IYTTEPAAK Chapter 7

Feeling churned inside him. If she hadn't already found him out, perhaps—but she had. There was no longer any reason to hold it in.

"I have no more reason to live. No value left in it. I don't want a shameful, dragged-out life."

He couldn't understand why he was still breathing when he'd failed to protect a single thing, why he hadn't yet paid the price he owed.

He had no will left to live, either. What was possible for a man whose mana core had been shattered?

He thought of himself as a dragonfly caught by an innocent child. A cruel, innocent child frees the dragonfly—but tears off its wings first.

The dragonfly can never fly again. It must crawl the ground like an insect. To live like that is not to live at all.

"I would ask for mercy. That you turn a blind eye."

CHAAANG—the porcelain vase that had held the flower arrangement shattered.

He snatched up the sharpest shard and pressed it to his throat. The blade found the spot where the artery ran—beneath the throat.

The princess showed not the slightest flicker of alarm, even now.

He understood why soon enough.

The point of the shard scraped his throat but could not drive in any deeper. His arm simply would not move, as though caught on something.

The princess spoke, soothing his confusion.

"You can't die."

The reason came quickly.

"...Because I ordered you to live."

"Surely not——"

"Just as you've guessed. It's the power passed down through the Magnalorde imperial bloodline. I used it on you."

It was a threat Regen had never once considered.

He had been a knight no rival could stand against. Even the Mad Emperor, said to possess a power without precedent in history, couldn't be certain he'd bring Regen to his knees.

To have stripped from him the will any man is owed simply for being a man—that could never feel good. Disgust rose from somewhere deep in his gut and settled, quiet, into his voice.

"You're a merciless one."

"I am the Mad Emperor's daughter."

Having answered that way, the princess's next words were strange.

"I'd like to talk."

"Talk?"

"If, once we've talked, you still want to die—I'll let you."

He couldn't get a fix on her.

"Do you mean that?"

"I swear it on my name."

"......"

"Come here and sit."

The princess led him to the table at the center of the bedroom. Food had been laid out on it.

"Eat. You must be hungry."

The most he could manage was to sit down. Eating was an act in service of survival. A man who wished to die had no need of it.

The princess looked at him—steady, unhurried. Sensing she was uncertain what to do, he told her the method himself.

"If you truly mean to make me eat, order it with your power."

"I've already given as many orders as were needed. From here on, I'd rather hold to the posture of conversation."

Regen assumed she would give up. He was wrong.

She filled his cup with her own hands, portioned the food onto a plate in easy bite-sized pieces, and pushed it in front of him.

"Watching you, I find myself thinking of a story my mother told me when I was young."

"......"

"My mother stopped eating when she was pregnant with me. Her defiance offended the Mad Emperor, it seems—he tried every method he could think of to make her eat. Dozens of failures, and then, finally, one that worked. It was very effective."

"......"

"The Mad Emperor had prisoners brought from my mother's homeland. Every time she refused an order to eat, he had one of their heads struck off. Five men died before her eyes. Then—a breath before the sixth—she drank the bowl of soup dry, right in front of him."

There was no way a story told in that clear, ringing voice could land pleasantly on Regen. His fist tightened; his nails bit into his palm.

"You won't order me—but you'll threaten me?"

"A threat's better. At least it doesn't turn a person into a doll."

The air settled, cold. An air cold enough that no one would've blinked if she'd sent for Rohengrin's prisoners that instant, to have them killed.

It was the princess who stepped back first.

"If you truly don't want to, you needn't eat. My mother, they say, vomited it all back up the moment the Mad Emperor left satisfied."

"......"

"...Hm. Wrong story to tell, maybe."

It didn't make sense, but Regen felt, in this moment, that she looked a little downcast.

Like the tyrant's daughter one instant, like his victim the next—he truly couldn't make sense of her.

"What is it you're trying to say?"

At Regen's demand that she come to the point, the princess stopped circling it. What she said was direct and startlingly honest.

"I want you to live. Only the living can plan for what's ahead. Revenge, a greater cause—whatever it is, I'll make the opportunity for you."

"I have no power left to meet Her Highness's expectations. Even alive, it would be nothing but a wretched, dragged-out existence."

"What if I could mend your mana core?"

Regen's mind snapped to attention.

"Is that possible?"

"It is. Restoring a mana core is the fifth tier of the imperial bloodline's power. I have dominion enough for that."

"......"

"Is there any reason to refuse?"

Light returned to Regen's eyes, listless until now.

The tyrant's daughter standing before him was, at the same time, the one who might weave him new wings for the ones he'd lost.

His savior whispered, sweet.

"Live. If you're alive, opportunity comes. This helplessness now—it's only for a moment."

"......"

"Be my sword."

The princess extended her right hand, as if requesting an escort.

All he had to do was take that hand respectfully and press his lips to it. It was a temptation with no refusing it.

Watching his gold eyes glaze over, pulled in—I knew it. Almost won.

There was no seal to take as proof of an oath or contract, so a kiss to the back of the hand would have to do.

That was when, instead of taking my hand, he caught my fingertips lightly—held them, let them go. When I met his eyes again, something new and sharp had settled there.

Not good, that clarity coming back into his gaze right now. I tensed.

"I have a question."

"What is it?"

"There's no guarantee I can meet Her Highness's expectations. Why go this far? Wouldn't another knight serve better?"

The meaning behind that sharpness in his eyes came through clearly.

He's testing whether I know who he really is.

Probing. Wariness. And beneath those, mixed in like an impurity, another feeling: fear.

Not simply the fear that his life would be in danger the moment his identity as the defeated prince came out. He was ashamed—ashamed of having survived alone.

A man who'd lived his whole life honorably, without shame, under a deep blue sky—to a man like that, this situation must feel like a humiliating, dragged-out existence.

Which meant his real identity was a secret that would do neither of us any good to share.

I have to pretend not to know.

He didn't remember the little princess he'd once saved, in any case. And back then, neither of us had even given the other our name.

If I didn't dig the memory up myself, then there had simply never been a point where he and I met.

The problem lay elsewhere.

I needed some other reason he'd find believable—one to explain why I'd chosen him as my knight.

If it came out even slightly clumsy, he'd suspect my sincerity, my real motive, and pull back. I couldn't let his heart close.

Think, Rosasia. Think faster.

A reason not to let everything I'd built up till now go to waste——

Ah.

I had one.

I turned the handle of my teacup over and over, several times. Feeling his relentless scrutiny on me, I let my gaze fall, forlorn, into the cup.

"It's because you...remind me of my dead brother."

I sold off one of my sixty-seven dead brothers.

"......"

I rolled just my eyes sideways and glanced at him. As I'd hoped, his gaze had begun to waver where it held mine.

He had a little sister my size. A clean hit, confirmed—my nerve steadied.

"He was very gentle with me. In this palace that's more like a breeding pen, he was the only family I could lean on. It's been years since he left my side, but I still miss my brother."

"...I see."

"I don't think I'm ready yet to accept that he's gone. And then today, I saw you. So—even if it's an illusion, even if it's a lie... I'd like you to fill the space my brother left, at my side. Just until I'm ready to let him go. Please."

I finished speaking and turned my head to the side, playing at pitiable.

It would have been lovely to let a tear fall from the trembling edge of an eyelash here—but sadly, that was beyond a dried-up woman like me.

He stayed silent for a long moment before he finally opened his mouth.