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Edelgard never did kiss that noble boy. He was a hazy figment in her memories, quickly pushed to the side by the horrors that greeted her when she returned to the empire.

He was a blond blob who cried too easily and tripped over himself when they danced and stammered when he gave her a dagger as a parting gift.

Part of her did love him in those few months they spent together, but then he was gone. Edelgard learned young how eager the world is to take things away, to pry them out of her small hands and leave her alone in the dark.

She looked in the mirror on the first month anniversary of the day she became an only child. Her roots were white and her eyes were dead.

She brushed her hair methodically and felt somehow outside herself as her eyes ran over those little white hairs over and over again. Her thoughts were a disconnected cacophony whenever she was alone in those first months, and Edelgard wondered if the scars on her arms from elbow to wrist would ever heal over, if her eyes would turn white too, if that little crying noble boy would still be around if she had kissed him.

It was a fleeting thought, and Edelgard put her hairbrush down on her nightstand with an echoing click of wood against glass. A few of her sisters had been bunched around her in age, and they all shared a room together to sleep and giggle and fight over hairbrushes in.

She slipped out of her room, her bare feet with their still healing sores stung against the castle’s cold stone floors. She stood outside of her uncle’s room, the child’s dagger clenched in her tiny hands until sleep took her sudden impulse for revenge from her, too.

-

Edelgard’s first kiss went like this.

Her father became a ghost in her life. His puppet strings always pushed and pulled him away from the capital and into different meetings with different nobles demanding different things. When they did have time together, his eyes always cast over her white hair, and he seemed to run out of any words other than, “Oh, El. I’m so sorry, little El.”

Edelgard realized belatedly that Hubert was her only family. He was two years and two months older, and dutifully preformed his task to scout out the next few years of adolescence for pitfalls before Edelgard followed after him. He never complained about playing childish games with her when her hair was brown and helped plot her revenge on the world when it was white.

Their fathers and a small host of other empire nobles walked ahead of them on her first visit to Garreg Mach. It was the day of the goddess’s rebirth, and Edelgard tugged on Hubert’s sleeve. “Can people really be reborn?”

“No,” he said. “They’re just playing pretend.”

“Aren’t they a little old for that?” Hubert smiled at her when she pursed her lips and said, “They’re all rather stupid, aren’t they?”

“Yes, but you should keep your voice down, El. You’ll get in trouble.”

“What? Will the goddess get mad at me? What’s she gonna do? She’s dead.”

Hubert laughed, and his father reprimanded him without turning his head. He scowled at the ground, and Edelgard grabbed his hand. “Don’t worry,” she whispers. “He’ll be dead soon, too.”

He nodded. “I know.”

He still looked troubled. Edelgard wanted to squeeze his hand in comfort, but her second Crest had played havoc with her muscles. Anything above a feather light touch, and she’d break his hand.

Her father labored over his apologies to the Archbishop for not enduring the pilgrimage the year before. Edelgard didn’t remember any talk of plans to visit. She figured she must have been in the kingdom during those months.

The Archbishop smiled and told him there was no need for regret—the empire and the church had been friends since the days Seiros walked the earth, after all. She glanced over at Edelgard, still close to Hubert’s side and tilted her head. “And this is your daughter, I presume? It is truly a blessed day that I could meet you, child. I pray to see you on the throne and in good health in the years to come.”

Edelgard didn’t say anything back. Instead, she narrowed her eyes and looked for signs of the scales and tail she knew were hiding beneath her crisp white robes.

The Archbishop turned back to her father. “Such a lovely little thing. You must be very proud. Though there is much I must attend to today, I will ensure she receives a proper education on Seiros’s teachings and the goddess during your visit.”

They trekked the monastery’s hallowed halls, the Archbishop’s voice droning on about the goddess and the saints and the Crests she blessed her chosen heroes with. She looked down at Edelgard again with kind eyes, and Edelgard looked for reptilian film. “You have a Crest, too, my future emperor. A very special one from Seiros herself. When it is time to pray, make sure to thank the goddess for blessing you with such a gift.”

“Yes, Lady Rhea.”

When they gathered in the cathedral, Edelgard finally released Hubert to clasp her hands and vow to kill every monster hiding in the dark and playing with her blood.

They filed back out of the pews, and she was at Hubert’s side again to whisper her suspicions about a strange man with ethereal green hair she had seen peeking in on the service. “There are more of them.”

“I saw him, too, El.”

The Archbishop happened to glance in their direction, and she said to Edelgard’s father, “How adorable. I can recall being inseparable from my servants at that age. Does he bear a Crest as well?”

“Ah,” Edelgard’s father said. “No, I’m afraid not.”

“A pity,” she said. “But there is little need to worry—the goddess loves all her children equally, blessed or otherwise.”

Edelgard scowled. Hubert’s father subtly pulled him away to yell at him in another part of the monastery as they continued to walk on. The Archbishop shifted and shimmered, something inhuman slithering just below her surface. She was the Archbishop when Edelgard’s grandfather was in power, and there wasn’t a speck of white in her alien green hair.

When Hubert and his father rejoined them, he stayed a step back from her, and she had to save her whisperings for the carriage ride home.

“She’s ancient, you know,” Edelgard said. “Nothing will ever change as long as she’s in charge.”

“Yes, Lady Edelgard.”

Edelgard blinked at him. Then, when she figured it out, she said, “we’ll kill them all—the Archbishop, my uncle, your father.”

“Yes, Lady Edelgard.”

She was ten when Hubert’s father beat the nickname out of him and she became a lady. The following year, a nursemaid took her aside and let her know that things were different now. She was a young lady, and holding hands with a boy or leaning her head on his shoulder when she got tired was inappropriate. If she woke in the middle of the night, it would be unheard of to go to a boy’s room. Edelgard still hasn’t learned to deal with the nightmares alone.

Edelgard could physically feel the walls slowly being mounted between them as they lurched on in age. The thought of Hubert being taken from her and left to fester in the snake pit that was the imperial palace completely alone was what spurred her on.

Her thirteenth birthday party invited every noble with a child near her age to the palace to give her a present and suck up on their parents’ behalf. She was stuffed into a purple ball gown with two many skirts, and a maid had shooed Hubert out of her room to poke her skull with pins in an attempt to weave flowers into her hair.

A noble woman—the Countess Varley, she recalled—pushed her quaking daughter over to place a box tied up with a bow in her hands. Her daughter looked at the ground and said nothing. The Countess Varley said, “My how you’ve grown. You are turning into quite the young lady, Lady Edelgard. I keep telling my Bernadetta of the many wonders you discover at that age. I know I discovered romance and drove my poor mother up the wall with all my talk of boys. My nursemaid read me too many fairytales, and I was just obsessed with that magic first kiss, though of course all little girls are at that age.”

Edelgard said, “My mother is dead,” and slid out of her chair at the front of the room.

Her heels clicked against the grand hall’s floor, and Hubert turned his head at the sound when she must still have been a purple blob across the room. He had shot up in height recently—out of her reach in more ways than one—and she ordered, “Hubert, sit down.”

He blinked at her, but followed her command. He blinked again with wide eyes when she gave him a peck on the lips that lasted half a second. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand.

They were both promptly dragged away to have adults explain the importance of propriety on her end and be screamed at on Hubert’s.

A noble woman shook her head. “Lady Edelgard, what were you thinking doing something like that?”

“It’s my birthday party—I can do what I want,” she said. “You can’t control me.”

Her uncle raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

Edelgard didn’t bother to hide her glare. She didn’t have claws now, but she would grow them if she had to and sink them into whatever her uncle tried to pry away from her.

Her father started to joke about teenage rebellion to lighten the mood. Her uncle’s gaze turned amused, and Edelgard didn’t take her eyes off of him for a second.

Neither she nor Hubert ever spoke of it.

-

Her second kiss happened because Hubert couldn’t spar. While Edelgard appreciated his talents at magic, her blood and seething fury at the world caused her to pick up an axe, and the two don’t mesh well in a practice fight.

She learned from a few painful lessons in power that open shows of hostility would get her nowhere. The Archbishop would still look down at her like a cockroach from her ivory tower, and the rats in the darkness would never be forced into the light if she continued the path of a haughty princess.

The anger never left her. It just manifested in slaughtered training dummies and sparring partners sent to the infirmary. She liked sparring with the second Bergliez boy when the head of the military visits the palace. The poor boy was likely an accident given his family was already swimming in suitable heirs, but he punched and kicked like he was born for something after all.

The prime minister’s son, on the other hand, is all too aware exactly what he was brought into this world for. And he was very, very happy to share it with Edelgard.

“I do not understand how you can show such little enthusiasm,” Ferdinand chided. “In just three years, it will be us in that meeting instead of our fathers—or, at least, we will be sat beside our fathers while we learn the nuances of our positions.”

“And I have been aware of that fact for fifteen years, Ferdinand.”

“Well, you could certainly do more to show it. As future emperor, there is no need for you to demur on your patriotism. The people will have no reason to look up their leader if you seem apathetic, Edelgard.”

“Trust me. The only thing I’m apathetic about is this conversation.”

“Edelgard—”

“Do you not think you have bothered her enough with your drivel? We have not even had lunch, and yet you—”

Hubert emerging from the shadows whenever Edelgard needed him was the one constant in her life she was grateful for. She was also grateful that Ferdinand was as distractible as he was irritating whenever Hubert made his presence known.

“And how is anyone supposed to place their face in the imperial household if you conduct yourself like a snake?”

“And how would you continue to speak if someone cut out your tongue?”

The prime minister’s family was visiting for the month to discuss some island on the empire’s periphery acting up. Edelgard pinched the bridge of her nose. It was going to be a long month.

For as little freedom as she had, Edelgard did learn the interesting fact that Ferdinand was kept in a similar, if different cage.

“You’ve never left your family’s estate without an escort?” she asked over a cup of tea when the day finally did slope to the afternoon.

“I rarely walk the edges of my family’s home without an attendant. It is improper for a noble to be without—”

“It’s demented.”

Ferdinand shifted in his chair, daring to glance to Hubert. “You do not seem to have a problem with it.”

“Hubert doesn’t report my every move back to my father.”

“Well,” another shift that fifteen years of lessons on noble temperament hadn’t quite trained out of him. “Perhaps he should. Doing otherwise is ignoble.”

“And I will be sure to correct Lady Edelgard on her posture as well,” Hubert drawled.

Ferdinand immediately snapped out of the slouch he had slowly shifted into. “O-Of course. But it is hardly a surprise that my noble bearing is superior to Edelgard’s.”

“It is easy to win when you’re the only one competing,” Edelgard said. Ferdinand started to reprimand her, but she paid their surroundings more attention, interrupting him with, “where’s your escort now?”

“Oh. Well, since you were with Hubert and the von Vestras are trained in attending to the imperial family, my father thought—”

She couldn’t help the short laugh. “Hubert is supposed to be watching you?”

His eyes shifted to Hubert. “Yes…” He cleared his throat in an attempt to gather his nerves. “As I said, the von Vestras—”

“If you were on fire, my first concern would be whether Lady Edelgard was parched from the heat.”

“Ah, w-why,” Ferdinand stammered. “Why don’t we speak of something else? Clearly neither of you have been properly trained in polite conversation.”

“No,” Edelgard said. “I spent my time learning how to defend myself in case a man like Hubert ever attempted to set me on—”

“Ah! Weapon work! I’ll have you know—”

Edelgard consented to a proposed sparring session. Taking her annoyance out on Ferdinand by knocking him to the ground did admittedly sound like a bit of childish fun.

“The weapon of choice is yours, Edelgard. As any noble should be, I am proficient in all combat forms.”

She inspected the blade of the wood training axe. “None you prefer?”

“Of course not. In battle, one must be flexible and ready to change weapons at a moment’s notice.”

Her eyes flicked up. “Really none you’re attached to?”

“Well,” Ferdinand sent a guilty look to the remaining weapons. “I suppose I favor lances ever so slightly.”

“Then use—”

“Which means I must train my sword work to bring it up to the proper noble standard.”

Edelgard rolled her eyes. From the sidelines, she was sure Hubert was doing the same.

Ferdinand was far more competent than Edelgard had been expecting. He lacked the raw physical strength Edelgard possessed but knew the basics about how to shift his stance to properly accommodate for parrying heavy blows. What impressed her most, however, was his rather frustrating ability to dodge her strikes altogether.

“You’re quick on your feet,” she commented after bouncing back from one clash.

“Of course. Speed is of the utmost important in battle. Even you should know that, Edelgard.”

“I do, I’m just surprised. I had thought shying away from an enemy’s attack would be seen as cowardly.” She smirked. “Running in battle isn’t the most noble of actions.”

Ferdinand gaped at her for the second she gave him before charging again. Her words did the trick, and he stopped attempting to dart away from her attacks. She’s learned to read her uncle’s ticks—an insecure fifteen year old is nothing.

Edelgard would discard her inhuman strength in a second if given the choice, but it was useful in ending fights quickly, especially against targets that couldn’t—or in this case, refused—to get away.

What Edelgard wasn’t expecting, however, was Ferdinand to make the absurd decision to lean into her blow. After the fact, she assumed he was planning to throw her off balance or force her to open up her stance for a potential strike. During the strike, the wooden blade of the training sword he had hastily picked made a sickening crack. Both of their eyes widened, and Edelgard’s axe finished its swing. There’s another crack when it hit right below his neck.

Ferdinand fell to the ground with a scream, clutching his collar bone. Edelgard threw her own splintered axe aside as if it had caught fire. She ran to Ferdinand’s side, and out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Hubert darting off without even needing the order to fetch a healer.

Edelgard realized asking if he’s alright was pointless when she kneeled at his side. Instead, she reached towards him, mindful of the wooden splinters littering the ground and the site of impact. “Ferdinand, stay calm—just,” he didn’t seem to hear her, and pushed away her hovering hands on instinct. “Try to stop moving—that will only make things worse. Hubert’s getting help, and—”

“I—I am fine—I can fight through any—” his poor decision to attempt to sit up by putting weight on his elbow resulted in his assurances being caught off with a strangled gasp of pain.

She took his hand, half to prevent him from trying to get back to his feet again and half to give him something to squeeze to distract from the pain. Ferdinand apparently didn’t understand her intentions as he met their hands with a bewildered stare. “Just stay still. Help will be here soon. And I’m sorry—I was behaving recklessly, and—”

Her apology seemed to spark something in him, and he frantically attempted to shake his head, likely only aggravating his injury. “No, I was the one who was reck—”

“What is going on here!?”

Edelgard glanced up. Hubert brought a healer and both her and Ferdinand’s fathers, along with a group of other nobles Edelgard assumed they had been in a meeting with.

Despite his condition, Ferdinand managed to answer his father before her. “Nothing! I-I mean, just—I was carelessly inspecting the training weapons, and the strangest—ow!” he yelped when the healer now kneeling beside him placed their hands on what Edelgard was starting to suspect was a broken collar bone.

The rest of the situation became a blur as Edelgard was shooed away to allow the professionals to assist Ferdinand in the trek to the infirmary. His father and the other nobles trailed after them, and the distant sounds of his father scolding him for being an embarrassment echoed back to the training grounds.

Hubert joined her side. “Why did he lie?” she asked. “The opportunity to get me in trouble…”

“I have a guess, Lady Edelgard,” Hubert said. “When his father overhead me speaking to the healer, he said something interesting. Apparently Ferdinand begged him to accept me as his supervisor for his stay here.”

“I see,” Edelgard murmured.

Healing spells were designed to stitch back up soldiers nearly cleaved in two on the battlefield. A training mishap was nothing, and Edelgard suspected Ferdinand was confined to the infirmary more as a punishment than worry over his health. They waited until all the elder nobles filed out, and Edelgard assigned Hubert to stand watch outside the door while she slipped inside.

Ferdinand turned at the sound of her heels against the stone floor. A bit of faith magic washed away the grimaces and pale color his face had turned immediately after the accident. “Edelgard. I wasn’t expecting—”

“I’m surprised you managed to convince them.” She took a seat at his bedside. “You’re a terrible liar.”

“Ah,” his face fell. “Well, I have no intentions to better my lying skills, but it would be more ignoble to let the future emperor take the blame for my own poor judgment.”

“That wasn’t what happened, and you can’t convince me you don’t revel in pointing out my mistakes specifically because I am the future emperor.”

“Well,” he fidgeted with his hands and glanced at her own hands folded in her lap.

“Ferdinand, like I said, you’re a terrible liar.”

His gaze fell even further, and Edelgard sighed when she realized he intended to remain quiet. “There’s nothing wrong with not being enthralled by every part of being a noble. I understand your desire to be the perfect son, but—”

“What?” Ferdinand’s eye brows were drawn together, and he looked so genuinely perplexed that Edelgard allowed him to cut her off without protest. “You think…?”

“You… don’t want to impress your father?” Edelgard asked.

“No,” he said. “If that were true, then I would not have blamed this accident on my own clumsiness.”

That was true enough, Edelgard had to admit. “That is true.”

“I would rather…” Ferdinand paused, measuring his words carefully for a reason other than speech lessons. “Ally myself with noble children my age than my father.”

There was something else hidden in his words that Edelgard could almost painfully relate to. “That is understandable enough, but discarding your relationship with your father…”

“He,” Ferdinand frowned. “Is not a good man. He has become greedy and corrupt, and when I am of age, I need to be ready to depose him without hesitation. Nobles like him should not be allowed to stay in power, and right now he is only one among many.”

Edelgard was taken by surprise by Ferdinand for the second time in the years she had known him that day. “You would remove your own father from power? And others like him?”

“As soon as I am able to.”

It was only ever from Hubert that she heard anyone parroting the words she felt were written on her soul. Somewhere in navigating all of her uncle’s mind games in near isolation, she had assumed no one could possibly want to follow her ideals of their own volition. Suddenly, Ferdinand looked slightly different to her.

Edelgard still realized it was a mistake as soon as she did it, though. She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his in a kiss more fleeting than even her first.

Ferdinand gaped at her, and his entire face slowly turned red by degrees. He was speechless. Edelgard was speechless at her own actions as well. Whatever rosy hue had been coloring her vision gave way into sheer teenage awkwardness.

She fled, Ferdinand didn’t call after her, and Hubert raised an eyebrow when she slammed the door shut to the infirmary.

She cleaned up the remains of their broken training weapons and refused Hubert’s help when he offered. The rest of the month crawled by, and they were both too well bred and trained to say a word.

-

Edelgard was one the receiving end of her third kiss.

Garreg Mach offered far more than Edelgard had been expecting. She had been considering enrolling the year before, all too aware that whatever secrets the church was harboring had to be buried in that ancient monastery. Instead, she had only pulled a few strings to pass a recommendation for a new, dark fighting instructor through the imperial court.

But his reports came too slow and too barren for her to be satisfied with just her knight and her uncle’s pawns in place. When word came that both the future king and duke were to attend, she figured that was a sign from the universe that her wait had come to its end.

She arrived and was surrounded by half-familiar faces and names. That had to be another sign, though Edelgard wasn’t quite sure of what yet, and slowly but surely, Claude and Dimitri faded from her attention.

Each time Edelgard thought she had thrown away that quietly desperate part of herself, it somehow bubbled back out of her.

She committed the second Bergliez boy’s name to memory as quickly as possible, and she treated him a touch almost as soft as that saved for Bernadetta. Caspar was a victim of everything she was fighting against, and even if he seemed confused at the best of times by her snapping at Linhardt and letting him off with a mild scolding, Edelgard couldn’t help but treat him with velvet gloves.

It was convenient, too, that he was the most logical training partner due to shared weapon proficiency and their childhood history of beating each other with wooden axes. Edelgard had more finesse and skill than him, but Caspar fought with an energy that always fueled her to keep going on a little longer than she could before. The fact that he never complained when she drilled him in training exercises at paces she had only dared to put herself through also did well to land him in her good books.

There was also the inherent joy in forming a tag-team and dominating the inter-house axe tournaments. Edelgard had never had a fighting partner right at her back in the thick of it, but she thought—and tried to quickly stamp out the thought—that she could get used to it.

Dimitri had come to watch his personal retainer and an annoying boy who looked like a less well groomed version of Ferdinand get slaughtered in the contest, and shake hands with Edelgard when the Black Eagles were pronounced as champions.

Claude simply confessed that one member of his house’s team had skipped training, and the other was only informed he had been signed up five minutes after the official start time and halfway through a plate of whatever they were serving in the dining hall that day. Dimitri looked appalled for half a second before mentioning in as roundabout a way as possible that the annoying redheaded boy also opted to skimp on training in lieu of flirting with girls from the nearby village.

Edelgard rolled her eyes. “Both of you should be ashamed of your poor leadership. Dimitri, at least tell Dedue he preformed as well as could be expected without an able teammate.”

“I will be sure to.”

“Claude…” she looked the grinning boy from top to bottom. “You should just be ashamed.”

He saluted her. “Duly noted, princess.”

Edelgard barely resisted the impulse to roll her eyes a second time. “I don’t know why I was expecting you to take this even remotely seriously.”

“Relax, we’ve been here like two weeks. You’d do well to take a page out of my book and not run your house into the ground with work before they’ve even finished unpacking.”

Dimitri wondered aloud, “is anyone really taking that long to unpack, Claude?”

Edelgard ignored Dimitri and met Claude’s criticism with a glare. “We are here to train to become generals. My training methods and leadership reflect that, while yours,” she glanced over her shoulder at Hilda admiring how big and strong Sylvain was for putting her axe and armor away for her. “Lack direction and any discipline whatsoever.”

Claude only laughed. “I think she’s doing a great job. Though then again, I’m not planning on ruling my house with an iron fist just yet. But do keep it up—it’s pretty fun watching you go full blown control freak.”

What irritated Edelgard most about Claude was that she was never quite clever enough to think up proper comebacks whenever he’d land a particularly barbed blow. “I am not a control freak,” she said before barking over her shoulder, “Caspar, we’re leaving.”

Caspar hadn’t been paying attention to their conversation, his eyes locked on whatever was going on between Hilda and Sylvain, but he snapped to attention when Edelgard called for him. “Huh—oh, coming, Edelgard!”

He scurried after her stomping boots, Claude’s laughter echoing after them.

Her head felt a little clearer once she was a step away from Dimitri and Claude and headed towards the dorms. The hostility she had been holding hunched around her shoulders gave way when only her allies were present. “I do have some critiques for your form, but I think I will hold them for our next training session. You performed well today.”

Caspar brightened at the praise. “Hey, no need to be modest. We kicked their asses!”

Edelgard couldn’t help but smile as suddenly nothing Claude said seemed real. “Too true.”

Caspar gave a short laugh. “Glad you agree. I thought for a second you might get mad at me for talking like that.”

“Well, I personally wouldn’t say it,” Edelgard paused for only a second. “To their faces.”

He beamed back at her. “You’re pretty cool, Edelgard.”

Edelgard mentally patted herself on the back and made another note that Claude clearly had no idea what he was talking about.

Then, Caspar’s face shifted to a pensive expression that seemed foreign on his normally cheerful features. “Hey, Edelgard?”

“Yes?”

“That girl from the Golden Deer—Hilda, she,” he trailed off, rubbing the back of his head. “She was kind of weird, right?”

“Not anymore so than anyone else from her house, as far as I’m aware,” Edelgard raised an eyebrow. “Did she behave strangely while I was talking with Claude?”

“Yeah. She and that other guy.”

Edelgard didn’t need to think it over much to assume Caspar was referring to Sylvain. The two had the audacity to flirt even during the match from winks to truly embarrassing attempts at flattery to overhear between axe swings. “I think I know what you mean, but it’s not the oddest thing in the world. Some people just behave like that.”

Caspar seemed to take a second to think it over. “Like Dorothea?”

“She’s a good example, yes.”

“And you said ‘some people,’ not ‘all people,’ right?”

Edelgard felt herself losing whatever thread Caspar was trying to string out. “I did. I meant that it’s normal to have an interest in romance, but few are outrageous flirts.”

“Huh.” He scratched the back of his head again, and Edelgard somehow felt she had given the wrong answer. “That’s what Linhardt said, too.”

“You’ve spoken to Linhardt about…” she paused, hardly believing what she was saying. “Romance?”

“Well, yeah. It just feels like everyone met, said hello, and then started talking about marriage. They’re weird.”

“Ah.”

Edelgard knew that Garreg Mach’s primary purpose was to keep the future warriors of all three nations under the church’s thumb, but a secondary purpose of pairing off into proper noble brides and grooms seemed to have cropped up over the years. Her ambitions had so fully overshadowed the potential onslaught of suitors in her mind that Edelgard was somehow always surprised whenever she was forced to comment on the topic.

“Well, it only makes sense for Dorothea, given her situation,” Edelgard said. “And far too many nobles are obsessed with marrying well anyway. Pay them no mind.”

Caspar snorted. “I wasn’t really planning to. It’s just,” he kicked a rock on the path, sending it skittering the down the long empty hall. “When I see everybody do it, I wonder what I’m not getting.”

Edelgard felt another pang of sympathy. She didn’t know why it took her so long to realize that, of course, no one ever sat down with a Crestless second son to talk about courting and the importance of marrying well.

“It’s more trouble than it’s worth, really,” Edelgard said. “I know I have no time to waste on sifting through suitors to find a proper one, let alone one I could actually be happy with.”

He hummed, mulling her words over. “Is that why Dorothea’s been on like five dates with five different guys?”

“Most likely. Romance is a difficult thing.”

“That’s why I asked Linhardt about it, and he said I shouldn’t worry.” Caspar scratched the back of his head again. “I just need to find a girl I have a bunch in common with, and it will all sort itself out.”

Edelgard thought Linhardt was probably one of the most thoroughly unromantic people she had ever met. “That’s… not the worst advice out there.”

Caspar perked up at her words. “You think so?”

“Common interests are a better base than money and blood, at least,” she said with a shrug.

“Oh. Huh.”

Caspar stopped dead in his tracks, forcing Edelgard to spin on her heel back to face him. It was midday, but the way up to the dorms was completely empty, save for the sun’s shining rays alighting the sudden red on Caspar’s cheeks.

“Caspar?”

They’re about the same high, meaning they’re one of a handful of pairs the other could kiss without having to stand on their tiptoes.

“Uh,” he said after the fact. He took a step back, and Edelgard could see he wasn’t blushing anymore—he just looked startled at his own actions. “That—sorry. That didn’t work.”

Edelgard blinked at him, feeling a flush of her own creep up her neck, turning her skin as red as her cape. “You’re… going to have to fill me in on some details about what was supposed to happen.”

Caspar flailed his arms. “Well, like Linhardt said, romance or whatever is when you find a girl who likes the same stuff as you, and we always train all the time, and you’re the only girl I know who doesn’t get mad when I yell in training or eat too fast in the dining hall, and just now you didn’t care when I said a bunch of crap nobles aren’t supposed to, so I just figured…” and he seemed to run out of steam all at once, his arms falling to his sides. “It made sense…?”

Edelgard pinched the bridge of her nose. She heard Caspar shuffle his feet as he asked, “is Hubert gonna, like, jump out of the bushes and kill me now?”

“Not unless he gets word, and he won’t. At least not from me.” Caspar heaved a sigh of relief at her words, but Edelgard cut the celebrations short with a raised hand. “I’m sure I don’t need to let you know that I would be fully justified in ordering such a thing, however.”

“Yeah, and I won’t again, and not just because I’ve seen how you handle an axe. ‘Cause…” he kicked at the ground again.

“Kissing a princess isn’t what it’s like in fairy tales, is it?” Edelgard asked with a shake of her head.

“I actually wasn’t even thinking about that,” Caspar said, gaze still on the ground. “I just figured everything would make sense or something. Dorothea said there’s supposed to be a spark or something when,” he had the decency to flush at least a little. “You know… But I didn’t feel anything, except… confused over what the big deal is.”

Part of Edelgard felt mildly offended, but she quieted that side of herself easily enough. “I… don’t have very much experience with romance either, but from what I do know, ‘the big deal’ is being with some special to you, not forcing romance just because.”

He furrowed his brow. “But isn’t that what everyone else is doing?”

Edelgard sighed. “Yes, but they shouldn’t have to. The fact that they’re in that position at all just—” she could tell she was losing Caspar from his blank expression “—look, you know you have no interest in me, right?”

Caspar shrugged. “I do think you’re cool.”

“And I thank you for that, but that’s not the same thing as romantic love,” Edelgard said, looking somewhere to the side of him. “And there are more important things, anyway. We’re going to be spending a lot of time training to survive real battle—romance can wait.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I know I’d rather fight than bother thinking about who I’m gonna marry, but,” Caspar shook his head. “I think I being around everyone else just made me feel sort of like… I don’t know, all the other nobles had some private lesson about this stuff that I never got.”

Edelgard felt a familiar hole well up in her chest. “I know that feeling well. Try not to dwell on it, and just…”

“Pretend this never happened?”

“Exactly,” she said with a nod, the hole growing bigger.

They parted ways, and Caspar sent her an apology bouquet of flowers from the greenhouse and flowering weeds from the hills surrounding the monastery mixed together.

Dorothea saw her pick them up from where Caspar had sent them in front of her door. “Ooh, got a secret admirer, Edie?”

In the few seconds before Edelgard turned over the tag on the haphazard bundle to confirm it was from Caspar, she imagined a world where such things could happen and she had the luxury to be happy about them.

“Actually the opposite,” she said. “Would you mind finding me a vase, Dorothea?”

The next day, she failed to assassinate Dimitri and Claude, and the new professor took their first steps through the academy.

The flowers were just starting to wilt when Edelgard placed their vase on her desk.

-

It was months later that Edelgard kissed a girl.

Life was suddenly different. Professor Byleth had thrown herself in front of a bandit’s axe for her, and Edelgard wasn’t sure if it was finally okay for her to loosen her grip or if she needed to hold on tighter.

Between secret exchanges in the dark beneath a mask, she tended to the horses with Ferdinand, sang in choir with Dorothea, and sat beside Bernadetta when her first kill jitters caused her legs to give out from under her.

Hubert kept a wary eye, and Edelgard only realized belatedly it wasn’t due to his lack of trust of the others—though that was in no short supply.

“There is nothing wrong with behaving like a student from time to time,” she told him. “If you accuse me of wavering in my ambitions, I might have to recommend that the professor nominate you as our representative for the White Heron Cup.”

“You have no need to pose such merciless threats,” he said. “I have no questions about your dedication, only of how great a toll certain steps will take on you.”

Edelgard narrowed her eyes. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. Have I not vowed a hundred times to stain myself it whatever blood is necessary?”

“You and I have made that vow,” Hubert said. Then he tilted his head a fraction of an inch in the direction of the Black Eagle’s class room. “It is much to ask of someone.”

“So it is,” Edelgard said, following his gaze. It would be childish not to. “And you are underestimating me. I am not so naïve as to expect ties of companionship to mean anything when the time comes.”

“Then my concern has been misplaced,” Hubert conceded. “My apologies, Lady Edelgard.”

They both knew he was right, but Hubert always let her win their fights. Before the ball, she announced her proposal for a class reunion in five years time, and Hubert managed to conceal whatever misgivings she knew were going on in his head from manifesting on his face. She couldn’t quell the thoughts of how a decimated battleground would be a bad place for a reunion, herself.

But everyone started twittering over the ball, and Edelgard wasn’t going to stop herself from joining in.

Ferdinand was the only boy from their house likely to dance, which was just as well. Linhardt and Caspar were both uniquely terrible dancers, and Edelgard suspected they were attending for the food. Hubert would also be camped out at the banquet tables, but that was more due to his inability to participate in merriment of any kind than gluttony, and dark corners suited him and his lurking best.

Dorothea was determined to spend half her time dazzling the dance floor and the other half joining Professor Manuela in performing center stage. When Petra expressed interest in learning formal Fodlan dancing, Dorothea promptly divided her plans for the dance into thirds instead of halves.

And Bernadetta was in her room.

At least, that was what Edelgard first thought when she knocked on her door that night. Lending a helping hand to her classmate was an excellent excuse to get a break from her line of truly hopeless suitors, but her feet and heart did carry her to Bernadetta’s in earnest. There was something just a little bit tragic to Edelgard of looking out over a room and only seeing six out of her seven Black Eagles.

“I won’t make you dance,” she said after her knocking received no answer. “I just thought you might want to sample some of the cakes before Caspar swallows them whole.”

No answer was strange. Whenever Edelgard knocked to escort her to class, she would always hear a shriek of surprise or the sounds of someone tripping in their haste. Her compassion was replaced by anxiety as she called, “Bernadetta?” again and jiggled the handle of her door.

Edelgard was more than strong enough to tear the flimsy thing off its hinges, but she knew a girl from the Blue Lions had done something similar in the months before. The act had traumatized Bernadetta so much that Edelgard had taken it upon herself to report the crime to Dimitri and levy some accusations that he was as bad at controlling his house as Claude.

Her quiet worry still mounted until she heard a timely voice from behind her. “Lady Edelgard?”

Bernadetta’s posture was its usual meek state—shoulders hunched, hands fumbling in front of her chest. The dress draped over her arm was new, however.

“I was just looking for you—not because you have done anything wrong,” she quickly clarified. “We just missed you at the ball.”

“Oh,” Bernadetta’s eyes fell to the dress in her arms. “Um, you probably already know, but I don’t really mix well with balls and dances and… lots of people. Dorothea came by earlier and said I should go just for a minute or two and that she wouldn’t leave my side—she even gave me this dress to wear—but…”

“I’m afraid I came to offer the same thing,” Edelgard said. “And inform you they have quite the selection of cakes.”

She fidgeted. “That’s what I heard, but I don’t think I’m brave enough even for cake. Um,” she held the dress out to Edelgard. “W-Would you mind returning this to Dorothea? I don’t think I can face her right now. She’s probably really mad I still chickened out even though she went so far out of her way for me.”

“I don’t think Dorothea would ever get mad at you for something like that,” Edelgard said, gently taking the dress from her. “But if you mind my asking, why were you walking around with that anyway?”

“Uh,” Bernadetta’s cheeks flushed pink. “W-Well, I, um, I try not to think about my appearance too much, and there are no mirrors in my room since I know I’m so clumsy and useless I’d probably just break one and curse myself with even more bad luck. B-But the embroidery was just so pretty that I kind of wanted to… just see it?”

The image came together quickly in Edelgard’s mind—Bernadetta sneaking off in the dead of night to one of the dressing rooms to twist and twirl in a pretty commoner’s dress. The thought made Edelgard’s lips twitch into a smile.

She buried her face in her hands before Edelgard could say a word. “Augh, you knew I was pathetic before, but this just confirmed it, didn’t it? Ugh, way to go Bernie—you knew this was a terrible idea, but you still—”

“Why would anyone think that’s pathetic?” Edelgard asked. “Personally, I can relate. The ball is special for a reason—it’s not everyday you get to dress up and forget your responsibilities.”

“Ah! What was I saying!?” Bernadetta shrieked. “I’m sorry! O-Of course you’re not pathetic! You’re the emperor, and you have so, so, so many more responsibilities than me that I shouldn’t even—”

“Bernadetta.”

She snapped her mouth shut, and Edelgard waited for the fear to slowly abate from her eyes. Eventually her shoulders did slump, and she murmured, “Sorry,” to the ground.

“It’s really alright. Now,” Edelgard held out the dress in front of her, letting it drape free of its folding. “Let’s take a look at Dorothea’s taste in fashion.”

Bernadetta flushed again, but scurried to stand behind Edelgard, looking over her shoulder at the delicate needlework curving up the dress’s sides. “Um, she said she bought it because it reminded her of me.”

Edelgard could see why. Though it was made of a coarser material than noble dresses, it had its own unique beauty with embroidery of vines and flowers running down its sleeves that became increasingly intricate the longer she looked at it.

“I’m afraid embroidery is a bit of a hole in my knowledge,” Edelgard said. “I can only guess at the craftsmanship behind this.”

“Oh well, it is pretty impressive in some places,” Bernadetta said. “I’m actually pretty okay at needlework. You tend to develop a lot of little hobbies like that when you’re a recluse. You, uh, have to entertain yourself somehow on days when you can’t go outside.”

Her nervous laughter answered quite a few of the questions buzzing around Edelgard’s head. “What other hobbies do you have?” she asked instead.

“Writing, reading, oh, and sketching. Specifically, I really like drawing interesting pants. If you see here,” Bernadetta said, reaching over Edelgard’s shoulder to run her fingers over a few fine stitches. “These aren’t just generic flowers. I mean some of them are, but these ones are supposed to be pitcher plants.”

“The flowers in the greenhouse that eat flies?”

“That’s right,” Bernadetta said, dropping her arm but remaining a hair or two’s breadth away from Edelgard’s back. “I pointed them out to Dorothea on greenhouse duty once and mentioned they were my favorite. I guess it was pretty surprising that someone like me would say something like that since she remembered.”

“It wouldn’t be the first thing I would assume about you,” Edelgard said. “But I think I can see it. An unassuming, maybe even delicate looking thing that’s ready to strike when the time is right—that sounds like you.”

Bernadetta gasped. “Wah—no it doesn’t! I-I’m more like a scared rabbit or a worm that gets stepped on or—”

“Did you look like a worm when you tried this dress on?”

“Huh? Wha—I,” Bernadetta faltered and her nerves decreased with her confusion. “W-Well, no, I don’t think so…”

“And you shouldn’t,” Edelgard said, turning her head just an inch to bring her nose to nose with Bernadetta’s red face. “Because you’re a very pretty girl just trying to have a little fun without getting caught up in everything in your head for once.”

To Edelgard’s surprise and joy, Bernadetta didn’t step away. “I think so. I-I mean, I’m not very pretty, but—”

“I disagree.”

The soft kiss left Bernadetta stunned. Edelgard took the opportunity to place the dress back in her arms and step back into the shade of the night to hide her own reddening face. “The next time there’s a ball, why don’t we both dress up?”

Bernadetta nodded dumbly. “U-Uh-huh.”

“And it will be just the Black Eagles and the professor. No one to be scared of.”

“That.” Her voice was an octave or two too high. “That might be nice.”

“And there will be plenty of cake.”

“Y-Yeah. Um, Lady Edelgard?”

“Yes?”

Whatever confidence Bernadetta managed to summon in that half second disappeared the second they made eye contact. “N-Never mind!” she squealed before darting into her room, her next words coming out as one in a single breath. “Butthatwouldbereallyfunokaybye!”

Edelgard stared at the closed door, and even though Bernadetta had fled, she couldn’t help but smile.

Nothing more was said on the matter, but Edelgard wasn’t expecting anything more that what she had already claimed with her own hands, words, and lips.

-

It wasn’t until after she declared war on the goddess that Edelgard kissed someone who knew what they were doing.

There was a general sense of chaos after the siege of Garreg Mach. But it was a good kind of chaos. It her more optimistic moments, she could of it as the fires of revolution.

The professor’s disappearance never quite left her mind even in the most intense negotiations with her uncle. His presence in the aftermath was sporadic, and Edelgard had the suspicion that he timed his appearances to ensure they always just managed to set her off kilter. But she had long since become a master in concealing her distress when support was ripped out from under her.

Some of the others were not.

In the immediate aftermath, Petra, Linhardt, and Caspar were all allowed to return home to sort out personal affairs and support. A half dozen of Hubert’s spies accompanied each of them, but Edelgard was fairly certain Petra knew the terms of a trip to her homeland, Linhardt wouldn’t care, and Caspar wouldn’t notice.

Dorothea was far too used to not having a home, and she threw herself into helping Manuela organize the monastery’s infirmary into something that could accommodate an army. Whenever Edelgard saw her, she seemed busy or flustered by one thing or another, but in a good way.

“I think you know my thoughts on violence,” Dorothea said to her in one of their few spare moments. “But sometimes I do regret you didn’t invite me to Hubie’s purge of the noble asses.”

Edelgard laughed. “Don’t worry. We left a few, so they can stare in horror when you rise above them.”

“Glad to hear it.”

Going back to her father’s house wasn’t an option for Bernadetta, and with everyone bustling around, she seemed to feel a touch to guilty to stay locked up in her room all day. She took to attaching herself to Dorothea, Ferdinand, or—when he was doing less unsavory business than usual—Hubert’s side.

Talking to any of Edelgard’s other staff was out of the question. Even Ladislava, who was by far the most familiar to them, seemed to scare her half to death. Edelgard’s every attempt to help ease her fear served as a subtle reminder that while the future loomed large in her mind, her present was doing no favors to the weak. Any steps Bernadetta made out of her shell would come at the cost of the lives of whatever soldiers her troops trampled over in their victory.

Edelgard had learned to drag herself through death and blood, and she let Bernadetta follow in her shadow in the small hope she wouldn’t need to step on every stone in her path.

Then there was Ferdinand, who had no home to go to anymore. Aegir was forfeit for his father’s crimes, and Ferdinand only survived Hubert’s purge by Edelgard’s good graces.

However, Edelgard still had the sinking suspicion the “house arrest” Hubert had placed Ferdinand’s father under was a particularly dark euphemism every time it came up in conversation. And she knew Hubert—a few more bodies than expected always turned up whenever she asked him to handle something.

She didn’t breathe a word of it to Bernadetta or Ferdinand, especially during the days they spent before the siege where she had caught him just staring blankly at the crumbling walls of their dirty makeshift fortress. Edelgard asked Hubert to keep an eye on Ferdinand’s wellbeing, too, and he seemed remarkably less agreeable about a compliment or two than wearing a pretty flower pin.

To Edelgard—and Hubert’s—relief, Ferdinand managed to get the wind back in his sails once he was assigned soldiers to boss around and paperwork to complete. Their other classmates saying their goodbyes for visits home still noticeably unsettled him, but he didn’t say a word about it, and Edelgard didn’t say a word about him retreating to the stables for an hour or two afterwards.

Through everything, it was a surprise to Edelgard that one of her most prominent feelings was relief. She had walked through Rhea’s fire and came out the other side with something other than isolation to show for it. A greedy part of her had wanted to object when the others wandered home for the coming months, but she managed to only let it manifest on the days she scoured the surrounding hills for hours in hopes of seeing a wisp of ethereal green among the vast fields and forests.

That desire was why she didn’t object when Dorothea announced that everyone had been working far too hard and needed a wine break on Edelgard’s nineteenth birthday.

“And we’re celebrating that we’ve all almost made it to nineteen,” Dorothea said with a wink at Bernadetta. “And before you say anything about wasting time, Hubie, let me remind you that Edie’s empire isn’t so weak it will fall apart due to one misspent night.”

Hubert glowered but took a glass of wine with nothing more than a dirty look.

Bernadetta takes her glass with less protest. “It, um, it is sort of fun doing this with just the five of us. I never went to any of the parties before, um…”

“Then that is all the more reason to celebrate!” Ferdinand said before downing the glass in his hand.

“Slow down, Ferdie,” Dorothea said. “Or don’t. It might be kind of fun to see you bumble around.”

“Do not encourage him,” Hubert said, massaging his temples.

Dorothea laughed, tilting her head back and letting her eyes sparkle in the dining halls flickering candle light. Edelgard smiled, sipping quietly from her own glass.

“You sound like you speak from experience, Hubie. I’d never have guessed you were having drunken escapades with Ferdie, of all—”

“No, Dorothea, you are mistaken! Hubert is referring to—”

“Shush, Ferdie, I’ll tease you later. Have some more wine.”

Edelgard felt a touch of guilt over Ferdinand’s strange eagerness to get out of his mind as soon as possible, and Dorothea followed her slight frown to the small collection of bottles she had brought. “Don’t worry, Edie,” she whispered. “I’ll cut him off soon. Have to save some for us, after all. Can’t have you sitting upright like an emperor all night.”

She winked. Edelgard shook her head. “As much as I appreciate the thought, I’ll have you know I have no intentions to make a fool of myself tonight.”

“Well, I certainly hope so! If you didn’t, then you wouldn’t be able to appreciate our lovely company.”

Edelgard rolled her eyes while Dorothea nudged her shoulder with another laugh. But she couldn’t help the smile tugging at her lips. As the night passed, the pull only got stronger until she found herself outright laughing until a few undignified snorts escaped her in the midst of one of Dorothea’s stories.

“—But the worst part,” she continued, “was that when I tried to get out of there, I thought ‘well, I’ll just give him a kiss on the cheek goodnight, it’s not his fault he reeks of garlic.’ I’m sure you all know where this is going—when I called his name to get his attention, he turned his head at the exact second I went in. Hands down, the worst kiss of my life.”

“Dorothea,” Ferdinand said, his few drinks slurring his words far more than they had any right to. “Where do you find these men?”

“Oh trust me, I’ve looked high and low for a halfway decent guy, but when I find one he’s been cursed by the goddess to smell like a dump or is obsessed with his mother or just won’t stop talking about fish.”

“Fish?” Bernadetta said, a tiny smile and a small blush on even her nervous features as well.

“It’s happened more than once, too!” Dorothea exclaimed. “Ferdie, Hubie, tell me—why has the goddess made all men intolerable?”

"I’m afraid the goddess and I aren’t on speaking terms,” Hubert said, taking a sip from his glass.

She laughed. “You’re funny, Hubie. You should make jokes more often, or at least tell us another one now.”

“None come to mind.”

“You’re no fun,” Dorothea said, nudging his shoulder. “How about this—tell us something embarrassing instead. Like, ooh, what was your worst kiss?”

Hubert choked on his wine.

“That’s a good sign,” Dorothea said, eyes sparkling. “So just how bad was it?”

He took a second to sputter and get his bearings back, though his face was distinctly red as he answered, “this is a highly inappropriate topic of conversation to be having around Lady Edel—”

“Oh, Edie’s a big girl, I’m sure she can handle it. Right, Edie?”

Hubert shot her a rather desperate look. “I’m not about to keel over, no,” Edelgard said. “But perhaps we can find a different way to torment each other.”

“Well, the emperor’s word is law,” Dorothea said. “So, what about just your first kiss? Oh that might be fun actually—what was everyone’s first kiss like?”

Bernadetta and Ferdinand both went a shade redder and followed Hubert in glancing nervously at her. It took one embarrassingly long second for Edelgard to realize why before she started to blush harder than all of them.

While Hubert surveyed the other two with a strange look in his eyes, Edelgard stammered, “I-I’m not sure that’s a great idea either.”

Dorothea blinked, looked around at the suddenly quiet group, and smiled. “Well, it seems I’ve been missing out.”

Ferdinand fumbled to stand, announcing he had deeply important middle of the night business he just remembered and had to attend to. He tripped over his own feet on his first few steps, and Hubert muttered something to Edelgard about stopping him from impaling himself on a stray sword before the war’s second battle before jerking to help him as his own escape.

Ferdinand let out a slurred protest that he could handle himself, and Hubert whispered something back on the edge of Edelgard’s hearing that included her name and a threat of murder. Whatever it was, it made Ferdinand flush up to the roots of his hair and sputter while Hubert hurried him out of the dining hall.

Bernadetta hunched in on herself, and Dorothea’s teasing gaze turning gentle did little to ease her stiffness. “Don’t worry, Bern. I make it a habit to only terrorize men—you have nothing to fear.”

Her assurances didn’t abate the red of Bernadetta’s face or help her make eye contact with Edelgard. “Ah, th-that’s okay. But, um, I think I’m going to go to my room now I’m sorry okay bye!”

There was at least enough space between her words for them to make out what she was saying—which Edelgard noted was an improvement—before she, too, fled the room.

Dorothea sighed. “Well, looks like I scared them all away.”

“I… think that is more my doing,” Edelgard said, staring down into her half finished wine glass.

“I shouldn’t have pushed it, but, Edie,” Dorothea grinned at her. “I never would have suspected—three of our classmates? And here I wrote the Black Eagles off as being hopeless for marriage prospects.”

Edelgard looked at her askance. “Have you really?”

“Well, maybe not all of them,” Dorothea said. “But enough that I wasn’t planning any dates with anyone wearing red. No inner-class romantic trysts for me unlike—”

“I’ve hardly had a ‘romantic tryst.’ I’m just… more impulsive than I would like to think sometimes.”

Dorothea hummed. “I can see that.”

“Really? I assumed everyone thought I was a stick in the mud.”

“Oh, you are, but you have good reason to be.” Dorothea looked towards the closed kitchen doors and the piles of supplies haphazardly left there when the sun dipped too far below the horizon for work to continue. “Honestly, it makes me happy in a way. I remember before you told me you never had time for romance.”

“I’d hardly call a few poor decisions romance.”

“I’d argue ‘a few poor decisions’ is all most of my romances are.”

Edelgard furrowed her brow, and part of her was aware that the wine in her system was going to play a role in loosening her tongue if she wasn’t careful. She spoke anyway. “Those aren’t romances. Your dates with… gross men who smell like garlic were for survival.”

Dorothea raised an eyebrow. “Edie—”

“I understand,” she said, feeling something rotten mixed with the cheap wine welling up in her throat. “You have to think about money and power to get anywhere in this world, but you also didn’t just grin and bear it for the first rich man who smiled at you.”

“No,” Dorothea said, the mirth gone from her voice. “But I’ve always been greedy—or maybe too hopeful. If finding a man who was rich and possible to love was going to happen, I probably would have done it by now. But,” she set her glass down and smoothed out skirt as she stood. “With the war, I think I might take a break from dating. Just focus on surviving… with a few poor decisions here and there.”

She took a step away from the table, halfway through wishing Edelgard a happy birthday when she interrupted her. “It’s not hopeless, I don’t think—or greedy or irrational.”

“No, it’s not.” Dorothea’s bright smile from earlier in the night had escaped with the mass exit, leaving something melancholy and painfully relatable in its place. “But it is hard.”

She leaned down, and she tasted like wine.

When Dorothea pulled away with a sweet smile and bright eyes, Edelgard thought that the opera gave her better training than Garreg Mach could ever hope to. “One more for you,” she said, breath ghosting across her lips.

She started to lean back in, but Edelgard placed a hand on her shoulder. “One more kiss or one more bad decision?”

Dorothea only smiled in response, but she didn’t try to kiss her again.

“Dorothea,” she said. “For both of us, prove there’s some hope left in this world. Don’t let your next kiss—”

“I can’t promise that.” She took a step back, the remains of the burned down candles’ light barely touching her. “Happy birthday, Edie. I hope I didn’t ruin it too much for you.”

She vanished into the darkness better than Edelgard’s nightmares ever could.

Edelgard wiped the wine from her mouth. The hollow feeling in her chest that had been growing since the rubble fell the wrong way in the siege of Garreg Mach stayed with her through the morning and the next day when Dorothea laughed and smiled and pretended Edelgard could still buy her performances.

-

Halfway through those long five years, Edelgard had the first kiss she felt she deserved.

The war had slogged to a brutal standstill. All their attempts at breeching the mountains and Arianrhod had given Edelgard were headaches and piles of letters to send home to newly widowed spouses and orphaned children. Claude had managed to turn the Alliance into a roadblock rather than the speed-bump it had been under his grandfather, and too many soldiers on both sides died conquering, retreating, and re-conquering the same few feet of land.

Her uncle had turned from an occasional pest meant to unsettle her into a hornet, jabbing her at each of her failures, and instructing his minions to swarm the halls of any base he could pry the location of. Whenever he appeared, offers of power came with him—take his hand and take the reins of his war machine. Edelgard had wasted over two years of her short life stuck in a mire of blood, but her throat still felt tight and rotten at using what he had to offer. It was worse when she found herself actually considering it.

Edelgard felt herself on the edge of so many precipices that her only hope for her sanity seemed to be retreat.

The Black Eagle Strike Force became renowned as the empire’s best and brightest and as the emperor’s inner circle turned cult.

Hubert rolled his eyes at the accusation. “The Immaculate One and her puppet king declaring us the fanatics? Perhaps the world has turned to madness.”

Edelgard agreed at the time, but she knew there was a reason why the whispers didn’t stop at Faerghus’s boarder. It hadn’t been intentional, but somewhere between the scars from her childhood and the professor’s vanishing act, the Black Eagles had changed from allies of chance to the new familial voices echoing off the imperial palace’s halls.

Counting the little blonde boy who had been killed when she took her mask off, Edelgard had lost eleven siblings. She pulled her new seven as close to her as possible.

And with the war, they had no choice but to cling to each other, too.

The fighting had softened Hubert and forced Ferdinand to leave behind the tattered remains of his sheltered childhood naiveté. In their new middle ground, their bickering bore a playful edge that made Edelgard send teasing looks Hubert’s way that he pointedly avoided. It also eased one of many knots in her stomach—Hubert hadn’t thrown his life away for her, he could be happy, could lead a normal life.

Caspar had seemed to figure out Linhardt’s advice from years ago somewhere along the way, too. He broke the silence over their adolescent kiss to let Edelgard know that while he still thought she was really great, he found someone else and hoped she wouldn’t be too broken up about it. Linhardt’s usual subdued expression gave way to absolute confusion at the conversation as Edelgard assured him she was happy to continue their friendship as it was.

At gatherings of mixes of just the eight of them, Edelgard saw the Bernadetta who had only come out in glimpses at the academy. She still cowered and panicked on occasion, but a bravery almost none of them—Bernadetta most of all—expected out of her manifested more and more with every arrow notched and conversation successfully navigated.

Amidst her changing world, they all slowly lurched forward, and Edelgard’s chest swelled with pride as if their accomplishments were her own. Yet another aching part of her grew, too. Her hands ached from clawing at the fallen rubble and her feet from scouring the country side. The others had seemed to find their anchors, and Edelgard felt like the world had still left her untethered, determined to hold the last piece just out of her reach after giving her so much.

But before her thoughts that day could grow too dark, she heard someone clear their throat at her side. “Lady Edelgard? I have something I need to be speaking with you about.”

She turned. Petra’s brow was furrowed with concern, and her eyes were focused somewhere behind Edelgard. “Yes, Petra?”

“It is Dorothra. I have understanding that she is doing poorly.”

Petra nodded at whatever she had been looking at, and Edelgard turned her gaze out her window and towards the goddess tower down below. Dorothea was standing on the half crumbled bridge, seemingly staring up at nothing.

Petra took a few steps closer, her frown growing as she got a better look at the sight below. “She goes there for many hours. She used to be singing to herself, but now she only is watching the sky.” She leaned forward an inch more, almost resting her forehead against the stained glass. “I am missing her songs.”

Edelgard felt the need to look away, and directed her attention towards Dorothea. “Does she know you arrived from your mission? Perhaps, she is looking for your wyvern.”

She asked her question knowing full well that Dorothea wandered the monastery halls in a daze even when they were all right at home together. Petra still earnestly shook her head in response. “I wanted to have speech—to speak with you first. Dorothea speaks of you often—she has been saying that you are similar. I had the thought that you could be offering advice.”

Edelgard wasn’t surprised at the revelation—their shared wistfulness and half conversations made her pertinently aware they were alone in feeling adrift amongst their fledgling family.

“I see. Dorothea is strong, but she is a very sensitive person. Though, I’m sure you have realized that more times over than I have.”

“She carries much in her heart,” Petra said. “Sometimes she is reminding me of when I first to the empire.”

That caught Edelgard’s attention. “How so?”

“Know these are feelings of the past,” Petra said with a shake of her head. “But when I first arrived, I carried much torment over the past in my heart, in my thoughts, even my spirit. I wanted vengeance for all that was done to my family, and I had great feelings of anger over being forced to learn the ways of my people’s conquerors.”

Edelgard felt her words stick in her throat for just a second. “That is only to be expected, but I must say you hid it well. Or at least, I never caught on.”

“It was when I was first arriving that it was at its strongest, but that is of little importance,” she said. “What I am meaning to say is that I remember the heaviness of every step. It left like… when the waters would come high during Brigid’s flood season, and I would wade waist deep to cross the beaches carrying as much supplies as I could. The grudges in my heart weighed on me even when there was peace, and when I did step forward, I was always waiting to be stricken with anger and misery.”

“And you say you’re not good with words,” Edelgard said, a slight smile thinning at her lips.

Perta let out a small laugh. “Perhaps I have been spending too much of my time with Ferdinand. He has been writing many poems as of late.”

“Don’t read them. They’re awful.” Edelgard also knows from her own overly insistent curiosity that too many of them are about a mysterious, dark haired man, and that she might die from embarrassment at the mental image of her childhood friend as a romantic hero from one of Bernadetta’s bodice ripper novels.

“I find inspiration in them. They are reminding me of Dorothea’s songs.” She glanced back down through the window. “Perhaps that is why Dorothea is no longer singing.”

“Her heart is too heavy for inspiration?” Edelgard questioned.

“That is the understanding I am having.”

Edelgard paused, then she picked up a weighted ink well from her desk in both hands. “Petra, you said you came to me because Dorothea and I are similar. And I know in the dark hours I’ve had these last few years, I’ve yearned for someone very special to reach out their hand to me.”

“Lady Edelgard?” Petra asked. “I have understanding, but we are rather high up to reach down to Dorothea from here.”

“Then use your voice.”

The ink well was mostly empty, so it only left a few drops on her office’s floor as it arched across the room and smashed through the stain glass window, a rainbow of shards trailing behind it on its descent.

Petra stared at her openmouthed until Edelgard nodded her head to where down below, Dorothea was hurrying over to the source of the sudden commotion.

Petra didn’t need anything more than that, and she leaned out the window, barely minding the remaining spikes of pristine glass framing her as she called out. “Dorothea! I have been returning!”

Dorothea snapped to the attention at the sound of her voice, and Edelgard heard the slightest laugh before she called back, “You know how to make an entrance!”

Petra smiled before turning back to Edelgard. “What should I be doing now?”

Edelgard took only a second to think of what she wanted when she was standing in the dark. “The pain she’s going through isn’t going to be cured all at once, but you can help ease it.”

Petra thought for a moment, tilting her head. “Should I be giving her inspiration?”

Edelgard felt that increasingly familiar swell of pride. “As much as you can.”

Petra beamed, leaned towards Edelgard to press a quick kiss to her cheek. “Thank you, Lady Edelgard,” she said before leaning back out the window. “Dorothea! I do not have much practice in singing, but—!”

Edelgard took a step back, but even from her observation point, she could see Dorothea with her hands clasped over her scarred heart. Petra eventually ran out of her office, laughing to herself and barely giving Edelgard a second look, but that hardly mattered.

Very little work got done that day, and Hubert sent a curious look over to the shattered remains of one of the monastery’s last ornate windows.

Edelgard answered his wordless question. “It was getting in the way. Our lives are too short to worry over broken glass anyway. No point in holding onto it.”

-

Then there was a whirlwind.

Professor Byleth picked her way through Garreg Mach’s twisting halls as if she had merely got turned around looking for the dormitory staircase.

The Sword of the Creator was tight in her grip, and she raised it high over her head next to Edelgard on their first steps into Alliance territory together.

The mire of blood and death Edelgard felt she had been dragging herself through for years changed. Byleth’s charge was relentless, and she kept Edelgard’s hand firmly grasped in hers on her march.

Before each fight on their freshly carved path, Edelgard would pour over their tactics maps, biting her lip to tatters. Byleth tilted her head, her alien eyes ghosting over the parchment with a serenity Edelgard couldn’t even pretend to possess anymore.

“The fighting is only going to get more difficult,” she warned. “We’ve broken the stalemate, and that means both the Alliance and the Kingdom are going to tighten their defenses. From here on out, we will face only the best they have to offer.”

Byleth blinked slowly. “I see.”

Edelgard dared to inspect her from the corner of her eyes. “We’ve managed to keep our forces together and not lose anyone from the strike force in the five years you’ve been away, but against our strongest opponents, I want you to know…” she shifted back to the map. “That I’ve spoken to the others, and they are prepared to make sacrifices should it come to that.”

“It won’t,” Byleth said. “I will keep my students safe.”

She always spoke as if she was speaking the exact truth, and Edelgard couldn’t help but believe her, even if for only a second. She brushed the hope away with an airy laugh and, “We are hardly your students anymore, my teacher.”

The corners of Byleth’s mouth twitched. “Then what am I to call you?”

“Soldiers, comrades in arms—whatever your suits your needs.”

“I need,” Byleth said as if examining how the words felt on her tongue. “Water, air, food.”

Edelgard raised an eyebrow. “Those are simply things that keep you alive.”

Byleth hummed. “They are. They keep me tethered to this earth.” Edelgard stared at her with wide eyes, and Byleth placed her hand on her shoulder. “And so I will keep them safe. I was given a sword and a life and fists for a reason.”

Byleth’s winds continued to blow them forward, and her promise continued to hold true. Claude slinked away with the Goneril girl on the back of his wyvern and Flayn and Seteth scattered in her wake. Edelgard dashed the thought that none of them would allow her the same mercy if she were trying to escape with her family.

Then she met the remains of her eleventh sibling growling and thrashing in a mud soaked field. Byleth stood at her side, ready to push Edelgard behind her should Dimitri lash out from his position on the ground.

She had sent Perta and Bernadetta to track down where Rhea and her troops had retreated to, Ferdinand and Caspar to regroup their remaining forces, and left Dorothea and Linhardt to busy themselves in the medical tents.

Hubert stood at her other side, a miasma on his fingers mirroring Byleth’s grip on her sword of bones.

Dimitri spit at her feet and swore he would see her in hell soon. Edelgard raised her axe and let go.

“El?” Byleth whispered when the tears got a step farther than she thought they would.

The Edelgard who shed tears wasn’t quite dead, but one of the many weights strung around her neck fell with Dimitri’s head.

Hubert reminded them they had no time to waste in pursuing Rhea, and Edelgard took his merciful misdirection as an opportunity to brush aside the rush that had overtaken her.

Edelgard took her first steps into Fhirdiad since she entered hell as a child, and Rhea set her torch to the city.

The smoke bloomed like flowers, and Edelgard only trusted the order to split up because it came from Byleth’s lips.

It was the bloodiest battle Edelgard had ever fought in the light. Dragon roars rattled her skull and managed to drown out even the din of the crackling flames and strange stampeded of jerky mechanical wheels. She still heard Dorothea’s screams of pain and the cries of Petra’s wyvern and Hubert’s muffled yell when he was knocked from his horse.

Her hands burned and bled, and she summoned every drop of her boiling blood to raise Aymr again and again. Her energy swelled, and she moved at ten times the speed a single soldier could until new scars pulsed up the lengths of her arms torn up from elbow to wrist.

And yet somehow, Byleth was always where she needed her, her long absent voice ringing loud and bright above the chaos.

The Immaculate One beat her wings and screeched loud enough to make Edelgard’s hearing white out, and force her to watch Byleth charge forward through the fire and towards the dragon’s jaws in silence.

She pushed off the ground and tightened her grip until she felt Aymr’s handle crack under her hands.

-

And Edelgard has a nightmare. She is on her knees, staring up at Byleth’s strange eyes, begging her to let her kiss her sword’s blade and push her into the dark.

She doesn’t even finish the last words she ever meant to say, then

-

Byleth falls when the Immaculate One does, and Edelgard rips her eyes from her victory the second she hears her crumple to the ground.

There is no breath and no response when Edelgard shakes her.

They are still in the burnt remains of the city, and Edelgard doesn’t bother to brush the soot from her Byleth’s armor before placing her ear against her heart. She circles her arms around her chest and asks the world that has finally given her so much to let her grasp one last thing.

Something shatters against Edelgard’s sobs, and there’s a burnt hand in her dirty hair. Byleth’s heart beats through the darkness, and her blue, living eyes blink back at her.

Edelgard’s vision blurs, and Byleth reaches up with the gentlest touch to ease her hands and take the remains of her sorrow from her.

And Byleth’s lips, bloodied and irradiated from The Immaculate One’s fire, break through her haze.

-

Then Edelgard shared a kiss when the fingers of fate finally uncurled around the last piece they had been holding out of her reach.

“I feel the need to apologize every time I see you,” she says to Linhardt at one of their now weekly meetings. “A few months delay turned into a year and a half.”

“Oh, I’m more than aware,” he says, not looking up from the books in front of him. “Caspar started packing for our trip six months ago. He’s turned our room into a maze, and after months of practice, I still trip in the dark. Let me see your arm.”

Edelgard does as instructed, and Linhardt’s long, graceful fingers trace over the delicate blue vein tracks. “My apologies again.”

“There’s no need. It’s teaching him patience.”

She smiles. “And I feel the need to tell you again how grateful I am for this.”

Linhardt continues to focus on searching for whatever he must be looking for, but he still manages to answer her with his usual drawling wit. “The emperor of Fodlan is in my debt—what a lucky man I am. I’d be even luckier if you had asked your request a few years ago.”

Edelgard sighs. “Perhaps I should have, but I didn’t think I had the luxury then.”

He blinks up at her at that, narrowing his eyes just enough to let Edelgard know he thinks she’s being very stupid. “Yes, being able to live a normal amount of time is truly a luxury the emperor cannot afford. How silly of me to think otherwise.”

“I mean that I hardly had the time to set aside for meetings like this, not to mention I couldn’t afford to remove one of my best generals so they could work on a superfluous side project.”

Linhardt releases her arm with a shake of his head. “Oh, no need to flatter me. I am by far your worst general.”

Edelgard smiles. “You have other skills.”

“That’s what I’ve heard.”

He returns back to his desk, and Edelgard tilts her head just enough to get a look at what he’s working on. “Have you heard a report back from Professor Hanneman?”

“He sent a letter a few days ago,” Linhardt replies, shuffling through his poorly organized research notes. “He and Lysithea managed to find a few others in former Alliance territory. They’re going to bring them all back here, and to secure their boarding, they plan to spin it to Hubert that providing a cure will cause them all to pledge lifelong loyalty to the empire.”

“Or they could just come straight to me.”

“Going straight to you doesn’t mean avoiding Hubert.”

“Well, Hubert’s more likely to listen to me, and,” she looks down at her arm and the blood pulsing through it. “He won’t argue with me about something like this.”

Linhardt stands and approaches her with a tray of small bottles and an incision knife. “I would hope not,” he says softly. “I assume I don’t need to let you know that knives hurt, yes?”

Edelgard presents her arm without prompting. “Your bedside manner is improving.”

“I’ll tell Professor Manuela that the emperor disagrees with her, then. And Dorothea. And Caspar. And everyone, really.”

Edelgard manages a smile at his quip, but still finds herself averting her eyes when he begins his work. She’s endured much worse a thousand times over, but her old childhood scars being reopened evokes more than just physical pain. She tells herself it’s just like any battlefield surgery—removing poisoned arrow heads or demonic beast fangs—it’s just this time the poison’s been better sealed over.

It takes hours as Linhardt warned, but he’s careful and deliberate, the infirmary is clean, and she had seen the brown roots of Lysithea’s hair shimmering brighter than her snowy locks ever could.

They take regular breaks, Linhardt checks up on her with concern furrowing his brow, and Caspar pounds on the door once to ask if either of them want lunch. Linhardt calls back, “No, and if you interrupt and cause me to fumble while I’m doing something important, Hubert and Professor Byleth will chop my head off.”

He and Edelgard share a small smile while Caspar whines at the closed door.

When it’s finally done, Linhardt finishes securing the winding strips of gauze around her forearms with a small reminder for her to come back to see him to get her bandages change. “I should be able to see if it took then as well. If it didn’t, well, Caspar can wait until we find another way.”

Edelgard runs her fingers over the bandages on her sore arms. “And it if did?”

“Then you should see coloration return to your hair,” Linhardt said. “At least, that’s the first sign we saw in Lysithea. Less fighting, less time to see if your Crest manifests—all the more reason you should have come to me during the war.”

Edelgard doesn’t feel any different, and she flexes her fingers as if willing them to reveal what blood they contain. “That’s fine. I see no reason to pick up an axe again anytime soon, and we can both be thankful for that.”

“We can,” he says and turns away from her to begin putting his supplies away.

Edelgard keeps gently pressing where she knows her scars are under Linhardt’s bandages. “Linhardt,” she calls. “How long do you think I’ll have to live now?”

Linhardt’s movements halt for half a second, but he goes back to methodically cleaning his instruments just as quick. “I’d say that depends on you. For all I know, you’ll get run over by a stray carriage tomorrow.”

“And if all the carriages stay on the road?”

He glances back at her, his usual indifferent eyes shining with the gentle low candle light. “Then as much as any of us can hope to.”

Edelgard slips off the infirmary bed and onto her feet, her head swimming at the sudden motion. Linhardt is at her side in a second, helping to steady her. “And a war didn’t teach you that blood loss makes you dizzy,” he sighs. “If it’s not a carriage or stray horse, then it’s likely to be—”

“Linhardt.”

He glances down at her, and Edelgard stands on her tiptoes to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Thank you for giving me my life back.”

Linhardt gives her a half smile. “You know how much I dislike work—I hardly did anything. And it’s rather early to sing my praises now, though I won’t be opposed to it in the future.”

She shakes her head and slips one of her arms through his. “Let’s put the future aside for now.”

“Oh really?” Linhardt says. “I don’t remember operating on your head.”

“I mean,” Edelgard says taking her first step forward. “Even if you’d prefer to keep quiet on the good news, I’d like to go see the others.”

Linhardt spares a glance at her thin infirmary nightgown, bare feet, and bandages parading up her scarred arms. He shrugs. “The emperor’s word is law.”

Her feet slide over the cool stone of the imperial palace’s floors, down the grand halls, through the sun dappled courtyards, to the garden side tea tables and the array of stragglers hemming and hawing late into the afternoon.

Caspar sees them first and jolts to his feet. “Linhardt! Edelgard!”

Hubert is at her side in a moment, inspecting her arms for any sign of unnecessary damage, while Ferdinand jabbers about how he knew all along that Fodlan’s greatest emperor would emerge victorious from her last battle.

Dorothea’s eyes are shining with barely held back tears as she clutches Petra’s hand and gently brushes Edelgard’s hair back over her shoulder. Bernadetta is crying, and she fumbles with a newly embroidered Get Well Soon throw pillow, caught between handing it to Edelgard and scrubbing at her own tears.

Petra makes the decision for her, gently taking the gift and presenting it to Edelgard when Linhardt gradually removes his support, letting her stand under her own power. “Bernie made a gift for you. There are more, but Hubert worried you might be overwhelmed.”

“Hubie was so, so, so worried,” Dorothea stresses. “If there are any new trenches, it’s from his pacing.”

Hubert makes a vaguely choked noise, and Ferdinand comes to his defense with, “Dorothea is exaggerating. Hubert was concerned exactly the right amount, as we all were.”

Caspar took the moment to circle behind the group and place a hand on Linhardt’s back, loudly whispering, “Everything went okay?”

“Given Hubert and the professor haven’t murdered me yet, I’d say so.”

His response gets Edelgard’s attention, and she looks up from the Black Eagles to Byleth standing a foot behind them. Her blue eyes are shining with tears, and her hands are clasped over her newly beating heart.

“El…”

The others part just enough to allow Byleth through and Edelgard to fall into her embrace.

She held Byleth close in her scarred arms, and in a moment’s time she felt Dorothea’s arms around her shoulders, then Caspar and Ferdinand’s and soon even Linhardt and Hubert’s.

And Edelgard kept her whole world circled in her arms for as long as her strength would let her.