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i.
The last person Hilda ever expected to see at the jeweller’s table is Felix Fraldarius. He looks more uptight than usual, eyeing the wares like they might bite him. When he notices her at the other end of the table, he stiffens, drawing his hand away from the beaded bracelet he was considering, and turning on his heel.
Hilda chases after him though. “Hey Felix!”
She relishes the scowl he makes no effort to hide. “Hilda.”
“Were you looking for something for yourself?”
Felix scoffs at the thought. “Of course not.”
“Oh?” Hilda tries to keep her tone light, but her excitement is obvious and Felix certainly notices it. If a man wasn’t buying a bracelet for himself, then surely there was only one reason. He seems to realize his misstep because he begins backing away. “Who—”
“I’m done here.”
“Felix!” Hilda grabs his arm. “Look, if you want to get a gift for your sweetheart, I won’t tell anyone.”
“I don’t have a sweetheart,” he grunts, pulling his arm out of her grip and walking away.
That evening, Hilda goes back to her room and pieces together a dainty bracelet of turquoise beads from Derdriu that match its shores. She was never sure what she wanted to do with these, but after linking them together, she knows she made the right choice. The next day, she catches Felix outside the training grounds and hands it to him.
“A good business woman knows she’ll need to give out some samples at the beginning,” Hilda says. “Tell me what your sweetheart thinks of it!”
She runs away with a laugh, ignoring Felix’s continued claim that he doesn’t have a sweetheart dammit.
A few weeks later, Annette removes her uniform jacket as she eagerly cleans Hilda’s room. It takes an absurd amount of effort to not shriek in delight at the sight of a familiar turquoise bracelet around her wrist.
ii.
Hilda catches up with Sylvain, still fun to flirt with but as empty-promised as ever. She teases Lorenz, secretly glad to know that the Kingdom spared him despite initially working with the Empire. Hilda catches up with the classmates she never wanted to face at Gronder and who came to her rescue in Derdriu.
She manages not to clap in excitement when she sees that five years later, Annette still wears one of Hilda’s first sales. Sure, Felix didn’t pay with gold, but he sure paid with the cute story Hilda got to unfold, so she’ll go with that.
She corners Felix later in the evening with a grin so wide he actually draws back.
“Ugh, it’s you,” he says in lieu of a proper greeting. “What do you want?”
“I think the question is what do you want?”
The look of disgust on his face is almost comical. Her words came out a bit more flirtatiously than she intended, but Felix really needs to work on his poker face now that he’s become one of the most powerful men in Faerghus.
“So matching earrings or a matching necklace?” Hilda asks.
Felix blinks. “What?”
“For Annette,” she clarifies. “I see she still wears the bracelet you were not giving to your not sweetheart.”
“It—that—” Felix glances at where Annette is chatting with Mercedes and Ashe. “That was just a peace offering.”
“And whatever I make next can be for courtship!”
Felix looks up at the ceiling and then shakes his head. “I’ll see you at the monastery, Hilda.”
“So earrings then?”
“Goodbye.”
Earrings then, Hilda decides. She can’t deny the relief she felt when Felix and Dimitri appeared at the port, cutting down the soldiers attacking her as Arundel galloped closer. Earrings were the least she could do.
iii.
Fhirdiad, Hilda thinks, is much too cold. She presses her hands against her teacup, hoping to draw some of its warmth.
Across from her, Duke Fraldarius crosses his arms. “Why am I here?” he grumbles to himself.
Hilda bats her eyes. “Come now, that’s not how nobles are meant to make small talk, Felix.”
“The Boar said I need to stop declining people’s invitations every time I get them,” he complains. “Apparently it comes off ‘rude’ and makes me seem ‘unapproachable.’”
“It’s true.” Hilda leans forward, resting her chin on her hand. “But you’re the one who invited me, remember?”
“Right.” Felix’s cheeks begin to redden, and if he hadn’t been caught with Annette in the greenhouse so many times during the war, Hilda would actually think he might be proposing a union. “I’d like to, uh, commission you.”
“Oh?”
He shrugs. “A necklace, I guess. Something different though. Not the turquoise again.”
“Wait—” Hilda slams her hands on the table, eyes wide and full of excitement. “You mean you want to commission me to make jewelry?!”
“That’s what I said.” Felix raises an eyebrow. “Why are you being weird about it?”
She’s practically shaking with glee. Holst always called her jewelry-making a hobby, but for Hilda, it was a passion. She didn’t want to fight or play at politics. So far she’d only made things for herself and a few close friends. She’d never been sought after like this!
“Is this your courtship present?” Hilda asks. “Do all those months during the war not count? So scandalous, Felix—”
“Do you want the work or not?!”
iv.
The engagement ring is as opulent as expected. House Fraldarius is ancient and wealthy and the massive sapphire reminds Hilda of that. She runs her finger over the smaller diamonds that surround it and then looks up at Felix with a grin.
“She’s going to hate it.”
“I know.” Felix sighs heavily. “My uncle wouldn’t let me leave the family vault with anything less.”
Hilda always found the pieces most noble houses kept to be awfully gaudy. There was an extravagant necklace that belonged to a great aunt of hers that Hilda eagerly awaited inheriting so she could disassemble it and turn it into a few newer, better pieces.
Felix pockets the ring and then pulls out a bag of gold pieces. It lands with a thunk in front of Hilda. “If I commission you again, are you going to be weird about it?”
Hilda, whose only customers have been Lorenz, Marianne, and Felix, tries not to clap in addition to smiling. “I would never.”
Felix just shakes his head when Hilda proceeds to clap anyway. “Just make me a better ring.”
“Are you going to give her both?”
“I have to,” Felix grunts. “But I want to propose with a ring that actually suits her.”
Hilda pulls out the notebook she’s learned to start carrying around so she can draw out her ideas when they strike her. She begins sketching a design. “Oh, I know just the thing!”
v.
“You know the war is over, right?”
Felix makes a face, like he wants to tell her something dramatic about how the war can never truly be over when there are always little skirmishes that threaten the peace. Instead, he shrugs. “I thought it was a good gift.”
“Did your wife?”
“No,” he huffs. “She said to get you more crafting materials.”
“Smart woman.”
“The smartest.” He shrugs again. “You opened a school. If our school days were anything to go by, having a weapon on hand is always good.”
“You do realize this isn’t an officers academy, right?”
Really, the short axe the Duke and Duchess gifted her in celebration of her new artisan academy is more ornamental than functional. The weight feels right in her hand and since it came from Felix, the blade is most definitely sharp. But the handle is wrapped in leather dyed pink and studded with pretty stones. Hilda wouldn’t be shocked if their daughter had a hand in its design.
“Well, that’s all,” Felix says, already standing to leave the Goneril drawing room. He’d come for a meeting with her big brother and only met Hilda to pass along the present.
“Wait!” Hilda shoves him back into his chair. “You can’t just leave.”
“Can’t I?”
“You haven’t seen my new pieces, silly!”
Hilda asks one of the servants to get her collection while Felix complains that he just wants to go home. They return shortly and Hilda displays the line of smaller bracelets meant for children. If Annette’s letters are anything to go by, their daughter is fairly spoiled and Felix is the main cause of that.
“I’ll give you a discount since we’re old war buddies. One for the price of two.”
“That’s...shouldn’t it be two for the price of one?”
“I said what I said.”