Anthony’s words set both Leon and Kasha thinking rapidly.
Kasha’s action had been nothing more than self-defense — but the very person who was both perpetrator and witness was already dead, gone from the world entirely.
Moreover, the Baron was still a nobleman. And once it became known that he had died by an unverified magical instrument, the situation would inevitably grow complicated. The development work Kasha had underway for various instruments would likely be set back as well.
“Brother. For now, it would be best not to reveal that the intruder was Baron Marquis, wouldn’t it?”
At Anthony’s question, Leon lifted his head with a hardened expression. But instead of answering his brother directly, he turned to look at Kasha’s face as he spoke.
“I’ll go to the village myself and assess the situation. In the meantime, would you rest and wait here?”
“I want to go as well.”
She said it — but she knew perfectly well that her body was not in any condition for a long ride. Still, waiting here and doing nothing sat ill with her.
Why does my body have to be this weak? Of all times, it can’t even hold up when it matters most.
Kasha bit the inside of her lip, caught between restlessness and frustration.
Then Leon, who had been looking up at her uneasy face, spoke quietly.
“Kasha. Do you trust me?”
It was an unexpected question.
But not a difficult one.
Kasha trusted Leon. He was, she thought — taking into account both her life before the regression and after it — the only person in the world she could trust completely.
His principled nature. His chivalry. The steadiness he never surrendered, no matter the circumstance. In a world that never stopped shifting, for a woman who had to forge ahead alone, relying only on her own imperfect self — those qualities in him had been a lantern in the dark.
And so Kasha nodded, without hesitation.
He had not expected such an immediate answer. For a moment, Leon went still — and then a smile broke over his face, easy and unguarded.
It was a smile Kasha had not seen from him in some time, and even Anthony, who had been watching them, seemed to falter slightly at the sight of it.
Under ordinary circumstances, Leon would never have allowed himself such an expression in front of his brother.
But he thought:
I don’t know the reason — but this woman trusts me this much. This woman who cannot seem to take care of herself. If I can give her even a moment of peace, then I have nothing left to hold back.
He spoke again.
“Kasha. I trust you as well.”
“……”
“Whatever goal you are working toward — I believe you can reach it. You are stronger than anyone I know.”
“……”
“And… you have a warmer, more sincere heart than anyone I have ever met.”
Kasha heard his words and could do nothing but blink.
I trust you. You are strong. You are warm.
Coming from no one else but Leon, those words were something like a spell.
A spell that reached down into her exhaustion, into her wavering — and pulled her upright.
Her goal — to expose the shadow behind it all and save the people she cared for. It was vivid and almost close enough to touch one moment, and then impossibly distant the next. Like a horizon that moved as she moved.
Today alone was proof of that. The brief relief at having saved Eve had barely had time to settle before the news came: Baron Marquis, the intruder, had been found dead.
Baron Marquis was almost certainly not the true orchestrator. He was not the kind of figure capable of setting Simon in motion or igniting a war between the holy orders and the mages.
He was probably working on orders from whoever stands at the top — sent to abduct Eve, and then eliminated the moment the plan failed.
Once again, the shadow had dissolved like smoke just as she had reached out to grasp it.
Eve was safe for now — but was that enough? After failing once, wouldn’t they come back for her in some way no one had thought to anticipate?
And Baron Marquis — terrible a man as he was, was this really the right end for him? This hollow, senseless death?
It was in the middle of that tangle of thoughts — just as her resolve was beginning to fray at the edges — that Leon had said it.
I trust you.
To be believed in. To be cheered on by someone. So this is what it feels like — this fullness, this sense of safety.
The ground beneath her, which had been trembling, suddenly stilled.
As she felt it steady, Leon reached up and gently brushed the loose strands of hair away from her face. His touch was careful — the way one handles something that might break.
“So this once, let me go alone. Don’t you need time to recover? After all — you’ll need your strength if you’re going to build more instruments, or hunt another bear.”
The joke was so unlike Leon that Kasha actually laughed. For that one brief moment, looking at each other with laughter still in their eyes, it felt as though nothing in the world was wrong.
And then the fear came back, quick and quiet.
Leon. You shouldn’t look at me that way.
There are things one simply knows, even having lived apart from the world.
The way Leon was looking at her right now — it held genuine affection. Not the kind Simon had once performed with such practiced ease. Something utterly different. Something whole and real.
It was unmistakably more than the steady trust that a business arrangement might produce between two people.
Why do you look at me like that? I’m not someone who deserves that from you. Why aren’t you more suspicious of me? Even now, I haven’t told you a single truth.
As though he had noticed the shadow moving back over her face, Leon leaned in and murmured softly.
“Just wait a little while for me, Kasha. If you trust me.”
Looking into his eyes, she found she could not hold out.
And apart from that — the openness of his gaze, the feeling it carried, was more than she could bear to face head-on.
In the end, she dropped her eyes and nodded.
“Be careful.”
He nodded in return, with a sincerity that made it feel like a vow — as though her words, whatever they were, were something he received and held carefully.
He did not seem even slightly conscious of Anthony watching them from across the room.
With a visible reluctance — the look of a man whose feet refused to move — Leon asked Anthony to look after Kasha, and turned to go. He glanced back at her once more, and then again, before finally stepping through the door.
Bang.
The instant the door shut, Anthony turned to face Kasha as though he had been waiting for exactly this.
“Shall we talk?”
The change in him was immediate and unmistakable. The look in his eyes was entirely different from moments before. The younger-brother quality that had clung to him in Leon’s presence — something slightly unfinished, slightly boyish — had vanished in an instant. In its place stood a cool, unreadable man, his gaze difficult to parse.
But strangely, it was that very look that settled something unsettled inside Kasha.
She turned to face him quietly.
“If you have something to say.”
Anthony raised one corner of his mouth in a slow, deliberate curve. The warmth of his earlier smile was gone entirely. This lopsided expression suited the fine-drawn sharpness of his face rather well.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
The sudden sound of applause rang out in the room. Kasha did not flinch. She simply looked up at him.
“I have to admit,” Anthony said at last, “I’m impressed. Truly.”
“……”
“To bring down our brother. For that wall of iron — Leon Aranias — to fall for a woman. I have to say.” He shook his head with what seemed like genuine bewilderment.
Kasha felt her chest plummet.
So it wasn’t my imagination. Has Leon opened himself to me so thoroughly that anyone watching could see it?
Why.
The curse had been lifted. He was free now to meet a good woman. To love freely, without any weight holding him back.
Their relationship had to remain a contract and nothing more. So that when everything was over, the betrayal he felt would not destroy him. So that no more damage would be done to him.
Anthony’s voice broke through.
“Do you know what I find most amusing, Kasha? Our brother has the most dreadful luck with women.”
He pressed a hand over his mouth to smother a laugh. At the same moment, Kasha’s chest tightened with a sharp, cold guilt.
“Do you know the story of our mother?”
“…A little.”
He raised his shoulder in a slight shrug.
“I suppose if our brother is like this with you, he must have told you. But as you may have heard — our mother was a truly dreadful woman. Foolish Leon had no idea he was being consumed, giving and giving his divine power to her until there was nothing left to give. No matter how she was wasting away herself — was that any way to treat your own child?”
Anthony clicked his tongue and drifted toward the window, drawing the curtain across it. The room, which morning light had filled just moments before, turned dim again. Anthony’s silhouette in front of the window turned dark as shadow.
Standing there, he looked like something from a myth — a figure who had surrendered half his soul to a lord of darkness, never to reclaim it.
“And do you know what truly makes me laugh? After everything our mother put him through — he still feels guilty over her. He pretends otherwise, pretends he’s forgotten her entirely, but I know. I can see it in his face when he looks at her portrait.”
“……”
“In a certain sense… perhaps our brother is every bit as terrible as she was. In the way he makes you sick with it.”
His murmured words took on an increasingly inward quality, closer to something said only to himself.
Kasha spoke before she could stop herself. She could not listen to someone speak of Leon that way.
“It isn’t terrible. It’s good. He’s sincere.”
Anthony went briefly still. Then, slowly, his mouth curved upward again — as though he found this genuinely interesting.
“Is that so.”
“What’s amusing about it?”
“You approached him to use him — and here you are, speaking as though you’ve fallen for him yourself.”
Kasha said nothing.
Approached him to use him.
Anthony’s phrasing was strikingly definitive. Strangely, uncomfortably so.
She had never thought carefully about Anthony before this. Not because she had no interest in him — simply because there had always been too much else demanding her attention.
But what is that look in his eyes?
It was a gaze that felt somehow certain — as though he already knew her intentions — and at the same time thick with a kind of watchful secrecy. It was a different thing entirely from the wariness Leon had once directed at her. Her instincts sent up a small, quiet warning signal.
When she remained silent for a stretch, Anthony gave a short, bitter laugh — as though something had just occurred to him.
“I suppose. No woman who’s ever crossed paths with my brother has managed to walk away unaffected.”
Kasha caught something flicker across his expression as he said it — the shadow of a disappointment he hadn’t quite kept from his face.
“I’ll say just one thing, Kasha.”
“Say it.”
“Stay away from my brother.”
