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Chapter Text

My dearest Dorothea, surely shining radiant as ever,

You will not believe the rude treatment I have faced of late. Some of Hubert’s nasty minions actually collected all my scribbled ‘love’ letters to you, pasted the scraps together, and left them for me as a script! ‘So you don’t dither trying to remember your harebrained thoughts,’ Hubert explained. And laughed! I am not—forgetful! I simply refine every letter to an extent deserving of you, my dear.

Well. He will get his comeuppance sooner rather than later. There is to be an Almyran trade conference next month in Derdriu and he is slated to put in an unhappy appearance. Certainly she has said as much in her own letters to you, but allow me to reinforce exactly how desperate our Bernadetta is to extend her travels into Almyra. Rare plants, I expect. She has faced troubles on both ends, as Hubert is reluctant to send her so far beyond his, let us say, professional borders, and Claude is unwilling to extend a passbook to any noble without diplomatic concessions.

All of this for plants. Sketches of plants. They shall be a delight to frame in my parlor, but even so. Edelgard has backed the mad endeavor as long as Bernadetta will send back more whimsies for their carnivorous greenhouse. I have named it the Edelgarden, but so far no one has supported the measure aside from Byleth. You will join me in referring to it as such, won’t you? Surely a bastion of maneaters should have a misleadingly gentle name.

It appears that Linhardt and Caspar are en route to join Hubert at the conference, possibly as Bernadetta’s guard should the travels proceed east. I extended an invitation to Edelgard to run away with me to Brigid for a rival reunion of our own, but met with a swift veto. I shall work on my delivery.

(I must return to this: please my dear, do pause to picture Hubert’s mortification when Edelgard received and read aloud Claude’s missive. To be blackmailed so overtly over his favoritism for Bernadetta! I have never seen the man mottled so pale and red all at once. Edelgard has declined to memorialize the event in a portrait. Alas.)

On an unrelated note, that shall remain perfectly unrelated to anything else in this letter if you wish gifts to continue streaming across the ocean and into your lap: Do you recall when I made pastries for you? I have been considering a return to baking. Please provide a thorough review of my previous attempts.

Yours,

Ferdinand

P.S. I have noticed of late that your letters arrive to my desk still sealed. Funny that.

“Well,” Edelgard said delicately, pushing bits of charcoal around her plate with a fork. “If you’re trying to drive me to Brigid through starvation tactics, you’re making startling progress.”

“I should have fed them to the pigeons,” he groaned.

“Ferdinand, please don’t sell yourself short. Even the ants would pass these by.”

He couldn’t decide whether to laugh or to cry, and settled on swatting at her arm with a napkin. This was the third batch of pinwheels he’d massacred after giving up on five scone recipes and a supposedly foolproof shortbread just this week. Even his own impeccable confidence had to flounder at some point—but not quite yet. “As always, I thank you for your clarity.”

And for not telling Hubert, or I would be dead twice over for attempting to poison you.

Edelgard settled back and lifted her cup of tea to her lips, sighing through the steam. Her eyes drifted shut for a single moment of utter peace, and that was all it took for Ferdinand to shake off his frustration and reach for his own cup.

It was a delight, pure and simple and unimpeachable, to take breakfast tea with her every day they could manage. On clear mornings they would sit in the gardens and Edelgard would thread a bright blossom through his buttonhole before he set off for his duties. She took a certain aesthetic pleasure in having her right and left hand advisers in matching black, but couldn’t resist decorating him at every opportunity, as if his shock of fiery hair didn’t draw attention enough. Every calla lily, every iris, every sprig of lavender weighed down his shoulders in a devoted, flustered bow, and the whispers and giggles of staff and citizens followed him everywhere he went—and that, he had finally realized, was the point. Not deference, an offering of his well-founded pride at her altar, but the way shame stopped prickling at his spine and driving him to distraction, how he settled into his skin with every derisive comment, because none of it meant a damn to his honor and worth, yet a smile and a pocket full of posies meant the world.

Ferdinand had little doubt that Edelgard had calculated it as such, and as usual, her plan panned out. She’d never have offered him the position of Prime Minister if she didn’t know how to make him do a merry marionette’s jig. But she’d still missed the side effect dearest to him: the soft edges of her smile every time she leaned in to thread another stem through his buttonhole, behind his ear, into the plait of his hair. The harder the Prime Minister worked—well, all the ministers and staff, he wasn’t that self-centered, thank you—the less fell upon the Emperor’s endless plate, and the more time she could scavenge for her a life of her own. Not the goal of a minister’s work, certainly, but if Ferdinand privately considered it one of his many duties, no one could naysay him. He’d spent the war keeping an eye on all of their classmates, a sheepdog patrolling their haphazard flock, and if Edelgard now had to bear the brunt of it all, so be it.

Technically, their meetings were to discuss policy and ongoing reform efforts, not social matters. But to merely sit there with her, alive after everything, surrounded by such thriving vibrancy, settled Ferdinand’s heart like little else. Save the occasional afternoon coffee break, at least.

“You left the last batch on the heat too long.” Edelgard glanced back to the box of pinwheels, blackened on the bottom and the jam badly soured. “Much too long. Where on earth did your mind wander this time?”

He flushed a soft pink and reached for one of his failures, letting the burnt char shock his senses back in line. “In every direction.”

“Is this about Albinea? We have two weeks before the ambassador arrives. Or. Hm.” Edelgard sat back and folded her hands together on the table, surveying him for new weaknesses.

Ferdinand was not foolish enough to hang his head, but his heart sank with despair. Here it was. Once, after a particularly debilitating debate with count Hevring, Ferdinand had complained that his childhood oratory instructor had clearly been incompetent since Ferdinand had such pitiful grasp on all those infuriating little tricks the rest of them used. Leading questions, serpentine logic, all that wheeling and doubling-back to smack your opponent in the face with the incontrovertible truth of whatever they didn’t believe in. He’d hoped his colleagues would refer him to a book, some manual of verbal logic tricks that he could study. Or better yet, assuage his fears that arguing passionately from the heart wasn’t quite up to par.

Instead Edelgard and Hubert smiled at one another, slow as a seeping poison, and he knew to be afraid.

“Brigid?” she asked.

Yes, Brigid, like all of Petra’s comparisons to predator and prey. Ferdinand understood how this one worked, the way you circled around and hit closer and closer to home each time. He couldn’t scowl his way out or sit in silence as she veered into more dangerous territory, which she absolutely would. The only solution was to deflect to a matter of equivalent value.

“If you must know, Tisiphone is foaling next month. It will be her first, which is always more dangerous than—” He narrowed his eyes at Edelgard’s subtle head-tilt of confusion. “Hubert’s horse.”

“Ah. Yes.”

Ferdinand bristled, setting down his cup. If she weren’t the Emperor, he really would demand she bother to remember at least the names of the quartet of lovely mares that had brought her generals so many victories in the war. More accomplished than some humans, certainly. “Well. Hubert has only the one, and since he needs to travel for the conference, I have arranged to send my Eumenis along with him instead. He isn’t terribly fond of the beasts, you know. But my fine lady recognizes him and is too gracious to antagonize his sort. I expect he will complain regardless, as she stands a few hands higher than his usual mount, but she will bear any of his additional travel provisions admirably.”

“I can see how much thought you’ve given this.”

No, she couldn’t, because everyone left the horses up to him and blithely nodded along to whatever he said. Ferdinand carefully did not pout. He hadn’t even gone into the delicate business of arranging a stud from the Gloucester stables, nor how much goodwill the gift of a few well-bred foals would bring them with Lorenz. Nearly as complicated as arranging a marriage, he expected — Lorenz surely treated it as a matter of the same magnitude, with how prickly he became over letting his primary magehorse out of sight.

“However, it doesn’t account for the…”

“Treats.”

It visibly pained Edelgard to say it. “Treats.”

“Perhaps I wished to broaden my horizons.” Perhaps he wasn’t sleeping and needed something new to occupy his racing thoughts.

“Hm.” She took another pinwheel and broke it into its four individual daggers, as easily as she might dissect him under one steely glance. But her eyes were kind when she looked up, kinder than anything either had brought to the tea table in many weeks. “You can always discuss your concerns with me, Ferdinand. Even the ones we share.”

He gazed down into his teacup, swirling the fragrant dregs within. Which concerns, exactly, did they share? That Hubert hadn’t journeyed farther than a day’s ride away from them in well over three years, and his absence would ache into every shadow? That it left Ferdinand as her main retainer, defender if it came to that, and he was an all-around pitiful replacement? That they’d been fighting with Count Bergliez and Count Hevring over matters of the displaced Faerghus army for near on a month now, and with every argument they hacked expertly into Ferdinand’s legitimacy, revealing him for the decorative, impotent lapdog he feared to be? That Dorothea was an ocean away, instead of here, and Bernadetta was angling for the same, and sleep was already an unreliable ally, and even the stress baking was going miserably, and—

And two weeks ago Edelgard had offered him back the Dukedom of Aegir, and he still hadn’t said yes.

“…Thank you, my friend. Truly. But another cup of tea will do me enough wonders for today.”

Ferdinand knew his smile did not reach his eyes, but she was well-versed in smiles such as those. She would understand.

Indeed, Edelgard immediately took the teapot in hand and poured him another cup. Then she stood and carried it away with her, wandering off towards a less-cultivated area of the gardens. “Come see the new celosia blooms.”

“Edelgard!” He pushed away from the table in a hurry, more dismayed at the sight of her carrying away his perfectly steeped cup of vanilla bergamot—his own blend, that he’d devised to broaden her limited horizons!—than he cared to admit. “One does not simply hold another noble’s tea hostage—”

“Unless it is a hostage negotiation. In which case I find it surprisingly effective.” She waved the cup so dangerously over a bed of tulips that it nearly spilled.

“You need only invite me to see your…whatever they are!”

Edelgard stopped at once, holding the cup gingerly between her cupped hands with the delicate porcelain handle pointed his way. “And you need only invite me to see your stables,” she concluded smoothly. “Instead of sulking like a child. Was I meant to hear an opera monologue in the background? Alas, only the horses will understand my yearning soul!”

“Fair enough,” Ferdinand laughed, heart light for the first time in days. He didn’t take the cup, but spread his arms wide in adoration of the lilac bush aside him. “Ah, sweet blossoms, only you can perceive the heart I must hide from all the world! Only you shall receive the tender care I have always longed to—”

She upended the tea into the soil.

Ferdie,

This letter should reach you in time. Petra is so eager to send our trinkets along that she plans to bring it halfway herself on wyvern express. If it wouldn’t cause a border dispute, I expect she’d bring it further still.

Your regular allotment of tea leaves and coffee beans are enclosed, along with a new sample from our first Albinean shipment. Make sure to serve it when that ambassador visits. It shouldn’t take much effort on your end to reopen that trade route – those Albineans seem mostly concerned about regional stability and security. Redirect some of your restoration troops to a western port and they’ll be eating out of your hand. In the meantime, let me know if there are any other delicacies you’re pining for. Unless they’re living and breathing delicacies, in which case I believe you already have them there in Fodlan, so you’ll have to ensnare them on your own.

The seeds are for Bernie, please keep them dry while she’s on the road. Linhardt has the…colorful wiggly things? Petra said they’ll help his fishing. (Isn’t the point to fall asleep on the warm shore?) The coat is for Caspar. Let him know it’ll make him look exceptionally handsome on his Special Adventure Day. He’ll know what I’m talking about.

And make sure Edie writes me back, won’t you? I can never tell if she’s holding out on me, or if Hubie’s getting them ‘lost’ in the mail.

Now on to your question: I have a sweet tooth, so your treats were sufficient. I doubt the target of your renewed baking endeavors would appreciate such sugary delights. Petra’s chef jotted down some more appropriate recipes, attached. The mokatines are beyond your skill level so you’ll obviously attempt them anyway. I’ve included a box of specially ground coffee that will help.

On your unrelated note, both recipes should last on the road if one is journeying to, say, former Alliance territory.

Good luck (you’ll need it),

Dorothea

P.S. You’re breaking international espionage etiquette, my buzzy bee. Send more trashy novels and we won’t report you to headquarters.

Chapter Text

Dorothea,

How troublesome to hear my letters are being ‘waylaid’. Let us perform a test. In one letter, this letter, I shall observe full professionalism. In another letter, mailed at exactly the same time, I shall detail the fascinating pollination dance performed by two of the bees in my garden…

“He will never acknowledge you,” Ferdinand informed his darling most seriously, drawing the soft brush down the center of her forehead. The dapple-grey mare only flicked her ears. “But he will pat your ears while he rides, if the journey is fair. You must sneak your affections from him when he is too distracted to realize your game.”

It sounded a little too familiar, come to think of it, and Ferdinand had to crush that realization as quickly as it dawned. No, no, he was not comparing himself to a—mare or stallion?, came Dorothea’s lilting laughter, fresh from her most recent letter, and Ferdinand had never been more viciously glad that she wasn’t around to see his newest. Frustrations.

Tisiphone whinnied from two stalls down, and Ferdinand grasped for the distraction. “See? She agrees! Surely I am only telling you what you have already discussed. Tisiphone has put him through his paces, so he will be no poor rider. But. Well. He is miserly when it comes to treats.”

That was the reason Tisiphone still preferred Ferdinand, though perhaps she only remembered how he trained her, so swift with praise and carrots.

Even so, Hubert had managed to bring her—his first and only magehorse—through the war unscathed. He had ridden plenty of other mounts, of course. On the road, in the baggage train, on midnight flights off to some assassination or to swap secret poisons with swamp-dwelling hags, whatever it was he did on ‘business’. He’d complained endlessly when Ferdinand tried to ascertain his actual riding ability. But a proper magehorse, like a proper warhorse, was different. They were brought up with a language all their own, trained into brutal fearlessness so they would hurl themselves into the pits of hell, never flinching when fire erupted under their hooves or a bolt of lightning crackled forth from the space aside their ear. They needed to anticipate which spell the rider would cast before their hand raised, and many an unfamiliar groom had commented on how eerie they were in the stables, silent and watchful until their riders returned, at which point they broke into uncommon affection.

A magehorse off the selling block was useless no matter how well-trained. It could take upwards of a year to fall into sync, and the battlefield was the wrong place to do it. Ferdinand began training Tisiphone during a quiet, deadlocked autumn, when all the troops bristled with anxiety and supply lines across the continent had failed. Apparently watching him coo encouragement and press kisses to his lady’s head after she correctly maneuvered around the obstacle course did something for his battalion’s morale, as they always circled round to heckle him from the fence. Sometimes Hubert would join, if plied with Ferdinand’s share of coffee rations, and lob the occasional mire pit or dark spike onto the field for training.

The following spring, Ferdinand handed the reins to Hubert instead. A tactical decision. If Hubert’s magical expertise exceeded his riding ability, then he would need a mount experienced enough to compensate. Tisiphone was the natural option, and her shiny black coat suited him perfectly.

That Ferdinand could scarcely manage a proper warding spell had nothing to do with it whatsoever.

So he saved up and started again. Eumenis had always been a bit bigger, a bit hardier, still war-blooded within recent generations and lacking the willowy grace of Tisiphone. A lady of many talents, she had trampled more than one feckless thief to death in the field, but still broke from her stall to seek out Ferdinand’s company during thunderstorms. He wouldn’t dream of ever letting another ride her out of his sight, and yet…

With a sigh, Ferdinand drew a hand through her soft, freshly brushed mane and wondered if there was still time to braid it. “Never fear, my darling. You are the most noble and devoted of all steeds—you will deserve those treats! Do not let him stiff you. Be pushy if you must.”

“Are you plotting sedition with my horse?” A low rumble of a question directly behind him.

Ferdinand set his hands to work putting the mare’s beard into a neat plait while he properly schooled his expression. “Yes. At the agreed upon moment, she will toss you into the mud. I look forward to seeing if you manage to warp in time.”

“Hm.”

His heart wouldn’t settle, tumbling over itself like a newborn foal, but it would have to do. One, two, three, and Ferdinand turned with a ready grin and held out the reins. “Here you are. All packed and ready for the road. Everyone’s gifts are bundled into the lower left-hand side, so lean right when she throws you. And do remember that she’s my horse.”

“How could I possibly forget,” Hubert muttered. He didn’t quite turn his attention onto Ferdinand himself—hadn’t been, recently, which only made Ferdinand watch for it more keenly, holding his breath for another glimmer of that simmering intensity.

At the moment Hubert simmered his intensity onto the horse instead, as if he actually gave a damn for her outfitting. Which Ferdinand had done to perfection, by the by. No heavy armor for a simple diplomatic mission, but enough leather padding under the packs that she’d have fair odds if Hubert got them into a spot of trouble. A dark knight’s tack would be pointless as camouflage on a mount with such a light coat, so Ferdinand had draped her in dark lavenders instead, as a compromise to Hubert’s shadowy preferences and to make her feel pretty.

“Does she pass muster?” Ferdinand pressed, strangely keen to hear the answer himself.

Something in his tone made Eumenis turn her head, and she nosed at his shoulder before hanging her whole head upon it, one disdainful eye fixed firmly upon Hubert. Ferdinand couldn’t help a laugh as he scratched under her chin.

“I fear to imply otherwise,” Hubert answered gravely, “Considering the wheels you have set in motion. I will endeavor not to splash Her Hoofed Majesty as I tumble into the mud.”

“Ah! You understand her charms at last, the grace of her gait, the unparalleled intelligence in her eyes. Her Majesty indeed.” Ferdinand beamed and finally pulled away. “Hold a moment before you leave. I have…made something. For you. For both of you! Treats for the road. It is astonishingly easy to bake one’s own horse treats, as it turns out, and I could not allow you to be jealous.”

Hubert’s raised eyebrow clearly said, jealous of the horse?, but he wiped even that by the time Ferdinand glanced back. Once, Hubert’s eyes raked over him with attentive care every time they so much as passed through the same room. Now his gaze rested as always above Ferdinand’s head, which never failed to inspire a childish desire to push up onto his toes and make height. Maybe it would at least draw a demeaning chuckle, a distasteful twitch in Hubert’s blank frown, or glory of glories, a half-circle roll of his eyes.

Ever since Ferdinand toed his way past a few more implicit boundaries a month earlier, Hubert had been frustratingly, comprehensively blank. Even when they took tea, rarer these days than ever, he appeared utterly determined not to let Ferdinand see anything more than he already had, like a creature afraid to make any ripples in a dark pool. Frankly, Ferdinand wasn’t sure what else he could possibly dredge up from those impossibly inky depths that was worse than the oil slick he’d lived alongside for the past six years, but one didn’t catch a Fodlandy without patience and bait aplenty.

Not that catch was entirely suitable as a word… Surely if Hubert meant to take up what was so clearly on offer, he would have by now. Yet there Ferdinand was with burn calluses and charbroiled pride, because it didn’t matter if Hubert accepted his suit. He had come to terms with it, traded demands between heart and head, and walked away with unflinching surety of his own feelings. As long as Hubert did not truly reject such affection, did not throw him in the stocks for his bleeding heart, then he did not require reciprocation. He required that Hubert be cherished, and that was that.

Dorothea would be alternatively furious or sad—he couldn’t decide and wouldn’t commit it to paper—that he cared so little for being cherished himself. And Goddess, it would be nice, but as long as his people were flourishing he had no complaints, truly. He was valued, and appreciated, and heavens, he was actually Prime Minister after everything. He would not claw for more out of greed. Besides, Hubert had never been a particularly tactile or emotional sort. Some people were simply not of that make. It wasn’t a flaw. Some people had no use for romantic entanglements either, despite whatever those soppy opera arias proclaimed about soulmates, and despite how dearly Ferdinand loved those songs in particular. It would not break Ferdinand’s heart.

(He had not yet come to terms with the lack of heartbreak bit, but discussions were ongoing.)

The point was this: Devotion did not require moonlit kisses and tender nothings whispered against flushed skin. What it did require was, apparently, a relentless drive to prevent Hubert from getting peckish on the road.

“Here.” Ferdinand held out a fine velvet satchel not at all meant for the road, but ostentatious packaging had been his only hope of balancing out the meager rewards of all those hours sacrificed to the oven’s cruelty. He flipped open the covering flap so Hubert could see the three slim boxes stacked within.

“The maroon is for Eumenis. Please balance them out with proper meals and the occasional carrot. I do worry about how much honey the recipe called for, even if the remainder is apple and oats. The violet is for you. The taste will be to your liking.” The coffee had been so overpowering in his final attempt at the brownies that he’d labeled them a success out of desperation. Surely that was how coffee was supposed to taste, yes? “The emerald has my best attempt at mokatines, which are truly a nightmare of construction, so I will require your praise for my attempts regardless of the outcome.”

When Hubert only stared and said nothing, Ferdinand lifted his chin in defiance, daring the other man to tease him over this. If the Emperor herself could stomach his attempts, then Hubert could damn well do the same. “And do remember to balance out your own diet with proper meals and the occasional carrot as well.”

There it was, that wry twitch to Hubert’s thin lips — smirk, sneer, scowl, whatever. It was the little curl in the corner that filled Ferdinand with unmitigated delight, regardless of its intended effect.

“Noted. May I proceed without further complaint from my glorified stable boy?”

My.

Ferdinand colored at once, nearly dropping the bag before Hubert retrieved it from his lax fingers. “Yes,” he said, weak to all but the roar of his heartbeat in his ears. “By all means.”

With a sigh, Hubert moved to pack his own belongings into the horse’s kit. “Are you adequately prepared for the Albinean ambassador’s visit? I left an ace in Her Majesty’s sleeve should you find yourself in need of it.”

“I can conduct a simple trade agreement without resorting to blackmail, thank you.” The cool professionalism of it put breath back in Ferdinand’s lungs, and he busied himself giving Eumenis one last round of nuzzles before her departure. At least someone was kind enough to let him fuss over them.

Still, however brief, Hubert’s words settled him back into a familiar routine that had been sorely lacking. The past two weeks had offered no time for afternoon tea at all, and even if they saw each other nearly every day as part of their duties, Ferdinand mourned the lack of quality conversation. Such a strange reversal of his breakfasts with Edelgard, really: with the Emperor, they met for politics and spoke only pleasure; with Hubert, they met for the sake of…routine and generally ended up arguing politics. Even if he regretted the shadowy details of how the knowledge had been gained, Ferdinand couldn’t help but appreciate every glimpse Hubert gave him into the hearts and minds of the myriad officials in their line of work.

Ferdinand could more than manage a single ambassador, but he would miss decamping to the tea table to hear Hubert’s dour take on whatever squirrelly little man had tried to kiss up to Edelgard this time.

He would miss more than tea, to be quite honest. Ferdinand had been trying not to think the words, because they only ever echoed the one way, and the resulting sliver of doubt hurt more than any injury he’d ever taken on the battlefield. But when Hubert finally swung himself into the saddle and stared down with gloating expectation, daring him to take the reins and lead him on out of the stables like a properly dutiful, lovesick stable boy, Ferdinand couldn’t help but think them anyway.

I will miss you. The words were true, no sense denying his heart its own melody. Ferdinand gave the mare’s neck a final pat, led her out under the open sky, and handed back the reins to her temporary master.

Hubert tarried for a moment, gazing down at him solemnly, reins clenched too tightly in his hands. Much too tightly. He knew better than that. Perhaps he also…

“Swift travels,” Ferdinand blurted instead of everything he wanted to say. He could see both of Hubert’s eyes from his strange angle, and he wanted to stay exactly there, watching nothing else, until he’d memorized the sight. The words knotted in his throat, I will miss you, I will miss you, and not a one of them slipped free.

Hubert offered a quick nod of farewell and nudged Eumenis onward into a graceful trot. He didn’t look back even once, while Ferdinand leaned against the fence and watched until they passed around the bend.

Will you miss me?

Achingly unsatisfied, Ferdinand curled his fingers into the knot of his bun and pulled tight at the roots. Now for a month of agony, of second-guessing, of wondering whether…

No. He knew what he wanted, and he’d damn well have it.

The road curved down and away from the palace hill, weaving through four separate gates before spilling into the city below. All Ferdinand had to do was jog two blocks east and lean over the stone wall to catch another glimpse of Eumenis slowly making her way down the hill below, her dour rider studiously watching the road instead of the view. As soon as they passed directly below, Ferdinand gave a high whistle, and his darling stopped in her tracks.

He could feel Hubert’s brow furrow with frustration when he couldn’t nudge Eumenis back into movement, and by the time Hubert looked up with a distant scowl, Ferdinand had laughed loud enough to draw the attention of every guard nearby. Now, with an audience, he floundered on all his planned declarations. But Hubert only waited, dutiful as ever, as Ferdinand shuffled through a dozen teasing responses.

At last he settled on, “Take care of my Lady!”

Hubert bowed at the waist, as well as anyone could manage on horseback, and then extended his right hand forward in a gesture that instantly translated as, And you, mine.

Why that of all things sent lightning zinging through Ferdinand’s chest, radiating out into his limbs with a vengeance, was a question for another place, namely his bed with his face smothered into his pillow. For now, Ferdinand simply beamed and lifted a hand to wave.

To his shock, Hubert actually returned it, raising a hand and rolling his fingers in a distinctly stilted gesture. Then he turned back to the road, dug in his heels, and this time Eumenis set onward once more.

Ferdinand had a clear view all the way down from his perch, and he climbed up to sit on the wall for the twenty minutes it took Hubert to circle all the way down. His heart still sang its funny song in his chest, and he’d teased free his bun to let his hair catch the wind, just in case. Down below he could just barely make out a four-legged black and violet lump at the final gate, and he watched as it paused, as a head raised and caught sight of Ferdinand’s hair streaming in the breeze.

He’d looked back.

And if that wasn’t a victory, Ferdinand didn’t know what was.

Edelgard,

Please forward the enclosed letter to my father. Should he still refuse to disown me, you may then file the variant of my will on pages two and three with the appropriate legal authorities. I have left my title to the government; may some greater fool make use of it.

Sincerely,

Linhardt von Hevring Bergliez

Hevring

Bergring

That isn’t how names work, we’ll discuss this later. Please pay attention to the conference welcome speech.

How about YOU pay attention!

I cannot believe you scribbled your little notes on my letter. Caspar, this is important.

You wrote notes first! And hell yeah it’s important!

That’s it. I am too weary to pen another letter. I shall have to mail this one as is.

Hevring

Chapter Text

Bern,

Our own little Bernie Bear, all grown up and heading off to see even more of the world. I’m so terribly proud of you, sweetheart.

I doubt I need to say it, but remember: you don’t have to push yourself every single day of the week. Days inside are important, too. Even the Queen of Brigid spends the whole day as a layabout sometimes, and I’ve been reliably informed she loves those days best.

I sent another packet of seeds to Enbarr last week. I’m sure Edie will have them all planted and thriving by the time you get back, so just remember to come back, okay? We like to see you bloom.

Love,

Dorothea

P.S. It’s all up to you. He won’t even answer my letters anymore, and He’s being a brute about anything Edie and I send each other. You’re my last hope!

And yes, I received the real version of the portrait. I’ll deliver it to Edie personally the next time I’m visiting. I guarantee she’ll never see the other. You know how He gets.

“Nees. Stop.”

Hubert slid one step left towards the gate, and the towering beast followed him at once, her weighty head all but glued to his shoulder as she continued to nuzzle into his neck. “No more treats. You’re done. Stay in the stall. Eumenis, stand!”

So much for the famed intelligence of magehorses. Far from intuiting Hubert’s desire for her to become a stationary object, Eumenis wouldn’t even obey Ferdinand’s oft-trained vocal commands. She committed herself to making a mockery of him with an all-too-human fixation; were it not for the stark purple teethmarks bruised under his sleeves, Hubert would laud her tenacity.

Eumenis snorted indignantly, as furious with him as Hubert was with her, and that disgustingly warm puff of air set his hair on edge with pure revulsion. When he stepped away to free himself, she boxed him into a corner with all the ease of rancher with a stubborn mule.

“It’s a perfectly amenable stable. You have an abundance of hay,” he tried in a low growl. Only a handful of overtaxed servants stood dithering around at the moment, but any of them could pass on word of Count Vestra’s seeming incompetence with a simple beast. Seeming, because no other horse had ever given him such trouble, would not dare play nuisance, and certainly his own Tiz had never behaved in such a way. He was a fool to have offered her to Ferdinand for his featherbrained breeding plans, pedigrees this and goodwill that.

“Is it not to your liking?” he hissed, “Do you require superior hay?” Hubert leaned in, looming on instinct, and took a hasty step back when the horse’s ears flicked down in warning. Ridiculous. Violence and logic were not his only weapons, he could surely outsmart a mere creature. Spellcraft was out, as he could not risk a warp spell without strong odds of bringing the horse along with him, and every attempt to tie her in by the reins added a new row of bruises to his growing collection.

Eumenis advanced on him once more, teeth clipping at his ear, and that was quite enough. “Behave for once in your life you miserable piece of—”

“Hubert? Do you, um, need any help in there?”

Hubert fumbled at once for the sprig of embroidered flowers in his pocket, yanked it away from the horse’s needy nosing when she hoped it a treat, and pinned it to the breast of his jacket in one swift movement. “Bernadetta,” he greeted smoothly as he turned to face her.

The horse turned too, all but slamming Hubert into the wall.

“Oh! You brought Nees!” A gasp of delight, and the clatter of the gate admitting one foolhardy little horse whisperer. “Hello sweetie, how are you? Are all the other horses nice? Do you like the stables? Is Dross fitting in okay?”

Immediately, the demonic beast turned into an entirely pleasant pony. Down went the ears in an easy droop, the first sign of genuine relaxation since they passed through the palace gates in Enbarr days earlier, and Eumenis stood perfectly still as Bernadetta stroked her neck, whispered soft nothings about how lovely and good she was, and unloaded the remaining packs. Neither of them gave Hubert a lick of attention as he beat a tactical retreat.

No wonder the horse had eyes only for Bernadetta. Even Hubert’s gaze caught on her bare shoulders, sun-kissed and thrown back instead of hunched forward around anxiously clasped hands, the line of them so much taller when she stood to full height. It took him a moment to note she’d grown out her hair and piled it into a bun at the nape of her neck, frizzy waves curling free into unmoored petals. That housebound ghost had faded into the dawn, replaced with a capable young woman whose confidence captivated the world around her — and who could, in an instant, lodge an arrow deep into the breast of any who failed to take proper heed of her. A little violet tucked happily among the ivy, with all her hidden thorns sharpened for his appreciation.

Eumenis began swishing her tale in warning when the final piece of her parade drapery was pulled away, as if removing the last piece of Ferdinand’s touch from her coat had her tumbling back into frustration. If they weren’t going to conjure him up to sing her some opera tunes, or whatever Ferdinand’s horse magic entailed, then it was time to leave her be. Hubert held open the gate just long enough for Bernadetta to slip through.

With the gate locked, Hubert offered his rescuer a precise half-bow. “My thanks, Bernadetta.”

Rare for such a solemn word of gratitude to pass from Hubert’s lips. A pressing concern, how easily Bernadetta drew forth his best manners out of some nebulous desire to shape the world ever closer to a place where she could thrive—especially now that he’d seen her in full bloom, if only for a moment—but unfortunately not a surprising one. Her newly sun-kissed cheeks and wide smile were a weakness he’d come to expect, a vulnerability in his tightly-run web, in his very own armor, and if von Riegan could see it, anyone could. Careless, sloppy really, to allow such a thing. Hubert already had one damning weakness in his Emperor; two was extravagant. Greedy, even, for a man such as him.

Best to send Bernadetta as far away as possible, out of Fodlan entirely, until his war was won and even the shadows were safe for her defiant kindness, wildflowers through the cracks in pristine stonework.

As ignorant of the damage as any dandelion nodding in the breeze, Bernadetta covered her mouth with a giggle. “You’re welcome. You looked like you were trying to say, help me!, with your eyes. And since you’re here to, well, be my hero, I couldn’t just let you be mauled!”

A cool shock of shame twisted through him, distinctly artificial, as his mind conjuring up the exact pout that Ferdinand would make at the accusation.

“Merely a battle of wills,” Hubert said firmly, still watching the newly placid mare with overt suspicion.

“Gosh. Gosh! I can’t believe you’re really here…” She trailed off in wonder, as though his road-weary self were worthy of any comment whatsoever, and even graced him with a happy little sigh. “Do you want to go straight to your room? It was a long ride so I’m sure you need rest—or, no, probably the quiet to get back to work, but if you’re not terribly busy I would l-like to have tea with you!” Her voice lowered, the words not quite meant for the world outside her head, but she still fixed Hubert with a hopeful, determined look as she said them. “I missed you. You never write!”

So many words all spoken so freely; travel had been good to her indeed. Hubert held his tongue just long enough to purge any warble of sentiment from his tone, to skim the smile from his lips. “Tea will suit. I…missed you as well, Bernadetta.”

Irrationality at its finest. He kept her under constant surveillance, tracked her travels across the continent with greater detail and accuracy than an astronomer plotting the stars, reviewed daily reports from the agents who monitored her on the ground, and facilitated a lively correspondence and underground seed smuggling ring between Bernadetta and Her Majesty. There was a fly-trap thriving on his office windowsill. For such a meek creature, she was ever-present in her absence. He couldn’t possibly miss her, for more reasons beyond not having a tremendous capacity for missing allies to begin with. The moment they neither served Her Majesty’s interests nor stood waiting for orders, they ceased to be allies, and it became a moot point.

And yet it didn’t taste like a lie, that smooth and familiar twist of his silver tongue. Perhaps he’d never said the words before and meant them. He didn’t dwell on it.

With perhaps too much haste, Hubert cleared his throat. “Are you in the ambassador’s suite?” She was Countess Varley after all, and he would not see that damned von Riegan make light of her.

“Nope!” Bernadetta’s face crinkled in delight, as if her joy would balance out the furrow of Hubert’s brow. “Rule number three, never stay where they expect you to. Right?”

“Expertly done. The farther we remove you from these asinine parochial quibbles, the more freely you can pursue your work.”

“And it’s quieter.”

With an indulgent chuckle, soft as so not to startle her, Hubert reached for one of his travel bags. Clever girl. Although she lacked the same aptitude for leadership and natural charisma as Dorothea, who’d swanned into the position of a regional orchestrator in his ring, Bernadetta still held the cards well when he handed them to her. Possibly too well, as more than one junior agent had written a frantic letter to their superiors asking if they’d get burned after Bernadetta offered them sweets, or shelter from the rain, or a sketched portrait as reward for simply doing their job. When those in the shadows protected her, she did not take it for granted.

Hooves crunched against the fresh straw, and when Hubert glanced up, he found Eumenis peeking over the dividing wall with her ears flicked forward and all her attention fixated on the many colored boxes Hubert had retrieved. He cast her a withering look, to no avail, and stood to leave.

Hubert slipped the groom five gold coins as he swooped past. “Consider her a prized Gloucester stallion, or you’ll hear from me.”

Outside on the busy street, Hubert offered a steady arm to Bernadetta’s tight, clinging grasp. It was a short walk to her accommodations. Derdriu had taken minimal damage in the war, as far as such things went, and to the casual eye it remained a thriving hub of activity, much too vibrant for Bernadetta’s tastes. He kept close watch on her in his peripheral vision, but even though the stress put a wavering uncertainty into her steps, happiness shone from her in a blessed aura.

She smiled more easily these days. It suited her. Hubert couldn’t put his finger on the moment when his life veered so far off the closely-plotted tracks that he now existed in a small crowd of smiling fools gunning for his attention, but for all his sins, there were worse punishments to be found.

Bernadetta missed her footing as they crossed an intersection, skipped her left foot to catch up, and bumped into Hubert with a quiet apology. She stopped looking at him, glancing instead at every soul they passed, face pinking step by step until she finally couldn’t take it any more.

“Hubert.”

“Yes?”

“Y-you, um, you’re wearing it in public…” She jerked her chin in the direction of the flower pinned to his coat. “You don’t have to do that. I’m not scared of you anymore and I know you have an…image to cultivate, so, you don’t have to follow Bernie’s stupid…”

He caught himself before he smiled—no use alarming her further with his grim visage. “It doesn’t trouble me, Bernadetta. I consider it a badge of honor. If you would prefer I keep it for private occasions, however…”

“No! It isn’t that. I, I like that you…like it. A badge of honor?” She gnawed at her lower lip and fell quiet for a few minutes, lulled by the companionable silence. Finally she forced out, “Like when Edelgard decorates Ferdie?”

Hubert shook his head. “No, nothing like their current…whimsy.”

Half the imperial court thought Edelgard had selected Ferdinand as her second consort, and another third thought he’d purchased his position the old-fashioned way. The remainder were Ferdinand’s own troops, who brought him flowers themselves. Even Ferdinand had questioned the propriety and unbecoming levity of a Prime Minister with daisies threaded through his hair, but only in terms of whether it bothered Edelgard herself or reflected poorly on her cabinet; his own reputation was the rare matter he kept close to the chest these days, for all Hubert’s delicate prodding.

Privately, Hubert suspected that Edelgard had spent the last six years ready to decorate Ferdinand’s grave rather than his silken tresses, and Hubert let her have this one indulgence, unquestioned. He would deal with the politics, the reputations, the necessary repudiations. He…owed that much. Acknowledged, perhaps. Left to Hubert’s own devices, the heir to Aegir would have perished with his house, and it was a sickening relief to not live in that world, to not have stepped beyond the bounds of Edelgard’s orders on that particular matter.

Bernadetta’s flower shared not a single connotation with Her Majesty’s whimsy. How to make her understand? He scarcely did himself, and had no urge to send her flying into fits of fancy, as though he were a storybook knight of Ferdinand’s ilk who’d taken to wearing her token upon his breast.

“So you just…like it?” Bernadetta pressed gently.

Had she any duplicity in her whatsoever, Hubert would accuse her of merely wanting to hear the words aloud: that in a world full of monsters, she’d decided he was the one thing worth more than fear, and he’d gotten the message.

Hubert tilted his head a few degrees to the side, enough to let his bangs fall away from his eyes and face her full. “Angling for praise? Your craftsmanship is impeccable, Bernadetta. I could scarcely hide away such a treasure.”

“Uh,” she gulped and stood stock still in the middle of the street. “Actually. F-funny you say that!”

He paused and raised an eyebrow at her. Bernadetta didn’t balk, even as her hand trembled on his arm.

“I have something to show you,” she decided for herself when he didn’t answer, then pulled him onward the rest of the way, forging her own path through the crowd. Hubert maintained just enough tension in his arm to allow her the illusion of force.

Her lodgings were in a small boarding house, likely run by an acquaintance of a local operative. Not something he’d choose himself, but fair enough, since it left her under friendly eyes for the duration of her stay. The landlady happily threw together a tray of tea and biscuits at Bernadetta’s request, though she cast Hubert a dubious look all the while. It wasn’t often he was looked upon as a suspicious gentleman caller, rather than…well.

Once they reached her room, Bernadetta surveyed the chaos with a practiced eye and quickly assembled a makeshift tea table out of two stacked trunks. Her bed served as her own seat, and the desk chair she offered to Hubert, chin raised in a silent dare.

Ferdinand had done the same when he handed over his bag of mischief. It meant something akin to, I know the snake will bite, and you know that I know, so what purpose will it serve? Simultaneously innocuous and infuriating, how familiarity led them to such blatant errors of judgment.

Regardless, he sat.

“Okay. Okay! So. You brought some boxes from home, and I brought some boxes from, err, not home, which means...” Bernadetta took a deep breath and shoved a tattered package across the table into Hubert’s hands. “A box for a box!”

Judging by the intensity of her gaze, she’d just torn out her heart and offered it up as a sacrifice, so Hubert opened the package with all the ritualized solemnity of an ancient priest. Untied the twine wrappings instead of cutting it free, ensured no disturbance of the flaking leather on the outside covering, lifted the lid without any anticipation of its treasures, and unveiled a slaughter of sanguine silk.

Hubert delicately lifted out a blood red petal, and a full chrysanthemum spilled into his palm. A breath of perfume. Under the top layer of gore-stained imperial reds, a full kaleidoscope of blooms kissed by a firefly’s dance of gold embroidery.

“Edelgard mentioned how quickly her favorite flowers went out of season, so I, I thought… And there are at least two of each, so she can make Ferdie match if she wants! Ohhh, I really hope she likes them…”

“She will.” He could already feel the warm glow of Her Majesty’s eyes to receive such a gift, finer than all the jewels of the imperial treasury. The whisper of her hair over the petals, twisted and plaited under his hands, or curled up into a crown of undying bleeding hearts.

“And. And I. Well. I thought you could match too? Just a little bit?” Bernadetta held out a smaller red blossom on a long pin, clearly meant for a buttonhole. “I didn’t do any bright ones, I promise. Just blues and dark reds and… Would you want them?”

Flowers, for him, again. From anyone else, it would be a prank, the words spoken with quivering seriousness as they struggled to keep a straight face—a memory of Dorothea stringing flower garlands onto Ferdinand’s brow, then daisy chains for his horses, then turning with a crown of ragweed for Hubert’s honor—but from Bernadetta, the honesty burned so bright it hurt to look at, let alone hear.

How many times had Hubert explained to his young charge, during the first decade of their lives, that it would be inappropriate for the Emperor’s shadow to match her in any way, to ever rival her radiance? The muted gold of their school uniforms was gaudy atrocity enough. To sport a matching boutonniere should be unthinkable. And yet there he sat with Bernadetta’s flower on his breast, that deep lavender limned with golden light, as she asked him if he’d dare creeping even farther into the sun alongside his doubtlessly delighted liege.

Peace did not suit him, yet there he sat, still.

“I doubt they would gather dust,” Hubert sighed with a great show of reluctance. “There are always occasions that demand a certain showmanship.”

And silly Bernadetta lit up so prettily, cheeks burning as if he’d heaped a lifetime of praise upon her, that he couldn’t help snuffing it out.

“Unfortunately, you’ve consigned yourself to a dreadful fate.”

“I—what!!”

“A box for a box. Your own words. Careless not to consider the other half of the bargain.” That restless smile that had been simmering under his skin all morning finally carved a gleeful gash across his face, stretching broader when she jerked up her legs so she could cling to her knees.

“Hubert! Don’t tease!”

Hubert slid the three boxes onto the table and tapped them one by one: maroon, emerald, violet. “In honor of our enduring friendship, I will allow you the choice of your own demise.”

“Are they p-poisoned?!”

“Essentially.”

Bernadetta groaned and covered her face with her hands. She took several gulping breaths, nearly enough to ignite a legitimate prickle of concern in Hubert’s chest, as though the brooch had pierced his own skin, and then she peeked out between her fingers. “You fool. C-careless even for you, nemesis! As if I would bring only one box!”

Hubert carefully leaned forward, tucking one hand against his mouth—against his smile, his laugh—and gestured for her to continue with the other.

She had to go rummage for the second package, taking so long that it had to be nerves holding her back, not the room’s disarray. Hubert poured them each a cup of tea while she came to terms with her imminent death, always sure to be first to taste any foreign brew. The deep bite of the overpowering cinnamon flavor was a comfort for once. He had little stomach remaining for his usual coffee after the week’s ride.

When Bernadetta returned at last with her prize, less a box than a thin parcel roughly the size of a dinner plate, she kept it clutched to her chest. First there was a destiny to meet. Her eyes narrowed on the colored boxes on the table. “What am I looking at here?”

“Ferdinand’s ineffectual attempts at…murder, I suppose? Certainly they cannot be considered anything approaching sustenance.”

Her eyes went wide as dinner plates themselves. “Ferdinand baked for you?”

“For the road,” Hubert corrected. “I require a specialist to identify the full extent of his crimes.”

“Ferdinand baked for you,” she repeated in awe, this time to herself. The truth held no sway.

She chose the middle box first. Only two misshapen lumps remained, surrounded on all sides with stiff walls of piped cream and topped with a small pool of dark icing. Bernadetta frowned at it before taking a bite into the ashen cake within. Her hand twitched towards her still cooling cup of tea; to burn the taste out of her mouth or spit into its waiting pool, Hubert couldn’t begin to tell. At last she forced herself to swallow, closed the box, and pushed it back his way.

“That,” she managed at last. “Was a mokatine. In a former life, long, long ago. So long it passed completely out of memory and then arose one day with a singular desire: murder.”

Hubert pushed the next box forward with one slim finger.

Within the violet box Bernadetta found a half dozen chalky lumps of mud. The bitterness of the coffee wafted off of them so powerfully that her nose scrunched even before she forced a bite. “Brownies, but he swapped out all the good parts for the yucky bits at the bottom of your coffee press.” She took a deep breath, eying the final box as if it held every rejection letter she’d ever gotten from a publisher and half the praise reviews from Sylvain. “Next one. Hit me.”

Whatever had been in the maroon box had melted into one big block in the heat of the sun. Bernadetta pulled free a chunky clump of it, sniffed it suspiciously, and popped it into her mouth. She frowned. Chewed, then frowned again. “This is for horses.”

“I will be sure to pass on your scathing review.”

“Hubert. No. That was. Actually for horses. Were you…eating horse treats…?” As she swallowed it back with difficulty, a new round of displeasure flashed across her face. “Wait, coffee aftertaste. Huh. I don’t think he cleaned the pan right…”

The maroon had the horse treats. The maroon. Six days of Eumenis snapping caffeinated bricks of mortar from his fingers, and the one he’d been reluctantly partaking of was meant for the horse. Damn Ferdinand and his rambling explanation of the horrors he’d cooked up, for the overwhelming mask of coffee in every bite without fail; damn Hubert himself for being so inexcusably empty-headed the moment ‘I have made something for you,’ came tumbling out of Ferdinand’s sweet mouth, for accepting the unwanted gift simply because Ferdinand smiled at him with such uncommon nerves.

After downing a full cup of tea, Bernadetta scrunched up her nose in memory of her ordeal. “I think he probably subbed out all the sugar.” Because you’re not sweet, she didn’t say, but looked hastily away when Hubert narrowed his eyes. “But coffee doesn’t work the same. It’s…science. Weird how you didn’t dump them all in the mud.”

Weird, yes. Troubling. Incomprehensible that the boxes made it to Derdriu at all, instead of being incinerated two steps outside of Enbarr with all their contents. Ferdinand would needle him for feedback upon his return, but a simple lie as to their excellence would have sufficed. It did with Bernadetta’s flower. Why had he bothered with anything beyond that level of sufficiency?

“Buuut,” Bernadetta continued. “Since those boxes made it all the way here, I guess I can trust you to get this one all the way home. I mean, back to Enbarr. It’s for Edelgard, too, so um, don’t laugh? Well no, you can laugh because it’s meant to be a little silly, she didn’t want something serious, but don’t laugh at me. Promise?”

“What else can you possibly have—” Art. He let the words wither away as she reluctantly passed over the package, receiving it with considerable care. “Are you certain you want it opened?”

“Yes. I’d like your, uh, opinion first. Because if it’s really bad then we can put it in the fireplace with your poison treats!”

Hubert slipped a hand to his belt for a knife. If Bernadetta knew about the one in his sleeve, she’d never take his offered arm again, and that was too high a price to pay for a simple expediency. To her credit, she barely flinched at the weapon’s sudden appearance, even watching with vague satisfaction as he sliced open one side of the careful packaging. She’d sandwiched the piece between two thin wooden boards for travel, and he made quick work of it.

A knock on the door startled them both, though only Bernadetta jolted at it. Hubert twirled the knife into a firmer grip and held out his other hand palm-out to signal Bernadetta to remain still. If anyone thought cornering two of the Empire’s leading ministers in a shoddily defended residence was a stroke of genius, they were about to be strongly convinced otherwise.

“Bernadetta! Open up! It’s just me, Caspar!”

Now she shrieked. As panicked as he’d ever seen, Bernadetta raced around the room to gather up the boxes and everything Hubert had brought with him, piling them into his hands.

“Are you embarrassed to be seen with me?” Hubert hummed, bending down to let his voice rumble into her ear.

Bernadetta swatted him away. “He can’t see the presents!” she hissed. “Because—because I didn’t make him any! Just! Warp out of here! Please! I’ll—I’ll feed him the rest of Ferdie’s horse biscuits if you do!”

“How sweetly you beg.”

“Hubert!”

“Very well. I’ll see you at supper.” With a formal bow, he let the dark wisps of black magic swallow him up.

Had Hubert known the exquisite torture of taking supper at the table with a victorious von Riegan, he would have arranged for Arundel to serve as the ambassador to the Alliance years ago. To his left, Linhardt had his chin in one hand and his spoon in the other, smiling like the cat who got the cream and proceeded to nod off into it. To his right, Bernadetta took tiny birdlike bites of her meal and shot Hubert an apprehensive look between every single one, vibrating with a terror he hadn’t seen in years. Across the table, Caspar and von Riegan had been discussing Almyran nuptials for near on an hour, driving Caspar to higher and higher heights of buffoonery, and the Almyran princeling continually solicited Hubert’s opinion with all the gravity of an armistice negotiation.

“No comment,” he grit out to the matter of color symbolism that wouldn’t clash with Linhardt’s love of greens.

“No comment,” on Caspar’s idea for a bookcase cake with a different flavor for each volume.

“No comment,” to von Riegan’s smarmy face when asked if he’d like to catch the bouquet.

The trade conference itself proved genuinely harmless, more posturing than actual politics, no matter how much von Riegan took advantage to feel out his newly united western neighbor. Hubert had brought no real work to occupy himself with, unwilling to spend any manpower on the breadth of security he’d need to arrange in the foreign city if he planned to carry even a single document on his person. True, there were some contacts he would interview before departing, some household staff to poach if the mood struck, but otherwise the entire ordeal wasted his very precious time. Horrifically, it was the closest to a vacation Hubert had ever endured in his life. He did not wish for another.

When a servant in the rose-drunk livery of House Gloucester rushed in and hissed something into von Riegan’s ear, however, his luck finally changed.

“Von Vestra? A matter for you in the stables.” Von Riegan’s eyes glittered with dark laughter, all but confirming that everyone from Fodlan’s Throat to her Fangs would soon know Hubert couldn’t manage his mount. “Something about a feral horse.”

Still, an expertly timed excuse. Perhaps Eumenis understood him after all.

“My, is that what you’re calling Lord Gloucester these days?” Hubert asked, setting him up for an easy riposte to see which weak spot he’d lean into.

Unfortunately, Caspar’s wheeze of laughter drowned whatever barb had leapt to von Riegan’s tongue, and Bernadetta took the opportunity to skitter after Hubert as he swept into the hall.

“Bernadetta.”

“Nuh-uh, not listening, hmm hmm hmm. If you can use a horse to get out of a stupid dinner, then I can—”

Hubert cleared his throat, then swept ahead to hold the door for her, carefully timed so she couldn’t see his face as he clarified, “You cannot shadow me everywhere. Von Riegan already believes us to be intimate.”

To her credit, Bernadetta did not pitch forward in a dead faint, but continued marching forward in wide-eyed, pink-cheeked silence. She failed to put any distance between them or to duck into the library when they passed its diverting temptations. In the past, she’d often blanched in the middle of a conversation, gone scurrying off to recalibrate, and returned to pick it up hours later on the well-justified assumption he’d ignore the lapse. Now she leaned in even when the words choked up her throat.

The crisp evening air did no service to her faltering constitution, and the quiet continued until the stables came into view at last. Only then did Bernadetta pluck up her courage and turn her face up to meet his somber concern.

“This is a t-tactical tryst. No one will mess with me this way, because, you know, you’re just too…scary. And if you’re nice to me, then…I must be even more scary…right?”

“Careful,” Hubert chuckled, smoothing his laughter into a tone darker than he’d usually risk on her. If that was how she wished to play it, the viper caught fast in the pitcher plant’s unassuming maws, then so be it. “Grow too clever and I may consider you a threat.”

She smiled at that, a wicked curl of her lips that sat all wrong on her face, like she’d picked it up from his pitiful attempts at glee. “Bernie? A threat? No, never.”

Her record in the war said otherwise, and they both knew it.

Hubert held open the gate for her when they reached the stables, and felt the strangest pang of envy in his ribs, sharp in the marrow, that Linhardt would be escorting her east instead of he himself bringing her home to Enbarr at week’s end. Edelgard opened all her own doors, these days. Truth be told, if Bernadetta were home, Edelgard would still be rushing to hold open the doors before Hubert ever had the chance.

“Finally,” drawled a polished voice as they strolled to the end of the hall. Lorenz stood in full travel kit, even his hair still braided back for the day’s ride from Gloucester. He uncrossed his arms only to gesture at the wreckage of a nearby stall with impeccable disdain. “I cannot believe Ferdinand let you abscond with his lady, when you are clearly bereft of the slightest equestrian knowledge! A magehorse seven day’s ride from her master! We had to seclude the poor dear after she broke from her stall and nearly trampled one of the grooms!”

Bernadetta made a face that clearly questioned who, exactly, was the poor dear in that situation.

“What do you have to say for yourself, Vestra!”

Several choice words about what Lorenz’s magehorse had gotten up to with Hubert’s own lady, though he elected to keep them to himself. “Please, do elucidate us on the matter at hand.”

When Lorenz proceeded to do just that, completely missing the smooth sarcasm that had so readily flown over a much younger Ferdinand’s head, Bernadetta choked back a laugh and ducked into Hubert’s shadow for refuge. His mantle trembled with a mirth all its own as her hands twisted in the rich cloth.

“—Put simply, their superior breeding and emotional aptitude bestows upon them the most dire separation anxiety to be found in the entire species. One does not separate horse and rider barring retirement or death, you utter imbecile. Ferdinand will have your head for this.”

A niggling correction there, but Hubert would not be the one to make it. Enough of his personal life was already on frightful display in Derdriu.

“She’s a horse,” Hubert said flatly. “She’ll survive.”

Lorenz gave him such an ugly look that it had to have broken every rule of etiquette ever penned by a nobleman. “Should I ever have to endure such heartless company as yours, I would—”

“Bite?”

Bernadetta gave him a sharp pinch in the side, part reminder that the quicker he dispatched Lorenz the better, and part punishment for sending her into a new round of barely suppressed giggles. One more bruise to chalk up to the ongoing horse shenanigans.

“How lucky your reins are already spoken for,” Hubert added with a damning smirk, just enough to leave Lorenz guessing as to whether he meant Edelgard’s hold on the former Alliance or something else altogether. “Come along, Bernadetta. I fear My Hoofed Lady has need of us.”

Rather than pick a politically unwise fight—or worse, comment on Bernadetta’s giddy presence at Hubert’s elbow—Lorenz sputtered off to drown himself in calming tea and complain von Riegan’s ear off, as the mood suited.

Unfortunately, the situation was not as needlessly exaggerated as Lorenz’s affront. They’d barred Eumenis into a larger, more isolated pen at the far end of the stables, and she paced the perimeter with a frantic gait, raggedy beard trembling under her chin. She fixated on Hubert for a moment only, as if hoping he signaled another’s presence, then pinned back her ears and continued her angry circumnavigation.

“Hubert, did you let her eat the…”

“I am aware.”

Ferdinand could never know how few carrots and how much outright coffee he’d let the horse nip from his fingers on the week’s ride. Drugging horses was not previously part of his repertoire.

“She misses Ferdie,” Bernadetta said in that soft, compassionate tone she used only for animals and plants. “Maybe you should talk to her?”

“No.”

“But think about it! Ferdie’s always talking to his horses. It must be so scary not to hear his voice anymore, and if you aren’t talking to her either, then all she’s got is silence!”

“Or she’s wracked with dread over the upcoming return to her personal chatterbox. Never a moment of peace.”

Bernadetta’s brow furrowed into a very serious thinking face, as if she were now truly trying to pass her exams for horse whisperer. “You should talk to her about Ferdie.”

He didn’t dignify that with a response.

“Come on! It’s really cathartic! I talk to my horses all the time, even if I don’t know them—”

“Do I look like a man in need of catharsis?”

She didn’t dignify that with a response either, curse her, and it left them at an impasse. Around and around went Eumenis in her furious circles.

Only an hour at most until any lingering shops closed their doors for the evening.

“Then talk to her, if you wish. I have business to attend to.” Hubert gave her a polite nod of farewell, nothing more.

“Hubert!” she snapped, shocked at him and her own tone alike, and clasped her hands over her mouth. “Ohh…”

Years ago, when Her Majesty first floated the idea of Hubert joining the fray on horseback, he’d expected Ferdinand to approach him with absolute, unrepentant fury. The lapdog replacing him in the field at the only thing he was actually good at, a butcher playing friendly with beasts too stupid to know themselves prey. Ferdinand would have no part of it, and the aggravation would be just one more drain on their limited resources.

It was, perhaps, the very last time Hubert misread him so utterly.

What followed was a long summer of pre-dawn rides to earn his morning brew, incessant nitpicking over the proper way to brush a horse, sadistic obstacle courses in front of their own battalions, and meticulously detailed lectures on the purpose and care of each piece of armor for mount and rider alike, which proved purely informational when Ferdinand simply streamlined his own armor polishing routine to include yet another fellow soldier’s kit. And at the end of it all, Tisiphone’s reins in Hubert’s own hands, as though she weren’t quite literally the only thing Ferdinand owned in all the world.

Through all of it, and the years that followed, Ferdinand’s sheer devotion to all matters equestrian had failed to rub off on Hubert, much to his oft-emphasized despair. Yet Hubert was not unobservant. He knew the spells Ferdinand worked on the beasts, knew the ingredients. Some were easier to obtain than others.

Bergamot, chamomile, and lavender. On days they rode to battle, Ferdinand always brought his tea with him to the stables, crushing the delicate leaves into a handkerchief before letting his mount sniff giddily at the distraction. Aromatherapy, he would explain to any groom unfortunate enough to take notice. It calmed them, encouraged them, bolstered their patience. Or it simply smelled like him and the rest was parlor tricks.

Hubert had nothing with him that held Ferdinand’s scent, which were frankly horrifying words in that particular order, and which he would take care to strike from memory. But the tea was easy enough to acquire. He kept a portion of it bagged in a small, smelly satchel, and the rest he forwarded on to his lodgings. A pillowcase steeped in the brew all day long would hold the scent well enough, and stuffed with straw it could surely be left in a horse’s stall.

Eumenis had at least stopped running the stall by the time he returned, moon bright and lonely in the midnight sky. She paid him little attention, slipping into despondency, and barely bothered to twitch her ears into a half-hearted menace when he slipped in through the gate.

“Here, Nees,” he whispered low, hand creeping forward with a sliver of honey-drizzled apple.

At length, she took the bribe as polite as could be, and the next two slices as well. Not the solid diet Ferdinand demanded, but miles better than the sharp highs of the caffeine she’d supped on before.

She let him stroke a hand down her neck, knuckles following the stocky musculature, and leaned into it warily. Hubert generally let the grooms handle this sort of thing. Tiz was a very practical sort, easily bored with too much fussing, which suited him well. Eumenis required a patented von Aegir serenade every eight hours on the dot.

Hubert had lived alongside Dorothea for six years without ever learning a single song, and he wasn’t about to do it for a silly horse. The music trick would wait for the maestro.

As she reached for another piece of apple, Eumenis nudged against his shoulder instead, nickering softly. He pulled the tea bag from his breast pocket and offered it in a loosely held fist, not open enough for her to try and gobble it up, but a clear offer. And like magic, every tense line of her shivering body relaxed, softened, and her dark eyes glittered in the lamp light.

Ferdinand could wax poetic about his precise methodology for grooming his beloved steeds. Could and did. Regularly. All crooning adorations and bonding, attuning himself to their wavelength by putting ribbons in their deftly braided beards. The braiding was another skill best left to more suitable hands, but Hubert knew the brushing routine after constant reinforcement, and it was simple enough to let muscle memory do the work as his mind wandered.

Six more days in Derdriu. Six weeks of von Riegan cornering Bernadetta for details of their imaginary love life. It would certainly give Her Majesty a laugh to hear it… Could he make his excuses after two days more? Bernadetta would likely cry, an unacceptable outcome.

How had Eumenis managed to tangle her tail into such a state? He started with the ends, slowly working upward. It had been many, many years since he had brown hair under his quick hands.

He did not care about the damn horse, least of all because she belonged to blasted Ferdinand. He didn’t. But if she paced her stall in such desperation that it reminded him of a certain parlor, so many years ago, where he paced holes into the weave any time Her Majesty sat for private talks with Lord Arundel, or younger still, when he had no carpeting to wear away, when Edelgard languished far in the north as he burned away his fingertips with lore, with pitch, with acid, wearing himself down for want of her—

Well. If the horse missed her neighbor, harried her heart over leaving Tisiphone’s side when she was in such a delicate state, Hubert could not deny a similar fury had snapped at his heels, now and again.

Now. Again.

They weren’t children. The Emperor could take care of herself. And yet. The despair of his youth, of her torn from his grasp, could never fully be outgrown, never carved out when it was what made him. That one weakness he bore, gladly, on his sleeve, on his back, at his throat. Separation by choice, for duty, was entirely different—should be entirely different, yet.

To have anyone else step into his place, under his mantle, not even for his sake but for hers—that she had such people there by her side that his absence would cause her no lack of allies? Such a gift he could scarcely believe in, could certainly never repay. Ferdinand and Byleth, her knight and bishop ever ready to burn the chessboard on her say. The troops, who had cheered an Emperor in the field and still gathered to see her on the training grounds, sweat on all their brows. And that was only the start, only the pieces he’d planned. Maids who paid particular attention to which cakes their lady favored, gardeners ready to defend flowers and Empress both with a hand rake if need be, and the entire land of Brigid led by two women who cherished Edelgard enough to steal her away if needs ever must. To admit to a safety without him. Unimaginable, and here it was.

And with her safe, he could. Miss her. Childish, simplistic as it was. No need to tie himself into knots with valuation and strangulation of the feeling in favor of higher callings, in favor of the work. No need to arrange network reports every three hours for the entire 100-mile radius of her location. It was, perhaps, the closest to retirement he would ever actually come, and while frankly as dreadful as the vacation itself, it was. Survivable.

And his Tisiphone was foaling and if anything went wrong he’d be stuck with this menace until Ferdinand rummaged him up a new mount, which was all around unacceptable.

On the second run with the soft brush, Eumenis began to sing to him. Not very well, obviously, since all she could string together was a chain of incessant nickering, but it sent laughter bubbling in his chest. Soon enough she had her head slung over his shoulder, nuzzling into him with her full weight.

“Masterful,” he hummed, and maybe it was sonorous enough to pass for music to her ear. “True operatic genius. No wonder your master holds you in such esteem.”

She held calm and still enough for Hubert to brush along her forehead, avoiding the dark jewels of her eyes as he stroked at the bristled coat. Already he’d shuffled his schedule to fit in an afternoon ride each day, as an escape from boredom for them both. He could survey the walls much more easily from the outer perimeter, after all, and there were enough bridges and roads being restored that he’d never run out of construction to inspect.

Hubert’s fingers tangled in the horse’s long beard, and despite himself, he combed it out and began to braid.

Take care of my Lady, Ferdinand had asked, even though the words meant, I’ll take care of ours.

It shouldn’t make his pulse jump, that Ours and all it entailed. Hubert had long since dispensed with honor and oaths and all the pretensions of duty. There was only action. Direction. Intent.

Which was why all of Bernadetta’s asinine pestering fell so flat. He didn’t miss Ferdinand. He regretted leaving the front row seat where he could closely monitor whatever foolishness Ferdinand tried to push through the cabinet, surely, but beyond arguing those proposals into a more polished, more carefully crafted piece of legislative excellence, he had no doubts about the man doing his job.

And in what world would Ferdinand ever come foremost in his thoughts in place of Her Majesty? No matter how strong his magnetism, Ferdinand could never—

Ferdinand had never tried.

His hand stilled, and Hubert jerked his arm to resume its motions. Meaningless. Character growth, nothing more, that Ferdinand now relished his hard-won place at Her Majesty’s heels, that he never so much as pouted when duty called Hubert away from their rare moments of companionable rest, never complained, never competed. With Edelgard, surely. With Hubert himself. But never one against the other—too cowed, or too discerning to try?

Or Ferdinand saw no gain in it, and never considered it at all. A two-legged table does not stand, as he’d yelled at one particularly memorable war table before breaking the wobbly wood in twain. The horror on his face at the spectacle he’d made, and Her Majesty’s ragged laughter once he’d fled in a fit of self-induced humiliation.

But something sat wrong about it, some niggling error, a thread double-woven in an otherwise flawless bolt of cloth, and two past midnight in a stable full of dung was not the place to start picking it apart.

Ferdinand,

Yet another utterly pointless conference. The Alliance nobles are beyond worthless. Even von Riegan abandoned his scheming the moment Caspar offered him a more extravagant prize.

In short: Linhardt and Caspar are eloping to Almyra. Von Riegan will officiate. Bernadetta will accompany if she ever ceases her effusive weeping.

I will require you to review the succession terms of House Hevring. Linhardt claims knowledge of an esoteric isolationist clause prohibiting foreign marriage, defined in such loose terms as to include ceremonies conducted abroad. If you would copy the passage and forward it to Her Majesty, I would perhaps do you a favor in return and keep your spoiled horse away from the ‘human’ treat bag.

(What manner of hay-brained stable boy advises a diet of regular treats, then packs the horse ones with the human ones? Apart from her foray into caffeinated delights, Eumenis is fine. For now. If her sudden greed for mokatines results in my losing any fingers, I may reevaluate the necessity of this thrice-damned beast.)

This entire letter serves as an indictment against our generation. I wash my hands of it.

Sincerely,

Hubert

[Attached, a half-year’s supply of Almyran pine needles, tea grade, unprocessed.]

Chapter Text

Dear Lady Edelgard,

I’m in! I get to see Almyra! I will draw every single flower and send them back to you. Thank you again and again for keeping my draft pages! I’ll get as many seeds for our (???) garden as I can!

Attached is a painting of. Uh. Me. I know you asked for them but it’s SO STRANGE to send someone art of MYSELF. Please don’t laugh if it looks bad! There was another one to go with it but it got Lost In The Mail. I’m so sorry!!! I will paint another one of Ferdinand soon!

I will also try to sketch at the wedding but, um, they’re still arguing about whether it will be long (Claude has a speech prepared??? For someone else’s wedding??) or short (Linhardt.) so maybe that won’t be a very good time if Linhardt’s just grumpy and asleep. But Caspar looks really heroic in his new coat so maybe I’ll just draw him… Honeymoon sketches will work instead, right?

Oh no. OH NO. If THEY’RE getting married, but THEY’RE accompanying ME, then I’M GOING ON THE HONEYMOON.

What do I do??? How far away should I pitch my tent???

I should have gone with Hubert!!! Send him back for me!! I want to go home!!!

Imperial dispensation!! Please!

HELP ME.

— Bernadetta

She was beautiful.

Ferdinand could not shape the evening’s events into their proper significance. Tisiphone had her foal, healthy and sound and without a bit of trouble, and ever since Ferdinand held the little one in his arms and wiped clean her velveteen coat, all the world’s troubles had tumbled clear out of his head. Such tiny, warbling chirrups as she nosed at him, completely unafraid, and he hummed back in turn, handling one leg and then another, stroking at her forehead and neck until Tisiphone wandered over to nip gently at his shoulder and remind Ferdinand that she, too, deserved a moment with the child.

He retreated to the hall after that. In another hour he would go back in to continue handling the newborn, but for now he crossed his arms over the wooden gate and pillowed his head upon it, gazing at them in awe.

Lovely, that was the only word within grasp. All poetry and fine words turned to smoke between one thought and the next — he would summon Manuela for a proper aria to match his heart’s soaring, if she would not bemoan a four-legged audience instead of the full house that was her due.

Selfish, too.

With an entire continent to reform, who was he to fritter away his hours like this? To let his mind wander to such frivolity when edicts and dispatches and legal drafts malingered under his pen, to waste his eyes skimming another pamphlet on the newest training methodologies when he could have forged a chapter further into his agricultural survey of Gaspard. Years of outrage over those pampered nobles who cared for little more than horseflesh and haberdashery, and yet he proved himself such a man all the same.

But they had won a war, and Ferdinand had won his post, and he had earned one good thing, just one.

Politics would always be thankless. Time alone could weigh his contributions; the best rewards would arrive posthumously if at all. He could not roll up his sleeves and join the plowmen of Aegir, could not work himself to backbreaking exhaustion and gaze at golden bounty come spring. And he could not have what he wanted—Hubert’s hand under his own, Edelgard’s nightmares vanquished, Dorothea’s laughter in his ear, an invitation to Caspar’s elopement, a nation that could breathe deep and finally heal—but he could have one small new life, untouched by the war’s horrors, and dark brown eyes that looked back at him with untrammeled affection.

Someone cleared their throat beside and below him, and Ferdinand at once jolted to his full height, dirty hands tucked behind his back as though the rest of him was in any better state: filth worn into the knees of his slacks, straw clinging to the frayed curls of his bun, no vest, no tie, down to only his shirtsleeves. Fit for the company of horses alone, and whatever grooms he paid to wait the night with him, now long scampered to their hard-won beds.

“Your Majesty!” Ferdinand ducked into a bow.

“Had I known all it took for you to disregard me was a newborn foal, I’d have been plying you with ponies since you hit thirteen.” Edelgard raised a single brow at him, and he felt it like the blow of an axe—but could not quite put his finger on why. It was not as if she had only now scented his inadequacy and come to rub his face in it, when she had gazed unflinchingly at all his failings since the day they met.

“I…the missive.” Ferdinand winced, recalling all at once the frantically joyous note he’d penned and sent off to Edelgard’s quarters earlier that evening. “My apologies. It was not urgent, I should not have disturbed you at so late an hour. I certainly did not expect that you would ever—”

With a curt shake of her head, she pressed a handkerchief of fine lilac silk into his hands. “Ferdinand.”

He stared down at it in confusion for so long that she plucked it back from his lax fingers and went up on tiptoe to wipe at his wet cheeks.

“As emotional as a new father,” Edelgard chided, scrubbing at his face as if she could chase away the bone-deep blush that stained his skin. “Saints help us if you ever hold a human babe in your arms.”

Ferdinand sputtered a protest in vain, for she did not release him until all those unwanted tears had been dried. To be caught weeping in front of the Emperor! “Adrenaline and the crash of relief, no more than that, I assure you.”

She hummed in disbelief and leaned against the gate, turning her eyes to the little one within the stall. Nothing softened in her gaze, but it fell over the foal’s back like a blanket warmed in the summer sun. Edelgard seemed...charmed, he hoped. She had joined him in the stables more days than not, these past few weeks, learning the names and histories of all the illustrious residents and lending Ferdinand her ear in far greater share than he deserved. But that was entirely the problem. She’d hounded out some faint loneliness in him, and he hoarded her offered presence with a sickening desperation. It needed to stop.

“Frankly, I’m offended that you consider this so low on my list of priorities.” A sliver of uncommon uncertainty in her tone that shamed him where he stood.

“Edel—”

“Can we sit with them?” Edelgard cut him off, voice sharp.

Ferdinand stared at her a beat too long, mouth still ajar as it twitched into an incredulous grin of far too many teeth to be noble. “But of course! I only stepped out so that she could have a moment with her mother. It is important to have them handled as soon as possible, as much as possible, so that they harbor no fear of humans later on. For instance, if she observes that no harm comes from our touching her hooves, then she will anticipate no harm from the farrier!”

He pushed open the gate and ushered her forward, and Edelgard strolled inside the same way she entered a council meeting, dressed in her flawless crimsons and steeled for a challenge. That there was straw beneath her boots instead of velvet did not register in the slightest. Ferdinand almost warned her against ruining her skirts—surely no Prime Minister would ever allow his Emperor to sully herself in such a ridiculous way, mucking about on a stable floor—but, well, it was Edelgard. She calculated every single footstep, recognized and weighed every single choice, even when she made what was patently the wrong one.

Ferdinand could not imagine her putting down paperwork in favor of his scribbled message, tucking into polished leather boots with full knowledge of where they would tread, strolling to meet him without bothering to change into more suitable dress because she wished to be present without delay, and yet she had.

Unwilling to evaluate the matter any further with his heart a teeming menagerie of emotions, Ferdinand turned to the horses. He offered Tisiphone a few firm pats to her flank, a few more gushing words of praise, and kindly requested her child’s presence for the Emperor’s surprise inspection. A difficult burden, yes, with the little one not yet firmly on her feet, but Tisiphone was as diligent in her service as her master and did not bat an eye. Ferdinand crouched to haul the foal into his arms, crooning softly when she shook against his warm chest.

“Have you chosen a name?” Edelgard asked once they’d settled in a corner of the stall, sitting side by side with the foal laid at their feet. She had a dusky coat far lighter than either of her parents, and Edelgard’s white-gloved fingers trailed over the soft grey hair like a butler inspecting for dust.

“No. She belongs to…Count Vestra,” he finished with a tense frown. “So the honors would be his.”

Edelgard would surely have raised that eyebrow at him again, so Ferdinand pointedly did not check. It had simply occurred to him, unbidden, that for the past few weeks he had never once said the man’s name. Count Vestra featured regularly in their daytime work, forced as they were to reshuffle his duties, and Ferdinand had great fun alluding to whatever Count Vestra might think if the vintner failed to renew the household contract on appropriate terms. But far from using his absence as an opportunity to grill Ferdinand on his obvious intentions, Edelgard had never once brought him up, never tutted about whatever their Hubert was fretting about now, never dropped the odd anecdote into their tea time meanderings.

Edelgard did not turn her eyes away from a festering wound, paid no one that courtesy regardless of etiquette or fondness or well-honed bravado, unless they were so far below her notice that—

“Night-Stalker von Vestra,” came a throaty growl from his side, choked with restrained laughter.

Ferdinand turned to see Edelgard cupping the foal’s long head in her hands. She leaned in close, gazing adoringly into those warm brown eyes, and intoned darkly, “She Who Treads the Bloody Path von Vestra.”

The foal twitched her ears and leaned into those warm palms.

“No bloody path for you, sweetness? Then perhaps…”

“Sanguine Silence von Vestra,” Ferdinand drolled as deep as he could go.

Edelgard’s shoulders shook at Ferdinand’s offer, and she had to steel herself for another rumble as she leaned forward to kiss the foal’s forehead. “I dub thee Grim Visage of Absolution von Vestra.”

Ferdinand reached out to lift one small hoof as gently as he would a maiden’s gloved fingers. “Grim, we do not kick the grooms unless they have imperiled Her Majesty. You must uphold the hallowed standards of the Vestra name. I will not hesitate to add your name to the proscription list if you do not give up this meaningless rebellion.”

“No, no, we cannot leave it in his hands.” Her knowing eyes slid to Ferdinand’s. “If you could name her…”

“Mocha.”

“Then Mocha it will be. Does that suit you, dear one?” She stroked a hand down Mocha’s neck, and the gesture hooked Ferdinand’s gaze like a fish, gutting him in one clean slice.

No more sharp contrast of white against dusty grey.

Edelgard had removed her gloves. To let the foal nuzzle her rough fingertips, to let the warmth of her scarred palms press against the velvet coat. Such a small thing, to send Ferdinand’s heart racing wild with terror and affection alike, as though he had tempted the Emperor down some dark path of horse-petting and would now be proscribed himself, or worse, have those soft brown eyes torn away from him in retribution. He could not look away, jaw tight.

“Yes. An excellent name. That’s one matter settled.” Edelgard’s hands moved to the foal’s front leg, gently lifting to inspect each finely formed inch. “Thank you, Mocha. You are most patient. Now, Ferdinand—oh, sweetheart, don’t shiver so. Ferdinand, the grain measures.”

Finally something he could put into words, and easily at that. “I will not budge. Centralization is not the answer.”

“I understand your reservations about the plan, but we only require a provisional system for now, and we have neither the time nor the manpower to waste on administration. We do not even have a Minister of Agriculture.”

“And we should not!” The foal startled as Ferdinand threw his hands into the air with great emphasis. Ah, well, perhaps she would more easily grow accustomed to sudden movements this way. “How many petitions has Count Oche sent you by now? If you choose a single point of consolidation for the grain distribution, you will empower the nobles of that land alone, and they will ransom our stores with the slightest provocation.”

“Once the lands are reestablished, they will lose any such power. We can endure that nonsense for the handful of years it will take.”

“We cannot and will not. Even if we disregard the populace, the military needs its bread. Count Bergliez could easily ally with whoever controls that bread. Put it in the people’s hands and it robs him of the chance.”

“You know I agree with you on that front.” Edelgard shook her head. “But again. Time and manpower are not on our side.”

“And they never will be! Please, this is too important not to do properly. Six regional centers, staffed by a local administration, with free exchange between each.”

“Six posts to embezzle from instead of one?”

Mocha lurched upwards and tumbled to the side, a pitiful huff of frustration whining from her throat, and Edelgard caught her with ease. The foal collapsed into the Emperor’s lap, and Edelgard merely settled those gangly legs comfortably on either side of her own, nodding at Ferdinand for him to continue. A perfectly normal debate.

“Not if we limit terms. It would even provide opportunity to train lower staff and promote the most successful to higher office, which aligns perfectly with your goals. Regional governance cannot succeed without—”

“Without full bellies, which we will not achieve if our measures are not embraced. I require your support on this, Prime Minister.” Those were the words meant to end the discussion, and never once had they succeeded.

“Six posts,” Ferdinand pressed. “I have drawn the map and plotted the most amenable districts based on the extant system of roads and surviving farmland. Only allow me to present my idea in full.”

“And the manpower?”

“We have enough contacts with the regional merchant guilds to draw on even if the nobility wash their hands of it entirely. I will get it off the ground if you give me the chance.”

“Ferdinand, you have as many hours in the day as the rest of us.”

“Have I failed you yet?” he demanded, words bitter on his tongue. She had only to say yes and that would be the end of him. A no would raise the bar beneath his feet, and already he danced on bloody toes to leap it, higher and higher before the fall.

Edelgard closed her eyes, less to block him out than to call up her mental map of the continent. “Four posts, with the possibility for further branches. Disregard the southeast for now. East, west, southwest, and a distribution center based in Galatea to handle the north. Rework your map and have it to me by week’s end. We’ll discuss.”

A sigh of relief hissed its way through Ferdinand’s teeth. Some part of him still worked itself up for a yelling match every time they pieced together a proposal, waiting for the shoe to drop when she asked for obedience instead of collaboration. For all their internal arguments, it was necessary to show a united front to the outside world, to the Council and citizenry, and Ferdinand dreaded the day they could reach no agreement. His position had one immutable rule: his voice could not outstrip hers. The work was done together, or not at all. He was a weapon in her hand, in the light, and though Hubert had had his entire life to shape himself to what Edelgard required, a blade that fit her hands alone, Ferdinand could do little but figure it out along the way and hope his untempered edges carved neither of them to shreds.

“Now. What are your plans for this one?” Edelgard asked, running those bare fingers through Mocha’s soft, silken mane over and over again.

“I have not decided. She is simply so small...” He tapped his fingers down the center of her head from brow to muzzle, then murmured sweet praises when she did no more than blink curiously. “Such an exceptional pedigree and yet I am loathe to train her into a heritage of war. Is that strange?”

“No, it doesn’t surprise me at all. Not from you. You’re the only equestrian I know who doesn’t give a damn for the value of horseflesh. Outside Marianne, perhaps.”

In an instant, the playfulness of the evening, the splendid ease of discussing politics with equally dirtied knees, all of it vanished into the night.

“Please do not tease,” Ferdinand said, struggling to dull the sudden cut of his own tone. “We had the most worthless stable in the Empire, and my father never gave me any peace over it.”

Edelgard had once commented that she could tell time by the stories on his tongue — current events with the dawn, nostalgia creeping in by late afternoon, restless recollections after the dinner bell tolled. He never spoke of his father to her, ever, unless it was two hours past midnight and he’d forgotten himself entirely, so tired that all the history between them settled into uneasy slumber.

That it could slumber at all, and so regularly, still astounded him. It did not slumber now.

“It was a compliment,” Edelgard offered at length, and he hated how he could barely draw breath until he identified the shade of her tone. Curious, not hurt. Small mercies.

Ferdinand brushed his thumbs gently against the sides of the baby’s nose and held her muzzle in his cupped hands when she chirruped tiredly. “My…eighth birthday, if I recall. I had run off from my nursemaid with a mind to visit the village and bestow my birthday pennies on the locals. I happened to pass a farm with a lame foal on my way. By day’s end I was many pennies poorer, had traded my fine leather boots, and was in possession of a very worthless darling. I named her Freckle.”

His voice cracked. He could not even name his own humiliation, suffused through his marrow, but he could not ignore that wretched break.

Edelgard let her free hand rest casually upon his shoe, a touch not of understanding or solidarity, but simple presence. A paltry offering worth more than his life. “Ferdinand…”

“Father screamed and screamed and, well, that was alright by me. A fair trade in all respects. Eventually he gave the stables over so I could make my own mockery of myself, and so I did. We had about fifty head. Ten for my mother’s whims, all dainty riders with delicately patterned coats, and another ten my father ostensibly considered his. Exorbitantly expensive, there to stand taller than any others. He never rode. The rest were mine, one way or another. The outlying villages knew I would offer a fair price for any sweet lady they brought my way, or would house the old souls they could no longer afford to keep.”

He forced a tremulous smile to break through the memory’s fog. “I simply…love them. Like you love your flowers, or your paintings. Not a one is perfect, they all have a will and a spirit of their own. And it only transfixes you more, does it not?”

A month ago, she would have given him a tight-lipped politician’s smile and nodded along, yes, I understand. Now she gave him silence. A ponderous moment of actual reflection, as she worked the idea over in her mind with a painter’s brush, ink tracing gentle wisps of color around the dim colors of his inscrutable youth. When they had grown as vines on two distant trellises, and yet faced the same rain, the same drought, and now sheltered the same road together.

“What happened to Freckle?” she asked.

And Ferdinand’s feigned smile, a joyous, infectious monster even so, flattened into a bitter, aching curve. No wistful nostalgia in his tone now, only the steady cadence of a field report. “I cared for her all her life while I owned the Aegir stables. And once they defaulted to the Empire, Hubert sent them all off to be made into glue.”

Edelgard’s hand stilled on the foal’s neck, and he felt it like a yoke upon his own neck, suffocating. “That isn’t how it went.”

He shook his head, as though he wasn’t on the verge of tears at the memory alone. He remembered that year with perfect clarity, every cruelty, every kindness. What mattered was where he stood now, and that he could stand aside them. “No matter. I bear no ill will.” Then, dark with self-recrimination, “Clearly.”

“Ferdinand.”

It was politics. Aegir had to fall. That Hubert himself had wielded the knife meant nothing; the man had no less than seven daggers on his person at any given time, it was scarcely personal. Ferdinand had not even existed as a person to him at the time, not truly, just a suspicious afterimage of Duke Aegir, and all threats had to be put away, even now. What mattered was, was—

“Ferdinand.” Sharper this time. “Nobody butchered your horses.”

“He told me as much,” he snipped, his own petulance rolling through him in a wave of nausea.

“Yes, and what else did Hubert tell you simply to get a rise out of that loathsome Aegir whelp?” She waited for it to click, for him to slowly raise his head. “As I recall it, he spent the next two months snarling at a long chain of brokers before finding satisfactory placements for them all. No asset wasted, you understand.”

Ferdinand stared.

“A cavalry training program took any hale enough for auxiliary service. Your…worthless darlings went to a farm somewhere. He still pays the farmer a yearly stipend for their upkeep. Whenever I asked, he’d grunt that it was necessary and not for me to concern myself with. Below the Emperor’s purview and so forth.”

A sop to cement his loyalties, even now. How it stung that she still thought he needed one.

“…Ha. Very cute, Edelgard, but I am not fool enough to fall for your teasing.” He forced a stiff hand into the air to wave off her concern. “Everyone knows Hubert feels no guilt, let alone over something as silly as…horses. Truly, let us put the matter aside.”

Edelgard would not. She tucked an elbow against one knee and leaned onto it, further into his space, watching him carefully. “I didn’t say it was guilt. What else explains your warhorses?”

“My warhorses.”

“Awfully high quality, were they not? Even Count Bergliez had difficulty finding suitable mounts at the time, but you had two purebreds to spare at all times.”

“The army supplied me,” Ferdinand answered blankly. He could feel the blush rising to his cheeks, trapped in the undertow of wherever she thought to lead, and could not for the life of him distinguish the point of this conversation. All his mounts, armor, and field kit came from the military supplies, save for any he acquired with his own meager coin. The magehorses were all that he had acquired on his own, due to the delicate business of synchronizing horse and rider.

“At astonishing cost. You should have seen Hubert’s face when you gave that first stallion to your battalion lieutenant. Twenty thousand gold, that horse. But you only wanted your mares.”

Oh.

“Did you really never notice?”

Ferdinand could notice little more at the moment than the roar of blood in his ears.

“Perhaps the way to a man’s heart is through his horses, not his stomach,” Edelgard mused.

“You will stop that line of thought right this minute unless...”

“Unless?”

He had no threat. Not a thought beyond Hubert, newly stained by patricide and full of seething venom, carefully arranging a home for every single one of Ferdinand’s would-be casualties without a word. Years of scathing comments meant to draw out whether he was truly well-matched to whatever warhorse Hubert had personally selected for him. Hubert’s bleak gaze when Ferdinand gave him Tisiphone’s reins, that flicker of disbelief before duty devoured the emotion.

If not guilt, then what?

If not care, then why did his chest ache, an arrow leeching its sweet poison into every vein?

Edelgard’s hand settled on his like a brand, and it took all his strength to relax into it, not to jerk away in scandal. Ah. This would be why they did not discuss Hubert in his absence; Ferdinand’s heart was a willful, dangerous creature, no matter how many years he spent bringing it to heel.

“If you will not train her as a magehorse,” Edelgard said, steering the conversation back to the calm safety of the stables, “Then what will we do with her?”

Ferdinand cleared his throat, then again, all of him wrung dry of emotion. At least she had not brought out that silk handkerchief once more; a man could only bear so much. “The same as tonight, for now. Daily handling to reinforce her trust in people.”

“Then let us set aside our morning tea for now.”

Ferdinand startled. “Edelgard, I can still find time for—”

“I cannot. So we will take our tea here, in the stables, for the next two weeks. At night will be easiest on both of our wardrobes, so let us set it for an hour before midnight. The more people that Mocha can trust, the better. Am I wrong? Or do you prefer a more experienced trainer at your side?”

“Please. A moment. I am…overwhelmed.” Ferdinand’s lips pressed into a firm line, and he took in the sight of his Emperor with a lap full of slumbering foal, fingers still folding braids into the short mane before tenderly brushing them out once more. “I believe we have misnamed her.”

An imperial frown. “It suits her.”

“Another will suit better.” Ferdinand ducked to press a kiss to the foal’s forehead. “I dub you Mocha von Hresvelg. May you flourish.”

And if the true gift was the shock of scarlet painting Edelgard’s face when he rose, well. Fair was fair.

She had a handkerchief should she require it.

Hubert,

I gave you a single request. Such nerve, sending me your ‘requirements’ when you cannot be bothered to do a thing for me in turn.

Does caring for My Lady involve drugging her to the gills with your foul brew? Perhaps I shall treat Her Majesty the same, without her imperial food taster here to sip the wine first.

Yes, yes, do not twist your face in such a manner, you know I jest. But we shall have words upon your return.

Please wish our friends safe travels, and swift weddings, if they so choose. You are able to do that much for a valued colleague, are you not?

Sincerely,

Ferdinand

P.S. What in Cichol’s name did you say to Lorenz? I received the most alarming letter… Try not to drag me into any diplomatic debacles of your own making, you wretch.

Chapter Text

Edelgard,

I cannot accept it.

The duchy is dissolved. Let it remain so.

It appears I want to be your Prime Minister, not

I will not take the title.

Thank you for reconsid

Thank you for giving me the choice

If you would grant my mother the name of Duchess once more, that would be all the honor I ask. The name alone. Sufficient.

Let Aegir be a model of your meritocracy, not a bartering chip in my family’s festering legacy. I will handle my cousins. This is on my head.

Faithfully yours,

Ferdinand

[Retrieved from Prime Minister’s waste basket. Archived pending Marquis Vestra’s return.]

Against all expectation, Eumenis did not buck Hubert and bolt the moment they passed under the first vaulted gate of the palace district. They had reached an understanding. She merely assumed a faster clip, and now and again she turned her head as if to confirm her rider shared her joy, or at least professed complacency enough not to draw on the bit. Loathe to consider it joy, Hubert could still admit to a definite relief in escaping the constant cycle of plying the wretch with her fresh tea, with the drone of his voice as he read missives aloud in substitution for the musicality he would not grant, with lengthy brush-downs every evening and rows of precise braids in her mane every morning.

Still, when they reached the palace grounds and a liveried groom stepped forward to retrieve the mount, Hubert waved him off. Bernadetta’s gifts would not suffer the rough handling of Ferdinand’s ham-handed lackeys, and they were sure to toss away the tattered bag of straw and tea leaves that Eumenis had grown so fond of. As with most things in this life, he would have to handle it himself.

Prancing into the stable hall with a queenly gait, Eumenis ensured every other member of the herd knew of her return—and, judging by the way she leaned into Hubert even as they strolled, that she had conquered the terrible warlock of legend. He led her to her stall with little trouble aside from the boisterous affection she lavished on him at every turn, and she waited patiently as he stripped down her tack, fingers tracing each line where the leather had rubbed to ensure she’d suffered no abrasions.

“Patience, Nees,” he hummed as she flicked her tail, less now a harbinger of danger than a demand for a leisurely brushing. “Your servants will see to your coat soon enough.”

“Yes, ideally,” rang out a familiar voice burdened with its own sincerity, “That would provide the most efficient route, but the road is simply not up to the task. Dirt roads do not tend to survive the march of tens of thousands of soldiers. Perhaps if you did not always ride in the vanguard you would have a keener comprehension of—Lady Mocha, please, I would much prefer my hair remain attached to my head.”

And then laughter, soft, that chimed through Hubert like those ghastly church bells never had, sweet shivers in the heart of him. A less restrained tone joined in a moment later, that most un-noble bark of amusement, and a hushed breath of whispers shushing each other.

Hubert followed those familiar voices to the end of the hall where the uniform stalls gave way to a larger pen, newly strewn with fresh hay. Against the far wall stood a small table stacked with a utilitarian tea service of tin cups, boxed treats, and two precisely folded capes. A roughly drawn map of the former Kingdom had been spread upon the uneven ground, and the Emperor and Prime Minister sat pouring over its topography while a spindly foal with a large velveteen bow around its neck tried to graze upon the auburn offerings of Ferdinand’s hair.

“We need to dispatch engineers to deal with the infrastructure failures in the area as is.” Edelgard marked off a strip of land and crowned three nearby towns with small diamonds, her red gloves smudged with chalk. When Ferdinand did not immediately protest her ignorance, she propped her chin on one hand and gazed at his continued struggle for freedom.

Hubert could not immediately decipher just what that gaze implied.

Since childhood, Hubert had cataloged Her Majesty’s gazes with the unflagging diligence of a lexicographer, encoding her every expression into the deep well of meaning that drove his every action. The dictionary nearly doubled in the last year alone, when he added the rawness of Edelgard’s pinched smile as Caspar’s final battle cry rang across the field, the faint flush of her cheeks as Byleth arrived to lunch with dirt on her cheeks and freshly cut carnations in her hands, the subtle easing of her brows, her shoulders, whenever Dorothea sang their spirits to distant lands, the exhilarated smirk of carefully plotted arrogance whenever the Council voted exactly the way they wanted. She had specific looks for the servants, warmer than they ever deserved, and looks for her flowers, as if they needed that nourishment to thrive, and even looks for the skies, as she gazed off and waited for the year’s first snowfall to wash the city clean.

None of them aligned easily with the way she looked at Ferdinand now, as if he were a particularly difficult flower brought painstakingly to bloom, all of his dead leaves pared away.

“Some help?” Ferdinand angled himself away from the foal with a laugh. He’d wrapped his hair tightly around one hand in its defense, a spindle of fine copper that drew back the usual curtains of his lush locks and revealed the freckled slope beneath.

“Sweetness. Here.”

Hubert’s eyes snapped to Edelgard as easily as the foal on its lead.

“Good girl,” she hummed and leaned in to press a kiss to the beast’s forehead. “Yes, I know. We are dreadfully concerned for the state of Ferdinand’s fine mane.”

Edelgard tugged off one glove and wet her fingers in her teacup before offering them to the foal, who mouthed at the no doubt saccharine drops.

“Spoiled rotten,” Ferdinand grumbled.

He leaned over the map to trace a new path, and Edelgard flicked the last of her tea-dipped fingers directly into his face.

Ferdinand sputtered with laughter unheard for months—for Hubert may, possibly, have cataloged those as well, and recognized the light timbre of true amity in him, the same way he laughed when he tipped his head against Dorothea or Petra’s shoulders and joined with them in the braying marching songs their battalions so favored.

They had not possessed such companionship, such ease, when Hubert left. The Prime Minister walked a tense line between obstinacy and compulsion, eager to embody the Emperor’s ideals while desperate to know exactly how far he could run before she strangled him with the leash. He calculated exactly how much of his natural exuberance would be tolerated, honing a restraint that a younger Hubert would have, privately, praised, but now found as bitterly stifling as Edelgard did.

None of that now.

Hubert could not spin it into any grand, sweeping program of united government or mutual drive. Only a kindred childishness, as if they had pushed their classroom desks together to construct a birthday banner for the Professor rather than fiddling with the intricacies of land reform and public policy. Ferdinand braced the corners of the map as Edelgard sketched a new course. The striking vertigo of standing near to such vibrant life, impossibilities on sweeping display.

Still, his eyes lingered, lost for only a moment in the thought of Bernadetta home again after all her travels, putting brush to canvas to capture just such a scene. Far preferable to the drivel she’d been scribbling of late. She would capture the way their heads bowed in tandem, twin constellations heralding the return of mathematical order to the earth, a treasury of silver and gold spilled for mankind’s future prosperity. And the charcoal sketch before the masterpiece, the rough lines that hinted at unending warmth, at a felicitous imperial household after so long, that would be his to secret away once the artist had no more need of it.

The stable background would need to go, of course.

Rationality returned in a swooping shadow. The stables. An empty space on the maps of palace fortifications. Had anyone even tested the flammability of the roof in the last decade? No underground entrance, no protective brickwork, the propensity of hay-bales to self-ignite in close quarters. Her Majesty would be undefended, trapped trying to drag a hysteric Ferdinand from the screams of his horses—or, by some mercy, a ground attack alone, and no one to defend them save groom and pitchfork. Would the flesh-hungry steeds fight so furiously to come to their own master’s defense, as he would to theirs?

A chirrup at his feet. Hubert dragged his gaze down to the gangly creature at fault for all the past month’s frustrations.

Mocha, they called her. Well. At least she’d been spared another asinine opera reference. He allowed her to nose curiously at his riding gloves, then traced a line down her forehead where Edelgard’s lips had touched.

“Well?”

He met Edelgard’s eyes, expectant and bright.

“A passable addition to the imperial stables.” Hubert inclined his head and made no move to join them in their playpen. “Yet I have grave reservations about the work ethic of these new stable hands…”

Ferdinand went very still, then ducked his head to busy himself with the map. “Welcome home, Hubert.”

A sullen tone and a pinched, evasive smile, all utterly unlike the Ferdinand who had nearly thrown himself into the saddle behind Hubert upon his departure. Combined with Edelgard’s effusive care, it portended something as foul as another serving of Ferdinand’s homemade monstrosities. There was only a twelve hour lag between message dispatch and receipt—it would need to be a recent catastrophe, or else Her Majesty would have informed him post haste. He glanced to her in hopes of a covert sign, and all she did was shake her head.

“Slander,” Edelgard tutted when it was clear her ministers had no words for each other. “I tamed a ferocious beast and bested Ferdinand at his own craft.”

A handful of sugar cubes would win the loyalty of any horse, it was hardly an accomplishment worth baiting the Prime Minister’s fool pride over.

But Ferdinand’s brisk laughter swept the room like a spring thaw. “Surely that is for an impartial judge to decide.”

Curious and curiouser. Unusual mirth and felicity infected them both — something in the water? With no one to test their tea, anyone could slip a tasteless additive into the brew without notice.

The Emperor rose to her feet, brushed off her knees, and carried an open pastry box over for Hubert’s perusal. She gestured to the bulbous lumps of charred pastry dough. “Fruit and herring on this side, regular meat pies on the other. You were always a fan of the monastery’s meat pies, if I recall.”

“…You baked.”

Whatever face Hubert made was enough for Ferdinand to clap a hand over his mouth, swallowing a truly egregious burst of laughter. He coughed. “I am certain Byleth will appreciate whatever share of your iron stomach you can spare, seeing as Edelgard will unload the remains onto that poor woman tonight,”

“Come now, Hubert. Is it not your duty to serve as judge of our baking duel?” she asked. “Prove your partiality.”

Ferdinand blanched and shot her a scowl over his shoulder. “It is not a duel.”

“No?”

“I realize you are teasing, but firstly, there is no honor in a competition between unknowing participants, and secondly—”

Hubert cleared his throat. Loudly. He did not select a pie. “Might I firmly suggest, no, implore, that you two locate a suitable teacher before embarking on such culinary endeavors?”

“I’m shocked to hear such treason.” Edelgard’s hand dropped to her heart, and for a terrifying moment, Hubert could not tell if she was mimicking Ferdinand or had adopted the gesture in truth. “Insulting your Emperor in such a way…”

Ferdinand drew both hands to his hips. “Now hold on. From your letter, my treats were received by the horses with pleasure. Clearly you are the wrong audience for my considerable skills. This speaks to your inadequacy, not my own.”

“And I am truly honored to be inadequate to the task at hand.” He sketched a bow, dripping with mockery, and had scarcely straightened his spine before Ferdinand breezed past him.

“Typical. Let us see how inadequate you were to the task of properly cherishing my Lady—”

Hubert caught him by the arm, letting momentum carry Ferdinand back around to face him for a full inspection. No dark bags under his eyes, no twitch of secrecy or shame, no sickly pallor. His eyes widened slightly when Hubert searched them, flawless amber with that familiar glint of challenge and absolutely no answers whatsoever.

“Did you?” Ferdinand asked after a long moment, searching him right back. A pity he never found anything.

“Hm?”

“Cherish her.”

That was not the conversation at hand, though the braids of her mane would attest to that admirably. “Surely that is for an impartial judge to decide,” Hubert demurred, pitching his voice low enough that he could feel Ferdinand’s resulting shiver. That much, at least, had not changed.

Surely this wasn’t brought on by Hubert’s comments about Ferdinand’s baking. Repressed fury over the caffeine-drugged horse?

Ferdinand turned away, too slow to entirely conceal the heat of his cheeks, and extracted his arm. “…I will be by your office shortly. Certain matters cannot wait.” He nodded firmly to Edelgard, as though he had not just blazed through the worst cover for a workplace tryst that anyone had ever heard. “Your Highness. Lady Mocha.”

“Until evening, Ferdinand.” She smiled at him, again, and off he went.

Edelgard turned to Hubert in turn, the foal dutifully stumbling to her side to stare at him with a far gentler gaze than Edelgard’s sharp mix of business severity and well-worn neutrality. “Well.”

“Your Majesty.” He offered a full bow this time, sinking into it with all the relief of homecoming. This was all he needed, not Ferdinand’s fussing and nonsense, only a few hours catching up on paperwork, developments in the ongoing war, and all those legalities to invert, loopholes to strangle. Let the man stew for a few days until this paltry crisis blew over.

“I am glad to see you home,” Edelgard offered with all the affection she might offer a particularly infuriating courtier. She frowned. “But I will not see you again until morning.”

Hubert frowned in turn, and that was most worrisome of all, to have slipped from the same wavelength as his liege in only a few scant weeks, to stand as a shadow one quarter of a second out of sync. “Lady Edelgard, there is nothing that would keep me from—”

“I have a date,” she blurted, and the world tilted still further, the slope of a quill as he recorded that new flustered strain of stiff-lipped frown. “Byleth will serve admirably as my retainer for the evening. And Ferdinand is… I thought we had fixed this, Hubert.”

“What is this, exactly?”

Edelgard rubbed a hand at her temple in a gesture all too familiar when it came to Prime Minister Aegir. “Whatever it is, I expect you to share your findings.”

Edelgard & Ferdinand,

Please do not be sending us any further fish pies.

Dorothea says this is act of border aggression. You are not wanting to see our counterattack.

Hopefully,

Petra

“The Aegir ledgers. Please.”

Ferdinand had not meant to let the please slip free, determined to be—not angry, exactly, but firm. An interrogator, even if he had not the skill to wring any true secrets out of a seasoned spymaster. He required answers. He would stand in Hubert’s damn office and stare the man down until he got them, or else be hauled off to be turned into glue himself.

Goddess, how many years had it been since Ferdinand let himself feel this particular heartache? Just one more thing he boxed away with all the other trappings of childhood, consigning himself to a clean burn so something new, better, would nourish itself on the ashes. Of course Edelgard would think to till the soil and question the scorched bones under the surface. Of course.

He should have buried it again without a word. It meant nothing. Certainly it was no sign of blighted fondness.

But it must signify something, and still, still, Ferdinand could make no sense of it. Hubert, the Aegir horses, kindness and guilt and—feeling. Because Hubert felt nothing for him in those days, quite possibly still didn’t, and the man’s capacity for generosity extended little further than heavily veiled excuses about preserving the Empire’s assets, which a handful of meek ponies certainly weren’t.

The only reason he could fathom was pity.

And that was the irony, was it not? After all Hubert had done, all he claimed to be, and all Ferdinand had accepted as his natural pernicious state, the only venom left to scream its way through Ferdinand’s veins was what Hubert prided himself on having none of. Far better to love a pitiless man, than to be seen as lesser, lower, coddled, after giving his very soul to their cause.

Hubert walked to the bookshelf and fetched the appropriate register. He dropped it on the desk between them with a damning thud.

“They have always been available for your perusal,” Hubert said when Ferdinand did not reach for the book, his tone clipped yet careful. He had not yet deciphered the precise direction of their conversation, which meant Ferdinand should push his advantage. If only he had one.

“And how was I to know that?” Ferdinand hedged towards annoyance. That was safe, was it not? Old hat between them, really.

“By running your fool mouth and questioning every little thing I do, per usual.”

Never mind. If Ferdinand answered that, he would have to fling all niceties out the window. Not yet. The facts first. He shuffled around the desk and slid into the chair, avoiding Hubert only by virtue of pretending he was not standing there at all.

The book of accounts had no dust on the edges, and Ferdinand recognized the tight, elegantly practical penmanship. He paused on the table of contents to skim the numbered inventory and sales listings, as expected, but also a chronology of inflows and outflows, of investments, of. Beneficiaries. Twenty-three indented tabs at the back of the book: Knave, Buttercup—

“Ah,” Hubert said, and Ferdinand slammed the book shut.

What a baffling world, to have such righteous, vicious anger in him, yet no one he truly wanted to direct it against. It had become so much simpler to think of Aegir’s loss as a circumstance, faceless politics at best, a chapter in his father’s life and not his own. Focus on the rot in the tree and sharpen the axe, rather than grieve the old grove, the trees that sheltered him as a child. Ignore the jibes and laughter about pups brought to heel.

Hubert’s hand brushed faintly at his shoulder, a sparrow uncertain of its welcome.

“You told me only a butcher would take them,” Ferdinand managed at last. Every word putrid on his tongue with its weakness.

The hand pulled away. Then, before Ferdinand’s held breath could ache in his lungs, Hubert hauled a second chair to the opposite side of the desk. All that was missing was the tea.

“Ferdinand.”

His eyes drifted up to that tired smirk.

“I did say something like that, didn’t I.” Hubert raised a brow, and maybe Ferdinand was supposed to read that as, you know me better than that now, and maybe that made his heartbeat canter wild, but it was still better than an apology, or a brush-off, or silence.

“You did,” Ferdinand agreed, wishing they did have their drinks of choice if only so he would have something to do with his hands. He pressed his fingers to the underside of the desk and traced the rough whorls of the wood. Polished on the surface alone, how fitting. “And it…troubled me for a long time, until I came to understand you better. You are never cruel for cruelty’s sake. Only because it is necessary, or deserved, or because the threat of it proves expedient. Logical, even when driven to extremes. I can accept that even if I do not partake in your particular methodology.”

If only Ferdinand had known a few weeks ago that all it took to make Hubert look at him was a bit of waxing on about the ethics of torture and blackmail. He frowned and searched Ferdinand like he had the box of meat pies, vaguely horrified as he weighed his options. “I do not require your acceptance, Ferdinand,” he settled on at last, an unappetizing delicacy.

The words sat poorly on the desk between them.

“Well, you have it,” Ferdinand forged on breezily, “And regardless. Your disposal of my stables was not something you needed to be excused for. The logic was simple. It was not necessary, and it was not expedient, and so I must have done something in your mind to deserve it, traitor-born that I am.”

In the space of a breath, Hubert halved the distance between them, one hand braced on the desk while the other tensed as if to cast, as if to drag the words back through Ferdinand’s teeth. A little staging, a little orchestral accompaniment, and it would rival every dastardly villain’s monologue of Ferdinand’s experience, the house lights dimming as the world narrowed down to only Hubert, seething with electric intensity, and the smiling fool within arm’s reach.

Hubert said, “It was not deserved.”

He laughed, tight. “Careful, Hubert. That almost sounded like an apology.”

“Merely acknowledgment of your logical fallacy.” Hubert raised three fingers, then lowered the last two in turn. “Not necessary. Not deserved. What remains is the expedient option. That you refused to bow to the threat does not change its intent.”

This was not a conversation worthy of its words.

“Do not demean me by pretending—”

“You bared your throat,” Hubert spat, and, oh. So he did remember. “A little sheep bleating its own name and begging for slaughter. To leave it at a few harsh words was a gift.”

Ferdinand gestured to the ledgers. "And this? Diabolic preparation for this very moment, I suppose? Proof of how me and mine only draw breath by virtue of your gift?”

How bitterly unsurprising would it be for Hubert to push out of his chair, stalk those last few feet to his prey, and bend down to ask if Ferdinand was begging for it even now, for his life or for the butcher’s knife, that ominous miasma choking its way down Ferdinand’s throat with every forced breath. It would be a relief, even. To know it true.

But Hubert only leaned back in his chair and folded both hands against his knee. “And there’s the crux. It’s an unbearable affront to the Prime Minister’s pride for anyone to have such power over him. We should count our blessings you have no unsavory secrets behind that noxiously honest facade, or you’d sustain the blackmail industry by your own asinine devices.”

“You have power over me with or without the horses,” Ferdinand reminded him, low and warning. “That, uh, that is to say, you have power over everyone, considering your reach and many…skills.”

Hubert’s ears pinked at the declaration, which was absolutely a point in Ferdinand’s favor. Good. They could both be terribly off-kilter in this damn mess.

“So no. That is not the issue. What is an affront to my pride, Hubert, is that no matter how thankful I am that my horses have lived their years, they were still condemned because of me. They were still spared only because I made a sufficiently pitiful fool of myself. And nothing has changed! What good is a man who cannot protect a single charge under his care?!”

Perhaps he should have planned this discussion for another day, another week, after they’d settled comfortably back into routine, because apparently Ferdinand’s fool mouth had six forlorn weeks of words stockpiled and ready to burst free. He’d started off with a proper statesman’s gravitas, but. Well.

Saints be praised that Hubert honed in on something other than that whiny drivel at the end. “It wasn’t pity,” he said carefully, enunciating each word as if speaking to a sleep-addled child.

Ferdinand rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, another emotion you have no experience of.”

Displeasure twisted Hubert’s already dour expression, twitching at the corner of his lip as though a host of maggots squirmed in his mouth that he would allow no one to see. “If it was pity, I would have used my own funds. I used the estate.”

“You executed the estate?” Now that was an image. However would the Empire find a noose large enough for the bloated corpse? “We both know I have no claim to it.”

Strangely, that gave Hubert pause. A question lurked in the speculative tilt of his head, the same tense contemplation as when he traced his mental map of inheritance ties or calculated the angles of a particularly complex sigil. “The Aegir estate is held in trust for the Empire. I used your estate.”

Hubert’s ears were burning now, as though he’d run the length of the palace to confess his darkest emotions to the milkmaid before she eloped with—Ferdinand’s thoughts stalled out on that nonsense, but still could not grind their way back to function. Hubert’s ears were red, and Ferdinand did not have an estate, and if he didn’t manage to shut his mouth shortly, someone might swoop by to ply him with more charbroiled fish pies. Which was, clearly, why his stomach continued to practice its somersaults with no concern for the seriousness of the matter at hand.

“You still don’t understand,” Hubert sighed. “The concept is simple. When a fretful imbecile fritters away his funds on bribes and ponies—”

Ferdinand slapped his palms onto the desk, red-faced and sputtering. “Bribes?” His final visit to Aegir consisted of little more than selling off his few worldly possessions and splitting the funds between horses and household. “Those were wages! To my staff!”

“Bribes to my staff, which would have gone very, very poorly if anyone found out the deposed heir to Aegir was tossing coin at imperial spies.”

An understatement by far.

“…Granted. But that was not enough to provide for thirty horses for six years.”

“You rarely drew your General’s wages,” Hubert explained in a tone that clearly ended in, you stuck-up git.

“Perhaps if the quartermaster had not seen fit to snarl when I so much as requested a new pauldron—”

“And now you never draw your Ministerial wages—”

“They are—excessive! And if I had such exorbitant funds sitting around, Mother would jump at the chance for a pension, and I am not about to deal with that in the first year of my career. I must draw a clear line between my father’s administration and my own, and seeing as he was known for his avarice above all—”

“And voila. An estate. Your own coin, earned with your own sweat and blood, spent on your own herd. Does that suffice?”

“No. I would like to hear quite a bit more about you hoarding my money into trust funds for my ponies, actually. Frankly it sounds barely legal—”

“The ledgers remain available for your study.”

“I am not speaking of accounts!” Ferdinand’s voice tore from him in sudden agony, shock and fury trembling in his hands. He stared down at them in silence. A child’s tantrum. How dignified. When he could not will the nerves away, quiet the hum of vinegar boiling in his gut, he pushed away from the desk.

The chair caught on the plush carpeting and plummeted backwards in a clatter.

Hubert said nothing.

Shoulders stiff, lungs frozen, Ferdinand bent to put the chair to rights. He picked up the ledger and returned it to the shelf. He stared at the blank spines of Hubert’s most mundane records, running a hand through his hair and knotting his fingers into the waves.

And still, Hubert said nothing. Ferdinand could feel the weight of that attention he’d so longed for, how it lay like a solid touch at the nape of his neck, reassuring and warm through the layers of his collar.

Patience had always been a weapon in Hubert’s arsenal, but this particular blend was crafted for Ferdinand alone. Hubert baited, he provoked, he tricked and tempted and tempered all of Ferdinand’s thoughts through their ceaseless debate, and he seized on every unpolished word that slipped from the Prime Minister’s mouth to dare him to better. But he had learned to read the fine line between the Ferdinand with fifty ideas buzzing free of a fruitful mind, and the Ferdinand who tripped over the clutter of his own brain, working himself into a lather without anyone’s assistance. The former was profitable, the latter useless. And at the war table, when the latter showed its sleep-deprived, battle-grim face, Hubert had clicked his jaw shut and simply. Waited.

As if whatever Ferdinand suggested was worth waiting for. Valued.

“Why?” Ferdinand asked at last, to the bookshelf. “What did you gain from it? You always have some goal in mind, plans upon plans… Did Edelgard command it, so you have no truth to share? Did Dorothea scream you deaf for your sins against team harmony? Was it leverage should I ever abandon my post, or did you feed on the irony of my unknowing sorrow, or did it simply please you to hold my, my heart in your hands, or—”

“What did you gain when you gave me Tisiphone?”

And Hubert’s voice was so…Ferdinand could scarcely think the word soft, but there it was, and he turned to see if Hubert would speak such a way again, if he could watch those thin lips spin kindness. A trap, likely. But.

It took him a moment to even recognize the question, let alone understand all it implied. There’s the crux, as Hubert gloated with one mask and slipped on another for that pristine smirk and wondered, himself, if Ferdinand could tell the difference, if Ferdinand treated him with the good faith he offered the entire world, or if Ferdinand had singled him out despite all their bad blood because he…

It changed everything.

“She suited you best,” Ferdinand answered quietly.

It was the truth. He’d had no finer feelings for Hubert at the time, could never see himself falling head over hooves for some grizzled butcher, and still he’d found his heart lighter every time they went for a ride, every time Hubert saddled up that sweet lady and admitted she maybe, possibly, had earned a carrot for her work. Ferdinand could picture no one else as her rider.

Hubert cleared his throat. “Perhaps it did not suit for the…household, as it were, of the Empire’s foremost knight to suffer.”

With a hum—precisely chosen, as Hubert had once snarled that it sounded like an empty-headed child daydreaming their way smack into a door—Ferdinand advanced on Hubert’s position, bracing his hands on the arms of the chair so he could lean down with a smile as coveted as spring. “That sounds suspiciously like ‘the horses were innocent and I am not a monster.’”

“Have you entirely lost your wits in my absence?” Hubert growled, bristling at the new vantage point. He did nothing to change it.

“I have not, so I still do not believe you.” Ferdinand dared another few inches closer. “Tell me your Aegir spies were set to rebel. Tell me a gesture of goodwill saved your skin.”

Hubert’s brows furrowed so deeply that Ferdinand reached out to smooth down the lines, and he ducked his head with a smile when Hubert jerked away. Tell me another pretty lie, right here, to my face, Ferdinand promised the precise stitches of Hubert’s shoulder seam, and I will let you keep it.

“I miscalculated,” Hubert grit out, as if it cost him more than Ferdinand was worth. “And I corrected the error.”

But there was shame there too, unmistakable despite its rarity. Ferdinand had heard it only twice in their acquaintance. First at the monastery, when Edelgard fashioned a peerless excuse to relieve him of sky watch duties and he forced himself to turn up anyway, wound so tight he gave even the poor wyvern an attack of nerves. Second at a hastily dismissed Council meeting, where he’d legitimately snored during the Trade Minister’s proposal, who thankfully took it as a carefully crafted insult and not the result of a senior minister working himself through four straight all-nighters.

To be precise, it was the surly tone Hubert took when he’d been caught out by Edelgard and reacted by over-correcting his perceived failure.

“Aha!” Ferdinand pulled away to perch on the desk, all his storm clouds breaking for a giddy sun. He did not swing his legs, but if his knees knocked against Hubert’s, it was certainly due to the proximity alone. “It was guilt! You disobeyed an order!”

“I did no such—”

“The snarling lapdog went off leash—”

Hubert cleared anything approximating a snarl from his face.

“Her Majesty told you to play nice and you botched the job entirely!”

Truly, Ferdinand could not have been happier. An actually satisfying conclusion! It wrapped up Hubert’s sullen distrust, Edelgard’s early mixed messages of friendship, and Ferdinand’s propensity for receiving high-class warhorses — not favoritism so much as recompense. He could live with that.

“I would not use those words,” Hubert answered stiffly, as if his displeasure alone could slow the dawn’s rising.

“Then what words would you choose?”

None, for Hubert stood and regained his natural superiority of height. Weeks since Ferdinand had been properly loomed over—refreshing, really. He smiled and waited.

“Are you satisfied yet? May I get back to the considerable pile of critical work sitting on my desk?” Gloved fingers flicked towards the stack of paperwork under Ferdinand’s smug bottom.

Riding gloves, Ferdinand realized, and giddy relief flooded him in crashing wave. Hubert had not gone by his room to fetch spares. He had not touched any of that critical work, or he would have detailed the precise severity of each matter of state to hammer home his point. He had not made himself a pot of coffee, and had certainly not called for one, since no one had disturbed them. Ferdinand had flashed a hint of hurt, and Hubert beelined straight to their meeting.

“Please. The critical work is not on your desk, and were it genuinely critical, you would not be here.” Ferdinand crossed his arms, bordering on gloating now. He quite enjoyed being an interrogator with fruits so delectably tart. “We have established that you are cruel and that you would escape your very skin to right a wrong done to Edelgard’s cause.”

“Astonishing discoveries.”

“But not why you kept up the charade another five years! Hubert.”

Their knees knocked again as Hubert sighed and leaned forward, investigating a freckle at the corner of Ferdinand’s eye with greater fervor than it could possibly deserve. “If I must put it into words, my dear Prime Minister, it would be these: administering to the Imperial Household entails more than you will ever realize.”

Could it entail this? Ferdinand thought wildly, fingers gone rigid on the edge of the desk, for they were so very, very close now. He had only to turn his head, so he did, and Hubert raised an eyebrow, and.

“Actually,” Ferdinand blurted, “In that case I have wonderful news. The Imperial Household expanded in your absence. Lady Mocha von Hresvelg, I believe you met her earlier? The one with the bow…? There is no question that she embodies the nobility of her stock—why, we have already begun to house train her! Her Highness dotes on her at every turn, to separate them would be an absolute cruelty—neither necessary nor deserved nor expedient, you see?”

Red truly suited Hubert’s cheeks, though he got only a glimpse of rage-burnt skin as the man bent to Ferdinand’s ear to murmur a not-quite-lover’s promise.

“If that loathsome beast shits on my carpets, I will separate you bone by exquisite bone and boil you into glue myself.”

Dear Ferdinand,

This is my last letter before Almyra so I have to be quick, but this is important.

Remember when everyone was camped at Airmid for forever and Dorothea put together a mini opera to keep everyone motivated and you demanded to perform so she dressed you up but wouldn’t let you sing and you complained for so long about it that Hubert went away to poison someone just to get away from you? So he missed the opera? Remember that?

Youuuu should wear that outfit again.

Just some friendly advice!!! Can’t wait to get home and see you!!!

(BUT NOT IN THAT OUTFIT OBVIOUSLY.)

Love,

Bernadetta

Like any gardener, Bernadetta had not taken her leave without planting seeds.

“It’s a little funny,” she’d whispered, smile pressed against Hubert’s chest when she squeezed him as tight as she could in farewell. “Even Edelgard laughed in her letter when I told her, but…I’m really excited to go home after this, too. Because she’s there, and Ferdie’s there, and Byleth’s there, and…if we’re all living there together, in one big house, doesn’t that make all of us the household you’re taking care of?”

No knife had ever slid so cleanly between his ribs.

The long route home: Daphnel, Airmid, Varley, each whisper of miasma, each snap of bone another stitch across the open wound, suturing himself back into working order. Yes, his letters reassured. A restful vacation. How lovely, how relaxing he had found Derdriu and all her painted streets.

Days later, the bruises of it ached most of all—even Edelgard laughed—and he prodded at the edges with a furious curiosity. Strictly speaking, there were two working definitions of the imperial household: first, the Emperor and her legal family; second, the working staff of the entire palace complex. No one would argue that the former outweighed the latter. Though Her Majesty and Byleth shared no legal bonds as yet, his duty clearly encompassed the woman’s general wellbeing, and besides, her peerless tactical value and minimalistic lifestyle made it no great struggle to cater to his old Professor’s occasional whims.

It should have stopped there. Vet the consort (and oh, how he had vetted that consort), record the new household total as Two, perhaps brood a bit over the inevitable onslaught of change. Continue to serve.

His loyalty had always made such anxieties meaningless. There were no totals, no numbers to change. Only the singularity of Lady Edelgard. And if he vetted each and every one of her Strike Force with sharper malevolence than required, held the knife to soft necks and dared their treachery, found them instead worthy and stalwart and devoted to Edelgard in such new and charming ways—mending her cape, bagging pheasant for her favorite meal, crafting songs of her grandeur only to make her blush and smile, calling such things friendship instead of the miracles they were—then it was only natural for him to extend his talents towards preserving those unforeseen gifts.

That did not explain orchestrating Bernadetta’s travels around the continent or the ledgers he kept for Varley in her stead. It did not explain Petra’s access to select portions of his southern spy ring or Linhardt’s newly bestowed ability to draw on House Vestra funds should he ever find a book well beyond a wanderer’s purse. And not a word of it explained why he had once pulled an infuriating cavalier’s personal accounts onto his plate and snarled the moment anyone suggested it wasn’t his right.

If Ferdinand left loose threads, it was Hubert’s job to tidy them.

And Edelgard laughed. Of course she did. In a kinder world, the household would encompass eleven families—against all odds, the Black Eagles had managed far more than that, with teachers and comrades and a fresh crop of ministers for the Empire’s new age. Hubert was not made for such a world with so many valued lives underfoot, and Edelgard knew it, and laughed soft, and loved softer, and dragged him into it careless of the damage, a starstruck pony on a blood-slick lead.

At least Bernadetta knew, he supposed. Hubert would never have to define it for her, never spell out the arrangement in excruciating interpersonal detail while grasping for the proper words, each of them panicked to end the conversation with haste. Byleth had either discerned it long ago or couldn’t be bothered to care, both of which were preferable to. Ferdinand.

Ferdinand, who required full explanation of every triviality, always pushing for greater detail to ensure he missed nothing of use. Ferdinand, who’d been batting his eyes and dropping honeyed hints ever since the end of the war, tittering like a loon every time their hands so much as brushed, leaning into Hubert’s space only to bolt at first blush. Ferdinand, who could not even see the manifest necessity of Hubert handling his affairs if he could not be bothered to do it himself.

Ferdinand, who had never accepted rooms in the palace, flitting between duties like Dorothea’s industrious bees, fully invested yet somehow ephemeral, as though part of him still tarried in the waiting parlor, ready to put on his precisely tailored coat and be on his way.

No wonder Edelgard dithered with blossoms and blooms; she could not lay roots in him. He was no sibling and no consort, and their world had no other options.

Offering him the dukedom was the only card left to play, and Ferdinand had thrown it back in their face. And yet it meant he chose Enbarr, he chose their Cabinet, he chose them. How could Hubert ever regret tearing Aegir from his grubby, entitled little fingertips when this was the result?

A dangerous precedent. What more need he take for Ferdinand to understand there was nowhere but Enbarr, that no other life would offer him the slightest challenge or glory?

How fortunate that Ferdinand already knew his place.

But still that whisper, furious and achingly naive: Did it simply please you to hold my heart in your hands?

As if he would ever leave such treasures on display, even in a world purged of all greed save his own. Better to hoard it, to ransom its master’s life and service, to secret it away for study until he could learn how all those bloody arteries spit limitless gold.

So he did not, would not hold it.

Ferdinand’s heart was his own, no matter his poetics. He held it on offer every time their eyes met across the debate floor, across the coffee table, hunched over aside one another in the library, in the stables, in the hallways and gardens and parlors. He would declare it to the whole of Enbarr if it would do any good, if it would make Hubert finally pluck the syrupy, grisly mess of it from his hands.

And every day he found disappointment, and every day he tried again, buoyed by that grand romance of his own imagination, as Hubert knit shut the optimist’s wound with careful hands, ordered his tea and his cakes and his dinners, intercepted the worst of the baseless criticism and encouraged its direction elsewhere, declined inopportune marriage contracts, rearranged seating plans for optimal conversation at state dinners, shifted investments and earnings and preserved the Prime Minister’s due.

Or does it simply please you to have my throat beneath your knife?

The reflection off of Ferdinand’s gauntlets as he gripped his spear, his axe—and a throat was such a fragile thing in the end, Hubert knew. But Ferdinand only ever offered, again and again, because the storybook noble never learned how to take.

It was the kind of contradiction Ferdinand would love to contend with, if only he knew the stakes. Selfless, and he slipped within the boundaries of the Imperial Household unremarked, a bastion of support regardless of his overbearing advice. Selfish, and he could rip that toxic rot from Hubert’s chest, if he truly wanted it so badly.

Hubert had never been particularly fond of middle roads. The former path suited their Prime Minister, and there was no need to complicate it, despite Lady Edelgard’s weary frowns, despite the unsigned scraps that accompanied every diplomatic packet from Brigid—Hubie, don’t be a fucking coward—despite even Bernadetta’s quiet, beguiling traps, no matter how clever.

And she had been very, very clever indeed.

Her final gift slipped his mind entirely. It was not until Hubert unpacked the box of silk flowers that he remembered the second offering, tucked neatly between the sheaf of papers outlining the conference’s moronic conclusions. He freed it from its backing so it could be framed before presentation to the Emperor, and.

Well.

Pride struck him first. Such an expertly executed trap from his most unassuming pupil, to give him three absurd options and let him choke on his own pride. Whether he delivered it to Edelgard (impossible), consigned Bernadetta’s handmade art to the fire (impossible), or retained the item himself, he would still lose the round.

It’s meant to be a little silly, she’d said.

A wholly inadequate description of the watercolor painting in Hubert’s hands. Edelgard may have requested informal portraits of their former classmates, now scattered to the four corners of Fodlan and trying to drag themselves further still, but she certainly hadn’t requested this.

Ferdinand as a fairy king, bedecked in full operatic radiance, ivy threaded through his hair as he leaned against his gilded lance with all the grandeur of a conquering god. Daring any challenge to his honor, beauty, or divine dignity, a surety unmatched even as he stood half-clothed in a tunic hanging from one shoulder, his torso scarred and all too tan, musculature not at all obscured by the loose drapery. A god of the harvest, smiling as his willing sacrifices offered their soft necks, his lips meant only for the darkest reds of blood and wine. A god of liberation, too proud to transgress boundaries when he could simply shatter them.

A god of utter madness.

Under no circumstances would it ever sit in Edelgard’s office.

Chapter Text

Another man would consider it lowering, menial work for the Prime Minister himself to be sent forth to scout the southeastern coast after a recent storm swept the area, but after two months holed up in Enbarr with no chance to escape further than the opera house, Ferdinand rejoiced in the fresh air. It was an even trade after Hubert’s adventures in the north, and he felt no guilt at abandoning the man to face his paperwork mountains alone.

Truly alone, for he’d sent his chief aide to accompany Ferdinand and carry out a task of her own. A rising star of the masonry profession in Boramas needed to be bribed north for the reconstruction, or some such. Ferdinand would only accompany her as far as Inverné, a small port south of the ravine, where they would spend the night and then part ways as he raced back to speak at the ribbon-cutting ceremony of Manuela’s Ministry of Education.

If only the company were better.

Fleche had turned into such a serious, sullen girl since joining Hubert’s staff — she would not even properly introduce Ferdinand to her horse! How was he to strike up a friendship if he did not even know the sweet chestnut’s name? She listened to him with a complacent smile, nodding along to his stories and observations without offering anything of her own, eyes ever sparkling, and Ferdinand felt, well, on display. As if Hubert wanted to train a new keeper for his prized peacock, renting Ferdinand out as a challenging case study for his minion’s edification.

Worse still, despite all his requests to the contrary, she would not stop calling him sir.

“Your map is wrong,” Ferdinand declared as he crested the hill, frowning down at the sprawling fields and vineyards stretched below. No glimpse of the sea shimmered in the distance. “This is no shortcut to Inverné.”

Fleche raised an eyebrow at him, the most extreme response he’d won thus far. “Our maps are never wrong, sir,” she reminded him. Her horse plodded along without a lick of urgency.

“Then it appears we have been sent on a winery tour.” He stared at her meaningfully.

She stared right back.

If there was one thing Ferdinand had not missed in Hubert’s absence, it was the sense of juggling three unspoken games inside of a fourth shuffle of encoded cards. Of course he could not have a simple day’s ride in the countryside, that would be asking far too much. No, no, Ferdinand had to be strung along for reasons he would never truly discern—a display of unity between House Aegir and House Bergliez? Would his striking visage dissuade some miscreant from troubling Fleche on her secret duties? Or the reverse—an engineered attack on the Prime Minister’s life to stir up public sentiment. Poisoned arrows! And Fleche would conveniently have the antidote on her person.

They rode into the lush valley in silence. As they approached the farmhouse, Fleche dismounted and passed her reins to Ferdinand. “Water your friends, sir. I’ve an hour’s business with the owner and then we’ll be on our way.”

“I would love to, if only I knew the name of my new friend—”

She waved him off and strolled away. Honestly. It was enough to make a man glad he had no younger siblings.

Ferdinand led the horses around back to a lazy little paddock, tied them off against the fence, and set out in search of a stable hand.

“Hello?” he called at full volume, though only a few drowsy heads turned his way, all of them equine. The work horses enjoyed their well-earned afternoon break, the sort Linhardt daily dreamed of, and not a worker in sight. “Sorry to bother, we are traveling through and I need to partake of your well.”

There was a second enclosure a bit to the east, shaded by a line of elderly maples on one side and the rising hills on the other. When he shielded his eyes against the autumn sun, Ferdinand could make out a helper at the far end of the field, sat on the ground checking a placid mare’s hooves. A brave scrap of a girl, to try such a thing without cross tying the horse. Someone really ought to have words with her. “Miss? Might I bother you for a moment?”

Strangely, the mare raised her head first.

“The both of you will do,” Ferdinand laughed, gesturing them near. He patted down his pockets to see if any treats remained, or if he’d given them all to Chestnut in hopes of winning the newcomer’s favor. Alas, none to be had.

The girl reached him first, outpacing the teetering, tottering old pony by yards upon yards. She stood near as tall as Ferdinand’s shoulders, a beanpole of a child who couldn’t be more than twelve, and her brows peaked in confusion when he gave her a shallow bow.

“You some Lord?” she asked, as if he would have her head for a failed curtsy.

“As noble as you, Miss,” he promised. Ferdinand had used the line on nervous children before, but never had it made his heart feel so light — it was nearly true, now. Truer by the day.

She didn’t seem convinced. “Right. Um. You need something?”

“I would greatly appreciate the chance to borrow you for a moment. My friend and I are passing through, and our mounts are in need of—”

A tawny head poked its way over the girl’s shoulder, splattered with patches of white. Dark, knowing eyes. The mare leaned her whole weight against the handler’s back, as if it had tuckered her out half to death just to cross the field, and she nickered softly in greeting.

“Mister?”

Ferdinand swallowed his heart back into his chest. “Your horse. Her name?”

“You’re funny about horses, aren’t you,” she laughed. “This is Freckle. She’s from up north, just like me. Mister Byron took in all sorts of rescues during the war. He’s real funny about horses too.”

“Oh.”

Ferdinand could manage nothing more. He thought he was, probably, crying. The girl was very kind not to mention it.

“Um,” she tried again after a little while, shifting her weight so Freckle could lean close enough to sniff at Ferdinand’s wet face. “She likes it when you sing to her. Maybe you could watch her while I go check on your horses?”

“You sing to her?” he echoed faintly.

“All the time. She comes running for it! Well, best she can anyway.”

“Thank you. I. I cannot express. How thankful.” Ferdinand raked a hand through his hair, forgetting his braid and pins and messing it all to hell. Saints, he must look an absolute madman, for the girl went wide-eyed with alarm and ducked free of Freckle’s forceful hug, taking off at a jog to take care of the strange nebulously-noble-man’s horses.

At least it meant nobody heard when he whispered, “Hello, sweetheart,” when his voice cracked all the way through the first stanzas of Orlando’s opening aria and he had to sit on the fence because his legs swayed beneath him.

Ferdinand pressed his forehead to Freckle’s, hands holding up the beloved head she let rest in his trusted palms.

“And my heart began to glow, consumed by soft flames, as flakes of falling snow are melted in the sun’s rays.”

He could feel eyes on him at a distance—Fleche, watching from the back porch of the farmhouse, guarding his back even in this sliver of paradise, just as Hubert planned. A day’s scenic ride, playing him for a happy fool, all of it typical, infuriating Hubert. Ferdinand could burst into butterflies, into bloom, into the whole of spring for want of nothing more, nothing but this: a pitiless man who could not name kindness and allowed it to flourish all the same.

“If your heart ever tells you that I’d forget you, tell it that it lies to you. Your constant heart was formed for love.”