Uriel Wayne Dana Alfred
Dreams most often took on random shapes, but the other kind tended, as a rule, to reflect the state of one's own mind.
......
And Euphemia, inside her lucid dream, lost herself for a moment.
Beyond a beautiful window a full moon hung, and the moonlight pouring down from it mingled with the warm glow of the room until the whole of it became a hazy, dreamlike scene. She herself sat in a chair, and she was nearly at full term.
Was this the mind paying her back in kind—a compensatory reflection of the anxiety she had never let show on her face, her unease at Perzen taking Alfred's second daughter as a concubine?
Her future self, neither very near nor very far, held a faint smile at her lips and looked at her gently, as if to say there was no need to worry.
Then... where is he?
The thought came to her all at once, and the dream seemed to answer it. Beyond a door swinging open, Perzen stepped in, came slowly toward that future self, and with a hand full of affection began to stroke the near-term swell of her belly, laying a tender kiss upon her.
Smack.
The sound rang out, hot enough to burn the face. She might well have been ashamed, and yet her future self seemed long accustomed to receiving affection of that sort. She did not so much as blush. She only curved her lips into a seductive smile and drew his back into both arms.
That overflowing ease, that ripe and languid maturity peculiar to her—was this truly herself? For an instant the strangeness of it struck Euphemia.
"Hnn... ah..."
But then she watched Perzen lift the hem of the negligee and press kisses over the pale belly, and watched her future self spill a lewd, shivering moan, and the dissonance cleared away completely.
After she had let those heated sounds fall for a long while, her future self—face lush with desire—drew Perzen's head into a tender embrace. Then she quietly met the eyes of the Euphemia who was watching.
There's nothing to worry about.
Even in this moment, he is still a good husband.
She told her so, softly, with nothing but the shape of her mouth.
Euphemia flinched.
"......"
The dream ended there.
More precisely, as if forbidding her to peep any further into the happy moments that would follow, her mind was all but driven out and returned to the waking world.
Unlike the night inside the dream, warm sunlight poured down into the room. She turned her head with care, and there was Perzen, sitting at her side.
"Has the fever come down a little?"
A mid-low voice, pleasant to hear. That characteristic large hand rested against her forehead. At the affection sunk into it, Euphemia stared at him blankly for a moment, then moved the hand from her brow to her cheek and nuzzled into it like a child.
"Mm..."
The worry that had lingered, faint as a mist, seemed to vanish clean.
June 9th. Half past five in the afternoon.
Uriel saw a carriage marked with the crest of Alfred come to a stop outside the house Perzen had prepared for her, and she quietly rose. There was nothing in this house she particularly needed to take, so she left every trace of the life she had lived there just as it was, opened the door, and stepped out.
"It's been a while."
"You have been long from us, Lady Uriel."
"Yes. Let's go..."
She gave the coachman a bright smile and climbed into the carriage.
So Uriel returned to the mansion in the capital she had left for a very long time, and, as if nothing had ever happened, went into the bath with maids following deferentially at her back and received their careful attendance. No scented oil was applied. Tonight would be her first night, and nothing could be more bewitching than the scent of her own body.
"Hhk! Wh-what are you doing?"
"We are loosening the muscles that have knotted or gone stiff."
"You never used to do this. Did Grandfather order it?"
"Yes."
At the maids' hands reaching to massage her waist and the region of her groin, Uriel flinched, flustered even as she startled.
"It is said that the more softly the hip joint is loosened, the higher the sensitivity becomes."
"For fuck's sake. They really will try every filthy thing..."
It was so absurd that Uriel let out a sigh. The maids, as if that were only to be expected, went on massaging her body and gently worked free the stiff muscle near her hip joints.
When she came out of the bath, the hour was half past six. She went straight to the dressing room and was changed into a pure white dress. He preferred a trim black suit; the color had surely been chosen so that she would sit in harmony beside it. Nor was she adorned with jewelry. Gerard might not have cared, but Perzen disliked such things.
Yes. Even if the thing wore the shape of an auction, Uriel herself was being wrapped for Perzen alone.
"We are finished."
At the end of a long while, the maids lowered their hands. Uriel opened the eyes she had kept half-shut, looked at herself in the mirror—light makeup and all—and for a time said nothing.
"Is there some part that does not please you?"
"No... let's go."
She shook her head at the maid's question, lifted the hem of the dress a little, and stepped forward.
When a woman entered a household as a concubine, a ceremony was not ordinarily held. The only time one was held was when a husband meant to declare, openly, that he would treat his concubine above his wife.
So...
She would not hope for a ceremony. And yet, like that single painting she had seen on a street long ago, Uriel wanted herself engraved beside Perzen as well—peacefully, together.
With a creak, a luxurious carriage drew up before a mansion in the heart of the capital, purchased in the name of House Alfred.
The crest engraved upon it was a blue hawk taking flight. Anyone could see that it stood for the head house of the North—House Aslan.
A step. And sure enough, the man who revealed himself beyond the quietly opening carriage door had gray hair threaded with a distinctive silver sheen. Gerard.
He was neatly dressed in a blue formal suit made to order at Azelia, and though he tried not to let it show, tension lay thick across his face. His rival in this contest was, after all, the direct heir of Brutein.
The time...
Ten minutes short of seven in the evening. Thinking he had arrived at no bad hour, Gerard set his clothes to rights and stepped into the mansion.
But when the maids led him to the place where a splendid evening banquet had been laid, Gerard frowned before he could stop himself. The banquet matched, far too clearly, what Perzen had told him inside that restaurant back then. A main dish of cooked goat. Fruits whose sweetness did not go too far.
Even the elder is making sport of me.
His face pretended not to waver, but Gerard clenched his fist hard, offered Coleone a greeting, and sat.
The hour was five minutes short of seven. Still, Perzen had not shown himself.
Does he mean to appear exactly on time?
Thinking the man had planned some pointlessly childish battle of nerves for no reason but to grind him down, Gerard wet his throat lightly with wine and looked at Uriel.
A pure white dress that suited her fair, fine skin. She seemed dressed with dignity, and yet—perhaps because of that unmistakable, generous bust—a lewdness stirred through the elegant poise and instinctively drew up a sticky want: to paint that white over in a color that belonged to him alone.
"......"
Perhaps she had caught his gaze. The moment their eyes met, Uriel turned her head away at once, and Gerard drew the corner of his mouth up in a thin, cold curve.
That she had made a mockery of the heart he had offered in consideration and goodwill was one thing. She had called herself, with her own mouth, an object of her house.
So... even if I am the one who wins the bid, do not regret it.
He might not have known how to handle people. Objects, however, he handled roughly.
Five minutes passed, and it became seven in the afternoon. To the very end, Perzen did not appear.
Ha... haha...!
He did not know the reason. He did not know it, and yet because of it his tension eased another degree, and he could lean his body back against the chair in comfort.
But another ten minutes passed. And then thirty more after that. When Coleone still did not open his mouth, Gerard felt his breath catch hard in his throat. It was like becoming a member of a company of players—the lead had not come, and the play could not be raised.
"I am not... an extra, Elder."
At last he spoke to Coleone, who sat as if time itself had stopped, without so much as a sip of water passing his lips. Even if the man was the old monster of House Alfred who ruled the underworld, this was too excessive a treatment, too naked a slight.
"......"
Hearing that single remark, Coleone took his gaze from the door that would not open and quietly stared at Gerard.
A gulp. Saliva slid down his throat by reflex. Gerard closed again the fist he had let loosen.
Coleone's eyes were beyond overbearing. They were crushing. Every fine wrinkle carved into that face seemed to crawl like a snake and glare at him, and merely facing it made Gerard feel as if every shred of presence in his body was being drunk away. So much so that a vision wavered before his eyes: the blue hawk that could be called his house's crest, caught and swallowed by a snake.
"Yes... let us eat."
At last, after a span of time that felt like an eon, Coleone let fall a short phrase, and Gerard barely expelled the breath he had been holding and steadied his breathing.
When Coleone began the meal, Gerard took up a knife as well, but his fingertips shook so badly he could not even cut the meat properly. And the food he finally, barely, managed to put in his mouth had gone quite cold, and it had no taste.