IWJACM Chapter 4

The ways available to Elise for dying were not limited to swallowing that poison. There was no shortage of options. It required no great effort—pressing the magic circle on her ankle and calling for her brother and she could dissolve into dust.

Which meant there was no urgent reason to choose self-destruction right now.

She still had well over two weeks before reaching Van Yela's border.

She had lain awake through the previous night and made her decision.

She would survive to the very end, whatever the depths she found herself in. Whatever she had to do. Whatever she had to endure.

Rezet Kyrstan was still appallingly, perfectly composed.

"That concludes His Majesty's message."

"Do I have to decide now?"

"If you need time to consider, I will give you some."

"……"

"I'll come again tomorrow morning."

Until tomorrow morning was a full day's time.

The Grand Duke clearly intended to say exactly that and withdraw. But Elise did not take her eyes off the mineral blue of his gaze—something pressed into his face like sapphire, impersonal as a material.

The strongest man in this encampment. The one with the highest authority.

She had heard that the Emperor would produce stars from the sky if this man asked for them.

He held power second only to Van Yela's imperial family.

Elise could not ignore the rope hanging directly in front of her. Even a rotted one was worth grabbing.

One possibility.

The one thing she knew about him: he held to his principles like a religion.

He would keep his word. The way Andrei always had.

"Lord Kyrstan."

The Grand Duke—who had given her a brief nod and turned to go without delay—stopped.

Elise crossed to him in wide strides. She looked up at him from close range.

She forced her voice to come out louder deliberately, to conceal the fine trembling inside it.

"If I don't take my life here—will you take me to Van Yela?"

"I would have to. Self-destruction, or execution at the capital. Those are the only two options."

The Grand Duke answered at neither a fast nor slow pace.

"If you choose not to take your own life, I will escort Your Highness to Van Yela's capital, Ophel."

"Unharmed. That's what you mean."

The Grand Duke's gaze touched Elise and then moved to the letter bearing the Imperial decree. He gave a dry affirmation.

"Yes. Unharmed."

Every word spoken as the Empire's commander carries weight.

Even more so—words spoken at a formal conveyance of an Imperial command could not be dismissed as empty or careless speech.

Elise had to die in Van Yela as the princess of Argan.

Then on the road to that death, Van Yela's army would treat her as a princess.

'No. That alone isn't enough.'

Rezet Kyrstan had not shown his face to her once in the five days just passed. He would likely be the same for the entirety of the journey to Van Yela.

Reaching Van Yela safely was not the point. Her goal was to get this man—somehow, by whatever means—onto her side before they arrived.

Whatever it took.

The only thing Elise had to work with was her own body.

Fortunate, at least, that—regardless of the fact that her life hung by a thread—the value of her body as the princess of Argan had always been, and in any context remained, exceptional.

What an absurd thing to be grateful for.

Elise finally opened her mouth.

"I won't take my life. And I understand that you are obligated to bring me to Van Yela's capital without so much as a scratch on me—unharmed. You are promising me this, yes?"

The man's eyes were still. He answered with nothing but a brief nod.

But will you remain unmoved even now? Elise bit her trembling lip with everything she had.

Let's see.

Just before the Grand Duke turned away completely, she caught hold of his arm.

"Why are you—"

And as he turned to her with a tone of faint perplexity—she reached for the dagger he had taken back. She gripped the handle and pulled. The blade came free.

The draw was smooth enough to make her skin crawl.

Elise drove it into her own left shoulder. She brought it down with force—the blade tore through skin and sank in nearly two knuckles deep.

The sharp involuntary intake of breath escaped before she could stop it.

"——!"

For the first time, genuine shock crossed the Grand Duke's pale blue eyes. He called out in a voice turned suddenly sharp.

"Your Highness!"

The voice summoning her had urgency in it, finally.

She smiled then—satisfied. The pain of tearing flesh was nothing against that satisfaction.

But the body did not follow the mind. The world tilted as her vision flickered. The man reached out and caught her as she collapsed.

Elise said, between uneven breaths:

"You said—bring me to Van Yela—unharmed."

"What is this—what are you doing—"

"You made a promise. Grand Duke Kyrstan."

The pain was vicious, raw flesh lit with fire, and her vision blurred. But Elise looked at the man holding her, checking the wound with a sudden urgency about him, and let out a small breath of relief.

This man would not be able to leave her alone now, for the entire road to Van Yela.

The princess had driven a dagger into her own shoulder.

Rezet had witnessed this unfathomable development and found himself without words.

Both his hands—where he had stanched the princess's shoulder—were soaked through with blood.

'You said you'd bring me to Van Yela unharmed. You made a promise.'

He hadn't anticipated she would read those words that way. Rezet finally understood exactly what she had intended.

She had no interest whatsoever in a dignified death.

More than that—she was not only refusing to die. She was actually planning to work on him. With her body.

With her body.

The phrase fit with a precision that was almost admirable.

The princess had hurt herself, and in the days following, she had tried to harm herself again in a manner that was almost convulsive. Which meant Rezet could not leave her alone for so much as a moment.

The Emperor's order was to bring the princess to the capital if she didn't take her own life—with the condition that she not sustain serious injury.

Why that condition had been attached when she'd be mounting the scaffold the moment she arrived, Rezet couldn't say. A knight had no cause to question an Imperial command. He simply followed it.

That said—sharing a tent with the princess was something else entirely. Astonishing.

Argan. Of all things, the imperial family of Argan.

The name of Argan carried more than the weight of a powerful nation on this continent of Grendel.

Rezet, for his part, held no personal grievance against Argan's imperial bloodline.

His feelings, if he were pressed to categorize them, would land closer to something like regard.

He thought of Argan—the country he had visited years ago, leading a goodwill delegation. An empire with its strength in decline from its peak, but still possessed of a composed and noble bearing.

The Emperor leading Argan, Arzeika the Third, had been nineteen at the time. The Emperor—barely past the edge of boyhood—had smiled warmly and offered Rezet the first greeting he could still remember now.

'So you are Van Yela's hero. Welcome to Argan, Grand Duke Kyrstan.'

The young Emperor had looked upon the slaughterer feared across the entire continent without a trace of flinching. He could not have been ignorant of what Rezet Kyrstan was.

Hero. Hardly.

Rezet also remembered his twin sister, the Princess Elizabetha.

He had seen her from a distance across the banquet hall, but the memory was clear. Not because he had been watching her with particular attention—simply because his memory was excellent by nature.

Though in truth, anyone who had seen a beauty like that would find her difficult to forget.

The silver-white hair that fell in waves past her waist, the harmony of golden eyes that were the very symbol of Argan's imperial bloodline—it was beautiful to the point of being overwhelming.

The Emperor had been a remarkably striking man as well, but there was no comparison to the princess. She did not look like a person who breathed the same air as ordinary people. She seemed almost holy—as if she wandered alone through a dreamscape.

There could not be two women in this world capable of inspiring something like religious devotion in those who looked at them. So it had been no great difficulty for Rezet to recognize the princess the moment she appeared.

The princess who had fled into his tent looked the same. Fragile and slight as a butterfly with a torn wing. Still impossibly beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with the ordinary.

But the unguarded purity of a girl was nowhere in her. What was pressed deep into every line of her face was the despair and precariousness peculiar to those who had felt the burden of living.

Even that desolation was noble on her. That was simply a matter of birth.

Rezet exhaled and looked down at the princess lying on the cot.

She had her eyes closed, but he knew she wasn't asleep. She had kept every sense in her body sharpened to a point all day, alert to whether he might step away from her side.

And if he did step away even briefly, she would unpick the bandage tied around her shoulder and dig into the wound. The injury had nearly festered—naturally he could not leave her, and just as naturally she could not leave him.

Only: Rezet had kept it to exactly that. He did not initiate private conversation with the princess.

But she spoke to him.

"Are you always this quiet?"

And Rezet had to answer. He could not disregard whatever the princess said.

"Yes."

Though there was no need for his answers to be long.

The princess laughed the laugh of someone who found the situation absurd, then opened her eyes and looked at him. Rezet kept his gaze lowered rather than meeting the golden eyes directed toward him.

Elizabetha's own eyes went sharp at that.

"Would I have to add another knife mark to my body to have a real conversation with you?"

"……"

The last princess of Argan was, in certain respects, more than a match for him.

Rezet resigned himself and opened his mouth.

"Your Highness ought to learn to treat your body with care."

"I'll be dead the moment I reach Van Yela. What use is care. I'll use it while I can still use it."

The tone was precisely opposite to the elegance of her voice. The princess pressed her hand to the cot and pushed herself upright.

She had clearly no intention whatsoever of treating her body with care—there was no caution in the movement.

The result was that the bandage changed barely an hour ago bled through again.

A line cut between Rezet's brows.