IWJACM Chapter 22

Dragged along for a month and a half, locked in a cell for five days. Ordinarily there wouldn't have been a sound patch of skin left on her—never mind that she should have spent a full month, at minimum, laid up sick.

Wasn't hers the freakish sort of constitution where one wrong step rolled her ankle, where even a shallow scrape dragged on for weeks?

Elise drew her hand out from inside her robe and checked her bare wrist. When the manacles had first come off, a red bruise had sat stamped clearly into the wristbone.

Ten days or so had passed since that day. The bruise had gone yellow now. A faint stain remained, but it had nearly disappeared entirely.

"The bruise is still there."

Above her head, Rezet let out a light sigh. Startled, Elise asked back.

"Still there? This is the first time one's ever faded this fast."

"—What?"

"In just ten days…. How did that happen?"

Andrei's voice rang abruptly through her head.

'You'll get healthy.'

'Come to think of it, he'd said something like that when we parted, too.'

She'd taken it only as encouragement—words meant to reassure her she'd manage fine even away from Argan. Had that not been all it was? A glimmer of hope began to grow in Elise's eyes.

'Maybe I really can be free of this husk of a body someday…!'

Even the plans she'd been quietly building on her own seemed to catch a little light. She sank into her own thoughts for a while, and only belatedly did she notice the silence stretching out where the conversation had trailed off oddly.

"Oh, sorry. It's just strange, since this has never happened before."

"Sure held on…."

"Sorry?"

"Never mind."

Rezet caught the words that had nearly slipped out of his mouth. He thought: well, look at that—holding on this long.

Bruised this badly just from a pair of manacles was startling enough. And it lasted ten days? Over that? Over a thing that trivial?

He had genuinely never, in his life, seen a human this fragile. The physician's diagnosis surfaced again in his mind, one after another—that Elise's pulse hadn't seemed like the pulse of a living person at all.

"Shouldn't you rest?"

"Oh—shall we go back to the carriage?"

"No. I'm asking whether you'd rather stop the journey and rest in a nearby village."

"I'm fine, but if you're tired, my lord, then perhaps we should—"

"—What?"

"Sorry?"

The conversation had gone strangely off track. Rezet had, in his entire history, never once been asked whether he was tired.

While he sat with the absurdity of it, Elise, belatedly, recognized her own mistake.

"I really am fine. I'll say something if I think we ought to rest. If I push through and collapse again, that'll just be a burden on everyone too."

Still, the answer left something distinctly unresolved.

A burden.

Rezet often found it hard to gauge exactly how he was meant to respond to this woman's words.

'Does she have no self-awareness as a princess? She should have grown up cherished, loved above all else—so why?'

Elise had a strange, persistent habit of watching for the other person's mood. She wore the bearing of someone born to rule and command, and yet every single word that left her mouth, without exception, came out low, groveling.

It didn't seem to be simply because Argan had fallen and she owed him a debt. Her "I'm fine" didn't discriminate by who she was speaking to, and it sounded almost like habit.

'Is it because she's never really met people?'

If she'd been raised cut off from the world, confined to her own room deep in the Argan palace, that might explain it.

The body now half-slumped into his chest was too thin at the bone, through and through. It was almost baffling that people took at face value the claim that a child had been put inside a body like this.

On a body this frail, she'd somehow made it all the way here. Rezet swallowed a sigh and braced her lower back a little more firmly.

A princess who had never properly set foot outside her own palace in her life—captured by an enemy nation, hauled across half the continent, thrown into a cell, spared death only through a lie, married off in a slapdash ceremony—and now, once again, riding east toward Lothier.

'At least her nerve isn't as poor as the rest of her—small relief, I suppose?'

But then, unbidden, came the awareness that he was paying the princess more attention than the situation required.

However she chose to determine the end of her own life was none of his concern. Rezet coldly severed the chain of thought right there.

Elise spent a while turning her head this way and that, taking in the scenery. Color gradually returned to her pale cheeks, as though warmth were rising in her.

But her lifted mood didn't last long. It happened just as the horse carrying them reached the end of the sloped road.

"A moment, my lord."

Elise's expression hardened as she gripped Rezet's forearm.

"I don't think we should go any farther. Stop the horse."

Almost simultaneously, Rezet sensed something similar to what Elise had.

Killing intent. His eyes changed in an instant.

Killing intent hung over the road ahead.

Rezet glanced at Elise, faintly surprised. His senses were sharper than any ordinary human's, beyond comparison. And still—she'd been a beat faster than him.

"Assassins… I think they're assassins. Twelve o'clock, and two o'clock—"

Seeming frightened, Elise drew her shoulders in and leaned in closer to him.

They stood at the head of the column. Rezet kept his gaze fixed ahead and bent his head down toward her ear.

"You'll need to go back to the carriage. Get inside, shut the door, and don't come out under any circumstances until I open it myself."

Elise bit her lip and nodded. Rezet dismounted first. Just as he reached both hands up to lift her down—

A whistling gust of air cut past her ear.

SSHRIEEEEK!

An arrow tore through the edge of Elise's hood.

"Wha—?"

Elise didn't immediately grasp what had nearly happened to her. Understanding only came after she saw the man's face, mid-lift, twist in something close to fear.

Someone had shot an arrow at her.

"Ruben!"

Rezet's shout tore out like a growl, calling his subordinate. In a single motion he swept Elise down to the ground, then handed her off to Ruben as he came sprinting up.

"It's an attack. Get Her Highness to the center, form up the defense."

"Yes! This way, Your Highness."

Elise barely managed to catch the edge of Rezet's cloak.

"Be careful."

The man's eyes settled on her again with that same unreadable look. He gave no particular reply, only nodding at Ruben.

The deep blue cloak slipped uselessly through Elise's fingers.

The carriage sat at the rear. Even over the short distance, arrows came down in a steady rain.

This volley had a different arrowhead shape than the last one. Elise's face went bloodless.

This arrow….

Elise gasped out a warning.

"Sir Ruben, the arrows are coated in deadly poison. Be careful not to graze them!"

"Poison? Damn it! What ballsy sons of bitches would dare pull this on Lothier's own army—!"

"Ughel. It's Ughel."

She'd seen arrowheads shaped like this before, escaping the Argan palace. The cross-shaped tip was far broader than a standard one, its edge coated in a black, viscous fluid. A few of her ladies-in-waiting had been struck by arrows like these and collapsed, black blotches erupting over their entire bodies.

"Savages, the lot of them—typical!"

Ruben swung his sword, deflecting two arrows at once. Elise tried to twist around and look back. Rezet's figure was hidden behind the knights.

Instead, black arrows poured down again through the empty air ahead of her, like rain. The aim was precisely fixed on her.

'I'm the target.'

Lothier's knights had already gathered around Elise before she'd noticed.

Could this many people, faced with dozens of arrows, come through without a single one grazing anyone?

There was no time to weigh it. Elise thrust her hand back inside her robe. Two fingers pressed hard beneath her left forearm.

A defensive magic circle sat there.

"Andrei—!"

The invocation activated. A faint blue glow spread instantly overhead, a barrier unfurling above everyone at once.

"—!"

The barrier's scale was broad enough to easily shelter dozens of people. Arrows striking the sturdy, translucent membrane bounced off in every direction.

Not only the knights guarding Elise but Elise herself was stunned.

'This—this was that broad a spell?'

Andrei had explained something to her once, when he'd inscribed the circle directly onto her body. But there was no time to dig through the memory now.

"Your Highness!"

Yvessa, ashen-faced, came stumbling out and pulled her toward the carriage.

"What in the world is happening. We haven't even fully crossed Van Yela's border yet. Are you all right?"

"Yes. Are you hurt?"

"I've been inside the carriage the whole time. Don't worry about me at all. It's not a pretty sight out there, so let's get the window down first…. Oh, you're freezing. Are you really all right, Your Highness?"

An inescapable stench of blood was seeping through the gap in the door.

The bodies she'd seen fleeing the Argan palace rose up before her. Faces of people who had once been her attendants, once nobles who had upheld Argan, filled her vision.

"I'm fine… fine."

Elise barely managed to choke back the urge to retch.

The smell of blood was growing stronger.

The front of the defensive line. Rezet looked up at the translucent veil unfurled above him.

Scattering faint glittering dust, it rippled through the air like a calm ocean swell. Countless arrows struck it and bounced away.

A beautiful sight.

"…Said she wasn't a mage, but knew how to use magic."

Hadn't been a lie, it seemed. If the barrier held on its own like this, there might not be any need for him to step in personally.

His right arm, which had half transformed, gradually stopped its change.