IWJACM Chapter 5

Watching scratch after scratch accumulate on a body that ought not to bear a single mark was not a pleasant experience. It was the first stirring of feeling he'd had in a long time.

"I'll help you sit up."

The princess blinked and looked at him. Rezet found it almost incomprehensible.

After all, was this not exactly what she had been trying to bring about with her stunt? And yet she looked at him now with that expression—as though it were entirely unexpected.

With a heavy exhale, Rezet slid one hand beneath the princess's waist and the other behind her knees and lifted her. She was thin as paper, and lighter than he had expected even so.

He settled her upright against the head of the bed, then withdrew his hands quickly.

"Thank you."

She murmured it, barely audible. But those gold eyes hadn't moved from him—fixed on him with the same focused attention as before.

Eyes that seemed to be measuring something. He could tell she was reading him, but whatever she was thinking behind those eyes, he couldn't read in return. It left him with a faint, unexpected irritation.

The princess was silent for a time. Then she said something he hadn't anticipated.

"We've met before, haven't we, Your Grace."

"……."

"Isn't that why you recognized me at once?"

The irritation a moment ago shifted into something more uncomfortable.

Rezet found the situation—sitting across from this excessively beautiful woman and trading words with her—profoundly unreal, and yet found he could not simply ignore her question.

"I was sent to Argan once, as an envoy."

"Yes. I remember. Our eyes met, at the banquet hall."

The princess murmured it to herself. Then, lightly, as though setting something down on a table:

"Are you married, Your Grace?"

"Unmarried."

"You must have received many fine proposals from across the continent. If it isn't too forward—the reason?"

She was performing composure, but the end of her voice was trembling. Rezet answered plainly.

"I don't know whether you're aware, but there are stories about me spread across every corner of the continent."

"Ah…."

"I cannot imagine what father would consent to such a match."

A faint twitch at the corner of the princess's jaw.

Rezet Kyrstan's name was wrapped in more dark rumors than most could count. Those stories had surely reached Argan—they had reached the southernmost point of the continent. Was Argan exempt?

In the rumors, he was a murderous beast that no demon could rival. Cold and merciless, with a minimum body count of ten. Stories circulated that he was not human at all, but a monster.

Most of those stories, anyone with real acquaintance understood, were true.

Rezet Kyrstan was a cross between dragon and human.

Neither dragon nor human—an incomplete, unstable existence.

One who inherited not the dragon's power but its madness—a cursed bloodline that could only hold the madness boiling in their blood through periodic killing.

Most yon'gyn were born half-beast, half-human. A reptile's head on a human body, or the reverse; sometimes only one or two limbs holding the dragon's shape. Low intelligence. Fatal physical defects. They had carried these conditions from birth.

Such creatures were what history had called yon'gyn.

Rezet Kyrstan was one of these. He had simply taken a form closer to human than most.

The princess hesitated.

"Rumors… tend to be exaggerated."

"I believe there is very little falsehood in the rumors that circulate about me. If anything, I suspect considerably more remains concealed."

"I… see. But I've heard that Van Yela's Emperor has been pursuing a match for you. That he's been pressing you for an heir…."

"Ah."

For the first time, Rezet visibly frowned. The frustration and vexation he couldn't conceal played openly across his face. An heir. A successor. Marriage. They were the problems that had been plaguing him as long as he could remember.

Without meaning to, a sharp word slipped out.

"I have no particular taste for killing women in pursuit of an heir."

"……."

"I'd prefer not to see blood in bed."

The princess visibly tensed.

Rezet catalogued her reaction and let a faint contempt curl through him. His gaze dropped briefly to the hand she was holding, then lifted away. Frightened enough by that. And yet the hand still would not release his.

"An ordinary woman would certainly be at risk."

The princess managed this much, barely. Rezet's gaze dropped briefly to the hand that still held his, then lifted away.

The fingers that had tapped so lightly along the back of his hand when she asked whether he was married—thin, pale fingers. And yet despite his quite clear warning, those fine fingers had worked their way between the knuckles of his hand.

What did this mean.

The princess called to him in something close to a whisper.

"Your Grace."

"…Yes, Your Highness."

"Do you know that Argan's founder was a disciple of a dragon?"

Rezet did not answer immediately. The founding legend of Argan was known across every nation on the continent.

A legend more than seven hundred years old.

In the age when the mad dragon Semesitha's fury swept across the continent, five mages who had served the dragon chose to betray their master and protect humanity. Their leader—the hero Ghallian—became Argan's founder.

The first human who knew the dragon better than anyone. Taught directly by the dragon—the first to learn how to protect himself from it.

The hero and his descendants who, with that power, protected humanity's world—Grendel. The nation they founded was Argan. That was the reason why, even hundreds of years later, the entire continent loved and revered Argan's imperial family.

As generations passed, however, the mage's power flowing through Argan's imperial line had gradually thinned. By now, a mage was barely produced once in three generations.

And Argan's last mage had departed this life only weeks ago. The one standing before Rezet now was that mage's twin sister.

Rezet asked directly.

"Are you a mage, Your Highness?"

"Both yes and no."

She answered vaguely. It did not look like caution—not a careful refusal to show her hand.

She was barely holding up a thin shield with everything she had.

"There are countless myths passed down within Argan's imperial family, Your Grace. About dragons. Do you know them?"

The reason for surfacing this tired mythology was obvious enough.

Dragons. A dragon's disciple. And a yon'gyn.

Was this woman trying to find common ground between herself and him by any means available?

Did she believe that common ground could purchase his compassion or forbearance? A brief scorn touched the corner of his mouth.

"I don't. Nor do I wish to."

Even to his own ear, the words came out cold.

A woman whose last slender thread of hope has been severed will shatter immediately. Or weep quietly.

He was wrong. Despite the cold reply, the princess did not look particularly crushed. She only wore a faint, weary smile—as though she'd expected exactly this.

"What a pity. There might have been a use for me, after all. But you won't even hear it."

The melancholy that fell across her dazzling face made him, for one instant, feel like a guilty man.

That a woman could make a man feel guilty merely by lowering her eyes—extraordinary.

Her fingers were still tangled with his. Thin and delicate, not easily untangled—like a snarl of fine thread—and the sensation, softer than anything he had touched in his life, pressed itself deeper and deeper into his skin.

Then she tightened her grip, and Rezet knew, instinctively, that she had not given up.

The eyes looking up at him were burning with a hunger for life.

He understood it again. This woman had no intention of meeting the most beautiful death available to her.

It was not something he had anticipated—and so he found himself genuinely puzzled.

Imperial blood lived and died by honor. To choose self-destruction over being dishonored by the enemy—that was their pride, their obligation.

No one saw imperial blood as merely human. They were representatives of nations. Argan had fallen, yes, but Argan was still Argan.

Elizabetha Arzeika should die cleanly. Unblemished, unbroken, in a manner befitting a princess.

To lead her to a death worthy of a princess—that was the order Van Yela's Emperor had given Rezet.

So why she was determined to take the difficult path, he still could not fathom.

Rezet abandoned the attempt at understanding.

The princess had already, of her own will, refused Van Yela's accommodation. So she would be sent to the scaffold the moment they reached the capital.

The princess seemed to regard him as a lifeline, but Rezet had no intention of becoming her salvation.

Argan's princess was fated to disappear into the back corridors of history alongside her homeland. His Emperor had decreed it so.

Rezet was not the kind of man to let personal sentiment cloud public affairs. His emotions had never influenced his actions. The princess's beauty was not a reason for him to extend mercy.

"I am no use to you, Your Highness."

Rezet felt the need to say it to her directly.

"Nor do I intend to be of use. I am a knight who pledges his loyalty to my brother and liege—His Imperial Majesty of Van Yela."

"……."

"And Van Yela is the lord of the Northern Alliance, and at the same time the brother-nation of the Kingdom of Ughel."

"And so, as a knight bound to Van Yela, you cannot assist the princess of Argan—Ughel's enemy."

"Yes."

The princess held his gaze for a moment.

"Even if I were to kneel before you?"

Kneeling. Here, on the bare ground. The very thought.

"That is entirely uncalled for."

"And even tears and pleading would mean nothing to you?"

"It would only make my discomfort worse. If I were you, I would not spend my strength on something meaningless."

"So it's unthinkable that I should kneel—yet perfectly acceptable that I should take poison and die."

The look in her eyes said: contradictory man. Said it plainly, without words.