Uriel drew his neck and shoulders in at Avelos’s voice, which came out low and growling. It was hard to understand why Avelos was so angry. Was it because of the lie? Nothing else came to mind as a reason.
But even putting it down to the lie felt off somehow. Because Avelos had already looked angry before Uriel had even told the lie about hurting himself while cleaning.
Uriel wasn’t answering, only shifting his eyes around, and Avelos swept his gaze across the surroundings with a fierce intensity. There were no signs of anything like tear marks around the wound. The only thing that could produce a wound this cleanly split open was a well-honed blade.
By nature, those who worked in the imperial palace were not permitted to possess sharp metal objects. If the person in question was a slave, that went without saying even more so. Those restless violet eyes didn’t take long to find the decorative dagger mounted on the wall. And the faint trace of blood left on its blade.
“…Did you do this to yourself on purpose?”
“…….”
“Why.”
The violet eyes, now cooled to something cold and still, fixed on Uriel. Avelos’s voice as he asked quietly was every bit as cold as those eyes.
“…Are you going to refuse to answer?”
Should I answer? Avelos had, until now, never shown much interest in whatever wounds appeared on Uriel’s body. Wasn’t he, of all people, the one who had repeatedly stamped the slave brand into Uriel’s waist? It was hardly the reaction to be expected from the very person who had repeatedly left the largest and most agonizing wounds on Uriel’s body.
As the memory of the agonizing slave brand surfaced, Uriel felt a small flare of anger of his own.
“A wound this minor heals in a day. It is not… something for Your Majesty to concern yourself with.”
Uriel spoke on impulse and regretted it a moment later. He suddenly felt a jolt of fear — wondering if he had been too insolent, given that Avelos was still the Emperor and the one who held his life in his hands.
It was not wise to provoke Avelos, who, unlike at the beginning, no longer seemed to intend to kill Uriel.
The majority of the imperial household slaves at present were not criminals but people who had been born into slavery. Because of that, the imperial household offered a reward — serve honestly as a slave for five years, and be released as a free citizen. Uriel, though brought in personally by Avelos, had been given no other indication of his fate, which meant he too was eligible to become a free citizen after five years.
Since learning of that system, Uriel’s goal had been to quietly endure his time as a slave and walk out of the imperial palace as a free citizen with his head held high.
Enduring the remaining four years without provoking Avelos as much as possible — that was Uriel’s aim.
“So — are you saying you did it on purpose?”
“…No.”
“I’ll ask one last time. Are you truly saying you did not do it on purpose?”
Uriel pressed his lower lip tightly between his teeth. Perhaps because he was a Sword Master accustomed to blades — Avelos was already certain the scar on Uriel’s hand had not been made by accident. If that was the case, there was no point in continuing to lie. Uriel bowed his head.
“…I’m sorry.”
At Uriel’s answer — amounting to an admission — Avelos’s face went slack with disbelief, as though he had heard something he had never expected. And then he burst out laughing. Avelos, who had roughly pushed his hair back during the brief back-and-forth, looked down at Uriel.
“Ha. I didn’t know you enjoyed hurting yourself. I suppose the tears you’ve shown me all this time were false, then.”
Avelos, who had been gripping Uriel’s hand hard enough to hurt, released it. His hand grazed Uriel’s arm as it passed, and where it landed was the place the slave brand had been stamped months ago. He pulled the shirt that had been neatly tucked into Uriel’s trousers free and slipped his hand beneath it — and what he felt was skin smooth and unmarked, without a single wound.
Avelos clicked his tongue quietly. Both eyes went cold and flat.
Clearly, the first time he had stamped the slave brand, Avelos had felt nothing. Uriel had wailed as though it were the most agonizing thing he had ever experienced, yet Avelos had watched with complete indifference.
He also hadn’t understood why Uriel — who had so viciously abused him in the past — reacted so violently to something as minor as a single brand. Watching Uriel, who put up no real resistance and crumbled weakly, shaking over what amounted to a small wound, Avelos had felt the resolve he had nursed for so long — to return everything that had been done to him — collapse into something hollow.
So he had deliberately put it out of his mind and left Uriel alone. If he hadn’t discovered by chance a few months later that the brand had faded, he might have simply let Uriel remain a slave, forgotten entirely. And then, by chance, he had found Uriel’s waist — healed smooth and clean, without a mark. And he remembered the feeling that had risen in him at that moment. It had been a rage that burned cold and bright.
Of all the countless pains he had suffered at Uriel’s hands, he had returned only one — a single one. And when he saw that even that single one had vanished without a trace, he had felt the heat of a fury that could have scorched him hollow. The smooth skin of that waist and the face that had not changed in the slightest came into his view one after another.
He himself, who had once been far smaller than Uriel, now looked the older of the two. In that face that hadn’t changed by a single thing, he caught an expression that seemed to say, as though the past had nothing to do with Uriel at all — and in that instant, Avelos’s rage had exploded.
As though someone like you could never leave any trace on me. That was what Uriel seemed to be saying with his entire body.
And so he had branded him once more. He had taken the iron brand, heated in fire until it blazed red, and pressed it into that snow-white, smooth waist with his own hands. In the exact same place as before.
“Ahhh… AAAAAH!!!!!”
He had stood there and quietly looked down at Uriel, who had lost consciousness from the pain he could no longer endure. He had looked at the hair damp with sweat, the lashes wet with tears, the parched lips — looked at them without moving. Strangely, his heart had lurched and dropped. It was an unpleasant feeling he could not put into words.
“Throw him in his quarters.”
He had been deliberately even colder than he felt. He had not wanted to know what this unpleasant feeling was, and had sensed that he mustn’t.
I hope this brand mark doesn’t fade. A thought that had drifted past like a passing shadow — and he had laughed faintly at it. Right. He was only thinking that because it was a bother to go to the trouble of branding someone twice. That was what he told himself, and he tried to forget it.
But Uriel’s body had erased the slave brand’s scar once again. Cleanly. Without a trace.
“Ha….”
When he had discovered that a second time, Avelos had thought it felt as though someone was playing a trick on him. For the third time, rather than doing it himself, he issued the order instead.
And Avelos had not sought Uriel out for some time after that. Even on this day, had the headache not flared up, he might have stayed away from Uriel for longer still. An unidentifiable, unpleasant sound had been buzzing through his head, and then the headache had come on. Setting down the documents he had been reviewing and going to the sitting room had been half an impulse.
The sitting room had been empty. Before he could even take in the sight of that empty room and think anything of it, the crushing headache had come again. A throb — and anger flared.
He had grabbed the vase and poured the water out. As Uriel bent over to wipe it up, the short shirt had ridden up and exposed the white, clean skin beneath.
Avelos’s violet eyes had landed on that skin — white and smooth, the slave brand’s marks vanished without a trace no matter how many times he stamped them. Even the smallest blemish would have done. If even the faintest speck had remained, he would not have been this angry.
“Whether to call this a blessing or a curse.”
“…….”
The moment Uriel heard those words, Avelos had seen the vivid fear that surfaced in those golden eyes. The moment he saw the body gone rigid with dread, and the trembling eyes holding that fear — Avelos felt an ominous premonition that something was going wrong.
“Unfortunately, my schedule is quite full today, so it will have to wait. I’ll call for you in two days.”
His heart was thudding — thud, thud — and not wanting it noticed, Avelos said the first thing that came out and rose from his seat. He had felt relieved that the urgent matters along the border had come up.
Then, finding a brief window of free time, he had gone on impulse to see Uriel. In the few busy days of work since then, it had felt as though much of the confusion from that moment had dissolved. As time passed, the sensation of that hammering heartbeat had grown gradually faint and dim.
It must have been a mistake — it was certainly a mistake. To Avelos, Uriel was someone no different from an enemy. Someone who had not been content with abusing him physically, and in the end had cruelly betrayed even his trust. It must have been the headache making him not himself. He was certain of it. And yet — when he heard Uriel murmuring to himself, he felt that he could no longer be the same as he had been before.
“I’d almost rather he just never showed up again….”
Avelos had felt a strange sense of fulfillment. Even though those were clearly words of negation — words that said he did not want to see Avelos. What felt more important to him was that, up until the moment those words left Uriel’s lips, Uriel had been thinking of him.
The unfamiliar sense of fulfillment had put him in good spirits, and he had deliberately teased him.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?”
“Pardon? Wh— what do you….”
“Didn’t you just say that? That you’d rather I never showed up again.”
He had stroked Uriel’s body gently. Avelos had laughed, watching Uriel react faithfully to his light touch and grow flustered. This is fine, isn’t it.
