Chapter 178

For a moment, fear stirred in her chest.

In the midst of war, she doubted whether a midwife could even be found, and there was no woman by her side who could share the experience or wisdom of childbirth.

Worse still, who could say whether Cherry would take on the perfect shape of a human infant? Ordinary women’s tales might not help her in the slightest.

But Elise shook her head firmly.

“I won’t start worrying ahead of time,” she said, her voice clear though a trace of trembling lingered in her eyes. “You only know once you’ve gone through it.”

Rezette’s gaze was steady, but his reply came low, edged with certainty. “There are many things one must know even without going through them.”

“Then,” Elise countered quickly, almost playfully, “you’ll just have to come back quickly. How far shall I count this time, until you return?”

The words carried an unspoken plea. The head of King Ugel might be important, but more than that, she wanted her husband at her side when their child was born. Nothing could be certain in this storm before the storm, in this night heavy with omens—but still, she wished.

Rezette pressed his lips against the back of her hand and exhaled a faint, weary laugh. “One each day, thirty in all.”

Her eyes widened. “Truly? Only a month?”

“It may be sooner.”

His glance dropped briefly to the faint wound upon his wrist—the cut he had made to give his blood to Barnon. He was convinced the separation this time would not be long. That certainty alone allowed him to entrust her to the safety of the fortress and turn his steps away.

He bent his forehead to hers, voice quiet but unwavering. “My sovereign says she has need of me, and so I will move day and night until it is done.”

The word sovereign was not meant for kings or emperors. It meant Elise. She was his every direction, and even his departure was only a path that circled back to her.

She frowned lightly, puzzled by his phrasing, but smiled nonetheless. “I don’t quite understand what you mean, but I’ll count the days diligently. One by one.”

Her eyes bent in mirth, and her cheeks flushed with the tender glow of ripened peaches. Leaning close, she whispered in a voice meant for his ears alone. “I’m glad you are still my husband. Glad you still love me.”

So let it all be finished swiftly. Let Cherry be born into a season filled not with blood and ruin but with blessings and peace.

No further words were exchanged. Their lips met at once, sealing the vow of silence with warmth.

Outside, the dawn deepened over the gorge, heavy with foreboding.

***

“If by some misfortune I should die, you must cut the child from my womb.”

The Great Dragon of Grandel, Sameshita—the first creature wrought by the hand of the gods, perfect above all, the progenitor of magic—licked his lips as he watched the clouds drift across the sky.

“It would be quite pleasant if things turned out that way,” he murmured, almost idly.

He was bored. Utterly, suffocatingly bored.

Ever since Elise had descended into the gorge, more than a fortnight ago, nothing had roused his interest. Not a spark, not a flicker. Observing Elizabeth and the life she carried within her belly had been far less tedious. The babe had grown by the day, and Elizabeth herself had grown paler, thinner, increasingly wan.

She, too, could not help imagining the worst. Within days of arriving at Riosa Castle, she had made a second bargain with the dragon.

“It’s about a time when I have no one to turn to,” she explained. “If death comes suddenly.”

“Go on,” the dragon had urged, faint amusement dancing in his eyes.

“If that happens… you must tell my child his father’s name. Promise not to teach him anything wicked. I will allow you to care for him for a time, only until he can find his own path. Then you must send him to his father.”

The dragon tilted his head, intrigued. “And in exchange, you wish for magic, as ever?”

“Yes,” she answered. “Surround the citadel with a barrier no force can destroy. My own power fails; corners collapse too easily.”

It was a poor bargain, hardly worth his notice. A mere decade-long contract, and even Elizabeth did not truly believe he would release the child freely after ten years. It was a contingency, nothing more. A last desperate hedge against ruin.

But what tempted him more than any such bargain lay elsewhere.

The dragon, wearing the form of a boy, turned from the window and approached the bed, where heavy indigo drapes hung solemnly. Through the folds of the canopy a motionless figure could be glimpsed, stretched out upon the mattress.

Sameshita swept the fabric aside. A young man lay there, thin and rigid, posed as though for a sculptor’s model.

His right eye had been gouged away, the hollow bound with silk, yet the remaining half of his face bore the austere, pious beauty of an icon. From the neck down, however, the truth was uglier.

His hands were gaunt, the bones of the wrist jutting sharply. His arms were marred with bruises that never faded, gifts of his own faltering strength. Even the short distance from sofa to bed had left him stumbling, falling, striking himself again and again. These wounds would never heal.

“Until the war ends,” the Emperor had commanded, “my body must not be laid in earth. I have laid a spell to keep it from decay. Touch it not. Seal it within this chamber.”

Those had been his last words before slipping into final sleep. Yet the pact between Andrei and Sameshita endured. No—its true beginning was only now.

The dragon held his hand above the Emperor’s lips. No breath stirred there.

“Of the three, I wondered who would die first,” he said softly.

Then, with a child’s voice made mocking, he sang under his breath, “It was you after all.”

At last, something worth his attention. At last, a new amusement.

The body of the boy-host he had worn crumpled bonelessly to the carpet, discarded. Only a pair of golden eyes remained afloat in the dim air above the bed. They lingered an instant before melting away like tar.

Moments later, the Emperor’s eyelids fluttered. His unfocused eyes cracked open.

The youth, who had lain like a corpse swathed for burial, shifted with ponderous effort. He pushed back the sheet that covered his chest, braced on an elbow, and sat up.

A long breath shuddered out of him, dragging air deep into lungs that had been still. Blood coursed once more through limbs that moments ago were drained of warmth.

Now fully awakened, he stretched languidly, then tore the bandage from his ruined eye. His fingers raked through brown hair, pushing it back from his brow.

And there, where nothing should have been, a new eye gleamed—pure gold, glinting like molten metal.

He stood, stepping onto the carpet with unerring stride, no longer limping, no longer frail. Before the tall mirror hung on the wall, he studied his reflection.

“Yes,” Sameshita murmured through the Emperor’s lips, stroking his chin with satisfaction. “This one is the better likeness.”

The artifacts and treasures of the dead man were fine enough, but what the dragon coveted most was the body itself—this body.

“Gallian,” he whispered, almost lovingly.

To kill it would be a waste. How could he ever bring himself to destroy such a vessel?

His golden eye glimmered, the pupil shimmering with a soft madness.

“My beloved disciple,” he said. “No matter how many times you are reborn, you are mine. Even death cannot take you from me.”

***

“Ah, it worked!”

Elise’s cry burst forth, threaded with joy and relief.

In the air before her hovered a translucent magic array, shining with a radiant glow.

Only yesterday her eyes had opened once more to the world’s hidden lines—the gossamer threads of mana woven through everything. Just as Barnon had promised, within five days her circuits had returned.

But this time, something was different. She was not merely memorizing and sketching runes; she could see the principles, the rules governing the lattice of intersecting lines and symbols.

Even the strange language inscribed upon the spell circle came to her unbidden. It was not of any kingdom in Grandel.

It was draconic—the tongue of transcendents, the very medium by which they communicated.

Elise turned, flushed with pride. “It’s complete. This is the teleportation circle to Riosa Castle. Rezette—”

But the man who had been lightly stroking her hair was staring into the air, his gaze unfocused. He looked less like a man studying something and more like one lost in thought.

Her lips parted to draw him back, but slowly she fell silent.

Something had changed. Around Rezette’s body shimmered a faint grey haze, unseen until now. His mana overflowed, filling his frame and spilling beyond the skin, restless as it surged with each breath.

Elise remembered the sting upon her skin, the prickling whenever his madness surged or when he lost control of his emotions. It had always been this—this turbulent, dangerous mana, now laid bare before her eyes.