Chapter 122

“It is a design I have never seen before, yet it somehow seems familiar, so I am trying to recall where I might have seen it.”

There was no need to lie, so Eugène answered honestly. What part of that simple reply had caught the Emperor’s interest? With a languid expression, as though only just roused from a doze, the Emperor let a faint smile touch his lips and asked him again.

“Did you say it seemed familiar to you?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“That cannot be.”

“…Pardon?”

“I assure you, it cannot be. What you are looking at is three hundred and sixty-seven plant emblems.”

Startled by those words, Eugène turned his gaze toward the wall. Looking again after hearing the explanation, he realized it was indeed so. At first glance, the motifs had seemed repetitive, yet upon closer inspection, not a single one was the same.

Even the species of plants depicted were all different. Three hundred and sixty-seven unique and splendid designs, each one portraying a different plant. If the Emperor’s words were true, then every motif symbolized a distinct noble house.

The Eastern Empire, birthplace of the faith of Saint Eustace and a realm whose doctrine was far more doctrinaire and high-minded than that of the Western Empire, had long regarded plants as divine gifts and held them in great reverence.

For that reason, the Eastern Empire possessed the tradition of crafting crests solely from plant forms. The three hundred and sixty-seven plant emblems compiled from the crests of noble families, woven together into what was famed across the continent of Ladivenia as the grandest and most intricate decorative system.

“The plant emblems are one of the foremost symbols of the authority of the Shaak imperial house. Neabed Pasha, though the most powerful of officials, favored above all others by the late Caliph and even called the ‘Sacred Left Hand,’ was permitted to use them only after he had conquered the whole of Landrienne. Rumor has it that even the imperial heralds, whose very profession was the drawing of arms, commit them only to memory and to the hand, keeping no patterns as reference.”

It was well known that the true name of the three hundred and sixty-seven plant emblems was the ‘Shah Khan’s Crest.’ The name was given in honor of Shah Khan, the founding Caliph of Shaak, who had established the first unified dynasty in the east of Ladivenia and claimed to be the rightful heir of Saint Eustace. However, for religious reasons, the Western Empire, which denied his very existence, could not freely use that name.

“Was it for this, then, that Your Majesty lived under constant threat of assassination?”

Eugène asked, struck by the thought. At his question, the Emperor narrowed his eyes in amusement and nodded.

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“The only place in the empire where that crest can exist isOurbathchamber.Wewondered why you had taken note of something so rare, but it seems your poor discernment has not vanished after all.”

Eugène smiled bitterly, but could not deny his words.

“Indeed, Your Majesty.”

Even with an explanation he could accept, he could not shake off the unease. It was not that he had seen the exact same design, yet he could not rid himself of the feeling that he had encountered something much like it somewhere before. While he lingered there with a faintly unsettled look, the Emperor moved his hand in a subtle gesture, signaling him to come closer.

“Come closer.”

His clothes, damp and clinging with the steam, were uncomfortable, yet he gave no sign of it. Eugène advanced to the distance permitted by etiquette and halted there.

“Closer.”

At the Emperor’s command, he stepped forward until he was but a pace away from the bath. But the Emperor, still unsatisfied, flicked his fingers once more.

“…How close would Your Majesty have me go?”

Gazing at the hot water rippling before his eyes, and at the man immersed within it, wholly unclothed, Eugène posed his question. If he obeyed as commanded, he would all but have to plunge into the bath with his clothes still on.

“Who can say? Perhaps until you are left with no choice but to strip off those unsightly garments of yours.”

“I fear Your Majesty forgets but this attire was tailored for me by none other than you.”

Now his taste in clothing, after already his discernment, was being impugned; Eugène could not quite conceal his incredulity as he protested. But the Emperor did not so much as blink at his objection.

“It is precisely that failure to distinguish that proves your lack of discernment. One’s attire must suit the time and place.”

He chuckled shamelessly, then with a sudden motion seized Eugène’s cravat and drew him forward. Startled, Eugène was forced to bend over the bath’s edge, all but toppling toward him.

“Even had you been clad in a sacred vestment woven of the Holy Spirit itself, it would be the same. The matter is not what you wear, but that you are still wearing it.”

Drawing Eugène closer until their noses nearly touched, the Emperor twisted his elegant lips into a meaningful smile and murmured the words over his lips. His eyes, glimmering with a strange luster, looked up at him without a single blink. The weight of that gaze was hard to meet, and when Eugène’s own lowered for an instant, the Emperor, like a predator finding its opening, struck without hesitation.

The Emperor’s kiss began at a much hotter temperature than ever. The red flesh, flushed by the steaming water of the bath, forced its way between his half-parted teeth and poured its fever into his mouth. At the same time, a sensual hand reached for him, unhesitatingly loosening the knot of his cravat and baring his skin.

The Emperor, kissing with honeyed richness, tugged at the drenched cloth. Following the path of his hand, silk smooth as the serpent of paradise slid down the nape of his neck and fell to the floor.

Before Eugène could regain his senses, his justaucorps was stripped away, and the vest, crumpled beyond any hope of restoration, met the same fate. To steady himself, he braced both hands against the edge of the bath, only to realize that such resistance availed him nothing in this situation. Yielding to the inevitable, he moved of his own accord.

At this point, to try to withdraw would be laughable. Nor did it seem His Majesty would allow such a thing. With his lips surrendered to the Emperor, he shed his shirt and trousers, casting even his shoes aside in turn. The moment he stood bare, the Emperor seized him by the forearm and pulled him into the bath. Eugène was drawn helplessly and sank into the scalding water.

The bath was deeper than it had appeared. The water was as blissful as paradise itself, and the Emperor’s arm encircling his waist bore his weight more steadfastly than a column of marble. Guided by the Emperor’s hand, Eugène pressed himself close to him. The Emperor settled him upon his thigh as if it were the most natural act ever and, cradling him as though he held a bar of gold, showered him with fervent kisses.

“…Truly, Your Majesty is in no position to fault my taste.”

Even if their height and weight were similar, Eugène’s build was overwhelmingly more muscular. To seat such a man, heavier by nature, upon his lap as though he were a delicate maiden was a perversity plain to any eye. Wrenching free at last from the relentless kiss, Eugène drew breath and reproved his sovereign. Hearing this, Ebroin V smiled with such overwhelming tenderness that it was nearly suffocating, and firmly denied his words.

“Surely not, when none could compare to you.”

The Emperor’s hand traced the deep furrow of his spine, sliding down along the ridge of his back. Fevered lips, hot and wet, branded his chest with scarlet marks like searing irons, while the other hand, once idle, pressed into the space between them and closed around both their genitals at once.

Following his hand, the sensitive penis, which had not yet been erected, was rubbed against the Emperor’s. The grip was clumsy yet stubborn, and at times sparked with a deftness that kindled fire in his stomach. Perhaps because his body was already overheated, the blaze spread swiftly. His penis stiffened, rising upright in a rigid flame.

But even in such a state, Eugène could not bring himself to focus wholly. The Emperor’s words ever bore weight, and what he had spoken just now sounded far too heavy with meaning to be dismissed as idle.

“For one who chose me of all people, it is not a fitting thing to say.”

“And what flaw is it you see in yourself?”

The Emperor teased, pressing his thumbnail against the slit of his penis with mischievous cruelty. Eugène, his cheeks flushing beneath the sting of heat, yet refused to yield in reply.

“Your Majesty’s preferences are hardly ordinary, are they not?”

“You state the obvious. Tell me, should an Emperor content himself with what is common? My beloved may be difficult to handle and obstinate in will, but he is worth every effort. He is capable, intelligent, peerless in strength… and, moreover, he clasps me so tightly even here.”

Hardly had the words left his lips when the Emperor’s penis pressed into the gap between his buttocks. The massive pillar of flesh thrust against his sealed entrance without hesitation, and with it, the bathwater coursed inward, flooding Eugène’s depths.

Startled by the sudden intrusion, Eugène instinctively arched his back. However, with him being penetrated, he could flee nowhere and was forced down again. Though he had spent his life at sea, never once had his body been opened beneath the water. Feeling the unfamiliar tightness that clenched of its own accord, he let a thin moan escape between his teeth.

“And what of you? Madame Redan, Prince Cyrill, even Young Lady Dumont…. All those who were your lovers, or held some semblance of that place, share the very same trait. Are you even aware of what it is?”

The hot water had raised his body’s temperature. A heated body grew all the more sensitive to touch. He struggled to suppress the moans that erupted as the stimulation continued to inflict pain on his already sensitive body. To hear not only the name of his late wife, and the lover who had been unavoidably exposed, but even that of a former paramour he had long forgotten left him reeling.

From the first time they met, he had known the Emperor had inquired into his past. But he had never once imagined that the investigation would burrow so far into his private affairs.

“In such a moment as this, mmh, are those truly names that should be spoken aloud?”

Catching back breaths that threatened to spill into moans, Eugène managed to land his rebuke. He had no special mastery of long romances, but he was not so ignorant as to fail to see how unseemly this was.

“You cannot stand to leave a soul in distress. And then, inevitably, you fall in love with them.”

But the Emperor paid his words no heed. By then, Eugène had begun to perceive that something was amiss, his brow furrowing.

At that instant, the Emperor’s mind had strayed toward Eugen’s meager history of relationships, recalling it with a trace of bitterness. According to what Adelphe had unearthed, Eugen’s first paramour, Madame Redan, had been a young widow in her twenties. When she first met Eugène, she was a prosperous woman who owned several fishing boats. But with no one to lean on but a child, who was less than ten years old, her life had been perilously uncertain day by day.