Led up to the second-floor study, Kasha made a quiet round of the bookshelves.
The collection was remarkable — as befitted the household of a Grand Duke who ranked among the top five in the imperial line of succession.
That edition — I don’t think the Imperial Library even has a copy of that one…
Her fingers itched.
Focus. This is not the time.
To redirect herself from the shelves, she got up and began making a slow circuit of the room.
Oh…
A family portrait. Five beautiful people posed together in a warm grouping. Her eye was drawn to the small infant beside Leon, beaming a gap-toothed smile.
That must be Eve Aranias.
Leon’s younger siblings — the baby, the youngest and only daughter of the Grand Ducal family. She would be about ten years old now.
A memory surfaced — something Leon had murmured in the ruins of the temple, on one of those long nights.
If only I had held her one more time. One more time, I should have turned back and looked at her properly. I don’t know how I’ll ever stop regretting it.
She remembered his eyes then — that hollowed-out quality.
She remembered what he had said. The person most precious to him in the world, his youngest sister.
And…
Looking at the bright, unguarded face of infant Eve, Kasha’s expression fell.
Another victim of the magestones.
Thinking of what Eve was going to endure made the biscuits she’d eaten feel heavy in her stomach.
One thing at a time. Change one thing at a time. Get Leon on your side first. There’s still time before Eve is in danger.
She steadied herself.
The baby in the portrait looked to be about two years old, which would put it roughly eight years ago. Leon in the painting was in his late teens — an entirely different presence than the man he was now.
Radiant vitality, coexisting with a kind of unspoiled purity. A boy who was already luminous enough to make you think he had a halo, yet unmistakably young and human in it.
Nothing like the dangerous edge he has now.
On the opposite side of the parents from Leon stood a slender, delicate-featured boy with the look of fragile health about him — that must be the elder of the two younger brothers, Anthony.
Anthony takes after his mother.
Where Leon and Eve had inherited the Grand Duke Oscilote’s platinum hair and violet eyes, Anthony had his mother’s silver hair and green eyes to the last detail.
…And this must be Saint Larissa.
Leon’s mother, Larissa, was beautiful in the way of a lily of the valley — pure and clear and simply lovely. She had been revered in her lifetime as one of the most powerful holy women in the empire’s recorded history. She had died when Eve was three years old.
Leon must have grown up as the heir apparent to his mother’s legacy — the son expected to carry on what she had left behind.
And carry it on he had, in more than holy power alone — he had his father’s build, and a talent for swordsmanship that made him exceptional.
Looking at five people who resembled each other, smiling together with an ease that spoke of genuine warmth, she felt something small and wistful move through her.
Family.
She had never had a real one.
She was so deep in thought that she didn’t hear the footsteps approaching behind her.
“I wasn’t aware spying on other people’s belongings was a hobby of yours.”
Kasha startled and turned around.
Leon was standing about three paces away, watching her.
Freshly washed, hair still damp, lashes still slightly wet — it made his beauty unusually distracting. Not simply beautiful, exactly — far too dangerous and complicated for that word alone.
The thin shirt he wore did nothing to conceal the lines of his build.
Looking at him, the thought came to her again.
He really is the kind of man anyone would want.
Whether or not he noticed her gaze moving over him without any trace of embarrassment, Leon pressed his brow and gestured.
“Weren’t you the one who wanted to talk? Sit.”
“Yes.”
When Kasha moved to take the chair beside him, Leon startled slightly and pointed to the one across the table instead.
He spoke the moment she sat down — without quite meeting her eyes.
“I trust you’re aware that if I chose to, I could remove someone like you without any particular effort.”
A threat for an opening gambit. Kasha responded as pleasantly as she could.
“Of course.”
He let one corner of his mouth tilt up.
“Good. I’m actually weighing my options at this very moment. What method would be most effective for getting you to tell the truth.”
He leaned back in his chair and laced his long fingers together, issuing the warning at a leisurely pace — his cold eyes making clear this was not for effect.
Kasha replied, calm as still water.
“Decide what to do with me after you’ve heard what I have to say.”
There was a knock at the door then. A servant entered, setting a tea service on the table.
Conveniently, Kasha was thirsty. She reached for the teapot without ceremony and began to pour.
He watched her without a word while she did it.
The porcelain pot was heavier than it looked — the blue veins in the back of her pale hand rose noticeably against the effort.
Trickle.
As the tea fell into the cup, the air in the room seemed to grow denser — but she was too busy concentrating on not spilling to notice.
When she finally lifted her eyes, she caught what looked like him glancing away — rather quickly, as though redirecting his gaze from somewhere he hadn’t meant to keep it.
Ahem.
Leon cleared his throat.
“Very well. Let’s start with this curse you mentioned.”
Kasha wet her throat with a sip before speaking.
She thought about how much to tell him.
Three magestones.
Three clear stones — each with a name: Onor, Opus, Kailum.
Forged through pacts with demons in the age of ancient magic, each stone housed a different and formidable power.
The first magestone, Onor: attraction and renown. Whoever holds it becomes beloved by all.
The second, Opus: strength. The one who possesses it gains a body no force can break.
The third, Kailum: immortality. The owner of this stone lives, in the truest sense, forever.
But equal to each stone’s power is a curse of equal magnitude. That is why, for all their power, these stones had lain dormant through the ages.
The curse bound to the first magestone, Onor, was lust.
In exchange for irresistible allure and fame, the bearer was condemned to be consumed by desire. A trap only a demon would set.
“That is the curse you’re under.”
Kasha finished.
Every halting word of it, Leon had listened to without interrupting.
“Magestone Onor.”
He repeated it quietly, leaning back in his chair.
An expression that revealed almost nothing.
Kasha wanted him to believe her.
If he agreed to work with her, the entire plan — saving him, saving herself — could move forward.
“One question.”
Leon raised his head.
Those burning violet eyes met hers — and the sensation that ran through her was almost physical.
“How exactly do you know any of this?”
“…….”
“You may not know this, but I’m the Vice-Commander of the Holy Order. And my mother was one of the most revered holy women in the history of this continent. I grew up learning about the divine and the demonic from childhood. And yet I have never once heard of these magestones. So — who are you, that you should know of them?”
Kasha touched her tongue briefly to her lips. Everything she had told him so far had been the truth.
But from here, she would have to mix truths with careful omissions. For her own protection.
She was concentrating so thoroughly that she didn’t notice Leon watching, with rather fixed attention, the small motion of her tongue.
“I’m a magitool maker.”
The confession was unexpected enough that his eyebrow rose.
“A magitool maker?”
“Yes. I’ve been studying independently for about three years. Made my first real breakthrough about a year ago.”
“Are you affiliated with the Mage Tower?”
“No. I studied alone. I find groups… a bit much. I’m introverted.”
“…….”
Leon studied her face.
Introverted.
She was, admittedly, a different kind of presence than the ladies he usually encountered in society. Simply dressed. Slender in a way that drew notice. And yet there was something about her — a maturity in certain unguarded expressions that seemed at odds with her years.
Though calling her introverted seemed at odds with the way she’d handled herself at the ball, or the fact that she had simply marched herself into his household today.
“Regardless. Let’s accept that for now. How did you learn about the magestones specifically?”
“A magician — someone who gave me guidance on one of my early tools — told me. He had discovered a way to separate a magestone’s power from its curse.”
Kasha explained: the magician had come across the method by accident. But afterward, the stones had been taken from him without his knowledge. In the course of trying to reclaim them, he had uncovered that Leon was the first victim of the first stone.
Nearly everything she said was true — except for the fact that she herself was the unnamed magician.
“His name?”
“…Wolfbane.”
“Can you contact him?”
“Not anymore. I don’t know where he is now.”
“Wolfbane. Odd — I feel as though I’ve heard that name somewhere.”
“…….”
Kasha felt a flicker of something cautious as she looked at his furrowed brow.
Wolfbane. A name that, within a year, would be known across the entire continent.
As the leader of a spreading infestation of possessed creatures and dark beasts, a plague spreading through every corner of the known world. And Wolfbane was, in fact, the bearer of one of the three stones — Opus.
Did Leon know someone by that name?
She was running that thought through her head when she shifted her hair back behind her shoulder. The motion brought the curved neckline of her dress into view, exposing the line of her collarbones.
Leon, who had just glanced up, caught the movement and lost his focus. He opened his mouth with irritated abruptness.
“Right. Let’s say I take your loose excuse for a story at face value. Next question.”
“…….”
“What do you want from me?”
“…I—”
“Spare me the speech about hoping I’ll be happy.”
He said it with undisguised sarcasm — and his gaze, despite the tone, was directed somewhere below her face.
“Miss Kasha Rüschino. You’re holding an enormous piece of leverage over me. One word from you and I’m buried — I and my entire family. Hunted by my own Order. A fallen paladin cursed by a demon.”
He let out a short, self-deprecating sound. Then he closed his eyes and tipped his head back against the chair.
The veins at his temple were visible.
The symptoms again. Already.
Kasha felt something in her chest pull tight.
She had always felt the ache of hearing the victims’ anguished grief in the prison — the crowds who had suffered because of the magitools and the magestones.
But watching Leon’s pain was a different kind of hurt. More private. More specific.
Whether it was simply guilt, or something in the tangled thread of fate that bound them — she couldn’t quite say.
She pressed back the impulse to move toward him. And then his eyes opened.
Red at the edges.
