Ten Nails, One Nightmare
A sharp, tingling ache lingered.
Adonis washed the white foam of her fluids from his cock and shuddered hard, a full-body tremor rolling through him. Semiramis’s inner walls had clamped down with such savage force today that he had almost believed the root of him might be crushed and torn free.
“Looks like you’ve finished washing.”
When he stepped out clean and alone, Semiramis glanced sideways at him and smiled. They had tangled from nightfall until the next dawn, yet not a trace of weariness showed on her. She looked, if anything, as if she had rested thoroughly—overflowing with vitality. The same as Adonis himself.
He had barely finished changing into the clothes laid out neatly on the rack when a knock sounded at the door. Only minutes had passed since Semiramis hung the plaque announcing they were open for business. The thought that this was far too soon flashed through Adonis’s mind, but there was no throwing out a guest who had already arrived.
“Forgive me. Did I come in too much of a hurry?”
The visitor who had rushed over was none other than Count Clenzer. Adonis watched the noblewoman step down from the carriage with the count, bowed his head, and spoke at a measured pace. Semiramis stood guard at his back and said nothing.
“Not at all. Please, come in. I can only say it is an honor that you would seek me out again today.”
“Haha. Kind of you to say so. Then I’ll leave myself in your care once more.”
Adonis ushered the chuckling count inside and set about his usual work. Even for the highest authority in the territory, meeting face-to-face a few times was enough for the tension to ease on its own. Humans, for better or worse, were animals that adapted.
“Mmm…! Come to think of it, I believe I asked you to take down the partitions. Any particular reason?”
“I put them up because I thought the awareness of other eyes might make people uncomfortable. But there turned out to be more couples and people in deep relationships—like yourself, my lord—than I expected. So I concluded it would be better simply to remove them.”
“Ah! That makes sense.”
Adonis pressed hard into the wing of the count’s shoulder blade, and Count Clenzer, face-down, frowned. Once the massage was finished the body felt light enough to fly, but until then the weight and the sharp, electric pain remained. When Adonis’s flat voice announced that it was over, the count stretched with a look of pure relief and sat up. Seeing the light sheen of sweat the count had worked up from enduring the pain, Adonis opened the bath door for him and stepped aside. The countess received the same treatment.
“I wonder what sort of talk we’ll hear today.”
Semiramis, who had come down to the first-floor kitchen under the pretense of consideration, closed the door and murmured to herself. Nobles were no fools; they would never spill intimate secrets where strange eyes could see them. But if those eyes were gone, they inevitably let their guard down. Semiramis had counted on exactly that and installed eavesdropping and concealment magic circles in the bath so that no one would ever notice—allowing every word exchanged to be overheard.
“Mmm… Who on earth made this bathtub? I hear the craftsman wanders from place to place, but his whereabouts are so thoroughly unknown…”
“Nothing to be done about it. The people here say they only came into contact with him by pure chance as well.”
Semiramis’s long white fingers tapped the kitchen table, and the voices of the count and countess spilled across its surface. Every scrap of conversation from the bath was being gathered without fail; even the thinnest breaths seemed to carry through. Because of that, a round of heated moans and the wet slap of skin on skin came through with vivid clarity. Then, after a languid sigh, silence settled in.
Adonis listened quietly, thinking the countess might well conceive a new child before long. As nobles, the offhand remarks they tossed out often proved surprisingly useful. Of course, there were times when the talk stayed worthless until the end—but just as often, it did not. Like right now.
“Oh, by the way—have you heard the news? Word is the Empire is quietly searching for the Hero.”
“I have. You told me yourself, and I’ve received reports from my close aides as well. Why bring it up again all of a sudden?”
“Well… there’s a rumor that the reason they’re looking for the Hero is because they’ve already seen him.”
“What…? They’ve seen the Hero? Then why are they searching for him?”
“I don’t know the details myself. The other ladies don’t seem to have heard anything more either…”
Those who had seen the Hero were searching for the Hero. That meant a Hero who had once set foot among them had vanished without a trace, and those who had met him were now hunting his trail. The count could not fathom the reason and tilted his head, but he was certain of one thing: something suspicious was afoot.
Meanwhile Adonis, who had kept his mouth shut and listened, tilted his own head. The Hero was Adonis, and Adonis was the Hero. Yet he had never met any of them face-to-face. The rumor that he had directly encountered the humans who once belonged to the expedition left him full of questions. How could that be?
He stroked his chin, turning it over, and then his gaze fell on Semiramis’s rigid expression. That her face would harden when the Hero was mentioned was understandable—but there was more to it than that. She looked oddly restless, as if she had been struck square in a sore spot.
“What’s wrong?”
Surely not. Half-suspecting, Adonis tossed the question out almost carelessly. Semiramis closed her eyes and let out a short sigh. Resignation sat plain on her face, as if there was simply no other way.
“It’s exactly as you’re thinking. I did it. I’m a little surprised the rumor spread faster than I expected, but you would have learned of it eventually.”
What Adonis hated, Semiramis hated as well. He could not blame her for striking first. Far from anger at her acting alone, gratitude rose ahead of everything else. He was only slightly put out, and curious about what she had done. Semiramis was his woman, his benefactor, and also his mother. Still, in the middle of that, he found it so absurd that he stared at her with a strange look in his eyes.
“Can you tell me what you did when you went?”
“I kicked the man in the face and put him to sleep. Then I pulled out every last fingernail from the three women who happened to be there.”
She had pulled their nails. The words came easily enough, but the thought of the sheer, horrific pain that must have crashed over them cast a shadow across Adonis’s face. Of course those humans deserved that much suffering—and yet it also felt a little cruel. Hard to sum up in a single word; a strange, complicated feeling.
“Why?”
“Because it’s your revenge. Naturally, you should be the one to finish it. So I made certain they clearly remembered the words that I would come for them again. I thought it might make your revenge shine a little brighter.”
That made sense. Adonis folded his arms and nodded. The pain of every fingernail on all ten fingers being torn out, and the time that followed, would remain vivid and terrible—hardly something easily forgotten. She had cast that agony as bait; they would endure a greater or lesser measure of ruin because of it. Awake or asleep, it would be as if they were living a nightmare.
Hearing the count’s voice call that they should leave the bath, Adonis turned on his heel. In his mind he was already picturing whom he would break, and by what means.
That day. The moment when every last fingernail, pulled without exception, had been laid out neatly before her eyes remained far too clear.
Close her eyes and she saw the fingertips swollen a livid red, streaming blood. The feeling that had finally taught her what it meant for a root to be torn free. The skeletal fingers displaying the nails caked thick with crimson, and the voice that went with them.
Olivier. Vivian. Isabel.
Every time the three women looked at the nails that had grown back cleanly through treatment, their faces went paper-white. Terror made their brows tremble and their lips press tight—afraid that if they poured out screams the way they had that day, they would be treated as people who had gone mad.
Among them, Olivier received yet another report that no meaningful trace had been found, and sighed. Even with the undeniable fact that the Hero had launched a midnight raid, she could not bring it fully into the light. Days had already passed since the search began under a false pretext. She knew it was far too short a time to expect real results, and still she could not help but feel the pressure.
No warrior stood a chance against sheer numbers. So perhaps overwhelming them with numbers would work. But would a Hero twisted to such cruelty ever move the way they wanted? That anxiety brushed through Olivier’s mind more than once or twice, yet each time she steeled herself with the thought that the water was already spilled.
“Ugh…!”
The instant her gaze fell on the ten fingers laid neatly atop the desk, Olivier’s brow knotted and a groan tore from her throat. The nails that were clearly sitting where they belonged suddenly felt as if they had vanished, and from those empty places a sharp, searing pain seemed to climb.
It hurts. It hurts so much.
As the agony swelled, Olivier drove her head down against the desk and bit hard into her lip. Strangely, the pain always struck at least once a day, and she had no choice but to endure the time it took to ride it out. Vivian and Isabel, who were not here, suffered the same. Only Castro was free of this torment.
“Uh… uhh…”
When the pain that had dragged on finally subsided, a cold line of sweat ran down the back of Olivier’s neck. Realizing the worst of it had passed, she let out a breath of relief without meaning to and slowly lifted her head, drained. All for a little more profit. Or because she had lost her mind over a man.
Olivier had committed many large and small wrongs as a human being, but she thought turning her back on the Hero had been the greatest mistake of all. If only Castro had taken the lead and killed the Hero, none of this would have happened. Why leave him half-alive…
“…No.”
Right. That wasn’t it. Olivier shook her head hard, trying to drive the foul thought that had risen from her mind. Even when she had been halfway mad, she was the one who had chosen to follow him. The other women were the same. And if they had tried to kill the Hero, they never would have received their titles and lived in such swaggering comfort. The tip of the holy sword would have pierced a heart, or that thin, keen edge would have taken a head.
But even knowing that, people could not help resenting him all the same. Doing wrong while knowing it was wrong, then regretting it too late—that was common enough.
He’ll come again. Olivier remembered the voice that had planted the nightmare until the very end and shuddered from head to toe. If she had known it would be like this, she should have stood with the Hero to the last. That regret squeezed her heart, yet her hands kept working busily. Whether because the regret was still not enough, or because she had let everything go and resigned herself—Olivier had no way of knowing. She only believed that by doing this, some hope might yet appear.