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The Führer shook her hand after presenting her with the medal, and an hour later, Riza Hawkeye was still thinking about it. It wasn’t just the opportunity to be up close and personal with the man who’d been responsible for the worst eight months of her life, a mere handful of weeks after the official declaration of victory. It wasn’t even that he had congratulated her for the nightmare.
It was Bradley himself, who radiated power as palpable as the heat of his skin. Though Riza had done nothing but return to her seat and taken the occasional sip of champagne as her colleagues stepped and twirled across the floor, the impression he’d made had left her dizzy as if she’d been dancing drunkenly for hours. Her hand still felt warm.
Not just her hand, she realized, pushing away from the table. The prickling sensation snaked beneath the sleeves of her dress, dampened her underarms and the small of her back, flushed the bare skin of her collar, and, now, crept up to twist around her throat.
The noise and light of the party followed her out of the ballroom. The Hakuro mansion was neither as well-located nor as grand as the Armstrong estate, but it had the benefit of being owned by a general in good favor. Instead of heading toward the washroom, Riza turned up the main staircase and padded her way to the second floor, trying to maintain an unruffled expression as she passed smaller groups in conversation. No one else seemed to be having as much trouble breathing as she was.
She tried the room at the end of the hall, found it unlocked and unoccupied, and slid inside gratefully. It was a small parlor, with velvet couches arranged about a round wooden table, and paintings in ornate golden frames. The far wall was paneled all with windows. The celebrations didn’t extend to this room, which was as quiet as slumber and shadowy around the moonlight filtering through the sheer white curtains.
But she wasn’t alone.
“I’m very sorry, sir,” she said hastily to the broad-shouldered silhouette. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Führer Bradley turned slowly. The moonlight caught the sharp profile of his nose and jaw, but the patch over his eye was so dark that his face seemed maimed, gouged out, empty.
“It’s no trouble,” he said at last, and his smile split his face in a different way. “Lieutenant Hawkeye, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Congratulations again, Lieutenant.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Bradley waved her over. As Riza approached, the flushed, prickling feeling made itself known again, bizarrely, and hotter than before. It wasn’t as though this was the first time she’d ever spoken to him; it wasn’t even the first time she’d done so this evening. There was no need to feel nervousness—or indeed, feel anything at all. He was only a man, she reminded herself sternly.
She saw now that he was looking, not out the window like she’d first thought, but at a painting in the corner that flanked a liquor cabinet. It was wider than Riza was tall, and showed a northern landscape, a solemn gray town nestled below a distant line of sharp, snow-dusted peaks. The fields were freshly tilled; here and there the painter had picked out women bowed or kneeling in the spring planting.
She wondered what had captivated him. Was it a landscape of somewhere real and under his control? Whatever town was depicted might, she thought bitterly, not even exist anymore.
“Will we see you on the sporting clays this month?” Bradley asked without looking at her. “With your record, I’m sure you’d have an excellent chance at placing.”
Riza swallowed. “I’m not sure. My shoulder’s been giving me trouble recently.”
“Rest should come first, of course.”
Beyond the veil of the curtains, Hakuro’s strictly-maintained grounds were silent and still. Riza wondered what they would look in high summer, in the chilling embrace of autumn, in the rare central Amestrian snowfall; if she would ever have the opportunity to be here again. Surely there would be a year when Hakuro hosted no ceremonial receptions, when the light from the windows receded and the buds were allowed to blossom without pruning.
“Do you think you have a natural talent for shooting, Lieutenant Hawkeye?”
His voice was strangely pensive. Wrenched from her ruminations, Riza tried to collect her thoughts. “I’ve always liked guns,” she said honestly. “I hunted as a girl.”
“I was never much of a shooter. I always preferred swords.”
Riza glanced at him. Bradley’s eye was trained on the painted field, but his gaze seemed to be seeking something much farther away. “I used to pretend I was a soldier,” she admitted.
“Really?” Bradley made a thoughtful noise. “I did always enjoy the stories of knights and lieges. The pomp and ritual of courtly manners—dancing, curtsies, and formal kisses. Although I’ve found the reality is somewhat less romantic. Perhaps you were guided here just as I was.”
“I don’t think so,” said Riza. Her mouth was dry. “My father hated that I played that way.”
Bradley laughed. “And yet you developed such talent. You must be truly remarkable.”
The flushed prickling made itself known again on her skin, hotter than before. She didn’t feel unsafe, exactly; there had never been salacious rumors about him, unlike many of the other generals. The feeling was merely strange, like she had stepped sideways into a different woman’s life. They could be any two people in the world stealing a quiet moment together.
“Only because I’m in your army, sir,” she said, tasting each word as she spoke it.
“You flatter me,” said Bradley, smiling. “I’m sure I had very little to do with it.”
The heat shuddered and slipped lower. “It’s important for people to have leaders.”
“Hm.” But Bradley didn’t elaborate, only turned to face her. “How old are you, Lieutenant?”
It was incredible how one discerning eye could feel as divesting as twenty. She glanced at his hand, resting beside the heavy hilt of the sword at his waist. “Nineteen, sir.”
“I haven’t been nineteen in a long time,” said Bradley. The wistful note was back in his voice. “I’m not sure I even recall who I was at that age.”
Riza swallowed. Next to his sword and hand was his thick belt buckle, gilded like the painting’s frame. “I wouldn’t think you were a day over fifty if it wasn’t a matter of public record, sir.”
“Well, anger burns a body out,” he told her quietly. “People think they can control it, use its vitality to keep themselves young, but that’s a delusion. The only way is not to feed it in the first place.”
“Is that the secret to your youth, sir?”
Bradley’s gaze snapped back to hers. His mood had suddenly turned. A blade’s edge Riza tested absentmindedly, only to find herself sliced.
“No,” he said. “I control it.”
He held out his hand. “I’m afraid I must return to the festivities now, Lieutenant.”
And the rumble in his voice was gone: she was once again nothing more than a soldier in his employ. That was the power he had, Riza realized in a flash. The power to command any woman to dance for him, the power to summon or dismiss an entire performance with little more than a look.
She hated him.
That was the feeling burning in her, the fire licking up the inside of her belly. It felt good to admit it. It felt even better to be so close to him, his palm thick and hot as it covered hers. The thrill of it reminded her of telling lies in her childhood.
She bent swiftly, brought his broad knuckles to her lips, and kissed them. And kissed them. The air rushed warmly from Riza’s nose across his fingers. Bradley didn’t pull away, even as the contact lingered past any hope of propriety. Her back began to ache from her bowed position, but she thought—if she let herself breathe through it—the fire could be survived.
Then his fingers twitched, and Riza broke the kiss. He dropped her hand as she straightened. This time, as the moonlight passed across Bradley’s sharp profile and the painted spring beside him, Riza wasn’t frightened by the dark eyepatch that split his face. Now she knew he was no different than any other person.
He was simply a better liar than most.