Daryl came storming toward Leon, his footsteps thundering against the floor.
His expression was already severe on a good day, but flushed red with fury, he looked positively menacing. The problem, of course, was that he posed very little actual threat to Leon.
Behind him, the maid from earlier stood pale as a sheet, wringing her hands with no idea what to do. Beside her, a healer who appeared to have been summoned from the temple craned his neck to assess the situation — until his eyes met Leon’s, at which point he startled and quickly drew his head back.
Leon watched their entrance with one brow furrowed, and then it struck him — he understood at once why they were all wearing those expressions.
…I never let go of her hand.
He had taken Kasha’s hand to reassure her before channeling his holy power, and he had simply never released it. He had slipped his ring back on afterward, but the prolonged contact with human skin had been enough — he could already feel the stirrings of lust beginning to rise again, threatening to boil over.
Of all the idiotic things to do, Leon Aranias.
He quietly released Kasha’s hand and rose from where he sat.
Watching him do so, Daryl ground his teeth as though he had just witnessed something unconscionable.
Daryl gestured to the healer to go check on Kasha’s condition, then turned and strode directly toward Leon. His expression was nothing short of murderous.
“Given that you are, of all things, the Vice-Captain of the Holy Knights. Given that you carry, of all things, the blood of the Aranias imperial family — even after that disgraceful incident at the last ball, I chose not to press the matter further. But this —” He swept the room with his gaze. “What in the world is going on here?”
“…Viscount.”
“How exactly did you come to meet my sister again today? This child barely leaves the house — she does nothing but study all day — and yet lately she’s been going out with alarming frequency…”
Daryl pressed one enormous hand to his forehead and let out a long, agonized groan.
“What on earth did you do to make her collapse? Well? Answer me.”
“‘Do to her’ — what exactly are you implying? What kind of person do you take me for?”
“Sir Leon, I —”
Daryl pinned Leon with a sharp green gaze. It was perfectly clear he had no intention of listening to any explanation.
They look nothing alike, no matter how I look at them.
Leon observed them both, turning the thought over in his mind.
He had heard the rumors — that Kasha Rüschino was an illegitimate child who had been adopted into the Count’s household.
Still, even if they only share half the blood, you’d expect some resemblance.
The two were as different as a predator and its prey, as unlike as an elf and a dwarf — in every conceivable way. Build, complexion, the color of their hair and eyes, their expressions, their manner of speaking — all of it utterly, completely different. Leon suspected that if he pulled a perfect stranger off the street and compared them to either one of these two, he’d find more resemblance between the stranger and the sibling than between the siblings themselves.
He stood with his arms folded, watching Daryl continue to work himself into a state.
The man clearly cared about his sister. That much was evident.
And yet — Leon had heard Kasha’s sleep-murmuring quite clearly.
Hungry… oh no…
That was not the kind of thing one expected to hear from the lips of a young lady from a distinguished household like the Rüschinos.
Surely she isn’t being mistreated?
Could this rigidly principled, boulder-like Daryl Rüschino — as unyielding as an old bear who had never learned the meaning of compromise — really be treating his own half-sister that way?
Leon’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.
When he recalled Kasha’s heartbroken, desperate sobbing from earlier, he found it impossible to look at Daryl Rüschino with anything resembling charity.
And Daryl, sensing that scrutiny, only grew more agitated.
Half-listening to the escalating reprimand, Leon cast his gaze around Kasha’s room.
Who would ever guess this belonged to a young noblewoman?
There was not a single gemstone or piece of jewelry to be seen, not a pair of decorative shoes, not even a lace canopy draped over the bed. The room was likely less adorned than ten-year-old Eve’s.
Without the smell, it would have been near-identical to the chambers of the mages he had glimpsed at the Mage Tower, or the workrooms of academy professors who had surrendered themselves entirely to their research.
On the dressing table sat a few cosmetics and a comb, but these were dwarfed by the towering heaps of crumpled paper and stacked books crowding them on all sides.
The desk at the center of the room was in an even more alarming state — buried under a chaotic sprawl of research volumes and schematics of unknown purpose, without so much as a single clear spot to rest a pen.
I am… an artifact maker.
The words she had spoken came back to him unbidden.
Those schematics. Those thick research volumes spanning both magic and engineering.
At least one thing you told me appears to be true.
No. I studied on my own. I’m introverted — belonging to a group was never quite my thing.
That also appears to have been true. And then there was…
What else had Kasha said to him?
I want you. Leon Milojonif Aranias.
A sudden rush of heat.
The moment he recalled the eyes that had held his with such startling directness, the lust he had suppressed began to stir and swell once more.
Without thinking, Leon bit down on his lip and forced his gaze to sharpen.
“…What’s this? Are you considering hitting me, Sir Leon?”
Daryl had caught Leon’s expression and his own turned colder still.
A blessing in disguise, perhaps. The sight of Daryl’s face cycling furiously between red and purple had an immediate cooling effect on the desire rising in Leon’s chest.
Leon composed himself and unfolded his arms.
Daryl pressed on.
“I’m not sure you understand the gravity of the situation. You have unlawfully entered a lady’s private chambers and made physical contact with her person without her consent while she was incapacitated. How is this remotely acceptable behavior?”
“That’s enough.”
Leon cut him off with an expressionless face. He had no reason to stand here and absorb this tirade any further.
“I am fully aware that the situation lends itself to misinterpretation.”
“Misinterpretation??”
“First. I did not unlawfully enter this room. I was escorted here by Miss Kasha’s maid.”
“…….”
Daryl turned on Sena with a ferocious look. She flinched and averted her eyes.
“And second. I did not touch the lady’s person without her consent. I was asked to, and I acted in good faith.”
“Asked to? Good faith? What in the world are you talking about?”
At that, Leon shifted his gaze toward Sena, who was trying her best to disappear into herself.
“You. Did you not approach me with a request? Did you not ask me to channel holy power for your mistress?”
“Huh? I — yes. Yes, I did. I just… you said you were a Holy Knight, so I thought… if she could receive treatment even a little sooner…”
Daryl listened to Sena’s halting explanation, then turned back to Leon with a low mutter.
“Holy power… you channeled holy power?”
Only now did Daryl properly look past Leon to examine Kasha’s face.
The healer, who had until that moment been doing his best to make himself invisible, took the opportunity to nod vigorously and throw his support behind Leon’s account.
“She is mildly dehydrated from perspiring so heavily, but her condition is otherwise excellent. Sir Leon is, after all, one of the most formidable wielders of holy power in both the Holy Knights and the Grand Temple itself — there’s really very little left for me to do, if I’m being honest.”
Daryl absorbed the healer’s explanation and tilted his head with a slightly uncertain expression. He seemed to be realizing — with some discomfort — that for all his outrage at a Holy Knight committing such a transgression, it had never occurred to him that Leon might actually have been providing medical care.
Leon moved to bring the matter to a close.
“Viscount, as you know, I am a Holy Knight. I trust you are aware that the Order’s code of conduct is stricter than that of any other knightly order on the continent.”
Daryl’s expression softened incrementally as he listened. Suspicion, however, had not yet left his eyes.
“You’re certain that’s all you did — channeled holy power? But when treating the sick, doesn’t one typically lay a hand to the forehead? Why were you holding her wrist?”
“That is because…”
Leon found himself at a loss for words again.
Daryl’s observation was entirely accurate.
And truthfully, Leon himself had been unable to account for why he had continued holding her hand long after the healing was complete.
Before Daryl’s expression could grow any more hostile, Leon seized on a quick explanation.
“I was taking her pulse.”
“Her pulse…? You know how to do that?”
“Naturally. I am, after all, the Vice-Captain of the Holy Knights.”
Leon inclined his head with a composed expression.
In that moment, he had just violated two more precepts of the Holy Knights’ Order.
Thou shalt not speak falsehood.
Thou shalt not make use of the Order’s name for base purposes.
Even granting that I have already fallen…
He found the taste of it deeply bitter.
“Well… if you put it that way.”
Daryl relented, if not entirely. His gaze, however, remained cool.
There was something about it that suggested Leon’s very presence here was an affront — regardless of what had actually transpired.
“Sir Leon. I will apologize for my misunderstanding in this matter. And… regardless of the full circumstances, I do thank you for bringing my ailing sister safely home.”
He bowed his head as he said it.
Leon returned the gesture with a slight bow of his own.
“However.”
Daryl lifted his head and held Leon’s gaze. These were not the eyes of a man seeking peace.
So this is why they call the Rüschinos ‘the Red Bull.’
Watching that fierce expression, Leon thought to himself.
“Going forward, I would ask — earnestly — that this sort of thing not be repeated, Sir Leon.”
“This sort of thing?”
“Precisely as I say. I am asking you, sir, never to meet my sister again.”
“And what exactly do you mean by that?”
“Sir Leon. I am a man who has never cared for high society, and I know nothing of rumors or gossip. If news has reached even my ears — ears as deaf to that world as mine — then surely the situation has grown serious.”
“Speak plainly.”
“Today I met with a merchant who trades weapons with my father. He told me that there is a rumor — widespread across the entire capital — that the betrothal discussions between the Grand Duke’s house and the Tyrot Ducal family are on the verge of collapse, and that my sister is the reason for it.”
“…….”
“Sir Leon. I will grant you that Kasha is no ordinary girl. But that does not mean she deserves to be bandied about on the tongues of others. Not so long as she bears the Rüschino name.”
Leon regarded his resolute expression and turned the matter over in his mind.
The request was reasonable. Beyond that — had he not arranged today’s meeting precisely to bring his association with this woman to an end?
All he needed to do was say so plainly. That he would never see her again.
Was this not, in fact, what he had wanted?
“…….”
And yet no answer came.
The answer he ought to give was perfectly clear. But the woman lying behind him made it impossible. Her presence was like a weight he could not move past.
Kasha Rüschino.
A woman suspicious from head to toe.
A woman who might hold the key to breaking his curse.
The only woman who had ever disrupted the pattern of his curse.
And…
A woman who pressed her tear-wet face into his hand as though that hand were salvation.
It was in that moment that he understood.
He could not stop seeing Kasha Rüschino. Not anymore.
He could not explain with any precision why that was. Only that it was true.
Then Daryl pressed him again for an answer.
“Sir Leon. Answer me as a knight would. Tell me you will never see my sister again.”
“That isn’t possible, Brother.”
The voice that spoke was soft, and it carried no strength — but it was unmistakably firm.
Leon and Daryl turned toward it at the same moment.
