Work Text:
Felix crossed his arms, tapping his foot impatiently. His old man was due to arrive any minute now and their whole class was gathered in the reception hall waiting for him. He always had to make an entrance, didn’t he?
“Stop that,” Sylvain hissed at him. “You’ll wear a hole through the floor.”
Felix rolled his eyes at how much Sylvain was currently acting like Ingrid, but complied. He wasn’t the only one who currently had a huge problem. Or maybe it would be better to be as annoying as humanly possible, just so that Sylvain would have something to focus on other than his evil older brother being the leader of a group of bandits they were going to have to take care of.
Before Felix could start muttering about how much longer his old man was going to be, Sylvain dropped something on the ground and slyly kicked it under a table.
“What was that?” Felix asked.
“Huh? Oh, nothing.”
But Sylvain had a secretive little smirk on his face, and that meant that it was something.
Felix started to bend down to pick it up, but Sylvain pulled him back up by his arm before he could.
“What are you doing?”
“Stopping you from making a huge mistake,” Sylvain hissed. “Unless you want to be stuck with me forever?”
Felix frowned in confusion.
Sylvain sighed. “It’s an old wives’ tale. If someone finds things you lost and gives them back to you, repeatedly, it means they’re your soulmate.”
“Soulmate?” Felix scoffed. “You believe in that crap?”
“No, of course not,” Sylvain said adamantly. “It just—it doesn’t hurt to be prepared, to know who’s trying to trap me into marriage.”
Felix wasn’t interested in marriage and continuing his crest’s line any more than Sylvain was, but sometimes he forgot just how cynical Sylvain could be about it. “Do you want me to pick it up to prove it wrong then? Do you need it back?”
Sylvain shook his head. “Nah, it’s only a tube of lipstick a girl left in my room one time. I’d be happy if no one gave it back to me.”
“Excuse me.”
Sylvain and Felix parted slightly to let Professor Byleth between them. Felix couldn’t quite see where she’d be going though, as she seemed to be heading straight for the wall. But then she bent down and picked something up and studied it for a moment before handing it to Sylvain. “Is this yours?” she asked him.
Sylvain looked down at the lipstick with distaste. “Oh! That’s mine… Thanks, Professor. You really saved the day.” The rictus grin on his face should have shown anyone who was looking at him that he wasn’t being sincere, but the professor didn’t seem to notice as she went back to stand beside the boar, patiently waiting for Felix’s old man to arrive.
“I can’t really see Professor Byleth trying to trap anyone, but congratulations,” Felix said dryly.
“Idiot,” Sylvain replied, rolling his eyes. “Haven’t you noticed? She does this for everyone in our class. So unless we’re somehow all her soulmate, it doesn’t mean anything.”
Felix frowned. How was he supposed to know that? The professor hadn’t returned anything to him, plus he’d been the one to find Annette’s textbook and hand it back to her when he’d seen her leave it behind in the dining hall that one time, and—
Oh no.
Felix looked across the hall and saw Annette standing there, laughing with Mercedes and Ingrid, while she fiddled nervously with the decorative clasp on her bag.
It didn’t mean anything. It was just an old wives’ tale, like Sylvain had said. And he’d said something about repeated instances of finding someone’s lost belongings, and it had only been once. And she hadn’t returned anything that Felix had lost to him. So, even if he found himself staring at her in class, and wanting to hear her sing, and trying to shield her in every mission they were sent on, it didn’t mean anything.
For the first time in a long time, Felix was relieved when he heard the grating sound of his old man’s voice, because it meant he could focus on a more pressing concern and try and push the thought that perhaps Annette could be his soulmate into the dark recesses of his mind, never to be considered again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Felix only had a few weeks of peace before it was abruptly shattered. To be fair, it was his own fault. Sylvain had goaded him into ‘losing’ something so that he could see if the professor would return it to him too, and Felix had stupidly agreed in an attempt to keep Sylvain amused as the day when they would leave for Conand Tower grew closer.
Felix had noticed that he’d have to start using a new sword belt soon enough—his old one was falling apart—and so he’d helped it on its way by prying off its metal buckle and dropping it in the training grounds. Maybe he’d picked that place because he’d never once seen Annette there unless their whole class was training together or there was a tournament on, maybe he’d picked it because the professor spent a lot of her free time there and so was likely to find it and prove Felix’s ridiculous suspicions wrong.
While he waited for something to happen, he thought he might as well practice the technique he’d seen the professor use the last time they were on the battlefield. He’d never seen anything like it, and if he could manage to emulate her movements, he was sure to catch his future opponents off guard.
“Your right elbow needs to be higher,” Professor Byleth said in her monotone voice.
Felix whirled around, feeling a strange sense of satisfaction that he’d been right. “Would you spar with me so I can become proficient in the technique?” he asked.
“Hm.” The professor’s eyes slid over the floor of the training grounds and stopped on the metal buckle as she mulled over his proposition.
Pick it up, pick it up, a desperate voice inside Felix’s head chanted.
She didn’t. She blinked and then looked at him again. “I thought there was a tournament today.”
Felix frowned. “Yes, but it finished in ten minutes. The boar’s strength was far too much for anyone else to keep up with.” Perhaps Annette’s cheering for the boar had also contributed to Felix’s need to get this over with, to make sure his stupid heart knew that there was nothing in some old-fashioned superstition that signified that he was destined to be with Annette.
“Ah. That makes sense. Well, I’m far too busy to spar with you today—I have to go check on the plants I’m growing in the greenhouse, and then there’s all these students I promised to take lunch with—but I’ll pencil you in for sometime next week. Maybe.”
She left before Felix could even reply, the cold reality that she hadn’t returned his lost item to him like she did for nearly everyone else in their class setting in uncomfortably. Felix gripped his sword more tightly and lashed out at the training dummy. He knew he shouldn’t hit it so hard that he damaged it beyond repair, but it felt so cathartic he couldn’t help himself.
“—Felix! Felix!”
Felix came back to his senses and stopped swinging, turning around to see Annette standing there, her hands on her hips and an unimpressed look on her face. “Annette?”
“What are you doing? That’s going to be so much work for Cyril to fix, and Lysithea’s going to be so annoyed at you.”
“It’s a training ground, Annette. This happens all the time, which you’d know if you ever did any training instead of just reading books all the time,” Felix snapped, his jaw clenched. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
Annette glared at him. “I needed to talk to Professor Byleth, and I saw her come in here, but then I got sidetracked and she must have left while I wasn’t paying attention.” She paused, pursing her lips as she considered something. “Do you know where she went?” she finally mumbled, the words pulled unwillingly from her mouth.
Asking him for help? She must be desperate. Felix sighed. “She said she was going to the greenhouse and then to the dining hall for lunch, so you should be able to find her easily.”
“Oh.” Annette blinked. “Thank you,” she added, almost as an afterthought. “Um, that was nice of you.”
Felix’s brow furrowed. “Why do you sound so surprised?”
Annette’s eyes widened. “Oh, uh, no reason! No reason at all!” Her eyes wouldn’t meet his, flying all over the training grounds until they landed on something.
A pit of dread grew in Felix’s stomach.
“Oh,” Annette said, suddenly sounding like her usually cheerful self again. She bent over to pick something up off the ground. “This is yours, isn’t it? There, now I’ve done something nice for you, so we’re even.”
The pit bloomed into a flowering tree, twining up and around his heart and squeezing it tight as Annette placed his old metal buckle firmly into his free hand. “I gave you back your textbook that time in the dining hall, so this makes us even for that,” he said mechanically.
“Oh, I forgot about that! So I still owe you for telling me where the professor is and for not telling anyone about my songs? Ugh! How am I supposed to make us even, Felix? I keep falling behind!”
Felix looked down unseeingly at the buckle that his open hand refused to close around and firmly grasp. “This is old, I don’t want it anyway,” he said.
“You’re so ungrateful!” Annette yelled at him, her hands closed into fists. “Why do I bother trying? Don’t you know how to lie to make someone feel better?” She wiped away a tear from under her eye, and Felix felt like the villain she always said he was. “I’m going to find the professor,” she said. “Have fun being alone for the rest of your life because you don’t know how to be nice to people!”
Felix stabbed the training dummy—right where its heart would be if it had one—as she left, watching as sawdust rained down onto the ground. It didn’t matter that she’d given him back the buckle, it didn’t mean anything. Besides, he’d just guaranteed that she’d never want anything to do with him ever again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Annette stood in the cathedral next to Mercedes, wondering if the Goddess would hear her prayers if she asked to never have to interact with Felix Fraldarius ever again. Or for the horrible way her heart sped up every single time she looked at him to stop occurring. She doubted it would work—the Goddess didn’t have that kind of power—and then she immediately felt guilty for thinking that, when Mercedes was so devout.
“Is this yours?” Professor Byleth asked, cutting into her thoughts.
“Oh! This is mine! Thank you for returning it to me, but how did you know I lost it?” Mercedes asked.
The professor frowned. “It’s a book about baking that I found in the cathedral. Why would I not think it was yours?”
Mercedes giggled. “I suppose that makes sense. You’re so kind, always finding people’s lost belongings and returning them,” she said, a trace of wistfulness in her voice.
“I wish all of you would take better care of your things, but when even your teachers have the same problem it seems more like a widespread issue at the academy than simply being isolated incidents.”
“I’ll try and do better, and so will Annie.”
“Hm? Oh, yes. I’ll do my best!” Annette pumped her fists. The professor had never returned anything to her, and Annette felt giddy just thinking about maintaining her perfect record and making Professor Byleth proud.
The professor smiled her enigmatic smile and wandered off without saying goodbye.
Mercedes sighed as she stared at the professor’s retreating back.
“Mercie? What’s wrong?” Annette asked.
“Oh, it’s stupid. Don’t worry about it.”
Annette gave her a look. “Now that you’ve said that, all I’m going to do is worry about it, until you tell me what it is. So, come on and tell me already.”
Mercedes smiled and nodded, and took Annette’s arm in hers to lead her outside of the cathedral to a bench in a secluded corner.
“What do you know about soulmates?” she asked.
“What?” Annette had heard of the possibility but it was always in conjunction with You’ll never get to marry who you want to, so forget about the miniscule chance that you’ll find your soulmate. “Um, I guess it’s the one person who’s your perfect match in all the world?”
Mercedes smiled at her kindly. “I meant more about how you would know that someone is your soulmate.”
“Oh, that’s easy. You’d feel it in your heart. You’d smile just thinking about them, you’d feel like a glow.”
“Oh, Annie,” Mercedes said, covering her mouth with her hand. And were her shoulders shaking? Annette pouted. She wasn’t trying to be funny. She was being honest.
“My parents were soulmates,” Mercedes said.
Annette froze, the sounds of the monastery melting away at the importance of this admission. She had told Mercedes all about the situation with her father, a week after meeting her, but she knew only the bare bones about Mercedes’ family. Her mother was lovely, her father had died when she was a baby, and her stepfather was the most odious man alive—worse than Lorenz!
This was an opportunity for them to deepen the bonds of their friendship, and Annette wasn’t going to ruin it! “They were?” she asked hesitantly.
“Mmhmm,” Mercedes murmured. “They met when Mother dropped her handkerchief on the ground when she was visiting Enbarr, and Father found it and gave it to her. Mother never thought she’d ever see that handsome, helpful man again, but then a moon later, the heir of House Martritz was visiting the villages in his territory. Mother didn’t go and see him, you know. She thought a stuck-up heir held no interest for her. But she was cleaning up in the town’s meeting hall after the festivities and found an engraved silver pen that he’d misplaced. And he came back looking for it, and she gave it to him. And that was that—they knew they were soulmates.”
Annette tried to work Mercedes’ words through in her head, but it was like having an equation with an expected answer, but not understanding the method to get there. “Um, sorry. It’s a lovely coincidence, but how does that make them soulmates?”
Mercedes giggled. “Because they found each other’s lost belongings. That’s how you know. Even after they married, it still happened. Mother lost her wedding ring once, and all of the servants helped her search the entire estate for it, but of course no one could find it until Father returned home, and then he found it immediately. At least that’s what she told me.” Mercedes smiled wistfully.
Annette’s eyes widened. “Oh! So Professor Byleth is your soulmate?” she squealed. Mercedes had always been more invested in a person’s character than whatever gender they happened to be, and the professor, while not someone Annette had a crush on, was definitely crushworthy.
“No, sadly not. I’ve seen her return belongings to Sylvain, Ingrid, Ashe, Dedue, Dimitri, and some students from other houses, and even some of the faculty. I think she’s just a natural magnet for lost items.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. She hasn’t given me anything I’ve lost, so I just assumed.”
“That’s okay. How could you have known, having been one of the few of us here who hasn’t lost anything?”
Mercedes smiled, but Annette found she couldn’t answer with one of her own.
She had lost something. Her textbook. But it hadn’t been the professor who had returned it.
And she had returned something to Felix, that he’d lost.
One of each, which had been enough for Mercedes’ parents to know.
Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no.
It couldn’t be.
She clasped her hands together and lowered her head in fervent prayer, ready to try anything to prevent the inevitable. Her soulmate couldn’t be the most villainous villain in Fódlan.
What had she ever done to deserve such a cruel trick of fate?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Felix entered the dining hall, thoroughly worn out from his exploits at the Battle of the Eagle and Lion. He’d proven his worth, tenfold. Most “kills” for the winning house, and sure maybe it was partly due to his crest activating with nearly every slash due to his frustration with his current Annette-shaped predicament, but it was still worth celebrating.
It wasn’t like he didn’t want her to be his soulmate. She was pretty and smart and made of pure sunshine, warming everyone around her with her good cheer.
He was the problem. She couldn’t stand him, and every time he tried to talk to her, she assumed he was making fun of her.
“Piece of gold for your thoughts?” Sylvain said, slinging his arm around Felix’s shoulder. “What’s up? Shouldn’t you be proud of how well you did? I’ll be replaying the look on Hubert’s face when you used the hilt of your sword to give him a black eye for a long time. If only Manuela hadn’t healed him and we could look at your handiwork all night.”
“Idiot,” Felix said, shrugging Sylvain’s arm off. Or trying to. Sylvain could be surprisingly strong when he wanted to be. Felix wished he’d apply himself to training more.
“Look,” Sylvain said, leaning in to mutter under his breath into Felix’s ear, “try and look a bit happier, otherwise everyone’s going to bother you with questions about why you look so upset, okay? I’m not saying this for my benefit.”
Felix nodded curtly. There was no way he’d manage to look happy—everyone would know something was off if he did that anyway—but neutral? Neutral he could manage. Maybe.
It was two drinks in (the monastery staff thankfully giving as much of a shit about legal drinking age as the average Faerghan parent) when Felix realized the lucky charm he’d kept in his pocket during the mock battle wasn’t there anymore.
Shit shit shit shit.
Glenn’s black iron spur had been the only thing left of him other than his armor. That had been entombed in the Fraldarius family mausoleum, but Felix had snuck the small object out when he’d gone to the viewing, knowing that the armor itself had meant less than nothing to his brother but the spur—a gift from the late king on Glenn’s appointment as a knight—had meant everything to him.
Whenever he was unsure in battle, Felix would stick his hand in his pocket and feel the melted edges of the spur and think about what Glenn’s plan of attack would have been. His brother had been a master strategist, and sometimes Felix thought that his own outlandish strategies were only so surprisingly successful because he’d always had to be quick on his feet to develop unusual tactics to have a chance of catching Glenn off guard.
“Shoot!”
Felix looked down at Annette, sprawled on the ground.
“That bad at holding your liquor, Annette?” Claude asked jokingly. “And here I thought all Faerghans had a natural advantage in that area.”
Felix’s hand clenched into a fist. He’d never wanted to wipe that annoying smirk off Claude’s face more than at this moment.
“I’m not drunk! I only had one drink,” Annette insisted. “And I’m not that clumsy, either.”
Claude looked at her skeptically, and while Felix happened to agree with him, it didn’t mean he had to like it.
“See!” Annette picked up something off the ground and waved it in Claude’s direction. “I wouldn’t have fallen if this stupid thing wasn’t lying in the middle of the aisle, just waiting to trip me!”
No.
Felix stood up quickly, going over to Annette, and snatching Glenn’s spur out of her hand. He couldn’t let Ingrid see it. She was in her element, eating and drinking and having fun for once, and Felix refused to ruin it for her by reminding her of someone they had both lost.
“What are you doing?” Annette exclaimed.
“That’s mine,” Felix said quietly. “And stop attracting everyone’s attention.” He braced himself for Annette’s usual refusal to leave things well enough alone and tried to think through how he’d handle it if Ingrid came running up, demanding to know what Felix had done to upset Annette.
Annette’s face paled. “Please, Goddess, no,” she whispered.
Felix’s jaw clenched. She knew. She had to know. There was no other possible explanation for her reaction.
She knew, and just like Felix had expected her to, she didn’t like it one bit.
He only wished that it didn’t hurt so much.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Annette frantically rifled through the papers in her room. It had to be here somewhere, it had to.
But it wasn’t.
Annette cursed herself for making the fatal mistake of actually writing down her song lyrics for once. Professor Byleth had given her some sheet music and Annette had tried to write out the notation for her favorite hymn, she really had, but instead the music and lyrics to the song Felix had overheard in the greenhouse had rushed out of her. And if that wasn’t bad enough, it was soon followed by Creepity Creep. No one had heard that one yet, but Annette had forgotten herself in the greenhouse last week, and it was only a matter of time before someone did. Probably Felix, given how the Goddess was conspiring against her.
But the worst by far was the one she had added to the collection just yesterday. Annette’s songs were usually spontaneous creations, sprouting from what was occupying her mind at the moment—her grumbling tummy, watching all the new shoots break through the soil, or having to move boxes for the professor, to name a few examples.
Her latest song was tentatively titled The Dungeon Song. It wasn’t actually about a dungeon though. It was more of a metaphor, really. A metaphor for feeling trapped, with no escape. She’d written it as a way to get her feelings about the soulmate possibility out of her system and as she did so the sentiment of the lyrics had gradually changed, until the person who had started the song as her captor had become her path towards freedom. If Felix truly was her soulmate, she wouldn’t have to worry about being married off to some horrible stranger by her uncle or about how she was going to support herself if she toughened up and refused to bend to his wishes.
She would only have to worry about whether she was good enough to be the next Duchess Fraldarius.
Annette turned bright red. She had to stop thinking about it. Just because Mercedes’ parents had been soulmates, it didn’t mean anything for her and Felix. Who knew? Maybe Mercedes’ mother had lied to her about a father who Mercedes had never known, just to give her a bright spot amidst the gloom of the Bartels’ household.
Annette needed to do more research. A hypothesis could never be supported by only one data point (two if you counted what was currently happening with her and Felix, and Annette did not), and if finding lost items was an indicator of soulmates, there had to be more information on it somewhere amongst all of the books in the library.
But first she had to find her music score before it was returned to her by Felix and (Goddess forbid) he had read the song about him. Felix was smart enough to be able to read between the lines and Annette couldn’t bear it if he found out how her feelings were softening towards him in that way.
Wait, what was she thinking? In that way? She didn’t want him to find out about that ever!
Annette ran towards the Blue Lions classroom. She might have accidentally taken the score with her to class, buried somewhere amongst all her other papers, and then lost it there, just as accidentally. No, Annette mentally chastised herself, misplaced it, not lost. Lost meant that Felix would be certain to find it, and she couldn’t have that.
Annette could no longer deny that she had lost her score when she entered the classroom and saw Felix bent over and picking something up from the floor, something that she recognized immediately.
“That’s mine,” Annette said shakily, thankful that the Goddess had made sure that no one else was in the classroom to witness her humiliation even as she cursed her for everything else.
Felix looked up suddenly, his eyes wide as he stared at her.
“Can I have it back, please?” Annette continued, desperate. He’d just picked it up, so he couldn’t have seen more than the first page, and that was only the song that he’d already heard her sing.
“Is this the song from the greenhouse?” Felix asked.
“Yes,” Annette said, curtly. “Now give it back.” She moved closer and tried to snatch it out of his grasp when he refused to obey her wishes quickly enough for her liking.
Felix lifted the score high above his head and Annette knew that not even jumping would put her within reach. Plus, it would be so embarrassing, and she’d come to realize that she dreaded embarrassing herself in front of Felix for reasons that she didn’t want to examine too closely.
“Is Creepity Creep in here, too?” Felix asked.
“How do you know about that!?” Annette demanded.
“Claude heard you sing it last week and was bragging to me about it.” Felix grimaced. “You should be more careful about who you sing in front of.”
“I should be more careful about singing in front of you, you villain!” Annette said. She gave up on trying to appear cool, calm, and collected, and jumped as high as she could to try and grab her score. It wasn’t high enough.
“I’ll give it back if you sing that one for me. Or a different one that’s in here, maybe a song about bears? Or swamp beasties? You mentioned those before.”
Annette wondered if there actually was steam coming out of her ears, or if it just felt like it. “There is one about a swamp beastie,” she said, thinking of the song about Felix, “but I’m not showing it to you, much less singing it for you!” Annette forced herself to not run away. She had a clear goal, and Felix wasn’t going to stop her from getting her score back. “I’ll let you look at the song Claude heard,” she said, attempting a compromise.
“Why does he get to hear you sing and I don’t?” Felix asked, almost pouting. It was too cute! Why was he so cute? He wasn’t meant to be. He needed to remain an unapproachable villain for Annette to stay strong, but he was ruining everything for her!
“Fine, I’ll sing it,” Annette said, and she knew she was as red as a tomato now. “But give it back to me first.”
She frowned. Felix was blushing terribly as well, and she couldn’t understand why.
“Can I—Tch. I’ll put it down on the table, and you can pick it up. Understood?” He lowered his arm.
“What?” Annette could only think of one reason that Felix wouldn’t want to hand it to her. Because he knew and he didn’t want to be her soulmate and he was trying to circumvent the giving it back stipulation. No, that was ridiculous. Felix would never believe in something so intangible, he needed proof of everything. Felix would be the type to hand Annette her lost item without a second thought, just to prove that the soulmate legend meant less than nothing.
She could do the same. She could be brave. She snatched the score out of his hands, Felix so stunned that his quick reflexes failed him for once. “There, nothing to worry about,” Annette said. She took a quick look around the classroom, satisfying herself that no one had entered while they’d been arguing, and began to sing.
Annette knew that her voice wasn't at its best—she was far too nervous for it to be, and Felix’s contemplative silence wasn’t helping either. He was staring at her, and Annette could feel her self-consciousness threaten to explode into another tirade. But she had promised to sing for him. And Annette was not the type of person who ever broke her promises.
The sound of her heavy breathing filled the classroom as Creepity Creep mercifully came to an end. She should leave. She could leave, now that she’d gotten what she came for and she’d fulfilled her promise to Felix, but she couldn’t help staring into the depths of his eyes, their amber hue warm like honey instead of cold like sword metal as she’d always thought before.
They were so close together, either of them could lean forward and—
A low whistle interrupted Annette’s thoughts. “What do we have here?” Sylvain asked. “Practicing for the ball?”
“What?” Annette shrieked, jumping back to distance herself from Felix and only making the situation worse because she tripped as she did so, and Felix had to reach out and catch her around the waist to stop her fall, and the warmth from his touch was spreading throughout her body.
“Seiros, I was joking,” Sylvain said. “No need to be so jumpy.”
“We weren’t doing anything,” Annette insisted, hating herself for it because she knew she was being too defensive and only encouraging whatever suspicions Sylvain might have. “I was looking for this sheet music I misplaced, and Felix found it.”
Sylvain’s eyes grew sharp. “You found it?” he asked Felix.
Annette realized she might have made a huge mistake.
“Shut up,” Felix said, glaring at Sylvain.
She had made a huge mistake.
Felix did know. He knew about this all too specific method for finding your soulmate and he had wanted to prevent it from happening. Because he didn’t want her, just like so many other people in her life who held importance for her.
Well, fine. She didn’t want to be his soulmate either!
Annette ran out of the classroom before she embarrassed herself horribly, by letting Felix and Sylvain see her tears start to fall.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“You need to talk about it,” Sylvain said.
“I don’t,” Felix said, and he knew it had been a trap from the moment Sylvain had agreed to train with him, but he had hoped that they’d get through more than a single bout before he brought up the topic that Felix definitely didn’t need nor want to talk about.
Sylvain thrust his lance forward and hit Felix in the side. “You’re not concentrating hard enough if even I got through your defenses.”
“That’s because you’re trying for once,” Felix spat back.
Sylvain raised a (very annoying) eyebrow. “I don’t think so.” He sighed. “Look, it doesn’t have to mean anything, it could still be a coincidence. You found one of her things, and she found one of yours. Thanks for that by the way, after the mock battle. Ingrid didn’t notice a thing. I can’t remember the last time I saw her so happy and I would have hated for a memory to ruin it for her.”
Felix nodded curtly. “Of course,” he said, unable to handle how sincere Sylvain seemed. To break the tension his mouth moved of its own accord, giving Sylvain an opening he didn’t want it to. “That was the second time, actually.”
Sylvain looked at him quizzically. “Yeah, I know. That’s what I said—one for her, and one for you.”
And Felix realized that Sylvain might have been right, that he did need to talk, because he continued to explain even when it would have been just as easy to stop talking. “No, Glenn’s spur was the second thing of mine she found, and her sheet music was the second thing of hers that I found.”
“You’re joking.”
“No. I wish I was.”
“Do you?”
Sylvain was looking at him far too knowingly and Felix could feel his face heating up in response. “It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t like me.”
Sylvain’s face scrunched up in thought. “Well, either she’s finding your stuff on purpose—”
Felix scoffed.
“—or it really might be fate. Huh. Weird.”
“Could you be helpful instead of telling me things I already know?” Felix said.
“See, now I don’t want to be.”
Felix went over to a training dummy, deciding that he would rather train with an inanimate object than have to deal with Sylvain further.
“I’m kidding! I’m kidding!” Sylvain yelled as he chased after him.
Felix grunted, hitting the dummy and trying to ignore Sylvain.
“It was good to see you open up,” Sylvain said, as Felix rained down blow after blow, “but when I said you need to talk about it, I actually meant with her.”
Felix stopped immediately, his sword falling from his suddenly loose grip and tumbling onto the ground. “I—I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
Sometimes Felix hated how perceptive Sylvain could be. It made it far harder to ignore him.
“You know what I think about all the girls here, but Annette does not fit into that category. I tried to flirt with her once, and she shut me down, like that.” Sylvain clicked his fingers. “I still think about it sometimes. What’s wrong with me? Where do I start, am I right?” Sylvain laughed.
He stopped laughing when he saw Felix’s face.
“You flirted with her? With my—with Annette?”
“Shit, man. She means that much to you? Talk to her.”
Felix looked down at the ground, trying to calm himself. Sylvain flirted with anything that moved, it wasn’t serious, Annette obviously hadn’t appreciated it, it was fine. “How am I meant to do that?” he asked quietly.
“Uh, go up to her and open your mouth?” Sylvain looked at Felix like he was being an idiot, when in fact, Felix knew that he was the only one thinking things through properly.
“She doesn’t like me. If I try to start a conversation, she’ll run away. I doubt I’ll even get close to her. The last few times when we’ve gone out on missions she’s deliberately asked the professor to be on the opposite side of the formation to me.”
“Felix, Felix, Felix. Buddy. Pal.”
Felix rolled his eyes. “What?” he spat out.
“Lose something.” Sylvain’s smile was so self-satisfied that Felix wished his plan wasn’t so smart. But it was.
“Maybe it won’t work,” he bluffed.
Sylvain shrugged. “Lose something expensive then. I’d say something important to you, but you already did that.”
Felix nodded slowly. “I bought a very rare dagger from Anna’s shop last week.”
Sylvain sighed. “A dagger? Really?” He smirked. “Although I guess you could propose with it right after she finds it for you.”
Sylvain ran out of the training grounds before Felix could hit him.
Felix muttered to himself as he went over to his training bag. Sylvain was being ridiculous. The dagger Glenn had given to Ingrid had been because of practicality, and the dagger Di—the boar had given to that girl, the one who had lived in the castle with him for less than a year (what had even been her name? Felix couldn’t remember) was because he was trying to copy Glenn, like he always did. A proposal? Sylvain was an idiot.
But when he opened his bag and saw the dagger, he decided to face everything head on. He held it up, looking at the unique shape that hinted at an Almyran origin, running his finger lightly along the toothed edge, before dropping it onto the sand.
He sat down on the bench nearby and began to wait.
He didn’t have to wait long.
Annette entered the training grounds cautiously, peeking her head around the door. “Um, Felix?” she said nervously. “Sylvain said you wanted to see me?”
Felix scowled at Sylvain’s meddling, although judging by Annette’s expression she somehow thought he was unhappy to see her. He’d have to work on that if—Stop it.
Her mouth twisted up in annoyance as she stalked over to him. “I have important things to do. The professor is so upset, what with her father and all, so Mercie and I are going to make her some delicious sweet buns.”
Felix frowned. “Do you really think food will stop her from being sad that her father was killed?”
Annette almost growled at him. “Sugar always makes me feel better and we need to try everything we can!”
He hadn’t meant it as the reprimand of her actions that she took it as, he simply had been wondering if Annette really thought it would help, and if so he was going to suggest giving the professor some smoked meat, because in his experience, she preferred meat to sweets. Though he wasn’t going to suggest it now—for someone so adorable, Annette could be remarkably short-tempered.
It didn’t matter that he deliberately didn’t speak, Annette seemed to be getting more annoyed that he wasn’t arguing with her, and she kicked out at the sand with her foot.
“Ow!” She lifted her foot up and grabbed at it, hopping around. “What was that?”
Felix knew what it was. He should bend down and pick up his dagger, so that she wouldn’t touch it. He really should. She wasn’t in the right frame of mind to try having this conversation with her, but he couldn’t seem to move, frozen in place, dreading what would happen next.
Annette picked it up and immediately closed her eyes with an exasperated, sad sigh. “This is yours, isn’t it?” she asked, her voice utterly joyless.
“Yes. We need to talk.” Felix knew that he should try and be more soothing, but he had never been one to modulate his speech to please other people. He wasn’t sure he even knew how to be gentle with his words, but Annette was the first person who he wished he could have sounded kinder for.
Her eyes flew open as she stared at him in pure panic. “No, we don’t,” she whispered.
Felix’s brow furrowed. “Yes, we do. According to this,” he gestured at his dagger, still in Annette’s hands, “we’re soulmates. We need to—”
“No!” she yelled, throwing the dagger in his direction and running out of the training grounds as fast as she could, while Felix was still trying to process what had just happened.
He looked down at his hand, and saw a shallow gash on his palm where the dagger she had thrown in panic had cut him. It didn’t hurt nearly as much as Annette’s rejection of him did. He let out a bitter little laugh. That had somehow gone worse than he had ever imagined it could.
Why the hell had he listened to Sylvain’s advice?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Annie, can I come in?”
“Yes,” Annette mumbled into her pillow. She had spent far too long wallowing—she knew it—and worse than that, she was clearly making Mercedes worried.
Annette felt Mercedes’ hand, comfortingly smoothing down Annette’s unbrushed hair and gliding over her scalp. “There, there. Nothing’s as bad as it seems.”
Annette scoffed into the pillow before sitting up, wiping the tears from under her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’ve ruined everything,” she wailed, slumping over to rest her head on Mercedes’ arm.
“I don’t believe it,” Mercedes said firmly.
“No, I—” Annette took a couple of gulping breaths. She should have told Mercedes long ago, but she had been so unsure and then so embarrassed and then so angry at her own actions, that at each turn she hadn’t quite been able to manage it. After everyone had been so shocked by Captain Jeralt’s death and then shocked further by the professor’s disappearance and just as sudden reappearance in the sealed forest, Mercedes had finally opened up to Annette about the existence of her half-brother and of how she and her mother had left him with his horrible father. And Annette had repaid her honesty by not saying a word about her soulmate situation.
That was going to change.
“It’s about Felix,” she said hesitantly.
“Ah,” Mercedes said, and it sounded far too knowing, and did she already know? Had she known all along and not told Annette?
“Breathe, Annie,” Mercedes said softly, rubbing her on her back. “I see you looking at him during class.”
“I don’t! I… Oh, I do, don’t I?” Annette said, no longer able to deny the truth.
“Don’t worry. He looks at you, too. More than you look at him, if I’m not mistaken.”
Annette sniffled. “Because he’s thinking about how he’s saddled with me and how he wishes he wasn’t,” she mumbled.
“...What are you talking about?”
Annette sighed. “Mercie. He’s my soulmate.”
Mercedes’ eyes widened.
“He’s found two of my lost things, and I’ve found three of his. It’s undeniable. And he doesn’t want to be stuck with me—”
“Has he said that?” Mercedes cut in. “Or is this an example of what we’ve talked about, when you let what you think other people are thinking cloud your judgment?”
Annette bit her lip guiltily. “Maybe it’s the second thing,” she mumbled.
“Well, I think you need to make sure of his feelings instead of imagining them for him.”
“How am I supposed to do that!?”
“Ask him,” Mercedes said.
Annette thought she could have simply repeated her last statement, but decided to elaborate so that Mercedes would understand her position. “I ran away from him the last time we really talked—the last, and first, time he suggested that we might be soulmates. And since then he’s been avoiding me, always training longer so that he eats at separate times to everyone else, always asking to be on the other side of battle formations.”
“I seem to remember, oh, about a moon ago, that you were the one doing that. And how do you know that he’s doing it because he wants to? It seems to me like your soulmate is being kind and trying to give you space while you work through your feelings. And now that you’re miserable without him, maybe you should let him know you’re ready to talk to him about it.”
Annette nodded glumly. Mercedes always knew best. “How?” she asked. “How do I get his attention to let him know that?”
“Lose something.” Mercedes smiled.
Which was how Annette found herself in the dining hall, purposely dropping her heavy, unmissable, wax diptych onto the floor, in the exact same spot where she had misplaced her school of sorcery textbook. It felt so long ago now, when that handsome boy had called after her and given her book back to her and Annette had tried to extend the conversation by asking whether he liked sweet or spicy food, and instead of answering which one he liked like a normal person, he had answered by saying he hated sweets. And she had decided she would never forgive him.
But even as angry as she’d been with him then, Annette knew that Felix wouldn’t make her heart race and her blood sing if he wasn’t exactly who he was, warts and all.
She was too busy watching the front entrance to notice Felix slipping in through the back, seeing her tablet on the floor, picking it up, and only when he sat down in front of her placing it with a dull thud on the table between them did she realize he had come to her, as if by magic, just as she had wanted him to.
“You should be more aware of your surroundings. You’re too easy to catch off guard.”
Annette took a deep breath. She couldn’t ruin this by lashing out from the start. “Did you still want to talk?” she asked him. “About …soulmates?”
Felix raised an eyebrow. “You know you draw more attention to the word by whispering it like that,” he said.
“Why does that matter?” Annette asked, trying to remain calm.
“It doesn’t.” Felix coughed nervously. “Of course, if you don’t want people to know then—”
“Why would I care about that?” Annette asked.
Felix blinked.
Annette delighted in having caught him off guard.
“Because you’re upset. That it’s me—that I’m your soulmate—which is why you ran away after you …returned my dagger.”
She was far less delighted in how confused his words were making her. “No, you’re the one who doesn’t want it to be me, which is why you didn’t want to give me back my sheet music that time in our classroom.”
“Well, you were very upset for someone who supposedly doesn’t mind when you found Gl—my iron spur.”
“That’s what that was? And don’t push it back on me—you’re the one who looked like his whole world had collapsed when I gave you back your metal thingamabob in the training grounds. I didn’t even know then, about the soulmate thing!”
Felix leaned forward, his elbows on the table, and stared at her. “So you don’t mind?”
Annette felt her face turn bright red. “Well, I—I mean, uh, it’s not…” There was a deafening silence even as the hustle and bustle of the dining hall echoed around them. “It’s not the worst thing in the world.”
Felix raised an eyebrow.
She could do this. She just had to be brave. “It’s far from the worst thing in the world. In fact, I’m happy that it’s you.” She coughed and looked to the side. “But, um, I guess it’s not the same for you…”
“What? Why would I—you’re beau—kind and sweet and nice.” Felix was staring her down, like he desperately needed her to believe his words, and she could see the tips of his ears turning a fascinating shade of red.
“But you’re going to be Duke—”
“That doesn’t matter,” Felix interrupted. “Don’t think so poorly of yourself. You’re worth ten of me.”
Annette felt tiny splinters of hope forcing their way past her misgivings. “I don’t think I am,” she said.
“I do.”
Annette’s breath caught in her throat. Felix looked like he was leaning forward and she hadn’t thought her first kiss would be in the middle of a busy dining hall but she’d take it. She almost couldn’t believe how desperately she wanted it.
Felix’s brow furrowed as he stopped moving forward. “You really don’t have a problem with it?” he asked skeptically.
Annette rolled her eyes and giggled in relief. “It’d be a pretty stupid soulmate system if it matched you with someone you didn’t want to be with. Sorry! Too bold!” she squeaked out.
“I forgive you,” Felix said, with a familiar smirk that suddenly wasn’t half as aggravating as she had always found it. “Will you forgive me?”
“Huh? For what?”
“For this.”
Felix leaned forward, as far as he could across the table, and kissed her full on the mouth. It was better than she had ever imagined it would be, and she had been imagining it a lot in the last moon, because she had felt that it was something that was now completely out of her reach. Except it blessedly wasn’t. She had exactly what she wanted. She had Felix’s love.
Annette melted into the kiss, only pulling away to mumble “Villain,” at him. But straight after, before he could respond, she reached for his vest and yanked him closer to her, never wanting his lips to leave hers again.