Work Text:
Annette,
It’s been one moon. I’ve tried to sneak out of Fraldarius twice. The first time my old man thought I was running away, and the second I finally told him why. I doubt he believed me, but your stepmother’s name struck a nerve and he actually sent someone to Fhirdiad.
But not me. I hate being trapped here, useless and waiting with my thoughts going round in circles wondering what’s become of you. And what’s even the point of writing this letter when I don’t even know where to send it?
And I’m annoyed with you for not meeting me like you promised. You could’ve left Fhirdiad with me and been away—
Felix dropped his quill and crumpled yet another piece of paper, another attempt at a letter that would go unsent - not least because he didn’t know an address.
Or if the intended recipient still lived.
His father would receive word from his agent in Fhirdiad any day now, and Felix lived in suspense. Every time they dined together in tense silence, as they had for years since Rodrigue gave up on stilted conversation, he had to bite his tongue to keep from demanding answers.
One moon to the day since the only thing that stared back at him from the mirror was his own frustrated gaze, and one moon since a pair of Fraldarius soldiers dragged him back to the castle.
It hadn’t been much of one since Glenn never returned, but since then he’d become something of a prisoner in his own home anyway.
If his father really wanted him to be its master one day, he ought not treat his son like an enemy captive.
“I thought you absconded,” his old man had said, his expression like thunder. “Is that any way to act just because you’re not content?”
“I was going to Fhirdiad,” Felix had retorted, sounding and feeling as petulant as a child in his righteous fury.
“We just returned from Fhirdiad,” Rodrigue had said. “I did not realize you liked court life so much.”
He pressed his lips together to keep from snapping something foolish, like an accusation or a confession. Thwarted energy thrummed through his body, and if he didn’t take to the training grounds soon he’d take a sword to that stupid cracked mirror in his bedchamber instead.
It had become useless anyway.
Felix couldn’t bear to look at it anymore, nor could he bear to rid himself of it. Pacing pointlessly before it, spinning around at every hint of movement only for the awful disappointment to tug at his chest when he realized it was only his own reflection.
He tried - and failed - to leave again two days later.
“I’m not a child anymore,” he’d seethed. He felt like a caged beast wearing a hole in the fine Almyran rug in the ducal study. “You can’t force me to stay if I don’t want to.”
Last time his father had been angry; this time he leaned back in his chair and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just tell me why, Felix.”
“I have business in Fhirdiad,” he’d insisted. “A score to settle with…”
And loathe as he was to admit he needed help - much less from his old man - he swallowed his pride and said, “Th-there’s a…”
Rodrigue crossed his arms, expectant eyebrow raised.
“A girl,” Felix eventually said. “A friend,” he added when his eyes widened.
“A friend,” he echoed. “And what is wrong with this friend?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “That’s the problem. I haven’t heard from her since…”
“Since we were in Fhirdiad?” Rodrigue pressed. He frowned, his skepticism painfully obvious.
“Something like that,” he said, because the mirror...defied explanation.
Annette had wondered about it, offered her own theories for its enchantment and pressed him for his own, but Felix had always taken it for granted.
He’d taken her for granted too, and more fool him.
His father sighed. “Did you refuse to tell me of her because she’s a commoner?” he wondered.
“What would that—no!” he snapped. “She’s—her stepmother—I saw Cornelia attack her!”
It was a mark of his skill as a politician that Rodrigue didn’t so much as twitch at the mention of a disgraced - and disliked - enemy. “How could you have seen this, Felix?” he asked far too reasonably.
Felix’s hands curled into fists out of mounting frustration. “I just did,” he said. “Do you doubt my word now?”
“Of course not,” he said, “but Cornelia is hardly in a position to—wait, did you say stepmother?”
Too late, he remembered that Annette had claimed to meet his father at the boar’s stupid coronation party, her abhorrent stepmother with her. “Yes,” he said through gritted teeth. “She’s—I know what I saw, old man. You have to—I thought it was a tenet of knighthood to protect women.”
Felix wasn’t even sure what he was saying anymore, only that he needed his father to understand...something - even if it was for the wrong reasons. Rodrigue would hunt Cornelia himself if he thought it served the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, if it honored his vows of knighthood, even if not for a young woman he didn’t know from Seiros, regardless of anything his son might feel for her.
“And since when do you care about the tenets of knighthood?” Rodrigue asked.
His ears burned, as if embarrassment had any place in this conversation. “If you’re not all talk,” he said, “you’ll send someone to Fhirdiad, find Cornelia, and save—” The words died in his throat, choked out of him by a fresh wave of fear.
What if he’d delayed too long, simply through his silence? And his father had resources Felix didn’t and wouldn’t for a long time. If anyone could find Cornelia - and mistrusted her enough to attempt it - and Annette, it would be him.
His old man saw reason eventually, but manhunts did not come to fruition overnight. And he forbade Felix from taking part, citing his determination to hide this from him.
He thought it more likely he was trying to control him - or that he didn’t fully believe him and worried he’d use it as an excuse to run away after all.
Felix had stormed out of the study, slamming doors behind him in a fit of pique, and he was halfway through buckling his swordbelt intending to travel to Fhirdiad in defiance of his father’s order when he realized he was being watched.
Well, if that was the way he wanted to play it…
He’d tossed another letter into the fire when the courier brought him the news:
That deposed Lady Cornelia Arnim had disappeared, and that neither she nor her stepdaughter were anywhere to be found.