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“That… That… absolute—urgh!”
Annette moved to the side, leaning against a stone wall for balance, as Manuela stalked past her, her fists clenched and her entire body vibrating with anger. Annette frowned. She didn’t think she’d ever seen Manuela angry before. Even when she had been dumped (once again) she seemed more bereft than anything else, plus she tended to be either a maudlin or boisterously happy drunk—never lashing out at others.
“Manuela?” she asked tentatively. “Did something—”
“Happen? Oh yes, it most certainly did! It started well enough. Tall, dark, and handsome—exactly what every woman wants to hear. Well, maybe rich and powerful as well, that’s always an advantage. But then he said that the man would take one look at my room and never contact me again!”
“Mmhmm,” Annette said, her lips pursed as she rapidly realized the reason why Manuela was angry. While the situation she’d described was one that had happened countless times before (as Manuela had often told her and the other women when they went out drinking together), it still wasn’t nice of Felix to actually say it! “I’ll go and tell him off for you.”
“Oh, thank you, Annette. If he wants to make any gold for the war effort, he should learn to have more tact, and if anyone has a chance of getting through to him, it’s you.”
Annette accepted Manuela’s thanks slightly sheepishly. Why did Manuela think that she had any sway over Felix? She had tried so hard to get him to forget her songs, and he hadn’t listened to her pleas at all!
After they parted, Annette looked down the stairs at the bustling market and (despite the knowledge that she would soon be having to deal with the most obstinate person she’d ever met) she couldn’t help smiling, greatly encouraged by the amount of people that had ventured back to the monastery after so long, as well as all of the gold they were spending. The market stall holders paid Seteth for the right to sell in the marketplace based on a reasonable percentage of their profits, so the better they did, the better the army did. Every single stall had a line of at least five people waiting to be served. Every stall but one.
Annette almost tripped as she made her way down the stairs, too lost in thought about that particular stall. Or rather, about the particular villain who had been asked to run it. She still didn’t understand why he and Seteth got on so well—Felix would never have agreed if, say, she had asked him to do it—but he had taken on the responsibility of acting as the wayseer on market day when Abyss’ resident fortune teller had fallen ill unexpectedly. Annette had been apprehensive from the start, thinking that Felix was far too abrasive for this task. His uncanny knack for predicting the future wouldn’t offset the news being delivered with such blunt unconcern for the feelings of his customers. And judging by Maunela’s experience with him and looking at the distinct lack of a line in front of the wayseer’s tent—due to rumours of his villainous nature having spread like wildfire no doubt—Annette knew she had been right to be worried.
Annette grew more worried when Mercedes burst through the flaps of the tent, wiping at her eyes with a lavender-coloured handkerchief.
“Mercie!” she called out. “What’s wrong?”
Mercedes blinked through her tears until her eyes focused enough to see Annette. “Oh, Annie. It’s nothing.”
“You’re upset. That’s not nothing,” she said, her mouth set tightly. “What did he say to you?”
Mercedes shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Annette looked around and realized that people were starting to stare at the two of them. She just needed to pull Mercedes discreetly to the side and ask her in a whisper what had happened. It was just that it was awfully difficult to do so when her blood boiled at the thought of whatever Felix had said to make Mercedes cry.
Annette got herself under control enough to lead Mercedes to the nearly deserted dining hall and to sit down with her at one of the tables. “Please, Mercie. Tell me. I—I promise I won’t yell at him.”
Mercedes’ eyes brightened through her sniffles. “Really? You promise? You can’t take it back once I’ve told you.”
“It’s that bad!?” Annette exclaimed. She breathed in deeply. “No, it’s okay. I promise I won’t, pinky swear.”
Mercedes solemnly shook Annette’s pinky finger with her own and then told Annette everything. About how Felix had told her that the long lost brother she’d been searching for so desperately was the Death Knight and that she would have to be prepared to face him in combat soon. About how everything had suddenly clicked into place, as Mercedes had thought back to how Professor Jeritza had seemed so eerily familiar five years ago. About how if Mercedes had just put the puzzle pieces together sooner, she might have been able to save her brother, to make up for how she and her mother had left him with that monster of a man. But now it was far too late.
“Oh, Mercie,” Annette whispered, gathering her friend into a tight hug. “I’m so sorry. I’ll go and tell him off for you—I bet he didn’t even try to break it to you gently.”
“It’s not his fault. I’m crying because I’m upset at myself and my own failings and what that means for Emile, not because of how nicely or not Felix told me about it. At the very least, I’ll have the comfort of knowing that it’s him when I see him next.”
Annette thought that didn’t sound very comforting at all, but wisely decided to not say anything so as not to upset Mercedes further. Which was exactly what Felix should have done!
“Will you be okay if I leave you now?” Annette asked. “I really need to talk some sense into Felix so that the wayseer tent isn’t a gigantic failure.”
Mercedes smiled a little, her lips twitching. “If anyone can, it’s you. Go on.”
Annette’s returning smile was far less genuine. Why was everyone saying that? No one could get Felix to do anything he didn’t want to do, least of all her.
She was still stewing it over when she pushed open the flap to the wayseer’s tent, there having been absolutely zero people lining up to wait their turn. Felix was sitting on one of the two chairs in the room, his hands moving from the table to onto his hip where his weapon was, instantly on guard. He looked so incongruous compared to the deep purples and sparkles of the wayseer’s paraphernalia that Annette almost laughed. Almost.
“Annette,” he greeted her, his words without inflection.
“Felix,” Annette returned, as calmly as she was able to. Which wasn’t very calmly. “What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me?” he asked, bewildered.
Ugh. Could he do anything except repeat her words? “Yes,” she said, seething. “You told Manuela she’d never find love. You told Mercedes that she’s going to have to kill her brother, or at the very least, watch him die. A wayseer is supposed to give people hope for their future, tell them that their dreams will come true—not dash them!”
“No, a wayseer is supposed to tell the truth,” Felix said stubbornly.
“Even when it hurts people?” Annette shook her head. “I thought—But you don’t care at all, do you?”
Felix’s eyes blazed with righteous indignation. “I was trying to help them,” he insisted.
“How?” Annette scoffed.
“We all know that the main obstacle to Manuela finding love is how messy she is. I thought that she might take the criticism and use it to do better, instead of throwing a tantrum like a toddler.”
Annette’s mouth twisted in reluctant agreement. “Okay, so maybe you have a point there. But how is telling Mercie about Emile being the Death Knight helping her? And how did you know, anyway?”
“They have the same coloured hair, the same coloured eyes, and there’s…” He shrugged. “She healed me during the last skirmish, and there was something so familiar about the way she was concentrating on my wound that reminded me viscerally of sparring with Jeritza before everyone found out what he truly was.”
Good, at least he hadn’t known about it for years and been hiding it from Mercedes. But that still didn’t mean he was off the hook for being so mean! “You didn’t answer my first question!” she said. “How does it help her now?”
Felix frowned at her as if she were simple for not understanding why. “Sometimes… When I think of what happened at Gronder, I—” His eyes moved from staring at her to looking over her shoulder to somewhere off in the distance. “I wonder if it would have been better to face the bo— my old man in battle, even if his fate wouldn’t have changed, just so that I wouldn’t have this hollowness within me.” Felix winced. “Sometimes I wonder if I could have changed things. You understand, right?”
Annette nodded reluctantly. She’d known she was right to follow the professor’s lead, even as it led her further and further away from her goal of bringing her father back home, but sometimes she wished she’d been part of one of the armies who were at the fiercest battle of the war, or to have at least seen her father’s body so that the finality would set in. After all of those years of not knowing his whereabouts, she sometimes found it difficult to believe that he was truly gone now. Annette found herself having to deal with a terrible pain that felt almost as if someone had cut off one of her limbs, while the possibility that this was all some terrible dream remained lurking beneath her grief.
“That—That still doesn’t mean that you should have told her so bluntly, though. You could have told me and I would have broken it to Mercie gently,” Annette said, not wanting to dwell on things she couldn’t change, to instead focus on those she could.
Felix raised an eyebrow. “Or you would have put it off over and over again because you didn’t want to hurt her.”
Annette glared at him.
Felix sighed. “I mean, if Mercedes hates me because of it, it doesn’t matter to me. I wouldn’t want her to hate you.”
“Mercedes would never,” Annette seethed. But a small part of her remembered the time when they hadn’t talked because of how ready Annette was to put herself between Mercedes and danger, and she knew that, despite his dubious methods, Felix really had been trying to do the best he could.
Still, her stubbornness wouldn’t let her back down. Even if the fortunes he’d given Manuela and Mercedes were for their own good, it didn’t make his actions acceptable, least of all because it was costing their army precious gold they couldn’t afford to lose.
Annette needed to do something to satisfy her anger at him, to feel like it was entirely justified even as a trickle of doubt set in. “Read me,” she said, her hands clenched into fists. He’d say something horrible and she would deal with his ‘helpful’ advice and give it back twofold. She wondered what he would say—maybe something about her mother being useless and leaving Annette to fix all of their families’ problems, maybe something about how she was going to work herself to death refusing to face truths she’d rather ignore, maybe something downright terrible about how her father hadn’t deserved her love. Whatever he said, there was nothing that could shock her.
Felix didn’t say anything.
Annette’s temper rose. “You never have a problem saying awful things to anyone else!”
Felix looked at her pityingly. “You’re too angry to hear it,” he said, his voice strained as he tried to be soft and comforting in a way that annoyed Annette greatly. She was looking for a fight and the villain was refusing to give her one!
“Write it down then, if you can’t say it,” she said, her head held high.
Felix took a scrap of paper from the pile held down by the crystal ball. Annette almost laughed at how incongruous it was for Felix to be writing on the type of fancy purple paper she assumed someone like Lorenz would use, but she was far too angry about how upset he’d made Mercedes. And for his refusal to admit any fault in it.
When he finished, Annette grabbed for the scrap of paper, but Felix held it away from her, too high for her to reach.
“Stop pawing at me,” Felix complained.
“I wouldn’t have to if you just handed it to me! I meant for you to write it down so that you didn’t have to say it if you didn’t want to! In case you were embarrassed!”
“If I was embarrassed? I’m not the one acting like a child,” Felix scoffed, crumpling the paper in his hand. “If you’d asked nicely, maybe.”
“I don’t think so,” Annette said. “You’d have made up some other excuse then. You’re so stubborn!”
Felix’s jaw clenched. “I’m stubborn?” He huffed out a mirthless laugh. “You’ll hate me forever and ever,” he said, his voice so low that Annette could almost believe that she had imagined it. She wished that she had imagined it.
But she hadn’t.
“What?” she asked barely audibly, her hands shaking.
“That’s my fortune for you. You’ll hate me forever and ever. It’s what you said to me, so you can't have any problem with it.”
Annette felt sick. She couldn’t stay here. If she stayed here, she knew she’d break down in tears, and she desperately wanted to prevent Felix from seeing that, from seeing just how much his cruel words—her cruel words, really—affected her.
She turned on her heel and rushed out of the tent, not seeing any of her surroundings, lucky that she didn’t trip over anything. She just needed a plan. Everything was better when she had a plan.
Felix wasn’t even coming after her! She was upset and he’d just let her run off on her own! He was as big a villain as she thought he was, and what did she normally do with villains? She stood up for herself and fought them. Nothing ever seemed to breach the defences of Felix’s unfazed demeanour, but Annette reasoned there was one thing she could do that would hurt him.
He was always so sure that he was right.
She had her plan—she’d be so nice to him that he’d have to admit that, for once, he had been wrong. She’d show him, once and for all!
🔮✨🔮✨🔮
“Here you go.” Annette placed the plate of rabbit skewers in front of Felix and sat down opposite him, her chin resting on her hands as she gazed at him.
“What is this?” he asked warily. “It’s fish today.”
“Yep!” Annette chirped. “But I thought that maybe you’d like some meat, so I went hunting with Petra yesterday—it’s actually way more fun than I thought it would be. Did you know that a cutting gale works just as well as an arrow for hitting a rabbit?—and then Ashe helped me cook this, so before you ask, no, it’s not burnt, at all, so eat up!”
Felix looked down at the meal and prodded at it.
“It’s yummy yum!” she insisted.
A small smile appeared on Felix’s lips. Finally! Her hard work wasn’t going to go to waste!
“Enough to fill my tummy tum?” he asked, the smile turning into a smirk.
Annette’s fingers gripped the edge of the wooden table as she desperately tried to calm her breathing. He was the most aggravating man in Fódlan, but he wasn’t going to best her. It was like he knew the exact buttons to push to make sure his prophecy came true, but Annette was going to do everything in her power to prove him wrong.
“Yes,” she said, smiling sweetly, even as she dreamed of yelling at him for mentioning her songs again. “Now eat up!”
“You heard her. If my girl made me a home-cooked meal, I’d make sure to give her the appreciation she deserves.”
Annette looked away from Felix to see Sylvain and Dorothea sitting down at the same table as them.
Dorothea rolled her eyes, even as she let Sylvain kiss her on the cheek. “You should be so lucky.”
“That’s not what Petra says,” Felix said.
Annette’s jaw dropped at how rude he was being. Dorothea was a perfectly serviceable cook. It wasn’t like she was Flayn!
“Annie,” Dorothea said, smiling at her while ignoring Felix (and oh, how Annette wished she had a tenth of Dorothea’s composure), “if that ungrateful wretch doesn’t want your food, I’d be more than happy to take it off his plate. It’s fish today…” Dorothea grimaced charmingly.
Annette winced. She knew that Dorothea hated fish, but she was on a mission. “Sorry,” she said. “I only have enough for Felix. Petra caught a lot of rabbits when we went out hunting though so I’m sure there’ll be skewers for everyone tomorrow.”
Dorothea frowned slightly. “I didn’t realize your feelings had changed.”
Annette blushed as she remembered last week’s afternoon tea with all of the women generals and how it had devolved into everyone else listening to Annette’s complaints about Felix. It had lasted for over an hour. She wished someone had stopped her from making such a fool of herself, but now that she had to act all polite around Felix all the time, she had desperately needed an outlet.
A scraping sound shook her from her thoughts, and she watched in horror as Felix pushed over his untouched plate towards Dorothea. “Have it, I’m fine with fish.”
All of her hard work, and he was giving away her delicious meal, just like that?
“It’s crayfish,” Annette said incredulously. “No one’s fine with crayfish.”
“You are,” Felix said.
Annette frowned. How did he even know that? She didn’t mind it if there wasn’t anything else, but she didn’t particularly like it. And it wasn’t like she let that be common knowledge, otherwise everyone would pass on their crayfish to her and she’d never get to eat anything she really wanted.
“No, she’s not,” Sylvain said, with a laugh. “No one likes it.” He leaned his head on Dorothea’s shoulder and batted his eyelashes as he looked up at her. “Darling, light of my life, jewel of my heart—”
“Yes?” Dorothea inquired, one eyebrow raised.
“Would you do me the honour—”
Annette winced, preparing herself for another of Sylvain’s ill-timed proposals. He chose such unromantic times and places that Annette almost wondered whether he even wanted Dorothea to say yes.
“Of giving you half of my meat skewers?” Dorothea interrupted. “Of course. But be a good boy and go and fetch yourself a plate.”
Sylvain instantly rose and went over to the kitchen area to do as he was told.
Dorothea fiddled idly with one of the rabbit skewers. “It’s always so much better when they start learning to obey. You’ll have your work cut out for you, Annie.”
Annette blushed as she realized what Dorothea was insinuating, her gaze moving between Annette and Felix suggestively. She was entirely wrong but Annette couldn’t say it in front of Felix, lest she embarrass herself with her spluttering denials. It wasn’t like she wanted to date him, she just wanted him to acknowledge that she didn’t hate him.
She stewed in silence for the rest of lunch, poking her fork at her crayfish as Dorothea and Sylvain carried the conversation for the table. Her first foray hadn’t gone as planned, but that didn’t mean she would give up. She’d show him the true meaning of fortitude—continuing her all-out assault on Felix’s affections even if he repeatedly ignored her attempts to help him out, or do something nice for him, or simply spend some time together. Eventually he’d crack and have to acknowledge that they were friends.
Annette didn’t know why that word made her feel so queasy.
She ignored it and instead threw herself into Operation Make Felix Admit That I Won’t Hate Him Forever And Ever. Maybe she should have come up with a snappier name, but she didn’t have any creativity to spare—she was too busy using all of it to come up with plans that were absolutely, positively, guaranteed to work.
She decided to start with her songs. Felix loved them (she’d finally accepted that as a fact and not as a ploy to embarrass her after much convincing from Mercedes and Dorothea). She still couldn’t bear the mortification of other people overhearing her, so she went to the training grounds in the evening, after she’d finished pouring over magic texts in the library, and when Felix was the only one still there, practicing his newest techniques in his relentless pursuit of becoming stronger.
He didn’t tell her to leave the first night she turned up unexpectedly (even though she still couldn’t summon up enough courage to sing for him on purpose) so she kept going, night after night. She noticed early on that his gloves were the worse for wear so she took her knitting needles and yarn with her, and using the techniques Mercedes and Bernadetta had taught her knitted him some woollen gloves for winter while he trained. As she did so she began to hum, pleased when Felix’s attention drifted a little as she did so.
Over the next few nights the humming steadily progressed to songs he loved and then to songs he’d never heard before, the effect of which was curiously similar to that of a rally spell. It made Annette feel warm and fuzzy inside, that her songs could provide such a morale boost for Felix.
But he still hadn't made any moves to lessen the gap between them. He never spoke to her during those times, he barely acknowledged her presence (she wasn’t quite sure if a barely perceptible nod of greeting counted or not), and most of all they still didn’t do any friend-type activities together during the daytime.
Annette gave him the finished gloves, to which he mumbled a thank you. And he really did appreciate her misshapen efforts, judging by how often he wore them afterwards.
But they still didn’t do anything non-war related together.
She organized for the kitchen to cook more meat dishes (even as her own taste buds protested), she found a rare weapon at Anna’s stall and with Ashe’s help bartered it down to an affordable price and gave it to Felix, she helped out whenever it was Felix’s turn to clean the stables, or clear the rubble, or to be on patrol.
She spent all her spare time with him.
But nothing she did seemed able to move them past the wall that was Felix’s stubbornness. The utter villainy! She was working herself to the bone trying to make him happy and he wouldn’t even say that his so-called prophecy had been wrong!
It was when she started joining him to train in the afternoons, where everyone could see them, that things changed.
Annette smiled smugly as she clipped his shoulder with a cutting gale. It looked deep enough that he’d have to go to the infirmary and get it healed, which was good, because he was a villain who refused to do anything about his dangerously low magic resistance and maybe this would be a wakeup call for him to deal with it before there were people who were left distraught when he was grievously injured in battle because of it!
Or maybe she’d be nice and heal it for him.
Annette moved over to him and knelt on the ground beside where he was sitting, clutching at his shoulder. “Let me,” she said, already feeling the healing magic at her fingertips.
“No!” he said, jerking away from her touch, as his eyes darted wildly around the training grounds.
Annette tried to ignore how much his rejection hurt. “I was just trying to be nice, you know, like someone who wouldn’t hate you forever and ever would be,” she hissed at him.
“Is that what all of this is about? Why you’re spending so much time with me?” he asked, his frown lines more pronounced than she’d ever seen before. “Fine. You don’t hate me. Will you stop now?”
“I—I—Don’t you want my help?” Annette asked, staring at the glowing tips of her fingers so she wouldn’t have to look at Felix’s face as he refused her as ruthlessly as he did everything else he didn’t want.
“Not here.” Felix coughed a little, and Annette’s eyes lifted to meet his. “Sylvain’s watching,” he muttered.
Annette blinked, having forgotten that other people were present. “Why does that matter?” she whispered.
Felix stopped for a moment, almost as if he was thinking over his words. But that couldn’t be right, he always said exactly what was on his mind, it was one of the most aggravating things about him!
“He keeps teasing me. He thinks we’re dating or something because we’re always together,” he said so quietly that Annette wondered if she’d misheard.
A sort of choked laugh came out of her mouth. “...What would be so bad about that?” she asked, blushing furiously. A moon ago she’d have been distraught to hear of it, but now… Now she wondered if other people also thought that. She wondered how Felix would act if they were in a relationship. She wondered if he’d talk to her about everything and nothing like she wanted him to. She wondered what it would feel like to kiss him…
“That’s not what I meant, I didn’t say that. Stop misunderstanding me, it’s like you’re doing it on purpose.” He looked down at the ground. “Anyone would be so lucky,” he muttered.
“Then what did you mean?” she asked, waiting with bated breath for his answer. “Tell me.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he answered, continuing to refuse to look her in the eye.
Annette grew indignant. Felix was always so sure he was right, and despite her best efforts maybe he once again was. Maybe she would hate him forever and ever, if only because in spending so much time with him he’d somehow stolen her heart and was refusing to acknowledge what was going on between them!
🔮✨🔮✨🔮
A few days later, Annette surreptitiously slipped into Felix’s room, focused on redoubling her efforts. Felix’s admission that she didn’t hate him hadn’t been enough for her, she needed more meaningful words from him to stop trying to gain his friendship (and only his friendship, despite what her traitorous heart wanted). He’d said he didn’t want her doing anything anywhere that Sylvain could see, but he’d said nothing about in private.
Sure enough, Felix was in the training grounds, just as she’d known he’d be—he really had quite a rigid schedule, and he’d stubbornly stuck to it even those times when Annette had brought some tasty food to share so they could take a small break together. She’d use her previous disappointments in his actions as knowledge to help her in her quest now.
Annette looked around the room. Just as she had suspected, while it wasn’t messy exactly, it also wasn’t very clean. Annette loved cleaning and she loved helping people, and those two interests would collide today, and when Felix came back to his room and saw how nice it looked, he might even be grateful. He might even say as much to her. He might even—
Stop it! Friends only, she reminded herself.
Annette hummed as she took out her cleaning cloth, and soon into her work she began to cough a little instead. When was the last time that Felix had dusted? A thought of pure horror occurred to her—had he dusted at all since they’d returned? Never mind, it left more room for her hard work to make a positive impression!
As she dusted (and surreptitiously examined all of Felix’s belongings) Annette became more and more annoyed with herself for having a crush on someone who was truly a villain. He had no books! She had a crush on a person who didn’t like to read! Was her heart so fickle as to ignore this incontrovertible, and frankly damning, part of his personality?
She sighed in relief as she found a single book, under an assortment of shirts and cloaks and other items of clothing piled on his chair that he really should have hung up somewhere. A book about Zoltan swords, naturally, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and she was absurdly grateful that at least she had proof that he knew how to read.
She flipped it open idly and a small square of purple paper fluttered out and dropped onto the floor.
It was the scrap of paper. It had to be. It was folded over and flat, having been stuck between the pages of his solitary book for so long, but there were lots of visible crease marks from when he had crumpled it that day.
Annette slowly unfolded it so she would be able to read the words. It wasn’t really an invasion of privacy she told herself. After all, it was her fortune and Felix had already told her about it. It was just confirmation of what she already knew.
That she had ruined any chance of them ever getting together by how horribly she had treated him when they were students.
The words on the paper, Felix’s spiky handwriting stark black against the light purple paper, shocked her. Tears came to her eyes, but they weren’t tears of shame at what she had said five years ago, they were tears of happiness, tears of hope.
She didn’t think she had ever been so happy to learn that someone had lied to her.
I’ll never abandon you, no matter how hard you push me away
Huh, Felix wasn’t right about everything. She’d stopped pushing him away a long time ago.
🔮✨🔮✨🔮
Annette burst into giggles as Ferdinand and Lorenz—far too drunk and so unlike their normally put-together selves—sang (if you could call it that) a bawdy tavern song.
Dorothea sighed and rubbed her temples. “I never would have teased them with that song if I’d known what it would lead to.”
Annette smiled at her. “Oh, I think it’s quite sweet. We’re all so relieved that it’s finally over, they’re just excited.”
“More like they can’t handle their liquor in the slightest. It would be fine if they could hold a tune, but for all their love of choir, neither of them can manage that. Not like us.”
Annette warmed at the compliment of her mediocre singing being compared to Dorothea’s melodious tones. Dorothea was far too nice.
Annette looked around the entrance hall. She almost couldn’t believe that it was over. It had been so shocking to see Lady Rhea turn into a dragon of all things, but she was now recovering nicely in the miraculously undamaged infirmary, Mercedes and Manuela at her side. The thought of the two of them in particular brought a smile to Annette’s lips. Just as Felix had prophesied, as soon as Manuela had cleaned up her act, she’d found a new paramour, and this one had stuck around for far longer than any of the others. Even better, in Annette’s opinion, Mercedes had found a sense of peace from knowing the truth about her brother. He had given Mercedes their family’s relic and warned them of the impending attack on Fort Merceus. Annette strongly suspected that it had only been Mercedes’ pleading with him that had led to their army’s lives being saved that day. Even though the professor had been forced to kill him in battle in Enbarr, it was enough for Mercedes that she finally knew the truth of what had occurred all those years ago.
Sylvain came up behind Dorothea and hugged her to him tightly. Annette quickly averted her gaze. She knew that neither of them minded, but to see two people so happy, well, it made her consider her own situation more closely.
The war was over, and with that, everyone would be going their separate ways. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want that in particular for her and Felix. They were definitely friends now, sure, but she wanted more than that. Her heartbeat sped up. Felix had been so infuriatingly unobservant whenever she had tried to flirt with him lately—she needed to go and make it extremely clear that she was interested in him, too. What else could I’ll never abandon you, no matter how hard you push me away mean? He couldn’t have meant in a friend way, surely?
Annette bade her friends farewell, ignoring their pleas to stay and celebrate longer and walked off in the direction of the dormitories. Felix hadn’t appeared at the celebrations, but he often didn’t. Annette smiled as she remembered the last time he had, after Enbarr. Surely that meant something—he had completely ignored Sylvain’s attempts to persuade him to loosen up a little that time, but had agreed to attend instantly when Annette had asked.
Annette took a deep breath outside Felix’s door, her heart fluttering in her chest. The dormitories were eerily quiet, what with everyone at the celebration in the hall.
She knocked on his door.
He didn’t answer.
Annette frowned. Even Felix wouldn’t be at the training grounds at this hour of the night… No, he definitely could be. Still, she’d invited herself into his room without permission often enough that she felt no compunction about pushing the door open to check if he hadn’t somehow fallen asleep before she ran all over the monastery grounds looking for him.
Her blood ran ice cold at what she saw when she did.
The room looked like hers had done on her first day at the Officers Academy, before she had moved in. A bed, a desk, a chair, blue carpet. Nothing else. No clothes, no swords, no book on Zoltan swords.
He’d packed all of his belongings.
He was leaving.
He was leaving her.
He was leaving her without even saying goodbye, just as her father had.
It was that last part that hurt the most. Annette held onto it and watered it with the tears she could feel brimming until all that remained was her anger.
There was no point in looking in the training grounds now. If he was leaving while everyone else was too drunk to notice, he’d be at the stables. Even Felix wouldn’t be so stubborn as to go on foot when there was a perfectly serviceable horse available.
Annette held up her dress so she wouldn’t trip on it and ran.
She arrived just as Felix finished leading his fully-laden horse out of the stables and was preparing to mount it.
“Felix!” Annette yelled, almost out of breath.
Felix’s foot missed the stirrup and came crashing down onto the ground as he turned to look at her. “Annette? What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here? I think the question is what are you doing here?”
Felix had the decency to look down at the ground as he mumbled out his answer. “I’m leaving.”
Annette laughed bitterly. “I can see that! Why? Where are you going? Did you even tell Sylvain?” She wished she had more self-control, but all her questions came rushing out of her at once.
“No.” Felix looked up and Annette’s breath caught in her throat as their eyes met. “He’d have told you if I did.”
Annette put her hands on her hips. “And you didn’t want me to find out because I’d tell you how stupid you’re being?”
“It’s better this way.” His eyes slid away from her face. “There’s nothing for me here. The war’s done, and I’m not made for peace. Before Glenn died, I always thought I’d make a living as a mercenary. It’s not quite the way I thought it’d happen, but…”
Annette wished she had something in her hands to throw at him. “Nothing for you here? What about me?” She wasn’t going to let him see her cry. He didn’t deserve her tears.
“You?” Felix asked, bewildered.
Annette’s anger grew, but so did her sadness. Had all the time they’d spent together meant nothing to him? Everything he’d predicted in the wayseer’s tent had come true, why did those words he’d written have to be the only exception?
“I found your note—in apparently the only book you own—and I read it. I—You promised. You promised you’d never abandon me. Is there some meaning of the word never that means the opposite, Felix? You're such a liar!” She couldn’t hold back her gulping sobs and cursed herself for it.
“Annette…”
She looked up and saw Felix’s stricken face.
For some reason, seeing him so affected gave her confidence. Maybe he hadn’t wanted her to find out not because he didn’t like her but because he was worried she’d talk him out of leaving, just as she had talked him into so many other social activities he hadn’t wanted to participate in.
She’d do everything she could to get him to stay.
Annette moved closer to Felix and grabbed him by the arm, pulling him down into a kiss. It wasn’t perfect—it was messy, and desperate, and she was still crying a little—but it didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter because Felix was kissing her back, his lips firm and warm on hers.
They finally pulled apart for air. “Don’t leave me,” Annette whispered. “We can figure something out. Just… Don’t leave me.”
Felix placed a soft kiss on her cheekbone, stopping a tear from falling. “I won’t.”
Maybe she was a fool, but she believed him.
Her faith wasn’t misplaced. He never let her down again.