“Because I like you!!”
The cry, nearly a scream, scattered across the cold November grassland.
At the confession I had never even imagined, the circuits of thought in my head stopped for an instant.
‘……What?’
In the bewildered silence, Victoria began pouring out the emotions she had kept suppressed all this time.
“As you know well…… there isn’t a single person in the imperial palace who truly cares for me or loves me.”
Her tear-thick voice trembled.
The knuckles of the two hands clutching my collar had gone white.
“My mother died giving birth to me, and because of that, Imperial Father hates me, calling me a bitch who devoured her own mother.”
“…How could that be Your Highness’s fault?”
“…That is simply how human hearts are.”
“……”
“And that isn’t all. Because of the things I’ve done, even my younger sister despises me terribly, and my other siblings loathe me as well. What person in high society would welcome a princess who receives the contempt of both the absolute ruler of the empire and her own blood kin? On top of that, I’m a half-broken cripple who can’t even recognize people’s faces properly. I was always a thoroughly isolated, miserable loner.”
Her shoulders rose and fell sharply.
Unable to raise my hands or lower them, I simply looked down at her in silence.
“Amid that contempt, the only place where I could breathe was the battlefield. Because war was the only way I could prove the worth of my existence. So…… every time I went out to battle, I always went thinking that today would be my last.”
“……Your Highness.”
“Whether the enemy standing before me numbered in the hundreds or the tens of thousands, I charged at the very front without the slightest hesitation. Because if I simply collapsed and died on the battlefield, that would be the end of it. This wretched life would be over.”
Victoria swallowed a ragged breath and continued her desperate confession.
“To me, the hard, uncomfortable sleeping bag on a blood-soaked battlefield was far more comfortable than the soft bed of the imperial palace. The tasteless combat rations that crunched with dirt suited my palate far better than the finest cuisine in the palace.”
“……”
“But even after drenching myself in blood countless times for the empire and cutting down enemy heads…… I only became more alone. The comrades I gave my heart to kept dying at my side, and those who survived by leaving the front lines avoided me, calling me a monster. To them, I was nothing more than an ominous sword demon who summoned blood, a madwoman crazed for slaughter.”
Victoria slowly lifted her head and looked at me.
The tears gathered in her violet eyes rolled down her sharp jawline and fell, one after another, wetting my collar.
“But…… into that black-and-white hell of mine, you appeared.”
Her voice trembled faintly.
In the gaze fixed on me, resentment, affection, and guilt were tangled together.
“I know. I know that I was the vanguard who trampled your kingdom. That I was the one who mercilessly stole away the peace of the people precious to you and dragged you into this dreadful place. For someone like me to dare hold you in my heart must be sickening hypocrisy, even to me.”
“……”
“But…… in this cold imperial palace, the only person in my entire life who was not afraid of me, who allowed me at his side and treated me kindly, was you. You were the only one who approached me when I had been cast into darkness.”
The empire’s First Princess and the greatest female warrior on the continent.
The woman everyone feared was, in truth, slowly sinking into piercing loneliness.
Victoria clutched my collar tightly with her tear-streaked face.
“So…… I will never say anything so shameless as to ask you to accept my feelings.”
She forced her voice out with difficulty.
“A princess of the empire and a hostage of a defeated nation. There’s no way I wouldn’t understand the difference in status and the resentment between us. Even if you loathe me, that would only be natural. I won’t dare beg you to love me. I don’t even hope for that.”
“Princess Victoria……”
“I am simply…… begging you to live.”
She collapsed, pressing her forehead against my chest as she sobbed.
“If you earn Imperial Father’s wrath and are thrown into a cauldron…… if I see you screaming in agony as you die…… I, I will truly break completely this time. I’ll live the rest of my life in madness, never again keeping anyone in my heart.”
“……”
“Please, Ian…… I beg you. Please don’t die. It’s fine if you’re not by my side, it’s fine if you loathe me for the rest of your life and never even look at me…… just live a long, long life somewhere. Please, promise me you won’t die…….”
I slowly raised my frozen arms and carefully embraced Victoria as she buried her face in my chest and wept.
After silently accepting her tears like that for a long while, I whispered softly through the sound of the cold wind brushing past my ear.
“……I don’t hate you.”
“……”
“I never resented Your Highness from the beginning. So please stop blaming yourself. I don’t hate you, Your Highness, so don’t worry so much.”
At my gentle whisper, Victoria, who had been held in my arms, flinched and went rigid.
She slowly lifted her head and looked up at me.
Her tear-ruined violet eyes were filled with deep disbelief and confusion.
“How…… can I believe that?”
Her voice trembled finely.
“How could you possibly not hate me? I am the one who created all of this terrible situation. I am the source of the calamity that trampled your homeland and dragged you into the jaws of death…… How could you not hate me?”
She was a woman who had lived her whole life amid hatred and loathing.
Unable to accept the very fact that someone did not hate her, she trembled with unease as she asked me again.
I looked down at her quietly, then slowly reached out with both hands and cupped her tear-wet cheeks.
The cheeks of the undefeated female warrior resting in my hands were astonishingly hot and soft.
“If I do this…… will you believe me?”
Without waiting for her answer, I lowered my head and pressed my lips to her trembling ones.
“……!”
I felt the hands clutching my collar tighten sharply.
But she did not push me away.
The wounded girl carefully closed her eyes and, clumsy yet desperate, accepted the warmth of my lips.
Our first kiss tasted of the cold grassland wind and salty tears.
#
The lips that had remained pressed together for a long while, sharing each other’s breath, slowly parted.
Victoria’s cheeks were flushed red, and just as I was about to clear my throat awkwardly and avert my gaze—
“Neigh-hee-hee!”
“……Huh?”
Startled by the sound of a horse whinnying behind me, I whipped around.
The two horses, Ambesa and Marengo, whom we had let loose to graze quietly some distance away, had somehow come right up behind us and were standing side by side, staring at us intently.
As if she had just watched a romance drama, Victoria’s black horse Ambesa nodded her head as though proud of us and gave a gentle whinny.
Marengo, on the other hand, snorted furiously as if she found it all extremely displeasing and stamped the grass with her foreleg.
“……Have those two been watching us since earlier?”
As I stood there with my mouth hanging open in disbelief, Victoria, who had been blushing in my arms, let out a deflated laugh.
“Haha…… Females, I swear. Even when they’re not human, they’re terribly interested in other people’s love affairs.”
On the face of the woman who had been sobbing as if the world had collapsed only moments ago, a far more peaceful and relieved smile finally spread.
“Our sweat has cooled now…… Let’s head back. It’s early winter, so it’ll get cold once night falls. Your clothes are thin too. You’ll catch a cold.”
Victoria took a step back from me, straightened her clothes, then turned and lightly mounted Ambesa’s back. I, too, soothed the grumbling Marengo and climbed onto my horse.
Just as I was about to adjust the reins to return to the imperial palace, Victoria looked back at me from atop her black horse.
Instead of the sweet smile from moments ago, her face now held a somehow sorrowful and affectionate, yet firm resolve.
“Ian.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“The heart you gave me…… what you just gave me was already more than enough. More than I deserve. I don’t think I should accept any more.”
“Your Highness, what do you mean……”
“Because from now on, I have to save you. Let’s both cool our heads and think this through carefully.”
Victoria stared straight at me with an unwavering gaze.
“As I said earlier, I am the child Imperial Father hates most terribly. My standing in the imperial family is at rock bottom. And Imperial Father has no hesitation about using me as a tool.”
She bit her lip and continued.
“If you become my husband…… far from protecting you, I would only be driving you into an even more dangerous deathtrap. Even if no one discovers it’s fake.”
Victoria took a deep breath, then declared to me in a firm voice.
“So from now on, I will make you the husband of my half-sister…… Chloe. That is the only way you can live.”