Ollie was walking toward the family cemetery holding the hand of her youngest sibling Karl, who was three years younger. Today was Karl's birthday and therefore his mother's death anniversary. A day to celebrate the birthday in the morning and visit the cemetery in the afternoon. Even Karl, who had no memories whatsoever of his mother, was downcast amidst his brothers' silence.
The fathers usually stayed in the demon forest or the border regions, but today they had all arrived at the cemetery. After losing their mate seven years ago, the fathers had lost half their souls. The warmth and passion had vanished from their eyes, leaving only a chilly languor. The gaze that grew vivid only during battle looked indifferent during normal times, as if draped with a thin veil. Yet even so, as Ollie drew near the cemetery, they turned their eyes toward her and briefly regained some warmth.
"Ollie, it's been a while."
"You've grown a great deal."
"You look more like Mother every day."
The fathers spoke one by one, each embracing Ollie once before stepping back.
Ollie subtly pushed Karl forward, but the fathers merely nodded in acknowledgment and showed no further interest.
Karl did not particularly mind. Though still young, he was a man of the clan.
The first father, who had been the head of the family, died in battle three years ago. He had been brave and strong, but after losing his mate, his sword lost its way. He roamed battlefields, achieving impossible consecutive victories that defied differences in strength, but in truth, he was in the process of committing suicide. Because he was too strong, his suicide took four years. In his final moments, surrounded by over thirty knights including a Swordmaster, the instant he died after killing twelve of them, a satisfied smile likely hung at his lips.
Mother's grave was covered in Rohana flowers offered by the fathers and brothers, shining white. Ollie let go of Karl's hand and split the Rohana flower she held in her other hand in two, placing half on top of Mother's grave and the other half on the tombstone of the first father beside her.
Because Father had died in enemy lines during battle, his grave was empty. The enemy did not return the body of the father who had slaughtered countless knights and soldiers of their nation all this time. When burying Mother, the fathers' hair had been placed together inside the coffin. Therefore, Father's grave was essentially Mother's grave as well. Still, Ollie thought of the tombstone engraved with her father's name as the grave that commemorated his death.
The sound of a bell announcing noon rang in the distance. The remaining family of the woman who had died seven years ago stood before the cemetery, closed their eyes, and reminisced about her when they heard the bell. As it was the Countess's death anniversary, the bell that usually rang five times tolled twenty-five times, and the family, who had kept a long silence, opened their eyes and raised their heads one by one as the bell fell still. In silence, they each kissed the tombstone and left the cemetery.
Ollie held Karl's hand, kissed their mother's tombstone, and then kissed the first father's tombstone beside it as well. The brothers only kissed their mother's tombstone, but Karl followed his sister's example and kissed their father's tombstone too, then held his sister's hand and walked toward the castle following behind his brothers.
The Mallaktajenda family was uniformly taciturn. The fathers had originally been men of few words, but after that day seven years ago, they hardly spoke at all. Even to the sons they met at the cemetery, they merely nodded in acknowledgment, and only to Ollie did they barely manage a sentence each. The brothers, still young boys, were also sparing with their words. They mostly spoke only when communication was absolutely necessary. Of course, they sometimes made meaningless remarks to Ollie. About the weather, and such.
The eldest, Errol, who had no imprinted mate for eight years after birth, was as taciturn and belligerent as his emotional deficiency, but he did not show his belligerent side when with Ollie. The clan's eldest sons mostly possessed similar personalities. Since it was rare for the firstborn to be a daughter, the eldest son usually grew up without being imprinted for anywhere from three to ten years. Due to the clan's nature of feeling even their parents as strangers, after spending infancy in a state of seeming to exist utterly alone in the world, their belligerence became pronounced, and in most cases it transformed into obsession with the imprinted mate they obtained later. Like the first father's suicide.
After the first father, Count Mallaktajenda, died in battle, the Count title was inherited by the eldest son, Errol. As a Margrave, he did not need to go to the imperial capital to receive the title succession; he succeeded in the territory and only sent documents to the capital for approval. He had received the practical authority of the Count title at fifteen, but it was this year, when he turned eighteen—the age of adulthood in the Empire—that he would officially become Count.
At the dinner held on Mother's death anniversary, Errol spoke as the head of the family.
"In a month, on my eighteenth birthday, I will become the head of our Mallaktajenda house. And from that day, I intend to join with Ollie."
Jes, two years younger than he, Tima three years younger than Jes, and Ted one year apart from Tima, froze. Only Karl failed to understand the meaning, taking his eyes off his plate of food and looking around at the rigid atmosphere.
"Since Ollie is still young, I intend to only share her bedroom for now. Actual consummation will be after her first menstruation, and the union for the sake of childbirth will take place after she reaches adulthood."
The fathers' eyes gleamed with a chill light, but that was all. Ollie was the daughter they loved most in the world right now, perhaps the only one they loved, but she was merely a stranger after all, merely a fragment of their dead mate, and they also understood the pain of the eldest son who had turned eighteen while his mate was still so young. Though she was their daughter, he was the head of the family, so they had to obey, and if things went as he said, the loss of virginity and the life-risking childbirth were still matters of the distant future.
Though the fathers agreed in silence, Jes, sixteen years old, clenched his fist and trembled as he raised an objection.
"Ollie is still ten."
"She will not become the Countess immediately. It is eight years until she comes of age, and it will be several more years before she becomes a woman. I am already eighteen. It is impossible to go on without contact with my mate any longer."
"Then... then what about me!"
"...Jes, when you come of age, I will share her bedroom with you. Not only you, but all brothers who have imprinted on her as their mate, I will accept. This is officially permitted, as the head of the family."
At Errol's declaration, the gaze of Jes, who had been glaring at him, wavered, and after a moment he lowered his eyes and bowed his head. Tima, Ted, and Karl also bowed their heads. Regardless of Ollie's will, at that moment the brothers became Ollie's husbands. In truth, the will of the brothers or Ollie's will were not obstacles. It was simply destiny. The destiny of their house, of their clan.
Since long ago, even before unification under the Empire, several houses in the North had maintained a special culture unique to their clan. There was a legend that these ruling class people had descended from farther north, and judging by their appearance, which was markedly different from ordinary commoners or serfs of the North, they certainly seemed to be an entirely different people. Their appearance was so unique that it was difficult to find similarity among the many peoples of the vast Empire, and their closed family culture prevented the inflow of mixed blood, so they had not yet lost that uniqueness.
The male children had pitch-black hair, while the female children had silver hair tinged with bright gray. The irises of both men and women were a metallic silver, but the male children had darker shades while the female children had a bright silver-gray similar to their hair. Their skin was a white paler and more bleached than any people on the continent; though the male children, raised as warriors from birth, were tanned by the sun and thus not so striking, the female children, raised only indoors, were a white so seemingly lacking in pigment it appeared almost mysterious.
The birth rate was such that female children were not even half that of male children. Usually, when two or three sons were born, about one daughter would be born. And when the clan's male children met their mate, they would be imprinted. An imprint where the heart trembled at first sight and that existence was perceived as more brilliant and vivid than anything else in the world. The imprint occurred the moment they first met, and it happened only once in a lifetime. There were occasional cases among the clan where one failed to meet the object of their imprinting for their entire life.
Usually, the object of imprinting was one of their sisters, and in the rare case that one imprinted on a girl from a different house rather than a sister, usually that girl's brothers would accept him, but occasionally there were cases where he was killed by the girl's brothers. Most of the time only male children were born without sisters, and even when there were sisters, it was almost unheard of to imprint on a girl from another house.
Though it was a very rare occurrence, if there were two girls, the brothers' imprinting would be divided between them. In this case, when the girls came of age, the family line would split into two houses. It had not happened once in several hundred years for three or more girls to be born.
Since imprinting happened regardless of individual intent or will, it could truly be called destiny. Once imprinting occurred, that person became the only meaningful human being in the world and the meaning of life itself. They were the only existence that approached with color in a colorless life, and arousal occurred only toward the imprinted mate.
Upon being absorbed into the Empire, they became the only clan permitted to practice fraternal consanguineous marriage, which was allowed only in the Imperial royal family. Externally, it appeared that only the eldest son practiced consanguineous marriage, but in reality it was fraternal polyandry. Only the male children imprinted. The female children only received the imprint. Of course, the males who had imprinted were special to them as well, but only to that extent; they could not know the sensations and emotions felt by the males.
That is why Ollie could not understand them. They were beloved family and precious brothers, but they were creatures beyond her understanding, faces reddening and breathing deeply, fingertips trembling at even such trivial contact as holding her hand and kissing the back of it. Only Karl was special. Unlike his other brothers who had imprinted on her the moment she was born as a newborn, Karl had imprinted on her the instant he himself was being born.
Perhaps because of this, Karl perceived her as an existence like his mother. From the moment he opened his eyes until he went to bed, he followed her around in daily life, studying when she studied and eating when she ate. From the time she was three, Ollie too had felt maternal affection for her youngest sibling, who followed her like a baby duckling having lost his mother, and loved him like a son.
From when she was very young, the brothers had treated her as their Lady. When they encountered her, they would kneel, meet her eye level, take her hand, and kiss her fingers; when they left for hunts or departed for battlefields for several days, they would hold her preciously and kiss her cheek. At such times, she too would offer the handkerchief prepared by the maids instead of her young self, for their safe return, and they would tuck their Lady's handkerchief into their garments and head for the battlefield.
In the Empire one became an adult at eighteen, but on the border one was recognized as a warrior at fourteen. As a clan of warriors, they already possessed the martial prowess to effortlessly defeat the combined attacks of three or four ordinary knights at fourteen. As long as they didn't engage in reckless battles, survival was not an issue, and in young Ollie's eyes, the rest of her brothers except Karl were no different from distant adults. They were not beings she needed to worry about.
Errol was the eldest and strongest among them.
Even the fathers obeyed Errol. At fifteen, when he ascended to the position of head of the family, he had already possessed the height and physique of an adult, and his martial strength exceeded that of adults. Now at eighteen, he was the tallest not only among his brothers but in the entire territory, and despite his boyishly slender frame, his whole body was covered with taut muscles and minor scars obtained from the battlefield.
With a blade-sharp nose bridge that looked so keen and cold it sent shivers down one's spine, steel-colored irises with upturned tips, and pitch-black dark hair swept back slightly long so that it shone silver when catching the light, his expressionless face made him appear arrogant and cruel. The only feature on his face that looked alive was his lips, provocatively plump with a blood-like hue, but even they were firmly pressed together with austere restraint, contributing to his sharp impression.
---------= Author's Note =---------
As Adi advised, I corrected Ollie to Errol.
I was confused about both of their names from the beginning, wasn't I? ㅠㅠ
Thank you for reporting the typo^^
Corrected a typo thanks to Minsyara's report.
Thank you for the report^^
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