Chapter Text
The doors in the ancient and aging Galatea fortress were thick. Carved from ancient oak and lined with wrought iron frames, every door in the noble family’s home was a strong slab between one room and the next. They needed to be forged from the toughest materials to stand up to the ice and blizzards that ravaged Faerghus’s highest peaks for nine months out of the year.
Oak and iron were her shield. Keeping herself locked in and the world locked out. The world where everyone else kept on living. Where her mother and her father and her brothers kept going with their lives in the face of unspeakable tragedy.
For weeks, their voices were nothing more than a thin fog, knocking on that barrier of hardwood.
For weeks, Ingrid did not answer. She kept her curtains drawn closed, cutting herself off from any sense of light.
In the depths of her sorrow, and the fog of voices all begging for her to come out, there was only one that asked something different of her.
“Ingrid?”
Her eyes slowly moved from the ceiling, which she had been staring blankly at for hours, and found the wrought-iron frame of that heavy door. She knew the voice which broke through the haze. She wondered if her parents had brought Sylvain to visit in some hope of drawing her out.
“Ing... I know you don’t want to come out,” he conceded, his voice muffled and distant. “But can I come in?”
Maybe it was because he was the first person who asked to come into her conclave of mourning, or maybe it was because Sylvain had known Glenn too. Whatever it was that pulled her up from her bed, Ingrid found her hand reaching out and pulling back her heavy shield just a crack. Enough for him to slip inside before he helped her close it again.
“Ingrid...” Sylvain’s voice wasn’t muffled anymore and she winced slightly at how loud he suddenly sounded. How long had she been listening to people through that door?
“Can I light a candle?” he asked, rather than trying to pull back her curtains. Ingrid only nodded in reply. She could barely see his face in the thick darkness she had surrounded herself with. But somehow, Sylvain managed to find a match and a candlestick, both left abandoned on her bureau.
When the tiny flame flickered to life, she heard Sylvain hold his breath. He was trying not to gasp at her. Did she look so pathetic? Ingrid knew she must. She hadn’t bathed or eaten. Only wept and slept and tried to convince herself that none of it was real.
That the king and queen were still alive. That any moment now, Glenn would knock on her door and call her silly for ever doubting him.
“Ing...” Sylvain murmured, his hand finding her shoulder. She tensed beneath his gaze, unable to look him in the face. She knew what was coming. He’d chastise her and try to convince her to come outside. It was why her parents had brought him here, wasn’t it? Sylvain was the only one of her friends who wasn’t actively mourning as well, there was no one else to even try.
“I... need your help,” he said instead, breaking from the sympathies and platitudes that Ingrid had expected.
“...What?”
“I got myself in some trouble,” he said, his voice hesitant. When Ingrid looks up, she could tell he was observing her. Studying the starving hollows in her cheeks and how grey her eyes had become. “I could use your advice.”
“I don’t know... what I could possibly tell you.”
“That’s ok,” he shrugged and gently led them both to her bed. He sat her down and then perched beside her, pulling out a napkin from his jacket pocket. Inside, he had wrapped two scones from the kitchens. Without asking, he handed her one, and Ingrid stared at the simple piece of food in her hands.
She had no appetite. Eating felt like a chore. The very idea of it made her flinch in pain.
“So there’s this girl,” Sylvain began, carefully wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “She’s gorgeous, Ing, a real stunner, but... she’s got this older brother, see?”
Ingrid let out a sigh, only halfway listening to the rumble of his voice. But as he continued on, regailing his tale of heartache and woe, Ingrid took a bite of the scone and leaned her head against his shoulder.