Chapter Text
Ingrid was pretty sure her ankle was twisted. But that was the least of her worries at the moment.
The first of her worries was that Hermia had run off. She’d had the same pegasus throughout the war, and trusted her more than she trusted a good three-quarters of her battle companions. Hermia wasn’t the sort to shy, or panic. Ingrid called her “practical,” which caused Sylvain to shoot tea out of his nose with laughter the first time he’d heard the compliment. But it was true. Hermia was a very practical, sensible pegasus, and she trusted Ingrid and Ingrid trusted her, and so Ingrid was naturally sick with worry as to where she might have run off to.
The first of Ingrid’s worries (call it a subset of general Hermia-worries) was also that Hermia was hurt. The arrow had come out of nowhere, catching Ingrid across her side but grazing her rather than piercing her. It had been shock rather than injury that had caused both rider and mount to lose control of the situation, to tumble from the sky at a 20 foot drop onto a wooded hillside. Ingrid supposed she should have been thankful she hit the hillside and not the woods, and that she’d managed to stay on Hermia’s back for long enough that the fall hadn’t actually killed her. But when she finally pulled herself up into seated position on the grass, Hermia was gone, and Ingrid was alone on a wooded hillside, and someone had been shooting arrows at her.
Which brought her to the second of her concerns: She was alone, in unfamiliar territory, and the only fact she knew for a certainty was that someone did not want her there.
Dimitri had asked her to leave for Almyra that morning. Following their victory at Fort Merceus the previous week, their sights were on Enbarr and the end of the long, horrible war that had consumed most of Ingrid’s adult life. Her task was simple: fly to the capital, confirm the tenuous-but-established peace treaty along the eastern border, and fly back with a guarantee that Dimitri’s army could march on Enbarr without fearing an attack from multiple sides. Ingrid had taken the assignment begrudgingly – Dimitri’s suggestion that she would be perfectly suited for negotiations with Almyran royalty were bizarre, if not outright incorrect. She strongly suspected the newly returned prince of Almyra would come up with aggravating terms, or draw out negotiations, just to spite her, unless he’d done an awful lot of growing up since their academy days. But frankly, when she’d left that morning, an afternoon of arguing with Claude von Riegan had been the most terrible scenario she could imagine. He would annoy her, but he would agree. And she was sure he would find a way to annoy her. Perhaps that’s why she wasn’t paying attention as she crossed over the Almyran border, headed to the capital city. Perhaps that’s why the arrow almost found its mark.
Ingrid pulled herself to her knees and hobbled over to a nearby tree stump. She could put weight on her leg, just barely, even if walking felt nearly impossible. At least it wasn’t broken, then. She prodded at her shin, which was already turning a nauseating shade of reddish-bluish-purple, and winced as she made contact. Her vulneraries might be enough to tide her over. Tide her over to what, she wasn’t exactly sure. Flying was her best chance out of here. If she was lucky, she might be able to find Hermia before whoever had shot at her did.
A commotion from over the hill drew Ingrid out of her contemplation. She heard the voices before she saw whom they belonged to. She gave a hasty glance towards the woods, but running was out of the question, and hiding spots were scarce unless she could make it to the tree line in the next 30 seconds or so. Ingrid grabbed her lance and pulled herself to her feet, shifting the entirety of her weight to her left side. She tried to match such a lopsided stance with a fierce expression as half a dozen men came into view over the hillside.
She was lucky that she had her lance, even after the fall. She was lucky that they appeared to not have found Hermia. She was lucky that she had heard them before they saw her, giving her time to pull herself into a battle stance, quick and fierce and ready to parry.
Other than that, it seemed all her luck had run out.
The leader of the group – Ingrid assumed he was the leader, because he was the tallest, and he looked the meanest, and his beard was the ugliest – threw out his hand to stop his companions as the came into view. He strode towards her unhurriedly, not bothering to hide the smirk as he looked her up and down. “A dangerous place to be out alone, lass,” he said, his voice mocking and grating on her ears. “And a strange time of the year to be out picking wildflowers.”
Ingrid gave the entire group an appraising glance, sizing up her chances. They were armed, but their weapons were makeshift and rusted, beyond the shiny silver of the axe their leader carried. She could reasonably hope that such a ragtag assortment of weapons meant they were similarly unorganized in their battle tactics, but five against one wasn’t great odds. Her eyes narrowed in confusion as she surveyed the group. She knew relatively little of the world outside of Faerghus, but these men didn’t look like the handful of Almyran troops she’d fought against or alongside in her time as a solider. Their outfits and gear more closely resembled merchants traveling around the Alliance, although more faded and bloody than the bright outfits that shopkeepers wore in the southeast corners of Fódlan. One thing was certain – these were not members of Claude’s army. She wasn't sure they had any larger commander to appeal to. She tried anyways.
“Stand back, sir,” she said, her voice practiced in the art of speaking with more authority than she had claim to. She spoke on behalf of a prince, after all. “I seek safe passage to the capital; I have a message for the prince on behalf of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus.”
The man’s smirk turned into a sneer. “How lovely, boys, we’ve got a messenger here today,” he said, looking around behind him with a sarcastic laugh. “That's an awfully fancy weapon for a diplomatic mission, lass,” he added, looking back to Ingrid, who stood with her lance at the ready. “I suppose they can afford that sort of thing if you’re coming all the way from the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus .” He spat the last words as if they were a curse.
Ingrid’s eyes flashed towards him, angered by the disrespect to Dimitri, but also the condescending way he drawled every word at her, the way he’d already written her off as an easy mark with a pretty weapon. She took a deep breath, drawing her focus away from her irritation and trying not to let it resettle on the pain in her ankle. “I mean you no harm and bear you no ill will,” she said, her voice more authoritative than conciliatory, although conciliatory was possibly more likely to get her what she wanted. “If you will be on your way, it seems we have nothing more to offer each other in this conversation.” She gave a slight bow, polite but not deferential, and stayed where she was, hoping they would move so she would not have to. She wasn’t sure how obvious her injuries were but a limp was a weakness she had no intention of revealing.
They didn’t leave, and Ingrid wished she could say she was surprised. The leader smiled and his companions followed suit; he seemed to be the only one in charge of talking but they were good at mimicking. “We’re agreed on that,” he said, too pleasantly to be pleasant. “I certainly don’t think you have anything to offer us by way of conversation . The weapon, on the other hand – and if you could be so kind as to tell us where that pegasus of yours ran off to? She’s more valuable than you, love. Take us to her and we just might let you go off to the capital, after all.”
Ingrid grimaced, dropping what little pretense of civility she had left. She wasn’t surprised they were the ones who had shot at her. Still, she liked to give people the benefit of the doubt. A knight should ask questions first and shoot later. But it would seem all of her questions had been answered.
Ingrid could run, but she wouldn’t get far. She could scream, but she doubted anyone would hear her. She could try charging into them, maybe take one or two down on the element of surprise, but she didn’t have a plan after that and one or two was not four or five, last she checked. So she twirled her lance to be in front of her, pointed slightly outward at the pack, and shifted her weight to her good leg. If they wanted to attack, they could try. She was ready.
“In the name of Prince Dimitri and the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, I order you to step aside,” she said. “Leave now and you take your life with you. I will not ask again.”
In response, the leader of the bandits charged forward, his men following close behind. Their weapons were drawn. It wasn’t the first time Ingrid had received such a response to such a request. She desperately hoped it wouldn’t be the last.
Ingrid could tell they were amateurs, or at least, that they had little experience in working as a team. For starters, they all ran at her at the same time, clearly all intending to land a first hit. This may have seemed like a good idea in theory, but in practice, this was just what Ingrid was banking on.
As the first axe swung down towards her, Ingrid dodged, easily anticipating the trajectory before the swing had even begun. In return, she jabbed at the wielder with the butt of her lance, sending him flying backwards into one of his unsuspecting friends. They crashed into one another and Ingrid stopped caring about them, for the time being. She reversed direction of her lance, swinging it forwards, into a bandit that was trying to flank her from the right. The lance made precise, sickening contact, and she pulled back, ignoring the gurgle of pain in her peripheral hearing and mentally marking that quadrant as safe – for now.
The bandit leader was upon her, now, and she deflected his first hit with her lance, but barely. Her follow up attack was too slow, her reaction time thrown off by the shockwave through her shoulders, and the leader sidestepped her lance with a smirk. He swung his axe once more, and Ingrid plunged to the side, wincing in pain as her injured ankle temporarily bore her weight. She swung back around into a fighting stance, and struck with her lance again – not at the bandit, but at the handle of his axe. She pressed downward, fiercely and intently, and forced the axe to clatter to the ground.
Ingrid gave a triumphant, wordless yell and charged forward, her lance raised. The bandit leader’s eyes widened in shock, but rather than pivoting backwards, as she’d hope, he instead raised his arm and ran forward, side stepping Ingrid’s lance and elbowing her in the ribs at close range, sending her stumbling backwards and knocking the breath out of her.
Ingrid made a mental note that at least one of them could think on his feet and regrounded into a battle stance. She needed to focus, not let her guard down as she had just done.
The leader had faded into the background, to recover his axe or his dignity or both. Ingrid swung to face yet another attack from a side that untrained observers might have considered unguarded. Ingrid thanked the goddess that she was dealing with one such untrained observer, who was foolish enough to become an untrained opponent, and she easily sidestepped his attack. Twirling her lance over her head, Ingrid executed a perfect third of a falcon rider’s signature triangle attack, one that she had been practicing since she was a child. The lance came down with shattering power, and her attack crumpled to the ground. That she was on foot, and alone, did not diminish her brief flash of pride at another successfully executed formation. It was a shame, she thought, that no one was around to see it. Her former opponent certainly would not be telling anyone about it.
Ingrid allowed herself a moment to breathe. She’d taken down at least two, she knew that. The leader would be back with a recovered weapon; he would be easiest to take down if she could eliminate the others first – but had it been one or two other bandits remaining, after the leader? She spotted movement from her right, shifted to take an oncoming hit from an axe. She could already tell he would be too clumsy to stand a chance; not enough power in his swing.
She heard the footsteps in the grass directly behind her right before she could turn back around. The sword cut directly into her arm before she could pull away. Two bandits remaining, then, not one.
She turned towards her attacker and aimed her lance in a long, arcing swing, warding off side attacked even as she made contact with her target. The hit was imprecise, and she inwardly chided herself for her slapdash technique, but she had the intended effect of knocking him off his balance and delaying a counter attack as she sensed an axe swing from behind her and pivoted again, facing the leader once more. There were less of them now, but they seemed to have found a sense of coordination. She might have a chance if she could just take one down, and a second, while parrying attacks from the others. She just needed to outdodge and outlast; power had never needed to be Ingrid’s strong suit.
The leader looked unsurprised when she sidestepped his swing, which was a disappointment – Ingrid took a selfish pleasure in every look of surprise that flitted across enemy faces when she dodged their attack as easily as she drew breath. It was also a disappointment from a tactical standpoint, as he wasted no time in swinging again, but as Ingrid dodged that his as easily as the first one, she allowed her vainer regrets to take subtle precedence. She gritted her teeth as she raised her lance to swing – the sword cut had gone deeper than she’d expected, and while it didn’t appear to have lessened the power of her swing, pain radiated outward at even the slightest exertion, so it took full effort to compensate for the pain as she attacked once more.
As it happened, she overcompensated – her lance missing its mark and following through a little too far downward. Ingrid gave a scoff of annoyance, already preparing for the counter attack. The bandit brought his axe down with expected force – but not towards Ingrid. Instead, he aimed his axe direct at the lance she was already swinging back into fighting position. (Swinging too slowly, a voice in the back of her head reminded her. The newfound pain in her arm was not unbearable but it was disorienting.) The axe met the lance with a sickening crack, and Ingrid had a sudden snippet of conversation flash through her memory – Sylvain asking her if she’d needed to repair her lance before she left, her accusation that he was trying to get her out of his hair, Mercedes’s laugh just within earshot. Turns out they’d both been right, Ingrid thought, holding up her lance with a sinking heart, the crack in the lower third rendering it all but unusable.
The bandit’s smirk was unbearable as he stepped forward, grabbing either side of the broken lance and finishing the break with a swift, brutal motion. He gave Ingrid a wide smile before he tossed the silver head of the lance over his shoulder. It landed uselessly in the grass behind them.
“Hit the weapon, not the solider,” he said with a sneer. “That’s a good technique, girl. I’ll have to remember that one.”
Ingrid punched him in the jaw.
He wasn’t expecting it, and he reeled back from the impact with a roar, no longer smiling. The other two bandits raised their weapons and leaned forward, and Ingrid dared not attempt a follow up hit, but he raised his hand before they could move towards her, his control of the situation at odds with the red and raw mark Ingrid had left across his face.
This would have been the time to run, if she could have managed anything beyond a shuffle. It would have also been an excellent time to pull out a hidden weapon, and she ruefully thought back the arrows and daggers tucked safely away in the Hermia’s saddlebags. Ingrid took a step back, wincing as she shifted weight onto her bad ankle, and then another step back, shifting into a defense stance even as she cast her lance aside. She squared up, fists in front of her, hearing Felix in the back of her head critiquing her form, flicking her eyes to the flecks of blood across her knuckles.
“Your comrades died for nothing,” she said. “Do not make the same mistake.”
“You’re the one making a mistake,” the leftmost bandit said, his voice a higher whine than she’d anticipated. “To think you can claw your way out, unarmed against three of your superiors.”
Ingrid angled toward him, surprised to hear him speak. The rightmost bandit charged – from some unspoken signal or his own nerves, Ingrid knew not. She swiveled and dodged his fists – he’d evidently forgotten he had a sword – but her wrist was caught as she raised her arm to strike. The leftmost, whiny bandit had evidently learned a thing or two about coordination in the last twenty minutes, and he’d pounced at the opening. He wrenched her arm behind her back, and Ingrid bit back a cry of pain as her wrist bent upwards at an unnatural angle. She was starting to lose feeling in the fingers of her other hand, and her flail away from him was short-lived as he grabbed that arm, too, jerking it backwards with a painful tug. Ingrid thrashed against the grip but was unable to get out of it; her injured arm throbbing painfully with every tiny movement. She stopped her struggle just in time to see the leader of the bandits step in front of her. He grabbed her by the front of her collar and pulled her towards him, lifting her slightly up. At least, Ingrid thought darkly, she didn’t have as much weight on her ankle now.
“The terms of my offer have changed,” he snarled at her, panting heavily as he brought her too close. “You’re dying either way. Help us find that winged rat of yours, and I’ll be kind enough to kill you quickly.”
Ingrid kicked at him but only succeeded in throwing herself off balance, struggling to regain balance on an injured leg and with her arms trapped behind her. She looked up at him angrily and took great pleasure in how ugly his face was going to be for the next few days. She wondered if it was unknightly to spit; she no longer cared if it was unladylike.
The bandit chuckled, leaning in closer. “And if you keep trying these little stunts, I’ll kill you slowly. And that, lass, will be much worse than any pain or injury that you can ima –”
The arrow hit the bandit so directly, and with such force, that it had to have been a shot meant exactly and only for him. His threat disintegrated into gurgling wordlessness, and he dropped his hold on Ingrid, stumbling away. Two more arrows hit him in such quick succession that it was impossible to say which of the three actually killed him.
Ingrid jolted back in surprise, jostling into the bandit behind her, who had a terrified, white-knuckle grip on her now. Ingrid hastily scanned the surrounding field for a sign of an archer, but could see no one in along the horizon. She turned to try to glimpse of the nearby treeline, but the bandit yanked her forward by her aching arm. A telltale flap of wings, however, made her realize her gaze had been in the right direction – but too far down.
Looking up, the silhouette of a wyvern was unmistakable, even as midafternoon sun obscured all details in its backlighting. It swooped towards them at a breakneck speed, its wings kicking up gusts of wind as it circled that would have knocked Ingrid off her feet if she weren’t being held up. As it was, the bandit clung to her arms as if she was a useful shield, someone that could protect him from the incoming beast. She could not.
The wyvern landed on the edge of the hill with a kind of clambering confidence that almost approximated grace. Ingrid’s eyes had adjusted back enough from her ill-advised glimpse sunward to realize it was a startling all-white wyvern, its golden eyes all the more stark against blindingly bright scales. She had only seen such coloration twice in her life, and her heart did a backflip as she slid her eyes to the dismounting rider, scarcely believing her perfectly horrible luck.
Claude von Riegan strode towards them slowly, almost lazily, spinning an arrow around his fingers with a practiced ease. Ingrid would bet her portion of dinner that he was playing some overly orchestrated operatic score in his head as he walked; he made no effort to hide the pleasure he took in achieving such a dramatic entrance. It was as obnoxious as it was effective – between Claude’s careless notching of his bow and the hulking wyvern angrily snorting smoke behind him, the remaining bandits both evidently decided that it was finally time to cut their losses and run. Ingrid’s would-be executioner tossed her viciously aside before sprinting away and she fell to the ground. She took consolation that it was her good arm that hit the grass first, and not her injured one. She’d need something to thank the goddess for the next time she prayed, and she wasn’t finding a ton of options at the moment.
Claude turned back towards his wyvern, jerked his head towards the retreating backs of the two bandits, and barked a command that sounded an awful lot like “Fetch.” The wyvern took off in a run across the hill and Ingrid instinctively curled away from its path, not wanting to add “trampled by a wyvern” to her growing list of injuries that day, but it had taken to the skies before it even reached her, and she pushed herself up slightly to watch it swoop after the retreating bandits, the occasional burst of flame nearly but not quite catching up to them.
A shadow fell across her, and Ingrid looked up to see Claude standing over her, looking down at her with his head tilted to the side, like a cat that had just spotted something interesting in the distance. His eyebrows were knit together in curiosity, or perhaps confusion, but as Ingrid shifted to look up at him, his eyes shifted into an emotion far too pleased for Ingrid’s taste – she would code it, uncharitably, as “sparkling in amusement.”
“They weren’t friends of yours, right?” he asked. “I’d feel bad if they were friends of yours.”
Ingrid closed her eyes and drew a breath through her nose, but unfortunately, when she opened them, both the pain and Claude were still there. She jerked her thumb over her shoulder, down the hill in the direction the bandits had run.
“It would seem your wyvern’s run off, sir,” she said, the politeness in her voice not fooling Claude for even a second. “Perhaps you had better fetch him.”
“That’s a bit hypocritical of you, wouldn’t you say, Miss Galatea?” Claude asked, taking a seat next to her in the grass. “Unless there are two pegasus wandering the woods snapping at the fingers of charming and well-meaning friends who are just trying to help, that is. Otherwise, I think I ran into your mount less than an hour ago. Without you there, I might add.”
“You found Hermia?” Ingrid asked. “Is she – she’s okay, right? Where is she?”
“She’s fine, Ingrid,” Claude said. “We’re a little worried about her wings, but a group of our soldiers always trek back from these missions on foot. I told them to take her to the capital – and then set off to look for her rider.”
“You knew it was my pegasus?” Ingrid asked, skeptically. Most people she knew couldn’t keep track of one mount from another, but she had been with Hermia since before the war. There was a chance Claude remembered.
Claude flashed her a grin. “Never met an animal that hates me that much, Ingrid. She hasn’t forgotten me, either, I guess.” He waggled his gloved fingers in front of Ingrid. “Nearly took my fingers clean off.”
“I’m glad she’s safe,” Ingrid murmured, momentarily forgetting her own pain as relief washed over her. She suddenly remembered the start of the conversation and jerked her head towards the disappearing figures of the two bandits. “Seriously, Claude, they’ve got weapons. You should call your wyvern back to you.”
“Nah, he’ll be okay,” Claude said. “I’m part of a larger scouting troop, trying to track down thieves like these guys. My men will be able to follow him easier than 2 men on foot; he’ll come back here once they’ve been caught.” Sure enough, Ingrid realized as she looked up, the skyline was littered with wyvern riders, spread out in scouting formation. A set of them had already broken from the group and were streaking north, towards Claude’s wyvern and its prey.
“Your wyvern’s doing all the work for you these days?” Ingrid scoffed. “That checks out.”
“Weirdly enough, Ingrid, I was kind of expecting a thank you or something,” Claude said, stretching his hands behind his head lazily. “Your new friends didn’t look like the nicest of guys, you know?”
“I was taking care of it,” Ingrid snapped. The pause was just long enough for her to feel ridiculous. “But yes, thank you,” she finally added. “I’m glad it was y – I'm glad to see a familiar face.”
She didn’t like leaving an opening, but Claude didn’t use sincerity as a chance to strike back. He got to his feet and briefly held out a hand, then pulled back, uncertain. “Okay,” he said slowly. “What part of you is least injured right now?”
“It’s fine, I’ve got it,” Ingrid said, pushing herself up to a fully seated position and then struggling to her feet. “The last thing I need is for you to have another reason - oh goddess,” she swore, stumbling forward as she put an ill-advised amount of weight on her bad ankle. Now that the adrenaline of battle was gone, her beaten-down joints were refusing to cooperate.
Claude caught her, quickly and easily, and she looked up at him, annoyed at herself for stumbling and annoyed at Claude for seeing her stumble. She hadn’t seen him outside of the battlefield for something like four years now. Up close, he was both strikingly different and remarkably the same. She tried to remember if he’d actually grown taller or if his shoulders had just broadened out to make him seem more towering than she remembered, but his green eyes had the same intelligent, observant intensity, and his lips still seemed on the verge of a smirk at all times. Claude hadn’t let go of the inside jokes that only he was privy to, evidently. Ingrid wished he’d let go of her.
“Of course you’ve got it,” he said, walking them both over to the same tree stump Ingrid had taken refuge at earlier. “I’d never imply otherwise.” He narrowed his eyes as Ingrid took a seat; she ignored him, gingerly poking at her ankle to decide if she should upgrade it to broken. “Do you have anything for that arm, though, is the question,” he said, and Ingrid glanced at her arm, which was streaked with crusted and barely-congealing blood.
“Umm, yeah, I think – hold on,” Ingrid said, scrambling for a vulnerary at her belt. Blessedly she hadn’t left that in Hermia’s saddlebags.
Ingrid fumbled to get the vulnerary open, her fingers covered in sweat and blood and gods knew what else, and Claude plucked it out of her hands before she could object, or even really give it a serious try. She took the bottle back from him without looking at him, her eyes still on her swollen and discolored ankle, with a second muttered “thank you.” She was surprised, as she raised the bottle to her lips, to realize she was holding an elixir. She looked up finally and Claude was inspecting her own vulnerary judgmentally.
“These look just like the ones they issued us when we were students at – how long have you had this? Do these things have an expiration date?” He asked, turning it upside down to inspect the bottom. Viscous vulnerary liquid dripped over the edges, falling at his feet.
“Claude! Stop that, you’re wasting it,” Ingrid said. “I need that!”
“You’ll need more than this, look at yourself,” Claude said skeptically. “Those guys really did a number on you.”
“They weren’t so bad,” Ingrid said defensively. “Most of this is from the fall.”
“Wait, you fell ? Like off your pegasus?” Claude actually looked shocked for a moment.
“It wasn’t my fault! There was a lucky hit from an arrow, I’m just glad that they didn’t hit –”
“Drink,” Claude interrupted her, nudging her elbow upwards.
Ingrid narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m fine, Claude. I can’t afford to pay you back for –”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Claude interrupted her again, and Ingrid’s glare intensified. “Pay me back? Just drink the damn elixir, Ingrid.” He looked back at the vulnerary he was holding. “I’m throwing this away; I don’t think it’s supposed to smell so . . . vinegary.”
Ingrid took the angriest swig of elixir in the history of drinking, and was cut off mid-sip by as she broke into a cough, the burning at the back of her throat a new, if not painful, sensation. It felt different than healing magic, a warm light that surrounded you from the outside and gently soothed over broken skin and displaced bones. She felt like she could feel the liquid heat of the elixir coursing through her veins to the tips of her fingers, red-hot and then instantly too cold, particularly as it passed beneath injuries. The relief that followed was too quick, too sudden a change, and Ingrid drew a sharp breath of air as her coughing subsided, staring in shock at the newly forming skin as it spider-webbed up her arm. She could never afford a bottle of this. Part of her wasn’t sorry.
“So, do you want to go first in explaining why we’re both out here on this picturesque hill, or shall I?” Claude asked. “I must admit I didn’t expect to see you here today – or ever, really.”
“You said you were on a scouting mission?” Ingrid asked. She looked behind her, where the bodies of the three bandits lay where they had fallen. “They weren’t from Almyra,” she said. It was both a fact and a question.
“No, they rarely are,” Claude said. “The war in Fodlan casts a long shadow; even the victories, sometimes. The new unification of the Kingdom and the Alliance has increased trade routes for the first time in years. But there are plenty of Alliance merchants – if you can call them that – who think Almyran travelers are easier targets for . . . shall we say for acquiring stock. The war drove them to the edge, but peacetime isn’t an automatic switch, right? You have to work at it.” He frowned, glancing at the bodies himself, then turning away, pushing at Ingrid’s shoulder until she turned away, as well. “I think the court thinks I’ll have a better time negotiating, because I’ve got Alliance connections,” he said ruefully. “But so far the people we come across aren’t interested in talking.”
“Yeah, I found that,” Ingrid muttered. “I’m sorry to have interrupted your mission. I meant to meet you in the capital.”
“The capital?” Claude said, looking down at her in surprise. “I assumed this was some business near the border.”
“No, I’m serving in capacity as the Prince’s personal courier right now,” Ingrid said, and it felt strange on her tongue to say it, and delicious, and she wanted to say it again. It was, perhaps, the closest to knighthood she would ever get.
Claude gave her a wide smile, and Ingrid realized he must have read the pride across her face, and that he probably found it ridiculous. He offered her a slight bow. “A lady of letters now, then? I’m all ears,” he said, crossing his arms and fixing her with an inquiring gaze.
“I bring a message,” Ingrid began, trying to tap into that same borrowed confidence, but suddenly finding herself a bit embarrassed to be so on display under Claude’s scrutiny. “From his Royal Highness the Crown Prince of the Holy Kingdom of Fa –” she winced as a lightning bolt of pain shot through her body, her message getting lost in the gasp she let out. The elixir had healed her most immediate injuries, but the aftershocks of pain came in waves as the numbing effect flickered down.
“Woah, okay, don’t talk, hold on,” Claude said. He prodded at the elixir in her hand, his other hand settling on her shoulder. “Drink more if you need more. Why don’t we just wait until we get back to the capital and you can tell me –”
“I bring a message,” Ingrid cut him off, her eyes flashing angrily up at him. His voice was cajoling. Soothing. Condescending. She had one job and he wouldn’t even listen.
He dropped the charm, glaring back at her. “Ingrid, seriously,” he said before she could continue with the report. “Can you even stand right now?”
“Just let me do this,” Ingrid said through gritted teeth, her hand gripping into her skirt so tightly that she could feel nail marks through the fabric and against her leg.
Claude took a step back, hands up in defeat. “A message, fine, whatever,” he said, annoyance written across his face. “From Dimitri. Let’s hear it, then.”
Ingrid closed her eyes to reorient herself, but she would look Claude in the eye while she delivered the message. Even if he looked at her like she was an idiot – or worse, a curiosity. She owed herself that much.
“Our army prepares to march on Enbarr at the end of the month,” she said. She had her doubts on sharing such information so openly, but her job was to be a mouthpiece, not an advisor. And in all likelihood this wasn’t news to Claude. “We request resources at the eastern border of Faerghus. It is in our mutual interest to see the Empire’s campaign of violence and treachery halted once and for all. All we ask is that Almyra promise to uphold existing peace treaties formally established by Alliance territory.”
It was a long message, and Ingrid felt out of breath before she’d gotten two words into it. But she stumbled through it with minimal coughing, and if she gasped too loudly for a breath at the end of it, Claude didn’t seem to notice. He was looking off into the sky, generally towards Faerghus territory.
“So it’s finally come down to Enbarr,” he said, his voice sounding far away to Ingrid, which might have been an effect of exhaustion, or of too much elixir too fast. “It was inevitable; it’s been inevitable since this whole war began.” He pulled his attention back to Ingrid, who had been staring at him without meaning to, but who didn’t blush when he looked back at her. Claude stared at her all the time, or he had; he could handle a baffled glance or two in retaliation.
“Have you an answer, then?” Ingrid said, and if her tone was impatient, Claude didn’t seem insulted.
“Dimitri’s at Garreg Mach, I take it? Not the capital?” he asked. Ingrid nodded, and Claude surprised her by tuning back towards the skies and giving a loud whistle, using his fingers to project the sound so it pierced through the air. A wyvern rider looping patrol circles across the sky caught the sound and cast a wide gyre in their descent before landing several yards away from the pair. Ingrid gave a subtle sigh of relief as the rider dismounted and walked towards Claude. Perhaps her injuries were a boon, in a strange sort of way – Claude didn’t seem in the mood to argue or to tease, so if she could fetch her pegasus and his answer, she might be able to make it back to Garreg Mach before nightfall.
“A message for Prince Dimitri, of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus,” Claude said, and Ingrid gave him a suspicious glance – first, because she wasn’t entirely sure his formalities weren’t a mocking imitation of her own, and then because she was unsure why this knight needed to know the message. He continued, “Tell him that his courier has arrived safely in Almyra, and I will send another message in the morning, once we have had time for negotiations. You’ll find him at Garreg Mach Monastery. He should give you shelter for the night, but make haste – I’d rather he have this message sooner rather than later.”
The wyvern rider hurried away with a simple “yes, highness,” and Claude turned back and walked towards Ingrid, his eyes still faraway in thought, as if he was traveling back to Garreg Mach at faster speeds than any wyvern could manage.
“Claude! Did you think I couldn’t hear that?” Ingrid said, jumping to her feet, leaving the flask on the stump behind her. She swayed unsteadily from the sudden movement, but was pleased to see she could once again balance on a leg well enough to stand – the elixir was doing faster work than she’d anticipated. She didn’t drink them very often.
Claude looked up at her in confusion, as if he’d momentarily forgotten she was there. “What? You said Dimitri was at Garreg Mach, right? They’ve plenty of spare rooms there; the least they can do is can put my best wyvern knight up for a night,” he said, raising an eyebrow.
“No, not that ,” Ingrid snapped at him, taking several angry steps towards him. “This is not a conversation that requires extensive negotiation. Just give me a yes or no answer and take me to my pegasus, and I’ll be on my way!”
Her leg chose that moment to remind her that it elixirs wouldn’t fix everything, and she stumbled forwards, her ankle throbbing from the briefest moment of holding weight. Claude caught her by the arms before she could properly fall, and held her fast as she tried to shake him off, looking down at her as she flailed both to loosen his grip and to regain her footing. Neither attempt was particularly successful.
“Ingrid, I can’t guarantee a healer will be available as soon as we get back to the palace,” he said, shifting his grip to more steadily hold Ingrid by her elbow, keeping her weight entirely off her leg but practically lifting her off the ground in the process. “It might approach nightfall by the time you’re ready to travel. And this way, you’ll have a chance to rest before you head out.”
“I don’t need rest . I don’t need a healer,” Ingrid protested. The look Claude gave her was not judgmental so much as legitimately confused, but she felt judged regardless. “Give me an answer and I’ll be out of you way. I’m not demanding accommodations, Claude; I want no more than a message to return. It’s a reasonable request, I think.”
“No one said anything about requests, or demands, Ingrid,” Claude said. He gave her a charming smile that didn’t last quite long enough – Claude’s smiles never did. His eyes weren’t settling on hers properly; he instead seemed to be scanning her face, taking stock of the bruises and scratches and imperfections of battle. “I’m inviting you to stay the at the palace as an official guest of the Almyran royal family. To ensure our continued good favor with the Kingdom. Dimitri would prefer it if I took care of you, don’t you think?” he added. His practiced smile was replaced by a frown as he brought his hand up and brushed the back of his knuckles alongside a nasty gash that stretched across her cheekbone.
Ingrid swatted his hand away with her free arm.
“Please don’t interpret this as rudeness, highness, but I must refuse such invitation,” Ingrid said. She had many official reasons she could give – she was needed at Dimitri’s side; she would prefer to tend to Hermia’s wounds in the comfort of her own stables; the return message would only be trusted from her lips and surely Claude also wished for such messages to remain trustworthy. But in honesty, she just wasn’t sure she could stand another second of Claude von Riegan making a mental list of her flaws and injuries. He was lazy and arrogant, yes, but he was also smart, and calculating. And the longer she stayed in Almyra, the more he could calculate about her . And that made her feel just as vulnerable as she had when she watched her lance snap in front of her eyes. Just with a different sort of vulnerability.
She didn’t give this as her reason, of course, and as Claude continued to stare at her, puzzling her reply together with her generally disheveled appearance, she added, “I am confident enough in my own abilities that I need not trespass on your hospitality. I am not inclined to ask favors of our allies so readily.”
Claude’s puzzled eyes narrowed for a moment. “Fine, then,” he said. “Then I’m taking you back to the capital as a suspected spy, for intruding on Almyran lands during wartime.”
Ingrid’s jaw dropped open in disbelief, and she shoved Claude backwards, stumbling away from him, ankle injury or no ankle injury. “You wouldn’t dare ,” she said, dropping the mask of decorum to fix him with five years of pent up fury – at every irresponsible, entitled man she’d ever met, not just at him. “That would be a direct affront to the Kingdom,” she snapped at him.
Claude threw his hands up in exasperation. “Well, yeah , but so would sending Dimitri back a half-dead knight . Or worse, a fully dead one!”
“You’re impossible!” Ingrid cried. She collapsed back down on the tree stump, to avoid standing any longer, and glared up at Claude. “You think you know what’s best for everyone; you won’t budge on a single negotiation – how are you expecting to run a country if you just boss everyone around to have things your way?”
“You know, Ingrid, from some vantage points that’s literally what running a country is,” Claude replied tersely. Ingrid narrowed her eyes at him, and she didn’t have to say it – he knew she had little respect for such vantage points. He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose, a gesture of exasperation that Ingrid recognized even years later. He sat on the edge of the stump next to her, and Ingrid found herself scooting over to allow him more room even though he didn’t ask for it. He readjusted, and looked at her, his eyes still exasperated but more determined.
“You want negotiation? Fine,” he said. “Come back to the palace. I’ll fast track a healer to look at you, and I’ll have the stable master personally oversee the care of your pegasus.”
“Hermia,” Ingrid corrected him.
“Bless you,” he said, and she glared at him. “And then we’ll both agree to go by their diagnoses, okay? When they say it’s safe to fly, it’s safe to fly.”
“It’s hardly a neutral party if you’re picking the healer and you’re picking the stablehand,” Ingrid pointed out.
“You wound me, Ingrid,” Claude said, clasping a hand melodramatically to his heart. “I am a man of honor; I will provide the finest expertise for my favorite former classmate. Besides,” he added, returning her eyeroll with a raised eyebrow of his own in a way that was uncannily like their teenage conversations. “Your other option is 20 days bread and water in the palace dungeons, so maybe you’re just going to have to trust me on this one.”
“You never miss a trick, Claude von Riegan,” Ingrid mumbled angrily, but she was losing energy to argue, and that didn’t bode well for her having enough energy to travel back to Garreg Mach, even if she did manage to win this debate. The world was bending slightly in and out of focus, and she dug her fingers into her knees again, the sudden rush of pain bringing her back into the present. One final set of bruises wouldn’t mean anything in the morning.
She was more sharply brought back to the present by something prodding against her arm – she looked over and Claude was offering out the flask of elixir again. If she didn’t know better she would have thought he looked worried.
“One more sip won’t kill you,” he said, more kindly and coaxing than he’d been moments earlier. “You held your own pretty damn well out there, Ingrid.”
Ingrid ignored the compliment, took the flask, eyed it suspiciously. “I’m rather worried too much of this stuff is what’s making the world spin right now,” she said, and she pushed it back towards him.
He frowned. “Could be. That or the blood loss,” he said, but he pocketed the elixir without further argument. He gave Ingrid another worried glance, and stood up, offering a hand. “On that note, we should probably get going. The sooner we get to the palace, the sooner someone can patch you up.”
Ingrid nodded and sighed. She took Claude’s hand and pulled herself up, shifting her weight automatically to her good leg. But Claude surprised her, continuing to pull her forward. He reached down scooped her up, one arm settling under her knees and the other dropping to rest on her back. Ingrid grabbed the collar of his shirt for balance with an undignified yelp.
“Claude, don’t you – I can walk on my own just fine,” she said. She could feel a blush creeping up her entire face as Claude readjusted his hands to get a better grip on her, somehow managing to avoid the numerous cuts and scrapes as his calloused fingers flickered across her legs.
“Okay, so objectively that’s not true. You know that’s not true, right? Like. Objectively,” Claude replied. He had already begun walking down the hill, away from the forest and the stump and the awful scene of battle. Ingrid didn’t think he’d drop her, not really, but as the hill angled downward she grabbed the back of his neck in a momentary reflex of panic, and then couldn’t think of a way out of it without admitting that she had panicked. Claude didn’t seem to notice her furious internal debate of how to best regain dignity. He continued, sensibly, “You can barely put weight on your ankle, Ingrid. And I’m pretty sure nothing on the human body is supposed to be that shade of purple.”
“Leave my ankle alone,” Ingrid grumbled. “It never did anything to you.”
“Hmmm, not sure about that,” Claude said, “I seem to remember getting kicked under the table in lecture more than once when we were in classes together.”
“Those were my toes, not my ankle,” Ingrid said. She could also be the voice of meticulous reason if she put her mind to it. “And you were probably drifting asleep during seminar. You should thank me for being so invested in your education.”
“Yeah, well, consider this thanks to your toes, then. Hold on,” Claude said. Ingrid gripped the back of his shirt more tightly, but he hadn’t meant hold on literally. Shifting Ingrid once again so her head jostled against him, Claude looked out across the field that stretched before them at the bottom of the hill and let out a piercing whistle. Ingrid supposed she was glad he wasn’t whistling directly in her face, but she still flinched at the sudden sound, burying her ear against his shirt for a moment before she realized what she was doing and jerked back suddenly.
“Thanks for the warning,” Ingrid began, but her retort was cut off by the sudden, jubilant cry of a wyvern, and she might have imagined it but the ground seemed to shake slightly Claude’s oversized wyvern bounded across the field towards them. Ingrid was no expert in wyvern care, but his enthusiastic gait and joyful screeches as he saw Claude were probably a good indication that he was uninjured and that he’d survived any bandit encounters unscathed, as Claude predicted. Ingrid had never been jealous of a wyvern before, but this was certainly a day for new and unwelcome experiences.
The wyvern came bounding up to Claude, stopping just short of crashing into them, and eagerly poked his nose down towards them. Ingrid flinched as smoky breath passed over her, and she realized the wyvern was sniffing her in friendly greeting, unconcerned by the occasional sparks that dropped down on them.
“Hey! Hey. Be polite,” Claude ordered, quickly swerving away from the wyvern to shield Ingrid from its inquisitive greeting. Her head spun wildly at the movement and she grabbed Claude’s arm more tightly, but the wyvern backed off. “That’s my handsome boy,” Claude cooed cheerfully, and Ingrid would have rolled her eyes if she hadn’t full well known she’d called Hermia the “prettiest buttercup warrior” just that morning.
“You’ve ridden a wyvern before, right?” he asked Ingrid.
“Um,” Ingrid replied.
“Great,” said Claude. He turned back to his mount – Ingrid supposed she should probably learn his name – and said “Down,” in the same sharp, precise tone as before. The wyvern dropped low to the ground, and Claude swung Ingrid up into the saddle, following close behind. It was a different feeling than a pegasus, with the seat somehow both higher set and further forward than she was used to and her legs swung over to one side. She was pressed up against Claude in a way that would have made her feel secure is she hadn’t felt so deeply mortified, the rise and fall of his breath moving against her shoulder blades.
“Mkay, here we go,” Claude said, evidently completely unaffected by the rise and fall of his breath, which seemed an unfair advantage. He clicked his tongue and the wyvern got to its feet, a shaky, rumbling process. “Hold on,” Claude added as the saddle pitched forward slightly under the newfound curvature of the wyvern’s spine.
“Hold on to where ?” Ingrid demanded, neither reigns nor handholds in front of her.
“Oh, hm,” Claude said. He swung an arm around her waist, pulling her back even closer against him. “Onto me, I guess?” he suggested, and the wyvern took to the sky before Ingrid could take issue. Ingrid loved the swoop of takeoff, had chased it her entire life, but the wyvern was once again an uncanny mirror of what she was used to, an upwards firework rather than a graceful leap.
Ingrid grabbed onto Claude’s forearm for balance, feeling the muscles twitch beneath her fingers. She was sure there was a proper way for wyvern riders to carry passengers, just as she had studied and demonstrated proper transport etiquette with theoretical precision before she was even allowed to sit for her for her falcon rider’s exam. She was also sure that Claude had never bothered to learn it, or had learned it and then immediately forgotten it.
“We’ll head straight to the capital; the scouting party will be fine without me,” Claude said, his voiced raised slightly as the wind whipped past them. “Shouldn’t be more than an hour.”
Ingrid twisted to look at him, the angle somehow even more awkward that it had been. “You can’t just leave your men! Aren’t you the leader of the scouting mission?” she asked in horror.
“They’ll be fine,” Claude said, and Ingrid felt him shift against her in a shrug. “They’ve done this before.”
“First your wyvern, then your battalion,” Ingrid said, and she was shouting over the wind, but maybe also shouting just because it was Claude. “Is there supervision you actually oversee as prince of this land?”
“Hey, I have an idea,” Claude said. “How about you take a nap and I’ll supervise you not falling off this wyvern? I’m sure you’re tired.”
“I’m not tired,” said Ingrid, which was a lie. She was exhausted.
That shrug again. “Well, it would be better than you yelling at me all the way back to the palace,” Claude said. “Actually, tuck your head in. Cichol likes to fly pretty close to the treeline sometimes.”
“You named your wyvern –” Ingrid started, but as the wyvern – Cichol, evidently – took an almost vertical dive towards the forest below them, she took Claude up on his advice, pressing her ear against him and squeezing her eyes shut. She took slight comfort that his heartbeat pounded more rapidly against her ear than she’d expected – perhaps Claude was a thrill seeker rather than simply an idiot with no regard for his life or hers. She lived for the dips and dives of flight, as well, but it was one thing to control a descent and another to be along for the ride. It was one thing to ride a pegasus and another to ride a wyvern. And it was one thing to be the star pegasus knight in the service to the crown of Faerghus, bringing an urgent message across the border with all due speed, and quite another thing to be Ingrid Galatea, stranded across unfamiliar borders, clinging to the world’s most irresponsible idiot and actually being stupid enough to find the sound of his heartbeat against her ear rather comforting.
Ingrid was positive her ankle was twisted. But that was the least of her worries at the moment.