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“I must say this is a rather unexpected reunion.” Hubert von Vestra’s pale green eyes are as cold as Annette remembers, his voice as low and eerie. His dapper overcoat with the silk vest underneath makes him look almost handsome - in a…snakelike sort of way - and dressed for the opera.
Which is where they are, in the Mittelfrank Opera House, a place she always wanted to visit but never envisioned doing it like this: in the middle of a war, gathering intelligence from the Adrestian Empire’s elite while encountering the very person they most need to avoid.
Felix’s arm under her hand tenses. She can all but imagine him longing to reach for the sword she convinced him not to carry. “We’ll look suspicious,” she said. “We’re pretending to watch choreographed fights, not start real ones.”
Maybe Hubert would be the one starting the real fight instead; it might even make a nice change to relieve the awful anxiety in her gut, but it would be a shame to open fire in a structure as beautiful and unique as Mittelfrank.
Annette doesn’t want to ruin the gorgeous fresco ceiling, but she will to protect herself and Felix.
“Well, um, ah–”
Felix wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her closer. He’s been touching her almost casually all evening to further their ruse, but it never fails to make her heart skip an erratic beat. “We’re on leave,” he says, and someone that doesn’t know him as well as Annette does wouldn’t hear the slight waver in his voice from the lie. “And I thought my new wife might enjoy a sheltered night away from the ugliness of the world beyond Enbarr.”
Annette plasters a smile that she hopes looks sickeningly in love - she doesn’t have to try too hard - onto her face as Hubert glances at her. “Y-yes,” she says. “It’s just a…a honeymoon for us, you could say!”
“In the middle of a war?” He raises a thin eyebrow but chuckles. “I suppose the people of Faerghus would find sneaking behind enemy lines romantic. In that case, are congratulations in order?”
“That’s really not necess–”
“Yes,” Felix says. His arm around her tightens, his free hand finding hers and gripping it as if it’s the hilt of a sword. “Congratulate us, because you won’t get another chance.”
Her face warms. Why must he sound so…so.... dramatic ? Did the first act of the opera affect him more than he let on?
“Then please accept my warmest congratulations,” Hubert says cooly, his thin lips stretched into a sad excuse for a smile, “and perhaps a toast, if you are willing to spend a few more moments of intermission with one such as me.”
Somehow, Felix grows even tenser, more taut than a harp string. “Absolutely n–”
“Yes,” Annette blurts, because outright refusing will draw more suspicion than even a reluctant acceptance. “A toast from an old schoolmate sounds…nice, Lord Vestra.”
Somehow she rearranges her hand in Felix’s to grip his fingers and squeeze in what she hopes is a reassuring manner. She takes some comfort from his warm touch too and hopes he doesn’t find her sweaty palm too disgusting.
Hubert’s broad sweep of his arm beckons for them to follow. They trail in his wake as he slices through the bustling atrium, past imperial nobles and officers whose soldiers they’ve faced - killed, wounded, captured - in battle.
It’s surreal, like passing through an enemy army’s camp, and the anxious giant’s fist wrapped around her chest squeezes tighter with every step.
Soft candlelight barely illuminates the Mittelfrank’s small ballroom, and shadows dance around like the opera’s chorus line. The clinking of glasses and the low hum of voices fills the room, and a valet at attention beside the curtained doorway glances over them before his eyes fall on Hubert.
He nods; apparently Hubert is important enough to gain entry to a private room.
He guides them to a table and pulls out a chair. “Lady Annette,” he says.
Felix doesn’t let her go, and something about his hand on her waist begins to feel distinctly…possessive. It’s probably a figment of her imagination, his hand burning hot through the bodice of her formal gown to sear her skin, but she nudges him and mumbles, “Lord Vestra is just trying to be polite, d-darling.”
Besides, if Felix can’t be bothered to help her into a chair himself…well, that’s his problem, not hers.
Yet he hesitates, his sharp, narrow-eyed gaze on Hubert full of warning or a promise of violence he can fulfill without a sword.
It sends a traitorous shiver down Annette’s spine, and maybe a little prickle of fear too. She tears herself from his grip and takes Hubert’s offered seat with a smile she doubts convinces anyone.
He pushes the chair so close to the table the edge presses into her abdomen. And that too feels almost like a threat, like they’re trapped with nowhere to go. She can all but feel the hot, menacing breath of a predator against the back of her neck and wishes she wore her hair loose rather than pinned up.
A warm hand lands on her shoulder. She yelps in surprise, only to recognize Felix’s hand, and his grip when he squeezes. On some impulse she rests her hand on his and flashes him a smile - far more sincere than her last but no less nervous.
His eyes fix on some point on her forehead, the closest to meeting her gaze he ever comes, and there’s something so very comforting about the reminder that she’s not alone, and she has someone as dependably…protective as Felix with her.
(Even if it’s as likely to get them into trouble as it is to save them, but that’s neither here nor there.)
Hubert clears his throat. Annette glances at him, her face warm as if he caught her doing something far more mortifying than smiling at Felix (which is mortifying in its own right). “Um…”
“Since you are here on my invitation,” Hubert says with a slight quirk of his eyebrow, “allow me to fetch the drinks. But won’t you sit down first, Lord Fraldarius? You look rather…unsettled.”
Felix’s grip on her shoulder tightens, but to her relief he doesn’t argue, only drops rather gracelessly into the chair beside her with a glare at Hubert that says, Happy?
“I shall return shortly then,” he says with a shallow bow of his head.
Even as he glides towards the bar and leaves them behind, Annette can’t feel at ease. Too many hostile eyes and figures in the midst of an enemy stronghold, and now they’ve been noticed as familiar - if not friendly - with the Adrestian Emperor’s right-hand man. Eyes already fix on them, cool and assessing, tracking their movements, ruining any anonymity they ever claimed.
“What are we going to do now?” Annette hisses to Felix under her breath. “Dorothea’s expecting us during the intermission, but now–”
“I know,” he cuts her off. His fingers tap against the table, muted by the thick white tablecloth but betraying his own nerves. “We hurry here with Vestra, then sneak backstage. And don’t you dare drink anything he offers you.”
“What, is he going to poison us at the opera house, Felix?” she says. When his eyes flash dark and angry, she sighs and rests her hand on his, attempting to calm his fidgeting. “I know, Felix, I know . Even if he doesn’t try to poison or drug us with truth serum, getting even a little tipsy is the last thing we can afford to do.”
“Then let’s go now,” he says.
Felix doesn’t wait for her reply. He bolts to his feet and grabs her hand before tugging her from her chair. Annette stumbles over the leg of the chair in their haste, and he spares her a mumbled apology as they push their way out of the quiet barroom.
She calculates the odds that no one will follow as a resounding zero , yet moving away from obvious danger feels far better than sitting still, waiting, and worrying.
“We need to disappear,” she tells him. She hikes up her long skirts to avoid tripping as they navigate the atrium. The crowd shifts with impatience, flowing towards the auditorium. “The second act must be starting soon.”
Felix ignores her. “Which door leads backstage?” he asks.
Annette repeats Professor Manuela’s directions to him, and soon they shove their way through a nondescript door marked “CAST AND CREW ONLY”.
The narrow corridor beyond is far darker than the bright atrium, with glass-covered gas lamps lining the walls, but it’s just as crowded. Crew members rush every which way along it, bearing unwieldy props while shouting at each other. Actors flit past dressed in flamboyant costumes. Doors open and shut, pounding out a rhythm steadier than Annette’s heartbeat.
And somehow, amid the chaos, no one pays any mind to two misplaced, well-dressed audience members fleeing like Nemesis himself chased them.
Felix barrels his way through, towing her along behind them. Annette offers awkward apologies to the people they push past, the ones who drop yards of colorful fabrics and boxes of powders and props. Felix even seizes a prop sword from one poor stagehand, right as the atmosphere in the corridor…shifts.
She’d be less harried and terrified in battle, with the way the voices of stagehands and actors diminishes into nothing in a wave. The air around them stills with the motion, and over it all someone whispers, “...Marquis Vestra…doing here?”
Her hand feels damp and sweaty and slippery in Felix’s tightening grip, as she hisses, “Felix, we need to hide now !”
No sooner do the words leave her lips than Felix wrenches open a random door and shoves her unceremoniously into it. A gasp escapes her at the shock of something hard and bumpy against her back, before he slips in after her.
Shutting the door plunges them into darkness.
Annette’s heart pounds wildly against her ribs as she blinks, trying to force her eyes to adjust. A faint hint of light seeps in beneath the crack in the door, outlining Felix in a silhouette, but she doesn’t need to see to know that they’ve made it into a small closet stuffed to bursting with props.
Felix presses her against what feels like a shelf, and something that feels like the handle of a broom or a wooden sword digs into her hip. Annette grabs onto his arms to steady herself as her chest tightens with an awful tension.
His unsteady breaths warm her face before he murmurs in a voice that sends a shiver up her spine, “Are you hurt?”
Even in the dark, his face hovers far too close to hers, his presence warm and inviting and distracting from the discomfort of their confines. She angles her face away from his, and shakes her head before remembering he probably can’t see her.
“N-no,” she says. “I’m fine, just a little–a little out of breath.”
And not just from their mad dash down the bustling corridor, nor even from the fear of the Adrestian Emperor’s faithful hound nipping at their heels. No, Annette isn’t so stupid to delude herself that Felix’s proximity has nothing to do with her struggle to breathe.
Chiding herself that now isn’t the time to dwell on pointless feelings doesn’t help at all.
“A-are you all right, Felix?” she wonders.
“Fine,” he says far too quickly. “Wish I had better than a prop sword.”
A helpless, breathless laugh bursts from Annette. “You should’ve paid more attention during Reason lessons then,” she whispers. “Did I waste our time tutoring you?”
“N-no,” he says far too quickly. She feels his eyes on her despite the dark, as if he sees her anyway or fills in the contours of her face with his memory. “You just–I paid too much attention to y–other things.”
“Then I must not have been a very good tutor,” she muses.
“That’s not–” he cuts himself off, then sighs. “More songs would’ve been nice.”
Annette’s grip on his arm tightens with her irritation, until he huffs in a way that betrays his amusement.
And if Felix can laugh - so much as he’s capable - in this situation, perhaps they’ll escape the opera house and Enbarr unscathed after all. Perhaps they’ll survive the war and build a future, and perhaps they’ll even do it together.
A smile tugs at her lips, and she turns back to face him. “You know, Felix,” she says, “it’s not just pretend to–”
The door rattling interrupts her, and a fresh wave of blood-chilling fear sweeps over her. Felix shifts, his whole frame tense against her.
And Annette has a flash of horrible - wonderful - inspiration. She slides her hands to and up his blessedly firm chest before gripping his shoulders. “Felix,” she mumbles, “we’re newlyweds.”
“What?” he says. His gaze fixes on the door, something sharp and expectant in him, and she has no doubt he won’t hesitate to club whoever stands on the other side with the prop sword he stole.
“What do newlyweds get up to when they, ah, escape?” Annette presses. She stares at him, hoping she won’t have to spell it out because then she’ll die of embarrassment before Hubert can poison or hex them or worse, but if she has to take matters into her own hands she will.
Luckily, for once, Felix understands her perfectly.
He grips her chin, tilts her head back, and leans down.
His lips find her nose first, before she exhales and stands on her toes. But despite everything, she should’ve been glad for that moment to catch her breath, because then Felix kisses her.
Heat floods Annette first, from the tips of her toes to the cavity in her chest and cheeks that never fail to betray her with a blush. Her pulse hammers in her ears as she leans into him, letting her lips slide clumsily against his, a part of her reveling in the feeling of him so close despite knowing it’s all a ruse.
Something clatters to the floor - the prop sword, she thinks - when he wraps his arm around her waist. A shallow gasp slips out of her, and she flings her arms around his neck to pull him closer.
Warm fingers cup her bare neck, slide up into hair Mercie so carefully helped her style, but she’s beyond the point of caring, not when Felix kisses her like he never wants to stop, like he’ll never have the chance again, and better than anything she’d ever admit to imagining.
At least when this ends she’ll have something real to fuel her future fantasies.
The door jerks open.
Felix pulls her closer.
Annette jerks away from him, blinking against the sudden glare of light outlining the tall figure in the doorway. Her breath comes in sharp gasps, but somehow she has just enough composure to brush a loosened curl away from her face before grasping Felix’s hand.
“What?” Felix snaps at their interruptor, sounding as breathless as her.
Hubert von Vestra’s expression shifts almost comically from smooth satisfaction to lip-curled disgust to glowering rage. “What do you mean, what ?” he demands.
She shifts very slightly in a feeble attempt to hide the prop sword Felix recovered. “W-we just, well, wanted a bit of privacy before returning to the auditorium for the second act, so if you could excuse us we’ll–”
“Hubie, what are you doing backstage?” a new and far more welcome voice interrupts from behind Hubert. “Surely you’re not here to visit me so close to the curtain lifting!”
Hubert looks distinctly discombobulated as he half-turns to reveal Dorothea, dressed in the resplendent costume of a long-dead princess. Her gaze shifts past him towards Annette and Felix in their failed hiding spot.
It must be a testament to good acting that she doesn’t look the least bit surprised at finding them there.
“Well,” she says, “if it isn’t Felix and Nettie!” She shoves past Hubert and seizes both of their arms to tug them out into the corridor before shaking both of their hands. “I was wondering where you’d gotten to! I was worried you wouldn’t be here before intermission ended!” She speaks so convincingly that Annette can’t help returning her smile despite the nerves once again writhing in her gut.
Felix, looking far less composed with his cheeks a fading pink and his eyes just a little glazed, nods. “We got lost,” he mumbles.
“Got lost in each other, looks like,” Dorothea muses with a smirk. She faces Hubert again, her grip on Annette’s arm suggesting she’ll fight if he insists on confronting them. “I’ll make sure they find their way back to the auditorium, Hubie, so why don’t you hurry along to your seat? The stage simply looks dazzling from your box and I would hate for you to miss that.”
Hubert’s awful, chilling, suspicious gaze slides from her to Felix before landing on Annette. She resists the stupid urge to gulp and instead settles with pulling a trickle of magic into her chest while shifting nearer to Felix.
At last, he says, “Very well, Dorothea. I will trust you to escort them to their own seats lest they lose their way again. After all, who knows what might befall them without your presence?” And then he drifts away, leaving nothing but his ominous words and unspoken warning behind.
Dorothea wastes no time towing them down the corridor and shoving them through a doorway marked with her name. A small but well-lit dressing room greets them, clothes, paper-wrapped bouquets of roses, and cosmetics covering every available surface. She shuts the door behind them before facing them, her arms crossed and her eyebrow raised.
“You’re lucky I found you right when Hubie did,” she says.
Annette sags with relief, but Felix doesn’t relax. He still carries the prop sword in one hand…and her hand in the other.
But she remembers her manners and says, “Thank you. Hubert probably would’ve murdered us and buried our bodies behind the opera house if you hadn’t found us.”
Dorothea waves away her thanks. “It’s a good thing he only caught you kissing and not doing something more incriminating,” she says, but then she pouts. “Speaking of, I should tell you off for letting that distract you from meeting me, but instead I’m awfully hurt you didn’t invite me to the wedding.”
“Wedding?” Felix blurts.
“W-we’re not married,” Annette says. “Being on a sort of honeymoon was just our excuse for, um, visiting Enbarr.”
“Not married?” Dorothea raises her eyebrow and glances between them in a way that makes Annette squirm and wish she had the willpower to let go of Felix’s hand. “Lovers then; whatever.”
“We’re not lovers,” he says, his voice far steadier than she would’ve managed.
At last Annette slips her hand from his grip to cover her hot face.
The fact that she wishes they were…well, that only makes her chest tighten with the ease of his denial, the reminder that their first kiss would be their last.
“Huh,” Dorothea says. “If you say so. For what it’s worth, that little…kiss looked pretty convincing, and neither of you is nearly that good of an actor.”