When I shouted forcefully, invoking my status as Crown Princess, Bill was startled and took a step back.
“Raki, stay here. Guard Forti. I’ll be right back.”
“Yes, young master.”
I strode out. As I walked feeling the air much colder than three days ago, Bill chased after me again.
“I’ll return shortly.”
“Please wait a moment. I’ll prepare a carriage.”
“Thank you.”
Bill bowed slightly, then turned and gestured. Then an attendant brought a deep navy frock coat. Bill unfolded the neatly folded coat and draped it over me.
“Please maintain your dignity.”
Only then did I become aware of my attire. I was wearing thin nightwear through which my bare skin showed and silk slippers. There was a reason the palace servants were shocked. No wonder the temperature had dropped so much in three days.
“Thank you.”
I pulled the collar tightly closed.
***
As soon as I got off the carriage, I ran to Hereis’s room. The palace servants and knights who followed me here said they’d search together, but when I barked at them asking if they intended to peek at the secret items Duke Chendewden had given me, they couldn’t follow me in.
“Harry!”
I opened the door calling his name, but the room was completely empty. I stood still in the room filled with a chilling atmosphere.
Blood…
There were red bloodstains on the white pillowcase. It wasn’t simply lacking energy and losing weight from starvation. He’d been sick enough to cough up blood. You idiot Rosenthal, even if it was a heat cycle, you forgot about Hereis because you were crazy for sex!
But self-reproach was a matter for later. First I had to find Hereis.
“Harry! Harry! Hereis!”
I called his name and searched through the detached palace. But the palace was silent. It was filled with a chilling stillness as if no one was there.
Surely nothing serious happened? It’s not an irreversible situation, is it? Suppressing my fearful emotions, I opened the door to my room located in the deepest part of the detached palace.
The moment the bedroom came into view, my breath stopped.
Hereis was there. He lay quietly on my bed covered with my blanket. He didn’t move a muscle and I couldn’t even hear his breathing.
“Hereis!”
I screamed a beat late and ran to him. When I pulled back the blanket, his emaciated body was revealed, so gaunt that his white shirt and pants hung loose. He’d withered so miserably in just a few days. It’s all my fault.
I placed my hand on his chest. I felt a slight movement over his cool body temperature.
His heart is beating. He’s alive.
“Hereis, Hereis! Wake up! Open your eyes. It’s me! I’m here! Hurry! Hurry! Dream…!”
I desperately cried out while sweeping his cold body into my arms. As I felt his skeletal frame completely, guilt weighing down my body welled up. As I bit my lip and embraced him even more strongly, I suddenly felt a chilling touch on the nape of my neck.
Hereis’s hand was wrapped around my neck.
“Are you awa—?”
Before I could finish speaking, his lips touched mine. Hereis’s tongue coiled around my tongue with a snake-like chilling touch. The sticky smell of dried blood was conveyed.
Thank goodness. He’s alive. He was alive.
Tears of relief that I’d been holding back from the moment I heard from Raki began to fall, when Hereis suddenly pushed my chest.
“I, I’m sorry.”
Hereis hastily covered his mouth. Between his disheveled hair, his eyes glowed red. Both pupils dyed blood-red showed his unstable state.
“No. You were trying to receive vital energy, right? It’s fine, so hurry and give me the erotic scent.”
I had to have an erotic dream as quickly as possible. But even in this urgent situation, Hereis remained rigidly frozen, unmoving.
“Hurry. I don’t care if it’s a lucid dream or whatever, just give me the erotic scent quickly.”
“If I do it now, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“I told you before. You can do whatever. I’m just a meal. You don’t need to be considerate.”
I took Hereis’s emaciated hand and placed it over my eyes.
“Hurry and give me the erotic scent.”
“You really are…”
I couldn’t hear his following words properly. Suddenly drowsiness poured over me and my consciousness faded.
***
This was the bedroom of the detached palace. It was filled with the same chilling stillness as moments ago, but I felt a sense of incongruity somewhere. I got up from the bed. And I identified the source of the incongruity. The excruciating pain that had pierced every joint had disappeared. Not just somewhat alleviated—I couldn’t feel even a speck of it.
Right, this is a lucid dream. I stepped outside the bed and looked at Harry, who was bowing his head like a guilty puppy, with a faint smile.
“My first partner was Harry.”
The lucid dream I’d had right before the ceremony all came back to me. The mingling with Hereis, the words telling me to cherish myself, and the source of the words “You’re so bad you’ll get divorced” that suddenly came to mind during intercourse with Eldon.
“I’m sorry.”
Hereis bowed his head even more deeply.
“What are you sorry about? For cursing me to get divorced?”
I made a light joke. Honestly, thinking about Hereis entering inside me made me embarrassed and awkward. If I’d kept remembering it all along, it might have been different, but since forgotten memories suddenly poured out, it was even more embarrassing and I wanted to crawl into a mouse hole right away. But seeing Hereis acting like he’d committed some great sin, I absolutely couldn’t show it.
If I showed even a little embarrassment or reluctance about what happened then, he seemed like he’d refuse vital energy even if it meant starving to death.
“N-no. That wasn’t a curse, it was, te-teasing. Originally before the first night, teasing is an incubus custom, no, it’s not a custom but…”
Hereis stammered uncharacteristically flustered. Each time he shook his head and his hair swayed, his gaunt, deeply sunken cheeks were fully revealed. I got up from the bed and took his hand.
“I know. You were joking. Don’t do that and hurry up and eat first.”
His already cold body temperature dropped another level. My heart ached at his skeletal fingers, so thin that the witch from Hansel and Gretel would mistake them for twigs and just leave. How painful must it have been for him alone, unable to do anything until he reached this state.
As I pulled Hereis toward the bed, he suddenly shook off my hand.
“Harry…?”
“Don’t touch me. I can’t hold back. I’ll mess up Young Master.”
“‘Young Master’? Didn’t we agree you’d call me Rosenthal now?”
“……”
“You can call me whatever you want when you do, but you can’t take it back. From now on, call me Rosenthal.”
The more I thought about it, the more I questioned whether I was qualified to criticize Eldon. From starving someone to forcing forms of address, I’m doing the same things. But Hereis’s current state looked truly dangerous, so I wanted to create a slightly more comfortable atmosphere. Only by showing him I don’t mind in this way could Hereis also eat comfortably.
“Hurry.”
“…Rosenthal.”
Hereis hesitated before continuing.
“I’m happy Hereis called me by name.”
I smiled faintly and pulled his hand. Then Hereis was pulled over far too easily. I looked straight into the eyes of Hereis sitting right beside me.
“Hereis. Hurry and take the vital energy. I’m fine.”
Hereis stared at me with a corpse-like pale face. Even sitting side by side on one bed, he was conflicted.
“Hereis.”
When I called his name once more, urging him, Hereis looked at me with resolute eyes and moved his pale blue lips.
“Once I start, I won’t be able to stop.”
“Pffft.”
I, who had been tense along with him, reflexively burst into laughter. What was he saying so resolutely?
“I told you. You can do as you please. I have that responsibility.”
“……”
Even after I said this much, Hereis hesitated and couldn’t reach out his hand. I had no choice but to take out a piece of the embarrassing experience I wanted to keep hidden.
“Besides, however much Hereis does, it won’t be as much as His Highness the Crown Prince. He didn’t rest for three days. So you don’t need to worry at all…”
I was about to say there’s no need to worry since I’ve already tasted enough rough experience to make my spine scream, when suddenly our lips overlapped.
It was a fierce contact like an animal attacking prey. I was flustered for a moment and pulled my body back, but feeling Hereis hesitate at my action, I quickly wrapped my arms around his body. As I touched his skeletal ribs, anger at myself for making Hereis like this surged.
Hereis’s tongue increasingly roughly ravaged inside my mouth. As his body became emaciated, even his tongue seemed dried. His tongue coiled around me like a snake. Hereis’s cool body temperature and sticky touch were the same as before, but still, I didn’t feel the fishy smell of blood.
After indulging for a while, Hereis’s lips slowly pulled away. As I gasped for insufficient breath, his lips bit my lower lip with a crunch. I was startled by the sudden action, but because it was a dream, it didn’t hurt and didn’t leave a wound.
Hereis kissed past my chin to my neck and removed the navy frock coat. No, the moment his hand touched it, the coat disappeared and only the thin nightwear remained.
My mind was occupied by the acts proceeding without a moment’s rest, but I tried to maintain a calm expression. Hereis untied the knots of the nightwear and bit the brand above my collarbone. The intensity was stronger than before. Is this what it feels like to have flesh torn off by a beast?
Feeling Hereis’s even teeth chewing and gnawing, I felt rather at ease. This is truly a meal. From the moment we kissed, I erased Eldon’s face that had been occupying a corner of my heart.
It’s a meal. Absorbing vital energy. It’s treatment. Hereis is just eating. Thinking other thoughts isn’t courteous to him either. So I shouldn’t feel anything unnecessarily.
“Haah!”
Contrary to my resolve from one second ago, a moan leaked out. Hereis’s cold lips touched my right nipple. The nipple, swollen from being overworked by Eldon, was sensitive to even small stimulation. Just how far does this lucid dream connect with reality?
It felt like my nipple would be bitten off by his sharp teeth chewing and gnawing, but this time there was no pain either. But as if all the pain had been converted to pleasure, the hotter the sensation filled my body the more force he applied.
