His kiss was hot and rough, but Kasha felt no resistance at all.

Because she also yearned for him so much it drove her crazy.

Panting with a kind of violent desire she had never felt before in her life, Kasha straddled his thighs on her own.

Another painful groan sounds from deep within his stomach.

Kasha looked up at him with her lips swollen red. Laying her down on the blanket, Leon whispered softly.

“Kasha.”

Mmm, her answering breath was already ragged.

Hair sprawled messily over the blanket, reddened eyes, and pale pink pupils clouded with desire. And the dizzying white skin that blurred his vision…

As Leon tried to calm his heart which felt like it would burst, Kasha suddenly parted her swollen lips.

“I love you, Leon.”

“…..”

A weary smile passed over Leon’s lips, which had frozen for a moment.

“You didn’t even give me a chance to confess first.”

“So you don’t like it?”

At her words, innocently blinking, he narrowed his eyes.

“How could I not.”

His face lowered closer and closer to Kasha lying on the floor. The platinum-colored strands that fell from his forehead tickled Kasha’s eyebrows.

The moment Kasha closed her eyes slightly, Leon’s lips lightly kissed her earlobe.

“I love you, Kasha Lyuschino.”

“…..”

Kasha silently trembled and hugged his neck.

“I will never let you go in this life… you’d better be prepared.”

Kasha’s low laughter tickled his ear. With a smile on the corner of his mouth, he kissed her lips and went lower and lower.

A few hours later, the two of them, drenched in sweat, lay side by side wrapped in a blanket, looking up at the bright red sky hanging at the mouth of the cave.

“Are you okay?”

Kasha wearily leaned her head on his shoulder as he kissed her forehead and asked.

“Honestly, I’m tired. I didn’t know you’d do it three times.”

When she complained, opening her eyes round with an innocent face, he became endlessly embarrassed.

Of course, he had no intention of making her suffer like that. He thought he would healthily satisfy his desires only until the power of lust subsided.

The problem was that he didn’t know that healthy desire would blaze out of control like a heated furnace.

When he put his hand on her forehead with a guilty face after hearing her words, Kasha shook her head and avoided his touch.

“Stop using your divine power. You already gave me a lot just now.”

“But.”

“The one who was really seriously injured is you. Not me.”

At her words, pointing to the bandage made by tearing his shirt, Leon had no choice but to lower his hand.

His body had already fully recovered, but Kasha was still worried about him. And Leon didn’t dislike that fact.

His skin against hers was still hot. But it was due to the lingering afterglow of their long and passionate lovemaking, not the curse of lust.

To calm his body that kept trying to get excited again, he repeatedly recited all the prayers he knew in his mind.

While he was fighting that anguished battle, Kasha looked up at him with a completely defenseless face, nestled in his arms. Sometimes she blushed slightly as if recalling their recent lovemaking.

His relationship with her was really too good. It was almost painful that the heightened senses had not yet fully subsided.

When the act reached its peak, he really lost his mind for a while. It was a miracle that the curse of lust did not take over him during that time.

Her face, which was always indifferent, was overly stimulating when it was flushed with desire, and the way she snuggled into his arms languidly after sex was as lovely as a kitten.

If it were up to his heart, he wanted to roll around with her here for days, forgetting about the expedition or anything else.

To have such thoughts, leaving behind the hundreds of knights and Count Lyuschino waiting for him. It was the most irresponsible thought in Leon’s life, but it was also a blind and sincere desire that matched, no, surpassed that.

‘If only the environment here was a little better, I might have really done that.’

Thinking that, Leon examined her body.

Even though they had laid a blanket on the floor, it was unacceptable to him that he had laid her on the hard and bumpy cave floor.

‘Once we return to the capital….’

Leon found himself burning with a strange kind of determination without even realizing it.

‘Should I propose as soon as we return? It would be nice if I could get permission to marry her when I meet Count Lyuschino on this expedition.’

Although anyone who heard it might call it hasty, Leon was very serious.

His heart for Kasha was already firmly set. But now that he knew the joy of becoming one with her, he saw no reason to endure and wait any longer.

‘No matter what, no matter who it is, if there’s anything hindering me and Kasha….’

Leon’s eyes, lost in his own delusions, took on a somewhat vicious light. Suddenly Kasha, looking back at him, made a worried expression.

“What’s wrong? Are you not feeling well?”

“How could that be.”

He quickly composed his expression and gently hugged Kasha.

“If there are any lingering effects…”

“Not at all. I feel lighter than I ever have in my life.”

His words were sincere.

For him, who had always lived restraining and suppressing his own desires, the recent lovemaking was a shockingly satisfying and liberating experience.

The relief of having completely overcome the curse of lust without hurting Kasha or being consumed by it, being faithful only to his own desires in that moment, also likely contributed to this sense of liberation.

It completely blew away the remaining self-doubt he had.

Leon smiled with irrepressible emotion and hugged Kasha in his arms even tighter. After silently fidgeting with his fingers for a while, Kasha suddenly raised her head and asked an absurd question.

“Leon. After the expedition ends well and everything is resolved, what do you want to do?”

Of all things, he had just been burning with determination to indulge in passionate lovemaking with her to his heart’s content once they returned to the capital, so he was a bit taken aback. Averting his gaze with a noticeably awkward expression, he turned her question back to her.

“…What about you? Is there something you want to do?”

Then she answered without hesitation.

“I…want to hear the sound of you playing the piano.”

“The piano?”

At the completely unexpected answer, Leon tilted his head.

Kasha continued to fiddle with his fingers with a serious expression and went on.

“Yes. Something done just for enjoyment, not to survive. I want…to try that.”

Shadows passed over Leon’s face as he heard her answer.

Her first life, stained with betrayal and hardship. Thinking of those who thoroughly used her and drove her to her death made his blood boil in reverse and his head go white with rage.

Just hearing about it from her was painful. Then how must she feel, having actually lived such a life? How desperate must she have been all this time to live this inexplicably given second life well?

Leon barely managed a smile and nodded.

“My skills may not be the same as before, but as much as you want to hear it.”

Kasha’s eyes sparkled with a clear pink, seeming happy.

“Now it’s your turn. Do you…have something you want to try, like me?”

He couldn’t honestly say that he wanted to roll around with her for days in a cozy space with just the two of them.

After some thought, Leon barely came up with half an answer.

“I want to be alone with you.”

She smiled slightly, then tilted her head as if thinking of something and asked.

“Just the two of us? What about Eve?”

“Eve is…”

Leon trailed off with a strained expression.

“I think she would understand if we said we were spending time together.”

It was a lame excuse, but it wasn’t a lie.

Before leaving for the expedition, Eve’s expression as she saw him off for the last time was quite plucky.

Even though living surrounded by layers of guards must be suffocating, through the series of events including the attempted kidnapping, his youngest sister seemed to have grown up in a flash.

‘Don’t worry about me, elder brother. I won’t go anywhere without the guards. Until you return safely, I won’t do anything dangerous. That way we can see Lady Kasha again too, right?’

After visiting Elor, Kasha didn’t even reply to Eve’s letters. It must have been part of her efforts not to expose her relationship with Eve to an invisible enemy.

Eve probably didn’t even suspect that much, but she showed no hint of hurt feelings toward Kasha. She just seemed to believe that Kasha must have her reasons and was waiting for her.

Hearing his words, Kasha gave a faint smile. Then she asked again.

“Then what about Sir Anthony and…His Highness the Grand Duke?”

“Well.”

Leon paused for a moment.

Anthony and his father. They were the problems he had to solve.

It occurred to him that he might have to sort out those issues first before proposing to Kasha.

Why had his father suddenly fallen into such strange madness?

And why was Anthony acting in such unfathomable ways with a strange face all of a sudden?

Moreover, why was the dream he had before leaving for the expedition so ominous?

‘You have everything, elder brother. So can’t you yield that woman to me?’

Even though he knew it was a dream, the cold and sharp gaze with which Anthony looked at him in that moment was still vivid.

As Leon sighed, his gaze drifted beyond the mouth of the cave to the red sky. Seeing that blood-like red hue suddenly brought back many memories.

“Anthony was very timid when he was young.”

“…Is that so?”

“Since he was weak and easily hurt and frequently sick, it must have been natural. Even with a small cut, if blood was visible, he would cry and wail. No matter how long I held and comforted him, he wouldn’t easily stop.”

“…Then what did you do at those times? It must have been hard for you too, as a child.”

Kasha calmly asked, looking up at him intently. Leon looked back at her, tucking the blanket well over her white shoulders, and slowly replied.

“He had a storybook he liked. If I read that book to him, he would stop crying and his eyes would sparkle. The cover of that book was just this shade of red.”

As he spoke, looking up at the blood-red sky, Kasha also looked at it with him.

“What book was that?”

“It was one of the collections of legends about the life of Saint Antebein… the story of him and his younger brother, Wolfbane.”

“Wait. What did you just say?”

Suddenly Kasha sat bolt upright. As the blanket slipped down, revealing her white nakedness, Leon’s face stiffened, but he asked in confusion.

“What is it, Kasha? The collection of legends about Saint Antebein?”

“No, Antebein’s brother. What did you say his name was?”

“Wolfbane.”

The moment Leon spoke that name, Kasha’s face turned astonishingly pale.