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INGRID CLAIMS A SECOND portion from dinner, ignoring the silent, peeved looks she receives as she takes her leave. Gronder fox is hard to obtain in wartime, but Ingrid wouldn't pull rank if it wasn't important. Meat skewers are Felix’s favourite; it’s the least she can do for him.
She quickens her pace out of the Dining Hall and the skewers rattle in response, tender chunks of meat showing their pink faces like flowers turning their heads to the sun. The winter chill seeps into the rich, savoury scent, scalding it with bitter cold. Ingrid clutches the plate close to her chest, half-inclined to slant her cape over it to guard it, though she chooses against it. Felix, she decides, would not want to gamble with the chance of hair in his food any more than she would.
At this time of evening, the bridge to the cathedral is empty. The wind howls mercilessly across the mountainside, blanketing the gaping world below with white mist, while the sky above is pitched dark in its inverse, the two colours pouring together like melted wax.
Ingrid uses her shoulder to push open the cathedral door, and it creaks solemnly in response.
Felix stands with his arms crossed, haloed by hallowed light. Moonlight falls like confetti through the stained glass, stopping short at his feet.His expression is made harsh by the cut of the light, the firmness of his brow.
The haggard look of a man who does not sleep at night.
Ingrid’s heels strike stone as she approaches, a thunderous echo in the gutted room. Felix looks away, and at the back of the room, toward His Highness—
Ingrid's the one who doesn't know how to look at him.
“Felix, you missed dinner. I had to fight for your share.” She waves the plate in front of his eyes.
He looks at her, then down at the skewers. His lip curls with disinterest. “Not hungry.”
“Come on,” she persists. “Eat this, and then we’ll train.”
“I said no.” Felix shoves at the plate; Ingrid cradles it before it can fall and shatter. With a sigh, she sets it at the base of a pillar, and returns to Felix's side with her hands on her hips. He eyes her with thinly-veiled irritation. “Are you done?”
“Are you?” she retorts. Felix rolls his eyes, but instead of getting aggravated, Ingrid just lets her hands fall to her sides, as good as surrender. Looking at the shell of His Highness now, Ingrid wonders how she ever doubted Felix's honesty. “Felix, I… All these years, everything you were saying about His Highness… You were right. Is that what you wanted to hear? Is that what it’ll take for you to listen to me? You were right. You were right. You were—”
Felix grips his hands into fists, white pulsing at his knuckles. “Be quiet. Shut up.”
“Felix—” She seizes his wrist. He makes a strangled, suppressed noise, and when she looks up, there are lantern-oil tears glittering stubbornly on his lash line.
“I was right.” Felix rips his hand out of her grasp. “What good did it do? He won’t do anything but pace and rave and mutter. He won’t even—he won’t even look at me.”
The words strike true, and Ingrid feels like a little girl, poring over illustrations of knights she’ll never be.
Instead, she becomes twelve years old again, in a nightdress with dust at the hem and tear stains on the sleeves, curled up in her childhood bed when Sylvain told her, “Ingrid, c’mon. Come out. Look at me, please.”
She rolled back over, pursing her lips though Sylvain couldn’t see her. “Weren’t you telling me about all the pretty girls in town? Why don’t you go and pester them for once?”
“Maybe I want to be with the prettiest girl,” Sylvain suggested, and Ingrid stifled a groan into her pillow.
“Millie’s outside.”
“And you haven’t taken care of her in days. Don’t worry, I made sure to feed her and brush her mane exactly as you like. But you know me, I must’ve made a mistake somewhere. Come check with me, will you?” She heard the thump of Sylvain dropping his back against her bedroom door. “Please? We miss you, Ingrid.”
“You and Millie,” she deadpanned, infuriating tears rising to her eyes.
“The very same,” he replied easily. He always sounded like he didn't—he didn't care. About anything. About the future, or Glenn, or even her. She wanted him to, that was the worst part, and this realisation made her feel worse. “Do you really want me gone?”
Ingrid nodded miserably. “Have fun with the stupid milner’s daughter.”
“Tailor’s daughter,” Sylvain corrected, then paused. “Does the milner have a daughter?”
“Sylvain!” Traitorously, her voice cracked. “Go. Just—please, please go.”
“Okay.” He rapped five times on the door. It was their special knock, the five of them. Only then, it rang hollow. “See you later.”
She still hated to hear him leave.
He sent letters between visits, but Ingrid left them all unopened, untouched in a heap upon her desk. The next time she heard from him was in the throes of winter, when daytime at Gautier was so short, candles had to be burnt all season long.
In contrast, winter light at Galatea was scarce, but usable; he could do anything he wanted with the extra time. Yet, instead of running around town, or tending to the horses, or practising his lance forms, Sylvain took to sitting outside her bedroom door to pass his days.
She didn’t know how to tell him she was grateful for the company.
“—Lord Gwendal’s daughter. It’s not like when we were kids—I have a newfound appreciation for her—”
Ingrid sat up to throw her pillow at the door.
“—maturity,” Sylvain finished. She didn’t have another pillow, so she threw her shoe.
“You’re disgusting. And you never talk about anything else,” she complained. Code for: I don’t think I know you anymore.
“Because you don’t want to talk to me the way I want to talk to you.”
Ingrid’s pulse spiked. He made everything sound simple, and maybe it was, before Duscur changed everything. Before she didn’t have it in her to answer his letters. Before her father started looking for new suitors. Before, when her future was so secure she could entertain her fantasies of something different.
Now, it was all she could do to hide herself away and not betray Glenn’s memory any further.
“Then, go and train,” she replied desperately. I don’t know why you’re still here when I’m like this.
Sylvain laughed, an infuriating, comforting sound. “I don’t need the practice,” he said. He was lying; Ingrid didn’t need to see his technique to know that. “You want me gone that badly?”
Ingrid’s bottom lip trembled. She bit it hard, but the feeling didn’t subside. “You should leave me alone.”
“You are alone. I’m not even in the room with you.”
“You’re on the other side of the door,” she protested.
The door wobbled, Sylvain shifting against it. “Doesn’t count unless you come join me.”
Ingrid slid her legs from the bed. The wood was rough beneath her bare soles. Pins and needles pricked at her shins, making them stiff and unwieldy as she crouched on the cold, cold floor.
“It counts.” She leaned her head back. Her scalp knocked against the solid curve of the doorknob.
“Actually, I just changed the rules. It doesn’t count until you look at me.” More movement. His voice sounded closer, wavering, bowed by the weight of its own cautious softness.
Ingrid twisted onto her knees and glared at his brown doe eye through the keyhole. “It counts,” she said.
This was Sylvain’s game, but she didn’t care. Like this, she could have the best of both worlds: shut away, but not alone.
▬▬▬
Felix heads to the Training Grounds to find Ingrid, who has scarcely left since they returned to the monastery. She cycles through positions by the light of the braziers, form never fluctuating despite her clear exhaustion. Her weapon moves in rapid strokes, deftly puncturing holes in her training dummy until it collapses in on itself, sand and stale grain cascading to the ground.
“Felix.” Her arm drops down to her side. She turns to him, sweaty hair clinging to her temples, her composed expression barely masking the familiar fury held beneath it. “You’re not dressed to train.”
“I just visited Sylvain,” Felix says, and, as expected, a bolt of rage strikes her irises. “I figured you’d be here.”
“Right.” She presses her lips together, swivelling back to the emaciated dummy. “Well—he deserves it. That idiot.”
Felix scoffs. “You don’t mean that.”
“Don’t I? I can take care of myself on the battlefield.” She stakes her lance into the ground, leaning on it so heavily it slants. “If I die, I die. But, he—”
Felix grits his teeth. No matter how many times he hears it, he will never understand it; why so many of his friends are willing to throw their lives away for the boar when it’s so clear he wants them to live.
“You know why he does it,” Felix interrupts, unable to keep the snarl out of his voice. “You’d die for the boar. Your ideals. If that besotted mindset of yours is foolish, then he’s an even bigger fool for thinking he can bear that burden for you.”
“Of course I know why.” Her hand writhes around the pole of her lance, knuckles flushing bone-white in the firelight. “I know how he feels. And I’d rather he didn’t—not if it means I lose him.”
She shoves at her weapon. It clatters against the dummy, the ground, and, with her trembling hands bared to the light, Felix can finally see how badly they’re bleeding.
“Come on,” he says, struggling to keep his voice soft. He takes Ingrid by the arm, deftly guiding her to the wall. “Sit down. You need those to fight.”
Lips clamped, Ingrid shoves her injured hands down into her lap, bunching them into fists. The shaking overtakes her arms, her shoulders, as though it is a tangible thing fluttering through her bloodstream.
Felix remembers this moment. The same chill in the air, the same look. The same motion of his hands as he untucked Dimitri’s small fingers one by one from his palms so he could clasp them between his own.
They’d held hands a million times before, but everything felt different in a world without Glenn. In the immediate aftermath, Felix hadn't known what to do with himself.
“You know why,” he told Dimitri then, fighting that horrible habit of his bottom lip jumping when he needed to cry but really, really didn’t want to. He should’ve grown out of that by now, he should've— “It’s not because you weren’t strong enough! He didn’t—Glenn didn’t—he knew.”
He moved as close to Dimitri as humanly possible, even though the cold flagstones scraped at his knees. It was Ethereal Moon, but Dimitri wasn’t even wearing gloves; the tips of his fingers were stiff and red-tipped and raw. Felix stripped his own gloves. Even if he couldn’t warm Dimitri’s hands with his own, he wanted to be able to feel him.
Mitya was still there. He had to be still there.
“Not enough,” Dimitri said. His voice was faint, as was his breath. He didn’t even seem to be aware of Felix’s fingers laced through his. “If I was, I—” He licked his cracked lips. “I’m sorry, Felix. I am so sorry.”
Felix shook his head. He didn’t like this. He could feel Dimitri slipping away from him, right when he was in Felix’s grasp. This prim, stiff, vacant Dimitri wasn’t his Mitya. He wasn’t the boy Felix so adored.
“I'll take care of you.” The dam broke; Felix found himself begging. Dimitri’s head snapped up, expression stricken, but the diluted, haunted look to his eyes never left. Moon-pools without the moon; night-dark and wanting. Felix hated that look. “We'll get strong. Stronger than he ever was.”
Dimitri did not so much as nod, and Felix’s heart sank.
He didn’t want this to be hard. He wanted it to be easy. He wanted Glenn to be alive and His Majesty to be alive and for his father to stop saying such stupid things. He wanted Dedue to help Dimitri out of his stupor, and he wanted to be the only one Dimitri needed, and he wanted everything to go back to the way it was.
He wanted to be Dimitri’s shield.
“I’m getting better at healing,” he said, rising to his feet. His shadow fell over Dimitri’s eerily still form, a cloud on a sunny day. Dimitri had stopped looking at him, even though Felix wished he would. “Wait. Wait here.”
There weren’t any actual bandages nearby, not outside of the palace infirmary, but the knights kept the crates stocked with hand-wraps for brawling practice. Felix scooped up a handful of linen strips and dashed back to Dimitri’s side, shaking his shoulder so that he might finally realise Felix was there.
“Here.” Dropping the dressings onto Dimitri's lap, Felix took his hand. There was blood settling into the webs of his fingers and streaked across his palm. Felix bowed his head, lowering his lips to Dimitri's knuckles before he flipped his hand over. Here, Dimitri made a noise of pain. “Uh—sorry. Sorry. Hold on.”
The weight of Dimitri's gaze dropped to his injured hand like it was too heavy to hold any higher. Oh—how Felix wished to be there. In Dimitri’s palm, in his line of sight. Dimitri couldn’t look away from him then.
“Hold on,” Felix said again, irrepressible emotion caught in his throat. With clumsy hands, he picked up the first linen strip and smoothed it over the slice in Dimitri's palm, flinching when Dimitri did. When Felix glanced up to search his face for pain, Dimitri conveniently hid it beneath the solid curtain of his hair.
Felix bound one hand and moved onto the next. This one was worse: slashed with red, angry cuts.
“It doesn't hurt,” Dimitri said automatically when Felix hovered a tentative finger over the blooming wound, like tracing a rune.
He didn't want to say it, but— “I don't believe you,” Felix snapped, tripping over the syllables. Pained and helpless and angry. “Don’t pretend with me!”
The tears spilled over then, warping his vision into a rain puddle. He pressed his forehead to Dimitri's, and, against him, Dimitri's breath shortened and his body shuddered. He was crying too.
“I—I'm sorry,” he gasped. He touched his neck, grabbing at it. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry Glenn died instead of me. I'm sorry for pretending. I'm sorry, Felix.”
And Felix couldn't tell him then, about the little part of him that was glad Dimitri had survived.
He squished Dimitri's hands together between his own, clutching them tight. He would hold them forever if he could, and wishes now he'd never let them go.
▬▬▬
Sylvain’s room in the infirmary is quiet, but scattered with signs of numerous visits: freshly-baked pastries from Mercedes and Annette, a bouquet of flowers and herbs hand-arranged by Ashe and Dedue, a cup of tea from the Professor’s signature set with dark liquid settling in the bottom of the cup.
The curtains are drawn, and Sylvain sleeps peacefully beneath the low light, duvet twisted around him to hide his scars. Ingrid busies her hands with the pitcher at his bedside, water sloshing into the steel mug—a mirror of coal and firelight—and he stirs, a low moan escaping his lips as his eyes shutter open.
He peers into the middle distance until his eye gleams with recognition, and his lips slide into that familiar, easygoing smile. “Hey, Inky,” he says, voice parched from sleep, and Ingrid’s heart twists furiously in her chest. “How do I look? Drop dead gorgeous, right?”
Ingrid sucks in a hitched breath. “Like you got a sword run through you.”
“Well, I’d hope it looks better out of me than in me,” he jokes, and Ingrid clenches her fists.
“Of course I think that,” she hisses. Unrehearsed, the words tumble out one after another, sharp and harsh as though filtered through barbs. “What do you think of me, Sylvain?”
“Brilliant. A real force of nature when you want to be.” His mouth quirks, strangely bittersweet. “Not infallible, though. Glad I finally got to dig you out of your mess.”
Ingrid starts out of her seat so rapidly it slams against the bed frame.
“We're old friends. Comrades-in-arms. I'm your equal. I don't want—I don't need—to be protected by you.”
It's not what she wants to say, but she can't take it back. Her words brand the air between them, stinging it with flames.
“Ingrid.” Sylvain searches her face, brazen, and Ingrid wonders if she's doing a good job hiding herself—if he sees her, in spite of all her best attempts. “Inky. Ingrid. Of course we're equals. You're better than me. You're better than me in all of this. That's why I'm the sacrifice, and you're not.”
Sacrifice? Ingrid reels, grits her teeth. There it is again, that phantom pain. His pain, twisted up with her possessive need to take it upon herself.
“Do you have to say such things? I don’t need you to be a sacrifice, Sylvain. I need you to be with me.”
Sylvain shoves himself upright. The covers fall loose around his abdomen, revealing a canvas of scars and blood-dappled gauze around the plains of his stomach. Ingrid feels the pain as keenly as if the sword rightfully embedded itself in her flesh instead.
She urges him back down. “I need you to be with me,” she repeats.
“I am with you.” His voice is so low and rich it might be earnest, if Ingrid’s head wasn’t spinning, if everything out of his mouth didn’t mean a different promise broken. His fingers wind through hers, and it’s a different world from joined hands as children, of pulling each other up after a spar. It’s the same feeling she had when they were back to back through her bedroom door—unseen, he may as well have been touching her soul.
She jolts, pulling away, but his palms skim hers, skin and callus and bandage. He lifts them to his face, peering at them against the candlelight; suddenly, the most shameful, buried part of her is laid plain to his eyes.
“What happened to your hands? This didn’t happen in battle.” Coldness cuts his gaze; a silver blade forged in violence and something else—something, if Ingrid had to guess, kindles his inner fire with guilt and regret.
“Training injury,” Ingrid says. Sylvain’s finger traces the edge of her dressing. “Felix wrapped them.”
“Do you still need them?” His finger hooks under the first layer of gauze, and Ingrid exhales.
“No.” She steps forward, thighs pressing into the side of the mattress, dragging her fingers to where his bandages form white veins, creeping up to his neck. “Yours need changing.”
Sylvain swallows, his Adam’s apple stuttering as Ingrid slices into the gauze with her dagger and peels it back, layer by layer, bloodied white linen framing his torso like pegasus wings.
The gash on his stomach maps out a drooping flower: the entry slash of the stem; the twist of the bulb; the sloppy cut of the petal as Ingrid yanked the perpetrator away and ended his life.
She lifts her hands, and Sylvain takes the opportunity to lay them bare, discarded bandages making a pile on the infirmary floor. Her own palms are a frenzy of cuts from mishandling her spear, mishandling the dummies—mishandling everything—from the very moment she wasn’t fast enough to dismount.
She skims shaking hands over Sylvain’s broken skin, the beginning of her apology.
“Thank you.” Her fingers graze the roughness of his scars, the contours of his muscles. His waist and his stomach, filling out beneath her hands when he breathes, warmth and life cupped tenderly against her skin. “You saved me.”
Sylvain, arms dropped back down to his sides, just says, “Ingrid—” but she shakes her head.
“Listen to me, Sylvain. I'm not thanking you for getting hurt. And I won’t thank you for dying for me either. I want to fight with you. Because—I need you with me. Always me. Always you.”
The corner of Sylvain’s mouth creeps up in a crooked smile. “Now, we both know that's not true. You always soar, especially without me dragging you down. Don't you go pinning it all on me now.”
Ingrid’s fingers tighten into Sylvain's waist, marking him with the blood-warm imprint of her grip. “I always wanted to fly. But, after Glenn… I thought I never would. I couldn’t even stand. And you knew, didn't you? You offered me a hand, and—when I wouldn't take it, you waited for me to find the strength on my own. Writing me letters, outside my room every single day… You saw me, back then. And you see me now. You couldn't leave me behind if you tried.”
It comes out like an accusation, a threat, and genuine pain haunts the cracks in Sylvain's expression. A whisper of light, disappearing into the darkness of his facade the moment the curtains are drawn.
“I wasn’t trying to leave you behind,” he says. His voice is quick and strained. Wordless, Ingrid picks up salve and clean dressings and starts at his hips, working her way up. “C’mon. You know I’d never.”
She purses her lips, smoothing buttery medicine over his injury. “But?”
His eyes dip, heavy. “But, we’re at war, ‘Grid. If anyone’s to die—it won’t be you first. I can promise you that.”
Ingrid yanks the gauze deftly over the wound. The last fragment of scar tissue disappears beneath fresh-fallen snow.
“I don’t want your promise, Sylvain. I know you understand.” Her hand comes to settle over his chest, the area zero of his heart. It thuds against her palm like she could reach in and take it. “I want you.”
Despite the way he falters beneath her touch, his unflappable mask doesn't waver. “Careful, Inky. You can’t say that to a guy like me. You might give me the wrong idea.”
“Is it wrong? I want everything, Sylvain. I want to be a knight, and I want to repay my father for his sacrifices, and I want to do my duty as House Galatea's last hope. I want to win this war, and see His Highness to the throne, and—” She buries her vulnerability into his skin. “I want you to choose me, instead of the idea of dying for me.”
Sylvain’s hand comes to rest over hers. Tentative, even though Ingrid crossed the line first. “You sure you want that? You know what I’m like. You see me—more than anyone.”
“Exactly.” She flips her palm, entangles their fingers. Cups his jaw with their entwined hands. “I see you. So you don't have to hurt yourself for that anymore.”
When she leans over and kisses him, Ingrid feels Sylvain smile against her mouth, a silver crescent splitting the northern sky.
And the little girl she left behind reaches up to open the door.
▬▬▬
The Adrestian sun burns gold over the Imperial palace, spindles of light forming chainmail mesh over the cloud-scattered sky. It is a soldier's disillusioned eye which tracks it for a chink, a faultline, a flaw to be used, and Felix sneers at himself for the familiar action, resheathing his sword.
Victory hasn’t sunk in yet. The absence of adrenaline hits him like an axehead, but he refuses to let himself fall, instead steadying himself against the grainy rubble of a nearby wall. Nearby, the curtains of the war are closing: healers crouched around the injured, soldiers passing around supplies. The Blue Lions maintain resolute positions in the courtyard, taut with anticipation, just as he is, all waiting for the final bell to toll.
Felix’s eye falls to the mouth of the Palace entrance just as the boar emerges into the light.
The Professor accompanies him on one side, while Areadbhar sways uncertainly on the other, its head engorged with crimson and gleaming in the sunshine. The colour of the Empire's banner, now branded with its defeat.
Kingdom soldiers roar, but it fades into a heartbeat. Many of them did not see the leadership and brutality Felix did in the tomb of the Imperial Palace. Selfishly, he thinks no one did; that his memories of the boar are all his own.
Mercedes is the first to meet them on the steps, intent on taking the boar’s arm until he staggers, half-lucid, urging her away with as much mobility as he can muster. She persists, a Faith spell cast from her fingers like a halo, and the gaping wound by his shoulder sews itself up. The jagged petals of a flower, folding back into a bud.
She says something to him, ushering them both down. To be with everyone else: Ingrid, Sylvain, Annette, Ashe, Flayn, Dedue. The boar’s lone eye is as vacant as a building; the gutted remains of the Goddess Tower, standing tall in its ruin.
In the end, Felix does not approach him until even Dedue has finished lingering by his side, content to leave the boar to bask in the last of the sun. As evening dwindles to lavender twilight, the light shimmers on his skin, subtle and serene, as though he is glowing from some precious place inside.
Felix is sure preparations for a celebration are underway. On a day of victory, the weapons are stowed, the armour stripped. Annette must be composing a song as she works, humming as the scent of the burgeoning feast scores the air.
Despite this, Areadbhar stands proud, blood-crusted and pulsing. A beacon of danger.
“You might send the army the wrong message with that.” Felix strides up to him, nodding at the lance. The boar’s fingers clasp the rod so tightly they may be welded there. “Clean it. And if you aren’t going to use it for anything useful, put it away.”
The boar blinks at him, then at his hand. His head tilts, but he is as still as death otherwise.
The boar. Dimitri. In the end, Felix learnt to mourn them both.
“Give it to me, then,” he says, taking ahold of Areadbhar. His gloved fingers brush the boar’s gauntlets; a spark of metal, of life, and Areadbhar—not synchronised to him in the way it is the boar—flickers and dies as Felix carefully sets it aside.
The wound faces him now. Beyond the crack in his armour sits a scar like a rock face, gnarled and twisted. Felix slips off his glove and feels the boar flinch as he touches it, strange and puckered beneath his fingertips.
“El stabbed me,” the boar finally murmurs, an alien viscosity to his voice. Something uncertain and hesitant and rugged with emotion. “I offered her a hand.”
A hand. The boar—no, Dimitri—had offered her a hand. Emperor and villain and war-seeker, and he still would have walked with her.
“Of course you did.” Felix traces the razor edges of his shattered plate, the X of his chest. The pad of his finger catches and breaks and bleeds.
The boar blinks down at him, remorseful and lucid. “Let me,” he urges, hands snaring around Felix’s wrist. He lifts Felix’s hand to his mouth and sucks the blood from his finger, and something furious unfurls in Felix’s chest.
“What—Boar!” He snatches his hand back, aflame. “You have a sick manner of repentance.”
The boar laughs, a surprised, hurt expression on his face. “I’m glad you think so,” he says, and the warmth of his laughter spreads over the gouge in Felix’s heart,keeps the sun in the sky a moment longer.
And when he’d cried that mournful night, it had brought a storm.
“Give me your hand,” Felix instructs, hand upturned as if beckoning a dog, and Dimitri gingerly lays a closed fist on Felix’s palm. “No, not like that, you fool.”
With practised ease, Felix frees each of Dimitri's fingers from the cage of his gauntlets, setting the armour aside with Areadbhar, before scuttling his fingers up Dimitri's wrist to bare his hands. His fingers tremble slightly in the relative chill, elegant and crooked, his fingernails cracked and bruised and broken.
Fitting strangely in the gaps between Felix's own.
Dimitri makes a startled noise as Felix runs his thumb along the underside of his hand, over a rough, calloused palm. Fate lines, a long life. He's never been one to believe such a thing. Until right now, he thought there was no point hoping.
“I wished you dead once,” he mutters, and Dimitri's hand twitches, a pointed, cathartic tell. “I hoped. I thought.”
“I remember.” Somewhere to the left of Felix's gaze, Dimitri nods sagely. The words tear, and Felix’s guts rearrange around them, internalising them. The boar doesn't have a clue.
“You don't,” Felix replies, in the same steady intone. “I buried you after the Western Rebellion.”
He'd scratched Dimitri's name into soft, rain-rich soil, a monument of piled stones to mark the spot. Buried his last piece of the Dimitri that was—a shred of blood-gold hair—and wept traitorously in the aftermath, rooting the very ghost of him in the earth.
“Oh.” Dimitri's eye widens. His lips part around words, half-formed, as it occurs to him what that means. His voice is small when he stutters, “Then—Duscur—”
“You had no idea.” Felix glares at their joined hands. “You never did. I wanted to tell you. I—”
“Felix—”
Felix's head shoots up, making eye-contact at last. “I was glad you survived.” He twines their fingers together so tightly they might fuse at the joints. His throat is freer than it's ever been, like he's finally learned how to breathe. “I'm glad you're alive, Dimitri.”