This time, too, Kasha did not answer. Anthony seemed not to have expected one, and continued without pausing.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to do — but I’m certain it will put our family in greater danger. Look at the situation right now. If it becomes known that our family is connected to Baron Marquis’s death, the Crown Prince will come for us immediately.”
“The Crown Prince?”
Kasha tilted her head slightly, repeating the words back. Anthony seemed to realize he had let something slip, and changed course.
“…Besides, our father’s condition has worsened since you appeared. Leon and our father were never close, but they never used to clash so directly before.”
That, at least, she had no rebuttal for.
Though to be fair, Grand Duke Osilotte’s condition seemed to have been deteriorating entirely on its own, regardless of Kasha.
“The longer you stay at our brother’s side, the more all of us will be driven into impossible corners. From where I stand, it looks like he’s a breath away from handing you his heart whole — and before that happens, before he becomes any more vulnerable, I’m asking you to step back. If you have any conscience at all.”
Beautiful words, delivered in a voice that grew gradually closer, that struck each thing she had been looking away from with exact precision.
But in the end, everything I’m doing is to protect Leon and all of you.
Kasha shook her head.
“I would never harm your family. Not ever. Today, too — I only wanted to save Eve. Should I have simply stood by and watched her be taken?”
“Eve never would have been in danger if you hadn’t intervened. Just because my brother is soft with you doesn’t mean everyone around Eve is a fool.”
The edge of real frustration was present in his voice now — a biting, genuine irritation. As though Kasha had derailed something of real consequence.
“I want to be very clear: if my brother becomes entangled in this affair, the Crown Prince will find a way to bring him down. This time, it may truly break him. Is that what you want?”
Kasha met his gaze steadily.
“Leon will not break.”
The certainty in her voice seemed to catch Anthony off guard for just a moment. Then he let out a short, hollow laugh.
“You really… do you hear yourself? You say the most extraordinarily presumptuous things.”
He said it gently — and he was genuinely angry.
“You think, if the imperial court decides to destroy him, there’s anything that can stop them?”
The way he said it — as though he wanted Leon to be destroyed — was more than Kasha could sit still for. She rose from her seat.
She looked straight up at him. He was a full head taller.
“It seems to me that you don’t know how strong he is. How upright. And you’re his brother.”
Anthony let out a short, derisive sound — the kind you make at someone who has badly misjudged the scale of things. But Kasha did not retreat.
“And I will not let it happen. I will protect Leon. I promise you that.”
What was written on Kasha’s face as she said those words was not bravado, and Anthony could see it. The laughter drained slowly from his expression.
“You really are—” He exhaled. “God.”
He turned toward the window. The sharp morning sunlight fell across his face through the half-drawn curtain — flooding one half in warmth and leaving the other half in deep shadow.
He looked like something from a myth. A figure who had surrendered half of himself, permanently, to something dark.
“Fine. I know. I know better than anyone how strong my brother is. But do you have any idea how suffocating it is to stand beside someone like that? How—”
“Small it makes you feel.”
Kasha’s voice was quiet, but it landed with precision.
Anthony looked up and met her eyes.
Those deep pink irises, aimed squarely at him. Seeing straight through his inadequacy, his sense of lack — and not flinching from it. Not judging it either.
“……”
“I know the feeling. I know it too well. There was a time when I believed I was the most worthless person in the world. The most empty-handed.”
She gave a faint, self-deprecating smile. The subtle lift at the corner of her lips. Eyes cast slightly downward.
And Anthony, his expression caught somewhere between a scowl and something else, found he could not look away.
“But, Anthony — pitying yourself is the same as announcing to the world: I am someone who can be taken advantage of.”
“……”
“Cruel people have a strange talent for sensing that kind of weakness. And then they use it. Ruthlessly.”
“……”
“Because they know, all too well, that people like that won’t fight back.”
“…What exactly are you trying to say?”
His voice came out agitated — but underneath it was something almost desperate.
“Are you saying I’m weak? Someone who gets used? I am absolutely not—”
“I’m saying: don’t pity yourself.”
“……”
“Because from where anyone else is standing — you have more than enough.”
With that, Kasha rose from the sofa. The blanket she had been wrapped in, she left folded on the cushion.
The trembling in her body had passed. It was time to do what needed doing — even if Anthony had left her thoughts more tangled than before.
Anthony watched her cross the room toward the door with an expression that could have devoured her whole.
She reached the door and had just taken hold of the handle when his voice came from behind her.
“Oh — one more thing, about that village I mentioned. Apparently something else dreadful has happened there.”
There was a strange, heightened note in his voice.
“A child went missing from the village. Or rather — kidnapped would be the more accurate word.”
“…What?”
Kasha turned slowly. Anthony looked at her trembling eyes, and the crooked smile returned to his lips. This time, somehow, it seemed darker than before.
“Ten years old, I believe. As it happens — the same age as Eve.”
“……!”
“The daughter of a woman who worked odd jobs in the village, they said. Someone broke into the home, killed the mother, and took the child. From the state of the body, the mother apparently put up a fight — quite brutal, apparently.”
The composure in Kasha’s face crumbled.
And at the sight of it, Anthony smiled — wide and bright, as though something in him was pleased.
“In any case — I want to express my gratitude for protecting Eve. The thought of her being made to endure something like that… I can’t even imagine.”
One week later.
Kasha’s bedchamber on the second floor of the Rüschino Viscountcy.
She had been writing at her desk for a long while. Now she lifted her face.
Her small, pale face was full of shadow.
A death that had not happened before her regression.
Kasha’s intervention had saved Eve — but in her place, two innocent people, a mother and her child, had lost their lives.
To fail at abducting Eve and then, in the very same breath, take another child — and in such a deliberately brutal, conspicuous way.
The magical stone called Kairum — said to sustain eternal life.
Its owner was required to offer a pure soul as sacrifice to a demon once every month, in order to maintain the stone’s power.
Whether the Kairum belonged to the shadow figure themselves, or to someone connected to them, she couldn’t be certain. But the cold cruelty of it — the ease with which they extinguished innocent lives to preserve their own — sent a chill deep into her bones.
She had tried to put a stop to it.
Kasha’s plan had succeeded — and at the same time, it had failed completely.
The child offered in Eve’s place. The mother, killed in the violence of it. Two people, wholly without blame, were dead. Two lives that should never have been touched.
Before leaving Elore Bay, Kasha had tried to find whatever family remained for the mother and daughter — someone she might be able to help. But she could find not even a distant relative.
In the end, there was nothing she could do but give the abandoned body of the child’s mother a careful, dignified burial. The debt she owed them — she had no way of repaying it.
Not until she had found the ones who had destroyed them, and made them answer for it.
But having failed once, whoever they were would only grow more careful, more relentless.
Leaving the Baron’s body in that village and then taking a child there, killing her mother — it was a warning.
Whether they had traced back to Kasha as the one who had foiled the abduction, she couldn’t say. But it seemed likely that the shadow had sent a message to whoever had dared interfere with their plans.
Obstruct us again, and more innocent lives will be the price.
Vile. Monstrous.
Kasha’s hand tightened on her pen, and the paper beneath it crumpled.
It was not only the mother and child whose death had not existed in her previous life.
Baron Marquis, too, had been alive before her regression. His end might be called a consequence of his own actions — but it should have come only after his crimes were brought plainly to light, not like this.
The timing of the Baron’s death and the deaths of the mother and child — simultaneous — suggested the Baron had not been the Kairum’s owner. Had he been, he would not have been killed.
And whatever he had done, a life carries weight.
Three lives now rested on Kasha’s shoulders.
What do I do from here?
A week had passed since the night of the abduction, and she was still no closer to an answer.
She had fought with everything she had to avoid being wrongly condemned and sacrificed without cause.
But now, faced with three lives lost — lives that should not have been lost — she could not help but turn the questions on herself.
Were the choices I made truly the best I could make?
Was I careless?
And what do I do now?
And Leon. What do I do about Leon?
It was then that there came a careful knock at the door.
“Miss. Leon has gone.”
Sena’s voice, from behind the door. Kasha did not turn around. She simply nodded.
“Thank you.”
She didn’t want to show her face — and Sena chose not to press it, moving closer to change the subject.
“Are you doing more magical instrument research? The Young Viscount said to make sure you don’t sit at your desk for more than four hours a day.”
“My brother is particular like that.”
Kasha laughed, weak and brief, and bowed her head. Sena watched her for a moment, then reached for the comb and began drawing it gently through her hair. The late summer heat had been pressing down hard lately, and Kasha had taken to wearing her hair up.
Sena chatted in a bright, easy tone, as though nothing were the matter.
“With all due respect, it isn’t the Young Viscount who’s particular — it’s you, Miss. I honestly don’t understand it. You’d rather do magical instrument research than put on a beautiful dress and go to a ball.”
“…Because this is what I’m good at.”
Kasha’s murmur came out thin and without energy.
Sena heard it and quietly exhaled a worried breath.
Since returning from Elore Bay, the young miss had been like this. Low and heavy, without pause.
She had always been quiet — but lately she seemed to be wrestling constantly with some dark, tangled problem just beneath the surface.
She would stare into the middle distance during meals, lost in thought for long stretches.
Whenever Sena worried aloud and asked what was wrong, the answer was always the same strange phrase.
I’m looking for the answer.
