The Unbroken Flower (3)
They were dull days.
His ambitions were absurdly small for the power he possessed, and he had no idea how to enjoy the things he had already achieved.
A man indifferent to everything.
That was Marquis Dragonia.
By a certain point, his wealth multiplied without him lifting a finger, and his influence swelled on its own. If the Marquis had a goal at all, it was simply to live quietly, free of any major trouble—yet his allies fiercely expanded his territory on their own initiative.
He couldn't stand tiresome affairs.
Which was why he had intended to skip this party as well. The villa had been built for nothing more than a place to rest, and the scheming nobles might easily mistake a Marquis buried in the snowy frontier for someone coveting the capital's center of power.
But then a variable appeared.
"You want to bring in a human woman?"
"Yes..."
Leopard had arrived with a most curious card in hand.
A woman with a child, is it.
He found himself curious why Leopard—who loved and obsessed over a maiden's purity to the point of madness—would show interest in such a defiled body. He wanted to know what kind of light was cast by the jewel Leopard was so desperate to hide from Dragonia.
Just a passing look, that was all.
That was the entire extent of his purpose.
"It is an honor, my lord. You cannot imagine how happy I am to gaze upon the face of one I have only heard of in legend."
"The villa is truly beautiful, my lord. Though the staff you see now hardly seem enough to maintain it—might I be permitted to introduce a manager of exceptional ability?"
"My lord, to have arranged such an occasion..."
He simply hadn't expected the hyenas of the Imperial Capital to be this insufferable.
The moment the Marquis saw the dazzling lights and the crowd packed into the banquet hall, dizziness washed over him.
Leopard's treasured jewel or not, this was unbearable.
Let me just wrap this up roughly and get out of here.
With that thought, the Marquis was on the verge of turning straight back when—
"Ah..."
He found her.
A single flower.
At a glance she seemed merely plain and pretty, but to the Marquis's eyes she stood out more than any lavish ornament or gown in the hall.
Standing awkwardly in a corner, she looked at once like a flower bud that had failed to bloom, and like a blossom already trampled and broken after having flowered.
A strange sense of déjà vu stirred as well, as if he had seen her somewhere before.
The Marquis understood at once.
Who the woman Leopard cherished so dearly was.
And why he cherished her so.
Having survived far longer than any human, the Hero's tastes had grown somewhat dark and perverse—but those were mere amusements, nothing more.
The value the Hero truly loved and prized above all was quietness of spirit.
And the serenity possessed by a woman who had already lost her virginity and borne a child—that was a value beyond all comparison.
For the first time, the Marquis felt he understood the Hero a little.
"You there, my lady. Might I ask your name?"
"Yes?"
"...?!"
When he came to his senses, he had already pushed through the crowd and crossed to the corner of the banquet hall.
Ignoring the countless hands extended toward him.
Ignoring the baffled stares.
The Marquis behaved as though he and the Hero's jewel were the only two people in the entire hall.
No, damn it. What is wrong with this man now?
Yulia, meanwhile, froze solid the instant every eye in the room swung toward her.
No matter how hard she tried to forget with her mind, the memories of that day—seared into her body and resurrected unbidden—crashed over her.
Her vision narrowed, her eyes lost focus, and sweat began pooling in her palms. Her stomach even seemed to twist with sudden nausea.
The miraculous sovereign who had ruled the vast frozen wastes, repelled countless foreign invasions, and taken in tens of thousands of settlers without starving a single soul to death.
Thrown into outright panic by the Marquis Dragonia's sudden behavior, Yulia could barely turn her stiff, unresponsive head to look at the butler.
Met by those pleading eyes—eyes begging for salvation—the butler only answered with a placid, indifferent face.
Deal with it yourself.
His face said exactly that.
Ruin things here, and employment or anything else would be off the table.
Gritting her teeth, Yulia lightly grasped the hem of her skirt.
"It is an honor to meet you. I am Yulia, invited to attend this banquet. I consider it a great privilege to meet His Excellency the Marquis."
"..."
A modest bow with a lifted skirt—a perfectly ordinary greeting.
A textbook answer.
And a careful one that declined to name her sponsor.
Yet beneath it, glimpses of a bold audacity showed through. Her suppressed urges toward self-destruction, and her unstable impulses held in check before the crowd—those, too, seemed faintly visible.
Discovering that much was satisfaction enough. The Marquis raised his right arm.
It meant she had been chosen as his partner for tonight—she should hurry and take his arm.
Yulia stared blankly at the outstretched hand for a moment, then absently offered her own right hand and clasped it.
Ah. Idiot.
Only after watching the nobles' eyes go wide and shock spread across their faces did Yulia realize.
This was not the modern era, and she was not a man.
Too late, she recalled the interminable etiquette lessons Anna had drilled into her.
"A handshake?!"
"What in the world is that..."
Sure enough, laments burst out from every direction.
The butler, watching from a distance, clicked his tongue and turned away.
While Yulia stood frozen in the wake of her absurd blunder, a faint smile spread across the Marquis's lips.
So she knows how to show boldness, too.
She had just refused to accompany him as his partner.
By his stubborn reading, a woman introduced as nothing more than a commoner maid-for-hire could not possibly stand at the Marquis's side.
That was the only way he could interpret it.
"Yulia. A beautiful name. A pleasure to meet you. Enjoy yourself at your leisure—I'll speak to the butler, so come to work starting tomorrow."
"..."
After shaking Yulia's hand vigorously, the Marquis turned away without a trace of lingering attachment.
Yulia simply stood there in a daze, arm still raised as if frozen.
Come to work starting tomorrow.
It sounded like a positive signal.
After committing that many improprieties and piling up that many mistakes, the result was... a job offer?
Unable to grasp how the situation had spiraled to this point, Yulia's already exhausted mind throbbed as if it would split open.
"Butler."
"You called, my lord."
"I intend to remain in the Imperial Capital for the time being. Have her serve as my lady's maid in the interim."
"Which maid do you refer to, my lord?"
"Never mind the maids. The woman Leopard brought. Keep her training brief—watching her fumble a little should be entertaining."
"As you command."
As the butler bowed and saw the departing Marquis off, he could not quite hide his bewildered expression.
He had never seen the Marquis wear such a face.
The face of an agitated youth brimming with excitement and zeal.
It was the look of a wild beast feeling curiosity, passion, and the hunger to conquer something. One might have believed he was a different man entirely from the Marquis of before, whose face had been that of a sage dying away.
What on earth could have stirred him to such excitement?
It couldn't be lust.
In his long life he had met and touched countless women, yet not once had he ever shown interest in the opposite sex. Still unmarried even now, with no lover, never having laid a hand on a single maid—the rumors that he was a eunuch were, in a way, only natural.
Reassured that no unsavory scandal was likely, the butler let out a breath of relief.
"Hm...?"
As the Marquis returned to his seat to receive the nobles' greetings, his brow furrowed.
Most of the crowd that had gathered around Yulia had dispersed and come surging this way, but a few still remained, pestering her with conversation.
Just as irritation began to crease his brow, Yulia was bowing briskly to all sides and hurrying toward the main doors with quick steps.
That was the last he saw of her.
Yulia had left—ignoring even the Marquis's final courtesy, his invitation to stay and enjoy herself.
The Marquis could no longer contain himself and burst out laughing.
"Hahahaha!"
"My lord? Has something pleased you?"
"Excuse me a moment. I won't be gone long."
The Marquis hurried to the back door used by the staff and slipped out of the banquet hall.
The corridor beyond was dim, lit only by faint, muted lamps. After glancing around, he caught the sound of a single pair of heels, echoing softly.
It was Yulia.
Sniffling, the sound as if she were trying to swallow her own tears.
The Marquis all but ran, adding one more set of footsteps to the quiet corridor to catch up with her.
He had no thought of what he would do once he caught her, or how.
On sheer impulse, he simply seized her.
"Yulia."
"Ah, hh—yes. My lord. I'm sorry. I showed you such an disgraceful display just now..."
"..."
Yulia wiped at the corners of her eyes, then lifted resolute eyes to meet the Marquis's gaze.
The moment he saw her smudged eye makeup and the stains of dried tears, the Marquis's throat bobbed. His parched mouth began to moisten with saliva, and he felt blood rush sharply toward some point below.
He had sometimes wondered whether he was some kind of sexual cripple—and now he was feeling an unbearable, destructive, overwhelming impulse.
Lust.
Only the second primal desire he had ever felt in his long, long life.
"I know of one way you could make amends."
"What is it...?"
What is it, she says.
The Marquis felt as though he might be swallowed whole by those innocent eyes, so genuinely and earnestly curious.
Guilt merely burned as fuel for his sense of depravity, flaring and dying away.
Before he knew it, he was gripping Yulia's shoulders and shoving her against the wall.
Only after sealing every route of escape, leaving Yulia no way to flee, did the Marquis slowly bring his face to the vicinity of her collarbone and breathe in her scent.
Beneath a faint fragrance of perfume, a subtle bodily scent lingered.
He felt he had smelled it somewhere before, but he was too frantically, drunkenly sniffing at that intoxicating note to have any leisure to search his memory.
No matter how deeply he inhaled, the sharp sting of cosmetics dominated his nostrils, and that captivating natural scent gave him no more than a whisker's worth of itself.
I want to strip that makeup away.
At that impulse, the Marquis swallowed hard.
"W-wait a moment. My lord? What in the world are you—! Mmph! Mmmph!"
Only then, finally grasping her predicament, did Yulia begin to resist.
But it was crushed beneath superhuman strength that transcended the human, reduced to meaningless squirming that only doubled the Marquis's excitement.
Her furious glare—defiant, unmistakably her own—did nothing for Yulia. It only stoked the Marquis's lust further.
No amount of screaming here could ever reach the banquet hall, where the noisy strains of the orchestra still rang on. The Marquis pushed his fingers into Yulia's mouth and sealed it with his palm.
"Mmph! Mmmgh! Nn! Hhh! Hh—nnh, ngh...!"
In that dark corridor, the only sounds were the rustle of brushing fabric, whispers, and the desolate half-formed moans of sobbing that could not even become a proper cry.