“……!”
That was not all. Her hands moved quickly — and stripped the glove from his hand.
He recoiled, too late. The glove was already in her possession.
The fist he closed against his instincts held a ring set with a violet stone, and it pulsed with a light that was not quite right — like the eye of something that had not yet decided whether to attack. The veins on the back of his hand were already distended and red, branching visibly under the skin. The demon’s curse of desire had already been tripped into motion.
Leon went pale.
But Kasha’s recklessness did not stop there. Her cold hand rose to his cheek.
Over skin roughened by long years of hard training, her pale hand moved. She touched his cheek — the way one might calm a child who had frightened themselves.
Leon swallowed a breath, the sound of it pained.
She continued without hesitation, her hand sliding down to the sharp line of his jaw.
Something between a groan and a sound he hadn’t meant to make escaped him. She watched him quietly.
When her hand was about to reach the strong line of his throat, Leon caught her wrist and pushed it away.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“…….”
“Is this what you’re after instead of pity — mockery?”
His voice was cold. Laced with contempt.
But not a single edge of it landed on Kasha.
She looked down at the wrist he had struck away and touched it gently. He had not meant to use force, not by his own standard — but Kasha’s skin bruised easily, and it was already flushing red.
The whites of Leon’s eyes reddened dangerously as he stared at it.
He stood breathing roughly for a moment. Then he turned toward the balcony entrance, ready to leave. Watching his back as he moved to go, Kasha finally spoke.
“You’re in pain right now.”
“…….”
He stopped. He did not turn around.
Kasha continued, slowly and evenly.
“A heat so intense it feels like your eyes are burning from the inside… moving through every part of you. Your mind feels clouded. Your senses — smell, sight, hearing — all… unbearably sharpened.”
“……!”
His shoulders locked. The stiffness of his back — she read the shock and terror in it and went on.
“Certain parts of your body… even now, completely beyond your control.”
“You—”
A sound almost like a growl.
Leon turned around, slowly.
Kasha was startled. And at the same time, glad.
Where had the refined, principled, courteous knight gone?
His eyes were lit with something sharp and volatile. The muscle in his jaw was visible from how hard he was clenching it. Anger seemed to have added inches to his size.
This was, if she was being honest, the face she was more familiar with.
“Who are you.”
“Kasha Rüschino.”
“You. What do you know?”
The careful speech was gone. A cornered animal remained — one that had just had its weakness exposed, and was ready to take the nearest throat in its teeth.
The red bleeding into his irises was probably not entirely her imagination. She had seen his eyes go red when the curse took hold of him, before her return. Proof the fever was rising.
Kasha turned her back to him slowly. She didn’t want to provoke him further by holding his gaze.
She had pushed enough. Now she needed to draw him in — carefully, with something worth wanting.
“Did you really think… no one had noticed?”
She spoke with her back still to him — and suddenly felt a searing heat close around the back of her neck.
Leon had seized her throat.
Burning. The kind that would leave a mark in the shape of his grip.
He spun her around to face him.
Eyes that blazed with a temperature no ordinary human body should produce locked onto her. His voice, roughened by anger, demanded:
“You. Do you know… why I ended up like this?”
The anguish in it was real.
He had been suffering for months — with no name for what was wrong with him, no idea how to fix it, nothing to hold onto.
Kasha forced out words through the grip on her throat.
“…A curse… cough.”
A curse?
He went still.
“A curse — you mean someone cast it deliberately? Someone made me like this on purpose?”
She couldn’t nod — her neck was trapped. She blinked twice.
Understanding her, his fury intensified to something nearly beyond bearing.
“Who sent you. Who are you working for? Is it the same person? Answer me.”
His hand grew hotter. The violet stone in the ring on his finger pulsed with a dangerous, pulsing glow. Kasha found it increasingly difficult to breathe.
He was not bothering to conceal the murder in him.
But he wasn’t crushing her throat, either.
As though he knew — with absolute precision — that one squeeze would be all it took, and was simply holding that power in his grip, waiting.
Kasha closed her eyes.
Someday, perhaps.
When the magestones are recovered. When Simon and his faceless patron have paid what they owe. Maybe then I can tell you everything.
But not today.
“I don’t… know who cast it… cough. Cough.”
The words came in fragments, broken up by her own shortness of breath.
He showed no sign of letting go.
“Don’t play games. You’ll want to be more honest. If you want to live.”
“Let me… breathe first… cough. Cough. Then I’ll—”
Only when her gasping became truly labored did he relax his fingers — fractionally.
Even so, his face twisted. As though suppressing something — desire, or pain, or both.
Because despite the fury behind it, despite it being an act of aggression — his hand had held her throat. He had felt her skin. Her warmth. The flicker of her pulse.
For someone who had enforced complete abstinence since the curse began, it was more than too much.
“Hah — ngh — hh.”
He stumbled over his own breath suddenly.
Lurching against the need threatening to overtake him. Trying to keep reason within reach.
Perhaps the need won, in the end.
In the moment just before he pulled his hand back entirely, his fingers drifted — involuntarily, almost dreamlike — down the ridge of her exposed spine.
Kasha inhaled sharply and shivered.
But Leon’s expression was half-gone, absent, as his fingers continued their slow, deliberate descent — tracing the vertebrae beneath the open neckline of her dress, one by one, finding each as though memorizing something.
What stopped him, when his hand reached the edge of her dress and was about to move lower, was the sound of her coughing.
Cough. Cough.
The combined shock of being strangled and the sudden sensation had triggered something convulsive. The coughing wouldn’t stop.
Cough. Cough. Cough.
As it went on, the dangerous red began to drain from the whites of his eyes — very slightly.
He moved toward her, vaguely — reaching to support her.
Kasha stepped back.
Stillness.
He stopped the instant he registered her refusal.
And in the next moment, the full weight of what he had just done hit him. His face fell apart.
Kasha, still fighting her cough, thought quietly:
I’m not stepping away from you. I’m worried that if you touch me again, it will only make things worse for you.
But the coughing wouldn’t ease, and the standoff stretched.
Then — the curtain across the balcony entrance shifted.
“Kasha. Is something wrong?”
Kasha startled.
…I forgot about Daryl.
He must have been standing guard just outside and heard her coughing.
Kasha raised her voice quickly.
“Nothing — it’s nothing! Cough.”
“Are you sure? I’m coming in.”
“No.”
The curtain moved toward opening — and Leon’s voice, flat and absolute, stopped it.
“Viscount. Stay out.”
“I beg your pardon? Sir Leon—”
Kasha cut in before the standoff could escalate.
“Brother. I’m fine. Just another moment, please… cough.”
“Just what exactly are you two—”
Daryl’s voice went loud with warning.
“One minute. Then I’m coming in.”
Given Leon’s rank — Grand Prince — even Daryl couldn’t very well force his way through. Or perhaps the thought of what a nobleman might want with a young woman on a balcony in the dark gave him one moment’s hesitation.
Leon, glaring in the direction of the curtain, exhaled with a sound like grinding teeth and bent close to Kasha’s ear.
“Talk. Now.”
The heat of it scorched the side of her face.
Kasha blinked several times and steadied herself. Then she spoke, quietly and carefully.
“Three magestones. Said to have been created… in the age of ancient magic, by sorcerers who made pacts with demons.”
“Demons?”
He was seething — but working to understand every word she said.
“Yes. Those who possess a magestone… can wield a demon’s power. But the power comes with a curse… equally strong. You, Leon — the curse you carry belongs to one of the three stones… the one called Onor.”
“Onor’s curse. But I don’t have any magestone.”
“You’re not the one holding it… cough. Someone else has the power. You have only the curse.”
The scowl of concentration on his face shifted as he absorbed it. The fire in his eyes went out — not to calm, but to something colder and more dangerous.
His voice dropped lower. Enough to raise the hairs on her neck.
“You’re telling me. Someone holds the stone, takes the power for themselves, and arranged it so that only the curse came to me?”
She had gotten it exactly right.
“…I can help you.”
Leon looked down at her, his expression frozen.
“You. Help me?”
“Yes. If you come to find me… there must be a medium that links the curse to you. If we find it—”
“Why would I trust you?”
The cold contempt of it.
“That’s—”
“Let me summarize what you’ve just told me. You know I’m cursed. You know the curse comes from a stone called Onor. You claim to know how to fix it.”
“…….”
“And yet — conveniently — you don’t know who cast it.”
“…….”
“The most logical conclusion seems fairly obvious.”
“…….”
“That the person who cast the curse… is you. Kasha.”
His mouth curved at one corner — beautiful and ugly at once.
