Leon’s expression turned grave.
She looked so exhausted that day…
Of course she did. She had pushed that fragile body of hers relentlessly for the entire day.
I should have come yesterday, instead of waiting.
Eve’s eyes went wide at the swift change in his expression. Daryl shook his head slowly.
“How could she possibly be well? She hadn’t slept properly in days — nothing but enchanted tools, one after another.”
Sigh.
Daryl let out a long, weary breath, as though the air itself might fail him.
“I simply can’t understand why she refuses to take care of herself.”
The two men fell into a brief, shared silence — unlikely common ground. Eve, beside them, lowered her brows in quiet distress.
Just then, the butler came hurrying into the drawing room.
“My lord. Count Ranomer and the young Baron Penileton have arrived. They wish to speak with someone about the enchanted tools presented at the tournament today.”
“Now?”
“Yes. And there are letters as well — quite a number of them…”
The silver tray the butler carried was heaped with correspondence.
Daryl’s expression became one of visible discomfort.
“There’s nothing I can tell them until Kasha wakes. I don’t know any of the details myself.”
He scratched his head, clearly at a loss, but rose from his seat regardless.
Then he turned — not to Leon, but to Eve — and said firmly,
“Please keep the visit brief, Miss Eve. When my sister’s condition has improved, I’ll extend a proper invitation to the manor.”
“Thank you, Lord Rüschino.”
Eve gave a charming little curtsy. The effect on Daryl was immediate — something in his expression eased as he excused himself from the drawing room.
* * *
“Welcome, my lord.”
Kasha’s lady’s maid recognized Leon at once and lowered her head deeply.
“How is Miss Kasha?”
“She has just finished her treatment and fallen asleep, my lord.”
“Is the healer still with her?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to look in on her briefly — just her face.”
“Of course.”
The maid answered graciously and opened the door.
Leon passed the bouquet and cake to her, and her face brightened at once.
“This is exactly the dessert she loves. Thank you so much.”
At those words, Eve shot Leon a pointed look over her shoulder, as if to say: see? Leon gave an approving nod.
Eve stepped into the room with wide, wondering eyes, taking in the sight of Kasha’s chamber for the first time.
It was as spare and stark as before. Stacks upon stacks of blueprints and reference materials everywhere. Now, added to those, were samples and components of enchanted tools, custom-forged at the smithy. There was barely a clear path to walk.
In the center of it all, Kasha’s small bed sat quietly, and beside it, the healer from the temple — the same one Leon had seen before — was seated, one hand resting on Kasha’s brow.
As Leon drew closer, he saw it clearly.
The healer’s hand, resting on that small, pale face. Leon’s chest lurched.
She looked impossibly white and fragile lying there. Like something that might break if the air breathed too hard against it.
But it was not only that which troubled him.
“……”
The healer’s hand on her forehead — murmuring incantations, tracing the magic of healing across her brow — grated on Leon in a way he could not fully articulate. He wanted to remove it. Immediately.
He knew that forehead all too well.
He knew the softness of it, the cool, smooth skin. He knew the slow, steady rhythm of her pulse at her temple, as unhurried and unreadable as her expression always was.
That the healer was now feeling all of that in his place sent a surge of irrational, wordless displeasure rising through him.
“How much longer is this going to take?”
The healer, absorbed in concentration, turned instinctively at the voice behind him — and scrambled to his feet in alarm.
“L-Lord Leon!”
“Are you short on skill? Or are you dragging out a finished treatment to collect a higher fee?”
“What? No — I would never—”
The healer had no idea what he had done wrong. He broke into a flop sweat.
“You may go. I’ll see to her condition from here.”
“But — my lord, I was engaged with a commission, and until the young lady has fully recovered—”
“Her recovery is my responsibility. Surely you’re not going to question my abilities.”
The healer was visibly caught. He could hardly claim distrust of one of the most formidable wielders of sacred power in the empire.
And the lady’s maid at the back of the room was blinking at him steadily, giving him every nonverbal indication to clear the way. The healer relented and withdrew.
“Leon.”
Eve called to him in a small voice as the healer left.
“What is it, Eve.”
“You really do like Lady Kasha, don’t you?”
“What?”
Hehe.
Eve didn’t bother answering his startled question. She simply flashed a teasing smile and crept toward Kasha’s bed.
She stood there for a long moment, looking down at Kasha’s paper-white face. Then she settled herself at the head of the bed, folded her hands in her lap, closed her eyes, and began to murmur quietly. She was praying, it seemed.
Leon stood behind her in silence, unwilling to disturb her.
After a little while, Eve opened her eyes and whispered,
“Brother — Lady Kasha is so different from the other noble ladies, isn’t she.”
“She is.”
“That’s why I love her.”
Eve said it simply, and then looked up at him — with an expression that said clearly: you do too, don’t you? I already know.
“…I suppose so.”
“You know, before — I used to study the other young ladies, the ones who had mothers. I wanted to be like them. Their dresses, their manners, how they moved.”
Leon pulled a chair close and sat down beside her, quietly.
It had been a long time since he and Eve had simply talked like this. After the symptoms had begun, he had been so consumed with keeping his distance from her that he had barely considered her loneliness.
She had grown, somehow, in these few months. More than he had noticed.
“But Lady Kasha doesn’t care about any of that, and she’s still doing extraordinary things. She’s developing enchanted tools. She won the tournament. She’s genuinely wonderful.”
Eve’s eyes shone as she looked at Kasha.
“Lady Kasha doesn’t need someone to protect her, does she, Brother.”
“Most likely not.”
Leon nodded softly in agreement.
It was true. He thought of Kasha standing alone on the stage, facing the disdain of the assembled nobles without flinching.
She looked so delicate — and yet there was something in her that no one could break. Like a single wildflower lifting its face toward the sky even as a fierce storm tried to press it into the earth.
“I want to become like Lady Kasha, Leon.”
Eve turned to look at him as she said it — as if making a vow. Leon nodded, not quite knowing what else to do.
“So stop worrying about us.”
“What?”
“You don’t have to protect Anthony and me anymore. All right?”
Before he could even begin to untangle what she meant by that, Eve was already on her feet.
“I’m going to ask them to cut the chocolate cake right now — so it’s ready the moment she wakes up!”
She announced this brightly and went dashing out of the room before Leon could say a word.
“Eve—!”
Too late.
Click.
The moment the door closed behind her, Leon understood. She had arranged for the two of them to be alone.
When did she grow up so much?
He thought it with a pang of something bittersweet, and turned — and found a pair of deep pink eyes already looking at him.
“Kasha? Are you awake?”
The relief in his voice came out more plainly than he intended. Embarrassed by it, Leon pressed his lips together — just as Kasha blinked and looked around.
“I thought I heard… Eve’s voice.”
Something almost like a smile crossed his face.
“Her prayers seem to have had quite an effect.”
Kasha’s eyes widened slightly at the sight of that smile. Leon erased it, a little self-consciously.
“Eve insisted she wanted to congratulate you on your victory, so she dragged me along. She’s gone to fetch the dessert she brought for you.”
“Ah. I see.”
Kasha blinked slowly.
Each time her lashes fell and rose, a burst of deep pink bloomed against the white of her face — vivid and almost startling, like a flower opening.
Leon was watching her, momentarily lost, when he remembered what he had come to say.
“Yesterday — Miss Odette detained me, as she had something she wished to discuss. That’s how it came to be.”
“……”
Kasha said nothing. She drew her hands out from beneath the sheets and turned them slowly in her lap. The faint blue of her veins showed through translucent skin — something about the sight kept catching at him, and he forced his gaze away.
“The matter of the engagement has been definitively settled. I made that clear to her. But given how the situation must have looked to you that day — I felt I owed you an explanation.”
Through everything Leon said, Kasha listened without speaking, giving only quiet nods. He watched her pale lips, restless.
“If you had asked me for an explanation on the spot, I would have given you one. But by the time I got out of Odette’s carriage, you had already gone.”
He hadn’t meant to say that last part.
Leon felt a flicker of regret — because what he had just revealed was that the moment he stepped out, he had looked for her, and that finding her gone had left him not merely disappointed but genuinely, unsettlingly anxious.
Then Kasha spoke.
“It’s all right. You don’t have to explain.”
“……”
“We’re a contract arrangement, after all.”
Leon had nothing to say to that.
She was correct, of course. They were in a contractual courtship. Whatever either of them did — or whoever they met — neither party was obligated to report to the other.
And yet her words deflated something in him that he couldn’t quite name.
“In any case — thank you. For coming to see me.”
Kasha said it gently and reached toward the nightstand. The stacked letters and invitations — she wanted to go through them.
Leon passed her the silver tray, his mood vaguely unsettled.
Kasha began leafing through the correspondence one by one, as though she had already forgotten he was in the room. Then she let out a small exclamation.
“Ah, here it is.”
She hurried to unseal the envelope. The pale hands tearing at it trembled faintly. Her strength hadn’t returned yet — that much was obvious.
In that condition, she’s already searching for the next thing to do. And here I am, practically invisible.
Leon was caught somewhere between exasperation and something more tender — a feeling he couldn’t quite sort out — when Kasha looked up abruptly from a letter edged in gold.
Her expression was entirely serious.
“Lord Leon. Lately… how have you been? Your condition — is it… all right?”
