Now, You Are Mine

"It wasn't the flowers I meant, Madam Kasika. I meant that you are beautiful."

"……"

Kasika faltered for a moment, but banter of this caliber was exchanged often enough. In the cheap novels she used to devour, that is. One could go even further than this without batting an eye, so there was hardly any need to get flustered over a compliment.

"You've grown in a direction I didn't quite expect."

"What do you mean by that?"

"You've become an excellent flatterer."

"I've thought you beautiful since I was a child, madam."

Whether that was a lie or the truth, there was no telling.

Beautiful, he says.

Kasika looked at Noah. From the very first time she'd seen him, she had thought his hair the color of the finest champagne. A radiant blond, oddly translucent and clean despite being merely hair, tinged with a faint sandy hue lighter than a strand of silk — how she had envied it as a child.

Kasika had wanted to become someone like Noah. Having been born a girl, she had wished she could be a child like that instead. Of course, Noah was a boy, but back then, the brightness of the child with that sunlit laugh had struck her as endearing, if a touch tiresome. She had been so envious of that noble color he carried that she'd wanted to chew his hair up and swallow it whole — or else seize it for herself, or hide it away in secret.

"And what do you think of yourself, then?"

"If I am beautiful in those eyes of yours, then your own face must be blind indeed. Especially with regard to that hair of yours."

"Hmm, I wouldn't go quite that far. Darker hair is the more beautiful, wouldn't you say? It doesn't gleam even when sunlight touches it — rather, it draws the light in, and……"

There, Noah fell silent. Kasika waited for him to continue, but he simply stopped and covered his mouth with one hand. She couldn't imagine why.

Perhaps he had peculiar tastes. To anyone else, a blond like him would far outshine a brunette like — ah, so he was the one who wanted black hair, apparently.

"It's true that men tend to covet darker hair more, I suppose. Perhaps because it carries more weight?"

At her words, Noah smiled as if in agreement.

"Yes. Like a forest on a dark night. One that might stretch on farther than anyone could ever know."

It goes that far, does it?

"The sort of forest where it might not be so terrible to lose one's way, just once."

"You seem fond of literature."

Come to think of it, Countess Lambroise had always seemed displeased by the books Noah read. That, at least, made sense now. When Kasika only stared at him in silence, Noah appeared somewhat embarrassed, rose to his feet, and said, "I'd better go wet my throat."

He stepped out and returned almost at once, a servant who had been waiting outside handing over something to eat along with tea. She had taken tea and fruit for breakfast that morning, and now dessert again — though it was quite a different spread from the one Lydia would have prepared.

"……Your memory."

He had remembered.

Everything set upon the table was something Kasika had once loved. She hadn't put on airs, but back when she came to the Lambroise estate as a tutor, she had regularly made a meal of dessert. Unlike Elpertz, where she had known nothing but black bread, everything she ate here had carried the sweet, rich scent of butter and sugar.

The maids and servants from those days hadn't changed, so naturally they knew her tastes — but she hadn't imagined he would recreate that era so faithfully. Food, after all, was less about flavor than about the memories that came with it.

The Lambroises had offered her everything her childhood had been denied, and from time to time, she had caught herself longing for these very tastes.

"These are all things you like, aren't they?"

"Yes."

Kasika had her share of bluster and pretense, but this alone she had no reason to hide. It was the simple truth that she loved them.

"Thank you for the thoughtfulness."

She smiled. Noah's lips moved briefly — he seemed to have something to say — but instead of speaking, he drained his cold tea in one swallow. Kasika lifted her fork. The cake, its paper-thin layers of pastry filled with custard cream and crowned with sugar icing marbled across the top, crumbled with a delicate crackle.

Rather unexpectedly, she and Noah shared a few things in common. Kasika's memories of her childhood were not especially vivid. Perhaps she simply hadn't wanted to remember. But Noah recalled every moment they had spent together down to the smallest detail — his memory really was remarkable, she thought. It would surely serve him well in law.

Just as she finished the last of the dessert, the person they had been waiting for entered. A man with sun-darkened skin and black hair, a touch shorter than Noah but more solidly built — like a knight, almost.

"Right on time."

So that was the dark forest on a moonless night — the one Noah claimed to envy, the one he wouldn't mind losing his way in……

"This is Bertram. He serves the royal household as an administrator."

She'd taken him for a knight. An unexpected profession.

"Weren't we bringing in a lawyer?"

"He also holds a license in law."

"……Is it proper for an administrator to take part in something like this?"

"Well, serving the crown pays surprisingly little, you see. Ah — a pleasure to meet you, madam."

The answer came from Bertram himself. Noah gave up his seat to the man and settled, quite naturally, into the place beside Kasika. There hadn't even been a moment to shift away. The warmth of another body at her side felt strangely foreign.

"We had originally intended to summon someone from a cadet branch of the family, but it seemed we might risk losing their trust."

"I see."

It was true enough that a royal administrator could not simply be done away with. A member of a cadet branch, though — with one of those, one might at least attempt something. Good heavens, was he really thinking several moves ahead again? Still, this arrangement couldn't be disadvantageous to Kasika alone, so if anything went wrong, Noah would presumably handle it. A position unprofitable to both parties alike. Not a bad compromise.

"Are mistress contracts normally drafted like this?"

Kasika asked. Bertram tilted his head up slightly, then lowered it again. Perhaps he was uncomfortable meeting anyone's gaze; keeping his head bowed, he answered, "Hard to say."

"Not to my knowledge, but these arrangements are so clandestine by nature that I imagine anything could pass behind closed doors."

In other words: possibly. A perfectly useless answer.

Bertram lifted the documents. Now that the subject had been raised, there was little left to review — and yet the administrator, as if seeing the contents for the first time, wore a faintly puzzled expression before speaking.

"'Neither party shall enter into physical relations with any other person' — is this genuine? In a mistress contract?"

"That clause is void. We seem to have brought the wrong draft."

"……"

And he means to simply strike it out here and pretend it never existed? However she looked at it, Bertram thought, this had to be deliberate — and yet the two before her showed not so much as a flicker of change in their expressions. Something about the pair suggested neither was to be taken lightly.

The other amendments were all tilted in their favor, and Bertram found it difficult to grasp why Kasika had agreed to any of this. The terms weighed heavily against her. Of course, the advantages were proportionally considerable as well.

"You have both read the contract in full, I trust?"

"Yes."

Kasika answered. Noah merely shrugged instead of replying. I would have read it once more at this point, Bertram thought — but saying so would have been disadvantageous to the two of them, and so he kept his mouth shut.

"Then, if you would sign here."

Bertram said. Noah held out his fountain pen. Kasika took it and signed at the bottom of the contract, then passed the pen back; Noah signed in turn and handed the documents and pen to Bertram. Bertram signed at the bottom as well and set the pen down. What followed was a process Kasika could not have made sense of even watching closely. He merely held the papers in his hand, and a pale blue light seeped into them. Then, drawing out a stack of blank paper and tapping it once with his pen, he made the writing rise from the contract and drift neatly across onto the new pages. As each line of text settled onto the fresh paper, page by page, the man fanned the sheets with his hand. When Kasika stared, he said, "The ink needs a little time to dry, you see."

So even when the words themselves were moved by magic, the ink still had to dry. A fact she hadn't known.

"We'll keep these in the bank's custody, then."

Though the ink did seem to dry faster this way than by hand. The man continued as he gathered the pages together.

"Should the contract be lost, a replacement can be issued. Since it's been treated with magic from the start, it won't burn in fire or soak through in water — there's very little upkeep to worry about."

When he held the documents out, Kasika lifted the edge with her thumb and forefinger alone, as though accepting something unspeakably grimy. The gesture left Bertram looking distinctly awkward. He tucked one set of papers away for himself and handed the last to Noah.

Noah gazed down at the documents in silence. His face wore a smile of perfect harmlessness, but it was impossible to guess what lay behind it. Had he always been like this? He hadn't seemed the type to smile so often — perhaps it was only that she had seen nothing but that smile lately, so that it had come to feel familiar.

Yes — the smile in Noah Lambroise's eyes was, in its way, rather endearing, and thoroughly, unmistakably mercenary.

"Well, then."

And yet, with that very smile——

"You are mine now."

"……"

For the first time, Kasika felt that Noah Lambroise was dangerous.