#cloudiataker

The dream slipped into strangeness. She was in a room, a bed, both familiar and not. She felt hot like she was having one of her attacks. All was both so bright and so dark, the scenery smudged and fading in and out at the edges.

There was something, someone, by her bed – standing? sitting? – who felt gold and bright and warm in a way she recognised and did not at once. She strained to see, strained to make out the figure by her side but her vision was too blurry, was as crumbling and failing as the rest of this dream world.

“Oh, you are awake,” said a soft voice she could not place. “Good morning, Cloudia.”

Cloudia opened her eyes – and was immediately hit with the intensity of the world around her: The room was not faded but a splash of colour, brilliant greens and deep purples and the bright yellow light of the shining morning sun. There were multiple blankets covering her, and her head was propped up by several pillows. There were hushed footsteps and creaking wooden boards beyond the room’s door, and heels on stones and wheels rattling over streets and chirping birds and human conversations, both loud and muffled, sad and joyful, finding their ways through the slightly opened window and inside. Kamden was sleeping on a chair beside her bed, his hand clasped in hers, holding onto her tight as if it was high tide and he feared he would lose her to the sea.

My mind had tried to cling to the disintegrating remnants of my dream – now, it let go, stopping the process because it was too much.

Everything was too much.

The colours were too intense, the light too bright, the blankets too heavy, the pillows too soft, the sounds too loud, Kamden’s grip too tight.

I wanted to shut my eyes. Press my hands against my ears.

I didn’t want to see, to hear, to smell, to feel anything anymore.

I only wanted to curl up and shield myself from the world. From all that overwhelmed me so.

Get me out. Get me out.

Get me away from these pillows, from under these blankets, from this blinding light…

With all her might, Cloudia kicked and kicked until the blankets did not weigh her down anymore. Pain raked through her head, and her vision blurred when she sat up too quickly. She placed her free hand against her chest and gasped for air.

In one moment, it was hard to breathe, all these sensations lying heavily on my chest, pushing down.

In the next, the intensity of it all – the fabrics touching my skin, the colours shining in my eyes, the sounds from outside knocking against my ears – faded to normalcy.

Inhale, exhale.

And the world balanced itself out again.

Inhale, exhale.

And my senses lost their sudden amplifier.

Inhale, exhale.

And most of the strangeness went away.

Except for one piece that remained.

It took a while until Cloudia found her footing in the world again and remembered where she was and what had happened. She craned her head to Kamden who was still sleeping. Although everything had been too much for her barely a minute ago, Cloudia had, nonetheless, never freed her hand from Kamden’s. Now, she gently tugged on his hand; he would want to know that she had woken up, even if she was certain he needed all the sleep he could get. After a few tugs, Kamden finally opened his eyes.

“Good morning, Kamden,” Cloudia said and then frowned. She could not understand why, but something about this simple greeting scratched a part of her mind.

“Oh, good morning, Cl…” Kamden said drowsily before his eyes suddenly widened. With a jolt, he sat up straight in his chair, the blanket someone must have thrown over him falling off him. “Ah, Cloudie! What are you doing?” He scrambled to his feet and placed his hands on her. “You shouldn’t have pushed the blankets away and… and… you should still lie down and…”

Kamden gently pushed her down into the sea of pillows, and Cloudia let him. “I’m sorry. I got a bit overwhelmed by the absurd number of blankets,” Cloudia replied. “And I’m feeling…”

She frowned.

Only hours earlier, cascades of pain had radiated from the wound on her abdomen even as she had lain motionless in bed. But no agony had pierced her while she had kicked the blankets away or sat up.

“Cloudie?” Kamden said, puzzled. “Are you… are you okay?”

Cloudia stared at Kamden for a moment before she pulled up her nightdress.

“Ah, Clou-Cloudie!” Kamden exclaimed and reached for his bag on the bedside table with one hand. “I will change the bandage immediately. Please don’t do anything. Your wound could open up…”

With strength she should not have, Cloudia ripped away her bandages.

“… again.”

The word came out both high-pitched and muffled, thrown into the air and plummeting right down again.

Cloudia had been shot in a Paris alleyway two days ago, lost more blood than she ever had in her entire life before…

… and now, she and Kamden were staring at where her injury should have been but was not.

Her abdomen was void of any blemishes – no cuts, no bruises, no stitched-up bullet hole.

There was only smooth, unbroken skin and nothing else.

Kamden was the first one to find his voice.

“What the fuck.”

***

~Cedric~

Waking up was easier today. The core of me was still heavy, heavy with guilt, heavy with worry, and Kamden’s words from yesterday were echoing loudly and persistently in my mind – “She survived last night, but what guarantee do I have, does she have, that she survives this day too? This night too? And the following ones as well?” But the rest of me was lighter than it was yesterday. Because I had seen her alive, because I had held her hand and sat by her side.

Because I had told her the first part of my story.

How strange it had been to speak of my parents and my sister for the first time in over a century. To allow myself to think of them instead of pushing every thought and reminder to the back of my mind.

Cedric changed into his clothes from yesterday. Newman had arrived a few moments beforehand to wake him up and bring him some early morning tea. He had told him that he would seek him out when Cloudia asked for his presence, and had offered to help him dress. Cedric had declined; Newman was better needed elsewhere after all.

Cedric washed his hands and face in the bathroom, brushed his long hair, and gathered it into a high ponytail. He ran his fingers through the strands of his hair, mesmerised by their colour. He would need to get used to his hair being silver and clean now, he supposed.

With one last quick glance at his new reflection in the mirror – a strange sight as if it was a distortion and not the truth – Cedric left the bathroom. He followed the stairs to the ground floor, stopped by the kitchen on his way to the small drawing room. Newman had created a buffet and set it up in the kitchen for everyone to come and get something to eat when they found the time and strength, and Cedric’s stomach grumbled at the sight of the lavish dishes. He had barely eaten in days; his anxiety and worry had even made him forget that he was starving.

How unlike me, Cedric thought while he helped himself to some sandwiches and eggs and pancakes and whatnot until he was finally full again. Then, he continued his journey to the small parlour.

When he had entered it yesterday, it had exactly been as he had left it the day before as if time had stopped overnight.

This wasn’t the case now.

Time had run overnight, had taken Oscar and Cecelia and Barrington and their prisoners away into the dark city…

… and worked its magic on Milton too, for he was gone as well.

Cedric stared at the empty sofa.

It was a peculiar sight, but a welcome one, nonetheless.

Milton was awake at last.

But where was he?

Cedric turned on his heel, stepped out of the drawing room with the mission to locate Milton. He searched all the rooms on the ground floor, snatched another sandwich from the kitchen, and even made a cursory glance over the garden (he didn’t feel like going out), but Milton was nowhere to be found when Cedric had expected him to be everywhere, paper and pen in his hand, wandering the corridors like a ghost and mapping them all like someone who found just as little rest.

When Cedric climbed the stairs back up to continue his search on the upper floor, Aurèle came his way, wearing a deeper scowl on his face than usual. His hair was tousled from sleep, and his arm was still in a sling. Cedric wondered for a second whether he should address Aurèle at all or let him pass by in silence; he seemed not to be a morning person after all, and it was rather early in the morning indeed. In the end, Cedric decided to bother Aurèle anyway, against all better judgement.

“Aurèle, have you seen Milton by any chance?” he asked.

Aurèle’s face soured. “You’re asking me about Salisbury? Good morning to you too, Your Grace,” he replied dryly. “I suppose he’s still in the basement.”

Cecelia’s townhouse was comparatively small for a noble family’s city estate – two stories, a reasonable number of rooms, less than half the size of the Phantomhive townhouse – and not built winded and irritating like the Château de Charbonneau. Still, Cedric had completely missed the door to the basement on his search, had forgotten one existed at all, though he now recalled Barrington having mentioned one.

“In the basement?” Cedric repeated.

“Yes,” Aurèle said in such an annoyed tone that it was evident that he wished to be elsewhere doing anything but talk to Cedric about Milton. However, he must have concluded that this ordeal would pass quicker and easier if he just answered Cedric’s enquiry in full as Aurèle continued without having to be prompted. “I was in the uh, drawing room in the back when Salisbury woke up last night. That engineer, Quentin, asked me if I could stay by his side for a moment while he had to go… take care of something. I don’t know why I, or anyone, would need to watch Salisbury sleep – there was nothing wrong with him, right? – but Quentin asked nicely so I begrudgingly agreed.

“Salisbury woke up not long afterwards. I don’t think he slept well; he woke up with a scream, though it was not very loud, and I don’t think anyone else heard it but me. Did you hear the scream?”

Cedric shook his head, and his body ran cold at this information. Milton woke up screaming? “No, I did not.”

Aurèle shrugged. “At any rate, Salisbury then looked around, pale as if he had seen a ghost. He also seemed… confused? Disoriented? On edge? Something like that. Eventually, Salisbury wanted to know what had happened since he lost consciousness. I told him, and he then asked if I knew how to get to the basement. I thought it was a weird request, but I brought him there anyway and opened the first door I saw for him. I think it was the wine cellar? He should still be there.”

“Thank you, Aurèle,” Cedric said. “Could…” he began to continue, but Aurèle bolted down the stairs before Cedric could finish his sentence.

With a sigh, Cedric turned to go down as well. He combed through the ground floor until he finally discovered the door to the basement. Someone had put wallpaper over it, the same one as on the walls around, the pattern running seamlessly over the walls and door. Cedric did not know if this was done to create a “secret door” for the sake of a fabricated mystery or whether one of Michael Williams’ relatives had decided it was “unsightly” for a basement door to be displayed openly. Whatever the reason, the door was a hassle to find, and Cedric was immensely relieved when he spotted the golden doorknob and noticed the door’s outline at last.

The basement was clean and well-kept, not at all like a forgotten secret passageway. Cedric opened the first door he saw, just like Aurèle had before, and peered into the room. Wine barrels were displayed in the back, and the left and right sides of the room held shelves with numerous bottles of wine. An open doorway to the right led into another room which seemed to be a sitting room rather than a storage room. There was a low table in the middle of the wine cellar.

And Milton was sitting by it.

When Cedric saw him there, awake and alive and well, a wave of relief washed over him. It took him suddenly and fully, pulled him down into relieved exhaustion, and made him walk, as if in a trance, to the table.

Cedric had longed to talk to Milton for days, had waited for days for him to wake and make it a possibility – and now that Milton was awake again at last, his composure broke and crumbled into nothingness from one moment to the next. He collapsed in front of the table, unable to hold this weight any longer, and buried his face in his arms.

“I got the Countess shot,” Cedric mumbled into his arms, wondering if his words could even reach Milton and still being unable to raise his voice. “I held her bleeding body in my arms, carried her all the way here… Carried her while her blood seeped through the makeshift bandages, our clothes, and I can still feel it on me. The blood; the touch of her hand as she kept holding onto me, even as she grew weaker and…”

Cold hollowness spread within him, making his body and words shake; still, he dragged each word to the surface.

“But she’s alive. She’s alive. Alive and well, and I should be happy and relieved, and I am – of course, I am –, but she has lost so much blood, and no one knows for how long she will be well. If she can make it through another day, through another night… And all I can think of is that it was me. That I was the only one with her. That I was the only one who could have helped, who could have prevented this. If only I had been faster, quicker, better, she wouldn’t have been wounded, wouldn’t have lost all that blood, wouldn’t be fighting for her life as I speak.”

Cedric felt Milton shift slightly, but he neither spoke a word nor reached out to touch him. Instead, Cedric continued undisturbed, his words tumbling out of him, ragged and full of nails, “But it wasn’t like that. I was too late, too late again, and I could only stand there and watch her getting shot. It’s all my fault that she got hurt and that she might die, and it’s all because I lost my idiotic glasses.” His heart was hammering inside his chest so strongly, was racing with such intensity and such rage, that his whole body was trembling in anger and guilt and hopelessness. He wanted to fling his spectacles across the room again. Wondered whether it would be cathartic if only he repeated this motion another time, another hundred times. Still, Cedric did not lift his face to do so; he could not bear to raise his head, to let his words come out unmuffled and look at Milton as he spoke.

How pathetic he felt. How pathetic he was that he could not even do that.

And so, he kept on talking, words sent against the fabric of his sleeves.

“I don’t know what I will do if Cloudia dies,” Cedric whispered.

“Kristopher,” Milton said then, in that soft, siren-like voice of his; that voice that was always so full of warmth and gentleness and comfort. Only this time, something harder, something sadder, was mixed into it as he asked, “Did you do something that set everything in motion?”

“No,” Cedric answered.

“Did you arrange for this to happen?”

“No.”

“Did you divert your gaze and do nothing?”

“No.”

“Did you pull the trigger yourself?”

“No.”

“Then,” Milton said, the strangeness leaving his voice again, “none of this is your fault.”

His words made Cedric tense up, and he would have replied, would have protested, if Milton hadn’t kept on talking. “Lady Cloudia will live,” Milton said, the steadiness, the gentleness of his voice a becalming force that picked apart the tangled knot in Cedric’s chest and eased his racing heart and the tension in his body. “She will live because you were at her side then. Because you brought her here on time. Because you did everything you could to save her. Lady Cloudia will live because of you.”

His words pulled Cedric’s head up, made him look up and into Milton’s face for the first time since he entered this room in search of him – and the sight of it made him freeze.

Milton looked terrible.

He looked exactly the same as always, his skin its usual hue of paleness, not any shade lighter, his hair its regular gold-blond that caught the light and came alight, his eyes their normal hazel, sometimes more green, sometimes more brown. His hair was brushed, his clothes were changed, his face was unblemished, but something was undeniably wrong.

Even as his voice sounded the exact same, was still as soft and soothing as always as he went on, as if nothing was off about him at all, as if whatever seemed to pain him was irrelevant in the face of Cedric’s agony, “I know you are scared, but…” Milton looked directly into Cedric’s eyes then, his hazel ones both so familiar and so wrong. “Lady Cloudia will live,” he repeated. “Do not worry. Her time hasn’t come yet.”

Milton averted his gaze, redirected it at the table between them. “And I am so glad that you do not have to live with the burden of having held her corpse in your arms; it is a heavy one to carry,” he said in the same silken tone, and the dissonance of his words and voice made Cedric shiver.

A moment later, Milton realised it too. He clasped a hand over his mouth and shook his head a little. “I’m sorry,” he said in a little voice. “I… I have a bit of a headache at the moment.”

Cedric chuckled; he couldn’t help himself. “It’s okay, Mil–” His words and humour slipped from his tongue when he noticed the bottles.

Six empty bottles of wine, placed in a neat row at Milton’s side, half-hidden to Cedric by the table. A seventh full one was at Milton’s other side.

Milton followed Cedric’s gaze. “Do not worry,” he said. “I memorised the wines’ names and dates so that I can replace them, and I was careful not to pick anything the Marchioness’ husband might have purchased, or anything of great monetary value.” Then, Milton placed the full bottle on the table; Cedric hadn’t noticed before that it had already been opened. Milton read the label to him and explained a few things about this particular wine, but all the information he gave fell through Cedric’s head as if his brain had been replaced by a sieve because Milton followed his little ramble by setting the bottle to his mouth, tilting his head back, and drinking everything in one go.

Cedric could only stare at him in horror.

“Milton…?” he said, the name half-swallowed in shock, when Milton put the now-empty bottle back on the table.

Milton looked at him. His eyes were still clear, not clouded. “That’s my little party trick,” he said nonchalantly.

“Excuse me?”

Milton ran a finger over the bottle’s rim. “To drink an entire bottle of spiritus at once,” he replied, his voice sounding oddly… far away as if he was in deep thought. “And to down multiple in succession. I have never got drunk before as I have a very high alcohol tolerance. I thought you knew?”

Cedric felt his cheeks redden. “I didn’t know what Cecelia had planned.”

“I know that you are blameless, Kristopher,” Milton said gently. “She must have wanted to make me drunk to get something she wanted to know out of me. I only ever performed that party trick in a small circle; the Marchioness couldn’t have known about it. She could have just asked me her questions though.”

Cedric nodded. “My words. Cecelia made me taste her concoction afterwards. It was dreadful; I felt like I was on fire. If I had known that she had created such an infernal tincture to give to you, I would have stopped her.”

“It did tingle a bit,” admitted Milton.

Cedric stared at him. “It tingled a bit?” he said and then his eyes fell back on the empty bottle on the table and the various others on the ground. “Milton,” Cedric began slowly. “If you cannot get drunk, then why are you drinking that much?”

“I’ve never said I cannot get drunk.” Milton lifted the wine bottle, picking it up by its head and turning it in his hands. “I never got drunk before, yes, but everything has a limit, and I wanted to test what the limit of my alcohol tolerance is. I am human. Humans get drunk, but everyone has a different threshold and I’m searching for mine.”

“But why would you?” Cedric pressed. “Getting drunk is not pleasant. And people usually don’t get drunk just because. Milton…” He reached out to him and he would have grabbed his arm if Milton hadn’t pulled it away before he could.

Milton set the bottle down. “I just thought it might help to dr…” he started before he suddenly stiffened and shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. Milton closed his eyes before he continued, his voice quiet. “I just thought I might be able to cloud my senses like that, if only for a little bit.” He rubbed his face, and his voice was still faint as he said, “I’m sorry, Kristopher. This headache… It’s just so…”

Milton buried his face in his hands, breathed heavily in and out, and his whole body was shaking now.

“Milton?” Cedric said and extended his hand to him again. Again, Milton dodged his touch, letting him grasp the air instead.

“I’m sorry,” said Milton, eyes fixed on the ground. “But would you mind not to touch me? Not now?”

Cedric pressed his lips into a grim line. “Okay. I promise I won’t,” he replied. “But what is wrong, Milton?”

“Just a headache, as I said.” Milton lifted his head now, to look Cedric into his eyes and give him a reassuring smile; it came out slightly crooked. “They can get very intense sometimes. It’s nothing to worry about. Truly, Kristopher.”

“How about you sleep a bit?” suggested Cedric.

Milton shook his head. “No, I… I don’t sleep well. I always get terrible nightmares.”

“Right, Aurèle mentioned that you woke up screa…” Cedric started before the rest of the word died in his throat.

Shit.

I had justheard of that from Aurèle, and I wouldn’t even have enquired about it if Milton hadn’t mentioned his nightmares himself. Hadn’t reminded me of what I had forgotten, as I was too focused on my own troubles.

“Milton, I…” Cedric tried to apologise but Milton only shook his head again. “It is all right,” he said in that soft voice of his. “There is a lot going on right now. You didn’t mean to forget. I hope I didn’t spook Aurèle or anyone too much with my scream?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“That’s good to know.” Milton rubbed his face again. “I’ve had these nightmares since I was little. I rarely wake up screaming, though I usually wake up too soon because of them.”

“Really? You slept for over a day before you woke up last night.”

Milton suddenly turned very, very quiet. Then, when Cedric believed Milton would finally say anything in response, his hand drifted to his right sleeve instead. Tugging on it briefly before wrapping itself over his wrist.

And the movement made Cedric remember something else he had nearly forgotten.

He hadn’t thought much of this mannerism of Milton’s, had written it up as a mere anxious habit, a simple way to get his nervosity and restlessness under control. And after seeing it dozens and dozens of times over the last two weeks, Cedric had barely registered it anymore when Milton fumbled with his sleeves again.

More often his right one, rarely the left.

Cedric had not understood why, had not understood the reason for this preference, until they had stood in front of that cabin in the woods and Milton had panicked when Cedric had touched his wrist, until they had stood in the burning cabin, and Cedric had reached for Milton again and felt that unevenness under his sleeve.

That scar whose origin Cedric did not want to know but knew all too well still.

How often had I repeated that same movement, restless fingers to my wrists, in the years afterwards?

“Milton,” Cedric said, and it was his turn now to speak gently and be soothing, even if he would never do it as well as Milton did. “Have you eaten anything yet?”

“No, I’ve only had the wine and nothing else since I woke up.”

Cedric stared at him.

Of all similarities he had to share with Cloudia!

“No wonder you’re like that,” said Cedric and stood up. He held his hand out to Milton before he let it sink again, remembering his promise from earlier, and scolding his body for acting on habit. “Come, Milton. Alfred set up a little buffet for everyone, and I’m sure there is still something left. I’ll make you some tea too. And maybe get you a blanket; you’re shaking quite a lot.”

“I don’t need to eat anything.”

“Oh, you sure do. What did you say earlier? ‘I am human. Humans get drunk.’ You are human, Milton, and humans also get hungry. And now come.”

Milton looked up at Cedric and, after a moment of hesitation, he got to his feet. But he did not follow Cedric to the door just yet; instead, he craned his head to gaze at something in the adjourning room. Cedric frowned and turned to look as well, and he was quite surprised to see Milton’s tinderbox on the side table there. Now that it was in a properly lit room and not in a dim forest cabin, the blue pieces in the metal shone like stars. Without thinking, Cedric went to grab the tinderbox and held it out to Milton.

“You don’t want to leave it behind, do you? You said it’s important after all.”

Milton blinked at him before he smiled softly. “It is. Would… would you mind holding onto it for a while? I feel a bit scatterbrained right now and don’t want to lose it by accident.”

“Of course. I will take the best care of it,” Cedric said and put the tinderbox securely into the pocket of his jacket. “Now, let me acquaint you with the kitchen.”

***

~Cloudia~

Cloudia stared at the wound which wasn’t one anymore for a second longer, Kamden’s exclamation having only half-shaken her from her shock, before she ran a hand over her abdomen.

It was one thing to see that the injury had vanished. It was something else entirely to feel its absence too.

With horror, I felt the lack of any obstruction under my fingertips.

With fascination, I noticed how no pain bloomed under my touch.

With curiosity, I noted that not even a scar had been left behind.

As if the wound had knit itself together by magic. Which was, of course, utter nonsense.

Still, there was no wound anymore, no pain, no scar. It should have been impossible for me to have recovered with this speed and thoroughness, to go from shivering and weakened to perfectly fine in a single night. If my memories weren’t intact, if the shock of the day wasn’t one shared by many, I could almost think of the injury as a dream.

“Cloudie?” Kamden said, concerned. Cloudia realised at once that he must have said her name multiple times before without getting a response.

“I’m sorry,” she said and leaned back, sinking into the cushions. “I’m only deep in thought. I can’t understand why, but I’m fine, perfectly fine which...”

“… should not be possible,” Kamden continued quietly.

They were silent for a moment again before Kamden asked, “Would you mind if I examined the area too?”

She looked down at her hand which was still spread across the missing injury, as if lifting it would shatter the magic, unravel it and restore the hole at once; as if her hand was the dam that kept her blood at bay and her intestines secure.

What a silly thought, it rang through her mind as she removed her hand and none of that happened. “Be my guest,” she said and gestured to her stomach.

With light fingers, Kamden touched every bit of it, pressing down every now and then and asking “Does it hurt?” to which she would always reply “No.” After repeating the same spiel again and again, Kamden seemed to be done with his examination. He ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up in all directions; Cloudia could see the gears turn in his head. “Do… do you re-really have no… no idea what could have ha-happened, Cloudie? For your… for your wound to heal like this?” Kamden stared at where it used to be. “I... ha-have never seen, or even heard, of anything like that be-before.”

“Me neither,” Cloudia replied, following his gaze and staring at the same space too. “And no… no, I don’t think I do.”

A headache blossomed at the back of her head; it was still merely knocking gently against her skull when she said, her thoughts and voice faraway, “What about the rest?”

Kamden insisted to help her stand and get behind the folding screen. There was a large mirror in the room, not floor-length but portrait-sized, and when Cloudia pulled her nightdress over her head, she could see her blue eyes widen at the sight of herself.

She was always injured; she couldn’t even remember a time when she hadn’t been.

At any given time, bruises flecked her body and cuts marked her skin, from work and from training. Torn-open knuckles hidden beneath gloves, the fabric of dresses resting gently against bandaged stab wounds, special shoes which were particularly soft to walk in for her chafed feet. Since forever, her body had been glowing in wounds of any kind behind her clothes – a constant reminder of the chasm between her and any other court lady.

And now, they were all gone.

Her entire body had been wiped clean of any injuries, except for the old scars though they looked fainter now than they had before.

Cloudia touched the mirror first, separating herself from that stranger she was looking at, before she ran her hand over her body. The taxing last days played like a theatre performance at top speed in her head as she checked every millimetre of herself.

The chaos of Nanteuil-la-Forêt, the skirmish on the train, the high chase in Paris, even the horse ride between the château and Creil had left its marks on her.

And now, nothing was left of them too.

The headache knocked with more fury now.

“Cloudie?” Kamden said behind the partition.

Cloudia locked eyes with her reflection – she had looked into Kamden’s eyes so often without it ever feeling as strange as it did now – before she got dressed again, briefly washed her hands in the water bowl, and re-emerged from behind the screen.

“There’s nothing,” Cloudia told him. “There’s no cut or bruise left. There are no puncture marks or weirdly-shaped new scars either.”

Kamden blinked at her, and their gazes crossed.

“I don’t know,” Cloudia answered his unspoken question. She sat down at the edge of the bed, let herself fall backward into the messy layer of blankets of cushions. Kamden let out a muffled shriek when she did that.

Her thoughts were multiplying by the second, somersaulting in her head, tangling into knots. She closed her eyes and tried to focus on everything that had happened since she had stepped into Nanteuil-la-Forêt’s townhall to unravel a murder series; only, this time, the theatre performance ran at normal speed.

So many exhaustingly notable things had happened lately, between that summation in the townhall and me getting shot in an alley: getting hunted by hundreds of villagers, learning that Milton had known all along that I was the Queen’s Watchdog, riding on horseback to Creil, fighting my way through a moving train, and stumbling into Paris to find two people in the middle of an uprising.

And last night? What had happened last night?

I did my best to recall anything of the previous night, but no matter how intensely I searched my head for anything, I could only remember how sore and weak and tired I had felt, how my pain had eventually knocked me out, and how I had woken up with the residue of a fading and now forgotten dream in my mind.

My dream. How odd it was that I could vividly remember its existence, even if I could not recover its contents.

And the more I seemed to try, the stronger my headache seemed to become.

Cloudia pressed her hands against her eyes.

How come this was the only pain that was now cascading through me?

“Cloudie?”

She dropped her hands and used them to prop herself up. A flash of agony exploded in her temples when she moved, and she winced as she nearly fell backwards again. Kamden was quick enough to steady her though.

“Cloudie!”

Cloudia blinked until her vision cleared and looked into Kamden’s worried eyes. “Sorry. I got an annoying headache.”

“Are you… are you otherwise okay?” he asked hesitantly and glanced towards his medical supplies which had been set out on a desk.

“Yes, yes.” Cloudia held her head and gritted her teeth together. “It’s just a headache. My gunshot wound didn’t suddenly reopen. I doubt this could even happen at all, despite how miraculously it closed up.”

“A-are you sure? What… what if it’s temporary like…”

When he didn’t finish his sentence, Cloudia raised an eyebrow, though even that seemed to worsen her headache. “What do you mean? Temporary like what?”

Kamden avoided her gaze as he tidied up the bed a little and helped her settle back against the cushions. Only when he sat back down on the chair did he speak, “I… I don’t know… I…” He clutched his hands together. “When I… when I tho-thought how this could be, that you are-are healed already, my mind first went to… first went to the strange energisation.”

Cloudia’s eyebrows instinctively rose in astonishment – then, she winced from the pain and rubbed her temples. “What do you mean? We talked about that already, didn’t we? That the energisation is just that and nothing more?”

Kamden kept his eyes fixed firmly on his lap as he replied, “I know I-I saaaid that I was only e-energised and nothing else, just like… just like you. But I keep, keep thinking about this and… do you remember when, when we first no-noticed it? It was right after… right after we spent a day walking around Nanteuil-la-Forêt in star-stark rain. We got dre-drenched, and it was so cold; still, neither of us – you, Miss Greene, and I – got ill or, or felt under-the-weather afterwards. In-instead we were perfectly fine, vitalised even. Usually, if I… if I have to run errands all-all day while it’s raining, I feel un-unwell for a day or two eeeven if I don’t get sick exactly.” Kamden took a deep breath before he continued, calming himself, and he spoke a bit slower and more composed when he continued, “And the energisation returned before we left for Creil. What if its source doesn’t just refill our energy tanks but makes sure that we don’t get sick either? What if it can heal wounds too?”

It was a little difficult to follow him, with her head as fogged as it was right now, but Cloudia had strained to listen to Kamden’s hypothesis, and it did sound like it could be in the realm of possibilities. However…

“My energisation faded away long before I got shot,” Cloudia told him. “About the time we arrived in Paris. Even if it did prevent us from getting sick from that terrible rain, I don’t think it has anything to do with my recovery. If it hadn’t even been ‘active’ at that time, how could it suddenly have become active last night? And even if a piece of it had still been ‘active,’ why didn’t its healing properties set in immediately? What reason could there have been for such a delay?”

Kamden raised his head and tilted it too. “Hm, if it had already faded by then, I doubt any little remaining ‘ember’ would have been able to heal that injury in such a complete and flawless manner and rid you of all the other smaller wounds too.” He sighed. “Not that I actually know how any of this works. But then…” He looked her into the eyes. “Because we don’t know how your wound got healed, I think we should act as cautiously as possible.”

Cloudia sat up, her headache throwing her off-balance for a second. She dug her fingers into a blanket. “What do you mean?”

“That I should better re-bandage your stomach.” He got up and went to the desk with the supplies. “Just in case this is really only a temporary state and the wound reopens…”

With a sigh, Cloudia leaned back. “Very well, bandage me up again.”

She watched him work, and when Kamden was done, she sat up again. Cloudia was about to swing her legs out of the bed and stand up – her headache had subsided slightly while Kamden had bandaged her up – but Kamden gently pressed her back into the cushions.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I think it’s best if you stay in bed for a bit longer too.”

“Kam, I’m fine. As soon as my headache fades, I’m as good as new. I don’t need to stay in bed. And what about my work here? What about Townsend?”

“Lord Livingstone, Barrington, and the Marchioness left last evening with Townsend and another man the lord has caught because they thought this would be best, considering that Lord Livingstone is officially dead and should not be around the uninitiated if it can be helped,” Kamden replied. “Townsend was captured, and Her Majesty’s box is secure in this room. The Marchioness told us that there is a little safe here, and Miss Lisa put the box inside of it. And as far as I know, the city is still in chaos. There is nothing else for us to do but to wait until everything calms down again.”

Cloudia sighed. “Okay, I will stay in bed for now.” She reached to grab a blanket and pulled it over her. She was adjusting it when Kamden began to place the other blankets on top of her as well.

“Kamden.”

“I just want to be safe.”

“Sixty blankets wouldn’t help with a gunshot wound anyway.”

“There are only four.”

“That’s still three too many, Kamden.”

“I’m just worried,” he said and took one of the pillows that had fallen to the floor when she had got up earlier. “We don’t know anything about what happened. I just want to be on the safe side.

“I know I should just focus on the fact that you are well and healed,” Kamden continued as he fluffed and arranged the pillows. “But I can’t. Sorry, Cloudie.”

“It’s okay,” Cloudia replied. “But, truly, I don’t think I need to stay in bed anymore.”

Kamden re-settled on his chair. “Would it bother you so much, to stay in bed for a bit longer? It’s fantastic, of course, that you are fine, Cloudie…” He reached out for her hand, and she grasped his. “… but I don’t like that we don’t have a clue what happened and how. What if this is only temporary? What if whatever healed you also did something terrible to you which hasn’t shown itself yet?”

“Kam,” Cloudia began but she swallowed what she wanted to say when she saw the look on his face, the worry and fear in his gaze and the lines of his face, underlined by the dark rings under his eyes. Kamden had been asleep when she had woken up, and she was aware that Newman had given him something to make him sleep yesterday. Cloudia also knew that the former could have hardly been comfortable (he had fallen asleep on a wooden, unupholstered chair after all) and that the latter had only lasted a few hours which weren’t enough to catch up on all the hours he had missed.

And it was all because he was so worried for her. Because, from what Newman had told her briefly and quietly, Kamden had known that she had got hurt, had somehow been able to feel her pain across the city almost as if it had been his own. Freshly awake and with agony radiating through her, Cloudia had barely comprehended Newman’s words, but seeing Kamden now with her strength restored, she did realise that he was still mirroring her, always mirroring her.

Would I feel like he had, was feeling still, if he got hurt as badly as I had?

Cloudia’s heart ached as she squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “It is better that way, of course. We don’t know anything, and it would be very difficult to explain to everyone else. I think I’m just in shock and don’t want to dwell on my magical recovery any longer, even if I know that I should. And, besides, this is a very pesky headache. I should stay in bed for that too.”

Kamden shook his head. “No, you don’t have to apologise, Cloudie. I only want you to be well but all I am doing is being such a worryguts. Saying that the wound could still reopen must scare you more than help you.”

“Oh, come on, you know it takes more to scare me.” Cloudia pulled him towards her with the hand that was clasped in his and ruffled his hair with her free one. “I promise to remain in bed if you promise me to go straight to bed yourself and sleep, okay, Kamden?”

***

~Cedric~

Some people must have been very hungry because by the time Cedric and Milton arrived in the kitchen Newman’s buffet was almost gone. Only three sandwiches, one single muffin, and half a bowl of raspberries were left.

“That’s enough for me,” Milton assured Cedric; nonetheless, he felt bad at the pitiful spread and insisted to make him some eggs. But first, Cedric poured some water into a kettle and set it on the stove to heat and went to fetch a chair and the blanket Oscar had put over Milton two days earlier from the small parlour. Cedric made Milton sit down, wrapped him in the blanket, and pressed a sandwich into his hand.

“Please eat this and wait until I get the rest ready,” he said. Milton nodded faintly.

Milton had grown quieter with every step that had brought them closer upstairs, his reassurance from a few minutes ago were the first words he had spoken since they had left the wine cellar. It unsettled Cedric, but he kept on chattering about everything and nothing, whatever that came to his mind while he led Milton to the kitchen and worked to get some more food for him, just in case it helped. At the very least, it allowed him not to be engulfed in awkward silence.

And while Milton’s words from earlier had helped to ease my mind, I still did not want to be by myself in silence just yet.

Cedric searched the kitchen for some eggs. He still hadn’t found any by the time the kettle shrieked to announce that the water had boiled. He reached for the kettle barehanded at first, then caught himself before he could brush the hot metal, and tried it again with a cloth. Cedric set the kettle aside and threw some tea leaves into a tea pot before he poured the hot water in. “It’s almost done, Milton,” Cedric said, interrupting his convoluted and nonsensical little monologue on city design. “The tea only has to steep a little.”

When Milton didn’t answer, Cedric turned to him. The sandwich was gone, though Milton had left the rest of Newman’s food untouched. He was digging his fingers into the fabric of the blanket instead (he had wrapped it tighter around himself too), and from the way Milton held his head – slightly angled upwards – and the faraway look in his eyes, Cedric could tell that Milton must be listening to something – or trying to listen to something at least. Cedric could not figure out what it was, however, as he himself could not hear anything at all beyond some faint shuffling of feet across wooden and carpeted flooring.

Cedric filled a cup with the freshly brewed tea and tugged on the blanket to get Milton’s attention. Thankfully, it worked to pull him out of his strange reverie so that Cedric could give him the cup of tea. Milton wrapped both of his hands around it and looked down at the steaming brown tea.

Seeing him sitting there while I did something in the kitchen gave me the strangest déjà-vu – only this time, it was not raining, and he was worse.

He had been doing badly ever since we had come to Paris, and whatever had been ailing him since then had clearly not been erased by the hours and hours of sleep he had got. Instead, it seemed to have worsened. Could Milton have pushed himself too much when we had been chasing Townsend?

Cedric took a deep breath and then continued his search for the eggs – why couldn’t he find anything in this house? – and he wanted to say his frustrated thoughts out loud when…

“When do you think this will end?” Milton asked faintly. Cedric nearly didn’t hear him even though they were the only ones in this quiet room.

Cedric didn’t even close the cupboard doors before he turned to him. “What do you mean?”

“The uprising, outside,” Milton replied, his voice and gaze far away as if he was not talking to Cedric at all.

“I don’t know,” Cedric said truthfully. “What if it has already ended, and we just don’t know it yet? Cecelia’s townhouse is quite far away from the happenings after all.”

“It’s not over,” said Milton with unexpected sharpness. His grip around the cup tightened. “I… Quentin told me that it wasn’t over yet. That’s why I sent him away – he lives with his family in this half of Paris, but his thoughts kept straying to his wife and child in worry anyway.”

“I’ve wondered where he went,” Cedric admitted and then finally closed the cupboard doors before he began to rummage around in the pantry.

“Found them!” Cedric exclaimed when he procured a basket of eggs from deep within the pantry. “Milton, I’m going to make you some eggs. Do you prefer to have them scrambled or…” he asked as he re-entered the kitchen, though he dropped the question when he saw that Milton was glassy-eyed and mechanically gripping his still-full cup.

“Milton,” he started but before he could continue, Newman entered the kitchen.

Immediately, Milton’s head snapped up and to him. His eyes turned from glassy to wide and startled before he shook his head and said, his voice normal and soft again, “I’m so sorry; it must be so hard for you, Mr Newman.”

It took both Cedric and Newman a moment to decipher Milton’s words. Newman understood them first, and he set out to speak right before realisation dawned upon Cedric too.

What else had I been overlooking because of my own hurt and pain?

I knew little of a butler’s duty, but I knew that they did not only serve their masters…

… they kept them safe and well as well. And before me, it was Newman who would accompany Cloudia on missions.

“Thank you for your consideration, Lord Milton,” Newman said with a little smile on his lips. “Albeit it pains me that I was not at her side, my relief to know that my mistress will be well is greater nevertheless.”

“And you did everything to ensure that she would be,” Milton added.

Newman bowed his head. “And I did everything to ensure that she would be,” he repeated. “And she is flourishing.” Newman looked at Cedric. “I said I would seek you out if Lady Cloudia called for you; this is precisely the reason for my presence now: I came to inform you that the time has come – and to tell you that she is doing remarkably well, according to Master Emyr.”

Cedric’s heart made a jump when he heard that. He would have run out of the kitchen and upstairs right away if…

Cedric looked between Milton and Newman, glanced down at the basket of eggs he was still holding. “I…”

“It is all right, Your Grace,” Newman said and took the basket from his hands. “I will look after Lord Milton.”

“Are you sure? He…” Cedric leaned forward and whispered. “He has been a bit… off ever since he woke up. Apparently because of an awful headache, but it might also be a remnant of whatever had been bothering him days before too, at the Northern train station.”

They craned their heads to Milton. Cedric hadn’t even needed to lower his voice as Milton’s attention had been fully claimed by something in the distance again. Wordlessly, Newman set the basket down on the worktop before he went to kneel in front of Milton. “Lord Milton, how are you? Pardon me; I will be so free...” he said softly and rubbed Milton’s back with great gentleness. To Cedric’s surprise, Milton neither flinched nor recoiled at Newman’s touch; in contrary, it seemed to ease him back with little effort. Milton even closed his eyes and rested his head on Newman’s shoulder.

Newman blinked in surprise at that and, without stopping to pat Milton, turned his head to exchange a look with Cedric. Cedric raised his shoulders a bit.

Carefully, Newman took the cup from Milton’s hands and put it on the ground. “It is all right; it is all right,” he repeated to Milton, and to Cedric he said, “Please do not keep Lady Cloudia waiting any longer; we will be fine. There is also no need to worry about Master Emyr: He went to bed, exactly as he promised her.”

***

~Cloudia~

The door fell into its lock with a soft click, and I was all alone at last. Not for long, as I had asked Newman to call Cedric to me, but I still welcomed this little moment which I had all to myself.

I closed my eyes, exhaled, sunk with that action further into the plush pillows.

My temples pulsed still, sending little quakes through my head, though their strength and frequency had decreased.

Nonetheless, I rummaged through my mind again to search for the dream I had forgotten. I could not say why I was so set on finding it, only that I was. There was something within me that longed for it, or perhaps it was beckoning me towards it, even if its signals were impossible to trace back.

A broken line from here to there, something important I had forgotten.

A headache growing in the hole it had left behind.

An unpleasant déjà-vu.

Even if a quiet voice at the back of my mind told me that no, this time, what I was looking for was not forever gone.

I only had to remember.

There was a knock on the door, just like there was one against the inside of her skull, only the one that vibrated through the air was softer, fainter, gentler than the one in her head. Cloudia dropped her search – it had terribly exhausted her anyway and made her sink even more into the pillows which she didn’t think to be possible – and told Cedric to come in.

Though there was no way to tell without asking him directly, Cloudia was sure that he had been hovering in front of her room for a moment before he had raised his hand to rap against her door. When she called him inside, however, Cedric opened the door at once.

“Countess? You wanted to see me?” Cedric said as he closed the door behind him, his back to her. When he turned to look at her, he blinked at her at first before he frowned and walked towards her. Cedric took her hand which she had excavated from beneath the blankets and held out to him. When their skin touched, his eyes widened, and he blinked even quicker and tightened his grip on her.

“Countess, am I dead yet?” he asked.

Cloudia smiled. “No, you are alive.”

“Then, I must be dreaming. You look so much better now, and your hand is now warm.” He held her hand in both of his and looked at her. “I don’t think this can be accomplished by a good wash.”

She chuckled, and his eyes widened further; his chartreuse eyes were even more stunning than usual in the forenoon sun which softened the green and warmed the yellow inside of them.

“No, not a good wash, no,” Cloudia replied and squeezed his hand. “Neither a good night’s sleep.”

“It would have to have been the best sleep of anyone’s life, for it to have worked such a wonder. Countess…” Cedric circled his thumb over her hand and kept his gaze firmly strained on her as if he feared she was only an illusion, and she would vanish into thin air if he blinked. “Countess… You…”

“I can’t explain it,” Cloudia told him, cutting him off. She didn’t want him to describe her appearance to her; it would be embarrassing to hear on any given day, but it especially was today when she was locked in a stranger’s body. “Not because I don’t want to, or because someone urged me not to,” Cloudia added, and her words made Cedric’s shoulders which had tensed up slightly earlier relax again. “I can’t explain it because I don’t know the explanation myself.”

Cloudia sighed. “Kam and I talked about this; he has no idea either. It’s just that I went to sleep with a stitched-up gunshot wound on my abdomen and woke up with it fully healed.”

“Fully healed?” Cedric repeated. His eyes wandered automatically to the area where her injury used to be even though it was impossible to see, of course, beneath her nightdress and the five (Kamden had placed his blanket on her too) blankets.

She nodded. “The wound is gone. There is no lingering pain or a scar. Whatever caused that injury to heal also erased the smaller wounds I suffered. ‘Erased’ might be the best word to describe what happened even; it really looks as if someone took a rubber to me.”

“What a strange image you are conjuring in my mind, Countess.”

“It is true though. My injuries are gone, erased as if by magic which cannot be right, obviously, as there is no such thing as magic.”

Cedric burst into laughter. He lowered his head and raised it again as he laughed, but his grip on her hand never faltered, and Cloudia felt the vibrations of his snickering run up her arm.

“What’s so funny?” Cloudia asked, doing her best to sound stern despite the fact that his giggling was making her smile too.

“You saying with such certainty and conviction that there is no magic – to a Grim Reaper.” Cedric grinned at her.

“That’s not the same.”

“Of course, it is!”

“You cannot work any magic,” Cloudia replied. “You function almost exactly like any human. The most ‘magical’ thing you can do is making yourself appear in another place. And though you don’t age and cannot die under natural circumstances, you can still die, so you are not perfectly immortal either. Also, have you ever heard of something that could heal injuries with such perfection?”

“No, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that I’m a magical being myself.”

“Magically stupid, maybe.”

Cedric chuckled. “What do you think then what the cause could have been? If your miraculous recovery did not happen because of magic?”

Cloudia shot him a dark look. “That I don’t know. But just because I cannot explain it now it does not mean the explanation is ‘magic’ either. More research simply needs to be done. Also…” She trailed off, her headache momentarily intensifying at even the thought of the dream.

“Also, what?” Cedric leaned a bit closer, worry flickering in his eyes. “Are you fine, Countess? You suddenly paled.”

“I have a headache right now, and it’s not because of you, don’t worry; I’ve had it for about an hour now, I guess.” Cloudia struggled to free her other hand from the mountain of blankets to massage her temples. “I’ve been trying to recall anything that might bring me closer to the truth, but all I’ve got so far is this bothersome headache.”

“I would offer to use my Death Scythe to look into your Cinematic Record if you cannot remember anything amiss by yourself, but…”

“But?”

“… I’m not sure how it would go. I’ve never cut anyone alive with my Scythe before. Souls do ‘loosen up’ when their bodies die which makes it easy to sever them completely. Death Scythes are known to be capable of cutting through anything though, so I could possibly cut your soul from your body by accident if I tried to check your memories. And I don’t know if souls can even be reattached to bodies. It would be very interesting if this could be done.”

“Well, there must be a very good reason why they are called ‘Death Scythes’ too,” Cloudia pointed out. “The name itself does not make it seem as if they are particularly ‘friendly’ to use on the living.”

“Ah, that too, yes.”

Cloudia slowly and carefully shook her head. “I suppose this is an ‘it’s the thought that counts’-scenario, is it not?”

Cedric smiled faintly at her before he lowered his gaze and ran a finger absentmindedly over her hand. “The source of your recovery is important too, of course, and needs to be found but…” He raised his head and looked right into her eyes, his own bright with hope and worry. “… you are completely fine now, are you not, Countess? Your life is not in danger anymore? You will…”

“I will live, yes,” Cloudia said, and the light in Cedric’s eyes brightened. “Kamden worries that there might be a catch – hence, why he left me covered like this, a reversed Princess on the Pea – but something tells me that there is none, that this is permanent and benevolent, and…” She reached out despite the pain to cover Cedric’s hands with her free one. “… that yes, I will live. So please…” Cloudia lowered her voice, but kept her gaze steadily on Cedric even if she would rather avert it, even slightly. “… don’t worry about me anymore. I’m more than fine, and being a worryguts does not suit you at all.”

Cedric’s eyes widened at her words, and he broke off their locked gaze when he bent his head. “You didn’t let me yesterday,” he said, “but I think I should still apologise.”

“No, you don’t,” Cloudia responded. “Not for what you have been apologising since the incident at least, and if you do not know why and for what you should apologise instead, you really are magically stupid after all.”

“Countess, I…” When he lifted his head again, she met him with a stern expression on her face. His eyes were blank with non-understanding at first, but cleared when it, thankfully, dawned upon him. “Attacking Yvette, trying to kill her,” Cedric said, and she had to hold back a small smile. He let out a bitter chuckle and let go of their embrace, burying his face in his hands; Cloudia’s own hands felt cold without his.

“I really am magically stupid, am I not?” Cedric murmured. “I’m always focusing on the wrong thing. God, what an idiot I am…” When he faced her again, his eyes glistered, though there were no tears. “I only dwelt on what happened to you, on what I could have done, not on what I did. I forgot that I did everything I could to save you,” he said, to Cloudia’s surprise, “and that I hurt you too.

“Countess, I apologise for trying to kill Yvette and interfere with life and death. I’m sorry that I went and nearly broke my word and our deal. I should not have let my emotions get the best of me, should not have only thought of me, and not of you. I’m so, so sorry that I nearly did something forbidden and forced you to stop me, that because of my hotheadedness I almost jeopardised everything and…”

Cedric trailed off, their eye contact remained steady. This time, it was almost unbearable to hold it, with that unspoken thought, that unvoiced horror, hanging between them.

“You almost lost me, but I almost lost you too. And...”

“How did it continue?” Cloudia said instead, her voice quiet but firm. She reached out her hand to him, the cold harder to bear than his gaze. “The fairy tale?”

***

~Cedric~

Somewhere, Scotland, Kingdom of Great Britain – February 1732

“I cannot recall what I thought, what I felt, on that day when I saw the manor burned to its bones, warped by the fire into a ghastly shadow of itself, because they came in a rush. Thought after thought bombarded my brain. Feelings mixed together in a way that made it hard to recognise them anymore.

“There was only a single word that rang loud and clear in my mind and heart that day.

“‘Why,’ ‘why, ‘why.’

“Because there must have been a reason for this; what could have been the reason for this violence?

“And then, Cesca pulled me back into the woods and away from the manor house, the people picking through its charred remains.

“Though she had been a second too late.

“I had already seen the blackened, mangled bodies of our parents, half-hidden under sheets.”

Cedric’s legs gave away under him in the moment Cesca stopped briefly to orientate herself. They had held on to each other with an iron grip, knuckles white beneath their gloves, ever since they had begun their trudge through the woods, following the polished white stones to a house that had never been a home and was now not even a house anymore. Now, that grip split apart when Cedric fell to his knees, his bones crushing against the frozen ground. Still, this pain that shuddered from his knees through his body was incomparable to the one that dripped black like tar from his heart. He fell forward now too, hands colliding with the dirt and dead leaves, and in that moment, he wished to tear off his gloves, but did not find the strength for it.

“You know something,” Cedric said without realising that he had, the words coming out of him as he was being puppeteered, his voice so shaky and crumbly that he barely recognised it as his own. “What do you know?”

Cesca didn’t say a word. Hot tears welled in Cedric’s eyes and dropped onto the dirt. “Mother and Father are dead. The manor house is gone. No.” His fingers dug into the hard earth, crunched the dried leaves to dust. Cold seeped through the fabric of his gloves. “The manor was set on fire. Our parents were murdered. But why? Why? Please tell me why. Cesca.”

Cedric raised his head – and was startled to see Cesca kneeling in front of him. He hadn’t heard her move, had expected her to be standing a bit farther away, perhaps leaning against a tree as she had been when he had woken up; at the very least, he would have expected her to kneel before him with her head raised and her eyes fixed on him. Instead, her head was bent, and her hair was a curtain of silver hanging between them.

“I don’t know a lot,” Cesca said at last. Cedric was taken aback by her voice which had never sounded so devoid of strength and humour and warmth as it did now. “I overheard our parents a few times after the Christmas party. We were deceived by them all – the head butler, the rest of the staff, the executor of the will. Our grandfather didn’t die because he was sick. Our half-uncles didn’t die in an accident and from an ailment. They were all murdered.”

A shiver crawled across Cedric’s skin.

“Mama and Papa noticed that something was very, very wrong with the people the butler advised them to invite, the old friends and acquaintances of our grandfather. If his circle was full of people like that, what did that say about him?” Cesca paused for a moment. “Our grandfather was a terrible person. Papa’s older half-brothers were too. The executor of the will and the head butler were their accomplices, but our grandfather didn’t think to pass any part of his estate to them, or to any of his disgusting friends – it would have been too laughable if he had. He couldn’t give his riches to just anyone; it had to be a blood relative, even if it was one he had never met – or one born illegitimate.

“The butler and the executor just needed someone who could access our grandfather’s wealth, as per his will, so that they could keep their awful activities afloat. That’s it. Perhaps, they hoped they could rope Papa in in due time. They did bring him in contact with the… with the others at Christmas after all.”

“Father would never do anything bad,” Cedric protested.

“I doubt they knew or cared,” said Cesca. “Or maybe they did, but thought they could break him into joining them. I don’t know.”

“But what did… did our grandfather and our uncles do? Who killed them?”

“They were killed because of what they did,” she answered. “I never heard Mama and Papa talk much about their murderer, only that they found out that there was someone who was hunting them for their crimes. The manor where we lived for almost a year? It’s not our ancestral home as we were told; it’s just one of many old manors our grandfather purchased as a hiding place.”

“And last night that man found us,” Cedric said quietly.

Cesca nodded. “And last night that man found us.”

“But we didn’t do anything!” Fresh tears broke free and ran down his cheeks. “We’re uninvolved. We’re innocent. Why did he come for us? Why? Couldn’t he figure out that we had nothing to do with that?”

“We might have just been loose ends for him,” she replied with a hollow tone. “Nothing more and nothing less.”

Cesca lapsed into silence. For an agonisingly long moment, the only sounds Cedric could hear were the rapid beating of his heart, his strained breathing, and the wind howling coldly through the skeletal trees. And all he could think of was how strange it was, to be with Cesca and for her not to say a single word. Even in the weeks after her change, when her laughter and her jokes had faded into nonexistence, had it never been like this.

“In retrospect, this state could not have lasted for very long. We couldn’t have been like that for hours – us kneeling in the dirt without a single word passing between us – but it had felt like an eternity.

“And in that moment, with everything confusing and lost and uncertain, the silence was unbearable.

“My sister was right there, but seemed gone now too, as if she had vanished into the stillness, leaving me all alone.”

Cedric opened his mouth to speak, half of the question already out – “Do you know any…” – when Cesca wrapped her arms around him. She pressed him tightly against her. She did not say anything still, but her heart was beating next to his now, and it was enough to reassure him. Cedric leaned into the embrace, folded his arms around her too.

“I knew that she knew more, that she was keeping some secrets to herself and away from me. But I didn’t care to ask, didn’t dare to ask.

“She had done her best to hide it, but I already knew then that she had been crying too.”

***

“Where did one go when they had nowhere to be?”

“There was no way back, for we had neither a home nor parents anymore. There was no way forward because they were all unknown and shadowed. Still, it was the only direction we could take, forward into the unfamiliar forest.

“Without letting go of each other, Cesca and I wandered through it without a plan or a clue. All we had was a vague understanding that we had to bring as much distance between us and the destroyed manor and our parents’ remains as we could, that we shouldn’t leave the forest to search for a village or a town or farmlands until we did.

“What if whoever had killed Mother and Father was currently hunting us too?”

When the sky darkened but had not yet dipped into night, Cesca found them a hollow tree to hide in. It was a tight squeeze but it was better than nothing, and when night fell at last, and the temperature dropped as well, not only their thick clothes shielded them against the cold but their shared body warmth as well. Cedric stared into the dark forest for hours until sleep finally claimed him.

The next day, they resumed their walk. Their stomachs were growling from hunger, but they kept on pushing themselves to go forward and forward, to go as far away and away as they could. But hunger fed itself on everything it could find, and when there was no food to keep it at bay, it sunk its teeth into one’s sanity, drank itself full on one’s energy.

The laced tea was the last thing Cedric had consumed. The first day they traversed through the forest on empty stomachs, and their pain and their grief made them forget their hunger. On the second day, adrenaline pushed them forward, urged them to get away as quick and far as they managed. By day three, their steps slowed significantly; their hunger became louder than their grief, and the voice in their heads now persuaded them to sit and rest and eat instead of to flee. But their energies were depleting and the temperature was decreasing, and sleep and rest became false friends to lead you into death, so they kept on moving, even if it was slow and tedious and so, so tiring – and could they not sit down for even a moment? Close their eyes for even a second? Who was speaking now? The hunger, the cold, or the devil?

Cedric and Cesca could find water at least, small frozen ponds that had to be broken free and half-frozen rivers running sluggishly through the woods. It was better than nothing even if it let in the cold, made them shiver from within too.

On the fourth day, they found a cabin in the woods. It was not old or broken, mouldy or brittle, made of rotten wood and looking at them through shattered eyes. No, it was painted in shades of green, the windows were polished, and when they looked through them, they saw a perfectly furnished interior: a living room with a large carpet on the floor, and an adjourning open kitchen with a basket of bread on the worktop winking at them.

Cedric’s stomach growled louder, and he turned instinctively to the door. Cesca grabbed his arm and pulled him back.

“What are you doing, Ces?” he asked.

“It’s someone’s home,” Cesca replied. “We are in the middle of a forest. We haven’t stumbled over a single soul or even glimpsed at a village through the trees in days. Who would ever live here?”

“I don’t know but whoever does is not here right now.” Cedric looked at his sister with pleading eyes. “Please, Ces… I know it’s wrong but please just let us go in and take the basket, nothing more.”

Cesca pressed her lips into a thin line.

“Please.” He tugged at her sleeve, just like when he had been very small and begged for a bedtime story. “We’ll leave immediately. Please…”

She looked at him for a while longer before she closed her eyes and sighed. “We’ll just get the basket and then we’ll leave, do you understand?”

The front door was locked but a window was propped slightly open. It was small and located up high; the cabin was two stories tall, albeit the upper one only seemed to be half the size of the lower one. Cesca lifted Cedric up with all the strength she had left in her battered body. He squeezed himself through the opening; he barely fit through it with his thick coat, and when he finally passed through it, he landed on a bed. Cedric’s heart ached with longing. It was not a plush bed with thick soft pillows and blankets like at the manor but it was a bed nevertheless. If his hunger had not been so loud and scratched on the inside of his stomach like a demanding cat, he would have fallen asleep right there and then.

Cedric rolled from the mat and took the low staircase down. Although the open window had cooled the cabin’s inside, it was still so much warmer than outside that he could only sigh in joy. Cesca, he thought. Cesca is waiting. I cannot stand here and take in the warmth. He walked to the kitchenette. As soon as he laid eyes on the bread basket again, Cedric could not help himself but peel off his dirty gloves, stuff them in his pockets in haste and without a care, and grab a slice and shove it into his mouth.

“Maybe you could, if you tried and wanted to, draw a parallel between that moment and the Garden of Eden. But Eve hadn’t been a hungry, exhausted child who didn’t hear Adam knocking against the glass from outside, begging her to come back.”

“But just like it had been over for Eve the second she bit into the apple, it was over for me, for us, the instant I shoved the slice of bread into my mouth. My control was lost, and I only moved to satiate my hunger: taking another slice and another and another…”

“I only ‘woke up’ when I had emptied the basket.”

Cedric flinched when his hand reached for the basket and toppled it over and made it fall to the ground, for he had eaten everything that had been inside it, and there was no weight to keep it steady anymore. He pressed a hand to his mouth. A shameful heat spread over him like a wildfire.

And then, he heard the knocks and saw Cesca’s wide-eyed, pale face on the other side of the window. Cedric gulped before he picked up the basket, put it back on the worktop, and went to look for something else. He had promised only to take the bread, but in his frenzy, he hadn’t left anything for his sister; he needed to find something for his sister. He pulled open a cupboard. His mouth watered at the sight of the food. Swallowing his saliva, Cedric grabbed some fruit and a block of cheese and put them in the basket. He hesitated when he saw a bowl of candy, his heart making a joyous leap at the sight. He ultimately dug his hand into the bowl, curled his fingers around a handful of candy, and let them vanish in his coat pocket. Cesca kept on rapping on the glass, faster, louder than before, urging him to hurry and come out.

Cedric took the basket and turned to a window – he couldn’t go upstairs and leave the way he had entered after all, not without hurting himself – but the path there led over the carpet. His feet caught on something hidden beneath it, something metallic from the feel and sound of it, and Cedric toppled forward. He let out an “ow!” when he collided with the ground; an apple rolled out of the basket and beneath a shelf. Cedric gathered the rest of the food again, returned them to the basket, and went to the window where Cesca stood. He was about to pry the window open when he noticed that his sister was mouthing something. “Someone is coming!”

A key slid into the lock a moment later.

Cedric froze. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide; no convenient long curtains framing this window. Cesca vanished from the glass. The key turned in the lock. He heard a loud, muffled sound coming from outside. The door flew open.

Cesca rushed into the cabin, took her brother by the arm, yanked him after her and out of the cabin. She had always been quick and fast on her feet, having spent so much time of her life running and exploring the outside, but she hadn’t eaten in a while, and her strength and energy had suffered from that. And just when they were about to hurry out of the cabin, their way was blocked by a man, tall and wrapped in winter clothes like they were.

They skittered to a halt. Cesca shoved Cedric behind her and pulled herself to her full height. “We are very sorry that we broke in,” she said. “And I promise that we didn’t take anything of importance. Apologies for the troubles we must have caused you, but we will be on our way now, and you won’t have to see us ever again…”

The man ran his eyes over Cedric and Cesca, mustered them from head to toe. His gaze lingered on their faces for a moment, his own obscured by the shawl wrapped around it and the hat he had pulled down deep. When he moved, Cesca took a step back at once, taking Cedric with her, and he could see her eyes glance at a bottle on the table…

… but she stilled, her plan never coming to fruition, when the man knelt before them and took off his hat and scarf to reveal a surprisingly friendly face. He smiled. “Oh, my poor children,” he said. “Did you get lost? And tried to heat yourself up in here? It really is freezing cold out there…” The man looked at the moved basket which did not harbour any bread anymore. “You seem to be starving too. Please take a seat; let me make you some tea.”

***

“Having lost the opportunity to run, Cesca and I could do nothing besides complying. We sat down on a narrow sofa with our shoulders brushing together and our hands clasped. The bottle Cesca had wanted to take earlier was right in front of us on the table; if the man tried anything, I was sure that she would grab it and hammer it over his head. For now, we were simply waiting for tea in a stranger’s forest house.”

“While he worked – he had to make a little fire outside to boil the water – he chatted with us as if it was the most normal thing in the world: His name was Martin, and he had cut and stored some dry wood in autumn for when it got too wet and cold. He explained that he lived here only part-time and that he had built this cabin many years ago because he liked to be alone sometimes and “clear his head.” In spring and summer, this area was apparently very pretty too, with many berry bushes around as well. There was indeed a village not too far away from here – it took barely an hour to get there –, and Martin resided there when he did not stay in his cabin.

“Cesca and I listened with tense faces, nodded along to his words, and answered his questions curtly and dishonestly.

“‘How did you get lost in the woods?’ – ‘Our father brought us here, but we lost sight of him.’

“‘Where do you live?’ – ‘If you bring us to that village you spoke of, we can find our way back home on our own. Thank you.’

“‘What are your names?’ – ‘We are not meant to tell them to strangers; I hope you understand.’”

“We ate with him – bread and cheese and apple slices – and did our best not to wolf any of it down, even if the state of the bread basket (empty, refilled, moved) had given our hunger away. Still, it was best not to let Martin know how hungry we were. Let him think of us as greedy, not starving children.

“Afterwards, he offered to let us sleep here. It was too dark and late now to head to the village; he would take us in the morning instead. We could not refuse because of the late hour.

“Martin allowed us to sleep in his bed in the little half-level while he curled his large frame on the narrow sofa. It was close to the door; we took the risk anyway: We waited until we were certain that he had fallen asleep. Cesca and I went downstairs with soft steps and treaded cautiously over the carpet. However, when Cesca pressed down the handle, slowly and carefully, and then pulled on it, the door would not open.

“He had locked us in.”

***

“After deciding not to shatter a window and climb out of it in the dead of night – something that would definitely wake Martin up and give us cuts from the broken glass and might potentially jeopardise our lives completely – Cesca and I returned to Martin’s bed and went to sleep huddled together.

“We were taciturn at the breakfast table while he talked and talked.

“‘One can never know what they will encounter in the woods,’ Martin said and took his axe with him when he guided us to the village, cutting apart our plan to flee on our way there.”

“He did bring us to a village, just like he had promised. And I still wonder how things would have turned out, if we had sought refuge in the crowds, hiding ourselves there the instant we arrived, or screaming and crying to draw the villagers’ attention to us. But we did neither. Martin had proven himself to be a friendly man who was true to his word, and even though Cesca and I did not fully trust him still, we did not exactly think ill of him and followed him to a friend he said would surely be of aid.

“It was such a beautiful little inn too which his friend ran, in the village’s heart with a welcoming yellow façade and painted flowers climbing over its walls inside, and people greeted Martin’s friend so warmly.”

“We were led to a room upstairs.

“The key turned, locking us in, before we could do anything.”

***

“Cesca and I were kept there for two weeks. We were given food and water every day, and a washing bowl, soap, and a change of clothes too. But this cheery inn was still a prison, and we had no idea why.

“We would sit on the bed and wonder about the possibilities, especially as more and more days passed with nothing happening. Could they have found out about the burned down manor and that we came from there? But why keep us here then? If they thought we were the perpetrators, why didn’t they hand us over to the authorities? If they knew we were the lord’s missing children, why didn’t they seem to have alerted the authorities too, or perhaps even the killer who must surely be looking for us?

“And if they knew neither, what other reason was there to keep us imprisoned here?”

“Two weeks later, the door to our room was unlocked, and the innkeeper told us to get dressed and out. We wrapped ourselves in our original clothes and followed him with funereal silence downstairs.

“When the door had opened the first time on the evening of our arrival day, Cesca had jumped at the innkeeper’s deputy with the water jug and earned quite a few bruises and lost a few hairs for her efforts. Thus, our hands were bound together in front of us before we were led down and to a carriage. Martin was on the coachman’s seat. He smiled at us when he saw us as if we were old friends, and he was happy to see us again. Cesca spit on him and was immediately pushed into the cab.”

***

“Did you ever find out why you were held captive by them?” Cloudia enquired and tightened her grip on his hand.

Cedric shook his head. “No, never. They never told us a thing, but we could overhear something about money and ‘getting lucky.’ At some point, we contemplated that they might have heard of Mother’s family and the silver hair and how they were looking for her, and that Martin and his accomplices got a kind of ‘finder’s fee’ from our Towers relatives, but that wasn’t it either. Because if it had been, they would have brought us to Mother’s cousins, wouldn’t they? Or brought them to us. But they did neither. Which wasn’t all too surprising, all things considered; how could they have known after all? We were in a village somewhere in Scotland, and my mother was from Cornwall.”

“Where did they take you then?”

“To a farm.”

“A farm?”

***

“We travelled for hours. If they hadn’t locked the carriage’s doors, or if its windows hadn’t been too narrow for both Cesca and me, we would have jumped out mid-journey. All we could do instead was to wait until we arrived and try to run then.

“We got to a farm late at night. They must have anticipated that we might make a run for it because Martin and the innkeeper’s deputy dug their fingers into our arms as they led us to the main house. There, they exchanged a few words with the farmer, and Cesca and I were locked away once again, this time in a shed.”

“I don’t think the farmer brought us, that this sale was what Martin and his accomplices had been referring to. From what we could gather, the farm was only a temporary place for us to be. For some reason, they couldn’t keep us at the inn anymore – perhaps, people in the village had grown aware and suspicious of our presence there? At any rate, we would be moved elsewhere ‘soon’; until then, we were forced to help the farmer and his wife with the upkeep of their house, land, and animals. The farmer’s wife never let us out of her sight, holding a whip ready if we dared to escape. Sometimes, she would use it to punish us if we worked too slowly or too poorly for her taste.”

“We didn’t stay there for long, however. Cesca and I had no inclination to find out where Martin and the others actually wanted to take us, and because we didn’t know when ‘soon’ would be, we escaped on our fourth night at the farm. My sister had managed to swipe two hairpins from the farmer’s wife, and we did our best to open the lock with it that night. The first pin broke, but we were able to open the door with the second one.

“Hand in hand, Cesca and I ran through the night and away and away and away. And when we spotted a deliverer who had stopped to feed his horses, we sneaked onto his cart and hoped he wouldn’t notice us until we arrived at his destination.”

“To our luck, he didn’t notice us, and we got to a town as stowaways. Cesca and I were stunned when we got out of the cart and saw the size of the place; we had never been in a town for too long, had only moved between villagers before. But while we could easily hide here – there were so many other people, and the town seemed to be rather far away from the farm – we still had nowhere to go.

“What authorities could two orphaned children seek out safely? Particularly ones that might be hunted by a serial killer?”

Cedric and Cesca walked through the town without a destination in mind, just covered distances to keep being in motion in this terrible cold and maybe to try to find a spot where they could spend a night; some place where they would be shielded by any possible rain and be unbothered by people. Cesca instructed Cedric to walk with his head held high as if he knew where he was and belonged to this place, not like a wide-eyed visitor or a skittish child on the run. It was a little difficult because everything was new and exciting, and they sometimes passed by shops which emitted the loveliest of scents.

And their pretence might not be needed after all: After an hour or two, Cedric noticed that most people did not seem to pay them any attention. They were moderately clean, and the farmer’s wife had taken shears to Cedric’s head to rid him of his hair (“don’t you bring any lice to my house!”) and forced Cesca to hide her hair beneath a bonnet at all times (“what an unsightly colour and conduct!”), so their most eye-catching feature was hidden away. They were simply one of many orphaned, poor children wandering these streets. No one would turn their heads for them; they were practically invisible.

Eventually, Cesca found a good place beneath an older-looking bridge where they could stay for the night. They huddled together, and Cedric retrieved the candies he had stolen from Martin’s forest cabin all these weeks ago. By sheer luck, they had never been searched. At the inn, someone had cleaned their clothes a few times, but they had had to hand over their clothes for that, and Cedric had always removed the candy and the ring beforehand. He could have lived to be parted with the candy, of course, even if he had saved them for an occasion such as this one but the ring… he didn’t know what he would have done if Martin, the innkeeper or his deputy, the farmer or his wife, or anyone had taken their mother’s precious family ring away.

Cesca didn’t ask about the origin of the candies; she merely accepted one and wordlessly put it in her mouth. She had grown quieter over the weeks, with her speech having shifted from chatty to utilitarian. It is the hunger, Cedric thought to himself a lot. It is our situation. It is no wonder why she has become quiet.

But just because he understood did not mean it hurt any less. It was almost as if Cesca wasn’t there; especially at nights like now, Cedric missed her and her stories so badly it hurt. It was the only sound of home he had, she was the only piece of home he had, and it, she, was right there but had left nonetheless.

Without a single word passing between them, they rolled the hard candy in their mouths until it vanished and fell asleep with footsteps above and weakly running water next to them.

***

“We spent many more nights under that bridge and tried our best to find a way to get some money during the day. We weren’t so desperate yet to steal, so we went around and offered our services. After all, we had learned how to make pots and baskets, and cook and clean; we weren’t completely useless. At the very least, we – or rather I – could help to move around cargo.

“Some people did take us up on our offers. I loaded and unloaded boxes while Cesca helped clean the shop. If they couldn’t pay us, they gave us something to eat and drink in exchange. A few even allowed us to sleep in their homes and get washed.”

“We survived every day, saved our money, and kept our eyes out just in case the killer, Martin, or anyone else had tracked us down. I wished we didn’t have to live that way, of course, and, of course, I understood that they were all necessities – living dependent on the mercy of others and always glancing over our shoulders – for us to live at all. It wasn’t the most pleasant way to exist, but not the worst one either, and I learned to bite my tongue and settle into this new normal. Cesca, on the other hand, struggled to adjust, running off sometimes without looking for work and only returning to me late at night. Then, she would pull me into a wordless embrace, and I would lean into the touch because she was all I had.”

***

“When we had gathered enough money, Cesca and I left this town for another. We found a little room to stay in and went around to find work, and after a while, we headed to a new place. Two weeks later, it was time to move again. A month later, we packed our bags anew. Three weeks later, we paid someone to bring us to another town in his carriage.

“Five weeks was the most time we spent in one place. Though we were used to moving around a lot, it had never been that frequent before. But then, we weren’t moving to escape some pesky relatives anymore; now, we were running away from a murderer, and perhaps Martin and his accomplices too.

“On good days, when Cesca was herself, she would either roll closer to me in our bed or drag me outside to look at the starry sky before she would tell me about all the places we could go to. For now, we were focused on getting whoever might be searching for us off our trail, but Cesca dreamed of crossing the border and returning to England in the future. Of paying a brief visit to our old village, the last one in which we had lived with our parents before everything had changed. (Remaining there would be unwise, however. After all, the executor of our grandfather’s will had found us there once; maybe he – if he was still alive – or someone else could find us there again.)

“Afterwards, we could travel through all of England, and perhaps, in a more faraway future, we could even go all the way to the south of England, board a ship, and be carried to the continent. ‘We could see Italy and France, just like Mother had before,’ Cesca would say, her voice full of wishful softness and energy as she clutched my hand. ‘And head to those places I’ve told you about before, the ones where it’s always warm, no matter the time of year.’

“I would mostly nod and tell her to continue when Cesca began to talk about what rivers, what castles, what hills we could see. What places we could visit, and what adventures we could have. I didn’t have such lofty dreams myself, but I did not mind carrying Cesca’s as mine too. I grew to want to go to those places too, just because I hoped that, if we were to ever get there, she would be happier again and fully return to herself.

“The bad days – the ones when Cesca got very quiet and sometimes refused to leave the room at all – were few and far between, but they were slowly increasing with every move.”

***

Somewhere, Scotland, Kingdom of Great Britain – September 1732

It was a surprisingly lovely day with a blue sky and no wind, and he had been able to readily find some work too.

Cedric Rossdale was now twelve but still hated nothing more than braiding baskets which reminded him of before, except for sitting in front of a potter’s wheel which did too but also dirtied and forever stained the few pieces of clothes he had. He hadn’t had to do that a lot since the fire at least. However, out of all things, he hated how distant Cesca had grown, how this was the eighth town they were staying in in as many months, how little time to grief he had in-between the hunger, the fear, the work. His tears seemed to be clocked, welling in his eyes whenever he found a quiet moment to himself, but he couldn’t have a crying fit when he was unloading boxes, cleaning small crevices adults couldn’t enter, delivering an urgent letter, or having to fulfil an order of three dozen baskets like he did now. And, at night, Cedric didn’t want to disturb his sister as they always shared a bed when they could afford or were offered a room, or huddled together when they had to stay in an alleyway or under a bridge. She needed to sleep after all, as she was just as busy as he, offering cleaning and cooking services at every door on her good days. There were many good reasons why they – he – had to live that way, swallowing tears and screams and pain; it was necessary and important so that they – he – could keep going, but… but...

But then, today was such a lovely day. Why dwell on such terrible things, even if they rested so heavily on his heart and soul?

Cedric focused on the willow rods instead and plaited them neatly into one basket, and then into another and another and…

Streaks of red and orange and purple ran over the sky when he was finally done. He was one of the faster and most skilled workers the shop owner had, and he smiled at Cedric when he gave him his money and told him to come back tomorrow. Why he couldn’t just employ him properly Cedric didn’t know. If only he did, maybe he and Cesca could stay here for longer; what if that employment could even help to keep them safe? They had no way to tell whether anyone was still looking for them, but if the shop owner gave him a proper job, he might help him too if push came to shove…

Cedric looked up to the colourful sky as he walked back to the shabby inn where he and Cesca were staying. The stone façade was crumbly, and the wooden steps groaned under his light weight as he walked up to the front door but it was better than nothing. Cesca wasn’t home yet, so Cedric tidied up the room a bit, which didn’t take long because it was rather small and they had few possessions, and put his earned coins in his pouch. They kept part of their money under a floorboard which they had pried off and carried the rest close to their bodies.

Cesca had said she would bring something to eat today; the lady of the house in whose kitchen she currently helped out was hosting a party today, and one of the scullery maids had told her that the servants always got some of the leftovers on these occasions. Thus, Cedric curled up on the bed, tried to think of everything but his parents, the destroyed manor, and the murderer, and waited for Cesca.

The orange and red faded out of the sky and the purple darkened to a deep blue as he waited. She never took that long, and Cedric now did his best not to dwell on his worry either. She would be fine; she would be fine…

“Ceddie – it is time to wake up!”

With a groan, Cedric slowly opened his eyes and rubbed them. He hadn’t even realised that he had fallen asleep. The sky was now pitch black with flecks of gold, and Cesca stood by their bed with a little bag in her hand and a bleeding gash along the side of her face.

Cedric was immediately wide awake and got to his feet at once. “What happened?” he asked aghast.

She put the bag on the sliver of a table and leaned against the door. Her eyes were dark. “Nothing of importance, Ced,” Cesca pressed out between gritted teeth.

“Nothing of importance? You’re bleeding!” Cedric went to fetch the water bowl and looked around for a cloth. He was quite relieved when he found one.

“It’s a shallow wound,” she insisted.

“But someone still hurt you,” Cedric replied and reached out to dab the injury with the wet cloth. Cesca, despite her reluctance to tell him of the incident, allowed him to clean her wound at least without protest.

“It doesn’t matter who hurt me or why.” She paused and directed her eyes to the ground. “It just matters that I hurt him back, and that it’s best if we left now.”

Cedric frowned at her. “What do you mean you…” He trailed off when he finally took a good look at her hands; the gash had been such a shocking sight, he didn’t notice that his sister had blood on her hands as well.

“Not mine,” Cesca said quietly.

Cedric lifted his head and stared at her with wide eyes. “Whose then?”

“It doesn’t matter. He’s not dead though, in case you’re wondering.”

She pushed past him and removed the loosened floorboard. She threw the pouch with the money on the bed and fetched their bags with their clothes from under it. “And with now, I really meant now. Ceddie, we need to hurry.”

“Cesca never told me about the incident even if it forced us to move sooner than planned. Her eyes had burned with anger when she had come into our little room. Her shoulders had shaken with shame while she imparted that little piece of information.

“And on our way out of the town, she had pressed my hand and said ‘I’m sorry’ in a tone that made me never ask about that incident again.”

“I didn’t understand until much later what must have happened.”

***

Somewhere, Scotland, Kingdom of Great Britain – June 1733

New town, new start.

In the worst sense of the word: Just as they had settled in – having found their first small jobs and a tiny room to stay in – their money was stolen. Their landlord had gone through their room when they had been away and found the hidden pouch. Cedric and Cesca had protested upon their return, but he merely kicked them out, and there was no one who could help them. That day, they sat seething in an alley as they shared the bread they were given as payment for their day’s work. They had still some money left, the one they carried with them at all times, but it wasn’t a lot, and certainly not enough to go and spend it on another room for the night. Thus, they slept on the streets with one eye open.

In the next few weeks, they struggled to find work, and when they did find something, they were either paid in food and shelter or not at all and tossed to the streets after a full day’s work with a venomous laugh. It was fine to be be given something to eat and drink, though it was usually only very little, and they ended the day with growling stomachs nonetheless. Their little savings slowly depleted, and when the weather turned and it rained heavily for a week straight, and they had to pay for a room with a heavy heart, something inside Cesca snapped.

“By the time this happened, it had been more than a year since we had lost our parents, more than a year since we had begun travelling in a zig-zag throughout Scotland. We had to endure a lot, though things had started going better since January: It had become easier for us to find work, as we now knew how to present ourselves and had learned various new skills since. We hadn’t spent a single night on the streets since February because of our savings, and we had decided to stay in one place for longer periods of time after my 13th birthday. Maybe, we would even head south to England later this year. Cesca’s bad days had decreased significantly too. Naturally, just as we had settled into this life, it kicked us down in the most horrid way.”

“Despite everything, the core of her had remained: Cesca had always been a dreamer. Wandering off into the unknown, searching for adventures and something new. Sitting by a storyteller, her head propped on her hands and her wide eyes glittering with fascination, to learn every fairy tale she could. Loving Father’s inheritance and the new, shiny life it gave us, even if the lessons had been so bothersome, until the day of the Christmas party.”

“Cesca grew angrier after that stormy week, even though things began to pick up for us again afterwards, after we had departed that town for a nearby city. Her anger was not directed outwardly, however; she did not start to yell at me or slam doors or throw objects. Instead, it lived under her skin and burned holes inside of her.”

“Still, that incident with that thief of a landlord and Cesca’s rekindled anger were not the most notable events of that summer as it was the summer we met Chester.”

***

Somewhere, Scotland, Kingdom of Great Britain – July 1733

Cedric was on his way back from work when it happened. On a busy walkway in one moment, looking forward to a meal shared with his sister, and pressed against the wall of an alley in the other, blinking away stars from having hit his head.

When his vision cleared, he could make out two men towering over him. The one who had grabbed him from the street and was now holding him up and against the wall spoke first, “Come on; search him already,” he said to his companion. Cedric kicked about with his feet, wiggled to try to free himself, attempted to bite the hand that was covering his mouth, but the man was strong: He restrained Cedric’s legs with little effort when he kicked at him, kept his grip iron-tight, and did not even flinch when Cedric managed to ram his teeth into his flesh. He merely chuckled and told his partner to hurry up, and his partner patted Cedric down and rummaged in his pockets until he found and retrieved his pouch of money. Since the incident with that larcenous landlord, he and his sister had split their entire money and were now carrying half of it around each. Thus, when the thief opened the pouch, his eyes widened, and Cedric’s heart dropped.

“The brat wasn’t just carrying around his day’s wages, Ralph!” he exclaimed and showed the other one the pouch’s contents.

Ralph’s eyes lit up immediately. “And here I thought it would be yet another meagre grab.” He smiled at Cedric. “A little idiot, aren’t you?”

With a dirty laugh, he threw Cedric to the ground. Pain vibrated through his body. By the time, Cedric had recovered enough to lift his head, he could only see the two thieves hasten away. A second later, Cedric got to his feet and hurried after them. “Hey! Stop! Help! Please, someone stop the thieves!” he shouted but no one did; many merely murmured angrily under their breaths when he cut off their path in his chase or bumped into them.

Cedric did his very best to go after them, but they were older and taller than him with more energy and strength and wider strides, and no one was helping him, no one was helping him… Breathing heavily, his heart thundering in his chest from the strain, Cedric fell to his knees at last, the thieves unreachable. The crowd did not part for him, not quite: While some did move around him like any other bothersome thing blocking their way, others bumped and brushed against him. Someone scolded him for sitting in the middle of a walkway but Cedric could barely make out their words. Blood was rushing in his ears, and thoughts were somersaulting in his head.

How could he ever explain this to Cesca?

It had only been a month since their landlord’s theft, and about two weeks since something had fallen apart within his sister. Two weeks of Cesca having grown angrier and moodier. Cedric knew she was doing her best to hold herself together but he feared what yet another blow could do to her…

He raised a hand to his throat, felt the piece of thread around it which held the Towers ring close to his heart, and wept even harder. At least, at the very least, Ralph and his companion hadn’t discovered his mother’s ring too.

Suddenly, there was a hand on his arm, pulling him up and away from the crowd and the disapproving glances. Something inside Cedric froze before it burned, and he broke away, ready to run, ready to fight, because what were the odds? To be attacked and robbed twice on the same day? Twice within a few minutes? But he didn’t want to test his luck and…

Someone blocked his fist and said, “Hey, calm down. I don’t want to do anything to you.”

Only then did Cedric realise that the person in front of him was not much taller than him and that his own eyes were clouded with tears. He took a step back, wiped angrily at his eyes, and scrutinised the other boy properly.

Because, this time, it was indeed a boy. He seemed to be about Cesca’s age with wild brown hair and blue eyes and his hands held out in front of him as if he were approaching a scared animal.

“I just saw you crying there and thought to get you out,” the boy continued. “It is a very busy street, and people can get trampled to death, you know? Didn’t want to see you flattened…” He paused. “Maybe I shouldn’t have added that...”

“It’s fine,” Cedric replied a bit gruffly. “And thanks.”

The boy tilted his head as he mustered him. “Why were you crying in the middle of a street anyway? It must have been something very upsetting,” he said and quickly added, “If you want to talk.”

Cedric rubbed his eyes. “I don’t. And thanks again for saving me, but I should really leave now. My sister is waiting and…” Fresh tears welled in his eyes when he thought of Cesca.

Without a word, the boy grabbed Cedric’s arm and dragged him after him for the second time today.

“Hey! What are you doing? Let me go!” Cedric protested.

“Won’t do!” the boy returned. “We don’t know each other, sure, but you have a face like a wet weekend. And I don’t know your sister either, but I’m sure she wouldn’t like to see you like this, and you wouldn’t like for her to see you like this, right?”

“No… but…”

“Then it’s agreed upon!” he interrupted Cedric. “I’ll get your mood up again before it gets too late and your sister starts to worry about you! Now, what’s your name? Mine’s Chester Fleming…”

***

“… And that was how I met Chester. It was odd, of course, to be dragged across the city by a strange older boy, but I was used to whirlwinds, and he had been right: I didn’t want to return to Cesca gloomy and with red-rimmed, teary eyes.

“He brought me to a beautiful plateau from which you could see almost the entire city and shared the candy with me which he had purchased on our way there. Although we were strangers, Chester spoke freely with me, and I did eventually forget about the ordeal with the thieves as I listened to his stories, looked down upon the city, and put candy after candy into my mouth. However, this did not erase what had happened: that I had lost half of our money. And when it was time for me to go, everything came crashing down on me again.”

Cedric halted on the stairs. He had to go down and back into the city to get to Cesca but his entire body felt like lead. She wouldn’t be mad at him; he was certain she would not be. She would be mad at Ralph and his friend and worried about him. Still, he couldn’t go on; he could not. He didn’t want to tell her anything to break her further. He couldn’t do that.

“Kris?” Chester had been a few steps ahead of him on their descent; now, he was standing right in front of Cedric, his blue eyes full of concern.

“I can’t do this,” Cedric whispered and sat down on the stair. He folded himself together, head buried in his knees and arms wrapped around his legs. “Everything has been going so badly and…”

His eyes burned up again, and tears were ready to cool them but he didn’t want to cry again. He was so sick of crying…

“What happened?” Chester asked with a hard voice. “I know you said you didn’t want to tell, but it must be something very, very serious if you are like this. Please tell me. Maybe I can help.”

“No one can help,” Cedric said, and the words made his chest tighten. “Our money… I lost half of our money.”

“You lost it? Where?”

“No, not like that…” Cedric gulped. “It was stolen…”

“Ah, I see,” Chester said with a strange tone. “Do you know by whom?”

Cedric looked up. “I don’t know why it matters. It’s gone. That’s what matters. The money’s gone…”

“No, it matters too. Who stole your money, Kris?”

“Two men… I think one of them was named Ralph…”

Chester’s eyes darkened momentarily before his face lit up again. He crouched before Cedric and put a hand on his shoulder. “Do not worry, Kris. Trust your new friend Chester, and everything will be perfectly fine again, okay?”

***

“His plan went as follows: I should return pretending that everything was all right; Chester would lend me a few coins which I could show Cesca as the money I had earned that day. Chester would get my money back, I would hand him the borrowed coins, and all would be right again.

“I had my reservations about this plan, of course, particularly regarding the part about Chester getting my money pouch back from the thieves. He assured me that he would definitely be able to do it and reiterated to trust him. I ended up agreeing to the plan; for one because I really didn’t want Cesca to know what had happened but also because I wanted Chester’s word to be true.”

“Two days later, when we met up at the foot of the staircase to the plateau as we had the day before too, Chester grinned widely as he held two bags out to me: one was unfamiliar and filled with candy, and the otherwas my pouch with all the money inside.

“When I asked him how he did that, Chester only said that he knew the right people.”

***

It was a particularly sunny day when Cedric stumbled down the stairs.

It had been almost three weeks since he had met and befriended Chester, and they had agreed to meet up every other day at the plateau. Cedric had grown to look forward to this hour or two between the end of his work day and the beginning of dusk. He had never had a proper friend before and was very glad that his first one was Chester, not only because he had saved his and his sister’s likelihood: He was kind and funny, and whereas Cesca used to tell him fairy tales – dreamy stories of faraway adventures and lands, of magic and wishes – Chester gave him stories of things that had actually happened – stories Cedric knew from his history books, as well as anecdotes Chester had heard from others. Despite his age (he was 17, one year older than Cesca), Chester had travelled around a lot in England and Scotland and met many interesting people. It was pleasant and soothing to listen to him, and just like that first day, Chester’s stories had the ability to fully distract Cedric’s busy mind.

However, although he spoke about other people’s experiences a lot, he rarely parted with any details on his background and personhood – not that Cedric told him much of his story either; he hadn’t even revealed his actual name to him, had only given Chester the false names his sister and he had chosen to use over a year ago. Cedric had told him that he and his sister were orphans without going into any more details though, and during that one conversation, Chester had admitted to being one himself as well. That was all Cedric knew. Over the last few weeks, he had also learned that his friend liked red candy the best (the taste did not seem to matter to him, just the colour “like the setting or rising sun”), loved climbing up trees and façades and balancing on tree trunks and the edges of roofs, disliked getting wet (apart from taking baths in a river, thankfully), and, most curiously, held a special kind of hatred and distrust for adults in his heart. It was curious to Cedric because he did not know the reason (nor did he feel like enquiring; it seemed to be a private matter, and they had not known each other for long enough that he was in a position to pry, he thought) and because Chester was nearly an adult himself.

Now, Chester’s story – how a man he had met named Joseph O’Connor had once tried to scale Tron Kirk’s stone spire in a drunken stupor– was broken apart by Cedric’s tumble and yell. Immediately, Chester rushed to his side and helped him up.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Cedric nodded faintly but dug his fingers into the fabric of Chester’s shirt until his head didn’t spin anymore. “I… Yes, I think I am,” he said at last. “I think I just scraped my knees and a bit of my hands.”

“Thankfully, you stumbled on the last stair,” said Chester and helped Cedric stand on his own. “You didn’t seem to have hit your head.” He paused. “You didn’t hit your head, right? I heard of people who dropped dead hours after hitting their heads even though they were fine in the hours between.”

“No, I didn’t. But I should really get going now.” Just as Cedric took one step forward, his legs buckled under him, and pain exploded in one of his ankles. Chester barely managed to catch him on time.

“I think I hurt my ankle instead,” Cedric said sheepishly. Chester assisted him to sit on the step and then gently rolled up Cedric’s trousers and inspected his ankle by poking it carefully; Cedric clenched his teeth together to stop him from whining loudly.

“It doesn’t seem to be broken, thankfully.”

“But Fey awaits me at home, and I can’t walk like this.” Cedric looked up at the darkening sky and felt sick.

Chester turned around and gestured to his back. “Come, I’ll carry you, Krissy.”

***

“Oh, there you are fina-” said Cesca as she opened the door with wide eyes and her chopped-short hair stuffed under a bonnet. Her eyes widened a bit further when she saw Chester. Then, she positioned herself right in front of him and braced her hands against her sides. Last year’s wound had left a scar along Cesca’s face, and she was a little upset that it was only a faint one as she thought that a more pronounced one might have made her look even “fiercer.” (Cedric was sure that she was overall happy that it wasn’t a deeper one; after all, she had always been proud of her looks.) The scar, coupled with the stern expression on her face and her ever-burning anger glowing beneath it, made Cesca look fierce indeed.

“Who are you?” she asked gruffly. “And why are you with my brother?”

Chester stared down at her – he was half a head taller than she was – with his mouth slightly open, though he seemed to be at an unusual loss for words.

“That’s Chester,” Cedric introduced him. “He’s… a friend. We met a few weeks back, and he helped me get back home because I twisted my ankle when I fell down a stair.”

Cesca’s head snapped to her brother. The stranger was forgotten; with one stride, she was at Cedric’s side, touching his face and holding one of his grazed-up hands gently in hers. “You fell down a staircase? Are you okay? Do you need a doctor?”

“No, no doctor. I’m fine, Fey.” His cheeks turned red. “And it wasn’t a flight of stairs… it was a single one.”

She blinked at him. “A single one?”

Chester nodded and said, having rediscovered his voice at last, “It was a beast of a stair.”

“It absolutely was,” said Cedric and nodded too.

Cesca shook her head. “I’m just glad that you haven’t broken anything. You didn’t break anything, right?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“That’s good.” She looked up at Chester and narrowed her eyes as she mustered him. “And you’ve befriended my brother?”

Chester straightened his back. “Yes.”

“And brought him here when he got hurt?”

“Carried him all the way. It was nothing, really.”

Cesca let her eyes wander up and down, and Cedric saw that Chester’s forehead was beaded with sweat. At last, she opened the door behind her wider and gestured into the small room she and Cedric inhabited. “Well, then, why won’t you come in?”

***

“We spent a lot of our spare time together afterwards. Because Chester had been living in this city for much longer than we had, he showed us all his favourite places, from the high plateau and a beautiful meadow nearby to a small sweet shop hidden in a corner street. Sometimes, Cesca met him on her own, as she had grown fond of his company too and decided that he was trustworthy to be around us. She would listen to his stories intently, though never share one of her fairy tales with him, and her eyes would get their old shine back when she did.

“Chester also liked to give us gifts: He would get us food and books and trinkets, and me specifically sweets from that little shop whenever he could and Cesca flowers, to put in her hair or in a vase, and once, sheepishly, a dress he thought might fit her well when her favourite one ripped and couldn’t be mended anymore.”

“The summer passed in a beautiful rush of mostly successful work and hours spent traversing the area and rolling around grass laughing. Everything was still bright and shiny in our lives when autumn came: Our situation might not be the best (we were kicked out of our room once when a higher-paying tenant arrived, and there were still – were always – nights when Cesca and I clung together, not saying a word but sharing the memory of the burned manor and bodies nevertheless) but Chester brought new energy and light into our life, and we in his.”

“And in all that joy and bliss, we never once asked what he was doing during the day when we worked. How he got the money to buy us all those gifts.

“And where his bruises and injuries came from.”

***

Somewhere, Scotland, Kingdom of Great Britain – October 1733

The days were growing cooler and shorter and the leaves more colourful with every passing day. Autumn had been his mother’s favourite season because its light and colouring had always felt warmer to her than summer’s and because she had loved to see the world wind down slowly, getting itself ready to get their well-earned sleep in winter after a busy spring and summer. It was Cesca’s favourite for the same reasons too and because everything felt more magical to her in the golden glow of autumn.

Cedric, however, had never liked that it was the foreboding of the cold winter. With his hands buried deep in the pockets of his coat (Chester had helped him purchase it after he had worn Cedric down enough to accept the offer), he strode back home. He only dug out one hand to pick up a particularly pretty red leaf to take home and bring to Cesca.

He didn’t make it back to the dinghy apartment building: Chester found him two streets away with a grim expression on his face and multiple bags slung over his shoulder, two of which Cedric recognised as his and Cesca’s. Before he could ask his friend what was going on, Chester had already clasped his hand in his and was pulling him away from his one-room flat.

“What-what is going on?” Cedric pressed out, struggling to keep up with Chester. “Chester, did something happen? Is my sister all…”

“She should be fine,” Chester replied and quickened his steps, not even slightly turning his head to talk to Cedric. “We’re going to get her from her work – she’s at Old Mary’s tavern today, isn’t she? – and then we’re leaving.”

Cedric stared at him. “Leaving? Why? To where? Chester, I don’t…”

Chester tightened his grip on Cedric. “I’ll explain when we have got Fey and have left the city. I promise.” He paused before he added in a low voice, “I’m so sorry.”

***

“What on earth is going on?” Cesca asked when they had passed through the city gates and left them behind, though they were still visible in the distance. Cesca hadn’t even had the chance to be upset to leave work early and lose her day’s wages; Chester’s pleading eyes and voice had smothered any anger she could have felt in that moment. Mirroring his grim face, she had simply left the tavern with a quick apology to Mrs Mary, grabbed a bag and Cedric’s other hand, and allowed herself to be guided away from yet another home. “Chester, you promised us an explanation and you owe us one too. What is going on?”

“When we’re a bit farther away…” Chester said and quickened their pace again, pulling Cedric along with him and making Cedric pull his sister after him too.

Cesca halted abruptly, bringing everything to a stop and making Cedric tumble against Chester’s back. She yanked on Cedric’s arm which caused him to lose his grip on Chester and fall against his sister. “No, explain it now,” Cesca demanded. Her now chin-length hair was blown about by the wind. “I’m not following you blindly to wherever with my little brother.” Her voice softened as she continued, “Please, Chester, tell us, what happened? Who hurt you?”

Chester turned around to them then. Cedric sucked in the air when Chester faced them as he could finally make out the bruises that peeked out from behind Chester’s scarf and bloomed around his throat like a collar and the red rim around his eyes. “I’ve messed up,” Chester said in a thin voice. “I’m sorry I’ve messed up. We tangled with the wrong people, and I accidentally made them aware of you and…” He paused, bowed his head. “Please… Fey, please let me explain everything to you later. We need to get going before they…”

“He could never finish that sentence; it was broken off by the people we were running away from: They came by horse and by carriage, and a knife flying through the air and past Chester interrupted his words and distracted us for long enough for them to grab us and haul us into the carriage.”

“It turned out that Chester had belonged to a group of child thieves led by a sixteen-year-old boy named Flynn. He had gathered many orphaned children over the years – some were his age like Chester, others as young as six – and instructed them in the art of thievery. (Flynn himself had learned it from a man who had taken in street children to commit crimes for him.)

“Chester had encountered Flynn when he was eleven; he had been part of this group ever since. They sometimes moved between towns too, losing and gaining members from place to place. They had stayed in that city the longest because of its size, and everything had gone well until they had begun stealing from Percy Lennox’s gang.”

“Lennox and his gang were infamous in the Scottish underworld and known for their ruthlessness. Flynn’s thieves had stolen money from a shop affiliated with Lennox once by accident a few months ago and then fell into blind recklessness and greed.”

“They had got caught yesterday at last, with Lennox and his people hunting down all members of Flynn’s group so that they could punish them. Chester had managed to escape when he had been captured a few hours before I ran into him. Some of Lennox’s men had seen Cesca and me with Chester before and mentioned to Chester that they would get us too, uncaring that he assured them that we had nothing to do with the thievery at all.

“For that reason, he had come to get us and made us escape at once, though Lennox’s men had been faster in the end after all and...”

***

~Cloudia~

Cedric trailed off and stared absent-mindedly into the distance, all while circling his thumb over Cloudia’s hand. She mustered him for a moment. He had told her a good amount of his story already, and she had listened to him intently; still, it was difficult for her to think of him – her ever-laughing Grim Reaper – as that serious, worried boy who clung to his older sister.

“You don’t have to continue if you don’t want to,” Cloudia said after a few minutes of absolute silence.

Cedric shook his head, having recovered from his stasis. “No, I want to keep going for a bit longer at least… It’s just…” He leaned forward, pressing his forehead against the knuckles of her hand. A bitter laugh escaped from his lips. “It’s been so long ago, and everyone from that time is truly and fully dead except me, and I still barely wish to talk about that piece of my past, even to you. It’s silly, is it not?”

Cloudia raised an eyebrow even though he couldn’t see that. “Well, I doubt that whatever you did, whatever you had to do, was that bad. And, at any rate, it was a very long time ago. Also,” she added, suffocating her own curiosity, “you can skip all the unimportant bits of that part if you want. It’s not as if you told me everything about the time before too – or begun with your birth. I do like a lengthy novel but not under these circumstances.”

He laughed again, brighter this time, and the improvement made Cloudia’s skin tingle in joy. “You’re right, of course, Countess.”

“When haven’t I been?” Cloudia tugged on his hand to make him look up again so that she could see his face as he went on…

***

~Cedric~

“They brought us to their hideouts where they had taken the other members of Flynn’s group of thieves too. When they had collected them all, they guided us to a room where Percy Lennox himself was sitting. He began to talk how he did not take kindly to what the thieves had done and that they had cost him a lot of money before two of his henchmen dragged a brunette boy into the room. He had been beaten up badly, and his face was swollen and cut. I had never seen him before but I knew instantly that this must have been Flynn, the leader of the thieves.

“The two henchmen forced Flynn to his knees, and then a third one came with a flintlock pistol and shot Flynn right in the head.”

“It was a rather horrifying sight. I had been embracing Cesca since we had been led into that room and I remember holding her even tighter, and she me, when we saw Flynn getting shot and his body toppling backwards and left to bleed out on the ground. Lennox continued that, with ‘our’ shabby leader now gone, it was time for someone else to take control of that little thievery group: Despite the troubles they had caused him, he was fascinated by their skills. He wanted them to work for him, robbing people at his command and undertaking other kinds of jobs for him as well, until their ‘debt’ – the monetary damage they had caused him – was repaid. Lennox emphasised that our labour under him would only be temporary: As soon as the debt was paid in full, we would all be free.

“Some anxious children tried to flee before Lennox had finished talking; they were caught and their throats slit open for their efforts. Two others attempted to run after he had mentioned the debt; they got their necks twisted and broken. The others remained, both out of fear and because they felt reassured by the part with the debt. If their work under Lennox was indeed only temporary, it would be easier to endure; it was good to have a ‘finish line’ after all.

“He did, however, emphasise that he only wanted people who could actually benefit him. This part scared me the most. Cesca and I had neither expertise nor knowledge in thievery and crime. When would he filter us out?”

***

“Later, Chester tried to teach Cesca and me a few things without Lennox’s people noticing that something was amiss. It turned out that, despite my lack of experience, I was not empty of skills: A lifetime of weaving baskets and making tableware had made my fingers rather nimble. I had never been so glad for my parents’ teachings as I had been in that moment – and I had never wished to spend long hours with a potter’s wheel or willow rods like in that moment either.”

“I might have the needed talents to be a thief, but I did not have the conviction and the courage to do it. Chester made sure that we would be sent out on missions together – to steal a specific letter from a drawer, a piece of jewellery, a key that opened something we didn’t need to know – so that Lennox wouldn’t learn that I was too hesitant to ever take anything because whenever I was about to, I was transported back to that cabin in the woods.

“How would things have turned out if I hadn’t taken more than I should have? If I had left the cabin on time, or never begged to go in?”

“Lennox, of course, noticed this. He had eyes and ears everywhere, but he did not kill me on the spot. He simply reassigned me to different work, shuffling me from task to task and making me do whatever needed to be done in the moment.

“This astonished me, obviously. Why was he so lenient with me specifically? But as a child, I was merely relieved to be allowed to live another day, relieved to know that I wouldn’t leave Cesca all alone. And as an adult, this arrangement had become so commonplace and natural to me, as had my position in Lennox’s gang, that I never thought to dwell on this oddity.”

“A month after we had been forced to join him, Lennox had cut down Flynn’s remaining thieves – with Cesca and me included – from eleven to seven.”

***

“We might not have needed to spend another night outside in dirty alleyways and under bridges, but we had to tread carefully at all times, for we lived in the constant terror of doing something wrong or something that could upset Lennox in any way. We might have been together and been able to huddle together and comfort one another but we were frequently separated for our differing tasks. We might have steady work but it was one that gnawed at our souls. A startlingly stable life, albeit one filled with fear and devoid of peace.

“But as the time passed, as weeks turned into months, months into years, and years into decades, we had grown number, duller. Something inside us had eroded over the years and made us complacent and used to what we were doing. We still worked and worked to pay off that never-ending debt and be able to leave, but this was what we had been doing for so many years now and it was all we were familiar with, and this unsafe existence still brought about a kind of security that we couldn’t quite turn away from. The qualms from the first theft were extinguished, the tears from the first kill dried out, and even the nightmares from it all that would fill every night for years and years eventually lessened. Everything we did was a necessary evil we had to do to survive.

“This was our life now. It quickly surpassed Cesca and my time moving between towns all alone and later even the time we had spent with our parents. Everything we did for and with Lennox’s group became our normality. The errands we ran, the crimes we committed, the long hours we spent drinking together and going to...”

***

~Cloudia~

“Why did you stop? Is something wrong?” Cloudia asked. She scrutinised him curiously as Cedric turned his face away from her.

“I… I had simply begun to ramble,” Cedric replied at last, his voice a little high-pitched. “And I didn’t want to stretch this out for so long. Please give me a moment until I’ve caught myself and found a good point for resuming, Countess…”

***

Somewhere, Scotland, Kingdom of Great Britain – November 1753

~Cedric~

Cedric looked up to the sky. It was grey and overcast. Clouds were crawling over the sky but at least they weren’t heavy with rain. The icy wind was bad enough; he didn’t need rain to be added to the terrible weather too, not when he was out running an errand. A special one, even.

But then, Cedric thought as he raised his shoulders against the cold and trudged through the city, it is almost December. The weather’s only going to get worse. It’s a wonder that it hasn’t snowed yet.

Shivering even beneath the multiple layers of clothes he was wearing, Cedric made his way to his sister’s favourite bakery. It was all the way across the city and already a bother to get to on days when the weather was good and friendly. However, Cedric hadn’t seen Cesca in a week as he had been sent away to another place for a mission – this time, it had taken him all across the Scottish-English border –, and Cesca hadn’t wanted him to bring her something from there, so he was going to get her something from here. They had agreed to meet up at a park that was located about halfway between the bakery and the headquarters afterwards. Albeit it was certainly a walking-heavy day today, Cedric did not mind it much (he only slightly minded the cold but then he had never been fond of autumn, particularly autumn rolling into winter) because he ached to see Cesca.

The ache from being away from her had lessened when he had grown into adulthood but never vanished. Until the debt was paid, and they were finally freed, Cedric and Cesca only had each other to truly trust. It did not matter how many people they had befriended over the years or how close they had become to their debt sharers. At the end of the day, it was only them – Cesca and Cedric.

“Out of all the others, we trusted Chester the most as we had known him the longest. And while we had forgiven him for pulling us into this mess (he had done this unintentionally after all), that incident had created a wound that had never fully healed. For me at least.”

Holding the paper bag pressed against his body and soaking in the pastries’ warmth, Cedric headed straight to the park. He only stopped for a brief moment when he noticed a sweet shop. He went in and out – it did not take long, maybe a minute or two – and then he was already on the road again; only now one of his pockets was heavy with candy.

Cedric found Cesca sitting beneath a tree. At this late hour and in this cold, there was barely anyone else in the park. The temperature had dropped further since he had set out on his errand run, and Cedric’s breath turned into white clouds in the air now. Cesca, however, seemed perfectly unbothered by the cold. She just sat there – legs stretched out, hands pressed against the frozen ground, and eyes fixed on the sky – as if it was the height of summer, not a late autumn night. For a moment, as Cedric looked at his sister, it was as if they were children again: Cesca sitting idly under trees, listening to the nature and turning stories in her head, and Cedric sighing in relief of having found her at last, a call to come inside as dinner was ready at the tip of his tongue. And then, he blinked, and they were orphans and adults again.

“How did it go? The mission?” Cesca asked without taking her eyes off the night sky when Cedric settled down next to her.

“It went well,” he replied. He debated whether to give her any details and ultimately decided against it. Instead, he asked, “How has it been for you?”

And Cesca grew quiet at once.

“I was always reluctant to talk about work. I did what I did and did not want to dwell on it any longer unless absolutely necessary. Cesca, on the other hand, did not like speaking about her work at all. She had only reassured me that she was not doing anything dangerous not long after we had been forced into Lennox’s gang; she refused to say anything else.”

“I mean in ge-” Cedric said when she didn’t answer. Cesca cut him off with a shake of her head. “I know what you mean,” she replied. “I was only wondering…”

And now, at last, did Cesca turn to her brother, her brown eyes dark but her hair alight – moonlight hair shimmering in the silver light.

“As a child, Cesca had always wanted to grow her hair out and show it proudly to the world, but ever since we had to join Percy Lennox, she kept it boyish short and firmly under bonnets and hats at all times. It was a rare sight to see her bareheaded, and light being able to tangle in her silver hair.”

“I was thinking,” Cesca said, and something about her tone made Cedric back away ever so slightly. “Wondering, really: When you’re sent someplace else for a mission, why don’t you try to stay there?”

Cedric blinked at her. “Why should I?”

“Why shouldn’t you? Wouldn’t it be better than to remain here?”

“Why would it be better?” he returned aghast. “They never let me take you with me – if I left while on a mission, I would leave alone. And we don’t have that much to repay anymore. We suffered major setbacks when Ezra and Maud died but we should be almost done now.”

Cesca pressed her lips into a thin line. “We should be, yes,” she said hollowly.

Cedric took her hand in his. Her hand hadn’t been bigger than his in many, many years now; still, it always sent a shock through his system to see how small it was now inside his. “Yes, and when we are done, we will be able to leave together.” He gave Cesca’s hand a squeeze. “With Chester too, if you wish.”

“Ceddie, I…,” Cesca continued in a low voice before she shook her head and leaned it against his shoulder. “Yes, I am still glad,” she said instead, “that we have each other at least.”

***

“Cedric.”

Cedric turned around to see Chester leaning against his doorframe, arms crossed in front of his chest. He was the only one here – in Lennox’s gang and the city as a whole – who knew Cedric’s and Cesca’s real names. Cesca had imparted them to Chester one day, a month or two into their new life, saying that she would have wanted to tell him the truth sooner if it had not been for that October day. He had traded his full name (“Chester” was merely a nickname) and pieces of his history too in exchange. It had been the same day on which they had forgiven him for his part in their current situation. Cedric had been mostly quiet then, having found the timing of it all odd; to him, that conversation had felt like a last message, a last chance to give their story to someone else so that it might never be forgotten. But here they were, twenty years later and still very much alive.

“Ah, Chester, what’s brought you here?” asked Cedric and gestured for Chester to sit on his bed while he turned to keep reorganising his desk.

“Couldn’t I have visited you just because?”

“Of course, you could have. It’s just become a bit rare lately, so I was just asking…”

“It hasn’t become that rare…”

Cedric lifted his head and raised an eyebrow at Chester. He withstood his gaze for a moment before he scratched his head. “Okay, maybe, it has,” Chester admitted. “I’m sorry; it’s been so busy lately. I really just want to talk though.” He paused. “If you aren’t too busy right now...”

“I am, actually,” replied Cedric and shuffled through more papers. “I still need to give my report to Lennox.”

“Right, of course.” Chester paused again before he continued, “I will be quick.”

“That’s fine, I…” All of a sudden, a realisation hit him. Cedric put down the documents he had been holding and looked at Chester again. “I’m sorry. I have been too busy to seek you out too.”

“It’s all right, Cedric.”

“It’s only that I’m a bit excited,” Cedric said, warmth blooming in his chest. “We should be almost done with our debt and…”

“Cedric,” Chester said, cutting him off and sighing. He ran a hand through his hair which was now nearly shoulder-long and usually bound into a ponytail at his back. He took half a step back, away from the doorframe and into the corridor, looked left and right before he stepped fully into the room. “Did your sister…” Chester began at last, and the strain in his countenance and his words made Cedric’s heart sink and his blood freeze.

“What’s with Cesca?” he asked.

“Nothing of note, but did she already…”

Someone knocked against the doorframe then, making both Cedric and Chester flinch. Chester even took a step away from Cedric.

“Hey, you,” said the man. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and Cedric couldn’t remember his name. It seemed to be mutual as the man simply nodded at Cedric and said, “Lennox is calling for you.”

***

“November passed in a blur. I kept getting sent to England for tasks which irked me as I couldn’t be with Cesca.

“Of course, it was because I wanted to be at her side. She was my only family, my beloved sister who had always been there for me. But my frequent travels bothered me mostly because of her. Because Cesca was so much worse than I.”

“I had never liked to see her go, never liked for her to be away, but I had learned as a child to accept that it was like that when I would look for her, and she was long gone, having run off into the unknown for her explorations and leaving me behind.

“She had always been the one to reach out to me, to take my hand, to keep me close.

“The outside had always called her away and away. But her heart always returned her home because it could never bear to be away from me.

“And though the situation was so very different now, the core of it was still the same: For years, Cesca would pull me into an embrace before saying ‘hello’ when I had been away for even a small errand – a message to be delivered to the other end of the city, or an item fetched from a specific place. She would insist on sharing a bed when we could spend the nights together, which wasn’t always, and she would hold my hand until she fell asleep.

“Eventually, Cesca had become more hesitant in her reaching out to me, but her need for me to be at her side, to be in her sight, had never decreased. I had started to close the gap more often then, taking her hand or pulling her close when she seemed to waver, and she would always lean into the touch and relax, and I would know that despite the years and the pain, she was still the same.”

“I left the city again and again in that month, for a couple of days or even a week, and I would always return with a panicked heart, wondering how Cesca had fared in my absence.

“But something would always feel off and tense when I would hug her then.”

***

Somewhere, Scotland, Kingdom of Great Britain – December 1753

The day began as regularly as any other: An unremarkable waking, a standard breakfast, a fresh list of tasks to go through if he wanted to keep his nails and decrease his debt. Only around three o’clock in the afternoon when Cedric had finished a letter delivery did the day turn and dip and begin its descent into chaos.

“Cedric,” Chester said, emerging from a side street with the quiet steps of a cat. He held a pouch out to him and shook it in his hand. “Do you have a moment? I have candy and something to talk about.”

Because Cedric had completed the delivery earlier than planned, he did indeed have time, so Chester walked him to the park where he had been with Cesca the month before (it was Chester’s favourite too), and Cedric led him to the tree under which Cesca had waited then. Cedric immediately folded himself together to shield himself against the cold as best as he could. The sky was fully covered in clouds today, grey and bleak, and Cedric wondered when it would snow at last.

Chester put a candy in his mouth and then handed the pouch to Cedric. He took it with a thanks and let it vanish into his pocket after throwing a sweet into his mouth as well. They sat like that for a moment in silence, freezing off their bottoms and rolling candy in their mouths, until Chester finally spoke.

“Cedric,” Chester began. “It was me.”

“Hm? You were what?”

He craned his head to him then, his blue eyes as hard and serious as Cedric had ever seen them. “The thief who stole from Lennox.”

Cedric nearly choked on the half-sucked candy. “What?”

“I was the one who stole from Lennox and his people,” Chester repeated emphatically. “It wasn’t anyone else who did that; it was just me.

“I was the one who decided to mess with Lennox. I was the one who got too cocky. I was the one who got all those children killed. I was the one who doomed you and your sister to this life, not because I happened to belong to a group of child thieves but because I instigated it all.”

Cedric stared at him. “What the…”

Chester grabbed him by the shoulders all of a sudden, pushed him down and against the cold, hard ground. If someone noticed the commotion, they did not step in. “And do you know what is worse than having got you into this mess, Krissy?” Chester said, his voice cracking now as he spoke. “That I could never get you out. That there was never an end to this at all except death.”

“But, but the de...” Cedric pressed out but Chester ripped his sentence apart when he yelled, “It’s been twenty years, Cedric! It must have been repaid tenfold by now, but here we are – still working for that bastard and still getting placated with a ‘not now but soon’ because he never intended for any of us to leave! Ever! Especially not Cesca, my Cesca…”

Cedric grabbed Chester’s collar. “What’s with Cesca?”

Chester laughed hollowly. “How can you be so old now and still such a child, Krissy? Surely you must have understood by now that I condemned her to the worst of fates as Lennox’s…”

Cedric punched him in the face, sending his head flying back. Before Chester could recover from the impact, Cedric reversed their positions. He slammed his head against the frozen ground, lifted his fists again and again to pummel Chester with punches, now that he was on top. Some of those punches landed, and Chester dodged the others. He swung his fists now too. Stars burst across Cedric’s vision when Chester’s knuckles hit his jaw. They punched and kicked at each other, rammed their elbows into the other, all the while rolling down the small elevation.

When they had transferred from frozen grass to uneven cobblestone, Cedric pushed Chester away and scrambled to his feet. He spat blood onto the ground and then looked up to see that Chester had stood up too, though he remained a few metres away.

“How could you…,” it burst out of Cedric. And just like the day he had met Chester for the first time, he felt broken and lost and only noticed that he had been crying all along too late. Tears ran over his face and mixed with his blood as he opened his throbbing mouth to repeat his question when…

“Because of you.”

Something inside Cedric stilled. Chester raised a bloody hand to his head and let out a bitter laugh. “Isn’t this the worst of all, Krissy?” he exclaimed. “That I only got so reckless and so greedy because of Cessie and you?”

Red-hot rage surged through Cedric then. He could not remember moving, or pushing him at all; he could only remember standing above Chester, breathing heavily. “What nonsense is this?” Cedric boomed. “To blame my sister and me for your faults and weaknesses?” He spat on Chester, his own body shaking. “I don’t want to see you again,” he said, the strength slowly leaving his voice. “I hope you go to hell – and stay away from my sister.”

Without another word or look, Cedric turned and ran.

***

“I was seething. My schedule was tossed aside as I walked and walked and walked through the city, blindly and aimlessly and with my whole body feeling as if it was on fire.

“My anger and my pain pushed me ever-forward and tangled my thoughts into a mess. And I walked and walked to cool my rage and walked and walked and walked on because it wouldn’t work.”

“I was angry at Chester for doing this to us with his recklessness. I was angry at Lennox for trapping us. And I was angry at myself for having known all along – of course, I had; part of me had always known, one way or another – and refusing to face it head-on.”

“When my fury had decreased at least, when my chest was not as tight from the pain anymore, I came to a halt. And my right pocket suddenly felt so heavy and weighed me down.”

Cedric collapsed against the façade of the closest building, leaned against it and slid down on it until he was sitting on the ground with his back against the stone. Passersby threw odd looks at him, but he ignored them all. He dug his hand into his pocket to retrieve Chester’s candy pouch, and Cedric would have thrown it carelessly onto the road if a piece of paper hadn’t sailed out of his jacket alongside it.

Frowning, he picked it up and turned it around to see the note on its back, written in Chester’s uneven scrawl: I am sorry that we haven’t told you anything earlier, Cedric. Stay away and do not look back.

Time slowed down at once.

The sky wasn’t darkening as swiftly, the people on the street weren’t walking as quickly, his heart wasn’t beating as frantically and still it was aflutter with terror and confusion.

Cedric raked his eyes over the note again and again until the letters blurred together into one long word and later into complete illegibility. His mind was racing and then he was on his feet and running and running towards the headquarters.

“There hadn’t been a note the last time. No apology, no goodbye. But the strangeness and the distance had been there, right in front of my eyes, and I still hadn’t understood them as the markers they were before it was too late – again.

“Decades later, and I was still none the wiser.”

The headquarters were located outside the city and inside an old castle. People roamed the area at all times – guards patrolling the exterior and interior, people returning from tasks or heading out to missions, lovers sneaking into chambers, and others playing cards outside, warmed by the liquor they tossed down their throats. This was a place that was never truly empty or quiet; screams and laughter were always abundant.

Tonight, there was no one to be seen, and no sounds could be heard.

The air smelled of the dark and the cold – and copper and black powder.

The headquarters were located outside the city, just far enough away for nothing that happened here to be heard there.

The smells intensified as Cedric came closer to the building, its eyes hollowed out but not darkened. Candles burned behind windows and made the scene in front of him look almost ordinary. As if he could blink, and everything would be normal again, even if it was not fine.

With his mind filled with hopeful wishes and prayers running on repeat, Cedric kept close to the walls as he entered the castle.

And nearly stumbled over the first body.

He jumped back at once, but it was not Cesca, it was not Chester, and so he walked around it, kept his pace and heightened his vigilance. Cedric had just rounded a corner when he heard a shot ringing through the corridors. His heart stopped for a split second.

They are still here.

Steps followed the shot – not from one person or from two but from multiple, and Cedric couldn’t decipher how many exactly because his heart was thumping, and his ears were rushing, and damn it, hadn’t he learned to stay calm in situations like these? But none of them had ever involved Cesca. His sister, his sister, where was his sister?

He quickened his steps, looked over the corpses littering the ground in haste and in fear. He ran chaotically through the castle, opening and closing doors in a frenzy. He would have called out if he knew whether the attackers were gone already (it had been a while since the last gunshot, but he had lost his sense of time, and what if he had missed one? with his ears and mind everywhere but truly here?) and if he didn’t know that his voice would fail at the attempt.

The air outside had grown cooler while he had been inside. Cold hands wrapped around his body, but Cedric barely registered them when he was standing in the garden with the hard, steady thud, thud, thud of his heart setting his blood ablaze.

He found them at the back of the garden at last.

Chester had landed face-down, clothes matted in blood that bloomed from his back His right arm was stretched out, forever frozen in his last motion: reaching out to Cesca who was lying a few metres away.

How odd it was that both of them were dead, but only Chester looked as if he was. Cesca could have been sleeping just as well considering how she was lying on her side, her face relaxed, her tousled short hair gleaming silver in the dim moonlight.

But, of course, she was dead too. Her injury was merely on her chest, and her body curled up to hide it as if she had wanted to shield her little brother one more time from something bad.

Cedric’s knees gave up from under him. He crashed to the ground right in front of Cesca.

He hadn’t felt her death, hadn’t realised that something was amiss at all until he had found the note, and still and still, he knew that something inside of him had snapped even if he hadn’t noticed the tear.

His thoughts collapsed. His mind was empty, and his body was numb, and he buried his face in his hands because he couldn’t reach out to, couldn’t even look for a second longer at his sister’s cooling body and his own failure.

Maybe it was a good thing, that his mind and body had got overwhelmed and shut down when they did. That he knelt motionless on the frozen ground. There was nowhere for him to go, nowhere for him to be, not anymore. He could just stay here and joi–

The faint smell of smoke startled him awake. Cedric let his hands sink and lifted his head – and that’s when he saw him.

The man stood several metres away from Cedric, right by the back entrance to the castle. Despite the distance, and thanks to the lantern in the man’s hand, Cedric could make out the man’s finely tailored clothes, a suit and a top hat and a heavy coat. An ensemble that would have made him disappear in the crowds of London and one that made him stand out like a sore thumb in this poorly kept garden that stretched out behind a washed-out, brittle castle.

Cedric could only stare at the man. He must have got lost in the worst possible way to have wandered to this place at this hour – or, rather, he would have seemed lost if he wasn’t standing there so full of purpose with his head bent over a stack of papers.

And if another man didn’t emerge from within the castle then, his clothes stained slightly with soot and blood and a hunting rifle in his hands.

Cedric felt nauseous while the man with the rifle spoke something unintelligible to the dapper one before he peeled away into the night. The man in the fine clothes, however, remained where he was. A moment later, he folded the papers and put them in his pocket and blew out the candle in his lantern as if he had all the time in the world.

And then he lifted his head…

… and looked right at Cedric.

Cedric held his breath.

With the candlelight gone, the man was repainted under the winter moonlight: He looked otherworldly with his blond hair lightened to white and his green-blue eyes glowing in the dark.

They bore into him, and they stared at each other for another long, long moment.

Then, the man turned and left.

And the night was illuminated orange and red.

***

Silence descended upon the room when Cedric ceased talking. He wondered what Cloudia must be thinking now as she appeared to be deep in thought, but he didn’t dare to ask.

He wasn’t ready to hear those words voiced aloud after all.

And as they remained in quiet togetherness with their hands still interconnected, Cedric shifted a little in his chair – and felt something heavy in his right pocket. For a moment, he froze, wondering if he was imagining the weight while he was wide-awake or if he was fast-asleep and dreaming. With slight hesitation, Cedric reached into his pocket. He sighed in relief when he procured not a sack of candy and a worn note but Milton’s tinderbox. Its small blue stones blinked in the light as if in greeting.

“Oh, why do you have Milton’s tinderbox?” Cloudia enquired.

How nice it was of Milton – to unwittingly provide me a new topic of conversation from afar.

“I looked for him after I woke up and before I came to see you. He’s awake again,” Cedric told her and mentally bit his tongue to leave out Milton’s current state of mind for now. Between Cloudia’s injury and miraculous recovery and his story, there was enough heaviness and enough to worry about; he didn’t even know if Milton wanted her to know at all. “I got him to eat some breakfast because he forgot, and he forgot to take his tinderbox with him too, and I fetched it before we left.”

Cloudia’s eyebrows flew up. “He forgot his tinderbox?”

“I know it’s important to him, but why are you that surprised, Countess?”

“Because it used to be his mother’s,” she said.

“It is? Milton didn’t speak a word of that.” Cedric turned the tinderbox in his hand, and he was both taken by its beauty and saddened at its sight as he recalled the file Cecelia had compiled for him: Kordelia Bloomfield, Milton’s mother who had died giving birth to his sister before he had even turned 15.

How weird it had been, to read bits of that file. Near-same name, both dead so young and so sudden.

Cedric tightened his grip on the tinderbox and felt that its bottom was strangely uneven. “Milton said that I could hold onto it for a while, but if it used to be his mother’s, I think I should return it to him now. And Kamden might wake up anytime soon now, and I don’t think I should be here when he does; he will certainly come to see you, Countess, and he definitely doesn’t want to see me.”

“He won’t be upset for long.”

“He’s upset right now though.”

Cedric stood up, and his heart ached when he let go of Cloudia’s hand. “And don’t worry, Countess, I’ll come to visit you again later,” he said and leaned forward to press a kiss on her head.