Whether anyone else would ever know that a face as serene and composed as his could look like that — Kasha doubted it.
She held his gaze and kept her voice steady.
“I came across this through research. Lost magic. Sealed magestones. It was… accidental. I have nothing to gain… from cursing you.”
His smile was dangerous. Her eyes didn’t move.
The silence between them pulled taut. Neither looked away. For tens of seconds they stared each other down, close enough that reading each other’s faces was unavoidable.
Looking for whatever truth or feeling or confession might be hiding just beneath the surface.
Kasha broke it.
Say something more. Before he leaves.
“I…”
I only want to help you?
But that wasn’t the whole truth, was it — she intended to use him too, to find the mastermind who held the magestones. She couldn’t bring herself to say it. Her lips pressed together.
What are you hesitating for? You decided this time you’d go after what you wanted.
Say what you actually mean.
“I…”
He raised one pale eyebrow. Waiting.
“I want you to be happy.”
That was Kasha’s truth. The one she hadn’t been able to reach him with before her return.
Would it reach him this time? Or would he shake her off again and walk away alone, as he always had?
His face moved — a small, involuntary contraction, as though he found it faintly absurd.
Then — the curtain began to stir with urgency.
“Kasha. I’m coming in.”
Daryl. Before the curtain could open, Leon seized it and held it fast. Daryl, finding himself blocked, erupted.
“What in the world is going on in there? My sister is only nineteen years old!”
Leon let him carry on. With his other hand, he reached into the breast pocket of his uniform and held something out to Kasha.
A handkerchief. White and clean, edged with gold, embroidered with the initials of his name.
“Your neck. Cover it.”
“…….”
Only then did Kasha raise her hand to her throat. Still flushed and tender. The marks would be visible.
She took the handkerchief without a word and wrapped it quickly around her neck. The moment it was in place, she looked back at him.
“Come and find me.”
“…….”
He looked down at her a moment longer — that expression still somewhere between cold and something harder to name. Then, finally, he spoke under his breath.
“What to trust, what to break — I’ll know when I see it.”
Before the last word had fully settled, he released the curtain.
It swung back. Daryl filled the frame behind it.
“What in the— what kind of behavior is this? An unmarried man and woman, alone together for this long—”
“Excuse me.”
Leon had no interest in the lecture. He cut across it cleanly, turned, and left the balcony without once looking back at Kasha.
The same retreating silhouette from the memory she had carried since before her return. Cold. Unhesitating.
“What is wrong with that man, exactly? I thought he was supposed to be decent — and then he — wait, Kasha. What’s that handkerchief?”
Daryl, still muttering complaints, turned toward her and caught himself.
Kasha said nothing. Her fingers moved quietly over the handkerchief at her throat — Leon’s handkerchief.
Some things were different from before.
Whether they were different in the right direction, she still wasn’t sure.
I suppose I have to believe there’s reason for hope.
“What on earth were you two…”
Whatever Daryl was imagining, it was clearly getting more complicated by the second — she could hear it in his voice.
She left him to it and walked out onto the hall floor.
Flutter.
The curtain swung behind her. She felt every set of eyes in the room shift toward her at once.
Toward the handkerchief at her neck, specifically.
“Wait — is that the handkerchief from the Holy Knight’s Order? Those aren’t issued to anyone else—”
“Don’t tell me Sir Leon— impossible—”
“But they were on the balcony together, just the two of them, all that time…”
“What is happening right now?”
“I heard there were talks of a betrothal between the Grand Ducal family and House Tyrot—”
The stares were sharp enough to sting. Tongues already sharpened and ready. And somewhere in there, Odette’s gaze, too.
Click. Click.
Kasha walked the full length of the hall and left it all behind her.
Taking her time. Watching every bewildered face as she passed.
Unhurt, for once. Intact.
For now, this is enough of a beginning.
She looked up at the blaze of lights across the ducal manor and said it quietly to herself.
⁂
“Still no letters today?”
More than a week had passed since Kasha attended the Duke’s ball.
And every afternoon since that evening, she had asked Sena the same question.
Whether any correspondence had arrived for her.
Each time, Sena had had to shake her head with an apologetic expression.
Poor thing. She must be waiting for an invitation from the other nobles.
After the debut, a handful of families connected to House Rüschino had at least sent invitations out of courtesy. But this time, by some unspoken agreement, there had been nothing at all.
She did look quite beautiful that night though…
Sena looked at her young lady with a pang. Kasha, for her part, had her nose buried in papers on the desk and hadn’t lifted her head.
Is she very disappointed? Or is she waiting for someone specific?
Sena approached carefully.
“My lady. Shall I ask the cook — Haxen — to make a pudding for you as a snack?”
“Sure.”
At least her appetite had improved lately. In the old days she would barely nibble at a salad before pushing her plate away. These days she finished everything she was given.
They say when a person changes suddenly, they’re close to their end.
Sena left the room with an uneasy feeling — but returned at a brisk pace not long after.
“Already? Is the pudding ready?”
Kasha looked up.
“No, it’s not that — someone’s here, my lady!”
Sena’s face was lit with excitement.
“Someone? Who?”
Kasha turned, still wearing her reading glasses.
“The one you’ve been waiting for!”
Sena was slightly out of breath, as if she’d hurried up the stairs.
Is it Leon?
Kasha was on her feet before she’d decided to stand.
“He’s actually here?”
“Yes! He’s waiting in the sitting room. Shall I take you down now?”
“Yes. Wait — just a moment.”
Kasha pulled off her glasses and looked at herself.
She’d been up for nights studying blueprints and research notes, and it showed. She had turned down Sena’s offer of help with her appearance that morning — a decision she was now regretting.
Sena seemed to read the situation in a glance and steeled her expression immediately.
“Don’t worry, my lady!”
⁂
Sena was genuinely talented.
Kasha thought it as she looked at her own reflection.
She had managed a complete transformation in almost no time — makeup, hair, a change of dress. All done. The thought of how many years Sena had spent unable to use any of that skill, because her mistress hadn’t cared, made Kasha feel something close to guilty.
Still — Leon came sooner than I expected.
A week since that night. She was curious what answer he would bring.
She caught herself straightening her face — the tension that had crept in without her noticing.
What to trust, what to break — I’ll know when I see it.
Even now, recalling the open fury in his eyes then, something cold moved through her chest.
But at the same time — she found herself quietly imagining how brilliant he would look today, which was slightly ridiculous, and she was aware of it.
She descended the stairs at last. The sitting room opened up at the bottom.
A tall man was sitting on the sofa at the center of the room. The light came through the window directly behind him, turning him into a silhouette.
Thud.
Without meaning to — the memory of the balcony. The hand that had moved slowly down the ridge of her spine. Her heart reacted before she could reason with it.
I was simply startled. That’s all.
Kasha filed her own response under shock response and took a steady breath.
The man on the sofa turned around.
“Ah, Kasha. There you are.”
A voice as though he owned the place and she was the one paying a visit.
An arrogant gesture. Entirely self-satisfied.
Simon Blanche.
Not Leon. Simon.
Kasha’s feet stopped.
She turned slowly to look at Sena behind her. Her expression asked: what happened?
Sena blinked, genuinely puzzled at her reaction.
…Well. Before my return, I would have run out barefoot the moment Simon appeared.
Kasha pressed her fingers against her forehead briefly.
And today of all days.
Before her return — on this very day — Simon had come to find her after the wretched experience of the Duke’s ball. She had felt, with the desperate intensity of the truly isolated, that he was her only lifeline — the one person willing to come to her when everyone else had turned away.
She had cried in front of him like a child. He had patted her back and played the magnanimous rescuer to the hilt.
After that night, what had already been an unequal relationship tilted further. Kasha became so terrified of losing Simon that she would have done anything he asked. And she did.
She made what he wanted without asking what it was for. She simply did whatever it took to be useful to him — to make him stay.
The blow to the back of her head when it finally came — she hadn’t understood anything until then.
The man sitting in her sitting room was a vain, transparent, calculating villain. Nothing more.
She could still feel the sharp blow of his boot connecting with her face before she stepped onto the scaffold. She remembered it clearly.
Her fists had closed at her sides, fingernails pressing into her palms, before she’d fully noticed.
Every part of her wanted to make him feel exactly what he had made her feel. And if she couldn’t, she at least wanted to throw him out and never look at his face again.
But our histories are already deeply tangled, and I can’t simply cut off contact with Simon yet. If that’s the case, the wiser move is to see what information I can draw out of him about the mastermind.
Kasha steadied herself.
“Kasha. What are you standing over there for? Come sit down.”
All warmth and false consideration in his voice. He hadn’t gotten up from the sofa. Not even close.
Of course. That’s very you, Simon.
A crooked smile passed through Kasha’s eyes.
