They returned the boat as the sun began its descent, painting the lake in shades of amber and pale rose.
Sigrid's arms ached pleasantly. The kind of ache that came from using muscles in an unfamiliar way — not the sharp burn of swordsmanship, but something slower and more diffuse. She rolled her shoulder as she stepped back onto the pier, and Beramund noticed.
"Sore?"
"A little." She handed him the fan to hold while she adjusted her gloves, which had indeed gotten wet. "It's a good feeling."
"You say that about most physical discomfort."
"Don't you?"
Beramund considered. "Less than you do."
They walked back along the pier in the fading light. The park had grown quieter in the late afternoon — the families with children had gone home, and the remaining walkers moved with the unhurried pace of people with nowhere in particular to be. Sigrid matched her steps to Beramund's without thinking about it, shortening her natural stride to account for his cane.
He noticed. He didn't say anything.
A vendor near the park entrance was packing up a cart of roasted chestnuts, the warm smell drifting across the cold air. Sigrid's head turned.
Beramund stopped.
"Do you want some?"
"We just ate."
"That was two hours ago." He was already reaching into his coat. "And you only ate a little because of the corset."
Sigrid looked at the vendor, then at Beramund, then back at the vendor.
"...Yes," she said.
He bought a paper cone full of chestnuts and handed it to her. She pulled off one glove and took one, and the warmth of it against her palm was immediate and satisfying.
They walked on.
"I've never eaten while walking before," Sigrid said, peeling a chestnut carefully.
"Never?"
"It wasn't permitted in the Order. Meals were taken seated, at designated times, in silence or with minimal conversation."
"Minimal conversation. During meals."
"Yes."
Beramund was quiet for a moment. "That sounds profoundly grim."
"I didn't think so at the time." She ate the chestnut. It was sweet and slightly smoky. "I thought it was discipline."
"And now?"
She considered the question seriously, turning the paper cone in her hands.
"Now I think discipline and grimness are not the same thing," she said. "And that I confused them for a long time."
Beramund glanced at her sideways. There were things he wanted to say to that — about the Order, about the Emperor, about the years she had spent sharpening herself into a weapon for people who saw her as nothing more than one. But this wasn't the moment for any of that.
Instead he said: "Have another chestnut."
Sigrid looked at him. Then she reached into the cone again.
They reached the park gate as the lamplighters were beginning their rounds, small flames blooming one by one along the avenue. Beramund's carriage was waiting where they had left it, the driver reading something in the box seat that he hastily put away when he saw them approaching.
Sigrid stopped.
"I have to go back to Marie-Chez's first," she said, remembering. "To remove the makeup."
"I know. We'll stop there on the way."
She nodded. Then she looked down at the paper cone in her hands — still a few chestnuts left — and held it out to him.
Beramund took one without comment.
They stood there for a moment in the lamplight, eating chestnuts outside a carriage, and Sigrid thought that this was a very strange day. Strange in the way that Beramund had described — not unpleasant, just entirely outside anything she had a framework for.
She was trying to build one. It was slow work.
"Beramund."
"Yes?"
"Today was—" She stopped. Searched for the word.
He waited. He was good at waiting, she had noticed. Better than she would have expected from someone who moved through the world with such easy confidence.
"Good," she finished. It felt insufficient. "Very good."
"I'm glad."
"I didn't fall off the horse. Or out of the boat."
"Technically you almost fell out of the boat twice."
"Almost doesn't count."
"In boating it usually does."
Sigrid made a sound that was nearly, almost, just barely a laugh. Beramund's expression shifted into something warm and careful.
The carriage door opened. Sigrid climbed in, managing the hem of her dress with more confidence than she had that morning. Beramund followed, settling across from her, and the carriage moved off into the early evening.
Inside, the lamps hadn't been lit yet. The light came only from the windows — fading gold, deepening into blue.
Sigrid looked out at the city passing by. Shopfronts being shuttered. Couples walking arm in arm. A child chasing a dog across an intersection while a harried-looking nurse ran behind.
Ordinary life. She had walked past it for years without really seeing it.
"Can I ask you something?" she said, still looking out the window.
"Of course."
"The Emperor." She kept her voice even. "He'll call on me again soon. Won't he."
The warmth in the carriage shifted almost imperceptibly.
"Probably," Beramund said. His voice was equally even. "He won't be able to resist for long. You've made yourself interesting to him."
"I didn't intend to."
"I know. That's part of what makes you interesting to him." A pause. "Are you worried?"
Sigrid thought about this honestly.
"No," she said slowly. "Not worried. I know what he wants from me. And I know what I won't give him." She turned from the window to look at Beramund directly. "I'm more concerned about what I don't know yet. What he hasn't shown me."
Beramund looked at her for a long moment.
"You've changed," he said. Not as a judgment. As an observation.
"From what?"
"From the person who would have simply done whatever he asked and called it duty." He tilted his head slightly. "The Sigrid I first met wouldn't have thought about what she was willing to give. She would have thought about what was required."
Sigrid was quiet.
She knew he was right. She could trace the exact shape of who she had been — the knight who followed orders with such perfect fidelity that she had never once stopped to ask whether the orders deserved following.
That person felt very far away now.
And yet.
"Old habits," she said finally, "take time to unlearn."
"They do."
"I still— sometimes I catch myself. Standing at attention when no one has ordered it. Calculating the most efficient path rather than the one I want." She looked at her hands in her lap. "It's like a rut in a road. The wheel keeps falling into it."
"But you notice it now."
"Yes."
"That's not nothing, Siri."
She looked up at the use of her name. He said it so naturally, without thinking about it. She wondered when that had stopped startling her.
Sometime between the lake and the chestnuts, she thought.
"Beramund," she said.
"Yes?"
She hesitated. The carriage turned a corner, and the lamplight swept briefly across his face — the different-colored eyes, the patient expression, the slight smile that seemed to exist as a default setting regardless of what was actually happening.
She had a thought she didn't quite know how to form into words.
She tried anyway.
"When this is over," she said carefully. "When whatever the Emperor is planning is finished, and things are — settled. What do you want?"
Beramund blinked. It was the first time today she had seen him genuinely surprised.
"What do I want?"
"Yes." She kept her gaze steady on his. "You ask me that. Often. What I want, what I would have chosen, what I like." She paused. "I'm asking you."
The smile faded into something quieter and more real.
He was silent for long enough that she thought he might deflect — give her something easy and charming that answered without answering. He was capable of it. She had seen him do it with other people.
But he didn't.
"Peace," he said finally. "Actual peace, not just the absence of immediate crisis." He looked out the window. "A life where I don't have to calculate three steps ahead every time I walk into a room."
Sigrid absorbed this.
"That sounds tiring," she said. "Calculating constantly."
"It is."
"I know." She thought of the Order again — the endless assessment of threats, angles, optimal positions. The way she had lived inside strategy for so long she had forgotten what it felt like to simply exist. "I know exactly what that's like."
Their eyes met.
Something passed between them — not a word, not a gesture. Just the particular quality of being understood by someone who has lived inside a similar kind of exhaustion and come out the other side still standing.
The carriage slowed. Through the window, the lights of Marie-Chez's townhouse came into view.
Sigrid picked up the fan from the seat beside her and stood, bracing against the motion of the slowing carriage. Beramund rose as well, reaching past her to open the door before the footman could.
She paused in the doorway.
"Beramund."
"Mm?"
She turned just enough to look at him over her shoulder.
"When this is over," she said quietly, "I think I'd like that too. The peace."
She stepped out into the evening air before he could respond.
But she heard him, just as the footman moved to close the door behind her —
A soft exhale. And then, very quietly:
"Then we'll make sure of it."
Sigrid walked up the steps to Marie-Chez's door with the fan held carefully in both hands, her ears pink at the tips, her expression as composed as she could manage.
Which was, she had to admit, not very composed at all.