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“We’ve got another one! Where’s the professor? Mercedes?”
“This tent! But life threatening injuries only! Physics are running low; if a Vulnerary or Concoction can fix it, stay out!”
Gautier knights rushed through the camp, supporting a gravely injured man between them. Sylvain looked up long enough to see who it was before turning back to the glass bottle in his hand. The Concoction allotted to him that morning was still two thirds full; he tipped another third out onto a clean rag.
“Not so much,” Ingrid hissed.
“You need it,” Sylvain started to say, but as she leaned in, the hand Ingrid held to his wounded side pressed too hard. The pain was white hot, far sharper than the sweet burn of pressing old bruises. Sylvain choked down a gasp.
“ You need it. My wound isn’t nearly as deep,” Ingrid argued, but she fussed with the rags they’d hastily bound around her thigh. Already a little russet circle was forming where the arrow had been removed.
“I wasn’t the one picking splinters out of flesh.”
Careful not to spill, Sylvain set the Concoction bottle between his armored feet. Ingrid made to take the damp cloth from him, but he tugged it quickly out of reach.
She leveled him with that stern glare. The one she used to flash him in the dining hall, after a girl burst into tears when she saw his newest date. Sylvain took it as a good sign. The fire in Ingrid’s eyes made her look warm and alive.
“You are the one at risk of blood loss, Sylvain.”
“It’s not that bad. Trust me, I’ve had worse.”
“We should treat you first. The third of a Vulnerary I have left won’t be enough to close your wound. And as tight as things are now, we aren’t likely to find any more supplies before we return to the monastery.”
“If you only had a Vulnerary, why the hell did you jump off your pegasus mid-battle?”
Even having only one hand to tug her bandage, Sylvain easily undid the knot before Ingrid could swat him away. She grumbled, but it would take two hands to secure it tight enough again to staunch the bleeding, and they both knew she wouldn’t let up on the pressure she had against his side.
“You were surrounded by archers,” she said. “I couldn’t risk getting his wings clipped.”
As soon as the bandage fully unwound from her upper thigh, she snatched it from Sylvain and darted to yank the Concoction from between his feet. Fresh pain shot up Sylvain’s side as the jerking motion tore at both their wounds. Sylvain quickly pressed his prepared rag to the inside of her thigh with a curse, at both the pain and Ingrid’s recklessness toward herself.
Ingrid hardly noticed. Most women would flush or duck their heads if Sylvain pressed his hands so firmly there, but Ingrid remained single-minded and focused on preparing her rag for him. She’d always been that way—practical to a fault and unflinching before any of them. In war, there was little room for privacy or decorum, but Ingrid had never been bothered. She’d strip to her smalls and bathe in front of him if a river was all they had.
More often it was Sylvain averting his eyes. Surprising, given all the bodies he’d touched and tasted. But that’s all they ever were; bodies. Bedwarmers in the shape of women, nameless and using in as much as they were used. It was different when it was a Blue Lion. When she was a sister-in-arms, a dear friend. The campfire beside them burned too hot while he held his hand so high on Ingrid’s thigh.
Ingrid gave him another reason to burn when she finally released the pressure against his side to dress the wound. He winced and ground his teeth. Concoctions stung worse than wyvern bites, and the sensation of his torn skin rapidly knitting itself back together was something he’d never get used to. It had to be worse for Ingrid. Her knuckles were white where she tied the wrapping, body so tense she might have been carved from stone. But the tight pinch in her brow and the narrow-eyed glare fixed on her hands wasn’t pained. It was guilty.
“Don’t make that face,” Sylvain croaked. Green eyes flicked to his, looking hurt. “ Don’t . That sword was coming for your throat when you slipped, of course I jumped in. I knew what I was doing. If anyone here knows how to take a hit, it’s me.”
“You think that’s worth bragging about? All these battle scars are more than just notches on your belt, Sylvain.”
“Better a scar than a whole leg.” He pressed harder, partially for emphasis, mostly to be sure the potion took. “I mean it. I’m covered in armor and I know what’s safe. You , on the other hand, are dressed for speed, not taking hits. You know how lucky you are you can even walk right now? Two inches higher and you’d’ve bled out in seconds, Inga.”
By the end, the words were tumbling out of his mouth faster than he could think. The childhood nickname slipped through unbidden. A crack in the mask.
Ingrid easily caught it, her sharp, falcon knight eyes honed for taking aim from fifty feet in the air. But seeing wasn’t the same as giving in. Not with Ingrid.
“I didn’t have much choice,” she said, only marginally softer than before. “That archer you hit with Sagittae wasn’t dead. As soon as you turned to fight the heavy knights from the rear, he took aim. You couldn’t have blocked in time.”
Sylvain sighed. Whenever she took up a tone like that, there was no arguing with her. She’d just dig in her heels and cling to her opinion until she was blue in the face. Neither of them could spare the energy for that. They needed their strength to heal, and help the fighters who’d taken worse hits.
“I’m a soldier, Sylvain,” Ingrid said, quieter now. “Don’t scold me for doing my duty.”
If it weren’t for the rag he held to her healing leg wound, he’d have thrown his hands up in the air.
“We’re coming from the same place, you know. I don’t know why everyone acts like I’m doing anything different. You all freak out on me whenever I step in with my half-plate armor to protect you, but then you , in a riding tunic , and Felix, with nothing but a pauldron , turn around and do the same exact thing every fight! The professor actually draws up battle maps based on who we’re gonna take a hit for.”
He huffed out a breathless growl of frustration. All this arguing was meaningless, just the adrenaline run-off and stress from a battle turned sour. The last dregs of hot fear swallowed down when he wasn’t sure how many familiar faces would be covered in grave soil tonight.
But Ingrid gave him one of her long, quiet looks. The kind that was too hard for him to meet, knowing she was peering past his mask, peeking in at his soul.
After a judging silence, she said, “Our reasons are different.”
Sylvain heard the scold beneath the surface. The anxious fear beneath that.
She always acted so above blame.
“Are they?” he cocked his head. “‘Cause you and I both know the reason Felix damn near has a panic attack when someone he cares about is under fire. All of your ‘chivalric values’ come from Glenn, too. And I get it,” he held up his free hand when she scowled and made to interrupt, “of course everyone would look to the little brother and the fiancée first. The prince who saw it happen. But I knew him, too.”
She cut back before he’d closed his mouth.
“Do not define me through Glenn.”
“I’m not– that’s not what I meant. I’m saying it haunts all of us. And yeah, alright, some of us more so than others. But…”
Sylvain lowered his voice and his gaze, avoiding her eyes. His next confession tasted bloody on his tongue.
“D’you know how many times I’ve dreamed I was there? I could have been. If I took a squireship like Felix and Dimitri later. I was old enough. I could have done something.”
Again, she was silent. It burned worse than the bite of the Concoction. Always it was silences and eyes that pierced him, deeper than any lucky lance in the narrow gap of his plate. Sylvain tortured himself with a lift of the head just to search her eyes for something, any kind of empathy, or even irritation. Anything other than the silent threat of pity.
He found pain, instead. Ingrid dragged her hands away from his healing flank and looked at him with deep, knowing pain.
“Everytime the professor gives us orders, I think about that,” she said.
Sylvain was captured by the depths of her eyes. Like peering down a tunnel into a broken past.
“I used to have fantasies, after we lost him. Imagine I’d been a prodigy, too.”
Her voice fractured. Ingrid ducked her head and turned back to the exposed skin of Sylvain’s side. Gentle, red-stained fingertips traced gingerly over the seam of his newest scar. Earned in service to her.
“I’d imagine I was there. That I protected him when he couldn’t protect himself. Or even that I traded my life for his.”
Sylvain watched her swallow more down before returning his gaze. She blinked, and the tunnel was gone.
“But as noble and heroic as his sacrifice was,” she continued, louder, firmer now, “it was the desperate, final choice he could make.
“You’re right, I’m not used to taking hits like you. I miscalculated the arrow’s trajectory. I thought it would hit lower. But you throw yourself in front of anything and everything without a care. Like your armor is only meant for our protection. Like your life is worth less than ours.”
“That’s not what I’m doing. I just had this talk with Felix last month. Look, believe me or don’t,” he said, because Ingrid was staring at him with so much skepticism he could practically hear the doubt. “But you know I wouldn’t turn my back on you two, right? He and I made a promise as kids not to die without each other. We’re still holding each other to that.”
“Is that supposed to reassure me? What if I’d made a deal like that with Glenn? Where would I be now?”
“It’s not like that, Inga. We’re not dying together. We’re keeping ourselves alive, for each other’s sakes. It’s loyalty.”
“Something you’re well known for,” she sniffed.
He winced. Ingrid and Felix never left the cracks in his mask alone. They always had to press the shards inward, to pierce him through with a blade of his own making.
“What do you want me to say, Ingrid? How should I prove I’m loyal to you, if saving your life isn’t enough?”
“I don’t want deathbed devotionals, Sylvain! I want–”
She cut off with a growl and reached down to grab him firmly by the wrist and tugged him off her healed thigh. Sylvain pulled back as though burned, heat flooding his face. His eyes shot to the sky.
“I want ,” she turned his hand in hers, red stained palms pressed to dirty fingertips, “us to devote our lives . I want a different pact from you.”
She raised her chin and drew him to meet her eyes, sharp and determined. At once a noblewoman and a soldier. Sylvain gripped her hand tight as a lance.
“Then name it.”
“Swear to me, no matter what happens, we’ll keep ourselves alive. I want us to always be here, supporting each other. Not buried together.”
“I’d fight Death himself for you, Inga.”
“Then shake.”
Sylvain squeezed her dirtied hand with his own, both stained by each other’s wounds. They sealed their pact in blood.