Archive of Our Own

“I am not natural, you know—even though, if you cut me, I will bleed.” - Angela Carter, The Passion of New Eve

—

They did it a week before they left for Shambhala, because Lysithea said they might never get another chance if they kept putting it off.

“I don’t plan on dying down there,” Lysithea had said, annoyed, when Edelgard raised her eyebrow, “but there is every possibility I will.” Edelgard had opened her mouth to object, but Lysithea cut her off: “Edelgard. I need to know.”

Then, softer: “Don’t deny me this.”

Edelgard could not. She had not been good at denying Lysithea things for a few years now. Lysithea deserved to know. She had already paid the price for it.

So Edelgard kept the candle lit after she and Hubert finished their evening briefing, dismissed him early, and waited. She knew how it would appear if anyone saw Lysithea sneaking to her liege’s room in the middle of the night, what manner of rumors might fly about Her Majesty’s evening proclivities. But Edelgard’s suite was the only place in the palace where they were guaranteed privacy, the only place they could be truly safe.

She had already shed the crown and dress of office, let her hair hang limp down her back. She changed into her nightgown while she waited. It mattered little if Lysithea saw her en déshabillé, considering what they were going to do. 

She settled into her chair with a fairly dry historical novel and flipped through ten pages before she realized she hadn’t absorbed a single word. So she closed it, set it on her desk without marking the page, and drew a shawl around her shoulders. The spring evening was always chilly off the bay, but it would not be long before it gave way to summer, to warmth.

The knocks on the servants’ entrance came sharply, two of them, and they jostled Edelgard from her thoughts so abruptly that she almost shrieked.

“Come in,” she said, after taking a breath.

Despite the late hour, Lysithea had not changed into sleepwear or even casual clothing. She was still in the severe lilac dress Edelgard had seen her wearing at their meeting that morning. A late night in the office, probably, defying Edelgard’s constant requests that Lysithea take better care of herself. Edelgard stood when she entered.

Lysithea shut the door quietly behind her. She looked Edelgard over. “I see you’ve taken a head start.”

Edelgard bristled, too conscious of her exposed calves. “It’s late, Lysithea,” she said, though she was unaware of the exact time—she must have missed the bells tolling, but the candle had burned low down its wick. “I wanted to be comfortable in the privacy of my own rooms.”

“I didn’t mean it as a criticism.” Lysithea looked around, narrowing her eyes first at Edelgard’s bookshelf and then at her desk, which she stepped toward. Edelgard made no move to stop her. It was natural for her to be curious.

Lysithea gave the papers on Edelgard’s desk a once-over—a proposal for research into experimental irrigation techniques in Galatea Ferdinand had presented that morning—and raised a slight eyebrow at her paperweight, a black marble statuette of the two-headed Hresvelg eagle. “If anything,” she said, turning to Edelgard, “I’m impressed by your forethought. You know I hate wasting time.”

Had Edelgard been thinking of maximizing their efficiency, she would have been naked when Lysithea arrived, and probably under her blankets, to avoid the chill, sprawled across the settee, waiting for her like a lover—an image that she snuffed out of her brain at once. She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “We should get started, then,” she said.

Lysithea made a noise of concurrence, then sat down at the edge of Edelgard’s settee, a motion that set Edelgard into a brief panic until she realized Lysithea was merely removing her shoes. She untied the veil from her hair, folded it neatly, and set it on the cushion next to her. Her choker followed, revealing a pale stretch of neck that Edelgard had not realized until now that she had never seen, that Lysithea kept ensconced behind such accessories, or the high collars of her dresses. A tender part.

Lysithea bent over, and lowered her hands to her legs, tugging her stockings down in fits. The correct way to do this would be to remove her dress first, and then roll the stockings down her thighs. Edelgard knew better than to point this out. She turned around, in fact, although Lysithea had not asked her to and did not seem to care. Something about watching her undress felt as though Edelgard was looking at something not meant for her eyes, as though it were not Lysithea who wanted it, who came to the emperor’s rooms in the dead of night.

“Never mind,” Lysithea huffed, “I guess you do like wasting my time.”

Edelgard turned around. Lysithea had fully disrobed, and was now standing, nude, in front of the settee. Edelgard made sure to only look her in the slightly-narrowed eyes. Lysithea gestured to Edelgard’s clothes. Oh. Yes.

Edelgard unwrapped the shawl from her shoulders and tossed it on the settee, to join Lysithea’s discarded smallclothes. “You should have done this at the same time as me,” Lysithea said.

“My apologies.” Edelgard pulled her nightgown over her head, which somewhat neutered the effectiveness of her eye-roll. “I failed to consider how these two precious seconds would cut into your evening.”

“They all count,” said Lysithea, absently. She did not afford Edelgard the same privacy. Instead she watched, with her arms folded across her chest, as Edelgard removed her smallclothes. She wasn’t lecherous. It seemed as though she was barely even looking at Edelgard.

No point in folding her clothes. She left them on the floor. Time to begin.

Lysithea looked her up and down. “I’m guessing some of these are from injuries,” she said. She pointed at Edelgard’s hip, where a dark scar curved across the crux of her femur, courtesy of Failnaught. A parting gift from its master. Hubert had nearly killed him for it.

“Yes. Most of them, actually.” Those did not bother her; she knew not a single person who had emerged from the war entirely unscarred. Edelgard’s eyes did not stray from Lysithea’s face. Not yet.

Lysithea made a sound that was at once contemplative and dismissive. She was staring directly at Edelgard’s sternum. “You were the tenth subject in your house? Sorry. Hubert told me. They started with the oldest when they did mine.”

Edelgard cast her eyes away from Lysithea, toward the window. The moon was out, peeking through her curtains. “I don’t know.” She crossed her arms, to rub her shoulders. She missed her shawl. “If that was their method, I would have been ninth.”

“Don’t cover your chest,” Lysithea said, in a neutral tone, neither irked nor particularly sympathetic. Edelgard shivered, which she suspected had little to do with the chill. She lowered her arms to her sides. “Thank you.”

Lysithea took a step closer—Edelgard fought the urge to retreat—and tilted her head a few degrees to the side. Her eyes roved over Edelgard’s torso, pelvis to collarbone. Her gaze held no prurience. It was detached, analytical. Curious, perhaps; a researcher’s gaze. She did not linger on Edelgard’s cold-hardened nipples, the weight of her breasts. She read the cartography of her, picking out the scars that mirrored her own, sorting data from noise. Nothing more. 

Edelgard wondered if she would note that her right breast was a little larger, that her left areola was off-center. These were the things Edelgard noticed when she examined her body in the mirror. She never really saw her own scars, anymore.

“Turn around,” Lysithea said, after a minute.

Edelgard did so, and since she had already received one scolding tonight, she gathered up her hair in her hand and lifted it out of the way before Lysithea could tell her to. Were their positions reversed, Edelgard might have praised Lysithea for this. Lysithea said nothing. Edelgard heard her take another step.

Where were her eyes falling, now? Edelgard shut her own. Was Lysithea tracing the curve of her spine, the jutting angles of her shoulder blades? Edelgard did not know what her back looked like, if the tailbone that made sitting on a hard surface uncomfortable was visible, beneath her skin. Without Edelgard policing her gaze, did it linger? Edelgard folded her free hand over her stomach.

At last, Lysithea said, “Did you know you have a scar underneath your left shoulder blade?”

“No.”

“I have the same one.” Lysithea sounded self-satisfied. “It’s small. May I?”

Edelgard nodded. Another cautious step, and she felt Lysithea’s smooth, cold fingertip, tracing, gently, gently as a breath, a small upward curve, midway down her ribcage. “There,” she said. She pulled her finger away. Not even a full second of contact, and still Edelgard wanted to shed her skin, as a snake might.

“Okay, you can turn back.”

Edelgard took a breath in, quietly, held it, counted to four, and released it. Then she let her hair back down. She had clenched her other hand into a fist, nails digging into the meat of her palm.

Lysithea seemed—Edelgard did not exactly know. Pleased, maybe, or triumphant. Her brows were lifted, and her lips were wet and very pink. Were her cheeks flushed, or was this a trick of the candlelight? 

“They did a better job with you,” she said, and Edelgard thought there might almost be admiration in it. “You can tell I’m the beta test.”

Edelgard frowned. “What do you mean, better job?”

Lysithea took a step back. “Look,” she said, and raised a hand to her midriff. Edelgard allowed herself to, finally, drop her eyes from Lysithea’s face, down her torso to her hand. She tried not to stray, if only to spare herself a sneer, a comment about her weakness. 

Lysithea gestured to a long white line that ran down her midriff—Edelgard stopped herself from looking below Lysithea’s navel. Edelgard knew this one, or rather its double, the icy line that bisected her abdomen. Just below her lowest ribs (and, she now saw, Lysithea’s), it split into two, a Y, the prongs of which ran up along the sides of her ribcage.

“You see?” Lysithea glanced down at Edelgard’s stomach. “It’s a neater incision on you. Mine is all wobbly.”

Edelgard could see what she meant. The scar on her abdomen was arrow-straight. Lysithea’s was somewhat jagged, its branching terminus less precise. Beta test. Hubert had said proof-of-concept, when he’d looked into it. They had not known about the Ordelias. But Edelgard had known, the second she saw white hair across the Academy lawn, that she was not alone.

“I’m not better than you,” she said.

Lysithea scoffed. “I didn’t say you were better.” She crossed her arms, lifting her head in defiance of her emperor. “Just that they did a better job. I’m superior to you in many respects. Magic, obviously. And baking.”

“Obviously,” Edelgard echoed, amused.

“You could learn magic if you applied yourself. But then you wouldn’t be able to wear so much armor.” Lysithea smirked. “Anyway, you’re more physically-capable than me. They must have learned from their mistakes, I’ve never seen you collapse in the hallway.” (Edelgard bit back a comment about knowing her limits, unlike some people.) “Hold out your hand.”

Edelgard froze. “I—”

Lysithea wrinkled her nose. “Oh, please. It can’t be any worse than this”—she gestured between them.

“I’ll get gloves.”

“I’ve been able to see them since I came in, you know.” Lysithea cast her a scornful look. “I just haven’t looked. Edelgard. I don’t care.”

Edelgard closed her eyes and nodded. Then she held her left arm out in front of her with the air of a cat about to drop a half-eaten rodent at Lysithea’s feet.

“Raise it,” Lysithea said, “palm facing me. Thank you.” She raised her own, her right hand, and stepped forward—Edelgard’s breath quickened, her heart pounded in her ears. She closed her eyes, again, before Lysithea touched her, before they were palm-to-palm; more than the ghost of Lysithea’s fingertip at her back, but skin touching skin, the rough, raw flesh of her hand against Lysithea’s. This was not an intimacy she knew. 

It never came. 

“Hm,” said Lysithea. “Mine are larger. I didn’t expect that. But you have wider wrists.”

Edelgard peeked her eyes open. Lysithea’s fingers were spread, the same as Edelgard’s, only a hairs-breadth of space between their palms. Her fingers were slightly longer, the tips of them peeking over Edelgard’s cracked, discolored nails. They were pale and flawless. Edelgard noticed this often, at afternoon teas, when Lysithea raised her cup and the overlarge sleeves of her dresses fell away. Her perfect hands, her only-faintly-scarred wrists, the warm places she daubed her perfume. They had done a much worse job with Edelgard.

Lysithea looked her in the eyes, skewered her there with her gaze. Her other arm rested at her side, just like Edelgard’s, and Edelgard had never been more aware that Lysithea had grown taller than her. Usually her heels bridged the gap. 

“They destroyed Arianrhod,” Lysithea said, cold fact. “You lied to me.” 

“Yes,” said Edelgard, over the thudding in her ears. She did not break eye contact.

Lysithea leaned forward, their hands still just apart. Her face was set in annoyance. “I figured it out back then. You really thought you could fool me? I’m not like the others, Edelgard. Maybe you can lie to Caspar, but you can’t lie to me.”

Edelgard’s eyes flicked down to her mouth, for an instant. “I was protecting you. Everyone. Knowing about their capabilities would have made you a target.”

“I don’t need protecting,” Lysithea said, in a dangerous register. Not her typical irritation—this was something else. Real anger.

“Of course not.” She had seen Lysithea fell an entire line of Faerghan cavalry with a single Dark Spikes T. “But at the time—”

“What could they do to me that’s worse than what they’ve already done?” Lysithea’s voice was a garrote. 

Edelgard knew she could not answer the question honestly. She could not say: Nothing, nothing, but I can’t lose you after all this, stay here, with me, where it’s safe, trust Hubert to deal with them, don’t go, please don’t go. She said nothing at all.

Lysithea lowered her hand. She put her hands on her hips, balled into fists. She stepped back, regarded Edelgard with what could not be pity—Lysithea detested pity. Then she walked to the settee and began to put her clothes back on. She skipped her smalls. She sat on the edge and tugged her tights up her pockmarked calves by the waistband. 

Edelgard picked her shawl up from the cushion, a thin red thing that provided little warmth. She wrapped it around her naked shoulders regardless, and drew it around her chest. She sat down next to Lysithea, and watched the candle, on its last wax, flickering on the tea table. When her leggings were on, Lysithea stood up and pulled her dress on over her head. She gathered her smallclothes, choker, and veil into a pile. There was no point in offering to help. Edelgard watched only out of the corners of her eyes.

“I hate this country, you know,” Lysithea said, after putting her shoes on. “I’ve never cared for politics. The Alliance never meant anything to me. But the Empire killed my family.” Edelgard met her gaze. “I’m only here because I believe in what you’re doing, because I trust you.”

“I’m sorry, Lysithea.”

“Ugh,” Lysithea snapped. “Get some sleep, you look exhausted.” (Lysithea was one to talk.) “No more lies, Edelgard. Good night.”

“Lysithea,” Edelgard said, panic inching up her spine.

Lysithea stopped. She had one hand on the door handle. “Yes?”

“I—” Edelgard swallowed. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Hm," Lysithea said. "That depends on what I was looking for. Good night, Edelgard.”

Lysithea walked lightly enough that Edelgard could not, through the door, hear her footsteps recede. She waited, a moment, two. She pulled her nightgown back on. She blew the candle out, crawled under the blankets. She was grateful it was not cloudy, the night split by the pallid gleam of moonlight over Enbarr Bay.

She thought about Lysithea’s mouth, her thin lips. She did not smile with teeth.

“I had assumed,” Edelgard said, from the doorway, “that you wanted to talk about your irrigation proposal.”

Ferdinand lacked the decency to look bashful. Instead he poured. Edelgard had never found such things impressive, but Ferdinand’s tea service had always been impeccable. He could do it in his sleep. “Should we not discuss such matters like civilized people?”

Edelgard stepped into the garden. “Civilized people eat lunch indoors when it’s cold.”

“Tea will warm you up, Edelgard.” Ferdinand smiled. “I have gone to great trouble to procure Airmid pike for sandwiches. Sit.”

Edelgard furrowed her brow. Were this genuinely a business lunch, he would have said ‘Your Majesty’ as a matter of propriety. Still, she sat, drawing her cape around her shoulders. In truth it was not that cold. Ferdinand presented her with a plate of pickled-pike-and-cabbage tea sandwiches. She took a small sip of her tea. It scalded the tip of her tongue, but the fresh bite of bergamot bloomed across her mouth.

“I am in favor of allocating greater funds for agriculture in the north,” she said, carefully. “The only question is whether Galatean soil is truly capable of producing more than it already does.” She blew across the surface of the tea.

“There is no question; it can.” Ferdinand crossed his arms. “To begin with, we can examine whether the Ailell pomegranate can be cultivated in acidic soil, and there is always the possibility of transferring Ithan soils—” He frowned. “I did not want to talk about this.”

“I thought not. You made these yourself?” She picked a sandwich up by the toothpick; a thoughtful touch. She had stained several pairs of good gloves eating pickled cabbage sandwiches.

Ferdinand sighed. “If I say that I did not, will you be more inclined to eat them?”

Edelgard popped the one in her hand into her mouth, sliding the toothpick from between her lips. “Your cooking has improved,” she said, after swallowing.

“Thank you for not wounding my pride twice in only a few seconds.” Ferdinand took a bite of his own. He chewed it thoughtfully. “These are marked improvements over my last batch. I made a horrible mess of the ratios for the pickling liquid. Even Hubert refused to touch them.”

Hubert certainly had few qualms about wounding Ferdinand’s pride. Her stomach sank. This must be the time Hubert and Ferdinand had their usual luncheon. “Why did you ask me here?”

Ferdinand tossed his napkin onto the table in defeat. “You are sleeping poorly,” he said. “It shows on your face.”

Edelgard took another sip of her tea. “My sleeping habits are not disrupting my ability to lead Fódlan effectively, Minister.”

“I am your friend,” Ferdinand said, “not your minister. I do not dispute you, I worry about you.”

“As your friend, then, Ferdinand, my sleeping habits are not cause for concern.” Edelgard set her teacup down. “You’re right. I have not been sleeping well. But I am fine.”

Ferdinand tongued his cheek and toyed, idly, with his half-eaten sandwich. Edelgard made a point to eat another, though she approached it without her previous pointed gusto. “You will not tell me what is troubling you,” he said, which seemed like it was supposed to be a question. “Hubert and Lysithea are in Hrym. Even Manuela cannot make time for me this week.”

Hrym. Hubert had not told him the truth, then, about their mission.

“Well,” she said, leaning back in her seat, “shall we discuss these Ithan soil transfers?”

The spring chill did not abate that night. Edelgard tossed and turned in bed, windows tight, until she gave up, threw her shawl on, lit a candle—she was not so useless with reason that she could not spark between her fingers—and walked into her sitting room. 

Her novel was where she’d left it the other day, on the corner of her desk. She retrieved it and settled into her armchair, candle in the holder on the side table. King Klaus’ illness had rendered him too feverish to properly declare his last will and testament. Prince Krouffer schemed to take the throne of Faerghus while his father lay on his deathbed. He was clearly intended to be the villain—his simpering was over the top, and the author of the novel had given him a hunchback that Edelgard thought was of dubious historicity at best—but he was certainly the most compelling character in the book. A prince without a Crest. Perhaps the Mittelfrank could adapt this story to make him more sympathetic.

She shut the book. She was in no mood to read. She was shivering a little beneath her nightdress and shawl. She glanced over at the empty loveseat. A week, Hubert had said, before anyone should come looking for them. He had left a coded dossier on Shambhala, complete with a map. It had been three days since he and Lysithea had departed.

Edelgard had seen them off. They left Enbarr under cover of night, but she had made time. “Come home,” she’d said, “both of you, come back whole and sound. That is an order.” Hubert had bowed. Lysithea had shifted from foot to foot, and kept looking west.

(Lysithea, she knew, did not think of this city as home. It was merely where she lived.)

After she returned to bed, Edelgard drew the blankets tight around herself, curled onto her side, only her face exposed to the evening air. She was still cold. Her legs refused to fit together properly. Her knee was bent at the wrong angle for the other one to comfortably rest against it. The condyles of her femurs pressed into one another.

She twisted violently onto her back, legs spread. She folded her arms so that her hands rested on her stomach. She stared into the dark. Lysithea did have beautiful eyes. Edelgard did not know what shade of pink they were—her dilettantism in the art of portraiture did not extend to names; perhaps she could recreate it on the palette. And her hair, too, was quite pretty in moonlight. 

These were horrible thoughts: that something beautiful had come of this, that Lysithea was beautiful because of it.

Edelgard closed her eyes. Lysithea had touched her back. She did not recall the last time she had felt bare skin on her back. Hubert and her attendants all wore gloves and tried their best to avoid direct contact with her skin whenever possible. She felt her stomach rise and fall beneath her hands. It was as if, under Lysithea’s eyes, she had not even been a body, only evidence of something that had been done to one. Lysithea did not regard her with want, never mind need. When she touched her, it was merely demonstrative: Here is the damage. Here is what you are.

Edelgard could almost feel the ghost of that finger again. When they’d stood palm-to-palm, like oath-takers, Lysithea had been so close that Edelgard could smell the last dregs of lily perfume clinging to her wrists. Could have kissed her, if she’d wanted to, with only a slight lean. Edelgard squirmed again. She was too warm. She kicked a blanket off and rolled onto her stomach, arms folded beneath her head.

She imagined Lysithea spreading her palm against her back. Exploring the edge of her scapula, the notches of her spine. Fitting her fingers in the spaces between her ribs. Her other hand resting on Edelgard’s hip, trailing up her side. Lysithea used to bristle when Edelgard called her a good girl. Now it seemed that she was inured to it, or just ignored it. 

Lysithea had never been the one to say it, but at this point anything went, so: Good girl. Breath on her ear. You’re taking this very well.

Edelgard grimaced into her pillow. She was wet. She clenched her thighs together.

Lysithea’s hand, the one that had trailed up her side, coming to cup her breast, her thumb tracing over Edelgard’s bluish veins. The other hand remained on her back. Steadying her. Edelgard had toyed with her own breasts before, of course. It did little for her, she felt only scant sensation there at all. But she had never felt another’s touch like that. She imagined Lysithea squeezing, pinching her nipple in between her thumb and forefinger, tugging, not softly, but without malice. Not to hurt, only to make Edelgard feel it. Were Lysithea’s own breasts sensitive? Was this a difference, or another parallel?

Edelgard gave in. She rose off the bed and shoved the pillow between her legs. This was not—she did not do this often. She could not remember the last time, nor what she’d thought about. Maybe nothing at all. She lay with her head on her forearms.

Lysithea pressing her lips to the base of Edelgard’s neck, the top of her spine. How does it feel? You’re wet. You want this. “Yes,” Edelgard whispered, aloud, “yes.”

Lysithea releasing her breast, her hand trailing down Edelgard’s chest and abdomen, following the path of her scar. They did a better job with you. I’m jealous, Edelgard. You are beautiful. The hand on her back, unmoving. Spread your legs for me. Yes, like that, good girl.

In reality, Edelgard did the opposite, gripping the pillow with her thighs. She bucked her hips into it, sans any finesse. Her clit throbbed.

Lysithea’s fingertip, tracing her clit as gently as it had her back. Barely a touch at all. Lysithea did not need to see her, surely, she could do this with her eyes closed, standing behind Edelgard, chin on Edelgard’s shoulder. She knew her own body, surely, she touched herself, surely. Edelgard’s body was the same, she could touch Edelgard the same. They were two of a kind. 

Did Lysithea think about her? Had she retired to her bedroom, after their meeting that night, and fucked herself, imagining Edelgard inside her, or the reverse?

Her finger teasing Edelgard’s folds. One, up the middle. Her gaze, clinical and academic, peering down Edelgard’s torso from above. There had been something enticing about its lustlessness, its sterility. In the fantasy she said, You like me looking at you. 

This time Edelgard kept her concurrence to the imaginary realm: Yes. 

Lysithea’s fingers probing her cunt. You can take two. You do know your limits, don’t you?

Anything, anything. Lysithea could tear her apart.

Two fingers, inside her, up to the second knuckle. Her knees quivering. Take it, take it, stand up, good girl. This is what you need. The fantasy pulled wet gasps out of her, drool on the sheets.

Edelgard ground feverishly against the pillow. She felt her climax building, molten iron in her stomach. She wished she’d used her hands, so she could imagine Lysithea’s more clearly, but—no. Hers were not the same hands. She would have ruined the illusion before even casting it. This was better, rubbing against her pillow like a teenager.

The heel of Lysithea’s palm against her clit. Something for her to grind on. Lysithea saying, in that same wheedling tone, You’re a pervert. You’re this desperate just for me. You wouldn’t let anyone else touch you like this, El. Only me. Only I understand how.

Edelgard came in a wave: rise, crest, break, and fall. She clenched around nothing, fucked the pillow through it, panted through her nose. She felt like she was crumbling apart.

(Lysithea had never called her ‘El.’ Edelgard had never asked her to.)

When she came down, shaking, she was much too warm. Her nightdress clung to her in sweat-damp patches. She kicked the blankets off. The side of her pillow was soaking; she tossed it to the floor. Her shoulder itched. She lay on her stomach, again, and cried into the sheets.

The next morning, Edelgard called for an additional mirror to be brought to her rooms. She positioned it opposite her vanity, removed her nightdress, and sat between them. She ignored the shadows beneath her eyes.

She had to twist in her seat, and reposition the new mirror a bit, but it came into view: there, beneath her shoulder blade, a small, white, upward curve.

Since there was no longer a Ministry of Religious Affairs in Edelgard’s cabinet, they’d put Lysithea up in what used to be the late Count Varley’s office. It suited Lysithea fine, thanks to its proximity to the palace kitchens. That also suited Edelgard fine, in this particular instance. She balanced the tea tray in her right hand and knocked with her left.

“Come in.”

Lysithea was hunched over a desk that was such a genuine, catastrophic mess that Edelgard had difficulty believing it belonged to her, the second- or third-most organized person Edelgard had ever met. It was stacked high and precarious with papers and heavy, leather-bound books, like the towers of a structurally-unsound castle. Lysithea looked up when she entered, though she did not sit any straighter.

It was the first time Edelgard had seen her in the flesh since she had left for Shambhala. Edelgard felt some weight lift from her chest. One thing to know she had made it back, another to see it—to see her—with her own eyes, for herself.

“I’m busy,” she said, shortly, before Edelgard could so much as open her mouth. “I’ve been busy.”

“Indeed,” Edelgard said, brusque, “so busy that you cannot even spare your emperor the time of day. I am making time, since you won’t.”

“Ugh!” Lysithea dropped her pen and sat up in her chair. “It’s nothing personal. I have responsibilities, I can’t while away the days drinking tea.”

What had they been fighting for, if not for Lysithea to be able to while away the days doing whatever frivolous thing she wished? Perfecting her cake recipes, learning to tolerate cabbage? Edelgard did not know with any degree of precision what she had thought Lysithea might do after the war, but working herself to death at a cluttered desk was not it. Perhaps it should have been.

“I didn’t suggest you could,” said Edelgard. She walked over to the tea table, a relic of the office’s prior occupant—it still bore the Crest of Indech on its facade; Edelgard fought a moue of disgust at the idea of replacing it with a Charon or Gloucester—and set the tray down. “You can, however, while away a few minutes.”

Lysithea crossed her arms and scowled. Edelgard set to pouring. She was no Ferdinand, but Lysithea’s interest in tea service extended no further than the food, and on that front Edelgard could triumph. She sat down at the table and blew across her teacup, looking across the room at Lysithea.

“It’s sweet-apple blend,” she said. Hardly her favorite, but Lysithea turned up her nose at bergamot. Too floral, she’d said, once.

Lysithea rolled her eyes and stood. Edelgard took a sip of tea to hide her smirk. Good girl.

As Lysithea busied herself with dissolving not one but three sugar cubes in her teacup, and pouring enough cream that it nearly overflowed, Edelgard said, “Hubert tells me you’re working on deciphering their records.”

Lysithea sucked her teeth. “What we have of them,” she grumbled. “We—I should say the Professor, I wasn’t there for it. The Professor killed two of them who were trying to burn their archives. They probably destroyed most of it before we got there.”

“Help yourself,” Edelgard said, pushing the plate of petits fours Lysithea’s way. “Do you know what you do have?”

Lysithea paused. She looked at Edelgard with pursed lips. “I was reading experimental records on blood-reconstruction surgery when you knocked.”

Her own, or Edelgard’s? Or worse, one of the less fortunate, a sibling, a cousin. Edelgard clenched her hands beneath the table, willed them not to tremble. “I see.”

Lysithea picked up a cake between her thumb and forefinger, delicately, as if she were handling some precious objet d’art and not a pastry with far too much sugar. “You and Ferdinand worked through the irrigation proposal,” she said. She seemed to consider setting the cake on her saucer, thought the better of it, and bit it in half with a brief flash of off-white incisors, using her other hand to catch the crumbs.

She’d spoken to Ferdinand, then. And Hubert, surely, since they worked in close proximity. Linhardt must have given her a once-over when she returned. It was only Edelgard she had been avoiding for four days without so much as a hello. 

“Yes. Cabinet meetings go much more smoothly with neither you nor Hubert around to antagonize the Prime Minister.”

“S’mtiesh ‘e nees ‘nt ‘gonishin.” Lysithea swallowed the other half of her cake, and took a long sip of her—it could now only charitably be called ‘tea’—to wash it down. Edelgard tried not to dwell on the way her fingers curved around the handle. “Besides, I don’t fight with Ferdinand that often.”

“Fair enough. You fight with Minister Hevring instead.”

“Because he’s an idiot.”

An unfortunate reality of Imperial politics was that Edelgard owed Waldemar von Hevring, obnoxious as he might be. An even less fortunate reality was that the man was actually competent, and ‘he’s a bit of a jackass’ was no reason to upset a functioning government when they were still dealing with rebellions in former Western Faerghus. 

“Would you rather be Minister of Domestic Affairs, then?” Edelgard raised an eyebrow. “Maybe someone would finally get around to putting a plaque on your door.”

Lysithea set her teacup down. “I’m actually stepping down from the cabinet altogether. My resignation is effective next week.” She raised her eyebrows. “Hubert didn’t tell you.”

“No.” Edelgard picked her own teacup up, mostly for want of something to do with her hands. This was a mistake: it only exposed her tremor. Her stomach sank. “Are you—may I ask why? I know you do not care much for politics, but your insight has been invaluable these last two years.”

Lysithea snorted, a jarring, un-Lysithea-like sound. “If you want an expert on Leicester, offer Lorenz the job. He might not like ‘minister without portfolio,’ though. You’ll have to come up with a sufficiently-pompous name.”

Edelgard smiled, which she hoped seemed genuine, and took another sip of her tea. It coated her mouth, cloying, even though she had not sweetened it.

Lysithea reached for another cake. “I’m not leaving, if that’s what you’re afraid of. It’s not like I’ve anywhere else to go. I’m just”—she gestured in the direction of her desk—“going to focus on this instead. The records.”

Edelgard swallowed her tea very carefully, then set her cup on the saucer and folded her hands in her lap. “Surely Hubert’s people can handle that.”

Lysithea narrowed her eyes at her. “Why do you want me off this project so badly?”

Hubert had kept Edelgard as far away from those who slither in the dark as he could. Of course she could not be seen to ally herself with them—the Adrestian emperor must be above such rats. But it was more than that. There were things that were not for her to know, new ways to learn how to hurt. She had endured enough by their hands.

“I never said that,” Edelgard said. “I—”

“I hate it when you do that,” Lysithea snapped. “Don’t hide behind your exact words. You said you would stop lying to me.”

Edelgard’s teeth grazed her bottom lip, for a second. A bad habit, and one she rarely lapsed into these days. “I worry about you.”

“Well, don’t. You know what I’m capable of.” Lysithea had not touched her second mille-feuille. “We eradicated them, Edelgard. They’re not going to come for me in the night. I can learn all their secrets.”

“That is not what I’m worried about.”

Lysithea crossed her arms and glared across the table. “Don’t you want answers? Don’t you want to know exactly what they did to us?”

Edelgard knew too well what they had done. She remembered only fragments, and even those were too much. She remembered Lycaon screaming, screaming down the hall, first with words; his vocabulary had always been impressive for his age; the tenor of his voice becoming less and less human, over time, until it might not have been him at all, but an animal of some sort. She remembered the rats, the relentless drip of water in the corner of her cell. They had never put her in chains. They never needed to. 

This was the difference between them. Edelgard had never asked how old Lysithea had been when they implanted her Crests. Hubert’s intelligence had turned up the answer when they were students. She’d known Lysithea’s darkest secret before they had ever even spoken.

“I’m satisfied with the answers I have.” She leaned forward in her chair, to drain the last of her tea.

Lysithea’s glare abated, somewhat. Rather than annoyed, she seemed—disappointed, maybe. Not quite scornful. She was oddly unreadable at times, for someone so expressive.

“Thank you for the tea,” she said. “I really do have a lot of work.”

Edelgard left her the cakes. She felt, as she returned the tea tray to the kitchens, like she had failed, somehow, and she did not quite understand at what.

Lysithea’s resignation from Her Majesty’s cabinet did not mean Edelgard could no longer see her. Most ministers had both a home in the territories that were once theirs and dwellings in the city—Lysithea had neither. She lived, like Hubert, in a small apartment in the palace. If Edelgard wanted to see her, all she had to do was knock.

Edelgard did want to see her. Quite badly. Lysithea’s rooms were in a wing Edelgard had little reason to visit, which made it easy to resist temptation. She began taking a route to the cabinet chamber that went around Lysithea’s office.

It did not take long for Lysithea to notice. She arrived at Edelgard’s quarters—the main entrance, this time—just after dinner, when Edelgard was catching up on correspondence. She walked in already scowling.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” she said.

Edelgard opened her mouth to deny it, and found she could not. “I thought you would not want to see me,” she said, somewhat sheepishly.

“Don’t be childish,” said Lysithea. ‘Pretty’ was not quite the word for this expression, though Edelgard was certain she would object to ‘cute.’ “I was angry with you. Is that letter from Petra?”

“Yes.” Edelgard folded it and set it down on her desk. “She’s rather excited about a proposal to open a marine trade route to Fhirdiad. But there is a tariff conflict that in truth I do not fully understand.”

“Hm.” Lysithea sat down in the chair on the other side of Edelgard’s desk, a contemplative finger tapping her chin. “What ever came of Constance’s bid to make Nuvelle a free port?”

Such meetings became somewhat regular occurrences, after that. Without Hubert dragging her off to the shadows of Enbarr or Arundel, and with no further ministerial obligations, Lysithea became more present. She often spent free evenings in the palace kitchens, tinkering with her cakes, but Edelgard could anticipate that she would turn up at her door the evening before a cabinet meeting to offer political advice, or, barring that, a sympathetic ear. In some ways it was as if she had resigned the cabinet only to become Edelgard’s personal, unpaid adviser.

“Ferdinand gave you an epithet in this morning’s meeting,” Edelgard said, on one occasion. An amendment Lysithea had scrawled in the margins of his most recent public education initiative had gobsmacked him.

Lysithea gave her a flat look through a mouthful of Albinean berry bun. These were the fruits of a planting initiative in Itha, an effort to grow the berries domestically, to both reduce import costs and increase food supply in northern Faerghus. The palace kitchens had purchased preserves in large quantities.

“I’m surprised it took him this long,” she said, after swallowing. “Ferdinand would give a grandiose appellation to a soup spoon. How bad was it?”

He did love his epithets. “‘Wisdom of the Empire,’” said Edelgard.

Lysithea scrunched her entire face in disgust. Edelgard had known she would. She was not the Empire’s anything. She was free, she belonged to no one. But the brush of pink on her cheeks did not escape Edelgard’s notice.

As spring succumbed to summer, the palace garden burst to bloom, all at once. It was a shame Bernadetta was in Brigid—she and Edelgard had planted it together the previous autumn, before the frosts that marked the closest thing southern Adrestia had to proper winter. When Lysithea arrived at Edelgard’s door, Edelgard presented her with a trio of gold-banded lilies, tied together with purple ribbon.

“You planted these?” She gave them a rather indulgent sniff, burying her nose in one.

“I remembered that you like them.”

Lysithea shot her an odd look: eyes narrowed in suspicion, but smiling, thin and true.

Edelgard’s attempts to recreate Lysithea’s irises on canvas proved fruitless. She always made them too red. This was her worst indulgence; she might have learned from her profound mortification when the Professor discovered the portrait she had done of them from memory, during the war. Instead she tried, over and over, and discarded every one. They only got worse.

On one evening Lysithea did not arrive when expected, and Edelgard, against her better judgment, marched down to her office and knocked on the door.

“Oh,” Lysithea said, upon Edelgard’s entrance. “It’s you.”

Lysithea’s desk was not the nightmare it had been when Edelgard was here last. She had acquired a system of rather quaint wooden filing cabinets, which stood against the wall behind her. They seemed intended to stack, but Lysithea had arranged them side-by-side; an inefficient use of floor space that left them low enough for every cabinet to be accessible without a stool. She had been, it seemed, cross-referencing a book with a sheet of yellowed paper, which she shoved unceremoniously into a drawer of the desk when Edelgard approached. Her eyes were rimmed with red.

“You have my apologies for missing our usual meeting,” she said, snappish, “but I’m quite busy right now.”

This was the topic they did not speak about, that loomed over every conversation for the last month, an invisible presence that still cast a shadow.

“You’re upset,” said Edelgard. Lysithea rubbed her eye with the heel of her palm. “What did you find?”

“You don’t want to know.” Lysithea glowered at her. “It doesn’t affect you.”

Edelgard folded her arms over her chest. She’d known this would happen. It was exactly what she had wanted to avoid. “Alright, then it doesn’t affect me. So you can tell me about it.”

“Shut up,” Lysithea punctuated this statement by smacking the surface of her desk with her hand. “You don’t understand what I’m doing here. You don’t care.”

“If you truly want me to go, I will. I do hate to see you upset.”

Lysithea’s nostrils flared. She leaned back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling. She was silent for a long moment. 

“It’s my own file. Latent Minor Charon, successful implantation of Major Gloucester. I don’t even know why I’m bothered by it. I read through—they don’t use any real names, but they have a system for designating test subjects. The last several must have been House Ordelia.” She closed her eyes. “I had four siblings, you know. And a bunch of cousins.”

Lysithea had never been one for condolences. Edelgard held her tongue.

“It didn’t get to me until this one. It’s the way they write about it, I think.” Lysithea grimaced. “It’s all so technical. I can almost forget what it actually means, it’s like talking about a machine. Except now it’s me.” She opened her eyes, looked at Edelgard, her mouth a hard line. “I read about an incision and I can point to the scar.”

(She did not need to say that the corollary was equally true: that she could reverse-engineer the incisions by reading her scars, or those same scars on another’s body, that knowing her own embodiment meant knowing Edelgard’s.)

Were they any other two people in the world, Edelgard might have reached for her hand, offered her shoulder for Lysithea’s head. She could even imagine doing it, but it was a mirage, an intangible fantasy, and an inappropriate one. She did not know what she could possibly say.

“Perhaps,” she said, and she tried to be gentle, to frame this not as a weapon, an expectation, something she was trying to force, “you could pass some of this research onto the Crest Institute.”

Lysithea leaned forward in her chair, elbows on the desk, hands balled into fists against her forehead. “What the fuck,” she said, “is your problem? You seriously want me to turn this over to Hanneman?”

“No.” It was truthful. “I want you to take care of yourself. If your work is upsetting—”

“What’s upsetting is that after all this time you still don’t trust me to handle myself.” Lysithea did not raise her voice like she had a moment ago. She mostly sounded tired. “I pledged my life to your cause, and you want me to go spend the rest of it doing nothing, like I’m one of Ferdinand’s old horses. The answers are here.” She looked at Edelgard, then. “I need them.”

“Your life is your own,” Edelgard said. “But you are precious to me, Lysithea. If this research is what you want to do, I’ll not fight you. I only don’t want to see you become obsessed with what remains of the people that hurt you.” 

She stood. “One of the bakeries in the port district was selling a pastry I thought you might want to try. It’s a butter dough wrapped around a chocolate cream filling. I had some sent to my rooms, if you’d like to come.”

“No thanks,” said Lysithea. “I’d like some time to myself.” She looked far away.

Edelgard held back a sigh. Her stomach felt awful, a tangled knot of emotions she could neither name nor articulate. “Very well. I’ll have it brought here.”

Lysithea made a noise that Edelgard took as gratitude. When Edelgard reached the door, she said, “Are you wearing perfume?”

Edelgard gave her a quizzical look. “No. Why?”

“Don’t you smell that?” Lysithea sniffed. “It’s like—roses, but sweeter.”

That evening, in bed, her eyes glazing over as she trudged through a tedious battle scene—Prince Krouffer and the Mach army were clashing with his brother Banfig and Faerghus in a war that she knew would lead nowhere, a fracture that the eventual reunification of the kingdom would never quite heal—Edelgard smelled it. Floral and sweetish, faint. Like when flowers had sat in a vase too long and were beginning to decay.

Edelgard read the report twice before she said anything. Lysithea watched her read it, with her arms folded, and an indecipherable expression. Hubert paced, which was unlike him. Going from one corner of Edelgard’s office to the other, like one of the sentry golems they’d faced in the Holy Tomb all those years ago.

“You’re absolutely certain?” she said, finally.

Lysithea huffed. “Of course I’m certain. There’s no question that this is you, unless there’s another twenty-five year-old woman with those two Crests we don’t know about.”

Edelgard brought her hand to her temple, and rubbed it in a little circle with the tip of her middle finger.

“Hubert,” she said, “stop pacing. You’ll wear a groove in the tile.” She looked between the two of them. She leaned back in her chair. Her heart pounded in her ears. She—could she feel it, inside her, now that she knew it was there? “How do we prevent it, then?”

“This is old magic,” said Lysithea, before Hubert could speak. “Archaic. It’s like the kind of thing you read in school about our barbaric forebears doing before Seiros showed everyone how to heal. There’s no reason in it. I’m amazed they could even work it, it’s nothing like their city.” 

Edelgard nodded. She recalled Hubert’s final report on Shambhala—the City Without Light, where the streets glowed blue; an impossible civilization, centuries more advanced than anything on the surface. Now returned to dust.

“The only thing to do,” Lysithea said, matter-of-factly, “is cut it out of you.”

Edelgard thought, Oh. Hubert cleared his throat and said, icily, “While that is one option, I believe, Your Majesty, that alternative solutions may be found. We know relatively little about this particular malady—”

Lysithea cut him off with a noise that suggested, to Edelgard, that they had had this argument several times already. “You know relatively little about this, Hubert, because you haven’t been reading the files and I have, and your rank overspecialization has left your grasp of basic magical theory sorely deficient.”

Hubert glared daggers at Lysithea. Edelgard raised a hand before he could respond. “Enough.”

Lysithea crossed her arms, but raised her chin in defiance. Hubert looked appropriately chastened.

“You said the only option is to cut it out of me.” Edelgard felt like she had devoured a coal, and it was burning its way through her stomach.

“Extirpation is the fastest method,” Lysithea said. “It won’t be pleasant. But this—thing”—she wrinkled her nose a little on the word. “If we leave it alone, it will kill you, and we have no idea when. We have to get it out.”

“Except,” Hubert snarled, “neither Linhardt nor Manuela possesses the knowledge of Agarthan magics necessary to perform this kind of invasive procedure, and by continuing to suggest it you are putting Her Majesty’s life at greater risk.”

For a long moment, they were all silent. Edelgard looked her oldest and dearest friend in the eye, and what she saw there was something invisible to most others: fear. 

She said, in an even tone, “Lysithea could do it.” Hubert’s visible eye widened. 

“Of course I could,” Lysithea said, through a smirk.

Hubert wheeled on her at once, teeth gritted. “I do not dispute your mastery of faith, flames know you are an adequate field medic, but we are not putting Her Majesty’s life in your hands when those hands have never dissected so much as a frog—”

“Hubert,” said Edelgard, “my mind is made up.”

They turned to her in unison. Hubert looked aghast. Lysithea looked hungry.

“I trust her, Hubert.” Edelgard made sure she sat up straight, and used her emperor voice. “Our lives have both been in Lysithea’s hands on the battlefield, many times over. She knows everything there is to know about their experiments. Who could be better?”

Lysithea nodded along. Her eyes gleamed. She wanted this. She wanted to—to do it. To pull out all the wrong parts.

That evening was especially sleepless. Edelgard lay awake in bed and listened to the pulse of the palace, of the city, quieter at night but never dead, the tides softly crashing in the not-so-distant bay.

She sat up. The second mirror she had requisitioned all those weeks ago loitered in the corner of her bedroom. She had not yet gotten around to its removal. She lit one candle, and then another. She stripped to her bare skin, and wished, horribly, that she might go further, step outside of her body and rifle through its pockets. She dragged the mirror to the place she’d had it before, opposite her vanity.

She saw no difference. The report suggested it was in her abdomen, but her stomach seemed the same as ever; scarred skin, stretched taut over fat and muscle, bisected up the middle by that straight white line. This must have been the very incision. She pressed her hands into her stomach, felt around. Nothing different, nothing new. It must have been inside her for years. She did not remember a body without this intruder.

There had been so much ardor in Lysithea’s face. Edelgard closed her eyes. She imagined Lysithea making that same expression, all that unadorned desire turned to Edelgard. Soon Lysithea would be able tell her all of her own secrets, even the ones Edelgard was keeping from herself. She dipped her hand between her legs.

When Lysithea walked into the operating room she said, with an approving lilt, “Good. You’re undressed.” She was pushing a small cart, covered with a cloth, and wearing a dark mage’s uniform, all black, with a crisp high collar and long white gloves up to the elbow. It was tailored well.

“I didn’t want to waste time,” Edelgard said, mostly for something to say. She sat at the edge of the operating table, which was itself covered in a cool white sheet.

Lysithea made an appreciative sound. She was busying herself filling a stone basin with water. Once it was full, she turned away and removed the cloth from the cart. Set atop it were various instruments—Edelgard did not know the names of most of them, but could guess their functions. Long-handled scalpels, a small pair of scissors with short blades. Edelgard’s heart beat a little faster.

Lysithea picked up one of the larger pieces, a steel bar with leather straps at each end. “Lie down,” she said. “I have to put this on you.”

“Surely that isn’t necessary.” 

Lysithea frowned. “I don’t even want to think about what could happen if you kick me during the procedure. Lie down and spread your legs.”

Edelgard felt red creep up her face. She hoped Lysithea didn’t notice. She did what she was told. Lysithea tied the straps around her ankles with practiced efficiency. It was not unbearable. “Too tight?” Lysithea said. 

Edelgard shook her head. The very idea of this might have sent her into a panic. But she felt calm.

“I need you to be honest with me, Edelgard. You’ll be able to feel if something wrong is happening, and I need you to be open and communicative about that.” Lysithea’s voice betrayed her nerves. Edelgard had rarely seen her nervous.

Edelgard swallowed. “I will be as informative as my limited knowledge affords.”

Lysithea made a ‘tch’ sound. “Don’t qualify your statements like that.” She held out a small glass of bright, clear liquid. “Hubert formulated this. It should make everything painless, but you’ll still be able to feel. So if it hurts at any point you have to tell me. I’m serious.”

Edelgard pushed herself semi-upright on her elbows. Drinking anything would have been much easier before Lysithea had restrained her legs. Before she could say so Lysithea was holding the rim of the glass to her mouth, encouraging her to tilt her head back. The liquid tasted saline and smooth, and very, very cold. Lysithea watched her throat work with an intense focus.

“You didn’t eat anything today, right?” She pulled the empty glass away and returned it to the cart. “Lie back down. Thank you.”

“No,” said Edelgard. The taste of analgesic clung to her mouth. The entire room smelled alcoholic, sterile.

“Good.” Lysithea leaned over Edelgard’s abdomen, pen in hand. Edelgard started when she felt the scratch of the nib. “Hold still,” Lysithea said.

Edelgard nodded and closed her eyes. It was somewhere between a scratch and a tickle, once Lysithea started moving it. Edelgard flexed her hands, clenching and unclenching her fists. She felt it run down her body in a long, unbroken stroke. Her breath caught when, for a second, the pen dipped into her navel, and then again when some part of Lysithea’s finger—it must have been the knuckle of her thumb—brushed against her. And then it withdrew. “There,” Lysithea said.

A trio of lines, labeled in Lysithea’s tight shorthand, stuck out against the pallor of Edelgard’s torso. The longest followed the medial scar verbatim, traced directly over it, the central line and the branches. Above the vertex, between Edelgard’s breasts, was written LvO 1st ncsn.

“This is for your benefit,” said Lysithea. “I know what I’m doing.” She traced her finger over the long line. “The idea is to minimize potential scarring by making incisions on scars you already have.”

Edelgard would take a hundred Lysithea-induced scars over a single one from Thales. She said “thank you” anyway.

Lysithea smiled, a bit smugly. “I need to see if the elixir is working. Your hand.”

Her hand. Edelgard grimaced. But Lysithea had seen them so close already. She held up her right, palm to the ceiling. She watched Lysithea prick her thumb with a needle. She knew not to expect pain, but she did anyway; the lack of it felt—strange. A bead of blood welled up in the wound at once.

“That didn’t hurt at all,” said Edelgard. Lysithea daubed the blood away. No point in wasting magic on a pinprick.

“Then we should get started. I’ll have to tie your wrists.”

Having her legs kept spread was bad enough. Edelgard nodded. The table had rails on the sides that Edelgard realized, now, must have been for this specific purpose. The fabric of Lysithea’s gloves was stiff—she felt it against her wrists, light brushes on the disfigured backs of her hands. Linen. She could tell by just those glancing blows.

Nobody else could have ever held Edelgard von Hresvelg down. She was a chain-breaker, she had brought the Immaculate One low. She could snap these leather ties easily. But for Lysithea, she took a deep breath in through her nose and held it, until one wrist was finished, again when she walked around the table for the other.

Lysithea watched her give a gentle, experimental tug at the ties. They were not tight; her range of motion was limited, but not gone. Where had she learned to tie knots? “Well?” Lysithea said.

Edelgard nodded. Time to begin.

The final piece was to suspend a white sheet on a bar above Edelgard’s chest. She could see Lysithea’s face, over it, and the silhouette of her hands, of Edelgard’s own body on the other side. She almost asked Lysithea to let her watch. Edelgard had seen more than her share of viscera. On the battlefield, Aymr had snapped in her hand like the jaw of a starving dog. But perhaps it was better to not see herself so open.

Lysithea held the lancet over the curtain, for Edelgard’s inspection. The blade was Ailell obsidian, shiny and black, sharper than even Dagdan steel, but too brittle for weaponry. The edge was so fine that Edelgard could not see it.

“I’m making the first incision. Do try to hold still.”

Edelgard suppressed a shudder that bore no correlation to the impending cut.

She felt the tip of the lancet against her skin, above the apex of her metasternum, and it entered her as gently and easily as a knife to a teacake. She parted for it like she wanted it. Lysithea dragged it down her stomach, not all the way, only a few inches. She felt a trickle of blood run down her side. Lysithea wet a fresh white rag in the basin, and dabbed it against the wound. Edelgard gasped at the contact—it was cold, she had been unaware of her own febrility. But she had always run hot. Lysithea’s eyes shot over to her face.

“Sorry,” Edelgard said.

“Don’t be, yet.” Lysithea dropped the rag back in the basin. “The hard part is next.”

Lysithea braced one hand against Edelgard’s solar plexus, her fingers spread out, even pressure across her chest—she arched her back up into the touch. Lysithea pushed her down without so much as a look. The edge of the scissors dipped just inside the incision, and then Lysithea undid her, all delicate, a toymaker unstitching a doll. Of course there was no pain. It was as if she had never been able to feel pain at all.

Lysithea said, low, “Good. Keep still. I’m almost done.” Edelgard could not hold back her sob. As ever, her body betrayed her.

It took two more cuts. The scissors clipped down her costal margin in slow, purposeful movements—Lysithea did not move her hand, she held Edelgard in place, not by force but by reminder—first one side and then the other. Lysithea cleaned the cuts with the rag. Edelgard could see red staining the white tips of her gloves when she turned around. And then Lysithea said, “Take a breath and hold it.”

She eased her fingers into Edelgard, her thumbs on either side of the incision, which Edelgard knew must be wet and red and fever-warm. Lysithea took a deep inhale. And then she pulled Edelgard carefully open like a love letter, like petals parting for the pollinator, and the air in Edelgard’s lungs escaped her in a sharp ha and Lysithea let out a long, smooth breath.

Everything of Edelgard was hers, now.

Soft and methodical—but as efficiently as possible, not a second wasted, never, ever—Lysithea pinned the fabric of Edelgard into place with long, thin needles, like mounting a butterfly. Edelgard didn’t squirm. She tugged at the restraints at her wrists, but she was cognizant enough to not break them.

Lysithea’s tongue darted out to wet her lips. Edelgard bit her cheek. “How do you feel?” Lysithea said. “Still no pain?”

Edelgard felt the Crest of Flames flaring to life in her blood, flickering, fighting to keep her alive and stable. But the rush of adrenaline that normally accompanied it was absent. She was calm. Her tongue was all fuzzy in her mouth, and she felt it too much against her teeth. Everything was warm. The whole room smelled of wilting roses, cloying and putrid. 

“No,” she said, and she knew her face was flushed, the sheet beneath her damp with sweat. “I feel—fine, given the circumstances.”

Lysithea smiled. “You’re being remarkably relaxed about this. How much of that is the drug?”

Edelgard needed no analgesic to feel woozy in Lysithea’s presence. “I am trying not to make things difficult.”

“You’re a model patient.” Lysithea said this dryly, but Edelgard went lightheaded all the same. 

Lysithea bowed over her, hands aloft, and Edelgard felt the heat of faith in her abdomen, though she did not know what needed healing. Lysithea glanced at her face and said, with open sincerity, “I know you dislike being touched. I am impressed.”

Before she could stop the words from spilling out her stupid throat, Edelgard said, “It’s different when it’s you.”

Lysithea didn’t say anything for a second. She reached over to the cart and plucked a pair of forceps, and took up in the other hand the lancet once more, and then she said, “Keep talking.”

“About what?”

“Anything.” Lysithea shrugged. “I need you to stay conscious, so you can tell me if something feels off. Just talk so you don’t fall asleep.”

“I—” Edelgard gasped at the forceps’ cold pinch. “I don’t mind when you touch me.”

Lysithea’s movements were careful, disciplined. She did not spare unnecessary touch. She had tied her hair high, out of her face, and it fell to the back of her neck as a lily of the valley drooped in bloom. Edelgard had never seen the ivory conch of her ear before. 

“Is that why you wanted me to do this?” All of Lysithea's focus was on her work. Her brow was furrowed, in the way it often was when she was thinking through a particularly thorny reason theorem. She cocked her head just to the side. “Instead of Linhardt or Manuela, I mean.”

Edelgard could not answer immediately, because Lysithea moved something in her that made her entire body quiver, and she gasped for air in desperate, ragged huffs. This should have been enough of a response, in her opinion, but Lysithea paused, and waited for her to recover, and so she said, “Yes. Only you. You never make mistakes.”

“I’ve made plenty of mistakes, Edelgard. I just recognize and correct them.” She leaned over the table a bit more, peering down into Edelgard with her familiar penetrating gaze, the cold look that had haunted Edelgard’s fantasies. “I cut too far when I made the first incision, so I healed you. Don’t tell Hubert.”

Edelgard had to fight the urge to rock her hips up. She clenched her fists. None of this was anything she would ever tell Hubert. She closed her eyes, licked her lips. Lysithea shifted something inside her with the forceps, gently, tentatively, fingers cupping and lifting, and she whimpered.

“Eyes open,” Lysithea said. An order to be obeyed, with no emotion behind it at all. Edelgard could only comply. Lysithea was not even looking at her face. Her eyes flickered toward Edelgard for merely a fraction of a second. “Better. Stay awake. Talk.”

The only thing Edelgard could even think about was Lysithea, her eyes, her hands. She said, the greatest fool in Adrestia, “Please.”

“We’re almost done.” Lysithea said this in a soft voice. “I can see it.”

A bead of sweat trickled down Edelgard’s forehead. Her blood rushed in her ears. She said, breathless, “Lysithea,” and then she could not speak, because she was falling completely to pieces, because she could feel Lysithea up to the wrist and her fingers seized something solid and horribly, horribly real, and Lysithea said, “Shh” in a placating tone. She pulled, very tenderly, and Edelgard felt the raw and pitiless obsidian of the lancet catch something, and she was warm all over, like she was going to catch fire and turn them both into ashes, and she drew breath only in rhythmic hiccups. Tears ran hot down her face, she tried to speak, to say Lysithea’s name again because she knew no other words, and managed only a sobbing, delirious moan, the scalpel blade so cold against the heat of everything else, the boiling core of her, and Lysithea’s breaths were even and her eyes were wide and her face was flushed and wanting like Edelgard had never seen—

“I have it,” she whispered, “Edelgard. I have it. We’re almost there. Hold still.”

—but she could not, she could only manage to buck into Lysithea’s touch, and it mattered not at all if she was still or if she writhed. Lysithea’s nostrils flared, she panted in unison with Edelgard, she was immovable and infallible, Edelgard could feel every millimeter of her gloved fingers, every delicate caress of things never intended to be touched. The hand that held the lancet made another merciless stroke inside Edelgard’s quivering body, the whole room was glowing red, and Lysithea pulled once more, her fingers twisted something deep inside, and Edelgard unraveled into molten nothing with a final, shaking groan, and sobbed without words. It was as easy as dreaming.

The lancet clattered against the tile when Lysithea dropped it. Her gloves were soaked red and dripping, and there was a small spatter on her cheek. She wore the expression of a conqueror. The thing she had removed sat bloody and ash-black in her grip, all spongy pericarp, pouring red light from a small circular hole, and its fat white rhizomes trailed to the floor.

Manuela mandated at least one week of bed rest for Edelgard’s recovery, with daily checkups, and Hubert fretted over her in the way he always did until she told him that she would be able to rest more easily sans his constant check-ins. Ferdinand visited the day after the procedure, tea tray in hand, and refused to humor her questions about that morning’s cabinet meeting.

“I am afraid I am under very strict orders not to discuss work,” he said, shaking his head with a wide-armed gesture. “Hubert frightens me much more than you do, to say nothing of Manuela.”

Byleth brought a vase of fresh orange carnations. Linhardt brought a notebook, and asked her several questions about the procedure before Caspar reminded him (in an admirable impression) that Hubert had strictly forbade interrogation of Her Majesty, so he took a nap in her chair while Caspar told her a long, rambling anecdote about a new brawling technique he’d seen in a bar fight, which he insisted he didn’t start.

The next day, Manuela agreed that she was fit enough to return to her rooms. This was a great relief. If she must be bedridden, she would rather be in her own bed, under familiar sheets.

She was propped up on pillows, in her shawl and nightgown though it was the middle of the afternoon, and nearing the end of her interminable book—after a particularly brutal clash in Itha and much soliloquizing about the tragedy of war, the kind only written by those who had never seen it firsthand, a peace accord was finally in sight—when two sharp knocks sounded on the servants’ entrance.

“Come in,” she called.

Lysithea closed the door behind her in near-silence. Edelgard closed the book. Everyone else had sat by her bedside in the infirmary these past few days—Lysithea stood at the foot of her bed and folded her arms awkwardly. She glanced around the room, without looking at Edelgard, and the corner of her mouth quirked up in an expression Edelgard could not parse.

“How are you?” she said.

Since Lysithea had pulled the Agarthan thing from her abdomen, Edelgard had felt empty, in a pleasant way, loose and ill-defined. But the ache of three days ago had settled into an abdominal agony that Manuela was cautious to treat with more analgesics. “In all honesty,” she said, “I’m mostly bored.”

“You look terrible.”

That was probably true, but it stung all the same. “Thank you, Lysithea. I will keep your feedback in mind.” 

Lysithea went a little pink. “I mean—you don’t look terrible, you just—ugh.” She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. 

“I understand.” Edelgard shifted her seat, pushed herself further upright. “You’ve been investigating the—specimen, yes?”

“Nothing we didn’t already know.” Lysithea shrugged. “Whatever they used to make it is older than any documented dark magic. And it’s dead, so I don’t know how valuable it will be for further experimentation.”

“I see.” Something about that was a relief, in truth. Edelgard folded her hands in her lap. She was wearing a favorite pair of gloves, black silk, ideal for reading. “Something else to report, then? I should warn you Hubert has forbidden me from indulging in anything work-related.”

Lysithea scowled. “I have to have a reason for visiting you?”

“Of course not. You are welcome to visit me whenever you like.” But she did have a reason. Edelgard could tell. She was all nervous energy, shifting slightly from foot to foot. Edelgard patted the bed beside her. “You can have a seat, if you want.”

Lysithea did not move. She crossed her arms. “The other day you said you don’t mind when I touch you.”

“Yes.” Edelgard felt her heart rate increase. “That—I don’t.”

Now Lysithea walked over to the side of the bed. Edelgard could see subtle shadows beneath her eyes. She sat at the edge of the mattress, facing Edelgard, one leg hanging off. “I don’t believe you.”

“I assure you, Lysithea, I really do not mind.” Edelgard’s stomach twisted into a knot while she spoke. “I felt quite safe in your hands.”

Lysithea leaned closer. There was a dangerous glint in her eye. She kept her voice low. “I think it’s more than that. I think you like it. You couldn’t keep still when I was operating, you kept trying for more contact. You wanted it so bad you couldn’t do the one thing I asked.”

She knew, then, the awful truth: that she needed no black scalpel to dismantle Edelgard. Her touch alone could break her. Edelgard should have known she could not hide this any longer.

“Yes,” she said.

Lysithea’s expression did not change. She breathed evenly. She reached for Edelgard’s hand, and Edelgard did not flinch, did not pull away. Lysithea’s fingers wrapped around hers, and she turned her eyes away from Lysithea’s face.

“Edelgard,” Lysithea said, “do you want to touch me?”

Edelgard bit the inside of her bottom lip. She nodded.

“Look at me.” Edelgard did not need to be told twice. Her eyes darted back to Lysithea’s. She had that same hungry look she’d had in the operating room. “Say it. Tell me with words.”

The tips of Lysithea’s fingers found their way into the lace cuff of her glove. Edelgard’s breath hitched. “I want to touch you,” she said. 

Lysithea lifted Edelgard’s hand, fingers still hooked into the fabric, and she eased the glove off, a finger at a time, until she could peel the dark silk away altogether and expose Edelgard to the harsh light of day. She tossed the exuvia to the floor.

“Go ahead,” she said.

Edelgard’s fingertips brushed Lysithea’s cheek, featherlight. Her skin was soft and warm, and there were bags under her eyes. Edelgard had still never captured the color of her irises. Lysithea had not worn a hair veil, today. Edelgard tucked a lock back behind her ear, and then traced her auricle, helix down to lobe. She splayed her palm across Lysithea’s cheek, her pinkie pressed into the place where her jaw met her neck. Lysithea leaned into the touch.

“You are beautiful, you know,” Edelgard said.

Lysithea frowned. “You could have said so before now.” 

Edelgard trailed her thumb down Lysithea’s nasal bridge, to rest the pad on the tip of her nose, her cheek still in Edelgard’s palm. “I’ll make it up to you. You’ll get tired of hearing it.”

Edelgard brought her thumb down to Lysithea’s lips, pressed it briefly into her philtrum. Lysithea opened her mouth, slightly, and Edelgard slid her thumb between her teeth. “Good girl,” she said, and Lysithea gave her a seething look.

Lysithea wrapped her tongue around the tip of Edelgard’s finger, and she sucked at it, insistently, like it was a hard candy. Edelgard licked her lips. Lysithea brought her hands to her own high collar, and began to undo the buttons of her white silk shirt in quick, purposeful motions. 

She said, around the thumb in her mouth, “You have two hands.”

Edelgard did not want to let her go. She felt—dizzy. She tugged her glove off with her teeth and tossed it away, an action Lysithea’s eyes followed covetously. For a second, she cupped both of Lysithea’s cheeks, one in each hand, and Lysithea breathed heavy through her nose when Edelgard tilted her head up. She began to work her thumb in and out of Lysithea’s mouth. Her other hand fell to her neck, palm to jugular, tips of her fingers to the wiry hairs of Lysithea’s nape. Her thumb grazed the front of Lysithea’s throat. No choker today, either. 

Lysithea grunted. She gripped Edelgard’s thigh through the sheet with her now-free hand, digging her fingers into her. Edelgard responded only by stroking Lysithea’s long, slender throat with her thumb, and Lysithea pulled away from her with an exasperated noise and said, “I have better things to do than sit here while you spend an hour fondling my jaw.”

“I’m sorry,” Edelgard said, though she was not.

“Ugh!” Lysithea swung her leg over Edelgard’s, and raised herself up on her knees, straddling Edelgard’s hips. “I’ve worked by your side for years, and you never said anything. You don’t get to waste any more of my time.”

“I’m not wasting time.” Edelgard reached up to cup her cheeks again. “I’m savoring it. I already told you you are beautiful; should I not appreciate that beauty?”

Lysithea did not dignify that with a response. Instead she leaned forward, so that Edelgard could feel her words on her own lips, and said, “Are you going to fuck me, or not?”

Edelgard smothered whatever noise threatened to bubble out of her and said, mortified, “Manuela has ordered me not to do any strenuous physical activities.”

“If you tear anything, I’ll fix it.” She gave Edelgard a smug look. “I bet you want me to.” She tilted her head, pressed even further forward, their lips only barely apart. “I saw the way you looked at me while I was operating on you.”

Edelgard shivered. “I—”

“You liked it. You liked me touching you like that. Cutting you open. Making you better.” Lysithea pulled back, only a bit, to look Edelgard in the eyes. “Don’t try to lie. You’ve been thinking about it for days, haven’t you?”

Edelgard nodded. Lysithea’s pupils were wide, black pools.

“You’re shameless. You wanted me inside you.” She rose back up onto her knees, to hike her skirts up. Edelgard’s hands fell from her. She tugged her leggings down to the middle of her thighs. She looked at Edelgard like she was made of glass, like she could see through her, peer past her skin and muscle to her soft workings, to the desire burning her stomach to cinders. “Now you want to be inside me.”

“Yes,” Edelgard gasped. She had never wanted anything more. Her eyes fell to Lysithea’s chest. “Yes. But be a good girl and be patient,” she said, but her breathlessness undercut her authority.

“Ugh,” Lysithea snapped, “I’ll just do it myself. You can watch.” 

The hand not holding her skirts up flew downward, and Edelgard’s gaze followed, inexorably, down to the thin patch of white pubic hair so identical to Edelgard’s own. Lysithea—the only word Edelgard could think of to describe her cunt was ‘cute.’ She brushed her clit with the tip of her middle finger, and Edelgard faintly heard her breath hitch, and then Lysithea parted her own folds, unfurling herself, sliding in a gentle fingertip, just past her cuticle. 

“See?” She lolled her hips forward, sinking her finger in a little bit deeper. “I can take care of myself.”

Edelgard grabbed the front of her shirt in both hands and tugged her back down into her lap. She went willingly. The knuckles of the hand between her legs brushed Edelgard’s stomach. “Keep going,” Edelgard said.

Lysithea made a husky, contemptuous sound, almost a laugh. “I wasn’t going to stop.”

Edelgard pulled Lysithea’s shirt open, baring her chest, peeling it down the bones of her narrow shoulders. Lysithea exhaled sharply. Edelgard wet her lips. Lysithea’s tiny, pink-peaked nipples stood out against puffy, rose-brown areolae, alabaster skin translucent over bluish veins. Lysithea rocked her hips in place harder, and a quiet, eager sound escaped her mouth.

Edelgard looked up at her face. Her brows were creased in concentration. She stared down at Edelgard. Her breaths came quick and heavy. Edelgard brought her left hand up to cup her chin, and when she probed Lysithea’s lips with two inquisitive fingertips, she took them as easily as she had her thumb.

“You are a good girl,” Edelgard murmured. She expected Lysithea to retort, or maybe bite her, given her mood, but instead she only sighed around Edelgard’s fingers. Edelgard could not tell if Lysithea still had only one finger inside herself, or if she had added a second, a third. Her hips jerked against Edelgard in stuttering, uneven movements.

With her other hand, Edelgard cupped Lysithea’s breast. It was not quite a handful, but was soft as her fantasies all the same, and Edelgard fluttered when she felt Lysithea’s nipple tighten beneath her palm, her back arch into the touch. She gave it a rough, experimental squeeze, and Lysithea hissed through her mouthful. She pinched the nipple, tugged, looking up at Lysithea’s face, and Lysithea’s eyes rolled up. She made a muffled sound somewhere between a moan and a growl.

When Edelgard leaned forward and took Lysithea’s nipple between her lips, grazing the hard bud with the tips of her incisors, Lysithea did bite her fingers. She did not remove them. She pressed down on Lysithea’s tongue, and sucked hard. Lysithea wriggled in her lap, and Edelgard’s hand released her breast to circle around her waist, to keep her still. Lysithea groaned. 

Lysithea jerked her head to free her mouth, and she panted, in a voice fraying around the edges, “Edelgard. Enough.”

When Edelgard did not pull away, Lysithea tangled the fingers of her free hand in Edelgard’s hair and yanked, hard, tearing her from her prize. Lysithea glowered down at her, red-faced and ravenous, and all the breath left Edelgard’s lungs. This could not be real, this could only be her feverish reverie.

“I want—I need your fingers.” Lysithea thrust her hips forward, insistently. Her legs were watery, shaking. “Come on.”

Edelgard fumbled with the hem of Lysithea’s skirt. Lysithea grabbed it and hiked it up again. She was still fingering herself, and when Edelgard’s hand found its way between her legs there was a brief confusion of knuckles, like shy young lovers trying to interlace their fingers together, and then Edelgard’s hand was alone against the slick heat of Lysithea’s cunt. She had fucked herself open for Edelgard; sliding her finger inside—the middle, just like Lysithea—was easy. Lysithea’s body yielded to her emperor. She could take two. Up to the second knuckle.

Lysithea brought her hand to Edelgard’s mouth. She’d been using two fingers on herself, apparently, and Edelgard took them eagerly between her lips, licking them clean.

“Good girl,” Lysithea hissed. 

Edelgard groaned into the fingers. Lysithea nodded. Her mouth was slightly open, and Edelgard could see a pallid sliver of teeth, the red length of her tongue. “I’m almost there, Edelgard,” Lysithea whispered.

Edelgard shoved her hand upward, burying her fingers inside Lysithea all the way to where they met her palm, and Lysithea made a little choking sound and Edelgard felt like she was deep, deep inside, touching wet and novel parts. Fluids dribbled down her hand. She shifted her thumb upward, floundering for Lysithea’s clit, and when she found it she pressed her thumb into it hard, and Lysithea rocked back and forth in paroxysmal motions, clearly trying to hold in her mewling, and Edelgard gave her fingers a fatal twist, and Lysithea’s entire body clenched around her, and she writhed in her lap with great heaving breaths, and Edelgard watched her face in rapture.

She rode Edelgard’s hand through her orgasm and collapsed, panting, boneless atop her, her fingers slipping from Edelgard’s lips, head heavy on her shoulder.

Edelgard withdrew her hand slowly, and Lysithea shuddered against her. She wiped it on the bedsheet, and wrapped both of her arms around Lysithea’s torso, beneath her halfway-on shirt. She stroked her back. Lysithea felt so delicate like this, all smooth skin beneath her calloused hands, brittle as porcelain, an antique doll, a wishbone. A damp patch of nightgown clung to Edelgard’s stomach. 

Lysithea’s breathing slowed, eventually, and she tucked her own arms between Edelgard and the pillows. She didn’t say anything. Edelgard closed her eyes. The bed smelled of sex and sweat and Lysithea’s perfume, a combination that made Edelgard’s head swim. Her own cunt was soaking; need seethed all the way up her guts in a tight coil. 

Lysithea nuzzled into the crook of her neck. Edelgard wanted her to shove her down onto the bed and pull those leggings off completely and fuck her face. She wanted to feel Lysithea’s breath on her clit, to let Lysithea undo her with fingers and tongue and teeth instead of scalpel and forceps, to let her cut her open again, to let Lysithea bruise her thighs, to risk tearing something, to make Lysithea fix her after they did. She wanted to hold Lysithea here, like this, in perfect silence, for the rest of the day, to feel her beating heart and her rising chest, both of them alive—somehow, still, after everything, alive.

After a minute, she said, “I suppose I should let you get back to work.”

Lysithea sat up. Her face glowed in the rosy aftermath of orgasm. Her eyes were heavy-lidded. She leaned in. “It can wait,” she said, and her lips were nearly brushing Edelgard’s.