Paddling across Chaudlac lake in the depths of night, Caldwell shivered. His skin was prickly from the cold air, his breath billowed out in white clouds, and his toes were numb from his sogging boots, wet from stumbling into the water as he tried to enter the boat.

Just my luck.

With no moon in sight, the lake was cast into a silent, eerie darkness, the lake’s surface undisturbed except for the occasional splash of Caldwell’s paddles. From time to time there would be a distant sound of water drops, and his head would flick to the sound, expecting to see another boat. Except there never was another boat, nor anything at all. And, when the time finally came to rest, Caldwell would peer over the side of the boat and down into the unseeable darkness of the lake’s waters. In the dead of night there were no reflections; he did not see his own bearded face, which had become almost unrecognizable to him these past few months, nor the tousled hair on his head that earned him compliments from every farm girl in the area. Instead he saw darkness, and, without an image to sate him, his mind conjured dark, watery monsters that must be lurking just beneath the surface, waiting to strike.

Kerplunk.

He twisted his head around, searching for the source of the sound and finding only blackness. All this for a damn meeting. His eyes adjusted well enough to see a small rippling wave on the water’s surface. A fish. Nothing more. A fish could be frightening, too, though, especially the kind the mind could conjure. The kind that were three times his size, or even three times the size of his boat. The kind that might see his rickety little boat and think it was competition, or a meal, or just something it felt like smashing to bits.

Where is she? he wondered as he searched across the lake. He’d received her letter a week past, scrawled messily on parchment cheaper than he was used to, though he couldn’t hold that against her. He served a baron, now, and barons had better parchment and needed better handwriting than common battle mages. Still, it had taken him some time to parse what she’d written; Caldwell learned to read late in life, only really starting after he’d become a soldier and then only becoming halfway competent once Alden became a lord. But he’d read it, hard as it was, and now he was sitting alone on a boat in the middle of the great Chaudlac lake during the deep of night. I read the fuckin’ thing right, didn’t I? Tonight’s the night.

Minutes passed, he wasn’t sure how many, before he saw another boat. A small thing, not unlike his own, it drifted noiselessly across the water’s surface. At its center was a slumped figure, or maybe a pile of fabrics. In the darkness it was hard to tell, and he imagined it might just as well be her as some cursed boat haunted by some drowned angry fisherman from days long passed.

As gently as his numb hands could muster, Caldwell dipped his oars into the water and paddled forward. The slumped figure moved at the sound, then stilled, waiting.

“That you?” Caldwell whispered. But on the lake sound carried, and the whisper came out ten times louder than he’d intended.

The figure moved again, grabbing up its own oars and slowly paddling towards him. As they grew closer, Caldwell saw that the figure was wearing robes which, despite their bulk, could not hide the slender frame beneath.

It’s her, he thought, and, just as the two boats nearly collided, the slender robed figure conjured a flame in its hands.

His eyes burned in the sudden light, which revealed the familiar wrapped face of Aerin. As quickly as the lights came they were gone, and Caldwell’s vision was cast into unseeing darkness once more.

“So it’s you,” he said. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, almost too heavy to move. There weren’t enough words coming to mind to speak, regardless. He knew what he wanted to say. That he loved her, or at least that he liked her and thought about her all the time. Useless things she didn’t care to hear. She came here for a reason. Must have. You didn’t send a letter asking to meet on a lake in the middle of the night unless something serious was going on.

Silence dragged on until Caldwell remembered that she didn’t speak. Not that she couldn’t, just that she wouldn’t. Aerin only ever spoke to her brother, and her brother was dead.

“Why did you want to meet?” he asked. His cheeks flushed with embarrassed heat, and suddenly he was glad that it was night.

Aerin stood unsteadily, her boat toddering back and forth in the water. The boat steadied, and she took a step, and then the boat was back to rocking. Just as Caldwell thought she might tumble over into the water, Aerin leapt towards him. When she landed in front of him she pushed her hands out to catch herself, striking him in the shoulders and toppling him over.

The boat rocked and Caldwell’s head swirled. Sitting up, he saw Aerin still standing and looking down upon him.

“Could have given me a warning,” he said.

Shrugging, Aerin sat down and, from beneath her robes, produced a thin book. Opening it, she scrawled onto its surface with a finger, and upon the book’s page faint glowing lights appeared. Lights which, as Caldwell strained his eyes in the darkness to see, were in the shape of letters and words.

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Shoving the book into his hands, she stared at him expectantly. Looking down, Caldwell began to read the book, sounding out the words. He had yet to learn to read silently.

“I…have…a…book…for…Alden,” he read. He looked back up at Aerin. “This one?”

Aerin shook her head, swiped the book from his hands, then began to scrawl more lights on the next page.

Taking the book, Caldwell read: “I…took…a…tome…from…Tor–Tormere’s…library.” He looked over the words again, mouthing them out silently. There was something off about what he read. Tormere, maybe. He knew what it was. A college of some sort, and one of the few in Drygallis that taught mages. There were other things taught there, too, like the techniques used in farming and smithing and even fighting. Fighting, especially, was an interesting topic. It seemed like every few years he’d hear word of a new technique spreading through the ranks of knights. More often than not, he recalled, those techniques came from Tormere.

He read the words once more, this time completely silently. His eyes hovered over a particular word. Took. That’s what it was. That’s what was bothering him.

He looked up at Aerin.

“You stole a tome?”

The silhouette of her form was thin and small; even in comparison to other women, Aerin possessed a delicate frame. Yet, with her glimmering pale blue eyes staring squarely into his soul, Caldwell felt himself shivering. As one hand gave back the book, the other clutched the dagger at his side. A useless precaution, he hoped. He wasn’t certain.

“W-what’s the point of this tome?” he asked, cheeks flushing hot with embarrassment. How could he be afraid of her? He, a soldier of the Empire and veteran of a war, afraid of a woman who was as delicate as a flower. He took his hand from his dagger.

Flower’s can have thorns, he thought. In all the excitement he’d almost forgotten Aerin was a mage. A skilled one. If things went sour he might be able to kill her. A simple draw of his dagger, a quick sweep at her throat. Over in an instant. Unless she torched me, first.

He returned his hand to the dagger.

Caldwell waited for several minutes, his body shivering and his teeth chattering. Half from the cold, half from fear. She was taking too long to give him an answer.

But she answered, handing the book with glowing letters back to him. He took it with a shaky hand and sounded out the words. “Between…Alden…and…me,” he read, a pit forming in his stomach. It wasn’t the answer he wanted. It wasn’t any answer at all, really, and about as far from what he wanted as could be. All this for some fucking book. He didn’t want to talk about some old dusty book, stolen or not, nor did he want to be on some patched together boat ready to sink at a moment’s notice. The only reason he was here was for her.

When his eyes flashed up again at her the fear was gone, leaving only that warm, almost happy feeling he’d felt when he’d gotten her letter. The book didn’t matter. Nor did her stealing it, he supposed, if it meant he could spend some time with her. It shouldn’t have been that way, of course. He should have been angry, maybe even scared. He didn’t know why she was here or what kind of problems she was bringing with her. She left months ago, leaving him and Alden and all the rest to make the barony on their own, and now she was back and bringing trouble to all they worked for.

But, damnit, he couldn’t deny the fluttering feeling in his chest that Aerin always made him feel. Nor could he deny the burning shame in his cheeks when he thought about all the local farmer’s daughters and the things he’d done with them. He wondered what she’d think, if she knew, or what she’d do if he confessed. Not that confessing made any sense. She didn’t care about him. She cared about her book. She cared about meeting Alden.

He handed the book back to her.

“What if I say I can’t let you meet him?”

There was a long silence as Caldwell waited, but Aerin didn’t write a thing. She just stared at him with her pale blue eyes, which seemed a shade colder than before, a shade darker. She’d come to a decision, Caldwell guessed, and he wasn’t sure he was going to like what it was. That was until she stood, dropping her book to the boat's floor, and she reached for the fabric around her face. She pulled it down, revealing a pale, thin mouth.

Caldwell thought to say something, anything, but by the time the words crossed his mind her hands moved down to the clasps of her robe. Her robe fell from her shoulders, and her hands continued to strip away layer after layer until her entire body was laid bare before him.

The darkness hid nothing from his gaze. He’d seen enough women in the nude to guess where all the parts were anyways, had the darkness hid anything, but, surrounded in darkness in the dead of night, Aerin appeared as bright to him as the moon might have had it been out. She was just as beautiful, too, or maybe more so, like the marble masterwork of a great sculptor.

When she leapt into the water, splashing cold flecks onto his face, he awoke from whatever stupor the sight of her had put him under. Pushing against the boat’s edge, he peered out onto the lake’s surface, searching for her and wondering what the hell she was up to. Her head broke the water a bit further out, facing away from the boat, and she turned back to him, her wet hair cascading over her face. She swam back to him slowly, waves rippling behind her.

Caldwell gripped at his chest. Tightness and pain spread over his torso, and the beating of his heart was so strong he could hear it in his ears and feel it in his limbs. He took a breath, then let it out.

“Hop in,” Aerin said.

He didn’t take another breath. He was too stunned to breathe, the action forgotten entirely. In his head there was only that sound. A simple sound, something anyone might have made, yet to him it was as sweet as honey.

In the next moments Caldwell was naked and plunging into the freezing waters of the great Chaudlac, his body tensing and shivering. Then he was swimming towards her, the cold forgotten, and when he reached her she wrapped herself around him and pressed her warm body into his.

Caldwell held her, too, his fingers clutching at the soft flesh of her back, and when she pulled back from him he felt disappointed, even scared. Scared she might untwine from him and swim off. Scared she’d leave him.

But she didn’t leave him. She only looked at him with her pale blue eyes, which were as warm as summer waters, and then she said something with her voice of honey that he couldn’t have refused even if he’d wanted to.

“I need to see Alden,” she said. “After this.”

“Fine,” Caldwell said. There was no denying the pain he felt, the stab in the heart that her words were.

But then Aerin smiled, kissed him, and the pain was forgotten.