3

Zayed let out a hollow laugh, genuinely at a loss.

“You may have forgotten, given the memory loss, but I’m only twenty-five. Who gets married at this age?”

“You do. Once I’m gone, there will be a scramble for your life. Facing that alone is worse than facing it with someone you love.”

“Wouldn’t I be putting my future wife through a great deal of trouble?”

“Bah, you protect her well enough!”

In the Empire’s north, it was customary to marry as young as eighteen, but the south was different. Southerners were unhurried and believed in marrying for love, so marriage there was something done at twenty-seven at the earliest.

Zayed’s appalled reaction was entirely reasonable.

“Ah, the same goes for the position of family head. Setting aside the matter of children, if you’re not married within a year, I’ll pass my seat to someone else.”

“You know I’d simply take it back. Why make this so troublesome?”

“Because I want to. I want to see you flustered over a wife before I die.”

On this fine sunny afternoon, with not a breath of wind, what was all this out of nowhere.

Zayed felt the tendons in his neck tighten as he let out a long breath. The scent of the palm wine he had been drinking mingled with the air.

To any outside observer, it was a perfectly peaceful scene. Except for the conversation.

“If you truly can’t find a woman to marry, wed your distant cousin Daphne.”

“That’s…… no.”

“Daphne is one of the rare superior Quilaisers in this world. She could manage your energy every day to keep you from losing control. She could handle you even during the Hunting Season, couldn’t she? She’s a fitting match.”

Zayed met his grandfather’s mischievous eyes head-on.

An aged predator with deep experience and authority, and a young predator who had not yet seized as much power as his grandfather. The two beasts stared each other down, and in the end, the one who could say ‘after everything I’ve done for you!’ won. That was Gillian.

“If you truly won’t have Daphne, I’ll bring two other superior Quilaisers a day for you to meet. Surely one of them will suit you.”

“Grandfather!”

“That’s settled then. Ha ha.”

This was coercion. Zayed knew it, but there was nothing he could do.

No matter how lawless he was, no matter how little he shrank from killing, this was his beloved grandfather. He could not simply remove someone for being inconvenient.

“Daphne. No.”

In the end, Zayed had no choice but to smile through gritted teeth.

“Oh? Then will you meet the others I bring?”

“…… No to that as well.”

“My, my.”

Gillian made a displeased sound at the repeated refusals. Zayed had no choice but to offer an answer his grandfather would find at least somewhat satisfying.

“Then three months. Give me three months to find a woman I could fall in love with. Will that do?”

“Hmph. Let’s see you manage it. But don’t forget, your wife must be a Quialaiser. If you go past the deadline, you do things my way and meet the candidates I arrange.”

“Understood. Watch me.”

He had lost this round.

Rising from his seat, Zayed clenched his fist.

‘What he said about speaking with the emperor is no lie.’

He knew his grandfather as well as his grandfather knew him.

The iron-blooded family head who had spent his entire life as a superior Master protecting the south. The man who had built the Idmazel family into a house of such immense wealth that even the emperor could not treat it lightly. A single word from his grandfather could gather or scatter thousands of people. Wherever you went in this Empire, there was nothing but respect for him. The imperial palace received him with the highest possible honors. That said everything.

His grandfather followed through on what he said he would do.

‘Swapping out the will is too shallow a trick to fool him.’

That night, back in his hideout tucked away in the back alleys, Zayed stroked the hair of the women who pressed close to him and sank into thought.

‘I have the casino, and the businesses I’ve built in the back alleys. So even without the Idmazel name, I could get by.’

But if this life in the shadows was his darkness, the family was his sun.

He didn’t want to lose it.

His grandfather knew exactly how much he was attached to the Idmazel name, which was why he had used the family as leverage.

‘So. What do I do about this?’

A crooked smile settled on Zayed’s lips.

He liked making fools of people. He enjoyed lavishing someone with kindness, then blindsiding them and laughing at their dazed expression. The sight of someone crying from a wound he had dealt excited him.

The problem was that every one of these twisted tendencies was a mirror image of his grandfather’s.

‘And the bigger problem is that whatever I’m thinking, Grandfather has already anticipated it.’

This was a game of reading each other’s moves. His grandfather had cast the net, and he had to find a way out of it.

‘Tch. He was moaning around like he’d be dead in a few days, and that was all an act too, I suppose.’

It was true that his grandfather’s health had declined. He was holding on with medication, but three years at most.

That was why thoughts of his grandfather had been making Zayed soft lately. And his grandfather had used that against him beautifully.

“Something on your mind?”

“Mm. Just wondering when my beloved grandfather might breathe his last.”

He smiled at the women pressing close to him and gave his answer, then sank the back of his head deep into the plush sofa cushion.

‘A marriage contract for around three years isn’t difficult to arrange.’

Call it filial duty. Stay married while the old man was still alive, have a child in the process, and settle the question of the next family head ahead of time. Not a bad plan.

The problem was finding a woman who would agree to it.

‘She needs to look convincing, but ultimately be a nobody. Someone who can’t exert any influence over me or the family.’

She would need to be perceptive, a good actress, and bold. They would have to put on a convincing performance of being deeply in love.

‘But Grandfather will probably see through the act anyway.’

To get past him without raising suspicion, a child was ultimately necessary. He was the kind of old-fashioned man who believed a child was proof of love.

‘In other words, to win this bet and avoid those wretched blind dates, I need a woman who can get pregnant within three months. But she also has to be willing to leave the child behind.’

Proposing this to any noblewoman was out of the question. They placed too much value on bloodlines.

‘Finding an ordinary person wouldn’t be hard, but the fact that Grandfather wants a Quialaiser is its own headache.’

Ordinary people, Masters, Quilaisers. Three kinds of people lived together in this country.

Ninety-five percent of the Empire’s population were ordinary people with black hair and black eyes. Masters, those transcendent beings, made up a mere one point eight percent. But Masters could draw on divine power, and the more they used their abilities, the more madness seeped into them. That was why the calming, purifying ability of a Quialaiser was absolutely essential.

Only zero point two percent of the population, however, were superior Quilaisers. And every single one of them was a noble.

When a Master and a superior Quialaiser paired, there was a high probability their child would also be a Master. With a recessive Quialaiser, that probability was cut in half.

The rare superior Quilaisers knew their worth. They had been raised without want, treated as precious, and their pride reflected it. Arrogant creatures, every one of them. There was no chance any of them would agree to a contract marriage, a performance, any of it.

‘Which means I have to look among the recessive Quilaisers.’

But recessive Quilaisers weren’t exactly plentiful either. They made up roughly three percent of the population, and most were already tracked by the state. The odds of the emperor or his grandfather finding out about a marriage contract were far too high.

“I’m going to lose my mind.”

To summarize, what he needed was this: a woman who could get pregnant within three months, who would then leave the child behind, who would not become attached to him, who was bold and a convincing actress, who had not been touched by the emperor or his grandfather, and who was an off-the-books recessive Quialaiser.

Where in the world was a woman like that supposed to exist?

‘Right here, it turns out.’

Zayed studied the filthy, grimy, disheveled woman and let out a satisfied sound low in his throat.

She was a woman he would enjoy dressing up from head to toe.

Win her, and the bet with his grandfather was his.

He was certain of it.

***

In all the years since she had been locked up at eighteen, now twenty-four, Yul had been brought to the director’s office exactly three times. All recent, all for the purpose of being administered some suspicious new drug of unknown origin.

So she had no warm feelings toward the director’s office.

“Make me find you interesting within three seconds.”

She had no warm feelings toward the man lounging arrogantly in the chair the director always sat in, either.