Why… isn’t he leaving?
He had spoken as though he was about to go at any moment, and yet Avelos’s feet didn’t move an inch — fixed right where they were.
“Your Majesty? Weren’t you busy— ngh.”
The hand that reached out caught Uriel by the jaw. It wasn’t painful, but Uriel let out a short sound as Avelos forcibly lifted his chin.
“If you show so openly that you’re pleased, don’t you think I’d find that unpleasant?”
“…Ah.”
“Considering what you’ve done to me, Uriel, no one could fault me if I killed you on the spot right now. Isn’t that so?”
“…….”
Uriel didn’t know what to say, so he kept his mouth shut. He knew what Uriel had done — but it hadn’t been him who had done it. Even so, he had no intention of saying that. Avelos wouldn’t believe it, and it might only stoke more anger, making him think Uriel was telling lies.
“Even so, the reason I’m keeping you alive is because I haven’t made my decision yet. Whether to kill you in a single blow — or to keep you alive and make you suffer something worse than death.”
“Hnn….”
“Uriel. I am not keeping you alive because you’re pretty. So you had better make yourself agreeable to me. Who knows — if you look appealing enough, perhaps I’ll be so taken with you that I’ll let you live in peace.”
“Ah….”
The hand gripping Uriel’s jaw tightened. At the fingers pressing down as though to crush his lower jaw, Uriel made a sound of pain.
“From now on, don’t avert your eyes when I’m speaking to you. It feels like being dismissed, and I find it unpleasant. Understood?”
“…Yes.”
Through the pain of his jaw being clenched in that grip, Uriel’s answer came out slow and dragging. He worried Avelos might be angry that he wasn’t even responding properly. Fortunately, Avelos didn’t seem to mind Uriel’s sluggish tone very much.
“Ha — regrettably, I really must go now.”
With those words, Avelos moved away without a second glance. With a click, the door opened and closed. Confirming Avelos had left, Uriel sank straight down to the floor.
“Why…. How….”
As the tension left him, his body trembled finely. The reaction below his waist had already quietly subsided. What on earth was Avelos thinking? At first, he had assumed Avelos was doing all this simply to humiliate him. But there were parts of it that didn’t quite add up, if the only aim was to inflict shame and degradation.
If Avelos wanted to humiliate him, there was no need for the Emperor himself to do it — a single order to a subordinate would have been sufficient. In a class-based society with no concept of human rights, one word from Avelos would have been more than enough.
He could have given Uriel the kind of pain that split flesh and broke bone. He could have put him to work not as a labor slave but as a sex slave who had to spread his legs. Even if the toying remained exactly as it was now, he could have inflicted far greater humiliation by doing it somewhere others were watching.
But Avelos had done none of that. The only physical pain he had inflicted was the stamping of the slave brand that kept fading away, and the touching and teasing happened exclusively by Avelos’s own hand — in a space where it was only the two of them.
From Avelos’s perspective, Uriel must be someone he despised enough to not even want to touch — and yet Uriel couldn’t make sense of the intent behind the contact that was growing more intimate with every encounter. He didn’t know whether to be grateful Avelos wasn’t being truly cruel, or to feel more afraid because he couldn’t tell in what way the fire behind those cool violet eyes would eventually burn.
What would happen as this contact kept growing more frequent, kept deepening in its intimacy? Weighed down by the anxiety of not knowing what lay ahead, Uriel slowly let his eyes fall shut.
Avelos, who had been seated at his desk in the study receiving a report from the budget commissioner, furrowed his brow.
“Ngh….”
After a stretch of quiet, the chronic headache had come back again. For four years now, he had been experiencing both a wave of nausea and a crushing headache at the same time. Even after becoming a Sword Master and transcending ordinary physical ailments, the headaches had never stopped tormenting him. They came roughly two or three times a month, and fortunately, the pain lasted only about a day — not long.
“Your Majesty, are you alright?”
“Ha…. I’m fine.”
The commissioner, pausing his report, asked with careful concern. The Emperor’s health was a matter directly tied to the stability of the empire. Avelos answered while pressing the thumb of one hand against the bridge of his nose where the headache was naturally drawing his brows together. The commissioner read the room for a moment, finished his report, and withdrew.
After reviewing a few more documents, Avelos rose from his seat.
“Where is Uriel?”
At Avelos’s question, the servant standing nearby answered politely. It was not uncommon for Avelos to ask after the whereabouts of the golden-haired slave, and so the answer came quickly.
“By now the sitting room cleaning would likely be almost finished, so he may have returned to his quarters.”
“…….”
It was not the answer he had wanted. The headache persisting without relief, Avelos knitted his brows. The servant, watching his complexion, carefully added:
“I can have someone else sent to find out.”
“No. I’ll check myself.”
Avelos rose from his seat. He could barely focus on his work with the headache as it was. Years of experience had taught him that at times like these, it was better to take a light walk than to force himself to sit with his work.
On top of that, he hadn’t been able to go see Uriel for some time — so the reasoning was that checking in on whether Uriel was doing his work well would serve both purposes at once. As Avelos set off, the other attendants and knights waiting outside the study quietly fell in behind him.
The sitting room Uriel was responsible for was on a different floor from the study where Avelos worked. It was also far away in terms of location — one to the east and one to the west — but as it was still within the same building, he arrived quickly. The moment Avelos reached the door of the sitting room he had aimed for, he pushed it open and walked straight in.
“…Ah!”
The first thing that greeted Avelos as he opened the door was a glimmer of golden hair. Catching the sunlight streaming in through the clear glass windows, it shone so brightly it was almost blinding. Uriel had his back turned, his head lowered. With his head bowed, his white nape was more visible than usual.
I want to see Uriel’s face. The thought came to Avelos suddenly, as he stood there looking at Uriel’s back. He stretched out his stride without hesitation and walked toward Uriel.
“Uriel. Why are you so startled? You look just like someone caught doing something they shouldn’t.”
“…….”
At the words something they shouldn’t, Uriel’s shoulders visibly flinched. Avelos raised one eyebrow at the sight. He had only said it offhandedly, thinking Uriel had been overly startled by the sound of the door opening. He took hold of one of Uriel’s arms and turned him around.
That pale face, and those golden eyes that shone as brightly as his hair, looked no different from usual. But he couldn’t quite tell what had startled Uriel so badly — and so Avelos scanned Uriel’s body slowly and carefully. The violet eyes stopped on Uriel’s left hand.
“Is this what startled you?”
Avelos pulled Uriel’s left wrist toward him. The cut running from the tip of his fingers to his palm was fairly long — blade-like. The wound still had blood seeping out at its edges, as though it had been made not long ago.
“…Come to think of it, the injury last time was also on the left hand, wasn’t it.”
Uriel froze at the words that came from Avelos — who had, until now, seemed interested only in touching various parts of his body, and showed no attention to his wounds.
“Injuries like this happen when you’re cleaning. I need to wipe up the bloodstain on the floor, so please let go.”
Uriel tried not to appear awkward as he pulled his left wrist free from Avelos’s grip. The attention Avelos was showing now — which he hadn’t shown even the first time Uriel had cut his finger in front of him — felt like too much.
Avelos watched Uriel’s hand slipping free from his grip for a moment. And then, just before it escaped completely, he grabbed it again.
“Ngh!”
Uriel let out a pained sound at Avelos’s rough grip around his injured hand.
“…What is this?”
“I— I hurt it cleaning.”
All around the new wound were the traces of others, in various stages of healing. Avelos’s face crumpled at Uriel’s excuse.
“Ha. Do you take me for an idiot?”
