IWJACM Chapter 6

And yet, the next moment, she laughed—a clear, light sound.

"I understand your position quite well. Though it is a little embarrassing to be dismissed before I've even made my case."

"I apologize."

The discomfort rose again, sharp at the edges. In truth, from the moment he'd understood she was trying to find a way to live rather than choosing an honorable death, something like discomfort had been settling into him—thick and clinging, like soot on stone.

She suppressed a sigh and said, quietly:

"Still—stay by my side for now, Lord Kyrstan. Don't leave, not even for a moment."

"If that is your command."

"It is a request."

"......"

"I'm sorry to trouble you. But even so."

Rezet barely swallowed the sound that rose in his throat.

The princess had drawn his hand toward her and pressed her lips to his rough knuckles. The way a knight kisses a lady's hand. The way a servant kisses a master's.

"By your own words, I am a person who will die at any time. So at least this much—"

"......"

"Can you not give me at least this much?"

Their eyes met across the space between them—sudden, electric.

That blind, absolute faith that he alone was her salvation—it struck him like an arrow. Even an arrow that had missed its mark could not help but inspire a kind of pity. Because it was hope that would not be answered.

"I'm glad you understand. Please take care of yourself."

Rezet averted his gaze from her dimming golden eyes and pulled his hand free, without gentleness. There was nothing left he could say to her.

But exactly one week later, the discomfort that had been sitting in him like sediment began, quietly, to germinate.

The princess who had been clinging to him as though she'd die the moment he left had collapsed—suddenly, with a raging fever.

Elise had already noticed the discomfort Grand Duke Kyrstan projected at her—subtle, but present. She was not particularly discouraged.

In truth, she had never intended to persuade him. Not from the start.

A man like that—his walls were not the kind that crumbled in a single blow. Some defenses could be breached. Others could not.

There was no play more foolish than appealing to the emotions of a cold rationalist, a man governed by principle. Clumsy seduction would fare no better.

The first question was whether he saw her as a woman at all.

The journey to Van Yela moved at a crawl. The distance was more than two weeks on horseback even at speed—and with her along, like an unwanted appendage, there was no question of urgency.

Nearly three weeks had passed since Elise had been captured by the Van Yela imperial forces. And in that time, Grand Duke Kyrstan had been absent from her side for almost no time at all—save for the first five days.

Day. Night. The small hours before dawn. Morning. Elise had not let him out of her sight for a single moment.

The Grand Duke had tried, once, to assign another knight to her. He had withdrawn the knight immediately, of course—Elise had only needed to pick up a dagger without a word.

After two weeks of that, though, she no longer needed to hold on to him at all.

Before the wound in her shoulder had even begun to close, she came down with a severe fever.

The man pressed a hand to her forehead and exhaled, low.

"The fever isn't breaking."

"......"

"Were you always—"

He swallowed the rest. She didn't need to hear it to know what he'd meant to ask.

'Was your health always this poor? That was what he'd wanted to say.'

Elise forced her flickering eyes open.

"Always."

"......"

"Sometimes I get a bad fever like this. This is probably one of those..."

The cough cut off the end of it.

Elise's constitution had never been strong. It was why Andrei had wrapped himself around her like armor since they were very small. Not just her stamina, which had always been poor, but her immune system—far weaker than anyone ordinary.

Recovery was unbearably slow. A stumble on solid ground would leave bruises the size of two palms; bones broke easily. It went without saying that wounds were slow to heal. A cold that others shook off in days would keep Elise coughing for weeks before it finally relented.

No single organ was damaged—no identifiable cause. She was simply made this way, born to fall ill every season.

The man checking her temperature in silence exhaled—a shallow, quiet thing.

"If you stay this close, you'll catch it."

"In my entire life, I have never once fallen ill with a cold."

The response of a man who had heard everything and was no longer surprised by anything. Elise laughed, weakly. 'Must be nice, being built like that.'

Illness had its uses. Without the fever, she wouldn't have had this—this prolonged proximity, this chance to observe him from close range.

She had spent nearly three weeks watching him, and she had noticed something. Grand Duke Kyrstan—Rezet Kyrstan—did not refuse her commands.

He had told her himself that he had no intention of helping her. And yet he treated her with courtesy, unfailingly. He maintained his distance—held his line—but when she reached out, he did not ignore her.

Or couldn't, rather.

Then again—she was effectively under his protection. Even if he intended to send her to the scaffold the moment they reached the capital.

The absurdity of that gap made her laugh, and his eyes narrowed at it. But, as always, he didn't ask why. It was difficult to be that taciturn; in its way, she found it remarkable.

Whatever the reason, Rezet Kyrstan stayed beside her.

It was the hour before dawn.

Elise woke shivering, seized by chills, and by instinct reached toward the head of the bed. Immediately a hand caught hers.

"What do you need, Your Highness?"

The voice carried no trace of sleep. Elise looked up at him, dazed.

Was she dreaming? Or was it only that the world around them was drowning in darkness? The man's black hair seemed to blur and shift until it looked like Andrei's brown.

She raised her free hand and reached, before she'd decided to. Soft hair wound around her fingers.

"Andrei."

The eyes that held her reflection were as blue as the sea. But she wanted, willfully, to believe they were gold.

Andrei. Andrei.

My emperor. My beloved other half. My world.

My sweet younger brother, who always called the twin born only a handful of minutes before him "elder sister," without fail.

"Andrei."

"...Your Highness."

"If you could come back alive, I'd do anything. Anything at all..."

I still can't believe you're no longer in this world.

Elise's hollow murmuring scattered into the air and was gone.

"I should have been the one to become Emperor."

"......"

"I should have been Emperor, and I should have been the one to die..."

Then you would have lived. Even if Argan had fallen, you would have rebuilt it.

You were the kind of person who could do anything.

From somewhere, the faint sound of her brother's answer reached her.

"So can you, elder sister."

'No.'

"You're so much more remarkable than you think. More suited to Argan than anyone—a princess deserving the reverence of all."

'No, Andrei.'

"Without you, I would be nothing. I mean that, Elizabetha."

'If you knew what I was planning even now, you might despise me.'

'It doesn't matter. From the moment I drove that dagger into my own shoulder, I gave up being a princess without flaw.'

Elise turned the hair between her fingers, slowly, and murmured:

"I'll come... I'll come and build your gravestone, I promise..."

Consciousness cut out.

Rezet looked at the princess's face for a long time—at the face of a woman who had dropped into unconsciousness like something severed.

Her body burned. He had heard that Argan's princess was frail—rumor had reached him—but he had not anticipated this. Though it was true that this length of journey was hard on an injured person. And the conditions surrounding her were poor, to say the least.

Whether Argan's precious princess had ever tried to sleep in a tent this crude—he doubted it.

Which made her more foolish than she appeared. She had inflicted a wound on her own precious body simply to keep him near her, and this was the result.

Rezet carefully extracted his hand from her grip. The moment his warmth left, she curled into herself.

"Andrei..."

The voice calling for someone already dead was fragile beyond measure.

Such fragile beauty. He understood now, with sudden clarity, why Argan's emperor had guarded his sister as though she'd shatter at a touch, blow away on a breath. In his position, Rezet might have done the same.

But it was not only her ethereal appearance or her frail body. There was something else in her—something difficult to articulate precisely. Something that set her apart from ordinary human beings. The princess had been born to command—born to reign, born with the world beneath her feet.

In every sense, she had lived in a different world from Rezet.

He had been born of the lowest origins—had clawed through mud to reach the top, barely. Their trajectories in life could not have been more different.

Which was precisely why he had believed, without question, that she would hold herself upright and remain composed until the very end—even with death pressed to her throat.

And yet. He had not expected her to cling to him like a lifeline.

It had been, he admitted, a rather remarkable experience. That much he would concede.

No one could be admitted into the princess's presence—certainly not other men—so it had always been him beside her. In this spacious tent, all day, every day, it had been only the two of them.

The woman wrapped in her thin blanket was shaking.

"Cold..."

No one was watching.

The realization and the impulse arrived together—the latter rearing its head like a snake.