The refusal came so immediately and with such finality that Kasha pressed her lips together briefly.
“Why—”
“I told you. I don’t trust you. You’re…dangerous.”
He said it quietly and turned back to the window. His expression had an uneasy quality to it.
Kasha steadied herself and asked:
“What do you intend to do about the curse?”
“…I’m looking into what you told me about the magestones. I’m the Vice-Commander of the Order, and I have connections within the temples. I’ll be able to find something.”
He had the look of someone who had made up their mind.
Whatever she said, he did not intend to change it. That much was clear.
He’s always been this way.
It took him time to reach a decision, but once he made it, he held it absolutely. That was the kind of man he was.
I never expected him to be easily persuaded anyway.
Kasha paused to collect her thoughts.
“Then — a different request. Just one.”
“A request?”
“I’ve told you everything I know about the magestones and the curse without asking for anything in return. I’m only asking for one thing in return. Please help me with this.”
She made no reference to the rejected proposal — simply and cleanly asked.
Leon looked at her.
“What is it?”
His tone had grown more formally distanced — as though the colder the words, the more firmly his resolve would hold.
Something sharp and quiet passed through her chest. She tried not to let it matter.
“The Imperial Library. There’s a restricted section — accessible only to members of the imperial family. I need access to borrow something.”
“The Imperial Library?”
“Yes.”
“What are you looking for?”
“For my research — the magitools that run on holy power. I need a specific text.”
“…….”
“The magitools I’m developing aren’t meant to harm anyone. Quite the opposite.”
Leon fell into thought.
Restricted access to imperial library holdings existed for reasons. And Kasha, from his perspective, was still an unidentified risk.
Granting her access to a restricted section would mean violating commitments he had spent years holding.
Don’t refuse this one, Leon.
She watched the clean line of his forehead as he deliberated, and said nothing more.
“Whatever book it is, you may examine it with me present, and if I find I’m not comfortable lending it to you, I’ll say so then. You’re welcome to decline the offer at that point.”
She finished calmly, maintaining an expression that suggested the outcome either way would cost her very little.
She knew, from experience, that this kind of composure often worked better than argument.
“Very well. That will do.”
“…Yes.”
No thank you — simply yes, as if it were the only reasonable outcome.
Leon watched her and bit his lip with a strange expression. As though he had almost laughed, and caught himself just in time.
“Tomorrow, then. Five o’clock at the Imperial Library.”
Having taken it upon herself to set the time and place, Kasha turned and walked toward the door. The warmth of his gaze on her back followed her every step of the way.
⁂
After Kasha left.
Leon stood for a long time, breathing slowly.
He had clearly lost his mind by now.
How else to explain the feeling that even the faint traces she had left behind in the room were something to be regretted?
Whenever he came face to face with Kasha, a strange and inexplicable pleasure moved through him — not the terrible lust of the curse, something different entirely.
That composed, unhurried expression of hers. The halting manner of speech that was somehow never uncertain in what it meant to say.
Eyes beneath dark hair — the deep blue-black of the hour before dawn — that held a color he couldn’t quite name.
Those eyes, always seeming to look straight through him. Always carrying the implication that she knew things about him he had never spoken aloud.
Most of all, her scent.
Clean as clear water. Deep as a forest. A smell that let him breathe without effort — and whose absence he was already aware of, barely a minute after she had gone.
Leon leaned against the window and looked down.
The tables in the courtyard below were beautifully arranged, and the people seated at them looked genuinely happy.
A strange sight.
The sound of girls’ laughter rose and fell without pause. Eve’s bright voice was threaded through all of it.
Has there ever been laughter in this house before?
He searched his memory.
I don’t think there has. Not once.
Not even when his mother was alive. The residence had always been quiet.
His mother — revered as a great holy woman — had always been in demand. The children were raised by nursemaids. As befitted the children of a saint, there had been no room for the ordinary indulgence of wanting.
On the one or two occasions each month when they had eaten together, her attention was always somewhere else.
Mother, today at training I received a compliment on my swordsmanship.
Did you? Swordsmanship is a rough skill — practice it in moderation. Ah, dear, about that donation to the temple last week—
His parents had praised him only when he performed something perfectly.
That’s our eldest. Worthy of the heir to this house.
The atmosphere of perfection for its own sake had only grown bleaker after his mother’s death. His father had retreated entirely into politics and left the children behind.
Father, Eve said her first word today. She called me ‘brother’—
Good. Listen, Leon — have you really not considered leaving the Order and entering the temple properly? With your holy power, you could rise as high as your mother, easily.
Even when the youngest child — who had been late to speak, likely from the absence of anyone to speak to — finally found her voice, his father had been unmoved.
Leon’s achievements were the one thing that consistently brought some warmth to his father’s expression. So he had lived accordingly.
What had made that possible were his siblings.
Eve, who had lost her mother at three.
Anthony, whose body was too fragile to function without the temple’s regular intervention.
There was no one else to protect them.
Brother, am I bad luck?
What are you talking about, Eve?
I heard people saying it. That mother’s holy power faded after she had me. That’s why she died.
That’s not true. Don’t listen to that kind of thing.
But—
Eve. You are the most precious and beloved child in the world. Do you know how much mother loved you?
Really?
Yes.
And so he had been able to lie. Even a knight who had sworn purity before the gods.
Leon, I’m sorry. I keep getting sick.
Being sick isn’t something to apologize for, Anthony.
But today was important for you. Your rank advancement test — you came here instead?
The test can wait. Stop wasting your concern on that.
…….
There had been nights he sat beside Anthony’s bed without sleeping, pouring holy power into him hour after hour, watching his brother lie with his eyes pressed shut because he couldn’t bear to say sorry again.
That was the family he had protected. So he still had to protect them.
From the unknown woman with her unexplained knowledge and her troubling calm.
Eve — was it true that Miss Kasha Rüschino came to help with your tea party?
Yes. It was supposed to be a secret, but she said I could tell you now.
Why would you ask someone you barely know for that kind of help? You could have asked Aunt Sheila—
You have no idea, Leon.
What?
The noblewomen at the last party Aunt Sheila organized made fun of me behind my back the whole time.
…….
I like Kasha and Margaret. When I’m with them, it feels like—
Eve had let the sentence trail off, eyes shining with unshed tears.
But Leon thought he knew what she had been trying to say.
It feels like having a mother.
She had always been that way — unable to keep her eyes off older young women who came near. There was a reason she had attached herself to Kasha so immediately, the moment a stranger appeared in this quiet house.
I don’t think I’ve seen that expression on her face before.
He had bought Eve the most expensive doll available in the capital on her birthday, and she had never smiled quite like that.
And then there’s Anthony.
Leon, you actually had a lady in your study?
Yes.
I can’t imagine what kind of person would make you spend time alone with a woman. I’m curious.
Anthony had stopped him on his way upstairs, after they had brought Kasha inside from the garden.
The way Anthony had looked at Kasha in those brief moments — it was an expression Leon had never seen from him before.
What was stranger still was Leon’s own reaction to it.
An irrational, unpleasant, faintly aggressive feeling — like looking at a rival.
Toward his own younger brother.
He shook his head, dispersing the feeling like something that had no right to be there.
Kasha is dangerous.
He said it to himself quietly.
I don’t know her intentions. I may not be able to help what she does to me — but I can’t let her affect my family.
A woman whose motives he could not begin to map.
I want you to be happy.
Who opens with a thing like that, to a complete stranger? How suspicious is that, as a starting move.
And then grabbing his hand without any warning, every time —
I know that you’ve been lonely.
How dare she say a thing like that.
Thank you.
…And then giving him that disarming smile like it cost her nothing.
All of it is strange. All of it is dangerous.
He tried, firmly, to erase the unfamiliar sensation that tightened in his chest every time he thought of her.
Ha-ha-ha.
Laughter rose from the garden again.
Concealed in the dark of the study, Leon stared down at the scene below. He told himself he was watching Eve. But he knew the truth.
He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off the suspicious woman for a single moment.
Whoosh.
Leon seized the curtain and pulled it shut.
The study went dark all at once.
