Christelle Dabos

Ophelia felt so alone with her uncertainty that she surprised herself by wishing that Thorn was there to help them out.

Ophelia was scared, viscerally scared, that he might have grown fond of her.

She had on a simple shirt and short hose, no shoes on her feet, and her long, brown hair flowed freely down her back. Entering Thorn’s room looking like this wasn’t a great idea. She had to rummage about in her mess to find the big coat he’d lent her. She buttoned it up from top to bottom, and rolled up the flapping sleeves.

Beneath the bull’s-eye window, there was a silhouette, all hollows and angles, seated on the sofa, totally still. Thorn was there.
Ophelia moved forward, tripping on bumps in the floorboards, banging into the corners of furniture. When she reached the sofa, she saw that Thorn’s pale eyes, bladelike flashes against a dark background, were following her every move.

“Do sit down,” said Thorn. He had a talent for turning what could pass as a polite formula into a despotic command. Ophelia felt around for a chair, but once she’d found one, had to give up on moving it. Made of velvet and fine wood, it was too heavy for her cracked rib. So she sat at a distance, her back to the sofa, obliging Thorn to move. He relinquished his hunched position with an annoyed snort, and sat on his official chair, on the other side of the desk.

“You want to know what I feel?” he said at last, not taking his eyes from his watch.
“Please.” Ophelia was almost imploring him. Thorn wound his watch, put it back in his uniform pocket, and, totally unpredictably, violently swept everything off his desk with his arm. Quill-holders, ink pots, blotters, letters, even the telephone, were all sent spinning to the floor with a deafening clatter. Ophelia gripped the armrests of her chair with both hands to stop herself from running away. It was the first time she’d seen Thorn succumbing to an outburst of violence, and she feared it would be directed at her next.
And yet, with his elbows on the desk, hands pressed together, finger to finger, Thorn didn’t seem at all like someone who had recently been angered. Now uncluttered, the desk displayed a nasty dark stain: the contents of the ink pot Ophelia had knocked over the previous time. “I’m pretty annoyed,” said Thorn. “Somewhat more than that, even.”

“Sorry,” whispered Ophelia.
Thorn clicked his tongue with irritation. “I said I was annoyed, not that you had annoyed me.”
“So you’ve decided to believe me?” murmured Ophelia, with relief.
Thorn raised his eyebrows in surprise, his long scar following suit. “And why wouldn’t I believe you?”
Caught off guard, Ophelia stared at the writing materials piled up on the floor.

Thorn looked at her closely. “Take off your glasses, please.”
Surprised by this unexpected request, Ophelia did as she was asked. Thorn’s thin figure at the other end of the desk got lost in the blur. If he wanted to assess the damage for himself, she wasn’t going to stop him. “It’s the policemen,” she sighed. “They don’t hold back.”
“Did they discover your true identity?”
“No.”
“Did they make you suffer other things that I can’t see now?”
Ophelia put her glasses back on clumsily, terribly embarrassed. She hated it when Thorn put her under interrogation like this, as though incapable of dropping his role of Treasurer. “Nothing serious.”
“On second thought, I correct what I said,” continued Thorn in a monotone voice. “You are partly responsible for my annoyance.”
“Oh?”
“I asked you to trust no one other than my aunt. No one. Does one really have to dot every ‘i’ for you?”

He went over to a wall, lifted a wooden shutter and retrieved an aluminum coffeepot.
“May I have some?” Ophelia asked, impulsively. She could no longer survive without coffee since living in the Pole. She noticed too late that there was only one cup, but Thorn let her have it with no objection. Coming from him, she found the gesture very gracious

“I, too, have been made to pay by that old vixen,” he said, pouring her some coffee.
Ophelia looked right up at him. With her seated and him standing, it was enough to give you vertigo. “She had it in for you, too?”
“She tried to suffocate me under a pillow,” said Thorn, languidly. “Luckily, I’m tougher than I look.”