Baraha hadn't moved. He sat staring at her, his face empty in a way that made him look like something had briefly stopped working inside him.
She leveled her sword at his neck. With the flat of the tip, she lifted his chin. Her face reflected in his gold eyes.
"Did you see?"
"…I saw too many things. I'm not sure which part you're asking about."
He answered slowly. She looked down at him steadily. He drew a slow breath before continuing.
"The cursed sword. ValderGio..."
A loud clang cut him off. Echi had driven the sword into the ground between them.
She left it there and sat down beside it, pulling her knees up. A long sigh escaped her.
"I'm going to lose my mind."
"…Sorry."
"Why are you apologizing?"
"Felt like I should."
She looked up at him in disbelief, then let out a short, helpless laugh. His expression was so thoroughly blank he looked faintly foolish. She reached up and untied the cloth holding her hair, raked the fallen strands back with her fingers. She'd already been exposed; there was no point worrying about how she looked.
Baraha's gaze tracked her hands as she fixed her hair - back and forth, as if his eyes didn't quite know where to settle. He looked like a stunned animal.
Echi waved a hand in front of his face.
"Are you all right?"
"Uh... well..."
He groaned and shook his head, pressing his fingers to his temples, and made himself speak.
"You're a Giosa owner?"
"Yes."
"Of the cursed sword?"
"…Yes."
"You were its master?"
"Yes."
Strictly speaking, she had surpassed that rank. But there was no common word for what was beyond a Master, and most people didn't know such a level existed. She let it pass.
"The one who knocked me out by hitting the back of my neck - that was you?"
"…Yes. I'm sorry."
"You didn't want to be found out?"
"You catch on quickly."
She smiled, briefly and with the wrong kind of humor. Now what?
She had come into the node to save Baraha. She had killed Ian, who had tried to take his life.
Should she now eliminate Baraha because he'd seen something he shouldn't?
The thought was absurd. If she'd been someone who killed that easily, she wouldn't have spent three years playing at being a cadet - she'd have slipped in at night, cut down the guards, and taken the Giosa by force.
Ian had been a different kind of problem - a specific kind of person who would keep being that kind of problem. But she didn't kill innocents. Not anymore. Not while there was another way.
Which meant she had to silence him without killing him. As someone without magic, she had exactly one method.
Echi looked Baraha in the eye. His sword was still planted in the ground between them.
"Senior."
"Yeah?"
"I don't want to kill you."
The color drained from his face.
She rested her chin on her knee.
"But if you can't keep the fact that I'm a Giosa owner a secret - I'll have to."
Even if he spread it to everyone he knew, she had no real intention of killing him. She knew that. The nightmares were too vivid - how could she kill someone she cared for with her own hands? She could barely stand the thought of it. She could push herself to desperate lengths to save him, but not the other way.
She wanted to see Baraha become a knight.
So this was a bluff.
But she couldn't let that show.
She kept her face empty.
"Keep it secret. Not a request, an order."
"…Hmm."
Something odd moved across his face. He looked her over where she sat, small and still, then spoke.
"I have a few questions."
"Go ahead. I won't be able to answer all of them."
"First. You own the cursed sword. Why are you still yourself? ValderGiosa controls its owner."
"I can't answer that."
"Can you at least tell me whether you'll be able to stay yourself in the future?"
"Yes. As long as I don't completely lose my mind."
"Why did you hide that you're its owner?"
"Because it's a cursed sword. Not everyone would believe I'm safe."
She smiled wryly, thinking of the building killing intent. She'd relieved some of it today - still not enough.
Baraha accepted her answer without difficulty. The cursed sword's reputation spoke for itself.
"Ah. That makes sense."
"You believe that quite easily."
"I don't exactly have a choice, given the situation."
A dry laugh. His gaze drifted to the monster corpses around her, then to the greatsword planted between them. She shrugged. She had just threatened to kill him.
"Fair point."
"Why did you enroll in the Celestial Knights?"
"To get rid of the cursed sword."
"Get rid of it? How?"
"I need another Giosa. Once I have one, I can discard this one. That's why I'm becoming a knight."
"If you get another Giosa, you can just release ValderGiosa?"
"Yes."
A lie. She could release it now.
But that would take everything she remembered from before the reversal. Echi had no intention of telling Baraha about the reversal.
"You're a Master. Couldn't you just become a knight immediately?"
"I'm planning to take about three years before making it formal. A twenty-year-old Master would be too suspicious, wouldn't it?"
"It would be… unusual, yes. Though the Commander became one at twenty-three, so a prodigy could manage it at twenty." He paused, recalculating. "Twenty now, though. Not twenty-three. That's even more… uh, seriously abnormal."
"Especially for a count's daughter who never had a single lesson with a sword before she was twenty."
"…What?"
"Senior Baraha. Before I turned twenty, I had never held a sword."
Shock. Real, open shock.
Echi smiled faintly.
"If I appeared as a twenty-year-old Master out of nowhere, people would dig into everything - my birth, my upbringing, how I was raised. It happened with Commander Yurien too, didn't it? But with him, the trajectory made sense. With me - untrained hands, no history with a sword - it wouldn't hold up. Spending three years as a cadet before reaching Master is a completely different story."
Baraha approached.
Understanding what he wanted, Echi extended her bare right hand.
He flinched at the mark on her palm, then carefully ran his thumb across it.
Soft. Smooth. A hand that had held a sword for less than a year.
"How," he said quietly, "did you become a Master?"
"Because of the cursed sword. Which is another reason I can't reveal it immediately - claiming to be a Master right away would raise too many questions. I intend to show gradual improvement and reach Master formally around twenty-three."
"The cursed sword could do that?"
"Yes."
A lie, technically. ValderGiosa could make its host fight at a Master's level by possessing them - but it couldn't actually grant mastery. Those were different things.
[You lie very smoothly. If I could actually do that, I'd be a holy sword.]
She ignored it.
Baraha rubbed his face. He pressed his hand over his eyes for a moment, then called out.
"Echi."
"Yes?"
"One more question. Why did you enter the node?"
"It just happened that way."
"No it didn't. I just watched you fight. You entered on purpose. There's no way someone swallowed by accident looks like that."
He lowered his hand from his eyes.
Dark skin. Black hair. A frame built like a crouching predator. Gold eyes, direct.
"You came in because of me."
"..."
"I got sucked in. You knew you could survive in here. So you came to get me out."
Echi had thought before that Baraha was sharply perceptive about certain things.
Unconsciously, she looked away.
She couldn't admit she had come to save him. That was unbearably embarrassing.
Her face was warming.
"No. It was an accident. I tripped. Masters make mistakes too."
"A mistake. You tripped and fell - directly into the node. With no connection to me. By pure accident."
"Why would I walk into a node willingly? Tripping was mortifying enough, please stop bringing it up."
"Mm."
Baraha looked at her for a strange moment. Then he started grinning.
"Echi."
"What, why are you looking at me like that"
"The 'I'll kill you if you don't keep my secret' thing. That was a bluff, wasn't it."
For the briefest moment, her shoulders tensed.
He caught it.
She hesitated - half a second - and then moved.
She yanked the sword from the ground and lunged. The force knocked him back. Before he could react, she had him pinned, sword at his throat.
A shallow cut. A thread of red.
"You think it was a bluff?"
Her voice was cold.
The killing intent pressing down was real, and dense. Like being pinned by something apex. She was slight and soft - and terrifying.
But he wasn't afraid.
"Echi."
"..."
"I won't tell anyone."
Still on his back, he raised one hand and placed it lightly on her head.
Smiling, he continued.
"You say it wasn't for me, but either way, I owe you my life. If you hadn't taken care of those monsters, I'd be dead right now. Do you really think I'd give away the secret of the person who saved me?"