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Mail from Faerghus came by pegasus or with the merchants, and only rarely. All of the Faerghus mail was given to Hubert who kept it in his office. For the first few weeks, she, Sylvain, and Felix would end up looking for Hubert at the same time, as though they had scheduled it. They’d say hello, say a few more words, and then keep moving. In the academy, they had become friends again, but after five years, fighting in their own respective territories, their friendship was back to where they had started at the beginning of their education. Maybe worse.
One week, the professor had been assigned letter duty, and it was like being back in school, back when the professor would lug around a big sack full of miscellaneous objects and go around showing everyone what was inside. She, Felix, and Sylvain had a good laugh watching the professor reach into the sack and pull out some letters, then stuff some back in and look for the right one.
“I know I have something for each of you,” the professor said, growing increasingly flustered.
“Enough,” Felix said. He made the professor hold the sack open and stuck his hands in. He pulled out letter after letter; if it had one of their names on it, he’d pass it to Ingrid or Sylvain. Then he started tossing letters onto the floor in frustration, leaving the professor to bend down and gather them before they could be taken away by one of the dogs or a gust of wind. Ingrid caught Sylvain leaning back to admire the view—either of Felix or the professor, she didn’t know. It was deplorable either way.
“Hey, come on,” Sylvain said. “There’s no need to make such a mess.”
“Useless people don’t get to talk,” Felix said.
Finally, they found it. It was a letter from one of Felix’s cousins.
“Either a call for aid or a letter to tell me she hates me,” he said. “Pointless either way.”
“That’s the only type of mail I get from my family these days, too,” Sylvain said.
“You should open it,” Ingrid said; Felix had a scowl that said he might chuck the letter over the railing.
“Fine. If you’ll open yours.”
One of the letters Ingrid received was from Count Galatea, and Sylvain had a letter from the Margrave. If the professor hadn’t been there, Ingrid would have scoffed and told Felix to stop deflecting or ignoring her, but she didn’t want to seem childish. She opened the letter from her father. Sylvain dropped his smile and opened the letter from the Margrave.
Dear Ingrid… It pains my heart… It may seem tempting to run away from your responsibilities and do whatever you please. The knights in the stories you love so much would never… Have you forgotten the prince or Glenn? … you swore an oath of loyalty… I know you loved him… Please come back. I love you.
Her eyes barely registered the words. All she felt was the pressure of teeth in her chest.
“Hubert asked me to collect any parchment that you do not plan on keeping,” the professor said. “We’re running low.”
“I don’t know how much use you’ll get out of this, but it’s yours if you need it,” Ingrid said, handing the letter over to the professor. She could see where her father had scraped off the words of another letter from the parchment. The membrane was thin enough to see through in some places. Felix also tossed his letter at the professor. Sylvain held onto his.
“I should write back to let him know I’ve already sworn loyalty to the emperor,” he said. “You should, too, if you want the letters to stop. And to keep Hubert from going through our letters all the time. I don’t mind him reading stuff from my dad, but I’m still trying to keep up with the ladies, you know?”
“Sylvain, if you die because of something you wrote, I’m not rescuing you from it,” Ingrid said.
“Don’t bother. Sylvain can’t seduce anyone with his letters. People only like him for his face,” Felix said.
“Ouch, ouch!”
“Even if you write that you’re swearing loyalty to the emperor, no one will take it seriously,” Felix said. “They’ll just think you’re asking the emperor for dinner. You’re fickle and haven’t been faithful to anything in your life. Why would you choose Edelgard?”
“Please, stop, you’re hurting me. Hey, professor, let’s have lunch together. The dining hall’s closing soon.”
The professor shook her head and held up her letter sack. She was still going to make her deliveries, it seemed. She was always devoted to her duties. Ingrid admired that.
Ingrid joined Felix and Sylvain for lunch. They sat at the table they used to sit at when they were students and ordered the same dishes they used to get when they were students, meat skewers and onion soup, and laughed like they were students. The only sign things had changed were the soldiers and children surrounding them. A few tables down, Linhardt was telling Ferdinand, “Honestly, if I were Hubert, I’d have you under surveillance all of the time to make sure you’re not letting anything slip in your letters to your father. If they really trusted you, they would’ve told you about the plan ahead of time.”
“Linhardt, it wounds me that you would say Edelgard and Hubert don’t trust me,” Ferdinand said. “I’ve known both since we were children, and while I might share a title with my father, I’ve never gone against Edelgard.”
“Very nice,” Linhardt said. “If Hubert’s spies are watching, I hope they take note.”
“What? Do not twist my words like that!” Ferdinand said, hitting the table with his fists like a small child. “Wake up, Linhardt!”
It seemed like whenever Ingrid saw the Black Eagles, they were in good spirits. Was that because their morale was high or because they didn’t trust her to be vulnerable? Goodness knew that she wouldn’t want to be upset around many of the people in the dining hall.
“I’m definitely going to say something to Edelgard later,” Sylvain said. He reached over to take a slice of bread from Felix’s plate. “Ow. Okay, you can keep it.”
“Don’t say anything to her,” Felix said. “She’ll use it to make you swear Gautier to her after the war’s over.”
“What’s the problem with that?” Sylvain said. “We can’t ally ourselves with the Kingdom if Rhea’s camping in Faerghus. No one knows if Dimitri survived our last skirmish, and I’m not swearing anything to Claude. Who knows what he’d have us do. Edelgard’s the only game in town.”
“You should swear yourself to people because you want to protect them, not yourself,” Ingrid said.
“We don’t owe anything to the dead,” Felix said. “He should stay that way.”
“That’s not true, Felix,” she said. “And you know it.”
His jaw worked. Then he said, “You should have become a normal woman. You’re trying to become Glenn, but you don’t have any part of him except the shell. That’s all.”
“How does every fight between you two involve dragging around his dead corpse around again?” Sylvain said.
Sylvain had his head in his hands. His fingers gripped his hair. He looked in pain, in a way that Ingrid almost never saw him, and she could see, in Felix, something similar, a rigid way of holding his head and neck. Couldn’t they see that it was the same for her? She was hurt, too. She wished she could make the rest of the dining hall quiet: the bright clank of knife and fork on plates, the high-pitched voices of children, the middle tones of adults, the low, deep sound of air deforming under the wyverns’ wings, all needed to be silenced so Felix could hear her more clearly.
“Look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn’t join Dimitri if he asked you to,” she said.
She knew that would silence him. He glowered at her and shook his head, and after that, ignored her. He said terrible things to Sylvain without any friendliness, and went to train without her. Sylvain said he was going into town to do some shopping. In other words, to find someone to play with. It didn’t even bother Ingrid anymore; she wished… She didn’t need his attitude, but she wished she had a reliable way of blowing off steam.
#
Sylvain must have sent that letter to his father. He started spending more time with the Black Eagles: Reason lessons with Hubert and Dorothea, exchanging letters with Bernadetta, hours spent lazing around with Linhardt. She saw him talking with Edelgard a few times while Hubert watched impassively from whatever corner of the room he was in; he always walked away chastened. The insincerity was repulsive. She could understand Felix’s disdain for him.
Sylvain had been the first of them to join the Black Eagles when they were students. And Ingrid had followed a few months later, for a ridiculously flimsy reason: the professor returned her pegasus horseshoe to her and surprised her with a book, and she was so elated to be taken seriously as a young knight, not the responsible, keeping-it-together friend or the young, marriageable prospect, that she blurted out that she wanted to join the professor’s class. There was nothing wrong with Manuela as an instructor, but whenever Ingrid talked about being a knight, she’d start winking at Ingrid and talking about what strong arms she’d need. Clearly, Manuela didn’t take her seriously at all. She had to become a real knight as soon as possible before she could be married away. Felix had followed weeks after as the professor’s reputation for swordsmanship improved.
That was all it took to separate them from Dimitri. There should be more paperwork to keep young students from making impulsive decisions. How had something that small led to them abandoning their former country for the Empire? She thought she was just switching classes. Five years later, she was in service to a lord she never imagined.
This was not to say that Edelgard was an improper lord, unless you counted having Hubert as her right hand. From what Ingrid could tell, that strange face he had was just how his features were and he really was about their age; rumors used to go around that he was secretly forty-five and an imperial plant. Edelgard was more than a proficient warrior, and on top of that, she was hands-on with logistics in a way she found hard to imagine Dimitri being. Although she rarely said much to Ingrid, whenever she did, there was evidence of her whole heart being in there, somewhere. With Dimitri, sometimes—only sometimes—there was only the veneer.
On the battlefield, Ingrid, having flown far away on her pegasus in pursuit of a mage, would fly back and catch Edelgard cleaving a man in two. Sylvain and Felix watched the emperor, too: Sylvain checking the face of her enemy for any familiar features or insignia, Felix searching for anything beastly in Edelgard’s face or movements. And every time it was the same: Felix would nod, satisfied with what he saw, and Sylvain would wince and ride away.
#
The weeks went by.
Felix stopped taking letters. Ingrid kept going to see Hubert alone. She discovered that Hubert had a second office, where he preferred to work. The one she, Sylvain, and Felix had gone to was apparently only for trifling affairs. She could see a stack of growing letters meant for Felix on Hubert’s desk, and when she offered to take them to him, Hubert laughed.
“You have better things to be than a letter runner,” he said.
“Then why do I see the professor making so many deliveries?”
“That’s her own fault.”
She saw Felix and Sylvain together, occasionally, when she was on her way up to Hubert’s office. Sylvain often chased after Felix, one time hopping around with his pants around his knees, another time with all the buttons of his shirt undone. If he wasn’t chasing after Felix, he was escorting some young woman back into town before the rest of the monastery woke up. If Felix wasn’t being chased, he was on his way to the training grounds, swords, gauntlets, and even axes in hand. She never asked them to come with her, but she didn’t stop going to Hubert’s office at the same time, week after week.
She got into the habit of reading the letters in Hubert’s office and giving them back to him so he could make use of the parchment. Her father, an unstoppable fountain of words, continued to send letters, even after she told him she wasn’t going back until the war was over, and she hoped he’d understand. She was putting them in the best position she could for the future with her own power, she wrote, only half-believing herself. She had killed so many people that she was starting to wonder whether marriage was the more sensible option for peace after all.
These days he sounded depressed. He wrote about their lands and the harvest and the people. The people were nervous and neglected their crops; how he missed her pegasus.
This office was close to Edelgard’s rooms, and once, when Ingrid was reading, Edelgard strolled in and said, “I refuse to allow the monastery to be contaminated by this filth! Oh. Good morning, Ingrid.”
“I’m sorry for bothering you both,” Ingrid said, putting the letter down. It was early in the morning. Edelgard only had half of her hair up and her head bore no sign of a crown. She came into the office in plainclothes, not her red gown, and barefoot, too. She looked human and gentle like this, and Ingrid, despite being fully dressed with a sword at her hip, felt underdressed, like she should be in full armor.
“No, I should be the one to apologize,” Edelgard said. “I’ve only come to complain to Hubert about the state of the quarters.”
“My door is always open for you, Your Highness,” Hubert said. “If I may say so, this is as good of a time as any for you to tell Ingrid the news.”
“Yes.” Edelgard faced Ingrid. The sternness returned. “I wanted to discuss this with you privately. Dimitri has sent letters to you, Sylvain, and Felix. I’ve told Sylvain this already, but you’re free to return to Faerghus at any time. I’ll understand, though know that I won’t hesitate to strike you down if we meet on the battlefield.”
“Think carefully before you speak,” Hubert said.
She didn’t know why he had said that. Dread swelled her tongue and throat. Waves of coldness spread through her, starting from her arms and legs and racing up to her stomach and chest. All she wanted was to warp to a point in time when she had never heard it. Being here, in this room, in front of this lord, was all wrong. She should not be in here. She had to go home.
“More than Dimitri, I’m loyal to the professor for making my—my dreams,” she said. Her voice cracked and she had to clear her throat. “If I choose to leave—”
“Hubert will oversee that,” Edelgard said quickly.
“I don’t plan to leave, but if I—”
“It will be handled administratively. I’ve never understood that Kingdom custom of swearing fealty to a single person or a single house. Although, I’m curious, Ingrid. Even before you learned this, would you have sworn yourself to me? Perhaps that should guide your decision.”
For the first time, Ingrid realized that she had to tilt her head down to make eye contact with Edelgard. It didn’t change her perception of Edelgard at all. If anything, it made her want to get down on a bended knee.
“I will swear loyalty now, if that would please you,” Ingrid said.
“It would not,” Edelgard said. Ingrid felt as though she had humiliated herself, though neither Edelgard nor Hubert showed any sign of disdain on their faces. “We’re headed for the Kingdom soon. The next time we fight, Dimitri may very well be on the other side of the battlefield. Keep that in mind if you choose to stay.”
#
The next day, the professor took them on a money run: hunting down thieves in the mountains. By then, more information had started trickling in from the Kingdom. The prince was not the same as before. The prince killed for sport. He hated anything living. It was like waking from one nightmare and into another.
They were sent into battle to protect Ferdinand and Petra’s flanks and rear, all on foot. Ordinarily, Ingrid would have felt insulted to be asked to trail behind instead of darting on ahead, but she quickly understood why. Right now, as she was, she was no good. Felix snapped at everyone who got too close; even Petra, one of the sweetest people in the army, avoided saying much to him. Sylvain’s form with the lance looked wobbly, especially with Ferdinand fighting right next to him with his usual flair.
When someone was in trouble, Ingrid would lunge to try to push them out of the way, only to crash into Sylvain or Felix, who had the same idea. If a bandit pointed a sword at her, Sylvain would sling a series of Fire spells at them and miss. Felix’s sword never hit the enemy clean enough to take them down on the first hit, and his anger only made him sloppier. She would have liked to say they improved as the fight wore on, but they remained rattled. Petra had to circle back to them to provide help when it should have been them rushing to meet her.
Afterwards, she ate with Felix and Sylvain by their tent. They always got along best when they were fresh off the field. More often not, they yelled at each other for making one or both of them worry. They had grown up in war, so it made sense to her that this was the only way they knew how to care for each other.
They were alone at the outer edge of the camp, in their own private circle of light from the fire. The other officers were celebrating with the professor, leaving them alone to fight. Too reckless. No good at infantry lancework. So mediocre at magic that they couldn’t understand how Sylvain had spent so many hours working for so little result. Felix was becoming a hateful man. Ingrid lived in a fantasy world. Sylvain had made himself into a stupid toy for others to play with.
“I hate this,” Sylvain groaned. “I hate this is where we are!”
“Speak for yourself,” Felix said. “I’m stronger here than I’d ever be fighting for someone else.”
“Even if you’re strong, you have to have something to believe in,” Ingrid said.
“Strength is its own reward.”
They went on like this for what felt like forever. When they were too tired to fight, they sat around the fire, feeling limp and exhausted. The noise from the center camp was getting louder, and the sound of revel wore out Ingrid’s ears.
“I’m going to bed,” she said. “Put out the fire when you’re done.”
“Don’t lecture me about how to put on a fire,” Sylvain said, all petulance and no calm. Felix raised his head briefly to make one of his angry noises.
She thought she’d be alone in the tent long enough to change, but Sylvain and Felix put the fire out and returned to the tent while she was still pulling on her nightclothes.
“It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, don’t worry,” Sylvain said, already bare-chested.
“That doesn’t make it better,” Ingrid said. “Turn away.”
“All right, all right.”
He did what she asked, turning toward the entrance so she and Felix could change in peace. Once they were done changing, they set their bed rolls in place. It was a tent mostly devoted to their weapons and armor, and with everything they had requisitioned from the bandits, there wasn’t much room for sleeping. No matter how Ingrid tried, she kept knocking into Sylvain’s foot or elbow. Worse, she was aware of how aware he was of her, and how he was caught between her and Felix, and how he felt too big for the tent; and she could sense Felix, still fuming, or maybe he had let go and was now trying his best to sleep. The three of them had slept together like this many times, but this was the first time she could remember feeling sad that they were nearby.
“Are you awake?” she said into the dark. “I’m sorry about what I said.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Felix said. “You were right.”
“I wasn’t. Not wholly.” She heard Felix make a grunt that probably meant, ‘It’s fine.’ It wasn’t fine. For weeks, her stomach felt like a boiling pot of awfulness. No matter how she tried to forget it, it always returned. Without a king, her dreams of knighthood were meaningless. Her current lord, or employer, whatever the emperor was to her, wanted to abolish the whole idea of nobility and knighthood and replace it with something that Ingrid had earnestly tried to understand, but couldn’t get her head around. It wasn’t that she thought those things were worth keeping if the Church really was as bad as Edelgard said, but what if she really was hopelessly out of time and place, a naïve fool who believed life was like a storybook? What if this, what they were going through now, was the real life she had tried to run away from? She turned her face into the blanket, not wanting her friends to notice the tears that came to her eyes.
Sylvain turned to her and put his arm across her waist, careful to avoid her breasts.
“It’ll be easier to sleep if we were all closer, wouldn’t it?” he said, turning around and pulling Felix closer. “Come on. Just like when we were kids. It’s warmer this way, too.”
“Stop talking,” Felix said, either because he wanted to enjoy the moment in silence or because they were still fighting. He reached over and put his arm on Sylvain’s waist, close enough so Ingrid could hold his hand. She took his hand and clasped it in hers, and was relieved when he didn’t pull away.
#
She woke up before Felix and Sylvain.
It was dawn. She had taken a barrage of punches to the side the day before and had declined to be healed, thinking it wasn’t so bad, but she woke up stiff and aching.
Aside from the guards and watchmen, the only other people awake were the emperor and Hubert. Did either of them ever sleep? Ingrid first thought she should leave them alone until Hubert raised his hand at her in greeting and she had no idea what to do. Was that a sign of overt friendliness? She decided to go to them.
“Good morning, Your Majesty,” Ingrid said. “Hubert.”
“Good morning, Ingrid.” Edelgard was already in armor. Her hair was done up, her horned crown placed securely on her head. Ingrid, in comparison, was embarrassingly only in her nightclothes and the coat she had thrown over it. Her encounters with the emperor always left her feeling naked. “Do you train so early every morning? I admire your industry.”
“No training, Your Majesty. I get up early to have more time to think.”
“That, too, is a good use of time.” Edelgard and Hubert turned their heads subtly to one another, a gesture Ingrid did her best to ignore. “I’m glad to see you’re still with us. I know it couldn’t have been an easy decision for you.”
Hubert stifled a yawn. “Apologies, emperor,” he said.
“Can I ask you something, Your Majesty?” Ingrid said. “Is it true what they say about Dimitri? That he’s not…” Edelgard inclined her head forward. A sadness filled her eyes, a sadness Ingrid had not expected to see. “That means any oath I’ve made to him…”
“You want to be released from your obligations. I see.”
Ingrid tried to not look surprised. So she was that obvious.
“I’ve been thinking about what you’ve said,” Ingrid said. “About not understanding why we swear loyalty to just one person. And it doesn’t make sense to me, not when you have Hubert.”
“You would be mistaken to think it’s like the ceremonies they have in the Kingdom, where the king swears line after line of men, some who he’s never seen before. Hubert chose my path on his own,” Edelgard said. Ingrid had the sense that Edelgard was direly unfamiliar with the process of swearing fealty. She held her tongue. “Anyone who swears themselves to me will have to drench themselves in blood for my sake. I asked for him to leave, but he refused.” She cast a look back at Hubert with something like regret in her eyes. Hubert’s face didn’t change. “It would be hard for me to ask you to do the same.”
“I’ve already killed in your name, Your Majesty. I consider myself a soldier in your army, oath or no oath.”
“But having an oath would make you happy, wouldn’t it? I may be a blood-soaked emperor, but I care about what you need. Would you would like to make a pledge?” Ingrid’s throat closed. She wouldn’t just like to; she needed to. There was no one else who could bring peace; there was no one else who could lead her. Her lips didn’t move, but the message was received nonetheless. Edelgard held her hand out behind her, and Hubert passed her a sword. She ran her gloved fingers along the blade then said to Ingrid, “Kneel.”
The terrible feeling that had been growing inside of her since she found out Dimitri was asking for them returned in full force. Ingrid didn’t resist it. So what if this was painful? One did not grow strong without suffering. On the other side of this suffering would be honor and peace and loyalty. Ingrid knelt and swore she felt the blood in her bruise crunch as she bent down. Her side ached horribly, so much that she wished she had stayed on her feet. And worse, she realized they could be seen from almost any part of the camp. Felix and Sylvain, if they were to wake now, could see her kneeling before their lord’s truest enemy. She stayed in the mud and lowered her eyes.
The sword flashed as Edelgard brought it to her neck. Ingrid’s breath caught. She almost took the rush of air and silver light to mean the arc of an executioner’s chop.
“I, Edelgard von Hresvelg, accept you, Ingrid Galatea, as my friend and knight until this war is ended. Do you promise to never raise your sword against me? To fight in my name and be faithful and true?”
The words were wrong, but the sentiment was close enough. It didn’t seem like Edelgard was used to accepting people’s loyalty. Was Ingrid the first, then? Would she begin a tradition—a new line of imperial knights who took the knee to the emperor and swore themselves to her person? It wouldn’t be a bad legacy, she thought.
“I promise,” she said.
Edelgard didn’t lift the sword. She put more weight on the flat of her blade and into Ingrid’s shoulder.
“Even knowing who I am and what I stand for, do you still swear to renounce your other loyalties and be mine?”
“I pro—”
“Look at me,” Edelgard said. Her voice was cold. Her armor had been recently cleaned and shone in the sun. This must be what it was like to meet Edelgard on the battlefield; to know that the wrong move would cut you down. If she withdrew her words, she would lose Edelgard’s trust; if she could not swear herself properly, she would never forgive herself for asking to be sworn and then failing.
She took the sword and brought the edge to her neck. To her surprise, Edelgard had turned the cutting edge away from Ingrid’s neck, and Ingrid cut her fingers against the blade. The blood stained Ingrid’s coat and shirt collar, and Ingrid felt a pang; she wouldn’t have the time to clean this until they returned to the monastery, and by then, it would certainly be too late for her shirt. “I swear to you, emperor, I am yours,” she said.
“And I am yours. Rise,” Edelgard said. “Hubert, wake Manuela up. Honestly, Ingrid…”
With the ceremony over, Edelgard returned to her usual self. She inspected Ingrid’s hand and wrapped it in a handkerchief. It was a normal thing to do, but it had a new gloss. If they won the war, then, in the stories people would tell about them, this would be an important moment. It’d be important that she had cut herself; it’d be important that Edelgard had cared enough to use her own handkerchief to bandage her hand. Her blood soaked through the handkerchief and dripped onto Edelgard’s armored foot. On the other side of pain, she would understand this to be beautiful—though she wasn’t there yet. All she knew was that her hand and her side hurt.
It was the first time Ingrid had Edelgard alone. Ingrid was more relaxed than she thought she’d be. She should get used to this. In the future, this would be normal.
“I did what I felt was right,” Ingrid said.
“Yes, but you should have used less of your strength,” Edelgard said, smiling wryly. Hubert and Manuela were approaching, or rather, Hubert was hauling over a hungover Manuela, her hand flung over her eyes. Edelgard took her bloodied blade and, before Ingrid could protest, cut the heel of her hand against it. The thick layers of skin parted, then filled with red. “We need to both bleed for this oath to make it complete. Do you understand? In the new world, we must learn to abandon the old ways.”
“I understand. I feel the same,” Ingrid said. What she meant was that she hoped she’d understand someday; she hoped that, soon, she really would feel the same.