SBTMK Chapter 7

'It hurts...'

Flora surfaced to consciousness all at once, and the facts came with her: she had been fighting Cenkan knights, taken injuries, and lost consciousness. Which meant—

'Then this must be Meryn Castle.'

Even the thought was horrifying. She knew exactly what would be waiting when she opened her eyes. Ayden, and whatever madness he had planned.

Slicing her open in the name of an experiment, perhaps. Throwing her into a monster's den. Or something else entirely—

Her body had already begun to tremble.

'If it really is that place... please. Don't let me wake up.'

Flora prayed with everything she had. The gods had never once answered her before, not in any meaningful way—but people kept asking anyway, the same futile hope every time.

Flora was no different. She wanted this time to be different.

Then, from somewhere nearby, a cool breeze moved through the room. It carried the faint sweetness of flowers.

'This isn't Meryn Castle...?'

Whether the prayer had worked or not, she was certain of it—this was not Cenkan. The quality of the air alone was nothing like the castle where she had lived.

She opened her eyes.

Relief came immediately. This was not the battered, familiar ceiling she had faced every day like a preview of hell.

The room was lavish and airy, its focal point a canopy of pink silk stretched above the bed, the lace catching the light.

'Where am I?'

She hadn't expected pink lace to be capable of looking that beautiful.

Flora set aside the question of where she was and spent a long moment simply looking up at it. The kind of thing she only ever saw in noble manors, during infiltration work.

'For now, not being in Meryn Castle is enough.'

The thought loosened something in her chest. The muscles that had gone rigid began, slowly, to ease.

"You're awake?"

The voice came from close by.

Flora was upright before the sentence finished, turning toward the sound.

The pain that tore through her entire body—she ignored it. Her reflexes were already reaching for a threat.

But what she found was a different kind of dangerous entirely.

The man seated at the window had sunlight pouring across his back, and it had no business making him look like that. Dark hair, precisely kept. Pale skin. And eyes the color of a late afternoon sun—a clear, luminous orange that she did not have a ready category for.

Flora's gaze faltered.

"...Simen?"

"You remember my name." He set down the book he'd been reading and crossed toward her. "Sharp."

'Why is Simen here?'

He looked far more composed than he had in the forest—no blood on his face, no torn clothing, no disheveled hair. Even in that state she had found him unreasonably handsome. Now, in a close-fitted black dress uniform trimmed with gold insignia that left nothing of his build to the imagination—

She thought, absurdly, that perhaps this was actually heaven.

'I always thought I wasn't interested in men. Maybe I just had impossibly high standards.'

"Is something on my face?"

Flora blinked herself back. She had been staring. She cleared her throat.

This was not the time for idiotic thoughts.

"...Where is this?"

"My home."

His home. He was the Emperor of Haenkan, so his home was, naturally, the palace.

"Why am I... here?"

"You appeared to be in trouble. I helped."

"...Pardon?"

"This time it actually was trouble, I assume? You weren't trying to get captured again?"

Helped. The word landed somewhere deep in her chest and stayed there.

That heart, which she had always assumed had the consistency of stone—thudding like that. It was disorienting. Like blood reversing direction.

'Helped. Why?'

She couldn't make sense of it. From the very beginning Simen had tried to help her. The first time, she'd understood—he'd thought a citizen was in danger. But he had known after that what she was. A fugitive. A foreigner who had slipped in like a rat. And his position hadn't changed. He had brought her to the palace. Had her treated.

These were not things Flora's mind had the framework to process.

"Why?"

"Why what?" He looked at her as though he were the confused one.

"I'm asking why you would rescue someone with no connection to Haenkan. I'm only a fugitive. My identity is uncertain."

"You helped me, too. I pay back what I owe."

Flora had tried to save him, yes—but it was not the same thing. Simen was an emperor. The Emperor of Haenkan. Haenkan's decline had always been Cenkan's great wish. The current emperor's death wouldn't collapse an empire outright—but with no viable successor, vulnerabilities opened up everywhere.

She had not wanted to provide any opening. That was the only reason she had acted.

"How's the pain? You won't be moving much for a while, apparently—lie back down."

"...I'm fine."

Sitting upright felt like something was being driven through her entire body. But with the Emperor standing in front of her, she could not in good conscience simply lie there.

Simen watched her with something careful in his eyes.

"I don't know what happened to you," he said. "But once you leave this castle, you'll be back to running. Won't you?"

"..."

"Even if you wait until you've fully recovered, you don't look like you'd last more than a few days."

He understood her situation precisely. She hadn't needed it articulated for her—and the bleak reality of it settled on her chest, tightening her breath.

"So I thought I'd make a proposal. Would you hear it?"

"A proposal?"

It was sudden. But the word proposal, from an emperor's mouth—she found herself curious despite everything. Flora blinked up at him.

"I won't ask why you're being hunted—not until you choose to tell me. So. How would you like to live here?"

"...What?"

"You don't have anywhere to go anyway."

She had not expected that.

Flora stared at him.

'Live in the castle.'

That was an offer of a new life. Of a life at all.

'Why?'

She had spent every year of her life being taught that no favor was ever truly free. The older she got, the more accurate that lesson proved.

He had saved her life—she could set that aside for now. But he could have imprisoned her. He had treated her wounds instead. He wasn't asking why she was running, and he was offering to hide her here. Every single thing Simen had said amounted to gratuitous kindness with no stated price.

She felt suspicion before she felt anything like gratitude.

"We met like this, which is its own kind of fate. I'm asking whether you'd like to become a citizen of my empire."

Serving a lord with a face like that had to rank among the more enviable lots in life—but that was not a good enough reason to accept something this significant without thinking.

Flora lowered her gaze.

"I'm grateful for my life," she said carefully. "But I decline the proposal. Gratuitous favors make me uncomfortable."

"I thought so."

Simen looked briefly caught off guard—then nodded, as though he had anticipated exactly this.

"Then what if I had a reason?"

"...What?"

He wasn't giving up. The follow-up came immediately. Flora lifted her head again.

He had leaned down at some point, bringing his face very close to hers. The smile he directed at her—

The proximity was one thing. But meeting those eyes, she felt the strange pull of them again, the way they seemed to draw her in.

'There is absolutely something supernatural happening in those eyes.'

"I don't want to waste your abilities. I want you to be a strength of this empire."

"..."

"You don't actually enjoy living as a fugitive, do you? It's not some eccentric preference?"

At his question, something she had been keeping carefully buried surfaced without warning.

'If we meet again, I'll kill you. I will.'

She had declared it to Ayden—with all the boldness she possessed at the time. And since then, she had done nothing. Only run. Weakly, uselessly.

It hadn't always been this way. After she had survived the fall from the cliff, she had made plans. Ambitious ones. Revenge had seemed possible, for a while. But there was no viable path. Nothing that could be realized.

"...There's no reason I would enjoy it."

She had also wanted, for a time, to stop running altogether—to live among ordinary people, simply and justly. She knew how that had ended. People who had helped her out of simple compassion, who had felt sorry for her without any malice—they had all been killed. Brutally. For no reason except that they had helped her.

Flora could only protect herself. She had not been able to protect Rene, or Rene's child.

The years she had spent alone in the mountains were the result of all of that. Living among people was a luxury a fugitive could not afford.

The days she had spent in despair, one after another, flashed through her mind in a revolving parade of faces she no longer let herself name.

"Then my proposal should appeal to you. Flora."

She had known there were Cenkan spies in Haenkan when she slipped through the barrier—and she had done it anyway, out of sheer stubbornness.

Cenkan had never once given her a mission involving Haenkan. For reasons she had never understood. Which had made her curious, in an abstract way—what kind of place was this country. Why Cenkan was so desperately fixated on keeping pace with it.

She had held, once, a small hope of finding an ally here. Someone in this empire who could help her.

At some point that hope had died entirely. The weight of the life she was living had eventually broken it.

"You don't trust me, surely?"

The chance was here now. Arriving in a form she hadn't imagined. The anger she had forced herself to forget—the dream of becoming ordinary again—something cracked open. Like a shell breaking after too long.

Why would Simen make this offer? Haenkan was said to have great knights. What could her abilities possibly be worth to a place like this?

There had to be something else behind it.

'Does he know something about Cenkan?'

And that hidden reason could be dangerous to her.

And yet—

She could not refuse. She wanted to drink it even knowing it was poison.

"...Does Simen trust me?"

"No. How much have we actually seen of each other? I'm not that easy."

"Then why make the offer? What if I'm a spy? I could kill Simen."

Simen narrowed his eyes at that. Tilted his head, appearing to consider the question with genuine thought.

"If you'd planned to kill me, you had plenty of opportunities. We spent quite a long time alone together, didn't we." A pause, and then his voice adjusted to something quieter. "Still just the two of us right now, for that matter."

The way he said just the two of us—

The memory surfaced before she could stop it. The cave. The moment Simen had—had pinned—

'Why is that coming up now—!'

Heat flooded her face. She squeezed her eyes shut. Simen's brow furrowed.

"Your face is red. Is the room too warm?"

She shook her head instead of answering.

"W-What if I'd received orders to extract imperial secrets?"

She threw the question out, desperate to move the conversation anywhere else. Simen, who had turned to check whether the window was properly open, looked back at her.

"Someone capable of uncovering and stealing imperial secrets would need to reach my innermost circle. Do you think you could make it that far?" His voice dropped half a register. "Flora."

It sounded like a taunt.