The stone walls were cold and damp. The floor, slick with green moss, was slippery, and the smell of the underground seeped in from every side. Nox sat on the floor, facing the iron bars. He had no idea how many days had passed since he had been dragged into the dungeon.
His arms, chained and bound behind his back, had gone numb long ago. Now he could barely feel them at all. His shoulders ached, and the cold floor had left him shivering.
Creeeak—
Just as he twisted one shoulder against the steadily dulling sensation, the cell door opened and knights entered. They carried rope and cloth in their hands.
“Stay still.”
They spoke to Nox in a tone he had never once heard from anyone in his life except his mother. The absurdity of his situation made him let out a quiet, breathless laugh.
At once, they openly frowned.
Thud!
One of the knights struck Nox across the face. His head snapped to the side, and the inside of his mouth split open, leaving the taste of blood on his tongue. Nox calmly spat the blood-mixed saliva onto the floor. The knights quickly covered his eyes with cloth and removed the chains.
“Looks like he still thinks he’s a noble.”
Then they began binding his arms painfully tight with coarse, sturdy rope. Nox stood still without resisting. He briefly considered fighting back and dying here and now instead, but it did not seem as though they would kill him just for resisting.
If they had meant to kill him, they would have done it long ago.
So he simply let himself be led forward by the knights. With his eyes covered, he could not tell where they were taking him.
But it was obvious enough.
Since that day, he knew perfectly well whose possession he had become.
He climbed stairs. Soon after, he felt wind against his skin. It seemed they had come outside. Not long after, Nox was thrown into a carriage, and he rolled his head against the floor where he had fallen.
Why did that boy ask for me?
For it to be a grudge from childhood, there was something unnervingly persistent about it. Did he want to keep him close and torment him? For an enemy from childhood, it would have been more fitting to cut his throat on the spot and be done with it.
He thought of his father.
My filthy, foolish father, who clutched the Crown Prince’s head and lost his own in the same moment.
With his eyes still covered, Nox blinked slowly.
Come to think of it, Mother…
From that day on, his mother had still been alive.
To think she had outlived his father even while carrying that illness. Who could have predicted that things would turn out this way? Her title had been stripped, so the estate must have met the same fate. The confiscation was probably long finished by now, but he had no idea where his mother had gone.
She probably could not have escaped death.
In truth, the fact that he himself was still alive after the crime of treason bordered on miraculous fortune.
Because that boy—Khalid—had requested ownership of him.
The carriage was still moving forward. He could not tell how much time had passed. How far had they come, exactly?
Clunk.
The carriage stopped.
Soon the knights opened the door and dragged Nox out. Even when his feet tangled and he stumbled because he could not see, they did not slow for him. By his sense of it, they went on for quite a long time. They climbed stairs too. It felt as though they had passed through a long corridor. Then, suddenly, they stopped. He heard a door open, and after a few more steps inward—
one of the knights kicked hard behind his knee.
Thud.
Nox dropped naturally to his knees. The back of the knee that had been struck throbbed painfully.
Then someone grabbed his jaw and wrenched it upward.
“…Who did this to you?”
It was Khalid’s voice.
That boy’s voice—only now strong and fully grown.
Without meaning to, Nox’s entire body tensed.
One of the knights who had brought him answered.
“I did.”
Crack—!
The sound was even louder than when Nox himself had been hit. Nox flinched before he could stop himself, and the hand gripping his jaw tightened.
“Leave.”
“Yes.”
The two knights answered at once, and footsteps followed. The clatter of armor receded into the distance. Then the door shut, and Nox held his breath.
He could feel it—
he and Khalid were alone in the room now.
There was no other presence here but Khalid’s.
Soon Khalid tore the cloth from over his eyes. Nox frowned and looked ahead. After being locked in the dungeon for days, his eyes could not adjust to the light right away. It hurt.
“……”
But little by little, his vision adjusted, and he saw the boy’s face.
No—
not a boy any longer, but a man.
Gray-blond hair. No longer the round eyes Nox remembered, but sharp blue eyes honed like blades. A man staring at him as though he would tear him apart. Khalid. The child who had loved him for the first time in his life now stood before him as a man he did not know.
“Nox Rainerio.”
A voice he had never heard before, and yet one that felt familiar, spoke his name.
“No. A slave doesn’t get a family name. Just Nox now, I suppose.”
That low, rough voice carried a curl of mockery. Nox was forced to look up at him, his jaw still caught in Khalid’s grip.
He wanted to lower his gaze.
He did not want to look at the one he had abandoned, the one who must hate him. But when Nox tried to turn his head away, Khalid’s large hand clamped down harder on his jaw until it hurt.
“Look at me properly.”
“……”
“I’m your master now.”
Nox slowly lifted the eyes he had lowered. Cold eyes looked down at him in a straight, merciless line. Khalid studied Nox’s face for a moment, then clicked his tongue.
“You look filthy.”
Then Khalid gave a cold order to someone nearby.
“Wash him.”
At that command, the servant girls waiting outside entered, seized Nox by both arms, and hauled him to his feet. Nox had no choice but to follow their touch.
What could he do on his own now?
Even if he shook them off and ran, where would he go?
As though reading that thought, Khalid began to stroll after him as the servant girls led Nox away, trailing behind him like a watchman.
Does he think I’ll run?
It was only natural.
He had come to this state now, but Nox had been trained as a knight since childhood. There was no way a handful of women who served nobles could overpower him simply by being several at once.
The servant girls loosened the rope wound around Nox’s arms, and his body shuddered once as blood began returning to them. From the bound places down to his fingertips, his nerves stung sharply.
They led him to the bath attached to Khalid’s room.
The bath in what looked to be a newly built estate was made of white marble. The rim of the bath, sunk deep into the floor below, shimmered with a pearly sheen. One of the servant girls touched a carving of a bird with its crest raised, and hot water immediately began to pour from it.
And as Nox stood there watching in silence, Khalid gave the order without hesitation.
“Undress.”
Nox faltered at that word.
Of course, if he was to be washed, he would have to remove his clothes. But he had not expected Khalid to watch like this.
And Nox, now, had no power to refuse his command.
With fingers still tingling from numbness, Nox slowly undid the buttons of his shirt.
He knew very well that in his current state, he ought to be grateful simply to still be alive. Ever since he had been forced to kneel before the Second Prince—
no, before Peltion, who was Emperor now—
he had given up on everything.
No.
Nox smiled faintly to himself.
Had he already given up on everything the moment he saw the man named Khalid standing beside him?
From now on, he would have to live as Khalid’s slave.
The slave of the one he had sinned against.
That fact pierced his chest like a honed blade.
Tap. Tap.
Each time he removed a piece of clothing, Khalid’s gaze landed on him. On his shoulders. His back. The space between his knees and thighs. Nox felt as though there were heat in that gaze.
Unlike those sharply upturned eyes.
A very hot heat.
Nox stood there naked and straight-backed. Khalid’s gaze moved slowly from below upward, raking over him. With his back turned to him, Nox could still feel Khalid looking. It felt like something crawling slowly over his skin.
Then, while that gaze crawled up his body as though licking it, it stopped somewhere.
Somewhere on his back, lined with restrained muscle.
Nox smiled bitterly and pretended not to notice Khalid’s hesitation. It was only a circumstance Khalid neither cared about nor had any reason to care about.
“Over here.”
At a servant girl’s words, Nox went where they led him and stepped into the bath filled with water of a proper warmth.
It was a place far too luxurious for a slave.
A slave was someone who could be stripped beside a well in the corner of an estate and have water thrown over him without the right to say a single word.
As if lost in thought, Khalid stood there with his arms crossed and watched from beginning to end as the servant girls washed Nox.
Every time that gaze touched him, it felt as though it were piercing him.
And strangely, it tickled too.
By the time his body had finally been washed and a robe draped around him, Nox felt as though every bit of strength had been drained from him. The greatest reason, no doubt, was Khalid, who had watched him the whole time as though guarding against him.
After being washed, Nox was shoved back into Khalid’s room once more. He could not understand Khalid’s intentions at all.
Khalid’s room was larger than even his mother’s room in Nox’s memory, and it had more windows as well. In particular, the door that opened onto the terrace was larger than an ordinary door.
Nox stood there, unable either to sit or remain properly at ease, staring silently at the terrace door leading outside.