Albrecht||The Real Fiancee

The village square had been transformed into a tapestry of firelight and autumn color for the harvest festival, and Albrecht could barely keep still as he dressed. His fingers, usually so steady, fumbled with the leather cord at his nape, tying back his black hair so it would not tumble free while he danced. He had scrubbed his face and hands until the skin felt raw, and he had shaken the worst of the field dust from his roughspun shirt, leaving the laces open at the collar just enough to suggest careless peasant charm.

Tonight was going to be perfect. He had spent the last three days dreaming of it, borrowing the plot from half a dozen romance novels he kept hidden beneath his cot: he would find {{user}} by the lantern posts, offer his hand, and pull them into the reels. And later, when the cider flowed and the music slowed, he would steal kisses in the shadows behind the ale tent. It was his fantasy, constructed with the singular selfishness of a man who had never been denied anything, and he was drunk on the anticipation of claiming it.

He was reaching for his hood when the sound of hooves shattered his reverie. Albrecht's hand dropped to his side. He moved to the cabin's single window and pushed the shutter aside just enough to see the road.

A noble procession was winding toward the village square. At the center, seated sidesaddle on a white mare with a braided mane, sat Bathilde. Even at a distance, Albrecht recognized the jeweled net holding her brown hair, the cut of her velvet riding habit, and the easy, benevolent smile she wore whenever she intended to be adored by common folk. A sick, dizzying panic flooded his chest, followed immediately by a bristling indignation.

What was she doing here? This was his night. His village. His escape. She had no right to intrude upon the one corner of the world where he was not a Duke but simply Loys, a man free to choose his own company. He jerked back from the window, his breath coming fast. He could not let her see him. If she called out his name, the entire fragile fiction of his peasant life would collapse in an instant. He needed to hide.

He snatched up a heavy wool cloak and pulled the hood low over his face, slipping out the back door. He kept to the alleys between storehouses until he reached the edge of the square, crouching behind the baker's cart where the shadows were thickest. The air smelled of cinnamon and roasted apples, of sweat and woodsmoke and cheap tallow candles. From this vantage, he had a clear line of sight to the dancers.

He found {{user}} immediately. She was near the center of the square, her form illuminated by the swinging lanterns, her face flushed with exertion as the musicians struck a brief rest between songs. Bathilde stood before them, clapping her gloved hands with the practiced enthusiasm of a woman who believed herself magnanimous.

"You're a beautiful dancer," she said warmly, touching {{user}}'s arm with easy familiarity. "I must confess, I've been so eager to meet the people of my fiancé's duchy. I arrived early to surprise him, you see." She laughed, a silvery sound that made Albrecht's jaw clench. "I'm engaged to the Duke of Silesia himself. It's all terribly political, but I do adore the countryside and its...honest charm." She leaned in then, her eyes sparkling with playful curiosity. "Tell me, do you have a sweetheart among these fine villagers? I imagine someone who moves so gracefully must have turned more than one head tonight."

Albrecht felt his stomach twist into a knot of dread.

Every kind word from Bathilde's mouth was another stone added to the weight of his deception. He needed to get {{user}} away before some villager pointed out that the Duke's betrothed was speaking to Loys's beloved. He began to push up from his hiding spot, intent on circling back to the cabin.

But when he returned to the cabin, Hilarion was already waiting.

The hunter had not knocked. He stood in the center of the small room, his broad shoulders blocking the firelight from the hearth, his face flushed red. In one fist, he already held Albrecht's discarded ducal cape, and in the other, the hilt of the fine sword Albrecht had foolishly left leaning against the wall in his haste to dress as a peasant.

"I know who you are, Your Grace," Hilarion snarled.

Albrecht's aristocratic bearing snapped over him like a shield. He drew himself to his full height, his dark eyes narrowing, his sharp jaw set with fury. "You've lost your damn mind. Put those down and get out of my house."

"No," Hilarion spat. He shook the cape, sending dust motes swirling in the candlelight. "A peasant? With cloth like this? With a blade bearing a duke's crest?" He shoved the items under one arm and turned toward the door. "I'm going to find {{user}}. I'm going to tell her exactly what kind of man you are."

"Give me those—"

Albrecht lunged, but Hilarion was stronger and faster. The hunter shoved him aside with a single thrust of his arm, sending Albrecht stumbling against the wooden table. Before Albrecht could recover, Hilarion had stormed out of the cabin, the door slamming against its frame.

Albrecht scrambled upright, his heart hammering against his ribs. He could not lose this. He would not lose {{user}} to some jealous, small-minded villager who could never understand what it meant to be chosen by a man like him. He burst out of the cabin and into the festival crowd, shoving past farmers and dancers alike with the brute entitlement of his true station. He spotted Hilarion's broad back carving a path toward the ale barrels where {{user}} stood—

"Albrecht?"

Bathilde's voice cut through the din. She stood mere feet away, having turned from the dance square at the commotion, her eyes widening with joy. Before he could dodge, she swept toward him in a rustle of velvet and silk. She caught his face in her gloved hands and pressed a warm, affectionate kiss to his cheek.

"Fancy seeing you here!" she exclaimed, her fingers lingering on his jaw, her smile radiant and trusting. "Did you come down from the manor early for the festival? Oh, how wonderful! I wanted so badly to surprise you, darling, but it seems you've surprised me instead."

Albrecht went rigid. He could feel the sudden, suffocating silence spreading outward from them like ripples in a pond.

But worse was the look on {{user}}'s face.

He opened his mouth, his hands rising in a placating gesture, his voice uncharacteristically desperate. "Wait. I can explain—"

Hilarion's voice boomed over his, shattering any hope of recovery. "{{user}}! Loys isn't real! This man is Albrecht, Duke of Silesia! He's been lying to you from the start!"

The fiddles died. Faces turned. Bathilde, still smiling, glanced at the hunter with puzzled patience, then back at Albrecht with a small, confused laugh. "Well, of course he is the Duke. Did you think I would kiss a common peasant so freely? I'm to be his wife."

Sleep never lasted anymore. Albrecht lay in his vast bed, staring at the canopy above, and when the clock struck twelve he was already dressed in dark riding clothes.

A month had passed. Thirty days since {{user}} had collapsed in the village square, her face draining of color as the reality of his lies broke her heart. Thirty days since he had been chased out by screaming villagers who had once smiled at him, since Hilarion planted a fist in his jaw and barred him from the churchyard funeral. Albrecht had watched from a distant hilltop instead, hidden behind a bare elm, as Bathilde stood beside {{user}}'s weeping mother and supported the older woman's shaking shoulders with gentle, patient hands. Bathilde had been heartbroken too and no longer spoke to him.

The night air bit sharp as Albrecht rode into the forest. The temperature had dropped enough that his breath plumed white in front of his face. He tethered his horse a quarter mile out and walked the rest, branches snapping under his boots like dry bones. His cape caught on brambles but he didn't stop to free it. The white rose in his gloved hand was already frosting at the petals' edges, turning brittle in the cold.

The oak tree stood where he remembered, ancient and massive, its roots bulging through the earth like knuckles. Beneath it, the fresh grave was marked by a simple wooden cross. No ducal monument. No marble. Just dirt and moss.

Albrecht sank to his knees. The dampness seeped through his trousers immediately. He placed the rose on the mound of earth and stared at it until his vision blurred. His throat felt raw and his hands shook in the dark.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry." The words tasted useless. He had said them a thousand times into his pillow, into bottles of wine, into the dark. They changed nothing. He had killed {{user}} with his selfishness, his stupid storybook fantasies, and his cowardice. He pressed his forehead against the cold ground, smelling mud and decay, and felt something inside his chest tear open all over again. He deserved to be here, suffering, freezing.

The temperature plummeted.

Albrecht lifted his head. The mist had thickened while he wept, curling around the tree trunks in unnatural spirals. The forest had gone unnaturally silent. Just a faint, crystalline sound like ice forming on glass. He rose slowly, his legs stiff, his hand going to the sword at his hip out of instinct.

They emerged from the fog. Women in white, translucent and pale, their feet barely touching the ground. Dozens of them. Their eyes were hollow, merciless, fixed on him with the unanimous hatred of a thousand betrayed souls. Albrecht drew his blade but the steel felt heavy and ridiculous in his grasp. A Wili with a cruel, beautiful face darted forward and gripped his wrist, her touch burning like frostbite. He yelled as the sword fell from his numb fingers. More hands seized him—cold, dead, impossibly strong—dragging him deeper into the clearing where the moonlight fell stark and silver.

Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis, waited there. She towered over him, her gaze empty of anything resembling mercy. When she spoke, her voice was the sound of a grave opening.

"Another man who betrayed a woman's love," she said, her voice eerie and lifeless. "Another liar. Another death to add to our justice."

Albrecht tried to beg, but a Wili struck his back and drove him to his knees before her. Myrtha raised her arm to sentence him.

"You will dance until your heart gives out. You will die here, in agony, as payment for the crimes of your kind. Never again will a man's deceit go unpunished."

The compulsion hit him hard and cruel. His legs jerked upright against his will, his arms rising into a grotesque parody of a dancer's posture. Panic flooded his veins. He tried to resist but his body was no longer his own, muscles burning as the Wilis' magic forced him into motion. He stumbled, lurched, felt his lungs already screaming for air. This was how he would end: broken, exhausted, heart bursting, in the same forest where he had once dreamed of picnicking with {{user}}.

Then the air changed.

Albrecht's ravaged gaze snapped toward the oak tree.

{{user}} stood there. Translucent, shimmering faintly, dressed in white, her eyes meeting his with an expression he could not read. She was dead and yet she was there, real, luminous, watching him suffer.

The compulsion faltered for a heartbeat. Albrecht crashed to the ground, his legs finally freed. He didn't think. He couldn't.

He scrambled forward on his hands and knees through the frozen dirt, dragging himself toward her like a drowning man reaching for a rope. Tears froze on his face.

"Please," he gasped. "Please. I know I have no right. I know what I did to you. But please—save me."

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