The House of the Grand Duke of Osilote fell very, very slowly. So slowly that even those falling could not see it, at first.
After Crown Prince Nigel seized effective power, the ventures underway across the Osilote family’s most profitable territories were cancelled — one by one, until there were none left.
The literary salon that had been the Grand Duke’s great pride was branded a den of decadence and shuttered.
Anthony’s application to the Academy was put on indefinite hold for a parade of trivial reasons. Eve was being excluded from noble society in ways too subtle for any single one to be named an offense.
And all of it had unfolded over years, with exquisite slowness. With the exact degree of subtlety required to make it look like coincidence.
Sometimes Nigel would invite the entire Grand Ducal household to an imperial event. And there he would watch the Grand Duke prostrate himself, sweating, fawning, grasping — and smile his broad, magnanimous smile. Everyone watching praised Nigel for his generosity. Everyone watching despised the Grand Duke.
As for Leon — he had joined the Holy Knight Order, which fell under the independent authority of the Grand Temple rather than the imperial court, and so had managed to rise to the position of deputy commander largely outside Nigel’s reach.
There was something almost absurd in the fact that his resemblance to his father had earned him the ridiculous title of Jewel of the Empire, along with a following of admirers he had never asked for.
But it was common knowledge by now that the imperial house was tightening its grip on the temple’s funding, extending its control — and leading that effort, beloved by every citizen of the empire, was Crown Prince Nigel himself.
Nigel had recently begun receiving regular reports from the Commander of the Holy Knight Order. Before long, the conditions for him to squeeze Leon’s existence whenever he wished would be fully in place.
The crown prince wanted the quiet, unhurried ruin of the Grand Duke of Osilote. Not just the man — the entire house.
At the wedding where Leon had stood as the crown prince’s attendant, he had understood this in his bones with a clarity that hurt.
The crown prince had shone all the brighter against the backdrop of Leon’s deterioration — his body warped and wasting under the curse. The reason Nigel kept the Grand Ducal house alive was simply this: to have their wretchedness on display before him, for his private satisfaction.
If Leon were to say any of this aloud, most people would laugh and call him a paranoiac.
And yet — you, Father. The Grand Duke of Osilote himself. The cause of all of this. Surely you, of all people, should be forced to see things as they are.
Leon looked at his father with an expression that ached. An old fool clinging to the ghosts of a past that no longer existed, refusing to look at the ruin gathering at his feet.
“You committed a crime, Father. Not a small one — an attempted assassination of imperial blood. The sort of crime for which there is no defense even if you are torn apart for it. So wake from this dream you’ve been living, and spend whatever is left of your life in atonement. That is the only path by which any of us survive.”
“Quiet! Be quiet! Shut your mouth with that filth — before I burn every last one of you!”
Crash.
Before Leon could finish, the Grand Duke’s eyes went wild. He kicked over the side table next to him with the force of a man no longer inside himself. Eve screamed in terror, but he paid no notice.
The objects on the table scattered across the floor — and with them, the candle that had been burning nearby toppled and fell. It did not go out. It lay on the parlor floor trailing black smoke, and the Grand Duke, eyes fixed on it with a strange gleam, bent and snatched it up.
He swung his arm toward Leon — as if to thrust the flame in his face — and then, catching the cold steel of Leon’s gaze, changed his target with no hesitation at all.
He hurled the candle straight at the hem of Kasha’s dress, where she stood holding a trembling Eve tightly in her arms. Without a moment’s pause.
“I’ll burn it all! Every last bit of it!”
“Aah!”
Crack. Boom.
The instant Eve screamed, a peal of thunder rolled through the air like the announcement of something catastrophic to come.
Kasha shoved Eve away and threw herself to the floor. Leon launched himself toward her at almost the same moment.
The parlor floor was hard marble. Kasha braced for the impact. But the floor — hard as it was — did not feel as she expected. It felt, instead, strangely warm. Sheltered.
When she lifted her head a moment later to check her dress, she found she could not move freely. Considerably longer and stronger arms than her own had wrapped around her and were holding on.
While Leon used his legs and his free arm to stamp out the remaining flames that had caught on her skirt, all Kasha could do was pull her feet to one side and stay still, so as not to be in his way.
Through all of it, she heard his heartbeat — rough and urgent, pressed against her ear. The arms holding her were rigid with desperate tension. She felt his fear entirely, without distance. Somehow, that realness of it settled her own shock more quickly than anything else could have.
When the last embers on her skirt were out, Leon released her. Kasha sat up — and for the first time, she could see his face properly.
He had aged years in the space of seconds. His eyes met hers, trembling with pain and fury.
He reached for her legs, exposed below the hem of her burned dress, and placed his hand against her skin. Golden sacred power blazed around his palm. In moments, the stiffness that tension had locked into her body eased away.
“Are you all right? Will you let me look at your legs?”
His expression said plainly that, given permission, he would push back the ruined skirt and check every inch of her.
To ease his mind, Kasha shook her head with deliberate calm.
“I’m fine. Even my underskirt is unharmed. It didn’t feel hot at all.”
That last part was a lie — but looking at his face in that moment, she found she could not tell him the truth. She was about to say something more, to reassure him further, when —
“What do you think you’re doing, Father! How could you do this to Sister Kasha!”
Eve’s voice, shaking with shock and fury, rang out through the room.
“What — what did you say? You useless little girl — how dare you speak to your own father like —”
“I am not useless!”
The shout startled the Grand Duke out of his spiraling rage for just a moment. Then he began to snarl again.
“Impudent little wretch —”
“That’s what Sister Kasha told me! I’m not a useless child! You’re the one who’s wrong!”
“You — you insolent — you want to feel how hot it gets, do you?”
He reached up to the mantelpiece and seized the silver candlestick standing there. The light from the unstable flame writhed across the Grand Duke’s manic eyes.
It was Kasha’s voice that stopped him.
“That is enough.”
“What? Who are you to interfere? Haven’t burned enough yet, have you?”
He chuckled — a low, ugly sound — and his pale eyes glinted with something that bore no trace of sanity anymore.
Leon stepped between the Grand Duke and Kasha, but she stilled him with a look. Then she turned to the Grand Duke and spoke each word with deliberate clarity.
“I can report you. Right now.”
“What are you babbling about? Hah.”
“I am a noblewoman. The second daughter of Count Rüschino. If I tell my father and my brother that you threw that candle at me — deliberately, with intent — this becomes a quarrel between houses.”
“…You.”
“Does the Grand Ducal house have the forces to stand against House Rüschino — the family called the Emperor’s Shield?”
“Ha!”
The Grand Duke laughed it off, but Kasha caught the flicker of hesitation that crossed his face. So there was still a fragment of reason left in him.
“Do you believe I won’t do it?”
“Shut up!”
“I was invited to the crown prince’s party as well. If I go there right now — and tell them what you’ve done —”
“What?”
“Would that truly be all right with you?”
At the mention of the crown prince, the Grand Duke’s face tightened. And slowly — very slowly — the madness in his eyes began to recede.
“I — I —”
That was when Leon stepped in.
Without another word, he took hold of his father’s arm, gripping it in a way that made the intention unmistakable.
“Let — let go of me! Let go!”
The Grand Duke flailed in Leon’s grip, struggling wildly.
“If you find my presence distasteful,”
Leon said, in a voice kept deliberately, dangerously low,
“I will have the guards escort you out instead.”
The coldness in those words made the Grand Duke flinch. The last of his defiance allowed him to glare — but meeting the fury in Leon’s eyes, his mouth twitched, and he dropped his head.
Kasha watched the Grand Duke being led away by his son, the old man’s steps limp and diminished — and reached out toward Eve.
But this time, Eve did not come running as she usually did. Instead she stood where she was, her eyes brimming, her voice wavering.
“Sister. Because of me, you were — I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”
Eve crumpled as though something inside her had given way. Kasha moved quickly toward her. The burned hem of her dress fluttered and gaped open as she knelt — but she didn’t care.
“It wasn’t because of you, Eve. None of this was your fault.”
“It was. It was me. Father always said — that when I was born, everything fell apart —”
“Eve. Hush.”
Kasha softened her voice and turned Eve gently to face her.
“Your father is unwell right now.”
“Father is…?”
“I know it’s hard to hear — but yes. He is. So please don’t carry the words of a sick person with you. If you do — you’ll only hurt yourself.”
“But you got hurt because of me —”
“Eve. Our good, sweet Eve.”
Kasha murmured the words and knelt down, bringing herself level with Eve’s eyes.
At the warmth in Kasha’s voice, Eve’s tears came spilling over again.
“Don’t cry. Trust me. And trust your brother — trust Leon. We will protect you.”
“Hnn — hh —”
“You are a precious, lovely child. I am so glad you’re here. I love you very much, Eve.”
Kasha pulled Eve into her arms and kept whispering, without stopping.
She knew what early wounds like this could do. Terrible things witnessed too young didn’t simply leave — they became old scars and quietly dismantled a person from the inside.
Hey, throw the rocks!
Let’s see who hits more!
Hey, crazy witch! Look over here! Go on — threaten to curse us again, why don’t you?
Stop…
What did you say, witch?
Before I kill every last one of you.
AAAH!
You want me to kill you all? Hehehe. Little vermin like you — want me to block up those eyes first so you never see the sun again? Hm? Kyahahaha.
Run! Run!
Help! Someone help!
Mama — please stop. Please stop.
The memory was more than ten years old, but her mother’s expression — the pure, unhinged intent in her face as she sent that madness toward a group of children Kasha’s own age — was still perfectly clear.
Looking down at her daughter, who had grabbed her sleeve in terror, her mother’s eyes had blazed with a confusion so deep it could not recognize its own child.
Most of what Kasha remembered of her mother was some version of that. And it had been the reason, all through her growing up, that she had not been able to love herself.
When she had first entered society and people had called her trouble and lunatic, she hadn’t been angry. She had made herself small.
The fear that maybe the blood in her own veins was the same blood that had made her mother what she was. The instinctive self-contempt that kept her from pushing back even when people turned her away.
Kasha did not want Eve to carry that same weight through her life.
And so she used every last bit of herself to whisper into the ear of a girl who was hurting.
“You are all right. There is nothing wrong with you. You are simply a child who is so very, very loved. Don’t worry about anything.”
Don’t let the stones thrown by people who don’t care about you land.
Don’t let them break you.
I will protect you. I promise it.
Kasha made the vow again, quietly, to herself.
And then.
Before the night of the raging storm had fully passed — before the first light of dawn —
A guard’s voice tore through the stillness from the direction of Eve’s room. It rose high into the dark, splitting the silence like a crack in glass.
“Stop him! An intruder! Lady Eve — the young lady, she’s —!”
