Chapter Text
Felix barely slept the night before. The conversation he and Annette overheard in Viscount Kleiman’s study weighed heavy on his mind. Hearsay, that was all they had against Kleiman and his overbearing adviser Myson, hearsay and a conversation that could be so easily misunderstood, and hearsay wouldn’t be enough to accuse him of treason and blame him for the Tragedy, for the old king’s death, for the razing of Duscur, for Glenn, for—
His sword slashed viciously across the neck of the effigy, spilling straw and sawdust onto the floor. The abrupt surge of strength from his Crest faded, and the tip of his sword drooped and struck the dirt as he panted, catching his breath.
“Your Grace,” Viscount Kleiman’s quartermaster cried from the edge of the enclosure, “you really oughtn’t use live steel while—”
His jaws snapped shut when Felix glared at him.
He regretted it a heartbeat later, when he stared down at the mess he made of the effigy, its blood and guts a heap of dust on the ground.
He shouldn’t let his anger and frustration get the best of him like this, and he should know better than to use live steel while training. He was no longer a child, even if he still struggled to rein himself in - he wasn’t so naive to think he didn’t need to - but everything from Dimitri’s stupid mission, to Viscount Kleiman, to Annette confounded him.
Annette.
He hadn’t seen her that morning yet, not since parting with her after a brief conversation where they decided they would proceed as if they overheard nothing from Kleiman’s study. When he slipped out of his own room for breakfast and training, a pair of guards - different from the day before - stood at her door, indicating she hadn’t emerged yet.
It was probably for the best. She might as well have accompanied him down to the training grounds with how incessantly she occupied his thoughts, his dreams, everything.
Again (as if she ever stopped).
Frustration flickered hot within him again. He raised the sword to challenge the effigy anew - though maybe he ought to draft a handful of his own soldiers to charge him together, see how he fared against multiple foes - until a flurry of activity burst out from the barracks.
Shouts rang out and hooves thundered, and a runner on a horse with flanks frothed with sweat halted before the captain of Viscount Kleiman’s guard. “S-sir!” she greeted him. “I-it’s two of those stone Beasts, sir, a ways west of here, close to the river!”
The captain wasted no time raising his voice and ordering his men about to assemble, and Felix, his interest piqued - two bizarre Demonic Beasts? - sheathed his sword and rushed.
Doubtless word would’ve traveled to the viscount too, so he scrambled away from the training grounds and towards the castle, nearly outstripping the knight set to guard him from morning. He burst into the entrance hall amid more activity, and as luck - for once - would have it he needn’t have looked far.
“Viscount,” Felix greeted him, marching up to him as his heartbeat steadied. He breathed evenly enough, to his relief, though the guard trailing him panted once she caught up. He swallowed the vitriol that rose within him like bile and instead said, “I heard there was a new sighting of those stone Demonic Beasts in your territory. I will accompany the soldiers you send to engage and observe it.”
Viscount Kleiman blinked, his lips turning into a frown before he composed his face into something more placid. “I suppose I cannot stop one such as yourself,” he conceded, “but what do you hope to gain from such an endeavor, Your Grace? I couldn’t help noticing your last encounter with a Demonic Beast left you wounded.”
Felix tightened his jaw, the reminder irritating. “I’m no stranger to injuries,” he retorted, “and it was a mage that struck me, not one of your stone Beasts.”
“A…mage.” Kleiman fiddled with his mustache, expression far away. “As you say,” he said with a slight shake of his head. “My men can handle this without your undoubtedly capable assistance.”
“I’m not looking to help,” he said. “Perhaps I can glean where they’re coming from and help you with that.” Even the suggestion of helping the viscount tasted foul on his tongue, but he suppressed his distaste.
“You think you can do any better than I have?”
“Maybe not,” Felix admitted, “but even if I have nothing to gain by going, you have nothing to lose by accepting it.”
“Well-spoken,” the viscount complimented with an unfriendly glint in his eye. “You sounded almost like your father. And nothing I say can convince you otherwise?
He gritted his teeth but held in an angry retort. “Nothing,” he agreed.
“Very well,” said Kleiman, sighing. “Do take care not to sustain any life-threatening injuries; I would hate to write to His Majesty about your untimely death.”
Felix rolled his eyes but nodded.
“Wait, hold on, what’s going—ah!” Annette’s voice, as familiar to him as his own, burst in as she raced down the stairs, her foot catching the hem of her dress on the last step. She teetered before falling forward and careening right into Viscount Kleiman.
He smiled as he helped right her. “Ah, are you all right, Miss Dominic?” His hand lingered on her waist, even as Felix tried to burn it away with the heat of his glare. Maybe a well-placed Thunder spell could—
“Yes, I’m fine,” Annette said, though color filled her cheeks as she wrenched herself from his grip and brushed invisible dust from her dress. “I just tripped, I think I was in too much of a hurry since I wanted to know what all the commotion was.” She offered Kleiman a smile that made Felix’s breakfast sit poorly in his stomach. What happened to wanting to blow him off a cliff?
But then her eyes drifted to him, and though he recognized an edge of…caution in her smile, it still filled his chest with a flutter.
He failed to squash it.
The two guards set to watch over her followed a little more sedately, lingering on the stairs with their hands on their weapons as they surveyed the activity of bustling soldiers and servants in the entrance hall.
“Duke Fraldarius was just telling me he wished to accompany my men on a little expedition,” Viscount Kleiman explained. “I don’t suppose you’re about to tell me you would have the same, though I scarcely think hunting Demonic Beasts is suitable for—”
“Yes, I’ll go,” Annette agreed quickly. “Someone has to make sure he comes back in one piece.” Her gaze burned into Felix, intent and full of alarm as if to ask what he was thinking.
He could tell her later, and not in front of their adversary.
“You really do make quite a pair,” Kleiman scoffed.
Felix ignored him and told Annette, “You don’t have to come. I’d…prefer you didn’t.” One strange Demonic Beast was one thing, but two? He could handle himself well enough but he didn’t want to be looking over his shoulder making sure she was still on her feet the entire time.
And last time she shoved him from the direct path of a dark spell; what if next time it simply struck her instead?
“I didn’t ask your preference,” Annette said, her eyes narrowing. “This is a good opportunity. We can try and find their origin for ourselves!”
“Why do we both need to go for that?” Felix wondered.
He was conscious of Kleiman’s attention, rapt on their every word, so he took Annette’s wrist and tugged her away from him before quickly letting go.
“Maybe we don’t both need to go,” Annette conceded with a sigh, “but if these two have that dark mage with them, and—”
“Think of it a different way,” Felix tried. “Kleiman doesn’t seem to be going, and I doubt Myson will either.”
Her eyebrow lifted, confusion evident. “And? So what?”
“So…you stay here and keep an eye on them,” he suggested. “Do some reading in the library, see what sort of books they keep. I don’t know, whatever it is you think would help us here.”
Annette crossed her arms. “Are you trying to protect me, Felix? Because I’m not one of your people.”
His heart skipped a beat. “What?”
“Are you trying to imply that I can’t—how can you condescend me like that?” she demanded, though mercifully she kept her voice low.
“I’m not—that was not my intention,” he gritted out through his teeth. Frustration swept through him again, but he bit it back. He didn’t want to quarrel with her again. “I…want nothing—I mean, I would prefer you with me and as far away from him as possible, but we can both do our own…hunting, separately, for now.”
For a long heartbeat he worried she would argue with him over it, and that he would agree just because he wearied of arguing with her, but then she lowered her gaze and said, “All right, fine, but you’d better take a few of your own soldiers too.”
“I was planning on it,” he told her. Relief that she listened made his lips twitch, but it faded before it could become a proper smile. “Make sure you’re never alone with Kleiman or his mage.”
Annette rolled her eyes but said, “Fine. Make sure you’re never alone with two stone Demonic Beasts.”
Felix laughed, the sound startling him, especially for such a…situation, but she always could surprise him.
They rejoined Viscount Kleiman, the better to solidify his plans, which was when his gaze slipped past Annette to the two Fraldarius soldiers lingering on the stairs.
“You know, Miss Dominic,” he said, “you need not trouble Duke Fraldarius for guards. If you fear for your safety - though I cannot begin to guess why - then allow me to assure you that you are quite safe within my castle’s walls.”
“Thank you for your assurance, my lord,” Annette said brightly, “but—”
“It’s no trouble to me,” Felix said, narrowing his eyes at Kleiman. “They need something to do anyway.”
“I suppose it isn’t my concern,” he agreed with a careless shrug. “Well, do have a safe journey, Your Grace, though if I may ask a favor of you as well?”
Felix, half-turned to climb the stairs so he could dress in something better suited for battle and retrieve the Aegis Shield, froze. “A favor?” he said. His eyelid twitched; if anyone owed a favor, it was Viscount Kleiman to Annette after last night’s disastrous banquet.
“As I’ve mentioned, these stone Demonic Beasts drop Crest Stones,” Kleiman explained. “I would appreciate it if you retrieved the ones these drop and return them to me rather than, well, stowing them for your own use.”
Dread curdled in his abdomen, but he pressed his lips together in an effort not to betray his thoughts. “What would I want with a Crest Stone?” he wondered.
Kleiman curled the end of his mustache around a fingertip before admitting, “I know not how your mind works, Your Grace. If I did, I might know better how to convince you I mean you and your charming companion no harm. To think you feel the need to walk with your own soldiers standing guard in my castle?” He shook his head. “It shames me.”
“Give us cause to trust you then,” Felix challenged, “and stop insulting Annette.”
Kleiman blinked; did he really have the audacity to look surprised? “I—”
“I’m holding up your men,” he said. He raced up the stairs without a second thought.
Before he left his room after shrugging off Marcus’ offer to help him don his light armor, he glanced back at the table with his stationary spread out over it. The Crest Stone he’d collected weighed down a half-written letter meant for the boar, but he grabbed it and slipped it into his pocket.
Felix clipped a second sword onto his belt and strapped his Shield to his back. Despite its weight, it felt a comforting burden ahead of a battle.
When Felix fought in his first battle, he hadn’t been nervous. He’d been almost eager in that way any young boy from Faerghus was, clutching a sword a little too big for his hands while the knight he squired for - damn, he couldn’t even remember his name anymore - imparted on him last-minute reminders and warnings before telling him to fetch his helmet and water skin.
He’d been eager…because he thought he fought for something too. He approached the raging storm hoping he wouldn’t be held back, hoping to test his strength and himself capable of surviving where Glenn hadn’t, and maybe to avenge him too - that was what he should’ve wanted, right? - and though the clashing of steel, the singing of swords against armor and the hum of lightning from mages’ spells filled him with a thrill that found him seeking one faceless foe after the other, it all almost…scared him too.
Dimitri scared him with that hatred and lust for blood burning in his eyes, and that was when Felix swore to himself he’d never hate an enemy (or love anyone) so much it consumed all reason.
That was why he liked fighting Demonic Beasts, sometimes, though after fighting so many they grew predictable since they lacked the intelligence of a human foe. A few well-placed arrows could send a giant raven careening back to earth and any array of defensive tactics worked against a giant wolf, and they all dissolved into dust and soot the same.
But these stone Demonic Beasts were different.
They worked together once the small party fell upon one at the riverbank. They cornered them, forcing them further towards the river until horses’ hooves crunched over stone before slipping from the bank.
The violent current took a knight before the Beasts did, his and his horse’s screams blending with the river’s roar.
Felix raised his Shield at the same time the Fraldarius soldiers that accompanied him formed up beside him. They knew better than to try and get between him and an adversary - or get in his way - but their presence was almost comforting in a way it never was.
(Maybe because he had yet to decide if the soldiers from House Kleiman were allies or not.)
Kleiman’s men scrambled to maintain some semblance of a formation while the two Beasts cornered them. They fired arrows at the Crest Stones embedded in their heads and aimed for the gaps in their stone armor. Lancers harried them, fighting to drive back the voluminous Beasts and create an opening, but the Beasts thrashed, the ground trembling beneath their heavy steps.
They breathed flame on them, great balls that left swaths of shrubs and trees burning and that collided with soldiers in force. One woman screamed as fire consumed her, but Felix shut out her voice.
The Beasts were great and lumbering, too slow to dodge direct attacks, so with his heart racing in his ears he darted forward, sword in one hand and Shield raised to ward off—
He dove away from a fireball soaring towards him. Its heat washed over him, and he gritted his teeth at the scent of something burning that told him it singed his sleeve. But he ignored it and swung for the stone Beast’s neck.
The Demonic Beast barely flinched, and where Felix’s sword connected with its neck, the thick stone armoring it warped and quivered like gelatin.
A hiss of frustration escaped him - he should’ve known better! - but he’d gotten in close enough it couldn’t hit him with flame. And there a gap in its stone armor, right where its great leg connected with its body, caught his eye.
He raised his sword and struck.
The Beast roared in fury and pain as it reared on its hind legs with such veracity it tore his sword from his grip. He stepped back, pulse pounding and breath short, as it crashed back down.
Its foot came down on him.
It struck the side of his leg before Felix could roll out of the way, crushing it against the ground with the Beast’s weight above. Bone snapped, and with it fire raced through his flesh.
Someone else screamed; it might even have been him, but he couldn’t tell with his blood in his ears and stars in his vision and agony in his veins and bile in his throat and—
“—Grace! Lord Fel—”
He barely heard his soldiers’ voices, only saw the Demonic Beast’s armor dwindling, failing to regenerate where his sword still stuck out of its exposed flesh. Molten fire like the lava of Aillel crackled within, exposing a weakness, so Felix gritted his teeth against the pain in his leg and raised his arms.
He shaped the glyph for Thoron without thinking and reached for that reservoir of magical potential within him, felt it bolster his energy and spark at his fingertips before the blast of condensed lightning burst from him with such power it shoved him backwards.
It hit the Demonic Beast at its weak spot, lightning arcing into it while an aggrieved shriek rose from its jaws. The remains of its stone armor shattered under a barrage of fresh arrows and magic, and its form withered into smoke until a single red stone fell to the ground and rolled towards Felix.
He scrambled for it, ignoring how that small motion sent another jolt of flame up his leg, ignoring his soldiers bidding him to stay still while they called for Kleiman’s healer, ignoring the sounds of the other Demonic Beast raging and resisting subduing behind him. His fingers closed around the Crest Stone, around its roughly cut facets, while he reached into his pocket and pulled out the other one. He held them side by side, eyes narrowed against a sudden rush of dizziness - he wasn’t even on his feet! - and realized, “They have the same Crests…they have…”
The ground tilted from under him. His shoulder struck stone, his Shield covering him at an odd angle, and before his eyes slid shut and he lost all awareness he thought of Annette and how he hoped it would be her angry face that would greet him when he woke.
It was not.
Felix’s eyes fluttered open to night, a dark broken by a crackling campfire. A cough burst from him as he tried to sit up, grimacing when a steady ache in his leg intensified, and that was when an unfamiliar face hovered over him.
They wore a healer’s white hood. Disappointment - that it wasn’t Annette. What was wrong with him? - made his chest tighten even as they forced him to lie back down, insisting that his leg had been set but that even with magic it would take a week to fully heal.
Perfect, just what he needed.
“Where’s my—” He cleared his throat when his voice came out hoarse. “Where’s my Shield?”
“Here it is, sir.” The Aegis Shield’s bone-white surface glowed, reflecting light from the campfire, as one of the Fraldarius soldiers brought it to him. “We also retrieved the stones you dropped.”
“The…stones?” Felix wondered warily.
“You had two Crest Stones in your hands before you, ah, before you fainted, Your Grace,” the soldier explained. “We put them with your—”
“Quiet,” Felix said in as measured a tone as he could. He swallowed a sudden swell of irritation and panic and resisted the urge to glance at Kleiman’s healer lest he give them something to tell their lord.
“Can you eat?” the healer, not bothering to remark on the exchange, asked.
“I…can I sit up first or will you insist on feeding me?” he demanded.
“I don’t advise you sitting up, no,” the healer said.
A rush of embarrassment washed over him. How daft of him to have gotten injured to this point on a damn Demonic Beast hunt, even if they had been dangerous and…intelligent.
A shiver traveled up his spine, but he ignored it. “How far away are we from Castle Kleiman?” he asked.
“With the wounded it’ll be a ride of a few hours,” the Fraldarius soldier told him. “The captain said we’ll break camp at d—”
“We’re leaving now,” Felix decided.
“What? But Your Grace—”
A grimaced found its way onto his face as he forced himself upright, but he ignored the pins in his leg. “I’ll take a vulnerary or concoction if there are any to spare,” he told the healer.
The healer, to their credit, didn’t express much surprise at his words. “I can spare a concoction,” they said, “though that doesn’t substitute proper—”
“I have someone who can heal me when we get to the castle,” Felix cut her off - someone he preferred, if only so he could tell her what transpired (what little did) while she had her hands on him.
Wait, that was…wrong. He rubbed his face, a sigh escaping him. He’d seen for himself the mystery of the stone Demonic Beasts and earned himself a broken leg for his trouble, so he had no reason to linger so far from Annette while she was under Viscount Kleiman’s thumb.
He couldn’t shake the sense creeping over him, that the viscount had something to do with the Demonic Beasts and that they held some invisible connection to the Empire before its fall, so it served no purpose for him to remain here while he could be elsewhere.
The healer sighed disparagingly - no healer he ever knew willingly let a patient go while in poor condition - but agreed, “Very well, Your Grace. I will give you a concoction. Do at least rest on your return though.”
“Gladly,” Felix said, because a part of him worried he’d fall asleep in the saddle.
At least leaving under the cover of darkness and the shadows cast by the campfire concealed his weakness from Kleiman’s other men, the ones that survived to nurse their wounds. They were subdued, or injured or asleep, as he leaned heavily against one of his soldiers on their way to retrieve their horses.
“Are you sure about this, Your Grace?” he asked.
“Ask me that one more time and you’ll retire before you want to,” Felix groused, his impatience getting the best of him.
To his relief no one else tried to scold him for this endeavor between camp and the too long nighttime ride back to Castle Kleiman. Perhaps they saved the honor of scolding him for Annette, he mused with a touch of bitterness at the back of his throat.
It was late, likely well past midnight with a quarter moon past cresting its highest point in the sky, when they approached the castle’s drawbridge. Felix’s lungs ached with each painful breath he drew, but he no longer felt as much pain in his leg after drinking the concoction the healer gave him.
His Shield smacked against his back, reassuring, and he reached every few moments for the two Crest Stones nestled in his pocket or his spare sword - the one he stuck in the Demonic Beast melted beyond repair - at his belt. His heartbeat quickened as the horses’ hooves pounded over the drawbridge, and after a blessedly brief exchange from the soldier stationed in the adjacent guard tower the gates opened and the portcullis raised to admit them.
He let one of his soldiers handle his horse while the other helped him up the stairs and into the castle entryway. Torches ensconced in the wall lit the path and cast eerie shadows throughout.
“Where are we going, Your Grace?” the soldier wondered. “Your quarters? Should I wake Miss—”
“N-no,” Felix said. He gritted his teeth as each step sent a spike of pain up his leg that even the concoction hadn’t suppressed. “I’ll rest for now. Don’t want to bother her while she’s—”
Something - a stack of books? - fell with a crash at the same instant a familiar voice shrieked, “Felix?”
“—sleeping…” A sigh escaped him, half-weariness and half-exasperation (and maybe some measure of relief) when he raised his head and found Annette’s shadowed form standing at the top of the first flight of stairs.
Watching her race down the stairs - side-stepping what was, in fact, a pile of books - was an eerie echo of that morning. He grimaced, half-expecting her to trip over the hem of her dress, but she reached them at the base without difficulty.
Her hands reached for him, hovering over his arms before she seemed to think better of touching him, before she demanded, “What happened?”
“A Demonic Beast happened,” he said. Irritation flickered within him, but it couldn’t overpower the immense relief that washed over him as he allowed his gaze to sweep over her.
She was wearing the same sensible day dress she’d had on when he left, albeit with a few more wrinkles and ink staining her sleeve, and her eyes were red, and she’d swept her hair up into a high tail that left the column of her slender neck exposed and—
The red crept into her cheeks as she frowned. She poked at her nose with a fingertip and asked, “Do I have ink on my face?”
Felix’s own face warmed when he realized he’d been staring. The ache in his chest clashing with a careless heat made one more complaint on a growing list. “Just on your sleeve,” he told her.
“My—” Annette raised her arms and turned them before sighing. “Not again,” she mumbled.
“Your Grace?” his soldier prompted from beside him. “Should we continue?”
“Right, yes,” Felix agreed quickly.
Annette followed their slow, limping, painful progress up the stairs, only pausing to collect the books she’d dropped. The soldier shoved the door to his room open and, at Felix’s behest, removed his Shield and settled him on the single sofa while Annette stopped in the doorway.
“Go change shift and get some rest,” Felix told him. “And food,” he added as an afterthought.
“Yes, Your Grace,” said the soldier before saluting and slipping past Annette.
Felix draped an arm over his face and sighed. His stomach crawled with nerves, at odds with his insistence on asking Annette to heal him, while she only lurked, hesitantly, in the doorway. His heart thumped painfully against his ribs, but he raised his arm to glance at her.
“Annette?”
He saw the barely perceptible way her shoulders shifted in a shudder. “Do you want me to heal you?” she wondered in an almost small voice.
He grimaced - he’d been doing that a lot tonight - as he remembered the last time she healed him, in his tent when he’d dismissed her so…sharply. Guilt struck him, made him almost nauseous, but he pushed it away and nodded before adding, “Please?”
“Well…” A slight smile graced her lips. “Since you asked so nicely.”
She left the door open as she approached. She dragged one of the chairs over - she cast a curious glance over the letter he’d tried writing for Dimitri’s benefit - before perching in it near his feet.
Too late, he remembered he should’ve wrestled off his boot first, when Annette reached for the buckles and tugged it off herself. “Sorry,” he muttered, peering at her. “I should’ve done that.”
“It’s fine,” she assured him while she rolled up his dirty trouser leg. “I guess I’ve done it before…”
Before, when he thought he knew what the almost assessing look in her eyes meant when it fell on him; before, when he would rest his head in her lap and she would run her fingers through his hair while she sang; before, when she would ramble or rant about something on her mind before apologizing and he would kiss her because he didn’t know how else to tell her he liked - he loved - just listening to her talk.
Somehow, Annette’s warm hand questing for the point of worst damage in his leg - someplace under his knee - tugged Felix from his dismal thoughts. He bit his lip against a flicker of pain but couldn’t suppress a hiss.
“Sorry, sorry!” Annette said, but she didn’t withdraw her hand.
The familiar touch of her white magic trickled into him, numbing the pain into a low and more tolerable ache. He leaned back against the arm of the sofa, his eyes fluttering shut as the long ride and the late hour caught up with him.
Annette pulled away all too soon and unrolled his trouser leg, but when she made no move to leave he cracked his eyes open to look at her.
Why didn’t it bother him to be so…vulnerable in front of her? Despite the tightness in his chest, it had been far too easy to slip back into this, though he found himself grateful she’d left the door open.
“What’s on your mind?” he asked, because there had to be some reason she had yet to leave and bid him goodnight.
“Why didn’t you return with Viscount Kleiman’s men?” Annette wondered. She clasped her hands in her lap, her thumbs twining. “I thought…well, when I saw you I thought maybe you were hurt even worse than a broken leg - though that’s plenty bad enough - or that you…learned something.”
Felix hummed, because speaking cost too much effort. He maneuvered slightly until he could tug the two Crest Stones from his pocket and hand them to Annette.
“D-do you think you can draw the Crest?” he asked her.
Annette’s eyebrow raised. “They’re the same,” she said. “And yes, I think I can.”
“Good,” Felix said, “because as soon as we can narrow down where those things are coming from, I want to send a sketch to the boar.”
Annette brightened. “Yes, he might be able to show them to Professor Hanneman, or even he could confirm this is the same as the ones on the Empire’s stone Beasts.”
Felix nodded. “I wish we knew more than that,” he admitted, sighing. “Did you…what did you do while I was gone?”
“Well, I perused the library,” Annette told him. “I took tea with Viscount Kleiman too in his study, though he never left me alone so I could—”
“You did what?” Felix sat up so abruptly his head spun, and his heart jumped into his throat with a sudden wash of alarm.
She flinched, taken off-guard by his reaction, before rolling her eyes and saying, “I promise I wasn’t alone with him, Felix, and contrary to how he was, well, before, he was actually quite polite asking questions about my post at the Royal School and if I liked it there and if I’d ever leave it.”
“Would you?” Felix wondered before he could stop himself. He scrubbed a hand over his face; what did it matter? “Who else was there?”
“Marcus,” Annette supplied, “and the guards watching over me today. And…I think I would, for the right reason.”
“You think?”
“I’d need to find the right reason!” she retorted. “Why are we talking about this anyway? You were asking me about my day.”
“Right, you’re right,” Felix said. He laid back down and tried not to think too hard about how Annette’s hand still felt warming his skin, or about how her bangs fell in her face, or about how she never wanted to—
“I found out that this…Myson has a lab,” Annette told him. “It’s in the dungeons.”
“The dungeons?” Felix seized on the changing flow of conversation. “Why would it be there?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I wonder the same, but I can’t find a way down to take a look yet. Perhaps I should provoke the viscount into arresting me?”
“Absolutely not,” Felix said.
To his surprise, a giggle burst from her. “You’re right, it would be far easier for you to provoke him.”
He glowered at her, but that only made her laugh harder, which he decided wasn’t such a bad thing. His own lips quirked into a slight smile.
But then they lapsed into silence that only Felix’s heartbeat filled.
Annette tugged on a frayed thread on her dress. “I was thinking today, actually,” she said, “if you’re…willing to hear me out, since it’s about…our relationship.”
He couldn’t help grimacing, couldn’t help turning his face away from hers or how his stomach flipped unpleasantly. “I don’t know…”
“Please?” Annette said. “It’s just an idea. You can, well, you can tell me it’s a bad one, I won’t mind.”
Felix doubted that, doubted he would want to hear, that anything she had to say wouldn’t just rip his heart from his chest all over again, yet he found himself nodding like a masochistic fool.
She smiled, and once that would’ve made it worthwhile.
“It’s that I was thinking that…when we’re done here and return to Fhirdiad,” Annette started in a low voice, “would you let me write to you when you’re in Fraldarius?”
Felix thought of all the letters she wrote him in the few months after the war, the ones he could neither bear to open nor throw in the hearth, tucked into a drawer in the big desk in the ducal study in Castle Fraldarius. “Why?” he managed to ask despite his dry tongue.
“I just don’t want to go back to how we were before we came here,” Annette pronounced in a rush without looking at him. “I always wanted us to still be friends, but then you never replied to any letters I sent and I thought maybe—well, please don’t avoid me again, Felix.” Her voice took on a plaintive note, and for a heartbeat he thought he recognized the hurt in her words.
The same hurt she’d inflicted on him.
Felix sat up and carefully swung his legs off the sofa, wincing when his bad foot touched the floor. Annette stood, apparently about to urge him to lie back down, but when he waved her away she stepped back.
He should say no, of course he should. What use was it being friends when every easy interaction between them still threatened to cut him into pieces? Having friends shouldn’t be so painful when Annette could turn each and every one of those pieces inside out and reassemble him all…all wrong.
Yet he mumbled, “I’ll…think about it.”
He hated how that alone could make her beam. Was that all it took?
“And if you do eventually agree, you’ll also reply, right?”
Felix shrugged, reconsidered, and nodded. “So much as my time allows.”
Annette groaned. “Once a villain, always a villain,” she grumbled, but her humor didn’t seem to diminish. “Thank you, Felix.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “You’re welcome. Now will you go to bed? You look tired.”
“So do you,” she retorted. “Stop putting your weight on that leg.” But she retreated towards the open door.
She rested her hand against the frame and looked back over her shoulder. “Good night, Felix,” she said.
He snorted - maybe he ought to just sleep on the sofa for whatever was left of the night - but replied, “Good night.”
Annette flashed him one last smile before slipping out of his room and gently shutting the door behind her.