PDCOO Chapter 31

He'd been crouching somewhere inside—emerged on his knees, by the look of it. The image of someone that large coming through a doorway in that particular manner was involuntarily funny, and Anna laughed before she could stop herself.

"Ha—so you really were hiding?"

"Someone came to warn me to stay in the dormitory. The villagers have been taking turns keeping the searchers occupied, apparently."

"My mother has them pinned down at the restaurant right now. I came up because I was worried you'd been waiting for my food and gone hungry. Though surely you're not that particular about it."

From the basket came several days' worth of dried provisions, and last, a container of stew still holding its warmth. Anna set it on the small table.

Bertram lifted the bowl and swallowed the contents directly. The spoon Anna offered a moment later was entirely unnecessary.

"Did you actually skip dinner waiting for me? I specifically asked the workers to give you something when they saw you!"

"I didn't go hungry. But I was waiting for your meal all the same."

"Ah... you—you don't have to say that to be polite! My cooking isn't anything worth waiting for!"

"I'm not being polite. And the one I was waiting for was you."

Bertram turned to look at her.

Eyes the color of a winter lake, carrying no particular emotion.

Cold at first glance. But hold the gaze long enough and something in it settled—the opposite of cold. Comfortable, somehow.

Nothing like Franz's sharp blue edges.

As much as those eyes held Anna in them, Bertram was filling his eyes with Anna in equal measure.

"Bertram. Did you wait long?"

"Yes."

"Not the food. Me. Anna Burthe."

His answer did not hesitate for a single moment.

He said it again, plainly and without decoration.

"Yes. It was you I was waiting for, Anna."

A few more sentences passed between them, each one confirming what was already confirmed.

Bertram's gaze settled around her the way fog spun into a net—the kind you felt before you saw it, gentle enough to slip through if you chose.

She didn't choose.

She stepped forward instead, and took his hand.

Finger and finger interlaced.

When her soft palm met the calluses on his, he went briefly still—not pulling away, just still.

"Anna. It happened again just now. The tingling."

"I know."

"...May I take your other hand as well?"

"Of course."

Anna held out her left hand.

Bertram extended his right hand.

Their hands were different sizes, considerably so—and yet the space between them was neither too little nor too much. Exactly enough to allow each other in.

Both hands clasped together, Bertram looked down at Anna, who had somehow come to be standing within his space. Close enough that all he could see was the crown of her head.

"How does it feel now?" Anna asked.

Her whisper reaches him.

Right in the chest.

Like a storm against a cliff face.

Like a very small crack forming in something that had been solid stone for nine years—and Anna's small hand pressing through that crack, widening it —

Something was going to give.

Bertram let go.

"Mr. Bertram?"

"This doesn't seem like the most pressing issue at the moment." His voice came out level. "We need to shake off the pursuers."

"I suppose that's true," Anna said, a little flatly, and worked her reddened hands against each other.

His hands had done that.

Bertram noted an impulse to pat her hands himself in apology. He set it aside and turned to the problem of the soldiers.

"The villagers seem broadly sympathetic toward me, for now. But the longer the pursuers remain here, the more they'll want me gone."

"Can't be helped. If it comes to it, go stay in the cursed castle." She sounded like she was reciting options from a list. "I'm not particularly keen on going inside myself, but I can at least bring you food."

"I appreciate the offer. But before any of that, there's one matter I need to resolve."

"A matter?"

Anna looked up at him, uncertain.

Bertram asked what he had been most wanting to ask since the beginning. The question that could account for all of it—The woman who had lifted him off the ground like something found abandoned, fed him at every meal, not flinched from the strange word curse, and had just, minutes ago, interlaced her fingers through his.

"Anna. What am I to you, right now?"

Blue eyes looking down at her.

Sometimes they moved across her face like something soft. Anna fumbled.

"Mr. Bertram...? What do you mean by—"

"Literally. I want to know how you think of me."

"Do you really need to know right now?"

"Yes. I may end up imposing on you presumptuously."

"...What?"

He explained, voice steady.

"For some time now, you have fed me and given me shelter. You even put your hands on my body to understand the curse. I had believed all of that came from compassion. But helping me when soldiers are searching for me—that is not an ordinary thing."

Anna said nothing.

"So I'm afraid," Bertram said, "of becoming arrogant. Of deciding I am something special to you. Of reaching a day when I take your help for granted."

"But you can't feel fear."

"I cannot. But—"

He reached a hand toward her. The gesture was odd—like a dog offering its paw. Anna found she had extended her own hand without deciding to, and his large hand settled over it, gently.

Their hands overlaid now in the opposite direction from before.

His rough fingers wrapped around her wrist like a bracelet made of yarn. Then lifted away.

The touch had been so light it left no red mark.

Only, the warmth disappears.

"I cannot feel fear. But if the warmth that has been beside me were to leave—on some cold night, I think I would come to regret it."

"...That's a remarkably poetic thing to say, for someone who can't feel."

"Any form will do, as long as it can reach you."

Is this really a person who cannot feel.

Anna looked at the floor.

The neglected homework had arrived all at once.

She'd thought of him at first as just the strange person she'd have to feed. Nothing more than that.

From the night he sleep-talked 'I'm afraid'—small, trembling, in the corner of the restaurant—he had stopped being something to fear.

The day he came running when the traffickers nearly took her: he'd looked like a hero out of a novel. A story she hadn't expected to be in.

Bertram standing in the middle of the ruins had looked like the lord of a fallen kingdom. If she'd glanced away even for a moment, she'd thought he might step into the great mural on the wall and disappear into it.

And now.

He might actually leave.

"...Mr. Bertram." Her voice came out steady. "Honestly, armed men wandering the village frightens me. But what frightens me more is you leaving."

"What does that mean?"

"I still don't know what you are to me! So—until I figure it out—"

Anna grabbed a fistful of his sleeve.

"Don't go."

"Let me know you better."

Karlah had a talent for adding just the right measure of spirits to a frozen atmosphere and watching it thaw into something like a celebration. The soldiers averaged approximately two bottles apiece before they were horizontal.

Franz had held out—refusing to be played, barely touching his cup, clearly intending to stay upright through sheer dignity—but the problem was Erich.

Half a bottle in, everything Erich had been pressing down for what appeared to be several years came out all at once.

"It's so hard. You looked wonderful from a distance, Franz, but up close it's absolute chaos! Do you know how many people have stormed into the knights' quarters over the disasters you've caused in society? There's actually a joke in Schleisen: if you want to find Franz, follow a woman carrying homemade cookies or a woman holding a hand-axe! What even is my life..."

This, and variations on this, continued without visible limit. Tears were also involved. They traveled down in a steady stream from under his glasses.

Franz deployed every resource he possessed to calming Erich down. When Erich finally slept, Franz—entirely spent—accepted the glass of honeyed wine Karlah held out with the resigned expression of a man surrendering a position he'd been trying to hold all week. He was unconscious shortly after.

Five men, arranged in the restaurant corners.

Two in the morning.

The daughter came home around the same time, trotting back at a pace that suggested she'd been running in short bursts most of the way.

Anna startled when she saw Karlah.

"Mama. You're still up."

"What time do you call this."

"What time is it? Oh. Oh, it's already this late? I had no idea!"

The performance was not convincing.

Karlah reached over and tugged Anna's ear. The old punishment.

"Ow, ow, ow—"

"Did you plant a whole field up there for him? Harvest it yourself? What took so long?"

"I just asked him why he's being chased! That's all!"

Karlah's grip loosened.

That was actually what she'd been wondering too.

"And?"

"Mr. Bertram left to repay debts he ran up during the war. He was gone so long that his uncle—his only family—sent people to find him."

"What kind of uncle has a duke's son running his errands."

"I wondered that too. I asked him—isn't he actually someone quite important?"

Karlah swallowed.

"What did he say?"

"That status doesn't mean much to a person like him, so just treat him however feels natural."

"Ha! That's a very convenient thing to say. Must be hiding something."

"Mama!"

"What am I supposed to trust, when he won't say anything straight? The villagers won't cover for him indefinitely. Tell Mr. Bertram to start handling himself from tomorrow."

"Ugh..."

"What. Why are you making that face."

Stepping through the doorway, Karlah noticed Anna's cheeks.

Red. Not from the cold, or not only.

Or—no. Surely not.

"What do you think of him?" Karlah asked, dropping her coat. "You. Our Mr. Bertram. What do you think of him?"

"Wh—what?"

Anna was pulling a shirt over her head. Karlah couldn't see her face, but the voice from inside the fabric was unmistakably caught off guard.

Karlah took one direct step toward her.

"What does our girl think of him, I wonder. Hmm?"

"He's a worker who doesn't listen and is impossible to communicate with!"

"Then why did you hesitate just now."

"Because you started asking all sorts of things while I was getting undressed! You've been making strange comments all week, and now I'm the one who feels strange about it! Are you scared I'll fall for him?"

That landed squarely.