The street lamps had flickered on one by one, bathing the plaza in soft amber, yet she hadn’t moved. Her right hand—the one he had kissed—still hovered near her cheek, fingers curled as though trying to trap the lingering warmth of his lips. She replayed his parting words in perfect, torturous clarity:
“You looked very beautiful today. Thank you!”
A single sentence. Seven ordinary words.
And yet her face ignited all over again—cheeks blazing like a ripe summer tomato left too long in the sun. She pressed both palms to her face in a futile attempt to cool the flush, but the heat only spread downward, curling in her chest, tightening her throat.
“How—” she hissed under her breath, mortified at the sound of her own voice cracking. “How is that the thing that undoes me?”
She snapped upright, spine locking into the rigid posture of the Champion Duelist. Infuriation surged—sharp, reflexive, familiar. A mere comment. A casual compliment from a man who had once teased her about her “pretty ponytail” while dodging her wooden sword. How dare he reduce her—Fontaine’s unyielding instrument of justice—to this blushing, breathless schoolgirl?
She hated it.
…Except she didn’t.
The admission slipped in quietly, almost sheepishly, and refused to leave. She didn’t hate the flutter beneath her ribs. She didn’t hate the way her pulse had tripled when his thumb brushed her collarbone. She didn’t hate the memory of his old alley smile breaking across the Duke’s guarded face, or the way his voice had softened on “beautiful” like the word had been waiting years to be spoken.
She hated that she liked it.
Clorinde finally forced her feet to move.
The walk home passed in a haze. Every step replayed another fragment of the day: his thumb catching the sweat on her throat, the almost-kiss interrupted by the clock tower, the absurd gentlemanly kiss on her hand (Sigewinne’s idea, she was certain), the quiet “next time” that had felt like a vow. By the time she reached her front door she had no memory of crossing half the streets.
She stared at the key in her hand as though it belonged to someone else.
Inside, she locked the door, leaned back against it, and slapped both cheeks with sharp, simultaneous smacks.
“Get. It. Together. Clorinde,” she ordered her reflection in the entryway mirror.
The reflection stared back—flushed, wide-eyed, lips still parted from the ghost of an interrupted kiss—and refused to obey.
Sleep did not come that night.
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She tossed. She turned. She punched her pillow. Every time she closed her eyes she saw:
- His thumb on her skin.
- His mouth hovering a breath from hers.
- His lips brushing her knuckles.
- His voice saying beautiful like a secret he’d kept for seven years.
Each memory arrived hotter than the last. She buried her face in the pillow and groaned—half frustration, half helpless yearning.
Across the city, beneath the waves, Wriothesley was faring no better.
He had meant to walk back to the checkpoint with dignity. Head high. Steps measured. The picture of calm composure.
Instead he arrived at the Fortress entrance with bleeding knuckles, sap-sticky coat sleeves, and a dazed expression that made the night-shift guard do a double-take.
He had no memory of punching the trees.
Every time the image of Clorinde in that midnight-blue dress resurfaced—hair catching lamplight, cheeks flushed after the almost-kiss, the shy way she’d covered her mouth—he would unconsciously slam his fist into the nearest innocent trunk. Poor trees. They had done nothing to deserve the onslaught of a man trying (and failing) to outrun his own heart.
By the time he reached his office he was breathing like he’d run the entire Court twice.
He dropped into his chair, dragged both hands down his face, and muttered to the empty room:
“What the hell is wrong with me?”
The greenhouse mint offered no answer.
Morning arrived mercilessly bright.
Clorinde had barely drifted into a shallow, restless doze when her front door rattled under an enthusiastic pounding.
“Clorinde! Open up! I brought croissants and gossip! You cannot hide from me!”
Navia.
Of course.
Clorinde groaned, dragged herself out of bed, and opened the door before the neighbors started complaining.
Navia swept inside like a golden whirlwind—basket of pastries in one arm, parasol in the other—then stopped dead when she saw Clorinde’s face.
“Oh my god,” Navia breathed, delighted horror in every syllable. “You didn’t sleep at all, did you? Look at those circles! And that blush is still going strong! Spill. Every. Detail.”
Clorinde shut the door with more force than necessary.
“There is nothing to spill.”
“Liar.” Navia set the basket down and folded her arms. “I saw the way you dragged him out of the café. I know something happened after that. So talk.”
Clorinde walked to the kitchen, poured herself a glass of water, and drank it slowly—mostly to buy time.
Navia waited, tapping one foot.
Finally Clorinde set the glass down.
“He… kissed my hand.”
Navia squealed so loudly the windows rattled.
“And he said—” Clorinde’s voice dropped to a mortified whisper. “He said I looked beautiful.”
Navia clutched the back of a chair like she might faint from secondhand emotion.
“And then?”
“And then nothing,” Clorinde said, too quickly. “We said goodnight. That was it.”
Navia narrowed her eyes. “You’re leaving out the part where you melted into a puddle.”
Clorinde glared at her.
Navia grinned wider.
“You’re in love with him,” she declared happily. “Hopelessly. Catastrophically. And he’s just as bad. I saw the way he looked at you when you pulled him out of the café—like you’d hung the moon and the stars and also invented fruit tarts just for him.”
Clorinde opened her mouth to deny it.
Closed it.
Looked down at her hands—the same hands he had kissed—and felt the flush return in full force.
Navia stepped closer, gentler now.
“Hey,” she said softly. “It’s okay to feel it. You waited seven years for him to come back. You don’t have to keep being the unbreakable Champion every second of every day. Not with him.”
Clorinde exhaled—long, shaky.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she admitted.
Navia squeezed her shoulder.
“That’s how you know it’s real.”
Outside, the fountains of Fontaine sang on—steady, eternal, whispering secrets only the city and its two most stubborn hearts could understand.
And somewhere beneath the waves, a man with bruised knuckles stared at a single sprig of mint and allowed himself—for the first time in years—to hope that next time might come sooner than either of them expected.