Sasha. Sasha. Sasha.
He has been waiting for her, just as she has been waiting for him. The luck of this seems impossible, a bit of gold found in the dirty road of her life. At the intricate black scrollwork entrance of the Summer Garden, she eases to a stop and slips off her bike.
The beauty of the castle grounds amaze her. Bordered on three sides by water, the park is a magnificent green haven in the walled city. The air smells of limes and hot stone. Exquisite marble statues line the well-groomed paths.
She does as they have planned: she walks her bike down the path, trying to look calm, as if this is an ordinary early evening stroll through a place where peasants rarely go. But her pulse is racing and her nerve endings feel electrified.
And then he is there, standing beside a lime tree, smiling at her.
She misses a step and stumbles, hitting her bike. He is beside her in an instant, holding her arm.
“This way,” he says, leading her to a spot deep in the trees, where she sees he has laid out a blanket and a basket.
At first they sit cross-legged on the warm plaid wool, their shoulders touching. Through the green bower, she can see sunlight dappling the water and gilding a marble statue. Soon, she knows, the paths will be full of lords and ladies and lovers eager to walk outside in the warm light of a June night.
“What have you been doing since . . . I last saw you?” she asks, not daring to look at him. He has been in her heart for so long it is as if she knows him already, but she doesn’t. She does not know what to say or how to say it, and suddenly she is afraid that there is a wrong way to move forward, a mistake that once made cannot be undone.
“I am at the cleric’s college, studying to be a poet. ”
“But you are a prince. And poetry is forbidden. ”
“Do not be afraid, Vera. I am not like your father. I am careful. ”
“He said the same thing to my mother. ”
“Look at me,” Sasha says quietly, and Vera turns to him.
It is a kiss that, once begun, never really ends. Interrupted, yes. Paused, certainly. But from that very moment onward, Vera sees the whole of her life as only a breath away from kissing him again. On that night in the park, they begin the delicate task of binding their souls together, creating a whole comprising their separate halves.
Vera tells him everything there is to know about her and listens rapturously to his own life story—how it was to be born in the northern wilds and left in an orphanage and found later by his royal parents. His tale of deprivation and loneliness makes her hold him more tightly and kiss him more desperately and promise to love him forever.
At this, he turns a little, until he is lying alongside her, their faces close. “I will love you that long, Vera,” he says.
After that there is nothing more to be said.
They walk hand in hand through the pale purple glow of early morning. The alabaster statues look pink in the light. Out in the city, they are among people again, strangers who feel like friends on this white night when the wind blowing up from the river rustles through the leaves. Northern lights dance across the sky in impossible hues.
At the end of the bridge, beneath the streetlamp, they pause and look at each other.
“Come tomorrow night. For dinner,” she says. “I want you to meet my family. ”
“What if they do not like me?”
There is no cracking in his voice, no physical betrayal of his emotions, but Vera sees his heart as clearly as if it were beating in the pale white cup of her hands. She hears in him the pain of a boy who’d been abandoned and claimed so late that damage was done. “They will love you, Sasha,” she says, feeling for once as if she is the older of the two. “Trust me. ”
“Give me one more day,” he says. “Do not tell anyone about us. Please. ”
“But I love you. ”
“One more day,” he says again.
She supposes it is little enough to agree to, although he is being foolish. And yet, she smiles at the thought of another magical night like this, where there is nothing but the two of them. She can certainly feign illness one more time.
“I’ll meet you tomorrow at one o’clock. But do not come inside the library. I need my job. ”
“I’ll be waiting on the bridge over the castle moat. I want to show you something special. ”
Vera lets go of him at last and walks across the street, with her bike clattering along beside her. Heaving it up the stairs, she tries to be quiet as she goes up to the second floor and opens the door. The old hinges squeak; the bike rattles.