Chapter Text
“I pledge my heart to—”
Ingrid’s mother dies when she is five.
“I swear my blade to—”
Galatea nearly dies, starving, hill by hill, when she is eleven.
“I promise my hand to—”
Glenn, as well as her king, dies when she is thirteen.
“I dedicate my body to—”
Faerghus dies, slowly, when she is seventeen.
When she is six, her family is visiting Count Rowe. Her brothers are not present; they need to work what little land Galatea can support with her poisoned soil.
Ingrid is not told to make friends with the other child present, yet she feels a deep, unplaceable hunger to make a connection. As she walks to him, she isn’t quite sure if he is a boy—or if she’s a girl. Her confusion blossoms up through her stomach and into her heart, the gleeful pounding crackling along her fingertips with a smile that rivals the sun.
She doesn’t know what to think of her—of him, of the boy, of the girl, of whoever that is, right there. She doesn’t know what to say to him, her, the young man, the young lady, the young eventual lord. She doesn’t know how to behave in front of this impossible child.
Ingrid, for the first time in her life, is unburdened by assumptions.
Blissful, true ignorance overwhelms her to tears, and she runs away before she can share a single word with the other child. All she can choke out is an odd cross between a sob and a joyful squeak. And, for an hour or so, she revels in that peace of mind, of adamantly refusing to ask the question anyone else in her position would.
Out of respect, out of tradition, and out of obligation.
“Are you a boy or a girl?”
Her father dresses her down for such unseemly behavior, not befitting of a lady of her station, or really any lady at all.
“He’s a girl, or maybe she’s a boy!” gasps Ingrid, her toothy smile cracking apart the moment her father’s face twists. “She’s—she’s the—the little boy, girl, boy. In the great room.”
“He’s a young man, Ingrid,” her father clarifies, and her heart shatters into her stomach. “I have no idea what kind of odd joke you’re trying to make, and you should stop trying this instant. It would make our lives immeasurably more difficult if rumors began to spread that you could not even speak well.”
“I can speak well,” insists Ingrid, itching her arms, slowly, then faster, trying not to rise to frantic. “I have always spoken well. That wasn’t a mistake—I just didn’t know!”
“You didn’t know? Did you not ask?” Her father almost, not quite, glares at her when she shakes her head. “Why not?”
Ingrid does not answer. Instead, she shrugs. Her instincts are begging for her silence, and she agrees, even if she doesn’t understand why.
“If you do not want your home and family to starve, you will be on your best behavior,” spits her father. “We are guests. We are not yet friends, and I can’t have these delusional antics jeopardize our entire lives!”
They do not become friends with Count Rowe, though her father assures her it is not her fault. She knows better. Somewhat. It could have been her father’s fault. But, probably not.
As she waits in the carriage, her father bouncing in his bright cushioned seat across from her the moment the wheels start to trudge through mud, Ingrid decides against trying to explain herself further.
She does not try to explain why she was so happy and so sad at the same time. He wouldn’t understand, as Ingrid certainly doesn’t. Only enough to know that she had become enamored with what was essentially a childish delusion.
Happiness that powerful must be make-believe.
Wounds are a curious thing.
On others, they are terrifying. Gouged flesh and bone, disfigured to the point of agony, and always bloodier than one would think possible. The pain smeared on every face as they try to literally hold themselves together pushes Ingrid’s protective instincts to the point of panic.
Ingrid cannot stand to see others suffering in front of her, and so it is only natural that she would prefer to have her skin rendered a cracked and scarred mess in their stead. Because when she is wounded, when a lance narrowly misses an artery or an arrow doesn’t quite strike true, she can take it. Her tolerance for punishment is unmatched by mortal men, past and present.
Wounds, again, are a curious thing.
Bleeding is clarity. She is more, she is stronger, more resilient, than her body allows.
Glenn nearly kills her when she is seven, by accident. Sparring is dangerous if you’re not careful. He’s so much better than her, and he is older. Nearly a man grown. In a fit of rage that she does not remember, Ingrid pushes him on the defensive and his blade slips, cutting her across her neck.
She remembers a shrill scream beyond terror, and that it was not hers. She remembers her fury vanishing with the pain, a sense of true calm washing over her as Glenn descends into absolute horror, beside himself. Bawling at her feet, trying to push the blood flowing down her clothes back into the open wound before Ingrid even realizes she’s making a mess.
She remembers trying to soothe him before tending to herself, her smile so wide and relaxed as life makes sense again. This bawling child in the shape of a young man, so worried for her, with so much love and fear in his eyes, yes, this is Glenn. So kind and considerate, he was beside himself at the sight of a simple cut.
After that, Ingrid becomes something of a daredevil. Not that anyone would think that of her, since she so rarely failed in her feats. When she did, though, that was never cause for concern. Pain was peaceful, and bleeding proved the heart she could not feel or hear was still beating.
Wounds become even more curious when she is twelve years, four months, and fifteen days old.
As that is the last day it will ever stop.
Ingrid fumbles as she berates her lack of focus, her eyes drifting to how her future king’s shoulders shift either weight rather than how his lance is moving. This mistake costs her a point in their spar as well as a cut along her arm, from wrist to her own shoulder. Her uniform is torn, and it is the sound of ripped clothing that alerts her to the wound.
“Ingrid! I apologize, I—” Her future king drops his weapon without hesitation, rushing to her side as Ingrid does not blink or react. If she were alone, she would have cleaned up the mess long before herself. “Are you not hurt?
“Of course not, Your Highness.” Ingrid smiles at her future king, his dumbfounded look somehow off center, and dutifully retrieves his weapon. “I barely felt a thing.”
“Be that as it may, this isn’t something we can ignore,” insists her future king, snatching the lances away. “You’re not going to heal properly if you keep pushing yourself.”
“As you wish, Your Highness.” Ingrid is not teasing him, even if it is difficult to refer to him in that way without sounding like it. “Shall I proceed to Professor Manuela’s chambers for treatment?”
“No, I can take care of it. I can do this for you.”
“Your Highness—”
“I will, Ingrid. You have your duty, and I have mine.”
Ingrid’s wound pulses as her future king lays his surprisingly calloused hands down atop it, the unintentional intimacy far more painful than the lance ever could be. The soft, tentative glow of white magic, suturing her flesh back together, feels somehow sloppy and uneven in application. Focused for efficacy over anything else. And then, she sees it, as she realizes he is hunched over her as a surgeon would on a battlefield.
It is Professor Byleth’s teachings, not Manuela’s, that are ‘healing’ her.
“I did not know you were competent in any kind of magic,” muses Ingrid, intently watching her flesh sloppily squeeze itself back into allegedly proper shape. “Thank you, Your Highness. You are far too generous with your time and effort.”
“I have watched too many die in front of me, in agony from their injuries, to not pursue some kind of balm for the experience. If I am going to send soldiers to die in my name, then I should at least take steps to ensure some of those deaths are not needlessly painful.”
“I see.” Ingrid can imagine the sight of Glenn dying rather vividly. Screeching and begging for life and death. Does her future king wish to ease inevitable pain, or save the lives he can? It was his decision to make, as is his right by birth. “You are too considerate for your own good, Your Highness. A knight’s sole existence is fulfilled in that suffering. Without it, they would not know they served their lord with honor.”
“Let us not discuss this topic further; your blood loss is clearly even worse than it looks if you're suggesting I let dying men writhe in agony at my feet.”
Ingrid simply nods, wondering far from the first time why there is such dissonance.
When she is cut, when she is hurt, her skin stings, curling at the edges like parchment. Bare skin that is unmarred is an inappropriate thing to see. A private view meant only for your husband.
Save one notable exception.
With scars and burns, Ingrid observes that there is no such taboo aside from uncomfortable glances at disfigurement. The more she throws her body into harm’s way, the more evidence she will gather of her knighthood. With every wound, she will grow into a proper knight, before anything else.
“I’m sorry, Ingrid. Unfortunately, you’ve a rather large scar,” sighs her future king, lowering her arm to her side. “I am not as experienced as Professor Byleth or Manuela, so it is more prominent than it would otherwise be.”
“Do I have one that garish?” Ingrid squints at the, yes, significant scar on her arm. She’d been so fixated on the process that she hadn’t noticed the lasting damage. “Ah, I do. There is nothing to apologize for, Your Highness. I’ve never minded them. They are further evidence of my dedication as a knight.”
“You are the most knightly woman I’ve ever met, so if anyone would know, it would be you, Ingrid.” Her future king regards her more deliberately for a moment, and Ingrid is viscerally disgusted by her lack of joy. “Pride in the sweet and the bitter, yes?”
“One could say that.” Ingrid carefully flexes her arm, the new scar joining the old ones as her muscles tighten and stretch unnaturally, as they always do. “There does not seem to be any damage. You did an excellent job, Your Highness.”
“Let us just hope I improve from leaving my men scarred.”
Later that evening, Ingrid takes a closer look at the scar in her mirror, her uniform top folded neatly on her bed. The deep blue turtleneck is rather tight, so rolling up the sleeves only emphasizes what is, theoretically, there. It is one of her longer former wounds, reaching across enough of her skin that she is able to see, just barely, her own silhouette.
For a moment or two. Just as always, Ingrid vanishes before her own eyes. Not that she can see those, either, without them moving.
The woman in the mirror does not look at it, nor at herself. She can’t, even if she desires to. At most, she steals a glance at the edges of her clothes, of her scars, trying and failing to connect shapes to the body that grew them. Her face is broad, her shoulders more, and armor is the only thing that reliably obscures her unwieldy strength.
Smocks and robes always find something to form around.
This is her, she knows it is her, she believes it is her, and yet she cannot accept that this, that thing in the mirror, is her. Ingrid ‘knows’ that she is striking, that she is, despite everything, quite pretty to a certain audience. She begrudgingly, with not too much self-depreciation, agrees to those rare compliments.
She has never seen what others insist is there. She’s barely seen anything at all.
The truth is that makeup is quite difficult when you do not recognize the contours of your own face. When your gaze unsettles you. When your mind’s eye is blind to you. When attention on one’s appearance makes you want to retch and flee more than bleeding out in a trench.
The few cosmetics lessons that Ingrid was able to absorb from Annette have only confused her more with every application. Ingrid rarely applies it, partially due to a lack of time and desire, and partially due to her incompetence at the craft. Of course, it would likely be easier to use makeup if she is capable of perceiving the shape of her face.
Foundation, blush, eyeshadow—everything took such a long time to administer to a series of shapes that, objectively, she knows is where her head was. Guessing and checking, following contours as she finds them, and making corrections every few seconds, is this truly worth it for vanity?
For everyone but Ingrid, it goes hand in hand with a woman’s ‘duty’.
New moons are that much more acute, as she is reminded that she will never truly heal. If only she could cut herself open to drown the darkest night; stain the pitch-navy with herself until the sun cooks the problem away. But, she can’t.
No one can.
Oh, how romantic dying with honor sounds. Her memory would be that of a gallant, noble knight who gave her life for her lord. Blended into the annals of history along with all the others. Nothing to focus too much on, or fixate about.
Ingrid unrolls her sleeve and dutifully redresses, having reached her limit of self-fellation for the week. Before bed, per routine, she is to read for an hour. Choosing what to read is becoming more difficult with each passing day.
Her bookshelf is not sparse, though it is not full of stories she loves. Those are often oral histories. It is so odd, she wonders, for the ten-thousandth time, that there are so few tales of people who did not seek fame and recognition for exceptionalism.
Unassuming greatness is vastly underrated.
Killing a corrupt merchant before he could steal her hand in marriage is already a rather positive and righteous memory for Ingrid, though that is not why she revists it so often. It is not the support from those around her, nor is it Dorothea’s unveiled attempts at…something. The most important element for Ingrid was that, when Dorothea, almost certainly as a joke, accepted her hand in marriage, Ingrid had immediately rebuffed her.
And that had worked.
There was no further discussion nor debate. Negotiations were not scheduled to be held next month at a more neutral place. It was, surprisingly, a rather invigorating feeling to know that her word was taken as law despite miniscule power to call her own.
Even if Ingrid, bafflingly, feels as though she may have been a tad too hasty in her blanket denial.
If Dorothea had been a woman of Faerghus, there would be some logic for her deference to Ingrid despite her meager pittance of political favor. However, Dorothea was Andrestian, and so Ingrid had absolutely no legal power over her. Of course, friends had listened to Ingrid for as long as she could remember, and half of what she said were lectures on what to and not do, but this was different.
Ingrid has never needed to deny her friends her hand. They’ve never asked nor insinuated interest. If her future king had asked, she would not hesitate to accept, as that was one of the highest honors anyone could achieve. If Sylvain had asked, hah. No. If Felix had asked—it was always odd that Rodrigue had not successfully pushed for that.
Perhaps it was due to the grim reality that there would never be anyone quite like Glenn.
Life would make so much more sense if Glenn was still alive. She would not need to deal with the exhausting nightmare that was marriage proposals; she’d already be married. Galatea would be saved, and they would have had healthy, happy crest-born children.
Would he permit her to fight and die for their king, or would she be chained to their lands? She likely wouldn’t mind a mundane life if it were with Glenn. She might even learn to love it. Yes, she’d find it fulfilling and wonderful, of course. Glenn made everything seem so perfect, even when it wasn’t.
That was his gift. The ideal that all aspire to become. Not even Ingrid could hope to match him.
Could Dorothea? From a completely different approach? Yes, she can.
Ingrid is unbelievably confident of that, even if she has no idea why.
“You’re slacking off,” accuses Felix, arguably not bothering to open his mouth or even push air out of his lips the moment Ingrid finishes weeding the courtyard, the both of them caked in sweat and soreness in the summer heat. “Go reign in your donkey before he makes a bigger mess.”
“If you think for one second that I’m going to respond to—” Ingrid’s indignation fades quickly once she realizes that Felix is entirely correct. “Must he be a donkey?”
“Yes.”
“Why butter it up?” Ingrid clicks her tongue. “Why not just call him the ass that he is?”
“Good point.” Felix cracks a smile that Ingrid assumes she’s hallucinating. “Get his ass in line.”
“Perhaps you could help for once,” offers Ingrid, almost frowning. “He respects you. He’ll listen.”
“He doesn’t, and he won’t.”
“I respect you, and he listens to me, so I think, by the transitive property—”
“Sylvain doesn’t think with logic; he’s horny and bitter.” Felix rolls his eyes. “Same as everyone else.”
“Excuse you, I am neither of those things.”
“Right. Sure.” Felix massages his temples. “Go prove your point somewhere else.”
Ingrid stomps away with dignity and purpose, very confident that she does not need to know Sylvain’s exact location to find him. And she is affirmed in this belief, since she finds him chatting with several townswomen out in front of the market. It’s often best to let him dig the hole deeper, since if she intervenes now, well, it would be pre-emptive. Not that she’d be wrong about his intentions, but why give him more ammunition?
“I didn’t know someone so loud could be so sneaky,” whispers Dorothea, touching Ingrid’s arm as she slides into place, that giddy grin so bright and charming. “Can I help? You look like you could use a few pointers.”
“On what, exactly? Skulking about?” Ingrid doesn’t flinch or yank Dorothea around the corner of the moss infested stone wall; she doesn’t need to. “I’m not hiding. I’m waiting.”
“Stalking is very beneath you, Ingrid,” tuts Dorothea, and she doesn’t stop when Ingrid shoots her a look. “It is. I’m right.”
“You’re right,” agrees Ingrid, straining her ears to catch the end of an extended Sylvain innuendo that was as crass as it was lazy. The two women he is speaking to appeared to enjoy it, though a bit forcefully. “If you’d like to help me catalogue Sylvain’s indiscretions, I’ll gladly accept your offer.”
“Good, because as cute as he is, he does not make ‘shallow’ work. He’s so mean and bitter about it.” Dorothea’s eyes sparkle, and there is a joyful warmth to her voice. “I’d have snatched him up already, otherwise.”
“I’d question your taste in men if I wasn’t so certain you could tame him if you put your mind to it.” Ingrid chuckles. “Is there a way to make ‘shallow’ work?”
“Yes.”
“And how is that?”
“By doing what I do.” Dorothea flashes her a wink, and Ingrid suddenly develops a false fever that thankfully vanishes quickly. “Self-preservation.”
“Dorothea, I don’t think that counts as ‘shallow’ anymore.”
“No, it does. I’m fine that it does, just so you’re not worried.”
“I’m not worried; I’m only saying that it isn’t ‘shallow’ to be focused on survival.” Ingrid holds her head high despite the hypocrisy. Her ideals have not swayed, even if she hasn’t followed through. Yet. “You’re a surprisingly honorable woman.”
“I’m really not.” Dorothea isn’t deflecting. There’s no bubble to her resistance. “I’m a gorgeous voice, figure, and face, and those aren’t the most permanent of features.” She raises a brow. “Oh, wow, Ingrid, are you actually deferring to a pretty face?”
“I don’t do that,” defends Ingrid, trying to remember if she has a history of doing that. “I can’t remember a single time I’ve ever done that.”
“It’s what you’re doing right now.” Dorothea shrugs, her eyes slowly shifting over to Sylvain’s continued regaling of the time he nearly killed his older brother—why was he telling that story?! “Technically, it’s what he’s doing right now. Except, it’s his own face.”
“Sylvain isn’t pretty.”
“No, no, he is very pretty.”
“He’s not,” insists Ingrid, her gut twisting around her spine. “He’s, at best, debatably, handsome.”
“Ingrid, this is Garreg Mach,” says Dorothea, with such expectation for that to explain the nature of existence itself. “There are only beautiful people here. That’s how it works.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Ingrid crosses her arms and struggles to think of a way to refute that. “How would that even be possible?”
Garreg Mach, now that Ingrid considers this aspect more deeply, truly is an odd sort of place. Nearly every person present, student and faculty alike, is particularly, in a purely objective way, beautiful. So much so that Ingrid quickly became desensitized to it. She’s thankful for her luck in that, as such an inappropriate distraction would only make her life that much harder.
Not that it, predictably, slows Sylvain down at all. Which is why she is in this mess in the first place.
Catherine is beautiful. The Archbishop. Mercedes. Shamir. Manuela. Professor Byleth. Edelgard. Hilda. Bernadetta. Anette. Marianne. Petra. And, most of all, Dorothea.
“Beautiful people are often blessed with wealth,” explains Dorothea, through her teeth. “Not by the Goddess, of course. By others, supposedly acting on her will. And it’s expensive to go here, and so it goes.”
“I hadn’t noticed that,” admits Ingrid, blushing again. “I thought it was only crests and nobility that weighted the scales.”
“A lot of my prospective suitors, before I got here, liked to tell me I was ‘as gorgeous as any noblewoman’ after the show.” Dorothea scoffs, and amusingly she looks like a noblewoman for a split second. “Sure, that was my goal, sort of. But they didn’t need to make it about them when I’m standing right there.”
“I’m more disappointed they didn’t compliment your voice.”
“If I was just a voice, I wouldn’t have been snatched up by Mittelfrank. Left to starve on the streets.” Dorothea crooks her lips. “Not that you have any clue what that’s like.”
“Not yet, no.”
“Not yet?” Dorothea bristles, and Ingrid assumes that it must have been something she overheard Sylvain say. “A little bit of advice from the so-called gutters, Ingrid. Would you like to hear it?”
“Yes, of course. I rarely get to hear different perspectives on this kind of topic.”
“Well…” Dorothea stares off into nothing, pouting for a moment. “Okay, now I feel like a whiny, petty child, since I had this whole speech in my head to throw at you when you said ‘no, I don’t care’.”
“What?” Ingrid whirls back to her, shocked. “I would never say something like that.”
“That is incredibly obvious the more I speak to you, Ingrid, yes. Either way, your charming manners aren’t enough to save you from the common sins of every family like yours.”
“Dorothea, how much do you know about—”
“I know enough to know that nobles will always hoard their food from their people, and control them through that, if push comes to shove.”
“I can’t speak to earlier generations of my family, but I promise you that we did not have food we could steal at all,” explains Ingrid, taking her eyes off of Sylvain to offer Dorothea her full attention. “We would need to feed our soldiers for that, and we could barely do that enough to keep them from leaving.”
“Pardon?”
“Galatea would only be more destitute if we were surrounded by desert. And even then we’d probably be better off. Even the desert has things growing in it.”
“Oh.” Dorothea swallowed. “This whole ‘honorable noble’ act isn’t an act at all, is it?”
“I wish that it were. I’d hate who I was, but at least Galatea wouldn’t be starving. Regardless…” Ingrid flashes a wide smile at Sylvain when he turns around to finally ‘notice’ them. “I think he’s on his best behavior because you’re here.”
“Are we just going to move on from—”
“We are, correct.”
“Okay, fine.” Dorothea paused. “You seriously think he’s still trying to impress me?”
“I do.”
“Good intel. I might be able to use that.” Dorothea stretches, waving at Sylvain, and he waves back before returning to his conversation. “You and Sylvain are close, right?”
“If I say ‘unfortunately’, will you believe I mean it both sincerely and in jest?”
“Hah!” Dorothea doesn’t actually laugh, at first. Then she does, her smile breaking as Ingrid’s doesn’t falter. “Yes. I would.”
“What did he do to give you such a strong first impression?”
“He has no real love for women. He ‘loves’, but he doesn’t enjoy or appreciate,” states Dorothea, surprisingly disappointed. “Well, he might, but it’s buried deep. This whole ‘charming bachelor’ routine is depressingly performative.”
“He does love to put on a show, yes.”
“No, I mean his heart’s never in it.” Dorothea sets her hand over her own heart. “I’m always sincere when I play the game; I know what I want, but I know what I want.”
“I think he might just be like this,” grumbles Ingrid. “My life would be so much simpler if he was all bite and no bark. At least then he wouldn’t rant and ramble.”
“Pay closer attention to his ‘ranting and rambling’. That’s probably what he’s actually feeling.”
“You just met him.”
“I’ve met many just like him, and he’s the first you can save from himself.” Dorothea adjusts her hair and hat. “Trust me; I read people better than I do books.”
If one were to observe Dorothea, and many of the other students, as a subject of a painting, she would be a near perfect person to depict. Symmetrical features, well-maintained hair, confident, healthy, and in good physical shape. The pieces of her puzzle connected in a way that made sense to Ingrid, and it would have been nice to appreciate the inherent beauty of mathematically appealing proportions.
However, doing so would mean she is no better than Sylvain and his ilk, so it was to never be.
Not that Ingrid was terribly hurt by her inability to see things like that. What was she missing? Her life was filled with enough strife and difficulty as it was; adding more voluntarily was self-destructive when it served no purpose.
Her family, her land, her people, will starve in barely four winters more if she does not deliver them from certain death with dowry so relatively paltry that she almost finds her ‘apprised worth’ insulting. Well, she does find it insulting, in that it exists, though the miniscule sum makes it worse. Not that her opinion is relevant to such things.
Galatea will die when she is twenty-one.
“Ladies, ladies!” announces Sylvain, possibly to the women that are quickly abandoning him as well as herself and Dorothea. “Take your time and think about it. I’ll be here.”
“What did you just do to them?” asks Ingrid, marching through the apathetic crowd, Dorothea, following close behind. “What did you say? Tell me now so I can prepare you remarks to save a little face.”
“Oh, yes, lord heartbreaker, how did you woo those fair maidens?” teases Dorothea. “I have two guesses, but I’ll only need one.”
“You know, you could have a little faith in me for once,” sighs Sylvain, his perfect posture creaking. “It’s not like I run around naked offending every woman I meet by standing next to them.”
“That is essentially what you do, yes. Half the words out of your mouth are bald faced lies or nakedly aggressive!” Ingrid throws up her hands. “At least, if you’d torn off your clothes, they might be disarmed by the gall and more open to your nonsense!”
“At a monastery?” Dorothea giggles. “I knew you were bold, Ingrid. Now I’m impressed and almost wooed myself.”
“Stop that,” deflects Ingrid, her eyes not leaving Sylvain’s for a moment. “What did you say, Sylvain?”
“I can’t really remember all of a sudden,” chuckles Sylvain. “Because that’s not nearly as important as you, Ingrid, sounding a lot like you’re asking to take my clothes off.”
“You may as well; you’d be that much easier to track.” Ingrid takes a very deep breath.”What did you say?”
“I told them a secret.” Sylvain refocuses on Dorothea. “Would you like to know my secret?”
“No.” Dorothea smiles. “I don’t.”
“Cold.”
“I’m very warm once you start looking me in the eye.”
“Just tell me what you said,” pushes Ingrid. “And, if we’re all lucky, there won’t need to be a lecture.”
“I can’t tell you, Ingrid.” Sylvain shakes his head. “Not gonna happen.”
“Why—” Ingrid scowls at him. “It isn’t a real secret.”
“Alright, fine.” Sylvain shrugs. “I told them I didn’t have a crest.”
“If the nobility think that ‘lies’ and ‘secrets’ are literally the same thing, that would explain why so many of you are truly rotten,” mumbles Dorothea. “We’ve seen you hold a hero’s relic, Sylvain. That’s not even a good lie.”
“This again?” Ingrid pinches her brow. “What is your obsession with testing these women?”
“He’s done this before?”
“He does this often.” Ingrid crosses her arms. “He draws women in, talks about how they’d be catapulted to wealth and luxury with a marriage, then whispers this ‘secret’ in their ears to see if they are attracted to him or his power.”
“She’s right,” confirms Sylvain, his eyes sinking into his head. “I don’t need to explain why I wanted an honest answer.”
“Of course you don’t, no.” Ingrid shoots him an odd look. “What I don’t understand is why you keep doing this. The answer is not going to change, Sylvain. What is the point of this?”
“Sylvain, I might have misjudged you,” whispers Dorothea. “Not enough to change my mind, but you’ve got hope and a prayer.”
“In your heart?” asks Sylvain, without any hope or prayer in his voice. “Or—”
“In your life, once-and-future Marquis Gautier.”
“To repeat myself again, what was the point of this?” demands Ingrid. “If you’re going to smash your head against the wall, at least make it one that you will eventually break through.”
“You’ve always been the smartest of us, Ingrid.” Sylvain stretches his arms behind his head with a half-dead smile. “I must just love torturing myself, since I’ll never get a different answer.”
“Not if you keep doing this entire routine to women that you deliberately reel in on promises of wealth and nobility.” Ingrid shakes her head and scoffs. “You might have better luck if you try to make connections with—” She sighs and waves him off. “Just go apologize.”
“You got it, sister.” Sylvain flashes her and Dorothea a wink before sauntering away. “I’ll get around to it.”
“That was existentially depressing.” Dorothea clears her throat, and it is somehow melodic. “How does a sweat sound? We can let that wet heat boil all this stress out.”
“I’m not particularly more stressed now than I am normally.” Ingrid is still watching Sylvain as he winds through the footpath. “You get used to him. Or, in your case, ideally you don’t.”
“Well, I’m bubbling over with dread so I’m going to relax in the sauna until my hair is big and poofy.” Dorothea smiles, hands on her hips. “Would you like to join me?”
“Yes, that sounds nice, actually.” Ingrid nods and idly imagines Dorothea naked. Which is deeply disrespectful, so she berates herself internally until the mental image is crushed down into the deepest depths of her mind. “I rarely get a chance to use it.”
“Not your thing?”
“Sylvain uses it to flirt with women.”
“Right, and then you’re stressed out trying to play down his ‘charm’ when you should be melting into the wood.” Dorothea grabs her shoulder. “Let’s fix that.”
Ingrid does melt into the wood, and it is a wonderful experience. The steam provides a blanket that seems to muffle both sound and sight, lessening the intensity of both the longer you stay inside. After a few minutes, she and Dorothea are the only ones left, and this becomes less surprising once Ingrid’s stomach growls so voraciously that she actually startles Dorothea.
“Good Goddess, I thought we were lounging with a bear!” Dorothea snickers into a laugh, her towel and bathing clothes far tighter than anything else in known history. “You can go, it’s fine, you’re fine.” She smiles. “I won’t be offended.”
“I am not going to leave a friend in her time of need,” insists Ingrid, and she can’t keep a straight face with that. “And what a friend needs sometimes is company while they see to themselves.”
“Is that what you need, Ingrid?” asks Dorothea, smirking. “For me to keep you on the right track while you take care of yourself?”
“I don’t need anything.”
“Except a trough full of pork and cow, right?”
“I’m not a horse,” defends Ingrid, even as her stomach snarls again. “Or a bear.”
“You kind of remind me of a mama bear.” Dorothea scooches closer to her on the bench. “Very protective and aggressive.”
“I don’t want to be any kind of bear,” grumbles Ingrid, stiffening so much she almost vomits for half a second. “I’d rather be a horse.”
“Not a pegasus?” gasps Dorothea, in likely fake shock and awe, waving her hand in front of her face. “I’m shocked!”
“To fly is to guarantee a fall.” Ingrid takes a very deep breath. “If a horse falls, she can get back up.”
“Wow, I had you pegged for ‘I would never run away’, but I like that thinking a lot more.” Dorothea rubs her chin, humming in thought. “I think I’d be a hawk, or an eagle.”
“I expected a peacock.”
“Peacocks are liars, Ingrid,” counters Dorothea. “It’s all about the dance, never about the partner.”
“I don’t think birds can lie.” Ingrid isn’t sure if she’s playing dumb or trying to make Dorothea laugh. “Why a hawk? Or an eagle?”
“Birds of prey swoop down to catch all kinds of critters. People respect them, and they are the apex predators of their whole thing,” explains Dorothea. “It’d be nice for people to take me seriously just from who I am, inherently.”
“People don’t take you seriously?” Ingrid almost chokes on her own tongue at how insane that sounds. “How is that possible?”
“I’m a commoner, Ingrid. Few people have any reason to care about what I have to say that isn’t already part of a song.” Dorothea crosses her arms. “It must be nice to open your mouth and have complete confidence that you’ll be heard. Maybe not agreed with, but at least they won’t pretend to be deaf or that you’re actually mute.”
“I promise, I’m largely ignored. You saw how Sylvain spoke to me, and he’s the best case scenario.”
“That’s still being spoken to.” Dorothea stares at her, intently, before relaxing. “You’re really not a friend I’d ever thought I’d have.”
“Pardon?” Ingrid is genuinely baffled, and she has no idea how to move her face. “Why—what?”
“I’m exceptional at conversation, Ingrid. One of the best there is,” says Dorothea, without a glimmer of happiness. “I could make friends on a deserted island if I wanted to. But you…” She smiles. “You are the easiest person I’ve ever met to talk to.”
“Oh.” Ingrid is still genuinely baffled, and still has no idea how to move her face. “What—why?”
“If I tell you, it’ll ruin the magic.” Dorothea crosses one leg over the other and taps her fingers along her knee. “I’ll promise I’ll speak up when you stop being so easy, how about that?”
“I don’t like how you phrased that.” Ingrid blushes again. “What exactly am I doing, Dorothea?”
“I’m pretty sure you’re just being you.” Dorothea flashes her a wink. “And you are just lovely.”