Chapter 202

Rezette patted the baby’s back and flicked his eyes toward Elise, as if to say he would follow once he had settled her.

“I’ll be right behind you. Go on first…”

“Roana.”

Elise cut him off and held out both arms for their daughter. Rezette hesitated, clearly weighing the risk, then finally surrendered the baby into her embrace.

The moment Roana was in her mother’s arms, the wailing stopped as if it had never existed. Elise bounced her once, savoring the soft heat of that little body, then shot Rezette a look that was pure sulk.

“So Roana can be with me, but you can’t?” she demanded, her tone sharp with teasing indignation.

Rezette answered with weary patience, as though she had asked the most obvious question in the world. “Roana has no disqualifying factors. She is the princess’s child. She is royalty.”

Elise scoffed under her breath, but her mouth kept trying to smile. She held Roana close for one more heartbeat, then turned and passed her to Ivetsa, who was waiting outside the carriage.

“Just for a moment, Ivetsa,” Elise said, her voice gentler now. “Please.”

Separated from her mother so suddenly, Roana’s lips trembled and her eyes began to glass over again. Elise pressed a finger to her own lips and leaned in as if sharing a grand secret.

“I’m going to go brag about your father, all right?”

Whether Roana understood the words or only the tone, the baby puckered her mouth in an exaggerated pout. Then, astonishingly compliant, she allowed Ivetsa to hold her without crying.

“Thank you,” Elise whispered, and kissed Roana’s cheek in a quick, warm peck before turning back toward the carriage.

She reached into the dim interior, found Rezette’s hand, and closed her fingers around it. His hand was large enough to swallow hers whole. He resisted for a beat, hesitant, but Elise tugged with all the ridiculous strength she could muster.

Even that laughable grip was enough. Rezette was pulled forward, caught off balance.

“Elise, wait, just a moment…”

His hood slipped back, revealing black hair that spilled into the sunlight. His eyes, always severe, held a brief, startled shine as he blinked against the brightness.

The cheers outside faltered, the crowd’s roar thinning into confused murmurs at the sight of a strange man beside the returning princess.

“Princess,” Rezette said quickly, letting the old title catch in his throat as he switched to the safest address. He glanced around, measuring faces and reactions with a soldier’s instinct. “I don’t think it’s wise for me to stand at your side.”

“Why?” Elise asked, tilting her chin up at him. “Are you ashamed of being my husband?”

“That is not what I mean,” Rezette replied at once. His voice was steady, but the words came slower, as if he had to push them past something lodged in his chest. “It’s only that…”

“Back at Rotiara’s Harvest Festival,” Elise pressed, “you wanted to show me off in front of people. You wanted everyone to see whose wife I was. Wasn’t that what you wanted?”

It had been. And in truth, his feelings had not changed.

Part of him still wanted Elise to reclaim everything that had once belonged to her, to take it back openly and without apology. Yet another part of him recoiled from the idea of watching his small, private queen be lifted up and named the queen of everyone. The higher she rose, the smaller his place beside her felt, as if the world itself could dilute what he was to her.

Elise, as if sensing that fault line, drove the nail in with quiet certainty.

“I don’t think you’re a stain on me,” she said, each word clean and unshaking. “You’re my salvation. You’re my love. And more than anything, you’re the most loyal knight I’ve ever had.”

Rezette fell silent.

“Come,” Elise said, and her mouth curved, daring him to refuse. “Grand Duke.”

Her hand pulled again, and this time there was no resisting. He could not bring himself to wrench away from a touch that was so gentle and yet so absolute in its insistence.

“…You have it backwards,” he muttered, half a complaint, half a surrender. “I’m meant to escort you.”

“What does it matter?” Elise replied lightly. “We’re already out. Walk with me.”

She kept his hand, held it like it was something she had every right to claim, and stepped down onto the carpet that had been laid for her. The sensation of solid ground under her feet, after so long, was oddly satisfying.

Even before the war, the people of Argan had rarely been allowed so much as a glimpse of the imperial princess. A single portrait from her girlhood had been treasured like a holy icon. Now she stood before them in flesh and breath, and the moment her face was fully revealed, the crowd sank to their knees as one.

It was like watching a wave roll through the world.

Elise felt it in her bones. The air itself seemed to bow. The sound of hundreds, thousands, bending and murmuring at once was overwhelming.

Beside her, Rezette’s grip on her hand remained careful, almost restrained. He did not squeeze. He did not pull her close. Everything about him said he believed he did not belong here.

As if there existed a place in the world where he did not belong at her side.

Elise ignored the wary looks from the barons and knights, ignored the silent question in their eyes, and kept walking. After a long, controlled breath, Rezette lengthened his stride and caught up with her, his steps falling into place beside hers.

“Will you regret this?” he asked, his voice low enough that only she could hear.

Elise did not slow. She did not falter. She looked straight ahead and answered with a confidence that left no room for doubt.

“I have never regretted choosing you. Not even once.”

There was no lie in it. No forced brightness. Just truth, carried like a banner.

Something in Rezette eased, melting as quietly as spring snow. The anxiety he had carried all the way here, the fear he had not allowed himself to show, dissolved in a single sentence.

And with that, his hesitation ended.

A chance was a chance.

A chance to make it known, unmistakably, who had protected her to the end. Who had crushed Ugel’s king underfoot. Who the father of her child was. Who she belonged to, because she had chosen it and declared it.

If Elizabeta had given him permission, then he would stop shrinking from the world.

Possessiveness, long smothered beneath worry and restraint, pushed up again like a stubborn sprout. It was not noble. It was not polite. But it was his.

Then, in this moment, there was no need to hold back.

Rezette adjusted his grip on her hand, shifting it into the proper posture of an escort. Firm, protective, undeniable.

“Still,” he said, the soldier in him reasserting itself, “warn me next time. I have no desire to do anything that could diminish your dignity.”

Elise’s shoulders lifted with a quiet laugh. “If you’re going to live as the consort of the imperial princess, you should have been prepared for situations like this.”

Her movements were light, almost buoyant. The smile she wore was fearless and radiant.

“Welcome to my country, Rezette,” she said softly. “I’ve wanted to say that for so long.”

His heart gave a violent, foolish thud.

If seeing her smile like this required him to stand on blood-soaked ground again, he would do it. If she wanted the world, he would overturn it. If she asked for something impossible, he would make it possible and place it in her hands.

When Elise finished turning her gaze over the crowd, she stopped before the palace gates. Her magic rose like a warm breeze, and the great doors, newly restored, swung open with a proud force. Elise stepped forward first.

At last, she was walking into the home she had reclaimed.

***

Argan’s imperial palace was nothing like what Elise remembered.

She stared at the church as if she had taken a blow to the gut. Once magnificent, it sat sagging and damaged, its structure collapsed in places, its dignity hollowed out. She swallowed hard.

“The barrier…” she whispered.

The most severely damaged section of the ward was twisted and snarled, strands of magic tangled like torn thread. The ruptures ran deep, lines of power stretching down into the very foundation of the spell.

She had to fix this first.

Elise moved closer, lifting her hands. She began to touch the lines one by one, tapping, tracing, correcting the pattern. Her fingers worked with delicate certainty, coaxing the warped magic back into alignment. Each time she set a strand into place, the barrier flared with a different color, as if the spell itself were breathing again.

Around her, watchers held their breath.

A single line of power snapped back into its rightful channel, and the broken fragments of stone trembled. Shattered debris rumbled, then began to move. A collapsed spire lifted as if pulled by invisible hands, rising toward the sky piece by piece. Elise, absorbed in rebuilding the spellwork, did not even notice the miracle happening above her head.

Within minutes, the church stood as if it had never fallen.

When Elise adjusted the last sigil, she stepped back and finally looked up.

Sunlight slid along the spire, gleaming. A massive golden bell rang out, announcing noon. The clear sound rolled beyond the palace, echoing across the capital like a declaration.

As the bell rang twelve times, the sanctuary that had been buried beneath rubble and ruin reasserted itself. The symbol of the empire regained its original authority for the first time in a year.

Elise closed her eyes, shivering as something like a tremor swept through her entire body. The bell’s sound, spreading outward in widening rings, felt like the opening note of a new world.

Whether that door would be closed again or thrown open wide was now a choice held in her hands.

Her thoughts flashed to her last conversation with Andrei before they had parted.

“The Argan imperial family has hoarded and hidden too much for too long,” he had said, bitter and exhausted. “I tried to keep watching over Argan. To the end. In the same way our ancestors always did. But… it seems you think differently, Sister.”

“I do,” Elise had replied. “I do think differently, Andrei.”

Now, she moved.

“Elise?” Rezette called, alarmed, as she slipped from the edge of his reach.

He hurried after her, but she was already going forward, almost running, her hair streaming behind her like a bright banner.

He stopped after only a few steps.

The towering doors of the sanctuary opened as if welcoming her. From within, a rush of color poured out, wrapping around Elise in radiant bands.

It was dragon magic, unmistakably so, yet it was nothing like the black power Rezette knew. It did not carry the same density, the same weight. It held none of the hatred he had felt from dragons, none of the contempt, none of the madness that had rotted their pride into something vicious.

This was pure.

It soaked the space like clean water. The air filled with the scent of fresh flowers.

It was the power that existed before Sameshita’s madness had corrupted it. The first strength a god had granted to his most beautiful creation.

Seven hundred years ago, a dragon had loved a human with a pure, consuming devotion, and that devotion became magic. The power passed from that human to their descendants, nearly severed at times, yet never extinguished.

And now, in this moment, a mage who had inherited something close to the original stood before the tomb of her ancestors.

Elise breathed in, steadying her lungs, and looked around the sanctuary.

“Whew…” she exhaled softly.

The altar was restored. The ceiling paintings, intricate with ancient myth, were whole again. The sturdy pillars that supported the spire stood unbroken. Only one thing remained ruined.

The entrance leading down into the underground tombs. The catacombs.

That was where her real task waited.

A barrier still sealed the way. Elise scratched the back of her hand with a fingernail, leaving a small cut. Blood welled bright and clean.

Her magic circuits, her boundless reserves, were hers now. She was a complete mage even without her twin brother. When the barrier tasted her blood, it softened, then melted away, opening the passage.

“There’s one more ward that needs to be raised,” she murmured.

The shield her ancestor Gallian had built to protect his people. The vast defensive boundary that encompassed the wide southern and central lands of Grandel that had been declared Argan territory. The great protection that had begun weakening when the twins were fifteen, and finally collapsed three years ago.

The heart of that barrier lay here, in this tomb.

Elise descended the stairs and ran, her steps light, her body feeling impossibly buoyant as the tomb’s magic surged through her. She sprinted toward a wall dense with spellwork.

“There,” she whispered, breath catching. “Found it.”

The sigil array lay just before the section that led to Gallian’s resting place. The right wall was dominated by a massive map of the continent of Grandel, engraved and layered with magic. It was Gallian’s greatest work, a living ward that had expanded and contracted over centuries to reflect shifting borders and imperial claims.

Elise placed both hands on the dull, dead spellwork and struck it with force.

The moment it drank in her magic, the array flared to life, glowing bright.

At that exact instant, far beyond the palace walls, in the distant borderlands of Argan, lights erupted in a chain. One after another, beacons of power rose into the air like pillars of dawn.

Soldiers stationed as a temporary border guard rubbed their eyes, staring in disbelief.

“W What is that?” one stammered.

“It’s a barrier,” another gasped, voice breaking. “It’s the empire’s barrier. It’s coming back…”