“Take my hand.”
She held it out to him.
“Don’t be afraid.”
To Leon — to the holy knight who had become a monster, to the man who felt himself the plaything of something demonic — she extended her hand again.
As if creatures of darkness, fallen knights, things that had been ruined — none of that frightened her even slightly.
“Here.”
And then her cool fingers made contact with his gloved hand.
The breath that had been strangled inside him for so long finally found its way into the deepest part of his lungs.
Haa.
Leon exhaled, long and shaking, and felt something like relief at the very edge of sensation.
* * *
“Are you all right?”
Kasha closed the balcony door. The noise of the reception vanished in an instant.
And with it, the crowd of curious, pressing stares.
She had not let go of Leon’s hand through any of it. Not once, not for a single step.
And that was the only reason he had not lost himself entirely.
“Am I all right.”
Leon half-collapsed against the balcony door and slid slowly to the floor, still breathing hard.
He was too exhausted — in body and spirit both — to even pretend at standing.
He growled up at her,
“Leave. Now. You know exactly how dangerous I am right now.”
But his hands — for all the coldness of those words — had not released her.
I want you.
He wanted her with a ferocity that was becoming difficult to contain. He was nearly to the point of ripping the gloves off his hands just to feel her skin directly.
He wanted to bury his face against the pale column of her throat, where her pulse flickered — to breathe in whatever scent lived there. To take whatever this feeling was and release it somewhere.
The last of his remaining strength was being spent entirely on not throwing himself at her.
“Didn’t you hear me?”
He drove more roughness into his voice than was necessary, hoping the harshness would work where the words hadn’t.
He needed her to leave. He genuinely feared that if she didn’t, he would do something irreversible.
And yet the other part of him — the part that had no interest in being reasonable — wanted nothing more than to catch the hem of her dress and hold on.
Then Kasha lowered herself. She sank down until she was at his level — sitting on the floor, looking at him directly.
“Really?”
“……”
“Shall I really go?”
She asked it barely above a whisper. Like she already knew the answer. Like she could see straight through every contradiction tearing him open.
“If you truly want me to leave… I will. If that’s what you want.”
“……”
“But if you need me here — just say so. I’ll stay.”
She pressed her fingers more firmly around his.
That small pressure settled something in him that nothing else had. A certainty that she wasn’t about to disappear.
Her eyes confirmed it — not the bold, challenging look from when they first met, but something else. A kind of quiet grief, the look of someone watching a long, familiar suffering play out.
He couldn’t hold her gaze. He shut his eyes.
His vision was still patched with red, and lying here on the floor gasping was a wretched enough sight without having to see himself in her expression.
But in her eyes there had been no revulsion at all.
And somehow — that alone had begun to drain away the rage that had been swelling toward the crowd.
The desire, however, remained.
“Kasha. Do you know why I’m like this today?”
She looked pained when she answered.
“It’s an episode — from the curse. They’ll come periodically. And they’ll probably come more and more frequently.”
“I see. So at any time, anywhere, I could become this.”
He laughed — a sound without warmth.
Just now, he had almost committed violence against the Crown Prince. He had felt an overwhelming desire to tear apart not only Nigel but Marquis Amari — everyone in that room.
“I was moments away from killing someone.”
He stared at his own trembling hands and said it quietly.
Kasha listened without a word.
“And you still want me to be happy?”
He tilted his mouth into something meant to look like mockery. Kasha answered him squarely.
“Of course. I want you to be happy. More selfishly than you allow yourself to be now. More shamelessly. More naturally — as though you deserve it. That’s what I want for you.”
Her words came out evenly, one by one, and they left him nothing to say. Kasha pushed harder.
“We’re allowed to be, Leon. We’re allowed to be happy.”
But Leon could only stare.
He could not break through the shell of himself. The holy knight who could not come out of the painting he’d been pressed into — a fallen angel, forever fixed inside a gilded frame.
“Please.”
Her voice had gone hoarse.
And then she pulled him into her arms — wrapped both arms around his neck and held him.
The image of him wandering that ruined temple, alone, kept overlapping with the man in front of her now.
She had wanted to hold him then too. To wrap her arms around the wreckage she had, through her own foolishness, helped to create — and say: I’m sorry. To offer herself, insufficient as she was, as something like atonement.
Thud. Thud.
His body, bearing the full weight of the burning curse, was like an open furnace. Even pressing close to him, Kasha felt her breath falter.
And that, too, grieved her beyond words.
“It’s all right. Leon. I—”
“……”
“No matter what form you take.”
It sounded almost like a love confession. But it was her truest feeling.
I watched you die. A death that lonely, that wretched — once is more than enough.
So let me hold you. Let the curse break against me, if that’s what it needs. I’m the one who let it into the world. The least I can do is this.
In the next instant, Kasha’s eyes went wide.
“……!”
Leon — who had been motionless, limp as a doll — suddenly gathered her in his arms.
His arms around her were like burning cloth — fevered and consuming. And yet, strangely, that strange heat did not hurt her. It seemed instead to quiet itself, gradually, against her.
His flushed cheek came to rest against hers — cool to his burning skin. When bare skin met bare skin, a long, low breath left his body.
Haa.
The breath was heavy and intimate against her ear.
Something ran down her spine — unfamiliar, sharp. Without thinking, Kasha curled inward and let her head fall against his shoulder.
“…?”
Then she smelled it.
Something she had not expected. Something she knew.
The scent of the person who had come to confirm her death in that prison cell, before her return. The one whose identity she had never seen — only smelled.
An overwhelming floral perfume. Thick, unmistakable.
Why does that scent… come from you?
She went rigid.
She had encountered the perfume on various guests at the ceremony today — but there had been no reason for Leon to have been close enough to any of them for the scent to transfer.
Before she could make sense of it, Leon’s bare hand touched the back of her neck.
He had removed his gloves at some point. His fingers traced along her neck, slow and deliberate. Just like that night on the Tyrot Duchy’s balcony, when she had pressed him and he had met it with fury.
But the difference was this: the touch then had been the lust of a curse with no particular object. Now his hands moved with something more specific — desire directed unmistakably at Kasha, and no one else.
A moment later, his voice came out raw and strained.
“Kasha. A contracted courtship is still a courtship. So—”
“Pardon?”
She surfaced from her thoughts, responding on instinct.
And then Leon — still breathing hard — turned her face toward him with a hand around her neck.
“I warned you. I told you to run.”
He exhaled roughly.
“So this — half of this is your fault.”
His eyes were a blend of red and violet, burning and close — inches from hers. Fierce and entirely without restraint.
And then he closed the distance, and her lips were no longer her own.
“……!”
Kasha’s eyes flew open, then squeezed shut.
His tongue, hot as an ember, found its way past her lips and pressed inside without hesitation.
It should have burned. But the moment his heat met hers, it became something else — not pain, but a slow, interior fire that had no name yet.
The warmth of another person’s mouth — a thing she had never known before — was almost impossible to believe. Wherever his tongue moved, each nerve ending woke to a sensation entirely new.
Without meaning to, Kasha made a small, helpless sound and tilted her head back.
Which only pressed things further.
He held her close — fiercely but carefully — one hand cradling the back of her neck. Then he angled deeper, and deeper still, as if no amount of closeness was sufficient.
Every breath she released felt precious to him. The cool temperature of her tongue against his felt like a gift. The kiss itself, finally had, tasted of something he couldn’t name but didn’t want to stop.
Everything that had been festering inside him — all of it surged toward the one opening it had found.
And it was terribly confusing.
The lust of the curse and something far more complicated — the pull he felt specifically toward her — tangled together in a way he couldn’t separate.
The kiss was rough, then tender. Desperate, then tentative. He surged toward her only to retreat. It broke and resumed, broke and resumed — and with each interruption, the chaos in him diminished slightly.
Kasha, breathing in fragments, held on and thought vaguely:
Is kissing always like this?
Or is it only because it’s Leon?
Why is a man with everything he already has — somehow this good at kissing too?
She had come here prepared to sacrifice something of herself for his relief. But this was not sacrifice. This was something she had no category for yet — a breathless, unanticipated pleasure she couldn’t name.
She had tried, finally, to push him back — to catch her breath. He didn’t give ground. He pressed closer instead.
In doing so, the balcony door behind him was left unguarded.
And as if on cue, it was flung open.
“Sir Leon? Are you in here—?!!”
Kasha and Leon broke apart simultaneously and turned toward the window.
The intruder’s face, taking in the sight of the two of them — every mark of that fierce, consuming kiss still plain to see — went completely, utterly still.
