Proving One's Worth (3)
Despite the chilly atmosphere, the tea was warm and fragrant.
The barracks were so meticulously kept that not a speck of dust could be found in them, even with the desolate desert winds of the battlefield raging outside, and everything was arranged with only the bare necessities in place.
Seoin's bloodstained armor had already been stripped away, but the clothes she still wore were filthy with dried dirt and blood.
The owner of this barracks was plainly a man of fastidious temperament—she could see that at a glance—and she accepted the chair he offered without protest and sat down.
"As you can see, we're hardly in a position to serve good tea."
Even the hand of the commander offering the cup was clean, without a single scratch.
How could a soldier's hands be so delicate?
Right. It was a war he won without lifting a finger.
It was this side that had fought to the death and truly died.
He must have simply watched, as if spectating, while the soldiers of Danya died with their hands tied.
"For the victor of a war, you're remarkably modest."
"One is supposed to offer hospitality in return for something taken, but as you know, Your Highness had very little to take."
"That's a relief, then."
Seoin drank the tea slowly.
This might be her last cup, so she savored it as deliberately as she could.
He had generously offered her tea, pretending to fall for her honey trap—but that was precisely why she felt uneasy.
Segwang's words kept circling back to her.
Would anyone truly stash their spoils of war in a shabby little annex?
No matter how she turned it over, she couldn't see him delivering her obediently before the King of Museon.
Either her head would roll this very night, or she would be beaten to within an inch of her life in retaliation.
As she finished her tea, Seoin did her best to keep the hand gripping the cup from trembling.
Fortunately, even after he had emptied his own cup, he waited in silence until she had finished hers.
But his gaze was scouring her, corner to corner, with relentless thoroughness.
He didn't look away once—not even when her long, half-lowered lashes gave the faintest tremble, and he caught even that.
Seoin felt his eyes on her too.
While she savored the tea, it felt as though he was savoring her.
Her cheek, the bridge of her nose, her ears, the hand holding the cup.
And the lips that touched the tea.
It was just as his burning gaze slid down the column of her throat and toward her chest that
Seoin swallowed her last sip and set the cup down.
"You do take your time with tea."
"It's hot. I can't handle hot things well."
"I warmed it a little extra, worried you might be cold. Not to your taste, then."
"Speaking of which—if you do mean to torture me, I'd ask you to spare the heat. I don't think I could endure that part."
"Torture is meant to target precisely what one cannot endure. It's more enjoyable for everyone that way."
The commander delivered his perverse remark without a flicker of embarrassment.
And even as she listened to such cruelty, Seoin's expression barely changed.
"So, will you actually torture me? Even though there's nothing more to squeeze out of me—purely as revenge? Or to add a drop more sweetness to your King's mood?"
"It's a comfort that Your Highness understands full well what she's done. The grudges of our commanders and soldiers, who died by your arrows, run very deep."
"That was my accomplishment, wasn't it? Thanks to it, I earned great praise from the people of Danya."
"Those people are now the people of Museon. You've erased your own accomplishment and left behind nothing but their hatred."
Even though she had only just drunk tea, Seoin's throat felt scorched.
Though she fiddled with the empty cup, he made no move to refill it, as if his goodwill extended no further.
In the end, it was Seoin who lowered her tail first.
"I… heard you intend to take me as a spoil of war."
"You seem worried that this spoil of yours might turn out to be your own head. Rest assured. My intention, for now, is to take you back alive."
"Then, since you're taking me anyway—take me prettily."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Take me as a beautiful trophy. A pretty one. Don't handle me roughly."
The commander let out a quiet laugh.
"So you heard that much."
"I nearly misunderstood your tastes. I was worried that the 'beautiful trophy' you spoke of might be something suited to that shabby annex."
"Ah. The reason I lodged you there is that I hadn't reached certainty yet."
"Certainty about what, exactly?"
"Whether Your Highness would serve better as a spoil of war or as a hostage—which would be the more fitting use."
"Didn't you already know I'm useless as a hostage?"
"Do you know the most efficient method when hunting a beast?"
"I don't care for hunting."
"Make the cub cry, and the mother comes running. I entertained the hope that even the desperate wail of a discarded princess might send that beast into a frenzy."
Even as the man called her own King—her own father—a beast, Seoin did not so much as waver.
"And how did that hope fare? I take it you gained your certainty, since you came looking for me."
"I came to meet Your Highness in order to gain it. And thanks to you, I now have my answer."
Suddenly, he rose from his seat.
Then he stepped close and stood beside her.
"!"
Seoin flinched at his abrupt movement—and understood.
She was more tense now than she had ever been standing on a battlefield.
With a soft pour.
He had been watching her this whole time, and only now did he refill her empty cup.
"I was curious what kind of woman you were. The princess who flung herself, of her own will, onto a battlefield even her princes fled. I thought she'd won once out of sheer luck—yet again and again, she made a nuisance of herself."
He set down the teapot.
The water came to within a hair's breadth of the rim without spilling over.
Seoin carefully raised the cup to her lips, taking pains not to let the water slosh.
"Seeing you in person, I find it a shame to kill you."
He stepped back a single pace and returned to his seat.
Only then did Seoin breathe properly again.
Merely being near him made the air feel as though it were being pressed out of the room by some strange, suffocating weight.
With her breath finally steadied, Seoin gave voice to the retort she had been muttering inwardly all along.
"Had I met you on my battlefield, I too would have found it a shame to kill you."
For a defeated princess, Seoin spoke with shameless arrogance.
"Ha. Is that so?"
He laughed as if utterly dumbfounded.
"And yet, wasn't the place we met earlier Your Highness's own battlefield?"
"It was a battlefield I prepared. But it was a game played out like pawns on a chessboard, so no—it was not mine."
Had it truly been my battlefield, our positions would be reversed right now. So Seoin declared, lifting her chin with perfect composure.
"That much is true. Because of this battlefield today, the front lines shifted considerably. Myself included. Your opponent was never meant to be me."
"That's a relief. I like you. It doesn't feel perverse, saying such things face to face."
"You must be easily flattered."
"Yes. So—if you've decided to keep me as your trophy, might I ask for different treatment?"
"I would like to handle my trophy gently, but you are precisely the sort of woman who might bolt in any direction at any moment—so I must ask you to endure it there a while longer."
Never once did he say he would treat her graciously, as befit a princess.
Handle.
Amid all that courtesy and politeness, the word snagged like a thorn.
Handle was a word used only for objects—things without a will of their own—dealt with however one pleased.
As though with a single word from him, she could be swept away and discarded at will.
And so, at this point, there was something Seoin wanted to confirm.
"One thing I'm curious about."
"And what would that be?"
"Your King."
"?"
"You could tell me at least something of the King's tastes, couldn't you?"
"…."
For the first time, the commander's eyes wavered.
Seoin, who until now had felt like the only one being pushed and pulled about, felt a small but genuine thrill of achievement.
Wearing a smile, she added:
"It seems to me a honey trap should be aimed at the King—not at you."
Seoin's adjutant, Ju Segwang, asked with gleaming eyes.
"So did you actually manage to find out the King's tastes?"
"No."
"Why are you answering so coolly?! You showed him your entire hand and didn't even get an answer out of him!"
"I didn't ask to get an answer."
"Then you're telling me you said all that just to try to win a battle of wills?"
Segwang pressed her, looking at her as though she were hopeless.
"I was probing him. I couldn't afford to rest easy just on a commander's word—my life or death rests not with that commander, but with the King."
"That's true enough, but how would he know that? Wouldn't it have been better to simply ask whether the King would spare you?"
"What I truly wanted to know was how far, and how deeply, that commander is trusted by the King."
"Why did that matter?"
"There was a strange confidence in his words. As though everything would go exactly as he said. Whether I live or die is the King's decision to make—and yet he seems to believe that if he finds me pleasing, the King will find me pleasing too."
"I had no idea Museon had a commander trusted so completely by his King. He looked terribly young. Well, if the King is young as well, perhaps they're simply kindred spirits."
"Is that how it works?"
"Yes. Surely you know this yourself, Your Highness—royals study alongside the talents of great families from childhood and forge bonds of lord and vassal early. From what I hear, that man has never once lost a battle he fought in. He's certainly a commander the King trusts, at the very least."
Seoin acknowledged that Segwang was right, and yet the commander nagged strangely at her mind.
He was a soldier whose name was barely known.
He was the one who had dealt Danya defeat after defeat on battlefields where she had never once crossed paths with him.
She had always assumed that someday they would meet—and yet, in a hollow, humiliating defeat, she had never even properly fought him.
And yet so little was known about that commander.