He looked somewhat tired, unlike his usual impeccable appearance, as though he had been up through the entire night.

Caesar came straight to her side and asked the physician standing nearby in a low voice.

“What is the Grand Duchess’s condition?”

“Fortunately, she did not inhale the smoke deeply, so there is no serious concern. She should recover fully with a few days of rest.”

At the physician’s words, Luna slowly sat up from where she lay.

Her mind was clear, fortunately, but her body still felt strangely heavy, not yet fully recovered. Still, aside from a slight stinging in her throat, she was not as uncomfortable as she might have expected.

“I see. Everyone out.”

At Caesar’s single word, the air in the room settled into a cool stillness.

Luna, watching the situation without understanding what was coming, asked him carefully.

“Um… a fire breaking out at the Grand Duke’s residence so suddenly, how did all of this happen?”

Only after everyone had withdrawn did Caesar open his mouth.

“There was a fire last night. In my study, no less.”

“What? Why all of a sudden…”

“That is what I would like to know. I am currently looking into the cause, and traces have been found suggesting someone started it deliberately.”

“Someone set it on purpose. Who on earth would…”

When Luna’s words trailed off, a strange stillness settled over the room. Caesar remained silent for a moment, as though lost in thought, then continued.

“As far as I am aware, the only person who entered my study recently was you.”

What flashed through Luna’s mind in that instant was the memory of wiping down the orchid in the study.

It had been nothing more than something she had done out of a natural sense of gratitude, after visiting the orphanage together with Caesar.

To think that very act had brought his suspicion down on her of all things.

Luna began to protest to him desperately.

“I only went to… tidy your study. And to look after the orchid in there…”

“Why would you suddenly do something so out of character? And of all places, my study.”

“I-I know it may be hard to believe, but it is truly the truth.”

That she, who had been flinging clothes around the dressing room, had gone and tidied Caesar’s study out of the blue. Even to Luna herself, it was behavior that did not fit the Adelia she had been performing all this time.

Which made it all the more unfair.

Last night at the banquet hall as well, Caesar had been excessively guarded. What on earth would it take to clear his suspicion?

Luna opened and closed her mouth, trying to get some kind of explanation out in her frustration, but the words would not come properly, perhaps from the shock of it all. In the meantime, Caesar pressed on more quickly.

“There were signs that the invitations in the study had been searched through. Whoever did it must have known in advance that I would be going to the imperial palace. On any other night I would have slept in the room adjoining the study, but last night I happened to fall asleep in my office, which was fortunate.”

“Are you saying… that I was trying to target you…?”

“I am not concluding that you are the culprit. But it is also true that the circumstances uncovered so far point in your direction.”

“Th-that makes no sense. The study is right next to my room. I nearly collapsed and died too! And that door, that’s right. My bedroom door was locked!”

Luna recalled the moment she had tried desperately to open the door, only for it to refuse to budge.

She had truly thought she was going to die right there, and yet an even greater obstacle had been waiting for her.

But an unexpected answer came from Caesar.

“The door was open. The attendants were the first to find you collapsed by that door.”

“It was definitely not open earlier. I remember it clearly…! Why would I set fire to the Grand Duke’s residence? There is no reason for me to do that.”

“That remains to be seen. Whether there is a reason or not.”

A taut tension still hung between the two of them, as though the strain of the night before had not yet fully lifted.

The standoff felt like it would never end, and it was suffocating. Luna let out a short breath, swallowing her frustration, and looked at him.

“Just… what would it take for you to believe me?”

“How to make someone trust a person they cannot bring themselves to trust. Is that not something my wife ought to be thinking about, rather than me?”

The frustration rose all the way to the back of her throat, and she felt her eyes prick with tears.

The Grand Duke’s residence had been peaceful for decades, and yet a fire had broken out not long after her arrival, and on top of that, every piece of circumstantial evidence pointed at her.

And the incident at the party the night before had only added more fuel to the misunderstanding.

Luna felt as though she had been caught in a trap she could not escape.

She spoke through gritted teeth.

“Fine. Then I will prove my own innocence myself. I will find the real culprit, no matter what…”

“Very well. I have no desire for my excellent partner to be the culprit either. Fortunately, I am told the Grand Duchess’s health is not in question, so stay here until all the restoration work is complete.”

The suspicion in Caesar’s gaze was still there, plain and unretracted.

Luna swallowed what she wanted to say, gave a short nod, and replied.

“Understood.”

The moment her answer was out, Caesar turned and left the room.

It had been the very moment she had made up her mind to accept her life as the Grand Duchess.

And yet, the moment it began, a tremendous obstacle stood in her way. To cooperate with him and keep the contract going, trust was what she needed above all else.

A sense of helplessness pressed down on her chest. She could not even see where to begin unraveling this situation.

But Luna had to find a way through it.

She bit down hard on her lower lip in her frustration, yet her eyes shone with a clear, unwavering light.

* * *

Several days later.

Having recovered, Luna was calling the servants in one by one to hear what they had to say.

The day the fire broke out at the Grand Duke’s residence. She needed to retrace everyone’s movements at the time of the incident.

“Are you certain I was truly the last person to enter the study?”

“That is how I remember it, my lady.”

The one giving testimony to her now was the guard responsible for conducting regular patrols of the Grand Duke’s residence.

“Think carefully one more time. Are you sure it was me?”

“Yes. After that… I have no memory of hearing anything about anyone else either. Nor did I witness anyone suspicious…”

He trailed off, looking uncomfortable.

“Enough, you may go.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Luna gave a brief wave of her hand and asked nothing further.

She had asked the same question to everyone, but the answers that came back were all identical.

Having dismissed them all without any notable result, Luna made her way to her own room, which had been scorched in the fire.

Standing before that door again, she hesitated for a moment, then took the handle and slowly turned it.

Click.

The door that had refused to move at all that night opened easily, as though nothing had ever happened.

She closed it and opened it again several times, but it was the same each time. For a moment she almost wondered whether she had simply misremembered.

Luna crouched down in front of the door and turned the handle this way and that. But there was no trace of anything unusual anywhere.

It felt like something out of a dream.

She tilted her head and lingered there for a while, then finally let go of the thought and got to her feet.

Having found no particular clue in her own room either, the last place she went was Caesar’s study, where the fire had originated.

The moment she opened the door, the smell of char that remained inside grew stronger.

And the state of the study was devastating.

The walls had been scorched black, and the bookshelves, consumed by the flames, barely retained their shape.

A thin layer of burnt debris and ash was scattered across the floor.

Luna pressed a hand over her mouth and stepped slowly inside.

This was where the fire started, they said.

She moved her gaze carefully and began to examine the study with care.

It was then that a small carriage figurine caught her eye.

Luna stopped in front of it and looked at it closely.

“The horse was definitely facing this way…”

She remembered the day she had entered Caesar’s study and spent a long time looking at that carriage figurine, struck by the novelty of learning his tastes for the first time.

The horse’s head, which had definitely been facing right, was now turned the other way.

Caesar, always busy with an overwhelming amount of work, would never have had the leisure to rearrange a decorative piece. On top of that, he was the kind of person who, once he had decided on the placement of something, rarely changed it.

That was precisely why Luna could only grow more certain.

Someone other than herself had definitely been in here.

And there was one more thing that struck her as strange.

An ordinary fire burns upward from below.

Even if a fire had started from above, it was natural for it to work its way downward and consume what lay beneath.

And yet the carpet, dusted with a thin layer of ash, was far too intact, without so much as a trace of the flames having touched it.

Then where on earth had the fire started?

There was no oil, no matches, and not even a trace of a candle or brazier. There was nothing nearby that could have served as a source of ignition.

That was it… it was less the feeling of a fire having been lit, and more the feeling of one having been summoned.

At the same moment, a memory from the past flashed through her mind.

Luna had attended magic lessons in the past, back when she had been standing in for Adelia.

Lessons about the five elements that made up magic, and about the magical power used to wield those elements.

Among everything she had heard, there was one thing that had stayed with her more than anything else.