Ch12. The Light Within the City

In the eastern district of Losinitro, there was a narrow alley called Ceylan Street.

It was so narrow that two people entering side by side would have to turn their bodies. Both ends opened onto other roads, but no one deliberately used it as a passage. Taking the longer way around was often faster.

That was why the alley was almost always quiet—quiet enough that the old blacksmith’s hammer at its far end struck the stone walls again and again until it sounded like a dull echo rising from beneath the earth.

A faded wooden sign hung over the third building on Ceylan Street. Rain had blurred its lettering until only the outlines remained, but everyone nearby knew it was an inn. It was not large: four rooms upstairs and a single long table below. No one remembered the landlady’s real name. Everyone called her Mrs. Ge.

Mrs. Ge had seen many travelers. Even so, she said the young man in Room Three was one of the few she had ever met who could not explain where he meant to go.

Not because he was mysterious, but because he looked like a man who had only just stopped walking. His feet had stopped here, yet something deep in his eyes had not come to rest.

Jeffery Grant set down his pack in Room Three of the inn at Number Three, Ceylan Street.

He stood by the window for a while, looking over the narrow alley. Through a slim opening at its far end, the top of the castle’s eastern tower was visible.

He had not chosen this room on purpose. He told himself that.

The window frame was old, its wood beginning to rot inward from the edges. The paint had started flaking away during some forgotten rainy season. Only a trace of gray-white remained in the corners, not yet entirely peeled away.

Jeffery placed his right hand on the sill and pressed the grain with the pads of his fingers, feeling its slightly raised roughness. Sometimes he liked to touch imperfect things. He did not know whether it was merely a habit, or because he himself had never once been whole.

The opening was still there.

The top of the eastern tower stood against the twilight at the end of the narrow street, like a sentence cut off midway and driven into the sky.

It was not deliberate, he told himself again. Then, without speaking, he watched his hand leave the sill and move slowly to his chest. Through the cloth of his coat, he pressed once.

Not hard. Only to make certain.

The pointed edge of a stone and the thin blade of a letter opener touched his palm through a single layer of linen, their shapes distinct as two seals.

His brows drew together slightly. The crease was so shallow one would have missed it without looking carefully.

His amber eyes remained on the tower. Light had sunk deep into them, making them resemble amber beneath water—transparent, but not clear. Something was suspended inside, though whether it was sediment or a thought not yet given a name, no one could have said.

He remembered hiding atop that tower and speaking with her that night. He remembered what he had said.

He remembered what she had said as well.

But more clearly than either, he remembered the way she had quietly pushed the letter opener toward his hand. She had said nothing. It had been only a small movement, hardly forceful enough to be called a push.

At that instant, something inside his chest had pulled tight, like a slack rope suddenly drawn from the other end.

He had said nothing then. He had only taken the blade.

His pack sat against the wall, still unopened. The dust of the road had not yet been brushed from the leather.

The room was small: one bed, one little desk. An unlit candle stood in an iron holder on the desk.

Twilight slowly poured through the window, steeping every corner in an uncertain color. There was still too much light to call it dark, yet far too little to call it bright.

It seemed almost like a metaphor for the man he was now.

Jeffery lowered his head slightly, and his mouth moved. Not enough to be called a smile. Something had merely escaped his expression, as though he had told himself a joke no one else could hear.

He had already been in Losinitro for several days. Not long, but not short either.

Little by little, he was learning the city: which street had a loose stone that caught the foot, that the bakery in the eastern district finished its first loaves at the third morning bell, and that Mrs. Ge’s soup was always too salty, though she never asked where a traveler came from or where he was going.

He liked Mrs. Ge’s habit of not asking, because he would not have known how to answer. “I am following a dream.”

He had given that answer for seven years and had never convinced anyone who heard it.

But now, if someone asked, even the word “dream” felt difficult to say. It had suddenly become inaccurate. A dream was hollow, a place one could enter only in sleep, a shadow that retreated behind the eyelids upon waking.

Yet the movement with which she had pushed the letter opener toward him atop the tower had been real.

The back of her hand had touched his knuckles. It had been cold—unmistakably, truly cold.

He could not dismiss that temperature with the word “dream.”

He raised his head and looked through the opening once more. The eastern tower had begun to blur in the twilight but had not yet vanished. It remained at the end of the sentence like a letter refusing to leave, waiting to be read to the last.

Jeffery removed his hand from his chest, turned toward the desk, and sat down.

He unfastened his sword and leaned it against a desk leg. Then he remained seated, elbows on the tabletop, hands clasped and chin resting on his knuckles, staring at the unlit candle.

Three months. She had won three months for herself.

He thought those three months belonged to him as well.

No one had said so. Not even he himself.

His right thumb slowly rubbed the back of his left hand. It was a small, unconscious gesture that appeared whenever his thoughts were moving. He did not know when the habit had begun—perhaps while his parents were still alive, or during the long nights of wandering that followed, when he sat alone beside a fire until dawn, holding something in his hand that he could not name.

Someone passed through the alley outside. The brief footsteps soon faded.

The top of the eastern tower was still fixed within that narrow opening.

Jeffery sat at the desk in Room Three, Number Three, Ceylan Street. He did not light the candle, allowing twilight to slowly fill the entire room.

As the dimness deepened, his expression became harder to distinguish. His amber eyes, however, did not close. They remained open, turned toward the window.

He had said he had not chosen this room deliberately. Yet he sat there with the window open and made no attempt to close it.

________________________________________________________________

The window in the castle’s western wing faced the eastern district.

Ioanna had not deliberately sought out that direction. She told herself so.

But the stone sill was cold. She pressed the back of her hand against it and let the chill travel through the bones of her fingers, as if it might make her a little calmer.

Outside, the sky sank inch by inch into deeper color. The roofs of the eastern district blurred into a low gray line beneath the twilight. Even when she narrowed her eyes, she could not tell which building belonged to which street. Still, she searched the gray line for a long time, looking for a window she could never possibly find.

She drew her collar slightly closer and lowered her face to look at the back of her hand.

What is he doing now? The thought had no reason. Or perhaps it had too many reasons, and she no longer knew where it had begun.

Had it started when they met on the road south of the city? When he took her hand? Or even earlier, on the morning she pushed the letter opener toward him without understanding why she did it?

She bit her lower lip lightly. Not hard—only a small gesture to stop herself. “Addie.”

Her voice was not loud, but it carried clearly.

Addie was someone who always waited by the door like a shadow, moving without footsteps and never speaking more loudly than necessary.

She entered through the side door carrying a plate of cakes she had plainly prepared in advance. It had become her habit to bring a little something around supper. Some days Anna ate; on others, she merely pushed the plate aside. Addie brought it every time regardless, as though following a rule she had made for herself.

She placed the plate on the small table by the window and looked at Anna’s back. She said nothing, only waited quietly. It was a way of waiting learned over many years: never urging, never asking, simply remaining there so the princess would know she was present.

Anna did not turn around. “I want to see him.”

Her voice was even, as though stating a fact about the weather. Yet Addie heard what lay beneath that calm. This was not an impulsive decision. Anna had thought about it for a long time and had only now found a way to let the words out.

Addie was silent for a while. It was not hesitation, but the silence of serious thought. “You cannot go out now,” she said softly. “Kloop replaced the guard in the western wing today. I do not know the man he assigned.”

Anna finally turned and leaned back against the window frame, folding her arms across her chest. Her brows drew together slightly. She was not troubled. She was calculating.

There was a quiet sharpness in her eyes, something learned from growing up in the palace. She completed every calculation where no one could hear it and allowed nothing to show on her face.

“Then bring him inside,” she said after a second. “Is there a way?”

Her voice was so low one might think she feared even the stone walls would hear. Yet she did not look away, meeting Addie’s eyes directly. There was a plea in her gaze that perhaps she herself did not recognize. It was not the gaze of a princess, but of an eighteen-year-old girl holding something newly born and fragile inside her heart, asking someone she trusted, Can you protect this for me?

Addie looked at her. Something moved faintly at the corner of her eyes, as though a string inside her chest had been plucked once. The touch was not strong, but the note still sounded.

She lowered her head and thought for a while, then pushed the plate of cakes slightly toward Anna as though the movement helped order her thoughts. “Ceylan Street,” she said at last. “I know where it is in the eastern district.” She paused. “Things have been delivered to Mrs. Ge’s inn before. Sometimes letters. Sometimes other things.”

She offered no judgment, only facts she had observed and remembered over many years. “In daylight, if I avoid the main road, it would not be difficult.”

“But...” She raised her head and looked directly at Anna. Her voice was even lower than before. “He must be told that you want to see him. There is no way to send a message unless someone...” She stopped without finishing.

They both knew what lay beyond the broken sentence.

Someone had to walk that road. Someone had to take the risk.

Addie did not say, “I will go.” The answer was already in her eyes, quietly placed there.

Beyond the window, the gray line of twilight over the eastern district had not yet sunk completely into night.

Hearing Addie’s words, Anna seemed to grasp the implication.

She rose hurriedly and took out a sheet of parchment and a quill. The parchment glowed a pale warm color beneath the candlelight. When she pressed it flat on the desk, her hand was steady.

She must write neatly and calmly, in the voice she used for negotiation. Every word must have weight, neither one too many nor one too few. She told herself so. Yet the instant she dipped the nib in ink, her wrist moved faster. Not because she did not care, but because she cared so much that something inside her pressed outward and drove her fingers forward. She could not stop it.

Will you come, or shall I? Nothing more.

The final words were slightly distorted. The last stroke in “shall I” extended too far, as though something inside her had wanted to say one word more and, unable to restrain itself, had let her hand speak instead. She stared at the sentence for two seconds but did not rewrite it.

She folded the paper in half with great care, turning the writing inward so it could not be seen.

Then she reached into her hair and removed an undecorated silver pin. She wore it because it was light, not because it was valuable. Yet now, as she slipped it into the fold, the gesture felt like pressing a solemn seal whose meaning only she and Addie understood.

Her fingers lingered for the briefest instant as she held it out to Addie. “Hurry.” Then, even more quietly, “Do not let anyone see you.”

Her eyes shifted away as she spoke, toward the sky above the eastern district as it deepened into blue. Her face betrayed no obvious emotion, but the roots of her ears had reddened faster than the sky outside. Beneath the light, the faint color could not pretend not to exist.

Addie took the hairpin and letter into her palm without saying anything unnecessary. She merely bowed, turned, and slipped soundlessly through the side door like a shadow carried away by the wind.

________________________________________________________________

At this hour, Ceylan Street seemed even narrower than it did by day.

Not because the walls moved inward at night, but because once every light on either side was extinguished, all that remained was a slim strip of deep-blue sky overhead and the stones one felt beneath one’s feet.

This was not the first time Addie had walked at night. Even so, she made her steps lighter than in daylight, as though afraid the paving stones might hear her.

There was no lamp above the sign at Mrs. Ge’s inn. Still, a thin orange line leaked through a gap in the downstairs window, enough to mark the entrance.

She knocked three times, paused, then knocked twice more.

Mrs. Ge opened the door, looked once at Addie and once at what she carried, then stepped aside without a word.

In the end, Jeffery had lit the candle. It had not been intentional. Once the sky became completely dark, he truly could see nothing in the room. He found the tinder by touch, struck it, and the rising flame transformed the little room into a trembling square of warmth.

By that light, he had taken the sword from beside the desk and laid it across his knees, slowly polishing the blade with a narrow strip of linen. It was a habit. Whenever he arrived somewhere new, the first task he performed with care was cleaning his sword, as though the motion told him: I am still here. I am still myself.

Someone knocked at the door.

His hand stopped for an instant. It was instinct, not surprise—the habit of identifying a sound before moving.

Twice, a pause, then once. Not Mrs. Ge. Her knock was even and never divided into a pattern.

He set the sword quietly beside the desk, rose, and approached the door. “Who is it?” he asked in a low voice.

“I have a delivery.” A woman’s voice, subdued but somehow familiar.

He waited one second, then opened the door a narrow distance.

Candlelight spilled outward and illuminated the slender woman in the gap. A dark cloth was drawn low over her head, hiding most of her face. But she extended one hand into the light. On her upturned palm lay a folded piece of parchment and an undecorated silver hairpin.

Jeffery’s gaze fell to the hairpin. Only once. After that, it did not move elsewhere.

He knew it. Not because he had seen it many times, but because though he had seen it only a few, he had never forgotten. He had a strange habit: his eyes remembered anything connected to her without being told.

He opened the door a little wider and took the letter. His hand was steady. Yet the instant his fingertips touched the hairpin, something moved faintly in his throat. He pressed it down at once, leaving no trace.

“Is she safe?” His tone was even, as if asking something ordinary. Yet his eyes were not on Addie. They were lowered to the folded parchment.

Addie looked at him once and answered with a single word. “Yes.”

He nodded and asked nothing more. He stepped back half a pace to make room, but Addie did not intend to enter. She remained at the threshold, waiting for him to read and give her an answer she could carry back.

In the narrow line of candlelight stretching toward the doorway, Jeffery unfolded the letter and lowered his head.

Will you come, or shall I? Nothing more.

He read the sentence once, then again. Not because he failed to understand it, but because the handwriting had grown slightly uneven near the end. The final stroke extended too far. His thumb gently pressed the ink, as though confirming that the movement was real, that her hand had left it there.

It was real. His mouth moved slightly. The gesture was so small that in the wavering light it was almost impossible to recognize as a smile. But he knew what it was: something had struck quietly inside his chest and could not help escaping through his lips.

He folded the letter again, raised his head, and looked at Addie.

“I will go.” There was no hesitation.

His voice was not loud, only strong enough to convey the meaning as clearly as her sentence had. Yet in the narrow alley, quiet enough to hear the old blacksmith striking the embers of his forge, the words landed with unmistakable weight—the weight of something he would not take back once spoken. “Tell me how to enter.”

Addie studied him once. Not with suspicion. She was retracing the road in her mind, deciding where they must be cautious, where they must hurry, and where she would have to keep him close behind her.

Then she nodded lightly and stepped back half a pace. She waited as he put away the hairpin, slipped the letter inside his coat, blew out the candle, raised his collar, and belted his sword again. She watched it all without speaking, then turned and walked deeper into Ceylan Street. Her steps were light as a shadow, yet certain with knowledge of the road—the gait of someone who knew exactly where she was leading another person.

Jeffery followed. He did not ask where they were going.

He had always known which way the eastern tower lay.

________________________________________________________________

At that moment, Anna was waiting restlessly in her room. She could not remain seated, and paced back and forth while imagining countless possibilities.

If he could not come, which road would she use to leave the castle later? Would Kloop’s new guard be too observant, leaving no opening? If Jeffery came, could he enter safely? What if they were discovered?

She truly could not sit still. In her nervousness, she had even begun biting her thumbnail.

Even so, she desperately wanted to see him.

She had lost count of how many times she crossed the room.

From the window to the door, from the door to the desk, from the desk back to the window. The path had already become a groove in her mind, and her feet followed it without thought.

A candle burned on the desk. Each time she passed, the air stirred the flame to one side. It bent and straightened, straightened and bent again, as though the flame itself were pacing with her.

She stopped at the window and looked once toward the eastern district. Nothing could be seen.

Night had become a single mass, deep blue pressed into ink. Every roofline in the eastern district had sunk into it. Even the top of the castle’s eastern tower remained only as a vague, dark shadow. Without knowing what stood there, one could not have recognized the shape.

She turned and began pacing again.

She recalled the face of the man Kloop had assigned today.

Tall, straight-backed, with slightly narrow eyes. She had seen him once from a distance in the dining hall. Only once, but she had always remembered the things she disliked especially well. His face had fixed itself in her mind.

People with narrow eyes were usually harder to deceive.

She bit her thumbnail. It was not a habit; the thought had simply given her clenched jaw somewhere to place its strength. A tiny rough edge on the nail caught beneath her tooth. Then she realized what she was doing and lowered her hand.

She had possessed this habit as a child. Her father had punished her many times, saying it was inelegant and unbecoming of a princess.

Later, she had stopped. At least, she thought she had.

She glanced down at the nail, closed that hand into half a fist before her lower abdomen, and covered it with the other. She wanted to look at least a little composed.

It was useless. Her feet began moving again.

If he came, which way would he enter? In her mind, she traced the side wall of the western wing. She knew the opening Addie had mentioned. She herself had left through it before. The crack was narrow; she could pass by turning sideways. But what about him? He stood more than a full head taller than she did. Could he fit through it?

She stopped again.

For some reason, the thought loosened the taut string in her chest. Not because she felt reassured, but because the image was so specific: a very tall man trying to squeeze through a narrow crack. It was absurd enough that the corner of her mouth moved without permission.

Only for an instant. Then it disappeared.

She walked to the desk, braced her hand against the top, and stared down at the grain. It was the posture of someone trying to surrender her weight to something fixed. Her legs felt weak when she stood straight—not from exhaustion, but from the sensation of waiting hollowing her out from within. Time seemed stretched, each second thicker and heavier than usual.

The candle had burned down by a tiny measure. She raised her head and looked out the window again.

She did not know whether he was already on his way.

She knew nothing. She knew only that Addie had taken the letter. Once it left her hand, nothing remained within her control—and the thing she had found most unbearable throughout her life was precisely that which lay beyond it.

She lifted her thumb toward her mouth again, then lowered it.

Closing her eyes, she drew a deep breath through her nose and felt it sink slowly into her chest before letting it out with equal care. It was a way of keeping herself upright she had learned before being escorted into banquet halls. At the doors of rooms she had to enter with her spine straight, she always breathed like this once.

When the breath had left her, she opened her eyes again.

The world beyond the window was still dark. Nothing moved.

She stood at the window, fingertips lightly touching the wooden frame. Wind slipped through the gap carrying the chill peculiar to stone at night and lifted several loose strands beside her ear. She made no attempt to fix them, letting them drift.

She wanted to see him.

Not the kind of wanting that could wait or be postponed, that could be answered by telling herself she would see him in a few days. She wanted to see him now, at this moment, tonight. If she did not, the night would be left with a piece missing. She had already lived through too many incomplete nights. She did not want another.

She pressed the thought flat inside herself and put it away, as she did with everything she could not say aloud. Yet it remained. Crushed or hidden, it was still there, like a glowing coal that burned her hand more fiercely the harder she tried to set it down.

The candle shortened again. She watched a tear of wax slide slowly down its side and harden at the base into a small white mound. Then her gaze drifted back toward the window and the midnight eastern district she could not see.

She waited. She was not good at waiting, but she waited.

The deep shadow beyond the window did not move.

Anna drew her gaze from the window and let it fall around the room: the candle, the desk, the corner, every place she had already examined more than a dozen times. Everything remained exactly where it had been. Nothing had changed. The room was as silent as an overturned jar, trapping her beneath it while she knew nothing of what happened outside.

She remained there, nailing herself in place—with the nail of her spine, the nail of her teeth against her thumb, the nail of the sentence she had repeated so many times in her mind that it had become an incantation—

The candle burned a little more. Wax slid down its side and hardened at the base, cooling and whitening into another shape. She stared at it without moving.

Then, at the far end of the corridor, came the faintest sound.

So faint she almost thought her own ears had deceived her.

It was not a footstep. Footsteps had rhythm. This sound had none, only a single touch, as though something had brushed the stone wall—like someone familiar with the turn in a side passage who had still underestimated the width of his shoulders in the dark.

Anna’s body went rigid. She did not move. Even her breath paused for half a beat as she gathered every sense she possessed and forced it into her ears. Holding still, she listened.

Then came a sound at the door.

Three knocks, a pause, then two. She recognized Addie’s pattern, but the force was different.

Addie’s hands were small and her knocks light. This sound was slightly heavier—the exact weight of someone trying not to alert anyone yet unmistakably knocking, using the backs of his knuckles and restraining as much strength as possible.

Anna’s legs moved. She hardly realized she had begun walking before she reached the door. Her hand closed around the handle and stopped for one second. It was the only second she gave herself, just long enough to push her heartbeat from her throat back into her chest. Then she opened the door.

Through the gap came the deep blue darkness of the corridor and a silhouette darker and more distinct than the night around it.

His short dark-brown hair was too deeply shadowed for its details to be seen. But his amber eyes caught the sliver of candlelight escaping her room and flashed, like two pieces of amber set alight, burning quietly in the upper half of the silhouette as he looked down at her.

The faint little scar on the left side of his forehead—she knew it. She said nothing. Still holding the handle, she stood there and looked him over, confirming from end to end that the man she had waited for all night, the man for whom she had imagined countless terrible endings, stood before her unharmed.

When she opened the door, the person standing there was Jeffery.

Anna’s heart accelerated with both tension and excitement: tension at this secret meeting, excitement that she had finally seen the person she wanted.

She pulled Jeffery inside, closed the door, and locked it. “I was terrified. I thought we would be discovered.” Even as she spoke, she could no longer restrain herself and wrapped her arms around him. Barely five feet three, she fit naturally against his chest. “Did everything go smoothly?” she asked with concern, still unwilling to let him go.

Before Jeffery could answer, she had seized his wrist.

Her grip was not strong, but it was certain. Her fingers circled the bones of his wrist and drew him inward. He followed the pull across the threshold, his boot heels touching the wooden floor. The door closed behind him, followed by the sound of the bolt being pressed into place. It was the movement with which she shut the entire world outside.

Then she embraced him. He had not expected it—or rather, he had been given no time to expect it. The movement happened almost in the same instant as the closing door. By the time he understood, she was already there.

Her forehead rested against his chest, her arms encircling his waist. Her breathing reached him through his coat, a little hurried and carrying the fine aftershocks of someone who had waited alone for too long.

Jeffery lowered his head and looked at the dark hair at her crown. A loose strand had slipped free and had not been pinned back, resting beside her ear and shifting faintly with her breath.

Something inside his chest quietly settled, like a stone that had hung in the air all night finally finding the ground.

He slowly raised his right arm around her and placed his palm against her back. The touch was not heavy, but steady. It held a familiarity he had not recognized in himself, as though his hand knew where to go without instruction. She was so small in his arms that one bend of his arm could gather all of her. He suddenly remembered her words, “I was terrified,” pictured her pacing this room alone, and recalled the final stroke of the word “I” in her letter, written just slightly too quickly.

His mouth moved faintly where she could not see.

“It went smoothly,” he said in a low voice, carrying the deep resonance of someone who had spent time moving through darkness. “Addie chose a good path.” He lowered his chin slightly as he spoke. At that angle his voice traveled from deep in his chest, and the person resting her forehead against him could feel that his words did not come from his mouth alone, but were sent outward by his entire body.

He slowly lifted his left hand and brushed his thumb over the loose strand at her shoulder. The gesture was light enough to seem casual, yet he paused for the second in which the hair slipped across the pad of his finger.

“Only at the corner of the western wing...” He paused. His tone remained even, but something he had not entirely contained escaped through its calm. “The gap in the stone wall was a little narrower than I expected.” He did not explain how he had passed through. But a pale scrape marked the fabric at his right shoulder, white lime appearing and disappearing in the candlelight.

He did not mention it. If she did not look, she would never know.

His palm remained on her back, feeling her hurried breathing gradually ease. It was like a gust of wind quietly brought to rest. He waited until she had breathed out every aftershock of the long vigil, until her feet were steady beneath her again.

“You waited a long time.” It was not a question, but a statement carrying his characteristic gentle directness. He knew. He did not ask, only let her know that he understood.

At the mention of the stone wall, Anna laughed aloud. She knew how narrow it was because she had passed through it herself, and could imagine how difficult it must have been for him. “I know. I have been through it... and...” Her eyes curved. “For some reason, one section in the middle is especially narrow.”

Noticing the lime on Jeffery’s right shoulder, she reached up and gently brushed it away.

“You truly went through a great deal.” Her voice had softened without her noticing, filled with a tender feminine energy that could intoxicate. She was entirely different from the woman others saw.

“Are you tired? Let us sit.” She released him and took his hand, leading him toward the sofa. “I want to hear whether anything interesting has happened to you lately.”

She wanted to know him.

Her laughter had taken him by surprise. Not because she never laughed, but because it had come so naturally. So naturally that something struck inside his chest before he even understood what had happened.

When she laughed, her eyes narrowed into arcs, with shallow curves at their outer corners. The scrutiny they usually carried dissolved completely, becoming something light and real, like candlelight reflected on water—unsteady, but warm.

Jeffery looked down at her. He tried to press his mouth into a straight line and failed. “That part...” A trace of exasperation entered his voice, one he made no effort to hide. “I thought it was the wall itself.”

When her hand brushed his right shoulder, he tilted his head slightly and watched the back of it. Her fingers were slender, her touch light. Lime dust scattered from the fabric bit by bit as she carefully cleaned away the white mark. Her brows drew together almost imperceptibly—not a frown, but the small expression of concentration she wore when doing something she believed should be done properly.

“You truly went through a great deal.” Her voice was very soft, holding a warmth of which she was probably unaware. It seemed to rise from the deepest part of her throat. It was not the voice of a princess, nor the guarded tone she used while standing straight-backed in the banquet hall. It was another voice altogether, one that escaped only behind this locked door, in a space occupied by candlelight and him.

Jeffery’s right hand moved faintly. He suppressed the motion before it could complete itself.

He followed as she led him toward the sofa. She probably did not realize how naturally she had taken his hand. There had been no hesitation, as though the gesture were inevitable, as though her hand had always been meant to move in that direction.

He glanced down at their joined hands. Her fingers rested between the thick calluses of his palm. He did not tighten his grasp, merely allowed her to lead him those few steps.

She sat, and he took the place beside her. A small distance remained between them, but not much—only enough that turning slightly would bring them into contact.

He leaned against the back of the sofa and let his shoulders relax. It was the first time his body had truly loosened since entering the castle. He had crossed the entire path under tension, listening before every turn and never letting his right hand stray far from his sword. Seven years of travel had trained that vigilance into him until it existed without thought.

But the door was locked now. Anna sat beside him, and the candle burned steadily. His back settled a little farther into the sofa.

“Something interesting.” He repeated her words and thought for a moment, amber eyes fixed ahead in genuine recollection. “Mrs. Ge’s soup is equally salty every day.” His tone was flat, but the faintest curve appeared at the corner of his eyes. It was the expression he wore when telling a dry joke: he did not smile, but made it clear that he knew it was amusing.

“The first day, I thought it was unusually salty.” He turned to her. “By the third, I was certain it was her standard.” He paused. Something faint moved through the silence, as though he were checking whether she truly wanted to hear or had merely needed an excuse to make him speak.

Her eyes remained on him, reflecting candlelight. The light in them was sincere, not courteous.

She truly wanted to know: how he had spent the past few days, what his life had been like in the moments when she was not present.

He saw it. So he continued, allowing his voice to relax further. “There is a blacksmith in the eastern district. The sound of his hammer rebounds from the stone walls,” he said. “On the first night, I thought there was a fire underground. I searched halfway around the neighborhood before I understood.”

When he said he had searched halfway around, one brow moved faintly. It was an embarrassed expression he rarely wore, no more than a glimpse before it vanished. For one second he let Anna see the man who had patrolled around the inn at midnight in search of a fire, then put the expression away.

His right hand rested on his knee. His thumb slowly rubbed the knuckle of his index finger once.

“And you?” His voice dropped half a note, not intentionally but in the way it naturally did when he asked something he truly cared about. “Have you been well these past few days?”

Anna stared at Jeffery with shining eyes and did not miss a single word.

Everything he described was extraordinarily new to her—experiences she had never been given the chance to have.

As she listened quietly, time itself seemed to stop within this moment. It was peaceful and beautiful.

While he spoke, her eyes remained fixed on his mouth, as though hearing were not enough and she wanted to take the movement of his lips into her sight as well.

So Mrs. Ge’s soup was salty?

Then she was like the old cook who worked on even-numbered days. Perhaps age had dulled his taste, and he needed more seasoning before he could sense it.

And iron scattered sparks when it was struck?

She had never seen a sword before it took shape.

All of it was new to someone who lived in a prison made of wealth.

“Me?” His low question drew her thoughts back. She understood what the lowered voice meant: the answer mattered to him. “Nothing... only the usual, compared with the things you have told me.” She paused, then smiled. “You know how dull life at court is.”

Jeffery did not answer immediately. He only watched her, watching the curve of her lips when she said “the usual.” The smile was beautiful; he knew that. But he also knew it was a shield, the smile she habitually used to push a question gently away. Like a polished copper mirror, it showed the viewer only reflected light, never what lay behind it.

He had wandered among people for seven years and seen many kinds of smiles. He had recognized hers the first time he saw it.

“Dull.” He repeated the word without emphasis, returning it to her exactly as she had given it so she could hear how it sounded in another person’s voice. “Is that truly what you think, or merely what you are accustomed to saying?” He did not move closer. His body remained against the sofa, his posture relaxed. But his gaze never left her. His amber eyes rested on her face with his characteristic gentleness and an unwillingness to look away from the truth.

It was not interrogation, but the gaze of someone who sincerely wanted to know. Every measure of his attention had settled on her—not because she was a princess or because of her history, but simply because she was herself, and she had just said something he did not believe was entirely true.

Night air slipped through the window gap and bent the candle flame. Their shadows stretched long and thin across the wall before becoming steady again.

Jeffery moved his right hand slightly from his knee and rested his index finger against the fabric of the sofa. He made no other movement, only waited for her to choose something from behind “the usual” that she was willing to tell him. “Mrs. Ge’s soup...” After a beat, he continued. His voice held a lightness he rarely revealed—not a joke, but his way of easing the tension in the room. “It is salty, but she never asks where you came from.” He paused. “I have always thought that was a form of kindness.”

Something moved slowly behind his eyes as he watched her. “Here,” he said, “has anyone ever asked what you yourself want?” He did not mean the three months, Geelong, or the arranged marriage. He was asking the question that existed before all of those, the one that had been there long before she said “the usual.”

He asked it so softly that, falling into the candlelit air, it almost sounded ordinary. But it was not. They both knew that.

Anna’s eyes widened.

Had anyone ever asked what she wanted? In this palace, where everything was arranged with care and even her thoughts could not belong to her, the question itself was blasphemy, a violation of royal dignity.

And yet someone had once asked her. That person was Addie.

“Yes... I remember someone did...” she said faintly, lowering her eyes. The question seemed to place pressure on her, or perhaps the response had simply been trained into her body.

Why did even wanting something for herself fill her with such guilt?

Jeffery said nothing. He heard the words “Yes... I remember someone did...” and everything folded into her tone. He heard the way her voice lowered after the sentence, like a leaf falling of its own accord when there was no wind.

He watched her lowered eyes. Usually there was light in them. He had seen them burn with a cold fire when she spoke, seen them carry the exhaustion of someone who understood too much atop the tower, and seen them brighten again when she lifted her face on the road south of the city.

But now they faced downward, as though the weight of the question had settled on her eyelids and made it impossible to look up.

He did not press her. He slowly moved his right hand from the sofa to the hand resting on her knee, then placed the back of his hand gently against hers. He did not grasp it, only covered it, like laying something warm over something equally cold and allowing the heat to pass slowly between them.

“Listen.” His voice was lower than before, scarcely existing beyond the reach of the candlelight. “That question was always yours.” He paused. “It is not blasphemy. It is not overstepping your place.”

His calm tone held the certainty of someone who had spent years traveling beyond these walls. He had seen too many lands, too many people, too many ways to live. He knew that some things declared natural and inevitable had never been so. “What belongs to you is yours.”

Night air slipped through the window. The flame sank once, then stood upright again.

Jeffery lowered his head, his gaze falling to her lashes. Their curve cast a faint shadow in the candlelight. He watched it, something like pain for her in his voice, though he did not use the word. He only said, “Addie asked you, did she not?”

It was not a question but a statement. He had caught the “yes” she offered and refused to let it fall.

“Then...” His thumb moved and pressed very lightly against the back of her hand. “Someone else is asking you now.”

His eyes waited for her to raise her gaze again. He did not hurry her. He was accustomed to waiting. He had waited for seven years; he could wait as long as it took her to look up.

The instant she felt his fingertip press against her, Anna turned her hand and closed it around his, as though searching for something safe.

“Yes... Addie did ask. She cares for me very much...” Anna slowly raised her eyes and absorbed each of his words. He was asking her the same question. Her thoughts mattered to him.

“I...” She paused so long it seemed the answer might never continue. “I want... someone to hold me in their heart...” Another pause. “Then I would not be afraid of anything...”

For a princess of exalted rank, the thing she wanted was astonishingly small. She asked for nothing except to be held in someone’s heart.

Just as she held so many things in her own.

The moment her hand turned and grasped his, Jeffery’s fingers tightened faintly.

It was not surprise, but the most honest physical response to being struck gently by something. The way her fingers pressed into his palm held a strength she probably did not recognize—not heavy, but certain, like someone who had finally touched something in the dark and, having found it, did not want to let go. He remained still and allowed her to hold him.

“I want... someone to hold me in their heart...” When the words fell, the room became so quiet that he could almost hear the candle burning.

He watched her and the expression in her eyes after she spoke. It was not weakness. She had never been merely fragile. It looked more like someone who had searched in darkness for a long time, finally dug something deeply buried from the earth, and lifted it in both hands with a cautious honesty, still unsure whether it had ever deserved to be found.

Jeffery’s throat moved. He lowered his head and looked at their joined hands: her slender white knuckles and the thick calluses seven years of travel had left on his palm. He studied them together for so long that even when the candle bent to one side, he did not look up.

At last he spoke. “Anna.”

Only her name. Yet his voice sank as he said it, carrying a certain weight—not oppression, but the natural depth that entered a person’s voice when they truly placed another human being within their sight.

He raised his head and looked directly at her.

“You say that,” he said slowly, in the rhythm he used when he wanted something understood clearly, “as though it were a very small thing.”

His thumb gently traced the back of her hand. The movement was slow, following the outline of her bones, like rereading a line he already knew by heart.

“But do you know...” He did not look away, amber light burning steadily in the candle glow. “I wandered for seven years.” He paused. The silence held every night he did not speak of, every crossroads where he changed direction, every morning he sat until dawn with a stone clenched in his hand. “Every step was toward you.”

His fingers closed slightly, enclosing her hand more firmly than before. Not tightly, but enough for her to feel the weight of his grasp. “What you asked for,” he said in a voice that reached only across the distance between them, “had already become true from the moment you placed that blade beside my hand.”

He did not say, “I will,” or “I want to.” He said it had already happened.

It was not a promise but a statement of fact—something that had occurred long ago, for which he had only now found the moment to speak.

The candle burned steadily between them, lighting both faces within the same warm circle. Jeffery watched her and waited for his words to fall into the deepest part of her heart, waited for her to understand what he meant.

The faint scar on his left temple, the thick calluses on his palm, those seven years—all belonged to him. He had brought every part of them behind this locked door and placed them before her. He had left nothing outside.

She understood. Her grip tightened as though confirming that this truly belonged to her, that it was not a dream.

Her dream was different from Jeffery’s.

His dream searched. Hers fought desperately to keep what it found.

Every time she awoke, nothing remained in her hands.

“Do you... make a habit of never saying things plainly?” she asked softly, with a smile meant to lighten the heavy air.

At that, Jeffery was silent for one second.

Then he laughed. Not the restrained smile that moved only his mouth before disappearing, but a genuine laugh, low and brief, escaping his chest with his breath. Her words had struck a truth he himself knew and kept hidden in some corner, making it impossible to control his expression as he usually did.

He lowered his head and covered his mouth with his free hand, trying to hide the laugh. It did not work.

“Yes.” His voice still held the warmth of laughter, and the admission was unexpectedly direct. He raised his face and looked at her again. The light in his eyes was relaxed, unguarded in a way he rarely allowed her to see. This was neither the composure of a wandering knight nor the man who walked dark corridors with one hand near his sword. It was simply him, accurately described by a single sentence and left with nowhere to hide.

“My mother...” He paused. The silence carried distance, but not heaviness; this was a memory he could now take out and speak of. “She was a witch and fond of riddles. Everything she said had to turn three corners. She would speak of a flower when she meant rain, and of rain when she meant a person.”

His thumb moved slightly over the back of her hand. “I listened to her speak that way from childhood. I suppose... I learned the bad habit from her.”

His voice was even when he said “bad habit,” but a slight curve remained at the corner of his eyes—the trace of a smile he had not yet put entirely away.

Then he looked directly at her. The looseness in his expression slowly settled and became something else, not the lightness from before but something deeper: the true man beneath the familiar layers of indirection.

“Then I will say it clearly.” His voice fell half a note. Not by intention, but from the natural weight of words moving from his heart to his lips.

“I hold you in my heart, Anna.” No detour. Only that single sentence, a line drawn from his chest and placed straight before her so she could take it, examine it, and know it was neither dream nor riddle. “Is that clear enough?”

His mouth moved again as he said it, a light gesture carrying the remnant of his earlier laugh. But his eyes were serious—so serious that there was no room to suspect another meaning behind the words.

“I hold you in my heart.” The sentence branded itself into Anna like hot iron.

Now he was not the only one holding the other in his heart. She was as well.

Feeling his thumb stroke her hand, Anna’s mouth slowly curved upward. Color returned to her cheeks as the hollow inside her filled. It was the smile of a young woman looking at the man she loved. “Truthfully, it does not matter if you never say things plainly. I will always ask.”

She moved a little closer. “I am very curious. If I want to know something, I will always find a way...” She gently lifted his hand before her face. “So you do not have to change that bad habit.”

She paused, uncertain whether she should do what she was considering.

Jeffery did not move. He watched her raise his hand and cradle it between both of hers, holding it in the air between them. In the candlelight, every line of his palm and every callus thickened by years of holding a sword was plainly revealed.

He was not accustomed to someone looking at his hands this way. It was not embarrassment, but an inexpressible feeling of having something turned open.

Those calluses were seven years. The lines held an even longer history: the time when his parents were alive, the forest fire, every night he sat alone on a desolate road gripping a sword until dawn.

He had never shown those things to anyone, not because he hid them, but because no one had ever wanted to see. Yet she lifted his hand, held it, and placed it earnestly before her eyes. Jeffery’s throat moved slightly, so little that even he barely noticed.

“I am very curious. If I want to know something, I will always find a way...”

He remembered the morning she rode out of the castle, the voice that said, “I do not want to lose you,” and the sound of her steps at the study door when she announced, “I came to negotiate.”

He knew she meant it. Once she decided she wanted something, she reached for it—without detours, without waiting, directly.

So when she told him he did not need to change his bad habit, his mouth moved. Something light and warm lived in the curve, an expression he never allowed to appear before others.

He lowered his head and watched the way she held his hand. Her cheeks were red, and the candlelight deepened the color. She was looking not at him but at his hand, yet her lashes trembled. It seemed she was making a decision, halfway to stepping across some threshold and stopping just before it.

Hesitation. He recognized it.

Jeffery did not speak or ask, and gave her no reason to feel pressured. He simply turned his hand palm-up and left it open within hers, as if to say: Whatever you want to do, I am here.

His gaze rose from her hands to her face and settled on the hesitation there. Candlelight burned in his amber eyes, carrying his characteristic gentle, unwavering patience.

She watched him turn his palm upward. He had not guessed what she wanted to do, but that did not matter. It would not prevent her.

The thickest calluses lay between his thumb and forefinger, with others at the base of the last three fingers. She stroked them lightly as though trying to feel something within them. Her heartbeat quickened, her breathing grew a little unsteady, and the color remained in her face.

After one final moment of thought, she decided. She slowly lowered her head. A loose strand of hair brushed the side of Jeffery’s palm, and her lips pressed gently into its center.

After the kiss, the corners of her mouth lifted again. She looked up at him with laughter in her eyes.

Jeffery did not move. Her hair reached him first.

The soft strand swept over the side of his palm, carrying a trace of her scent. The touch was so light it scarcely counted as contact, yet his fingers curled faintly—an involuntary response made by his nerves before his mind could act.

Then came her lips. The instant they touched his palm, Jeffery’s breath stopped for half a beat. Not a second, only half a beat—too brief for anyone but him to notice.

Her lips were soft and cool, carrying a little warmth from her breath. They rested against a callus he had never imagined would be touched this way. It was the callus of seven years, of holding a sword, of rough roads, fires, and countless solitary nights. He had never thought there was anything there worth cherishing.

But she lowered her head and placed her lips upon it, as though taking all seven years into herself.

Something tightened inside his chest. It was not pain, but the pressure of something too full for the chamber that held it. He kept his right hand still, letting her cradle it and leave the kiss there. He did not dare move, as though any movement might break something.

When she looked up, he had not entirely returned to himself. Her eyes met his with a smile, fine light at their corners from lowering and raising her face. Her cheeks were still red. Her lips held the slightly triumphant smile of someone who had done something she herself found bold. She was waiting for his reaction, waiting to see the usually composed man caught off guard.

Jeffery looked at her and remained silent for two seconds.

Then he lowered his head very slowly, slowly enough that she could see the shadows his lashes cast in the candlelight. He stared at his palm, at the place her lips had touched. His thumb moved there and pressed lightly, not with force but merely covering it, as if checking whether the warmth remained.

It did.

He raised his eyes and looked at her again.

The expression on his face was difficult to name. It was neither his usual composure nor the smile that had escaped when she saw through him. It was something deeper, the look of someone whose hidden place had been quietly pierced by another person—partly defenseless, partly wanting to gather her into his arms, partly uncertain what words could answer her.

“Anna...” His voice was lower than before and slightly rough, as though the breath that stopped for half a beat had not yet recovered. “You know...” He paused. The silence was brief, but held everything he could not finish. “When you do that, it is very difficult for me to...”

He swallowed the unfinished words. Instead, he slowly raised his free hand and touched her cheek with his fingertips, very lightly at the rise of her cheekbone. It was as though he were confirming the warmth of her face, that the blush was real, that she was truly sitting here, that the entire night was not a dream he had dreamed at the window of Room Three on Ceylan Street.

His amber eyes burned in the candlelight, fixed on her. Something within them continually pressed outward. He held it back, but she could plainly see that he was doing so.

“You are very wicked...” His voice was hoarse, though a curve was held beneath his lips—the expression of someone who had lost but still wanted one final attempt at resistance. “Do you know that?”

At the words “very wicked,” Anna laughed aloud, a genuine, mischievous sound from someone whose secret had been discovered and who did not mind at all.

“I know.” Her eyes revealed that she was no innocent prey. She was an accomplished hunter whose fierceness was wrapped in allure. “Everyone says so.”

She would not scratch him, but she would leave marks that could not be seen.

“I can be even worse...” She leaned a fraction closer. “You will discover that slowly.”

Her lips curved.

Jeffery stared at her. Her laughter filled the room, fell through the trembling candlelight, and traveled into the fingertips still touching her cheek. The fine vibration passed from her skin into the pads of his fingers, then ran upward through the bones of his hand like an unexpected current.

Now she moved a little closer again.

The distance was so slight that another person might have considered it meaningless. Jeffery felt it. Her breath was nearer, carrying the indefinable scent he had already memorized. Her eyes shone in the candlelight with something he had never seen when she faced her father, Geelong, or any of the others.

It was the expression she wore after hiding her claws, letting you believe her hands meant only to caress.

He recognized it.

Jeffery did not retreat. He was not a man who retreated. But his breathing quietly deepened. He restrained it and smoothed it flat, as though nothing had happened.

The fingertips touching her cheek moved downward along its curve and stopped at her chin. The pressure was light, not a restraint, only a way of holding her face within his gaze.

He lowered his head until their eyes were level, close enough for her breath to touch his lips. “I know.” His voice was so low it seemed spoken directly against the air, allowing a dark heat he usually kept buried to emerge. “I knew from the moment you placed that blade beside my hand.”

He did not move, holding her gaze. His amber eyes burned at close range. It was not the fire of impulse, but something contained and more dangerous, like a coal glowing red without smoke—you could not know its heat until you approached. “You think you are the hunter.” A very slight curve was held beneath his mouth, carrying something he had not entirely restrained. “But Anna...”

He stopped deliberately and left the silence before her for two full seconds. “I walked for seven years,” he said. “You think I was led by a dream.”

His thumb moved slowly against her chin with the unhurried certainty he brought to everything that truly mattered. “But a hunter is never visited by the prey.”

He said nothing more and did not move closer. He remained at that distance and allowed the words to settle slowly into the air between them.

He had caught her words exactly as she offered them and returned them unchanged, neither too heavily nor too lightly, letting them land precisely where she had least expected.

Behind them the candle burned thinly, drawing their shadows so close that they almost merged into one outline on the wall. Her eyes widened slightly at having her words returned. But she did not retreat. Instead, she smiled with a pride entirely unlike anything she had shown in their previous meetings.

“It seems two hunters have found each other.” She deliberately moved closer until their breaths touched each other’s faces, and smiled.

For the first time, he saw a small flame within the violet. “I am curious...” She drew a deep breath. “During your travels, was there ever someone you desired?” She raised her eyes to his.

Two hunters had found each other.

At the words, the curve he restrained deepened slightly. It did not become a full smile, but the fine lines at his eyes moved. It was the expression of a man who could do nothing with her: a man composed before almost everything, yet before her alone, a narrow crack opened through which something escaped.

Then she came closer still. When her breath touched his lips, Jeffery drew his chin in faintly, a tiny movement to steady himself, too subtle for her to notice. But he knew. At this distance her eyes were violet. He had seen that color atop the tower and on the road south of the city, but this time something within it was different. A small new light glowed in its deepest place, the light that had not entirely withdrawn after she laughed.

He saw it and said nothing.

“During your travels, was there ever someone you desired?”

When the question fell, he blinked once, slowly—the reaction of someone accepting a question with care. She looked up at him, her violet eyes carrying her peculiar way of wrapping curiosity and inquiry inside a smile. She wanted to know. Truly. Yet the way she asked only after moving this close carried something more, an intention that did not feel casual.

Jeffery did not answer immediately. He left the question in the air for several seconds, thumb still against her chin. He looked down into the tiny flame in her eyes, as though considering his answer—or perhaps simply making her wait until her heart beat half a measure faster.

At last, he spoke.

“Yes.” Only one word, delivered so evenly that he continued before she could react. “In a town beside the Lantis River, there was a girl who kept an apothecary.” His tone was unadorned, as though speaking of something very far away. “She had red hair and a loud laugh. Once, she bandaged a wound for me and asked where I was going.”

He paused. “I told her I did not know.”

“And then?” Anna’s words escaped more quickly than she intended. She must have noticed it too; the question carried an urgency she had not entirely restrained.

Jeffery saw the urgency and pressed his lips together, containing something. “I stayed in that town for three days. On the fourth morning, I continued on.” He said, “She was a good person, but she was not the person I sought.”

He stopped deliberately.

His thumb moved gently against her chin and raised her face, preventing her from turning her eyes aside. He made her look directly at him. His amber gaze burned in the candlelight, deep and steady, the gaze of someone who had hidden the answer long ago and was only now slowly lifting one corner of it.

“In seven years...” His voice sank, taking on a texture that seemed to weigh down the air. “I met many good people.”

He did not continue, but his eyes remained on her. Silence spoke the rest: You are the only place where seven years of walking brought me to a stop.

He left that silence between them, within her breath that had not yet drawn away, before the small violet flame. He wanted to see how she received it.

“You met many good people?” She repeated his words. A sour feeling she had never known rose inside her. It was faint, but she forced it down.

“Then...” She paused. “Did no one ever make you consider staying?” Her lashes lowered. It was the only way to avoid his eyes. She knew he was deliberately holding her there, keeping her from looking elsewhere.

Between “then...” and the rest of her question, Jeffery felt her gaze lower. It left him and moved to his chin, his collar, her own hands—anywhere but his eyes.

He recognized the movement. He also recognized the faint thing in her voice when she repeated “many good people,” the thing she believed she had hidden.

His thumb applied a slight upward pressure beneath her chin, not hard, but meant to lift her face. She did not raise it. She kept her eyes down, using her lashes to conceal the sourness behind them with such determination that he saw them tremble.

He stopped trying to raise her face and released the pressure. He allowed her eyes to remain lowered because he suddenly understood she needed the shield of her lashes. At this distance, it was the last one she had.

He was silent for a moment. “There was...”

Her lashes trembled again.

“Once,” he continued without inflection, as though discussing something distant and ordinary as the weather. “On a northern mountain road, I met a merchant in haste. He said the town ahead was quiet and a good place to settle. He asked me to come with him.” He paused. “I followed him to the town gate and stood there looking for a long time.”

Anna said nothing, but the rhythm of her breathing changed slightly.

“Then I turned and walked away,” he said. “Because the thing that made me want to stop was not that town.” He did not continue at once. He let the words fall before her lowered eyes and into the faint jealousy that had not yet dispersed. Then he slowly lowered his head and searched for her eyes from below. If she looked down, he would lower himself until they were level again.

She could no longer escape.

His gaze was still, like amber resting at the bottom of water, unwavering within her eyes. “No one ever made me consider stopping,” he said, every word slow and clear. “Only one person made it impossible for me to keep walking.”

This time, his thumb did not lift her face. It rested gently on the cheekbone beneath her lashes, where the skin was thinnest. He could feel the warmth there, hotter than the back of her hand, warmer than her lips. “My past matters to you...” His voice reached only the distance between them. “You do not have to hide it.”

He let her know he had seen. He had always seen.

“You are wicked.” She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the jealousy inside her was slowly fading. “Do you know that?” She returned his words exactly as he had given them.

Jeffery stared for one second.

Only one. Then he laughed.

It was a true laugh, not the brief movement of his lips he usually suppressed. It rose from his chest with his breath, carrying a defenselessness he rarely revealed. She had returned his own words so lightly and with such perfect right, like someone who had seen through him, clapped her hands, and declared, “You are the same.” There was nowhere left for him to hide.

He lowered his head and pressed a hand to his brow, trying to block the laugh. He failed again.

“I know.” His voice still held the warmth of laughter. The admission was as direct as before, without defense or detour. With those two words, he accepted what she had returned. Then he lifted his head and looked at her.

The sourness had left her eyes when she closed and reopened them. He could see it. They were violet once more, with that small flame inside. When she smiled, the flame brightened, and something in his chest quietly struck again.

His thumb moved slowly upward along the curve of her cheekbone and stopped beneath the corner of her eye. The skin still held the warmth from before. He pressed the pad of his finger there and felt it.

“Two wicked people,” he said, far more relaxed now, as though the last taut thing within him had fallen away with her laughter. “Here.”

He did not say they had found each other, but she understood.

He continued to watch her: the candlelight warming her profile, the slightly helpless smile still at her lips, the way her eyes could hide nothing from him. She believed herself a hunter, and she was. But perhaps she had not realized what she showed him—the jealousy he saw after she pressed it down, the distance she forgot to restore after moving deliberately closer, the way she lowered her head while holding his hand.

Those were the things she had truly given him.

His hand slowly left her face and returned to cover the back of hers, the warmth of his palm against her skin. He said nothing. He simply sat with her and let the locked room, lit by candle flame, hold them both in silence.

It was enough.