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It had been a fast fight, and it had not been a fair one; the bandits hadn't expected the woman they'd been following to be a mage, and even on her own Annette was much stronger than five untrained farmers with old swords and dull axes. The sky was a clean and piercing blue, the day was chilly, and it felt good to let loose all the frustration of being stuck in the countryside on the old family estate for the past six months, even if it was on some people who had probably had been driven from their homes by one army or another. Still, they'd been fighting to kill. Annette had had to incapacitate them, at the very least.
She'd been traveling for two weeks, and been traveling alone for two days. She'd gotten the letter from Ingrid telling her it was time to assemble for their reunion—such as it was going to be!—a month ago. She was so close to Garreg Mach she could taste it, but she had not even hit the foothills yet.
And now, panting with the exertion of her first real bout in a long time, she noticed that she was no longer alone. A thick forest fringed the side of the road, and she'd readied Sagittae to cast when she saw that it was Felix Hugo Fraldarius, sat on a tree stump, eating an apple. "Good fight," he said, tossing the core behind him into the woods. "You work clean. I'll take your bag."
"You could say hello," Annette said. "'Hi, Annette! It's been a while, it's nice to see you, hope you've been doing well.'"
Inexplicably, however, her heart leapt for joy to see him. Of all the classmates who could have met her on the road, it had to be the one who never had a nice thing to say and was weirdly into her singing, but whether he wanted it or not, he had been one of her friends. They'd taken their meals together, studied together, won the Battle of the Eagle and Lion together—when he met her in the middle of the lane, Annette threw her arms around him. She didn't remember only coming up to his shoulder, but here she was, her face pressed into his chest. Had he gotten taller? Probably. His entire body went stiff as a board, but slowly, by increments, he relaxed.
"Nice to see you," Felix said. He didn't sound uncomfortable, at least. He rubbed her back, just once—and then again, more gently. He smelled nice, like the forest around them, like cheap soap, like leather and metal.
When Annette let him go, Felix stared down at her like she was an exciting new color of mold he'd found growing on his bread. That was just how his face worked. Annette had learned years ago not to take it personally.
"They're all still alive," he said, indicating the people on the ground.
"There wasn't any reason to kill them," Annette replied, nudging the one at her feet with the toe of her boot. The woman groaned in response. "They were just hungry. I drained their energy off, and they'll wake up with big headaches, and maybe they'll hesitate next time they see a defenseless traveler?" In truth, she'd taken a little too much with Nosferatu, and she felt a little itchy under her skin, bubbling over with a restlessness she had no way to exorcise right now.
"I'd forgotten how fun it is to watch you when you get going, is all," Felix said, picking up her valise from where she'd dropped it, as though they'd been traveling together this whole time. Before Annette had a chance to process that, he added, "Come on, we're five days out from Garreg Mach."
And, well, that was Felix for you. He'd look like he was sick of you before you even opened your mouth, but then he dropped a compliment that left your head spinning. Maybe that was just her, though. Maybe other people had completely normal reactions to him, like "annoyance" or "anger." She'd seen him a few times over the past five years, but the kinds of events that the spare (not even the heir, not since her father had run off to the Church) to an unimportant barony were invited to were not exactly the events the next Duke Fraldarius deigned to attend. Then Edelgard had started waving her axe northward in earnest, and there had been far fewer gatherings to attend, and she'd spent the past six months far away from Fhirdiad, practicing her combat spells in the woods so her skills didn't get dull.
They set out toward the monastery, and walked together in relative silence for the next few hours. It was companionable. It was even pleasant. Her whole family liked to talk, and so had the people she'd been traveling with for the past two weeks. Felix's quiet was soothing.
The life force she'd taken from those bandits could have taken her much farther than a few hours' worth of walking, but at length they came upon a town, one that looked prosperous and completely untouched by the war. The high wall around it probably had something to do with it. If she squinted, she could see the guard patrols along the top of it.
"I don't think this is a good idea," Felix said.
"No one is going to look twice at two filthy travelers, especially not if they have coin to spend. I want to sleep in a real bed."
Felix nodded, but he still looked reluctant. "And you need a bath."
Annette felt herself turn pink with embarrassment. "You smell bad, too!" she said, and it wasn't entirely true, but even as the words came out of her mouth she knew she sounded childish. She'd meant to come to the reunion and impress everyone with how savvy and graceful she'd become in the past five years, how sophisticated she was, how her magical talents had grown.
Still, Felix smiled at her, tight-lipped, as though he wasn't sure how it was done. She elbowed him in the ribs—there, something she'd never have thought of doing when they were students—and fell in beside him as they approached the walls.
They got into the town without a problem. She had been right: they were filthy, but between the money Felix carried and the money Annette had liberated before setting off on her own, they could have bought a nice house here, probably. Annette had paid the guards their bribe cheerfully while Felix glowered over her shoulder, hand on his sword.
"My bodyguard is just protective," Annette said, before some of the guards who'd been eyeing that sword up could decide to rearrange his face. "I didn't want to bring him, but Mama never would have let me go to Enbarr on my own, not with bandits on the road."
"Enbarr's the place you want to be these days, sweetheart," one of the guards said, and she chucked Annette's chin. This only made Felix bristle more, which the other two guards found hilarious.
The streets they walked down were swept, the shopfronts were gleaming, the market stalls were full of produce, but the faces they passed were strained, tired. A group of Imperial soldiers lingered on a streetcorner, talking quietly amongst themselves, and Annette held her head high and walked past them, trusting that Felix would do the same. Stand straight, act like you belong, and no one will think about you, the professor had said once, in lecture. In retrospect, the professor had taught them a lot of things that probably weren't on the copy of the Officer's Academy curriculum that went out to parents.
Annette did not want to think about the professor. She did not want to think about Dimitri or Dedue, either, dead these long years. She was still twitchy with energy from the fight. The first three respectable-looking inns they tried told them they were full up, and so they found themselves at the front desk of a disreputable little hostel.
"One room left," said the proprietor. "Those damn"—they lowered their voice—"ah, those damn Imperials on their way up to Fhirdiad, taking up all our space. Sorry, kids." They gestured out at the taproom behind Felix and Annette, which was, in fact, full of Adrestians.
"My husband and I will take it!" Annette said, without any comment on the damn Imperials in question. She took Felix's hand and smiled up at him—newlyweds!—and, to be fair, there was a part of her that wanted to watch him squirm when she did it. They'd get up to the room, he'd be annoyed with her, she'd laugh, and it would be like old times, throwing suds at him in the dishroom when they were on kitchen duty or wheedling him into mucking out the grossest stalls in the stables for her.
But Felix didn't squirm. He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek, then nuzzled at her with his nose. The proprietor gave them a key, a promise of hot food in half an hour, and a wink along with it, and Annette dragged Felix along behind her, determined to forget whatever had just happened. They were selling their story, was all.
*
"All right, now we can talk," Felix said, once the door was shut behind them. The room itself had a bigger bed than Annette might have expected, a washtub in the corner hooked up to running water, a little armchair underneath the window.
"About?" Annette asked, shedding her capelet in the middle of the floor. She'd been wearing plain brown and green for the trip, but she had a much nicer outfit in the valise Felix was setting on the armchair. She didn't know what she expected, bringing that along: Garreg Mach was a smoking ruin, it wasn't as though they were going to have a party.
"How did you end up here?" he asked.
Oh, it had taken him long enough to ask. "Uncle Gérald started talking about me enlisting in Cornelia's army, so I ran away," Annette said. "And that was pretty stupid of me, but I've been fine. I got myself hired onto a trade caravan was going to pass by Garreg Mach for a few weeks, you know, everyone wants a trained sorcerer for security, and I told the caravan owner I charged a lot, like the professor told us to if we were going to hire ourselves out for mercenary work? But then the owner changed her mind and started turning south toward Enbarr, and she'd been turning south for a few days by time I realized. My turn: how did you find me?"
"There aren't that many red-haired people out there who can cut a person in half with wind magic," Felix said dryly. "I just had to follow the trail."
"You didn't need to escort me," she said. "I was doing fine on my own."
"Sylvain's with Mercedes," Felix said. "So Ingrid told me to go find you."
"Mercie's adoptive father let her go so easily?"
Felix's smile was unpleasant. "We didn't exactly give him a choice."
"Who's we?" Annette asked.
Felix explained: the heirs to Houses Galatea, Fraldarius, and Gautier, all names that still held weight in the new Faerghus Dukedom, had shown up at Mercedes's door in Fhirdiad. They'd all had big, scary weapons, and had told the man who called himself Mercie's father—the man who'd bought a girl with a Crest from the Church—that he was going to hand Mercedes von Martritz over to them, and to hear Felix tell of it, it had been that easy. Annette suspected that it had been a little messier than that, and that Ingrid, Felix, and Sylvain were all wanted for kidnapping, at the very least. Ingrid had hopped on her pegasus to find Ashe and head for Garreg Mach in advance, Felix had gone looking for Annette, and Sylvain had stayed with Mercie on the road.
While he laid this out, Annette went over to the washtub and ran the faucet. Given the choice between eternity at the Goddess's side and sinking neck deep in hot water, at this point, she would take the hot water. It smelled a little sulfurous, but it looked clean enough.
"Thanks for saving Mercie," she said, holding her hand under the tap.
"Mercedes is a useful ally," Felix said. He lay face down on the bed, his sword belt next to him. "It wasn't personal."
"Right, right, rescuing your classmate from her dastardly father just in time for the reunion no one's making any of us go to, super selfish," Annette said. "Oh, no, just awful! Exactly what I expect from a villain like you."
Felix snorted. "A villain who's your husband now, apparently."
"What was I going to say, that we were siblings? We don't look anything alike. I'll sleep in the chair if you want." The tub was half full. Annette kicked off her boots; her stockings caught on a splinter in the floor. Carefully, so that she didn't expose too much of herself, she toed her stockings off, too.
"You're not sleeping on the chair," Felix said. He did not, however, offer to sleep on the chair himself.
That was a problem for future Annette. Present Annette wanted nothing more than to be naked. "I'm not going to ask you to leave," she said, "on account of us being husband and wife, and all those soldiers downstairs. But I do want you to turn around."
With a groan, Felix slid off of the bed, taking his swords with him, and pushed the armchair so that it faced the door. Still, Annette stripped out of her clothes and got into the bathtub as fast as she could, and sank into it up to her neck. This was bliss. She didn't even reach for the clumpy-looking bar of soap that had come with the room, which even at a distance she could tell smelled like juniper berries.
"Hurry up," Felix said, before she'd even luxuriated properly.
"I'll take as long as I want," Annette said, doing her level best to splash water at him. It fell short between the armchair and the bathtub, but her warrior spirit was there. "I've been working for a living, these past few weeks. You've just been threatening people."
"I've been doing more than that," Felix grumbled.
"Is that so?" There was a knot in her back from weeks of sleeping on a hard bedroll, and the hot water did nothing to soothe it. What she really needed was someone to dig their knuckles into it and work it out. Could she ask Felix—no, she very much could not ask Felix, sharing a bedroom with him was awkward enough.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Felix shift in the armchair. Then he was very still, and she thought he'd fallen asleep. But then he cleared his throat, and said, "I might have some Adrestian soldiers on my tail."
Annette sat bolt upright in the bathtub, taking a care not to let any of her precious water slosh onto the floor. "You what?"
"They recognized me when I was on my way out of Fhirdiad," Felix pressed on.
"And now," she said, "we're at an inn full of Imperial soldiers—"
"Who are all downstairs getting drunk."
"—and you didn't think to say anything before now—"
"It didn't seem relevant."
"—and why wouldn't it be relevant!" Annette finished, and dunked her head under the water so that she didn't have to hear whatever he said next. If Mercedes was here, Mercedes could have been calm about this, and so Annette could have been too. But she hadn't seen her best friend in a year, and the Goddess only knew whether she was also in danger out there on the road; House Gautier was also fighting the Dukedom, and Sylvain's face was far better known than Felix's.
Well, Annie, you're just going to have to deal with it, she thought, and came up for air. When she glanced over at Felix, he was peeking around the side of the chair, and he didn't turn back around when he saw that she'd seen him. Annette pushed her sopping hair back from her face, the better to glare at him.
"If there's a problem, the two of us can fight our way out of it," Felix said. "You and me."
He sounded completely confident. You and me: it had been so long since they'd so much as seen each other across a crowded room, and he still had such faith in Annette's abilities. The energy she'd taken during the fight chose that exact moment to desert her, and she felt the tension go out of her body, as well as her anger.
"I should have told you as soon as we met up. I'm...." Felix sighed. "I was embarrassed. I made a stupid mistake, and Cornelia's spies caught me."
"So we'll lose the tail, we'll get to the monastery, and everything will be fine," Annette said, trying to return confidence for confidence. "Hey, I'd forget my own shoes if they weren't on my feet! I can't judge anyone for their mistakes."
"You should," Felix replied, and with that, he turned back around.
*
The next morning, Annette woke with the sunrise, as she had for the past few weeks. It took her a moment to orient herself: she'd had food last night that was just okay, and now she was hungry again. She was in a hard bed, but at least she wasn't on the ground. She flung her arms and legs wide to enjoy the novelty of real sheets and blankets, and the back of her hand smacked directly into Felix's bare chest.
Oh, yes. Felix.
They'd agreed last night that they were too tired to argue over who was going to sleep in the bed: that would be silly, they knew each other well enough, they'd seen each other in the sauna, for crying out loud. As soon as her head had hit the hard pillow, she'd fallen into a deep sleep; there had been no time to feel awkward.
"Good morning!" Annette said, sitting up and stretching. She'd slept in her chemise—next time she took a long trip, she was going to invest in a pair of trousers. "Ready for breakfast? I can't wait to be on the road again."
Felix grumbled in response, cracking one eye open to look up at her. The grumbling resolved itself into words: "Lay back down. You're letting the heat out."
Annette couldn't think of a reason not to, and so she did. She yanked the sheet up over their heads and rolled on her side to face him. The dim morning light filtered through the thin fabric, turning everything pale. "I wasn't kidding about breakfast."
"I'm not hungry," he replied. The bed too narrow for the separation between them to be meaningful. Her knee rested against his thigh, and the day was new, and Annette could admit to herself that she wouldn't mind resting against more of him. There were bags under Felix's eyes, and the tie in his hair had slipped downward at some point during the night, leaving everything above it a mess. It was adorable. His expression was soft and relaxed as he blinked sleepily, trying to wake up; the thousand things that ate at him hadn't yet had time to sink their teeth in.
He didn't seem half as mean and remote as he usually did—not that he was ever mean to her, she was the only person he was nice to, and she knew she shouldn't be as proud of that as she was—he looked like someone she could touch. So she did, reaching out to run her the back of her hand over his cheek. He closed his eyes again at her touch.
"Hey... I'm glad it was you who found me," Annette said. She brushed her thumb over his lips, and without opening his eyes, Felix bit it. But he was smiling around it, and this time it reached his eyes, it looked sincere, easy. She could pretend for just one second that their families weren't on opposite sides of a civil war, that their old classmate wasn't trying to destroy the world, that they still had a professor and a prince. Then Felix let her thumb go and threw one of his legs over hers, tugging her closer to him. She ran her hand through his disastrous hair—
Someone knocked on the door. It was not a servant's polite knock. They both froze, and Felix sat bolt upright, reaching for the sword he had learning against the rickety bedside table.
"No," Annette whispered, "I'll get it."
"Annette."
The knock came again, more insistent this time. Felix held onto his sword.
"I can slow them down," she went on. "They don't know you're traveling with a mage now, right? They don't expect me."
Felix's voice was low, and he took her wrist and squeezed it. "They might know. We might have been seen."
"This isn't the time to argue," Annette replied. "You're just going to have to trust me."
She shook him off, and he looked angry, but he let her It was worth trying to solve this without violence. Annette knew what she had to do. She mussed her hair, then tugged the neckline of her chemise down so that it exposed what little cleavage she had. His eyes widened at the sight of her—oh, there was nothing impressive to be seen there, she hadn't grown a centimeter in five years. She was never going to be as tall and muscular as Ingrid, or look as delicious as Mercedes always did. It didn't matter now, anyway. "Stay under the covers," she hissed.
He obeyed her, but he still didn't seem happy about it. His feelings could wait for later.
"Twenty-seven cakes, baking in the oven!" Annette sang loudly, walking toward the door. "Me and my new husband, cooking up some lovin—just one second!"
Whoever it was knocked a third time. Annette swung the door open, giggling, and made sure that she nearly walked into the breastplate of the enormously tall Adrestian woman in the hallway. She had a severe face, and her honey-dark hair pulled back into a painful knot. The uniform she wore was plain and mostly unadorned, and a really unfortunate shade of dull crimson. Annette could almost feel bad for her, having to wear that, if she wasn't here to drag Felix off to Enbarr to be tortured, or whatever the Empire did with its political prisoners. Lock them in cells forever? Make them break rocks? Force them to copy out boring anti-Church pamphlets?
The uniform was mostly unadorned. But Annette had gone to a military academy and passed Hanneman's four tests on the history and structure of the Adrestian army with flying colors, just as she'd passed all of her tests; and let herself be herself with a week's worth of cake, plus, okay, one really good kiss (just for practice!) to write Sylvain's essay on the Adrestian army. On the woman's shoulder, there was some stitching. At first glance it looked decorative, but Annette recognized it for what it was: the rank signifier of an Imperial general. Immediately, Annette's pulse sped up, pounding in her throat. The axe at the woman's hip was sharp and gleaming in dim hallway lights.
But at the sight of Annette as good as half-naked before her, all the general in question did was take a moment to gawk down the front of Annette's chemise. Then she recovered herself and stood straight up, and stared directly at the wall over Annette's head.
"Good morning, ma'am," the general said, after clearing her throat. "My name is Captain Ladislava. My soldiers and I have been following a fugitive from Her Imperial Majesty's justice." She held out a piece of parchment that had, Annette had to admit, a pretty good likeness of Felix on it. "He's wanted for—"
"You're interrupting me on my wedding night for this?" Annette whined. "Oh, well, I guess the night is passed. I've never seen this man before. Keep your voice down, my husband is still sleeping."
"Your husband," Ladislava said, trying to peek around the door. "Tell him to come here."
"No," Annette said, crossing her arms over her chest. Ladislava's nostrils flared with irritation. This was stupid: she should just knock this woman out, and grab Felix, and run for their lives. "He's, um. We've been really busy," she added. "I want him to wake up ready to... you know. Perform!" She clapped her hands together and beamed up at the general.
Complete disbelief from the general, that someone would say no to the Imperial army because they wanted their husband to be able to get it up later. Annette kept the smile plastered on her face, the No, Uncle Gérald, I wasn't casting spells up on the roof, that was just a super strong breeze! smile.
"I insist," Ladislava replied.
"And I insist on letting him sleep." Now Annette pouted up at the woman, praying to the Goddess above that she was buying this, that Annette really was doing a good impression of a foolish newlywed with only one thing on her mind. If the general knew what Annette was really capable of—but, then, Annette was small, and she knew full well that she was very cute, so no one ever really thought her capable of anything until she far exceeded their expectations.
"Ma'am. The man I'm searching for is dangerous. You will wake your husband up, or I will enter your room and search it."
With a legitimately frightening glower, Ladislava reached for the door. In response, Annette visualized the sigil for Cutting Wind, began to draw in the ambient magical currents from the air. It was hard to hold like this, to keep the magic spooled up but not released: she had to end this quickly.
"Oh, I don't think that'll be necessary." Annette lowered her voice and leaned forward, so that the top of her chemise gaped open even more. The general's gaze dipped downward, like a pendulum. What to say to make this woman go away, what could possibly scandalize a soldier, a general: "You can come in if you like! You seem stressed out. We're open to sharing, if you've got an hour. Maybe two hours? You're really, really tall, did you know that? There's a whole lot of you, and my husband isn't that tall; even with two of us, it's going to take a while!"
"No," said Ladislava, and at long last, she seemed as though she'd had enough. "That won't—excuse me, ma'am, have a good day. On behalf of the Adrestian Empire, congratulations on your marriage."
"Oh, darn. It was worth a try!" Annette said at Ladislava's retreating form. "Good luck finding your fugitive, Captain!"
Then she shut the door, leaned against it, and did not move an inch until she could no longer hear Ladislava moving down the hallway. Then, and only then, did she release the spell. Meanwhile, Felix came out from under the blankets and stared at her. If Annette had run home, gotten good old Crusher, and smashed his foot with it, he could not have looked more stunned.
"I didn't think that was going to work," Annette muttered, wiping a hand down her face and sighing shakily. "I thought for sure we were going to have to kill her and run."
Slowly, Felix nodded. "Sure."
"I hope that that wasn't too embarrassing for you to listen to? I don't usually do stuff like that. That is, I have flirted before—I'm not going to inherit the barony, but I have the Crest, and I still stand to inherit all my father's other assets—so it can be fun to play along with people who want just that, I guess. I think we fought that woman at the battle where Edelgard took the monastery, is that why she recognized you?"
"Annette," said Felix. "Come here."
Annette did so, unthinkingly. The moment she was in range, Felix threw his arms around her, crushing her to his chest. She let out a surprised yelp, but she didn't fight him. First of all, there would have been no point to it—his arms felt like steel bands around her waist, he sure had spent the past five years training—and second, it just felt nice. His hair was soft against her chin. A stray strand tickled at her nose, and she wrinkled it, trying to will it away. One of his hands was splayed out on her back, and the heat of his palm through the thin fabric of her chemise was wonderful.
"Don't put yourself in danger like that again. Don't be so reckless," he said hoarsely. "Not on my behalf."
"I would have been fine," Annette replied. "I had a spell ready to go, Felix. She would have been dead before she could draw her axe."
"And if she knew it was coming? If she'd killed you first?"
He sounded so rattled over just one little conversation. It was too early in the morning for this! When he spoke, his mouth moved against her collarbone. His face wasn't quite in the valley between her breasts, but it was close enough to be distracting. Annette rallied her senses to the task at hand and replied, "My father was so happy to die for someone else that when he didn't get his chance, he ran away from his entire life in shame. I'm nothing like him. I don't plan on dying for anyone." She cupped the back of his head and held him tightly to her, playing with the little hairs at the base of his neck. "Got it?"
It was so easy to forget that the compasses of both their lives had been realigned by the same tragedy. Everything Annette had done since the day mother had told her papa wasn't coming home had been to get to Garreg Mach, and what had she found there? A man who wouldn't even meet her eyes. When she'd heard Felix's last name and seen how he worked, how he trained, how he treated Dimitri, she'd known: deep down, Felix was exactly like her.
"Got it," Felix replied, after a long quiet. Another pause. "The song was cute, by the way."
"It—it wasn't!" Annette said. "It wasn't any good. I can't just make fun songs off the top of my head, it needed work."
"You're right. It could have used a swamp beastie."
"I cannot believe you remember... I changed my mind. That awful woman can have you. I'm going to go get her now!"
It had to just be the soft morning light, or the fact that she had just gotten out of mortal peril, or maybe the inn's terrible food had given Felix gas, because she could have sworn he was laughing silently against her.
"I'll get us breakfast, and then we can sneak out the back door, and we'll be on the road before you know it," Annette said, sticking her nose up in the air. She refused to sink to his horrible level.
That resolve lasted until one single chuckle escaped Felix. Her vengeance was to pull his hair out of its tie and toss it off the bed. In response, Felix picked her up—she yelped in surprise and wrapped her legs around him. Well. They had been about to kiss, probably, before the Empire had come knocking. She hadn't been thinking clearly then, but she was thinking very clearly now, and she still wanted it. They had time. She'd thrown the general off their trail, for a little while at least. She wound her arms around his shoulders to stabilize herself, but he looked unsure as to what to do next. That was what came of having more weapons than social graces. Annette was just going to have to take the situation in hand.
"You should sit down," Annette suggested.
"You barely weigh anything," said Felix.
"That's just your Crest talking."
"If you say so." But he did as she said, so that she straddled his lap; and probably his Crest had activated, because it was with an improbable strength that he maneuvered Annette onto her back and kissed her. He wasn't slow or patient, but, then, she hadn't expected him to be. She didn't want him to be. She'd tolerated way too many nervous, tentative pecks from people who were afraid of scaring her Crest and her money away. Felix had no interest in either of those things, and he kissed like he fought: giving no quarter, like it might be the last time.
"You know we don't have time for this," Annette managed to say, when they broke for air. Her legs were spread wide to accommodate him, her thighs clamped around his hips, and if she just pulled her chemise up a little, exposed the slit in her drawers, pulled him out....
"We don't," Felix agreed, moving down her neck, tugging down the neck of her dress to expose her breasts to the cool morning air. He pulled back to stare at them as though they were really impressive, and then without preamble, he took one in his mouth. Every touch of his lips and tongue went directly to the pulse between her legs, and she thrust up against him, seeking his heat, his friction.
"Felix Hugo Fraldarius," she panted, "this is a really, really bad idea. A really bad idea. All of our friends are going to see us, and they'll know...." Felix's mouth closed around her other nipple, and if he stopped, she did not know what she would do.
"Uh-huh," he said against her chest, his voice rumbling through her body.
"We've got to stop. We've—we've got to eat and leave."
Immediately, but not without a frustrated groan, Felix stopped.
"You're right," he said, rolling off of her to lay on his back. A downward glance showed that he was incredibly hard, and Annette felt a pang of regret along with her own frustrated desire: for a lot of things, but right now, for the fact that they weren't in a safe place with a lock on the door and no Imperial soldiers waiting to chop their heads off if they let their guard down for an hour. Maybe two hours.
"I usually am!" Annette tried to sound cheerful, but when the words came out her voice sounded squeaky, instead. "Besides," she said. "It's cold out in the woods at night. We'll have to share a bedroll to stay warm. And Garreg Mach is probably deserted, too, there's lots of places to, you know! We'll be there for at least a few days."
She pulled up her chemise so that she was decent, and casting about the room for wherever she'd tossed her dress before going to be last night. She found Felix's shirt and cloak instead, and passed them over to him.
"Sounds good to me," Felix replied. "Did you lose your dress?"
"Maybe," Annette said. He looked entertained by this—but she'd found one of her stockings, and she threw it at him. His smile when he let it hit him in the face was… it was adorable.
A few days at Garreg Mach was not going to be enough to explore this, she knew. Maybe when the reunion was over, she could screw up her courage and ask to join the Fraldarius army: she had the skills, and she had the training, she would have gone directly into the Kingdom army, anyway, and hopefully, when it was all over, he would say yes.