Simon made a sound like he was struggling not to laugh.
“Did you actually believe that? That we were married? You idiot. Did we make vows in front of a priest? Did we ever sign a marriage certificate?”
Silence.
“God. This is exactly your problem. You can make a magitool, sure — but you don’t know how the world works. You can’t even hold a proper conversation.”
He raised his voice with what sounded like genuine exasperation. Kasha’s face began, slowly, to crumple.
I’m the idiot?
You were the one who said it. That Kasha was too shy to go to the temple together, so you’d file the marriage registration alone. That I should focus on my work and not worry. That we’d go visit my father and brother together soon.
And then you put a ring on my finger. That ring — the one the guards tore off because it got in the way of pulling out my nails. The ring even the guards called cheap and threw aside without wanting it.
But she said nothing. Her teeth were chattering hard enough to click together, yet the words wouldn’t come — her throat had locked shut with the shock of it all.
This had always happened when she was frightened or furious. She would stammer like a fool or go silent as a mute. It had started, she thought, with something Simon had thrown at her once in anger.
“When you get worked up like that, all that rambling and stumbling — it’s a bit… grating. You’d really be better off just keeping your mouth shut.”
She had long known that everyone looked down on her. But Simon saying it had been a shock unlike anything else. After that, she had reduced what little speech she had to almost nothing.
She did only what she could do — the one thing he had ever acknowledged her for. She shut herself away alone in the research tower at the edge of nowhere and built whatever magitools he requested.
“You’re absolutely brilliant, Kasha. A genius. I love you!”
She had believed that what flickered in his eyes in those moments was love.
And so, when she had suddenly been branded a villainess and hunted by the imperial army, she hadn’t stopped to blame him — she had simply run in the direction he pushed her.
“Kasha. Today is the day. Your execution.”
Simon said it the way one might announce the end of a long inconvenience. Kasha strained her clouded eyes, trying to find his face. It was useless.
The truth of her situation — she had understood it long ago, really. The moment he had gone months without sending a single word to her cell.
The realization had come slowly. Painfully. He used me. And in the end, he betrayed me.
But — to die? He’s telling me to just die now?
I believed there was some misunderstanding. Some reason. I kept faith with you, and this is what became of me. And you say my death as easily as if it means nothing at all.
She clenched her teeth. And then — a sharp winter wind cut through the bars across the room, and with it came something unexpected. A scent.
Flowers?
A languorous, heady fragrance. The kind that might seep from a bloom laced with poison.
Shff.
From somewhere — the sound of a fan being opened. Simon wasn’t the kind of man to carry a folding fan. That was something women used.
Who is that? Is there someone else in this cell?
“Ah — the smell must be dreadful, I know. Really, there was no need for you to come down here yourself. Someone of your station. I was going to handle everything and confirm it all personally.”
Those words from Simon made Kasha go still.
“Who…?”
But no one answered her. Simon was fawning over someone in a tone so craven she had never heard it from him before.
“Once this woman is executed, there will be no evidence left. The secret of the magestones will be buried forever, along with her death.”
Before she could fully absorb the devastating truth of what Simon was saying, the cell door swung open again, and the guards called her name.
“Katiana Rüschino. Come out.”
“Where…?”
“Where do you think? The guillotine.”
The guard who had spent months treating her body like a plaything gave a snicker as he answered.
“Goodbye, Kasha. You worked hard. In memory of everything you did for me — I’ll make sure you get a proper grave.”
The generosity in Simon’s farewell — as though he were doing her an enormous favor — was what, at last, broke something loose in her locked throat.
“No! None of it — it wasn’t me! This man made me do all of it! I didn’t know anything. Simon Blanche — this man is the one who ordered everything—!”
Thud.
In an instant of tremendous pain, the desperate confession she had finally mustered was crushed. Simon had kicked her across the face.
Hot blood from her nose flooded down over her in seconds. What followed was merciless — blow after blow raining down on a body already destroyed.
“You’re going to die anyway — can’t you manage to go quietly? All this time, pretending to care, playing at affection for your cheerless, miserable little soul — do you have any idea how much effort that cost me? How much of an ordeal every moment of it was?”
And then Simon’s foot connected with the back of her skull, and the world went entirely black.
⁂
When she opened her eyes again, she was already lying with her neck in the guillotine’s block.
Rotten eggs, fish guts, and worse flew from the crowd and landed in spreading stains across her body.
Thousands of people packed the square, their voices rising in unison.
“Die. Die. Die.”
She was almost grateful for her ruined eyes. She tilted her face upward, away from the heaving mass of voices, and looked at the sky. Not a single cloud. The outside world she had missed so desperately.
That white shape cutting across the sky — it must be a bird. How strange, that only that white form appeared to her in perfect clarity.
She fixed her gaze on it, trying to forget her fear. And then, unexpectedly, a voice reached her.
“…I’m sorry, Kasha.”
The voice of a middle-aged man, heavy with grief. Kasha flinched.
My lord?
Her adoptive father. Was he here?
“Father, pull yourself together!”
The next voice was unmistakably—
Daryl?
The eldest son of House Rüschino. Her half-brother. The one who had always despised her.
Of all things, they had come to witness her execution — her, the shame of their house.
Daryl’s voice reached her again.
“…I asked the executioner to make it as quick and painless as possible. That is… all we can do for you now. Kasha Rüschino.”
His voice was low and colorless — so different from his usual bluntness.
“I truly don’t understand you, even now. Did we… is this something we did to you?”
“Please step back. The execution is about to begin.”
The executioner’s flat voice. Then the sound of Daryl guiding his father away, footsteps slowly receding.
“Fa— ther… Bro—”
Even at the very end, she couldn’t get the words out properly.
A single tear ran down her dirty cheek, tracing a path along the groove of the block.
“I didn’t. I didn’t do those things. I really didn’t…”
She murmured it in a voice barely louder than a breath. But no one was listening. Just as no one had ever listened to her — her whole life long.
A life no one had ever welcomed. She had survived by making herself small, by disappearing. So as not to be unwanted. So as not to be in anyone’s way.
But was that enough? Was that what a life was supposed to be?
She was paying for it now — the full price of her naivety, her foolishness.
Kasha murmured alone, to no one.
“Just once more… can’t I have one more chance?”
Just once.
I want to live properly, just once.
This is not what I made myself so small for.
This is not what I endured all that loneliness for.
Give me one more chance.
If I’m going to be used like a fool — let me become a real villainess instead.
A single tear fell. She lifted her eyes to the sky one last time — and had the strange, impossible feeling that the white bird crossing the blue above met her gaze.
And then, in the very next instant—
Shnnk.
The blade of the guillotine cleaved through her neck.
Her eyes lost their light.
Kasha died on her twenty-first birthday.
⁂
And yet.
“—Hk!”
In the next moment, Kasha gasped — a strange, choked sound tearing from her throat.
…?
With every breath she drew, something filled her nose and mouth.
What is this?
A smell — at once unfamiliar and achingly missed. Fresh earth. Clean and fragrant.
…Earth?
She lifted her head sharply. And immediately, she found herself looking into someone’s face.
A maid — dressed in uniform, her face stricken with alarm as she stared back at Kasha.
“M— My lady? What are you doing down there like that?”
The maid’s name — what was it—
“Sena?”
The name came out of Kasha’s mouth before she had even decided to speak it. The maid’s brown eyes went very wide.
“Oh my goodness — my lady. You know my name?”
Kasha stared at her, twice as startled by the reaction.
Sena was a maid of the Rüschino household. What on earth was she doing here? Had she come with the count to watch the execution?
No — more importantly.
I can see.
Sena’s round face was perfectly clear before her — every freckle dusted across the bridge of her nose visible and distinct.
And this place…
She looked around.
This was not the scaffold. This was—
The gardens of House Rüschino?
The place she had lived from the age of twelve to nineteen. The capital residence of Count Rüschino, the man who had taken her in as a daughter after her mother’s death.
What in the world is happening?
She began, slowly, to raise herself from the ground. Then stopped.
The parts of her body that frostbite had destroyed — that she had lost feeling in, or lost entirely. Her fingers. Her toes. Every single one of them — the sensation had returned.
She yanked off her shoes and counted. Ten toes. All ten.
They’re — they’re all there.
She was still staring blankly at her own feet, murmuring to herself, when she noticed Sena’s expression — sheer bewilderment at whatever she was witnessing.
That kind of look — it was nothing new to Kasha.
Revulsion. Disappointment. Pity or contempt.
People had always looked at her with some variation of those things. And every time, she had flinched and made herself smaller.
But now — now it snapped her fully awake. She looked up at Sena.
“How old am I… right now?”
It was an awkward thing to ask. But Sena was used to the young lady’s awkward ways.
This was how the troublesome daughter of House Rüschino had always been. Pallid and unsettling, given to behavior no one could understand.
Now she can’t even remember her own age?
Sena barely managed to keep the expression off her face as she answered.
“You turned nineteen half a year ago, my lady.”
Kasha clapped a dirt-covered hand over her mouth. The rich smell of earth pressed against her nose.
Nineteen years old. The early summer of her nineteenth year.
I’ve gone back.
A shiver ran the full length of her spine.
She rose from the ground.
