Take It Off
“…I'm sorry, what?”
When I asked back like an idiot with a blank look on my face, Varkan faintly furrowed his brow, as if the whole thing were an annoyance.
A single cold droplet of water fell, plip, from the tips of his wet hair.
“I said take it off.”
“….”
I stared up at him with round, dumbfounded eyes.
What was this?
Is this northern flirting?
With zero warning?!
It was a sentence of appallingly loose character.
But this suddenly?! We've been here for like two minutes!
Only moments ago I'd sized him up as a man who would be forced to take a woman to his bed by the Emperor's decree—and now he was saying this, at this timing?
Granted, given the era, even with my status as a princess—a fake one, admittedly—I was a hostage, and a hostage couldn't refuse the Grand Duke's orders. Princess Ivelina Delmar was, after all, meant to be both a political pawn and the Grand Duke's wife.
I did brace myself for the possibility of spending nights with him the moment I was sold off to the duchy anyway.
And yet….
For a man who'd just uttered an indecency of that caliber, the look in his eyes was cold enough to freeze even a thousand-year love dead in its tracks.
Oh.
In that instant, it clicked.
He's not asking me to strip for that reason!
I became acutely aware of the chill wrapped around my body.
My cloak, soaked through from pushing my way through the relentless blizzard, had met the warmth of the campfire and the cave's cool air, turning damp and heavy—leeching away even my body heat.
Only then could I understand Varkan's words and behavior.
I narrowed my eyes and met his gaze head-on.
Look, if you'd just said 'your wet cloak will make you colder, take it off,' that would've been fine. Did you have to chop the sentence in half like that?
People are going to misunderstand.
Clicking my tongue at the northern way of speaking, I shook my head.
“I appreciate the concern about my wet cloak, but I'll have to politely decline. As you can see, I'm sitting right next to a fire. I can manage.”
I reached my damp hands toward the flames, avoiding his gaze.
Just then, his voice came again, even colder than before.
“I believe I mentioned.”
“….”
“That I have no wish to clear a princess's corpse out of my duchy.”
“….”
My shoulders flinched at that frost-edged tone. I glanced up at him. As expected, his gaze was sharp as a blade.
Wow. Our dear Grand Duke certainly knows how to deliver a warm, tender sentiment.
Before my body temperature dropped low enough to freeze me solid, I was liable to freeze to death from the icy glare he kept radiating first.
Part of me knew we needed to improve our relationship, but when he said things that way, spite was inevitable.
Grumbling with a sour face, I finally shed the wet cloak. Then I snatched the uniform top Varkan had offered and hurriedly draped it over my shoulders.
Ugh, it's heavy….
It was far larger and weightier than the winter cloak I'd been wearing just moments ago. The sleeves spilled well past my fingertips, and the hem flowed down to swallow my thighs whole.
It was a moment that brought home, all over again, just how overwhelmingly big the man was.
But what felt stranger than his size was the warmth inside the uniform.
As if to prove that it had been wrapped around his body mere minutes ago, Varkan's heat lingered intact within the fabric.
His manner was rude, cold, and brusque—but the warmth of the garment he'd taken off for me was unmistakably, genuinely warm.
Warm enough that I felt glad I'd swallowed my stubbornness and put it on.
In the meantime, Varkan had casually picked up the wet cloak I'd discarded, hung it on a branch alongside his own, and propped it up beside the campfire.
His deft fingers made it clear this wasn't the first time he'd done such a thing.
Seeing him like this, he doesn't seem like such a terrible person after all.
Of course, Varkan had absolutely no reason to be kind to me.
The Delmar princess the Emperor had dumped on him—that was all I was in his eyes.
Which is why I could understand his rough, discourteous behavior.
Still….
Fine. I understand. Intellectually, I understand.
Understanding didn't make it pleasant, though. No one enjoys being treated like this.
If you're going to treat me like a maid from the start, expecting me to be meek and obedient is the shameless part, isn't it?!
Whew. Whew.
Swallowing the tangle of confusion and fury I couldn't unleash, I took a deep breath inwardly.
Stay calm, Evelyn. The one who loses her cool loses the game.
Somehow or other, I was in a position where I had to keep the rude man across from me at least somewhat placated.
Between me and the Grand Duke right now, I'm the one who can't afford to leave.
So endure. Just endure it.
And so I coached myself, quietly.
Crackle. Pop….
The bone-dry firewood burned away with a pleasant sound. Unlike the blizzard raging outside, the cave was strangely still and warm. The blue glow of the luminescent moss mingled with the fire's red heat, casting dreamlike shadows across the stone.
For a while, as if by unspoken agreement, we simply watched the firelight flicker and waver.
After a moment, my gaze drifting absently after the sparks, I spoke up carefully.
“Thank you for saving me.”
“….”
“And I'm sorry for screaming earlier. The blizzard came out of nowhere and I couldn't see anything ahead. I thought I was going to die right there. Well—I mean, you were there, but….”
I laid it out honestly.
“Honestly… I didn't think the Grand Duke would bother saving someone who'd run up a mountain on her own nonsense.”
“….”
Truthfully, given my whole act as the mad princess, I could have let it slide—I should have, if anything. Playing the lunatic, that reaction might have been exactly in character.
“I may be shameless and brazen by nature, but even I'm not the sort of wretch who doesn't know when she owes a debt.”
I stole a glance at Varkan and gave a light bow of my head.
“Thank y—”
“Princess.”
Right then.
Varkan, who had listened to me in silence for a while, cut through the stillness and sliced my sentence clean at the waist.
“Digging through the earth. Climbing down a cliff face. From the very start, you acted nothing like someone who intended to follow the knights up the mountain meekly.”
“….”
I understood. He'd been watching me from the very moment I set foot on that mountain.
Don't tell me—has he seen through my mad-princess act?
Heart pounding, I fixed my eyes on Varkan. He looked down at me with his arms crossed. We were both sitting before the same campfire, but his frame was so large that he naturally loomed over me.
He tilted his head.
“Princess, I hate troublesome things. Intensely.”
“….”
“Chasing after someone, cleaning up their messes—and that feeling of finding myself pathetic for doing it.”
His low voice scraped through the cave like a blade dragged over stone.
“Enough that drawing my sword on the spot often feels like the better option.”
Varkan stared hard at me and went on, coldly.
“You are troublesome, Princess.”
“….”
My mouth went dry before I could stop it.
It felt like a death sentence had just been handed down to me.
My chest clenched, for no good reason.
So I climbed one mountain and cleaned one window, and this is what I get for it.
And the window-cleaning in the first place was the doing of that Grand Duke who'd dumped maid's work on me.
Who in their right mind would want to come here, anyway?! Not me!
Wronged and resentful as I was, I shoved those feelings aside and asked with a perfectly composed face.
“And how do you usually deal with troublesome things?”
“I cut them down with my sword and remove them from my sight.”
“Is that your way of saying you'll handle me the same way?”
“….”
At my question, Varkan fell silent for a moment. He didn't actually answer, but looking at his expression, he seemed like a man ready to do exactly that to me at any moment.
A beat late, he replied.
“Within these duchy walls, at least, you won't be found as a corpse.”
I stared straight at him and forced one corner of my mouth upward into a smile.
“How reassuring. I had no intention of leaving the duchy anyway.”
Between the Guild's surveillance and the Helbine rooting around in my gut, there was no way for me to leave the duchy regardless.
Gritting my teeth, I pressed on.
“But what if I keep being a nuisance?”
At my question, Varkan's gaze sank even deeper.
“…A dog that won't be controlled gets put on a leash. What else?”
…I'm sorry, what? A leash?
When I looked at him as if he'd lost his mind, he continued.
“I know people with a state of mind like yours very well. They wield their own madness as a shield without ever realizing it, and act however they please. However.”
His eyes sharpened further. It felt as though he were boring straight through my skull.
“It won't work on me. I've been through this situation more times than I care to count.”
“….”
“If you can't survive on wit, you ought to at least survive on reading the room, shouldn't you?”
A state of mind like mine….
He was telling me, plainly: I know you're mad. But using that madness as an excuse to run wild won't fly with me.
He was right. The infamous condition of Princess Ivelina served as my shield, and I had been exploiting the mad-princess persona to act as I pleased.
The small mercy was that he didn't seem to have caught on to the fact that I was a fake—or that my madness was all performance.
Relieved inwardly, I answered.
“…I'll take your advice to heart. I'd rather not end up on a leash myself.”
“….”
Thanks to this little exchange, one thing was now crystal clear.
He didn't see me as merely an inconvenient burden—he saw me as a colossal, once-in-a-lifetime obstacle he'd dispose of the instant an opportunity arose.
Just so long as it didn't happen inside the duchy.
…Well, at least I won't be dying within these walls.
Fine. Just you wait and see.
The moment I got rid of the Helbine, I'd leave this duchy behind without a shred of regret—
Just then.
“In two days, we depart for the imperial palace.”
“…Sorry, what?”
“His Majesty the Emperor has summoned the princess and me to the palace.”
I shot to my feet where I sat, startled out of my wits.
“The—the imperial palace?!”
At the same moment—crack!—the campfire's sparks leapt up violently.
The sound rang out like the ground I'd believed so safe splitting open beneath my feet.