Leon stopped walking.
He turned to look at Kasha, and for the first time all day there was something genuine in his expression. Something he could not entirely suppress.
Discomfort.
While Kasha studied his face, trying to understand, the voice from the sitting room continued — edged with temper, with something barely held in check.
“What business does that woman have coming here? How dare they invite guests without my permission — “
“Father. You’re aware that Kasha Rüschino is in a courtship with my brother Leon.”
The measured, conciliatory tone was Anthony’s. The voice that had prompted it — sharp-edged, middle-aged — presumably belonged to Archduke Osilote.
“Nonsense! He has no business courting anyone without my approval. What is Leon thinking? He humiliates me by rejecting the Tyrot Ducal House, and now he’s dallying with a woman like that?”
“Father — “
The argument continued from within. With each exchange, Leon’s face hardened further.
He turned and caught the eye of Miles, who stood nearby, uncertain and helpless.
“Miles — take Miss Kasha to the dining room. I’ll follow shortly.”
“Of course, my lord.”
Kasha opened her mouth — she thought she might say something, though she didn’t know what — but Leon was already turning away, his expression closed and cold, and he walked into the sitting room and was gone.
She had no choice but to follow Miles.
She took her seat at the dining table. And unfortunately, the sitting room’s conversation remained entirely audible.
“Father. You’ve come home early. I understood you would be away all day.”
Leon’s voice — steady, but barely so.
“Leon! What is the meaning of this? How dare you bring that woman into my house — “
“I ask that you lower your voice, Father. There is a guest present.”
“This is my house! If she doesn’t want to hear it, tell the woman to leave!”
“Father! She is a noblewoman — the daughter of Count Rüschino. And more than that, she is a guest I have formally invited. There is no justification for treating her this way — “
“And who gave you permission — who told you you could bring that woman into this house without asking me first?”
“I have asked you to mind your words, Father!”
“And what if I don’t? What exactly are you going to do?”
“I am done being patient.”
Leon’s voice dropped. It became very quiet. Cold in a way that was somehow worse than shouting.
“Done being patient? You? What do you know about patience — “
“Father, you — !”
And then, cutting through both of them:
“Father.”
It was Eve. Small, trembling, barely holding herself together.
“Please don’t talk about Kasha that way.”
“Eve. You have no part in this. Go to your room.”
“Father — Kasha is a truly good person.”
“I said be quiet! Children — all they’ve ever done is get in my way, never once been of any use to me — “
“Do not raise your voice at Eve!”
“Quiet, the lot of you!”
Archduke Osilote’s outburst came as a genuine shout. Kasha sat very still in the dining room, listening, and tilted her head slightly.
That is more than simply displeasure.
Naturally he had no warmth toward Kasha — that was to be expected. But losing control like this, shouting at his own children within full hearing of a guest, was — to put it plainly — beneath a nobleman. All the more so for a man who had been raised and educated in the imperial palace from birth as the Emperor’s own brother.
It seemed Eve’s appearance had given Leon enough pause to attempt to reason with his father — but the Archduke was simply raging, past any reach.
“Have either of you ever once been of any use to me in my life? Especially you, Eve — from the very moment you were born — !”
“I told you to stop!”
Bang.
Leon’s shout, and then an indeterminate crash, and then a silence that dropped over the sitting room like a held breath.
Into it came Eve’s voice, thin and shaking, barely more than a whisper:
“I — I didn’t ask to be born.”
“What did you say?”
“It isn’t fair. You and mother made the choice — and then you blame me, as though it were my fault — every time — !”
“Your mother died because of you!”
The Archduke’s shout slammed through the silence. A stunned stillness followed.
Then Eve began to cry — a sound like something breaking.
“No — no, that’s not — “
“Of course it is! If she hadn’t had you, she’d still be alive. And if she were still alive, this family would never have come to this — “
“My mother’s death,” Leon said.
His voice was not loud. It cut through everything anyway.
“Was caused by your infidelity, Father.”
Kasha’s chin came up.
She was not the only one startled. A beat of stunned silence.
Crack.
She didn’t need to see it to understand: the Archduke had struck Leon across the face.
“You dare — you say that to your own father — “
“You blame Eve to avoid accountability. I am simply stating the truth. Our mother’s health broke down after Eve’s birth because her spirit was already broken — because the person she trusted most had betrayed her. That is why she became so ill. That is the truth.”
“Why you ungrateful — “
“Don’t hit Leon — Father, stop — !”
“Get away from me! Children — every last one of you — “
“Please. Please stop.”
Finally Anthony entered the quarrel, and the sounds shifted — the sense of someone being physically steered from the room — and at last the sitting room went quiet.
“I’m sorry. I kept you waiting far too long.”
When Leon returned to the dining room, he looked exhausted. His face was drawn and pale. Kasha rose from her chair when she saw him.
“Please — don’t apologize. But perhaps today it would be better if I — “
“There’s no need.”
“Don’t go, Kasha.”
Behind Leon, Eve appeared — eyes swollen and red, still fighting to hold herself together.
The moment Kasha saw her, something moved through her without thought. She lowered herself, opening her arms.
And Eve ran into them without hesitation.
“Kasha — ” She pressed her face against Kasha’s shoulder, and the tears came properly then. “Hmm — Father — Mother — “
“I know,” Kasha said. “I know.”
She said nothing else. She simply held Eve, one hand moving slowly across the small of her back, and let her cry. And Eve cried the way only a ten-year-old can — completely, messily, without restraint — pressing her wet face into Kasha’s shoulder and letting everything out.
Kasha understood this particular pain. She understood it with the kind of precision that only comes from having lived it.
She had spent most of her own life being rejected. Being told, in a hundred different ways, that she was not wanted, not enough, not real. But at least — at least — her mother had never denied her. Her mother had been unwell, unreachable at times, but she had never turned her denial on Kasha.
Eve was being told by her own father — the person who was supposed to be the wall at her back — that she should not exist. That his love was conditional. That her presence in the world was something he wished away.
Mama, Kasha thought, very quietly. How did you hold me, when I cried like this?
She could not quite remember. She tried to reach for it — the exact feeling of those rare moments when her mother’s mind had cleared, and she had been simply a mother. She tried to hold whatever she found and give it to Eve now.
And somehow, though it was Eve who was weeping, Kasha kept having to remind herself not to cry.
Eve. You are so small. So undeserving of what is coming.
She could not help herself. She pulled Eve closer, fiercely.
This was not only about Leon’s curse. There was another reason Kasha had come today — another purpose, just as urgent.
She had come for Eve.
Her arms tightened around the small, shaking body, and she asked herself the question she had been asking herself for weeks.
Can I actually protect her? Can I protect this child?
Eve cried herself to exhaustion and fell asleep in Kasha’s arms, and it was only after they had carried her to her room that Kasha and Leon were finally alone.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t anticipate anything like this. I was certain my father would be away all day — I still don’t understand what changed.”
Leon’s voice was low and weary, frayed at the edges.
He led Kasha to his bedroom door and opened it. Dark inside. Kasha registered the sharp, faint scent of cigars clinging to the air, and felt herself tense without entirely knowing why.
“You don’t need to apologize.”
Without speaking, Leon walked to the window and drew the curtains open. The room came into the light.
Kasha stood in the doorway and looked at him — backlit, his shoulders turned away from her — and imagined him here alone on the nights the curse took hold. Hunched in darkness. Fighting it in silence.
She moved into the room slowly, taking it in.
A large, heavy mahogany bed. A desk, immaculately kept. On the wall, a devotional painting in the classical style. Near the cold hearth, an empty space where a large piece of furniture had clearly once stood — a gap that felt like something deliberately avoided.
Leon watched her begin her search in silence.
Kasha did not ask about the scene in the sitting room. She had learned things about the Archduke family today that would constitute considerable scandal if known — and she behaved as though she had heard none of it, as though none of it was of any particular interest to her.
She moved through the room with quiet, unhurried care. She pressed her small magical energy detector against the walls, the furniture, the painting, pausing to trace her fingertips over the surface of the devotional artwork with a considering look.
“The spirit stone’s energy is different from ordinary magical force, you said — so does the detector actually work here?”
“It’s better than nothing.”
“And you know what it looks like? What you’re searching for?”
“…I’ve read about it. In books.”
She gave the brief answer and returned her attention to the search. She could not very well tell him that she had studied spirit stones herself — that she had split one, shaped it, sealed the curse into one half and left the other to grant its power — and that she knew its shape as intimately as her own hands. Not while his gaze rested on her face with that particular careful weight.
At last the bedroom was fully examined, and they passed through into the adjoining dressing room.
It was sparse — a handful of garments hanging along one wall, the remaining space used more like a storage closet. Small and large objects crowded a low side table, stacked in no particular arrangement. The room had a slightly different quality than the bedroom — less considered, slightly displaced.
—!
The detector trembled.
Kasha lifted it toward the side table, and it shook harder — once, again — and then emitted a curl of smoke and went still.
The spirit stone is here.
She confirmed it inwardly, keeping her expression composed.
She had learned the stone’s properties during the research that had led her to create it.
First: the magical energy contained within a spirit stone was of a magnitude far beyond what a standard detector could process.
Second: the stone appeared at rest — translucent, nearly unremarkable, like a shard of ordinary glass — but when its power was being actively drawn upon, it turned the color of blood.
Knowing what she was looking for, she examined each object on the table in turn. One item drew her eye immediately — a small wooden box wrapped in beautiful violet silk, incongruous among its neighbors, pulling at her attention with a quality she could not name.
She was reaching for it when Leon’s voice came from behind her, low and quiet.
“That belonged to my mother.”
“Oh.”
“It was the box for a ring — this ring.”
He touched the fingers of the gloved hand, the ones holding the ring. The ring that matched the color of his eyes. The one he believed, with full sincerity, protected him from both the curse and its seizures.
Or — believed he believed.
An unease ran through her, fine and sharp as a needle.
But as Kasha hesitated with her hand hovering near the box, Leon reached out and took her wrist.
