By now, darkness had fallen over the Arnin riverbank.
Ping. Ping.
With their distinct, clear tone, the spirit-stone lamps flickered to life, casting the banquet tables in soft blue light.
A slow breeze drifted off the river, and Kasha’s long hair lifted and settled with it, as naturally as breathing.
Perhaps it was the blue glow of the lamps coloring her hair — but standing alone before them, Kasha looked unusually pale, unusually fragile.
Some of the guests watched her with curiosity. Others made no effort to hide their derision.
“She has no sense of occasion.”
“Quite right.”
Simon dutifully seconded Odette’s barb — while never once managing to take his eyes off Kasha.
Kasha Rüschino. The person he had once considered so beneath him — such a tiresome, worthless presence.
Simon.
He had taken for granted the anxious way she used to look at him — shy, uncertain, always waiting for his approval. He had dismissed the magical devices she made and gave to him as nothing more than a minor parlor trick.
Only now, as all of it had slipped through his fingers, did he begin to understand.
She had been, perhaps, something quite rare. Something precious. And he simply had not known how to see her.
The woman he had once thought of as his fool was gone now, carried somewhere far beyond his reach.
The realization brought a bitterness that cut deeper than he’d expected. Simon drained the sharp liquor in front of him in one swallow. Odette caught the movement and fixed him with a look, keeping her voice below the hearing of those around them.
“Enough. You’re supposed to be my escort — at least act like it.”
Meanwhile, Daryl was quietly chewing his thumbnail, anxious and at a loss.
“I don’t understand why she has to do this.”
“She has her reasons.”
“But — why does she have to make herself the center of attention? Shouldn’t I try to stop her?”
“Let’s just watch for now, shall we? Please.”
As Margaret coaxed Daryl into patience, Princess Melissa — who had been watching in silence — turned her eyes to Kasha. Her gaze was tired, composed — but a trace of involuntary curiosity flickered through it.
Then, at some unnamed moment, the river breeze went still. As if someone had intended it. Everyone had the sudden, irrational feeling that the world in front of them had paused.
And in that pause, Kasha’s voice — low and unadorned — reached outward.
There was a time I held to nothing in this world
There was a time this world held no love for me
When the mountain birds fell silent and the northern snow stopped falling
By whose grace was it that you were sent to me?
Something had happened.
The sound of insects that had been humming steadily in the background fell silent. The world went still as held breath.
In the darkness, only Kasha’s voice moved — drifting through the air, settling at last in the blue pool of lamplight.
It was a simple melody. No embellishment, no artifice. The sustained, trailing notes that marked the folk songs of the north sounded unfamiliar, even strange, to most of the ears present.
And yet every person seated at those three tables held their breath and listened.
Each syllable she sang reached inside them — not with elegance or force, but with something small and exact, like a finger pressed to an old bruise. It woke something in their wine-hazy heads. It knocked against the rust on their hearts.
They blinked.
Kasha Rüschino — the woman they had called half-witted, called mad. They could have sworn, just for a moment, that something like sacred light was falling around her.
Like people brought under a spell, they stared at her with open mouths and forgot to look away.
Anthony was no different.
The slight furrow in his brow — the sign of his irritation at her sudden move — had gradually smoothed until his face was entirely blank. Not because he felt nothing. Because he was deliberately holding his expression still, pressing his feelings down. Without that exaggerated smile, his face was as pale as wax, and his eyes moved unsteadily — and continued to do so until the last note died away.
And Leon, for the duration of the song, did not move at all. He only looked at her and listened.
A smile had found the corner of his mouth and would not leave. The smile of someone trying very hard to conceal a love that could not be contained.
When the song ended at last, Leon’s applause broke the silence.
Then, steadily, more and more hands joined it. It continued until Kasha had bowed quietly and taken her seat.
She let the breath she’d been holding leave her slowly, evening out her heartbeat, and looked around.
It had been a bold thing to do. But it did not seem to have gone badly.
It was strange, the way that song had come to her — in the moment she had met Nigel’s eyes.
The song was a folk melody passed down in the region near the northern mountain range where she had grown up. You could hear women humming it together at the laundry place, or almost anywhere in that part of the world.
Her mother, even in her most confused moments, could always sing this one through to the end. And so Kasha had learned it too, without meaning to — every word, from beginning to end.
She had been around twelve, perhaps. She had been failing repeatedly to produce the incantation that initiated a spell and had been quietly crying when her mother told her to try putting her magic into the song instead.
This song? But it’s just a silly little thing — what would I even use it for? I barely have any power to begin with.
Magic came from people paying attention to ordinary things, getting curious about them, chasing after them obsessively. There’s no such thing as a thing that doesn’t matter. Even a pebble on the roadside has its weight.
Her mother had delivered this, with apparent profundity, before turning away and dissolving into private laughter and her own world.
From that day forward, Kasha had stopped fixating on the incantation. She had just sung the song, steadily, with concentration. And at some point — she could not say exactly when — she had found that she could thread a thin filament of magic through it. A tiny, insignificant amount of power, carried in a tiny, insignificant song.
The only magic available to a powerless young girl. Useless, of course — incapable of achieving anything of consequence. After that, she had stopped singing it altogether.
And now, after all those years, she had sung it here — in front of the most powerful people in the empire.
The moment she had seen the contempt in Nigel’s eyes — aimed at Melissa, at Kasha, at Leon — the urge had simply come over her.
There is no such thing as a thing that doesn’t matter. Even a pebble on the roadside has its weight.
She had wanted, perhaps, to say those words to him. In the only form she had.
You hold no right to look at anyone that way. Not a single soul.
And every last thing you think you hold in your hands — it may not be yours at all.
If that’s true, then I am going to take it all back.
But the song carried further than she had expected.
“Hk — oh—”
“Lord Daryl — are you crying?”
“I… Miss Margaret. My family’s estate is in the north, you know — I know this song, and hearing it again after so long, something just came over me. And Kasha — I never knew she could sing like this. I never even knew. What kind of brother am I. Hk.”
Daryl was not alone. Odette — whose nerves were raw with pregnancy — had let her pride go entirely and was dabbing at tears with trembling lashes. Others in the group had damp eyes or vacant, distant expressions.
It was the particular emotional pull of a folk song hardy enough to survive generations of passing-down, sharpened by the faint thread of magic woven into it. The fact that most of the guests were already generously wine-warmed had likely played its part as well.
Then Princess Melissa, who had been still and quiet throughout, spoke to Kasha.
“A deeply moving performance, Lady Kasha Rüschino.”
“It’s nothing, really.”
At Kasha’s modest reply, Melissa smiled gently.
“You surprised me at the hunting tournament as well. Your abilities never fail to catch me off guard.”
“Thank you. It was the Crown Prince’s and Your Highness’s invitation that gave me the opportunity.”
“Opportunity…”
Melissa’s smile faded into something more wry.
“What was an inescapable trap before you began your song — your song turned it into an opportunity.”
Trap.
She was speaking quietly enough to be heard only by Leon and Kasha, but even so, the word was a blunt one.
Leon, who had been listening, chose this moment to speak.
“Your Highness.”
“Yes, Leon.”
Whether it was the effect of Kasha’s song that had lowered their guards, the two cousins looked at each other for a moment with something like the ease they’d had as children.
“If there is something I can do to help you, please say so.”
“…”
The clarity that had briefly returned to Melissa’s eyes grew dim again.
“Something you can do to help… I’m not so shameless as that, Leon.”
“Your Highness.”
“I turned away from what you were going through as well. So you must do the same.”
Melissa looked between Leon and Kasha as she spoke — her voice as low as she could keep it, careful of who might overhear.
Looking at her eyes, Kasha was certain.
You are enduring something too. Something your brother Nigel is doing.
Kasha leaned toward the Princess. Leon, seated between them, shifted slightly to give her room.
“Your Highness.”
At Kasha’s tense, careful voice, Princess Melissa turned toward her. Kasha’s lips came close to the Princess’s ear.
“Do you know about the spirit stones?”
It was softly said, but Leon, sitting close, caught it too. In an instant his gaze swept the surroundings like a hound on alert. Anthony was nearby — but fortunately seemed lost in thought, his expression distant.
Kasha asked again, barely above a breath:
“The spirit stones made by a demon — have you heard of them, Your Highness?”
“…”
The Princess did not answer. But both Kasha and Leon saw it.
A shadow falling over those deep violet eyes, for just a moment. An instinctive, undeniable fear — impossible to hide.
The Princess knows something about the spirit stones.
Kasha was about to press further when a voice rang out across the gathering, bright and carrying.
“Well, well. Truly remarkable, Lady Rüschino.”
