In contrast to her brief, tentative kiss, Kailos’s was deep and lingering. His heated lips captured her startled breath, leaving her no time to recover. He gently brushed her lower lip as though to soothe her, then slipped past it without hesitation and drew her into the kiss.

What on earth was happening right now?

She knew this was hardly the moment for such thoughts, yet the force of the kiss only served to deepen her confusion. The longer it lasted, the more her thoughts seemed to dissolve; her mind gradually became blank, as though wiped clean.

Even as he continued to kiss her, he did not release her hand. When she flinched repeatedly, fearful that her magic might surge if their palms remained pressed together, Kailos guided her arms up around his neck instead.

He lifted her effortlessly into the air.

“Hah—!”

Her feet left the ground and she started to flail around, trying to regain her balance. When she looked at him in panic, his eyes seemed unfocused and distant, as though he were in a daze.

‘Shouldn’t I be the one losing my senses? Why did Kailos look as though he had already lost his? Shouldn’t he have demanded an explanation first?’

Her unease only deepened. She tried to stop him, but it was useless. Holding her securely in his arms, Kailos strode forward without pausing to kiss her repeatedly.

“Kai—los, ah, ngh… mm…”

Kailos placed her on top of the desk, lifted her chin with one hand, and stroked it gently as she struggled to catch her breath. Was he finally going to ask for an explanation? She cast a nervous glance towards the shattered window and tried to speak, but the moment she took a breath, Kailos bent down and kissed her again.

This time, there was no hesitation. His tongue slipped in at once, sweeping over the sensitive warmth within and drawing out wet, shameless sounds. The humiliating friction echoed in her ears, and heat flooded her body with every passing second. A soft, aching sound escaped her throat, only to be swallowed by his kiss as though he were taking her breath away.

Whenever moisture spilled between them, he traced it upwards with his tongue, unwilling to waste a single drop. His supple tongue slid along her teeth, circling and pressing with languid persistence. Gradually, the strength drained from her hands, which had been pushing him away. Without realizing it, she stopped thinking altogether and simply yielded to his kiss.

A cold wind blew endlessly through the broken window, making the office feel just as cold as outside. Yet she felt no chill — perhaps because of the heat flooding her flushed body or the burning warmth of his lips on hers.

Lost in the kiss, she had no sense of how much time had passed, surviving only on the air he let her breathe. She was unaware that her lips had swollen and grown numb.

Then, heavy footsteps echoed somewhere nearby.

Before she could process the sound, the office door was flung open.

“Your Grace, what’s going on—are you al—!”

“Your Grace, the window—! Gah!”

Five knights burst into the room with their swords drawn, but froze mid-step as though struck by a spell, unable to fully cross the threshold. Even Jerome and Comet, who had been shouting the loudest, fell silent the instant they took in the scene; their teeth were probably chattering in shock.

Kailos could be seen bent over the desk through the faint flutter of a dress hem. His broad frame concealed her entirely, but the pale pink hair swaying near his waist was unmistakable to anyone in the ducal castle.

“I beg your pardon, Your Grace. We heard the sound of breaking glass and assumed there was an intruder.”

Drawing on years of experience, the knight-commander was the first to recover. He bowed with practiced composure, his hands already reaching back to grip Jerome and Comet by the nape of their necks, ready to haul them out at a moment’s notice.

“Leave.”

Kailos said quietly.

“Yes.”

The knights hastily retreated from the office upon hearing his low, emotionless command, delivered without him even turning around. The chill in his voice made it unmistakably clear that they would be punished if they lingered for even a second longer.

The door slammed shut with a sharp thud, and silence fell heavily over the room.

Startled by the sudden intrusion, Selonia buried her face in Kailos’s chest and held her breath. Now, crushed beneath a shame heavier than the silence itself, she could not bring herself to lift her head.

The window of the Grand Duke’s office had been shattered — naturally, the castle guards would be on high alert. And yet, oblivious to all that, she had been kissing him brazenly on top of his desk.

There hadn’t just been one or two witnesses, either. What must the knights have thought when they burst in? Selonia and Kailos were locked together with a shattered window behind them — a scene vivid enough to set anyone’s imagination running wild.

As Selonia squeezed her eyes shut, a gentle voice — utterly unlike the curt command he had used to dismiss the knights — settled over her.

“They’re all gone, Selonia.”

“……”

“The knights of Laharden are discreet. You don’t need to worry so much.”

Kailos spoke in a soothing tone and even let out a soft chuckle above her head. However, his unruffled composure only served to deepen Selonia’s confusion.

Hadn’t he seen it clearly? Even if he had somehow missed the magic erupting from her hands, he had seen something bouncing around the room violently before it shattered the window. And yet he was acting as though none of it warranted even the slightest question.

Her instincts told her that this was the perfect opportunity to let it pass and pretend nothing had happened. But she couldn’t do that.

In the end, Selonia slowly lifted her head, her bewilderment plain to see.

“Why aren’t you asking anything?”

Kailos raised one perfectly straight eyebrow, as if unsure what she meant. Then, when he understood, he let out a quiet sound of realization.

“I’d already noticed, to some extent.”

“…What?”

“I thought you wanted to keep it hidden, so I pretended not to know. Was that not the right thing to do?”

‘Is this conversation even real?’

Kailos’s calm demeanor left her more bewildered than reassured. What exactly did he mean by noticed?

“Wait. I don’t know what you think you noticed, but that’s not it. What I’m talking about is—the thing that broke the window earlier, that was actually—”

“Magic.”

“…Magic. Yes—wait, what?”

Selonia had never been shocked before, and the feeling made her physically recoil. She almost fell from her seat, but Kailos caught her easily and steadied her. Gripping his arm with trembling hands, she managed to stand up. Her eyes widened, she covered her mouth, and she took a step back, only to find herself pressed against the desk once more.

“H-how…?”

The shock was greater than when Muneme had discovered her true identity. At least Muneme had been a witch herself. Was this really the Grand Duke of Laharden she had known before the regression? A faint, broken sound escaped Selonia’s quivering lips as she stared at him, utterly shaken.

The realization that Kailos knew she was a witch hit her full force. She had lived with the consequences of that knowledge in her own body before the regression. She had believed those memories were long buried, but as soon as the past resurfaced, her entire body began to tremble.

“…Since when have you known?”

“I saw you cast magic at the assailants on our way north.”

‘So it really was then.’

As despair flickered through her eyes, Kailos stepped a little closer and spoke again.

“There were no other witnesses. You don’t need to worry.”

His voice was gentle, as though he meant to reassure her. However, Selonia could not accept that so easily. She still could not grasp his true intentions, especially after he had seen her use magic and yet acted as though he knew nothing about it.

As if reading her thoughts, Kailos returned with a thick blanket, carefully wrapping it around her slender, trembling frame. Then he lifted her rigid body into his arms.

“The air here has grown far too cold for conversation.”

She could have resisted, but what difference would it make at this point? Selonia remained limp in his arms, dazed and unresponsive. He carried her down the corridor and into his bedroom, where he gently laid her on a sofa against the wall.

“This is the safest place in Serdin Castle. There’s no other meaning behind it.”

As he spoke, the tips of his ears turned faintly red. Walking through the corridor had cleared Selonia’s foggy mind slightly. She glanced around the bedroom, then lifted her gaze to meet his, her eyes full of guarded wariness.

“So… what are you going to do with me now?”

“…I told you. Use me.”

Selonia shook her head slowly, clearly not understanding.

“What… do you mean by that?”

“My father—the former Grand Duke—harbored doubts about what the Grand Cathedral and the Imperial Court call witches.”

“…What?”

“To be precise, he suspected that witches might not be the evil beings they claim them to be.”

She had never heard anything like this before or since the regression. The former Grand Duke was Kailos’s father. Had he really questioned the very nature of witches?

Doubting the Grand Cathedral and the Imperial Court was far more serious than it sounded.

After all, the Empire was founded as a holy nation when the current Imperial family and the Grand Cathedral received the power of the god Ardiel. They used this power to defeat the witches who bore the power of the evil god Ranesh. To question whether witches were truly evil was, in effect, to deny the very foundations of an empire that had endured for more than three hundred years.

Before she was wrongly accused of being a witch herself, Selonia had believed that the witch hunts were justified.