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In the still darkness, Glenn could hear his own breathing, hear every beat of his heart as it echoed in his ears, hear the whistle of wind just outside his window. A few raindrops pattered against the glass, signalling the approach of a storm.
Glenn didn’t care much for storms, but he hoped this one continued well into the morning. Storms often made the roads out of Fraldarius territory too difficult to be navigated...
He lay awake in the darkness, staring at the ceiling and feeling the silence seep into his bones and make him want to crawl out of his own skin. He only resisted the urge to get up and pace because everything would be ruined if someone came to check on him or he attracted some kind of attention...
The silence was so complete that he heard the gentle creaking of the floorboards outside of his door. Immediately, he rolled over onto his side and pulled his blankets up to his chin, squeezing his eyes shit and forcing his breathing to slow to give the impression that he was asleep...
The hinge of his door gave a lazy creeeaaaaak as it was opened slowly, and a click as it was shut again. Soft, careful footsteps crossed the threshold of his room, and Glenn forced himself to keep his eyes closed, keep himself facing the wall...
His bed dipped as someone climbed in on the other side, sliding in under his blanket with him.
“Glenn? Did you fall asleep...?”
The voice was so soft— Glenn wasn’t sure he could even really call it a whisper, because he was sure if it hadn’t been for his ears adjusting to the heavy silence he never would have heard it... But he recognized it anyway, and his heart skipped a beat in spite of itself.
“Miklan...”
In return, he breathed the name more than said it as he rolled over so he was facing the source of the voice instead of facing the wall.
With the rain clouds outside obscuring the biggest sources of light, Glenn was seeing in shades of grey more than colour, but he swore even in the darkness he could see the distinctive shade of red hair, and the warm brown of his eyes...
“Duh. Who else was it going to be?”
Glenn huffed out a laugh. “I thought it might be one of the servants...”
“Everyone’s in bed for the night. I made sure.”
As they were speaking, Miklan shifted closer to him. It wasn’t a small bed, but he moved so they were lying so closely together they could have fit on a single cot...
Glenn shifted so their legs were tangled together, and the feeling of Miklan’s strong, rough hand roaming up his body before it landed on his waist made Glenn shiver. Temperature had nothing to do with it.
“Miklan...”
“That’s my name.”
Though his eyes were as adjusted to the darkness as they could get, he was still seeing in shapes and shades... And yet Miklan’s smile, even though it was just a dark smudge on the lighter smudge that was his face, was enough to make his heart skip several beats.
Maybe it was the memory of the smile more than anything else... Because he knew it so well, and knew that Miklan never showed it to anyone but him.
“Miklan.”
“Yeah?”
“Nothing.” Glenn chuckled. It almost echoed in the silence, and his breath stuttered. He knew he wasn’t being loud enough to be heard, but he was so nervous that someone might... “I just like saying your name.”
“Mm. Say it as much as you’d like.”
There was something in his voice that was deliberately seductive, and even though the implication made another shiver go up and down his spine, the actual delivery made Glenn snort out another laugh.
Miklan could be seductive. Glenn would be the first to say that. But when he actually tried to be? Well, it was...
Sylvain’s better at flirting and he’s still just a little kid, Glenn thought, but didn’t say out loud.
He had a feeling Miklan was trying to sound ridiculous, anyway, based on the way he laughed in turn when Glenn did. And oh boy, the ‘say my name’ line had been kind of a flop, but the way Miklan’s breath ghosted across his face from how close together they were whenever he laughed?
That might actually do it...
But, no. It was the dead of night and Miklan had said everyone was asleep, but Glenn couldn’t trust it. They were in his bedroom and too much noise would almost certainly summon a servant, and he had absolutely no way of explaining why Miklan was in his bed...
They had done riskier things in riskier places, but not by much, he was sure of that.
Besides, thinking about such things... Almost seemed, hm, too vulgar considering the circumstances. After all, Miklan was going home in the morning, and Glenn had no idea when he would see him next...
“Glenn?”
Miklan might have enjoyed hearing Glenn say his name, but Glenn couldn’t imagine he enjoyed it half as much as hearing his name out of Miklan, whispered into the darkness, hushed and soft and questioning...
“I was thinking,” he said back just as softly, so Miklan wouldn’t think he’d fallen asleep.
“’Bout what?”
Miklan shifted, making the bed creak, so he was propped up on one elbow. He was practically looming over Glenn. Of course, since Miklan had hit his first growth spurt and seemed to be putting on muscle like he would die otherwise, Glenn was used to Miklan looming over him... And he had to admit he quite enjoyed it.
Miklan was looking down at him. A sudden flash of lightning lit up the room, making Glenn let out a little gasp— not out of fear (he’d never been afraid of thunderstorms, only found them inconvenient, if anything) but because he could see those big, warm, brown eyes that he’d been imagining earlier staring down at him from above, and in the strange comfortable darkness it was almost too much...
“About how I don’t want you to go home tomorrow,” he gasped, finding his breath suddenly stolen away. “About how I don’t want you to leave at all.”
There were few things that Glenn Fraldarius had ever felt completely sure about in his life, for good or ill. One, that his father had his life planned out completely for him, in the image of a perfect son and heir to House Fraldarius, wanting for (almost) nothing but with little choice in the matter.
Two, that he was completely, utterly, hopelessly in love with Miklan Anschutz Gautier.
They had known each other forever, which was only natural. Their fathers were both prominent nobles of the Kingdom, their territories were close to each other, and they were near enough the same age. Glenn had always gotten the impression that his father didn’t care much for Margrave Gautier, but one’s options were limited as a noble.
Like their younger brothers to follow, they had become fast friends. They played together, trained together, talked about the futures they wanted as if Glenn’s entire future hadn’t already been decided for him and as if Miklan’s didn’t hang precariously in the balance, based on an unloving father’s whim.
“Maybe we should just run off and become mercenaries or something,” Miklan said one day, when they were lying in the grass together and staring at the sky, training weapons discarded carelessly in the dirt and bodies stinging and throbbing where they had whaled on each other with what were basically sticks for what felt like hours. “Bet that would show our dads, huh?”
Glenn had never liked the sound of anything more in his life.
He was ten years old when he first pushed Miklan back against a tree, hands fisted in his shirt, and kissed him. He didn’t know what he was doing, or why he wanted to do it so badly, or why his entire body felt like warm jelly when Miklan put his hands on his shoulders and kissed him back.
That was before he got embarrassed, stomped on Miklan’s foot, and ran away to hide in his room until his father told him the Margrave and his sons had left. His father thought they’d had a fight.
Miklan would never let him live that one down.
Glenn Fraldarius was fifteen years old now, and more in love with Miklan Anschutz Gautier than he had ever been.
After the flash of the lightning faded, the room went back to being pitch black, and his eyes were no longer adjusted. But he didn’t need to see to know Miklan was frowning, and that there would be a little divot between his furrowed eyebrows that Glenn found adorable even when it meant Miklan was troubled.
“I know,” Miklan whispered back. Glenn heard the scrape of fabric on fabric, felt the shifting of the bed as Miklan moved so he could reach up his one hand and cup Glenn’s face, thumb running over his cheekbone.
Glenn shuddered and turned his head into the touch, kissing the palm of Miklan’s hand. He heard Miklan suck a breath in through his teeth that made his heart flutter.
“I know,” Miklan repeated, taking his hand away but lowering himself back to the bed so they were face to face, close enough that the tip of Miklan’s nose brushed against his own. He reached out in the darkness for Miklan’s hand, lacing their fingers together. “I don’t want to go.”
Glenn knew that, too. What did Miklan have to go home to? A father who hated him and saw him as a burden and only kept him around to avoid the scandal of turning his own son out on the street; a mother who had never really seemed to care about anything but her own comfort, least of all her children...
“I could stay,” Miklan said, and Glenn’s heart fluttered and fell at the same time. Because he wanted nothing more, but he also knew it would never happen.
“You’re not going to leave Sylvain.”
Goddess, did he want Miklan to stay. But leaving his little brother in the Margrave’s hands? Glenn knew Miklan would never do that. He would never ask him to do that.
Frustrating, that the things he loved most about Miklan were the same things that meant he had to be apart from him...
Silence fell between them. It wasn’t the comforting blanket of companionable silence, or the tension that had surrounded every breath and movement just moments ago, though there was a tension to it. Glenn wondered if he had done something wrong, mentioning Sylvain.
It was common sense not to mention your lover’s kid brother when you were in bed with him, but circumstances being what they were...
The joke fell flat, even in his own mind.
When Miklan shifted, he thought maybe he would get up and leave. It would hurt, but... He would have to get up and leave anyway.
Glenn wanted so damn badly to fall asleep beside him, but how would they explain that to the servants when they came to wake him up in the morning?
But no, Miklan rolled over so more of his body was pressed against Glenn’s. They were both in thin nightshirts, and the frigid air that seemed to seep into the house no matter how well-sealed the windows were crawled over them both, making them shiver.
Miklan’s arm tucked itself in around his waist and Glenn almost let out an utterly undignified noise when Miklan pressed his lips gently, so gently, to the spot just where his jaw and throat met. Quiet, quiet. He had to be quiet...
“I don’t want to go,” Miklan repeated. “I want to be with you.”
Glenn knew what he meant.
Glenn Fraldarius had been betrothed to Ingrid Brandl Galatea since before he even understood what the word ‘betrothed’ meant. By the time he was old enough to be incensed about it, it was simply an accepted part of life.
Glenn was the heir of House Fraldarius. Glenn was going to be a knight. Glenn was going to marry Ingrid and the two of them would have Crest babies, one of each with any luck, to carry on the legacies of both families. Happily ever after.
Glenn wouldn’t wake up every morning to a warm, muscled chest against his back, axe-calloused fingers running along his body, a deep rumbling voice bidding him to stay in bed just a few moments longer until those moments turned to hours...
Glenn had been ten years old when he first started to ask questions that would have been very dangerous if his father hadn’t been an understanding man, if he’d had a father like Miklan’s. Questions about why he had to marry Ingrid, why he couldn’t marry who he wanted like the knights in his stories, who always seemed to marry the person they loved and never seemed to be told they were going to marry someone from the time they were born.
(Those knights in those stories also never seemed to fantasize about marrying their best friends, of course... Except perhaps in the one he found in his father’s private collection about Kyphon and Loog, for which he had been sternly punished for taking without permission just as he got to the part about Kyphon discovering he wanted to kiss Loog...)
Rodrigue had seemed sad when he asked him that. Looking back on it later, Glenn would realize that he probably had some idea of what was going on. But all he’d said then was,
“It’s simply the way things are, Glenn. You’ll understand when you’re older.”
Of course, it didn’t take him long. Not when it was all he could think about. Not when he found himself seeking out stories of love and romance rather than stories of chivalry and adventure, for the first time finding any interest in such things where he would have turned his nose up at them not long ago.
Not when he could find no stories of people like him, where the knight didn’t marry the beautiful princess or the fair maiden at the end, but another knight— or perhaps a dashing mercenary.
He asked his governess once, hiding the true nature of his question behind something more vague, already in part understanding that it wasn’t something he was supposed to ask. And she had said, with hardly more than a blink of an eye,
“Why, dear, because it’s simply not natural.”
Those words struck him somewhere deep inside. Not natural. And though she had said no more and gone back to their lessons, in his head he could fill in the blanks.
It was something wrong.
Glenn didn’t kiss Miklan again after that, not for a long time. Infrequent visits from the Gautier family were filled with the two dancing around the subject, never mentioning what had happened directly. They filled their time instead with training and bragging about their little brothers, both still so young, and what new things they had learned how to do.
Then, seemingly out of the blue, Miklan pushed Glenn back against the back wall of a shed where they were hidden from view of their brothers’ minders in the far distance. He kissed him the way Glenn had kissed him, passionate and unsure, and afterwards Glenn wrapped his arms around him and cried.
Miklan called his governess an idiot and let him.
Glenn’s fingers dug into Miklan’s shoulders, biting back the sounds he wanted to make as Miklan kissed his way up along his jaw. It was slow, deliberate, sensual—and Glenn could feel himself practically shaking apart under it, the tenderness washing over him in a wave that made it very hard to remember where he was and why he wasn’t supposed to be making any noise.
Miklan solved the problem for him when his lips captured Glenn’s own, drawing him into a kiss. It was chaste but deep, like Miklan was trying to steal the breath right out of him.
He probably could. Glenn would probably let him.
The kisses swallowed the noises he made, except the small pants of breath in between each kiss as Miklan pulled away to allow both of them to breathe. The mixture of the sensations and the darkness made Glenn feel dizzy, lightheaded. Maybe Miklan really was stealing his breath, not that he’d ever had to try hard to do that...
Their bodies pressed together with only two thin layers of fabric between them, Glenn could feel Miklan’s body heat warming him better against the stormy chill than any blanket could ever hope to, and he leaned into it and into the feeling of Miklan’s lips on his own. So soft, such a contrast from the rough callouses on both of their hands from hours of gruelling training and the hard angles of Miklan’s jaw, and his nose where it was broken once in an incident Glenn knew better than to bring up...
One sound did almost manage to escape him, and that sound was a surprised yell that Miklan thankfully swallowed up with a deeper kiss as he flipped Glenn fully onto his back and climbed on top of him.
Miklan was taller and broader than he was, leaving Glenn feeling completely enveloped by him, especially as Miklan’s hands found their way into his hair to take his head in his hands...
“Glenn,” Miklan breathed against his lips, and Glenn might have died happy then and there,
except,
“Run away with me.”
When Glenn was seven years old, Miklan told him all about his daring plan to run away from home, take up with a roving band of mercenaries, and become the greatest sellsword who ever lived. Glenn had hated the idea at the time, had hated the idea of Miklan running off and forgetting about him.
When Glenn was eight years old, Miklan stopped talking about running away from home and started talking about the fact that he was a big brother now and that meant he had something to protect. Glenn had been happy, knowing Miklan wouldn’t be going anywhere any time soon.
When Glenn was ten years old, Felix was born, and suddenly being a big brother was all they ever talked about. Their lives revolved around it. Glenn found himself just hoping he could be half the big brother Miklan was, watching him constantly running around after a toddling Sylvain, better than any of his nannies at keeping up with him, while Glenn was still being taught how to properly hold Felix and support his head.
So, the talk about running away stopped for a while. Instead they talked about everything they would do when they grew up, for the sake of their brothers. Glenn knew he was going to grow up to inherit the Fraldarius estate, become a knight like his father in service of the King, and if that had to be his fate then so be it.
If he became the perfect Fraldarius, the man his father wanted him to be, the Kingdom needed him to be, then Felix wouldn’t have to be. He could be whoever he wanted.
Miklan, Crestless, never loved by his parents and now ignored in favour of his brother who would grow up to inherit the Gautier title, wanted the same thing. For Sylvain to grow up without the harsh expectations that Glenn’s family put on him, the ones he never stopped complaining to Miklan about (except when it came to the kiss because, of course, they didn’t talk about that).
“Everything would be better if we could just... Do what we wanted. If Crests and noble blood and stuff like that didn’t matter at all,” Miklan said one day, something he said often enough, in so many different ways, that Glenn had run out of things to say and instead had to just nod.
“Ha.” The way Miklan laughed, sharp and hateful, made Glenn pause. He watched something cold flood his friend, his companion, his first love’s eyes.
“Maybe I shouldn’t be a mercenary,” he said in a cold, so cold voice. “Maybe I should show all these stupid nobles what I really think about them and their fancy things. Maybe I should be a bandit instead.”
“...What?”
He’d heard what Miklan said, of course. It was impossible not to. There were no sounds, at all, besides their breathing, their voices, the soft patter of rain against the window.
In fact, in the deafening silence, it had been almost too loud, though he was speaking no louder than he would in any normal conversation. Before Glenn had processed what he’d said, he’d almost hissed at him to lower his voice instead.
“Run away with me,” Miklan repeated. His fingers were in Glenn’s hair, his strong hands were cupping his jaw, squeezing, almost too tight. “You hate it here. You don’t want any of this. You don’t want to marry some brat your brother’s age or run your family’s stupid estate or any of this. So let’s just... Run. Go off somewhere, anywhere.”
Glenn was glad that he couldn’t see Miklan’s face in the darkness.
“What are you saying, Miklan?” He laughed, but it wasn’t a nice laugh. He wasn’t amused. It was just... The only sound he could think to make that wasn’t choking on his own tongue. “Just... Leave our families behind? Leave Felix and Sylvain? Are you listening to yourself...?”
It wasn’t as though he had never thought about it. He had thought about it dozens of times. Hundreds, even. Thought about just... Giving all of it up and going off somewhere with Miklan, hand in hand, with nothing but what they could carry and their love for each other like they were the subjects of some ancient ballad... Or the lead characters in a cheesy romance story.
But if he wasn’t around to be the perfect Fraldarius, that would mean Felix would have to be. And if Miklan wasn’t around, Sylvain would be left subject to the whims of parents who didn’t care about him, with no one to remind him how loved he was...
“Glenn.”
Miklan’s grip on his head tightened again, bordering on painful.
“You’re a knight now, Glenn,” he said, and for a moment Glenn was confused, like he’d missed a part of the conversation, until he continued with, “Do you know what knights do? They get sent off to fight battles and die. Everything else, we can figure that out later, but I...”
Glenn could feel Miklan’s hands shaking, and his breath shook just as badly as he dropped his head so their foreheads were pressed together. Glenn wanted to kiss him, wanted to tell him it was okay, but he... He felt frozen.
“...I don’t want to lose you, Glenn. Not to a battle, not to Ingrid, not to anything. I just want us to be together even if that means I have to give up everything else.” He snorted, then pulled back... It took a moment for Glenn to realize he was rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand. He was crying. “Pretty selfish, huh?”
“Miklan...”
Glenn was ten years old and kissing Miklan against a tree, sheltered from the watchful eyes of their parents.
Glenn was twelve years old and Miklan was kissing him, telling him that his governess was an idiot for thinking he was anything less than perfect.
Glenn was fifteen years old and so, so in love with his best friend, the love of his life, that he couldn’t...
He couldn’t say no.
“Yes.”
A flash of lightning lit up the room just enough for Glenn to see the look on Miklan’s face— eyes as wide as dinner plates, which would have been funny if not for the fact that he had tears streaming down his face at the same time.
“I... What?”
“Yes, Miklan.” Glenn tried to shimmy out from under Miklan so he could sit up, and Miklan let him, settling back on the bed so he wasn’t lying directly on top of him. “Let’s just... Go. Let’s go together. We’ll figure something out about Sylvain and Felix later, but I...”
He felt his own matching tears rolling down his face.
“I don’t want to lose you either.”
And then Miklan was kissing him.
Glenn threw his arms around Miklan, kissing him again and again and again in a desperate, passionate daze. Miklan was saying such lovely things between each kiss, things like ‘I love you’ and ‘thank you’ and his name over and over, and every worry Glenn had about someone overhearing them had melted away in an instant...
The first audible roll of thunder interrupted them. They broke apart, staring each other in the face even though neither of them could see the other in the darkness...
“Help me pack.”
Miklan made a choking noise in the back of his throat.
“W-what?”
Again, Glenn might have found his speechlessness cute if not for the fact that the only reason he was functioning as well as he was, was because of the adrenaline that came with finally saying yes.
Of finally, finally choosing something for himself, even if he knew that something was selfish...
Glenn squirmed out of bed and fumbled for the nightstand in the darkness, finding a book of matches to light the candle that was kept at his bedside in case he needed to get up in the middle of the night.
He hardly cared if someone walked by and saw the light under his door. He was past that point when he told Miklan he would run away with him.
“You mean... Right now?”
“You’re already packed and ready to go,” Glenn said, and now that he actually got a good look at Miklan’s face in the flickering candlelight, despite the fact that there were tears running down his face that Glenn desperately wanted to kiss away, despite the fact that his emotions were still very much running high, he did find it quite adorable, the way he was staring at him in confusion. “If we take horses, we can be into the next township before morning, and the storm will make it so our fathers can’t send anyone after us until the roads are cleared...”
“Glenn...” Miklan got off his bed, walking over to him where he was pulling open the drawers of his dresser almost manically, pulling out what clothes he thought he’d need. (Only the bare essentials, of course. He would need to pack as light as possible. He would need a good coat, and hardier clothes that could withstand the elements...) “Glenn, look at me.”
That was something he never had any trouble with.
“We... don’t have to do this right now. You know that, right? And you also know how crazy it is for us to leave in the middle of a thunderstorm?”
Well. Except when he said things like that. Then, Glenn had trouble looking at him.
“I know, I just...” He inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly. “I want to do this before, before...”
“...before you change your mind?”
He didn’t have to look at Miklan to know how much it pained him to say that; he could hear it in his voice. But he looked at him anyway.
“No!” he said immediately, shaking his head. “No, never. I want... I want to be with you, Miklan. I just... Don’t want to get stuck in my own head. Don’t want to second-guess myself. I mean, I spent so long thinking that the way I felt about you was sick and wrong, and...”
Miklan pulled him to his feet and into a tight embrace.
Glenn inhaled deeply and held his breath.
“I’m not gonna let you think like that,” he said, voice suddenly quiet again, in a way that made Glenn feel like he wasn’t just the only person in the room but the only person in the world. “I promise. But if we’re gonna do this... If we’re really gonna do this, we need to do this right. We’ve gotta have a plan. My old man won’t care about me running off, but yours will, and we can’t just run from him forever...”
Glenn wanted to argue that he definitely could, if that meant he would get to be with Miklan instead of having to marry a noblewoman and become a knight and go off to die in a war...
But he knew that was just wishful thinking. Miklan was right. Running off into a dark and stormy night just to have his dad hunt him down and drag him back home wasn’t exactly the romantic ride into the sunset he wanted... And maybe they wouldn’t get to have that, but...
“Okay,” he said, though it was muffled by the fact that he’d buried his face in Miklan’s neck, leaning into the hug as he clung to him like he was going to float away if he didn’t. “Okay. Yeah. Planning. Not my strong point, but... I trust you.”
Miklan laughed, rubbing a comforting circle on his back. Glenn laughed, too. And when he did, he couldn’t stop laughing, because even if Miklan had convinced him to wait and even if there was a horrible cold feeling in the back of his chest that he was ignoring telling him that what he was doing was selfish and wrong, for the first time he felt...
Right.
Glenn Fraldarius was fifteen years old when he kissed his brother on the forehead, told him that he loved him and to never forget that, and disappeared into the night.
Glenn Fraldarius was fifteen years old when the letter reached his father, telling him that he formally renounced his claim to House Fraldarius. (Part of him almost wished he could have been there to see the look on his face. Another part of him knew it wouldn’t have been able to handle it.)
Glenn Fraldarius was fifteen years old when he spent his first night as a free man, without the weight of a noble title or a Crest hanging over him, in Miklan’s arms, being kissed and cherished and adored, in a way that made him sure he hadn’t made a mistake...
Miklan Anschutz Gautier was formally disinherited that same year. The Margrave probably meant it as an insult. To them it was the final chain falling away.
All of that seemed like a lifetime ago, now. Even that stormy night when he had made the most important choice of his life, which he could remember with startling clarity (and which he was sure he would remember for the rest of his life), seemed distant...
“Hey, better get a move on if we wanna get there before sundown.”
Glenn turned to face him as Miklan came up beside him on his own horse, and despite his warning the two of them simply stopped and looked out across the valleys between the mountains, settled in the middle of which was Garreg Mach Monastery...
Glenn was twenty-seven years old, and had not been a Fraldarius for more than ten years. His armour, dingy and beaten but well-maintained, was a far cry from the beautiful and elaborate dressings of the son of a noble house dedicated into the knighthood by the time he could hold a sword. They were the trappings not of chivalry but of survival, of a man who fought not to uphold his honour or defend the life of a king, but for coin and comfort. Who chased off bandits and guarded caravans, but would not throw his life away at the end of a sword for someone just because it was ‘his duty’.
Miklan reached for his hand. The years had not been kind to either of them, and they bore the scars to prove it— Miklan had a particularly gnarly one running across his face from his hairline, across his nose and just under his eye, from an injury he had been lucky enough not to lose either of them to— but Glenn did not and never would regret it for a moment.
“Your father won’t like hearing that we came here, you know.” The only reason Glenn dropped their hands was because it was enough of a pain riding to Garreg Mach in the first place, never mind doing so while keeping two horses in pace with each other.
“Tch. Neither will yours, but fuck ‘em.”
“Give my old man some credit. He could have been a massive pain in the ass for us all these years.”
“Yeah, well, I guess anyone would look good next to the Margrave, huh?”
Glenn laughed, and pushed his horse to ride on ahead, leaving Miklan behind in a trail of dust. Both to get back at him for his earlier comment about hurrying up, and because he was genuinely excited.
Garreg Mach Monastery, the Officer’s Academy... Felix was going to be there. Sylvain, too.
Glenn wondered if his brother even remembered him, and the ice shards that sometimes grew in the back of his lungs formed, suddenly. He’d tried to keep an ear to the ground about Felix, and Miklan did the same for Sylvain, but still had had to wonder how he’d grown without him.
He’d never wanted to abandon Felix. He’d never wanted him to suffer for the sake of his selfish desires. But with what had happened at Duscur...
Well, Glenn was glad that King Lambert and little Mitya had survived. He wasn’t sure he could have ever forgiven himself if they hadn’t.
“Do you think they’ll recognize us?”
“’Course they will. I mean, they were pretty young, but it’s not exactly hard to figure out. You look like a way more handsome version of your dad.”
“I could say the same for you.”
“Oh, don’t insult me like that!”
Glenn’s laughter rung out across the valley as he spurred his horse forward again. They played that game for a while, Glenn rushing ahead, slowing to wait for Miklan, falling into easy conversation with him, then going on ahead again when the excitement of the fact that they were almost there got to be too much for him.
Glenn was twenty-seven years old, racing across the sloping valleys towards Garreg Mach Monastery. He was not the inheritor of House Fraldarius; he was not married to Ingrid Brandl Galatea. (Rather, the ring on his finger was not a house insignia ring, nor even an especially fancy one, and was scratched and battered from being worn during battle.)
He was riding to see his brother, for the first time in over a decade, with the love of his life by his side, unshackled by the burdens that he’d been born into.
He was free. He was alive. He was happy.