IWJACM Chapter 6

But the princess smiled—clear-eyed, untroubled.

"I understand your position perfectly. How embarrassing for me, that you would say all this before I had even begun to speak."

"My apologies."

A slight discomfort rose in him again. The truth was, from the moment he'd realized that the princess—who he'd expected to choose a death with honor—was instead searching for a way to survive, something had been lodged in him like ash, clinging.

The princess suppressed a sigh and murmured softly.

"Still—stay close to me, Lord Kyrstan. Don't leave my side for even a moment."

"If that is your command."

"It's a request."

"……."

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

Rezet barely swallowed a sound.

The princess had drawn his hand closer and pressed her lips to the back of his rough knuckles—the way a knight bows to a lady. The way a servant bows to a master.

"I am going to die any time, according to your account—so at least."

"……."

"This much, can't you give me?"

Their eyes met in the air like a flash of light.

A blind, absolute faith—that he alone was her salvation—shot toward him like an arrow.

An arrow deflected. And yet he pitied it helplessly—because the hope would go unanswered.

"I am glad you understand your situation. Please take care of yourself."

Rezet turned away from the dimming gold eyes and pulled his hand free of her grip without ceremony. There was nothing more he could give the princess.

But exactly one week later, the residue of discomfort settled in him like ash began, somehow, to take root.

The princess—who had behaved as though she would perish on the spot without him near—collapsed suddenly with a high fever.

The faint discomfort Lord Kyrstan let slip toward her, Elise had already noticed. But she was not particularly disappointed.

She had never planned to persuade him from the start.

That kind of man's walls were not the kind that could be toppled in a single blow. There were things that could be worked and things that couldn't.

There was no more foolish a hand than appealing to emotion with a principled man of cold reason. Clumsy seduction wouldn't work on him either.

From the beginning, she wasn't certain he even saw her as a woman.

The journey to Van Yela proceeded slowly. The distance was well over two weeks even on horseback riding hard—and they were carrying her as an encumbrance, so there was no prospect of making speed.

Nearly three weeks had passed since Elise was captured by Van Yela's imperial forces.

And in that time, the number of hours Lord Kyrstan had been absent from her side—setting aside the first five days—was close to none.

Day. Night. Dawn. Morning. Elise did not leave him alone for a single hour.

There had been a moment when the Grand Duke tried to assign her a different knight. She lifted a dagger without a word, and he called the knight off at once, of course.

But fifteen days in, Elise no longer needed to go to such lengths to keep him near.

Before those fifteen days were out, she had fallen badly ill with a fierce fever.

The man who pressed his hand to Elise's forehead to gauge the heat exhaled, low and quiet.

"The fever won't break."

"……."

"Were you always…."

He swallowed the rest. She knew without hearing it.

Were you always this fragile? That's what he wanted to ask.

Elise forced her bleary eyes open and murmured.

"This is how I've always been."

"……."

"Sometimes the fever and chills come on badly—this must be one of those times…."

A cough cut off the sentence.

Elise was constitutionally unwell.

That was why Andrei had been so ferociously protective of her from the time she was very small. Not only her stamina, which was poor, but her immunity was far below that of ordinary people.

She recovered slowly, too. A stumble that would leave anyone else with a bruise left her with a mark the size of two palms; her bones broke easily. Of course her wounds refused to heal. A cold that others would shake off lightly might keep Elise coughing for weeks before she finally recovered.

There was no particular organ failing—yet she was severely ill with every change of season. She was simply made this way.

The man who had been quietly gauging her temperature with his hand gave a low exhale.

"You'll likely catch it if you stay this close…."

"I have never in my life been struck down by a cold."

He sounded like a man who had heard every conceivable thing. Elise smiled faintly, without energy. Good for you. Must be nice.

Even with her body aching like this, there were things she was grateful for. If she hadn't fallen ill, she couldn't have observed this man in such close proximity for so long.

Something she'd realized over these nearly three weeks watching him: Grand Duke Kyrstan—Rezet Kyrstan—would not refuse her commands.

He had said himself he had no intention of helping her, but he had always shown her the proper courtesies. He would hold himself back and withdraw to a distance, but when she reached out her hand, he did not ignore it.

Or—couldn't ignore it?

Well—she was effectively his ward, after all. Even if he intended to send her to the scaffold the moment they reached the capital.

That gap was funny enough that she nearly laughed, and the man's eyes narrowed at that. But as always, he didn't ask why. It was genuinely impressive, in its way, that a person could be so thoroughly reticent.

At any rate, Rezet Kyrstan stayed close to her.

Dawn broke.

Elise woke in the grip of chills and, out of habit, reached toward the head of the bed. A hand immediately closed around hers.

"What do you need, Your Highness?"

The voice did not sound like that of someone just roused from sleep. Elise raised her dazed eyes to look at him.

Was she still dreaming? Or was it that the dark had swallowed everything around her? The man's black hair overlapped for a moment with Andrei's chestnut hair.

Elise reached out with her free hand on impulse. Her fingers caught the soft strands of his hair.

"Andrei."

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

Andrei. Andrei.

My Emperor. My beloved other half. My world.

My kind younger brother who called me sister without fail, even though he came into the world only ten minutes behind me.

"Andrei."

"…Your Highness."

"If you could come back to life, your sister would do anything for you…."

'I still can't believe you aren't in this world.'

Elise's empty words scattered into the air and were gone.

"I should have been the Emperor."

"……."

"I should have been Emperor, and I should have died…."

'Then you would have lived. And even if Argan fell, you would have raised it again.'

'Because you were a child who could accomplish anything.'

From somewhere, Andrei's voice reached her, faint.

'You can do it too, Sister.'

No.

'You're so much more remarkable and wonderful than you give yourself credit for. The most fitting princess Argan could have—deserving of every person's reverence and love.'

No, Andrei.

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

What plan I'm devising even now—if you knew, you might despise me.

But it doesn't matter. From the moment she drove that dagger into her own shoulder, Elise had abandoned being a princess without flaw.

Elise threaded her fingers through Andrei's hair slowly, dreamily.

"Your sister will—come to build—your grave…."

Consciousness snapped out.

Rezet looked for a long moment at the face of the princess, who had dropped into unconsciousness as though felled.

Her body was burning like a coal. He had heard, by rumor, that Argan's princess was sickly—but he had not anticipated it would be to this degree.

But it was also true that this long journey was too much for an injured person to endure. Even the conditions surrounding her were poor.

'Had Argan's treasure ever once tried to sleep in quarters as crude as these.'

So the princess was more foolish than she looked. Scarred herself just to keep him near, and here was the result.

Rezet carefully extracted his hand from where the princess held it. The moment the warmth left, she curled in on herself.

"Andrei…."

The voice that called out for someone already dead and gone was pitifully faint.

What an exquisitely fragile beauty. He understood, newly, why Argan's Emperor had kept his sister wrapped in silk—couldn't be gripped, couldn't be breathed on. If he himself were in that position, he would have done the same.

Though it wasn't simply because she was dazzling to look at and physically fragile. There was something about her that was difficult to put entirely into words.

She was a different order of being from an ordinary human, was the only way he could put it. The princess had been born one who commands, one who reigns, one who holds the world at her feet.

She and Rezet had lived in genuinely different worlds.

Born from the lowest blood possible, rolling through the mud until he'd barely clawed his way to the top—and the princess whose life's trajectory had been entirely unlike his from the very beginning.

And that was precisely why Rezet had believed, without question, that even with death hanging at her throat, she would keep her spine straight and stay composed until the very end.

He hadn't expected her to cling to him like a lifeline.

A strangely memorable experience. Rezet conceded that much.

Because the princess needed no other person near her—especially not another man—the space beside her had always been his alone. This wide tent had held only the two of them, all day, every day.

Wrapped in her thin blanket, the woman's body was shivering.

"Cold…."

There were no eyes to see.

The realization arrived, and with it, an impulse lifted its head like a serpent.