Uriel Wayne Dana Alfred
A fine tremor ran through her. Lizzie drew her legs in and clamped them shut with everything she had.
Perzen looked down at her and smiled, a thin curl of scorn.
"You cannot offer even a scrap of resistance. The only thing you can manage is to barely hold your water—and you mean to tell me there is something you can do?"
"Hah... ngh... hhk...!"
"Lizzie. This is how powerless you are."
He reached out and stroked the soft line of her cheek. At that crawling touch Lizzie whimpered and twisted her face away.
"Had your legs been whole, you might at least have run."
But his hand caught her chin and snuffed out even that small defiance. From a breath away he stared into her eyes. The violet irises, dyed through with fear and shivering, had gone past pitiful. They were wretched.
"D-don't..."
The hand traveled down, closed around her wrist, and hauled her upright where she sat. There was nothing she could do. A moment later, with a cruelty almost elegant in its calm, Perzen wrapped one arm about her waist and drew her into the posture of a dance. Just as on that day. Then he bent his head and whispered, very low, against her ear.
♪ ♪ ♩.
The music of that day.
"No... no...!"
Memory overlapped memory. That day seized her by the hair and dragged her out past the lip of a hideous abyss. She thrashed, barely managing to thrust her face up for air, but the waves came on hard and swallowed her in an instant.
Then, strengthless as a marionette, Lizzie swayed in desolate time with Perzen's lead. And before long, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, her foot came down on the top of his.
"Ah..."
It struck like a violent catalyst. Bubbles seemed to rush up through her all at once, and the memory of eight years ago—crushed down, locked away—was dragged in a single breath to the surface.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry...! I was wrong...!"
"It hurts... it hurts..."
Phantom pain flared through the ruined left leg. Lizzie wept without end, writhing in agony.
"Lizzie."
Perzen let her other foot press quietly down on him in turn and laid her back across the desk. He wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes with a gentle hand, then lowered his head and murmured.
"People have instincts."
Among them, fear was the body's red alarm, wired straight to survival.
"When your body turns honest before me, do not deny it. Obey it."
From this close a fresh, youthful scent drifted into his nose, and threaded through it was a faint tang of urine. Perzen looked down. It had not quite come to a full loss of control, but a small leak had printed a pale stain across her lower abdomen, clear as anything.
"You meet me alone and cannot even keep from wetting yourself, and you speak of revenge? Lizzie... House Brutein, and an Apollyon-rank black mage, are not so cheap as to fall before a girl who leaks at the slightest thing."
He finished the long speech, drew his body back, straightened his clothes, and opened the locked door.
"I will give you exactly one chance to reconsider."
"Hhk... ngh..."
"Listen to the screams your feelings and your flesh are sending up to your reason."
Perzen stepped out. Left alone, Lizzie sobbed for a long while before she managed, at last, to push herself up. The trauma was ebbing little by little, but the trembling in its wake remained, and it still tormented her.
Perzen von Schweik Luerg.
Unchanged. A man horrifically self-righteous, selfish to the bone.
"You really are... the worst..."
She crushed the Rosewell treatise she had bought into a wrinkled fist, settled into her wheelchair, and left the room.
Two twenty-three.
She was late.
"You're back...?"
"You're awake."
When I returned to the carriage, Euphemia—just risen from sleep—greeted me. I ordered the coachman to depart and settled back at my ease.
"Um..."
"What is it."
"The... the bread... I was wondering if we might buy a little to take with us..."
"There is no reason not to. If there is something you want while the morning sickness is on you, say so without hesitating. So long as it is not the middle of the night, I can have it brought."
"Mm... all right."
"We may as well pick up some ryube while we are there. You liked it."
"Ah..."
A little color came back into Euphemia's face.
"We will buy a generous amount."
"But... your lunch..."
"We can share the bread you choose. There is nothing I particularly want. Do not waste your consideration on me. Mind your own body."
"..."
Euphemia looked up at me without a word. Kindness of this sort was probably awkward to her. Unfamiliar.
"Ah... d-don't... we're outside..."
She was cute like that. The hand I had wrapped around her waist crept upward, closed over her breast, and kneaded it gently.
"Ah—ahn..."
My fingers found her nipple with practiced ease and gave it a soft pinch through the cloth, and a lewd little sound slipped out of her. Not a shred of resistance. She took the pleasure and let the nipple stand up, obscene, and the sight was deeply satisfying.
I kissed her.
"Nnh! D-don't leave a mark on my neck... I-I can't even hide it..."
Did she not know that telling me not to only made me want to do it more?
The timing, however, was kind. The carriage creaked to a stop in front of the bakery, so I left her with nothing more than a light kiss and opened the door.
The moment I stepped inside, the shop's own smell—nutty and sweet—drifted over me, pleasant.
"Too much is better than too little. Fill it as you like."
I pressed a basket from beside the entrance into her hands, went to the clerk, ordered a generous amount of ryube, and sat. Time passed. Women's nature, it seemed, was the same in every age. Even a small errand like choosing bread took forever.
"This should... be enough."
Some twenty minutes later Euphemia held out a basket packed full. I paid cleanly and climbed back into the carriage, then unwrapped one of the packaged ryubes and held it out to her with a spoon.
"Eat. Bread drops crumbs, and that is a nuisance, but ryube is fine. You skipped breakfast. You must be hungry."
"Ah..."
She hesitated, glanced at me, then accepted it meekly and began to eat with care, one spoonful at a time.
"Does it turn your stomach?"
"Mm... it's good."
"Good. I am glad. Though—you are making a mess."
"Mmph..."
I dipped my head and licked the ryube from the corner of her mouth with the tip of my tongue. Soft lips. The particular sweetness of ryube laid over them. The stimulus from outside goaded me; instinct ordered me to push my tongue into her mouth and take her. I forced it down and drew back.
Color rose faintly in Euphemia's face. She fumbled at her own lips with her fingers, stole a glance at my eyes, edged a little farther away, and went back to finishing the ryube in silence.
I turned toward the window and looked up at the sky.
"..."
The weather had clouded over. It looked like rain tonight.
Just as expected, once evening came the rain began to pour. The drops were heavy. It did not look as if it would stop anytime soon.
Euphemia, her body already changing with the pregnancy, had sunk into sleep even though it was only seven.
A knock.
"Come in."
The door opened. A maid bowed at the waist.
"You have a visitor, my lord."
"A visitor?"
I had no one close enough to come calling.
"It is Sir Loer Paul Vistain Claudia. Shall I send him away?"
"No... Show him to the reception room. I will be down shortly."
"Yes, my lord."
The imperial knights also kept the peace at the Academy. He had likely come to me after seeing Lizzie. Otherwise there was no reason for him to want my face.
"..."
Sure enough, I walked the corridor with the sound of rain filling it, came down to the first floor, and stepped into the reception room—and Loer was there to meet me, his expression murderous.
"Do remain seated."
He had started to rise. I answered him in a flat voice, then drew my own chair back and sat at my ease.
"Perzen..."
"I believe I told you it is Count Luerg."
"..."
"Neither of you siblings has a scrap of manners."
"Are you... even human...?"
"A needlessly primitive question. What do I look like to you, then?"
"A bastard worse than a beast! If you had a shred of conscience left... how could you make that child live that day from eight years ago all over again—!"
"It is because a shred remains that I put a choice in her hands."
"A shred of conscience, you say... Ha. Hahaha!"
Beyond the red candles lighting the reception room, Loer's vicious face wavered as he let out a loud, empty laugh.
"If you had anything like a conscience left, you would beg forgiveness—"
"Loer Paul Vistain Claudia."
I cut him off.
"If I asked for forgiveness, would you even give it? If you would, I am sincerely prepared to lick the shoes of both of you. If what you want is a public apology... very well. That, too, I could do."
Perzen's squirming ego grated on me. Suppressing it, though, had grown familiar by now.
"..."
"I cannot turn time backward, but I would offer material compensation to match. You have no intention of accepting it, though, do you."
Whatever I did, they would doubt my true intent.
"I told your sister the same thing. I have no wish to chase a forgiveness that can never be granted. All the while, the two of you will thrash to the very end, trying however you can to bring me down."
"..."
"Have you heard this one? Take your revenge, and you become no different from the bastard you hate. Or else... revenge only gives birth to more revenge."
The sort of counsel a third party likes to offer after hearing a story tangled up in vengeance.
"Do you agree?"
"Spare me..."
"Yes. I think so too."
"You mad bastard... Don't put on some cheap show of mercy. Did you ever think you were in any position to offer it? You are trash who ground an entire family's life under your heel. The world does not call that loathsome, hypocritical heart a conscience. And if, by some chance, a shred of real conscience is still in you... then keep that unchanging, disgusting self of yours to the very end."
Loer rose roughly and turned his back. Then he walked out of the reception room as he was.
"Mary."
I called the maid who would be standing outside the door.
"Yes."
"He had no umbrella. Go and give him one."
"Yes, my lord."
That light word was the end of it. I stood, took a glass packed with ice, and poured liquor over it.
...
Rainwater ran in thin trails down the window. I stood before the glass, looking at my own face reflected there, unclear, and quietly took a sip.
Loer Paul Vistain Claudia...
As for me—from the moment I resolved to kill the man called Ciel Midford, I chose to smile as a villain rather than thrash about trying to become a good one.
If it is a knot that cannot be undone...
You cut it away and burn it, and that is the end.
A villain does not make a trade on which he loses.