TMWDS Chapter 1

"Wake up. Fall asleep here and you'll die."

The chilling warning came with her body being wrenched upright. Only then did Ionna realize she'd been unconscious.

She stared blankly down at the hand fisted in her collar, then slowly lifted her gaze.

The man gripping her by the front of her uniform was glaring at her with frightening eyes.

Ionna parted her cracked lips just enough to ask.

"……Duke Leroy?"

"Yes. Coming back to your senses at all?"

Something like relief flickered across his face—strange and out of place.

He'd glimpsed hope that she might live. A useless hope. Her body was, without exaggeration, a wreck.

Her mind wasn't much better; the memories from before she'd lost consciousness came back only in fragments.

The last clear scene in her head was a deafening roar, and her turning to look behind her.

Waking amid collapsed rubble suggested she'd been caught square in the explosion.

Ionna breathed in wheezing gasps, trying to steady her spinning head.

Why did it end up like this.

It wasn't confusion about the state of her body, torn to rags as it was. This was a more fundamental question.

Why had the Emperor's Sword, Ionna Modrov, been sprawled alone in the wreckage, waiting to die?

And why, of all people, was she spending the last moments of her life with this man—who meant less to her than a passing stranger?

That the one who'd come looking for her, after she'd been left behind protecting the Emperor, was none other than the husband she'd kept at arm's length because of that same liege—it felt like fate's idea of a joke.

Especially since it had been the Emperor who'd chosen that husband for her in the first place.

Ionna was the escort knight of the current Emperor, Rihardt—a loyal subject who'd stood at his side without wavering since before he'd even ascended to Crown Prince.

She hadn't refused him anything, for her lord's sake.

Not even something as consequential as marriage.

On a day when rumors had spread about their unusually close lord-and-retainer relationship, Rihardt had summoned Ionna to the Crown Prince's palace.

He'd shown brief displeasure at the absurd gossip, then said, in a tone as though it were nothing at all:

"You'd best get married, I think. The husband doesn't much matter, does it?"

The man Rihardt had picked out as Ionna's match was Duke Leroy Hance.

At a time when the old, storied house had been reeling from the fallout of a disgraceful scandal, Rihardt had wasted no time driving his own influence into the vulnerable seat. Naturally, it was the worst marriage there could be.

The Duke had always kept a wary eye on the wife who'd serve as the Emperor's eyes and ears, and Ionna had accepted his exclusion without complaint.

From the moment she'd walked into that wedding hall beside him to this very day, Ionna had never once thought of them as a real married couple.

The Duke, most likely, felt exactly the same.

So why, then, was he—no, you—here now?

"Why on earth did you come here. How did you even—"

Ionna asked with difficulty, swallowing a dry cough.

Outside of official obligations, they'd lived essentially separate lives.

She had no idea how he'd managed to show up in front of her, at exactly the right moment, when he shouldn't have known where she was headed.

She herself had never particularly minded the arrangement, but the Emperor's underhanded maneuvering against the ducal house had thoroughly ruined her married life.

No one in the Hance household had ever considered Ionna a proper lady of the house.

"You're not here to rescue me, I imagine……"

"Is it strange for a husband to come rescue his wife?"

"Of course. For us, it is."

"Agreed."

The man replied in a tone that carried no particular pleasure, and let go of her collar.

While he looked around them, Ionna took the moment to check her own condition.

The stab wound she'd taken in battle was fairly deep, but—fortunately or unfortunately—her red uniform hid it from view.

Holding onto a mind that felt ready to snap, Ionna asked,

"So. Are you actually going to tell me the real reason?"

"I'll answer if we survive this."

"That's an impossible condition. I'm about to die, and if you're unlucky, so are you."

"Talking this much for someone about to die. Guess you can still hold on."

He said it while studying her expressionless face with unusual care.

It was out of character for him to check on her condition like this. It really did seem, unfashionably enough, that he'd actually come here to save her.

To hide her own confusion, Ionna changed the subject.

"……Is His Majesty safe?"

"Asking after the safety of the liege who abandoned you and ran?"

He shot back, irritated. The remark had personal feeling mixed into it, but it was, objectively, a fair point.

And yet Ionna herself held no particular grudge over the Emperor's choice.

Wasn't it only natural for an escort knight to protect the person she was escorting?

Besides, Rihardt wasn't the sort of man to go soft on someone out of gratitude for years of service.

She was loyal to the Emperor, but not so lacking in sense that she'd deny the plain fact that he was, objectively, a son of a bitch.

'Today's attack, at least, had been carried out by people enraged over his tyranny—hardly the mark of a good ruler, however you looked at it.'

Which was why the sudden attack hadn't particularly surprised Ionna.

A leader who couldn't read the will of his people never lasted long, in the end.

Her fellow knights must have thought the same, because the moment they'd sensed trouble, they'd evacuated the Emperor first, moving with the kind of precision that suggested they'd half expected this all along.

Left behind at the site, Ionna had cut down the enemy pouring in without pause.

She was a woman who'd risen to become the Emperor's closest confidant on the strength of a single sword, and no one who faced her under comparable conditions could stand against her.

She might have annihilated every last one of them and returned safely to her liege's side—if her cornered opponents hadn't set off explosives.

"I have a subordinate who knows I'm here. He'll come find us soon, so don't waste your strength for nothing—just wait. The path outside collapsed anyway, so there's no getting out right now regardless."

The Duke said this, leaning his back against the wall with a faint sigh.

Had finding her alive put him at ease, somehow? His face looked, for whatever reason, a little more relaxed than it had a moment ago.

That he hadn't yet noticed her wound wasn't carelessness on his part. It was that she'd become someone thoroughly practiced at hiding pain, at pretending nothing hurt.

At first, she'd kept up the act out of wariness. But now, for some reason, she didn't want him to know she was hurt at all.

Was it because he'd actually come running, worried enough about her survival, to reach this place?

Not that it mattered—she'd be dead soon regardless……

"Duke Leroy, could I ask for one thing?"

"Go ahead. ……No, don't. Not if it's more of your noise."

"I'd like one last kiss."

Rare surprise flickered across the man's face.

He straightened his slouched posture back up against the wall and looked down at her.

"What did you just—"

His eyes darted toward the crown of her head, as though he suspected she might have hit it.

Only after sweeping her with a suspicious look did he continue the conversation.

"Do you happen to have some kind of grudge against me?"

"No, but it feels a bit unfair to die without ever once actually kissing my husband."

"We've already done that. At the wedding."

"For a grand total of three seconds, with nothing but our lips touching. Is Your Grace's mental age around eight, by any chance?"

Ionna pointed out the uncomfortable truth.

Since their marriage, up until now, they'd never so much as held hands in private. Naturally, they'd never kissed like a normal married couple, nor spent a night together, either.

Because of that, Ionna had always assumed he'd found himself a lover somewhere she wasn't privy to.

The Duke had at least never humiliated her by showing up with another woman in public, and Ionna had lived her married life expecting nothing more than that bare minimum of decent treatment from her husband.

Right up until death was staring her in the face, at least.

"I won't tell anyone. I'll keep it to myself, quietly."

If word got out that they'd kissed, no small number of people would be disappointed. His inner circle especially.

She'd meant it as a promise to protect his reputation, but apparently it had come out sounding, unintentionally, rather like something a woman in love would say. His answer came back defensive.

"Don't say it like you actually like me."

"I wouldn't do anything so shameless."

"To whom?"

The man asked, his voice flat.

When Ionna's expression showed confusion, he let out a short breath through his nose.

"Betrayed by your lover, and now you want to go have an affair, is that it."

The next thing out of his mouth made just as little sense as the first.

She had, quite properly, asked her legally wedded husband for physical contact. "Affair" wasn't the word for that.

And who was this lover he kept referring to, anyway?

Turning his words over, Ionna landed on an absurd thought.

"You don't mean…… His Majesty the Emperor?"