Ramson nodded almost imperceptibly. “Just don’t move. Couples come up here for…privacy all the time. Let him think that.”
She realized that she was gripping him tightly, one hand clutching at his shoulder and the other wrapped around his back. Ramson had placed a hand on her waist, his other still warm against the skin of her shoulder. He smelled of fresh kologne, clean with just a hint of spice and mystery.
He leaned over her, his head resting against the cool glass door that led outside. “Trust me,” he murmured, his breath grazing her neck. “And tell me if he moves.”
Trust me.
Her heart was threatening to beat out of her chest from terror at being caught, and some other strange thrill that she couldn’t even begin to understand. The fabric of their outfits rustled, and in the dim light that seeped beneath the curtains into their small space, they were a tangle of chiffon and limbs and soft, cautious breaths.
Ramson sighed, the corded muscles in his neck shifting slightly. His head was bowed, his breath warming the crook between her neck and her bare shoulders. Any closer, and…
Something shifted in the landscape of her Affinity. Ana perked up.
The person outside was gone.
She sensed the yaeger making his way down the stairs, his blood growing dim until it blended into the chaos of the banquet hall. “He left,” she murmured.
Ana felt Ramson loose a breath against her, his hand slipping from her shoulder, the calluses scraping against her bare skin as he squeezed her arm and stood back. A lock of hair had become undone and fell in front of his eyes; for some reason, she wanted to reach out and brush it away.
His gaze snapped to her. Ana stared back, shame curdling her stomach at her earlier outburst. The anger seemed to have dissipated from Ramson, too; he only looked at her, puzzled, lips half-parted as though he was simultaneously wanting to say something and waiting for her to say something.
Ana swallowed. Heat crept up her neck; the silence was becoming unbearable. She needed to break it.
“Ramson,” she found herself saying. “Don’t ever tell me to shut up again.”
He blinked, and his lips began to lift at the corners, until he was grinning at her. It wasn’t a sly or slicing smirk; it was a full-on smile, his mouth curving, his eyes crinkling, as though he found something genuinely amusing in her. And it felt like, for the first time, they were sharing something real between them, something tender.
A warm glow stirred in her chest. Ana turned away before she could smile back.
The brass handle of the glass door twisted when she tried it. A cold breeze slipped in, and she breathed in the scent of the winter night. Ana snuck a glance at the red curtains behind them again, and the shadow of that earlier figure lingered in her imagination. She shivered. “Can we talk outside?”
A trace of a smile played around Ramson’s lips. “We certainly can,” he said, and pushed open the door for her. “After you, meya dama.”
The veranda wrapped all the way around the Kerlan mansion. There were only a handful of guests outside, and the few lamps cast a soft glow in the night. Overhead, the skies were completely dark and overcast, and a quiet stillness hung in the air as though the earth itself were holding its breath, waiting for the arrival of the Deity of Winter.
Ana leaned against the marble balustrade, exhaling and watching her breath plume before her. She felt Ramson come up by her side; he stood, barely a hand’s breadth from her. Something about Fyrva’snezh, the way the night stayed silent and the air trembled with the promise of snow, filled her with a strange sense of hope. She’d stayed behind in the Palace while her family left for the annual Parade, but at night, when the servants had gone to bed and all was silent, Mama and Papa and Luka and mamika Morganya had gathered in Papa’s bedroom. They’d watched the snows fall as a family. And even after Mama’s death, after the incident at the Vyntr’makt, after Papa grew ill, Luka and mamika Morganya had always been there with her.
She drew in a breath and wondered if Luka was looking out his window at this very moment. Whether he thought of her. “You know,” she said softly, half to herself. “Fyrva’snezh isn’t meant to be about dancing and drinking. It’s about the quiet worship of the first snowfall, of the first breath of our patron Deity.” She hesitated, but some part of her urged her to go on. “Back at home, we celebrate by lighting prayer candles and standing outside, waiting for the first snows to fall.”
They were silent for several moments, and then Ramson spoke. “Back at home, we don’t worship your Deities. We have three gods: the Sea, the Sky, and the Land.” There was a rawness to his voice that she had never heard before, a quiet honesty that felt intimate.
Three gods. It all came to her then. She recalled hundreds of pages from old tomes she’d studied, of the Bregonians and their gods and values and their Navy. The Bregonian surname he had chosen for their invite letter. The slightest accent to his words, so subtle that she hadn’t been able to place it. Until now.
Ana whirled toward him. “You’re Bregonian.” The realization felt like another puzzle piece falling into place.
Ramson’s mask hung in his hands. He met her gaze, his eyes darting between hers with something like uncertainty. How could she have not guessed? She thought of the calluses on his hands, of the long scars on his back, of the way he wielded a sword better than any guard she’d seen. “You were in the Bregonian Royal Navy, weren’t you?”
“I was training for it,” he said quietly.
It all made sense. Bregonians lived on honor and courage; no matter who he’d become and what his history was, she’d seen glimmers of both in him. Perhaps…perhaps he could still be brave and honorable. Perhaps he could still change.
She stared at him, outlined in sharp-cut edges against the starless night, half-shrouded in shadows. He was a man in a mask, an enigma that she had been trying to decipher since the first day she had met him. There was still so much she didn’t know about him—so much she would never know. “How did a Royal Navy recruit become a Cyrilian crime lord?”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.” A weight seemed to settle into the lines of his shoulders, and his eyes clouded as he turned to her. “So, you know the plan. The carriage will be waiting outside the passageway for you at the tenth hour. One moment past ten, and it’ll be gone.”
“I know,” Ana said.
Ramson dug something from the pockets of his black suit and slipped it into her hands.
