That Face Looks Awfully Familiar

***

The Archduke's office, which I was setting foot in for the first time, was the North distilled into a single room.

Cold, hard, and immaculate.

The black-red wooden bookshelves lining the walls, the ash-gray carpet, the desk buried under a mountain of documents, the fireplace roaring away—take away the guest sofa I was sitting on and the table in front of it, and there was hardly a stick of furniture left to call furniture.

I had dug out and put on the same dress I'd worn the day I first arrived at the Archduke's residence. After growing accustomed to the comfort of a maid's uniform, it was unbearably restrictive.

And sitting across from me.

Archduke Varkan Escarr—a man harder to face than any luxury item in existence.

So we finally meet, Your Grace.

The first impression filling my field of vision was as if someone had gathered every merciless quality of the northern winter and sculpted it into a man. Hair black as ink, eyes long and glacial beneath it—and above all, those obsidian irises that seemed to bore straight through me.

His gaze alone radiated a menace and pressure fierce enough to cow anyone into submission. He was nothing more than a secondary male lead in the original story, and yet his presence was overwhelming. And above all—

He's disgustingly handsome.

His face, his physique, and even that dangerous air about him. Tragically, all of it was exactly my type.

Granted, the aide and the knight commander standing behind the Archduke were also faces that would hold up anywhere you put them.

But they're not my type, so.

Then—

I tilted my head, staring straight into Varkan's eyes as he studied me.

Those eyes... where have I seen—

Just as a strange feeling began to wash over me, Varkan, who had been tearing me apart with his gaze for a long while, finally spoke.

"You seem to be taking to the maid's work rather well, Princess."

My eyebrow twitched. That's his opening line? Asking if I enjoy being a maid?

He's the one who ordered it.

Strictly speaking, the man who commanded me to do maid's work was none other than the Archduke himself. I did it because he told me to—so why was he looking at me like I'd committed some offense?

I was dumbfounded on the inside, but on the outside I beamed with an innocent, unclouded smile.

"Yes, all thanks to Your Grace's extraordinarily thoughtful consideration. I suppose it's because the residence is such an old building, but there were so many layers of grime. This is the estate I'll be living in from now on, after all, so I scraped it off with a joyful heart."

"..."

Didn't I do great? Heehee. At my poised, shameless retort, Varkan's smooth brow twitched ever so slightly. He fell silent for a moment, then crossed his arms over that solid wall of chest muscle and spoke again.

"I've heard. There was an incident in the capital of the domain, not long ago."

I answered quickly.

"It wasn't an incident. It was more of a natural disaster."

"I believe you're the only person in the world who would call it that. It was a failure of duty by the knights sworn to protect you."

"Oh, dear me."

I clasped my hands in front of my lips and cast my eyes down.

"How bleak."

"..."

Varkan's eyes narrowed at my words, and behind him, the knight commander and the aide went wide-eyed.

"How remarkable that you don't have so much as a speck of flexibility in you."

"...Flexibility."

Varkan rolled the word around on his tongue, then let out a cold scoff.

"It seems you don't understand how 'flexibility' is nothing but a pretty excuse. On a battlefield where one small mistake leads straight to death, people lose their lives to exactly that kind of flexibility."

I gave a little shrug.

"Except this isn't a battlefield."

"And where, pray tell, would that battlefield be? Anywhere people live and die is a battlefield, Princess."

"..."

Wow.

I was genuinely impressed. That fortress wall of his seemed like it would turn back even a diamond-tipped needle.

Well, this is pointless. The man simply doesn't listen.

So he was going to punish the knights, was he? After I'd been back for barely a week, he wanted to discipline the very knights assigned to guard me?

I narrowed my eyes to points and said,

"You really do live such a grim, joyless life. No friends, I take it?"

"..."

His gaze turned even colder.

"You speak in a manner most unbefitting a princess."

I muttered back, petulant on purpose.

"And what exactly is princess-appropriate speech? I don't recall it being codified into law anywhere."

When I leaned back comfortably against the sofa and squared my shoulders, Varkan's eyes slitted.

"I'm beginning to understand how you earned your reputation, Princess."

"My reputation?"

I tilted my head.

"And what sort of reputation would that be, exactly?"

Varkan held his silence for a moment, studying me quietly.

"I'm sure you know better than anyone."

Under that meaningful stare, I blinked rapidly—then went ah! and clapped my hands together.

"That I'm insane?"

The knight commander behind him coughed violently, and the aide fiddled with his glasses and turned his head away. Varkan pressed his lips into a firm line before speaking, a beat too late.

"...I never went that far."

"Yes, yes, of course, Your Highness. Do go on living with all that dignity and refinement of yours. I'll be living my way, just as I am now."

"..."

The air in the office froze over, sharp and brittle.

Regardless of all that.

I rose from my seat wearing the smile of a victor, sweeping up the cumbersome train of my gown in a wide arc.

"And let me say this one more time. If you insist on punishing the knights who guarded me... I will receive the exact same punishment as they do, come what may."

At my terrifying ultimatum, Varkan's eyebrow rose with excruciating slowness.

"Suit yourself."

At his curt reply, I let out a light, dismissive snort.

As if I couldn't follow through if he called my bluff.

I lifted my chin slightly and turned my back on the Archduke.

"You'd better remember those words."

***

Thud—. The princess left, the door closed, and a brief stillness settled over the office.

As Varkan, leaning back into the sofa, scrubbed a hand down his face and sighed, his aide Roan Meyer stepped forward.

"Is something troubling you, Your Grace?"

"...Troubled?"

Come to think of it, perhaps that is the word for this feeling.

Varkan stared into empty air and let the words fall out flat.

"A strange woman."

He had, in all honesty, been struck when he first saw the princess. Dazzling platinum hair and delicately carved features with sharp, clean lines—she radiated a vivid, almost foreign color entirely at odds with this desolate North.

For a war-scarred hostage dragged here against her will, her eyes were far too alive.

They said the shock of the war had shattered her mind. Yet having now exchanged words with her, she didn't seem mad at all. But if the question was whether this was sane—absolutely not.

If she isn't sane, then she's certainly mad.

A strong sense of dissonance lingered somewhere in the back of his mind. Was she feigning madness? Truly mad? Or mad, with moments of clarity that surfaced now and then? He could not pin her down at all.

Varkan furrowed his brow and asked Roan.

"So. The princess who vanished in the town square—what did she come back carrying?"

"Yes, Your Grace. By all accounts she appeared clutching several pouches to her chest, holding them as if they were precious treasures."

"And what was inside them?"

"That is..."

For some reason, Roan hesitated.

"Why? Was it something dangerous?"

"No, nothing like that. ...We don't know yet either."

"What?"

Varkan looked at him directly. Roan continued with a pained expression.

"When the guard knights approached to inspect the contents, Her Highness suddenly bared her white teeth and... b-barked. ...She barked."

Varkan's brow creased.

"Barked?"

Roan's face contorted with shame as he answered.

"Woof! Woof woof woof!... She made dog barking noises like that, and warned that if they came one step closer she would bite the back of their necks clean open on the spot... so the knights couldn't bring themselves to subdue her by force and gave up on checking the contents."

"..."

The office sank once more into silence.

Varkan thought of the princess who had sat directly before him not long ago, answering back in that clear, measured voice. He felt utterly pathetic for having been confused, even briefly, over whether she might be faking her madness.

So she really is insane.

A clean verdict. And yes—it struck him as strange. A woman who didn't avert her eyes from his gaze, but met it head-on, boldly, as if boring into him instead. Most people flinched and cowered at the mere brush of his stare, but that princess had returned it blow for blow.

Those blue eyes, clear as a winter lake and deep as a cloudless afternoon sky, had stayed with him rather stubbornly. When he told himself it was because she wasn't in her right mind, it made a certain amount of sense.

Come to think of it, those eyes.

I've seen them somewhere before...

Where was it?

Then Deros, the knight commander, spoke up.

"Then what shall we do about disciplining the knights who escorted Her Highness? She's proven remarkably obstinate on the matter..."

At Deros's question, Varkan rested his chin on his hand and sank into thought. The responsibility of losing their charge in the middle of a crowded town square was beyond dispute. Wrongdoing must be punished—that was the law of the North. But with the princess shielding the knights so openly, it was equally awkward to simply let the matter slide.

After a moment, Varkan's lips parted slowly.

"...The punishment will be carried out as planned. However—"