"I see."
Sigrid nodded with the serious expression of someone who had just grasped an important tactical lesson. Beramund looked at her with a fond, slightly amused gaze.
They stepped into the restaurant he had reserved in advance. It was a quiet place, tucked away from the main street — the kind of establishment where the lighting was warm and low, and the other patrons spoke in hushed tones as if by unspoken agreement.
A server led them to a corner table by the window. Outside, the lake glittered in the pale afternoon light.
Sigrid sat down and immediately reached for the menu, then stopped. The corset made even that small motion feel like a battle.
"...Are you alright?"
"Fine."
She straightened her back and held the menu at a dignified angle. Beramund watched her silently for a moment, then reached over and tilted the menu slightly so it was easier for her to hold.
"Thank you," she said without looking up.
"Of course."
He ordered for both of them — soup, a light meat dish, bread — and when the server left, silence settled between them. Not an uncomfortable one. Sigrid was looking out the window, her chin tilted slightly upward, the winter light catching the silver of her hair.
Beramund rested his elbow on the table and watched her.
'She has no idea how she looks right now.'
That was, perhaps, what he found most disarming about her. Sigrid could walk into a room full of armed men without flinching, could face down an opponent twice her size, and yet she sat here completely unaware that half the restaurant had glanced their way since they walked in.
"Beramund."
"Yes?"
"You said guilty pleasures are sweet." She turned to look at him, her crimson eyes direct as always. "Do you do things like that often? Breaking rules."
"Often enough."
"Doesn't it bother you? Afterward."
Beramund considered this genuinely.
"Sometimes," he admitted. "But usually the regret is smaller than I expected. And the memory is larger."
Sigrid seemed to think about this. She folded her hands on the table — white gloves, still perfectly clean somehow, despite everything — and said:
"In the Order, everything was regulated. Wake-up time. Training hours. Meals. Rest. Even how you were supposed to feel about it." A small pause. "I thought that was just how life was."
"And now?"
She looked at him.
"Now I think I was simply never asked."
Beramund was quiet for a moment. Then:
"What would you have chosen? If you had been asked."
Sigrid blinked. It was clearly a question she had never been posed before. She looked back out at the lake, her brow furrowing slightly in thought — the expression she made when approaching a problem she genuinely wanted to solve.
"...Horseback riding," she said finally. "Probably. Without a saddle."
Beramund laughed. It came out before he could stop it — a real one, not the practiced smile he wore at court.
"That's it?"
"And swordsmanship. But I was allowed that anyway." She tilted her head. "And perhaps... this."
"This?"
"Sitting somewhere warm. Eating something good." She glanced at him, then away. "With someone who doesn't find me strange."
Beramund's laughter faded into something quieter.
Someone who doesn't find me strange.
He wondered if she knew how much that sentence contained. All the years of people stepping back from her. The knights who never knew what to say. The nobles who smiled with their mouths and calculated with their eyes. Even the Emperor, who had found her useful precisely because she was unlike anyone else — and had never once made her feel that was a good thing.
"I don't find you strange," he said.
"I know." She said it simply, without embarrassment. "That's why."
The soup arrived. Sigrid looked at the delicate porcelain bowl, then at the array of spoons beside it, then selected the correct one without hesitation. Marie-Chez had apparently covered this ground as well.
Beramund watched her eat — carefully, because of the corset, in small measured spoonfuls — and thought that she was possibly the only person he had ever met who made restraint look like dignity rather than deprivation.
"Beramund."
"Yes?"
"The boating. After this." She set her spoon down briefly. "Is it difficult?"
"Rowing? Not particularly."
"Mm." She picked up the spoon again. "I've never been on a boat before."
"Never?"
"The Order was inland."
He hadn't thought of that. Of course — Sigrid had grown up within walls, within schedules, within a life that had been handed to her fully formed. He felt something tighten in his chest.
"Then we'll go slowly," he said.
"You don't have to adjust on my account."
"I want to."
She looked at him. He met her gaze steadily.
After a moment, she looked back down at her soup.
"...Alright," she said quietly.
Outside, the lake lay still and waiting. The patches of ice had drifted further toward the far bank, and the water between them was dark and clear.
Beramund thought:
there is time. We have time.
He was not, by nature, a patient man. But for this — for her — he found that he could be.
He reached across the table and, very lightly, touched the back of her gloved hand. Just for a moment. Just enough.
Sigrid did not pull away.
She stared at her soup bowl, her ears pink at the tips, and said nothing at all.
But she did not pull away.