IYTTEPAAK Chapter 31

Regen seemed stronger than I'd thought. A welcome thing. And yet—something had slipped past my control, and that stirred in me a feeling close to lament.

"You told me it was ten percent recovered, the first day."

"...My apologies. I didn't want to dampen the sense of accomplishment you'd earned on my behalf."

"How gentlemanly of you. How kind."

I'd used irony, out of character for me. My dominion was my pride too—I couldn't help finding his unwanted consideration infuriating.

Before I let something sharper slip out, I turned my body away from him, sharply. I needed time to gather my thoughts and get hold of my feelings.

The princess had turned her body from him. Even the half-turn of it, her hand catching up the hem of her dress, was the movement of a woman lovely as a bird folding its wings.

Even mid-offense, the sight of her still snagged his eye. He found himself absurd for it.

Instead of facing the wall, Sasha, who'd been gazing at a camellia tree, turned calmly back around.

"Thinking about it now, it's strange."

She tossed the words out lightly, head tilted slightly to one side, eyes narrowed. Regen tensed, wondering if he'd done something wrong again.

"Strange—strange how, exactly?"

"Why warn me to raise my dominion at all? Right now, sure, the binding benefits you too, because of the core treatment. But once the treatment's done and the binding lifts on schedule, Sir Regen is free."

The question she'd left unspoken was readable in her eyes.

Don't you want out of the binding?

When Regen offered no answer, Sasha finally put it into words.

"A binding is an unjust relationship. One side has to submit unilaterally. And you especially, Sir Regen—you were forced into the vow against your will, with no say in the matter at all. A man who values honor as much as you do shouldn't have any reason to pass up the chance to throw off his shackles."

Even to Regen's own ear—no, to anyone's ear—Sasha's reasoning was sound.

Regen chose his answer carefully.

"Your Highness is a good liege. Honestly, I feel no humiliation at having been forced into the vow."

"How gentlemanly of you."

"I mean it."

He said it with weight, and Sasha's eyes dropped slightly, as if in quiet reflection. In that gap, Regen pressed on.

"Isn't it only alongside Your Highness that I can pursue either a greater cause or my revenge? I'm bound to be at your side regardless."

"That's something you could do without being my direct knight."

Regen nearly answered back at how precisely she'd struck the heart of it.

'That's exactly the problem.'

There was no reason for her to let surplus dominion go to waste—she would take on new knights of her own. At least three like Domynick. As many as five, maybe.

Probably it was the possessiveness the binding had provoked in him, but the thought alone was enough to disgust him.

If he was bound to remain at her side regardless, it seemed better to hold her dominion as her direct knight than not to. But he couldn't say any of this to Sasha outright.

Fortunately, Regen had a fine pretext ready.

"Doesn't the binding to Your Highness make me stronger, besides?"

"Ah."

Sasha let out a small sound of realization, as though she'd forgotten something.

Right now they'd skipped straight from completing the third tier of the binding to the fifth, going directly into core treatment—but properly speaking, the fourth tier held something called Empowerment.

Sasha spoke, sounding a little disappointed.

"So Sir Regen has ambitions of his own, after all. I thought you'd want to grow stronger honestly, through training alone, without relying on any sorcery."

"......"

"Well—Sir Regen is only human too, I suppose. In any case, I understand."

Her suspicion thoroughly extinguished, the princess strode on ahead. Regen's honor had taken some damage in the process, but he decided he could bear it.

"Where are we going?"

"To raise my dominion."

"......"

Regen drew a deep breath and carefully broached the subject.

"I'd heard the Mad Emperor grew strong by offering up his brothers' blood."

"The Mad Emperor is the aberration. The imperial family is different, ordinarily. I'll show you the normal process—come along."

Sasha led Regen to the Grand Cathedral, situated within the main palace. Ornate stained glass and the grand swell of pipe organ music overwhelmed anyone who entered with a sense of reverence.

There was no one inside. Likely only whoever was playing the organ up on the third floor.

Sasha walked straight toward the goddess statue at the center and spoke.

"The Empire serves the goddess of protection and discipline. She's the one true god—a state religion."

"I've heard of it. That there's a myth claiming the imperial bloodline descends from the goddess."

"Yes, quite the self-infatuation, for a fallen people. If anything, we'd descend from the god of war and corruption."

"......"

"There's not a single member of the imperial family or the nobility these days who actually practices any real faith. The Grand Cathedral's just used as a banquet hall that happens to feel solemn and holy. Usually it's for things like royal weddings or imperial rites."

Having walked deep into the cathedral, Sasha looked up at the marble statue. Regen, for a moment, couldn't take his eyes off her profile. Perhaps it was the sanctity of the space, but the way she took in the goddess's likeness made her look almost like a saint herself.

"Your Highness seems devout."

"......"

Sasha turned and regarded him blankly. Only after a long moment under her gaze did he realize his mistake and correct it.

"Sasha, I mean."

Satisfied, Sasha faced forward again and released him from the uncomfortable silence.

"On the surface, that's the impression I give. I make donations. I give to convents too."

"On the surface"—that phrase alone was a hint there was more beneath it.

Regen decided to focus on the matter of dominion for now.

"Is this where you pray?"

"What I'm about to do is called an 'Oath.' Watch closely."

Sasha looked Regen straight in the eye and raised one hand as though taking a vow.

"I, Rosasia Trinite Magnalorde, swear here and now. The wicked man who drags this world into ruin and suffering. Within one month I shall deliver him up."

A clear pattern surfaced in Sasha's pale sky-blue eyes, then sank away again.

This time, Regen's eyes didn't resonate with it—it seemed only Sasha was performing whatever special rite this was.

Once the pattern had vanished, Sasha lowered her eyes gently and explained.

"Keep the Oath, and dominion rises. Break it, and it falls. That's why the words 'Oath' and 'promise' are treated as something close to sacred among the imperial family."

"Does it have to be done in a cathedral?"

"Actually, all you need is a witness."

There was no particular reason she'd bothered coming all the way to the cathedral. It was simply a good place to explain the Oath's founding myth—and since this was the first Oath she'd ever taken in front of Regen, she'd wanted to do it somewhere sacred.

"Oh, right—the content of the Oath has to be something good. The guardian goddess is a benevolent one, so if you swear to do something wicked, it angers her instead."

"Sasha."

Regen spoke without quite meaning to, having listened this whole time. His face looked shaken.

"How many Oaths have you kept, exactly?"

Rosasia Trinite Magnalorde. Her dominion stood at the fifth tier—a level celebrated as without precedent in imperial history, matched only by the Mad Emperor himself. Which was to say: not normal.

There was much about Sasha that Regen didn't know.

Diligently slipping secret letters into library books, taking in the daughter of a destroyed house as her lady-in-waiting, carrying all manner of concealed poisons in her ring—from these alone, he'd sensed she was no ordinary person.

Naturally, he'd assumed there would be much more to learn about her yet, and had braced himself for it.

But the information he was confronting now, without warning, went beyond simply discovering a surprising hidden side of her.

Sasha's eyes drifted, as if looking at something far away, and she confessed, calm and matter-of-fact.

"I saved about five hundred. Killed about fifty. That's how I ended up like this."

Might this be what it feels like—to learn that the chunk of ice you thought was drifting alone on the open sea was only the tip of a buried mountain.

Regen very nearly opened his mouth right then and confessed his own identity. It was instinct—the urge to close the distance that had just yawned open between them.

He balled up the impulse and crammed it into his clenched fist, just barely managing to say something else instead.

"Then we'd better find some corrupt official to offer up to the goddess now."

"The goddess will provide that too."

The moment Sasha smiled, open and unguarded, the doors of the Grand Cathedral split apart on both sides.

"Ha, ha—every time this old body enters the palace, it seems I find Her Highness the Silver Bird Princess here in the Grand Cathedral."