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Emmeryn is nine when her father is struck by an assassin. She is shaken awake by her scared mother, groggy from spending too much of the night swaddled in blankets against the cold, studying when she should have been sleeping. “Emmeryn, you have to come.” Her mother’s grip is tight and painful. “Emmeryn get up, we have to go. It’s not safe here.” There is a knight at the door, armor shining a little in the candlelight, and Emmeryn’s eyes go wide.
“Mother, you’re hurting me.” Emmeryn pulls against that tight grip, but Lady Cybilla just holds tighter.
“We have to go , Emmeryn. Come!”
And Lady Cybilla jerks Emmeryn out of her bed, and the knight at the door steps back into the corridor with their lance held out, threatening to something Emmeryn can’t see. She shivers, and it has only something to do with the shock of leaving behind her warm bed, only something to do with the terribly cold stones under her bare feet, and almost everything to do with the painful squeeze of her mothers hand on her arm and the tense way the knight moves.
Her father lives, and the bruises on Emmeryn’s arm last for a week. No one offers to heal it, and her mother never apologizes. Chrom had already been in the safe room when they arrived, guarded by three knights, and Emmeryn is only glad that her baby brother had been so safe. Her father lives, and the assassin is executed in one of the city’s largest squares on a clear, bright day.
That man’s blood spills red across the cobblestones, surrounded by a silent, unmoved crowd. Emmeryn watches, holding herself still and stiff at her father’s side, and feels something like sick. She stares at the bloody street, stares at the splatter, and tries not to look at the body. She feels something like sick.
The crowd is silent as the royal family leaves the mess behind them, and Emmeryn shivers. It has nothing to do with the chill of winter, and it has everything to do with the satisfied look on her father’s face, and everything to do with the angry faces she’d seen in the crowd. “This is what justice looks like,” her father says. “Traitors should never be suffered, Emmeryn. This is the earned fate of any who raise their hands against us.
“Remember that.”
“Yes, father.”
Lissa is born in the spring, and Emmeryn falls in love the moment Lissa is placed in her arms. “Hello,” Emmeryn whispers, while her mother watches tiredly, protectively. “I’m your sister.” Chrom clamors for his turn, and he holds her like she might be made of glass. It is a moment of quiet and joy, and nobody mentions how the newest Lowell bears no brand.
Cybilla dies at the hands of an assassin, a knife between her ribs when she steps between a murderer and the nursery. Her last words gasped out into her husband’s arms, “Dick, the children.” The assassin does not make it to the nursery, and drops like a stone when the hilt of Falchion collides with their temple. Chrom and Lissa sleep through the whole ordeal, but Emmeryn is pulled from her bed to stare into the captured assassin’s eyes. To see the bloody and bruised thief who’d coveted her family’s lives.
“This man took your mother from us,” her father says. “What do we do with traitors, Emmeryn?”
“We do not suffer them.”
“Exactly so.” He pulls her roughly away, and sends her back to bed. “You and Chrom will be joining me, when we dispense the assassin’s reward. Be ready.”
Emmeryn and Chrom stand very still by their father’s side, and Emmeryn feels sick when the blood forms a little pond underneath the executioners boots. Chrom quietly loses his breakfast, and his weakness is met with disdain and a lecture.
“Do not pity the creatures that stand against us,” he advises. “We are Naga’s own, and this is vile blasphemy.” Chrom nods hesitantly, and Emmeryn nods as well in case he looks at her too. “We suffer no traitors, my son. Remember that.”
“Yes, father.” Chrom mutters, though he still looks ill.
Emmeryn is eleven when she finally gets up the courage to ask. “Father,” she calls quietly, in case he’s too busy and can’t spare her a moment, “might I come in?” She gets a wave in, so she boldly forges forward. “Father, when will I begin training for Falchion?” She’s the heir, after all, it’s supposed to be hers, isn’t it? She’ll be Exalt after, won’t she?
“You won’t. I’ve begun training Chrom for it instead.” Something must show in her face, because he hesitates for a long moment. “Focus on your studies, Emmeryn. Every Exalt needs...a general.”
“I won’t let you down, Father.”
“I’m sure you won’t.”
Emmeryn is fourteen when starving citizens break into the castle, armed with crude spears, axes, and old swords. “Frederick,” she calls, and then swears. “Frederick, we have to get Lissa. Chrom’s out in the yard with Father, he’s safe, but she’s in the gardens.”
Frederick keeps them both safe, Lissa shielded by Emmeryn from the rest of the world, and they wait. “Why are they doing this? Emm, why are they so mean?” Lissa is scared, and Emmeryn pets the top of her head, and tries to think of what to say.
“They’re hungry.”
“Oh. Why didn’t Father feed them?”
Emmeryn doesn’t laugh, it isn’t funny. “I wish I knew,” Emmeryn says instead. She focuses on Frederick’s tense face, and wishes she knew how to use a sword. She’s so useless here, with words and ink her only weapons. She can’t keep her family safe from the world, not like this.
“When this is over,” she tells Frederick, “you’re going to teach me to fight.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Training hurts . Frederick is careful, but he’s serious, and Emmeryn leaves every lesson sore and bruised and dirty. His hands are warm on her arms and gentle when he adjusts her stances, corrects her forms, and when he makes dry little jokes she laughs. When she is sixteen she kisses him in the gardens at night, when it’s just the two of them.
She kicks him, when he tries to massage the soreness from her calves, and he laughs when she writes him terrible poetry.
When Emmeryn is seventeen, an assassin comes for her .
“Bitch,” she spits, dagger hot and burning in Emmeryn’s abdomen. “Your wretched family wasn’t happy with just taking Plegia, you burned her too. And your greedy, devilish eyes turn towards Ferox now. Well, the Khans give their regards .”
Gasping, Emmeryn looks into the eyes of death and sees only herself reflected there.
Frederick does not come to save her, busy as he is with his duties. Her father does not come to save her, busy as he is with Chrom and the kingdom. She cannot save herself, armed only with words and ink. She looks at her death and knows that dying won’t change anything. Her father doesn’t suffer traitors, he won’t change even for her.
“Leave Emm alone!” Lissa screams, palms red hot and scorching. The assassin screams, pulls away, and Emmeryn falls. The noise brings in knights, who bring in healers. Lissa claims the other side of Emmeryn’s bed for weeks, and Chrom the chair at the side. It’s the closest they’ve been in years.
Chrom stands stiff by their father’s side, Emmeryn left at home to recover, and watches another traitor get their justice. If he feels ill, Emmeryn isn’t there to note it.
Lissa starts magic lessons, and delights in telling Emmeryn exactly how fun and boring it can be. She’s something like ecstatic. “Father’s very impressed,” she says proudly. “I’m making him happy!”
“I’m proud of you,” Emmeryn says, and tries not to look very tired.
“It’s not enough,” Emmeryn grits out, hands in the dirt. Her sword has been kicked off to the side, another defeat, another bruise. “I’m not enough.” The war keeps going. The hungry riot, the countryside grows barren. “I can’t keep my family safe this way.” More and more young people are dying in a war that never ends.
Phila reaches down to help Emmeryn up, and she presses a kiss against Emmeryn’s lips. “You’re enough for me,” she promises.
“My lady, I am yours,” Frederick promises.
Phila knits while Emmeryn writes her bad poetry, and Frederick reads it aloud with careful dictation, only to laugh when he finds out it was written for him, too. She kisses Phila, then Frederick, then Phila again. She drags them into her bedroom, and she counts their scars, and lets them kiss hers.
Emmeryn sleeps in between them and knows that this is love.
“I think my father has to die.” Emmeryn says one night, a little sweaty and trying to piece her thoughts together through her bliss.
“This is weird after-talk.” Phila mutters, shifting around so that she can look at Emmeryn. Frederick’s attention is his hand on her stomach, fingers unmoving but present. He says nothing, and Emmeryn lets the silence stretch as she thinks.
“The war won’t stop. He’ll never have enough.” The Exalt has been talking about sending scouts across the sea, she’s read the reports. “Father won’t even talk to me about it, I can’t convince him.”
“He’s been spending more time with your lord brother,” Frederick adds in, because he can always tell what she’s thinking about.
“You’re still the heir,” Phila says with a frown, “aren’t you?”
“Yes.” She should have guessed when she was eleven and wondering when she would finally get to touch her birthright, but she knows now that Chrom is the favored child. If she weren’t as capable as she was with ink and words, she would have been passed over years ago.
“But he won’t listen.” Phila concludes.
“No...he won’t.” Emmeryn sighs. “I don’t want Chrom to inherit this.” Fuck, but she didn’t want to inherit it either. “What we’re doing is wrong, and Father won’t even consider…
“I think he has to die. That’s the only way to stop this madness.”
“That will make you a traitor, Emm.” Phila says grimly.
Emmeryn closes her eyes. “I know.”
“We’re going to have to be very, very careful.” Frederick says, finally. Her Frederick, Emmeryn thinks, always cautious. “And we have to be successful.” Or else they all die. They all die, and Chrom inherits the hell her father has made of the world.
“Yeah,” Emmeryn says. “We do.”
Plotting the death of someone turns out to be very complicated. It would be simple, if all she needed to do was ensure her father’s death, after all. However, planning for her father’s death and ensuring that Emmeryn survives to take over from him is much more difficult. There are three lives here, after all, that must survive their coup. There are two lives that must not be caught in the crossfire.
It’s complicated.
“He spends a lot of time alone in his study,” Emmeryn says, putting a dot in what is that study on the rough floor plan. “But there are guards here and here.” and the makes little X’s in the hallway.
“The balcony?” Phila offers, dipping her finger in ink and making a print. Frederick gamely shuffles through the papers and pulls out the diagram of the floor above. “We could rapel down, and get in there that way. No need to get past the guards.”
“My lady,” Frederick says with a frown, “is there truly a need to sneak past the guards? Who would suspect you had ill intentions?”
This sends them all into a thoughtful silence.
“It can’t be that easy,” Phila argues, though it seems fairly straightforward, now. “Can it?”
They argue about it for weeks, going back and forth on who does what. “It has to be me, I have to do it. He’s my father,” she says helplessly. Even though he’s done...so many horrible things, he’s still her father. “I have to be the one to do it.
“Neither of you can’t do this for me.”
“You can’t do it alone!”
“I have to! It has to be me, and you can’t be implicated. Neither of you can be implicated!” Emmeryn grasps for both of their hands, and holds them tightly. “If this is going to work, I need you both to be guiltless. If this...if this doesn’t work, you need to take care of Chrom and Lissa. I need you both to do this for me. Please, please tell me you won’t do anything.”
When Emmeryn acts, she acts alone.
There’s a dagger hidden in her skirts, the metal dark and the hilt unadorned. For once, she’s thankful that the Lowell line traditionally holds its daughters to a very firm dresscode. There’s plenty of room to hide a knife, her plot, and the horrifying desperation that claws up the inside of her trachea within the folds of that tradition. Her father’s knights pay her hardly any mind, this isn’t unusual for her, after all.
“Lady Emmeryn,” is all the attention she gets.
Tense as she is, the most she manages in return is a jerky nod. If her heart could beat any harder, beat any faster, it would surely give her away. If they even looked a little closely, surely they would scent out her true intentions. Surely...surely…
They don’t notice, but the sweat that sticks the back of her dress to her skin makes her feel even more obvious. If they only look, if they only look! When the door clicks closed behind her, Emmeryn can hardly breathe. She’s not a killer, even with Frederick’s attention she is only ever armed with ink and word. Ink, word, and in this one desperate moment a knife.
“Emmeryn,” her father says with a frown. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I wanted to speak to you about the war, Father.” Maybe, if she just gives him just one more opportunity...maybe she won’t have to do this. He’s her father , and even if all his aims are evil, she still loves him. He snorts at her, and turns back to his papers.
“I’m not interested, Emmeryn. Go back to your study if that’s all you came to say.”
She has to do this, she has to do this. “I’m sorry, Father.”
“Don’t be sorry, be better-”
Her knife sinks into his back, aiming for his heart. “I’m sorry Father,” she cries, sinking her weight into it. He has to die, she has to do this. “The war is wrong,” she swears, trying to twist the blade. If she twists the blade he will be harder to heal. “You won’t stop, you have to stop.”
Exalt Dickard Lowell roars, and knocks her away. She tumbles backwards, eyes wide and heart pounding. She can’t hear herself breathe, and all she can see is how her father reaches back and pulls the knife out. He throws it at her, and she screams, covering her face with her arms.
“Traitor,” he hisses, pulling her up by her hair. “I knew you were craven.” When his knights arrive, too late to keep her from acting, he throws her at them. “Take her away from me,” he orders. “And no one may see her. Let the rest of the rot seek her out.”
Phila and Frederick won’t do anything, she prays. Naga, if you have any pity in you for your creations, if I am truly of your favored...please. Please let them do nothing . Someone has to look out for her family, now that it can’t be her. She can’t bear for them to join her in this wretched state.
Emmeryn is dead already, and she hopes no one else follows her.
Chrom and Lissa stand stiff at their fathers side, and she locks eyes with them. Of course they’re here. Of course they are. When she looks, she can see Frederick and Phila, too. They’re standing close together, leaning on each other. Emmeryn’s wrists are bruised and tied together, and she wishes that they could hold her, just one last time.
“Emmeryn, you have disgraced our name.” Her father’s voice is strong, loud. There is no regret in his eyes, not that she can see. There is no physical weakness either, the paltry wound she delivered healed up without so much as a scar left behind. Powerless.
“You have betrayed our nation, and you have betrayed me.” The executioner’s hand on her shoulder is painful and heavy. She won’t let her father have the satisfaction of seeing her bend to that pressure. She won’t buckle under the pain, under the fear.
No matter how much it hurts, no matter how scared she is.
“You are no daughter of mine.”
The executioner’s knife digs into her skin, neatly cutting her throat. She chokes on her own blood, and falls. When she looks, Lissa is crying. When she looks, Phila is grimly saying something Emmeryn can’t hear, something Emmeryn can’t read. Her blood puddles on the ground, and the roaring in her ears is just her heart. The crowd is silent, unmoved. This is the reward she has earned. This is the cost of her desperate hopes.
Emmeryn dies.