SBTMK Chapter 3

Flora studied him.

She'd categorized him as a guileless noble's son—that face, that skin, those jewels. The look still said that. What he did with it didn't match.

The way he'd looked at the bodies. The way the threat hadn't landed.

Most noble sons she'd encountered across the continent—whatever brave face they put on for an audience—eventually soiled themselves when their own life entered the equation. It was a reliable pattern. Losing things made people afraid of losing them; nine out of ten nobles were exactly that kind of person.

This one was different. No sport in provoking him.

"……If I don't try to find out—you'll let me live?"

"Yes. In return for your clumsy attempt to help me. In exchange, keep what you saw here to yourself."

Flora slotted the last arrow into its case and said it quietly.

He smiled again. There was a sneer in it—saying such nonsense with such care—but she wasn't angry. Her gaze kept returning to him.

He had an unreasonably pretty smile.

"Fine. Too much I haven't done yet to die now—I'll hold off."

Whatever weight he'd been carrying had receded somewhere. His voice had turned playful.

There was no more time. Flora swung the bow onto her back.

The visible knights were down, but there was no way of knowing how many more there were. She needed to be gone before they converged.

"……You—go straight home. Don't wander. Not if you want to keep breathing."

She gave him the warning and turned her back.

That was when it came—from somewhere distant, already growing louder.

"Your Majesty! Where are you, Your Majesty! Your Majesty!"

Flora's feet stopped.

'Your Majesty——?'

"Yeah, I'm over here!"

The man had apparently heard it too. He raised a hand and called back.

She was fairly certain someone had just said Your Majesty.

'……Then why are you the one answering.'

The thought arrived a half-second before the understanding did.

No.

Fuck.

Both landed at once. The curse came out low, without deciding to.

"What are you doing? Close your mouth."

She crossed to him fast and covered his mouth before it could open further. The worst-case calculation was already running.

"You're the Emperor?"

A nod.

"This is Haenkan territory."

Another nod. At the second one, her vision swam briefly.

The expression she always maintained flickered without her permission.

The throne of Haenkan had changed hands roughly two years ago. That timing overlapped with when Flora had made her decision to run. Cenkan had never assigned her anything touching Haenkan, and every nerve she had was bent toward escape in any case. She hadn't been following continental developments. She knew fragments. Rumors only.

The new Emperor was young, people had said. Handsome. The women knights who'd made sexual jokes about the new emperor without any particular restraint came to mind.

The man in front of her—even with half his face covered—was undeniably that. His appearance outshone the jewels hanging off him, which had made her lose composure for a moment when she'd first looked at him.

But looks weren't proof.

Why had she assumed noble son and stopped there. She disassembled the reasoning. You'd have to be idle, unoccupied, to be wandering this forest in broad daylight—the profile fit a young man with nothing required of him. A second son, maybe. She'd taken the obvious answer and not looked past it.

She wanted to dissect her own complacent mind.

And then his thigh, blood-soaked now, swam back up behind her eyes.

In an instant, she had become a traitor.

"……Hey."

Still uncertain—though half-convinced—she called to him with the resignation already in her voice. His gaze came to her instead of an answer.

"I can't be seen by many people. If that happens, I'll have no choice but to kill everyone who's seen me. If you want your attendants to live—stay quiet. Understood?"

There was threat mixed in, but the urgency underneath it was genuine. The man nodded. Only then did Flora take her hand from his mouth.

"You."

"……"

"Not a mercenary—a fugitive?"

Then came his question.

"……"

Her lips hesitated. He watched her eyes while she hesitated.

She was caught off-balance again. The composure that had cracked once wasn't filling back in cleanly.

At this rate she'd be broadcasting her state in plain view. A pounding pressed through her chest and down into the rest of her body.

How long had it been since she'd held someone's gaze for this long. The last person who'd looked at her with anything like goodwill had been an elderly innkeeper, and that had been months ago.

Knights trained harder than most in emotional suppression. Even they avoided Flora's eyes.

Her face was beautiful enough that people looked—involuntarily, before they could stop themselves—and then found that looking back was like catching something, a chill that ran up through the spine. Dead black pupils. Eyes that carry death, someone had once said.

This man didn't seem affected.

Which might be nothing to him. It was new to her.

She found herself looking into pupils the color of deep red embers—a scarlet that caught the light like something polished, brighter than any stone on his coat—and feeling distinctly as though she were being drawn into something designed to catch her.

'This isn't a trap. Some kind of magic——'

Haenkan had magic. It was possible. Something that compelled confession, or drew a person down into sleep.

The thought snapped her awake. Flora pulled her gaze away from his with effort.

"……Yes."

"You're not Haenkan's citizen?"

She nodded, composure re-assembled into something functional.

The calculation: if magic or trickery was in play and she wasn't careful, she'd be handing over classified information. Better to give him only what satisfied his curiosity and nothing further.

"Hm. Interesting."

"……"

"In that case—before the attendants arrive, maybe we find somewhere to be less visible? I'd like to keep talking. And I do have a reputation to consider… in this condition."

He indicated his leg. His eyes pulled down at the corners—something between complaint and appeal, the look of a dog that has been rained on.

She felt, on balance, approximately no sympathy—given that she ate whatever she could hunt and called it a meal—but——

'……he wants to keep talking.'

Flora worked the inside of her lip between her teeth and held it.

If he was genuinely the Emperor, the risk extended past his own life to the stability of the empire. He seemed to have no concern about this at all.

'Is he actually this thoughtless. I seem to recall rumors about the new Emperor being somewhat lacking.'

Or possibly he'd assessed her as non-threatening, or believed the situation fully resolved—either reading was too easy. Too comfortable.

Then again: maybe he simply wasn't the Emperor.

'Still—— this place is too exposed.'

She had no idea how many more might be waiting in the forest.

She had threatened him and put a blade through his thigh. She had no standing to offer him anything. But she didn't want to watch another innocent person die in her vicinity.

Cenkan's knights had no mercy. Anything that impeded the mission was something they were constitutionally satisfied to remove. If they knew the man standing in their path was the Emperor of the enemy empire, they would find that more interesting than dissuading.

They'd been trained for years to regard Haenkan as an enemy state. An Emperor who couldn't be protected was an opportunity.

"……Before that, show me proof you're the Emperor."

"Proof?"

He needed to be worth the calculation. If real danger came, was this someone whose life outweighed her own.

"Yes. I have no idea what Haenkan's Emperor looks like."

"Suspicious one, aren't you. But I don't usually bring proof of identity when I go out hunting."

"……"

"Should I call one attendant over? All I have on me at the moment are these jewels."

He abruptly presented his midsection—a small, insistent gesture. Flora's eyes dropped.

"Impressive, aren't they? The sort of thing only an Emperor could carry around?"

What he was indicating: a well-made belt, an ornate sword-hilt, and the jewels stitched into his coat.

Flora clicked her tongue.

She picked the short blade up from the ground. He drew a short breath.

"Going to kill me? Oh—that's a bit inconvenient——"

"Haenkan's Emperors carry a bound spirit passed down through every generation. Its mark——"

Shk.

"Is here."

Haenkan's historical records: when the emperor, blessed by the gods, was in danger, a bound spirit in the shape of a black wolf would appear and save him.

'It's real…… damn.'

For better or worse, there it was—on his shoulder, where the collarbone met. A black marking, unmistakable.

Flora let the killing edge leave her eyes and immediately dropped to one knee.

"I stand before the sun of Haenkan. May endless glory and blessing attend Your Majesty."

The confirmation arrived in her chest like a hammer.

She'd been looking at him as an enemy—and not a single thread of killing intent had arisen. Not one.

Real evidence she was free of Cenkan's conditioning. Goosebumps rose on her skin.

From pleasure. That was the kind of goosebumps it was.

"……For someone who isn't Haenkan's citizen, you know rather a lot about Haenkan."

"I've read the histories."

"That settles whether I'm the Emperor. But you—still no intention of telling me who you are."

He was still smiling. The edge underneath the smile hadn't bothered to hide itself.

"……That is correct."

"And if I try to find out—you'll kill me?"

He returned the threat she'd made before she'd known what he was, his tone light, as though he were reminding her of something slightly embarrassing she'd said at a dinner party.

A cold sweat moved through her.

The things she'd said and done to him—all of it—each item was its own category of offense. Threatening the life of a sitting Emperor. And then the blade through his thigh, which she had put there herself. If he chose to have her torn apart for it, there was nothing she could reasonably object to.

Flora pressed herself flat to the ground.

"……Please forgive my conduct until now. Your Majesty."

She had no reason to pledge loyalty to Haenkan's Emperor. But she had reasons to go on living. So she lay flat.

She still had things left undone that required staying alive.