Conclusion
His body would not properly take his strength.
Still, he was alive. The surgery, then, must have gone well.
"Who..."
A presence stirred beside him, and he turned his head. His vision refused to focus, too blurred for him to make out the figure, but it did not seem to be Euphemia. That distinctive green of hers was nowhere in it.
"They said there would be a few aftereffects, so do not worry. Your eyes will return to normal before long."
The voice felt strange to him, and yet it was deeply familiar.
"Brother... is that you?"
"Yes, little brother. You have made quite a spectacle of things."
If the man who ought to have been in Brutein was here now, then at the very least a week had passed. So that was why his body felt so strangely strengthless. How long, exactly, had he been lying in this sickbed?
"Today makes fourteen days. Exactly two weeks."
"..."
"You are certainly a patient. Every feeling is written across your face."
Jeremiah's faint laugh reached him. He could not answer it.
"I am sorry..."
He was Brutein's blood heir, yes, but the head of the house was unmistakably Jeremiah. By that measure, what he had done was outrage past all bounds. He had already braced himself for a reckoning that would not end in a simple apology.
"Perzen."
"Yes..."
"Have you ever received a gift on your birthday?"
"..."
"I received one every year. So many that I grew tired of them..."
"..."
"I am not trying to deceive you. You have never received anything from family or from the house, have you. Nor did you ever expect to."
"..."
"Twenty-four years old. Twenty-four years... so much time has already passed."
Jeremiah's hand reached out gently and came to rest upon his head.
"It is all right, now, to act the spoiled child once in a while. You need not try to settle every matter that confronts you by yourself. I am your brother, and you are my brother. Setting Brutein aside, we are brothers bound together inside the fence called family."
"..."
"Finding the courage for this may be far too late, but... as your family, I will become the one place where you may show yourself as you are."
"..."
"And as head of the house, I will be the rampart that protects you."
"..."
He was not Perzen in any pure sense. It was more honest to call him an entirely different third person, in whom the selves of Lee Seojin and Perzen were mingled together. And yet the memories of Perzen's childhood, judged useless and pressed down to the very bottom, rose slowly to the surface and began to flicker past like a lantern-reel.
"So not I am sorry. Will you give me a different word?"
"Ah..."
A laugh escaped him of its own accord, and he lifted a hand to cover his face. And for the first time since he had come into this body, this flesh, he seemed to shed what could be called tears. A moment later, he quietly opened his mouth.
"Brother..."
"Yes."
"Please... help me..."
Jeremiah von Berem Brutein. His brother met his eyes without looking away.
Yes. Even a villain has, in family alone, an ally that never changes.
Jeremiah, and Perzen as well, let the awkward, bashful stretch of time pass between them. Then they came to the point.
"I have already told His Majesty that Brutein will intervene in this struggle for the throne under the borrowed name of Luerg."
"Then..."
"Luerg must become the head of the North. For that, the first prince of the Robelium Kingdom will have to be set upon the throne without fail."
At Jeremiah's words, Perzen blinked.
"Prince Inas is not to be executed?"
However much Ciel Midford insisted that he had acted on his own, the Ernes Empire had the power to dismiss that claim and put the prince to death. More precisely, the justification for doing so existed. But to hear Jeremiah tell it, Prince Inas escaping execution was already a settled fact, and that left Perzen puzzled. Better to kill the piece cleanly here than hand him over to the Elmark Empire. Would the Robelium Kingdom not then be the Ernes Empire's to run alone?
"That was the plan."
"What happened?"
"Ciel Midford... drew in House Alfred."
"..."
"He claimed that once Alfred heard you meant to collude with Prince Inas and stage a play, they incited Ciel Midford himself and commissioned a murder through him, in order to keep Brutein from taking part under Luerg's name. Naturally, House Alfred demanded a verification."
"Ha... so this is his last loyalty."
The way for Ciel Midford to prove he had acted alone was simple. A black mage would enslave the body he had become, and if the proper Feedback came back from that information, it would be finished. The empire, however, had meant to omit that process and behead him. A corpse with its head cut off cannot undergo Feedback. That was why a headless corpse was said to be the worst bargain of all. But Ciel Midford, with a pretext that held water, had dragged House Alfred in and left them no choice but to go through with it. If he were beheaded as things stood, Alfred would be leaving behind a justification by which Brutein might devour them whenever it pleased.
In that case...
They would have to kill him without degrading the corpse. Ciel Midford would die by poison, not by beheading. He walked the path of an Aura Knight, so hanging would have meant nothing. Truly, a last thrashing worthy of a protagonist skewed so far toward the light.
"..."
He bowed his head for a moment, then looked toward his abdomen and frowned. He had not noticed it while he was not thinking of it, but the instant he did, he could not help wondering how the scar after the surgery might have been left. It troubled him more than a little. He reached out and lifted the hem of his clothes.
"..."
"Startled?"
Jeremiah gave a short laugh.
"Yes... considerably."
He had been stabbed in only one side, and yet the trace of an incision remained clear on the opposite side as well, making a symmetry of the two. No. The mark on the other side was not an incision. It looked as though the flesh had been scraped, and a scar forced into it and nothing more.
"I brought the physicians from within the Brutein domain as well. They had quite a time of it."
"Haha..."
"If we had not, you would have stabbed the other side of your own flank the moment you woke, would you not? I could not watch that with open eyes."
Jeremiah lowered his voice a little, rose, and patted Perzen's shoulder gently.
"I find myself... suddenly deep in your debt, Brother."
"Do not carry a useless sense of debt. I will take my leave. Your wife seems to be standing outside the door, unable to come in..."
"It was good to see your face after so long, Brother."
"Yes... from now on, let us see each other often."
Jeremiah turned and opened the door of the sickroom. Euphemia, who had been standing beyond it, startled and took a step back. He offered her a kindly smile, left a single word asking her to look after Perzen, and quietly vanished.
"..."
"..."
Left alone with her in the sickroom, Perzen said nothing. He only watched her where she stood, quiet and unsteady.
The bed gave a light creak.
He had no strength to spare, but aside from a little pain in his side when he put force into his waist, he was not past moving. He raised himself, took hold of the stand where the drip hung, and went to Euphemia's side.
"Euphemia..."
"Y-yes..."
"There will be no change in Ciel Midford's execution."
At those words, reality set before her the moment he was on his feet, Euphemia nodded slowly, her face bleak with sorrow. She knew as well as anyone how senseless it would be, at this point, to beg that Ciel Midford be spared. In truth, even if Perzen placed the choice in her hands, she did not have the confidence to say the words let Ciel live. If he survived and tried to repeat all of this in order to press something into her hands, she did not think she could endure that road.
Was it too great a greed, to wish that each of us might walk our own path?
She only pitied him: Ciel Midford, sunk wholly into the fact of her and already across a road from which there was no returning. Yes. All the Euphemia of now could give him was sympathy. The shape of the love he carried was far too heavy, and crushed beneath its weight, she felt pain instead.
"Can you not find your bearings?"
"..."
"Euphemia."
"Yes..."
"Did you go to see Ciel Midford?"
"No..."
"Then, the moment he dies, will you take your own life as well?"
At Perzen's words, Euphemia slowly lifted the head she had bowed. Then, slowly, she shook it from side to side.
"I see..."
Having confirmed that will, Perzen drew her into his arms. Her characteristically full breasts were pressed soft against him.
"While I slept, you remained at my side the whole time."
"..."
"And you said that even through death, you would not leave my side."
"..."
"Euphemia. It is your choice."
"Yes..."
"From this day on, you will be my wife forever."
"Yes..."
"And you will be the mother of my child."
"Yes..."
"The only man your body remembers will be me."
"Yes..."
"The only refuge you may lean on in your world will be me."
"Yes..."
"Yes..."
When Perzen, come back to himself, took hold of the leash fastened about her neck and set her direction once more, Euphemia felt a strangely comfortable sensation seep through her whole body. If a husband and wife are beings who walk while looking the same way, then it would not be too much to say that Perzen and Euphemia, ironically, had come nearest of all to that meaning.
The clock was passing one in the morning. Perzen reached out, brushed Euphemia's hair softly back behind her ear, and spoke.
"It has grown very late..."
"..."
"You must be tired. Shall we sleep together for the first time in a while? The bed is wide."
Euphemia nodded without any particular hesitation. Perzen took her hand, led her to the bed, and they lay down together. He had not known he would miss the faint scent of her body this much. Drawing in that deep fragrance, he reached out, loosened the closed front of her clothes, and cupped a soft breast, stroking it with an affectionate hand.
"Ah... nn..."
Her breast was bare in a sickroom, and being touched besides, and yet whatever way Perzen took her body, Euphemia no longer felt any resistance. Even when he caught a nipple and gave it a slight, teasing twist, she only flinched and let a thin moan slip, accepting his hand as a matter of course.
"Now that I think of it... do you remember what you said before the duel?"
"Y-yes..."
"Then say it again, here."
At his mischievous demand Euphemia hesitated for a moment.
"Hah..."
Perzen nipped lightly at her earlobe and pinched the nipple that had shyly risen, and she panted, shivering, and opened her mouth.
"W-when we go back... l-let's... have sex..."
"There should be more."
"I want to have a child who looks just like you..."
"And."
"I-I want your thing... to come inside me... a-and strike my womb..."
"And."
"I want you to kiss the nape of my neck... You can press my belly as hard as you like... If you are only gentle, I feel good too..."
When Euphemia finished, Perzen answered with a laugh.
"You have grown quite obscene."
"..."
"Do you not think so?"
What answer was he hoping for? Euphemia quietly turned her head aside.
"I'm... not obscene... ah!"
A soft kiss.
Because she had turned her head, the white line of her neck lay bare, and Perzen bent to kiss it. Startled, Euphemia shrank in on herself, but when he drew the blanket lightly aside, lifted the hem of her skirt, and stroked her belly, she meekly gathered both hands near her chest. It was a conditioned reflex engraved in her body.
"Truly..."
Perzen had not wanted to say something like this.
"The body is honest."
Nothing else seemed to describe the Euphemia of this moment so exactly.
"Hnn...!"
Under Perzen's hand, passing softly back and forth around her navel, Euphemia let out a heated moan. Each time she did, the white belly that had been rising and falling in a steady rhythm broke that rhythm and trembled. Another gentle kiss followed, laid against the nape of her neck, and Euphemia felt the panties she wore clinging wetly to her sex.
Ah...
She did not want him to catch even the faint scent of the fluid that might have leaked, so she quietly drew her legs together. The sound that resulted only laid something obscene into the quiet of the sickroom. Perzen's faintly laughing voice followed at once.
"Anh...! Nn...!"
At the hand slowly pressing upon her womb, Euphemia buried her face against his neck and shook her head pitifully, like a child.
"Hik...!"
But when the hand that had gone down between her legs stroked her sex, soaked through the panties, Euphemia gasped in surprise and drew a useless breath.
"I don't... want..."
Setting aside that this was a sickroom, nothing had been settled yet. Ciel Midford was still waiting to be executed, and the thought that she, who might be called the cause of it, was panting in pleasure stirred her guilt. Sniffling, Euphemia carefully refused his hand.
A wet sound.
"Anh...! Aahn..."
But Perzen, as if he disliked her sinking into self-reproach over Ciel Midford, pushed the black panties aside and worked his way into the inner flesh that was pouring out the scent of a female. So that she might make the pleasure he gave her into a refuge. With a skilled hand he groped inside her, found the rough place, and stimulated it over and over, as if scraping it out.
"Hk! Hnn...!"
At the sexual pleasure she had not felt in so long, a tingling rush of it, Euphemia panted and came lewdly undone in his arms.
"Hup...!"
Then his mouth covered hers, and Euphemia closed her eyes and awkwardly, politely, welcomed his tongue. As if to say he must not be rough, that he must please be gentle with her. Like a lioness clinging close to soothe an angry male, she tapped softly at his tongue.
"Nn...! Hk...!"
It was no use at all. As if he meant to take the inside of her mouth, Perzen did not suppress his desire. He laid it bare. And as that went on at length, Euphemia would rather, instead of panting through an ambiguous pleasure while guilt gnawed at her, do as one does when drinking to forget a pain: give her body over to his hand completely, and pant without shame.
So, of her own accord, she vulgarly spread both legs to either side, the better to let him stir her sex more easily.
A wet sound. A flinch.
As if in answer to that submission, Perzen's finger drove in deeper still, and Euphemia clenched tight around it.
A soft pop.
"...!"
But then he drew his finger out, and the sticky fluid stretched after it in a long thread, making a sound lewd past the point of vulgarity. Euphemia herself seemed startled. Her face flushed deeper still.
"Nn, ah...! N-not there... d-don't..."
He had been patting the smooth sex, and then, past the perineum, he mischievously tapped the neighborhood of her anus, where the running fluid had pooled. Euphemia sobbed and bit down on the cloth of his clothes. Wherever else he touched her was all right, but the rear stirred a physiological revulsion in her, and so, without crossing the line, she expressed her displeasure as far as she could.
"Hik...!"
He did not stop at once. When he touched her from behind again, Euphemia reached out a trembling hand and seized his wrist. Then she moved it upward, to her sex, and within his arms she lifted her face to look at him.
"I-it feels strange... d-don't touch there..."
"..."
"Please... for now... don't... torment me..."
How could a face begging through tears be so lovely? Perzen buried his face beside her head and, as she wished, slid his fingers back inside her, leading her gently to the peak.
"Hk! Anh... aahnn...!"
A flinch. A shiver.
Perhaps because her legs were spread wide, Euphemia trembled in his arms through the lingering of her climax, helpless as an infant wetting itself in a diaper. For this moment, at least, nothing else rose in her mind. With her thoughts gone hazy she breathed out hard and closed her eyes.
"Sleep... the night is deep."
Drawing the blanket up over her again, Perzen patted her soaking sex and whispered low beside her ear. In answer, Euphemia spoke toward him in a small voice, as if fussing in her sleep.
"Don't... pat me there..."
"..."
"Stroke... my belly... for me..."
It was nearly five months now since Euphemia had been tamed to him. In that time her belly, more precisely the region of her womb, had advanced into an erogenous zone. But there was one thing more. On the condition that he caressed it gently, her belly had become the trigger of a whole routine in which she felt peace and relief.
"I will..."
It was nothing if not a lovely, endearing request, and Perzen gladly lifted his hand and stroked her belly with tenderness.
A sniffle.
Not long after, the belly beneath his hand began to rise and fall in a steady rhythm, quietly telling him that she had fallen into a deep sleep. For quite a long while Perzen gazed at the face of Euphemia sleeping in his arms. Then he lowered the skirt he had raised, and sank into sleep beside her.
The second day after Perzen awoke.
The execution of the condemned, Ciel Midford, was carried out.