Eventually, the moment came when the two travelers realized they could not walk their choices back. 

George invited them to stay the night in the guestroom. Neither could come up with a quick enough reason to turn him down. His case for extending the invitation was valid. The cold front had come in, and the hour was too late to walk all the way back to the Inn.

“We couldn’t impose,” said Valkom with wide eyes that were asking Nikase for help. 

She opened her mouth to protest, but George was having none of it.

“You’re really going to make your wife walk in the cold?” He pointed to the coat on her chair, “No offense, Miss. Your coat is barely a coat. In fact, in this weather, you might need extra blankets. I’m sure there are some in this closet.” 

He opened a door in the short hallway and began to rummage through folded towels and blankets. The task took up all of his attention and left him unsuspecting of the two visitor’s rising panic. 

“Val…” Nikase said under her breath, looking at the heir’s astonished expression. 

Their theatrics had gone too far, and it would be humiliating to correct the record now. Nikase didn’t care about her own humiliation, George, however, had shown them nothing but kindness. 

“I can take the floor?” Val whispered wearily.

She mouthed a no, but it morphed into a friendly grin when George turned back to them.

“‘Ere!” He handed a stack of folded blankets to Valkom, “It’s the door far down the hall. The lavatory is the first left. I’ll be upstairs tidying up a bit, or dear Clara will have my head when she returns. Feel free to holler if you need anything.”

His smile reminded Nikase of her overbearing uncle, and that cemented her feelings on the matter. They couldn’t tell the old man the truth. 

The expression on Val’s face told her the same story. 

“Oh—thank you, George,” he said in weary sincerity. “I promise we’ll be out of your hair first thing in the morning.”

Everything in the room the evening light touched was given a teal tinge, the walls, the furnishings and even the veins on her hand. That is what held her focus as she lay on the bed.  The howling wind outside taunted them, and it prompted a question she had been dwelling on in her restlessness. 

“Why didn’t you correct him earlier?”

Valkom wasn’t asleep either. She couldn’t see him from where she was curled up, yet somehow she knew. 

“I don’t know, why didn’t you correct him earlier?” 

She could hear the shrug in his voice. 

“I thought you would.”

“I suppose we were both under the impression that the other would correct him,” he said after a moment of silence. “Regardless, I apologize for letting the joke go on for as long as it did.” There was a smile in the sentiment, she could hear that too. 

She laughed lightly, “Yeah, me too. I only added fuel to the fire.”

“I thought it was very clever.” 

The window rattled with a howl much deeper than the last. And Nikase wondered if it would let her sleep. 

Val, having given up, brought up something on his own mind, “You do know… that people speculate about us… back home that is.”

“Do they?” she mused, her eyes remaining closed. 

“Surely you’ve heard.”

“I have heard things.”

“And you came on this trip regardless? I mean, I’m glad you did, but your reputation is far more intact than our own. I’m surprised you’ve continued to spend time with either of us.”

She opened her eyes and furrowed her brow, tempted to peer down over the foot of the bed and get a read of his face. That had to be a joke. “You think my reputation is more intact than yours?”

“Alright, perhaps what I meant was that people are inclined to take you seriously.”

“Because they think I’m hysterical and violent!” she exclaimed as softly as she could, in the case George was awake. The last thing she wanted was for the man to think he was housing an unhinged murderess.

He laughed at the idea, not at her expense. 

Apprehension with their friendship and the rumors surrounding it were nothing to the rumors she did dread. Like the ones of her being a cold-blooded murder. The former were an inconvenience at most… at least until she runs into her brother. 

“I never told you what that dispute with the Countess was about– however many months ago…” she continued. ”It regarded your tendencies as a philanderer, and I noted that you had never acted inappropriately towards me. She implied that it was because I killed my husband, and you didn’t have a death wish. Now, I don’t know what rumors you have heard, but as far as I know, I’m far too deranged with mania for your taste.”  

He took her comment to heart, despite her playful tone, and responded so.

“I don’t think you’re violent or hysterical, and even if you were, that has little to do with the way I approach you, Nikase Ojeda. Don’t let my cordiality with you deceive you, the women around me deserve greater respect, and they don’t always receive it. It has nothing to do with who they are or how much I like them, only when and how my father’s involved. If my father thought my befriending you was a good idea, you bet your bottom dollar that I’d be elsewhere, miles away.” 

His last sentence happened to both be a joke and corroborate what Liorit had told her.

“Is that how you approach your friendship with Lior as well?” She doubted that. His friendship with her appeared to be sincere, even if, at surface level, it was what Valkom claimed it was. 

“More or less so.” He hesitated with that remark, and his tone shifted, matching the dark green tint of the room. “Recently, I’ve come to understand something about myself that I’ve debated disclosing to you. And now that I’m here, lying on the floor, contemplating my actions, hoping you’ll fall asleep first so you don’t hear me snore, I’m seriously thinking about telling you.”

The moment of candidness from him was one she had seen before, and she was glad in part that he couldn’t see her. Her relief didn’t stem from her desire to avoid the situation altogether, rather her own lack of presence in the conversation.

She’d made a previous comparison that he was similar to an apparition. That he faded in and out of existence, and floated through the world in an all too familiar way. It was in these moments that he almost lost all transparency, seconds short of being on the same plane as everybody else. She feared his full arrival into the world, as by doing so he might realize Nikase's own transparency. And try as she might, she couldn’t quite tune into the correct frequency. 

Of course, her anxiety was easier to hide when he couldn’t see her face.

“Then tell me, Valkom,” she said patiently. 

“I will. My seeking your friendship was influenced in part by my father's disdain for Liorit’s friendship, that  you do have in common. But it didn’t start in the same way with Liorit, and we have years of history between us—” he stopped, trying to work out where he was going with his confession. “Your circumstances differ, and it's in the way that they differ that worries me. I’ve yet to say it aloud – to anyone – but I’ve become quite skilled at hiding my dependence on alcohol from others.”

He didn’t expect her to say anything, and she didn’t. 

His abuse of alcohol was not lost on her. She was observant by nature and although it was true that he was skilled at hiding it, his mannerisms mirrored those of someone she knew back home. 

“As of late,” he continued. “I make a point of remaining sober when I know you’ll be around, because I can’t shake the feeling that you know. That you know when I’m playing it up, pretending that alcohol has the effects on me that it once had. That I can shoot an arrow better drunk than when I’m sober. That I’m not living in the moment, I'm getting through it.”

 She drew her response out slowly, “Would it ease or worsen your worries if I told you whether I can or can’t tell?”

“Ease them if you can’t, worsen them if you can.”

“Then I will say nothing.”

“But that statement on its own is an answer.” His tone held good humor, albeit strained, as it was induced by a desire to sound normal. Something Nikase recognized from her own mannerisms this time. 

 “I’d ask you if you think less of me for it, if I didn’t know you have no opinion of me,” he teased, still trying to lighten the mood.