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The second-to-last way Hilda Valentine Goneril wanted to spend a Saturday afternoon was cleaning out the stables, especially a Saturday afternoon as beautiful as this one, where the air was warm and the breeze was cool and the sky didn’t have so much as a single cloud in it. The last way Hilda wanted to spend a Saturday afternoon as beautiful as this one was cleaning out the stables with Claude, because while she liked Claude, and she would do anything for Claude, she wouldn’t do that. Besides, he was also far too smart for his own good—by which Hilda meant that she could never pawn her work off on him like she could with any of the other boys in the Golden Deer (or most of the boys in the other houses). And even if she could, who wanted to spend such a beautiful day in a smelly old stable watching someone else do her work for her?
She’d tried everything to get out of this, and she was out of tricks. She would have to suck it up and miss one of the sunniest afternoons in the Blue Sea Moon, and there was nothing she could do about it!
That was what she’d thought, anyway, until she’d ran into Constance von Nuvelle in the library and wondered aloud if there was a magical solution to her woes. As it turned out, Constance had just the thing for her! Thankfully for Hilda, there was a spell in the Nuvelle family grimoire that was so easy to use that even someone with no magical aptitude to speak of could cast it!
It was just as simple as copying the seal perfectly onto a sheet of Nuvelle spell paper (which Constance had plenty of, though most of it was fairly heavily gnawed-upon), placing a strand of one’s hair in the center, and reciting the incantation, and presto! Hilda would have her very own doppelganger to do those nasty chores for her while she got herself some much-needed ‘me’ time. The Hilda-ganger wouldn’t be so happy with the arrangement, but Constance had promised her that she would only exist for a few hours anyway before disappearing as long as the spell was performed properly.
The one thing Hilda had to watch out for, Constance had warned her, was that she had to make sure that nobody was in the immediate vicinity when she cast the spell. Hilda had meant to ask what would happen, but it had slipped her mind in her excitement. Nonetheless, with the afternoon bearing down on her like an executioner’s axe, she made absolutely, absolutely, absolutely certain that nobody was near her room before she went inside, closed the door, set the spell paper on the floor, plucked a strand of pink hair from her head, and performed the incantation.
Nothing happened.
“Ugh,” Hilda groaned. It was a dud!
She ought to have known better. Lots of Constance’s spells turned out to be duds. But, just in case, she plucked another hair from her head, dropped it onto the spell paper, and recited the incantation.
Again, nothing happened.
“Double ugh,” Hilda groaned. Now she really had exhausted all her options. She was going to have to spend the rest of the day mopping up dirty floors, hauling bales of fresh hay, shoveling manure, and ruining her freshly manicured hands, and there was nothing she could do about it. Worst of all, she’d just wasted two perfectly good strands of her lovely hair, which she worked ever so hard to maintain.
She looked out her window, squinted at the shining sun, and thought that this perfect, beautiful day was mocking her, specifically.
And then there came a loud, rapid, irate knock at her bedroom door, like the tapping of the world’s biggest and angriest woodpecker. A pang of worry struck Hilda. She’d made sure both of the adjacent rooms had been empty, right? And the ones adjacent to those? And the rooms downstairs? Of course she had; she’d even double-checked them. Just because she was lazy didn’t mean she was stupid.
There was another furious, frenzied tattoo against her door. “Hilda! Open this door!” a muffled voice snarled from the other side, and Hilda realized that it sounded almost like hers.
The Hilda-ganger! So the spell had worked, after all! Hilda could have jumped for joy. The only reason she didn’t was because she couldn’t help but wonder—why did her double sound so angry?
She took a gulp of air, approached the door, and opened it.
On the other side she saw herself, with her long, lustrous pink hair and bright pink eyes and extremely well-cared-for round face and button nose. Except instead of her own academy uniform, the Hilda-ganger was wearing a much, much fancier uniform boasting bright red tights, a sharp black jacket, and a waist-length half-cape of scarlet silk that fell over one shoulder—just like the uniform Edelgard von Hresvelg wore, though it didn’t quite fit Hilda as perfectly as it did Edelgard. And instead of Hilda’s go-to hairstyle of long, high pigtails, her lovely locks were tied back and away from her face with a simple braid and a pair of lavender ribbons.
And beside the first Hilda was a second Hilda, exactly the same in every single possible way except that her hair wasn’t even remotely styled at all—it simply cascaded down her shoulders in an aimless waterfall of pink—and instead of Hilda’s clothes, she was wearing a boy’s academy uniform that, judging from how baggy and shapeless it was on her, seemed to have been tailored for somebody at least a full head taller than her.
Hilda had no time to wonder what, exactly, she was looking at before the second Hilda-ganger reached out to her, her face contorted into a dark and vicious scowl as wisps of foul miasma swirled around her fingertips. “There you are,” she snarled, seconds away from pouncing on her—
The first Hilda-ganger held out her arm in front of her. “No, Hubert,” she said, her voice as cold and deathly serious as the look on her face was. “A gentler touch, to start with.”
Hilda stared at the second Hilda-ganger. Hubert von Vestra? Tall, dark, strong-cheekboned, thin-eyebrowed, kinda weirdly unconventionally handsome Hubert? Practices laughing evilly when he thinks no one is around to hear him Hubert? Once left an ether-soaked rag and a straight razor for his professor to find as a show of intimidation Hubert? That Hubert?
“Lady Edelgard,” the second Hilda-ganger huffed, stepping back and letting the tendrils of dark magic fade away, “If… you insist.”
Now Hilda stared at the first Hilda-ganger. Edelgard von Hresvelg? The house leader of the Black Eagles Edelgard? Snow-white hair, accusing lavender glare, demeanor frostier than a witch’s—That Edelgard? The only girl in the academy better with an axe than her?
Hubert glared at Hilda, who hadn’t thought it was possible for her own face to look that menacing. “I should hope a gentle touch is all we shall need, for your sake,” he hissed, and the sheer absurdity of Hubert’s menacing tones rendered in her voice nearly made her laugh.
“Hilda,” Edelgard said, turning her own glare onto her as well. It was frostier even than Hubert’s, and twice as piercing; to hear her characteristic stern, stiff, stuck-up tone coming out of Hilda’s mouth was nearly as odd as it was to hear his. “Perhaps you can help us figure out why we now look and sound exactly like you.”
For a moment, as two exact duplicates of herself stared at her with murder in their eyes, there was not a single thought running through Hilda’s head.
“Oh, no,” she said.
Hubert pushed past her and barged into her room. “What’s this?” he hissed, struggling not to stumble in boots that were now several sizes too big for his dainty little feet. With a single accusing finger he pointed to the magic seal lying in the middle of the floor. “I’ve never known you to dabble in magic, Miss Goneril. Care to explain yourself?”
“It’s Constance,” Hilda told him while he picked up the seal and inspected it, a skeptical furrow further darkening his demeanor. “She suggested a spell to help me get out of this afternoon’s chores. It’s so simple, anyone could do it—I thought.”
“Obviously,” Edelgard said, folding her arms over her chest and immediately growing frustrated with how much more space Hilda’s took up compared to hers, “you thought wrong, Hilda.”
“How does the spell work, pray tell?” Hubert asked, rolling up the seal and slipping it under his jacket for safekeeping.
“It’s supposed to create an exact copy of the caster for a few hours,” Hilda explained while Edelgard invited herself into the bedroom and closed the door firmly behind her. “I was going to have her clean the stables for me.”
Edelgard raised her eyebrows. “All this to get out of chores?”
“Cleaning the stables with Claude!”
“Oh,” she said, as though she instantly understood that such drastic actions had been necessary.
“And I was out of options,” Hilda protested. “I couldn’t even get Caspar to cover me, like I usually can!”
“Yes, because he’s busy doing his own work,” Edelgard replied testily, “instead of yours. Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned in that. So, do you have any idea how… this might have happened?” She gestured at her hair.
Hilda took a deep breath. “…Pink really suits you, Edelgard.”
“Enough,” Hubert spat. “You must have done the spell horribly wrong for… this to happen,” he said, gesturing to his own body, which was currently Hilda’s. Hilda could imagine she was quite firmly on his bad side now, considering he’d just lost fourteen inches of his height and presumably something else that was much more important.
“I’m sorry, Hubert,” Hilda said. “I swear I wouldn’t have done it on purpose! Anyway, I performed the spell perfectly—”
“Doubtful,” Hubert retorted.
“Constance told me the only thing to worry about was making sure there wasn’t anybody nearby,” she explained to him and Edelgard, “so I made sure to knock on the doors of both of the rooms next to mine and both of the rooms next to those, and the rooms right underneath this one. I did everything right! I even did it twice!”
Edelgard’s and Hubert’s eyes had both gone wide as saucers. Hubert’s jaw dropped.
“That,” Edelgard said quietly, looking down at her shoes, “explains the knocks we heard on my bedroom door before this happened.”
“What?” Hilda gasped. A wave of indignant anger crested within her. These two had the gall to come here acting like she’d done something wrong when— “Why didn’t you answer when I knocked? What were you doing in there, plotting some conspiracy?”
Edelgard and Hubert shared a knowing, almost guilty glance.
“Lady Edelgard’s business is none of your concern,” Hubert hissed at Hilda.
“Hilda, unlike you, I have ambition to spare,” Edelgard told her, resting a hand atop her heart. “For the goals I have planned, yes, a little conspiring here and there is entirely necessary. I regret to inform you that the job of a crown princess is not all makeup and perfume and fancy dress balls.”
“That’s why I’m glad I’m me and not you,” Hilda said as flippantly as she could muster, letting out a nervous giggle.
“I wish I could say the same right now,” Edelgard responded, unamused. “Although, Hubert,” she added, turning to her vassal, “if Hilda is telling the truth, then this is hardly her fault.”
“Exactly! You two ruined my spell!” Hilda protested.
“Lady Edelgard,” Hubert said, “I think we should take this spell paper to Constance and see what she has to say about it.”
“Of course, Hubert,” Edelgard said. “And if it can be remedied posthaste.”
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” Hilda assured her. “The spell’s only supposed to last the afternoon.”
“Supposed to has been thrown right out the window,” Edelgard replied curtly, issuing her another icy, stabbing glare. “And unfortunately, my dear uncle will not like to be kept waiting that long. Come along, Hubert. I believe I saw Constance in the library earlier.”
“Wait,” Hilda said as the two of them made for the door. “You can’t take that seal with you! How will I get out of this afternoon’s chores?”
Edelgard turned her head and glared over her shoulder at her. “There’s a simple answer to your question, Hilda,” she said, brushing aside a lock of her bright pink hair. “You won’t.”
She strode out of the room, Hubert stumbling along beside her. As the door swung shut behind the two of them, Hilda looked out her window at the sun as it continued to mockingly shine on everybody but her.
The nature of Edelgard’s ambitions and her… delicate situation, to speak euphemistically, made it an absolute necessity that she stay wary of any threats to her plans. The arrival of a new professor, for example, or the discovery of incredible relics deep within the slums hidden under Garreg Mach, or the presence of classmates who just happened to be the sons and daughters of the very same nobles who had destroyed her life and her family for their own corrupt ends…
But neither she nor Hubert, whom she had to admit was by far the most cautious and conscientious of the pair, could ever, ever have anticipated on any level what had just occurred.
As the two of them tramped across the lawn on their way to the library, she couldn’t help but notice how hampered he was by boots that were now two, perhaps three or even four sizes too big for him, to say nothing about the rest of his wardrobe. “Hubert,” she said to him, keeping her voice low so that no one would overhear—as though the sight alone wasn’t strange enough already—“are you certain you don’t mind wearing that?”
The sound of her voice, or rather Hilda’s, gave her pause. She spoke exactly as she normally did, and yet she couldn’t possibly get used to how much higher-pitched and… squeakier her voice was now. She sounded like a talking rodent.
“We can go back to my quarters; I’ve got a spare uniform there you can wear,” she continued.” I know it won’t fit perfectly—” She tried once again in vain to button the top two buttons on her blouse and jacket— “but it will certainly fit better than…”
Hubert shook his head, and Hilda’s pink locks, unfettered, swayed every which way and gleamed like rose gold in the sunlight. “That’s quite alright, Your Highness,” he gasped, cheeks reddening, and if Edelgard found her own words in Hilda’s bright, bubbly voice disconcerting, then Hubert’s was on another level entirely. “I am perfectly fine. Let’s just get to the library before somebody spots us and wonders why there are two of us.”
They hurried along. Hubert still slipped and stumbled in his boots, swimming in every other part of his uniform. Edelgard had to hope they wouldn’t run into anybody on the way to the library—Saturdays meant most students were busy with their assigned chores or studying or, if they had the time, taking trips into town. How would she and Hubert explain themselves if they ran into anybody from the Golden Deer? Or worse, Professor Byleth? Or, worst of all, that annoying little skulk Kronya?
A fourth, less-expected option confronted them as they entered the courtyard in the form of Flayn: Seteth’s adorable little green-haired sister (whom Those Who Slither in the Dark had suspected was no mere child) and Garreg Mach’s newest student. “Ah! Hello, Hilda!” she chirped, all teeth and emerald curls. “What a pleasure to see you this fine day! I have actually been looking for you—”
Edelgard silently cursed her rotten luck.
Flayn looked up at her, and then to Hubert, and then back to her. Her smile shrank by a molar or two.
Edelgard waited for her to say something with bated breath. This was exactly what she’d been afraid of.
“Um… I did not know you had a twin sister!” she exclaimed, her smile regaining its prior dimensions.
“What?” Hubert said.
“Oh! Yes,” Edelgard said, taking Hubert by the shoulder—his way-too-big jacket sloughed off his shoulders—“this is my twin sister, whom nobody has ever met. Her name is, um… Zelda.”
Hubert squinted at her. Zelda? he mouthed.
“Don’t mind her; she’s a bit of a grump. Especially today.”
“Oh. Well, what a pleasure to meet you, Zelda!” Flayn said. She furrowed her brow. “Hilda, why are you wearing Edelgard’s uniform?”
“O-Oh, this? This?” Edelgard plucked at the lapel of her jacket. “It’s, um… Lady Edelgard lost a bet, and we had to swap clothes,” she said, mustering a nervous giggle.
“Oh, I see! And you sound so much like her as well!”
“Yes, that is part of the bet,” Edelgard said. “I am wearing Edelgard’s clothes and trying to sound more like her, and she is wearing my clothes and trying to sound more like me.”
“Well, I think you are doing an excellent job of it so far!” Flayn said. “And must I say, Edelgard’s uniform looks particularly dashing on you.”
“Aw, thank you, Flayn,” Edelgard replied before she could stop herself.
Flayn turned to Hubert. “And whose uniform are you wearing, Zelda? It looks as though it must belong to someone very tall—but all the boys are so tall…”
Hubert sighed and glowered at her. “I lost a bet,” she explained, “with Lady Edelgard’s vassal.”
Flayn took a step backward and wrung her hands nervously, her cheerful demeanor fading under the power of Hubert’s scowl—which, with Hilda’s round cheeks and cute little button nose, was easily twice as unnerving.
“Zelda,” Edelgard said to Hubert, “I think your Hubert impression might be a little too good.”
Hubert cleared his throat. “Ah, yes—my apologies, Lady Ede—I mean, Hilda.”
“O-Oh! Yes!” Flayn clapped her hands together. “What a thrilling impression! You are just as frightening as he is, Zelda! Perhaps even more…”
“Thank you,” Hubert said, taken aback.
“But…” Flayn cocked her head and made a quizzical frown. “Zelda, if you lost the bet and had to wear Hubert’s uniform and act like him, does that mean Hubert won the bet and has to wear your clothes and act like you?”
Hubert stood stock-still for a second. “I-In a way, we both lost,” he hastily stammered.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Flayn said. “Anyway, how fortuitous for our paths to cross, Hilda! I have been meaning to ask you so many questions…” She looked around furtively, green eyes darting back and forth. “Questions my f—elder brother would not approve of me asking, about being more… how do I say it… adult?”
Hilda, Edelgard thought, was one of the less adult women she knew. “I’m sorry, Flayn,” she said, stepping off to the side and trying to inch her way around her, “but Hu—I mean, Zelda and I need to find Constance von Nuvelle, so we will have to talk later. I think she’s in the library somewhere?”
“Oh, I do think I saw her there,” Flayn said, obviously disappointed. “By the way, do you know where Edelgard is right now?” she asked, regaining her prior enthusiasm. “I think I would like to make the same wager with her! I would certainly look more dashing and mature of a young woman in such fine costuming, would I not?”
“Oh, definitely, you’d look adorable,” Edelgard said, patting her on the head without quite realizing what she was doing.
“Excellent! I shall find her posthaste!” Flayn exclaimed, and then she bounded off while Edelgard stared, bemused, at her own hand… which was no longer her own hand. Calluses aside, her skin was so smooth and soft and free of ugly old scar tissue that it was almost unfair.
She and Hubert snuck into the great hall without incident, much to their collective relief, and hurried upstairs to the library with little incident. All the while, Edelgard continued to curse her rotten luck. She could imagine that thing masquerading as her dear uncle tapping his foot on the floor in the tearoom, letting his tea oversteep out of spite while he waited for his little would-be puppet to show up for her regularly scheduled castigation while she ran up and down the monastery just to find a way to be her own self again. And on such a beautiful day, too—it was an insult added to injury that Thales even wished to speak to her today at all. What she wouldn’t give to simply lie down on the lawn and bask in the sun… Perhaps, Edelgard thought, just this once, Hilda might have had the right idea.
She and Hubert had hardly made it down the hall past the faculty offices before they found a stack of heavy tomes on a pair of wavering legs stumbling toward them, teetering precariously all the while. A few more steps and the books all toppled to the floor in front of them, revealing Annette Fantine Dominic of the Blue Lions behind them. One of the heavy volumes of magical text struck Hubert in the shin. He tried not to wince.
“Ah!” Annette gasped, horrified, as she crouched down to scoop up as many books as she could. “Ah, I’m so, so sorry, Hilda, and also, uh… Hilda?” She blinked and furrowed her brow, her spilled books momentarily forgotten. “You’ve been hitting the books too hard, Annette,” she mumbled to herself, turning her attention back to the mess she’d made.
“Let me help you with that, Annette,” Edelgard said, crouching down and scooping up one of the books in her arms. Mission or not, she couldn’t just let Annette wallow in her own mess like this. “Oh, and this is my twin sister Zelda—she’s visiting for the afternoon. And sorry about our clothes—Edelgard and Hubert lost a bet.”
Annette gave them a cursory glance and then returned her attention to the pile of books. “It’s nice to meet you, Zelda—ah, sorry about all this. You don’t need to help, I’ve got it—”
“No, no, I insist,” Edelgard insisted. “Why, with Zelda and I helping you, we’ll have this cleaned up in no time!”
With a resigned sigh, Hubert crouched down and helped out.
“Seriously, I’ve got this,” Annette said, flustered. “I don’t mean to make you two clean up another one of my messes on such a lovely day! I mean, wouldn’t you rather be lying on a grassy hill under the sun, or dipping your feet in the fishing pond, or…”
“It is no problem at all, Annette,” Edelgard told her, keeping her voice firm. “Part of the bet is that we must not just dress but act like Edelgard and Hubert, and I know Edelgard would help you.”
“You’re so sweet,” Annette sighed, lifting herself up to her feet with exactly one-third of the daunting pile of books in her arms. “And,” she added, giggling, “you hardly need to act more like Edelgard to help out. I mean, you’ve always been willing to lend me a hand before!”
She had? The conflation of Hilda and willing to lend a hand threw Edelgard for a loop. Always?
“Of course!” Edelgard chirped anyway. “Anything for you, Annie! I just can’t stand by while you go around doing the work of two or even three people. Like the time you tried to clean my room—”
The rest of her words came to a sudden halt in her throat. Where had that come from?
“You’ve got to—er, you must relax, especially on days like today,” she concluded, still flustered. “Isn’t that right, Zelda? Why, the two of us would love nothing more than to soak up the sun without a care in the world.”
“We certainly would,” Hubert grumbled noncommittally, his gaze falling to one of Annette’s tomes. “Ooh, is this Leandra von Adalhart’s Treatise on Dark Magic?” he asked, his eyes lighting up.
“Oh! Yes! You know, it’s funny that you bring it up, considering your bet with Hubert—I checked out the book because I saw him studying it last week! I thought I could look a bit more fearsome for the Battle of the Eagle and Lion. Have you read it, too?”
“Yes, cover to cover,” Hubert said. “A shame they restrict the Dark Mage certifications to men.”
“I know, right? Someone should change that!”
“Exactly. It’s even more arbitrary than not letting men be gremories or pegasus knights. I’m sure you’ll find that a fascinating read, though—I certainly did.”
“And while we’re at it,” Edelgard said, “women should be allowed to take the Grappler and War Master certifications!”
“I know! But, uh… don’t they, um, not wear shirts?” Annette asked her.
“A-Anyway, could we help you carry these books back to your room?” she continued. She knew it was a foolish question to ask—she and Hubert needed to get to the library and Constance now, but while Hilda Valentine Goneril might have still been a lazy girl at heart, Edelgard von Hresvelg was not, and would certainly take on a minor inconvenience for a friend. It would only be a slight detour, anyway.
“Your High—Hilda,” Hubert said, “we really must be going.”
“Oh, I don’t want to keep you,” Annette said, forcibly taking the books from his arms. “Hilda, give me the rest of the books; I can manage them all this time!”
“You’re certain?”
“I’ll be extra, extra careful!”
Edelgard reluctantly piled the rest of the books onto the growing stack in Annette’s arms. “Alright, then. Careful now!”
“Of course,” Annette said, already teetering.
“Especially on the stairs.”
“Definitely! Anyway,” she said, inching away from them one painstaking step at a time, “it was really nice to meet you, Zelda! Maybe we can talk more about dark magic later today!”
“I’d like that,” Hubert said. “Oh, that’s right—we’ve been meaning to—I mean, Hilda’s been meaning to share some of those new perfumes she’s bought with you, hasn’t she?”
“That’s right!” Annette exclaimed, glancing back at them over her shoulder and nearly losing her balance again. “Whoa—I’m okay! But yeah! We can chat about makeup and dark magic—it’ll be more efficient that way! Guess I’ll see you then!”
“Guess we will! See you, bestie!” Hubert chirped back at her, offering her a little wave.
Annette trudged onward down the hall and turned the corner, and when she had gone Edelgard and Hubert stood like statues and stared at each other, wide-eyed and frozen in horror.
“Lady Edelgard,” Hubert whispered, “can you please tell me I did not just say what I heard myself say?”
“I’m sorry,” Edelgard said to him, “but I… I don’t think I can do that, Hubert.”
As if it wasn’t bad enough that the two of them looked and sounded exactly like Hilda! Now they were even beginning to act like her, maybe even think like her… whether they liked it or not.
The two of them rushed to the library as swiftly as their legs could carry them. Fortunately, the place was practically empty. Unfortunately, Constance von Nuvelle was nowhere to be found.
“Do you see Constance anywhere, Hubert?” Edelgard whispered to Hubert.
“I’m afraid not, Lady Edelgard,” Hubert whispered back to her.
“Ugh,” she said.
“Double ugh,” he said.
Edelgard spied Linhardt von Hevring at one of the desks at the far side of the room, between two bookshelves. As one might expect, he’d nodded off atop whatever book he’d been reading at the time, and while Edelgard hardly relished the thought of letting anybody else see her and Hubert like this, she needed his help.
And so she took Hubert and marched up to Linhardt’s desk while he rested his eyes. There was still a quill pen clutched in his hand. “Linhardt?”
He cracked open his eyes. “…Hilda?” he mumbled blearily, blinking against the lamplight that illuminated the library’s darkest corners. “Oh, it’s you, Edelgard. Yes, I took a nap, despite being absorbed in this riveting journey through the history of Derdriu, because I am simply full of contradictions—” He finally looked up at them. “Oh, it is you, Hilda. I thought I heard your voice,” he said, and then his gaze turned to Hubert. He rubbed his eyes. “I’m seeing double,” he murmured. “Four Hildas.”
“Heaven forbid,” Hubert growled.
“This is my twin sister, Zelda,” Edelgard lied.
“Hilda and Zelda, huh.” Linhardt sat up and set the book he’d been studying and his notebook aside. “Funny, I didn’t even know you had a twin sister. Holst must really be something else if he can handle two of you.”
“I’m the black sheep of the family,” Hubert explained.
“With a scowl like that, I can see why. Why are you dressed up like Edelgard and Hubert? Do they know you’ve raided their wardrobes?”
“We’d love to sate your curiosity, Linhardt,” Edelgard said, “but we don’t have time. You’ve gotta do us a favor. We need to find Constance. She was just here, wasn’t she? Please tell us she was here.”
Linhardt looked around. “She was here when I decided to rest my eyes a bit a few minutes ago. Or was it an hour ago?”
“Linhardt,” Hubert growled. “Please, for once, be more helpful than that.”
“Excuse you, ma’am,” Linhardt retorted. He stifled a yawn. “Oh, Hilda—this is about that thing you were talking about with her earlier, wasn’t it?”
“Um… yes,” Edelgard said. “Yes, it was. She was, er… showing me something from the Nuvelle family grimoire that I thought Zelda would be really interested in. And she needs to ask her some really important follow-up questions.”
“Well, I don’t know where she’s gone, sorry,” Linhardt said with a sad little shrug of his shoulders. “Just pray she hasn’t gone outside, what with that sun and all.”
“Do you have even a clue,” Hubert snarled, “you witless, gutless—”
“Zelda, that’s enough!” Edelgard said, taking him by the arms. “Be nice to my friends.”
“Lady Edel—Hilda…”
Linhardt clapped his book shut, took up his notebook, and stood up from the desk. “This roleplay thing of yours is getting weird, Hilda. I’m leaving.”
“Please, just hazard a guess as to where she’s gone,” Edelgard pleaded with him as he strode toward the door. “It’s urgent!”
He left.
Hubert pulled off his boots one and tossed them aside, one after the other. “I’m gonna get blisters walking around in these things,” he whined, wiggling his toes.
“We cannot give up now,” Edelgard scolded him, though even she couldn’t help but sigh and lean against the back wall of the Black Eagles common room. Dappled sunlight poured over them through the shade trees, the sun shining happily above the both of them as though mocking them. They’d been searching for what felt like hours, and for what? Neither hide nor hair of Constance. As though she’d vanished like a ghost.
“I’m not saying we give up,” Hubert retorted. “But we can rest a bit, can’t we? Just a little. It’s such a beautiful day, after all.”
“Think of how long we’ve already kept my uncle waiting. He’s gonna be furious.”
“What, Uncle Alfonzo?” Hubert asked, furrowing his brow.
“Arundel,” Edelgard corrected. Neither of them had an Uncle Alfonzo.
But Hilda did.
“Right, Arundel.” He rubbed his head. “That contemptuous little man. Who does he think he is, making us run around and do his dirty work in dumb little costumes?”
Edelgard sighed. “We can’t stay like this.” She could feel herself slipping, and she knew Hubert was. This spell wasn’t going to wear off anytime soon, that was clear enough. The two of them would simply become more and more Hilda-esque until there was nothing else in their heads, and perhaps by then it would be too late.
No—that was defeatist talk. Surely this odd transfiguration could still be undone, even then, right? In which case there was probably no need to hurry… it was such a beautiful day, after all.
“Why can’t we?” Hubert asked. He stretched his arms over his head and yawned, arching his back like a cat. “This isn’t so bad.”
“Hubert, you’re swimming in your clothes. And look at me—” Edelgard tried again in vain to clasp the top button of her blouse, just for emphasis. “I’m practically bursting at the seams!” For someone just slightly shorter than her, she thought, looking down glumly—almost enviously—at the flawless peachy exposed skin of her bosom (and the conspicuously absent ugly scars Hilda Valentine Goneril was fortunate enough not to have), Hilda was certainly thicker in a few areas. Even her sleeves were too tight. Hilda may have pretended to have weak little noodle arms, but her biceps certainly told a different story.
“A tailor can fix that,” Hubert assured her with a weak and dismissive wave of his hand.
“And we have to meet with Lord Arundel.”
“Who says we do? We’re Hilda Valentine Goneril, not Edelgard von Hresvelg and Hubert von Vestra. Hilda doesn’t have to go around calling herself the Flame Emperor. Hilda doesn’t have to look over her shoulder everywhere she goes. Hilda doesn’t sully her hands with the likes of Those Who Slither in the Dark and plot sinister coups under a veil of darkness. Being Hilda for a little while longer sounds pretty peachy,” he concluded, and he laid down on the grassy lawn and started parting his curtain of long pink hair into pigtails. “Hilda, Hilda, Hilda.”
“Hubert, please. We’re not Hilda.” Edelgard forced herself up onto her feet and grabbed Hubert by the arm while he did his hair. “You’ve gotta fight back! I know you’re strong enough to resist this!”
“Who wants to be Hubert von Vestra, anyway?”
“Do you think I want to be Edelgard von Hresvelg?” she retorted. “Get up! We need to find Constance and fix this. We need to get back to our responsibilities.”
“Responsibilities,” Hubert scoffed at her, rolling his pretty pink eyes. “It’s such a waste to spend all your time working and being responsible. We only live once; we might as well enjoy it. And there’s no shortage of big, strong men who can do all the important work for us, anyway…”
She’d had enough. She yanked him up to his feet. “There are things only Edelgard and Hubert can do,” she reminded him brusquely. “Think about who we’re fighting for. The people of Fódlan, the oppressed, the people we’ve lost—our families… Who will fight for them, if not us?”
“Holst can fight for himself,” he assured her.
“That’s not—” Edelgard rubbed her brow. She tried to summon the faces of her own siblings from the mists of her own long-forgotten past.
The only person that came to mind was her big brother Holst, his close-cropped, spiky rose-pink hair, Freikugel resting along the length of his broad, burly shoulders—
She pressed her fingers as forcefully as she could against her temples, as though trying to stab herself in the brain with them. No! That was Hilda’s big brother, not hers! Damn it all! She wasn’t going to lose what little she had of Burkhart and Heidemarie and Pascal and Hedwig and Holst—and not Holst, definitely not Holst—
“Come on, Hubert. We are going to set things right and resume our work. Yes, it’s dirty work—yes, it’s painful work—but we’re doing it to reforge this twisted world! And we are going to do it, or my name isn’t Edelgard Valentine Goneril!”
Hubert stared at her, bemused.
“I-I mean, Hilda von Hresvelg,” she corrected herself.
No, that wasn’t right, either. She tried to focus on her childhood, what little of it she could remember. The boy she’d danced with. Of course she’d danced with a boy; she’d danced with dozens! No, this one, and she’d danced with him in… Fhirdiad, that’s right, with its sprawling courtyards and intricate canals and glittering harbor that made it truly the jewel of the Leicester Alliance—No, no, that wasn’t Edelgard’s childhood. She’d grown up in Goneril Manor, where Holst had ceaselessly regaled her with stories of—
She was losing herself. She couldn’t be. There was so little left of her to begin with! She hardly even had her own childhood to begin with, and now she had the indignity of watching another life—a much happier one, if she could be quite honest—flashing before her eyes! She couldn’t allow herself to succumb to this fate—these memories that yawned before her like a great pink abyss, an endless floral-scented ocean to drown everything she’d ever been, tantalizing as they were inviting in their clarity. But it wasn’t her.
She took a long, deep breath, let it all out, and sank to her knees. What was the point? Ambition was for people like Claude and Holst. People like her didn’t stand at the apex of the world or the center of the wheel of fate, and people like her didn’t change things. There wasn’t even any point to her being here at Garreg Mach, no matter what Holst told her. Why not be lazy? Why not be purposeless? Why not just have fun with life in whatever little way she could until some suitor from one of Leicester’s stupid bickering noble houses eventually came along that even Holst couldn’t scare away instead of wasting her time with plots and schemes and revolutions? Who needed to be Edelgard von Hresvelg, anyway? Why not live a simple, easy life—never striving, never lifting a finger for anyone beside her friends—instead of wasting her time on unnecessary effort for no reason other than because of the misfortune of her house and her Crest, as if that changed anything…
She leaped up to her feet. She felt as though she’d suddenly dunked her head in a bucket of cold mint tea, a cool clarity rushing through her brain.
“I understand,” she exclaimed. “I understand Hilda Valentine Goneril!”
Hubert looked up at her and furrowed his eyebrows. “You are Hilda Valentine Goneril,” he muttered.
“No,” she said, taking him again by the arm and hauling him back up to his feet. “Not yet. Listen.” She took him by the shoulders and all but shook him. “We’ve had Hilda all wrong. She’s not lazy or stupid at all!”
“We’re not?”
“No! Her spirit has been broken!”
“My spirit feels fine, actually.”
“It’s the Crest system and the aristocracy that broke it—that resigned her to a life of aimless and purposeless idling! The very system we aim to tear down!” She shook him again. “Her laziness and stubborn waste of potential is the only act of resistance and defiance against this tyranny that she knows! We’re fighting for Hilda! We’re fighting for us!”
Edelgard took a step backward, her chest and shoulders heaving. She felt so exhilarated, she could just start dancing. “We’ve got to find Constance and set everything right,” she said. “We must. Even if it means being Edelgard and Hubert again and doing a lot of horrible work that we hate. It’s up to us.”
Realization dawned on Hubert. He nodded. “You’re right, Edelgard.”
“And just think—if our dear uncle got a hold of this spell—no, not Alfonzo, you know the one I mean—the chaos he could wreak…”
Hubert clasped his hands over his mouth, ashen. “Oh, barf.”
“Barf is right.”
“He could turn our whole house into Kronya copies and we wouldn’t even know!”
“All the more reason to hurry! Let’s go, while we still have a chance—this twisted, broken world needs only one Hilda Valentine Goneril!”
She took him by the arm and the two of them set off once more, tearing with renewed drive through the monastery grounds. They would turn Garreg Mach upside down if that was what it took to find Constance von Nuvelle.
They finally found Constance standing in the middle of a field near the monastery’s eastern outer wall. Edelgard felt her weary heart leap. She’d clung to the last little spark of that flame of Edelgard-ness that remained in this body all this time, and with it just barely on the verge of giving out, she’d reached her destination.
“There’s Constance!” she cried out to Hubert, overjoyed. “We did it, Hubert!”
“Why do you keep calling me that, Edelgard?” Hubert asked. He picked at his oversized uniform. “Can we please just go back to my room and put me in some better-fitting clothes? It’ll only take a second! And we can rest our feet for a minute, and maybe take a light nap…”
“No, we’ll be back to normal soon enough, and we can take a nice light nap then,” Edelgard said, dragging him along. Sure, he’d… succumbed, unfortunately, to the same fate that Edelgard knew would come for her any minute, but Constance would make him right as rain, and she’d have her Hubert back. She just had to focus on her goals. Even though her feet hurt and her head was pounding and her heart told her she was doing all this hard work for nothing. Edelgard von Hresvelg’s willpower couldn’t be overcome so easily. Those Who Slither in the Dark and Duke Aegir hadn’t snuffed out the flame in her heart—who else possibly could? Certainly not Hilda!
‘Hilda’ was certainly a prettier name than ‘Edelgard,’ though. And Edelgard had to admit that it was nice not to be constantly aware of all those horrible aching scars she always had to try so hard to hide, and to actually feel comfortable showing a bit of skin, and to have a voice that sounded like sparkling wine and cherry blossom petals. She could certainly see why Hubert had fallen victim to that siren song of being Hilda—after all, who wouldn’t? Hilda was great! Sure, she had shockingly low self-esteem once you got past her looks and cheery demeanor, but it was better than having the complete and utter mess that Edelgard called a psyche, wasn’t it?
She shook those thoughts out of her head. “Constance!” she shouted out from across the field, waving madly with her free hand to get her attention. “Oh, Constance! Am I happy to see you!”
Constance took one look at her and froze. “Oh, Goddess, no,” she moaned, and she turned around and began trudging toward the nearest well.
“Wait! Don’t go! We need you!” Edelgard cried out, easily catching up with her even with Hubert stumbling after her. “Constance, we need to get you into the shade so you can help us!”
“Flattery shall get you nowhere, Lady Goneril. If my spell did not perform as expected, I can only blame myself for my poor guidance and my failure as a Nuvelle spellcrafter…” With her weary, sad eyes, Constance looked Edelgard up and down, then Hubert. Her frown deepened, if such a thing were even possible, and her eyes widened, her sunburned, pink-tinted face turning pale.
“Oh, no,” she said. It seemed she knew instantly exactly what had happened. Constance may have been particularly impossible in this state, but it was only her self-esteem that had deserted her, not her intelligence. “Lady Edelgard, I accept full responsibility for this tragedy. Had I been more prudent, Hilda’s spell would not have backfired and robbed Adrestia of its brightest white star. My culpability and my shame shall be an indelible blot on the blasted and broken detritus of House Nuvelle.”
“It’s quite alright, Constance,” Edelgard said. “Let’s simply go into the shade and work to fix this problem. No permanent harm has been done, right?”
Constance simply looked at her. She was quite beautiful—gorgeous even, simply divine—and yet somehow looked as though all the various parts of her body and her face did not quite fit together properly. In any objective light, of course, they fit perfectly well, but something in her bearing suggested they could easily have fitted better and had simply chosen not to out of spite or a general lack of will to do so.
“No permanent harm has been done,” Edelgard repeated, “right?”
Constance set out for the well once more. “I have no recourse save to lower myself into that yonder well, and live out my days wailing amid the Crinaeae, if they shall even have a wretch such as myself. It is more than I deserve.”
“I’m sure it’s nice and dark in there, but the well won’t do.” Edelgard surveyed the field. There was a tree close to the wall, and the sun was at just the right position that it cast ample shadow to stand in. “It’s just a few dozen paces away.”
“Please, Constance?” Hubert asked, resting a hand upon his heart. “I know that we’re both much prettier like this, and our attitude is better, and we have more friends, and we’re probably a little smarter, too, and we’re just overall an improvement in every way—so, really, if you think about it, you’ve actually done us both a favor, and you should totally be proud of yourself—but three Hildas in Garreg Mach is two too many.”
Constance stared down at her feet. “If I could turn myself into a Hilda, perhaps then I would finally be worth something.”
Edelgard patted her on the shoulder. “The grass is always greener on the other side, my dear Constance, but never as green as you expect. Let’s get out of the sun and discuss this.”
“It’s no use. Oh, foolish, stupid, wretched Constance!” Constance rapped her knuckles against her forehead. “What was I thinking?! I am truly as fatuous and injudicious in the shade as I am under the rays of purifying sunlight that so easily dispel the haughty facade that masks my moronic, doltish, asinine, harebrained, senseless—”
While Constance continued to rattle off demeaning adjectives, Edelgard wrapped an arm around her waist and tossed her over her shoulder, then carried her to the shade and set her down on the grass.
Constance’s self-abasing stream of rhetoric came to a stop. She took a deep breath and let out a long sigh.
“How do you feel now, Constance?” Edelgard asked her.
Constance looked up at her and her lips split into a wide, proud, toothy grin. The poison that sunlight fermented in her brain had been purged. “It really is the most incredible spell, is it not? Even when it goes wrong, its results are amazing to behold! You two truly are the spitting image of Lady Goneril, down to the last detail—not so much as a pore, a hair, or a beauty mark out of place!”
“Yes, and we’re even starting to think like her,” Edelgard said, “and while it’s definitely a relaxing change of pace to not deal with all of Edelgard’s brain problems and complexes and so on, we really do need to fix it. For all of ours sakes.”
“Nowhere but in the Nuvelle family grimoire will you find such a daring, innovative, and powerful spell,” Constance continued with a foxish smile lighting up her face as brightly as the shine of the sun she was hiding from.
“So,” Hubert asked, putting his hands on his hips, “can you reverse it?”
“Oh, ho ho ho! Of course not!” she said, tittering. “Nuvelle magic is simply too powerful to be undone! I did warn the original Lady Goneril to take the utmost care with the spell for a reason.”
“You can’t put us back to normal?!” Edelgard gasped.
“Oh, well,” Hubert said, clapping the dust off her hands and shaking her head sadly. “I guess we’re stuck being a pair of pretty girls who aren’t doomed to die alone and unloved. A tragedy, but one we’ve just got to accept.”
“I take full responsibility. I ought to have administered the spell myself to ensure it would be done correctly. But,” Constance concluded, clapping her hands together, still grinning like a loon, “never fear, my dainty doppelganger duo! All is not lost! I shall simply need a sample of both of your hairs—something from a comb, or perhaps shed onto your bedsheets or pillows, or the like—and it will be as easy as casting the spell again and getting it wrong in the exact same way!”
“That’s great!” Edelgard exclaimed.
“I’m gonna miss being me,” Hubert sighed. “But I guess it has to be done.”
The three of them raced back to the dormitories, and Edelgard and Hubert both searched their rooms from top to bottom to find any trace of their original bodies that could erase the spell. As Constance had hoped, Edelgard found a stray hair still clinging to her comb—long, brittle, and silvery-white—and Hubert, while he needed a bit of cajoling, found one of his own shorter black hairs in his own room.
“Excellent!” Constance crowed, surveying the materials they’d procured. “With this, I may make amends. And let me just say that the Nuvelle family grimoire is chock full of many spells with incredible positive effects, even when they are miscast.”
“This certainly has been a positive experience for both of us,” Hubert said.
“Hubert, please,” Edelgard chided him.
He looked around, a bemused furrow to his brow and wrinkle to his adorable button nose. “Why do you keep saying that name? I don’t see Hubert anywhere. I just see the prettiest young lady in the monastery,” he said, looking down at himself with a satisfied grin on his face.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” Edelgard sighed, mainly because the thought that he wasn’t deeply unnerved her. Granted, it’s not like he was wrong… “Remember what happened when you were ten.”
“Oh, you mean the time Holst came back from Fódlan’s Locket so bloodied and beaten up I thought he was gonna die?”
“Yeah, and—No!” Edelgard turned to Constance. “Please, do Hubert first.”
“Oh, come on, Edelgard. Can’t I be happy for just a few more minutes?”
“No,” she told him brusquely. “Constance, get to it.”
Constance took the spell paper and one of Hubert’s coarse black hairs. “With pleasure, Lady Edelgard—and might I say that if I were to be your right hand as reward for my service, my spells would work only for your benefit and the benefit of all Adrestia—”
“Yeah, sure, anything you want,” Edelgard said. She tried to focus on everything she remembered about being Edelgard. There had been the experiments… oh, what awful things! Why hadn’t anyone done something? Why hadn’t the Church stood up for House Hresvelg in its greatest hour of need? But with Hilda’s mind she couldn’t recall at all the scent of the brackish water, or the moans of Edelgard’s damned siblings, or the pain of all those gleaming surgical knives, or the way it felt when naked rat tails started slithering over your toes… It was really a blessing, being Hilda and not having to deal with all those ghastly thoughts anymore. She could definitely see the appeal of staying like this if it meant no more night terrors, at least.
“Wait, Constance,” Hubert said while Constance tried to push him into Edelgard’s bedroom to do her work. “Think about it. When has Hubert ever been nice to you? I’ll be your best friend if you let me stay this way! I can keep being Hilda’s twin sister Zelda! It’s fun! And I like being tiny and pretty and having soft pink hair and—”
Edelgard knew now in intimate detail that Hilda was indeed shockingly strong for all she liked to posture as a delicate little flower—she didn’t get to be Holst’s baby sister without developing some serious upper body strength, after all—so it wasn’t all that surprising that Hubert was perfectly capable of pushing Constance away. She knew the only person here strong enough to restrain him was herself, so she rolled up her sleeves, took Hubert by the shoulders, and pushed him backward into the room.
“Please, Edelgard,” Hubert said, and he made the saddest and poutiest face Edelgard had ever seen while he dug in his heels and tried to shove her back.
“I’m sorry, Hilda,” Edelgard said, “but even if the world will never appreciate him, it needs to have a Hubert in it. Now, Constance, get inside!”
Constance darted past the both of them into the room, and Edelgard shoved Hubert firmly over the threshold, slammed the door shut, and pressed the full weight of her body against it to keep it shut. She’d like to see Hubert force his way past this!
The door rattled. “Please, Edelgard! Don’t let her do this! I’ll be your best friend! I’ll be your new retainer, and it’ll be better than having Hubert around anyway! You’ll be more popular! Constance, no—I’ll make a deal with you. Anything your heart desires! Ooh, I’ve got it—You like girls, right? I’ll go on a date with you! Just give me that spell paper—”
The next thing Edelgard heard was an anguished wail in Hubert’s unmistakable voice. She sighed and slumped down to the floor, burying her face in her hands. The world had lost a beautiful flower that had barely even had a chance to bloom. Poor Hubert.
There was a soft knock on the door, and Edelgard stepped aside and opened it. In her bedroom she saw Constance preparing the seal with Edelgard’s hair sample while Hubert, wearing the saddest look Edelgard had ever seen on his face, glumly adjusted his uniform (which now fit perfectly).
“It worked!” Constance crowed.
“It worked,” Hubert moaned.
He would thank them later once the residual Hilda-ness wore off, Edelgard assured herself. “I’m next, I assume.”
“Yes,” Constance said. “It is time for the unparalleled magical arts of House Nuvelle to bring Adrestia’s crown princess back into the world!”
Edelgard nodded and stepped inside. “Wait for me out here, Hubert,” she told Hubert, motioning to the hall.
Hubert looked around, a quizzical furrow to his brow, as though it took him a moment to realize that Edelgard was talking to him. “Oh, um—yeah, Edelgard. Right,” he mumbled, and he trudged out into the hallway and shut the door behind himself.
Edelgard looked down at the seal and the strand of hair laid in its center, took an apprehensive breath, and sighed. She had to get this over with.
“Are you ready?” Constance asked her.
She closed her eyes and remembered the sun kissing her face as her big brother let her ride on his shoulders through the streets of Derdriu. It wasn’t fair how clear Hilda’s memories were. “No,” she admitted.
“Well, it simply must be done.”
“Yeah, I know. I don’t like it.” Adrestia needed its ruler, or it would fall to Ferdinand’s gross dad and those weird awful people Edelgard had to work with, she reminded herself. But couldn’t she be Hilda for at least a little while longer? Every once in a while she could hear Edelgard moaning and crying in the middle of the night through the wall separating their rooms, and wouldn’t it be nice to fall asleep for one night without dreading the nightmares that almost certainly lay in wait?
Oh, Goddess! She felt her stomach drop down to her feet and sink through the floor all the way down to the underworld. She could feel her cheeks burning as scarlet as her cape. All along, all this time they’d been at Garreg Mach, Hilda could hear all of that?!
“Well, I assure you,” Constance consoled her, “Lady Edelgard is magnificent and beautiful in her own way, and there are many things to appreciate about being her. Her inner strength, her stern resolve—”
“Just, please, get it over with before I change my mind and try to stop you.”
“Very well, Your Highness.”
The incantation was spoken, and just as she had felt earlier that afternoon, Edelgard found herself seized by a curious warmth that rushed through her body from head to toe. It was nearly indescribable, the feeling of something firm pressing here, pushing there, pinching at her skin from within, as though she were a clay sculpture and the potter could somehow do their work from inside. She could feel a hundred subtle and not-so-subtle adjustments and realignments to every part of her body all happen at once. She lifted her hand, watching familiar ugly scars overtake Hilda’s perfect skin, and pulled away a lock of her hair while its hue shifted from the loveliest shade of pink she’d ever seen to a gleaming silvery white, and she could perhaps imagine how terrible Hubert had felt.
It was over in a matter of seconds, and Edelgard stood in her bedroom, herself once more. “It worked,” she gasped, and the sound of her words coming out in her own voice, not Hilda’s, was sweeter than any birdsong. She looked down at herself and could see her own flesh and her own scars, and could finally button up her blouse and jacket and stop showing off Hilda’s ample cleavage everywhere she went—even if she would sorely miss being able to do that.
And she still felt like Hilda on the inside, and would for a little while longer; while she still could, she would cherish Hilda’s memories just to remember what it was like to have them before they faded away into the misty void and gaps that made up Edelgard’s own painful history.
She stepped out into the hallway while Constance collected the spell paper. “It worked,” she told Hubert while he sat in the hall and pouted. “It’s good to have you back, Hubert.”
“I’m glad someone feels that way, Edelgard,” he said, rising to his full six feet.
“Wait a minute,” Constance said, sizing up both Edelgard and Hubert as they tended to themselves and saw to it nothing was out of place. “How do I know I turned Edelgard-Hilda into Edelgard and Hubert-Hilda into Hubert, and not Edelgard-Hilda into Hubert and Hubert-Hilda into Edelgard?” she wondered aloud, tapping her finger thoughtfully against her chin as her eyes became lost in the ceiling. After a moment of thought, she shrugged. “Ah, well. I suppose it matters not, so long as there is one Hubert and one Lady Edelgard in the world! Oh, I do so love a happy ending!”
“You certainly do have our thanks, Constance,” Edelgard said, offering her a grateful bow. “House Hresvelg, and perhaps all of Adrestia, is in your debt.”
“Ah, there is no ‘perhaps’ about it!” Constance said.
“Yeah, I’m glad you could clean up the mess you made,” Hubert said, placing his hands on his hips, obviously keen on working any residual Hilda-ness out of himself as swiftly and efficiently as possible as his Hubert-ness reasserted itself.
“Well, then, I do believe it is nearly time for supper! I hope you will join me,” Constance said, joining them in the hall and closing the door to Edelgard’s room behind her, “and we may toast to a successful demonstration of Nuvelle spellcraft!”
“Wait, Constance,” Edelgard said. “Would you mind if I held onto that seal for just a little longer? I think Hubert would like to study it.”
“I, uh,” Hubert said, taken aback by her request. “Okay. Sure.”
“And, unfortunately, I think we’ll be late for dinner,” she added with a sad sigh. “My uncle—not Uncle Alfonzo—has been meaning to meet with us for hours, and he’s gonna be very, very cross with us for keeping him waiting so long.”
“Ah, that is a shame,” Constance said, shaking her head and clicking her tongue. “But I suppose we may all have dessert together! Tonight, my magic shall craft the most delectable sorbets you have ever tasted, and that is a promise!” she crowed, and with a polite curtsy she handed off the roll of spell paper to Edelgard, wished them goodbye, and then went off all but skipping down the hallway.
Once Constance had turned the corner down the stairs, leaving her and Hubert alone in the hall, Edelgard carefully studied the spell paper emblazoned with the magic seal that had started all this trouble in the first place.
“Well,” she said, “we have kept Lord Arundel waiting far more than long enough. This will not be a pleasant meeting. Ugh.”
“Double ugh,” Hubert agreed.
“Although,” Edelgard said, rolling up the spell paper and slipping it under her jacket, “I think I have an idea… an idea on how we might fell both Those Who Slither in the Dark and the Church of Seiros with a single arrow. What do you think, Hubert?”
Hubert smirked. “I think we have all learned,” he said, “that if you want something done right, you simply must… do it yourself.”