The silence that fell was immediate and complete. Even the nobles standing some distance away at the pavilions went still, straining to see.
Removing one’s own hat and placing it on another person — this was a more intimate, more direct expression of affection than offering one’s coat. It was not a gesture that could be dismissed.
That this was Sir Leon Aranias — the notoriously unapproachable holy knight — openly making such a tender gesture toward a woman. And to think the rumors about him and Kasha Rüschino had not been idle gossip after all. Faces across the gathering lit with a curiosity that was nearly bursting at the seams.
“Sir Leon.”
Lady Hailey, unable to endure it any longer, stepped forward. Leon glanced at her and returned the greeting with characteristic flatness.
“Lady Hailey Countess.”
“It has been a while, my lord.”
“Has it.”
“Sir Leon — the Tyrot Duke’s pavilion is just over there. They’ve prepared a sangria that is wonderfully refreshing. Would you join us? To pay your respects, and perhaps cool off a little. Duke Tyrot is waiting as well.”
Mentioning Odette without quite saying her name, Hailey pressed him with all the prettiness she could manage.
She refused to accept this. The look on her face made it plain — the idea that Leon, the most sought-after match in society, would turn away from Odette and show interest in someone as insignificant as this was something she categorically rejected.
Leon looked down at her with violet eyes utterly devoid of warmth.
“I would rather not.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It would not be proper to leave my partner and go wandering off alone.”
“Your… partner?”
Hailey’s lips trembled. The word seemed to reach her as something impossible.
Leon addressed her quietly, but without the slightest room for misinterpretation.
“Lady Kasha Rüschino is my partner today. I would have thought the Tyrot household already knew this.”
“No, that — but how — why would you —”
She had gone white and was stumbling over her words. It was almost pitiable to witness. Kasha turned away, her expression cool and composed.
I’m tired of this comedy.
She had no wish to spend another moment on it. Without further deliberation, Kasha turned, reached out, and lightly took hold of Leon’s arm.
She felt his thick forearm tense the instant she made contact. But she looked up at him with a blank face and simply urged him forward.
“Let’s go. Leon.”
She had dropped the formal address — only his name. Something shifted in his eyes.
“…”
The perpetual coolness of his expression developed a small, almost imperceptible crack. Without a word, he began walking in the direction she had indicated.
The two of them — dressed in near-identical ivory — looked for all the world like a matched pair. The nobles watching their retreating figures buried their mouths in their hands and whispered to one another.
The animosity radiating from the three noblewomen was almost enough to feel on one’s skin. Kasha walked on as though she felt nothing, her hand still resting in the crook of his arm — the arm that was taut with suppressed tension.
It was then that the sound rang out.
Bwaaaa —
A hunting horn, high and bright, signaling the beginning of the tournament.
Deep in the dense summer forest, the slender figure of a woman rode without hesitation.
Leon watched the dark knot of Kasha’s hair sway at the crown of her head, and found himself sinking into a feeling he couldn’t quite name.
Does she have any idea what kinds of animals live in this forest?
Even by his experienced measure, her horsemanship was alarmingly poor. She didn’t seem afraid of the horse, but it was clear she had rarely ridden. And yet, seated crookedly in the saddle though she was, her shoulders were straight, and the gaze fixed ahead of her held no trace of hesitation.
She looked like a veteran of a hundred battles — someone who had buried the very concept of fear somewhere far behind her.
When Kasha had declared that she intended to participate in the hunt herself, Leon had assumed she simply didn’t know what she was getting into.
The imperial hunting tournament, held every summer, was not simply a display of hunting skill. It was closer in spirit to a debutante ball — a matchmaking ritual of sorts, facilitated by the imperial court. A man who made a successful hunt presented his quarry to the woman he wished to court. It was a spectacle of public courtship and, for those watching, a measure of who reigned over that season’s social world.
In other words, it was everything the court’s most avid observers could want.
It was exceedingly rare for a woman to enter the competition. This year, aside from a female knight participating on behalf of her lord, Kasha was the only woman to have put her name on the list.
Even if they’ve stocked the forest mostly with safer animals for the event, bears have been known to appear — and not gentle ones. Why would she take on that risk? All she needed to do was wait for me to hunt something and present it to her.
When Leon had said as much to her, Kasha had looked up at him with those clear eyes.
This tournament is an opportunity.
An opportunity?
An opportunity to make something — a safeguard — so that no one can take what I have from me.
He hadn’t understood. She hadn’t explained further, and he hadn’t pressed. From the start, she hadn’t seemed to want or expect his understanding. The idea of him winning the hunt and presenting the prize to her as an act of courtship was clearly of no interest to her whatsoever.
She was doing exactly what she had said she would when this arrangement had begun — treating Leon as a shield, a deterrent against unwanted advances, and nothing more. Half the time, she seemed to forget he was there at all, absorbed as she was in her devices and her diagrams, lost in thoughts he had no access to.
And — disconcertingly — this bothered him.
I made rather a significant decision in agreeing to this arrangement.
And yet the result was something too dry to be called a courtship by any stretch.
If anything, unlike in the beginning, he was the one who had ended up restless — wanting, unaccountably, to know what was happening inside her head.
Could it be that she’s doing this on purpose — keeping me at this precise degree of unsettled?
But the eyes Kasha turned on him were always clear to the point of being exasperating. Clear and absolute — as though uncertainty were a concept she had long since rendered unnecessary.
That was how it usually was. And yet — she could ignore him so completely one moment and then stand in front of those hyenas wearing that stunned, faraway expression, and make him feel this particular kind of unease.
He hadn’t been close enough to hear what Lady Hailey was whispering in Kasha’s ear, but her expression had told him everything. Something cruel was being said.
Why is she just standing there?
This woman who spoke to him without a moment’s hesitation — she was standing there wearing the face of a child dropped alone in the middle of the world. That expression infuriated him in a way he found nearly intolerable. Before he had time to think, his feet had already carried him forward.
Kasha.
The face she had turned toward him when he called her name. Watching the fog of that blank expression clear in an instant — warm and sudden, like a lamp lighting — he was seized by something he had no words for.
The quarrel with his father, the weight of responsibility he carried for the crumbling Grand Duchy — in that instant, all of it had ceased to exist. Even Anthony’s warning, which had been circling his thoughts with an ominous persistence, was gone.
For that one moment, all the noise of the world went quiet. There was only Kasha’s face, vivid and near.
Before the intensity of that sensation could swallow him whole, he had — without quite knowing why — pulled his hat from his head and placed it on her.
Even he couldn’t say what it meant. Only that in that moment, he had wanted everyone present to see it. To see that he would protect her.
The sight of her face, made to look smaller and more fragile beneath the brim of his hat, kindled something protective in him — and sharpened his contempt for the women beside her.
He could see Odette clearly, seated in the shade of her family’s elaborate pavilion, fan in hand, watching their cruelty unfold. He could see Simon too, lurking at the edges, rigid with attention.
The urge to drag Simon out into the open and do something entirely undignified rose in him with alarming force. He barely suppressed it. If Kasha hadn’t drawn him away from that spot, he genuinely wasn’t sure what he might have done.
But what irritated him most, above all of it, was himself. Because even in the middle of all that — he could not take his eyes off the deep red curve of Kasha’s lips.
That I can feel something like this now, in this situation.
He had driven himself through brutal predawn drills before coming here. Surely that hadn’t failed to blunt this particular appetite.
He was filled with a revulsion at himself that felt almost like fear. Not just self-contempt — but a genuine unease at the violence of his own feelings.
Is this simply desire — or is it something else?
Brother. You’re going to regret this. Don’t trust that woman.
Anthony’s face rose before him — that strange, urgent expression, those unusual words.
Why did Anthony say that? Does he know something about Kasha that I don’t?
Anthony had an irritable streak, but he was also intelligent and perceptive. He was not a person who would say something careless to make another look bad.
His mind was growing complicated again.
Leon fixed his gaze on Kasha’s back, ahead of him in the trees, unhurried and composed as ever.
The forearm she had gripped was still burning — as though she had branded it. His breath felt warm inside him.
And she, the cause of all of it, had been perfectly calm the entire time.
Throughout the opening ceremony, standing directly beside him, she had not glanced at him once. Her attention had been fixed solely on the emperor delivering the opening address, and on the high-ranking nobles gathered at his side.
The aged emperor murmured through a few words at the podium and then descended. Princess Melissa and Princess Jasmine had been the ones to support him.
Had it been his imagination — the way Kasha’s gaze had sharpened into something cold and particular when it landed on Princess Jasmine, present in the Crown Prince’s absence?
It’s impossible to even guess what’s happening inside that small head of hers.
Before their departure, the same had been true. She had turned to look at him — that habitually distant gaze — and asked him exactly two things:
Which direction is it — where the largest and most dangerous gray bear lives, in this forest?
…A bear?
Yes. The gray bear they say has been taking human lives recently. The one they call the demon of Chrisos Forest. Which direction?
He had answered with visible skepticism.
Near the western ravine.
A man-eating bear that hunters had been attempting to bring down for years. The very quarry Leon himself had been thinking of pursuing today.
…That’s quite far. I’ll need to hurry. Understood.
And upon hearing him, Kasha had composed her face into something resolute — and ridden directly toward the western ravine.
That woman, she —!
That was why he’d had no choice but to follow her into the forest at a near-run.
