Ciel Midford
Euphemia, who had kept vigil through the night, turned her head.
Morning was coming on, brightening as it drove the dark back little by little.
She could no longer even remember how many times she had wound herself into his arms, offering a coquetry she had never meant as coquetry. In place of the thick scent of skin from those hours, the peculiar, fishy smell that rises after sex drifted up from inside the blankets and faintly called the night's heat back to her.
A trickle.
She had only drawn her legs in a little, and semen welled back from inside her and spilled out in an obscene slide. Dazed, held in Perzen's arms, Euphemia stared up at the ceiling as she felt the sheet beneath her hips soak through.
Fear, sorrow, every feeling shot through with bitter grief—perhaps all of it had burned away, for no thought came to her at all. There was only emptiness. Maybe that was why she tried to burrow still deeper into the arms holding her, like a child.
A rustle.
Was it because she kept fidgeting? Though it was only six in the morning, Perzen, woken from sleep, slowly stroked the back of her head.
"You stayed up all night."
"Mm..."
A sharp-eyed man. He noticed even this at once.
"Today I have to go in to the Academy. If that's the case, won't it get in the way of your work? If you wish, you may rest..."
"I'll see to it... that it doesn't cause you any trouble. So you don't have to worry so much. I've taken your seed time after time, and here I am, opening my eyes just fine."
"......"
The hand stroking the back of her head stopped.
Had she made a mistake? Euphemia hunched her shoulders and looked up at Perzen.
"It's early, but let us go and bathe. Soaking in hot water will do far more to work the fatigue out than a short sleep."
Gently, he kissed her brow and drew the blanket away.
She flinched.
Laid bare to the outside air, Euphemia trembled faintly and curled in on herself as Perzen sat up.
"Ah..."
At that, still more of the semen that had not yet dried mingled with her own scent and gave off a smell at once fishy and lewd.
"I ought to wipe you a little before we go."
"I'll... do it. Give me the towel..."
"No need. I'll do it. It isn't anything difficult."
"......"
He had to know perfectly well that this was not a matter of easy or difficult, and yet he insisted on going about it this way. What a truly nasty temperament.
"Lie back."
"Then... I'll spread my legs, so..."
"Euphemia."
In a low voice, calling her by name, he patted the sheet and softly narrowed those characteristic red eyes.
"Mm... all right..."
If what he wanted was surrender and obedience in every trifling thing, then she had no choice but to comply.
"Nnh..."
As if changing a baby's diaper, Perzen drew Euphemia's legs neatly together and up, and with a towel wiped away the thick semen sliding from her sex down toward her anus. The shame of showing him every private part was shame enough, but being unable to manage even so simple an act herself—being tended like an infant—stirred a deep sense of powerlessness.
"Done."
He set aside the towel soaked with semen, released the hand that held her legs, fetched a blanket from nearby, and covered her naked body.
"......"
And when she saw him open his arms a little, Euphemia crawled awkwardly across the bed, wound both hands about Perzen's nape, and let herself be gathered up like a princess.
"See that it's cleaned up properly."
"Yes, sir."
He opened the door, gave a brief order to the maids waiting outside, then walked slowly down the corridor and stepped into the bathroom.
"Ah..."
There, slipping free of the blanket and looking down at her own naked body, Euphemia let out a faint, hollow laugh. Her collarbones, her breasts, her sides—and near her thighs as well, the marks he had pressed into her lay utterly bare.
"You don't have to do this. I'm... already yours..."
With a strengthless hand, tracing each red mark in turn, Euphemia spoke to Perzen.
"At the very least... only where my clothes will hide it. My nape and my ankles are too much..."
"Very well. I'll give that much some thought from now on."
Finished undressing, Perzen answered indifferently, took her hand, and led her into the tub.
A splash.
"Hah, nn..."
Water warmed to just the right heat loosened the fatigue of sex and slackened her whole body into a languid ease, and Euphemia let a low moan slip free.
"Hnn...!"
But when Perzen spread her legs to either side and slid his fingers into her sex, gently scraping the semen out, Euphemia trembled from head to toe, not knowing what to do.
"Ah, ahh..."
She carefully caught his wrist, but Perzen's hand, tendons standing proud, lightly ignored a resistance of that degree. Again and again he stirred inside her and drew the thick semen out.
"Hah, anh..."
His other hand—the left, which was not teasing her within—rose to her lower belly and pressed softly down near her womb. At that Euphemia clenched inside without meaning to. A body trained past all training was beginning, now, to feel pleasure even at a touch that pressed her womb from the outside.
Press.
"Anh...!"
Press.
"Nn...!"
In time with the rhythmic weight of Perzen's hand near her womb, Euphemia lewdly tightened and eased around the middle finger sunk inside her. He would not give her so much as the most trivial scrap of any other knowledge, and yet when it came to how she might feel even a little more pleasure beneath his hands, he taught her with endless kindness. No—more than taught. Never forget. He had branded it into her body.
A shiver ran through her.
"Hah, nnh...!"
At last, brought to her peak by the hand bearing down on her womb and the fingers scraping within, Euphemia curled her toes tight and shook her slender waist with a pitiful tremor.
"......"
Afterward, utterly spent, she leaned limply into Perzen's arms and stared ahead with unfocused, hazy eyes.
"Sleepy..."
The warm water was like a blanket, and Perzen's arms were like a soft bed.
"Wanna sleep..."
Unable to fight the drowsiness rushing in, Euphemia flailed, whimpered like a baby, and closed her eyes. She knew she still had to be bathed, but it was a bother. She was a possessed thing anyway; surely her owner would see to it himself. And well he might. Putting a used object back in its place, or tidying it clean, had always been the user's share.
So Euphemia buried her face against Perzen's chest, breathed out soft little sounds, and sank into a deep sleep.
"......"
Chin propped at the carriage window, he had been looking out, and then he lowered his gaze. Euphemia, who had fallen asleep in the bath, still had not woken. Her head rested on his knee, and she slept soundly.
We'll be at the Academy soon. It would be a problem if she doesn't wake...
If he carried her from the carriage park all the way up to the faculty office—more precisely, if any student were there to see it—then the hostility he had stacked up all this while, desk by rigid desk, would fail to show.
......
But by now, perhaps it no longer mattered. Euphemia's pride had already fallen to the very bottom, to the point where she herself volunteered surrender and obedience.
"Nn..."
Yet the moment the carriage passed the Academy's main gate, Euphemia let out a faint moan and woke. The time of arrival was 8:35 in the morning. She had slept barely two hours, and she looked up at him with a decadent gaze, the fatigue not yet cleared.
Why did that look strike him as so indecent?
"What...?"
Sitting up and setting her disheveled hair to rights, Euphemia felt his gaze as well and made a sour face.
"Out... outside, someone might see..."
As he closed the distance little by little, she flinched and tried to persuade him with a reasonably sensible excuse.
"Mmph..."
But a carriage window was, by nature, for looking out from within, not for looking in from without. It was not impossible, of course, but surely no one would be so rude, so ill-mannered...
"......"
There was. On the chance of it, he kissed her and glanced outside—and Uriel, stepping down from a carriage marked with a purple petal crest, the crest of House Alfred, met his eyes. If she had any sense of tact, she ought to leave at once. Instead, as if he were the one at fault for kissing in a public place, she did not look away to the end, staring as though to deliver a reprimand.
"Hah..."
When he drew his head back, fed up with her, Uriel had already turned toward the main building and vanished without a trace. She herself went about with those ridiculous, oversized breasts bouncing as she walked, and yet she had the gall to throw a fit that a kiss inside a carriage was improper. He could not fathom the spite of it.
A creak.
Lizzie rolled her wheelchair up to the lecture hall and reached to open the door, but a man's hand appeared all at once and did it for her. She turned her head and found a classmate by the name of Lofen, who ordinarily would not so much as greet her.
"......"
After House Claudia and House Alfred were joined in marriage—no, more precisely, because Perzen had attended—people had begun, from that day on, to offer her an artificial kindness whose insides were plain to see.
"Thank you."
Of course, the ones offering that artificial kindness were the children of noble houses on the weaker side of power. From their point of view, if it was her—unable even to walk properly on her own, crippled—they could simply marry her and tie themselves to House Claudia, which was beginning, little by little, to show signs of revival. It was disgusting. Even so, Lizzie was satisfied enough merely that she had come to possess value as a political match.
She entered the lecture hall. The time was 8:50. She had thought he would be in before long, but the one who appeared first, to her surprise, was a green-haired woman. Most of the students wore puzzled faces, not knowing who she was, but Lizzie recognized her at once. She had seen her in the great cathedral where the ceremony was held. And she was the very person who had made her birthday the most wretched it had ever been.
"I am..."
Then Euphemia's introduction went on, and hearing it, Lizzie bit her lip.
From now on... even inside the Academy, do I have to watch your happy moments?
Just how much of his true face did that woman know? It was truly laughable. More than his own wife, she herself knew more about Perzen. And that made Lizzie unbearably angry.
He knew it was a side that must not be shown, and so he kept it hidden tight, didn't he? Then why had he shown that other face to her? Lizzie could not understand. Was it because, set beside Brutein, hers was a house no better than a toy—something one might step on and break at will? But Ruerug was nothing more than a wretched domain flung far farther out on the frontier than House Claudia. So why was that woman not abused by him, but given a love so warm?
"Lizzie Paul Liana Claudia."
Then, hearing her own name called for attendance, Lizzie looked straight at Euphemia.
"Yes."
When she answered, the woman took her in as well—to fix her clearly in memory, tied to the name. Yes. Please, never forget. Brand the sight of me now, sharp and clear, into your mind. Because here is the life of a woman thoroughly ruined and broken by your husband, Perzen von Schweik Brutein.
After that, Perzen came in and began the lecture, but not a single word of his voice reached Lizzie's ears.