“You want to come to the library with me?”
Friedrich’s suggestion came a few days later, entirely out of nowhere.
I had been preparing for another early-morning trip to the library when he appeared at my door.
“…Why?”
I asked with a slight undercurrent of caution. Friedrich didn’t know that I had been going to the library to search for a way to restore my magic. If he came along, my chances of being found out would rise considerably.
“Oh…”
He seemed to interpret my hesitation as reluctance. He paused.
“Would I be in the way?”
“No, it’s not that.”
Those luminous eyes were asking: then what’s the problem? And really, there wasn’t one.
You would have to have very cold blood indeed to look into those eyes and say you didn’t want someone’s company.
“Let’s go together.”
It wasn’t as though he’d be with me every day. And today I could simply read something unrelated to magic. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t been growing thoroughly tired of the same section of the library.
We took the carriage to the library together.
Ugh, it’s so hot.
I went for the window as soon as I sat down. Behind me, Friedrich’s voice came:
“You like the wind from an open window.”
“Hm?”
“I would have thought you’d use a cooling enchantment rather than open the window.”
“…Ah.”
Because I can’t.
“Are you warm?”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“Good.”
I let out a quiet breath of relief and smiled.
“I do like the wind through an open window.”
A convenient half-truth. The real truth was rather less graceful — the first time I’d opened the carriage window at speed, my long hair had whipped around spectacularly in every direction. Elsa, opening the door afterward, had fought visibly and heroically to suppress a laugh at the state of me.
After that, I had taken to braiding or pinning my hair whenever I planned to have the window open.
Today as well, the carriage picked up speed and a strong gust pushed through the open window, pressing against my face.
It tugged at the hair tied with a pink ribbon, and the ribbon wobbled precariously —
“Oh—”
The ribbon finally slipped free and sailed out on the wind.
I sat there, momentarily bewildered, as the carriage rolled on and the breeze pushed my loose hair around me. Strands began to stick to my cheeks, obscuring my vision.
Then a large hand reached up and pushed the hair away from my face.
The obscured light cleared, and Friedrich’s face was right there — composed and attentive. He met my eyes quietly, then asked:
“Shall I braid it for you?”
“…What?”
“Your hair.”
“But the ribbon—”
Before I’d finished, Friedrich had already pulled loose the leather cord that fastened his shirt at the collar.
The freed shirt collar fluttered open. Through the gap, glimpses of a pale, defined chest appeared and then vanished as the fabric shifted.
The teasing motion of it startled me thoroughly, and I looked away.
“You didn’t have to go that far—”
“It seemed like it might be uncomfortable.”
And then he settled naturally into the seat beside me.
He briefly held the leather cord between his teeth, then gathered my hair to one side with his hand. Just one hand — and all of it was caught. Something about that alone was enough to make the world feel simpler.
Friedrich held the wind-scattered hair lightly gathered and began braiding it with easy, practiced movements.
The sensation of those large hands moving through my hair with such delicacy was making my eyes heavy. Friedrich noticed.
“You may sleep, if you’d like.”
“No, I’m all right. Did you do this often for someone? The braiding?”
The skill in his hands was clearly not beginner’s luck.
A small, quiet laugh sounded from beside me. I turned, and caught him smiling. Then we were looking at each other.
I hadn’t been trying to be caught staring, but something about his expression made me feel suddenly self-conscious, and I frowned on principle.
“What is it? Did I ask something I shouldn’t have?”
Friedrich shook his head.
“I thought you might misunderstand. It wasn’t a person’s hair — it was rope.”
“Rope?”
“…”
He went quiet for a moment, then continued.
“I was trying to escape. From the prison at Kill. It was a tower — quite isolated, in the middle of nowhere.”
I went still. None of this had been in the original story. Friedrich continued, with a slight, self-deprecating note:
“I thought if I twisted the rope securely enough to lower myself, I could get out.”
“Down the side of a tower? With just a rope?”
“I had started to think — if I stayed there my whole life and died within those walls—”
He paused.
“One day it became unbearable. I thought dying might honestly be better.”
“…”
“Though I’m glad now that I didn’t try to escape.”
He seemed to notice my expression, because he ended on a deliberately light note, with a small self-aware smile. I bit down gently on my lower lip and asked:
“Why?”
I asked, and immediately regretted it. I already had some sense of what he would say.
“If I had run then—”
I tried to turn the conversation somewhere else, but Friedrich was a fraction faster. I held still and waited, slightly tense.
“I would probably have been caught immediately.”
“…Yes, you probably would.”
What is this? I thought I knew what he was going to say, and now I’m — disappointed?
The strange, unbidden note of disappointment in my own reaction caught me off guard.
By then, Friedrich had finished the braid, all the way to the end. He took the leather cord from between his teeth and began slowly, carefully knotting it.
His hands were reliable at everything they touched — that much was becoming abundantly clear. But then I noticed that the cord ended in a rather awkward trailing length.
“The end is a little long.”
“It can be trimmed.”
“We don’t have scissors.”
Almost immediately, I realized my error. For Rene, snapping a thin leather cord would have been nothing — a thought, barely an effort.
I was about to say never mind, this is fine and change the subject.
But then Friedrich’s warm, faint scent — soap, clean linen — moved very close to me. I felt him lean in.
Tuck. Tuck. Two small sounds in quick succession. He had used his teeth to bite through the excess cord, and as he straightened, his gaze lifted to meet mine. He smiled.
“Do you like it?”
I nodded without speaking.
No matter how hard the wind blew now, my hair would not be in my face.
I was looking at his rather neat work with quiet appreciation when Friedrich said, seemingly out of nowhere:
“If I had escaped then, I might never have been found by Your Highness.”
I laughed softly.
“If anyone heard you, they’d think you were glad to have been found by me.”
Friedrich didn’t deny it. He just smiled — the kind of smile that seemed to be brighter than the sunlight outside.
I was dazzled by it, and that was why I didn’t immediately ask: then say you’re not.
“I’m glad it was you who found me.”
He said it anyway, barely above a murmur. And somehow, prepared as I thought I was, it didn’t land with the discomfort I had expected.
Instead, Friedrich looked almost — sweet, saying it. And the thought passed through my mind, vaguely, that perhaps the heat had gotten slightly to my brain.
* * *
“Did you braid this yourself?”
Elsa looked up when the carriage door opened, took one look at my altered hair, and asked with a surprised expression. I answered with some satisfaction:
“Friedrich did it.”
“Hmm. I wonder what you were doing to have your hair come undone.”
“Ha — I wasn’t doing anything. The wind blew the ribbon loose, that’s all.”
“You seem unusually flustered about it.”
“I am not flustered, and it’s your fault for braiding it too loosely in the first place!”
“I’ll keep that in mind for next time.”
Her tone made clear she did not entirely believe me. I squinted at Elsa as she straightened my hair with perfect composure.
She paused, studying the end of the braid.
“The cord’s a little rough. Shall I redo it with something nicer?”
“No, leave it. I like this.”
I said it without thinking and walked into the library beside Friedrich.
“Good morning, Your Highness. How lovely — you’ve brought your husband today.”
“Good morning. Yes.”
“As it happens, we’ve just received some seating that might be rather well-suited for the two of you. Shall I show you?”
I glanced at Friedrich, who gave a small nod. I agreed without giving it much thought.
…I should have given it more thought. There had been something a little too knowing in the librarian’s expression.
