Julian snored gently as Anneliese slipped out of bed; she had pretended to fall asleep after they made love. She retrieved her nightgown, which had been tossed across the room, and put it on, followed by her dressing gown for extra warmth. Julian did not stir as she opened the door to the balcony and stepped out. There was no moon that night.
The stone was cold on her bare feet, but she did not wish for slippers. She walked slowly to the edge of the balcony and leaned over.
For a moment, Anneliese wondered what it would be like to fall.
She didn't want to jump, of course not, she was the happiest she had ever been, and yet... She was very, very curious. She had fallen out of a tree once, and although she hadn't broken anything, it had hurt quite badly to land. The fall itself, however, had been lovely; she'd felt weightless, lighter than air.
Her heart was heavy, and she wondered if that would make her fall faster.
She didn't know why she'd felt restless and anxious on the last leg of their journey—seeing Astraea again was wonderful! How she'd missed her palace, her own room, her own bed—and yet she could not shake the troubling feeling that she was missing something. The feeling had come to her in the middle of the night, and she'd woken up feeling cold, though Julian lay beside her. She'd slipped out of bed then, and fumbled through her luggage in the dark, trying to think of something she might have left behind in Dulcinea, but she found everything she thought to look for.
What, then, could create this pit in her stomach? This solid knot of dread in her heart?
Anneliese looked at the ground, shrouded in shadows, and wished to fall.
She straightened up, pulling her dressing gown tighter around her neck, and ran a hand through her tangled hair.
She wanted to see Preminger.
Well, not wanted. She hadn't seen him since the day he'd almost married her mother, and had no desire to look at him ever again, after all he'd done. But she needed to see him. She had to confirm, like her mother had when they'd first arrived, that he still sat in his cell. She took her mother at her word, of course, and knew he was still there—but if they'd both had the same feeling, on the same day, didn't that mean something?
She found herself tiptoeing through her bedroom and into the corridor, Serafina twisting around her ankles and meowing softly.
"I just—I need to see P-Preminger," Anneliese said softly. Serafina blinked, and she took that to mean the cat understood. In any case, she trotted along at her heels as Anneliese felt her way to the dungeon.
The guards didn't hear her coming, barefoot as she was, and she paused a moment to listen to them before they could see her: Some were grumbling about the queen—"fifteen men at all hours of the day for one little man who doesn't even speak, it's unreasonable"—and a few were exchanging gossip from the village, but she thought she heard at least one snore.
Anneliese stepped around the corner and the men fell silent, as though they'd seen a ghost. One man stood up hastily and nearly knocked over his stool. "Your Highness! What—what are you doing here, at this hour?"
"I came to see him," she said, and her voice nearly shook. She clutched her dressing gown very tightly at her throat, though she did not know why. Did having less skin exposed make her safer? And what on earth was she afraid of? She could clearly see Preminger, asleep on his cot. He was there, and there were fifteen soldiers at her beck and call. They would slit his throat if she asked. She was very, solidly safe.
And yet...
She stepped closer, and the guards hurriedly shuffled out of her way. She pressed herself right up against the bars, straining. The man on the cot certainly looked like Preminger. But there was something odd in the way he...shimmered? She blinked and shook her head.
"Can someone light another torch?" she asked quietly, and she heard quick fumbling and then the torch flared to life beside her. "Hold it higher, so that the light casts... Yes, thank you, just there." Preminger's cell was now fully lit, and he certainly wasn't shimmering, what had she been thinking? She cleared her throat. "Preminger."
The man did not stir.
"Oi!" said the guard holding the torch, and Anneliese jumped. "So sorry, princess!"
She shook her head; the prisoner sat up slowly, not quite awake.
"Preminger," she said again, and he looked at her blearily.
Their eyes met, and she felt like she was falling.
This man was not Jean Preminger.
"What is your name?" she said quietly, looking away from not-Preminger to the stout guard beside her.
"Hank—I mean, Hendrik Blumen, princess. I'm called Hank, it's a nickname, sorry—"
"Hank, has anyone been inside this cell today?" she asked, feigning calm. Her panic was rising as not-Preminger continued to stare vacantly at her. He didn't blink.
"I have, princess, to give him his supper."
"No one else?"
He shook his head earnestly, brow furrowing. "I—I know it may have looked like we was slacking off, princess, but I swear we was only taking a bit of a break, it's such long days, see, and he was asleep—but we've been here all day, or at least some of us has, and we've never left him alone for even a second since he was brought in two years ago, I swear it, princess."
She gazed at him for a moment, and then looked to Serafina. She did not feel that Hank was lying, and yet she was absolutely certain that the man behind the bars was not Jean Preminger. She felt it in her bones. Serafina looked at her quizzically, but she shook her head.
"Thank you, Hank," Anneliese said finally, turning away from the dead-eyed man in the cell. "And to all of you, for guarding... him." She gave them a tiny curtsy which left them all mumbling flustered thanks, and then she went back upstairs as quickly as she could without running.
Anneliese longed to outrun the creeping feeling of unreality that was poisoning her brain with every step.
Serafina brushed at her heels and meowed, but Anneliese ignored her.
Serafina was not real enough to bring her back.
Anneliese reached the bed where Julian slept and she climbed into it roughly, wanting to wake him; he jostled and murmured "Anneliese?" with a barely-drawn breath, and then her mouth crashed onto his and she felt his surprise in the way he moved his lips but she did not care. She pulled down his trousers and straddled him and in his surprise he made sounds that ought to wake half the palace and she reveled in it.
This was real.
Julian, warm and writhing and moaning beneath her, was real. Her husband, her best friend, her tutor—that was very solid reality.
Preminger, with his shimmers and blank eyes, was not real, or at least not relevant. That was another lifetime, a nightmare.
She felt closer to earth every time Julian gasped her name, and she refrained from kissing him to hear him say it.
This is real.