IWJACM Chapter 8

Elise had expected perhaps a small stream. She was somewhat off the mark. Through the trees opened a lake with a waterfall pouring into it.

"The water will be cold. Will you be all right?"

"I'll be fine."

"Be careful not to let water reach the wound."

"Yes."

Elise answered obediently while drilling her gaze into his face.

Rezet Kyrstan's face was not much different from when they had first met. Eyes unmoved by most things, carrying that flat, inscrutable quality. The ridge of his nose precise and uncompromising, his mouth set in its habitual closed line. Still terse in speech.

But a few nights ago, at dawn, he had held her in his arms. The heat that had radiated from that body—all thick muscle—Elise remembered it with vivid clarity.

"......"

Let her try just one thing.

Standing before him, Elise released the collar of his cloak she had been holding together.

The cloak slid free and fell to the ground without resistance. Thump.

The dress Elise had been wearing when she fled Argan had been soaked through with blood long ago. But in an army composed entirely of men, there was no women's clothing to be had—and so Elise wore a high-quality linen shirt, the kind issued to knights, and cotton trousers.

Whose, it was easy enough to guess. His. He would not have offered another man's clothing.

But Rezet's clothing would never fit her, and so Elise looked rather like something stuffed into a sack.

The man simply watched as she undid the button at her throat. No word of restraint. He did not turn away.

'I still can't read him. What manner of man thinks beneath that face.'

The only time Elise had seen anything legible in those eyes—a clear, unmistakable emotion she could identify at a glance—was the day she had driven a dagger into her own shoulder.

What would they show her now.

Without dropping her gaze from eyes deeper than the lake before her, Elise undid the second button. The line of her collarbone appeared—slender, unguarded.

The third button fell loose and revealed the modest curve of her chest. The fourth slipped free, and her waist narrowed beneath it, skin catching moonlight and gleaming smooth.

At last the linen shirt grazed her slender thighs and settled softly atop the cloak already pooled on the grass.

Cold moved over her without mercy, every surface of her exposed.

Was it the man before her, watching without so much as a blink—or was it the night air, still cold? Elise could not tell.

He betrayed no reaction. But she could feel his gaze traveling over her body, and where it settled, the skin rose in a sharp shiver. Her cheeks began, slowly, to color.

But if she had started, she had to finish. She had been clutching helplessly at the air beside her; she finally curled her fingers into the waistband riding perilously between hip and pelvis.

The moment she moved to draw the remaining cloth downward—her hands were seized.

"......!"

Elise went rigid. Only then did she realize she had been holding her breath.

The man, those eyes far too overwhelming, said quietly:

"The air is still cold."

"...I want to wash."

"The water is cold as well. It has been fewer than three days since your fever broke."

"......"

"And—"

The low voice seemed to rake across bare skin.

Something deep in her abdomen cinched tight. Her fingertips twitched; her toes curled on their own. Every inch of her, exposed to cold air and a stranger's gaze—every inch sharpened two, three times over, sensation turning reckless and raw.

Elise bit the inside of her lip and endured the force of his presence by sheer will. Every instinct screamed to lift her arms and cover herself; she crushed the shame down with everything she had. It cost her considerable effort not to look away from the eyes that consumed her without moving.

But she held.

Rezet finally looked down. He forced out the words in a voice that sounded almost suppressed, like a man holding back a groan.

"Do not put me to the test, Your Imperial Highness."

"......"

"I told you clearly—I cannot and will not be of help to you."

One month since she had known this man. And this—in those blue eyes—was the second storm she had seen there.

There was heat in the large hands that enclosed both of hers at once. The man drew a slow, deep breath, then closed his eyes entirely.

"The rocks are covered in moss. They'll be slippery."

"......"

"And tomorrow we reach a town with an inn. Can you not wait one day?"

"......"

"Even if you fall ill again, this time I will find it difficult to delay the schedule at my own discretion. You know this. You know that delaying our expected arrival in Van Yela will no longer be possible."

Grand Duke Kyrstan had never spoken at such length before.

Elise glanced down at herself. Bare-chested before a stranger, utterly exposed—and she found it suddenly, darkly funny.

The Princess of Argan, standing before the supreme commander of an enemy empire in nothing but dishevelment. No different from a woman who sold her body.

She had made herself cheap and obvious. He was an upright knight who knew what honor was.

Neither conversation nor seduction had worked on him.

She could not tell whether to feel relief or despair. But then—she had never expected anything to begin with. There was nothing left but resignation.

And yet.

"...I'll just wash my hands and feet."

Elise loosened her constricted throat and murmured quietly. Something in the substance of those long, uncharacteristic words had made her heart stir.

This time, he had said, he would find it difficult to delay. This time.

'This time...'

Her heart began to beat quietly. Elise washed her hands and feet in the lake, returned wrapped in his cloak, and took her place before the campfire.

Long after she had returned, she turned those words over and over.

And once—just once—she allowed herself a small hope: that perhaps, after she had done what she intended to do in Van Yela, this man might find it in himself to forgive her.

After what had passed at the lakeside, time moved quickly. And at last—a month and a half after Elise had been captured by the Van Yela forces—in the middle of March, she arrived.

The great empire of the northwest. Van Yela.

At the imperial palace, unwelcome visitors had arrived first.

The moment the Grand Duke's army crossed the drawbridge and entered the imperial grounds, soldiers in foreign armor blocked their way—dark-complexioned men clad in the unfamiliar metalwork of another land.

"Ughel men."

Ruben muttered, his distaste plain. Discomfort settled across the Van Yela knights' faces. Ruben drew up his reins and fell in beside Rezet.

"The fourth prince of the Ughel Kingdom—Yanok Sihat. I did not expect him to come here..."

A flash of discomfort crossed Rezet's expressionless face. Yanok Sihat—the man who had aided his elder, the first prince, in the assault on Argan's capital.

Van Yela had sent auxiliary forces to Ughel; the ten thousand troops Rezet commanded had been tasked with neutralizing the allied nations on Argan's eastern flank. He had never directly encountered the Ughel forces that had struck Argan's heart, its royal palace.

"You are Grand Duke Kyrstan?"

Yanok Sihat pointed at Rezet and grinned. Between lips split wide, yellowed teeth showed.

"I hear you caught the Argan princess trying to flee across the western border. Is it that woman inside that transport there?"

Rezet glanced back briefly. The prisoner transport wagon was draped in violet satin, its interior hidden. But the outside conversation would flow inside easily enough.

Inside the wagon, Elise drew her body tight.

'Ughel savages.'

The gleam of a single-edged blade, beaded with blood, flashed before her eyes. Three months ago—barely three—soldiers armored in thick animal hide and leather had broken through Argan's gates and poured in like a tide. They brought down Argan's soldiers with broad, curved blades, swinging from above without mercy. The captain of Argan's imperial guard, who had helped Elise flee, had fallen to one of those blades—the back of his neck split open. The savages had cut down young servants and old retainers alike without distinction. Those same blades had almost certainly struck Andrei's neck as well.

Elise's hands and feet trembled. Fear and fury rose in her simultaneously. The man beyond that fabric was Argan's blood enemy.

"I made it all the way to the imperial palace hoping to see the face of the Argan princess—beauty worth seeing before one dies, they say. But she'd already fled, hadn't she? How bitterly disappointed I was. So I made a request to the master of Van Yela. Bring her with not a hair out of place, and bring her respectfully."

Yanok Sihat sauntered toward the wagon. A faint crease formed in Rezet's expression.

"Since the Grand Duke of our brotherly nation was kind enough to personally capture the princess and bring her here—I'll be graciously taking her off your hands. You've brought her in one piece, I trust?"

Elise bored her gaze into the violet satin as though she could tear through it.

So Van Yela's emperor's command to bring her unharmed had meant: deliver her alive to be the savages' plaything. In the end, the emperor was no different from the Ughel men.

If she were handed directly to Ughel like this, her plan would run aground before it even began. Elise ground her teeth.

That swaggering step was drawing closer.

'Come, then. Come and lay a hand on me.'

The instant those foul fingers touched her body, she would activate the magic carved into her flesh. A prince of an enemy kingdom would make no bad companion into the afterlife. If she was going to die regardless, she intended to make her death count for something.

A fist—knuckles bristling with coarse hair—seized the satin draped over the wagon. The fabric was yanked upward, and harsh sunlight invaded the darkness.

Light fell across Elise's slender body and shoulders, angled along the line of her jaw, struck the lips she had pressed tight—

The sound of armor colliding rang out from directly ahead. An indifferent voice followed.

"Stand back."