IWJACM Chapter 39

Finding her carried back in the Grand Duke's arms, Yvessa cried out, tears welling up.

"Your Highness! I was so alarmed—thought you'd vanished clean off without a trace…!"

Even going outside, all she'd done was get as far as the barracks. Was that truly cause for the whole castle to go on edge like this? Elise meant to say something to ease the worried Yvessa, but Rezet swept right past her, and the chance slipped away.

And so Elise found herself back in the Grand Duke's study. The door she'd come out through stood wide open, and before it, a snuffed-out lantern lay carelessly on its side.

Ruben had surely shut the door properly again, after letting her out—she couldn't make sense of what had happened. While Elise stood bewildered, Rezet stepped onto the stairs.

In an instant, the study fell away, far below.

Without so much as one candle to light the dark, he didn't miss a single step, not once, clean to the top. Within a matter of minutes, Elise found herself back in the bedroom.

'Ought she to apologize, in a case like this?'

However she looked at it, this seemed unfair. As Elise stood there in the middle of the sitting room, still in the robe, not having taken it off, Rezet let out a sigh and took it off her instead.

"I was startled."

"…Why would you be, of all people."

"Heard you'd gone down here—and yet the door that should've stood sealed was open. And Your Highness, nowhere to be found."

"How did you even know I went down here?"

"Because I came up to see you—and that's how I found out. Miss your footing on stairs that steep, and you'd have fallen straight to your death, plain as that."

Not five minutes back she'd been throwing an unreasonable fit over being left neglected, and now it turned out he'd come up to see her, today of all days. Of course, she knew it for an empty gesture. Probably meant only to glance in, make sure she was doing fine, and no more than that.

"…I was careful."

"Careful doesn't stop a body from slipping, not for one moment. And aside from that—what in the world possessed you, going to the barracks?"

Elise turned her head clean away, avoiding his gaze. 'I went looking for you'—that, she'd rather die than confess.

But Rezet cupped her cheek, turned her face back to his.

"Of course, you may go anywhere in Lothier you like. Only—don't go to the knights' barracks, or the military grounds past the outer wall. If you're truly curious to see them, I'll go with you myself."

"……"

"Have you forgotten what nearly happened to you, that first day you were taken by Van Yela's forces?"

Ah, that day. Elise called it back to mind, fresh. The day she'd very nearly died in the most humiliating, most wretched way there was—and yet somehow the memory had gone hazy on her. No doubt because the sheer weight of the man she met directly after had swallowed it whole.

"By pure luck, Fred Roderick—the one who died at Your Highness's hand—wasn't one of my own knights. But once trouble breaks loose in the same camp, I can't swear every last man under me has his head screwed on straight, either."

"…It wasn't my doing, was it…."

"I'm not saying it was your doing. I'm saying I worry—a great deal."

"Is that why you keep me shut up here, all the time?"

If he worried, if her leaving the castle displeased him so—all he need do was come to her, quick, whenever she wanted him to. And get done with whatever needed getting done, while he was at it.

If only that much were promised her, Elise could've gone right on staying quiet, shut up in this isolated bedroom—the same way she'd sat, unmoving, enduring the whole road to Lothier in that carriage.

Rezet saw clean through that thought of hers, just as plainly.

"…Have you had breakfast?"

And at the same time, Elise saw clean through his trick of changing the subject, playing like he hadn't noticed a thing at all—just as plainly.

Elise's eyes went wide, her mouth fell open.

"You—you wrote it down, put it in the contract itself, that you'd cooperate…!"

Heavens above—so that was his angle: never set foot on this topmost floor again!

And on top of it all, he found her going out for a walk objectionable? This wasn't what they'd agreed to, in the contract.

"So that means you mean to go on ignoring my side of it too, from here on?"

Rezet caught Elise by the shoulder as she made to spring up, forcing her back down.

"At the moment, I've little mind to."

"And will a day come when your mind changes?"

Not likely. He'd no shortage of other choices besides her, after all! Lothier was crawling with women he could work his urges out on. No need for him to trouble himself, going out of his way to hold her.

Elise clenched both fists, glared at him.

"Then I suppose there's no need for me to sit here quiet, waiting on you, either. Let go. I'll just get Ruben to show me round the land, then!"

Unfortunately, that outburst struck Rezet's temper dead center. His brow twisted crooked, at once.

'Ah—so unless it's for that child-making business, there's no reason for the two of us to be like this at all?'

Is that why she went trotting after Ruben Diarck, tail wagging?

Rezet's composure—already coming steadily unstitched ever since he'd searched that empty study and the stairway behind the wall, top to bottom—finally snapped clean through.

"I understand well enough what you want of me, Your Highness."

He cut her words off, in a voice edged with a cold wind.

"I don't believe I've told you this. What I find most tiresome in all this world—coupling like a beast, chasing after nothing but pleasure."

"What—"

"Particularly—joining bodies first, with no heart in it at all, with someone you scarcely even know."

Elise, lips parted blank, asked, voice trembling.

"Then why did you act that way, that time, at the inn…?"

If he'd had no mind whatsoever to spend the night with her, shouldn't he never have shown that overflowing heat so out in the open? Why say something like 'get used to what's mine'—as if that meant nothing?

Rezet answered, without so much as a blink.

"That's precisely why I did nothing, isn't it. Let you go without laying a hand on you."

"……"

Elise's head began to spin. What was that supposed to mean. It wasn't like he'd said his body and his mind ran on wholly separate tracks.

If he held to such principles, he ought never to have entered into a succession contract with her at all, to begin with. She was learning, for the first time, that this man—who preached his own code of principle so devoutly—had a shameless streak like this buried in him.

And that wasn't the end of it, even.

"I understand the physician told you how yon'gyn are conceived—how they're born. That is exactly how I was born."

"Ah…."

"A monster conceived in rape, born devouring his mother."

"……"

"Beasts lower than beasts. Once blinded by lust, caring nothing what becomes of whoever's pinned beneath them—just ramming on, regardless. My own nature doesn't sit far outside that same boundary. Which is exactly why I keep myself all the further from it."

Rezet himself had been the one to explain the particulars of yon'gyn nature to the physician, in such detail. But every word of it was the plain truth—not a shred of it exaggerated, not a shred of it lessened.

"Surely you don't wish to be held by a thing like that."

"…That's not—"

"In a case like this, you're meant to answer no. Without hesitating."

At his cold, insistent prodding, her lips trembled, parting soundless, over and over. Endlessly unfair as it felt—him dredging up his own past like this—she found herself stuck, unable to move either way. And somewhere in it, some sense of danger must have caught, for her delicate shoulders drew in on themselves.

Rezet clicked his tongue, inward. Seeing her frighten this easy, his resolve went soft again—he couldn't bring himself to push it all the way through.

Not that it hadn't been on his mind, continuous, since he'd come to Lothier. Elise wasn't wrong. He'd drawn his own signature onto that contract, with his own hand—couldn't dodge the duty forever. And so he'd been turning it over, again and again: exactly how he ought to hold this woman.

Rezet reached out, without thinking, stroked her long hair.

'Thought if he saw less of her face, it'd naturally cool off. Doesn't seem to be the case, either.'

Every last thing tied to Elizabetha Arzeika had turned into a problem. One after another.

Having sworn Elise a comfortable life here at Lothier, he couldn't very well keep her shut up alone in this dizzying-high bedroom. But then he couldn't have her going about with this face hidden away, either. And some other man's eyes falling on her—the way they just had—that was even less to be allowed.

Elizabetha drew every eye to her like iron to a lodestone, wherever she was set down. Nor was it only men, either. How many times had her name come up, even on the maids' own tongues?

Plain as day: the more she was brought out into the wider world, the more people there'd be trailing her with their eyes. Just picturing it stirred something in him like resistance. Maybe worrying over Elise was itself nothing but an excuse.

'You'd do better to treat her the way you would some prized piece in a collection.'

Rebecca Phaetyson had seen it clear, right enough.

Elise shook her head, escaping the hand smoothing through her hair. Silver-grey lashes traced like fine twigs over golden eyes brimming with grievance. Even seen again after a week apart, she was—as ever—beautiful.

Rezet cupped her left cheek in his palm, tilted her face up to look at him. Beauty was no crime. And yet—beauty enough to wholly unseat a man's mind—could that not amount to something like a crime, after all?

He wanted her, still. Wanted her the way he'd wanted her three years back, glimpsing her in passing at Argan's imperial palace.

He traced his fingertips up along her cheek, stroked the round curve of her ear. Elise flinched, as if ticklish. Her chest heaved, rising sharp and obvious—so her ears ran sensitive, it seemed.

Where else might she answer, if he touched there. Rezet let out a soft, self-mocking laugh, at his own curiosity over such a thing.

That this troublesome, beautiful creature made his mind and his heart run on wholly separate tracks—and he couldn't even lay the blame on her looks.

A woman with a face maddening-lovely enough, eyes so guileless, indignant he wasn't taking her—what man alive wouldn't stir for that. Absurd, nearly. And fortunate, at least, that he was the only man she carried on so bewitching with.

So then. What was to be done.

'A collector's piece…. A collector's piece—well. Not the wrong word for it.'

The thought was settling slowly into order, in his mind.

Certain enough—he wanted this glittering thing that had come into his hands, however briefly, all to himself. As whole, as unmarred as she could possibly be kept. His. His alone.

Handled with care, so she wouldn't chip, wouldn't break by some careless mistake—slowly. To take her only the once, only to have her shatter forever after—what greater waste could there be than that.

Having reached his answer, a quiet curve of a smile settled at the corner of his mouth.