Uriel Wayne Dana Alfred
When Perzen returned to the mansion, he checked the clock. Twenty minutes to nine in the morning.
Did I linger a little too long...?
He stepped into the bedroom and found Euphemia still asleep. Perhaps the overcast sky had kept her from realizing morning had come. Or perhaps it was simply the change pregnancy had worked upon her body.
He dropped onto the edge of the bed, carefully smoothed the soft fall of her hair, and laid a hand over her belly.
A marriage made for political advantage, and polygamy with it, were things no one of this age would think to condemn, and Euphemia understood that well enough. Even so, perhaps because Lee Seojin's self still lingered in him, the guilt stung, and Perzen pressed a gentle kiss to her cheek.
She was knitting...
Beside the pillow lay a single sock sized for a baby's foot, and resting on it, unfinished, its mate.
Euphemia El Lorraine Ruerug. Whatever else she might be, she was his wife, and little by little she was preparing herself to become the mother of his child. How could each of those efforts be anything but dear to him?
"Mmm..."
He lay down quietly at her side, drew her into his arms, and stroked her cheek. Whether she knew the familiar scent and the warmth of him, Euphemia squirmed and buried her face against his chest.
Did she know? That when he touched her like this, it was as though he were slipping into some addiction, and he could hardly bring himself to take his hands away.
"I'm home..."
She was asleep and would not hear him, but he said it all the same, then surrendered to the fatigue of his night watch and to the sleep that came crowding in.
A soft rustle.
Euphemia stirred, opened her eyes, and looked down at Perzen asleep beside her, just as she had expected before she drifted off.
Yes. Looked down.
As a rule he slept with her gathered into his arms, his face buried against the crown of her head. Today he slept with his face buried in her chest.
"They never fade, do they."
She lifted a hand mirror. There on her neck, caught in the glass, was a kiss mark that had not been there before. He must have been toying with her body before he fell asleep. Since the pregnancy her breasts seemed to have grown a little, and she thought she had put on a bit of weight besides. This man... what about her could possibly please him so much? Why did he cling to her body like this?
She was carefully setting his tousled hair to rights when some thought she could not name came over her. She slipped the right strap of her negligee from her shoulder, bared one breast, and drew Perzen's face against her. Then, as if she were putting a babe to nurse, she gently parted his lips and set her nipple between them.
She simply wanted to handle this man as though he were a baby. Some secret desire of that kind may have stirred in her.
"Anh..."
When his mouth, working softly, nipped at her nipple, Euphemia let out a strange moan and flinched. What she had pictured was a baby suckling, soft little pulls.
"Nn... ahh..."
Perzen only worried her nipple between his front teeth, gnawing at it. Was he teething on what she had given him?
But it was not the pain so much as the shiver of pleasure climbing her spine that made her clutch the back of his head and spill a heated voice.
Me too...
Was it desire? Discontent? She could feel the underwear below slowly soaking through. Shame welled up belatedly, but Euphemia took the sound of rain beyond the room for a curtain and secretly let the moment go on.
"Ha... hnn..."
Before long a faint climax gathered and broke over her. The echo that lingered afterward left her only wanting.
Still keeping him latched to her breast, she reached out and carefully felt along the firm plane of his chest.
I want him...
The thought struck all at once, and Euphemia flushed. Then, modest once more, she drew her breast away and lifted the strap of the negligee. After that, as if nothing at all had happened, she began to knit for the baby who would be born only after a long while yet.
Perzen woke from a deep sleep at three in the afternoon. He rose unsteadily from the bed, went to the bath and washed himself clean, then ordered the maids to have a meal sent up to the bedroom. Returning to Euphemia's side, he shared a late lunch with her.
Afterward he listened to the rain beating harder against the window and tended to his private work, until at last he set the pen down and turned his gaze. Euphemia sat on the bed, quietly knitting.
"What is it...?"
Aware of his eyes at last, she looked steadily back at him.
"When your belly begins to swell, little by little, I mean to call a painter and have him capture the moments at certain months. Until the child is born, and until it has grown to some extent, we will go on. It will be a kind of parenting diary."
The notion was peculiar enough that Euphemia tilted her head for a moment, but when she thought on it, it did not seem a bad one, and she agreed. Then she fidgeted with her hands and spoke, carefully.
"I can't get used to it... You don't seem like you."
He said nothing.
"Are you really the man who raped me on the first day, who tormented my lower belly whenever he was bored, who tried to break me in as if I were some beast...?"
"To you, I am surely no very good husband."
He had no thought of denying it, and so he accepted the charge entire.
"But I will try to be a good father to the child."
At that, Euphemia pouted.
"You admit it... so why won't you even try to repent?"
He was silent.
"Perzen... von Schweik Ruerge."
Still he did not answer.
At words he had not expected in the least, Perzen could not keep a faint smile from his lips.
"Ah... yes. Euphemia El Lorraine Ruerug."
Two days later a letter arrived at the house to say that the seat for his promotion verification had been successfully arranged. Perzen finished his afternoon lecture and made his way to the Magic Society.
Verification of a promotion. The name was grand, but the process itself was exceedingly simple. To prove, for example, that one had risen to Euclid, it was enough that a mage of the lesser rank Kether could not perceive the subject's magical formula. Nothing was clearer than that. Even if it dragged, it would scarcely take five minutes.
The carriage drew to a halt. He opened the doors of the Magic Society and stepped inside, and found the place unusually unsettled today. A fair number of people filled the lobby. These were not faces he could simply ignore; he knew well enough that the stations of several among them were nothing to take lightly. The empire's two princes were there, and an elder of the ducal house of Rosewell.
And Coleone, the old monster of House Alfred.
"Count Ruerge."
"Are you the mage who is to assist in my verification?"
"Yes... my name is Melvin. That was the intention, but it seems word has leaked, and there has been some discussion of changing the method. I wished to ask your opinion on the matter..."
They wished to change the method. At that, Perzen let his gaze pass slowly over the room.
"Don't tell me you mean for me to open the third floor."
"Yes. As for the cost... every distinguished guest gathered here has offered to bear it..."
The third floor of the Netherworld—Pratāpana. This world's history was long enough, and yet what was known of the anomalies dwelling on the third floor was vanishingly little. Even the knowledge a house kept privately to itself, if it amounted to three or four scraps, was already a great deal. In short, those assembled here meant to pay the cost of opening the third floor and striking a bargain, and in exchange carry away what they could learn of the anomaly lurking beyond.
"I accept."
"Ah... understood!"
There was little in it for him to lose. Perzen himself wished to experience, just once, the power a third-floor anomaly possessed. If the first floor might be likened to a sword's durability, the second was the sword's edge, and the third was as though one laid aura over that same blade.
"Then let us go up."
He was the first to set foot upon the broad roof at the very top of the Magic Society, and the others quietly fell in behind him. Today they were, strictly speaking, uninvited guests, and so they exchanged only the briefest of greetings and made no further show of their rank. Only one of them did otherwise. The Second Prince of the Ernes Empire drifted up alongside Perzen.
"Count."
"...Speak, Your Highness."
"Concerning the Kingdom of Robelium, there is a great deal I wish to discuss with you."
"I am sorry. I shall fix a day and call upon you as soon as I may. Unwelcome engagements are already laid upon my time..."
"I understand. Only I hope that is no empty courtesy, and that you truly come soon. In the Kingdom of Robelium... it may not be easy to set the first prince quietly upon the throne."
There, Ruerge moved with Brutein's backing. The Second Prince could hardly be ignorant of that. If he said such a thing even with that in mind...
"...Understood."
"Good. I shall be waiting."
With that, the Second Prince slowed his pace once more, dropped back into the rear rank, and followed behind Perzen.
So they reached the topmost floor. Perzen opened the door, raised an umbrella against the drizzle, and was met by a rare sight: precious goods heaped thick in a single place.
Even a rough reckoning... some four hundred fifty million bern.
By what was known, borrowing the power of a third-floor anomaly of the Netherworld cost on the order of one to two hundred million bern. To ask a true descent, one spent some four to five hundred million. If they had prepared goods of this worth, then what the gathering wanted was a descent itself.
No need to draw it out.
Once he had confirmed that those behind him were each taking their places, Perzen stepped close, swept the goods into his subspace, and stroked the ring he kept as his altar. Then he opened the Underworld Gate.