When Lani was alive, he never noticed, but after she left the world, every time this night came, his body ached like it was burning with fever.

Suffocated, he left the inn and wandered without direction until he found himself deep in a nearby mountain. Kahar leaned his back against a tree and looked out at a clear lake.

Wishing to fall asleep with an empty mind, he closed his eyes, and that was when a rustling sound reached him.

Kahar lifted his eyelids and tensed against the unfamiliar intruder.

Bare feet, white calves, and a thin fluttering dress came into view.

The dress was blotched as though stained by something, strange-looking rather than dirty. It was disheveled like a child who caused all kinds of mischief and ran away.

A woman with pink hair falling to her waist, fleeing like something was chasing her.

It was that woman. The strange woman who dared to remind him of Lani, glaring at him with eyes full of unreadable meaning while tears ran down her face.

“Hah, hah…!”

Not fleeing, but searching?

She didn’t see Kahar hidden in the shade and ran toward the lakeside.

She looked around, searching for something, and seemed to be in some urgency.

Kahar let out a scoff.

“A coincidence?”

His voice made the woman’s small body go rigid, and she turned slowly toward him.

“Or a disgusting fate of your own making.”

If her startled reaction to seeing Kahar was an act, she was a seductress of the century.

Hoping that innocent face was not a mask, Kahar pressed his hand to his feverish forehead.

“Whether someone sent you or not, I can’t entertain you right now. I’m not that gentle.”

Rustle. The fearless footsteps drew gradually closer and Kahar’s brow furrowed.

He moved to remove the hand covering his eyes and drive the intruder away, when a cool sensation touched his forehead.

The woman’s palm quietly cupped his forehead. Kahar’s blue eyes flashed like a beast’s.

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Where does it hurt?”

The woman asking in a small voice and bending toward him was definitely out of her mind.

Kahar seized the slender wrist resting against his skin and pulled it away, speaking roughly.

“If you want to see madness, I’m happy to show you.”

“You have a fever. Let me…”

“Let you what?”

How dare she. Seeing her face again, so similar to Lani’s, irritated him to no end.

There was no reason to feel anything good toward a stranger who had the nerve to layer her image over Lani’s memory.

“What can you do?”

Following him all the way to a deserted forest showed real dedication. She was clearly some foolish noble trying to claim the Grand Duchess’s seat, however late.

Either way, whether this woman was her parents’ sacrifice or not, none of that mattered.

“So I’m asking what the likes of you can do.”

“…If I keep my hand on your forehead like this, the fever will come down.”

The woman’s voice was clear and thin, like it held water. And yet it was calm.

Her way of speaking was exactly like…

The moment the woman’s fingertips touched his forehead again, Kahar’s throat locked up and moved stiffly.

“Your Highness, staying like this might bring the fever down.”

Lani’s face rose before him again, and this woman felt almost repulsive.

Kahar pushed away the cool hand on his forehead and laughed with contempt.

“Are you sure you don’t want to do something that raises the heat with me?”

The woman looked back at him with a face that hadn’t quite understood yet.

“Raises the heat? What does that mean?”

Again. She overlapped with Lani again. Lani, who always tried so hard to seem grown-up yet had absolutely no instinct for that sort of thing.

Am I losing my mind? How could I possibly compare Lani to someone else?

Maybe a full moon drives people mad.

“I think I’ve given enough warning.”

The woman rolled her eyes uneasily, then looked at Kahar’s face and slowly let her gaze travel down his neck, his chest, and his legs.

Not only did she dare defy the Grand Duke’s words, she disturbed his rest and laid hands on him.

The audacity of openly looking him over from head to toe, something no noble lady would do, left him speechless.

Under normal circumstances, Kahar would have called a guard or his aide. He would have sent the woman away with humiliation and shame added on top, but tonight he had no capacity for that.

Kahar was suffering from a terrible fever, and he wanted to be alone as soon as possible.

“Excuse me. Just once. It’ll only take a moment.”

The woman suddenly closed the distance and this time wrapped her arms around Kahar’s neck.

“Please just stay like this for a moment. But I can’t help it either. I can’t leave someone in pain…”

Kahar’s irritation reached its limit and he rose to his feet. In an instant he pressed the slender body down onto the grass and pinned it beneath him.

“Ugh…”

He seized both hands that dared to wrap around his neck, pressed them into the grass on either side, and curved his lips upward.

“Well, you’ve gone this far begging me to kill you. No reason I can’t oblige.”

“…Your Highness?”

“Isn’t it obvious why you recognized me as the Grand Duke so quickly?”

She only bit her lip with a startled face and offered no excuse. Far from frightened, she stared back with eyes that looked like they had plenty to say.

In a way it was a desperate look, which made the scorn come easier.

“What is this?”

Looking more closely at the woman in the moonlight, her shabby appearance stood out.

The thin dress looked like indoor clothing, and the quality was poor. It was the kind of common fabric ordinary people wore.

Her white neck was blotched with several colors, like she dipped herself in flower dye.

What did she get on herself?

Turning away women who pushed their full figures at him and rubbed their pleasant scents against him was never particularly difficult for Kahar. It was simply tiresome and tiresome again.

But this woman’s atmosphere was a little different.

Worn clothing, disheveled hair, an innocent face that seemed to know nothing of seduction.

What was peculiar was that even startled by Kahar’s manner, she didn’t look away.

Two or three buttons on the woman’s dress were undone, and her sleeves were messily rolled up.

Setting aside the fever and thinking clearly, he began to think this might not be a woman dressed to seduce a man.

“You should be feeling better now.”

“Are you just plain crazy?”

“I, I’m not crazy!”

Her indignation was funny.

“Then what are you?”

“The one who’s crazy isn’t me, it’s you, Your Highness…”

“Did you come here to die today?”

“I’m going to live. I, I’m going to live.”

“This conversation keeps going in circles. Am I the only one who doesn’t understand what’s happening here?”

“It can’t be helped if you don’t understand.”

“Ha…”

A hollow breath escaped Kahar.

Right. Better to focus on confirming her purpose than her appearance.

For all he knew, she was here to confuse him and then assassinate him.

“Fine. I’ll ask directly and plainly. Do you want my body?”

“It’s not… only that I want.”

“How brazen.”

“I’m trying to be honest.”

Her skill at talking back was impressive. If Kahar were even slightly more rational, she would have been dragged off by the knights immediately.

“Then not your body, but jewels? Money? A merchant house? The Grand Duchess’s seat? Or shall I hand you the empire?”

“Pardon?”

“I’m asking whether your father, who sent you here, wants that.”

With Kahar’s repeated pressing, a flicker of fear passed through the woman’s eyes.

“Should I strip you here and hold you as you like? Then will you drop those wretched eyes and disappear?”

He leaned down and asked in a whisper, and tears pooled in the woman’s eyes.

Only then did a subtle thrill rise from somewhere deep in Kahar’s chest.

Whether she was pretending not to be that kind of woman, or truly wasn’t, he no longer cared.

“If you want to, take it off. That’s more appealing than lying there like a stone.”

“…I don’t want it like, like that.”

“What?”

“Properly…”

He let out a dry, amused sound from his throat.

“You have a talent for making people’s blood boil.”

The place where he held her felt cool. Kahar realized with a furrowed brow that the fever was slowly coming down.

Something similar to the feeling he had when pain eased in Lani’s presence circled through his entire body.

Focusing on the strange sensation, he felt something like a cool wave starting from the hand touching the woman, washing the heat away.

Kahar looked at her more sharply than before.

“What exactly are you? What did you just do?”

“I just came out for a walk…”

“Ah, a walk.”

“There’s a cottage nearby where I’m staying. I’m recovering because I’m not well… and I couldn’t sleep.”

“So.”

“And then you called to me, Your Highness.”

Kahar’s well-shaped lips curved slightly.

So because I called, you came. Is that what you’re saying?

This woman had no ulterior motive at all?

“You looked like you were in pain, Your Highness. My body temperature runs low. So I thought I might be of help.”

It was the first time he heard that a low body temperature could cure an illness.

“It seems like you can use some kind of magic.”

Among noble ladies lately, magic was all the rage. Healing magic in particular was widespread.

A noble daughter who learned healing magic could secure a better marriage, so parents were even more zealous about it than the daughters themselves.