“Should I come and make a scene the day after tomorrow?”

“……”

“The day that old layabout shows up.”

“He’s not a layabout, he’s Baron Tarmen.”

“Right, that old layabout b*stard.”

The more Lisette tried to correct him, the more colorful the insults he attached to the name became. She shook her head.

“Just say the word. I’ll turn the whole thing upside down.”

“How reassuring.”

“Of course. Now that this brother of yours has some weight behind his…”

“You do, yes. All right, that’s enough brotherly bonding. Out you go.”

She shoved Alexander’s shoulder before he could launch into another round of self-praise. He took a brief look at her face, which had eased somewhat, and finally got to his feet with what seemed like relief.

“All right, all right, I’m going.”

Rubbing the corner of his eye with his fist in the manner of a pitiful brother being thrown out of his own sister’s room, Alexander made his exit.

Quiet settled over the room again. Lisette ran her fingers along the spine of the book and looked at the window beyond the sofa. The forest, thick with deep green, swayed in the wind.

She had to go back there.

‘Do not come to find me again.’

His warning still rang clearly in her ears. Even so.

‘I have to go.’

She had to go and see for herself.

The curse she had sown.

And.

[One night.]

[That one time, and you’ll be completely free of this curse.]

The demon’s whisper.

* * *

“A sleeping pill?”

“Yes.”

“Why would you need a sleeping pill, Miss? Are you having trouble sleeping? Should I give you a massage? Or perhaps a warm bath might…”

“It’s not as serious as it was back then. I just take too long to fall asleep.”

“Still…”

Even after Lisette’s words, the nanny kept hesitating, pressing her lips together and releasing them over and over. Lisette added one short line.

“Just for tonight.”

Only at that did the nanny ease her suspicion somewhat. She nodded in understanding, stepped outside, and returned not long after.

The small glass bottle she held tightly in her hand looked oddly familiar.

“I’ll leave you just one. One is enough, isn’t it?”

“Yes, one is enough.”

One pill and she could sleep for about four hours before waking. Two pills meant six hours, three meant ten. The potency did diminish somewhat with each additional pill.

‘The most I ever took at once was twenty, wasn’t it.’

She recalled the uproar that had caused and held out her hand to the nanny. The nanny looked at the outstretched hand with its expressionless face, then lifted her head, let out a long breath, and turned the glass bottle open. She drew out a single brown tablet.

Then she set it carefully onto Lisette’s palm.

“Just tonight. Not tomorrow. You understand?”

“Yes, I understand.”

At the nanny’s repeated reminder, Lisette placed the single sleeping pill on the nightstand beside the bed. Once she took it she would be asleep within ten minutes, and four hours later she would…

‘Be able to see for herself.’

She curled her hand closed, as though feeling the faint weight of the sleeping pill still in her palm.

“Thank you, Nanny.”

“……”

“I think I’ll be able to sleep peacefully tonight, thanks to you.”

And so she sat in her bedroom for the better part of several hours, doing nothing but waiting for night to come.

But as midnight drew near, sleep would not come, and if anything her mind felt sharper and more awake than before.

‘It was a good thing I got the pill from Nanny.’

Without it, falling asleep tonight would probably have been impossible. When you try to stay awake, sleep crashes over you, but when you tell yourself you have to sleep, it refuses to come.

And her goal was to wake at dawn and go to him, which made it all the more…

‘Essential.’

She looked down at the brown sleeping pill resting in her palm. After that day three years ago, she had spent nearly a year unable to live without the pills. And after she swallowed twenty of them at once and lost consciousness, no one had given her sleeping pills again.

Only on rare occasions, when she truly felt she would lose her mind from being unable to sleep, would the nanny take pity on her and give her one at a time.

Even that had grown much less frequent over the past two years, and she had barely needed them at all.

So asking for one out of nowhere must have worried the nanny considerably.

But this was the only way.

‘Right.’

Lisette put the small tablet in her mouth, lifted the glass of water from the nightstand, and swallowed it down with a sip. Then she lay back on the bed. She would fall asleep soon, and once she did…

‘She would be able to see him.’

She had seen him every night for the past several days, but for some reason her nerves were up, and she breathed in and out slowly, again and again.

She only hoped her suspicion was wrong. That the marks on his body had not affected him in any way.

‘Just… just… let him be at peace…’

“Hah.”

But at that moment, a sensation tickled the back of her neck without warning, and Lisette drew in a sharp breath in surprise. She slowly opened her eyes.

“Miss.”

He had buried himself in her arms and was rubbing the tip of his nose against her neck, nuzzling her. It was the kind of thing a puppy or a small child might do, but the hand he had pressed to the small of her back was far from innocent. His fingertips swept down her back, covered only by a thin slip, and worked their way gently into her.

“I missed you.”

His voice, so like the one from three years ago, made her bow her head without thinking.

This was different from the dreams of the past several days. It felt as though she was fully aware of everything around her. She was not drifting and surrendering her body in the hazy space between waking and dreaming. She was moving and acting of her own will.

Almost as though this were not a dream but reality.

Lisette raised her hand and stroked the hair of Leon, who had burrowed into her arms like a child.

“I missed you too.”

Soft strands of hair tickled between her fingers. He seemed to enjoy the movement of her fingertips and slowly closed his eyes, pressing a light kiss to her neck. He was different from the past several days.

What was he, right now?

The question rose in her mind, but the time she had to spend in the dream was not long. Usually it seemed like only a few minutes passed with him before the whole night had gone by.

‘I have to hurry.’

With the thought that the time given to her would not be long, Lisette pulled her body back slightly from his arms and pushed herself upright. Leon looked up at her, thinking she was trying to get away, but she paid it no mind and pressed against his shoulder, rolling him to the side and climbing on top of him.

She placed her hands on either side of his face and held herself steady with her arms, looking down at him. Her hair fell forward and spilled down. Leon looked up at her with a dazed expression as her hair cascaded softly around them.

“Miss.”

“Yes.”

“Miss.”

“Yes.”

He called to her again, and she answered again, and in the gaze between them she could see his lips part, then press shut as he swallowed something back. And what that swallowed word was showed far too plainly in the reflection of her face in his eyes.

‘Don’t go.’

She read the words that could not make it past his throat, and undid the buttons of his shirt, then pressed her lips to his neck.

“Mmh.”

He shuddered as though something cold had touched him and turned his head the other way. Something surged up inside her at that reaction, a thrill she could not quite name, and she pressed it down and undid another button of his shirt.

Click. The button came loose, and she slipped her hand inside the open shirt. He bit his lip. She watched him and drew hard on one spot at his neck, leaving a deep mark.

She had struggled consciously not to do this ever since the first day, when he had noticed the traces of her desire on him. But now she sucked at his neck, hard and again and again, without any of that restraint, as though that time had never been.

Clearly enough to see.

Undeniably enough that no one could deny it.

‘So that anyone would know it was a mark I left.’

And below that too, his collarbone, his chest, her lips moved over his entire body leaving marks, and Leon’s breathing grew ragged.

“Tonight feels a little different.”

“……”

“Ha… Miss.”

He tilted his head back, and Lisette finally undid the last of his shirt buttons. For the first time in her life she placed her hand at the waistband of his trousers, and then…

“!”

His hand came down over hers, and the gaze he dropped to their hands trembled faintly. But Lisette pushed his hand aside and pulled his trousers down. His manhood, which had never once been exposed in all the dreams until now, lay before her eyes, enormous.

Just like the first time she had seen it.

Just like that moment when she had wondered whether she could ever take something like that inside her. His length held her eyes captive, and Lisette swallowed. Leon watched her steadily, her face making her hesitation plain, her eyes wavering. Then he reached up and placed his hand gently under her chin, tilting it up.

“You don’t have to do anything.”

Her chin lifted, and at his soft words, Lisette swallowed dryly. Leon let out a small smile at that, and reached out his hand.