Ciel Midford
"It has been a very long time."
The Emperor of Ernes opened with the safest words he possessed.
The lines cut into his face were no ornament. True to the years they recorded, he did not lose his composure even before Perzen, the man who had broken a tradition of House Brutein that long history itself had borne out.
"I have heard the reports. Your arm—has it left you with no lingering harm?"
"None, Your Majesty. I thank you for your concern."
"Yes. They tell me you met that unpleasant affair at the Academy with swift measures and put it down early. For a devotion that did not spare your own body, several proposals were laid before me, and in the end I have decided that the taxes of Ruerug shall be remitted for three years."
"I am grateful for Your Majesty's grace."
"Then... enjoy this banquet at your ease."
Was Perzen acting on his own? Or, if not, was House Brutein borrowing the name of Luerg to step into the contest for the throne?
Unable to seize a clear thread, the Emperor stole a glance at his sons, the First Prince and the Second Prince. Their faces, as he had expected, were complicated. If it were the latter, then winning Perzen's support alone would be as good as proof that a man would be named crown prince. If the former, it meant little enough. The coin that could be raised from Ruerug, a holding on the northern marches, was scant, and its soldiers fewer still. The only thing that could be called a force was, in truth, Perzen himself.
Has he come to choose with his own eyes who will sit as Ritualist? Or if not...
The Emperor could not quite swallow his regret. Elizabeth's gift for looking into the heart ran on a cycle of three months for each person. Had he opened the banquet at the end of May, he might have drawn a clear intention out of this very hall.
For now, there is nothing for it but to watch.
He quietly took his eyes from Perzen, spoke a while with his beloved consort, and before long withdrew with her. The true center of the banquet was his sons, after all.
The music that had been ringing gaily through the hall changed, as if to settle the confusion within, and now ran soft and low. The nobles who had gone stiff took up their talk again and coaxed the room back to life, though their glances still trailed after Perzen from time to time.
The man himself seemed to care nothing for any of it. He caught a passing maid, took a glass of wine, and wet his parched throat.
"Ah... s-sorry..."
As if panic had seized her, Euphemia, unable to gather herself, stepped the other way from him, and they collided.
At this rate, it might be better simply to leave her be.
If the Second Prince of Robelium came to speak with her, she looked ready to hand him a blunder he could catch and worry to the bone. Perzen was turning that thought over in silence—one that would have made Euphemia blanch to hear—when an unfamiliar presence drew near. He set the notion aside and turned his head.
"To think I would see, in this very hall, the blood of Brutein—the line they call the Ritualist. Fortune has been kind to me. Wouldn't you agree?"
She was dressed in colors woven warm, and yet the blue-haired woman gave off a cold all her own, sharp and unmistakable.
At first Perzen did not know her. The instant he saw the emblem worked into her clothing, he did.
The First Imperial Princess of the Elmark Empire. No—
its Empress. Gremory Eldin Ishtar Elmark.
"Frowning in place of a greeting is a rather disappointing answer. And I am no uninvited guest, I'll have you know."
No uninvited guest. That meant she had been asked here off the record—something even Brutein's intelligence had failed to uncover.
What is the imperial house thinking, to call her into this room?
The imperial scions of this generation in Elmark had numbered seven, and the only one left was Gremory herself. All six of the dead had gone in ways one could, after a fashion, comprehend—poison, the strike of unknown hands, and the rest—and yet a faint trail remained that she herself had done the work. Yes. Evidence left on purpose, like a mark set out for others to find. It was a famous tale that the Third Prince, begging to live, had gone to her, fallen to his knees, and licked her shoes. In the end every one of them died, and she alone remained.
Gremory Eldin Ishtar Elmark: a monster who, at twenty-eight and in a woman's body, had risen to the Extreme Realm of the Aura Knight. She was part of why he had expected Ciel Midford's growth to quicken in the course of forcing Ruerug's snowbound mountains. To inflict frostbite across the whole body on purpose, then drive mana by force until the cells rebuilt themselves—that was a method she herself had used.
"I have given offense without meaning to... I never imagined I would see the Empress of the Elmark Empire in this hall, so I ask you to forgive the slip in my composure."
"You have a prettier way with words than I expected. I'm pleased. If I followed my heart, I would like a word with that wife of yours as well, the one you've tucked behind you like a fledgling... but I have a prior engagement. I must take my leave."
He followed Empress Gremory's hand as it indicated a place a little removed, and his eyes met those of Princess Elizabeth, who seemed to be waiting for her. Perzen offered a short bow of the head. Princess Elizabeth answered by taking the hem of her skirt lightly in both hands and lifting it, a reply of poised grace.
"May the hour treat you well."
"And I wish Your Majesty the Empress the same."
He held her retreating back in his sight a moment as she turned away at her leisure, then looked to Euphemia, pressed tight against his side.
"Is the air of that hall so hard to breathe?"
"Mm..."
The strangeness of the place was one thing. Not knowing when, in this room, Ciel and Perzen might strike against each other left Euphemia feeling as if her blood were on fire.
"Then let us step out to the terrace for a little while."
He said it flatly, but Euphemia brightened and nodded hard. She was glad enough that the thought of Ciel watching never even occurred to her, and she took with pleasure the arm Perzen set about her waist.
They left the banquet hall, crowded beneath brilliant lights, and came out onto the terrace. A cool night wind met Euphemia together with a hush of stillness. Only then did she feel as if a way had opened for her breath. She let the tautness out of her body and released a sigh gone peaceful.
"I will not tell you to grow used to it. Even so, you are far too tense."
"If it is hard to bear sober, you might borrow a little from the wine."
He turned the glass in his hand halfway around and brought to Euphemia's lips the place his own mouth had touched.
"I'm... all right..."
She did not want to borrow drunkenness. Still, with his hand tipping the glass, she had no choice. She parted her lips and carefully took in a mouthful of wine both sweet and sharp.
"Cough—!"
The wine must have been strong. Her throat burned, and her face went scarlet all at once. Euphemia fanned the heat with her hand, trying to cool it—
"Ah—!"
Perzen bent his head without warning and kissed her. Startled more than a little, she reached carefully for his back and drew him in with arms that had no strength.
"Hn... mm..."
Unlike their usual kisses, the wine's fragrance spread thick between them. From nothing more than the mingling of tongues and the trade of saliva, Euphemia's head seemed to swim.
So a kiss alone can make me feel this wanton.
When the long kiss ended and Perzen drew his head back, she wiped about her lips with the back of her hand and turned her face aside. She did not know why, but a sweet ache gathered low in her belly. Inside her underclothes, her nipples stood lewd and stiff.
No...
Unable even to tell the hour from the place, she denied the body that had gone shamelessly into heat, and let out a hot breath. A little drunkenness was on her. It felt less like the wine she had swallowed than like the lingering scent that wine had left behind.
"How shameless... What do you think you're doing in the imperial palace?"
Euphemia jumped. At a voice both familiar and strange, she flinched and hid herself behind Perzen's back.
"He's shameless to the bone, so I'll let that pass. But if you knew what shame was, you shouldn't have answered him. Try all you like with one hand—you still can't clap."
Uriel had stepped onto the terrace and watched their shameful display from the first moment to the last. She scolded them with a jabbing finger. Perzen found the sight of her past belief. Wearing a dignified gown of Azalea in a manner so vulgar, and she dared lecture them on modesty? Because she bore the name of Alfred, he could not even imagine how desperately everyone she passed had been steering their eyes, for the sake of her face.
"Uriel, if you have any conscience, plant yourself on this terrace until the banquet is over and do not come out. Even your hobby of tormenting people, you practice in a truly vicious way."
"What... do you mean?"
"Enough. If you'd had any awareness to begin with, you wouldn't have dressed like that."
The point had been left unspoken, yet from long experience Uriel understood what he meant, and quietly covered her chest. It was like trying to hide the sky with a palm, and it meant nothing. If anything, those full breasts, only half concealed, stood out all the more brazenly.