Chapter 204

Epilogue

In July of that year, when summer’s fresh greenery had thickened around Argan’s imperial palace, the empire’s rightful owner visited the castle in secret.

Elizabeth had been away, attending the noble council she herself had convened. Two months had passed since she returned to the palace. With the throne vacant and the empire needing a steady hand, she had taken on the work of acting in the emperor’s place and had been moving without rest.

And so the first to learn of the emperor’s arrival was Rezette.

But even if Elise had been present, he would have stepped forward first. He had heard enough from his wife.

I heard the emperor’s body is merging with the dragon. Does he still hold control of himself…?

Until the very instant he threw open the door to the reception room in the annex, Rezette did not let his guard down.

A young man with brown hair stood by the sunlit window, his back turned to the room warmed by the morning rays. At the sound of someone entering, the young man turned at once. He had a face astonishingly like his wife’s. It was Andrei.

“As I thought,” Andrei said with a pleased smile, “you came first.”

He looked Rezette over and added lightly, “Have you been well, Duke? You seem to be, at least.”

His gaze settled on the baby in Rezette’s arms.

Dressed in soft cream-colored summer clothes and a yellow bonnet, the child was fast asleep, her cheek pressed into Rezette’s shoulder. Cradled against a man of such imposing size, she looked impossibly small.

“So that child is your daughter,” Andrei murmured in wonder. “Yours and my sister’s.”

Even now, the fact that his sister had once been pregnant had not fully settled in his mind, and yet the baby had already been born. Andrei had never imagined he would one day meet Elise’s daughter. He had imagined even less that the child’s father would be this man.

After studying Rezette’s features with quiet care, Andrei said, “It really has been a long time since we met like this, Duke. Four years, has it?”

He was still as striking as if carved by a god’s own hand. Yet the hard, savage edge that once clung to him like a beast of the wilderness had softened. Behind the taciturn face, beneath the old greed and razor-sharp wariness, there was something else now.

After a long look, Andrei summed it up in a single line. “You look tired, Duke.”

“You are mistaken,” Rezette replied flatly.

Andrei’s mouth curved. “So child-rearing has not been going smoothly, then?”

Rezette sealed his lips and gave no answer. He had no desire whatsoever to admit it.

Until immediately after Roana’s birth, he had honestly believed that human infants simply grew on their own if left alone. It had not taken long for him to discover what a laughable misunderstanding that had been.

“You have my sympathy,” Andrei said in a tone that sounded annoyingly sincere. “I was told that my sister and I were remarkably gentle children when we were young. It seems the baby takes after you instead.”

Rezette said nothing.

“If you ask me,” Andrei went on, still smiling, “that is only fair. After all the suffering you put my sister through, you ought to be the one raising the child with your own two hands.”

Rezette’s brow twitched. He was on the verge of retorting that he was already doing exactly that, and quite well besides, when Roana stirred awake in his arms and stopped him cold.

The baby gave an adorably tiny yawn.

“Buaaah.”

“…Damn.”

A flicker of distress crossed Rezette’s face.

I finally got her to sleep.

She had not even lasted an hour this time. It was a quietly devastating outcome.

His little Elizabeth had inherited only the traits she never should have inherited from him. Her inability to sleep soundly for any meaningful stretch was one of them. The moment he tried to lay her down in the cradle, she somehow sensed it and started fussing, so in the end he had had no choice but to bring her with him.

“Aboo….”

Roana, who had learned to hold up her head earlier than most babies, rolled her large eyes around, then noticed Andrei and startled so violently that her whole body trembled.

She had just awoken from a sweet and comfortable nap, only to find that someone other than her father was standing there. Her marble-like eyes quivered ominously.

Andrei took one cautious step toward his niece and smiled with serene politeness.

“Hello, little princess.”

Silence followed.

It was such a fragile, dangerous silence that even breathing felt reckless.

This feels bad, Rezette thought at once.

The baby’s mouth began to tremble at the corners.

“Hhuu….”

“Roana?” Rezette called.

“Uaaah!”

Her wavering little face crumpled, and at last she burst into full-throated tears.

The color drained from both men’s faces at the same time.

Some time later, after the crying fit had reached its full force, Andrei forced an awkward smile and said, “My apologies, Duke. When Sameshita seized this body, he crossed paths with Elise several times, didn’t he? It seems he was not exactly well-disposed toward the child in her womb. I failed to consider that she might remember it somehow, especially since dragon magic still lingers in my body.”

His long, rambling explanation did not do much to improve the situation. Rezette had retreated a full two steps farther away with Roana in his arms, and the murderous glare he now leveled at Andrei was enough to chill the spine.

This is bad, Andrei thought grimly.

Standing in the shadow by the doorway, with only his killing intent shining out of the dark, Rezette was terrifying enough to make the room feel smaller.

After a magnificent crying storm that left both men thoroughly rattled, Roana buried her face in Rezette’s chest as if she intended never to surface again. Stroking the back of her tiny head, no bigger than his palm, Rezette answered icily, “Then you must never show that face in front of her again. If you have no further business, I suggest you depart at once.”

He turned his body as though shielding Roana from Andrei’s very sight. It looked as if he might walk out on the spot.

Desperate to stop him, Andrei changed the subject in a hurry. “I heard the emperor of Van Yela is at death’s door. Shouldn’t you go?”

“As it happens,” Rezette answered, still cold, “I intend to return tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow already? And Elise is coming with you?”

“Is there a problem?”

“Not exactly a problem, but…”

“Do not come any closer,” Rezette cut in. “I will not trouble myself to warn you twice.”

“All right, all right,” Andrei said quickly, taking a clear step back and lifting both hands in surrender. “I have retreated. This much distance should suffice, yes?”

Even after Andrei all but struck a pose of complete capitulation, Rezette’s suspicion did not ease. That did not do much for Andrei’s dignity, considering he had once been emperor here.

Still holding Roana, who was now hiccuping against his shoulder, Rezette scrutinized him and asked, “So where is Sameshita? At this moment, I mean.”

His gaze remained sharp with hostility. There was no sign whatsoever of Sameshita surfacing through Andrei’s body, and that very absence only fed Rezette’s distrust.

His opponent might well be a dragon.

“Do not concern yourself,” Andrei said. He tapped a fist lightly against the region of his heart. “He is asleep for now. He said he wished to stop thinking and simply sleep.”

The dragon had realized that Andrei had been restored through a relic imbued with divine power, yet had made no effort to interfere.

“Did you read all of the founder’s keepsakes?”

When Andrei had asked him that, Sameshita had fallen silent for a very long time.

At last the mad dragon had spoken in a hollow voice.

“…I want to sleep.”

The dragon had chosen to bury himself in deep slumber. Just as he had once walked willingly into his disciple’s sealing circle, he had once again chosen escape, fleeing from a tide of emotion too vast for him to withstand.

“It would be nice,” he had murmured, “if I could dream of the days that might have been good.”

And before Andrei had the chance to answer, Sameshita sank into unconsciousness. There had been no time to separate the dragon’s power from the body that had already half fused with it.

“I think even Sameshita needs time,” Andrei said now, his voice calm. “When he wakes, I expect he will return to his own body. When that happens, I shall do my best to soothe him. I’ve even considered reading the founder’s diary aloud to him.”

He paused, then added with quiet resignation, “I do not know when he will come back, but waiting is all I can do. I have time enough now. Thanks to the relic Elise gave me, I suspect I shall live on in this state, neither aging nor dying.”

“Is that so?” Rezette replied, utterly without warmth.

“So he told me. He said a life that ought to have ended is being forcibly sustained by divine power. If that power is destroyed, or if someone were to take it from me, I would die at once.”

“I heard not every part of the body is restored,” Rezette said.

“So it seems,” Andrei answered mildly. “In my case, it appears that part is the heart.”

Rezette accepted this with a flat nod. At this distance, if he sharpened his hearing, he should have been able to catch Andrei’s heartbeat. Yet he heard nothing at all besides his own and Roana’s.

Andrei went on with disarming casualness. “So I imagine I will go on living for quite a long time with the essence of a dragon inside me. It may even be that guarding him, so that he never wakes and runs mad again, is the new duty given to me.”

“It is not.”

Rezette rejected the idea so sharply that Andrei’s brows rose.

“That is not all I meant,” Rezette said in the same flat tone. “You never named a successor. Which means the emperor of Argan is still you.”

“…You are telling me,” Andrei said slowly, “that I ought to become master of the empire again?”