She kept walking.
Simon called out again, more desperate this time.
“…Everything you’ve done until now! The things you built! I know all of it. I know everything!”
Kasha stopped.
He seemed to take that as the threat landing. His voice climbed higher.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but we can’t just end things this simply. You know that as well as I do.”
“…….”
“Especially — that thing. I’ve been keeping it hidden so the Church wouldn’t find out — but if what you unsealed were to appear in the world, do you have any idea how much trouble you’d be in?”
He couldn’t even bring himself to say the word magestone where someone might overhear, yet here he was, voice carrying down the hall.
Whoosh.
Kasha spun around. Simon startled.
“Funny you should mention it. I’ve been wondering myself — where exactly did you hide those stones?”
She had to work to keep the mockery from her face.
Starting today, I’m going to find them myself. Just you wait, Simon.
She turned away again, and immediately his voice came shrieking back.
“And we’re practically engaged, you know!”
Ha.
The sheer absurdity of it made her snort.
Surely he was referring to that time, a few months ago, when he had seized her hand mid-stroll in the garden and announced out of nowhere that they were practically engaged now.
He had sealed an entire marriage with a cheap ring he bought somewhere, and now he was apparently trying to count a casual declaration as an engagement.
Well. You have to be that shameless to be a proper villain, I suppose.
Simon pressed on, emboldened.
“If things end between us like this, you’re the one who’ll suffer! Do you not understand that men and women occupy different positions in society? Even for someone as unworldly as you—”
Kasha was unmoved by his tirade — but she noticed Sena standing in the doorway of the sitting room, having come in with a fresh pot of tea, her face going white as she listened.
That’s enough of this.
Kasha walked back over to Sena, lifted the teapot from the tray she was holding, and turned.
Steam was still wisping from the spout. It had been freshly brewed.
She held it up and faced him.
Simon, registering the motion, went still.
She looked at him. Her face was perfectly blank.
“Simon Blanche. Shut your mouth and get out. Before I pour this over you.”
This was not a bluff. Listening to him had brought her so close to actual murder that she could taste it.
All those years she had spent humiliating herself, so thoroughly that he had apparently believed this kind of nonsense would still work on her. It left her mouth bitter.
Simon, to his credit, looked quite satisfyingly pale.
“K— Kasha. You’ve actually lost your mind, haven’t you? How are you going to fix this? I’m not letting us end like this! I won’t! I absolutely won’t!”
Yet he was backing away as he said it, which suggested the tea earlier had made an impression.
Kasha exercised every ounce of restraint she possessed to keep from hurling the entire boiling pot at that face she couldn’t stand, and walked out of the sitting room like a storm.
⁂
He was never going to leave quietly.
Clatter, clatter.
Kasha sat with the gentle rocking of the carriage and thought.
As long as her gift for crafting magitools remained useful to him, Simon would not let her go without a fight. He knew she was different now — he would find another angle.
“If you walk out like this, you’re the one who’ll suffer! Don’t you understand that men and women don’t stand equal in society?”
It had been a pathetic threat. But thinking it through, she couldn’t entirely dismiss it either.
That kind of thing — sleeping around without consequences — that’s a privilege reserved for daughters of houses like Tyrot. Not for someone like me.
Kasha’s situation was different in every sense. She was a marcher’s daughter, yes, but she was illegitimate, and her origins were murky at best. There were already rumors flying about her — that she wasn’t quite right in the head, that she was dangerous. If Simon chose to add to those rumors, the damage would be real.
Though it would be rather ironic. He’s kept our meetings strictly secret all this time — too afraid of exposure to be seen anywhere near me in public.
She pressed her lips together, equal parts amused and grim, and let the carriage hold her.
Whatever the case — she had unsealed the magestones, and that was fact. The moment Simon and whoever stood behind him decided she was no longer worth the trouble, they would move to dispose of her, just as they had in her previous life. They would make her the villain and wipe her off the board.
Which is exactly why I must free Leon from Onor’s curse and bring him to my side. Starting with Leon.
From Leon, she would trace her way back to that woman. She would save Leon, and in doing so, save herself.
If Leon’s curse improved — if it began to recede instead of worsen — how frantic would the faceless mastermind become?
The thought brightened her mood considerably.
And there are other reasons to get close to Leon.
She needed to block Simon’s access to her — while also making sure he couldn’t spread damaging rumors in the meantime. She needed a barrier.
Something that would keep Simon away, and buy her the time to finish her research into the magitools and uncover the mastermind’s identity.
Leon had the rank, the family name, and the social standing to be exactly that.
If he agrees to my proposal.
Kasha cracked the carriage window slightly and looked out.
Beyond the smooth road, the outline of a grand manor rose against the sky.
The Aranias ducal residence.
White walls built entirely from pale brick, catching the light with a purity that was almost painful to look at.
Rather like Leon himself.
And about as approachable.
She eyed the firmly shut gates and thought.
The coachman spent a considerable amount of time in conversation with the gatekeepers before the doors were finally, slowly, opened. The Rüschino name had done its work, it seemed.
She should, by rights, have sent a letter and requested permission to visit in advance. But if she had sent a letter, Leon would simply have refused it.
And so — this particular form of recklessness would have to do.
⁂
“If you wouldn’t mind waiting here a moment, Miss? His Highness hasn’t returned yet. You did have a prior arrangement, I assume? I’m afraid I wasn’t informed—”
The house steward trailed off with a look of polite discomfort.
Kasha worked to maintain her most shameless expression.
“Yes. We did.”
“Ah — of course. Then please, do sit. I’ll have tea brought out while you wait.”
He bowed without further question, though the puzzlement on his face was plainly visible.
Our lord made a private appointment with a young woman? That was likely the thought he was turning over.
Kasha elected not to notice, and sat down properly on the sofa.
Staff appeared shortly after with a fragrant tea and an assortment of biscuits.
Kasha accepted without ceremony and ate. She was hungry — she’d left before lunch in her hurry.
But once her stomach was satisfied, she ran straight into an unexpected obstacle.
…I’m sleepy.
The exhaustion from the all-nighter she’d spent on her research was beginning to assert itself.
I can’t.
Nod.
I really can’t—
Nod.
The afternoon light falling into the Aranias sitting room was entirely too warm and slow-moving for fighting off sleep.
Before long, Kasha’s head was bobbing.
She drifted somewhere between sleep and waking for what felt like a long time.
Die! Villainess! Die!
Go and save your own life first. Mine is already beyond saving.
You were going to die anyway — couldn’t you just go quietly? All this time, catering to your miserable little moods, pretending to care — do you have any idea how much that cost me?
Stop. Please stop. Stop hitting me.
Her body remembered the pain of her past life and turned cold, beginning to shiver.
Then —
Step. Step.
From somewhere, the sound of measured, clean footsteps — and the suffocating memories began to thin and pull away.
Kasha opened her eyes. She was damp with cold sweat.
“What are you doing here?”
Sweat-dampened hair from what must have been a long and grueling training session. A uniform stained with dirt, and a jawline that looked sharper than before. Violet eyes narrowed against what they were seeing.
All of it together — the look of a weary predator, worn down and dangerous.
But also: a man who had held onto his convictions through sustained and merciless suffering. The only person who had never blamed Kasha for what had been done to him, even when he’d lost everything. Leon.
Kasha looked up at him and blinked, slowly.
He was staring at her like he intended to eat her alive. She didn’t look away.
If you want to tame a wild thing, you don’t look away. If you do, it will swallow you whole.
“Sir Leon.”
“…….”
“It’s been a week.”
Kasha gathered herself and rose from the sofa. When she swayed slightly, Leon’s body moved before his mind did — his hand reached toward her — then he caught himself and pulled back.
“Did I invite you here?”
His voice was cold. More deliberately cold than it needed to be, as though he were working to keep it that way.
Kasha was not remotely daunted. She smoothed her hair back with unhurried fingers and let the faint trace of a smile settle at the corner of her mouth.
“You wouldn’t come to me. So I had to come to you.”
He stared at her — at the slow gesture, the smile — without blinking. His gaze was intense enough to strip paint.
“You have no patience.”
“…….”
“Or perhaps no self-preservation.”
It was unmistakably a threat. Kasha met it without moving.
“I want to talk. Just the two of us.”
Ha.
As though the idea were beneath contempt, Leon gave a short, humorless laugh and turned away. He had already taken three long strides toward the door when he stopped, apparently catching some train of thought.
“…Show her to the second-floor study. I’m going to wash.”
The instruction fell toward the anxious steward, who had been hovering nearby. Leon still did not look back at Kasha.
With a smile she hadn’t quite finished putting away, Kasha followed the steward up the stairs.
