IWJACM Chapter 3

Elise was moved to an empty tent.

The inside of the tent was bare, but it was leagues better than the filthy, dark storeroom she'd been kept in before. There was a simple cot, of course, and even a wooden tub had been prepared for her to bathe in.

It was the finest luxury one could hope for on a battlefield—and yet her situation had grown twice as dire as it had been before her capture.

Grand Duke Kyrstan, the man called the savage war demon, was without question a far more sensible and ordinary human being than rumor had painted him.

But he seemed to have no intention whatsoever of letting her live.

The provisions he'd granted Elise amounted to this: wiping the blood from her and dressing her so her wrecked, disordered state would not be shown before other men. And giving her an entire tent to herself, with three meals brought to her without fail.

That was all.

But after telling her to be escorted, in peace, on her final road—did he truly think she'd be able to eat three proper meals?!

Elise let out a hollow, disbelieving laugh.

Food simply would not go down, no matter how many meals she sent back, and no further measure was taken because of it. The Grand Duke did not come to see her again either.

Restlessness ate away at her reason.

"If you meant to kill me, you should have just done it already…."

Elise ground her teeth. If they meant to kill her regardless, why not simply take her head in one stroke? Why keep breath in her body at all and still send in meals?!

She scanned the movement outside the tent, trying to slip away, more times than she could count. But the guard could not possibly have been any tighter than this. Not even before her own quarters in the Argan imperial palace had this many guards stood watch.

Since the prisoner was not bound, it was only natural that watchful eyes would be doubled. Instead of attempting anything reckless, Elise bent her attention to the conversation drifting in from outside the tent.

"Is it really true that woman is the last of Argan's royal line?! The princess wrapped in all that secrecy?"

This is about me. Elise dropped down onto the floor without a thought for how she looked and pressed her ear to the gap in the tent flap.

"His Grace declared it himself, so there's no doubt about it."

"Huh. And they said she was sickly. Seeing how she hacked a grown man's body clean apart like that, guess that was pure rumor after all…."

"What are we to do with Lord Roderick's remains?"

"What else. Burn it. Just the ashes go to the earl's house, those are the orders. Tch, that man really had a wretched fate, of all things. Had to go and lay hands on the Argan princess…."

Someone snorted.

"You keep going on about Argan, Argan—isn't it a fallen nation anyway? The moment the Emperor died, Argan might as well have already been finished."

Elise's body went rigid.

The low, chiding voice grew distant, remote.

"You shouldn't look down on it like that. Don't you know the legend of Ghallian?"

"Course I know it. The nation of mages who held the continent against the Mad Dragon. But what's the use of that old glory now, after everything?"

"Doesn't matter when it was—every nation on this continent ought to bow to Argan. Van Yela, too, owes its very existence to Argan's debt. Only the savages of Ughel look down on Argan. You want folks pointing fingers, lumping you in with them?"

"Oh, come on…. It's already common knowledge we joined hands with those savages to crush Argan. So what."

"That's exactly why—before that rumor leaves a stain on Van Yela's reputation, they want to draw a proper line between us and those savages."

Of everything in that exchange, there was only one thing Elise could grasp with any clarity.

The moment the Emperor died, Argan might as well have already been finished.

Andrei, her twin brother, really had died and left this world. Tears gushed up, sudden and violent.

The last fragile hope she'd held onto shattered into pieces. Andrei's parting words to her, telling her to live on, had become, in the end, his final testament.

'This isn't the time to cry….'

Elise tore at her lip with her teeth, desperate—it had split and scabbed raw with dried blood some time before. Andrei, her one and only shield, no longer existed in this world.

She was well and truly alone now. She had to keep her wits about her.

Elise pressed her fingers together, trembling uncontrollably, and turned her ear back to the talk outside the tent.

"So what's happening with the princess, then? The war's basically done, and once we mop up the last of the small fry, it'll be about time to pull the whole army out. Can't very well let her live, but it's not so simple to just kill her outright, either."

"His Grace has already sent a carrier pigeon to His Majesty about it. Word should come soon enough."

Grand Duke Kyrstan appeared to intend discussing her fate directly with the Emperor. Every manner of worst-case imagining spun through Elise's mind in disarray.

Outside the tent, a soldier stretched with a long groan.

"I see. Once the matter of the princess is settled, we'll finally be able to head home. Good—I'm sick to death of this dust-choked battlefield…. Though I reckon our esteemed commander will have to put up with His Majesty's nagging for a good while yet, even after we're back."

"How's that?"

"Oh, you know—His Majesty pecks at the commander like some fussy mother-in-law whenever he lays eyes on him. Telling him to hurry up and breed a healthy son already."

"Ahh, that."

"How else would that man, cold as he is, come away from an audience with His Majesty looking so thoroughly worn down?"

"Still, it'd be a shame to let that bloodline die out just like that. Easier said than done, though. Am I wrong?"

The knights let slip a short, empty laugh.

"He's no ordinary man, you know that. What woman in this world could possibly withstand a yon'gyn?"

Elise waited for them to say more, but the soldiers soon changed shift with a new group. Whatever they knew of Grand Duke Kyrstan ended there as well.

Elise wrapped both arms around her drawn-up knees and sank into thought.

'Lord Kyrstan is being hounded by his own nation to produce an heir….'

This was newly learned information. Judging from what the soldiers had said, producing an heir was, without question, no simple matter for him.

Because he was a yon'gyn—one who carried the blood of the dragon, a being called transcendent.

Because he was not human.

Because no woman existed who could withstand him….

'So the rumors were true. He really wasn't human after all.'

A yon'gyn—that's what he was. Gooseflesh crept up both her arms.

The yon'gyn Elise had seen depicted in books had been hideous half-beast forms, with low intelligence and remarkably deficient sociability.

But Rezet Kyrstan had been strikingly different from the illustrations she'd seen.

He'd been beautiful. A man with a body of such flawless proportion he might as well have been a statue carved of the sun god himself—wasn't that exactly what he was?

And yet he had been unnervingly detached and cold. It was almost impossible to connect that man to the pictures of raging beasts, unable to master the madness of the Mad Dragon flowing in their blood.

'Ordinary women cannot withstand him, is it.'

Whatever the case, it was unexpectedly valuable information she'd gained. Elise carved the new facts into her mind, again and again.

She needed whatever information she could gather on Grand Duke Kyrstan, anything at all. Some piece of it would surely save her life.

Of course, the most likely hope of all was that the Emperor of Van Yela might show mercy and let her live.

Elise pressed her forehead against her hands, clasped together as if in prayer, and squeezed her eyes shut. Please. Please….

Please let me live.

If it meant saving her life, she would do anything at all.

The Emperor's carrier pigeon arrived five days later.

The contents of the letter that arrived from the Emperor offered Elise no hope at all. It fell far outside even her own expectations.

"……."

Elise glared at the face before her, seen for the first time in five days. Rezet Kyrstan was dressed far more neatly and properly than before.

His hair swept cleanly back, the formal dress uniform of the Van Yela army, the long sword at his waist—everything about him bore the mark of full ceremony.

Maybe that was why he felt even less like he had any human warmth in him now than he had, disheveled, five days before. The man looked like nothing so much as a plaster statue that had simply been painted the colors of a human being.

"There's no need to bother with courtesy," Elise ground her teeth and spat the words out. "Spare me the hypocrisy. Why would someone bringing an item for a conquered nation's princess to kill herself with even bother with proper etiquette?"

"A message from His Majesty, the Emperor of Van Yela."

Grand Duke Kyrstan ignored her barbed words entirely. That expressionless face now sent a chill through her.

"To the last remaining princess of Argan, His Majesty grants leave to end what remains of her own life, by her own hand."

Elise bit her lip and glared at what the messenger held up in both hands.

One was a dagger with an ornate pattern embossed upon it, and beside it, a small black vial no larger than a finger. It took no effort at all to guess what its contents might be.

The Grand Duke continued, indifferent.

"Choose. Will you die with honor, or be dragged to Van Yela's capital and have your head taken on the execution platform?"

Being allowed to choose the manner of one's death was, without question, a consideration. An honorable suicide was the most extravagant death a conquered nation's royal, dragged off as a slave to a foreign land, could hope to receive.

The Emperor of Van Yela would hardly send anything cheap, so that was certainly a poison of fine quality.

Naturally, it would leave no unsightly mark on the body either. There would be little pain, and death would come cleanly and comfortably.

It was a consideration that let her preserve her last shred of dignity before the enemy army.

"Ha…."

Elise found, all at once, that she could not hold back the laugh.

'Composure. Like hell I've got the mind left for that.'