Avelos stood looking down at Uriel, his thoughts unreadable.
He had the sun at his back, making it difficult to read his expression. Uriel instinctively squinted against the bright sunlight before belatedly lowering his head. There were many servants and knights nearby. Even Uriel knew better than to stare openly at the Emperor’s face — even if he’d lowered his head a beat too late.
“…….”
Avelos looked down at Uriel, who lay prostrate before him without moving. The other slaves and servants who worked in the stables were prostrated alongside him, but Avelos spared them not even a glance. His violet eyes were fixed solely on Uriel.
Those violet eyes moved over the shirt and trousers soaked through with the water that had splashed while he was bathing the foal. The shirt, originally white, was drenched and clinging to Uriel’s body like a second skin. Wet as it was, and a size too small, his skin showed through with startling clarity. His thin trousers were equally soaked.
Prostrated with his forehead pressed to the ground, his wet trousers clung tightly to him, the rounded curve of his backside laid bare without concealment.
That cool, settled gaze traveled from the wet nape of Uriel’s neck downward along his slender throat, tracing the wet shirt where the ridges of his spine showed through, moving still lower. Avelos’s gaze lingered heavily at his waist, where the drenched shirt clung fast.
That day, Avelos had dumped the unconscious Uriel in the slave quarters and immediately changed his assignment. Having learned that Uriel was using the decorative sword in the reception room to hurt himself, he couldn’t keep him there any longer.
His reasoning was that Uriel wouldn’t be able to pull anything like that in a place where other servants were always around — and that it might be wise to keep him at some distance. That was how the stables had been decided upon. But he hadn’t anticipated that Uriel would end up soaked through like this. The thought that he’d been spending every day rolling around among men looking like that made Avelos’s expression shift in an instant.
Unable to identify what it was that unsettled him, he had stayed away and avoided coming to see Uriel for some time. Had he known it would come to this, he would have reassigned him long ago. And Uriel had no idea what kind of eyes the others were looking at him with.
A violet flame sparked in Avelos’s eyes, which had been cool and still until a moment ago. The air around him turned razor-sharp. Uriel’s head was bowed — he shouldn’t have been able to feel Avelos’s gaze — yet the shift in the air was so unmistakable that Uriel’s body gave a faint shudder.
Avelos, who had looked as though he might step toward Uriel at any moment, did not move. He simply stood where he was, lips pressed firmly shut, staring down at Uriel. The silence stretched long, but the atmosphere made it clear that speaking out of turn would be catastrophic — every servant and slave kept their breath held and their faces to the ground. Those standing behind Avelos quieted their breathing as well and simply waited.
It was Avelos who broke the silence first.
“Uriel.”
“…….”
Uriel swallowed hard at the sound of Avelos’s voice slipping cold between his teeth.
The voice calling his name was frigid, and Uriel found himself wondering what he’d done wrong. Then, belatedly, the thought came to him — his waist must have shown through that wet shirt. Had he seen the waist where the scars had disappeared? Surely he wouldn’t go back on his word after only a few days and brand him here. A cascade of frightening possibilities rose in his mind. Instinctively, his thoughts went to the agony of the slave brand, and he drew his neck inward.
How long had he been frozen? Uriel realized, too late, that he had failed to answer the Emperor’s call. In a fluster, he lifted his head before he’d even thought to stop himself.
“—Ah.”
The first thing he saw upon raising his head was Avelos staring down at him as if he meant to devour him whole. The moment their gazes met, Uriel’s body locked rigid. His heart hammered against his ribs hard enough to burst. Somewhere, he thought he heard the low sound of laughter.
In an instant, Avelos closed the distance between them, bent down, and caught Uriel’s chin, lifting it.
“What an interesting sight.”
The low, murmured voice pressed into Uriel’s ear. Those gleaming eyes, like something belonging to a beast, watched him as if to devour him whole. But in contrast to that gaze, his tone was unhurried and smooth — almost easy enough to mistake for something warm. The sheer size of that gap frightened Uriel more than anything else.
“How did you end up this wet?”
“…B-bathing the foal… that’s why I’m wet.”
He rolled his eyes away, evading that all-consuming stare, and answered as though making excuses. He had only done the work assigned to him as a slave — he couldn’t understand why Avelos was looking at him like he meant to eat him alive — but something terrible would happen if he didn’t say anything.
“…Ah.”
Avelos let out a brief sound of understanding. He knew that on days he visited the stables, the stalls would be cleaned and the horses bathed even when they were already clean enough. The shirt had been soaked, and he’d wondered what on earth Uriel had been doing — it seemed he’d been doing a water scrub-down. It didn’t look as though he walked around drenched like this every single time.
Even knowing that, the displeasure on Avelos’s face did not lift.
Uriel’s wet clothes. Those downcast, moisture-laden eyes trying to avoid him. The wet lashes draped over those eyes. All of it was displeasing, every bit.
When you were pouring water and scrubbing down a horse, the horse shook itself and water ended up in your eyes. That must have been why the skin around Uriel’s eyes was flushed and damp. A face that was already worth looking at seemed to drip with something like allure now that it was wet.
The stables owned by the Emperor were many. Among them, this was the largest — the one that housed the gentle mares and the foals they had borne.
There was no shortage of foals here, so bathing them must have taken quite a long time. Which meant that the slaves and servants who’d been here before him had been looking at Uriel in that soaked state for quite a while.
And if his back was visible enough through the fabric to show his skin, the front would only be worse. That thought made a crease form between Avelos’s brows.
“Why didn’t you change?”
“…Pardon?”
“The wet clothes must have been uncomfortable. I’m asking why you didn’t change.”
At Avelos’s question, Uriel’s expression went a little blank. Why didn’t you change. There was no way a slave could simply walk back to his room to change because his clothes got a little wet. He wondered if this wasn’t a real question at all, just picking at him because he disliked him.
But when he examined Avelos’s expression, that didn’t seem to be it. Maybe he doesn’t know much about how slaves are managed — he’s the Emperor, after all. He opened his mouth to explain, but Avelos spoke first.
“Were you trying to tempt someone, going around like this?”
“…?”
“Putting yourself on display like that — unfortunately, that’s not my taste.”
At Avelos’s words, Uriel’s mouth, which had already dropped open in a daze, fell open a little wider. From Uriel’s perspective it was genuinely unfair, absurd enough that his mouth fell open on its own — but those full, red lips caught Avelos’s gaze regardless.
Avelos moved the hand that had been lifting Uriel’s chin to his mouth instead. He rubbed roughly at those red lips, so vivid against the pale white of his face. Some vaguely unsatisfied feeling made Avelos’s expression twist. He seemed to want something, though what it was wasn’t quite clear.
Driven by that unpleasant sensation, Avelos spoke on impulse.
“I’ll call for you after today’s schedule is done. Go back to your room and wait.”
“Today… you mean today?”
At Avelos’s words, the first thing that surfaced in Uriel’s mind was the slave brand. In truth, there was no other reason Avelos might summon him separately, so that was why.
What Uriel was thinking was plain on his face, and Avelos tightened his fingers.
“It’s obvious what’s going through your head. You don’t need to frighten yourself needlessly. Didn’t I promise you that day? That as long as you didn’t deliberately wound yourself, I wouldn’t brand you again.”
“Then why…”
“Who knows. Use your imagination.”
Uriel asked with his lips pressed under Avelos’s fingertips. To form the words, his lips parted — and Avelos’s finger slipped inside as though it had found its way in on its own. Avelos did not withdraw the finger that had gone in unintentionally. He continued saying what he had to say, pressing down gently on Uriel’s tongue before moving in a slow, deliberate motion along the side of it.
“Why would an Emperor call a slave to him — at night.”
“Ah…mn…”
A shallow moan slipped from Uriel as Avelos’s finger played inside his mouth. Uriel’s face, which had been pale white, was now flushed deep red. Startled by the sound that had escaped him involuntarily, Uriel froze — unable to spit out Avelos’s finger, unable to bite down on it.
He looked up at Avelos, bewildered by his inexplicable behavior in still not withdrawing his finger. Uriel’s eyes had gone round — something between frightened and startled — and their gazes collided. It was Uriel who looked away first.
