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There was a boy she once loved. She could not (or would not) remember his name. But there were days she wanted to pretend that there was still more time before she was forced to forget.
She had met him outside in the gardens, enthralled by even the spring’s hoarfrost that coated Faerghus during Great Tree Moon. A brilliant pop of red had caught her attention amongst the light touch of ice that blanketed the earth. Her small hands reached for it, a crimson flower in the wake of snow. She had never seen such a thing before, not from where she was from.
“You like that camellia?” a voice broke through the mist and her reverie.
She swiveled around, surprise on her face, and her heart thundering fast in her chest. “You startled me!” she exclaimed. She pouted. “Who are you anyway?”
She could picture the boy’s voice in her mind’s eye, even as his face had diminished with time. It had a gentle quality to it, a familiarity she only grew to appreciate. She could not remember the shape of his face, nor the sweep of his hair, but at least she remembered how blue his eyes were. And that was it.
He opened his mouth to say his name.
“I’m Edelgard,” she introduced herself. “I just moved here.”
The boy reached out a friendly hand. “Nice to meet you,” he replied. “Why don’t we be friends?”
He was warm. She could not forget that either. He was warm and kind in this new place she was forced to call home. But in the handful of years they had grown to know each other, he made the capital of Fhirdiad home for her.
He was a terrible dancer, a feat she was flummoxed by. He was a Kingdom noble, after all. Surely someone would have taught him how to move about on the ballroom floor.
And so, on the afternoon right before the comedian’s night in the gala that would celebrate the founding of Faerghus, she circled him around the gardens she had met him in while he stumbled over his own feet.
“Be steadier!” she commanded. “You’re the one who’s supposed to lead.”
He was nervous about her movements, stuttering over words and half-formed phrases. Her brown hair whipped around her face, and he spluttered when some of it caught in his mouth. All she could do was giggle at the ridiculousness of it all.
Flurries swirled around them, floating in pairs and bunches. They landed on her eyelashes and the cold made her cheeks rosy.
The two of them were out of breath when it was over. She found herself plopping down on the steps of the frozen fountain, panting beside him.
“El,” she said, and she turned to him. Her face felt warm when he looked at her. “The people closest to me call me that.”
The boy smiled. She sighed.
It was a good time in her life. A peaceful time, no matter her reasons for leaving Enbarr at first. But of course, none of that could last.
She recalled the terror the most on the day they parted. He frantically handed her a dagger, encouraging her to cut her own path forward.
“You can make it out there,” he had said. “I know you can.”
She took the gift but was then whisked away, unable to say anything other than, “I’ll see you again!” over her shoulder.
Over time, the terror strengthened. Her life became a haze of pain and suffering. All she could hear was her own screams in the depths of the palace in Enbarr as she wondered how and why she had to return when all she was given was this.
One by one her ten siblings perished, succumbing to the torture those men held for them below. Those men were so obsessed with power and what the Crests could afford them that they had tried to implant them in their bodies.
Her father, who was the emperor, was powerless to stop them.
The boy’s face faded behind blood and tears. She clutched the knife to her chest, intent on enduring. But even then, her reasoning for doing so blurred into nonexistence when she could not even remember who had given it to her in the first place.
Still, she emerged as the only survivor.
Her survival became her tether, her life. She wanted to uproot the system and kill those men who had thrust their ideals onto her and her lost siblings. She wanted revenge.
And so, she raised her relic, her axe, high above the King of Faerghus now.
“Edelgard! You…I will kill you!” Dimitri roared even on his knees. “You will know the regret of my father, who was killed for you! Of my stepmother, who was slain by her own daughter! You will bow your head before all the lives you trampled for your ideals before you die in misery!”
She tsked. The damp earth soaked into her boots and with each step toward him, she sank into the mud. “Farewell, King of Delusion,” she replied. “If only we lived in a time of peace, you might have lived a joyful life as a benevolent ruler.”
She swung her weapon in a spiteful arc. She had to get rid of this man who was standing in her way. He was the man who protected the Church of Seiros, and it was the church and its demon founder who had done this to her. They valued her for nothing.
Shlink!
“To the fires of eternity with you…El…” Dimitri gasped.
Edelgard stopped, eyes wide. “No,” she trembled. “It can’t be.”
They met again on the battlefield. It was some cruel and fateful irony after so long wishing she could see him just one more time. Just to remember him.
The boy fell on the day she finally did.
They were two toppling pillars in a world so changed. How far they had come. How far they had crumbled.