1

  After reflecting for a few minutes, Greta decided to walk to the nearest tavern. If her memory wasn't playing tricks on her, the place was less than five hundred metres from the house. With her hand on the door handle, she took one last look at the almost empty room she was leaving behind. She noticed that Daros made a point of not leaving his personal mark. Whether in the near-absence of furniture, or in his habit of using only aftershave and a generic deodorant instead of cologne, he insisted on remaining an indistinct spectre. Little did he know that the more stubbornly he became mist, the more firmly he became a lighthouse.

  When she closed the door behind her, the cold night air bit at her skin. The icy wind dampened Greta's clothes along the way, and she didn't mind. As she walked unhurriedly, she looked up at the mountain beside her. She was sorry she wouldn't be able to stay in Germany long enough to climb to the top and peer across at France on some sunny day.

  At the end of a gentle curve, the establishment appeared on the horizon, wrapped in the grey darkness of a winter dusk. A low mist, woven from threads of persistent drizzle and damp woodsmoke, danced in lazy spirals above the rooftops. From the tall brick chimney, a vein of dense smoke escaped, stubborn, dissolving into the fine rain that fell from the sky like stardust. The sight promised not only refuge, but the crackling warmth of a fireplace, the smell of burning wood and rye bread.

  She was received in the tavern with curious glances and smiles. She returned the warmth, but barely heard the greetings. Her gaze swept the room, anxious, scanning face by face at the crowded bar. She observed the noisy groups around the solid wood tables. No familiar trace. Her chest tightened, feeling the sharp sting of disappointment.

  The establishment's collection of cuckoo clocks caught her attention. Some were older than she was, and each piece managed to be even more beautiful than the last. Though they were symbols of time, it was easy to lose all sense of the minutes before such charm.

  But it wasn't for the clocks that she had come.

  With a mixture of hope and apprehension, she turned toward the area of small private tables. Her heart gave a brief, unwarranted leap: the first table was empty. The second too, occupied only by half-empty glasses and a bare plate. Her gaze then slid to the back of the room, where the firelight barely reached. There, framed against the dark window, was a familiar silhouette. Or perhaps not. Darkness and anxiety have the gift of being treacherous. As though adjusted by invisible hands, the volume of conversation, of plates, glasses and cutlery, faded until it disappeared for a moment.

  She took a few more steps, the sounds still distant. Gradually, the features came into focus. The strong build beneath the dark jumper, the slightly hunched posture, a ceramic mug between his hands, a neatly trimmed beard. And then he moved. He lifted the steaming mug and took a sip, his gaze lost in the landscape beyond the window, oblivious to the presence studying him.

  He was like the cabin where he lived. The exterior imitated every other wall, but his aura had the colours of not belonging.

  Sensing that he was being watched, Daros Fischer turned his head and found her eyes. He opened his familiar half-smile and gestured to the chair across from him. Greta accepted the invitation.

  He didn't even need to call anyone over. He simply raised two fingers in the air, a discreet and familiar gesture that was caught from the other side of the room. The tavern's owner, a stout blonde woman in an immaculate apron with an air of contentment, responded with a wave and a wink. The woman turned aside and said something in the ear of a young waiter, who set off toward the kitchen like a soldier carrying out a tactical order.

  Shortly after, a heavy, steaming clay mug was set down before Greta. The aroma that rose was a warm cloud of wine, cinnamon, and star anise.

  "Glühwein," said Daros, as though introducing an old friend. "The best ally against a winter in the Black Forest."

  Greta had made plans to ask him everything about himself and to tell him everything about herself, but the words imitated the steam from the drink, determined to dissipate in the air before taking shape.

  "The beard suits you," she offered sincerely.

  "Thank you. It keeps my face warm, so it'll last until the cold goes away."

  The two spoke very little, mostly about how her journey had been. Gradually, a silence settled in, electric and incomplete, filled only by the clinking of mugs and the occasional burst of laughter. They drank, exchanging sidelong glances. His, curious, searching the woman before him for the invisible marks of the past year. Hers, guarded, but with an eager gleam that refused to go out.

  When the evening crowd began to arrive, bringing the street's cold into the tavern clinging to their coats, Daros broke through the thin layer of quiet:

  "It's going to get a bit noisy in here," he passed the empty mug from one hand to the other. "Do you have plans to spend the night..."

  With me was what he wanted to say, the word almost leaping from his throat. He swallowed it, shifted his gaze to the whitened landscape beyond the window, and finished the question in a tone of indifference he didn't feel.

  "...in the city?"

  "No, not really. Actually, I was thinking of catching a flight back to England."

  "England?" the question came out rougher than he intended. Daros stopped passing the mug from hand to hand.

  "Yes, I'm starting a creative writing course."

  Hearing that, a knot of frustration tightened in his stomach. A return to her roots? A return to what her husband had taught? How could she feel comfortable going back to that world after everything? His jaw tightened.

  As though she could read his thoughts, she added conciliatingly:

  "Not everyone is like Donaldo and Valério."

  "Yeah. I suppose not," the agreement came out dry, more like a tactical retreat.

  Not that the world of vigilantes like him was any safer or more beautiful, Daros reflected. Letting out a defeated sigh, he felt the irritation give way. He wished his protective instinct came with an off switch.

  "If you like, I can drive you to the airport. I always hire a car by the week when I come here. Much more practical," he raised his hand and made a writing gesture to the owner. "Let me get the bill."

  She stood, breaking the spell that had kept her motionless before Daros. She put on her coat, agreeing.

  "I'll owe you a coffee, then," she concluded.

  Daros stood too, the chair scraping against the wooden floor. For a moment they stood, facing each other, separated by the table and an entire year of absence.

  The clinking of coins on a tin tray broke the spell, a waiter materializing between them. Daros didn't even check the amount. He took the folded note and some loose bills from his pocket, setting everything down on the tray the young man was holding.

  With a discreet tilt of his chin, he indicated the door to Greta. An automatic gesture of courtesy, making way for her to go first. In that context, however, it was the opening of a gate. She would follow, he would stay behind, everything between them unravelling. But then, contradicting his own gesture, he changed course. He took a few firm steps toward the varnished bar, where the owner was already waiting to bid him farewell, leaving Greta standing in the middle of the room, between the table that still held the warmth of his body and the door that led back to the cold. Greta walked to the exit.

  While she waited outside, she felt her chest ache. She couldn't, didn't want to cry, but her vision was already blurring. She had planned a different evening, and everything was going wrong. What had she expected? That he would beg her not to leave? That he would say he loved her? He barely knew her. She barely knew herself.

  She felt Daros's warmth before she saw him arrive. He came down the few steps separating the tavern from the street and offered:

  "The car is in a garage nearby. Shall we?" he pointed out the direction.

  Yes, she wanted to go with him. She had for a long time. They covered the next stretch apart. When she slipped on the snow, Daros hurried to help, keeping her steady on the path. Then he rested his hand gently on her back, offering an anchor on the slippery way.

  When Daros stopped at a bend in the road, Greta expected him to bring up her silence of nearly a year. She expected him to ask for an explanation, but he said nothing. He stood looking at the city lights below.

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  "It's beautiful up here, isn't it?" he said.

  It was. The distant city lights were like strings of bulbs on a great Christmas tree. Greta tucked her hands in her pockets and asked, her voice rising to meet the strong wind:

  "How did you know?"

  Daros studied her face. When he was certain what she was asking about, he answered:

  "Come on. We can talk more in the car. There's quite a draught up here, but you never know. Someone might hear."

  Daros put his hand on her back again to be sure. Their steps soon fell into rhythm, the puddles of water here and there serving as mirrors for the stars.

  They reached the garage side by side. A press of the remote in his pocket and the gate rose with a metallic groan. Daros went to the pickup truck, fitted with heavy snow chains on the tyres, and opened the door for her. The heating began to purr, spreading a blessed warmth through the cabin. Greta rubbed her frozen hands against her chest, catching out of the corner of her eye that he was doing the same. They waited for the other to say something, but neither spoke. Daros turned the ignition key, only to realize he had already done it to start the heating.

  The red and green dashboard lights illuminated his face. Greta absorbed every line and angle as though seeing this man for the first time, or for the last. He barely seemed real, barely seemed a person of flesh and blood who could be touched. So close and so unreachable. In that moment, he looked more like a hero on a film poster than an actual human being. Greta gathered that image and planted it in her memory not as his appearance, but as his essence. Then the car moved, plunging into the fine snowflakes beginning to fall.

  Several kilometres passed before he finally answered. Greta had almost forgotten she'd had the courage to ask.

  "I didn't figure it out all at once. Part of me knew when we first met. Something in your posture. Your defensive manner wasn't one of fear. There was something else I couldn't define. The other part of me... well, I think I just needed time to accept what I already knew."

  Greta said nothing. She kept looking at the man behind the wheel, his profile framed by the snowflakes dissolving on the glass. He continued explaining.

  He said that, from what he had observed, Greta had only lied once. It was right at the beginning, when they were at the farm. She had given a false name, invented another profession. After that, she always told the truth. Well, almost always. She had consistently denied that her husband was after her. At first he believed she was in denial, refusing to admit the full extent of Valério's depravity. Much later, Daros understood the reason, when he learned the man was dead.

  The picture had begun to come together when Greta described her last encounter with her husband. Something in the cadence of her voice had given him pause. The sequence of events came out too fast, like a school presentation. Or like a lie with no time to be properly rehearsed. She hadn't aimed for the knee when she raised the sculpture the second time. She had aimed for the head. And she hadn't stopped hitting until her arm gave out, from what Daros had seen.

  At that precise moment in the cabin, he had heard a click. But he was too caught up, too drawn in, to listen to his own instinct.

  When he went to the couple's house, with Greta still in hospital, he found the panic room. The police would have searched the property more thoroughly had they known there was a body to be found, but they didn't know. He did. He even had the exact coordinates, extracted from the computers he destroyed during Greta's rescue. He had almost thought they were wrong when they led him to a wall. The position was ideal, as it required neither climbing nor descending stairs. Greta would have had no physical way of carrying a body up or down a staircase. So it was simply a matter of tapping along the wall to find the hidden entrance.

  He said he had intended to deal with the dean one way or another. Planting Valério's body in the grounds of one of Donaldo's country houses had taken less effort than he expected. And it wasn't as though the dean could deny it now.

  As Greta remained silent, Daros pulled over to the hard shoulder and applied the handbrake with more force than he had calculated. Once stopped, he turned to her:

  "Why didn't you tell me? Why did you hide it from me?"

  She looked away, fixing her gaze on the fields outside as if the snow-covered trees were the most interesting thing in the world. When she finally turned back to him, she didn't even try to conceal the frustration in her voice:

  "Was I supposed to tell an assassin hunter that I was also a target? That I was an unpunished criminal?"

  He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He ran two fingers across his forehead, trying to process it.

  "For God's sake, Greta. You're none of that."

  "I'm not? Are you sure? I killed twice. And I wasn't charged for either."

  This time he didn't know how to respond. He couldn't believe it. Did she really not see the difference between the killers he hunted and herself? Greta had killed in self-defence. Both damned times.

  "Well... thank you. For hiding the..." she swallowed. "For doing all of that for me."

  So that was it. That was how she saw him: as a hunter. A predator. And she wasn't wrong. That explained the year of silence, the distance. Greta had wrested her own life from the hands of a violent man. Of course she wasn't rushing to surrender herself to another.

  Only Daros was different, or wanted to believe he was. When he thought about saying that, though, the words died. Because perhaps he wasn't so different after all. She would never need to run from him, that much was true. He had already let her go twice. He was about to let her go a third time, even if it destroyed him from within.

  But then again, wasn't trying to convince her of that exactly what a predator would do?

  Exhaling slowly, he answered:

  "It was nothing. I kind of... well, I owed you that," he cleared his throat before continuing. "Can I ask you something?"

  Greta nodded. Something in her apparent calm hinted at a storm.

  "Were you afraid of me? Is that why you pulled away?"

  Greta shook her head, her eyes beginning to sting. No, she wasn't afraid of him. But the words wouldn't come. Then the barrier broke inside her. The first tear fell warm, salty when it reached the corner of her mouth. When she raised her hands to cover her face, Daros unclipped his seatbelt to be able to move closer.

  He put an arm around her back, his free hand stroking her trembling shoulder.

  "Shh, shh. It's all right. I didn't mean to push — I just... wanted to understand. I'm here."

  She unclicked her own seatbelt and let herself fall into the embrace, her body nestling in his arms.

  Daros held her even tighter, breathing in the scent of her — her skin, her clothes, her hair. They stayed like that until her tears dried. When Greta finally drew back, she took his face in both hands and kissed him. There was no more cold, no more snow; only the two of them existed.

  When she slowly pulled away, Greta looked at the man beside her.

  "I wasn't afraid of you. I was afraid of myself."

  Then she told him everything. She said she no longer knew who she was, that she no longer trusted her own instincts. One day she was an English teacher, an ordinary wife. The next, she had killed two people. When she had found in Daros something she never knew she needed, she had doubted him, putting them both at risk.

  "I told you I change. That one day I'm a butterfly, the next a caterpillar. But I didn't know I could be... this. And I'm frightened. I don't know who I am now. I don't know who I can be for you."

  Daros opened his mouth to argue and Greta silenced him with another kiss. He pulled her to him firmly. He was afraid that if he let go, she would turn to mist and vanish into thin air.

  She held his face in her hands, her eyes in his:

  "If I stayed with you today, I'd never have the courage to leave again. And I need to go. I need to find out who I am now."

  Daros ran his hand across her face and nodded. He fastened his seatbelt and waited for her to do the same. Then he started the car without looking at her again.

  They continued the journey lost inside themselves, listening to the muffled sound of tyres rolling over snow. Each time he changed gear, Greta brushed her fingers against his hand. Then she turned to him suddenly.

  "The first time I got into your car..." she opened an embarrassed smile. "Well, I heard the last song you'd been listening to."

  "Is it?" he found it funny that she had remembered.

  "Mm-hm. I liked it. That song had marked an important moment for me."

  "Some people say there's no such thing as coincidence," the corner of his mouth rose.

  Seeing his playful side was somewhat painful for Greta, a glimpse of what the two of them might have been. There was so much she still didn't know about Daros — like whose that old letter on his bookshelf was

  "Can I check again? See what you've been listening to?"

  Daros looked at her for a moment before turning his eyes back to the road.

  "The car is hired," he said.

  "Oh..."

  The lights of Frankfurt Airport appeared on the horizon. This was the moment to tell the truth. That she hadn't come to say thank you. She had come because she wanted to see him again. Maybe one day they could...

  But no. Daros wasn't made to stay. There were people who belonged to movement, to friction, to fire. Like him. And there were people who sought roots, anchors, solid ground. Like her. When the two kinds cross paths, the encounter can be profound, transformative... and impossible to sustain. It was tragic and beautiful at the same time. And it was also goodbye.

  Minutes later the car stopped in an airport space, and Daros applied the handbrake. He gave her his half-smile and lifted his eyebrows slightly, a wordless invitation.

  She nodded. They both got out of the vehicle and walked side by side to the building. He stopped halfway, hesitant. He put his hands in his pockets and said:

  "Well... I think this is where I stay."

  Greta embraced him, and he held her tightly. She buried her face in his chest, breathing in the smell of soap. Pulling herself away from him was like tearing off skin. She forced her legs to move forward, releasing her farewell into the wind behind her.

  "Goodbye, Daros."

  She thought she heard him murmur something, perhaps her name, but she wasn't sure.

  2

  Daros was sitting on the bonnet of the pickup truck when her flight took off. He had taken the USB drive from the car and plugged it into the old MP3 player he could never bring himself to leave behind. He pressed play to hear the current song. The car was hired, indeed, but the USB drive was not. Heaven by Cat Stevens began playing through his earphones. Lately, Daros couldn't listen to anything else.

  The snow began to fall more heavily, but he didn't move. He settled his back against the windscreen and crossed his arms behind his head, the same way he had done with his dead friend when they saw snow for the first time. When he lost sight of the plane, he closed his eyes and let his mind wander.

  Greta didn't need a saviour anymore. She needed space, a new beginning. That was what he had told her a little while before, in a voice so low the snow swallowed the words. He had apologised for arriving too late, when she no longer had reason to trust again.

  He opened his eyes and raised his hand in farewell to the sky. It could have been for a plane or for the stars. The peace he had longed for so long was now falling from above in flakes. He caught one in his hand and let it melt. He was in no hurry to get back on the road.

  3

  Settled in the window seat, Greta waved to the cars below, growing smaller with each metre the plane climbed. One of them was Daros's. She knew the gesture wouldn't be seen by anyone on the ground, but she didn't care.

  She barely knew that man, didn't know who the person beneath the soldier's uniform was. Nor did she know what she herself was made of now. But a part of her — the part she thought she had lost — swore that he had waved back.

  There was no way to be sure, not of that or of anything. Both of them were enigmas — to themselves, to each other, to the world. They were two mysteries on a cold night.

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