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Glenn was not nearly as good at magic as he claimed to be.
There was a reason he studied at the military school despite them both being sons of a rather accomplished holy knight. Felix was hardly any better, but he knew his limits and didn’t do anything beyond fire spells that barely lit the fireplace or healing that only really closed up minor cuts.
It’ll be fine, Glenn said. I know what I’m doing, Glenn said.
Felix, having grown up with the fool, should have known better than to simply let his brother test a spell on him without ensuring the idiot could not only properly cast it, but could cast the counterspell too. Although Felix didn’t exactly let him. He scoffed at his brother and tried to walk away, but Glenn was already uttering the magic words and transfiguring Felix into a goddess forsaken cat .
Suddenly several feet short, Felix looked up at his idiot brother and yowled.
Glenn grinned, much too pleased with himself for his successful spell. “I did it.”
Felix swiped at Glenn’s boot.
“Relax,” Glenn insisted. “I can fix this.”
Felix did not relax and opted to scratch him.
Glenn looked down at the book in front of him and chanted what Felix presumed was the counterspell. Felix felt a churn in his stomach and the way Glenn’s magic swirled around him. When he turned back, he was actually going to kill his brother. There was no doubt about it. Felix knew he would be doing a good deed, really, since allowing such an idiot to roam freely would be a crime against humanity. The wind picked up, its speed and power lifting Felix a few inches off the stone floor. And then, suddenly, it stopped. The mini tornado dissipated and Felix was still a cat.
“Oh.” Glenn crossed his arms. “It didn’t work.”
“You think?!” Felix roared.
Glenn blinked as Felix tensed. He spoke. Words. He said words. Words came out of him, not just some pathetic meow that didn’t contain nearly enough vitriol to convey the sort of revenge Felix would seek for ths.
“Did you just…” Glenn knelt down, foolishly putting himself in range of Felix’s claws. “Say something.”
“Fix this.”
“You can talk!”
“I’m still a cat, you idiot!” Felix swiped at Glenn’s outstretched hand, earning a well-deserved cry of pain. “Fix this.”
“I kind of did.”
“You did not.”
“Sure I did. You can talk now, can’t you?”
“Glenn!”
Glenn grabbed the book off the table, scanning the chapter on transfiguration for anything else he might be able to do. He was certainly aware of Felix’s eyes on him, occasionally looking back at the black cat he brought about and then flipping to a new page. After a few minutes of nodding and humming like he understood anything he was reading, Glenn closed the tome and faced Felix.
“Well?” Felix prompted.
“I have good news and I have bad news.”
“How can you possibly have good news?”
Glenn smiled, the annoying charming one he saved for the nobles that liked to pretend his engagement to Ingrid wasn’t real and tout their daughters for a potential betrothal. Or when they passed Cornelia, who disliked them because of who their father was. Glenn used that smile to get extra cake because he was a glutton with bad taste and to charm the librarian into letting him borrow spellbooks that weren’t supposed to leave the library because they didn’t belong in the hands of absolute fools .
“The good news,” Glenn continued, “is that we’re going to see your favourite person.”
Felix snorted, but it sounded more like a little sneeze. “I don’t have a favourite person.”
“Sure you do.”
“I don’t.”
“The bad news is that I appear to be at a loss.”
He had gathered that much. “Oh really? Just that?”
Felix could easily think of more bad news. They were in Fhirdiad for Dimitri’s birthday ball, after all, which of course was in two nights. Their father would be furious if Felix failed to show up because Glenn turned him into a cat, meaning Felix would have to endure hours, if not days, of annoying lectures. Worse, the Archbishop would be visiting and he promised Felix a spar on his off hours. What if Felix wasn’t able to beat his former professor because he had paws? What if Felix had paws forever?
Glenn scooped Felix up, earning a scratch and screech. “Actually, you’re right. There is more bad news.”
Felix bit him, deciding there were no words that would make Glenn understand the beating Felix would dole out when he got his actual fists back.
“If I recall correctly, your favourite person isn’t all that fond of you.”
Felix never intended to make Annette Dominic dislike him.
They first met in the castle greenhouse. He can’t quite remember why he’d gone there. He was probably hiding from his father or Ingrid or both. When he entered, he found her crouched down by some plants, combing through them for the right ones to clip. She added the blossoms to her basket while singing some ditty about steaks and cakes and when he finally got her attention, she screamed. Felix honestly thought she was going to use the gardening shears to attack him, but after his multiple failed attempts to placate her, she yelled that he was evil and ran away.
He didn’t get her name until the next day when Cornelia came to say her (very) grudging hello to the visiting Fraldarius family. This was her apprentice Annette, she told Rodrigue, prompting his old man to start quizzing the poor girl on Faith magic. Her teacher stood behind her, glowering at Rodrigue for his audacity and then glowering at Annette as she willed her to get every answer correct. When Annette fumbled over something that Felix swears his father made up to trap her, Glenn offered her an apologetic smile, but Felix might have snorted.
Another time, after a sparring accident that left him with a head injury, Dimitri asked her to heal Felix since she was nearby. She just needed to stabilize him until the bishop Sylvain went to retrieve arrived, but she said she could do more. As she knelt by his side and soothed away the pain, Felix got flustered by her hands on his skin and blurted out, “Why can’t you use Physic?”
So Annette wasn’t very fond of Felix.
Which is why he wasn’t really sure why Glenn thought bringing him to her was a good idea.
“Well do you want to stay like this—” Felix scratched his hand rather than dignifying that with a response. “It’s Annette or her boss, Felix.”
“Annette would probably make this permanent.”
“It seems rather permanent already, don’t you think?”
“And whose fault is that?!”
At so late in the evening, Felix wasn’t actually that surprised to find Annette’s cramped office awash in light.
She liked studying in her free time, often sitting in his preferred alcove of the library and reading. They’d had to share it on more than one occasion, Annette reading about distance casting while Felix read about past wars. She usually sat with her legs curled up on their shared bench, often brushing against or blatantly kicking Felix whenever she shifted.
Inside, they found her standing on a precarious pile of books trying to teach something from the top shelf.
“Can’t you levitate?” Felix blurted out, certain he’d seen her do that before when she cast a spell at him during a friendly spar.
Naturally, he startled her, leading to her yelping and tumbling to the floor. Glenn tried reaching out for her, but he lacked Felix’s speed. Not only was he an idiot, but he was a big dumb one at that.
When Annette rose to her feet, the scowl she reserved for Felix was already on her face. A frown replaced it when she saw Glenn instead.
“Hello Annette,” Glenn greeted with a slight bow.
“Hello Glenn.” Annette looked past him and into the empty hall. “I swear I heard your brother’s voice just now.”
Glenn takes a seat on the edge of her desk, concealing Felix under his cloak. “I wasn’t aware you were so familiar with Felix’s voice.”
“I’m not familiar with it.”
“Ah, but you were so quick to discern it.”
He couldn’t see her, but Felix imagined her puffing up the way she did when she was annoyed with him for not accepting her offers for steak dinners whenever he mumbled her lyrics in her presence. She always looked like an angry kitten. The memory makes Felix scratch Glenn’s side for good measure.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, nothing…”
Felix squirmed in Glenn’s tightening hold, uneasy with the way his brother was talking to Annette.
Yes, what was that supposed to mean?
Annette sighed. “Is there something I can help you with?”
Glenn laughed, another one of the fake niceties he reserved for visits to Fhirdiad or questions about his yet to be announced wedding or conversations with Lorenz Hellman Gloucester.
“Annette, did you know you’re my favourite court mage?”
“I’m an assistant court mage.”
“Semantics.”
“And your other alternative is the actual court mage.”
“It is.”
“Who hates your father.” She paused. “And, by extension, you and Felix.”
“Such is our lot as the sons of Duke Fraldarius.”
Felix meowed his agreement, but Glenn muffled that with his sleeve.
“What do you want, Glenn?”
“Are you familiar with transfiguration?”
“Of course.”
Finally, Felix managed to tear himself out of Glenn’s hold enough to peek at Annette. She rested her chin in her palm while using magic to gently reheat a cup of tea.
“What about accidental magic?”
Felix scoffed because there was absolutely nothing accidental about his current situation at all.
“That too.”
Annette laughed and Felix ignored the butterflies he suddenly felt in his stomach. They were obviously just remnants of Glenn’s failed spellwork.
Obviously.
“What did you do?” she asked, amused. “Transform your lance into a snake?”
“That’s not too far off actually.” Then, without warning, Glenn pulled him away from his side and held Felix in front of her. “Take a look.”
“He’s so cute!” Annette cooed, rising from her chair. She reached over and pulled Felix out of Glenn’s grip with no care for propriety. “Oh, you’re such a handsome, handsome boy, aren’t you?” Annette held him softly but firmly, much better than Glenn’s annoying grip. She brought him up to her face and rubbed her cheek against his head, eliciting a purr Felix didn’t know he was capable of. After a final noise of glee, she opened her eyes and remembered Glenn’s presence. “Sorry.” She cleared her throat. “So, you have a cat?”
Glenn raised an eyebrow at her. “I think I had a cat.”
“That you transfigured?” Annette held Felix away from her to properly assess him.
“Yes.” Glenn looked much too proud of himself. “You see, that’s Felix you’re holding.”
Annette stilled. “I beg your pardon?”
Felix peered back to find Glenn smiling. “I accidentally—”
“It was not an accident!” Felix denied, making Annette jump. “I told you to leave me alone and you threw a spell at me.”
“—transfigured Felix into a…” Glenn hummed thoughtfully. “What did you call him? A handsome, handsome boy?”
Annette shrieked as she dropped Felix. Thanks to his feline form, he landed on all fours. She leaned back and then leaned back in, peering at Felix with wide, worried eyes.
“Felix?” she whispered.
He groaned but it came out like a purr. “Yeah.”
“What?!”
“Stop shouting,” Felix demanded. “I’m a cat, not deaf—”
Glenn slapped a hand over Felix’s mouth and Felix promptly added to the collection of scratches on his brother’s stupid fingers.
“Did I mention he could talk?”
Glenn sat on Annette’s chair, slouched and snoring as he did nothing at all to contribute to cleaning up the mess he made. His stupid hair fell over his stupid nose and Felix watched the rise and fall of his stupid chest with no shortage of disgust. This man would be the right hand of the king one day. At this moment, he couldn’t even be the right hand of a training dummy.
“Look at him,” Felix hissed. “Look at his stupid face. I should scratch it.”
“Please don’t.”
“It’s so stupid-looking. Look at it.”
“I’m too busy to look,” Annette said over a yawn. “Describe it to me.”
“It’s stupid. And evil.”
“Sounds familiar.”
Even with him as a cat, Annette seemed to recognize his glare, so she bit her lip to stifle her smile and continued her reading.
It was well past midnight and Annette still had her face buried in books. She worked on the floor so she had more space to spread out her texts, so Glenn took to her desk chair to wait. She told him he didn’t have to stick around, but apparently he felt some modicum of guilt for what he did and so he stayed. He didn’t do anything, of course, but his presence was there and Felix thought he deserved perhaps one less scratch for that.
“Do you need, um, tea?” Felix asked when she yawned once more.
“I don’t think you can make me a cup like this, Felix.”
“I can wake up Glenn.” He considered his claws with delight.
“That sounds more like it’d be for you than me then.”
“We’re both allowed to win, Annette.”
She shook her head, smiling, and returned to her work. “Do you have any pets, Felix?”
“Are you making fun of me?”
Remembering his current state, Annette winced. “No!” she swore. “I’m sorry. No. I meant that seriously. I’ve just thinking about getting a cat recently because, well, I’ve been kind of lonely here in Fhirdiad now that my best friend has gotten married and moved away and honestly in that moment, I thought Glenn was actually giving me a cat, and then I thought ‘why would the future Duke Fraldarius just be handing you a cat’, and then I thought oh he would be such a perfect cat for me and did you know magic users can actually benefit from animal companions—”
“I don’t have any pets,” Felix interrupted before she could talk them both into a coma. “There are mousing cats in the castle, I suppose, but those aren’t really meant for…coddling.”
“Oh.” She nodded. “That’s nice.”
“Do you? Nevermind. You just said you want one.”
“I do want one! Cornelia says a familiar can help me focus or enhance my magic. But also I thought it would be nice to have a companion since Mercie moved away and I convinced my parents to retire to Dominic.”
“Sorry for not being a normal cat, I guess.”
Annette snorted. “The only person who needs to apologize for that is Glenn.”
Felix narrowed his amber eyes. “You’re nicer to me as a cat.”
“I’m always nice to you!”
“You called me the evilest of villains just yesterday.”
“Because you made fun of my library song just yesterday!”
“I didn’t—I wasn’t—”
The thing with Annette was that Felix didn’t want her to dislike him.
He liked listening to her silly songs. She was always so animated when she sang them, giddy and carefree as she practiced fencing maneuvers under the guise of dancing. Somehow she made making a mess with a watering can or falling off the top of a ladder look fun. She always looked so happy in those moments and Felix just wanted to watch.
He liked sitting beside her when she was reading, pouting and frowning and making an array of adorable faces as she processed the content and questioned it. She mumbled things under her breath and made notes upon notes and sometimes the papers would fall into Felix’s part of the alcove, revealing the silly doodles she made on the margins when she was taking breaks.
Felix liked being around her.
Felix wanted to be around her more.
“I wasn’t making fun of you,” Felix told her for what felt like the twentieth time since he met her. “I was trying to be nice .”
“You were?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Annette drew back from her book and settled her stare on him. She nodded slowly before offering a small smile. “You’re not very good at compliments, Felix.”
He never really had to be. Playing nice was always Glenn’s job. Felix just needed to be a good soldier.
“I don’t…I don’t actually think you’re evil, Felix.”
“Yes you do.”
She blushed, caught. “Okay, but I don’t think you’re the evilest though.” Annette tucked her hair back. “I just think you can use kinder words.”
“That’s just your opinion.”
“And I have…fun when I’m with you.”
“Oh.” Felix nodded, grateful to be covered in black fur at the moment. Had he not been, he was certain he’d be blushing. “That’s nice.”
“Yes.”
“I—”
Glenn let out the most hideous snore that made Felix’s hackles rise as Annette jumped. His feline instincts kicked in and he hissed, so Annette pulled him into her arms to calm him. He eventually relaxed into her lap as she stroked his back.
“You make a nice lap cat, you know.”
“I don’t think that’s a real career.”
“Sure it is. You can just, um…”
“Sit in your lap?”
“Shut up.”
Glenn snored again, and this time he seemed to have woken himself. He jolted up, eyes wide and alert as he scanned the room.
“We’re down here,” Annette said, giving him a small wave.
Glenn leaned over the desk to peer down at Annette sitting on the floor with Felix now curled in her lap.
“Well don’t the two of you look comfortable.”
Annette ignored the jibe and waved a sheet of parchment. “I’m almost done crafting the counterspell. There were some words missing from what was in the book you borrowed.”
“Stole,” Felix clarified. “He stole it from the library.”
Annette gasped, sounding much more offended now than Felix has ever made her. She looks at Glenn with horror on her face. “You stole from a library?!”
Annette’s lecture on the sanctity of libraries and the rules they have in place and why those rules should never be broken set them back by at least eight minutes. When she finished, she returned to refining her spell while Felix scratched Glenn a few more times just for good measure.
A half hour later, Annette set Felix down in the middle of her office and chanted her spell. He felt her wind swirl around him the way Glenn’s did earlier. Glenn’s wind magic felt weak, more like a summer breeze that did little to cool him down after a day of training. Annette’s, however, was much stronger than that. She felt like a storm, her gusts sharp and strong but only gliding by him because she was there to save him, not hurt. She would be a force of nature on a battlefield.
Felix felt the familiar thrum of change and this time he got his full body back, not just his voice.
The first thing he did was, of course, punch Glenn square in the jaw.
“I suppose I deserved that,” Glenn complained as Annette looked at her hands, clearly debating if he deserved a healing. He turned to her when she so kindly held a glowing palm beside his cheek. “And I’m certain I said those exact words.”
Felix rolled his eyes, but did recall a similar counterspell being read as the wind whipped around him.
“The spell in the book needed some modifications based on the person being transfigured,” Annette explained. Finished with undoing Felix’s handiwork, she stepped back and crossed her arms. “Now, if the lords of Fraldarius are done calling upon this court mage, I think I’d like to head home now.”
“Of course. Thank you for your assistance, Annette.” Glenn bowed as they all exited Annette’s office. “Felix is in your debt.”
“This was your fault!”
Glenn ignored him. “As such, he’ll walk you home.”
“I was already going to do that,” Felix bit out, glaring at his brother. His gaze softened when he turned to Annette. “Let’s go.” He grabbed her wrist, pulling her down the hall and away from Glenn and his inability to use magic.
He knew Annette lived closeby, although he can’t remember why that detail ever came up in any of their past conversations. The walk was only a few minutes that somehow passed in the tensest silence. Neither had said a thing by the time they were at the base of Annette’s building.
Annette offered him a smile, a great stride from the scowl she gave him regularly. “Thanks for—”
“You should get a cat.”
She blinked. “Huh?”
“A cat. You said you wanted one. But, um, if you don’t, I…I can keep you company?”
“What?”
Felix shrugged. “You said you felt lonely so you wanted a cat. But if you can’t get one, we can, I don’t know, spar.”
“Spar?”
Felix genuinely wondered if he was better off as a cat who couldn’t speak. “I don’t know,” he grumbled. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“Felix, are you…blushing?”
“No!”
Annette bit her lip. “How about a picnic?”
“Like deer hunting?”
“What?” Annette looked up at him like he was crazy. “Goddess, you are so Faerghan. No, not like deer hunting.”
She said nothing more, sending Felix into a panic that the incredible mage that rescued him from his brother’s idiocy and haunted his dreams with her songs had decided he wasn’t actually worth her time. She would go back to glaring at him whenever he was in Fhirdiad and kicking him on purpose in the alcove because no matter how much she denied it, her legs were literally too short to accidentally hit him the way she did—
Felix stilled when Annette stepped into his space. She planted a hand on his arm, stood on her toes, and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek.
“Why don’t we start with tea?” she suggested.
“Tea?”
“Yes. Tea. You offered me some earlier when you were a cat.”
“Tea would be nice.” Felix nodded slowly before picking up speed and then stopping when he realized he’d been nodding for too long. “And…” He swallowed. “Um, maybe you could escort me to Dimitri’s stupid birthday party?”
“O—oh!” Annette blushed and he couldn’t get enough of it. “I could do that.”
“Great.”
“Yes.” Annette shuffled up to her door. “Well, you know where my office is.”
“I do.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
“You will.”
“Preferably as a man and not a cat?”
Felix grinned, suddenly eager to head back to the duke’s suite to beat up his brother. “Of course.”