"Wingardium Leviosa."
The incantation was cool, precise.
A shimmer of invisible force lifted Eriri's sweat-slicked body from mine just as her back had begun to arch, her breath catching in that final, desperate hitch toward climax.
"Flipendo."
The second spell followed instantly, a sharp, telekinetic shove.
It wasn't brutal, but it was utterly unyielding.
Eriri was flung sideways across the rumpled sheets with a gasp that was pure shock, her moment of release violently severed.
She landed in a tangled heap of limbs and my discarded shirt, her skin flushed and trembling with interrupted ecstasy.
I let myself go limp against the headboard, the picture of exhausted depletion.
My chest heaved with exaggerated breaths, my limbs lying heavy.
I turned my head slowly, my gaze landing on Sayuri.
She stood framed in the doorway, not in her usual elegant kimono, but in a sleek, dark robe tied tightly at the waist.
Her wand was held steady, but her face was a mask of glacial, furious betrayal.
"Eriri," she said, and her voice was so cold it seemed to freeze the humid air in the room. "What possible insanity gave you the courage to lay a hand on your own stepfather?"
Eriri pushed herself up on shaky arms.
Her eyes, when they met her mother's, weren't filled with guilt or shame, but with a hollow, defiant emptiness.
The last threads of her restraint had snapped.
"You stole him from me, Mother." The words were flat, final. "I saw him first, and you just… took him. You stole him."
Sayuri didn't flinch. Her rebuke was a lash, stern and unforgiving. "I stole nothing. He came to me. Now, take my dress off your filthy skin and get out of my house. I have clearly spoiled you beyond all reason."
A cold, mirthless snort escaped Eriri.
She stood, her legs visibly unsteady, and fixed her gaze on me.
That desperate, possessive hope was back in her eyes, shining through the chaos. "Well, then I'll just take Ito-kun with me. How about it, Ito-kun?"
Her voice tried for sweetness but cracked with raw need. "Don't you want to come with me? We can be together, just us."
The sheer, staggering delusion of it hung in the air. Any sane man would be traumatized—raped, drugged, used as a pawn in a psychotic fantasy, and then asked to willingly follow his captor. It was a level of grandiose narcissism that bordered on the sublime.
Even Sayuri's formidable composure fractured further.
Her wand hand tensed, the tip now aimed directly at her daughter's heart.
"Must I repeat myself?" she hissed, each word a dagger of ice. "Get. Out."
"Mother," Eriri shot back, squaring her shoulders with a fearlessness that was both admirable and utterly unhinged. "Don't stand in our way. You can't force him to stay with you. His heart is mine."
A tense, electric silence descended.
The bedroom, which should have been a sanctuary, the prelude to a wedding night, had become a battleground. The silken sheets were the disputed territory, the air thick with the scent of sex, perfume, and ozone from spent magic.
Mother and daughter, locked in a stalemate over the limp, "helpless" prize between them.
Perfect.
The chaos was my canvas. This was my moment to peel back the final layer of mystery Sayuri had guarded so closely and seize the real power here for myself.
I let a weak, strained whisper escape my lips, directing it toward Sayuri. "Sister Sayuri… please. The paralysis from the drug… can you help me?"
Her gaze snapped to me, the fury softening momentarily into concern.
With a flick and a murmur too low for me to catch, she aimed her wand.
A warm, dissolving sensation washed through my muscles, a gentle counter-spell unwinding the chemical knots Eriri had tied.
Feeling flooded back into my limbs—the power to move, to act.
Once I was free, Sayuri positioned herself firmly between Eriri and me, a protective barrier of silk and righteous anger.
Her warning glare at her daughter promised swift magical retribution for any sudden moves.
I pushed myself up slowly, playing the confused, vulnerable beneficiary of this magical war.
I looked at Sayuri, my eyes wide with a carefully measured blend of awe and fear.
"Sayuri…" I began, my voice gentle, probing. "How… how can you do that? Magic… is it real?"
Eriri couldn't help herself.
She answered before her mother could, a frantic desire to control the narrative flashing in her eyes. "We're wizards, Ito-kun! Purebloods from an ancient family. But don't be afraid! I would never touch the Dark Arts. They're vile, corrupting… they poison everything, even the people you love."
She pointed an accusatory finger at Sayuri. "That's why you need to stay away from her. She's not just my mother. She's a witch."
Sayuri's response was a disdainful, icy sneer.
She elegantly settled beside me on the ravaged bed, her demeanor shifting from protector to possessive queen. "And that pathetic morality is why you are weak, Eriri. You cling to childish notions of 'normalcy' while true power waits to be claimed."
She then drew me to her, cradling my head against the incredible softness of her chest.
Her fingers, gentle and perfumed, stroked through my hair in a soothing, rhythmic motion.
"Don't you worry about a thing, my sweet boy," she murmured, her voice a honeyed promise laced with venom. "I will deal with Eriri. She will never set foot in our home again. She is no daughter of mine."
She lifted her gaze from me, and all the false warmth drained away, replaced by an arctic finality that she directed at Eriri. "You are disowned. From this family. From this name. From everything."
Eriri absorbed the decree without a flinch. Instead, a cold, determined smirk twisted her lips.
"So be it, Mother," she spat the title like a curse. "Then I'll just take it all back for myself. Ito-kun. This house. Everything you hold dear."
With one last, scorching look of possessive promise aimed directly at me, she turned on her heel.
The sound of her furious, stomping footsteps echoed down the hallway, a violent percussion marking her exit and the true beginning of the war.
I looked up at Sayuri, my brow creased with a concern that felt appropriately tender and wounded. "But… will she be alright out there? By herself?"
A soft, bitter sound escaped Sayuri's lips—not quite a laugh, more a sigh of profound resignation.
She cupped my cheek, her thumb stroking the skin as if marveling at my naivete. "Oh, you sweet, sweet boy. After what she just did to you… you still worry for her."
She shook her head slowly, a strand of her dark hair falling across her face. "She will be perfectly fine, my love. She may have never applied herself, but the blood in her veins is still a witch's. The doors to Mahoutokoro, the school of magic, remain open to her. She will likely flee there now, to lick her wounds and learn just enough to become a more irritating problem."
I let a spark of hopeful fascination light up my eyes. I turned my body toward her, the picture of eager yearning. "Sayuri… could I learn it, too? Magic? Could you teach me?"
Her reaction was immediate and telling.
She glanced away, breaking our gaze, a flicker of something hard and calculating passing behind her gentle mask.
"I'm sorry, my darling Ito-kun," she said, her voice taking on a soothing, regretful tone. "But your magical circuits… they are pitifully few. Even with a lifetime of study, you could never achieve real power. And the knowledge itself would do you more harm than good. Our kind can sense one another. The laws that protect ordinary people do not extend into the shadows of the extraordinary world. To learn is to become visible… and vulnerable."
I frowned, processing this with a show of dawning fear. "So, if I learned… I'd be exposed? And no one could protect me?"
There was a flaw in her story, I thought coldly. A glaring one. If that were true, why had she been so daring, so blatant, in using a Death Note to try and kill me, an "ordinary" person?
And the convenient death of my father… it reeked of the same shadowy handiwork. We were both supposed to be ordinary.
Yet she had moved against us without fear of this so-called 'detection'.
Sure enough, she revealed her true fangs, sheathed in velvet concern.
"Of course, that isn't the full truth," she murmured, leaning closer, her scent enveloping me. "If you were to stay by my side, within these walls… you could learn all you wish. No one would dare lay a finger on you here. This mansion is more than a home; it is a sanctuary. My sanctuary."
"And if I left?" I asked, the question hanging softly in the air.
Her grip on my hand tightened almost imperceptibly. "Then you would only be safe… when I am with you. My presence is your shield."
She continued, her voice dropping to a patient, ominous whisper. "You must understand, Eriri is out there now. She is dangerous, vengeful, and will soon have newfound power. I don't wish to frighten you, my love, but I think you can imagine what would happen if she… sniffed you out the moment you stepped beyond my protection."
She framed it not as a threat from her, but as a deadly fact of my new reality.
The prison walls were being erected not with iron, but with fear.
"But in here," she concluded, pressing a kiss to my forehead, her voice returning to a soothing murmur, "in here, you are safe, Ito-kun. This is my ward. My sanctum. My magical workshop. Not even the most powerful sorcerer from the Association would dare to cross its threshold uninvited."
And there it was. The final piece of her gambit snapped into place with chilling clarity.
Now I understood. Her seemingly lenient act of letting Eriri storm out wasn't mercy or poor judgment. It was a masterstroke. She hadn't released a daughter; she had unleashed a hound.
She had consciously manufactured a dangerous, external threat—a vengeful, soon-to-be-powered witch who bore a specific obsession against me.
It was all to add another heavy chip to the pile.
Another reason, another terrifying excuse, to confine me further within this gilded cage.
Every crisis, every external threat, was being meticulously engineered or exploited to reinforce one single, screaming message: The world outside is lethal. Your only safety is here. Your only protector is me.
Even now, in the shattered aftermath of her daughter's assault, she was seamlessly weaving the event into her tapestry of control.
Amazing.
A woman of this world continued to astonish me.
Not with simple cruelty or passion, but with this profound, chilling genius for control.
Every word, every act of "kindness," every display of "protection" was a move in a silent, desperate game of possession.
The depth of the manipulation was a dark art far more impressive than any spell she could whisper.
She was building a paradise whose only exit led straight into the jaws of a monster she herself had created. And she was doing it all while stroking my hair, her eyes full of what looked like love.
It was, I had to admit, utterly brilliant.