Ch6. No Answer He Could Name.

Addie felt no misgiving about letting him come along. She gave a small nod and started walking. "I'm heading to a lane just off the eastern market. There's an old woman there who makes pastries—hardly anyone knows about the place, but they're wonderfully simple and good." She smiled to herself, thinking of Anna, the girl she had served since childhood. "I always assumed a young lady raised in the palace would turn her nose up at something like that—but then one day she caught me sneaking a piece, and she made such a fuss about wanting to try one herself."

She laughed at the memory, the way a mother laughs when talking about her daughter. "After that, every time I had a long holiday and went home, she'd always remind me to bring some back."

Jeffery followed half a step behind Addie, slowing his pace to match hers as they walked through the shifting light and shadow of the narrow lane.

He didn't say anything.

He only listened, eyes on the path ahead, taking each word in, one by one. Caught sneaking pastries, and then she made a fuss about wanting to try one herself—he turned the image over in his mind: a girl raised in the palace, crouching in some corner, eyes bright and fixed on the piece of pastry in her maid's hand. That girl, and the one he had seen on the tower roof, were the same person—and yet the distance between them felt vast.

His throat moved, soundlessly.

By the time Addie reached the end of the story, there was a warmth in her laughter that only someone very close to another person can carry—soft, and certain. Jeffery glanced at her from the side, said nothing, but quietly moved "Addie" in his mind from the general category of palace maid to somewhere more specific.

She wasn't only a maid. She was the person who had grown up alongside Anna.

He walked on a few steps. At the lane's turn, the noise of the market was already seeping through—the smell of frying oil and the blur of voices, all mixed together into the warm, reassuring chaos of ordinary life.

"Growing up," he said, his voice low, half question, half thought spoken aloud, "was she always like this—"

He paused, sorted through a few possibilities, and chose the one that came closest.

"—keeping everything to herself."

Not an accusation. Not pity. Only the quiet confirmation of a man fitting a piece of a puzzle into place, checking whether he'd placed it correctly. His gaze stayed on the lane's far end, his tone as unhurried as if he were remarking on the weather—but his knuckles grazed the fabric of his coat once, briefly, betraying the weight those small stories had left in him.

Addie was already bent over the stall, carefully choosing the nicest-looking pastries for Anna, but she hadn't let Jeffery's question slip by—years of being a good maid had trained her to hold more than one thing at a time.

"She would talk," Addie said, "but when she did, she cried so hard she couldn't stop—she needed someone to hold her and coax her for a long while." She paused, as if weighing whether to go on.

Jeffery stood beside the stall, not looking at the pastries. He simply waited.

He waited in the quietest way possible—no follow-up question, no tilt of the head to prompt her, no pressure from his eyes. He only left the space after but open, like a door left ajar: come through if you choose; if not, that's fine too.

He had spent a long time waiting for things in his life. Waiting for the figure in the dream to turn around. Waiting for the weather to shift on the road. Waiting for a city's gate to open at dawn. He knew how to wait.

Wind drifted over from the market, carrying the warm sweetness of pastries fresh from the oven, laced with the hum of voices and faraway vendors calling their wares. Jeffery's gaze rested briefly on the pieces Addie was selecting—plain shapes, no particular beauty to the color, but the old woman's handling showed the ease of someone who had been doing this for decades. Hardly anyone knows about the place, but they're wonderfully good. He thought of the picture Addie had painted: Anna discovering the stolen pastry. An image he had never seen, yet somehow rendered itself in his mind with unusual clarity.

He slipped a few copper coins from inside his coat and set them quietly on the stall's wooden counter—a little more than the pastries cost—without comment or explanation.

Then he brought his eyes back to Addie, and lowered his voice to something only the two of them could hear:

"But—what?"

He didn't pretend he hadn't noticed the pause. But the way he asked made it clear: say it, and I'll carry it. Don't say it, and I won't press.

In his amber eyes, the slow-burning coal was buried deep, held steady—but it was always there.

Addie was quiet for a moment, then let out a small breath, as if deciding that there was no particular reason not to say it—the tale of Loxinitro's lovely, unloved princess was hardly a secret anymore.

"When she got older, she became very good at bearing things alone. I think it started the night she had a nightmare and went to her father's door crying. He wouldn't open it. She wept outside for hours—hours—until she cried herself to sleep on the floor. It was the captain of the guard who finally carried her back to her room."

She had barely finished speaking when she noticed the coins Jeffery had placed on the counter, and she turned at once to refuse them. "You can't do that—please, take it back!"

After hearing those words, Jeffery didn't move.

Even his breathing seemed to still for a moment.

An image rose before him, not one he had witnessed but one Addie's words had built piece by piece.

A closed door. A small girl on the other side of it. The sound of crying going from loud to soft, from soft to nothing—then silence, and a child asleep on the cold stone floor of a corridor. No one had opened the door. Only the captain of the guard, who carried her back.

His jaw tightened—slowly, quietly, but with force.

He thought of her profile on the tower roof, that expression older than exhaustion and deeper than fear. He had assumed at the time it was the despair of the marriage arrangement, the dread of Geelong, the worn-out edge of someone pushed to a cliff. Now he understood it was older than any of that—far older. It was the expression of someone who had learned, very young, that it was pointless to knock on certain doors. Who had spent so many years learning that lesson that by now she no longer knew where to go when she needed to cry.

Something in his chest was gripped, quietly and firmly, and did not let go.

Addie's voice pulled him back when she reached for the coins to return them. He surfaced from that deep place, glanced at the copper pieces on the counter, and calmly moved his hand to redirect hers—not blocking her, only shifting her direction, the way one gently turns a path.

"Keep them," he said. His voice was lower than before, like a stone worn smooth by water—no edges left, but solid. "Pick out a few more."

He paused, eyes settling on the modest spread of pastries for two beats.

"She likes them. Take back more."

As those words left him, he himself didn't notice: something in his voice had come slightly undone, so quietly it barely counted—not pity, not sympathy, but something nearer and less nameable, like a fist that has been held clenched for a long time, and has finally, by half a measure, begun to ease open.

Addie heard it. In all her years as a maid she had learned to tell genuine kindness from its imitations, and she knew which one this was.

She picked up two more pieces—one went into the basket, and the other she held out toward Jeffery.

"Aren't you curious why our young lady likes them so much?"

She extended her hand lightly, waiting for him to take it, then tilted her head with honest interest.

"Why do you care so much about her? You barely know each other."

Jeffery looked down at the pastry Addie was holding out.

He was silent for a moment—then he reached out and took it.

It sat in his palm lighter than he had expected, the surface rough, still carrying the lingering warmth of the oven: the uncomplicated, unadorned heat of something made with patience and not much else. His thumb grazed the edge once. He didn't eat it yet. He just held it.

"Curious," he said first, answering the front half of her question—his tone even, the way someone states a plain fact.

Then came the second half, and he turned it over in his mind. Why do you care so much. You barely know each other. He didn't answer at once. He drew his gaze away from the pastry and looked toward the far end of the market, and looked for a long time.

Barely know each other. That was true. He had seen her twice. Everything they had said to one another might not fill a single page of paper. He didn't know what color she liked. He didn't know if she was left-handed or right. He didn't know what she looked like when she smiled. Everything he knew of her life had come through other people's mouths.

But he knew her fingers hadn't trembled.

He knew what her back looked like when she turned to face the guards.

He knew there were wounds beneath her clothing, that she hadn't slept, that the rhythm of her footsteps as she walked toward that study would have been measured and unhurried—he hadn't heard them, but he had traced them in his mind so many times by now that they felt clear, and he couldn't account for why they were so clear.

He brought the pastry to his mouth and bit into it.

Sweet—carrying a plain, honest grain-smell beneath it, nothing like the refined delicacies of a royal banquet. This was a different kind of sweet: grounded, unassuming, the sweetness of an ordinary afternoon where someone is treated gently.

He chewed twice, swallowed, and then spoke, his voice quiet and slow, as if he were thinking through the words as he said them:

"I don't know either."

That was the truth. He had no tidy answer to give her.

He glanced sideways at Addie, his amber eyes carrying a stillness that was, nonetheless, entirely serious.

"Only—" He paused. "Once you've seen someone standing in that place, it's hard to unsee them."

He didn't say which place. He thought Addie would understand.

His fingers closed around the remaining half of the pastry, he looked down, and finished it—his expression composed, like a man who has said what he meant to say and has no intention of elaborating.

Everything he had said landed in Addie's ears like something out of a novel—and then again, she thought, the things that happen in novels are often exactly the things that happen in real life.

"I think you've fallen in love with our young lady," she said, with perfect calm—her own instinct speaking, and something that felt very much like a mother's.

Jeffery froze.

Longer this time—long enough that he noticed it himself.

He stood there with his eyes lowered, fixed on the few crumbs left in his palm, not moving, not speaking. The noise of the market pressed in from all directions—someone shouting their wares, a child running past and knocking something over with a sharp crack, a vendor nearby laughing and scolding in the same breath. All of it was there. And yet around him, a small silence had formed.

Fallen in love.

He turned those words over. Front side. Back side.

He had seen her twice. He had spent an entire day waiting outside the city gate. He had spent several days learning every alley in this city. He remembered exactly where the wear was on the knife's hilt. When he'd heard she hadn't said a word for days, something in his chest had gone dense and heavy, and hadn't fully cleared even now.

He brushed the crumbs from his palm with his thumb, looked up, and gazed toward the end of the market, his profile turned into the light—not looking at Addie.

A long silence.

Long enough that Addie had likely concluded he wasn't going to answer.

"…Hard to say."

He finally spoke, and his voice came out a shade rougher than usual—like a string tuned too tight, producing a slightly off note, but a true one.

Behind the dark hair at his temple, the tip of his ear had gone quietly, unmistakably red.

He had not denied it.

Addie saw the color creep into his ear and couldn't help laughing. She lifted her basket and turned to head back to the palace.

"I'll tell our young lady," she said, a teasing lilt in her voice—though she genuinely meant it, wondering if this might give Anna one more thread of reason to keep going. "Thank you for today. And… thank you for getting to that tower in time."

Her eyes dropped for a moment, as if the thought of the other version of that day had crossed her mind. Then her expression brightened again, because the way things had unfolded was still, all things considered, good.

"I should get back before she's been waiting too long."

At the words I'll tell our young lady that someone has fallen in love with her, the expression on Jeffery's face held itself together for approximately half a second—and then came apart, very slowly, at a seam.

Not quite a smile—or not only a smile. It was the look of a man caught precisely where it hurt, who wants to argue back and finds no argument available, who can only stand there while the words sink warmly into his chest in a way he hadn't prepared for: faintly bewildered, and—unexpectedly, even to himself—a little lost.

"You—"

He started, then stopped. The second half of the sentence circled the tip of his tongue and found no suitable landing. He pressed his lips together, turned his face slightly away, and used the composure he'd recovered to press the crack back into place—but the redness at the tip of his ear did not retreat.

When Addie said thank you, something settled in him at last. The small bewilderment sank to a deeper level, replaced by something more grounded rising in its place.

He watched the moment Addie's eyes dropped, and said nothing.

He understood what that expression meant. The tragedy that hadn't happened was, for Addie, only a passing shadow—but for him it carried a different weight entirely. He had climbed that wall on nothing but an instinct he couldn't name. One step earlier or one step later, and this would have been a completely different story. He didn't make a habit of dwelling on what-ifs—there was never any use in it—but he let that weight press against his chest for one full second before he stepped aside from it.

When Addie's eyes brightened again, he gave a quiet nod.

"Go on then."

His voice was light, but steady.

She turned to leave. He moved half a step forward—not to stop her, only to speak before she got too far, his voice dropped very low:

"Addie."

He waited for her to look back, then paused—as if measuring something one final time.

"That thing you said—" His tone sat somewhere between serious and helpless. "Say it or don't. That's up to you."

But his eyes betrayed him. Those amber eyes, as he said it, drifted for just one moment toward the direction of the palace's high walls—only an instant, but unmistakable.

He had not said “don't”.