IWJACM Chapter 9

The half-drawn cloth fell back into place. Elise was swallowed again by thick, unbroken dark.

"What do you think you're doing?"

Yanok Sihat's voice rose with displeasure. Elise crawled on her knees to the cart's iron bars and seized them with both hands. From beyond the cloth came that same flat, unhurried voice as before.

"Has the prince forgotten the covenant of the Northern Alliance of Grendel?"

"What nonsense is this?"

"When war is declared in the name of the Alliance, prisoners of war captured in battle belong to the nation that captured them."

Most of the Alliance's member states were petty kingdoms that had sustained themselves through economies of plunder. Van Yela itself had been nothing more than a small, unremarkable nation some hundreds of years prior.

Nations long accustomed to taking and being taken from—it seemed natural enough that such unwritten laws would exist among them.

The Grand Duke continued in that arid, affectless voice.

"To transfer a prisoner of war captured on the battlefield to Ughel requires the formal sanction of His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of Van Yela. Until His Majesty's approval is granted, the prisoner belongs to Van Yela—more precisely, to me."

"So you're refusing to hand her over?"

"In the North, there is no custom of surrendering what is mine without cause."

Elise had the distinct sense that the Grand Duke was pressing a quiet, deliberate weight into each syllable.

"A pity, then."

Clank. Armor shifted. The Grand Duke was returning to his position. His knights moved in perfect unison at his command. Yanok Sihat, who had been snorting with contempt, was shouldered back and away by Van Yela's knights.

"We move again."

From somewhere far ahead, the Grand Duke's order cut through the noise.

The cart wheels began to turn. Only then did Elise's grip on the iron bars go slack.

'Once more…'

Death had retreated one step back.

The smell of blood still seemed to drift at the edges of her senses. The final day of Argan—flames rearing against the sky—circled before her eyes like a hallucination.

Elise pressed her eyes shut.

The continent of Grendel was broadly divided into south and north.

The south, represented by the great Argan Empire, was covered in plains—warm, fertile, abundant. The territories of nations to the north of the continent—Ughel and Van Yela among them—were composed primarily of barren wasteland and jagged mountain ranges.

The petty kingdoms born from those harsh conditions mostly came to regard one another as brother states and banded together. Thus the Northern Alliance of Grendel was founded, with Van Yela as its presiding nation for some two hundred years.

The barbaric Kingdom of Ughel had been the last to join the Alliance. Nomads who had wandered the central desert for centuries united to build Ughel as a nation.

Even before its founding, they had been a people in long opposition to southern Argan. That once Ughel was established, the struggle for dominance would intensify was only the natural progression of things.

The barbarians coveted the rich southern lands—milk and honey flowing through them. Among those lands, they coveted Argan above all else.

The sole empire on the continent where mages existed.

What the Ughel people had truly wanted most from Argan was neither land nor treasure. It would have been magic.

And so the fate of Elizabetha Arzeika—twin sister of Argan's last emperor, Arzeika III, and the sole surviving member of the imperial bloodline—had been decided a full month and a half ago.

When Rezet entered the audience chamber, the Emperor greeted him with warmth.

"Welcome back, Your Grace. You've worked hard, traveling to such distant lands yourself."

"Yes."

Rezet received the Emperor's welcome with precisely one word. Accustomed to this, the Emperor made no issue of it and moved on.

"What was the princess like? Was she particularly resistant?"

"Ordinary."

"I rather thought that, being the exalted last royal of Argan, she would have taken her own life long before now. The fact that she's come all the way here suggests she has some other design in mind, perhaps…"

Does she. Rezet half-listened to the Emperor's words and drifted into his own thoughts.

Something had certainly felt off. He had spent nearly two months attached to her side, watching her from close range—and yet the princess had engaged in no suspicious behavior beyond an excessive dependence on him.

"The Kingdom of Ughel demanded she be handed over to them. Said they intended to take her head themselves. At any rate, those people make demands that are often difficult to simply let pass."

"Her head—did you say?"

"Yes. They said they'd preserve it and keep it mounted."

The princess's head. Preserved. Mounted. Rezet's brow shifted, almost imperceptibly.

He had expected, at most, poison—or a hanging arranged to leave no visible marks on the body.

But for a prince to personally take her head. To have the severed head stuffed and displayed? A revulsion stirred in him at conduct fixated purely on the degradation of Argan.

"Savages, true to form—"

"What was that?"

"Nothing."

The Emperor's eyes narrowed. Rezet Kyrstan was not a man who deflected with nothing.

"Did you grant them permission, then?"

"Even so, she is the last royal of Argan. I could hardly allow her neck to fall to a barbarian's blade. We reached an agreement—her body would be surrendered to them after a public hanging in the square."

Whether that could truly be called an agreement was open to debate.

"…When have you set the date for the execution?"

"Five days from now."

Five days. A longer reprieve than he had expected. Rezet thought of the princess—how she had gone visibly rigid from the moment they crossed the Van Yela border, and had not released that tension since.

The Emperor clicked his tongue.

"To think the great Argan could crumble in a mere two years… tsk. If only that young emperor hadn't indulged in pointless stubbornness, they might have held on for another generation or two. He pricked Ughel's temper out of useless pride. If I had been in his position, I'd have charmed and soothed them instead."

"……"

"The princess. Argan's princess… In the end, she's the last royal who survived alone from that storm. From the time of Arzeika I, they were so precious about how they were known across the continent. How old is she now?"

"Twenty-two, I'm told."

"Twenty-two. Not too young an age to die."

Rezet didn't know Elizabetha's precise age. He only reasoned: the young emperor had been nineteen three years ago, so his twin sister had likewise been nineteen then—which made her twenty-two now.

Twenty-two. Was twenty-two truly not too young for the princess whom Grendel had admired and Argan had loved?

Rezet was still turning that over when he missed the Emperor's next words.

The sharp-eyed master of Van Yela—Noyre—caught that gap with uncanny precision.

"Rezet, why do you keep letting your mind wander in front of me?"

"I was not thinking of other things."

"My brother is candid. Which means that on the rare occasion he does lie, it shows remarkably clearly. Are you aware of that?"

"I am not."

"Did something happen with the princess on the way here?"

"Nothing."

Rezet cut his breath short against a flash of something rising.

A woman's skin gleaming like a pearl beneath a cascading waterfall, reflecting moonlight. Golden eyes watching him with blind fixation even as her body trembled finely. Silver-white hair sliding slowly down pale white skin.

And those dizzying curves hidden within that spare, slender frame—white and lush—

…Enough.

Rezet brought the thought to a clean close.

"There was nothing."

He knew himself that he showed it when he lied. But he also knew, of course, how not to show it. If he had been caught every single time, he would not be standing where he stood now.

Noyre's eyes narrowed as they moved over his half-brother.

But this time he found nothing—not the faintest tremor—to catch in Rezet.

"…Very well. Return and rest. You've been moving through distant lands for nearly a year—even a yon'gyn needs a brief respite."

"Yes. I'll take my leave."

"And those lists piled on your desk—at least glance at them when you return. You're past thirty now. You should have produced an heir several times over. How long do you intend to make me wait?"

For an instant, something unmistakably weary crossed Rezet's face.

Again. That damned marriage. That damned succession.

"Surely you know why I placed you in your current position, Rezet?"

"……"

"You know why I granted you a new castle and a title, don't you, brother. Why I gave you Lothier—that prime piece of land."

He knew. Better than anyone. Even his name itself had been given by Noyre. Noyre wanted the name Kyrstan—beginning with Rezet—to be carried on through generations.

In other words, Noyre wanted to create a lineage composed entirely of yon'gyn.

Not ordinary yon'gyn. Yon'gyn with extraordinary abilities that transcended human limits—like Rezet.

By nature, yon'gyn belonged to neither dragon nor human. They were born as malformed half-creatures, possessing low intelligence and madness.

They were not beings that could be tamed by human hands. When a yon'gyn appeared, the standard response was to kill it outright. Or fit it with restraints and put it to use as a combat slave.

However, among yon'gyn, there existed an exceedingly rare possibility: some were born with countenances far more beautiful than ordinary humans, and with extraordinary minds.

Such beings were not the mongrel offspring of two existences carelessly mixed. They were closer to demigods.

A dragon with the qualities of a human.

Rezet was precisely such a case.

Rezet Kyrstan was, in blunt terms, a prize stud—and one of rare bloodline at that. A specimen not seen in centuries. His blood could not be permitted to die out.

But if that were as simple as it sounded, why would yon'gyn even remotely comparable to Rezet be countable on one hand?