Leon’s platinum hair gleamed with particular brilliance in the afternoon light. Each strand shone like the finest golden thread, scattering splinters of radiance in every direction.
Out of his uniform, he wore a loose shirt with two or three buttons undone at the collar. Each gust of sea wind sent the fabric rippling wildly, offering fleeting glimpses of the firm, defined lines carved into his neck and abdomen.
Perhaps because he had at last been freed from the curse of the magic stone.
He had always been beautiful — like a male deity hewn from temple marble — but today there was something different: a vitality, a warm and living luminousness that had no choice but to shine. The kind of beauty that made it impossible for anyone present to look away.
“Your Imperial Highness. Your Imperial Highness.”
Leon had drawn close enough now to offer his formal greeting, and Nigel responded with an easy, open smile that showed every one of his teeth.
“This is why summer holidays are a pleasure — you get to see all the people you’re glad to see, all in one place.”
“You look well, Your Highness.”
“So do you. I hear the Holy Knights have increased their training regimen again? The captain told me he’s worried none of the apprentice knights will survive to see the end of it. Go a little easier on them. It’s not as though war is imminent.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
Where Nigel made easy, affable conversation, Leon’s replies were clipped monosyllables — he had about as much warmth as a stone wall. But Nigel seemed entirely unbothered by this, clapping Leon on the shoulder and turning to look at Kasha.
“By the way — I hear you’ve invited the young Miss Rüschino to the villa?”
“…Yes.”
“And you’ve become publicly known as a couple?”
“Yes.”
“The things one lives to see. Leon, actually in a relationship. Well — naturally I mean that in the most favorable sense.”
Nigel’s teasing tone softened into something more reassuring as he spoke the last line, and he gave Kasha a sideways wink. Don’t worry.
“Yes.”
“……”
But even in a situation where most young noblewomen would have been blushing to their hairline, Kasha replied with nothing more than a flat monosyllable. Recognizing that the young lady’s social warmth was not exactly a high point either, Nigel smoothly changed the subject.
“…Right, yes. Speaking of which — would the two of you like to visit my villa this evening? I’ve arranged a concert — engaged a singer from the Kazim Kingdom. Jasmine has been rather struggling with homesickness, I’m afraid.”
As Nigel said this, he smiled at Jasmine beside him, and her haughty expression crumbled in an instant, giving way to something coy and sweet.
“Homesickness? Wherever Your Highness is, that is my home.”
In the moment that Nigel looked at her with such tenderness, a strong wind swept in and sent Jasmine’s hair tumbling wildly across her face.
Kasha had expected him to reach over and brush it aside — something achingly intimate and small. In the brief time she had seen Nigel at the wedding and reception, he had struck her as someone who, not unlike Simon, was prone to excessive displays of physical affection. He was, of course, incomparably more appealing than Simon in every way — but from Kasha’s perspective, that sort of behavior still made her uncomfortable.
What actually happened, however, defied her expectations completely.
Nigel watched Jasmine’s hair lash across her face in total disarray — and did nothing. He simply looked away.
The deliberate, unnatural detachment of the gesture was wholly at odds with the effortless composure he had projected until this moment.
It seemed Kasha was not the only one who noticed. Jasmine and the assembled nobles alike looked distinctly thrown, and a strained, awkward air settled over the group.
Jasmine smoothed her tangled hair back with irritable precision as her ladies-in-waiting hovered anxiously. Just as the silence was tipping toward outright discomfort, Leon — who had been watching everything quietly — spoke up.
“We are grateful for the invitation — however, Miss Rüschino only arrived at the villa today. After such a long journey, I would prefer to ensure she has ample time to rest.”
The nobles who heard his refusal traded displeased looks and murmured among themselves.
After the Crown Prince went to the trouble of extending such a generous invitation, to refuse outright—
Well, that’s the ducal family for you. Shameless as ever.
That sort of shamelessness is exactly what allows them to hold their heads up in front of His Imperial Highness after that incident — wouldn’t you say?
His Imperial Highness is remarkably gracious. Still looking after them simply because they’re family.
The perspective of Nigel’s inner circle was notably sharper and less forgiving than what one typically heard from ordinary nobility.
Nigel himself, however, seemed entirely undisturbed by the murmuring around him. He simply gave his effortless, pleasant smile.
“Is that so? Fair enough. Do take good care of Miss Rüschino. And do come by at some point — I insist.”
With that parting remark, Nigel turned to leave with unhurried elegance.
Jasmine, apparently expecting him to offer her his arm as a matter of course, extended hers toward him in a natural, practiced gesture.
But Nigel simply walked away, as though he had forgotten she existed. Jasmine was left standing alone in an instant.
As if her fingers had trembled, a fan slipped from Jasmine’s hand and fell to the sand.
Every person watching held their breath — hands reached out simultaneously to retrieve it — but the person who picked it up first was unexpected.
Kasha reached down for the fallen fan and rose slowly from the ground.
She had been watching it the entire time, which was why she was the first to move. The speed of her reaction seemed to surprise Leon, whose pale platinum brow arched almost imperceptibly.
Kasha brushed the sand from the fan with studied casualness and examined it closely.
“……”
It was a fixed-frame design — bird feathers woven densely onto rigid wooden ribs — round in shape. Unlike the folding fans favored by imperial nobility, this one had been constructed so that it could not be opened and closed.
As this registered, Kasha’s expression darkened slightly. She gathered herself quickly and held the fan out to Jasmine.
“Your Imperial Highness uses… quite a distinctive fan.”
But Jasmine, still visibly unsettled by what had just happened, only stared at the fan without expression. It was her lady-in-waiting who reached out and took it. And it was the lady-in-waiting who answered Kasha’s observation.
“It is a traditional fan from the Kazim Kingdom. How kind of you to retrieve it.”
Her tone suggested it was nothing of the kind — and carried an undertone of: how dare you pick something up from the ground and offer it to our Crown Princess.
“Oh, actually, we’ve been wanting to ask — the shape is so unusual. Is it cooler than a folding fan?”
“Indeed it is. The weather in the Kazim Kingdom is considerably hotter than it is here — so this style serves rather better than the folding variety.”
Several noblewomen seized on the convenient change of subject and clustered around Jasmine with animated conversation, moving off together. Kasha remained behind, listening to their chatter as her thoughts turned inward.
Two clues left by the mastermind. The perfume and the fixed fan. The perfume was brought into the empire by Jasmine — but she doesn’t favor the folding fan.
Perfume and folding fan. Simon Blanche. The magic stones. Magical instruments. The Holy War. The mastermind’s next target. Eve.
The fragments circled and collided in her mind, tracing a chaotic, tangled orbit.
In the meantime, the Crown Prince’s party had moved further away.
She stood beneath the fierce afternoon sun, feeling a vague, hollow bewilderment — a quiet disorientation — without knowing how much time had passed.
And then, without warning, a large shadow fell over her head.
The fierce blaze of sunlight vanished as though it had never been.
Kasha lifted her gaze slowly.
A man stood above her, his palm raised and spread wide to shield her from the sun like a visor.
Leon had drawn close while she was unaware. When she looked up at him, he averted his eyes as if caught at something.
“The light here is particularly harsh. You should wear a hat.”
Even now, with his broad frame already blocking the sun from reaching her, he kept his hand raised. As if the very idea of leaving her standing in the heat was something he refused to tolerate.
She gazed up at him, still slightly dazed — and in that moment, one more forgotten clue surfaced in her mind.
The connection between the mastermind and Leon.
Why had the mastermind chosen Leon as the target of the curse in the first place?
And furthermore — Leon’s younger sister Eve had also been a victim of the third magic stone. That was almost certainly not a coincidence.
The reason Leon — or the ducal family — had been chosen as a target.
Perhaps that thread is the more accurate lead.
The tangled fragments of thought that had been swirling through her mind began, slowly, to settle — to connect.
Just then a strong gust of sea wind rolled in, sending Kasha’s blue-black hair whipping wildly around her face.
At that, Leon stepped between her and the sea as though he meant to block the wind itself from reaching her. The gesture was so utterly natural that a stranger watching from a distance would have mistaken them, without question, for two people genuinely in love.
Kasha stole a glance at Leon’s broad shoulders framed against the sea, gathered her hair back, and pulled a hat from her bag and put it on. Only then did Leon slowly lower his hand and look at her.
Freed from the sun’s glare at last, Kasha met his eyes.
“Leon.”
Her voice came out slightly husky.
“Thank you… for coming down to meet me.”
At those words, the corner of Leon’s mouth curved up in a long, slow arc. It was a bittersweet smile.
“You should be angry with me, not grateful. I invited you here and then left you to wander the shore without so much as a welcome.”
Oh. Was that so.
Kasha blinked, suddenly embarrassed — she had been so caught up in her time with Eve that she had forgotten all about the mood inside the villa.
“And Eve…?”
“I sent Eve back to the villa with her governess.”
Leon gazed quietly at her blinking eyes.
“Your face is flushed. The sun was too strong for you, it seems.”
Kasha slowly shook her head at his concerned words.
“Actually, I’m glad I stayed. I’ve never seen the sea before… just sitting here felt extraordinary. New.”
At that, Leon turned to look at the sea — as though he had only just remembered it existed.
“Would you like to linger a little longer? Or…”
“I’d like to go inside now. That is — is it alright to go in?”
At her careful question, Leon’s expression clouded with something between bitterness and guilt.
“Of course. My father has gone out.”
“Ah. I see.”
Kasha nodded and began to take a step forward — then stopped short.
She was still barefoot, and the afternoon sun had heated the sand far beyond what it had been earlier.
Walking in shoes through this will be awful. I wonder how Eve managed to get back.
She had just started to slip her foot into her abandoned shoe when Leon’s voice came quietly, almost to himself:
“If it wouldn’t be unwelcome — would you allow me to carry you?”
Kasha looked up, puzzled.
“Pardon?”
“The shoes will make it difficult to walk. And you… you look exhausted. So, if I may — just for a moment.”
As the words left his mouth, Leon’s face was already moving closer.
Kasha froze, eyes going wide as a startled rabbit.
With precise, deliberate movements, Leon lifted her arm and guided it around the back of his neck. And then, as simply as if it were nothing at all, he scooped her up off the sand — and gathered her entirely into his arms.
This position — she was fairly sure she had read somewhere that it was called a princess carry.
Held there in the shelter of his arms, Kasha went stiff and found herself thinking, absurdly, of something as trivial as that.
