Chapter Text
Annette’s stomach lurched as she crashed into the ground. She blinked to clear the whiteness and black spots from her eyes, and when she raised her head it spun.
“The first Warp is always the most disorienting,” a level voice spoke over her. “I’m almost impressed you haven’t vomited.”
Annette pushed herself to her hands and knees, coughing at the ache in her lungs and groaning at the soreness in her shoulder. She sat back on her heels and stared at her bloodied palms before wincing. “What—”
“I confess to some regrets,” the voice continued, this time accompanied by uneven - limping? - footsteps. “I am oddly torn over you in particular. On one hand, I allowed you too much freedom, but on the other I wonder what could’ve been if I’d seen fit to apprentice you instead, converting you mind and soul to my cause rather than simply attempting to break your spirit. In that, perhaps, I would not have failed so abysmally.”
Her heartbeat throbbed dully at the back of her head. Even as she blinked the stars from her eyes a headache threatened to split her open if her eyelids so much as cracked.
Yet the voice, oblivious to - or perhaps uncaring about - her pain, carried on, “I must shoulder some of the blame for closing my eyes to your potential. Imagine what could’ve been, child.” Claw-like fingers grasped her face and forced her head back, heedless to the hiss of pain that escaped her lips. “Imagine what we could’ve done to this pathetic, human little kingdom together, without your father holding us back, without your own weakness in the way.”
Annette blinked, her vision beginning to clear, some of her headache fading away, enough that she could stare past the blurry figure standing before her and recognize the trappings of her own attic and—
A dagger lay on the bed, sheathed and clean.
“Tonight would have gone very differently in that case, I assure you,” Cornelia’s voice filtered through. “Perhaps I would’ve even let you in on the plan. That way you wouldn’t have bungled it so—”
Annette summoned Wind, the glyph blindingly bright in the dark attic, throwing as much of herself into the spell as she could. Cornelia, more startled than anything, let her go and stumbled away from her, but that was all she needed.
She lunged for the dagger.
Its hilt felt clumsy in her hand when she wrapped her fingers around it, fumbling to unsheathe it. She’d never used a knife except to chop vegetables or slice bread, so even with her heartbeat spurring her on she hesitated when she rounded on Cornelia.
Cornelia. Her stepmother, her tormentor. She bled from a wound in her side, inflicted by King Dimitri in his effort to defend himself, and even now, after all the dark magic she’d cast, veins stood out creeping up her face, stark against her pale skin.
She sensed Annette’s hesitation. Her eyes, wide with alarm at first, eyes that seemed to glow with an eerie light, narrowed. “A dagger?” she said, gaze flicking to the small steel blade. “How…cute.”
Annette desperately lashed out at her anyway.
Cornelia cast a lazy spell to bat her aside, and she flew to the ground, rolling, air torn from her lungs and dagger slipping from her grasp. She stalked towards her, an animal to prey, despite her own wound - the gash in her side dripped blood into her skirts - slowing her.
“If you think I’m done with you, child,” she pronounced with a sneer, “you’re sorely mistaken.”
Annette pushed herself onto her hands and knees and crawled towards the trapdoor, frantic.
“You and I are leaving Fhirdiad tonight,” Cornelia informed her. “You may be a failure, but you are my failure, and you should not be so foolish to think that just because you’ve somehow ensnared the heir of Fraldarius that you’ll escape me with or without his help.”
Her pulse rushing past her ears spurred her on, through the horror gripping her. Her hand closed around the trapdoor’s latch.
“Maybe you’re not a lost cause,” Cornelia practically purred. “Maybe the perfect manner to punish you for your defiance tonight is to force you to kill him your—”
Annette wrenched open the trapdoor.
Cornelia gasped, teetering for a few heartrending seconds before glaring at her. “Did you really think to harm me in this way?” she snarled.
“No,” Annette admitted before the air in the attic stirred up and buffeted at them both.
Her spells were so weak, so unpracticed, she didn’t have a prayer of a chance at harming a powerful and experienced mage like Cornelia even with her Crest bolstering her strength, but what they lacked in deadly and precise power they made up for with unharnessed force.
Cornelia fell through the trapdoor, thrashing in a feeble attempt to catch herself on the ladder until she crashed to the floor below. Blood still seeped through her wound, staining the wood beneath her, and she stared up at Annette peering down at her through eyes glazed with shock or pain.
“Well…played,” she hissed through gritted teeth that looked too sharp to be human. She flung her arms up, the air humming with energy before violet light blinded Annette anew.
She threw herself backwards, knowing she needed to move quickly with no more Ward to protect her. She grasped for the dagger, securing it through her belt, and tore the sheets from her bed. She returned to the trapdoor, its borders steaming from Cornelia’s spell, with her stepmother sitting upright below.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
Annette dropped the sheets in a heap on her.
Cornelia’s eyes widened. She thrashed, a spell bursting through a glyph before they draped over her.
She took advantage of the distraction to clamber down the ladder, heart pounding, every step lancing pain up her legs. But she stifled any winces or gasps before she stepped onto the floor beneath her.
She barely set foot past Cornelia before fingers grabbed for her ankle.
A yelp escaped her as she fell, landing hard on her elbows and knees, the shock making her limbs tremble. “Let me go!” she screeched, kicking out at her with her other foot.
“You’re lucky I don’t have another Warp left in me,” Cornelia snapped. She shoved the sheets off her and dragged Annette towards her. “If you don’t cease your struggle, you will force me to hurt you!”
“You’ve already hurt me!” Annette retorted. She struck out again, her knee catching Cornelia in her shoulder, and tried to summon another Wind.
It barely ruffled her stepmother’s crazed hair. She’d spent herself already.
“Hold still, you foolish girl!” Cornelia demanded. Energy emanated off her in waves, a tense static that warped and twisted, like the air after a lightning strike. A dim red glyph flared between them before an invisible force struck Annette’s chest.
It knocked the breath from her lungs, like a fist wrapped around them and squeezed.
Her heart raced with a rising panic, as she failed to draw in breath even as Cornelia let her go and stood.
“An interesting reverse of the Wind for which you have affinity, isn’t it?” she simpered, but Annette barely heard her for the roaring in her ears and the sound of her own wheezing as she fell to her knees. “I don’t want to kill you,” Cornelia reassured her, “but you’ve wasted enough of my time struggling I suspect I may have to if you insist on rebelling further.”
Annette’s head was light, as if she floated, unweighted and bloodless and—
She sucked in a breath at last as the spell lifted, coughing, but with her limbs trembling and only a hint of magical energy beyond her fingertips, she failed to resist when Cornelia grabbed her arm with an ashen hand and wrenched her to her feet.
Her head spun as she gasped for breath, but Cornelia only sneered and said, “Understand that no one - no dashing prince, no shining knight - is coming to rescue you. We’re leaving now.”
Annette tried to dig her heels in as she dragged her across the landing towards the stairs. She tried to fight her every step of the way, lashing out with her fists and feet where spells had failed her, and barely succeeded in slowing her down.
The cold air bit at her tear-stained cheeks when they emerged from the house outside. Annette didn’t know how Cornelia planned to escape Fhirdiad, if she had a horse ready and waiting for her, if any of her associates lurked to assist her. But the street on which they lived was dark, with few lanterns to light it.
Annette opened her mouth to scream on the feeble hope that some neighbor might help her but—
A shadow flickered over the ground before a wyvern screeched overhead, sending a primal shiver of fear up her spine. Wings beat, sending a gust of air over them, through them, and despite the tight quarters a Pegasus dove at them.
The knight astride it lashed out at them with a lance.
Cornelia jerked Annette around, between her and the lance, her heart lurching against her ribs. The Pegasus knight - she thought it must be Ingrid - drew her lance back at the last instant, before its tip grazed her.
At the same time others dropped from the back of the wyvern, with moonlight and lamplight glinting off armor.
Cornelia’s hand glowed dimly, yet brilliant in the dark, as the arrivals surrounded them. She held Annette between her and the newcomers, her whole posture stiff and wary, yet her voice was steady when she greeted, “Your Majesty, how nice to see you unharmed!”
King Dimitri stepped forward, lance with its head glinting wickedly in hand. “Spare me your lies, Cornelia,” he seethed. “Unhand Miss Dominic and surrender yourself.”
“W-why would I unhand her?” Cornelia wondered, the beginnings of panic seeping into her voice. “I caught her for you, since she sought to attack your royal person.”
Annette barely heard her, too busy scanning the faces of those surrounding them, both dreading and hoping that Felix would be among them, unsure what it would mean if he wasn’t. Hadn’t she disrupted the spell that Cornelia struck him with using her bracelet? He should be all right, shouldn’t he?
Her heart beat in her ears, and her chest tightened when she found the armored knight Mercie wanted to dance with, Ingrid with her lance poised to attack, a handful of others with the Crest of Blaiddyd on their tabards.
No sign of Felix.
“More lies,” said King Dimitri. “I had the proof of my own eyes that you attacked, based on her warning. Miss Dominic?” he called to her. “Are you hurt?”
“I-I’m fine,” Annette told him. “How’s—”
Cornelia’s hand grabbed for her throat, hot and buzzing with a spell waiting for her to cast. She tried to flinch away but she held her tight. “My accomplice then,” she said. “It was all part of the plan. She warned you so that you would be in the perfect position for me to kill you, and if I should fail she was to take the mission on herself.”
Bile rose in Annette’s throat, both at the threat at her neck and at the accusation, that her stepmother would still seek to ruin her so thoroughly. “She’s—”
“A likely story,” Dimitri retorted. “Now let her go.” He held his hand out.
“No,” Cornelia said. “She’s my beloved stepdaughter, the only thing left of my darling husband. I couldn’t bear to part from her.”
Annette might’ve laughed if she wasn’t so scared. “Let me go,” she protested, despite the spell brewing in Cornelia’s palm. “I’m no use to you anymore.”
“Why?” she muttered, that single word dripping with venom. “So you can have your happy storybook ending? Look around you. Where’s your knight from the mirror?”
Frightened, bitter tears that she could’ve been so useless and weak bit at her eyes. She tugged on her arm but Cornelia held tight. “It’s your fault this is happening,” she said.
“Is it?” Cornelia said with a note of skepticism. “Look at this mess. Would this have happened if you never drove your father away? Or even if you’d obeyed me tonight? Think about it, it’s obvious with even an ounce of intelligence, that you’re just—”
She cut off with a strangled gasp, her grip on Annette slackening. She didn’t understand what just happened, why her hand fell from her neck and why her jaw gaped, but she tore herself away and fumbled for the dagger in her belt.
She plunged the blade into Cornelia’s chest.
Her eyes bulged with shock, as if the arrow protruding from the arm that had held tight to her hadn’t surprised her, as if she couldn’t explain the burning hatred Annette felt for the woman that tormented her for almost half of her life. She dug the dagger in till sticky blood stained her hand and soaked into her sleeve before jerking it back out.
Cornelia crumpled to the ground, falling prone with blood gushing from her chest, eyes glazed and unseeing in the dark.
Annette stared down at her, Felix’s bloodstained gift in her hand. Her heart raced against her ribs, driving a furious energy through her limbs before it faded and left her trembling.
King Dimitri and his knights swarmed her, and one of them caught her before her knees buckled.
“Easy there, Annette.” Dimly she recognized Sylvain’s voice - she hadn’t realized he was there - as his hands tightened on her shoulders. “How badly are you hurt?”
“I-I don’t…know,” she admitted. “Some bruises and aches, my head hurts…” She clutched at it, wincing.
More conversation drifted over to her, King Dimitri conversing with someone else. “We’ll take her back to the castle,” he said. “A healer can see to her there. She won’t have to…stay here. I’m in her debt, if nothing else.”
“W-where’s Felix?” Annette asked then. “How is he?” She blinked tiredly as Sylvain guided her away from the house. She still clutched the dagger, though numbly she thought of her few other precious belongings stowed in the attic.
“Who do you think shot Cornelia?” Sylvain said. “He should be on—ah, there he is.”
She heard his footsteps, worryingly uneven, before she saw him, his silhouette shadowed from the light of the torches the king’s knights brought. His eyes seemed to gleam when they snapped to her, and his step quickened until he met her and Sylvain halfway.
“I’ll take her,” Felix told him, voice insistent and arms outstretched.
“I wouldn’t dream of stopping you,” Sylvain assured him, and Annette could imagine him winking.
Felix didn’t even scoff as he slipped his arm around her, holding her upright as Sylvain withdrew with a comment about checking on a carriage. Annette sank into him, a sigh escaping her, and a slow smile stretched across her face.
“The dagger came in handy,” she said. She shivered, for though Felix was warm the night still chilled her.
Felix noticed. He helped her lean against the side of a building long enough to shrug out of his coat and wrap it around her shoulders before taking them and scanning her up and down.
Her face warmed under his scrutiny as she clutched his coat closer around her, and she didn’t fail to repay him in kind. Half his hair spilled from the ribbon tying it up so it framed his face, a thin scratch split his cheek, and he’d walked with an unsteady gait that made her gut tighten with worry.
Annette reached up and swiped her thumb across his cheek, watching as his eyes fluttered shut under her touch. “I didn’t know you could use a bow too,” she noted.
“My aim could’ve been better,” he admitted with a venomous sneer that instantly faded. “Can you walk?”
She nodded before wondering, “Can you? You’re limping.”
“I can,” he said. He wrapped an arm around her waist and hers wound around his back.
They didn’t have to walk far before they reached a waiting carriage. A coachman opened it for them, and Felix helped her climb inside.
Her hand bunched in the front of his shirt, tugging him closer until his breath warmed her face. In the aftermath a million and one questions crowded her mind, threatening to slip from her tongue. What would become of her now with no Cornelia ruling over her life?
She could decide, she realized then. Once she healed, she could become anything she wanted: a musician, a scholar, a soldier…anything.
Annette smiled when Felix touched her jaw, and she leaned in and brushed her lips against his, just because she could. He cupped the back of her head, fingers buried in her grungy hair to drag her closer, as he kissed her.
Heat flooded her, even better when she felt him smile against her mouth. Her hand slid up to rest against his neck, and when he pulled away his forehead pressed to hers. His hair fell into her face, so to better see his she pushed the loose strands away.
“I have something of yours,” he told her.
Annette blinked, surprised. “Y-you do?”
“You lost this on the balcony,” he said. He pulled away only to dig through one of his coat pockets, though she still wore it, and tugged something from it. “Give me your hand.”
She did, the one not brown with drying blood, and he slipped something over her fingers before settling it on her wrist. Her eyes widened when they fell on the simple bracelet with the carved harp for a charm, the one she stuffed into his hand to unravel Cornelia’s binding spell. “I—”
“It’s how I knew it must be you last night,” Felix confessed, and when her gaze flicked up to his face his cheeks were stained pink. He met her eyes, warm and intense, and said, “Stay with me this time, Annette.” He took her hand in both of his, trapping the charm against her palm. “Please?”
Annette’s breath caught, and she nodded before all the words left his mouth. “I want to,” she said, and when he leaned in, before he kissed her again - the first of so many more - she promised, “I never want to run away from you ever again.”
It was, for all intents and purposes, a perfectly ordinary mirror, albeit one with a crack rending it halfway down the middle and with a thick layer of dust coating its frame. Annette’s reflection stared back at her, the crack distorting her face, and Felix’s hovered over her shoulder, a furrow on his forehead.
“The mirror, like you asked,” he said.
Her nose wrinkled as she wiped a streak of dust from the frame with a fingertip. “Why is it so dusty?” she wondered. “Everything else in your quarters is so…clean.”
“Our quarters,” Felix corrected with a mumble, though Annette couldn’t help delighting in how his cheeks still turned a faint pink. “And I hid it after…after yours was destroyed.” He avoided her gaze, both in the mirror and when she glanced over her shoulder at him.
She turned around and took his hands until he looked at her. “Can you at least tell me where you got it from?” she asked.
He rubbed the back of his neck, looking distinctly uncomfortable. It had taken some convincing - and a few bribes in the form of songs - before he let her examine the mirror that was the twin of the one she once had. “Why does it matter?” he’d demanded more than once. “We met, we married, your stepmother’s dead.”
And she’d always insisted, “I know, but aren’t you at least curious why we met?”
And that always took him aback until he’d retort, “I’m just glad we did.”
(He’d say it so simply with scarcely a change in his expression, but it never failed to make Annette smile.)
“Felix,” she said, letting a little plaintive note into her voice.
He rolled his eyes but finally explained, “It belonged to my mother. I think she bought it for the nursery before I was born. It’s custom like everything else, if that matters.”
“The…nursery? A mirror?” Annette frowned, confused despite herself. She rounded the mirror, seeking for any signs of a spell cast on it, but she’d done it so many times since her arrival in Fraldarius after their wedding that she didn’t doubt that whatever spell used to be attached to the mirror broke the instant her own shattered. She ran her fingers along the frame but still felt nothing.
The mystery of the mirror had lingered at the back of her mind through her two years of study at the Royal School of Sorcery and was why she chose a minor course in magical artifacts. Most spells on objects left a sign behind even upon breaking, but on this one not a single bit of magic remained.
By all means it made no sense to Annette, but she didn’t mind, for she had the freedom to examine it.
Not the time, so much. Between other projects, regular correspondence with Mercie amid her own new busy life in Duscur, and the duties Annette took on as the only lady - and the future duchess - in the Fraldarius household, she kept busy, and if certain…suspicion held about her current physical condition, she would soon have far less time on her hands.
And that she minded even less.
Felix’s eyes lingered on her as she investigated, his arms crossed and his face alight with a trace of amusement. She met his gaze from where she stood behind the mirror and asked suspiciously, “Are you laughing at me?”
His lips pressed together, but in the end he didn’t fight a smile. “No,” he assured her.
“Then why are you looking at me like that?” she demanded, glaring at him.
“It’s fun for me watching you so absorbed you start humming,” he informed her.
Her face warmed, but she still narrowed her eyes at him. “You don’t deserve the fun since it took you so long to answer my questions!” she retorted.
He raised an eyebrow, not looking the least bit put out. “I’m answering them now.”
“I’ve been here five months!”
“You’ll be here much longer,” he noted, as if it had anything to do with her scrutinizing the mirror. He approached her, his chest to her back before he slid his arms around her and propped his chin on her shoulder.
And, despite her indignation, Annette sank backwards into him with a sigh, close enough she felt his chest rising and falling with his breathing. She rested a hand on his jaw and tilted her head into his. “Does it bother you that much?” she wondered in a low voice.
“What does?” His body rumbled with his words, and it sent a wonderful shiver up her spine.
“Being reminded of the mirror.” She frowned even as she reached forward and brushed her fingertips against the back of the frame.
He sighed, his breath wisping over her ear, before pressing his forehead into her shoulder. “A little,” he said, “though maybe it’s not so bad while you’re here.”
“I’ll protect you from its evils,” Annette reassured him with a giggle.
“It’s not about that,” he said with a snort that tickled her neck. “It’s about…what I saw, how I couldn’t…do anything about it. All my training was useless.”
She frowned then, half-turning her face towards him when he lifted his. Her fingers slid into his hair, and she suggested, “Maybe rather than dwelling on when it…broke, you can think about the fact it brought us together, in a way. Even if I couldn’t tell you everything, knowing you made my life so much better after my father left.”
His grip on her tightened, yet she managed to turn in his arms to face him properly. “I…am relieved to hear it,” he said.
“Good!” Annette poked his cheek until he grabbed her hand. “We met, we became friends, we…fell in love through this mirror, so I’m grateful it exists.”
He didn’t quite meet her eyes, though his eyebrow quirked. “Fell in love through it too?” he said.
Her cheeks grew hot, yet she stuck her tongue out at him. “Yes? Why is that so surprising?” She scowled at him. “Are you going to tell me it was the ball that did it for you?”
He smiled very slightly before shaking his head. “No, it was before too, but…do you know what one thing the mirror couldn’t prepare me for?”
“Well, if it didn’t show your reflection, anything concerning your appearance, I would think.” Annette’s brow furrowed with confusion when Felix chuckled. “What?”
“It couldn’t prepare me for falling in love with your voice too,” he confessed.
She blinked at him once, twice, as an inferno threatened to overwhelm her. Then she prodded him in the chest and demanded with her voice pitching, “Warn me before you say something like that next time, Felix!”
Felix laughed, the sound warm and wonderful to her ears, before catching her hand and leaning down to catch her lips too.
Annette melted into him, just like she did the first time, but now with the knowledge that neither of them would be going far when they parted. They would just come together again, content that the other would be within easy reach. Even when distance kept them apart, they knew it would never be for long.
And he was right, Annette had the rest of her life to pore over the mystery in the mirror, and one day perhaps the simple inscription etched into the base would reveal itself to her, or to her own inquisitive son:
For lost children seeking solace, may this mirror gift you your heart ’s desire.