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In the middle of addressing the most mundane missives known to mankind, Byleth sensed a pair of eyes boring a hole into the back of her head.
As calmly as she could, the archbishop dipped her quill into a fresh inkpot before scratching the parchment lightly, pretending that nothing was amiss as she listened for more signs of life.
Fortunately for her, this was easy to do when she had a doting husband who insisted she take the castle’s largest office despite having a mercenary’s minimalist taste in furnishings. With only a wolf pelt rug and wooden desk-and-chair set occupying the corner furthest from the door, even the smallest of sounds tended to bounce around the walls.
Not caring that she’d have to redo her barely-started letter, she started to jot down potential culprits.
A thief looking to steal some valuables? No, any thief worth their salt would turn around. The most valuable thing in this room was the fancy quick-dry ink she was using. While useful, hardly worth the risk of beheading.
The overzealous steward who stopped at nothing to make sure she and Dimitri ate? Probably not. Last she heard, he was still recovering from the soup incident.
A pint-sized assassin? When a creak in the floorboards gave away the interloper’s position, Byleth inwardly smiled. Two paces away from her chair was definitely a new personal best, topping an already-impressive record of six paces when most couldn’t even slip in undetected.
But if there was anything the archbishop had learned from her teaching days, it was that being soft on kids did them no favours. So after setting her quill on the letter, Byleth broke the silence with a pop quiz.
“Deedee, what’s the number one rule when it comes to sneaking around?” she asked her daughter.
Byleth didn’t need to see her child’s face to know it was scrunched in total concentration, judging by the long pause. But then she turned around to no such expression — the only scrunch she could see was a balled-up orange handkerchief Deedee was fiddling with.
“...That you shouldn’t get into melee range if your target might notice you,” her daughter meekly answered, echoing her oft-repeated lesson word-for-word as her lower lip began to tremble. “I’ll do better next time. I swear it, Mother.”
Sensing she’d overcorrected a little, Byleth gave her a warm smile.
“Don’t worry about losing your sneaking privileges, kiddo.” she reassured. “You did really well today and I want you to keep trying.”
Deedee’s bright blue eyes lit up. “I did well?” she gasped.
“Keep this up and you’ll be a regular assassin princess before long.”
Unsurprisingly, this elicited another gasp from her daughter.
“Really?” she asked, scarcely believing the praise. “Father said I’m not quiet enough to be a princess assassin so I’ve been practicing my footsteps between my lessons to prove him wrong. So you think he’s wrong, too?”
“I think he can be wrong if you keep practicing. Have you passed the Gautier Cheese Gratin test yet?”
Deedee shook her head. “Father won’t let me try until I’m ten.”
“Hm. What about the Onion Gratin Soup test?”
“He said we won’t have soup in the castle for a long time,” her daughter answered. “Mother, do you know why? Father wouldn’t tell me.”
Oh right, the incident, Byleth remembered. Better come up with a distraction. Don’t need her to learn about the birds and the bees just yet…
“Don’t have a clue, kiddo.” she said. “Have you been practicing the Peach Sorbet strategy I taught you last week?”
When Deedee nodded eagerly, it took all of Byleth’s willpower not to affectionately ruffle her short blonde bob and ruin her hairdo right before she was due to attend her comportment lesson. Her daughter’s lopsided smile was far too precious for her own good — a definite occupational hazard of being her father’s mini-me in both disposition and appearance.
But as much as Adelyn was her father’s twin — so much so that her nickname was shorthand for ‘Dearest Daughter’ or ‘Dimitri’s Daughter,’ depending on who you asked — Byleth still saw hints of herself in Deedee’s penchant for finding lost items, quietly slipping into rooms, and general reticence.
In a different timeline where her daughter was not of noble blood, encouraging improvements in her stealth would have been a necessary evil for survival. But in the one they lived in, Byleth was thankful that Deedee could receive a proper education without wondering where her next meal would come from, that her keen interest in learning about assassin skills was just that — a useful interest that they could bond over.
After all, assassin skills required painstaking poise, patience and perfect timing — useful transferable skills when it came to politics even if murder was off the table… for now and hopefully forever. And while it wasn’t feasible to fight all of her daughter’s battles for her, giving Deedee extra tools to help navigate messy realities and open her eyes to different solutions felt like a no brainer.
“So can you tell me what’s the second-most important rule when it comes to sneaking around?” Byleth asked her young student.
She finally saw the adorable scrunch she’d expected earlier appear on her daughter’s face as she gave the question some thought.
“...That if you get caught, you shouldn’t panic?”
“You’re on the right track,” she encouraged before fishing for more. “But why shouldn’t you panic?”
“Because… you might spook your target even more. And that would be really bad.” Deedee added. “Princess assassins always have a good reason for sneaking up on their targets instead of fighting them face-to-face.”
And her daughter was right in more ways than one, even if she wasn’t quite aware of that right now.
If every battle could be won by brute force alone, there would be no need for tactics and strategy. Knowing when to bend the knee and when to apply pressure was key — a lesson Byleth learned quickly when she found out she was with child seven-odd years ago.
Never in her wildest dreams did it occur to her that the hardest thing about giving birth to a Blaiddyd child was all the political strings that came attached with them. Quite frankly, she’d spent most of her pregnancy mentally preparing for her child’s potential monstrous strength and size — a prediction that ultimately did not come to pass when Deedee arrived a full moon early. Not only was her daughter average-sized, but she was eventually found to be crestless too.
In hindsight, the rampant speculation about Deedee’s crest status should have clued Byleth into the madness that was to follow, especially when many court advisors were convinced her daughter was crestless based on a flimsy old wives’ tale about the Goddess blessing patient and strong children with crests, not those in a rush to be born. But regardless if the superstition was bunk — Byleth suspected it was, given the fraught circumstances of her own birth — it opened her eyes to the extra nonsense and scrutiny that came with possessing the highest titles in the land when there was no crested male heir in the picture.
The crest stone residing in Byleth’s chest did not beat, but the closest it came to breaking was over the thought of anyone believing Deedee was not enough, especially over the things she could not control like her lack of crest.
Shaking off her unproductive lamentations, she resolved to redirect her energy into being present for her darling towheaded spawn instead of fretting over things she couldn’t change with a divine pulse. Even so, how anyone could think poorly of this adorable child was beyond her.
Seriously.
“So aside from practicing your assassin skills, did you need something else from your mom?” Byleth pre-emptively asked.
Unsurprisingly, the question was met with silence and blue eyes fixating on an invisible speck of dust on the floor. This often happened when Byleth sensed what she wanted before she was ready to tell her. Goddess be damned, someday she’d strike the right balance like her husband effortlessly could.
But for now, she tried a different tack.
“Want to learn how to answer boring letters?”
Deedee stopped her one-sided match with the floor only to shake her head vigourously enough to muss up her hair. Byleth reached out to smooth her daughter’s flaxen strands back in place, offering her another reassuring smile.
“Use your words to tell me what you want, kiddo.” she told her in a firm but not unkind voice as she plucked a few grey threads off her blue dress. “Your father and I have a lot to do before our guests arrive next week so I need you to help me a little here.”
While a multi-day political roundtable to discuss recent land disputes and agricultural reports wasn’t something she and Dimitri were ready to teach her about just yet — the seven-year old’s current lessons focused on decorum, etiquette, and other niceties so various topics surrounding dirt was a little too advanced for her at this stage — Deedee’s eyes predictably lit up when the word ‘guests’ left her lips.
When she or Dimitri spoke of guests, that usually meant that at least Uncle Felix, Uncle Sylvain or Auntie Ingrid were likely to show up. And if any of them showed up, this meant that some of her friends might also show up too — an exciting prospect for an only child if there ever was one.
“Father said you could teach me how to have a proper tea party,” she finally explained in a voice no louder than a squeak. “I want to learn so Delphine will have fun and want to visit more.”
Byleth was careful not to show even the barest hint of a frown in front of her daughter.
Of all her husband’s childhood friends, it came as no surprise that Deedee gravitated towards Felix and Annette’s eldest the most, seeing as she was the only other girl among the gaggle of children. But while one could argue they were both their fathers’ daughters in appearance and demeanor, that was where their similarities ended. Bridging that chasm was something both she and Dimitri had not managed to help her daughter with despite many, many, many attempts over the years.
“A proper tea party, huh?” she forced herself to say, careful not to quash her daughter’s enthusiasm.
Deedee nodded with a smile. “Father told me everyone loved them when you were a professor.”
Oh Dimitri, she thought to herself. Her tea parties were anything but proper. Despite her husband’s heavily-biased opinion of them, they were definitely not universally-loved either.
Felix himself hadn’t particularly cared for them unless they served as a pretext to a sparring match or two. But while Byleth could confidently remember Annette enjoying them for both the company and sweets, she was far less confident about betting on the Fraldarius girl loving tea parties with tenuous 50-50 odds, given what she knew about the kid.
But was there a way to politely explain this concept to a seven-year-old with stars in her eyes in terms she could understand? No. No there was not. The only way to learn this lesson was through firsthand experience. But was she about to throw her daughter to the wolves wholly unprepared? No. No she would not. She would figure out a plan of attack like she always did when a new parenting challenge was afoot.
“Well kiddo, it’s too close to your lessons to have a practice tea party right now but there’s still enough time to teach you the first rule about hosting a proper tea party. How does that sound?”
“I would like that very much.” Deedee answered with the tiniest of nods.
Using that as her cue, Byleth leaned back into her chair and raised her pointer finger to start the lesson.
“The first rule of hosting a proper tea party is knowing what your guests like talking about.” she told her daughter. “Do you know what Delphine would like talking about?”
“Oh, yes! I do!” she exclaimed with none of the thoughtful nervousness she usually exhibited when it came to pop quizzes. “I know she likes learning Reason spells with Auntie Annette and taking care of her pegasus, Angel Cake. In her last letter, she said that she got to fly around the House Fraldarius castle and didn’t even cry once! Isn’t that so cool?”
“It sure is, sweetheart,” she dutifully agreed. Saints help her, Delphine sounded like a child soldier from Deedee’s answer. While it made sense on the surface, Byleth knew not to believe that wholesale either, considering how House Fraldarius had changed over the years under Annette’s influence. She needed to dig deeper here. “Does she only like training or does she like other things too?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I want to have a tea party — to find out about more things Delphine likes.” her daughter said, scuffing a heel against the floorboards. “Father said she couldn’t bring Angel Cake here.”
Ah, so that’s why Dimitri suggested the tea party, she realized. To avoid repeating history with another wild pegasus chase in the mountains. Completely understandable.
Still, it didn’t change the fact that she only learned more about her then-students if they didn’t see the tea parties as a waste of time. She understood why her daughter had taken a shine to the Fraldarius heir — a lot of kids and adults would find a spell-slinging and pegasi-riding nine-year-old interesting — but with little to go on, the archbishop wasn’t certain Deedee could tea party her way into being the kind of friends she wanted to be with Delphine, especially not with generic small talk.
This required a different tactic for sure. But what could fit the bill?
“Mother, is it ok if I teach Delphine how to be a princess assassin during tea time?”
Byleth was thankful that she was not currently drinking any tea at this moment because she would have unleashed a spit-take of epic proportions on her poor child if the sputter that escaped her throat was any indication.
“I’ll have to speak with your father about that.”
In a blink of an eye, Deedee’s tiny smile turned into a sad pout.
“...Oh. That means no.”
It was hard not to wince at her daughter’s crestfallen tone. The irony was that the suggestion was an excellent one but, there was most certainly a difference between indulging her with informal assassin lessons in private versus teaching the duke’s daughter these skills when she’d helped the duke himself attain his own assassin certification. Stealing the opportunity from right under his nose did not sit right with her.
It was one thing to be a teacher of common birth who taught anyone she crossed paths with, quite another to choose to do so as both queen and archbishop.
So needless to say, Byleth definitely required Dimitri’s counsel on this.
Not only in the capacity as Deedee’s father, but also as her husband, king and, most importantly, someone who intimately knew all the trappings that came with growing up in the same situation their daughter was in now.
💚💙💚
“I hate to disappoint you Beloved, but I am admittedly at a loss on how to approach this delicate situation,” Dimitri told her as he continued to cross stitch even after tearing a gaping hole in the center of the cloth hoop from the comfort of their dark blue four poster bed. “Can you help me understand why you believe the tea party itself will not be enough?”
Byleth chewed on the question as she picked up a large basket of laundry the maids had delivered during the day and brought it to the foot of bed to sort. While it was admittedly unorthodox, her husband convincing the castle staff to accommodate her request to let them manage the simple household chores within the confines of the royal chambers served as a boon for many reasons.
Not only did they not need to fear being overheard or interrupted at inopportune moments, Byleth found that doing simple chores that did not require much brainpower often allowed her to come up with solutions to the day’s unsolved problems.
As she folded a few towels, she hoped this trick would work its magic today.
“I think,” she began to explain. Smooth out. Fold. Focus. Think. “No, I’m worried this will turn out like all the other times. Delphine doesn’t strike me as the tea party type.” Put that on the pile. Grab another. Smooth. Fold— “If she doesn’t like it like Annette did, she might be ok with it if I can dangle some kind of training session like a carrot. Felix was like that at Garreg Mach.”
Her husband looked up from his mangled cross stitch hoop, eying her curiously from the opposite end of the bed.
“Would it not be more prudent to assume she can be more than just the sum of her forebears?” he politely challenged, as his lips slowly curved into a warm smile reaching up to his eye. “I have it on good authority that the presence of a remarkable influence can change lives.”
She gave him a knowing look. “If you keep on flattering me like this, my head won’t be able to fit through doors.” she quipped, waving a washcloth in the direction of the room’s entrance for emphasis before tossing it aside. “Even without wearing my archbishop headdress.”
And she wasn’t lying about that either. Even after all these years, her husband’s unflinching sincerity never failed to banish swarms of butterflies to the depths of her stomach. If it were anyone else but him, she’d let it roll off her back like it was nothing but a gust of hot air. But with Dimitri, she held onto those sweet words like they were lifelines more often than not these days as she continued to muddle through all the demands their positions required.
“It’s not flattery if it’s the truth,” he earnestly responded, setting down the cloth on the nightstand and circling around the bed to join her in laundry folding. As he grabbed one of her sheer nightgowns at the top of the pile, he cast her an especially-fond look. “While it may sound like I’m waxing poetic, I meant every word of it. I know you would see through me if I attempted to humour you.”
An undignified snort escaped Byleth’s mouth when he raised her nightgown in front of his face like a gossamer partition. Seeing him act so wholesomely ridiculous always warmed her from the inside out, fully aware that this side of him was a wifely privilege no one else in the kingdom got to see.
“My Heart, I know you always mean what you say,” she said, lifting the hem of the gown up to see his dazzling face and smile once more. “So tell me, was your suggestion to have me teach our daughter about ‘proper’ tea parties to avoid the inevitable mountaintop pegasus chase?”
Instead of being met with a hearty chuckle, the question was met with a deafening pause.
“I wish it were that simple, Beloved.”
As Dimitri lowered the gown from his face and began to fold it into slightly uneven sections on the bedspread, his smile sobered as he busied himself with the task at hand for a moment to mull over his answer.
“I’m worried about Adelyn not getting enough opportunities to bond with the others,” he admitted. Although his smile remained, Byleth couldn’t ignore the growing cracks in it caused by the soft, solemn tinge in his voice. “And that… perhaps I am hindering her growth in irreparable ways.”
Byleth reached for his hand to give it a firm, reassuring squeeze.
Because her first pregnancy had been rather touch-and-go, Dimitri refused to endanger her health to give Deedee siblings, much to the exasperation of his courtiers. His sense of duty, however, also drove him to keep their daughter safe by keeping her close. She rarely left the territory with them on diplomatic trips to see her friends and nurture those relationships due to the risk he believed it posed. Byleth suspected this was why he was rather stringent with age-appropriate princess assassin skills, seeing as they were just as useful for getting into trouble as much as getting out of it.
As much as she was sometimes tempted to remind him that they’d survived far worse as only children, she couldn’t blame him for struggling with the balancing act when she too was struggling with her own.
“I get the feeling,” she said before indulging in the luxury of a long-drawn sigh. “I feel like I’m robbing Deedee of some valuable life lessons failure can teach her because I don’t want to see her sad.”
“Wanting to make our dearest daughter happy at the cost of everything else is as natural as breathing, I’m afraid,” he said, gently raising her hand and pressing his lips against her fingertips. “But… perhaps we both need to make a concerted effort to act more like teachers and less like tacticians trying to anticipate every move.”
“I know but it’s hard not to. Not when Deedee might not notice she’s coming on too strong again.” Byleth said, sighing some more. “You know how she can be when she puts her whole heart into something she wants.”
“I do. Bearers of Blaiddyd blood are incapable of doing anything in half-measures, it would seem,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye as he pressed another kiss on the back of her hand. “Belatedly, I also understand the desire to avoid another owl feather incident, considering that Adelyn can be rather, ah, diligent wherever she implements your suggestions.”
Byleth couldn’t help but inwardly smile at her husband’s predictably sanitized phrasing.
During the incident in question, Deedee had taken her advice to gift Delphine an owl feather to such a logical extreme that the older girl had asked if she’d defeathered an entire pegasus in abject horror. While Byleth herself was thoroughly impressed her daughter had gathered that many feathers in a short amount of time, she understood why the birthday gift did not have the desired effect on Delphine.
“At this point, there’s no use taking any more stabs in the dark,” she admitted. “I’ll ask Felix and Annette if a tea party would be a waste of time when they get here.”
When Dimitri’s eye widened at the same time he let go of her hand, the archbishop raised a brow.
“Gold for your thoughts?”
“Beloved, apologies for not mentioning this sooner but, have I not shown you Felix’s latest letter?”
The question sent both her brows well into her hairline. “Not unless he stopped writing letters after his son’s birth announcement. Why do you ask?”
“His latest letter hinted that Delphine could benefit from attending one of your tea parties.” he said, plucking a pair of rather misshapen tea cup doilies from the laundry basket. “Does this piece of information help you in any way to chart a course of action?”
“Dima, I need a lot more context,” she replied, snatching the doilies from his hands. “That could mean anything from Delphine needing remedial comportment lessons to building up her tolerance for sweets. Show me this letter.”
When he produced the letter from his pants’ pocket instead of walking towards the correspondence tray at his desk, the corners of Byleth’s lips couldn’t help but curl upward.
For someone who’d just advised her to stop acting like a tactician, Dimitri surely wasn’t following his own advice.
Grabbing the proffered letter, Byleth skimmed through the lines of the Duke’s slanted scrawls about various on-going disputes happening in Fraldarius — one involving barrels, weirdly enough — until she struck gold and found the passage her husband was referring to near the bottom.
The half-formed battle plans disappeared into the recesses of her mind as the built-up tension in her shoulders eased.
Definitely unexpected but this could work with a slightly different approach, she thought to herself.
“I have a better plan,” she announced. “But we’ll need to push back Deedee’s lesson until everyone’s arrived for the roundtable.”
It was rather cute how her husband’s ears perked up right when she suspected they would.
“We, as in both of us?”
“Correct,” the archbishop nodded, handing the letter back so she could point at the doilies. “I trust you already know where I’m going with this?”
Unlike the day she’d chosen him to be the White Heron cup representative, her husband did not dramatically proclaim that she was cursing them all to damnation at the request to play against his strengths. He simply leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead.
“Anything for you and our dearest daughter, my queen.”
💙💚💙
As luck would have it, it wouldn’t have mattered that it was a conscious decision to wait for the tea party lesson, the days leading up to the roundtable left her and Dimitri so busy that they asked the staff to do their laundry folding and paused the moratorium on soup deliveries to their chambers.
Byleth’s heavy workload in particular provided Deedee the opportunity to successfully sneak up on her not once but thrice — the smallest of silver linings to tide her daughter over when the aim of her visits was to convince her to push up the lesson date.
Glancing over at her husband as they crossed the threshold of the castle gardens and the sweet scent of their yellow and orange roses hit her nose, Byleth pointed to the large round table decked out in thick Blaiddyd blue cloth underneath the nearest white gazebo, flanked by four high-backed chairs.
“1000 gold donation says Deedee’s hiding underneath the table,” she whispered.
Dimitri gave her a playful look in kind. “It would be foolish of me to take that wager when I can see our daughter’s shoes from here,” he whispered back. “Care to indulge in a counter wager of 2000 gold if Delphine is there as well?”
“You know something I don’t?” she asked, her curiosity piqued.
“Perhaps I do, perhaps I don’t,” he cryptically replied with a practiced smile. “So will you take the wager?”
“Dima, you do know my bet was a joke, right?” “Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn’t,” he said, his smile growing wider. “Care to turn your jest into a friendly wager?”
Taking another good look at the gazebo ahead of them, she could only see the bottom of their daughter’s round-toe black shoes and a sliver of her pale blue dress from underneath the stiff, lopsided cloth. If Delphine was there too, she was completely obscured by Deedee.
“If you’re that eager to lose, let’s leave our weekly donations out of it.” she quipped. “I’ll take the bet that Delphine is under the table if I get to keep your next cross-stitch project.”
“Beloved, I cannot fathom why you would willingly want one of my abominations.” he said, wrinkling his nose as his smile sobered. “Unless you are taking unsurmountable odds on purpose, that is.”
“Not at all. That is my bet because I want it to be true for Deedee’s sake. And I want your cross-stitch project because you made it.” she answered as if she was stating facts like water was wet and their daughter was adorable. “Deedee loves your doilies for the same reason too, you know.”
Dimitri sighed. “I still cannot fathom why you would want such a thing but should it be what you desire, I will acquiesce.” he conceded, patting down the aforementioned doilies on the top of the large basket he was carrying. “Should I request something just as foolish then?”
“It wouldn’t be a silly wager if you didn’t, My Heart.”
“Fair enough,” he said, stroking his chin with a thumb and forefinger until a thought struck him like lightning, judging by the newfound light in his eye. “Should I win, I would like you to teach me how to tell jokes in an effective manner.”
Byleth raised a brow. “Not sure I’d be the best teacher for the job but I can try. Unless you meant that as a joke.”
“Heavens, no. The request was entirely serious,” he laughed. “I have been informed time and time again that people often take my words at face value, regardless of my intent. Given the nature of today’s lesson, I thought it appropriate.”
“Makes sense,” she said, reaching out to shake his free hand.
Once the wager was accepted with a feather-light handshake, they quickened their pace to make short work of the remaining distance to the barren table. With the cutlery, plates, and saucers on a different table deeper into the gardens, the archbishop sensed a golden opportunity to lessen the pressure of tea party formalities.
In quick succession, Byleth’s eyes darted between from the basket Dimitri was holding, to the bottom of the table, then back to Dimitri himself.
“Follow my lead,” she mouthed under her breath, motioning to his basket. When he handed it over, Byleth crouched down and lifted the cloth, eliciting a high-pitched gasp as she flipped the cloth up and revealed the underside of the table.
“Girls, make room,” she instructed, barely containing her even keel professor-ly tone in the wake of her wish for her daughter coming true. “We’re having the tea party down here.”
“But if we’re sitting on the ground, how can we have a proper tea party?”
Déjà vu hit Byleth like a well-aimed finger flick to the face.
Of course, both the gasp and question came from the navy-haired Fraldarius girl. Not because of her looks, no, but rather because her own daughter rarely questioned her unorthodox methods — this much was obvious when Deedee took her joke names for stealth techniques so seriously they didn’t register as made up names to her. (Dimitri wasn’t the only one lacking in the joke telling department.)
“The three pillars of a proper tea party are tea, snacks, and company. Anything else is optional, even if it is encouraged by others.” Byleth explained. “It doesn’t matter if you have a party on the ground or on a table. Does that make sense?”
Delphine’s stiff nod and the gloss of panic in her amber eyes caught her by surprise.
Based on Felix’s letter, Byleth was under the impression that she shied away from things she wasn’t naturally gifted at, sometimes going as far as hiding her weaknesses altogether. For this reason, it didn’t take a genius to intuit that seeing a messy, non-traditional tea party might do her some good but, something told the archbishop that this plan needed another pivot. She couldn’t shake her gut feeling that the ponytail-sporting girl’s nod was out of deference rather than actual buy-in, something she’d seen Annette do time and time again—
“—Mother, could we still have the tea party on a table?” Deedee piped up, breaking Byleth’s chain of thought. “I’m worried ants will crawl on the sugar dust cookies if we eat on the ground. Delphine told me our castle’s cookies are her favourite so I don’t want her to eat ants.”
The queen resisted the urge to do a double take. Not because of the specifics of what her daughter said, but rather because of several implications, including the possibility that Deedee may have already followed her advice by asking about something Delphine liked without scaring her off — a huge win if that hypothesis was correct.
Curious, she focused her attention on the older girl to fish for more information.
“I had no idea you enjoyed cookies. Is that so?”
If Byleth didn’t know any better, she swore the tips of Delphine’s ears turned red.
“Only the ones here,” she reluctantly admitted. “I don’t like the ones at my home because the baking staff use weird spices or make them too plain. I like my mother’s cookies better but she always burns them. Please don’t tell my parents. I’ve convinced them I don’t like sweets to spare everyone’s feelings.”
“Your secret is safe with us until you’re ready to tell them yourself, Delphine,” Dimitri assured with a twinkle in his eye as he crouched down to join his wife. Looking over towards their daughter, he added, “Isn’t that right, Adelyn?”
“Oh yes, I’ll keep your secret safe just like this handkerchief you left behind!” she said, producing the familiar orange handkerchief from her pocket to give back to her. “I’ve been learning stealth techniques so I could even hide the cookies even if your family comes by.”
The older girl’s expression grew incredulous as she looked down to the handkerchief then back to Deedee herself.
“How would you use stealth techniques on cookies? Is that a fancy way of saying you’d shove them in your mouth?”
“Deedee’s technique would be to shove them in my mouth, actually.” Byleth deadpanned, eliciting a muffled chuckle turned fake cough from her husband. Without missing a beat, she turned to face him and added, “We should start this tea party now so you can have tea to soothe your throat.”
“We should,” he agreed, letting out another fake cough for good measure. “But first, I believe Adelyn wants to give our guest of honour a little something to commemorate this tea party before we get started.”
Deedee blinked hard, screwing her eyes in concentration at her father’s words. “I do?”
Dimitri tapped the side of the basket on the ground beside his wife. “Yes, you do.” he gently reminded her. “Remember our conversation right before our guests arrived the other day?”
When the words clicked, her big blue eyes widened and she practically dove headfirst into the basket to fish out her husband’s doilies and two other items Byleth couldn’t quite make out. The queen’s breath stilled. Her instincts screamed that her daughter was about to instigate another owl feather incident but she kept quiet. She had to trust that her husband had steered their daughter in the right direction with their little talk.
Once Deedee found what she was looking for, she presented the four objects to her friend.
“Father gathered souvenirs for everyone to remember this day,” she announced, practically beaming from ear to ear. “Everyone gets one but since you’re the guest of honour, you get to pick first. If you don’t want any, that’s ok too.”
Leaning forward just a smidge, Byleth couldn’t help but smile.
In addition to the two misshapen doilies that were in the laundry basket the last time they had the time to fold laundry together, she spotted her husband’s cross-stitch project from that day with the hole in the center of it, and one other cross-stitch project she hadn’t seen before — a simple but recognizable outline of a pegasus’s side profile in grey thread aside from a hint of black for a beady little eye.
“I’d like this one since it looks just like Angel Cake, please and thank you.” Delphine said, grabbing the pegasus picture.
The archbishop resisted the urge to snort at her husband’s stunt.
For a man who’d claimed he didn’t know how to handle this delicate situation, he sure didn’t let that stop him from trying to do damage control anyway by giving the girl who loves pegasi a pegasus picture as insurance. So simple yet so effective to curry favour.
“You like the cross-stitch picture I made? I’m deeply honoured, Delphine.”
Upon hearing the words of gratitude come out of Deedee’s mouth instead of her husband’s, Byleth realized her error and recanted her earlier thought. Dimitri gathering alternate gifts to prop up Deedee’s was nothing short of genius.
“I do. Very much so.” Delphine told the younger girl. “Do you and your father, er, Your Majesty, both cross-stitch?”
“We do it for fun, even though Father has a hard time controlling his strength,” Deedee confirmed. “He says it’s important to do things we’re not good at to remind ourselves that it’s ok to not be perfect all the time.”
Picking up the other cross-stitch picture, Delphine’s expression softened as she took in the details. “I like how the picture makes the most of the mistake by using the big hole for the lion’s mouth.” she remarked, shifting her attention towards Dimitri. “Your Majesty, did you make this one?”
“That is indeed mine,” he admitted with a curt nod. “While I lack the needed dexterity to avoid adding extra holes to my projects, I do enjoy the challenge of finding creative solutions instead of despairing over my weaknesses.” When he paused for a beat, Byleth’s chest fluttered when he gave her his signature lopsided smile. “Beloved, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you started your tea parties at Garreg Mach for similar reasons, did you not?”
Oh, that was smooth, she thought to herself in response to her husband creating the opening they’d been waiting for to embark on their side mission to help Delphine.
And here she thought they’d have to resort to having him pretend to break a tea cup by accident to show that mistakes and weaknesses weren’t the end of the world, no matter who you were or what your station was. This was far better. She could speak to this with her eyes closed if she had to.
“It’s true,” she said. “I thought providing students with tea and snacks would buy me some time to get to know them better. I didn’t let my lack of knowledge on proper etiquette stop me from having tea parties with the noble students.”
“But your tea parties are proper now since you’re the archbishop and queen, right?” Delphine asked, looking rather confused.
The archbishop-queen shook her head. “They haven’t changed in the slightest. Remembering all the rules and different spoons doesn’t come naturally to me, even now.” she admitted. “Deedee suggested it because she thought it might be a fun activity to try. And if it’s not your thing, we can find something else you’d enjoy. Right, kiddo?”
“Oh yes!” her daughter eagerly answered with a nod so vigorous she mussed up her hair. “We may not have pegasi but there are plenty of things we can do. Do you like painting?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t tried it but I’d like to see if I’m any good at it.” Delphine answered honestly. “Could we eat some cookies then go paint right away?”
“That’s a great idea! Oh—” As if she suddenly remembered she was not alone with her friend, the younger girl looked over at her parents with a rather sheepish expression. “Mother, Father… is it ok if we do that?”
Looking at one another, Byleth and Dimitri didn’t even need to exchange a single word before the former reached into the basket for the cloth bag full of cookies and handed it to the Fraldarius girl without a second thought.
“Have fun, girls.”
Both girls looked at Byleth as if she’d grown another head, their eyes as big as saucers.
“Wait. Really?” Delphine asked in pure disbelief, holding onto the bag of cookies as if she was guarding a treasure chest of sorts.
“Really, really.” Byleth confirmed in a matter-of-fact tone. “Don’t let us get in the way of your fun. All I ask is that you keep a watchful eye on Deedee. Don’t let her sneak into rooms unattended. Got it?”
“Got it, Your Majesty Queen Archbishop. I’ll find one of your staff to bring us to the right room for painting.” she affirmed before motioning to Deedee with a budding grin. “Let’s go!”
Quicker than a lightning flash, both girls left in a blink of an eye, the sound of their giggles and footsteps growing softer and softer in no time at all. When the gardens were quiet enough to hear the cicadas buzzing in the distance once more, Dimitri moved the basket aside to sit beside his wife.
“Well… that certainly did not go to plan,” he remarked in an amused tone. “Would you still consider this endeavour a success?”
“I would. Even if the lessons went over Delphine’s head, I’d call it a success since she chose to spend time with Deedee. I’m confident the rest will fix itself as they spend more time together.” she answered before plucking out a small container from the basket. “In the meantime, care to drink lukewarm tea and eat a block of cheese while I stare at you for old times’ sake?”
“Always, Beloved,” he said, punctuating his sentence with a kiss on her cheek. “Always.”