He was good at slogging through snow without complaint and hacking down the thickest of trunks. He had a partner who didn’t talk much, mostly because he didn’t speak much English, but when Asher, distractedly, almost sliced his hand open by holding the saw improperly – for the third time – Gregor gave Asher a hard stare.
Gregor was a massive man with an overgrown beard just brushing his warm flannel shirt, his hair, tucked beneath a hand-knitted winter hat, hung in long spindles to his shoulders. He was the definition of a mountain man, and though Asher was fit, he was not nearly as solidly built as Gregor. Even the man’s blank stare was intimidating. “Distracted,” he accused simply in that deep rumbling voice. “Why?”
Asher looked at him through the tangle of branches. Gregor still gripped the saw handle on his side, the trunk of the tree barely splintered though they had been sawing for a few minutes. Usually he was more efficient; usually he and Gregor could chop down several spruces in a twenty-minute span. Not today. Today Asher was distracted by his mounting troubles.
“It’s nothing,” Asher said, but Gregor snorted.
“You cut trees fast, work hard, today you slow, distracted. Why?”
“It’s the cold, it’s getting to me,” Asher lied, reaching for a plausible explanation. It was frigid, but the cold had not previously affected his performance and Gregor said as much.
“You not bothered before now.” He stood up to his full height, nearly two heads taller than Asher.
Asher was not particularly tall, but he had taken down men Gregor’s size before. He hated that his mind went there, as if his prior handler, Krone, had trained him so well he couldn’t help but to size someone up and think of a million ways he could kill if he had to. The instinct had been honed for so long that now it was as natural as breathing. Even so, he still felt a prickle of guilt.
Asher opened his mouth to give another excuse, but then wondered how bad it would be if he just told Gregor his troubles. Lying, too, was so ingrained into him that it came naturally, but he wasn’t an assassin anymore and the only thing he had to lie about to keep him and Cora safe was his name... and past, and, well, everything else except perhaps what was happening in the present. Maybe he could be truthful about their new life in Denmark and find a stable balance between lie and truth. The most effective lie held a grain of truth after all.
“Well, I didn’t get much sleep last night,” he admitted.
He could confide in him, right? That was after all what normal people did, didn’t they? Talk about what troubles them.
Before he could overthink it, he blurted, “Cor– Genevieve, my girl, has been having trouble lately. She hasn’t been herself.”
“The depression, no?” Gregor asked, struggling to find the proper word for the mental disorder.
“Something like that.”
“New home, new problems. Homesickness deadly, find some way to – how do you say – cheer her up?”
“I don’t know how,” Asher admitted miserably.
“This month, isn’t it a big time for couples?”
Asher stared at him blankly, the emptiness of his deep blue eyes saying what words didn’t.
Gregor snorted. “You have a woman,” he pointed out. “You must know of the Valentine’s Day.”
He had heard of it, just never celebrated. Wasn’t that where candy was exchanged for kisses or some other form of affection? He chewed on his lower lip, considering. “What does one do on Valentine’s Day?” he finally asked.
Gregor sighed deeply. “My woman and I exchange cards. My sister and hers have scavenger hunts, it depends on couple.” Clearly done with the conversation, he got back into position to continue cutting the tree, probably regretting asking Asher what his problem was in the first place.
Asher got into position, too, but talked while he pushed and pulled the saw. “Genevieve likes hunting,” he said more to himself than Gregor. “What else do people do?”
“Give one another candy–”
“I knew that one.”
Gregor scowled at him. “You want answer or no?”
Asher nodded as the tree began to give under the pressure of the saw. Its sap slowed their work but Asher didn’t notice, he was too engrossed with this idea. He could do this, he could make Cora smile again; he just needed more ideas. He could give her something normal that would make her happy. At least he hoped he could.
“Heart balloons, lover’s cards, snowdrops–”
“Snowdrops?”
“It’s what us Danes call the flowers. White flowers are snowdrops.”
Asher nodded, surprised when the tree started to topple. It crashed to the snow, sending a wave of powder up into the air when the force of the trunk struck through the soft snow. Gregor stepped up beside him and clipped Asher on the shoulder. “You don’t have to overthink, something simple is enough for a good woman.”
Gregor then leaned forward and grabbed one of the branches between his gloved fingers and started dragging it, leaving a divot trail through the snow as if he were actually pulling a sleigh. Asher usually would step forward to help him, but as Gregor had observed, he was distracted.
Gregor said he could go simple, but Asher didn’t want to go simple. Cora deserved everything, especially with what she had been through before coming to Denmark. What she had been through because of him; because she’d had the misfortune of meeting him. Without him she could have gone on prosecuting evil, but now she was on the run.
She was not a simple woman, she was complex, so she deserved the most complex Valentine’s Day Asher could possibly offer her.
2
Reigniting an Old Flame
The dream still haunted her. The nightmare she still seemed to live and the ghost from the
