Leon was mildly surprised, but kept it from his face.
“Where?”
“It was dark, and I swung in a hurry, so I couldn’t see clearly — but I think I cut his right cheek, and his right arm.”
She was recounting it all in a composed tone, yet her color had drained again, visibly, before his eyes.
This was the same woman who, at the hunting tournament, had asked that the man-eating bear be sent off without suffering before she ended its life. There was no world in which she could have cut a person with her own hand and come through unscathed.
“He seemed — flustered. First because I wasn’t Eve… and then because the magical instrument had already struck him, and suddenly the blade had too. But then he seemed to collect himself… He twisted my arm to make me drop the knife — and that was the moment the guard knocked on the door from outside. He panicked and fled right away… I went after him immediately.”
Leon’s brow furrowed.
“That was a dangerous thing to do.”
“But I had to catch him… I really did.”
She let out a sigh that was entirely genuine in its regret.
“He jumped from the balcony… I tried to grab him as he went, but he shoved me instead. Fortunately I fell into the bushes, so I wasn’t hurt. But by then, he was gone.”
She had fallen from the balcony — because he had pushed her.
Leon felt the ground lurch beneath him.
The moment he truly grasped that Kasha could have been gone — could have been taken from this world in an instant — the color left his face. A dark, suffocating fury descended over his eyes at the thought of whoever this unknown assailant was.
Kasha, who had not yet noticed the state he was in, pressed on with her explanation, her face grave.
“But I — I saw his face.”
“You saw his face?”
Leon turned to her sharply.
Kasha’s eyes brightened, and she gave a slow, deliberate nod.
“Who was it? Who was this man?”
He could not keep the urgency from his voice.
If he could only learn the man’s identity, he would find him that very night and make him suffer ten times, twenty times, everything Kasha had endured. He would make the man beg for death.
The grim vow that took shape inside him was far beneath the dignity of a holy knight — and he knew it. Meanwhile, Kasha had fallen into silent, troubled thought.
“Kasha?”
“He was… someone I know.”
Leon’s handsome face went rigid.
“Someone you know? Who?”
“I crossed paths with him on the very first day we arrived here.”
“The first day…?”
He turned the words over, and then something clicked.
The first day Kasha had arrived was the day they had encountered the Crown Prince’s party on the shore.
“Don’t tell me — the culprit is someone from the Crown Prince’s entourage?”
“Yes.”
Her single word sent his thoughts careening in every direction.
The Crown Prince… has he truly extended his reach to Eve as well?
A cold, gut-deep fury rose in him — but Leon forced himself to rein it in.
The fact that this man belongs to the Crown Prince’s party doesn’t necessarily mean the Crown Prince ordered this. Not yet.
He chose his next words carefully.
“Who is it?”
Kasha parted her lips to answer.
Bang. Bang.
Someone hammered at Leon’s bedroom door as though they meant to break it down.
Who in the world would dare strike the Grand Duke’s heir’s door with such violence — and at a moment like this?
Kasha and Leon looked at each other. In the space of that glance, each read the same dark premonition in the other’s eyes.
Leon rose quickly.
“Who’s there?”
“Brother!”
He stopped.
“Anthony?”
Click.
The door swung open without his leave.
Standing in the doorway, as expected, was his younger brother Anthony. His silver hair, still carrying the cool edge of the early morning air, was soaked through.
It was not only his hair — the robe he wore was drenched from collar to hem, and he was breathless, as though he had been running for a very long time. There was a feverish brightness in his eyes.
“Brother. What on earth is going on?”
“Never mind that — look at the state of you. You know how fragile your body is—”
Leon’s hand shot out reflexively to take Anthony’s soaked robe from him, but Anthony stepped aside with obvious deliberateness, evading the gesture.
“Brother. This isn’t the time for that. There was an intruder in the early hours — is that true?”
“Yes. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt, but the situation will need to be sorted out properly. The culprit still needs to be found. But how did you hear about it? How are you here already?”
“Father caused a scene yesterday, apparently. I’d asked the butler to contact me right away if anything like that happened.”
Anthony had been in the village temple about half a day’s ride from the villa, receiving treatment. His original plan had been to arrive at the villa in two days’ time, but it seemed the butler’s message had prompted him to leave early.
…Even so, it seemed too soon. But Leon set the thought aside.
“I see. Come in out of the hall, at least. Though you ought to have waited until daylight before pushing yourself like this.”
Knowing well how fragile his brother’s constitution was, Leon guided him quickly toward the fireplace. He had lit a small fire earlier to warm Kasha, and the air in front of it was pleasantly close.
But Anthony threw off his hand with an impatience that surprised him. The strength behind it was different from before — not inconsiderable. By the measure of an ordinary young man his age, it was nothing to dismiss. Leon felt a quiet relief, noting that his brother’s health had improved considerably.
Meanwhile, Anthony flicked a glance at Kasha and began to speak.
“My original plan was to leave in the morning. But then something dreadful happened in the village, and I couldn’t stay put.”
“Something dreadful…?”
Leon paused on his way to the sofa. Kasha, who had been seated, looked up at Anthony with the same look of unease.
Anthony held her gaze and answered with a deliberateness that seemed almost studied.
“Someone was found dead. In the village where I was staying.”
The dark premonition became real.
“Who was it?”
“Who was it?”
Leon and Kasha asked in the same breath. Anthony glanced between their two faces in turn — as though verifying something — before he replied.
“A nobleman. Baron Marquis.”
“Baron Marquis?”
The name was entirely unexpected. Leon tilted his head.
Wait. Come to think of it…
And then it happened. From the sofa, Kasha cried out in a voice so strangled it sounded as though something had seized her by the throat.
“Baron Marquis is… dead?”
“Yes. So they say. He had severe wounds to his right arm and his face.”
The arm and the face…?
Leon was still turning over those strangely resonant details when he glanced at Kasha — and went still.
All the color had left her face.
“How could he — but why…”
Whatever fragile composure she had managed to gather was gone. She looked as though she had been pulled back under. Leon crossed the room in an instant, dropped to one knee before her, and searched her face.
“Kasha. Are you all right?”
“Something is wrong. This doesn’t make sense. Something isn’t — right.”
“What do you mean? What isn’t right?”
He rested his hands on her shoulders, steadying her gently.
“Easy. You’re safe. Take your time.”
For a long moment, her lips moved without sound. Then, at last, the words came.
“It’s Baron Marquis.”
“Baron Marquis — what about him?”
“The intruder. The one who broke into Eve’s room last night. It was him. The one I drove off with the magical instrument.”
Leon went still.
“Are you certain…? That it was really Baron Marquis?”
“Yes. I know his face well. I told you — we crossed paths on the very first day we arrived here. That face, I’m certain.”
The words hit him like a blow to the back of the head.
She was right.
The day Kasha arrived at Elore Bay, they had encountered Baron Marquis. He had been among the Crown Prince Nigel’s entourage — unmistakably.
The moment Anthony had spoken the name, the same brief encounter had risen in Leon’s memory.
Baron Marquis.
Even within Nigel’s company, he had stood out — and not in any favorable way.
Nigel had cultivated his aesthetic sensibilities from a young age and was clear in his preferences. He surrounded himself only with things that were beautiful, only with the finest things available. The same applied to the people he kept close. Many were drawn into the Crown Prince’s orbit, but Nigel himself only allowed near those who possessed outstanding looks and powerful family names in equal measure.
But that man had plainly failed to meet either standard.
Leon had had no particular reason to pay attention to Nigel’s party, and so he had done little more than glance in their direction — yet the man’s presence had snagged at his attention all the same. Like an ugly, jutting stone in the middle of a golden shore.
A face drained of blood. A hooked nose. Eyes that were dark and somehow servile.
He seemed to recall hearing rumors — that this man had once hosted, in hushed circles, a certain kind of depraved gathering that had enjoyed a brief vogue in society. That he was a notorious gambler, too.
In short, there was not a single quality about the man — in appearance or in character — that aligned with Nigel’s standards.
And perhaps that was precisely why he had stayed in Leon’s memory.
Yet this same man had just broken into Eve’s room and put Kasha in danger. And now, barely hours later, he had been found dead in a village half a day’s ride away.
The wounds Kasha had described inflicting on the intruder matched exactly the areas mentioned. That much left little doubt as to his identity.
But… why?
Wretched as he was, the man was still a nobleman. His honor might have been worth nothing, his title little more than a name — but he was still a man with something to lose, a man with a stake in the world.
And yet such a man had dared to move against a Grand Ducal daughter.
He had failed — and then, within hours, he had been found dead.
What did those two facts, placed together, mean?
Leon dragged a hand over his face and raked his fingers through his hair with barely suppressed agitation.
It was then that Anthony, who had been watching them both in silence, spoke.
“What are you saying? Baron Marquis was the intruder? Are you telling me he was the one who broke into Eve’s room?”
“Yes. It was him.”
Leon answered on Kasha’s behalf, as she had fallen deep into thought.
“And — Kasha used a magical instrument to attack him?”
“…Yes. It was self-defense.”
“Ah. Of course it was. But the fact that he ended up dead — that’s the problem, isn’t it.”
Anthony murmured the words in a grave, measured tone, and the room went silent. It was Leon who broke it first.
“Kasha did nothing wrong. And what she used was a momentary paralytic instrument and a letter opener — nothing more. It makes no sense that wounds like that could have killed him. Besides, the guards witnessed him fleeing under his own power.”
At Leon’s somewhat forceful response, Anthony took a step back and raised both hands in a gesture of calm.
“Of course — that’s my thinking too. It’s difficult to believe that someone as slight as Kasha inflicted a fatal injury on a grown man. But this magical instrument of hers — has its safety been thoroughly verified?”
“That—”
Leon paused. He knew firsthand that the instrument posed no real danger — he had been its test subject himself. But the truth was that Kasha had completed it just before the journey, and there had been no time to run proper trials with a sufficient number of subjects.
As though he had heard the unspoken answer, Anthony went on with a look of concern.
“I’m worried. Did Baron Marquis actually injure anyone inside?”
“No. But the fact that he broke into Eve’s room and fled cannot be denied. He even pushed Kasha off the balcony.”
“That may be — but as it stands, Baron Marquis is the one who was physically harmed, while no one else suffered a wound. And he died from that harm.”
“……”
“And he was a nobleman on top of it. If it becomes known that he died from injuries Kasha inflicted, her position will become extremely difficult.”
