“There’s no need to go as far as calling it ‘borrowing a hand.'”
He already seemed fully focused on the incantations, as if he couldn’t hear such minor complaints.
To Liselotte, only a few scattered words reached her ears.
Just standing there holding hands felt like an awkward posture.
On top of that, one side kept muttering in confusion, while the other did nothing but stand still.
It felt like having her hand held as punishment back in kindergarten.
Wanting to do something at least, Liselotte asked with the intention of helping,
“How do you undo them?”
“I undo them again with an incantation. By recalling exactly the incantations I placed and releasing them as they are.”
‘Then wouldn’t it get confusing the more incantations you place?’
Thinking about it, even before, when she had accidentally entered his room, he had been muttering something.
It seemed to be the same symptom.
Her legs were starting to ache from standing there aimlessly, so Liselotte glanced around.
Her eyes, now accustomed to the darkness, took in his room, which truly had almost nothing in it.
“My room was really luxurious. How come there isn’t even a chair here?”
“I only sleep here.”
“My legs hurt. I want to sit.”
Only then did Eren react.
He led her to the bed.
After pressing Liselotte’s shoulder down with one hand and seating her on the bed, he himself sat down carelessly on the floor.
Using the bed as a backrest, he leaned against it and looked up at her with his head tilted back.
His clear golden eyes took her in, as if engraving something into memory.
Liselotte lay down casually on the bed and entrusted only her hand to him.
After all, the only thing she could do was offer her hand and wait for him to safely undo the incantations.
Being asked to stay still, when she was always the one to step forward, felt so unfamiliar that she didn’t even know what to do.
Up until before going to sleep, it had been routine for her to be looking over documents.
As Liselotte quietly gazed at the back of his head, fatigue pressed down on her eyelids.
Without even realizing it, she drifted off to sleep.
***
Late into the night before dawn.
In Eren’s room, there was no sound other than the steady rhythm of breathing.
Eren had long since returned to his usual state after undoing the incantations.
But the small hand was still tightly holding onto his.
More precisely, his large hand was the one that could not let go of that small warmth, clinging to it stubbornly.
The Word of Command was, by nature, meant to be used on others.
He had never even heard from the former Grand Duchess of using it on oneself to strengthen the body.
Usually, he only placed incantations to the extent that they would help with subjugations, and then undid them himself near the end.
As long as there were not many overlapping incantations, he had never once strained his body to this extent.
But this time, Liselotte, on whom the Word of Command did not work, was a variable for him.
He could not just stand by and watch such a small person tremble violently in pain.
When Liselotte met his eyes and spoke to him, Eren was completely defenseless.
He was used to people who shrank back in fear every time, or eventually turned their heads away to avoid him.
Seeing Liselotte maintain eye contact when she spoke made him feel as though he were walking a tightrope between an unfamiliar sensation and a sense of calm.
That feeling was even stronger on days like today, when she stared straight at him, clearly intent on pushing her point through.
Ridiculously enough, Eren liked it when those innocent eyes looked at him.
Unlike himself, when her clear eyes sparkled as if asking for something, he could not bring himself to refuse.
“So this sparkles too…”
Was this the sparkling the former Grand Duchess had spoken of?
He could not gather his thoughts.
If he were to say something like this to someone who thought of nothing more than a fountain pen as a means of self-defense, she would surely run away.
Eren was vaguely distinguishing between the things he should not say and the things he could say.
Subjugation force members lived daily lives of cutting and slashing, their senses dulled by it.
“She really has no fear.”
Slowly straightening up, Eren sat on the edge of the bed.
When incantations became entangled, it felt like a tangled skein of thread, making it impossible to sense what the cause was.
This was purely an instinctive perception. The only ones who knew of it were Ail and Ferento.
The only way to undo incantations was to quietly focus and search for the answer within the tangled skein.
But the moment he held Liselotte’s hand, the intricately tangled incantations were sorted out in an instant.
It became relatively clear where the starting point was and where they had become tangled.
Undoing the rest was his responsibility.
When he grasped her wrist, it felt like he could snap it with one hand.
So it was a little frightening. Eren had never, in his life, touched something this delicate.
“Just how does this even move?”
When he loosened his strength and gave it a small shake, it wobbled limply, swaying back and forth.
Worried that something might really go wrong at this rate, he carefully tightened his grip and held her hand firmly in his own.
Liselotte could be sharp and decisive at times, yet some parts of her were a little… pitiful.
She seemed to have no awareness at all that she lost her way every time Marsha or Ail was not with her.
She steadfastly believed otherwise, and since he did not want to shatter that belief, he simply let it be.
The thought of telling her she was directionally challenged and imagining her small frame trembling and growing dejected did not sit well with him.
“If she can never find her way for the rest of her life, that would be fine in its own way.”
Eren quietly looked down at her sprawled across the bed.
Moonlight poured brightly over him through the window.
His shadow shielded Liselotte so she would not wake.
The line of her neck, visible between her pale skin and thin negligee, stirred an urge to bite.
The emotions that had felt only vague before had become vivid in the carriage.
At first, her gaze had been flustered, but when she eventually clung to him, yearning for him, a strange sensation wrapped around his entire body.
He wanted her to call his name. He wanted her to want him a little more.
The slightly higher body temperature clinging to him, the waist that fit into one hand, all of it made it hard to pull away, utterly unsuited to the situation.
An instinctive sense sounded a warning.
He toyed with her pink hair. Unlike him, the soft strands slipped quickly through his fingers.
Finding that unsatisfying, he grasped it several times, and Liselotte shifted in her sleep.
“…You did it!”
The pronunciation was slurred, making it hard to understand clearly, but her brows creased as if something was uncomfortable.
It was strange. She seemed like someone whose words would never crumple, yet they slurred all the same.”
“Liselotte.”
Had he ever called her by name before?
When she was in the Imperial Palace, she was not someone just anyone could dare to call, and after the marriage, there had been no occasion to call her that way.
Perhaps because of that, the word rolling around in his mouth felt unfamiliar.
“Liselotte.”
“Mmm, Mister. You drank and went into the next house and insisted it was your home, right… Let’s settle this… let’s settle it…”
He could not even begin to guess what kind of dream she was having.
Thud, her head bumped against his thigh.
“Boksun, no…! If you run away… your mom keeps asking me to file charges… for trespassing…”
At this point, it was so absurd that a hollow laugh escaped him.
He did not dislike it. The faint, pounding sound of someone’s heartbeat made the quiet night all the more noisy.
“What on earth…? During the day you go around with such intensity in your eyes.”
Eren swept his gaze over Liselotte, who was sprawled messily beneath him.
His marriage to her had been unavoidable.
Not only was there no noble Lady willing to marry someone of nomadic blood like him, but if he were to meet an untimely death during subjugation, House Keilos would be handed over entirely to a collateral branch.
In that situation, the proposal that came from the Imperial Family was not bad.
The conditions she had set were also understandable when one looked at the former Grand Duke.
Above all, what pleased him most was that she had not been afraid of him.
She might shout at him in anger, but she was not frightened.
At the very least, it was better to fight than to look like someone who intimidated his wife.
But now, he felt that he had made quite a decent marriage.
He had never wished for a life like that of the former Grand Duke and his wife. As someone who had killed his parents, he had no right to wish for such a thing.
But.
“Just like this.”
As he lightly rubbed Liselotte’s furrowed brow with his index finger, he let out a small laugh.
Wouldn’t this much be all right?
