#unhurried

—

The midday sun gave no quarter.

Above Loktush the sky had bleached to white — not cloud, but heat distilled, the blue long since burned off and replaced by a blinding, featureless glare. The air carried dry grass and warm earth and the stillness of water going nowhere.

The pond lay as ponds do in summer: heavy, self-contained, indifferent to the hour. Its surface cast back the light in fractured silver — not a reflection but a wound in the eye. Small ripples crossed it at intervals, as though something below drew slow breath. Near the bank where the willows trailed their branches, the water deepened to shade-green and held it there, cool and still, folded into its own quiet. From the reeds along the far shore a splash rang out now and then — frog or fish — and then silence closed over it again, thick as pine resin.

Dragonflies worked the surface. Blue, green, half-transparent — each one a glint, a flash, a thing that was and then wasn't, gone before the eye could fix it.

In the far corner of the pond a heron stood.

Motionless. Patient with the patience of stone. Its yellow eyes moved across the water in slow arcs. Old enough at waiting that it had become something else entirely. Just being.

Below the dam, where the ground gentled into meadow and the Stebenka's shallow bed crouched between alders, three men were at work. Out on the meadow the horses grazed, mouths moving through the grass without ambition.

Henry and Hans stood a little apart from all of it.

Not far. But far enough.

Below them, three men. The two younger ones holding a plumb rule with their sleeves pushed high, and above them a master millwright — long pale tunic, blue embroidered hood slung back from his shoulders, leather apron worn to a dull gloss. He was calling something to the two holding the timber, pointing, and one of the journeymen set his tool down and crossed to the channel. They exchanged a few words. The master nodded and began marking on a wooden tablet. Distance swallowed every syllable.

Henry watched with his head tilted slightly to one side.

"I still can't quite bring myself to believe it," he said at last. He turned to Hans with a look that held a smile in it — a little uncertain, but true. "That we’re actually building a mill."

Hans's gaze moved across it all — the channel, the journeymen, millwright with his tablet, the slow drift of levels and measuring cords that made up whatever argument was being had down there, and beyond them the horses grazing along the bank without the slightest interest in any of it. Then he looked at Henry.

A smirk.

"And it'll cost a fortune."

Henry was quiet. He nodded — the slow, half-lidded kind, eyes turned a little inward. Reckoning, somewhere behind them.

"Everything the King gave me. Everything my father left me. That's my guess."

Hans looked back down the slope. The silence stretched a moment.

"It'll come back," he said. A small smile with the words, and nothing more.

The sun found the tops of their heads and stayed there. Above them, deep in the branches, a yellowhammer was making its case — the same short, insistent phrase pitched over and over into the heat, a grievance without end, requiring no audience and expecting none.

Then the master millwright broke from the group below the dam.

He came across the meadow at the pace of a man who considers his time well spent. No hurry in him — not in his step, not in the set of his shoulders. The blue embroidered hood sat across his shoulders out of sheer habit — no man needed wool in that heat. He carried his wooden tablet at his side.

He stopped and gave a measured bow.

"The site is well suited to the purpose, my lord. I've satisfied myself of it."

Henry's eyebrows went up. A brief glance sideways at Hans — barely a flicker — and then back.

"Then… how do we go on from here?"

The man cleared his throat. His thumb moved across the tablet's notations without his eyes dropping to follow it.

"A few days for the calculations, my lord — a week at the outside. Then I'll have figures for you. Materials, labour, coin, the full reckoning of the work."

Henry nodded, slow and thoughtful.

"When would you begin?" Hans asked.

The man turned to him.

"Should we come to terms with the lord, we can spend the summer and autumn preparing the meadow and the channel — so we may fell timber through the winter. And build come spring."

Hans went quiet. His eyes narrowed a fraction. Nose up, lips pressed just slightly together — the expression Henry could have drawn from memory.

"Finished next year, then."

The carpenter shook his head. No hesitation in it.

"No, my lord. The year after."

One eyebrow climbed. Hans gave a small snort, mostly to himself.

"Two years," Hans murmured.

Henry watched the faint tension move through his jaw — faint, private, the small labour of a decision being made and then unmade. Then it passed.

He turned to the millwright.

"We'll look for you at Klokotsch next week, master millwright.“

The man bowed and walked back across the meadow to his crew.

Henry turned to Hans. He wiped sweat from his brow with the back of one hand, looked at him, and smiled.

Hans gave it back. Quietly. Just the corners.

"Let's get out of this furnace," Henry said.

Hans was already turning toward the horses. He glanced back over his shoulder as he went. Beyond Loktush the meadows narrowed, and then the forest took them.

The shade came all at once — not as relief but as a different kind of world. The air beneath the trees was warm and still, untroubled by any wind worth naming. It smelled of sap and moss and damp earth — those layered, patient scents that don't move on their own but wait to be entered. Sunlight came through the canopy in sparse, shifting bands and laid its gold unsteadily across the forest floor, the patches swaying with the slow movement of leaves far above.

The horses slowed without being asked.

Their hooves fell soft on needle and leaf. The pace became the forest's pace — speed would have been a kind of rudeness.

Birds called from the canopy now and then — brief, half-finished phrases, as if each one had remembered only part of its song. And somewhere deeper in the trees, distant and rhythmic, a woodpecker was at work.

Henry rode a little ahead. He said nothing. Let his horse find its own way.

The animal's warm flanks moved in the slow, even rhythm of the walk. Behind him, Hans. The muffled beat of hooves. The drowsy quiet of the wood.

Then the trees began to thin. More light between the trunks — wider, brighter — and around a bend the sound of water reached them.

The horses heard it first. They turned toward it without prompting.

Henry let himself be steered. The stream was narrow and clear — threading its way between alder roots and blue-grey stone, the water cold and transparent. His horse dipped its head and drank in long, thirsty pulls.

The stream led them on a little, and then the forest stepped back.

A clearing — appearing quietly, like open hands. Round, enclosed on all sides by old trees standing close, the grass inside thick and soft, clover and daisies through it, and somewhere the sweet, steadying scent of wild thyme drifting from the warm ground. A single oak stood at the centre, old and broad, its bark deeply furrowed. The air hummed with insects.

They stopped at the edge of it.

Henry dismounted. He took both horses by the reins and led them to the water, then stood behind them and watched them drink — both at once, heads low, the stream bright around their muzzles.

Behind him he heard the rustle of cloth.

Hans had lain down in the grass where the shadow of the trees gave way to light. He was propped on his elbows, head tipped back, eyes closed. His chest rose slowly. He stretched his back — a long, slow arc — and then was still.

Henry tied the horses to a low branch and walked over without hurry, without a word, and sat down beside him in the grass.

Hans felt the brush of Henry's beard against his face — soft, light, the kind of touch that lives at the edge of dreaming. Then warm lips.

He smiled. Eyes still closed.

Then opened them.

He looked up at Henry in the slow summer light — both of them dappled with moving shadow. His eyes were calm. His lids heavy.

He turned his head slightly. His lips found Henry's.

They kissed slowly — no urgency in it, no pull toward anything. Only quiet, even pressure in which nothing remained unsaid. Lips soft and warm.

The forest breathed above them.

When they drew apart, neither spoke.

They settled back side by side, shoulders nearly touching, and looked out across the clearing.

At the centre, the grass stirred in a breath of wind too faint to feel on skin. The daisies nodded. A vibrant butterfly crossed the open light — and disappeared into shadow on the far side.

At the clearing's edge, where the undergrowth thickened, two hares broke from the grass. One after the other, they sat for a moment — ears high, perfectly still — and then were gone, three bounds each, the brambles swaying once behind them and going quiet.

Hans watched them until the last tremor left the leaves.

Then his gaze dropped slowly to the grass at his feet.

"I can't even remember the last time I hunted," he said. Quietly. More to himself than to Henry.

Henry didn't answer straight away.

He took hold of the hem of his tunic and pulled it off in a single movement, dropped it into the grass beside him. The air moved across his skin. He drew a breath. Then turned to look at Hans.

"Well," he said. "We could go. A hunting party. Up to Drzewolis."

Hans's eyes travelled across his bare chest. Slowly, without hurry. A landscape known by heart. Impossible to stop looking at. Then up to meet his gaze.

A small smile.

"As my lord of Rotstein commands."

He winked.

Henry snorted a laugh.

"Stop Rotsteining me, lord Capon."

He leaned over him — one hand planted across his chest, the other braced against the ground — and Hans yielded to the movement, let himself be pressed back into the grass. Henry hung above him, weight on his arms, face close.

Both of them laughing.

Eye to eye, so near.

The laughter faded slowly. Breath slowed.

Above them the leaves shifted in the soft wind.

Henry lowered himself — certain, unhesitating — and laid his lips against Hans's. Gently. Barely more than touch.

A question. An answer.

Hans's hands found his hips. They rested there — open, undemanding — and then began to move. Up across his back, slow as the afternoon. Learning, or perhaps remembering — each rib, each shift of muscle, each place where skin pulled taut or softened under the weight of a palm. Wanting to hold the shape of what they already knew by heart.

The kiss broke.

Henry looked down at him without speaking. Close enough to catch every flicker of light in Hans's eyes — and in them the sky, pale and deep at once, sifting through the canopy above.

Hans's palms went on moving. Up and down his back. Aimless, without purpose — a motion that simply did not want to stop.

"I love you so much," Henry whispered.

Hans smiled — that particular smile of his, the one that didn't begin at his lips but somewhere further in.

One hand left Henry’s back and slid into his hair. Fingers settling lightly at his nape. Drawing his head down.

He kissed him.

Their mouths stayed together — warm, soft, breath shared between them. Henry's lips moved against his, slow and almost pressureless, and then tongue met tongue. A moment of searching. Then finding.

And their mouths opened into each other.

Deep. Slow. Hungry in the way that patience can be hungry.

Henry's hand moved along Hans's side — across his ribs, over cloth, tracing back and forth — while Hans's hands descended his back by degrees. Lower. And lower still. Until they slipped beneath the waistband of his trousers and paused there, warm palms cupping his arse — firm, but with no demand in it.

Henry breathed out against his mouth.

A faint shiver moved through him.

Hans smiled into the kiss.

He felt Henry's arousal against his thigh — warm and hard, unmistakable, pressing closer. And felt Henry notice his in turn. Through cloth. The heat of it, and the tension.

The kiss shifted. Tender into hungry and back again — a wave that swells and settles and swells once more before it breaks. Their mouths parted for a breath and returned deeper than before.

Henry's lips moved across Hans's face. Across his cheek in slow touches, down to his jaw, and along it to his throat.

A shiver passed through Hans — neck to shoulders, shoulders down the spine, like a string plucked at one end and felt at the other.

Henry pushed himself up and swung astride him.

He looked down at Hans for a moment — without hurry, without anything that resembled urgency. Then he reached for the hem of his doublet, drew it over his head in one easy movement and set it in the grass. The shirt followed.

He stayed above him.

Said nothing. Just looked. His eyes, his lips, his chest rising and falling. The wound on his arm — weeks old now, nearly gone.

Henry's palm moved down his chest — from the collarbone, across the muscle, over the ribs. Slowly. 

Then he lowered himself.

Pressed his lips into the hollow above Hans's collarbone.

Hans arched slightly, his palms sliding along Henry's hips and over his sides — searching for something to hold, some point of steadiness, as though the ground beneath him had become less certain.

Henry's mouth began to move.

Downward, without pressure, without haste — along the collarbone, across his chest, over skin warm and faintly salt with the day's heat. His lips grazed the surface, breath following close behind — hovering just above skin. As if the touching of everything at once would be too much. And so it came piece by piece.

His tongue found a nipple. Circled it — once, slowly. A shiver moved through Hans like a current, spreading from the chest outward, dissolving at the fingertips.

Henry passed over it again. Lightly. Almost a question.

His palm, meanwhile, had travelled the length of Hans's stomach. Lower.

Through the cloth he felt the tension. The heat. The shape of want.

He raised his eyes.

Hans lay with his head tipped back, lids half-lowered, lips just parted. His breathing had deepened — each breath a little more deliberate than the last, as though the body were learning to attend to itself.

Henry moved back up.

Kissed him.

Hans's hands came up at once — both of them cradling his face, firm and unhesitating — and kissed him back with a hunger that had been waiting its turn.

Hans rose.

In one slow, fluid movement he shifted his weight and laid Henry back into the grass. Soft beneath him, thick, smelling of thyme and warm earth. Hans paused above him, still kissing him, in no hurry to stop.

Then moved down. Along his chin in small touches — each one light, each one slightly different — across his throat, onto his chest. Warm skin under his lips, and beneath it the pulse, steady and quickening.

Henry's fingers slipped into his hair.

Lightly. They rested there and followed the movement of his head, nothing more.

Hans's mouth went on. Down through the fine hair of his chest, along his ribs, across his flank. Patiently — as though time had agreed to wait. Nothing beyond this clearing, this grass, the two of them.

His hands moved down Henry's sides.

Then inward.

He loosened the cloth with practiced fingers and freed him into the warm afternoon air.

Hans looked up at Henry's face.

Just for a moment. Then his gaze fell again.

He drew his lips along the full length of him — slow, from crown to base. Henry shivered. The fingers in Hans's hair went still — arrested — and then gradually released.

Hans's mouth moved to the tip.

Took him in.

Henry gave a faint sound — quiet, deep in his throat, barely more than breath given shape.

Beneath his palms Hans felt the slow tightening of Henry's thighs — the tension building there like a tide, present and alive, each wave a little less willing to recede than the one before. He gave himself to it entirely. Lips and tongue, patient, with full attention that asks nothing in return. He felt every shiver. Every pulse of heat that moved through Henry's lap and quieted before the next one came. Heard every caught breath — uneven, unguarded — and Henry's fingers moving through his hair all the while, slow and almost wondering.

The tension in his thighs changed. It came stronger. More insistent.

Hans raised his head.

Looked at him.

Henry lay with his lips parted, his chest rising and falling quickly, his eyes carrying that particular softness that lives just past the edge of control — and in them, unmistakably, wholly: Hans.

Hans smiled — small, private smile — and moved up.

Henry's hands caught him and pulled him down without hesitation, and kissed him — hungry, with the full weight of everything that had been building. His palms moved across his back, lower, and stripped away his hose. Hans's hardness pressed against his stomach, hot and heavy.

Their mouths stayed together.

Henry's hands traced his thighs — firm, weighted, knowing exactly where they belonged. Took hold of him.

Hans moved his hips. Slowly.

Their arousals pressed together — pulsing, taut, a slow rocking that asked nothing urgent and promised everything.

The kiss broke.

Both of them still.

Close enough that the world narrowed to this — every line of the other's face, every shadow beneath the eyes, every small movement of the lips.

Silence.

Just them.

Hans half-closed his eyes. Kissed him softly — brief, light, the kind of kiss that wants nothing except to give. Then he rose. Shifted. Settled astride him.

Henry looked up.

One hand climbed Hans's chest — palm flat, moving across warm skin, across the heartbeat beneath it. Slowly. With the full awareness of every inch it crossed.

The other hand found Hans's.

Their fingers laced together.

Hans lifted himself slightly.

Looked into Henry's eyes.

There was nothing hidden in that look. Nothing held back. Only himself — open, entire, still.

Then his lids lowered, and he sank slowly down.

Henry's hands settled at his hips. Simply rested there — warm, steady, present.

And slowly entered him.

He stopped.

Just held. Didn't move. Hans's head was slightly bowed, his eyes closed, his lips barely parted. Each breath came slow and trembling. The body finding its way back to itself.

One of Henry's palms shifted — barely, the faintest stroke along his flank, back and forth. Almost a reassurance.

Hans opened his eyes.

Looked at him.

What lived in them had no name — or rather, had no need of one.

He sank lower.

Leaned down toward him — and Henry rose to meet him — and their lips came together in a kiss that was in no hurry to be anything other than what it was. Warm, slow, a quiet joining of mouths in the grass, beneath the moving canopy.

Henry began to move his hips.

Hans moved with him.

They went on kissing — mouths parting and returning, Henry's palms tracing Hans's sides in the rhythm they already knew by heart, the rhythm that needed no learning because it had always been there, waiting.

A drop of sweat ran down Hans's temple.

Fell against Henry's face.

Hans rose. Straightened.

He braced his hands against Henry's thighs and stayed there a moment — upright above him, chest lifting with deep, slow breath, the light between the trees laying gold across his skin in shifting bars, as though the afternoon itself had decided to touch him.

Henry's hand found the small of his back. The other moved slowly across his stomach, and then his fingers closed around him.

Stroked him. Slowly. The full length of it.

Hans tipped his head back.

His lids trembled.

They moved together. Slow — but with insistence that doesn't announce itself, only arrives. Each movement deep and answering. Toward each other and into each other. A rhythm slow and inexorable as the tide, the kind that doesn't ask permission and doesn't need to.

Their eyes met.

Only movement. Only that gaze. Only them.

Henry's hand left Hans's hip and climbed — along his ribs, across his chest — until his palm came to rest against his face.

Hans placed his hand over Henry’s. Turned into it. Eyes half-closed. He laid his lips against the centre of that palm — warm, slow, deliberate — as though it were the only place left worth arriving at.

Henry's palm moved slowly back down. Across his chest, across his stomach.

Both hands closed around him.

Hans's back arched.

He tipped his head back — and stopped governing anything. His body surrendered to what was coming — that gathering wave, deep in the place where only tension had lived moments before. A cold heat rising from the spine, from the hips, from the thighs and back into the groin. It spread slowly, with the quiet insistence of light appearing at the horizon's edge and filling everything, without haste, until there is no darkness left to fill.

Henry's hands didn't stop.

The rhythm of their bodies deepened. Each movement stronger, each press more urgent. Hans felt his breath grow tight in his chest — short, uneven — and the pressure building in his hips, the kind that doesn't negotiate.

He gave himself to it.

Not violently. More the way a vessel spills over — quietly, inevitably. A wave rising from the very centre of him — pouring into his hips, his thighs, his shoulders, the tips of his fingers.

Hans shuddered and let out a muffled sound. Then another.

He collapsed against Henry's chest in short, helpless shocks.

Henry pulled him in.

Both arms around him — firm, certain — and held him close. Began to kiss him. Across his face, his temple, his lips — wherever he could reach. Hans was still trembling against his chest, body moving in the last waves, breath ragged, fingers pressed hard into Henry's shoulders.

And Henry kept moving.

Harder now, deeper. Holding Hans with his arms, his mouth against his — and that heat which had been building the whole time gathered now without pause or mercy.

It receded for a moment. Returned stronger.

Until there was no way back.

His whole body drew taut — chest, back, thighs — one suspended instant, as though time had briefly stopped to watch — and then the warmth broke over him. Deep, full, flooding into every hollow of his body like water finding its level.

A long, slow exhale. His head fell back.

He grew heavy.

Neither of them moved.

Held together. In the grass. Chest to chest, breath in breath. Above them the leaves shifted in the soft wind, scattering light across their bodies in slow, broken patterns.

Hans's eyes were closed. Henry's too.

It moved through them still — in tremors, in small aftershocks, in that gradual settling, the way water finds stillness again after a stone has passed through it.

Henry's palm moved slowly across Hans's sweat-slicked back, still trembling faintly.

Nobody spoke.

Hans lifted his head a little.

Looked at Henry's face.

Eyes closed, lips slightly parted. Sweat on his skin, hair loose in the grass. His lids gave a faint flutter when a shaft of sunlight found its way through the leaves and crossed his face.

He leaned down.

Pressed a light kiss to his cheek. Another to his temple — soft, without hurry.

Henry's lips curved.

He opened his eyes. Blinked against the light — once, twice — as though the world had to reassemble itself into its proper shape.

He raised one hand.

His fingers drew a strand of hair back from Hans's brow. Slowly.

Hans leaned in and kissed him on the lips. Brief, soft. Then lay down in the grass beside him.

His fingers slipped between Henry's.

And held.

They lay still and quiet. Warm and stained and spent. Above them the leaves rocked in the faint wind, and between them the sky showed through — pale blue, endless, full of light. From deep in the forest came a distant bird. The hum of insects. The sound of the stream moving beyond the trees.

Henry turned his head and pressed his lips to Hans's shoulder. Lightly.

Then he felt something on his chest.

He looked down.

A ladybird was making its way across his skin — small, red, its seven black spots precise and serious, moving with the unhurried gravity of something that has somewhere to be and trusts it will arrive.

Henry extended a finger.

The creature stepped onto it without hesitation. Paused. Its antennae stirred.

Henry raised it slowly.

They both watched. The ladybird sat at the very tip of his finger — a red bead against the pale sky — and was still for a moment.

Then it opened its wing-cases.

And was gone. Silently, without trace. As though it had never been there at all.

Henry laughed — quietly, just a breath of it.

Turned his head to Hans.

"We should be going too," he whispered.

Hans sat up, arms resting on his knees. He looked around the clearing — taking it in.

"One more thing," he said. The sun hung over the courtyard like a coal that refused to cool.

The stonework of the Klokotsch manor gave the heat straight back — wall to air, air to wall, an argument that had been going on since morning. The courtyard held it all, a wide stone bowl with nowhere for warmth to escape.

Three figures moved at its centre.

Thomas stood facing the two younger men — feet planted, wooden sword loose in his right hand, wearing an expression of mild boredom that was not entirely sincere. Pavel came at him from the right — fast, with that look of concentrated effort he hadn't yet learned to conceal — and Thomas stepped aside in one fluid motion, the way a man avoids a low branch rather than a blade, and the sword cut nothing but air. In the same moment Lukas came from the left, lower, more considered — Thomas turned his blade and met it. Wood cracked against wood across the yard.

He stopped.

Gave a smirk.

Glanced to the side.

Against the wall, in the shade beneath the overhang, Jitka sat on the long bench. Mutt lay beside her, his head resting heavily on her thigh with the boneless contentment of an animal defeated by heat and happiness in equal measure. She was working her fingers slowly through the fur at his neck — slow, even strokes — watching the three men with a quiet smile.

When she caught Thomas's glance, the smile widened by the smallest degree. She gave a faint nod.

Thomas turned back. Shifted his weight forward. Blade up.

Pavel drew breath and came again.

Differently this time — in a wide arc, trying to force a turn. Thomas answered it, deflected — but that was the moment Lukas arrived. Quick, quiet, from the blind side. Thomas caught the movement at the last instant, shifted his weight, but not quite far enough. The blade caught him across the shoulder.

A beat of silence.

Then Pavel let out a yell — loud and entirely unrestrained — and Lukas followed immediately, laughter and triumph tangled together into something that echoed off the stonework.

From the shade by the wall came quiet, delighted applause.

Jitka folded her hands back into her lap.

Footsteps approached from the direction of the garden. Zdislava bent toward her.

"Your bath is ready, my lady."

Jitka gave a small nod. She didn't look at her.

She was watching the courtyard — Pavel and Lukas still laughing, still catching their breath, sweat running freely down their faces in the afternoon heat, their wooden swords held with a certain cheerful purposelessness. And Thomas standing between them like a monument to composure, hands on his hips, wearing an expression of wounded dignity that his shoulders were quietly betraying — they shook, just slightly, with the laughter he was declining to release.

The corner of Jitka's mouth rose.

She gave them a small nod — barely that — rose, and moved off. Zdislava fell in half a step behind her.

Mutt watched them go. Then he yawned enormously, dropped off the bench, wagged his tail once, and set off at an easy trot in the direction of Lukas. The canvas screen was drawn aside.

Sunlight entered the bathhouse corner of the garden — slanted, golden — and caught the surface of the water in the tub, setting it briefly alight. Small ripples moved outward from the sudden shift of air and stirred the mint leaves and the small purple clusters of lavender that had been turning slow circles on the surface.

Zdislava pulled the screen a little further.

Jitka stepped inside.

A long linen shift, thin as breath. Her hair loose around her shoulders. Bare feet on the warm earth. She crossed to the tub without hurry, and Zdislava drew the screen carefully closed behind her. The bathhouse folded back into its own shadow.

Jitka stopped at the edge.

Zdislava extended a hand. Jitka took it and lifted one foot over the rim — then the other — and lowered herself slowly.

Water moved around her legs. It climbed the linen of her shift — steadily, from the hem upward — cool and lukewarm at once, like an embrace still making up its mind. She eased herself down.

The water took her in.

Cold at first contact — and then less so, as skin and water came to terms — until what remained of the chill was only a quiet, patient kindness. The lavender flowers drifted toward her. Mint leaves circled her arms.

Jitka rested her head against the rim.

Drew breath slowly.

And let it go.

Long. Deep. The kind of exhale that begins somewhere below the reach of hands.

Zdislava moved a candle along the shelf — its flame leaned for a moment, then steadied. She took a small bowl, dipped it, and poured water slowly across Jitka's shoulders.

Jitka closed her eyes.

Water ran down her neck, across her shoulder blades, along her arms. Behind her closed lids: the heavy sweetness of lavender — dense, almost dizzying — and beneath it the cool clean edge of mint, clear as a spring. From somewhere across the courtyard came the distant sound of wood on wood — rhythmic, muffled — as though from another world entirely.

Each muscle surrendered in its own time.

Her shoulders dropped. Her back — tight, endlessly tight, that tightness she had stopped noticing because it had simply become the shape of her days — began to release, tension passing from her body into the water the way dye bleeds from cloth — slowly, completely — until the water holds it and the cloth forgets it ever did. Jitka couldn't have named the moment it happened. It was like falling asleep — not a decision, but the abandonment of the effort to stay awake.

Time dissolved.

There was only warmth, the weight of water, scent. The noise from the courtyard shrank to a murmur. The candle glowed somewhere orange and soft beyond her eyelids.

And then —

A movement. Deep, beneath her heart. Gentle, barely there — like a stretch in sleep, like the surface of still water disturbed by something that left no other trace.

A slow smile moved across Jitka's lips.

At the corners of her closed eyes, something bright gathered.

She laid her palm against her stomach.

Beneath it — a quiet pressure. Alive. Present.

An answer.

She stayed like that — hand on her belly, head resting back, eyes closed — and let the moment be what it was. Whole. Without movement, without thought.

Then she shifted — slowly, with full intention — and lowered her mouth beneath the surface. Then her nose. Then her whole face. Her whole head.

The sounds of the world withdrew.

What remained was that particular silence that exists nowhere else — dense, close, sealed. Air was far away. The courtyard was far away. Everything was far away.

Only water. Herself inside it. And the little one inside her.

She rose slowly.

The surface parted around her face. Thin streams ran down her cheeks — across her lids, across her lips, from her chin. She opened her eyes.

Above her, the canvas roof of the bathhouse. Through a gap, a strip of white sky.

She smiled, and turned her head.

Zdislava was watching her in silence.

Jitka gave a small nod.

The handmaid bent wordlessly toward the shelf and lifted the clean dry linen, folded with care. Henry parted the grass stems and picked a strawberry. Then another. A third.

He added them to the rest cupped in his other palm — a handful of red jewels, their scent sweet and earthy at once, summer distilled to something small enough to hold. He wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist.

Looked up.

Hans stood a few paces off. Bent at the waist, back turned. His fingers working carefully through the grass at the forest's edge. The fabric of his hose clinging and shifting with every move.

Henry straightened.

"Now that’s a view fit for a king," he muttered.

Hans went still.

Very slowly, he straightened. Looked back over his shoulder — one eyebrow raised — and then let his gaze travel the length of Henry. Unhurried. Deliberately. Head to boot and back again.

The corners of Henry's mouth made a quiet attempt at composure and failed.

Hans crossed to him. Stopped close — so close their eyes met without a word between them. 

Near. Still. Just that silence holding everything.

Henry leaned in — lips reaching for his— and Hans slipped a strawberry into his mouth and burst out laughing.

Henry snorted. Bit down grinning — sweet, overripe, almost honey — and Hans slid his palm to the back of Henry's head. 

Drew him in. Kissed him. Slow. Unhurried.

The taste and scent still there. The sweetness lingering on Henry's lips.

Henry brushed the back of his fingers along Hans's temple.

Looked at him from close.

"Shall we ride to Drzewolis today?" he whispered.

Hans smiled. Nodded.

Then looked down at both their palms — full of strawberries — and considered.

"Have you got something—"

Henry nodded before the sentence was finished. He went to his horse and drew a square of clean linen from the saddlebag. Tipped his strawberries in. Hans added his.

Henry folded the cloth into a bundle and tucked it carefully away.

Then he took hold of the pommel, turned, and smiled.

"Then let's ride." "—and the cook swore blind that this was exactly how rabbit from the Hradisch monastery was supposed to taste."

Thomas was barely holding himself together.

"But I give you my word—" The sentence broke apart before he could finish it, laughter cracking through the middle. "—not one of those cats was ever seen in that castle again."

He gave up entirely.

Jitka leaned back against the bench and let it take her — laughter running out of her and into the warm garden air, unguarded, unashamed, the kind that shakes the shoulders and puts tears in the corners of the eyes. Thomas watched her with that look he rarely let anyone catch: open, unguarded.

It wound down by degrees. She pressed her fingers to her eyes, drew a breath, and found his gaze.

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

The garden held them in its pleasant hum — bees in the flowers, light moving through the leaves overhead, the afternoon going quietly about its business.

Thomas cleared his throat softly. His eyes drifted away across the beds.

"I ought to go and see to—"

"Captain."

He stopped. Turned back.

She was looking at him directly, without preamble.

"I want you to know," she said, "how grateful I am. For what you give to Henry. To all of us here."

Something moved across his face — small, barely legible, the kind of change that only happens in people unused to being looked at squarely.

"The honour is mine, my lady," he said at last. "Truly."

He straightened, inclined his head, and walked toward the gate.

Jitka watched until he was gone. Then her eyes lifted — to the old tree's crown, to the way light sifted and resettled between its leaves, to the shadows crossing the ground beneath it. A quiet smile. A small shake of her head. Mildly surprised, and pleased enough to leave it at that.

She settled her back against the warm stone of the wall.

The wind came and went in the branches — fitful, without ambition, a breath here, a rustle there. The bees kept at their dense, ceaseless work among the flowers, that low purposeful hum that belongs to no particular hour. The heat lay along her forearms, her upturned face, the inside of her lids.

She began to drift.

Shadow fell across her face and she surfaced.

Henry and Hans stood before her, side by side, wearing the satisfied grins of boys returned from some minor adventure. Hans held out his hand — a gathered fistful of meadow flowers, loosely bundled, wilted at the edges from the heat, but bright: bellflowers, buttercups, ox-eye daisies, and the deep blue of cornflowers.

Jitka took it. Bent her head to them.

"I must have fallen asleep," she said.

Henry looked at her. "How do you feel?"

"Wonderfully." She nodded toward the bathhouse across the garden. "I had the most marvellous bath. Hans — that was a very fine thing you arranged."

Hans drew himself up with a breath of great ceremony and turned to Henry.

„Oh, but Henry is the true builder among us."

Henry's eyes made a brief skyward journey. He smiled.

"On the subject of building," Jitka said, "how did it go with the millwright?“

"Well enough." Henry rolled his shoulders. "He'll ride to Klokotsch in a few days with figures — what the whole thing will run to."

Jitka's face said that was worth hearing. She squinted at the sky, reading the sun.

"I should rest," she said, and began to rise.

Both of them moved at once — one on each side, hands finding her elbows without discussion, steadying her. 

Henry's hand paused at his pouch. He drew out the small linen bundle, slightly crumpled, and held it toward her.

Jitka opened it.

The smile that came was slow and full, the way warmth spreads through a room when a door is opened onto the sun.

"Tomorrow," Hans said, "we bring venison."

Henry nodded. "We'll sleep at Drzewolis and hunt at first light."

She looked from one face to the other. Then leaned forward and kissed each of them on the cheek.

"I shall be glad to see you both tomorrow.“

And the doorway took her. On the broad rock shelf between the tree crowns, a fire burned low — modest, almost apologetic, as though ashamed to trouble the dark around it.

The forest had given itself over to night. The crowns of the trees rose against the sky like black lacework, swaying slowly in the moving air — back and forth, back and forth — and between them the stars showed through in their thousands. The fire's trembling light held only a small amber bubble against the immensity. Beyond its edge the darkness began — quiet, deep, breathing with its own life.

Henry sat before the cabin, his back against Hans's chest. Hans's arms encircled him, fingers loosely laced across his stomach. Neither of them moved. They breathed together — slowly, in the same rhythm — and the forest breathed with them, as it had been breathing long before they arrived and would go on breathing long after.

Now and then a firefly threaded its way between the branches. A green light — small, intermittent — kindling and fading and kindling again, as though something in the darkness were searching for a path it half-remembered.

Henry looked up at the stars.

They flickered between the branches — cold, distant, indifferent to everything beneath them — and all the better for it. He laid his head back against Hans's cheek and watched them for a while, and simply was.

Then he turned his head.

Pressed his lips gently to Hans's face.

Then a little higher.

The corner of Hans's mouth lifted.

Then just beneath his ear.

A shiver moved through Hans — from the neck down through the shoulders, a quiet wave. He turned his head. Looked at Henry in the weak, wavering light, and kissed him slowly.

Henry's fingers slipped into his hair.

From somewhere far off in the trees an owl called. Once, twice — and then silence folded back over where the sound had been.

Their lips stayed together — but this was no longer a kiss of hunger or of urgency. It was presence asking nothing beyond itself. The warmth of breath. The softness of mouths that knew each other. A closeness so thoroughly woven into the fabric of things that naming it would have been beside the point.

Henry drew his palm slowly across Hans's temple.

Then they eased apart, just slightly.

Looked at each other.

In the surrounding dark their eyes were deep as forest pools — and in them the firelight moved, small bright reflections dancing and shifting, like memories of light.

Hans smiled — a quiet, inward smile. He leaned in and kissed him once more. Brief, soft.

Then both of them looked back into the canopy.

The forest whispered. The branches shifted. Somewhere deep in the dark a twig cracked under the weight of a forest creature passing through — belonging entirely to the night.

A firefly landed on Hans's sleeve.

They both watched it.

It lit — a small green light. Went dark. Lit again, blinked twice — and then went out entirely, and sat motionless on the cloth like a tiny shadow that had forgotten what it was for.

"We should sleep," Hans said quietly. "We ride at first light." The dark inside the cabin was total — the kind that has weight and texture, that presses close like held breath. It had swallowed even the memory of outline and edge. Henry looked into it and found nothing to look at. Only the soft, ink-thick everywhere of it, settled into every corner as though it had been there since the wood was cut.

The new bed gave off the smell of pine — fresh, resinous, a clean sharp note beneath the warmer smell of their skin, beneath the cool thread of night air finding its way through the gap at the door. Beyond the walls the forest murmured to itself. Steady. Unconcerned. The sound of something with no need of listeners.

Hans's head lay against Henry’s bare chest.

Stirred.

Henry bent his face into Hans's hair and breathed there — quiet, barely a kiss, more like an act of attention. Hans smiled. Henry didn't see it. He felt it — the small shift of a face against his skin, a change in pressure so slight it might have been imagined.

"Can't sleep?" Hans asked softly.

Henry moved a little, and the bed spoke beneath them — a low creak, new timber still negotiating the terms of their weight. His hand moved through the dark until it found Hans's, fingers reading wrist and palm before settling between his. Hans held them.

"I don't know why," Henry said. Almost nothing. Almost just breath with a shape.

Hans lifted his head and kissed him softly. Then settled back — just that fraction — and returned his head to its place on his chest.

Silence poured back in. The forest went on whispering.

"About a year," Henry said eventually. His voice was low, almost involuntary — the sound of a thought that had slipped out without quite meaning to. "Since Trosky."

Hans went still for a moment. Then his chest rose, and fell.

"Since I nearly lost you," Henry said.

Hans answered by closing the last of whatever distance remained between them — shoulder to shoulder, side to side, the whole length of him.

"And I nearly lost you," he said.

They turned toward each other in the dark.

The darkness between them was absolute — not a thread of light, not a shape. Only the warmth that came off the other's body, and the breath that could be heard, that moved warm against skin. Henry felt Hans's face close to his — near enough that the air between them had grown thick with it, a presence almost tangible, almost something that could be held.

Hans found his hand. Drew it slowly between their chests and held it there — palm against palm, and behind that, the heartbeat of each.

"But you have me," he whispered.

Henry's answer was barely a sound. Barely even that. The movement of lips in the dark, carrying what didn't need to be louder than this. "And you have me.“

He moved closer. Hans gathered him in.

And the dark held them both — warm, close, whole.