Whoooosh.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
The forge billowed scorching heat — the kind that made it hard to keep your eyes open.
The workers hammering red-hot iron against the anvil moved with savage intensity.
Daryl glanced back at the one person in this place who seemed to belong somewhere else entirely.
“Kasha. If you just hand over the schematics, I’ll take care of the commission with Hans myself. You really don’t need to come to a place like this…”
“I do. The structure and… the principles — they need to be explained precisely. That’s the only way to get a perfect result.”
Kasha held her schematics tight in both hands as she said it, and her cheeks were flushed — not entirely from the heat of the forge. She looked slightly, unmistakably excited.
“But you — are you really telling me you make magical artifacts? How on earth?”
Hans had stepped away briefly, and Daryl took the moment to ask again what had been nagging at him since they arrived.
“I studied. And after that… I took the principles and the ideas, and I researched from there.”
She said it the way one might explain that to grow an apple, you plant a seed and water it. The simplest, most obvious thing in the world.
“You’re seriously telling me you designed all of this by yourself?”
Daryl studied the schematics — complex at even a cursory glance — and scratched his head.
“Yes. Oh — is that Hans over there?”
She answered and then trailed off mid-sentence, already spotting the man returning across the floor. She walked straight toward him without the slightest hesitation.
Daryl watched her go and swallowed something complicated.
How much had he ever truly known about this half-sister of his?
Had he ever known her at all, really?
This girl who could nonchalantly announce that she had singlehandedly created an artifact that teams of mages at the Tower had spent years struggling to develop.
Was this girl — eyes bright, explaining her schematics to a craftsman without a trace of self-consciousness — really the same timid twelve-year-old who had walked through the estate gates clutching their father’s hand?
Kasha looked genuinely happy. Like a small child who had just stepped into a toy shop for the very first time.
Daryl tucked his unsettled feelings out of sight and followed her toward Hans.
“So you’re asking me to channel holy power into this?”
Leon examined the magical artifact Kasha had placed in his hands, turning it carefully.
“Yes. You see the round sphere in the center? There’s an intake point at the end. Just place your hand against it and focus your holy power there. For now… about a third of what you’re capable of channeling. Then with a different sample, half. Then with the next, the full amount. After that, I’ll test the operation as a prototype and…”
Leon listened quietly as Kasha explained — enthusiasm outpacing her hesitation, words tumbling over each other despite the stutter.
They were sitting beneath a white garden pavilion in the middle of the Rüschino estate’s modest but well-tended garden. Wisteria had wound its way up the columns and across the roof of the pavilion, creating a fragrant, dappled shade.
There was a reason they had come outside.
The steady rotation of Daryl’s informants through Kasha’s bedroom — an unbroken parade of interruptions — had made any kind of meaningful conversation there impossible.
Knock knock.
“Miss, please do have something cold to drink.”
Knock knock.
“Oh, I do apologize, Miss — I thought there might have been some cleaning left undone this morning. My goodness, would you look at the dust in here? Ho ho.”
Knock knock.
“…I’m told Lord Daryl may have dropped a handkerchief in here, and I’ve been asked to retrieve it.”
After Sena, the head housekeeper, and then the elderly butler had each taken their turn at the door, Kasha’s patience finally ran out.
And so it was that they found themselves here — outside, where Daryl could keep watch to his heart’s content, but where they could still talk in relative peace.
The hunting competition had been mentioned, and since then Kasha had been anxious to complete the work of channeling holy power into the artifacts as quickly as possible.
That competition is very important.
She had said it with a weight that left no room for doubt.
Partly for that reason, Leon had wrapped up his morning training and made his way to the Count’s estate, the books Kasha had requested tucked under his arm, borrowed from the library on the way.
Summer sunlight fell brilliant and unrestrained across the garden. Where it filtered through the wisteria above, it drew intricate spider-web patterns across Kasha’s dark hair.
Like a golden veil draped over her sleek black hair. Her pale pink eyes, softened by the light.
Leon found himself — against his will, more than once — losing the thread of his attention to these small things. The realization unsettled him.
“Over here.”
Perhaps reading his blank expression as confusion, Kasha reached out and took his hand, guiding it to the sphere on the artifact’s surface.
Even through his glove, the touch made him draw in a quiet, involuntary breath.
“…You have no sense of caution whatsoever, do you.”
“Sorry?”
Kasha looked up from the artifact with a genuinely puzzled blink.
Too close.
Leon looked into the deep pink eyes right in front of him and felt a sudden, fierce thirst rise inside him.
“Move back. I can manage this myself.”
He muttered it in a low, tight voice, and Kasha shifted obediently backward.
“I’m sorry. I was worried you might not… understand.”
The apology was there, but her attention was plainly still fixed entirely on the artifact — Leon could see it clearly.
He felt a strange, irrational petulance rise in his chest — one he couldn’t quite explain to himself — and pulled off his glove with slightly more force than necessary.
Hum.
The sphere reacted to his touch, glowing with a quiet golden light and trembling finely.
Kasha’s eyes sparked with fascination and she leaned in closer.
“So this is what holy power looks like.”
I just told you to move back.
He almost said it again — but stopped himself. Without quite meaning to, he pressed his power harder into the sphere.
Crack.
“Ah—!”
A fissure split across the surface of the sphere, and it crumbled apart in an instant.
“Are you all right? Did you hurt your hand?”
Kasha moved toward him with a worried expression, but he shook his head with a stiff face and held up a hand to stop her approach.
He set the broken artifact down, and she murmured with quiet disappointment.
“I thought a third of your capacity would be well within what it could handle…”
Something about her crestfallen expression made him feel strangely rushed.
“It wasn’t that — I failed to control the output. Let me try again. Give me another sample.”
The faint relief that moved across her face was immediate. She placed a new artifact into his hand without ceremony.
Her expression was absolutely earnest — not a single blink of distraction.
Buzz.
Without warning, a wild bee carved a threatening path between them.
Kasha startled and moved to recoil — and Leon reached out quickly, catching her by the shoulder.
The moment his hand met the bare skin there, the coolness and softness of it made his lips press closed on their own.
He contained the rising heat with considerable effort, and stretched his free hand toward the bee.
Kasha apparently thought he intended to catch it with his bare hand. Her eyes went wide with alarm.
Even the smallest change in her expression registered with vivid clarity. He focused hard on keeping his composure and directed a soft thread of holy power toward the bee.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
The bee calmed immediately, settled onto his open palm, and began exploring it with serene contentment.
“Oh.”
Kasha’s eyes curved into half-moons, and a small, delighted crinkle appeared at their corners.
“Holy power works on bees too. That’s remarkable.”
She leaned over his palm and watched the bee with her nose nearly touching his hand, studying it until it finally spread its wings and lifted back into the summer garden.
Buzz.
When it flew away, she tracked it with a wistful gaze. Her expression sank into some private thought, entirely absorbed — as though she had forgotten he was sitting right beside her.
That strange, irrational petulance surfaced in Leon again.
Thud.
He set the artifact down on the bench and crossed his arms.
Kasha looked up at him with round, confused eyes. He found himself registering — reflexively, against his will — that she had a kind of guileless quality to her, pale-faced and pink-eyed, that reminded him of a rabbit. He shook his head sharply.
He forced his expression into something sterner and deliberately turned his gaze toward the garden.
“…Why don’t you ask.”
He noticed, as he said it, that his manner of address kept drifting — veering between formal and informal with no consistency whatsoever.
He was aware of how little sense it made. It felt, in a way, like a reflection of his own state of mind when it came to her. Oscillating between wariness and curiosity, hostility and something like pity — and beneath all of that, between searing desire and a strange, restless flutter he had no good name for.
“Ask… what?”
Kasha replied slowly.
It really was remarkable how much more halting her speech became the moment they were no longer talking about her artifacts.
Her expression shifted too — a subtle blankness settling into her face. And yet even that strangeness caught at his attention somehow, in ways that made him uncomfortable.
He was still looking at her when suddenly his vision blurred and a wave of wanting crashed through him — abrupt and vivid and entirely unwelcome.
He wanted to press her back against the bench. Wanted to watch the color flush deeper into those pale pink eyes, watch them fill with tears. Wanted her to stop looking elsewhere, to look only at him —
Thwack.
Leon drove his fist hard into his own thigh.
God help me. I thought it had settled down over the past few days.
“…? Are — are you all right? What’s —”
Kasha startled and nearly lunged forward at the sight of him striking himself, but he thrust out a hand to stop her and she settled back with an awkward half-crouch.
Leon immediately summoned the image of Daryl’s face. That snorting, bear-like scowl of his. It was remarkably effective at dousing certain kinds of fires.
With his reason barely recovered, Leon picked up the conversation where it had been left.
“Ahem. What I mean is — why haven’t you asked me why I agreed to the contract?”
“Well… because you want to break the curse?”
“Doesn’t it strike you as strange that I’m choosing to believe you? You remain an extraordinarily suspicious woman.”
At the word suspicious, Kasha pulled back slightly and straightened herself. Her expression grew serious.
“Even so… you believe I hold a possibility.”
“A possibility, you say.”
“The possibility… of you being happy again.”
The unfamiliar word made Leon’s brow furrow.
“Happy…?”
“Yes. Happy.”
Pfft.
An involuntary, bitter curve pulled at the corner of Leon’s mouth.
What an idle, extravagant thing to say.
“Happiness. What right do I have to that?”
He was, after all, a fallen Holy Knight.
A man like him — happy?
The very idea would make the gods themselves furious.
What Leon wanted was nothing so grand as that. Only to find a way to disappear quietly — without exposing what he had become, without causing harm to his family or his name. To hold on until then without going completely mad.
That was the sum total of what he could allow himself to hope for.
And yet here she was, talking about happiness.
Then, unexpectedly, she spoke.
“Sir Leon.”
“……?”
“Sir Leon. I don’t know everything yet either, but… the right to happiness isn’t given to you. It’s something you earn for yourself.”
“…….”
“So don’t give up yet. Not yet.”
Shhhh.
A welcome breath of summer wind moved between them then, cool enough to cut through the heat of the afternoon.
Her long dark hair — blue-black in certain lights — stirred and lifted gently.
The fragrance of the wisteria was overwhelming.
And then, quite unexpectedly, a smile broke across Kasha’s pale face. Leon stared at her for a moment, at a loss for words.
His heart was beating. Far too hard.
He supposed he would need to train again today, until his body gave out entirely.
