing his teeth right now, but what's it matter. She's lady of Lothier now, like it or not. Gods, looks like a saint and underneath she's..."

His sharp hearing caught every word his men murmured behind him. Ruben, watching Rezet's mood, snapped his voice up at once to scold them.

"Oi! Quit your gossiping back there! If you've got time to slack off, use it to keep your damn eyes on the surroundings instead!"

The knights' idle talk cut off at once. Whether they'd read the mood on their own or not, no more words followed.

The journey to Lothier moved along faster than expected. Unlike the trip from Argan's border to Van Yela's capital, the princess hadn't caused any strange incidents this time.

The carriage door only opened when the maid stepped out to report on her condition or to fetch food. Otherwise it stayed firmly shut.

At first, Rezet felt no particular need to open the carriage door himself. That held true for the first day, the second, the third.

By the fourth day, something began to feel off. It was quiet. Too quiet.

Surely at some point she'd crack a window, make some small sound to signal her presence—but the space around the carriage stayed silent as the grave.

However strong someone's patience, being confined to one space all day long couldn't be anything but stifling.

But putting the princess out among his knights, reeking of sweat and packed together, left him uneasy. The moment she showed her face, she'd fall to nothing but a feast for the eyes of men gone long-starved for a woman.

And yet, locking someone so frail-bodied inside that cramped carriage the whole day through didn't sit well either. It was her side that was near-imprisoned, but strangely, it was his own side whose insides kept twisting tighter and tighter.

Eventually Rezet asked the maid, when she came to report on the princess's condition.

"Is she not finding it stifling?"

"She doesn't show it. I did think about raising the curtain..."

Yvessa's face twisted into a troubled expression.

The princess had sat there for hours, still as a wax doll doing nothing but breathe, and when Yvessa had gone to draw back the curtain, she'd quietly shaken her head no.

"She said the sun tires her out quickly... that a rash might come up, so it would be better not to open it at all from the start. She seems worried about being a burden."

Rezet often found himself running into difficulty when it came to understanding the princess. By rank alone, she was the highest-standing person in this whole party. She had no reason to endure discomfort, no reason to accommodate anyone beneath her. That, if anyone, she should know better than most.

"...Anything else she said?"

"She said it's not so different from how it was in Argan, so it's fine. That keeping the schedule on track matters more, and it's fine to travel like this for a while..."

He didn't need to hear any more. That damned schedule.

The princess seemed to be carrying something like guilt toward him. If anyone were to weigh who stood to lose more from this marriage, it would obviously be her—so who, exactly, was supposed to be worrying about whom here?

Either way, one thing was certain: being helplessly trapped this long in such a cramped space couldn't be doing her health any good. And if the princess fell ill again, it would be his side left to deal with the mess.

Rezet strode toward the carriage. He knocked twice on the door, but no sound answered from inside. His eyes narrowed with a bad feeling as he pulled the door open.

"Your Highness?"

For one instant he genuinely thought she'd collapsed again. His heart, which had dropped sharply, slowly settled back into place.

The princess had drifted into a light doze, her head tipped slightly against the window.

Her long, softly curling silver hair was braided down over one shoulder, loose and messy. The curve of her closed eyes looked innocent as a girl's, and her slightly parted lips lay completely defenseless.

"……."

That woman really was nothing but poison, no mistake—fatal to the one who held her, fatal to the one who took the blow.

The noise from outside poured in through the open door, unfiltered. Elise, sensing someone near, jolted awake with a violent start.

"Ah, Yves—my lord?"

She found Rezet and asked, bewildered.

"Is something wrong?"

"……."

"Was there something you needed to tell me...?"

His silence made her anxious almost at once. She straightened her posture and smoothed her disheveled hair.

"If there's a problem, please tell me..."

"The sun isn't strong today."

"...What?"

"Your body will stiffen if you stay shut in the carriage the whole way. What would you say to traveling on horseback instead?"

It was phrased as a suggestion, but the tone wasn't one asking permission. Elise blinked, dazed, staring down at the hand held out to her.

"If I come out... the atmosphere won't be very good, I think."

"That isn't something Your Highness needs to concern yourself with. Come out."

The Grand Duke was immovable. He looked like a man who'd already decided, then and there, that he was pulling her out of this carriage regardless.

The instant Elise, hesitating, gave him her hand, he pulled her with a grip considerably stronger than she'd expected. The back of her hand, caught tight in his grip, stung with a sharp, prickling ache.

She had no choice but to climb down from the carriage. His warhorse—a mount Elise already knew well—stood waiting in front of it.

"You should put the hood up."

Elise swept her hair to one side and pulled up her hood. But it apparently still didn't satisfy Rezet. He reached over and dragged the hood down further, past her forehead, down below the bridge of her nose.

Her vision went dark. He always did this—covering her face this way.

"Just in case, even if the sun isn't strong."

"But like this I can't see anything in front of me..."

"I'll be guiding you. Just leave it."

Rezet stopped her hand as it fumbled at the edge of the hood. Not stopping there, he lifted her straight off the ground.

In an instant Elise found herself set onto the horse's back. This time she was seated sideways, unlike before.

Rezet mounted behind her. The horse's back rocked beneath them. He held her firmly steady as she swayed with nothing to grip. Then he gave the horse's flank a light kick with his heel.

The horse began to move, hoofbeats striking the ground.

Just then a breeze caught the edge of Elise's hood and blew it back. Only now could she finally take in the scenery of the road they traveled.

The sun wasn't strong, but the day was warm. They were passing along a cliff edge midway up a mountain.

Green woods pressed close on three sides. Beneath the western cliff sat a vast lake.

The knights who should have been ahead of them were nowhere in sight. Somehow they'd ended up at the very front of the column.

The Grand Duke slowed the horse's pace. Elise glanced around, anxious.

'Aren't we falling too far behind?'

If the lead rider slowed down, the whole column naturally slowed with it. Elise craned her neck this way and that, trying to see how things stood behind them, but the man's body blocked her view entirely.

Rezet, unable to just keep watching her fidget in his arms for so long, finally said something.

"It's a slope, so we can't pick up speed regardless. The terrain is rough here as well."

"I see. That's a relief."

Elise relaxed. Only then did the thought arrive: she'd come out without even a glance at what state she must be in.

She smoothed her hair awkwardly with her hand. She didn't need to look pleasing to the eye, but she should at least look presentable—and somehow, in front of this man, she seemed to fail at even that, every single time.

Rezet said, almost offhand.

"If you want back inside, just say so. If all you ever tell me is that you're fine, I have no way of knowing otherwise."

"I really was fine. It's not a lie... I'm more used to being indoors than outside, that's all. In Argan I spent most of my day in my bedroom."

"I wonder how it was that Argan's princess came to be so shut up in the palace..."

"I wasn't confined, exactly. If I wandered around outside too long, I'd keep ending up bedridden, again and again—there wasn't much choice."

No one had ever locked Elise in her bedroom. The real culprit that kept her bound hand and foot, unable to budge—that was nothing but her own wretched carcass of a body.

Her eyes, taking in the greenery around them, took on a faraway, dreaming quality.

"Sometimes, when my brother came, we'd walk in the garden together. Those were always such special days—I'd feel excited from the moment I woke up."

"……."

"So today must be... one of those special days, too..."

The man held his silence again.

Elise had grown, by now, somewhat used to the pauses that came up whenever she spoke with him. When he felt no particular need to answer, this man simply fell quiet, like now.

Still, he must have been listening, at least—she could feel the arm wrapped around her waist tighten, just slightly.

Elise murmured, half to herself.

"Still... it's strange. I'm... strangely fine."