The footsteps outside the lounge stopped.
For several heartbeats, the silence was so complete that Kira could hear the distant music drifting from the banquet hall. Laughter echoed faintly through the manor, accompanied by the soft melody of violins, creating a strange contrast to the tension gathering outside the locked room.
Then came the sound of raised voices.
"Move."
"I'm telling you, you've got the wrong man!"
A heavy thud rattled the door, followed by the scrape of boots against the polished floor. Before Kira could move, the lock turned from the outside and the door burst open.
Two guards shoved a man into the room with enough force to send him stumbling several steps forward. His shoulder struck the edge of a table before he caught himself, breathing heavily as he struggled to remain standing. Thick ropes bound his wrists behind his back, and a dark bruise had already begun forming beneath one eye.
The guards never looked at Kira.
One of them gave the prisoner another rough shove before stepping backward.
"Stay here."
The words sounded more like a rehearsed performance than an actual command.
The door slammed shut.
The lock clicked again.
Silence returned.
For a long moment, neither Kira nor the stranger spoke.
The man blinked repeatedly, as though trying to clear a fog clouding his thoughts. His breathing remained uneven, and every few seconds he swayed slightly where he stood. Whatever they had forced into his body hadn't fully worn off.
His gaze finally settled on Kira.
Confusion flashed across his face.
Then realization.
His eyes widened. "...No."
He looked around the room, taking in the scattered clothing still lying across the floor, the open window, and finally the elegant young noblewoman watching him with unsettling calm.
"No..." His voice grew hoarse.
"They're framing us." Kira said nothing.
The mercenary let out a bitter laugh that sounded closer to despair.
"So that's why they drugged me." He closed his eyes for a moment before speaking again, each sentence coming more steadily than the last as if saying the words aloud helped him piece together what had happened.
"I was hired yesterday. Simple escort work. A merchant wanted protection on the eastern road." He frowned, pressing a hand against his temple. "We stopped at an inn before dawn. Someone bought us drinks. That's the last thing I remember."
He looked down at the ropes around his wrists. "When I woke up, I was already tied. They kept my head covered the entire journey. I thought it was a ransom... until they pushed me in here."
His eyes met Kira's again.
"I've never seen you before in my life." The desperation in his voice wasn't the desperation of a guilty man. It was the panic of someone who had just realized he was standing in the middle of another person's nightmare.
Kira believed him.
Not because his story sounded convincing.
Because she remembered him.
His face had haunted her for a year after his execution.
Back then, she had only caught a glimpse of him as palace guards dragged him through the Imperial Square. He had shouted until his voice broke, insisting he had never entered her room willingly, that he had been drugged, that someone had arranged everything. Nobody had listened.
Neither had she.
At the time, she had been too consumed by her own disgrace to think about the stranger whose fate had become tied to hers.
Three days later, he was publicly executed for dishonoring the future Crown Princess. His death had been little more than a footnote beneath the scandal surrounding her.
Now she finally understood. He hadn't been a convenient accomplice.
He had been another victim. Slowly, Kira crossed the room.
The mercenary stiffened instinctively.
"If you're going to call for help..." he began quietly, "...I won't stop you." She ignored the remark.
Instead, she stepped behind him and withdrew a slender hairpin from her sleeve.
The sharpened end slipped between the coarse fibers of the rope. A few careful twists.
The knot loosened.
The ropes fell to the floor.
The mercenary stared at his freed hands in stunned silence before looking back at her.
"You..."
His voice caught.
"Why?" Kira returned the hairpin to her sleeve before answering.
"Because if they succeed tonight, we'll both be dead before sunrise."
He frowned.
"What?"
"They may not kill us with a sword," she said evenly. "But the lives we have now will end here." The room fell quiet again.
The mercenary flexed his sore wrists, still watching her with open disbelief.
"You don't even know my name."
"No."
"And yet you trusted me enough to cut me loose."
"I didn't say I trusted you." A faint smile touched Kira's lips for the first time since entering the lounge.
"I simply know we're standing on the same side of someone else's plan."
The words lingered between them. The mercenary studied her for a long moment, clearly trying to reconcile the woman before him with the sheltered noble lady he had expected to find.
She wasn't crying.
She wasn't panicking.
She wasn't accusing him.
She was observing.
"You knew this was coming," he said quietly.
Kira didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
His eyes drifted toward the scattered clothing on the floor before slowly returning to her.
"Someone wanted us discovered together."
"Yes."
"And they expected you to be unconscious."
"Yes."
A humorless laugh escaped him.
"So we've already ruined their evening."
"Only the first part of it." The smile vanished from Kira's face as her attention shifted toward the corridor.
Voices echoed beyond the locked door.
Not one person. Several.
The sounds grew louder with every passing second. Orders were being whispered. Footsteps multiplied.
Someone was gathering witnesses.
The mercenary heard them too.
His expression hardened.
"What do we do?"
Kira's gaze settled on the door.
"They're no longer trying to create the crime."
She drew a slow breath.
"They're about to reveal it." The corridor outside erupted with commotion as multiple pairs of footsteps stopped directly outside the lounge.
Then came a familiar voice.
Prince Julian.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he called, loud enough for the gathering crowd to hear, "I believe something is terribly wrong."
Kira closed her eyes for the briefest moment.
The final act had begun.