IWJACM Chapter 27

Rezet's doubt hadn't left his face, but he didn't press further.

"I'll be just behind, then. Call if you need anything."

Elise only nodded and fled behind the screen as if escaping.

Hot steam was already rising from the prepared tub.

Elise finally let go of the hand she'd been clutching to the front of her robe. She glanced toward the screen, then quickly slipped her bare body into the tub.

The warm water closed over her body. With no oils or bubbles, her body showed clearly beneath the rippling, clear surface.

Truly, not a single scratch. A stroke of luck.

Thinking of how, back in the Argan days, she'd have come away with at least two broken limbs from something like this, a chill went through her entire body.

Elise lifted her right arm and checked the inside of her forearm. As expected, the protective magic circuit had vanished without a trace. It had probably faded on its own after the barrier—spread wide enough to shield the whole company—had dissipated.

But I could have sworn… underwater… the barrier had stitched itself back together.

Some powerful force had pushed her upward from behind as she sank toward the bottom of the lake.

...A trick of the mind?

Come to think of it—this had happened before, too. Right after she'd first been taken captive by Van Yela's forces.

When a knight named Roderick had tried to rape her, an unknown force had erupted and cut him down. A force strong enough to kill a solidly built, muscular man in a single stroke.

The Ughel prince's voice and Andrei's overlapped in her mind, dizzyingly, like an auditory hallucination.

'You're the real one, aren't you, you little bitch? Think we don't know the Emperor bled every drop of his own mana into you before he snuck his sister out?'

'You'll get healthy.'

'…Just what did you do to me, Andrei.'

Elise closed her eyes, at a loss. Even soaked through in hot water, cold was gathering somewhere deep inside her.

The water cooled quickly. Elise remembered someone was waiting outside and hurried to rise from the tub.

A towel and a change of clothes waited outside the tub. A long nightgown of soft silk.

The moment Elise had clumsily worked her way into the gown, Rezet appeared from behind the screen—however he'd known to. Considerable time had passed since she'd sunk into the water, and it seemed he really had been waiting the whole while.

Elise was drawn back into his hold, just as before.

The Grand Duke, the princess, and the Lothier column stayed several days in the village. They'd only made it a little more than halfway to Lothier by now.

Rezet flatly dismissed Elise's worry about whether the schedule was all right.

"I've already sent scouts ahead into the nearby forests and mountain paths. We'll continue at this pace until we reach Lothier, so Your Highness should focus on recovering."

Now that Ughel had gone as far as loosing poisoned arrows in an ambush against Van Yela's own forces, this was no longer some fistfight between two men settling a private grudge.

Brother nations bound within the Northern Alliance were forbidden from raising swords against one another. And Van Yela stood as the very power that had established that rule as head of the alliance.

Yet Ughel, the most junior member to have joined the alliance and, by rank, the youngest of the brother nations, had been the first to break that taboo. And not against just anyone—against the returning column of a Grand Duke, the younger brother of the alliance's own ruling emperor.

Rezet wasn't about to let this slide. On the very day of the ambush, he'd already had the heads of Yanok Sihat and the Ughel soldiers shipped straight to the capital. By now, Van Yela's palace would be in an uproar. This was a matter serious enough to justify convening an emergency session of the Alliance council.

Against all that, a delay in Lothier's homecoming schedule was hardly worth calling a problem.

Meanwhile, Elise was coming to understand Rezet's assurance that she needn't fear an unexpected ambush going forward.

It seemed he'd settled on simply never leaving the side of the one he was protecting. She kept sneaking glances at the man seated close beside her, half-reclined on the bed.

'When does he sleep, and when does he wake?'

Elise had never once seen him asleep. During their stay at the inn, Rezet had never once come up to lie beside her, either.

He'd instead brought a chair to the bedside and spent the time reviewing his knights' reports. He'd even read a letter that had arrived from the Van Yela capital, from the Emperor himself, and written a reply.

'He doesn't watch his brother's temper at all, does he.'

And apparently, he wasn't watching hers either. In the end, Elise turned her head away, tactfully, to avoid the mishap of peering into another nation's confidential correspondence.

In fact, Rezet was skimming Noyre's handwritten tantrum with half his mind elsewhere.

「You've really gone and lost your mind, haven't you? Think I won't see through it if you try hiding behind 'he wore a mask, no one could tell'? Knew full well he was Ughel's fourth prince and killed him anyway? And then had the nerve to send his head back like it's something to be proud of? You absolute lunatic. Not causing more trouble was my order—did it go in one ear and out the other?」

Imperial dignity had been thrown to the dogs entirely. There wasn't a shred of substance in it.

Rezet scrawled his reply, not bothering to dress it up. The poisoned arrowheads, the confessions dragged out of the captured Ughel soldiers under interrogation, the full extent of the damage on their own side—he wrote it all in. That much should more than cover the cost of Yanok Sihat's head.

Noyre would no doubt seethe over it privately, but as Van Yela's emperor, he wasn't the type to bow to Ughel over it. He'd manage the mess well enough on his own.

That settled the matters that fell to him to handle.

Rezet had just set the vellum aside when he noticed how quiet the room had become.

The woman who'd been peering up at him from the covers, eyes rolling this way and that, had fallen asleep at some point.

Contrary to how she looked, the princess apparently wasn't picky about where she slept. Rezet leaned in, noting how she'd curled herself up beneath the blanket.

Then he stilled, catching the chill radiating off her.

'Cold….'

Her cheek was cold. Not just her face—the air around her alone seemed to sit at a lower temperature than everywhere else.

"Your Highness."

Rezet was gradually coming to sense that something wasn't right.

However much warmth he poured into her, her body failed to hold it—it simply bled straight back out. That was why, once a chill set into her, it took her weeks to recover. He was becoming certain the same held true for medicine as well—that her body failed to properly absorb it.

The physician Rezet had brought from Van Yela's capital had already examined her more than once. But the result was always the same.

'No abnormality found… truly?'

The only way to be sure she was even alive was to touch her, or speak to her and watch for a reaction. A state like this could hardly be called normal.

In the end, Rezet forced himself to shake Elise awake.

"Your Highness!"

"……?"

Only after being shaken twice did Elise's eyes flutter open, heavy with sleep. Rezet lifted the woman, still hazy with drowsiness, into his arms.

"Why…?"

"It's nothing. Never mind me—sleep more."

He carried her up onto the bed with him. Reclining against the headboard, he drew her up a little higher against him.

Elise found herself draped against him. Not understanding what was happening, she blinked, dazed. Rezet added, brief.

"You seemed cold."

Only then did Elise murmur something small in thanks.

As Rezet smoothed down her thin back and let warmth seep through her skin, her stiffened muscles eased, soft. Elise let out a sound somewhere between a sigh and a moan, and let her body go slack.

Rezet glanced down at the woman in his arms. Her long, dense lashes lowered slowly, then lifted again, over and over. The change in position seemed to have chased off her sleep.

Sensing his eyes on her, Elise lifted her head. Their gazes met in the empty air.

Sensing his hand had gone still, a small confusion surfaced in Elise's languid eyes, soft and molten with sleep.

The warmth that had been steadily heating her body cut off. Elise instinctively pressed closer to him. She curled in like a small bird finding a safe nest, cheek rubbing faintly against his chest.

At the ticklish sensation, Rezet's brow furrowed slightly.

Elise was wearing nothing but a thin nightgown. He, too, was dressed not in armor or a jacket but a light cotton shirt. The soft curve of her body against his was clear enough to trace even with his eyes closed. That was how close they were pressed together.

The tightly-bound thread of his self-control began, gradually, to waver.

Without either of them noticing, Rezet's hand—which should have stopped at her lower back—slid past, unable to help itself. It was probably the scent of fresh blossoms rising off her skin, numbing his reason.

He hadn't meant to. But not meaning to wasn't a sin either.

Hadn't she been the one to promise to give this body to him, every last part of it?