“This is my mother’s house, kind of!” I say as I head out the door. “She probably knows what you’re doing!”
Emeric follows me outside, then hesitates. “Should we be seen walking back together?”
I shrug awkwardly. “Thanks to the, uh, linen closet incident, apparently the castle staff all think we’re . . . you know. So we can just say Gisele gave me the night off to go . . .” I swallow, my mouth suddenly dry. “You know,” I mumble again.
“I see.” Emeric offers me an elbow. “In retrospect, it’s likely the mar—bakeris having at least one of us followed, so it’s not safe to go alone either. Shall we?”
I slip my arm through his, glad the frosty night can explain my red cheeks.Scheit, I’m a disaster. “What pieces do you think we’re still missing?” I ask, more to distract myself than anything else as we head for the Hoenstratz viaduct.
“Ah, hmm.” He narrows his eyes, thinking. His voice lowers. “I have some questions about the baker’s . . . helpers. The night shift.”
It’s an absurd way to think of thenachtmären, and I can’t help huffing a laugh that steams in the air as we crunch over freezing slush. “How he, er, hired them?”
“How many there are. We haven’t seen more than one at a time on the job. That’s not enough to present a serious threat to the northern—er. Bakeries.”
The northern imperial territories, then. “Maybe he plans onhuggingthe competition.”
“That’s just it. His existing . . . day shift forces are significant, but not enough to manage that. So that’s one question.”
“What’s the other?” My foot slips a little on a patch of ice below the snow.
Emeric pulls me closer to steady me, waiting until I’ve caught my balance to keep walking. “I still don’t know about Hubert,” he says quietly as we reach the viaduct stairs and begin to climb. “He was a fully ordained veteran prefect, far from an easy target. It should have been me.”
“If Adaaauhhhh thebakerwent for the harder of two targets, then he wanted something only Klemens had. So he was always going to try to kill him, not you.” The words dangle in the air like a broken sign, for all the good they do. I gulp, then add, “There was nothing you could have done to stop it. So . . . stop blaming yourself.”
When I glance up at Emeric, he’s watching me with that peculiar expression, the one from the night of the ball, right before he came back for me. He quickly looks away.
“What?” I ask as we reach the top of the viaduct. It’s starting to snow again, but the roadway should stay clear long enough for us to reach Castle Reigenbach.
He adjusts his spectacles, eyes on the cobblestones. “Don’t let this scare you, but sometimes,sometimes, Vanja, I think you’re a much better person than you give yourself credit for.”
This is how I discover that despite fielding ludicrous amounts of flattery on Gisele’s behalf for the past year, I am completely unprepared for someone I like to say something sincerely nice aboutme.
This is also how I discover my panic response is to laugh so loud a passing donkey brays back.
Oh,gods.
I scramble for more familiar territory. “So does this mean you’re going to let me off the hook for the teeny tiny bit of theft I may or may not have committed?”
“You mean the jewelry worth roughly five years of income for a skilled laborer? That teeny tiny bit of theft?” His teeth flash in a smile. “Doubtful.” Then he sobers a bit. “Though . . . once I’m fully ordained, I’ll be able to request access to things like census records. If you wanted to try to track down your birth family someday, we could . . . call a truce.”
I know I’m staring, but I can’t stop.
I didn’t even let myself finish the thought last night, that if I could go anywhere when I turn seventeen . . . I could look for them, my birth family, my hometown, my name.
But I didn’t have to say it. He still understood.
I know, Iknowthat there’s no point in hope. That this amnesty lasts only until the margrave is gone; that unless we time it right, I will die from the curse anyway.
Butdamnif he doesn’t make it easy, and heartbreaking, to hope.
“It was just an idea,” he says quickly. “You don’t have to—”
“I want to,” I blurt out. “I—I’d really like that.”
The tips of his ears are going pink. “Oh. Then—good.”
We reach the bottom of the hill leading up to the castle and begin the climb. A fancy carriage rolls past on its way into Minkja; the evening is still young by aristocrat standards. Guests will likely be coming and going until dawn.
