IWJACM Chapter 3

Elise was moved to an empty tent.

It was bare inside, but incomparably better than a dark and filthy storage room. There was a cot, and even a wooden tub for washing.

The finest luxury a battlefield could offer—and her situation had become twice as dire as before she'd been captured.

The Grand Duke Kyrstan, the man they called the savage war demon, was almost certainly far more reasonable and functional a human being than rumor suggested.

But he showed no indication whatsoever of intending to let her live.

What he had arranged for her was this: her blood wiped away, her clothing put in order so she wouldn't be seen in that state before the eyes of other men, and one tent given over entirely to her with three meals delivered faithfully each day.

That was all.

But did he honestly think she could eat three proper meals, having just been told she would be seen to with due respect on her final journey?!

Elise let out a hollow laugh.

She had no appetite—she turned away every meal—and no additional measures were taken. The Grand Duke did not come to see her again.

Anxiety ate away at her reason.

"If you mean to kill me, just do it now—"

Elise pressed her teeth together. If he was going to kill her anyway, he could take her head in one clean stroke. What was the point of keeping her breathing and delivering food?

She had checked several times whether she might slip out, watching the activity outside the tent. But the guard could not have been more severe. Not even in the palace at Argan had there been this many escorts standing before her chambers.

A prisoner unbound meant scrutiny twice as unsparing—there was no help for it. Elise refrained from reckless action and instead pressed her ear to the gap in the tent wall to listen to the conversations outside.

"Is it really true—she's the last of Argan's imperial bloodline? The princess who was kept so secret?"

Her own story. Elise dropped to the ground and put her ear to the seam of the canvas.

"His Grace declared it himself. Can't be any doubt."

"Huh. They said she was frail. But the way she split open that grown man's body—that rumor was dead wrong."

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

"What else. Burn them. Collect the ash and send it to the Burken family, that's the order. Tch. That poor bastard had a cursed fate. Went and laid hands on the princess of Argan, of all people—"

Someone scoffed.

"Keep going on about Argan this and Argan that—it's a dead country, isn't it? The moment the Emperor died, Argan was finished."

Elise's body went rigid.

The low, reproving voice faded to a great distance.

"You shouldn't speak of it so cheaply. You know the Gallian myth of Argan?"

"Of course I know it. The nation of mages who defended the continent against the great dragon. But what use is that glory now?"

"No matter when it comes, every nation on this continent ought to bow before Argan. Van Yela itself owes its continued existence to Argan. The only ones who look down on Argan are Ughel's savages. Do you want to be pointed at as their equal?"

"Oh, come on—everyone already knows we joined hands with those savages to strike at Argan. What's the point."

"The point is we're going to distance ourselves from them before that association damages Van Yela's reputation. That's what."

Of everything exchanged, Elise could clearly grasp only one thing.

The moment the Emperor died, Argan was finished.

Andrei. Her twin brother. He was truly gone from this world.

The tears came all at once.

The last faint hope she had been nursing shattered to pieces. Andrei's final words—telling her to survive—had, in the end, been a dying wish.

'This is no time to cry.'

Elise bit her lower lip—already cracked and bloodied from the number of times she'd done this. Andrei, her only shield, was gone from the world.

She was truly alone now. She had to keep her head.

Pressing her trembling fingertips together, she turned her attention back to the voices outside.

"And what about the princess? What'll happen to her? The fighting's over—just mopping up the last stragglers and then it's time to withdraw the whole army. Can't very well keep her alive, but can't just kill her carelessly either."

"His Grace already sent a carrier bird to His Majesty. Word should come soon enough."

The Grand Duke Kyrstan appeared to be consulting with the Emperor on how to dispose of her. Every possible worst-case scenario circled chaotically through Elise's mind.

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

"Right. Once the business with the princess is settled, we can finally head home. About time—I'm sick to death of this dust-choked battlefield. Our supreme commander, though—even when he gets back he'll have to put up with His Majesty breathing down his neck for a while."

"How so?"

"You know how it is—His Majesty pesters our commander every chance he gets, nagging like a terrible mother-in-law. Get me one healthy son. Just one."

"Ah. That business."

"It's saying something that a man as unfeeling as he visibly looks drained every time he comes back from seeing His Majesty."

"But it would be a waste to see that bloodline die out. Still—easier said than done, isn't it?"

The knights passed a moment of empty laughter between them.

"He's no ordinary man, is he. Is there a woman in the world who could withstand a yon'gyn?"

Elise waited for them to continue, but the soldiers were soon relieved by new ones, and the information about the Grand Duke Kyrstan ended there.

Elise pulled her knees to her chest and turned it over in her mind.

Kyrstan was being pressed for an heir. By his own country.

A new piece of information. From the soldiers' words, it was clear that producing a successor was not a simple matter for him.

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

Because he was not quite human.

Because there was no woman who could withstand him.

'The rumor was true. He really wasn't human.'

A yon'gyn. Goosebumps ran up both arms.

The yon'gyn Elise had read about in books were half-human, half-beast—grotesque in form, low in intelligence, severely deficient in any capacity for human society.

But Rezet Kyrstan was strikingly different from those illustrations.

He was beautiful. Had he not been a man of such physical perfection that he looked like a carved statue of a sun god?

And he was cold—cold to the point of discomfort, impassive to the point of unease. To connect him with the monsters in those pictures—the ones said to lose control of the dragon madness running in their blood and go on rampages—was nearly impossible.

No ordinary woman can withstand him.

An unexpectedly valuable piece of intelligence, in any case. Elise pressed the new facts into her memory again and again.

Whatever it was, she needed as much information about the Grand Duke Kyrstan as she could gather. One of those things would certainly save her life.

The most probable hope, of course, was that the Emperor of Van Yela might show mercy and let her live.

Elise pressed her forehead to her clasped hands, as if in prayer, and shut her eyes tight. Please. Please.

'Please let me live.'

'If there is a way to survive, I will do anything. Whatever it takes, whatever I must endure.'

The Emperor's carrier bird arrived five days later.

The contents of the bird's message were not hopeful. They were far from what she had expected.

"……"

Elise stared at the face she was meeting for the first time in five days. Rezet Kyrstan was dressed with far greater precision and formality than before.

His hair combed cleanly back, the full uniform of Van Yela's military, the longsword belted at his hip—all of it deliberate. The effect was to make him feel even less human than he had in his loose white shirt five days ago. He looked like a plaster cast that had simply been dressed in human colors.

"You need not observe ceremony."

Elise forced the words out through her teeth.

"Spare me the pretense. A man delivering the means of self-destruction to a princess of a defeated nation has no reason to show her courtesy, does he."

"These are the words of His Majesty, the Emperor of Van Yela."

The Grand Duke Kyrstan ignored her sharp words entirely. The expressionless face was unsettling in a way she couldn't place.

"To the last remaining princess of Argan—the Emperor extends the opportunity to bring her remaining days to a close by her own hand."

Elise bit her lip and stared at what the attendant held out with both hands.

One was a small dagger with an ornate pattern embossed on the handle. Beside it was a vial the width of a finger, black glass. Its contents required no great imagination.

The Grand Duke continued without inflection.

"Choose. Will you take your life honorably, or be brought to the capital to die on the scaffold?"

The choice of how to die was, by any measure, a consideration. An honorable death by one's own hand was the most lavish end a princess of a defeated nation could be offered, sold off as a slave to a foreign country.

The Van Yela Emperor would not send anything cheap. Whatever was in that vial was certainly a high-quality poison.

It would leave no unpleasant marks on the body. The pain would be minimal. She would die clean and at ease.

It was a consideration—a way to let her preserve her dignity before enemy eyes to the last.

"Ha ha—"

Elise found she couldn't hold back the laugh.

'Dignity. As if I have the luxury of thinking about something like that.'