How long we stood there by the pool! How the moon bathed his face in silver light, painted his smile with pure beauty! I felt as though my chest were filled with overripe fruit, leaking sweetness into my blood.

I did not know a word to place on this new thing between us - I only knew that it was tender and warm. A great fear filled me, then - fear for this thing, for what it might do to us. It would consume us.

I looked up and found him watching me. Half of his face was shadowed, while the other was silver. Both were equally as lovely.

"Why didn't you write?" I asked him.

Connor studied the stars for a few moments. "At first, I just didn't want to," he admitted. "I kept thinking of what had happened before my arrest, and every time I thought to take up a pen, I was reminded of that night. I did not know what to make of it."

I might have gotten angry with him had I not understood what he meant. "I was so scared that I had ruined everything," I said. "When we didn't talk the next day."

"That was my fault." He looked down and scuffed one foot in the dirt. The full gravity of the situation hit me, then: Connor was not a person to let fear control him - and he never had been - but this scared him.

"For the last three months," he continued, "I have been staring at nothing but the empty horizon. Biddle escaped us. I was thinking too much. A few weeks ago, when Faulkner and I decided to turn back, I wrote to Achilles to tell of our lack of progress. It would have been unfair not to send you something, though there was nothing I wished to write, as I wanted to speak with you face-to-face. Hence the frog."

It was coming together now. I thought of that scribbled drawing and began to smile. "You still could have written something."

"What could I have written that I could not say directly?"

His words were soft, but I saw the downward turn of his mouth. I wanted to brush my thumb against that mouth until the frown disappeared. "I think," I said, "we both need to apologise, and start over."

He tilted his head, curiously. "Start over?"

"Yes." I could feel something spreading its wings in my heart, something that felt dangerously like hope. "I'm sorry that I didn't try to sort all of this out earlier. I'm sorry for causing you to endure three months of loneliness."

He murmured my words back to me, and added, "Ultimately, I am sorry that I did not kiss you sooner."

I smiled at the man who had become my best friend. There was none in my life so dear as him. "I'm Cassandra," I said. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

He stooped to brush a kiss over my knuckles. "I am Ratonhnhaké:ton, and the pleasure is mine."

I felt my cheeks heat up, and I glanced away as butterflies surged within me. He turned my face back to his with a gentle kiss. The others had been harder, like there was a point to be proven; the simplicity of this one sent my world spinning.

He drew back a little. "Let me court you," he breathed.

They were words I had never let myself imagine hearing - certainly not from him. But I couldn't stop the smile from taking over my face. "Okay. But," I added before he could get too joyful, "we cannot tell people."

He stepped away from me and tilted his head, puzzled. "Why?"

I searched carefully for my words before speaking. "I don't want Achilles to believe we are hindering our work. We both know what he would say if he knew. And I don't want Thomas to know - not yet."

His eyes narrowed slightly. "Why?"

The fog that tumbled off the mountains was getting closer, creeping through the forest, snaking between the trees. Perhaps that was what prompted me to reach for his hand.

"Thomas has just lost his love," I told him. "I don't want to rub salt into the wound by telling him about this."

He studied me for a few long moments, and I could not miss his look of scepticism. I did not want to keep this secret for my own gain - for indeed, I wanted to sing of my pride for him, of the tenderness I saved for him. What made him hesitate? Was it a mutual feeling?

In the distance, a wolf howled, and its song was mournful and wavering - an aria of fear incarnate. I pictured the wolves in my mind's eye: eyes shining like candles, the only part of these forest assassins one may glimpse before they clustered like shadows, wraith-like.

I had seen them before, roaming the mountain pass, lean and famished, with so little flesh that I could have counted their starving ribs. Slavering jaws, lolling tongues. Grey as famine and unkind as plague. Was there something of them in us, I wondered, a lack of humanity, a darkness that grew with every drop of blood we spilled?

But standing here with him, close enough to feel the warmth coming from him, I knew that the life in our veins was stronger than the darkness around us. We were everything that was not dead.

"Fine," he said eventually, as another wolf took up the howl. "But I do this for your sake, not for his." His voice took on a low note of warning. "And I will not hold my tongue for ever."

That seemed fair to me. Upon our agreement, we turned back and headed for home. The air grew impossibly colder, and as the lights of the manor glowed at the top of the hill, we quickened our pace.

Before we could cross the threshold of the manor's boundary, Connor held back. I looked at him - there was such wistfulness in his beautiful face. I asked him what was wrong.

He pulled me back by the hand and kissed me, one final time. "I may not get to do this again for a while. I want to treasure it while I can."

When we crossed through the front door, rosy-cheeked with the cold, and into the golden lamplight, Achilles rose from his chair to greet Connor. I stepped back to let them talk, and sought Thomas out.

I did not have to look far: I found him sitting, dejectedly, on the piano stool, tracing a finger through the dust on the keys. I wrapped an arm around his shoulders and kissed the top of his head in a greeting that was not returned.

Squeezing myself onto the stool next to him, I said, "Connor is home."

Thomas nodded. "I know."

His leg was tapping restlessly, though his face betrayed nothing. Where was the bright, vivacious friend I had known for so long? Lost, buried under ash. I reached out, placed a hand on his knee to cease the tapping.

"I was thinking of visiting my family this week," I told him. "Do you want to come with me?"

"Sure," he said flatly.

I placed my head on his shoulder - he did not respond. His leg resumed its restless tapping. Feeling something in my spirit sink low, I straightened and said, "Come now, I think I might play something." I touched the piano keys. "What should I play?"

He was quiet for a few long moments. "Something sad."

Though my heart was not sad, I poured myself into that sad medley. Every note was a chord played within my heart, pain never spoken of. Connor and Achilles went quiet so they might listen; Thomas, sitting next to me, watched my hands; but I paid them no heed. There was me, and there was the piano - and there was the place in between where we merged.

Around us, the wolves howled into the night.

*

Friends! Long time no see.

Sorry this chapter is so short - there are... um... things happening in the next chapter that I couldn't include in this one bc... um... plot.

I also tried to apply a structuralist reading to this chapter as I was writing it and I think I started driving myself insane so there's that

Anyway idk how to end this note so um happy Thanksgiving (in advance) I guess (idk I'm not American what am I doing)

xoxo Panda