Chapter Text
Annette began preparing for her departure to Fhirdiad as soon as they set foot in the castle, eschewing almost everything else in favor of packing and planning. She was late to dinner their first evening back and rushed through her plate so fast Felix almost thought she expected to be ambushed by an enemy any moment.
He stared after her when she slipped back out the door with an apology, the knife lodged in his chest twisting.
He walked alone to her quarters, determined to at least check on her if she didn’t welcome him, but when he knocked she didn’t answer. He scrubbed a hand over his face to muffle a sigh before turning back down the corridor and heading towards the library.
He found her hidden behind a pile of books, some with little notes in her own handwriting jotted in the margins. She scribbled in a journal, often lifting her head to reference the few books lying open on the table around her, and didn’t even react when he dropped into the empty chair beside her.
“Is this how it will be every night until you leave?” he asked.
At last she flinched, jerking her head with her eyes wild and her arms raised, before recognizing him. “Don’t sneak up on me, Felix,” she said.
“I didn’t,” he said. “I think you just didn’t hear me.”
“Perhaps not,” she agreed with a hunching of her shoulders. A sigh escaped her as she returned her attention to her journal. “Look what you made me do.”
Felix offered her his handkerchief, which she frantically dabbed at the jagged streak of ink that stretched across her page. “Are you going to answer my question?” he wondered.
“What did you ask again?” Annette said absently.
“Is this how every night will be till you leave?”
“I’ll come to bed when I’m done, if that’s what you’re wondering.” She frowned down at one of her references before crossing something out in her journal. “No, that’s wrong…”
“Which will be…when?” he pressed. “I remember how late your bedtimes were during the war.”
“I just need to have at least my first week of lessons planned since term starts soon after I return to Fhirdiad.”
Felix didn’t comment that it looked more like she was trying to plan her entire term.
“You can sleep in my rooms,” Annette told him. “I don’t mind.”
He didn’t say that he wanted to sleep with her, and that he wasn’t sure if he trusted she would retire in a timely manner.
She didn’t. He nodded off while polishing a sword in her private sitting room, only to jerk awake and glance towards the wall-mounted clock. When he noticed the hour he went to check in the bedchamber, only to find the bed empty.
“Dammit, Annette,” he hissed before deserting her quarters and once more walking to the library.
Unlike when he found her there after dinner, she’d fallen asleep on her pile of books, her low-burning covered lamp casting its glow on her ink-streaked cheek and parted lips.
No warmth filled him now, only liquid ice that coursed through his blood and coalesced as dread in his abdomen. He rested his hand on Annette’s shoulder but decided against shaking her awake so she could waste time trying to persuade him again, instead slipping his arms around her and lifting her just like he had mere weeks ago.
She didn’t wake the entire walk back to her rooms, or by the time he set her on her bed. He unlaced and tugged off her boots, but before he could decide if she’d mind if he undressed her, her eyelids fluttered open, and she squinted up at him.
She hummed and rolled onto her side, patting the bed. “Just a nap, Felix,” she mumbled into the pillow, “then I’ll get back to work.”
He snorted but made quick work of his own clothes before joining her.
The next few days passed much the same. Annette buried herself in the library and ignored his attempts to convince her to retire at a reasonable time, after which he found her and carried her to bed. He endured the first and second incidents with some exasperation, but by the third dinner she deserted after only clearing half her plate his frustration boiled over.
“Why?” he demanded, confronting her in her room after dragging her inside where they had more privacy than the corridor. “Why do you need all day, every day to plan your lessons?”
“Because I want them to be good,” she said. “I can’t waste my students’ time with poorly prepared lessons where they don’t learn anything.”
“At the cost of your sleep?” he said. “At the cost of–of me being able to see you before you leave me?”
She recoiled as if he’d slapped her, her eyes widening. “It–it’s not like I’m doing this to spite you, Felix!” she said. “It’s–I just–”
“What?” he said. “What are you trying to do?”
“I-I just want to prove I can do both!” Annette snapped, her face red with anger and the same frustration that coursed through him. “I want to prove to the dean that he was wrong when he said I couldn’t, to your mother that she shouldn’t doubt me. I’m selfish enough I want both these things so much I–I can’t think of anything else! I want to be a tenured professor and teach in Fhirdiad, a-and I want to be married to and raise children with the man I love!”
Her words echoed through the room, in the space between his ears, inside his chest. While each one stunned him more than the last - except why should they? He’d known Annette so long he knew her tendency to take on too much for frivolous reasons - eventually he managed to eke out through his dry throat, “You…never told me the dean said you couldn’t do it.”
She gaped at him, her eyes wide, her cheeks red. “ That’s the only thing you took away from my rant?”
“N-no,” he said, raising his hand before she could storm away from him into the bedchamber and slam the door shut behind her or–or something. “I’m just…thinking. Processing. It was…a lot.”
“I know I talk too much,” Annette said. “I-I ramble, I–”
“Stop,” he cut her off. “I-I mean, don’t stop talking too much, but stop thinking like that, like–like every word I say to you has some hidden meaning or–or something!”
“I’m sorry,” she blurted. “I just–I’ve been doing it to you as long as I’ve known you, I–” Her eyes pinched shut.
“Then I’ll say what I want now,” Felix said, “and you’ll know I mean every word.”
She opened her eyes again and nodded almost solemnly.
“First, I wish you’d told me about the dean,” he said. A sigh escaped him as he brushed a few irritating strands of hair away from his face. “I-I’m not sure you would’ve liked anything I would’ve done to set him straight, but I wish you’d given me that option.”
“It’s not your responsibility,” Annette protested. “It’s my career, while you’re busy enough as Duke Fraldarius.”
“So?” Felix retorted. “Being your husband is one of my responsibilities. Dammit, it’s my most important responsibility! If you’re suffering and I don’t know about it, I feel–I feel worse than useless. And don’t you feel bad about that now!” he hastily added before she could apologize again.
He hated seeing her worn out and upset, weighed down and weary. If she carried the burden of Fraldarius with him, then she should let him help with whatever troubled her too.
“Second, you’re not selfish,” he said. “If you’re selfish, then what does that make me? I-I want you to stay, I don’t want you to be gone for almost half a year.”
“But you’re not trying to stop me,” Annette reminded him, “a-are you?”
He shook his head. His feet carried him towards her against his will, till he could grasp her shoulders and pull her closer while she tilted her head back to stare up at him. “But you have no idea how badly I want to, Annette,” he said. “I-I want to make you my captive as much as I am yours, if only to keep you from leaving.”
She closed her eyes again. “I-it won’t be forever,” she said, “and–and a part of me wants to stay with you too.”
He bit back the words that rose from his chest, ones that would insist she stay after all. He cupped her jaw, her neck, his fingertips sliding into her hair as he pulled her face towards his and rested his forehead against hers.
“Just tell me you’ll miss me, Annette,” he whispered, so close she should taste the words on his breath. “Tell me you’ll miss me as much as I’ll miss you.”
Her fingers closed around his wrist, but she didn’t pull him off, only gripped him tight. “O-of course I will, Felix,” she said.
“Then third…” he trailed off as his heart drummed against his ribs, as he swallowed around the dryness in his throat. “I-I want anything you want. Because I-I love you.”
The words came far more easily than he’d expected, because he knew Annette needed to hear them aloud.
Her breath stuttered against his lips, her eyes wide. “Felix…” She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him against her, pressing her face into his shoulder. “I love you too, but you…you were so reluctant to marry me when I offered.”
His arms slid around her waist, and he buried his face in her hair. “It wasn’t because I didn’t want to,” he confessed. “I thought you deserved better than letting me marry you for money.”
“Why do you think I offered in the first place?” Annette asked. “W-why do you think I made you promise you’d never take a lover? I couldn’t stand the thought of you being with someone else.”
“I don’t want to be with someone else,” he insisted. He kissed her hair, he kissed her hairline, he would’ve kissed her lips too if she didn’t hold him so tight.
She sniffed, then laughed, the sound musical in his ears. “This is…so stupid,” she said. “Why am I crying? I’m so happy now I could die.”
Felix jerked away from her and cupped her jaw, catching a tear with the tip of his thumb. “Don’t you dare ,” he hissed.
She laughed again, laughed despite the shine in her eyes. She clutched his hand to press it closer, her fingertips slipping between his. “It’s just a figure of speech, Felix,” she said, “but all right, I’m so happy I could sing.”
“Would you?” he wondered.
“Incorrigible,” she said, but he felt her smile against his mouth when he leaned down to kiss her.
“Only for you,” he murmured into her lips. “Only with you, so please let me have these next few days before you leave.” His mouth slid languidly over hers, till she sighed and sagged into him. “Please.”
“Only if you visit me while I’m in Fhirdiad,” she said. “Only if you–you tell me you love me again.”
And what else could her captive husband whisper in her ear while she clung to him with all her strength and he loved her with all of his?