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Hours and hours paced by, slowing almost to a still, after midnight and long after everyone had retired to rest, as Ferdinand counted and recounted the stars dotting the black cloak stretched above Airmid River. The frayed roof of his tent had become a torment to stare at by the end of the second hour, his mind prickling with the anxiety that is inextricable from the uncertainty of the morrow, so he had gathered his bedspread and laid it out outside.
The Coup of the Great Bridge of Myrddin concluded in the most favorable outcome, considering their circumstances. Some battalion soldiers were lost in the struggle, as most fronts of the bridge were well prepared to shield against an offense, but Ferdinand was resigned to the fleeting, selfish thought that his friends came out unscathed, and that was enough for him.
Before seizing the winds in their favor and continuing to make headway towards Fort Merceus, their troops needed to regroup, and await reinforcements and a replenishment of resources. Thus, upon agreement of their leaders, they settled down into the available chambers within the structure and set up tents to spend the night.
A handful were stationed to stand guard atop the wall walks and watchtowers, placed strategically in favor of sparing numbers, so that everyone could get their rest. Claude was among those with the sharpest eyesight, but so was Riale, and she insisted that the leaders would need to be in top shape come the time to put plans in motion the following day. She occupied the post to the Southwest, to stay on the look-out for any remnants of Imperial forces or an ambush from any reinforcements.
So, here was Ferdinand, who could not outrun his deep concern for the safety of his comrades—for Riale’s safety—because he was long beyond recognizing that his care for her resided in another place entirely. It was in the time he put aside to wax her bowstrings before she got to it; in returning the books on Reason she had borrowed to take it off her mind; in sharing his favorite tea during breakfast without her even asking; in the ache of his chest made to burn red and so bright by the frustration of having to hold it all to himself.
Calling to mind these thoughts brought Ferdinand to his feet and carried him across the Southernmost ward, up the stairway to the wall walks.
There he found her, sitting upon the stone with an arrow poised on her knee as she adjusted the threads of the fletching. He strolled toward her, unhurried.
“What are you doing here, Ferdinand? You should be sleeping,” Riale called, without looking up from her task.
“I didn’t even announce myself,” he said, mild disbelief in his tone.
“Who else walks around in spurs?”
The paladin exhaled through his nose, lips crooked in a half-smile. “You have a point there.”
He approached her and swept a long look across the river, the inky black waters barely stirring beneath the thin fog, where the broad bridge faded into obscurity. Then, he sat beside her upon the stone. His eyes stole a glance of her fingers working the end of the arrow, their tips pink from the night’s chill.
Riale soon finished the job and slotted the arrow back into her quiver. “I meant it; we march to Merceus tomorrow. You need the rest,” she said, firmer this time. She finally looked at him, and Ferdinand snapped his head to meet her eyes. They were among the few comforts to quell his heart in these times of trial.
“So do you. How come you have not switched with another? You have been standing guard for well over four hours now,” said Ferdinand, in his best attempt at a scolding.
She couldn’t hold his gaze, so she looked ahead, into the vast waters of Airmid. “I haven’t been counting. Besides, I am not here to make decisions; I can spare some hours of sleep.”
“Ideally, we take turns,” he said, softer. “I’ll take over, you can go rest now.”
“No,” said Riale, without a second thought. He hoped she would look at him again.
He tested the weight of a long pause between them. Riale didn’t seem to budge.
“Very well. We shall both stay and keep watch, then,” said Ferdinand, with finality, and that air of something he always had in his chest, so uniquely his.
The brief exhale she gave in response was enough for him. He settled more comfortably onto the stone, raising his chin as if there was some sort of pride to uphold; he then remembered just who sat beside him, and released that bit of air he was holding, relaxing his back.
This piece of silence between them was cozier than the last, so Ferdinand allowed it for longer. Most every second he spent in Riale’s presence, he felt the need to be making conversation, lest he blurt out a declaration of love or something of such nature. What with the way she scrambles for words with him sometimes, or hides a snicker behind her hand, or—Goddess help him—when she pinks at his spontaneous praise, he knows he just might.
To his surprise, it was Riale who spoke up.
“Some soldiers died today,” she said, and her tone was so solemn he would have believed she was speaking to the still river, as if he weren’t there. “They were protecting Lysithea, from those falcon knights. I missed them by a hair.”
In the corner of his eye, Ferdinand could catch her fingers—thumb, index and middle—stiffen at the hem of her coat, the same way she would pull an arrow to the apex of the bowstring, and he knew then she was reliving the memory.
“Some betrayed us, too,” Ferdinand said, though he wasn’t sure why he did. “We suspect they may have been the last spies in our midst.”
“They also died,” Riale muttered, her eyes drawn to the ground. Her silent pain seemed not to discriminate friend from foe, and this realization about her, like most, left Ferdinand fascinated.
“This is a burden we shoulder together,” he said, before thinking twice. When she turned her head and cast a critical eye on him, he offered a small smile, the tips of his ears warming at the attention. She didn’t smile back.
“You have turned your back on what you have known all your life in the name of doing what’s right,” said the ranger. After a moment, he was pleased to see the corners of her lips curve, even if just a tad. “I never thought I would say this, Ferdinand, but, for what it’s worth, I don’t believe there is a deed more noble.”
His grin was so wide that a breathy laugh slipped past, and he didn’t miss how her head shot the other way, so she was giving him the back of her head. He allowed himself a moment to long for a time where he could simply reach out, feel her smooth strands slip through his fingers, as he moved them to reveal the sight of her flushed cheeks and ears, to tip her head toward him and hold her, hold her close, close enough for her to hear the intimate whispers of his beating heart.
“I have heard of someone who did just the same, and it was an act so courageous that word of it spread beyond the seas,” Ferdinand said, and the little smile she granted him felt like nothing short of a reward.
A beat, again, but he reveled in this one. They both turned their gazes back ahead, to the dead of night before them.
“You really should go back, get at least a few hours of rest,” Riale told him, her voice weighed by something earnest; he indulged in the notion that it may have stemmed from her caring for him at least a fragment of how much he did her.
“I say the same thing to you—in fact, I insist,” replied the paladin.
She slowly shook her head, and nothing more was said.
All that pervaded the still night were the faint howls of the wind slanting against the tall walls of the fortress, the listless rush of the river beneath, and if one listened closely, that which was impossible to shake off: the immortalized burdens of yesterday’s struggle, and the inevitability that tomorrow will be quite the same.
The lull of the dark hours was a cozy place for introspection, but Ferdinand didn’t let his thoughts stray far. They sat there, staring at the night, for how long he did not know, but with Riale by his side, the hours didn’t trap him, but instead he took them in stride.
At a certain point, it came to Ferdinand’s attention that the space between the ranger and himself couldn’t have been too great, for when her head fell upon his shoulder, he felt barely a tap.
With the closer proximity, he could hear her soft, deep breaths, and in that moment Ferdinand knew beyond any doubt that he would rather die than let anything, even himself, disturb that peace.
For a while, he relished in the feeling of her gentle weight on him, all other thoughts banished from his mind, perhaps other than how glad he was to have had shed his shoulder pads and overcoat long before calling it a night.
Once passed the novel thrill of the light of his life dozing off upon his shoulder, it occurred to Ferdinand he could make use of this opportunity to ensure she got proper rest. So, gingerly, as though she would fall away into dust with a false move, he managed to shift Riale’s small frame from his shoulder to the crook of his arm, securing it around her back, and the other under her knees.
After rising to his feet, Ferdinand peered down at her sleeping face to check that she remain unperturbed, although maybe he shouldn’t have, because the sight alone was enough to make his knees buckle that he nearly dropped her.
Everything was warm all of a sudden, despite the night breeze, and though the moon was hidden somewhere behind a cloud, the paladin swore by his very name that she was bathed in something bright—maybe starlight, or the adoration behind his eyes.
Minutes slipped away while he stood there being dazzled, but the slight ache in his arms snapped him out of his reverie and reminded him that there was a purpose to this. He made his way slowly down the stairs to the ward, then across it to his tent.
His bedspread still lay by the entry to the tent; it lodged two people, thus another one remained untouched inside beside where his had once been. He was careful not to bend down too brusquely, and put her down as tenderly as he had held her.
Immediately upon hitting the bed, Riale stirred, and in a split second his soul left his body at the thought of having woken her, but she only tossed to the side and nuzzled into the pillow, her breaths deepening. He had put his life at risk a countless amount of times the previous day, but none posed a threat as great as the display before him, capable of snatching his heart right out of his chest.
After taking a moment to pull himself together, Ferdinand reached for the quilt folded at the end of the bedspread and tucked it over Riale. For what was likely the umpteenth time that night, he looked his fill, fixed on her distinctive features—though he was biased, surely, for he did admittedly spare a moment quite often to daydream about what set her apart from everyone else.
Her thin nose and lips had that sharpness so strikingly Dagdan, and on her fair skin he could spot traces of the blue woad she wore for combat, and was visible just on her arms most days. Ferdinand let himself wonder where else on her body she marked with the pigment, in what shapes, and what they meant, and hoped that one day he might see them, that she might be so kind as to show him. Soon, he caught himself before any renegade thoughts on Riale’s body might escalate, lest the situation take a turn for the improper.
When she had stirred, her fringe had moved away from her face, leaving most every inch uncovered. He had never beheld the scar skirting her right eye so closely; it stretched from under the outer corner, all the way past the eyelid, across the eyebrow and a fragment of her forehead. She had never told of its story, at least not to him, and he hadn’t pried. It looked like it had properly healed, though it still had a rosy hue. In his loving eyes, it made her beauty all the more singular.
In a surge of boldness, his hand drew close to her face, and for a few seconds it hovered there. He paused, afraid that his touch might dissolve her, somehow, awaken her and erase this moment from history.
The length of his thumb skimmed her cheek, as delicately as a butterfly sits upon a flower, and his fingers ghosting her jaw. It was a softness entirely new to his senses, unlike that of fresh sheets, of a steed’s mane, of a silk robe, nothing like that; it soothed his skin and set it aflutter all in the same touch, emptying his weary mind of anything other than ardent love and all of its names.
Ferdinand stroked now with more purpose, and he would have felt a fool if he had had to describe it, for it was more as if she, from the realm of dreams, had caressed him, even though it had been the back of his fingers to kiss down her cheek.
Eventually the paladin realized it was imprudent to leave the Southwestern post unguarded, and Riale had to be left to rest, so mustering every trace of temperance within him, he tore himself away and rose quietly to his feet. He collected his coat folded on the corner of the tent, slipped it on, and stole one last glance of her slumbering face before stepping out.
On his way back to the wall walk, Ferdinand noticed the stars retreating, and the indigo of daybreak starting to slowly cast out the night. As he climbed the stairs, he zeroed in on the faint clink of his spurs, which he had long grown to filter out of his perception, and the corners of his lips drew slightly up.
As he sat where Riale had been, he watched the fog withdraw, little by little, to unveil the opposite end of the Great Bridge of Myrddin, and the expanse of Imperial land that lay beyond—his home. It would be his return after Goddess knows how long, and he came with the unwavering intent to make it a home, with the wind at his back and his allies beside him, to make it a place like Riale had once described to him—‘a future where children mustn’t train for war, where people spend their days sharpening their minds rather than blades’. It was a future he could envision, and one that he wanted to carve with his own hands.
With the clear air of the morn bathing him from inside out, he was revitalized, ready and willing as he will ever be to lead toward new days, where he didn’t have to think twice before speaking his heart to the dawn, to the ripples of the river, and, if the world might be so kind, to the one who had captured it.