“I— I was afraid.”
“…….”
“Didn’t you say it not long ago — that the time to stamp the brand was coming…. And then, Your Majesty didn’t come….”
“So.”
“So that’s why…. When the pain flares at my fingertip, and I see the red blood flowing, I can forget the fear for just a little while — that’s why I did it. I won’t… I won’t do it again.”
Uriel panted softly, clinging to Avelos’s leg. The violet eyes that looked down at the small body hanging from his leg and gasping turned dark. The displeasure over the wound on Uriel’s left hand remained — and yet the anger from moments ago had vanished as though it had never existed.
Clang. Avelos flung the brand in his hand far away. The iron brand struck the stone floor of the dungeon with a sharp sound and skittered across it. At the noise, Uriel, who had had his head lowered toward the floor, turned to look. Seeing the iron brand lying on the floor and Avelos’s empty hand, Uriel slowly lifted his head.
Those terrified, damp golden eyes collided with Avelos’s darkened violet ones. He had certainly seen those eyes before — the times he had stamped the brand — and yet strangely, they felt unpleasant now. The anger that had driven the usually rational Emperor to act on impulse had already vanished without a trace. And yet, strangely, his mood was worse than before. He felt as though he needed to say something — anything — for it to improve.
“This is the last time.”
Avelos suppressed the displeasure boiling up from somewhere deep inside him and let out a heavy breath. If he lost even a fraction of his composure, he felt something contrary to his own will might burst out of him in an attempt to relieve this unpleasant feeling.
“From the moment I chose to make you a slave rather than kill you, Uriel, that body became mine. The only one who may leave a mark on what belongs to the Emperor is me. Keep that in mind at all times.”
Yes, yes. Uriel nodded with an expression that suggested he wasn’t quite sure what he was even agreeing to. The smell of blood and rusted iron that filled the underground, the stale underground air, and the incongruous heat radiating from the furnace all swirled together dizzily.
In that moment, as the tension gave way all at once, Uriel tipped sideways and collapsed. Before Uriel’s head could meet the floor, Avelos bent down and caught him. The unconscious body, gone limp, was far too light.
3.
“Where is the slave?”
The Emperor’s servant came to the stables. At his arrival, the heads of the servants working in the stables automatically turned in one direction.
Standing where all their gazes converged was a boy with brilliant golden hair that looked utterly out of place in a stable. He carried himself with an air slightly too mature to be called a boy, yet looked young enough that calling him a fully grown adult wouldn’t quite fit either.
“You called for me?”
The golden-haired young man who approached the servant was Uriel. Uriel had been removed from the sitting room cleaning and management duties he had been responsible for over the course of more than a year. His newly assigned post was the stables, located a short distance from the main palace. It was a place where he worked openly alongside several other servants.
“Hold out your hands.”
The servant gave the order in a domineering tone. Uriel, practiced at this, rolled up his sleeves and held out both wrists and hands. The servant inspected the palms, backs, and then the connected wrists with careful attention, then nodded.
“No issue. You may go.”
Despite the fuss made in coming to find Uriel, the inspection was brief. The servant turned away without a second thought and disappeared, as though his duty was done.
“Good grief….”
Uriel bowed politely toward him, returned to his spot, and went back to what he had been doing. The shift from relatively comfortable indoor work to the harder labor of the stables drew an involuntary groan out of him.
“Is it tough?”
“No. I’m alright.”
At Uriel’s sound of complaint, the stable hand working across from him — with a foal between them — asked. Uriel and the stable hand were in the middle of bathing their fourth nearly-grown foal.
“Just bear with it for today. When it’s a day His Majesty goes riding, there’s nothing to be done.”
“Pardon? His Majesty?”
Uriel startled and asked again at the stable hand’s casual remark. Reacting with a flustered expression as though he had just heard something he had never expected, Uriel’s response prompted the stable hand to answer matter-of-factly.
“Didn’t you know? His Majesty comes by occasionally to ride. Today was a sudden notice, mind you.”
At the stable hand’s reply, Uriel let out a low sound of distress. The look of exhaustion from bathing the foals gave way to visible anxiety on his face.
It had been about two weeks since he had last seen Avelos — in the dungeon.
At that time, Uriel had wept and clung to Avelos, who had looked as though he was about to brand him at any moment. He also remembered Avelos throwing the iron brand and saying it was the last time. Avelos had said something to him after that, but he couldn’t quite recall what the words had been.
When Uriel had come back to his senses, he was inside the slave quarters. He had wondered whether the brand had been stamped while he was unconscious — but his waist was smooth and without a single mark.
Though Avelos had not appeared before Uriel in the time since, he had been sending servants to check whether Uriel was self-harming. It didn’t seem like Avelos would suddenly show up and stamp the brand — but even so, remembering that furious expression still made fear rise in him instinctively. The thick arms that had slung him over a shoulder without effort, and the forceful hands that had subdued his resistance with ease, were still as vivid as if it had happened yesterday.
Perhaps because Uriel’s expression looked far too dark, the older stable hand asked with concern:
“Come to think of it, you don’t look well at all. Are you sick?”
“No, no. I — could I ask… after we’re done bathing these ones, what should I do next?”
“His Majesty said he’d come after the midday meal, so once you’ve bathed them and put out the hay, you can rest. Today he’s coming with Franche, so there won’t be anything for you to do. Still, stay on standby near the stables until evening, just in case.”
At the name Franche, Uriel’s movements paused for a moment. Franche Iorea. He was the male lead of the original novel. The only person capable of calming Avelos, who had become a tyrant after years of sustained abuse at Uriel’s hands.
He was a priest endowed with divine power capable of treating Avelos’s episodes and headaches — the character who, after being discovered by Avelos, is confined by him and becomes the object of his obsessive, madness-tinged love.
Uriel had been in the imperial palace for over a year, yet he had never actually met Franche even once. If he were to see him today, it would be their first meeting.
Just as Uriel had only learned of Avelos’s visit abruptly, their encounter itself unfolded just as suddenly, without any preparation.
“We bow before His Majesty the Emperor, Sun of Hethos.”
“We bow before His Majesty the Emperor.”
The older stable hand and everyone nearby all bowed and pressed themselves flat to the ground. Uriel too, without even thinking to look at Avelos’s face, lowered his head to the floor alongside them. There was no opportunity to check whether Franche Iorea had come with Avelos.
He had just finished bathing the eighth foal a short while ago. All that remained was to put out the hay, and Uriel’s work for the day would be done. He couldn’t go back to the slave quarters in case something came up, and had to stay on standby nearby — but at any rate, everything he needed to do was finished. His plan had been to linger around the stables one last time, then slip into a quiet spot nearby where Avelos wouldn’t notice him and not come out.
As it happened, there was an unfinished stable from an ongoing expansion construction nearby, and he had already scoped it out. No horses were in it yet, so there was no foul smell, and since there were no horses, Avelos would have no reason to come in to see them — he had intended to rest there.
If only Avelos hadn’t suddenly appeared in front of Uriel like this, that plan would have gone off without a hitch.
Uriel pressed his forehead to the ground and exhaled. I wonder if the shirt came untucked when I bowed down. That was his first concern. Fortunately, this time the shirt was damp with sweat and had stayed neatly tucked into his trousers.
No matter how much care he took, his shirt came out of his trousers often while he worked. As a result, even though he didn’t see Avelos every day, every time Avelos did come around, Uriel’s shirt tended to have come untucked. Each time, Avelos would touch Uriel’s body with an expression of dissatisfaction, or toy with him like some ill-mannered layabout.
Even after being prostrated for quite some time, no permission came to rise. There was no sound of breathing, and it was so quiet it almost felt as though no one was there. Can I lift my head? After a brief hesitation, Uriel lifted his forehead just slightly and looked ahead.
Hah.
Uriel sucked in a sharp breath.
Standing directly before him was someone with jet-black hair and cold, pale skin that gave the impression of something other than human. It was Avelos — the first time in nearly a month. Still prostrated, with only his head lifted slightly, Uriel’s golden eyes collided with Avelos’s cold, settled violet ones.
