IYTTEPAAK Chapter 15

"You woke up first."

"Yes. Just a moment ago."

"How is it? Any change in the mana core?"

Sasha asked the real question straightaway, giving no thought at all to her own lips. Well—that was the right way to do it.

Regen set his stray thoughts aside and focused.

He could feel the mana core—what fighters called the second heart, sitting on the right. Barely revived as it was, still wanting for so much, it already felt like it could overwhelm someone at Jerome's level without much trouble.

"Thank you, Sasha. You truly did restore my core."

"A promise is a promise. I saw new leaves coming up along the trunk—how much has it recovered?"

Answering with something the size of a fingernail didn't seem like proper courtesy toward someone who'd worked this hard.

"...One in ten."

"Not bad. Let's aim for ten days—treat it like this every day."

"Every day, like this......?"

"Yes."

Without quite meaning to, Regen let his gaze follow the drift of his own thoughts. Her lips came into view.

Sasha corrected herself at once.

"Eye contact alone was enough. The lips don't actually have to touch."

"......Ah."

He let out a long breath, and—abruptly—felt the urge to sneer at himself.

Tense for nothing. Flustered for nothing. Relieved for nothing. He felt a little pathetic, himself.

"Aren't you curious what your core looks like, Sir Regen?"

Mercifully, Sasha turned the subject herself.

"I am curious. Is it large?"

"Figures. A knight, and size is all that matters to you."

"......"

"It was large. 'More than an armspan' doesn't even do it justice. The first time I saw it, I thought of the World Tree out of myth."

"I see."

"I've never seen another knight's core, so I can't say for certain—but I don't think there's another tree as large as yours anywhere in the world."

"Yes. Probably not."

At Regen's plain, unadorned reply, Sasha sent him a long, searching look.

"You don't seem terribly moved."

To Regen, his own tree being large was nothing more than confirmation of the obvious.

What he actually wanted to know was her impression—what she'd felt, seeing the size with her own eyes.

"You're one to talk, Sasha."

"What?"

"You don't seem terribly moved either."

If she'd learned her chosen knight in fact possessed tremendous power, shouldn't she ordinarily be delighted by the unexpected windfall?

And yet, somehow, her reaction had fallen short of what he'd expected.

'So combat strength doesn't matter to her, then.'

She was, after all, the woman who'd said from the start that she'd chosen him because he resembled her dead brother.

Perhaps his worth to her lay not in his strength, but in his face.

Unaware of what was going through his mind, Sasha spoke on earnestly.

"Not terribly moved—I'm astonished. Once it's fully healed, I think it'll make a truly splendid tree. It didn't have a single leaf, but the shape of it was so mysterious and lovely."

"I see."

"I looked at the fallen leaves on the ground—they looked like an oak's. I mean to check later whether it ever grows acorns."

"See if any squirrels turn up as well, if you would."

"I will."

Watching Sasha's face crease into a faint smile, Regen realized something.

This seemed to be the first time he'd ever traded a joke—a genuine, ordinary joke—with an imperial princess.

"Was there anything else?"

"Gravestones. There were a great many gravestones along the way in."

"......"

"Lord Regen?"

"It can't be a pleasant sight to witness, and it seems you'll have to see it many times more. I apologize."

"It's all right. I'm going there to see Regen's tree."

Not sleep-talk this time, and yet—his name again, alone, with no title.

Regen studied her for a long moment.

She was like a winter beach. Her pale-blond hair looked as though it would slip away the moment a hand closed around it; her light sky-blue eyes were clear and cold as ice water.

She didn't seem like someone who would let anyone near her at all—and yet, now and then, she opened some part of her territory. Like now.

Regen rose from the stool and moved to the bedside. He reached out carefully and swept back the pale platinum hair that had fallen in disarray across her shoulder.

Calm blue eyes blinked up at him. The instant their gazes tangled, Regen moved with a small, sudden impulse.

His lips brushed lightly against her smooth, bare forehead.

"Sir Regen......?"

Regen wasn't flustered by the question in her voice.

"Rest now, Sasha."

"......Ah."

Using her name meant they were playing at brother and sister.

"Yes."

Having accepted the situation, she lowered her eyes calmly. Dense moonlight falling onto her platinum lashes was beautiful.

Similar days repeated themselves.

I ate meals with Regen, and each night in my bedroom, I treated his mana core.

His oak had begun to look as though it were meeting early spring—small new buds hanging densely across every branch. Once it filled out into full green, I found myself looking forward to what it would become: a single tree, dense enough to be its own forest.

For the past ten days, for Regen's stability and protection, I had let no outsider into our quarters, and had kept myself shut in as well.

Now that he'd recovered a fair amount, I needed to resume my own daily life. I called in my tutors for lessons, and sorted through my stack of social invitations to decide which to attend.

The people quietly planted outside had also begun to move.

I slipped a coded letter inside a book borrowed from the Imperial Grand Library. I called for Demia to return it—but it was Regen who opened the office door and stepped in.

"Lady Hamel and Lady Demia have duties that take them out of the chambers. Was there something you needed?"

"Hm."

When I hesitated over my answer, his one uncovered eye—the left, no patch over it—flicked smoothly toward the book.

I was always startled anew that an eye so brightly gold could belong to a human being.

"If you give it to me, I'll return it to the Imperial Library and come back."

"Alone, Sir?"

His look asked if there was some problem; my look answered that a problem was all there was.

"I've learned the layout of the palace grounds by now."

"That isn't the issue. The black uniform you're wearing draws far too much notice."

It was a uniform issued to only eight people—the princesses' personal knights.

It branded them, plainly, as a mere possession of a princess, a former prisoner of war. Trouble was unavoidable.

"There's no one who would dare think of laying a hand on the Silver Bird Princess's knight."

"Why not? Plenty would. The Mad Emperor, for one. The other princesses. And......"

"And?"

"Forget it"

I rose from my chair.

"I'll return the book myself. You escort me instead."

So he finds the overprotection stifling. Can't be helped. I'd stake twenty-two years of my life on it—this palace is dangerous. Worst case, my head rolls today.

And he was, on top of everything, a gift the Mad Emperor had handed me expressly to treat as a plaything, a slave. An object.

The cunning people of this palace treating him as breakable would be handled as no more than an accident—the sort of thing that happens when a piece of porcelain is dropped.

Why didn't he understand that here was nothing like the kingdom where Regen had once lived, beloved by everyone around him?

If I had my way, I would stop him from stepping outside my own line of sight altogether.

On the way to the main palace, where the Imperial Grand Library stood, I chose the quietest possible route to walk. He called out to me as I walked stubbornly ahead of him.

"Your Highness."

No listening ears anywhere nearby, and yet—"Your Highness," not "Sasha."

I stopped and turned. He stood straight and unbending, as if he alone could hold up the blue sky above him, gold eyes fixed on me.

It seemed he had something to say about what had just happened.

"Speak, Sir Regen."

"A knight's duty is to protect Your Highness. Not to be protected."

"That would be true on a battlefield. Somewhere that isn't a battlefield, I'd say it's a liege's duty not to expose their sworn to danger."

"A man can't remain forever inside Your Highness's shelter. Please don't turn me into a useless knight."

"Useless."

The word was absurd on its face.

"Your value to me is more than enough, simply staying by my side."

"......"

Live. Just stay by my side. Even just that much—it's a fierce thing, wanting it.

His golden eyes went round, fully open. Only when I saw his surprise did it strike me—I'd shown far too much of my true feeling.

"My lord, what I meant was......"

I was given no chance to recover.

"It has been a long time, Princess Rosasia."

I had run into the one person in this entire palace I least wanted to meet, second only to the Mad Emperor himself.