Merlin, if Fortunata wasn't one of her best friends, she may have punched her. Ever since Edric's last letter, Febs had been a hot mess, just barely able to contain the nerves and the unease floating around her stomach. She must have looked ill, because she'd been excused from dinner early and gone upstairs, leaving her bedroom door open just a crack, waiting for her mother to inevitably check on her before she could sneak out.

Febs was athletic, but climbing down the tree outside her bedroom was something she hadn't done in actual  years. In an real dress no less. She'd nearly fallen, but as soon as she hit the ground, she hit it running, pulling her shawl up around her face as she scooted out her neighbor's fence and down the street. The fog wasn't any thinner, but at least there wasn't an unnatural darkness to it either. The lamps lit down the street cast easy shadows for her to stick to, but she skirted around the entrance to the alley to the garden more than once, before ducking inside one of the adjacent buildings and finding a way out the back.

Her heart was pounding and her thoughts racing for an entirely different reason than last time. It was panic that flooded her system and it had taken that angry letter for her to realize why. Against her better judgement, despite the mere weeks that she'd known him, she'd absolutely started to fall for him. That unsent letter that sat in her trunk with the rest of the ones he'd sent to her said it all. She'd gone and gotten attached, and worse, emotionally attached to their "hypothetical" marriage, that perhaps wasn't quite as hypothetical as he had made it seem on his end.

Finally, after what felt like hours, she squeezed through the hedge. It was so hard to see in the fog and now the dim light, but there he was, and her breath caught in her throat. She'd half expected him not to come and end it, just like that. "Edric?" She stepped forward hesitantly, unsure of how he was going to react.