She nodded as though she had been waiting for just that.

‘Yes.’

But perhaps it was still the sleep. No sound came from her lips as they moved at the end of that nod. She opened her hazy eyes a little wider. The person sitting beside her brought an index finger to the tip of her chin.

“Here.”

At that touch she looked up and met the eyes of the one gazing down at her. And at the familiar face before her, she could not breathe for a moment.

‘…Leon?’

Perhaps it was the half-drawn curtains, or the dim candlelight. Lisette blinked at the presence that had been hidden in the shadows.

‘Why are you….’

But still no voice came from her parted lips.

Instead, he pressed into the gap her parted lips made and slowly brought his lips to hers. A little deeper than before, he opened his mouth as though searching for something desperate, and pressed his hand harder against the tip of her chin.

“Ha.”

A low, clouded breath spread inside her mouth, and something in that yearning sound made her look up.

In those dark eyes, nearly brown, she was finally reflected whole. The absolute gaze turned toward her, those same eyes that had pressed their lips to the back of her hand when he left her three years ago.

‘I will come back alive, without fail.’

‘So please, wait for me.’

‘My lady.’

“Haa.”

Lisette was recalling his voice, which felt so impossibly far away, when she let out a quiet breath at the firm hand that pulled her nape toward him. The tip of his tongue pressed into her through the gap in her lips, and her breath stopped and her heart stirred.

‘Leon.’

Her voice still would not come, but none of that mattered at all.

He had come back to being her Leon again, and she did not dislike this. That was enough. With that thought, Lisette reached out and wrapped her arms around Leon’s neck. She pulled him close and sucked at his lower lip, savoring something desperate, and pressed her body tight against his, restless to close every last gap between them.

And he too held her in return, and touched her. From the tips of her ears down to her nape. Every place his hands touched burned with a stinging heat.

‘Ha.’

She drew a sharp breath and bit down on his lower lip, then let go. She felt the breathless panting rise all the way up her throat, and she looked up and met his eyes.

“…….”

“…….”

The mere meeting of their eyes seemed to raise every hair on her body. At her flinching, Leon’s eyes shifted gently, and he pressed his forehead to hers.

“Please.”

At his words, soft as a sigh, his eyes closing slowly, Lisette took his face in both hands. Her reflection filled his dark eyes completely.

No room for anything else. She slowly sucked at his lips and bit at his nape. She moved down slowly over his collarbone and further, leaving her marks behind.

Perhaps one day she would regret this choice.

‘But not now.’

She could not repeat the regret of that moment three years ago when she had left him, but she was breathless.

Like that day, her chest stirred with unease and her spine prickled. But one thing was certain: she felt sure she would regret it if she pulled back now, and so she left a very deep mark on his collarbone.

“Ugh.”

Lisette pulled her lips away, leaving a mark so dark it had gone from red to nearly black. Then she pulled his neck a little closer.

Afraid he might pull away from her, her hands moved urgent and restless, and Leon rose above her and looked down.

His black hair fell forward over both sides of his face as he braced his hands on either side of her. Lisette reached up and swept his hair back, and as she looked up, his body, hidden until now in the dark, finally came into view.

She swallowed at the sight of Leon’s bare torso, and his lips did the same as she had just done, tracing her lips, passing her nape. He stopped at her collarbone. Then he left a mark lighter than hers and looked down at Lisette.

That gaze left her breathless.

Even in this moment where her voice would not come, that look alone felt enough to undo her.

In that sweet moment, Lisette parted her lips and drew in the tip of Leon’s tongue. She pulled the back of his head a little closer and drifted through the depths of his mouth.

She did not want this moment to break.

The thought of him becoming someone else again and leaving her side felt unbearable.

‘If he were to again….’

Her mind went faint at the image of Leon from just before, and a clouded breath slipped from her throat. Leon parted his lips slightly, like a person struggling to find air to breathe.

“Breathe.”

Their breaths passed between the slight gap in their lips. At the barely crossing breaths, she looked up slightly and met his eyes.

Those eyes that had always looked at her with warmth, unconditionally on her side. He had returned to the Leon of that moment, the one for whom she had come before everything else.

Relief settled with a soft ache at her heart. But on the other hand, not knowing when he might change again, Lisette’s body burned with urgency, and she cupped his cheeks and sucked at his lower lip, licked at the tip of his tongue.

Driven by the thought that she had to bind him so he could not leave, she endured even the moments when breathing became too much and kept kissing him.

‘It’s all right even if I don’t breathe….’

She thought that as long as she could keep him by her side, nothing else mattered, and she pulled him a little tighter, and just then…

“Miss?”

The nanny’s voice shook her by the shoulder, and Lisette opened her eyes to the familiar pattern of the ceiling.

‘Where is this?’

Where?

Standing at the edge between dream and waking, she blinked in a daze. But Leon was nowhere in the room.

‘He was here just a moment ago. He was definitely holding me.’

But then.

‘Why.’

Am I alone?

Confusion fixed her gaze in place, and the nanny called out to her in a rush.

“Miss!”

“…Hm?”

And in that moment, her voice came back, and Lisette felt something cool and hard against her back and turned her head.

“Nanny?”

“Yes, it’s me. What on earth? Why are you lying on the floor like this! What will you do if you fall ill again!”

At the nanny’s scolding face, Lisette swallowed and raised a hand to touch her lips. They felt slightly more swollen than usual, and she let out a breath.

‘Was it a dream?’

But it had been too vivid to be a dream.

Had her longing for him grown this deep? she thought.

‘Deep enough to dream something like that.’

No one else knew, but the memory of herself in the dream made her flush with embarrassment. Lisette covered her eyes with the back of her hand.

Her vision went hazy.

‘How mortifying.’

But the embarrassment did not last long. The longing for him and the heavy sense of loss that followed settled over her even more deeply.

Even now, she wanted to see him.

Even in this moment when he was pushing her away, she missed him.

‘I want to see him.’

“Miss.”

The nanny’s voice carried its own wetness, filled with sorrow for her young lady, who had collapsed on the floor and was shedding silent tears one after another.

But there was no one to save her.

‘No one at all.’

[Is that so?]

In that moment, as she lay drowning in something close to despair and shedding only tears, an unfamiliar voice reached her ears. Not her ears exactly, but a strange voice that seemed to ring from inside her head.

Lisette startled and swallowed, and then…

[That’s not quite right.]

[Because I’m here.]

[The only one who can make your desires come true.]

A voice of temptation pressed into her ear.

A voice both alluring and dangerous.

* * *

“Marriage? Who, Lisette?”

The morning after the homecoming banquet, at breakfast, when the subject of Lisette’s marriage partner came up, Alexander’s mouth fell open.

He had come downstairs just as he woke, hair still disheveled, clearly not expecting to hear anything like this. He stopped mid-bite and looked back and forth between his mother and his eldest brother.

And his sister-in-law, sitting quietly beside them.

But no one said a word to deny it, and he set down his utensil and leaned back in his chair. A hollow laugh escaped him.

“No, how long has she even been engaged? And this little one is getting married already. That makes no sense. Mother.”

At Alexander shaking his head, Céline dabbed her lips with her napkin and rebuked him quietly.

“Little one, you say. That’s rude to a lady. Alexander.”

“But she’s only twenty, Mother. And I haven’t even seen that fellow’s face yet….”

“Alexander.”

Céline narrowed her brow in warning, and he raised a hand and waved it, then smiled and looked up.

“Anyway, what kind of marriage is this at twenty? It’s too soon, Mother.”

“You just don’t know. Twenty is late for a woman. And Lisette’s health is frail too, and well… anyway, time had been dragging on with no betrothed in sight, so I was worried. This is a good thing.”

Céline let out a sigh and looked steadily at Lisette. At that, Alexander too raised one hand toward the ceiling and looked at Lisette.

“…….”