Uriel Wayne Dana Alfred
"Ah..."
Waking from a long sleep, Uriel looked around her. Darkness had settled so thickly she could hardly see, so she converted her mana into fire and lit the room. Outside, it was raining.
The scent...
She had not been able to put on the perfume she always wore, and the sweet body-scent altered by the fragrance fruit drifted faintly through the room. She could not leave it like that. She cracked the window and interfered with the air, airing the place cleanly, and only then did the cloying sweetness that had filled the room vanish. In its place came the smell of wet earth from the Academy flowerbeds, steeped in rain.
Her stomach growled.
I'm hungry...
From morning until now she had eaten nothing worth the name. Still, the professor's office kept tea and cookies set out for light refreshments, so Uriel hauled herself up and put water on to boil. When at last she bit into a cookie over a cup of black tea, the worst texture met her—soggy, heavy with damp. Even so, to quiet the emptiness somehow, she forced down all seven.
She had always been a light eater, and fortunately a modest fullness rose, drowsy and gentle, to soothe her starving stomach.
"..."
What remained to her was roughly fifteen days. Once Count Asran's permission came down from the North, the betrothal would be held at once, and the wedding during the vacation. His son was attending the Academy, after all.
Worrying... is meaningless, isn't it.
Uriel sighed and got to her feet. She had always known that sooner or later the will of the house would bring her to this. All that had changed was the hour—from that day in her childhood to now. Better, perhaps, to savor this brief freedom, this moment in which the name Alfred had fallen away.
Cloth whispered as she finished the thought and undressed. It was the fourth floor; no one ought to see her. Even so, shame sent her slipping toward a corner, where she converted her mana into water and wrapped it around her body.
An Elemental Magician who could interfere with the air and turn mana into fire and water—it was not for nothing that Coleone, elder of House Alfred, had raised her so dearly as the vessel meant to receive Brutein's seed.
"Puh... ha..."
Within the water that held her, Uriel began to bathe, shaking off the clammy damp that clung to her skin. Moonlight did not reach the room, so her moving body was veiled in deep dark and only a faint outline showed—and even so she looked very beautiful. Was this how a ballerina looked, dancing beneath the water?
Too dark...
She did not exactly fear the hush of raining darkness, but a bleak feeling stole over her all the same, and she kindled fire in the air once more.
Flame flared.
As if in defiance of the gravity that pulled at them, her large, firm breasts were laid bare without concealment. There was not a trace of spare flesh on her belly, and below it the lush curve of her hips, and between her thighs the hair that had grown shyly in an inverted triangle, closer to down than to hair...
Yes. That form was neither vulgar nor cheap. If there existed an optimal shape for tempting a male to breed, it would be Uriel as she was now—desire itself, and nothing else. In a certain sense, one might even call her a beauty fit to topple a kingdom.
Bathing like this is a first...
The sensation was as if a slime were crawling over her skin. Uriel steadied her breath and went on. When a measure of freshness had washed through her, she dismissed the water that held her and interfered with the air, drawing a wind around her body.
"Hnngh!"
The weather being what it was, the cold bit. She could have lit a little more fire all around and dried herself on parched air, but she knew that was unkind to the skin, so she clenched her teeth and shivered.
If I'm not careful...
She might catch a cold. There was no one to look after her. Fall ill on top of everything else, and the sheer unfairness of it might drive her mad.
Judging herself dry enough, Uriel dressed in a hurry and opened the office door. Shivering in the cold air while she dried had sent a sharp signal up from her lower belly: she needed to relieve herself.
"Mmm..."
The fourth-floor corridor of the main building ran on and on, and the way to the lavatory felt terribly far. Darkness was not something she particularly feared, and yet even for Uriel the corridor as it stood now offered up a dread she had no use for.
Just a little...
She kindled a faint fire. Light the whole corridor, and the mage corps who kept the peace—or the imperial knights—would sense something amiss and come up.
I absolutely don't want to be found out...
If it got out that she had been thrown from her house and was living in a professor's office, the humiliation would be past speaking of.
Her steps tapped softly. Leaning on a flame no larger than a lamp's, Uriel walked the dim corridor and stepped into the lavatory.
I understand how my sister felt...
As a child, her older sister had taken maidservants with her whenever she went to the bathroom at night. When they shared a bed, she would always wake Uriel and beg her to come along. Uriel had not understood that heart then. Now the sympathy went through her to the bone.
Well... there's no one here anyway...
Surely she could leave the door open. Having decided, she stepped into the first empty stall, sat, and let the strength out of her body.
A thin trickle sounded. Into a stillness where nothing could be heard but the rain, an embarrassing noise spread, and with the door left open the shame cut deeper.
That bastard. That bastard...
All of it was because of that man—Perzen. Uriel clutched her face, heaped silent blame on him, finished, and hurried back to her office.
"Ah..."
Only after she had returned did it occur to her that she had not flushed.
Anyway...
No one would come in earlier than she did. When morning came, she could flush then.
Sleep...
Uriel lay down on the sofa and closed her eyes. She had only just woken, and she had bathed besides, so sleep was slow to take her—yet she courted it stubbornly all the same. If night and day turned over on her, she would only be making suffering where there was none.
Knock, knock.
"..."
Knock, knock.
"..."
Knock, knock. A rustle.
"Mmm..."
The knocking came at regular intervals. Uriel, asleep on the sofa, opened her eyes. It was still raining outside, and her body was heavy as a towel that had drunk its fill of water.
"Nn..."
She barely sat up, and a groan soured with fatigue left her. A slight chill seemed to be settling in, though she could not tell whether it was the ache of an uncomfortable bed or a true drop from the onset of a cold.
Knock, knock.
"Shit..."
She bit back the curse that wanted out at the considerably irritating sound, turned her head, and checked the clock.
"..."
Eight twenty-five in the morning. There was a lecture today, and in an instant she felt the drowsiness flee. She hastily put her rumpled hair in order and opened the door.
"..."
He was tall. Uriel lifted her head without thinking. Gray hair with a faint silver sheen, and blue eyes. A youth with a handsome face—no. To call him a youth was a misstatement. He was too well-built and manly for that, and it seemed righter to call him a man.
"Good morning, Professor Uriel."
"Who..."
"Gerard Ren Milrain Asran."
"Ah..."
The moment she heard the name Asran, Uriel knew at once who the man before her was.
"I heard from the elder late yesterday, and came to find you."
"..."
"I thought you might be hungry, so I bought bread. Please have it for breakfast."
He held out a basket that smelled savory and fresh, as if the bread had scarcely left the oven. Uriel made a sour face.
Childish...
Having roughly guessed what her grandfather Coleone was thinking, she sighed again and again inside.
"And... it isn't large, but there is a mansion comfortable enough to live in. I myself live in the dormitory, but if you have nowhere to stay at once, I will tell you where it is."
"That's..."
"Please call me Gerard, at your ease."
"Fine. Gerard... this is so sudden I don't know what reaction I'm supposed to give you. I don't know what my grandfather told you, but doing this at the Academy is a little uncomfortable."
Uriel pressed a hand to her brow and shook her head. And then she noticed it—Gerard's blue eyes, without manners, starting at her chest and raking the whole of her with a strange, lingering look.
...
Her mood turned sharply foul. Then she realized the cause of that sudden rudeness was her own body-scent, spilling from a room that had not been aired, and she quietly covered her chest with a hand.
"I'm sorry. I was told, but..."
Had they told him about the fragrance fruit as well? Uriel frowned.
"Professor."
"Yes..."
"If this is uncomfortable, I will call on you separately in the afternoon, once the Academy's lectures are finished. Shall we take dinner together, at least, and talk?"
"For now... go."
A throb. Her head pounded.
"Understood. And this bread..."
She had been about to say she didn't need it. But then she saw Perzen coming from farther down the corridor with Euphemia beside him, bit her lip lightly, and snatched the basket.
"I'll eat it."
The door shut with a crack.
It was the first time he had met her at close range—Uriel, second daughter of House Alfred. Turning over her image, and the seductive scent of her body, Gerard turned his steps back. The meeting had been short, and yet somehow it left a long echo. What if her scent still clung to his clothes, if only for a moment? Struck by the thought, he brought his nose to his sleeve—
Footsteps.
"Ah..."
He came face to face with Perzen, put on a pleasant smile at once, and offered a courteous greeting.
"Good morning. A fine morning to you, Professor Perzen."
"...In the main building, I believe this is a face I'm seeing for the first time."
"I am Gerard Ren Milrain Asran."
Asran. Asran... The son of the North's head? Perzen laughed under his breath.
Only two people knew that Ruerug meant to reach into the North with Brutein at its back: the Emperor of Ernes, and his daughter, Princess Elizabeth. Even if this young man had known that, would he still have greeted him this way? To the world it was known only that Brutein had tidied up a private affair, so one might as well say almost no one knew the true inside of it.
"Gerard... yes. May your morning be a good one as well."
"Yes. Thank you. And sometime, should you have the leisure, I should like to invite the two of you to the mansion and treat you to a proper meal."
"A meal. A treat..."
"Yes."
Euphemia at his side looked startled. Perzen could not manage the same; he only stared at Gerard, unblinking.
"Lectures will be starting soon. I'll take my leave."
Perzen turned his head, following the trace of Gerard as the young man passed.
"That there's someone who wants to welcome you... is unexpected..."
"..."
"Ah... I didn't mean it unkindly..."
"It is unkind, isn't it."
"That's..."
"But you put your finger on it."
As Euphemia said, there had never been a time he had shown others enough kindness to be welcomed in private.
That thank-you a moment ago may not have been the answer to a greeting. It may have been thanks, meant in earnest.
A cause for which Count Asran's house would offer him gratitude... That meant something had gone wrong. And once one knew what was wrong, setting it right was the proper next step.
The meal... I'll take it when that time comes.
Of course, whether any will to welcome him would still remain even then was another question.