Claude and Jehan

The great bells of Notre Dame had just finished tolling the final, resonant strokes of Compline, their bronze vibrations dying into the freezing river mist that choked the Parvis. For months, the shadow had been there—a suffocating presence lingering at the edge of the torchlight whenever you crossed the square from the Val d'Amour. Tonight, the cold had sharpened your temper enough to make you turn on your heel, march across the slick cobblestones, and demand to know who dared hound your steps.

The figure standing beneath the carved stone gaze of the judged souls on the western facade did not flinch. As he stepped out from the niche, the tallow light of a street shrine caught the severe, hollow planes of his face and the heavy black wool of an Archdeacon's robes. Claude Frollo looked down at you, his chest rising and falling beneath his vestments in a slow, measured rhythm that betrayed the violence of his restraint.

"In noctibus extollite manus vestras in sancta," he murmured, his voice a low, rasping baritone that seemed to scrape against the freezing stone, profaning the final psalm of the night office as his burning eyes dragged over your shivering form, lingering on the mandatory scarlet aiguillette cord tied to your sleeve. "You walk the parvis of the Virgin at the ninth hour with the brazenness of a queen, daughter of Eve. Do you think the stones of this church do not cry out when your boots cross them? Or did you turn around because you finally wished to confess?"

Before the defiant retort could fully leave your lips, the uneven clatter of leather boots and a bright, melodic whistle shattered the suffocating gravity of the square.

"Claude? By the nails of Saint Denis, is that actually you out past the cloister gates?"

Jehan Frollo materialized out of the river fog, his blonde curls damp with mist and a leather-bound treatise from the Rue du Fouarre tucked haphazardly under one arm. He came to an abrupt halt a few paces away, his rosy, almost girlishly pretty face lighting up with sheer, unadulterated delight as his eyes darted from his rigid, forty-one-year-old brother straight to you.

"Grace!" Jehan beamed, completely ignoring the terrifying tension radiating off the Archdeacon as he stepped in close, his warm fingers brushing your cold knuckles with effortless, familiar affection. "I was just heading to the Pomme d'Eve to look for you—I managed to borrow that copy of Ovid from Master Guillaume's lectern before the beadle locked the library. What on earth are you doing lecturing my saintly brother in the freezing dark? Don't tell me he's trying to save your soul on an empty stomach."

The Pomme d'Eve was suffocatingly thick with the smell of roasting mutton, spilled sour wine, and damp wool, though the roaring hearth barely touched the chill still clinging to your skin. Just minutes ago, crossing the mist-choked Parvis of Notre Dame as the bells tolled Compline, that same tall, suffocating shadow had followed you all the way to the boundary of the Val d'Amour—closer than ever before, close enough that you had heard the heavy rustle of black wool and a ragged, indrawn breath before you bolted into the tavern's noise.

"Here now, your hands are colder than the Seine in January," a warm, familiar voice murmured against your ear.

Jehan Frollo slid onto the wooden bench beside you, his blonde curls damp from the fog and his cheeks flushed with cheap wine and the cold. Looking like a painted angel who had tumbled straight out of a cathedral window into the mud, he immediately took both of your trembling hands between his warm palms, rubbing them briskly before pressing a playful, lingering kiss to your knuckles.

"Who rattled you out there? Not the Watch, surely—I paid off old Gregoire on Tuesday with a counterfeit gros," Jehan teased, his bright eyes crinkling as he reached into his unlaced scholar's doublet and pulled out a small, contraband octavo manuscript, sliding it across the scarred oak table toward you. "Look what I liberated from the scriptorium at the Collège de Montaigu today. A collection of Latin hymns by Bernard of Clairvaux—and before you roll your eyes at me, read the third page. It reads less like a prayer and far more like what I want to do to you behind the tapestry over there."

Under the table, Jehan's knee pressed warmly, insistently against yours, his thumb tracing the inside of your wrist with light, practiced familiarity. Yet as you glanced back toward the tavern's frosted horn window, the breath caught in your throat. Standing motionless across the narrow, filthy street in the shadow of a timber overhang was the tall figure in the black robes of an Archdeacon, his hollow, burning eyes fixed squarely on Jehan's hands touching yours.