It was not simply a request for a dance. It was a rebuke — and a warning — directed at every person in that room, including Odette.
Stop this. What you are doing is beneath you.
It was a thoroughly knightly thing to do. Irreproachably just.
The only thing the pure and upright Leon seemed not to have noticed was what it had done to Odette’s face. The way fury had mottled her features the instant he turned away from her. The way she was now staring at Kasha as though she wanted to tear her apart.
The Kasha of that evening had not noticed it either, unfortunately.
Or perhaps she had — but had been too consumed by the heat coming through Leon’s glove to think about anything else.
“Thank you… for helping me.”
It had taken half the dance before she’d mustered the courage to say even that much, in a small murmur.
“It is the duty of a knight. Please think nothing of it.”
The reply was entirely formal. Mechanical, almost.
And yet — the dance that followed was a dream from a midsummer night. One she had never forgotten.
Leon’s expression was cool enough to seem cold at first glance, but his face itself was breathtaking in a way that felt almost unreal. Those amethyst eyes — so beautiful they had earned him the name Jewel of the Empire — scattered the light from the chandelier every time it fell on them. His platinum hair lay smooth and luminous against his brow. The clean line of his nose, the strong set of his jaw — both spoke unmistakably of the man he was. His shoulders, broad inside the fitted uniform. The arm around her waist — long, solid, unhurried.
He was a flawless dancer, leading her through her own stumbling with calm precision, steadying her with a grip that asked nothing of her.
He was the kind of man anyone would fall for. Anyone at all.
Even a young noblewoman who was called unhinged.
Even if he had not been beautiful, it would have been difficult not to carry someone in your heart who rescued you from that kind of moment. And he had been beautiful. He had been righteous. In that ballroom, on that night, he had been better than every single person around him.
In his arms, circling the floor, Kasha’s heart had raced without stopping.
But the moment the dance ended and Leon walked her out of the ballroom, she had been yanked back to earth.
“Enjoy the rest of your evening.”
He bowed toward her, polite to the last. Outwardly — still composed, still impeccable.
“Are you… all right?”
But Kasha had danced with him. She had felt it — the way his breathing had grown strangely ragged, the way the tips of his ears and the back of his neck had gone red. The way his posture had grown subtly, awkwardly stiff the longer they danced.
She hadn’t known what was wrong. She had only wanted to help.
“Of course I am.”
His response had been sharper than she’d expected.
His face, flushed and agitated, looked at her as though the very question offended him. The expression and the flickering in his eyes were almost unrecognizable as belonging to the same man who had just rescued her.
Someone watching might have thought she had insulted him.
“Oh, I’m sor—”
Even her apology had died in her throat, swallowed up by her own confusion.
And then, as though she disgusted him, Leon had turned his back on her and walked away.
That shift in him had hurt in a different way than anything else that night. More than the cruelty of the nobles who’d surrounded her.
If even a person who had extended genuine goodwill ultimately turned away from her — was she really so unpleasant to be around?
It had been the moment when despair swallowed open ground beneath her feet all over again.
Of course — the Kasha who had come back now understood. She knew why he’d had no choice. She knew what he had been enduring in silence through every second of that dance.
He had been far more righteous than she had dared to imagine. Righteous enough to extend his hand to a bullied young woman even while fighting through his own curse to do it.
But the nightmare of that night had not ended there.
Splash.
“Oh — sorry. The glass slipped.”
Someone had upended a wine glass over her dress.
Rattle, rattle.
“Please — open the door. There’s someone in here!”
The door of the powder room she had retreated to — trying to blot out the stain — had been locked from outside.
She had clearly seen servants standing at the entrance when she went in.
By the time the ball was over and the guests had gone, it was Daryl who found her — curled up on the floor of the powder room, sitting in a daze.
She had been ill for a full week after that night. She hadn’t set foot outside the manor. Not until she let Simon talk her into fleeing to his tower.
⁂
“Presenting Lord Daryl Rüschino and Miss Katiana Rüschino of House Rüschino!”
The footman’s announcement pulled Kasha out of her memory.
The ballroom was exactly as it had been before she came back. Identical to the last detail, in a way that made her skin prickle.
Heads turned from every corner of the room to look at the two of them. Odette, standing at the center of the room with the ease of someone who owned it, caught sight of Kasha immediately.
Those eyes — pretty as blue glass beads — looked the two of them over with languid arrogance.
Rüschino hangers-on.
House Rüschino was a storied family that had guarded the empire’s northern borders for generations, but in the social world of the capital they carried almost no weight. To Odette, they were barely worth registering.
But then one of the Rüschino siblings walked directly toward her.
“Good evening. Miss Odette. I’m Kasha… Rüschino.”
“…….”
“It’s been a while. I’ve truly been looking forward to seeing you.”
The announcement had clearly said Katiana, but apparently she preferred to go by the northern diminutive.
What struck Odette, though, was something else entirely. Something about the eyes of the woman looking at her. Her throat had gone strangely dry.
Didn’t someone say she couldn’t hold eye contact?
At her debut, this woman had been practically invisible. People had mocked her and she’d stood huddled in a corner like something broken.
That had scratched at something in Odette, admittedly. There was something irresistible about the way the woman looked like she’d crumple at the first poke — like she didn’t even know how to push back.
She had been considering her as a plaything if the evening grew dull.
But those eyes right now — what was that? The audacity of them, burning as if she intended to devour the daughter of House Tyrot whole.
Odette straightened her neck deliberately and unfurled her fan with a practiced, elegant snap.
Crack.
The look in Kasha’s eyes as she watched the fan open was oddly cold — but Odette ignored it, raising the fan to her lips, letting just the right degree of mockery settle into her expression.
“You… missed me? My goodness — were we really that close?”
Snicker, snicker, snicker. Right on cue, sycophantic laughter rippled through the people gathered nearby.
At the open ridicule, Daryl’s expression went stony. But the person actually being ridiculed — Kasha — was perfectly unruffled.
“Ah — well, you don’t have to see someone often… to leave a lasting impression.”
“……?”
“Sometimes… a single meeting is all it takes. For someone to stay with you.”
Those strange eyes — the color of crushed flower petals — were uncomfortably, persistently direct. The slight halting in her speech only made each word land more distinctly.
“What on earth is she talking about.”
Odette muttered it loudly enough to be heard over the fan. Daryl’s expression darkened further; he drew breath as if to say something. But Kasha spoke first.
“And one doesn’t have to be close to someone… to want to see them.”
“……?”
“There are people one simply must see. Whether one wishes to or not.”
“So you’re saying—”
“I do hope this evening leaves a lasting impression on you, Miss Tyrot.”
With that, Kasha dipped in a small curtsy and stepped back — subtly but precisely cutting off whatever Odette had been about to say.
Daryl swept a warning look over the surrounding faces, then took Kasha’s arm and steered them both away.
Odette watched the trailing edge of that vivid dress disappear into the crowd.
That lumbering oaf Daryl Rüschino — at his sister’s debut he’d done nothing, let her flounder without a thought, and now he wanted to play the protective older brother?
I don’t know what that was, but I don’t like it.
If Daryl was going to be like that, there was no point trying to make sport of this woman tonight. House Rüschino might carry little social weight, but they were the Emperor’s northern shield — the Red Bull’s family. No one wanted an actual feud between houses over it.
She watched the back of the brilliant dress recede further, and bit her lip.
What irritated her even more was the dress itself — that shade of red, the way it matched so perfectly with that odd pink gaze of hers.
Of all colors to choose — it clashes with mine.
What Odette failed to notice was that the irritation came, at least in part, from not being entirely certain she was wearing it better.
Snap.
She folded her fan shut, brow furrowing.
And then she noticed that the crowd around her was strangely restless. Normally her followers watched her with the kind of attentiveness that would catch her every micro-expression — but their gazes had drifted.
To the disappearing back of Kasha Rüschino.
“Doesn’t she seem different tonight? Like a different person almost?”
“The way she carries herself. You feel it too, right? It’s not just me?”
“And wearing something that bold — pulling it off like that.”
“Her face looks different somehow.”
“More than ‘somehow.'”
The hand holding her fan trembled.
She was going to need someone to take her mood out on. And quickly — she had to win back the room’s attention before it drifted any further.
⁂
“Are you all right?”
Once they’d put enough distance between themselves and Odette’s circle and reached the far end of the hall, Daryl turned to Kasha.
“About what?”
“Miss Odette. I knew she was arrogant, but what she just did — that was dismissive. She was looking down on you.”
He said it with the particular severity of someone who had taken genuine offense on her behalf. Kasha tilted her head slightly, studying him.
All those years — the sheer depth of his inattention to her life — if this was the threshold at which he registered contempt, she wasn’t sure whether to laugh or despair.
But his awareness, however belated, was still a shift in the right direction.
He seemed to take her silence as agreement, and pressed on with a gravity that was almost endearing.
“The Duke of Tyrot may be powerful, but House Rüschino is the Emperor’s shield on the frontier. You have no reason to feel small before her.”
…Is he trying to comfort me?
Kasha blinked, chin slightly lowered.
He was still oblivious in so many ways, but there was something sincere in his seriousness that made her disinclined to stop him.
Just then, the scattered clusters of guests around the room began finding partners, arranging themselves into formation.
The first dance was about to begin.
The air turned warm and unsettled with anticipation. The musicians tuned their instruments. The sight of it — so identical to how she remembered — made her stomach clench without meaning to.
Then the next thing to happen will be…
Completely unaware of what was running through Kasha’s mind, Daryl continued faithfully.
“I’ll introduce you to some of my friends tonight. Oh — there’s the son of Baron Penileton now, as it happens.”
Right.
Kasha thought it quietly to herself. On cue, exactly as she remembered.
“Daryl! Is this the famous little sister everyone’s been talking about tonight?”
“Theo. It’s been a while. This is my sister, Kasha.”
Here it comes — he’s about to drag Daryl away.
But then something unexpected happened.
“Miss Kasha Rüschino. It’s an honor to meet you.”
“?”
Kasha turned to look at Theo — the son of Baron Penileton — in genuine surprise. Before, he had barely glanced at her. So what was this careful formality about?
