IWJACM Chapter 7

Rezet considered for a moment.

His reason, cold and unchanged, calmly analyzed the cause of this current disturbance. There was always a reason when one's emotions were moved.

He had first seen this woman three years ago. Even now, all that time later, she remained lodged in his memory like a fragment of shrapnel. Why was that.

"……."

He found what he thought might be the answer soon enough. He had seen this woman during the period of his life that had most resembled hell. So what he felt now was likely a reaction to unexpectedly encountering that time again—nothing more.

He would be lying if he said he had felt no desire for a woman like a jewel he could never, in his whole life, have touched.

The man he had been then was a little more wretched than the man he was now, and by way of compensation had revered those who shone as high and bright as the sun—practically worshipped them. Like a crow that gathered every glittering thing indiscriminately, regardless of what lay at the core.

'It seems that habit has yet to leave me.'

Rezet wrapped one arm around the woman's slender waist. Carefully, so her injured shoulder would not be pressed against him, he lifted her and drew her into his arms. He climbed onto the bed still holding her.

Her body, damp with sweat, pressed softly against him through the thin cloth between them. Rezet rubbed Elise's disordered silver hair slowly between his index finger and thumb. The texture was dangerously addictive.

He was doing something that should have horrified him—climbing into bed while holding Argan's princess—yet the guilt was thin, perhaps because he had found a fitting reason for it.

The woman let out a small sound—barely a moan—and pressed herself against him. She seemed to welcome a body warmer than her own. Her legs tangled with his, and from chest to lower abdomen their bodies fit together without space between.

The crease between Rezet's brows appeared—barely there, almost nothing.

He had thought she would be nothing more than slender, fragile enough to collapse at a single blow. But the curves that came against him, the texture of soft skin wrapped in only a single layer of thin cloth, were more plainly legible than they needed to be.

She had been sweating heavily, yet the princess smelled of wildflowers. Even holding her, he felt as though he were buried in fresh flowers in full bloom.

"Your Grace."

He had been caging her hair—that hair scattering light even in darkness—between his fingers, turning it slowly, when he stilled at the small whispering voice.

"You are a difficult man to know…"

"Did I wake you?"

A trace of surprise crossed Rezet's eyes.

Surely she hadn't been awake all along?

The woman leaning against his chest shook her head.

Before Rezet could pull away, she held him in place. Eyes still closed, the princess drew breath with difficulty.

"When we arrive at the capital. Your Grace."

"Yes."

"Don't be too… displeased."

She was murmuring something, but the sound was too small to make out. Rezet moved the princess slightly away from him and brought his ear close to her lips.

Shallow, labored breathing grazed his earlobe.

"Please think of it as a dying woman's last struggle."

"I don't understand what you mean."

"You may think me a madwoman if you like."

Think of my worth. Just once.

That was how the princess's final words settled.

Time passed quickly. Elise's fever lifted at last after another full two weeks of illness.

"We can delay no further."

The moment she had barely recovered, the Grand Duke announced, with perfect composure, that he intended to bring forward her execution date.

What response could she give to that. Elise had no choice but to nod.

"You'll need to ride from today. Are you all right with that?"

The journey so far had been made by prisoner transport wagon. But as the days grew urgent, the mode of transport shifted from wagon to horse.

'Should I insist on the wagon?'

But this man, who had stayed steadily by her side all this time, would already have noticed that her condition had improved enough to manage a horse. He was suggesting it because he knew.

Elise gave in and agreed.

"Which horse am I to ride?"

"Which horse, you say?"

The Grand Duke, who had been stroking a warhorse's mane, turned to look at Elise. A rare flicker of something like puzzlement had risen in those blue eyes.

"Excuse me."

Rezet crossed to her in a few long strides. His build was broad enough that he could crush something like her without effort, and Elise found herself shrinking back without meaning to.

Presently a firm arm arrived and gripped her waist securely. It was a motion that had grown familiar over the past month or so.

At first this man had asked permission before so much as letting a finger graze her. Somehow, without her noticing when, he had become this unguarded about it.

It wasn't an unwelcome change. He still released her cleanly the moment contact was no longer necessary—that much hadn't changed. But still. This much was nothing to complain about.

"Hold on tight."

"Hold on? To what—"

Before she could finish the sentence, he swept her up.

Elise drew a sharp breath in surprise. At the sudden weightlessness she wrapped her arms around his neck and held on without meaning to.

But the contact was over quickly, as always. Before she knew it Elise was seated on the saddle.

A faint dizziness rose with the height. His warhorse was far larger and heavier than the horses she had ridden in Argan's imperial palace.

"Thank… you."

But surely she could at least mount a horse on her own.

Elise thought this as she reached for the trailing reins—and then the horse's back shifted.

She startled and looked behind her, and came face to face with a solid chest encased in light armor. The Grand Duke had mounted behind her.

"You should look forward, Your Highness."

Did this man see her as someone too frail to ride alone? He wasn't wrong, of course—her limit was perhaps an hour at best. But still.

Before the bewilderment had fully cleared, a broad palm covered the back of the hand holding the reins.

"Let me. I'll take them."

"……."

A dry, roughened hand, and yet warm.

She was fairly certain she had somehow taught this man a habit she hadn't meant to.

Elise thought this as she waited, composedly, for him to help her down from the horse.

Did he perhaps think she was a woman who couldn't walk properly on her own?

"Put your arms around my neck."

That was the only way to account for why he guided her through each step like this. Surely it wasn't necessary to that extent.

But Elise did not bother to demonstrate the steadiness of her own two legs to him. She let herself be lifted without protest and her feet touched the ground almost immediately.

"We plan to camp here tonight. I'll arrange somewhere for you to rest, so please wait a moment."

"I'm fine resting just about anywhere."

"If you sit somewhere cold and your fever comes back, it will delay the journey."

But every time he produced remarks like that—blunt and cold, dropped without ceremony—any small expectation that had briefly surfaced dissolved like snow.

The Grand Duke wrapped her in his own cloak, settled her on a flat rock, and only then began issuing instructions to his subordinate knights one thing after another.

"……."

Elise turned her cloak lapels between her fingers and felt the soldiers' gazes sliding over her.

Having been raised not to avoid the eyes of attendants or subjects, she met them without much thought—and the men abruptly looked away.

Not one of them. Several at once.

She frowned in puzzlement, but not a single soldier among all those men attempted to meet Elise's eyes again.

'Strange...'

Did she look particularly rough? Elise ran a hand over her gaunt cheek.

Well, of course she looked rough. Several weeks of illness would do that.

As it happened, the Grand Duke was spending an unusually long time away from her side. He seemed to have more to instruct his subordinates today than usual.

Elise heard the faint sound of water in the distance and rose from where she was sitting.

She had just turned and was about to walk into the trees toward the sound of water when a sharp voice caught her.

"Your Highness."

Elise started and turned back. The Grand Duke, who had seized on her movement with almost uncanny speed, was approaching her quickly.

"Where are you going?"

The sheer physical presence of his height and build made her shoulders draw in slightly.

Elise gripped the trailing edge of his cloak and murmured quietly.

"There seems to be a lake in the trees. I thought—perhaps I could wash."

The man's blue eyes narrowed fractionally. Eyes that were trying to read her intent.

Well. A prisoner moving without warning—no guard worth his post would stand by and watch.

"I'll accompany you."

"Pardon?"

She hadn't expected that.

Elise asked back, thrown.

"You intend to accompany me while I wash?"

"Yes."

The Grand Duke answered so entirely without affect that Elise wasn't the only one startled by it. She witnessed the knight named Ruben—the Grand Duke's direct subordinate—drop his jaw as though it might hit the ground.

And not only him. The eyes turning their way were, without exception, charged with meaning.

Elise recovered herself quickly. This was an opportunity. An opportunity to appear in a more intimate relationship with Rezet Kyrstan.

'Not bad.'

Letting as many people as possible see them depart together would serve her well. And this time it was Rezet himself who had reached for her first, for the first time.

She had her thoughts in order within moments. Elise nodded.

"All right. You may accompany me."

The faces of the knights who had been watching with held breath filled with shock that made their earlier expressions look tame.