“Oh my, Lady Rüschino.”
The voice was honeyed and deliberate. In an instant, three young noblewomen had arranged themselves around her like a closing net.
Blonde, auburn, and chestnut — their hair was the only thing that set them apart. Each wore a ribbon in the season’s fashionable design, carried a lace parasol, and held a folding fan. The effect was so uniform that they might have passed for triplets. Their makeup was polished and precise, and each had applied a beauty mark in the exact same spot. Together, they smiled at Kasha with the practiced warmth of strangers pretending at intimacy.
“What a pleasant surprise, running into you here.”
“Your outfit is… quite something. Ho ho.”
Behind the flutter of their fans, their smiling eyes traced identical arcs of insincerity.
Kasha had attended only a handful of social events, yet she recognized these faces. They were the ones who were always hovering around Odette, attending to her every whim like extensions of her own body.
It also explained why Simon had so abruptly changed his expression and slipped away. He would hardly want the social world’s hyenas to catch him on familiar terms with Kasha.
“Ah. Yes.”
She gave a vague reply and was on the verge of excusing herself when something made her pause. Her gaze flickered.
What is it? Why…?
The women noticed the shift in her eyes and allowed themselves a small, contemptuous smile. They seemed to assume they had frightened her.
But what had unsettled Kasha was something else entirely.
It was a scent — drifting off the noblewomen standing directly in front of her.
A floral perfume so intense it felt like it was driving itself into the very center of her skull.
This scent… I know this scent. It’s the same one that woman wore.
The unknown figure Kasha suspected of orchestrating every disaster that had befallen her — the shadowy mastermind she had been tracking — had worn a perfume exactly like this. And now, inexplicably, it was rising from all three of these women at once.
No. It’s not just them.
Kasha let her gaze move uneasily over the surrounding crowd.
How is this possible?
It wasn’t only these three. A noblewoman in blue who had brushed past her moments ago — she had smelled it too. And now, as Kasha’s senses sharpened, it seemed to be coming from every direction at once.
What is going on?
She was not imagining it. She was certain. For months, she had been collecting various flowers and recording their fragrances one by one, training herself so she would never forget that particular scent.
Jasmine, rose, magnolia — blended together. It’s the same perfume. Unmistakably.
“Excuse me, Lady Kasha. Are you even listening?”
The irritated voice from beside her jolted her back to herself.
“Ah. Yes.”
“We were hoping to have a little chat. It’s not easy to catch you anywhere, and we can’t let such a rare opportunity pass, now can we?”
The blonde noblewoman — her smile pleasant, her grip anything but — reached out and seized Kasha’s shoulder. The moment her fingers made contact, her carefully cultivated nails dug in with deliberate force. It was no accident.
Without so much as a flinch, Kasha quietly knocked the hand away.
Tap.
The blonde noblewoman seemed momentarily caught off guard by the unhesitating response. But rather than retreating, she lifted her chin and fixed Kasha with a combative stare, as though determined not to be outdone.
Anyone watching would think I was the one who started something.
Whatever scheme they had come to carry out, Kasha had no interest in entertaining their petty provocations right now.
She arranged her expression into one of perfect composure and opened her mouth.
“There’s no reason we can’t talk. But… all three of you — what a lovely fragrance you’re wearing. I find myself rather… curious. Which perfume is it?”
Apparently mistaking her words for flattery, the blonde noblewoman relaxed at once, one corner of her mouth curling with satisfaction.
“My goodness. Don’t tell me you don’t know this perfume? It’s been all the rage among the noble ladies of the entire capital.”
The sideways glances they exchanged made their disdain perfectly plain. But Kasha was not thinking about their posturing. She was thinking about what had just been said.
This perfume was fashionable throughout the capital — among all the nobility?
One crucial clue she had been holding close was dissolving into the fog before her very eyes.
Kasha kept her agitation hidden and replied quietly.
“…Is that so. I hadn’t realized.”
“That’s precisely why you should spend more time with us. Stop carrying yourself like you’re above everyone else.”
“Oh my, Lady Hailey. Lady Rüschino will think you’re trying to embarrass her.”
“Ho ho. I only say it out of concern. Princess Jasmine brought this perfume over from the Kingdom of Kajim and set the trend — and that was already several weeks ago. Our dear Lady Rüschino seems to have been entirely in the dark.”
Princess Jasmine?
That name stopped everything else from reaching her.
Kasha was no great student of the social world, but she knew who Princess Jasmine was — the fiancée of the Crown Prince of the Aranias Empire. The first princess of the long-established Kingdom of Kajim, she was due to be married to the Crown Prince before long.
But could a foreigner, no matter how powerful, truly become the shadowy architect behind the empire’s unraveling in only a year or two?
And if this perfume has been circulating among the nobility… then practically any noble at that prison could have been the one I encountered that night.
Everything seemed to be returning to where it had started. An exhausted, hollow feeling settled over her that she could do nothing to suppress.
The blonde noblewoman — apparently called Lady Hailey — had no idea any of this was passing through Kasha’s mind and continued holding forth without pause.
“And just look at your outfit today. Even if it is a hunting tournament, you actually came dressed to hunt. Really.”
“Lady Rüschino, I’m telling you this in good faith because you genuinely don’t seem to know — the role of a lady at a hunting tournament is to offer encouragement and admiration to the courageous gentlemen competing.”
“Ho ho. Surely there isn’t someone in the Rüschino household who should have taught you something this basic?”
The barbs grew sharper and more open with every exchange, yet Kasha’s expression did not change.
Odette must have sent them with orders to cut her down to size. There was no other explanation for how venomously they were sinking their teeth in.
Then again — in the life before the return, it was at this very hunting tournament that Leon and Odette’s engagement had been made official.
The pitch-black night in that abandoned temple. Leon’s words, spoken when death was already upon him, came back to her with vivid clarity.
I can still see her face — that wide, slow smile as she received the game I offered her. As though it weren’t a hunted animal at her feet, but me myself, laid there as her offering.
He had told her he felt an omen of misfortune even then. But the Leon of that life had no grounds to refuse a marriage his father, the Grand Duke, was pressing him toward — and perhaps not enough will, either. He had walked into that unhappy union, surrendering himself like a sacrifice.
Just then, however Lady Hailey chose to interpret the expression that crossed Kasha’s face, she bristled.
“Excuse me, Miss Kasha. Why are you smiling? Do you find what we’re saying amusing?”
Kasha looked at Lady Hailey directly. The gaze she leveled at her was steady and unhesitating — a deep, vivid pink that made Hailey flinch almost imperceptibly.
“What if it isn’t common sense — but simply a fixed idea?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m going to win. I’m going to enter this hunting tournament myself. With my own hands.”
The words landed with quiet precision. For a moment, all three noblewomen wore the exact same expression — one of absolute disbelief.
Then the disbelief collapsed into laughter. They nudged one another’s elbows and tittered.
“Oh, listen to that. Miss Kasha, truly. This isn’t even funny. You want to enter the hunting tournament? Do you have any idea what this tournament actually is? It isn’t some children’s game. That has to be the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.”
The auburn noblewoman scoffed and turned up her nose. Then Lady Hailey assumed an expression of exaggerated understanding, as though she had finally grasped something she could use.
“Ahhh. Now I see what this is.”
The look on her face was one of triumphant discovery.
“…”
“You’re trying to catch Lord Leon’s eye again — in some new way. Since ordinary methods don’t make him so much as glance up. I’ll admit, it’s rather clever, Lady Rüschino.”
“Oh my, oh my. Was that it all along?”
The auburn and chestnut noblewomen chimed in with exaggerated delight.
Bolstered by their chorus, Hailey raised her voice with even greater confidence.
“Well — we can understand being drawn to someone like Lord Leon. Any lady with two functioning eyes has lost sleep over him at least once.”
She glanced back at her companions for confirmation, and the auburn noblewoman took up the thread.
“That said, not every one of those ladies goes throwing herself at him without a second thought. There is such a thing as a lady’s honor.”
“‘In most cases,’ ho ho.”
“In the case of ladies raised in families that understand honor. Ho ho.”
They laughed openly, making no pretense of keeping it from her. Kasha stared at them with a faint, bewildered furrow in her brow. The perfume rising off them was making her head ache. It was dragging her back — unwillingly — to the last night in that freezing prison.
Then Lady Hailey, as though she had tired of the game, stepped close and thrust her face near Kasha’s. Whatever patience she had maintained was gone. Her eyes had turned cold and mean — less like a noblewoman and more like someone who had learned how to use cruelty from the back streets.
“Listen here, you little bastard.”
“…”
The eyes had been harsh enough. But the mouth was worse. It was almost impossible to believe those words had come from the same lips that had been lecturing about honor not a moment before.
“Odette Tyrot is going to get what she wants. No matter how long you hover around Lord Leon, the outcome won’t change.”
At that exact moment —
“Kasha.”
A voice came from behind her. Low and steady and certain.
“Were you here?”
Along with it came a familiar weight of footsteps drawing closer — a sound she had come to recognize without having to think about it.
“…Leon.”
The sound of his voice cleared her head. Kasha took a slow breath and turned around. She allowed herself to observe, with a certain quiet satisfaction, the way the faces of the three noblewomen instantly collapsed.
“You’re late.”
She greeted him with perfect evenness, as though the last several minutes had been entirely uneventful.
At her words, Leon lifted the brim of his hat slightly and cast his gaze downward.
Today he had set aside his uniform. He wore a loose shirt and fitted trousers with suspenders, leather boots, and a long sword and bow at his hip — dressed precisely for the occasion.
“So it seems. My apologies.”
“It’s fine.”
The attention of everyone nearby swung immediately to the two of them.
Most of it, aimed at Kasha, carried the distinct heat of envious resentment.
Perhaps Leon felt it too.
Without a word, he lifted his hat from his head. Sunlight broke brilliantly across the disordered silver-white of his hair.
What followed was even less expected. He reached over and settled the hat squarely over Kasha’s head.
Kasha looked up at him with a questioning expression.
With the light behind him, his face was difficult to read. He only added quietly:
“The sun seemed rather harsh.”
