Lord Nik got better.

It happened the next day, in fact: the Savior broke through to him, and Lord Nik used his own Blessing to cure himself. He saw petitioners again the day after. Everything started to go back to normal.

But to Anthser, normal didn’t feel normal any more. It had stopped being a solid, comfortable reality, and was now a thin veneer that could shatter into nightmare at any moment. Anthser dedicated himself to reinforcing that veneer and making sure it didn’t fragment again.

There was no real point in consulting with Lord Nik about his own protection; Anthser didn’t want to inflict his paranoia on his friend. For reasons that only a human could understand, Lord Nik had returned the fortune Lord Comfrey had bestowed on him, so he had no extra money to spend on a personal guard anyway.

But Anthser kept his own share, so he did.

At Jill’s advice, Anthser gifted a large sum of money to the GA, and the GA in turn used it to create a stipend for the support of additional guardcats for Lord Nik, to work in four-week shifts. Warcats were too rare and too much in demand for the GA to acquire two more, but they hired one, and an additional untrained but reliable greatcat. The new hires kept an eye and an ear on Lord Nik and his surroundings when Anthser couldn’t. With three greatcats, it was possible to make sure someone was always awake, alert, and within earshot, without anyone having to devote their entire life to doing so. Their official story was that the two new greatcats were friends of Anthser’s and there to keep him company. The involvement of the GA was so that they could all honestly say they’d not been hired by Anthser. Jill said that Lord Nik would probably suspect anyway: “But this way he won’t actually put his foot down and evict them. Which he’d do if he knew they were employees.” Anthser couldn’t fault this logic. Lord Nik had always been weirdly scrupulous about paying folks.

Also, if anything happened to Anthser, he wanted the GA to keep up the practice. Even if they’d need a new excuse to hang around.

While the extra sets of paws, professionals and not just volunteers, eased Anthser’s mind, they did not put him at ease. He was hyperalert, hyperprotective. Sometimes, after he’d nosed Lord Nik’s face or licked his cheek, the Blessed human would look at him strangely, or ask, “Are you all right?”

Anthser knew that was code for your mind looks wrong; do you want to petition me?  and knew, also, that Lord Nik wouldn’t ask that question outright. “Sure. I’m good,” Anthser would lie, and change the subject. He didn’t want to go back to normal. He didn’t want to believe in a safety that was only an illusion anyway.

When he slept, he dreamed of Callie, her lean supple grace, the sandalwood and sweetness of her scent, the shimmer of her white-striped gray fur, turned silvery by the gaslight in her bedroom. In his dreams, their location varied: they might be together at the Ascension party again, pouncing one another over and over again on the game field, whiskers rippling in laughter. Or they’d be racing across the Markavian grounds, or curled together on her too-small bed which nonetheless had managed to feel just right. Often, the scene dissolved into nightmare: the floor might break and he’d find Lord Nik’s corpse in the room below, or he’d hear Lord Nik’s voice yelling, and then spend several minutes making out with Callie and apologizing for having to leave, so that when he finally did go check on Lord Nik, he’d find the human dead. Frequently, Anthser got shot in these dreams because he was too distracted by Callie to pay attention to an obvious threat. In one particularly grisly version, he was shot and paralyzed while making love to Callie, then forced to watch helplessly as masked humans butchered her before him.

His subconscious was not subtle.

Anthser wanted to see Callie again, desperately, but each time he had, all he could think about was his failure. While he’d been having the best night of his life, his patron had been having the worst. It wasn’t rational, and Anthser intended to call on Callie again, soon. Make sure she knew he hadn’t forgotten about her. He just had to make sure that nothing bad could ever happen to Lord Nik again first.

When the Ascension season was over and they were safely back in Fireholt, Anthser finally started to relax. Being in familiar territory, surrounded by people he’d known most of his life, with strangers few and far between, was more of a reassurance than even the extra paws about to help. A group of newcomers couldn’t come into Fireholt lands without word reaching Anthser within hours. Everyone knew everyone. Nothing like an abduction or a murder had ever happened in Fireholt.

After a week, he was comfortable enough to think about his personal concerns again.

Which is when Anthser realized he hadn’t spoken to Callie for almost a month, and had left Gracehaven without saying goodbye.

He wrote her an apology then, although even that took a few more days, and he felt stupid about it. How do you say “Sorry I ignored you for a month, I got distracted”? What kind of person forgets to say goodbye to his lover? He felt like one of those human men that women complained about, the ones that are ‘only after one thing and as soon as he gets it, he’s gone’. Did female greatcats worry about that? Greatcats weren’t hung up about sex the way humans were, because greatcats could tell by smell if they were fertile or not, so it was easy to avoid accidental pregnancy. Plus, greatcats had stronger parental bonds. You’d have to be crazy to abandon your kittens or your pregnant mate. Whereas, according to Lord Nik, sane human men were quite capable of doing such a thing.

Anthser was aware that Lord Nik was the expert and knew better than anyone else what was crazy or not. Even so, he couldn’t help feeling that, as adorable as humans were and as much as he liked them as individuals, they did a lot of things as a species that did not make any sense at all.

When Callie replied, however, she said that she understood and he shouldn’t worry about it. For some weeks, they maintained a regular correspondence. Though she didn’t complain, Anthser got the sense that she wasn’t delighted with her current employer. She was still thinking of returning to her previous career on the racing circuit.

Anthser didn’t want her to go back to the racing circuit. Nik visited Gracehaven on a regular basis; it wasn’t convenient to Fireholt by any means, but at least Anthser was there frequently. Seeing Callie if she was traveling on the racing circuit and based out of Soudon during the off-season would be much harder.

Maybe I should ask her to marry me.

That…seemed a little radical, given that he hadn’t known her that long, and had spent part of their acquaintance shamefully neglecting her. But he missed her terribly, and thought about her all the time. The more he mulled it over, the better he liked the idea. It felt wrong, being on the other side of the country from her. After a couple of months, he made up his mind to ask her the next time Lord Nik took him to Gracehaven on one of his visits to his betrothed, Miss Vasilver.

In mid-spring, Anthser returned with his patron to Gracehaven. On the first full day back, Anthser left his greatcat assistants/friends, Rawlth and Gavin, in charge of watching Lord Nik for the afternoon, then took off to see Callie, who was expecting him. They were meeting at the Cordelweight club’s bowracing course, on the southeast side of town. She was supposed to be training with her rider until 3 o’clock, and then she and Anthser would go to a greatcat cafe for dinner afterwards.

Anthser arrived a half-hour early, but Callie was already waiting for him. She looked disgruntled at first, and Anthser flatted back his ears. “Sorry, did I have the wrong time? I thought—”

“No, no, you’re fine.” Callie canted her ears and flared her whiskers in a smile. “My boss begged off on me. Again.” She rose to her paws with a sigh and touched her muzzle to Anthser’s, then moved forward to nuzzle down his side and lean into him. “It’s good to see you again, handsome.”

He curled his head over her back and purred. “You too, gorgeous. How’ve you been?”

“Better now you’re here,” Callie said, but she didn’t sound happy. “Let’s get some food.”

She asked about him as they walked to the cafe, so he talked about hunting in Fireholt’s preserve. A week ago, a couple of human hunters had injured a bear by accident, and he had gone with a handful of local greatcats to track the animal and put him down. It’d been a tense, uneasy hunt, with the party spread thin across the preserve. Sally had picked up the trail and signaled for backup, but Anthser was the only one who’d been able to get to her in time. Together they’d been able to pin the creature in a culvert and finish it quickly, without it hurting anyone else.

“Still a hero, I see.” Callie flirted her tail around his as she spoke, teasing.

He huffed. “Hey, Sally was the one who found the trail! And drove it into the culvert! She did all the hard work.”

“Uh huh. I’m sure. Hero.” She slurped his cheek while he feigned a scowl.

Dinner at the cafe was delicious. They shared a half-hog stuffed with cheese and spiced sausage and bacon. “Mrrr, pig with pig and more pig,” Callie said between delicate bites of crackling roasted skin. “My favorite.” Anthser grinned at her appreciatively.

After the meal, they ambled outside, with the general plan of going to the Anverlee Manor felishome; they were too full for anything more strenuous. Despite her superficial good humor and evident pleasure in the food and company, Callie still seemed out of sorts to Anthser, as if some underlying concern kept pushing its way to the top of her mind. “Something bothering you?” he asked as they walked along a smooth stone Gracehaven sidewalk.

Callie dropped her head and sighed. “Kinda. Mrow. I gave notice to Lord Endonbury this morning, after Lord Vernon called off on me. He was pretty annoyed about it. Lord Vernon, that is. Like I’m supposed to be grateful to get paid and not have to work. But this isn’t just about a paycheck for me. I want to race. And this just isn’t working out. We’re entered in a race at the Markavian in three weeks already and I’ll be staying through that, but after that I’m gone.”

“Mrowch.” Anthser stopped walking to tuck his chin over her neck in a hug. “Sorry to hear that,” he said, and meant it. “I know you’ve been working really hard at this.”

“Yeah. I’ve been working hard at it. But it’s a team game. It can’t be just me.”

“I know.” Anthser groomed the back of her ear, wondering if he should ask her about marrying him right now. But hey, you don’t need a new post! You can come live with me!  It didn’t seem politic, somehow. Maybe you can marry me and live with me while you look for another partner?

“So I might go back into racing. You know. Like I keep talking about doing.” She gave a full body shrug, gray and white fur rippling with the motion, and nuzzled him back. “But it’ll keep. No reason to worry about it right now.” Callie pressed against him for a moment before she started walking again.

“Sure. You’ll be great no matter what you do.” Anthser ambled beside her, trying to figure out how to ask. “But, um, speaking about the future—”

Callie turned to him and stopped his next words with her muzzle against his, licking and nibbling sensually at his mouth. “Let’s not talk about the future,” she murmured, after a long moment. “Let’s just enjoy now.”

A little dazed, he nodded. “Sure, I can do that.” I can always ask later.

But he didn’t ask later.

Several days later, on the morning when Anthser and Lord Nik were scheduled to return to Gracehaven, Anthser was in the felishome parlor with Jill. “I think I’ve screwed things up with Callie and I don’t know how to fix it,” he moaned, paws over his head as he sprawled on the longest couchbed.

Jill regarded him from her usual spot, blue-grey form comfortably curled up in a little couchbed just right for one. “Really? I thought you two were having a great time. You saw her practically every day.”

“We did. We were.” Anthser shook his head without raising it.

“So, what, it was something that happened last night?”

“No, last night was fantastic too.”

“So you’ve screwed things up…how? By making them so good you’ll never live up to this high again and every future visit will therefore be a disappointment?”

Anthser uncovered one eye to glare balefully at her. Jill met his gaze, deadpan. “No. It’s – I wanted to ask her to marry me. But every time I started to bring the subject up, she’d change it or distract me. ‘I don’t want to think about the future’. Until, y’know, it finally got through my thick skull that she doesn’t want to talk about the future with me because she doesn’t want a future with me.” He sighed, mournfully. “Maybe it was never anything I did. Maybe she just figures there’s no way to make it work, her a racer and me a warcat. Maybe there isn’t.”

“Eh.” Jill’s eyebrow whiskers tilted, her expression skeptical. “Sounds to me like you’re reading too much into this.”

Anthser slid his paw back over his eye. “Maybe. I just…she’s probably leaving Gracehaven in a couple of weeks, to go to Soudon. I don’t know when I’ll get to see her next. I feel like this was my last chance, and I blew it. And I don’t even know what I did.”

“Maybe you should’ve asked her.”

“Uhh. Yeah. I guess. I didn’t want to ruin the moment, though.”

“So you ruined your future instead?”

Anthser grimaced and burrowed his head against the cushions. “You sure know how to make a guy feel worse, Jill. Why am I even talking to you?”

“Because I’m female and you think I’ll have some useful insight.”

“…right. Do you?”

“Yes. You should talk to her. Whether or not you think she’s deliberately distracting you from the topic.”

Anthser groaned. “I can’t now. We’re going back to Fireholt.”

“Then write her a letter. Savior, Anthser, you’re a greatcat. You can handle this.”

The parlor door cracked open, revealing one of the servant girls from the house. “Fel Fireholt? Mrs. Linden says they’re almost ready to go, and asks if you’ll please come up now?”

Anthser heaved himself to his paws. “Right.” He scooped up his bags and hooked them onto his harness.

Jill followed him to the door. “Remember what I said!” she yelled after him. “Write it to her, kitty!” He flatted his ears in response, and Jill went back into the felishome, shaking her head.