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“You know, when people say they have to hit the books, they don’t mean it literally.”
Conceding defeat, Felix grabbed the thin book he was trying to balance on top of a training dummy, casting a knowing look towards his redheaded classmate.
“I was trying to maim the books, actually,” he wryly added, proffering the offending book in question. “Have any suggestions?”
Annette rolled her eyes before snatching it from him. “Fire spells are usually the best—” She cut herself off in mid-sentence and her eyes grew large. “Felix…”
“Yes?”
“Why in Seiros’s name do you have a book called ‘The Luna Knight?’” she asked, tapping the silver lettering on the cover for emphasis.
“Manuela threw it at me when I opened the infirmary door.”
Annette shot him a skeptical look. “...And?”
“...And I think you were right about me being cursed,” he admitted, finishing her sentence. “Can you help me break it?”
“Wait. So you believe me now?” she stammered as her expression morphed into disbelief. “What finally changed your mind?”
“I haven’t been able to go anywhere without interrupting some romantic dalliance,” he explained before pointing at the book in her hands. “I couldn’t see if Manuela was with someone but I’m certain she didn’t mean to part ways with that.”
Cracking open the book, Annette skimmed the first page. “I’m not sure what appeal a knight story would have for her but—oh. Nevermind, I see your point. This is raunchy from the get-go.” She slammed the book shut as if it could bite her if left open. “Anyway, enough about that. I’ll help you as best I can. Did it happen everywhere you went?”
“Only when I’d open closed doors,” he said. “Is that helpful?”
Annette nodded before walking towards the outer columns at a leisurely pace with an adorable scrunched expression Felix he recognized as her thinking face. She did a few loops around the pillars and barrels before coming back.
“I’d like to do some control tests by watching you open a few more doors,” she said. “I have a few ideas but curses are usually very particular by nature so I need to rule a few things out. Does that sound ok with you?”
“It does,” he thickly said.
Felix’s heart skipped a few beats at the prospect of her plan enabling them to spend time together in spite of the incredibly-strange circumstances.
❤️💛
Approaching the Cardinal’s room on the second floor, Felix grew more apprehensive with each step.
Traditionally, the room was used for war council during times of strife and was supposedly off-limits to those outside the church during times of peace. Supposedly being the operative word, given how the Church often turned a blind eye towards occasional use, given they did not keep anything of value within the spacious meeting room.
When narrowing down the list of new public spaces to explore, Annette immediately zeroed in on this one to start off their experiments with. Namely because he hadn’t gone to the second floor yet, the room was usually unlocked, and was alluring for rulebreakers by nature.
A few steps shy of the door, he turned to Annette.
“Is there anything special you want me to do when I open it?”
“Sorta,” she said, stopping altogether as she raised three fingers up. “I want us to approach the door as quietly as possible and to wait for my countdown to zero. If you hear anything beforehand, we can compare notes after. Got it?”
Felix nodded. The instructions were straightforward enough.
And with that, they cautiously inched towards the door, being careful not to make any noticeable sounds. To Felix, this was as natural as breathing after getting the assassin certification so long ago. As a consequence, he found himself focusing more on Annette, readying himself for any misstep.
For someone he saw nearly every day, he couldn’t help but wonder how he’d never noticed the faint freckles dotting the apples of her cheeks and bridge of her nose. Or how she was exactly a head shorter than him, perfect for—
Fortunately, the sound of light tapping and murmurs pulled him from his reverie before he accidentally walked straight into Annette’s chest when she turned around at the side of the door.
She was none the wiser as she raised three fingers once more, casting him a reassuring smile. He took a half-step forward with his hand ghosting the handle and gave her a nod in kind, starting the silent countdown.
Three…
Two…
One…
The split-second before he turned the handle, Annette nearly killed him with softness as she reached for his free hand, sending jolts down his spine. He wanted to look her way and ask if she’d meant to do that but they had bigger fish to fry.
“Uh, what are you doing here, Felix?”
Specifically, ones with gaping mouths in the form of Sylvain and Claude von Riegan. Felix narrowed his eyes at his half-clothed and extra-red childhood friend and the fully-clothed and fully-unbothered Golden Deer leader.
“I could ask you the same,” he cooly replied before his eyes caught the black and white game in front of him. “Debauching the game of chess? Does your depravity know no bounds?”
“Hey now, don’t be too quick to judge,” Claude interjected. “It may look like we’re playing strip chess to the untrained eye, but what really happened is that your good ol’ shirtless pal Sylvain over here showed up to our weekly standing chess match straight after narrowly escaping the clutches of a jilted date.”
Felix wrinkled his nose. “Those things aren’t mutually-exclusive.”
“Believe what you want, that’s the truth,” he said with a lackadaisical shrug and a wink. “If you’re not too preoccupied yourself, you could check the room for his jacket.”
And in that moment, both Sylvain and Felix were belatedly reminded that Annette was holding the latter’s hand. The former, on the other hand, did a double take.
“Gee, I never thought I’d see the day when you two would—”
Felix slammed the door before Sylvain could see any more than he already had.
With the door closed, he wordlessly led her towards the stairs, not once daring to look back or break free from her grasp either. Her hand was warm to the touch and he suspected he fared no better by how his entire body burned.
If given the choice, he would welcome more opportunities to set himself on fire like this. But practicality demanded that the heat needed to dissipate and their hands unlink as they descended the stairs. The last thing he needed was for Annette to fall because her short legs couldn’t keep up the pace and for his stupid curse preventing her from getting help in the infirmary or something.
It was only when they reached the base of the stairwell when he could hear anything beyond the sound of his heart beating in his ears.
“I’m sorry for not warning you in advance but I wanted to see if holding your hand changed anything,” Annette apologized, sheepishly meeting his gaze. “Was that an improvement?”
“It was,” Felix said. “Sylvain’s silver tongue only fails him when he’s genuinely embarrassed so I’d wager we walked into a legitimate chess game for that reason. None of the people in the other rooms had a shred of shame.”
“That’s good then,” she agreed with a tiny hopeful smile. “Onto the next place then? I have somewhere in mind.”
“Sure,” he said. “Did you want me to hold your hand for this one?”
All the freckles he’d previously noticed on her face nearly-disappeared in a rosy blush.
“Not this time, no,” she said, her eyes darting slightly. “I, um, want to see if the improvement continues without me. Does that make sense?”
“It does,” he said, ignoring the twinge of disappointment flicking him in the gut. “Lead the way.”
💙💚
Standing before the ornate greenhouse doors, he resisted the urge to facepalm.
“You’re getting payback for what happened months ago, aren’t you?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Annette sweetly answered from three feet behind him. “That’ll depend on the curse more than me. This is just a really convenient testing spot.”
“Sure it is. Next thing you know, pigs will fly like pegasi.” he deadpanned. Gripping the brass handle, he steeled himself for what could be on the other side.
Unlike the Cardinal room, the greenhouse doors muffled any sounds exceptionally well. But more often than not, someone usually left them open during the daytime due to their heft. Whether that meant someone was in there and needed privacy or that no one had visited the greenhouse at all yet was anyone’s guess.
Deciding that such speculation was pointless, he looked backwards at Annette and awaited her signal.
Like before, she raised her hand and counted down with her fingers.
Three…
Two…
One…
On cue, he forcefully pushed the doors forward only to wish they were just as easy to pull them back. Alas, the momentum was not in Felix’s favour. Neither was his sense of restraint as he wrinkled his nose in disgust.
“Monopolizing the greenhouse for this?” he groused. “You truly are an uncivilized beast, boar prince.”
But in Felix’s defense, the sight before him was fairly heinous. The tea party before him was a mockery between tankards replacing tea cups and the half-burned scones covering the oversized wrinkled napkin on the ground with nary a companion in sight.
Until Felix felt a hearty slap on his shoulder.
“Save your complaints for the advice box, Fraldarius. I’m the one to blame here,” Professor Byleth said as she passed his left and sat down on the other side of the scones. “I invited Dimitri to tea not realizing the courtyard was reserved for a tea-tasting event.”
Felix raised a brow. “So…why not eat in the dining hall then?”
“Why not eat here?” Byleth countered, before inelegantly stuffing a scone in her mouth without once breaking eye contact or even blinking.
Felix had to hand it to her, this was an effective power move to force him to look away. Sadly, this also meant catching the sight of the boar’s dopey lovestruck expression in his peripheral vision as collateral damage.
While he was clearly no love expert, it didn’t take a genius to see the boar’s infatuation as clear as day when he was as subtle as a brick. Especially when he struggled to look away from the Professor to look at him.
“I do apologize if we’ve inconvenienced you and Annette somehow, Felix.”
Felix’s eye twitched. “What does Annette have to do with anything?”
The prince gestured past him to the monastery proper. “She looks like she’s waiting for you over there,” he explained. “My understanding from the Professor is that you’re both fond of the greenhouse, are you not—”
“—I’m not doing this now.”
With a quick heel turn, he briskly walked out of the greenhouse and even closed the heavy doors behind him for good measure. The slow whine of the hinges fortunately caught Annette’s attention right away.
“That bad?” she asked, voice full of concern as she frowned slightly.
“Absolutely disgusting,” he answered. “But, uh, more in principle than what I witnessed, if that makes any sense.”
Her frown perked up into a light smile. “So… nothing out of the ordinary then?”
Felix tossed her a level look. “Technically no, but I’ll have you know he and the professor were planning to eat burned scones on the cobblestone floor.”
“Ok, so maybe that is a bit disgusting but not the kind of disgusting that matters so I’d wager this makes us 2-for-2,” she said, pausing for a moment to thoughtfully tap her chin. “I wonder, did the curse only trigger in public spaces with closed doors?”
“I’d say so. Why do you ask?”
“Because, I think we should go to your room next to confirm that’s the case.”
It took all Felix’s willpower not to look at her as if she’d grown two heads.
Annette tended to get hyper-fixated on things that piqued her interest and often discounted common sense in favour of covering every possibility, no matter how remote.
He wouldn’t have been surprised if she was caught up in the whirlwind of hypothesis testing to consider the optics and yet, he also wondered if she’d walk away from helping him if he brought it up.
Selfishly, he didn’t want her to walk away even if he also wished she had more reasons to stay beyond helping him lift this curse. But beggars could not be choosers and if this was the price, then so be it. Self-sacrifice was in his blood, whether he wanted to admit it or not, after all.
“Lead the way,” he told her. For some reason, the command earned him a peal of laughter.
“Shouldn’t you lead the way since it’s your room?” she pointed out.
“...Right. This way.” he said, pointing to the stairs up the second floor dorms. “I’ll be a few steps behind.”
With a simple nod, Annette did as she was told and started climbing up the stairs.
In spite of his word to stay a few steps behind, Felix kept a little closer for reasons he couldn’t fully articulate in his mind.
“I forgot to mention,” Annette said when they were a few steps shy of the second level. “Did you want to—AH!”
Ah, there was his answer. He needed to be close enough to catch her before she fell backwards.
“Careful,” he warned as he slowly righted her. “I can’t heal you and the infirmary might not be an option.”
“Right. I suppose romance novels can only help the soul but not the actual body,” she joked as she made it to the second floor landing. “Even less so when they’re used as throwing implements.”
Once he joined her, she looked up at him. “I was thinking we should stay close like this since we didn’t hold hands for the last experiment. Is that ok?”
“Sure. Makes sense to alternate,” he fibbed as he accepted her extended hand.
Goddess, this curse testing was testing him in more ways than one.
It was nothing short of a small miracle that the hallway was more-or-less deserted at this hour when they started walking towards his room.
Faster than a blink of an eye, Felix glanced towards her once they’d reached his door. It was a small mercy seeing her nervously tuck a few rogue strands of hair behind her ears knowing he wasn’t the only one feeling somewhat out of sorts.
“Do we need a countdown or am I ok to barge into my own room?” he asked.
Like clockwork, she raised three fingers. “Let’s just stick with tradition, shall we?”
When he nodded in agreement, the countdown started.
Three…
Two…
One…
Felix opened the door to nothing. Sweet, blissful, nothing.
After he promptly closed the door, he looked her way. “So what now?”
“Well, this rules out private spaces for sure.” she mused aloud. “I do wonder if private spaces that aren’t yours counts as a public space though.”
He furrowed his brows, unsure if he was imagining things or…
“What do you mean?”
“Like…um…”
Three…
Two…
One…
“My room.”
Felix’s eyes widened as his heartbeat quickened. “Your room?”
“Yes, my room,” she repeated, her face going pink in places. “Come down in ten minutes to give me a chance to organize a little, ok?”
“Sure. Er, I mean, are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure Felix,” she reassured, rubbing her thumb on the back of his hand before letting go altogether. “I’ll be sitting on my desk chair with all my textbooks on my bed so you’ll know if the curse changed something. Does that sound ok?”
“Yes,” he thickly answered.
“Alright, then I’ll see you in ten minutes then!”
Once she bounded away, Felix re-opened his door and mentally prepared the longest ten minutes of his life.
Was this the wrong thing to do? Surely there were other ways to test her hypothesis. What if—
Felix screwed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. No, Annette was an adult. She wouldn’t offer anything she wasn’t comfortable doing.
He had to trust her.
But Goddess, it wouldn’t make it any easier, knowing what he couldn’t have.
🧡🩵
Despite all the battles he waged in his brain, nothing could have mentally prepared Felix for the sight of her room after he knocked on her door to signal his presence and waited a few more seconds for good measure.
True to her word, there was a certified library-level explosion of various textbooks on her bed and she was daintily sitting on her desk chair. But what she had failed to mention earlier was the wardrobe change to a light blue dress that hugged her curves.
He couldn’t tell if he was cursed or blessed at this point.
“Did, uh, something happen to your uniform?” he lamely asked.
“No, I changed into this on purpose,” she said as she quietly rose from her chair, fidgeting with her hands. “You could say I was inspired by today.”
“Because of the curse?”
“Sorta.” she began to clarify. “I’ve seen enough today to know that even if you are cursed, you’re not creating new couples or magically summoning people to rooms. You’re finding what’s already there, whatever that looks like.”
His breath hitched ever so slightly as he composed his jumbled thoughts before he willed them into words. Even he could see this was a pivotal moment, even if it was one he wasn’t quite sure how to make the most of. Maybe…just maybe, this was something he could have.
“So by making me come here,” he said, taking a step forward. “what were you hoping I’d find?”
“—I was hoping you’d find someone you liked. Someone you wouldn’t mind being with outside of fixing curses, even if it means we might be one of those annoying couples who get walked in on someday.”
Maybe it was all the brazen displays of affection he’d been subjected to as of late, but Felix couldn’t find it in him to hold back anymore.
“And if I have,” he told her in a low timbre. “Would you be alright if I kissed you now instead of locking the door?”
Without hesitation, Annette closed the gap and wrapped her arms around the back of his neck.
“Felix, I think that’ll always be a risk I’m willing to take for you.”
And then they kissed and kissed and kissed, merrily uninterruptedly.
-the end-