SBTMK Chapter 4

"Hmm, the discourtesy you have shown Us is by no means slight. You know this better than anyone. That We might have your limbs torn from your body this very moment and you would have nothing to say in your defense. However, as Our magnanimity exceeds the ocean in breadth and the heavens in height, We shall extend Our forgiveness—this once."

Simen chuckled through his 'emperor impression.' Ah, how is it possible to have not even an eye-crust's worth of dignity……

"Right. Let's move first. Ow, my leg."

The performance lost its appeal quickly. He began his litany of complaints. Flora had already assessed the tree cover and concluded they couldn't stay, so she put a hand under his arm.

"Ow."

"……"

"Ow, ow."

This is the inner thought speaking—she felt genuine killing intent toward the Emperor for the entire walk to the hideout.

He was not in as much pain as he was performing. This was self-evident. And yet he leaned on her with a commitment that suggested he might not survive the walk otherwise.

"Is this your house?"

They arrived. He was immediately standing on his own, perfectly fine, surveying the cave's interior. The corners of her eyes trembled without permission.

"It is, Your Majesty."

Flora held the rising irritation somewhere it couldn't get out and produced that sentence.

She'd have to leave soon anyway—Ayden had found this place. The cave was already compromised. She'd brought him here because the middle of the forest was worse, not because anywhere felt safe.

"Surprising—you've made a proper home of it. But why the stiff tone? Talk the way you were talking. You're not my knight, and you're not my citizen."

"I know how to show courtesy to the empire's sun."

Flora steered him to the bed and sat him down on it, eyes angled downward.

She'd had extensive training for it. The people Cenkan assigned her against were not only petty criminals—they were nobility, imperial family. Etiquette was a required part of the training.

"My name is Simen Izenerus. Call me Simen from now on."

Simen Izenerus.

Flora looked briefly at the man sitting on her shabby excuse for a bed.

His black hair was neatly swept up, without a single strand out of place. His face was the kind of face a god produces when there is nothing better to do—clean lines, dark brows, and lashes that caught the light when he blinked. Those orange pupils.

Even in a cave with light that couldn't commit to anything, the man was luminous.

'Really the Emperor……'

She'd seen the mark. She still couldn't quite make it real. It wasn't that she doubted his identity—it was that the situation felt like something that happened to other people.

She was briefly lost somewhere until those orange pupils moved from the cave's interior and found her.

"You don't want to?"

Call him by name. He meant because she wasn't Haenkan's citizen, she had no standing to call him Emperor.

It didn't matter either way. It wasn't a hardship.

"No. Simen."

"What do I call you?"

"Whatever you like."

"You don't have a name?"

Flora didn't answer. Names were nothing, in the end. The name itself hardly mattered. Flora wasn't her real name to begin with—there was nothing about Meryn Castle she wanted to keep, if keeping could be avoided. She would erase every trace of it, if she could.

"You have a habit of going quiet when answering would be inconvenient."

"……"

"Then I'll call you whatever I want?"

Flora nodded and gathered the herbs she'd prepared earlier, moving toward the far end of the cave.

Simen's gaze followed her. She could feel it, constant, unbroken.

"Pretty."

She didn't immediately register it. Hm? Something unsettling just reached my ears. What did he say?

The knife slipped.

"Not that? Then—Cutiepie?"

What. Flora's face did something she would not have permitted it to do.

She had never had gooseflesh from secondhand embarrassment before. There was a first for everything.

"Which is better—one or the other?"

Both were bad. The meat she'd eaten this morning was threatening to come back up.

"Flora."

"Hm?"

"The……-whatever-nickname-you-were-about-to-say. Call me Flora."

Being addressed as Pretty or Sweetpea was worse for her mental health than disclosing the name. She would leave this place and never see him again, but she couldn't tolerate even a moment of that nickname.

She'd escaped the mad Ayden only to run into another bad one. That was the ominous feeling.

Her bad feelings had never once been wrong.

"Flora? That's a lovely name. So 'Pretty' really does——"

"Your leg. Show me."

Flora suppressed the reflex to cover his mouth and picked up the crushed herbs.

When she sat down in front of him, the light in those eyes—which had been finding her reactions interesting—shifted.

"The floor's cold, just sitting on it."

Simen pulled a cloth from the bedding and held it out toward her.

"Use this."

She hadn't thought of it. The consideration caught her off-guard—again. She accepted it. The floor was cold; she could feel it coming up through the stone. She sat.

A strange feeling, for no particular reason. She kept her mouth shut and focused on the herbs.

An awkward silence moved through the cave. Simen watched her work on his leg and blinked several times. He swallowed against a dry throat and opened his mouth.

"Flora. This is—I'm only asking on the off-chance——"

"Yes."

"No, I mean—just, possibly——"

What could require this much preamble. Flora paused the application and looked at him.

"Say it. Simen."

"Are you wearing anything under that robe? It's dark in here—maybe I'm not seeing clearly."

Flora realized, in that moment, that she had hunted down Cenkan's knights wearing nothing but the robe she'd pulled on while half-asleep.

"Oh. No."

She'd been wondering why she was cold. That was why.

The question of embarrassment had been resolved by Cenkan's extended program long before she had occasion to miss it, so Simen's perspective on the matter was not something that occurred to her to consider.

"Wh—what? No?"

"Is there a problem?"

She glanced at her own clothing. A neutral nod.

Simen stared at her response, then stared some more, then produced a forced cough.

"There is a problem, actually. I'm a man in the prime of health. For things to be like this already——"

Bullshit.

The rumors about the new Emperor had not been favorable, aside from his appearance. Various accounts agreed he had abandoned governance in favor of wine and women.

No need to go further: being lecherous in a situation where losing his life wouldn't be strange confirmed it well enough.

Instead of answering, Flora pressed the crushed herbs hard into his thigh, enough that he couldn't make another sound.

"Ah—ow! That hurts!"

"Bear it."

"……Gently."

The complaint landed in a smaller voice. Something softened in her grip.

Simen went cooperative.

"When I'm done, take your attendants and go down the mountain. It's not safe here."

"Are these actually medicinal? You know your herbs?"

"They're medicinal."

He hadn't retained a single word of that.

She would have struck someone of ordinary rank on the head by now. The impulse rose and was immediately impractical.

The anxiety tightening through her had a specific source: if anything happened to him, it was because of her. That thought, repeating, made her sharper and more on edge than she wanted to be.

The peace had held, so far. But conditions changed without announcement.

This attack had come after months without one. The gap, and the number of knights Ayden had sent, meant preparation—this had been planned for a long time. It probably wasn't finished.

The Emperor needed to leave. She wanted to explain that to him in terms he would actually receive—drag him down the mountain herself, if necessary—and the playfulness running through everything he said was making that impossible.

"Simen. Did you actually come here only to hunt? Or is there another reason?"

"……"

"This mountain is some distance from the capital. There are hunting grounds everywhere. Why here, specifically?"

"The game is better here."

"I'm not playing. Whatever your reason is—go back. Now."

Simen's brow pulled down slightly at the bluntness.

"Go back?"

"Yes. Use a different hunting ground."

A pause. He looked at her steadily for a moment before answering.

"You're right that there's no shortage of hunting grounds."

He did come out to hunt. Strictly speaking, human hunting—but.

"But I've hunted on this mountain since before my coronation and after it. Competitions with the nobility. Outings with my attendants. Today was much the same kind of visit. Is there somewhere in my own empire I'm not permitted to go?"

The voice that said this was a different instrument entirely from the one that had been complaining about his leg and requesting nicknames. The playfulness was simply absent. The weight that remained was not performed—it arrived, settled, and made the correct posture feel self-evident.

"Finding it somewhat strange to be lectured about my whereabouts by a fugitive who entered this country illegally. I should be the one questioning you."

"……"

"And if I did come here for other reasons—I have no obligation to explain myself to you. I have equally no obligation to return to the palace because you issued a command with no context attached."

She hadn't known the Emperor used this mountain. During her months here, no one had appeared—she'd assumed it was simply remote enough to be left alone. She'd been wrong about that, too.

Everything he'd said was accurate. She had simply been irritated that he had appeared in front of her at that particular moment—and had taken it out on him.

Simen was the sun of this empire. The weight already on his shoulders overflowed. She was not adding to it.

She'd known it wasn't his fault even as the words were forming. The worry for him had been producing sentences she couldn't quite stop.

She'd stepped over a line, and Simen's tone had shifted just enough to mark where the line was.

Flora pulled back immediately.

"……I overstepped. But there may still be stragglers in these woods. I said it because I was worried you'd be in danger—honestly, given the situation, I thought you were being too relaxed about it. Honestly, Your Maj—Simen. It's a matter of your life and you seem too relaxed about it."

In short: doesn't your life mean anything to you.

Simen looked at her with something cool in his expression, then looked away and let out a breath.

"Do I look like a child to you? I'm a bit young-looking, and yes, handsome—but…… I'm not so helpless that I can't manage my own body. I'm a Master, for what it's worth."

Master?

Flora's head came up.