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Of all of her siblings, Edelgard was closest to her second eldest sister, Henrietta.
They had different mothers. Henrietta’s mother was Ionius’s first wife, Jane of Gloucester. Jane was also the mother of his eldest son, Ionius X, who had been the first to bear a minor Crest of Seiros. Henrietta had her mother’s light colouring and her father’s mild brown eyes, and she carried her mother’s minor Crest of Gloucester. Patricia married Ionius following Jane’s divorce petition, a scandalous event heavily debated by both the Church and secular politics. Jane ultimately remained involved in court life, even after Patricia was officially styled as Empress.
Despite the court politics, Edelgard considers her early childhood well-shielded and almost idyllic. She loved all of her siblings, of course, but Henrietta was the one most open to her company. It helped, too, that they were only a few years different in age. She never grew frustrated with Edelgard’s questions, and she smiled easily even at Hubert when he began to shadow them.
Unlike Edelgard, who had moments of boisterousness and bullheadedness, Henrietta was a proper princess. She preferred sword work to Edelgard and their brothers’ axes, and she was very sure with the bow. In the arts, she excelled in dance and song, and she loved the latter best. Even twenty years later, Edelgard remembers Henrietta’s high, pure voice as clear as the sky on a sunny day.
These were not their only differences. Edelgard knew, from a very early age, that Henrietta would likely be made a good marriage. Henrietta knew this, too. It was the one fact of their lives before the Insurrection that brought her no joy. Her minor Crest was not needed by House Gloucester as their first son had been blessed with one as well. Jane looked to make her a match that would benefit them both, and Ionius would eventually seek her a marriage to the benefit of House Hresvelg as he had heirs to spare.
“Perhaps I will be sent across the sea,” Henrietta said once when she and Edelgard were learning to ride.
“To Brigid?” Edelgard asked because that was the first place she could think of as separate from Fódlan.
“No,” Henrietta said, and her gaze was upon the horizon, distant and reserved. “I think Dadga. They have some care for Crests, Mother tells me. Mother and Father would not waste such an opportunity.”
Edelgard remembers clearly how her heart sank in that moment. Henrietta was just beginning to show her qualities. Her hair was long and unbound. The natural waves fluttered along her shoulders and her back. Her voice was changing from simple and light purity to something more incredible. Edelgard could listen to Henrietta speak or sing for hours.
“I do not want you to go to Dadga,” Edelgard said because she was just nine and very childish.
Henrietta looked at her. She smiled. It did little to hide her fear and sadness.
“You bear our father’s Crest,” Henrietta said, with more weight than Edelgard had ever heard in her sister’s voice. “Such are our fates. They have been decided by the Goddess. You are destined for glorious things, El. I only hope you will stay willing to listen to me sing.”
“Of course I will,” Edelgard said because she could not imagine how she would not. “I will always listen to you sing, so long as you promise me not to ever stop.”
“I promise,” Henrietta said, her face clearing as she laughed, “and you know singing is my greatest pleasure. I would sing through the undoing of the world.”
And she did.
O Goddess, I call your name
O Sothis beloved, I sing to you
Take this mortal form’s shame
And listen to my soul true!
In the bowels of Those Who Slither in the Dark’s lair, Henrietta sang. Softly, at first, as she comforted Edelgard and all the youngest in their cell. In grieving wails when the children began to die. And then, as she died in Edelgard’s arms, she sang that hymn at the top of her lungs. She sang so loud Edelgard almost believed her sister’s Goddess would appear and spirit them away.
The Goddess did not. She was, Edelgard would come to understand eleven years later, asleep within Byleth. Then, as Henrietta expired in Edelgard’s lap with her lips parted and eyes fearless upon death, Edelgard believed they were abandoned. Gripping her sister’s still warm hand, Edelgard gazed into her eyes.
I will be your Goddess, Edelgard promised as she memorised Henrietta’s visage and the great strength in her dead flame. I take upon my body your shame. I will bear it all. I burn them from this earth. Every last one.
This is how Edelgard became the Flame Emperor.
In a world without Those Who Slither in the Dark:
Edelgard sleeps past sunrise most mornings. This is a recent development. Until Thales' defeat three years ago, Edelgard did not sleep long or deep. The nightmares still come, especially in colder weather, but there are more and more nights where Edelgard finds her sleep undisturbed. She does not dream, and the deep rest is welcome. A part of Edelgard that has always adored nothing else but leisure feels itself becoming spoiled.
This is her luxury because of her station. As Emperor, her quarters face neither the rising nor the setting sun. They are, outside of deep winter, always pleasant in temperature. Her quarters adjourn Hubert’s in his station as Minister of the Imperial Household. For the past twenty years, he always woke in time to wake her, help her dress and do her hair, and tell her the most pertinent news of the day. Now, it is usually Ferdinand who wakes her after he has gone to run himself and his horse. Hubert, except for the weeks that Ferdinand returns to Aegir for planting and harvest seasons, sleeps until close to noon.
Most days, the news is serious. A spike of plague in Nuvelle during the height of summer. A great fire in the town of Ordelia, the first major setback to its economic growth. A large and inexplicable horde of bears rampaging through Hyrm, attracted by the new fruit tree saplings transplanted from Aegir.
The bear incident was both bizarre and important, although Edelgard did not know the latter then. When it occurred, Edelgard left Enbarr in Hubert’s care and rode out in a hurry to help round up the very enthusiastic bears. Ferdinand and Hapi arrived as well to help while Lorenz and Yuri attended to the affected town.
“I didn’t even know Hyrm had bears,” Lorenz said after the worst of the damage was addressed and the bears chased beyond the town walls.
“You know,” Ferdinand said later as he and Edelgard rode back to Enbarr, “bear meat is very highly prized for game hunting.”
“But there is no game hunting in Hyrm,” Edelgard said, turning to Ferdinand who was looking to the northeast. “Hyrm is still your territorial responsibility –”
“Yes,” Ferdinand said, and the tone of his voice made Edelgard oddly glad she did not have to look directly into his eyes. “There are no bears in Hyrm.”
Edelgard waited for a long moment, but Ferdinand did not elaborate. He gazed upon the horizon. The sun, high and strong, glinted off his light armour. It highlighted the red that had grown more prominent over the past several years in his hair.
For a moment, in the silence:
Edelgard remembered Henrietta and how she looked that long-ago summer day.
It was extremely unsettling. They rode back to Enbarr in companionable if uneasy silence. What thoughts Ferdinand was fielding were his own, a quality of Edelgard had become familiar with over the past nine years. Edelgard herself did not have kind or thoughtful words to share. She was careful not to look too long at Ferdinand’s hair beneath the sun.
Even though they had won the war, there were many things to fear.
In the shadow war, Those Who Slither in the Dark stole faces.
They stole, of course, many things. Blood. Crests. Bodies. They stole them and created mimicks, which they placed so well that even lovers and parents of the original person were hard-pressed to know the difference. This is what Hubert despised the most on a personal level because it scraped against raw spots in Hubert’s heart. He had always viscerally feared being deceived and humiliated.
The changes to Ferdinand’s hair had been a reassurance then. It could not be mimicked because it was so unpredictable. Edelgard found the change passingly interesting, but Hubert had been drawn to the red strands like a moth to an evening lamp. His usual self-restraint broke in the face of Ferdinand’s hair. Edelgard got used to trying to hide her smiles at Hubert’s distraction so much so that eventually she gave up hiding them at all.
The changes, however, bothered Ferdinand because it brought up questions of his parentage of which Edelgard had not been aware.
“I know I am my father’s son,” Ferdinand said because the Crest of Cichol was rare and not in the blood banks that their enemy kept, “but I do not know if my mother was my mother. My father had many vices.”
He, Hubert, and Edelgard were in the royal baths. Ferdinand was submerged in the main bath, which was so luxuriously deep that the water covered his shoulders. Hubert was still scrubbing himself by the drain of black magic residue, and Edelgard sat on the side of the bath as she worked oil through her hair. They were all very worn out. There had been many casualties that day.
In the war, it was possible to write to families of the fallen with platitudes and kind words. In the shadow war, it was often not possible. The people who gave their lives were overwhelmingly Hubert’s black mages or from Abyss. Yuri wrote their names in the little books he shared with no one. Hubert did not share what few letters he could write because they were none of Edelgard and Ferdinand’s business.
“That was my father’s vice as well,” Edelgard said because she thought of her mother and Ionius’s consorts often, if only to wonder what happened to them. “I believe that is how Thales and Solon first took advantage of him. He was a weak man.”
Hubert turned off the water. Edelgard and Ferdinand both looked over to watch him stand from the stool, shaking off his feet of the residual soap. He straightened and turned towards them. His lips were in a thin, hard line as he moved to the edge of the bath.
“When I killed my father,” Hubert said, leaning down to lower himself into the deep bath, “he implied as much.”
Edelgard glanced at Ferdinand, who watched Hubert. There was no surprise nor repulsion on his face. Rather, his gaze seemed calm and very quiet. Edelgard, setting aside her oil bottle, slid into the water as well. It came up to her chin.
“My father’s vice,” Hubert said, which brought Edelgard’s attention to him fully because it was very strange for him to extrapolate, “was arrogance. He believed himself so clever that he wished to take credit for the ideas of others, even those so abhorrent that he despised them. He claimed that even the most evil minds could hold grains of truth.”
“That is true,” Edelgard said because the Flame Emperor would not have existed otherwise.
Hubert stared into the water between the three of them. There was no light in his eyes.
“Yes,” he agreed, and then he was silent.
Governing Fódlan is no easy task, especially now that they are at peace.
The guise of the Flame Emperor is long cast away, but there is a part of Edelgard that clings to it. The Flame Emperor could stomach the worst of the world and take upon itself all the greatest horrors. Edelgard has no qualms in admitting that it was not so different as Jeritza’s Death Knight or even the flashes of Dimitri’s madness. She is simply lucky that she has been able to maintain enough separation.
This was possible because of Hubert, who always knew Edelgard for herself. Edelgard also relies on her allies, who have over the years also become her friends, for grounding. In the nascent peace, all of the Black Eagles Strike force willingly lend their assistance and knowledge. Just as in the war, they all have their strengths. Ferdinand is able to manage Hrym and is, due to his knowledge and continued respect for scripture, Edelgard’s first choice to send to Fhirdiad to deal with former Kingdom issues. Bernadetta, despite her seclusion, is an excellent ear for Edelgard to share her thoughts and woes. Their letters are a balm because between them they can be honest about things they cannot share with Ferdinand or Hubert.
Ferdinand once told me, Bernadetta writes in response to Edelgard’s rambling letter about her father’s vices and how she fears repeating them, his parents sought to find a match for him with me. It was prior to the Insurrection but not so long before. After my parents died, I read their diaries and correspondence. In them, my father originally sought to marry me to one of your brothers, Ionius X. This was denied and very impolitely. I believe this personal affront soured my father to your father for he was a very spiteful man.
Comparatively, the correspondence on the topic between my father and the former Duke Aegir is very polite. They agreed it was better if they did not combine two houses with two different Crests of the Four Saints for the time being. They did not want to have the eyes of the Church upon them. Please do not tell Ferdinand. He believes that his childish fears prevented the match, and I would rather not cause him more grief.
Edelgard thinks deeply about this information. She sits in her reception room at the virginal that she does not know how to play, mulling over the idea that Bernadetta could have been her sister-in-law and possibly Empress in another life. In that life, Edelgard would have simply been a Princess with a minor Crest of Seiros, and Hubert would have eventually been taken from her to serve Ionius and Bernadetta. She could have lived a life of leisure and married who she chose, so long as they passed her father’s muster. It is so strange to imagine that Edelgard cannot dwell upon it beyond these thoughts.
She considers, instead, what would have happened if not for the interference of Thales and his ilk. If she would have gone to Garreg Mach and met Ferdinand and Bernadetta in the tail-end of their courting years. This thought is more acutely painful. Edelgard knows that would mean Ferdinand and Hubert would never come together because Ferdinand would not have had the freedom to choose his relationships. Bernadetta would likely have remained frightened and withdrawn, and Edelgard is not sure if Ferdinand in their academy days would have been able to reach her.
These thoughts bother her so much that Edelgard shares them with Hubert on an evening that Ferdinand is back in Aegir for planting. Hubert listens as their tea and coffee cool between them, his lips pressed together as he considers the possibilities.
“I think it is best that Ferdinand not know,” he agrees after Edelgard finally falls silent, her heart eased to share her thoughts. “Ferdinand speaks little of his youth even to me. Constance has told me what she knows, but Ferdinand did not take kindly to that.”
“Oh?” Edelgard asks, interested despite herself.
Hubert nods. He considers his half-drunk coffee. Now that it is no longer hot, Edelgard knows he will not drink it.
“After the Insurrection and before the Academy,” Hubert says with the weight those bookends to their lives carries, “Ferdinand likes to pretend he has no personal memories.”
“Ferdinand does not forget anything,” Edelgard points out.
Hubert looks at her. He does not open his mouth. His throat does not move. He is not withholding anything. He simply does not have anything to say.
It is not new between them. The greatest changes Edelgard has witnessed since the true end of the war are in Hubert.
On a surface level, Hubert has not changed. He still carries out his duties to Edelgard and Fodlan at large with the steady, unwavering dedication that he has always applied. He maintains his spyrings and keeps a close eye on the movement of people who slip between Yuri’s underground and the daylight world. As the Minister of the Imperial Household, he also runs the palace household and maintains its associated resources with his deep attention to detail. He remains serious and cold, and Edelgard knows well that there is none of the sharpness lost in his edge.
Since Thales was finally burned to ash, however, Hubert has taken up habits. He always preferred to sleep late, but now it is rare to see him before lunch. He does not ride unless necessary, but on the days that Ferdinand stables his horse on the palace grounds, Hubert goes with him to mind the horses following afternoon audiences. He goes for leisure walks when the sun is not high and spends time observing plants in the greenhouses. Edelgard, who sometimes sits out in the sun in the southern garden, has become almost accustomed to listening to Hubert’s low, sedate conversations with the gardeners. They speak of the seasons, the acidity of the soil, and the plants that Petra and Claude have sent.
Most surprisingly, he has taken to reading fiction. Bernadetta brings books and handbound collections when she arrives from Varley, and Hubert has read each one. Some are utter tripe, but Hubert reads each one with the same intent as he applied to war reports. Edelgard is not privy to his thoughts, although she is aware that Ferdinand is because, one time when it was just the two of them sorting through quarterly tax documents, he started laughing about it to himself.
“I am not sure so much fiction is good for our dear Hubert,” he said when Edelgard made a questioning noise. “He was telling me recently about that odd trend—the pirate plot, you know? He seemed very taken with the seafaring idea. I had to remind him that he cannot and refuses to learn to swim.”
Edelgard laughed, too. Both she and Hubert are quite terrified of swimming and flying and have been since their childhood days. Ferdinand’s enjoyment of swimming and flying is something that has been a source of bafflement and amusement, especially since that one hunting trip where Ferdinand tried, as earnestly as he was buck-naked, to convince them to simply dip their toes into the calm river.
“Please put on some clothes,” Hubert had said, very red in the face.
“You have seen me more naked than this!” Ferdinand cried, amused and exasperated at once as he trekked back into the deeper water. “Fine. Be hot and miserable then. I will have my very nice swim and be quite refreshed for our ride back!”
Hubert shook his head, but he could not hide his smile nor the flush that stayed on his cheeks and high on his neck for several minutes more. It was a display of sentimentality that Edelgard would have been shocked by even a few months prior. It eased her momentary spike of worry that perhaps Hubert wished to keep Ferdinand’s naked body to himself. Hubert had never been possessive, even of Edelgard, and it was reassuring to know that had not changed.
The truth of the matter is that Edelgard worries about Hubert. She worries less about Ferdinand because he blazes his own path forward, guided by his own hopes and dreams. It is lucky that these coincide with Edelgard and Hubert’s path, even as poorly as they judged each other in their academy days. Ferdinand, with Aegir and Hyrm and his remaining sister and his horses, is grounded. He readily jokes with Kingdom and northern Alliance petitioners that his minor Crest of Cichol keeps him earthy.
Edelgard worries about Hubert because, unlike herself and Ferdinand, Hubert does not have siblings. He had his father, who he despised and whom Edelgard helped him bury. He had his mother, who he held no resentment towards but also no filial warmth; she passed in the second year of the war. Now, without the shadow war, Hubert has Edelgard, Ferdinand, and his duty. He has their friends, but he maintains a distance from them as Edelgard does. He is content with Ferdinand, who shares his bed and body, and Edelgard, who will always tether his soul.
That is precisely why Edelgard worries. When Ferdinand is away, Edelgard cannot ease the melancholy that befalls Hubert because they are too similar. For so many years, they had their wars. As peace stretches out before them, Edelgard struggles to find a way to put the Flame Emperor to rest. And Hubert:
He is sad. Yearning, although not even he knows for what. Edelgard watches him returning from shopping in the market with books and trinkets. She listens to him through the door that adjourns their quarters dusting and cleaning in preparation for when Ferdinand returns. She feels, without having to ask, the quiet, intense anxiety that Ferdinand’s absence stirs in Hubert.
“Have you considered going with Ferdinand?” Edelgard asks one mild spring evening when Ferdinand is back in Aegir to plant crops.
Hubert does not immediately respond. He strokes the embers in Edelgard’s hearth. It does not require his full attention.
“I would give you leave,” Edelgard said, watching Hubert use the poker to turn over a dry piece of kindling. “I may ask Bernadetta or Manuela or even Linhardt to assist me for a week.”
Hubert is still. Shoulders stiff and back tense.
“That is not necessary.”
Edelgard sighs. She runs her fingertips over the lacquered lid over the virginal’s keys. She does not know who played it last. It was likely for her father. He would not have played. Perhaps, Edelgard considers, she should have Dorothea visit. They could discuss what should be done with the instrument. It deserves better than to moulder in the royal quarters of the last Emperor of Adrestia.
For Edelgard will be the last. The more time passes, the more Edelgard understands she does not wish to continue her family line.
At the hearth, Hubert turns. They gaze at each other. Hubert holds the poker loosely in his right hand. Edelgard’s fingertips lay upon the virginal’s lid. Above them, the ceiling is carved with an image of an eagle devouring a snake. When she was very small, Edelgard had felt so sorry for the snake. Over the northern window, there is a clutch of eggs it was guarding.
There is little that Edelgard desires any longer. The Flame Emperor has had her revenge. It has left little room for anything else to grow, let alone change.
“There is nothing I desire more than your happiness, Hubert,” she says, looking upon the eggs in their ill-fated nest.
Hubert looks at her. Shadowed and uncertain and more than a little upset. They have never been able to express themselves to each other, not without Ferdinand or, years ago, Byleth beside them. They shared too much in the days when Edelgard was more the Flame Emperor than herself.
That is why Edelgard must be clear. She must say what she means, or the world they have built will move on without them. This is the last thing Edelgard wants. What she wants more than anything else, even after all of this:
“Please think about your future. If not for yourself, then for me.”
Hubert is still. Silent. He doesn’t say yes.
But he doesn’t say no.
For the rest of Ferdinand’s absence, Edelgard and Hubert spend some time apart.
In duty, Hubert is still the same. He attends Edelgard each morning and evening, and he runs the Imperial Household with his usual, if less vocalised dedication. Edelgard goes through her motions as Emperor, and Hubert remains available to attend to her and Fódlan’s needs and desires. No one is any the wiser to their discussion in Edelgard’s reception room.
The emotional distance, though, is stark. Edelgard guesses that the only other time they had this much conscious emotional distance was during the war when she accused him of keeping secrets. She never doubted his love for her, although it was not what she desired. When Hubert and Ferdinand fell in with each other at some point between the end of the war and the battles in the shadows, Edelgard had been happy but also acutely relieved. Hubert deserved the opportunity to be more than what he had shaped himself into beside the Flame Emperor.
Everyone deserves a chance to make their own life.
This thought fills Edelgard’s mind. She retires early in the afternoon that Ferdinand is set to return, hoping that Hubert will use her absence to finally speak his mind. She takes a long, private bath and spends an hour attending to herself. She oils her hair and clips a few split ends before shaving, an activity that she picked up from Dorothea. By the time she is done, the sun is half-set, and she spends a moment by her bedroom window admiring the pinks, reds, and oranges passing beyond the horizon.
She wonders, as she pours herself a flute of water from the pitcher set out on her reception room’s table, if it is time for the Flame Emperor to also pass. If there is enough Edelgard without that vengeful creature. The armour and robes are long gone, scorched earth among the carnage and venom of Shambhala, but those were just the Flame Emperor’s clothes. Its physical presence. Edelgard knows the truth.
There is a part of her that is still trapped in the cell. Deep and shielded in her heart, she is still twelve-years-old and clutching Henrietta’s hand. The twenty years that have passed have changed nothing about that terrible moment when her sister sang and breathed her last. It is this part of Edelgard that cannot let go of the Flame Emperor. It feels like a betrayal of her promise.
Edelgard lifts the flute to her lips. She thinks of Henrietta. Her lips parted on that final note. If Edelgard fully puts the Flame Emperor to rest –
“O Goddess, I call your name –”
Shattering.
Wet. Sharp, sudden pain in the ball of the foot.
The singing stops.
Edelgard realises, as footsteps hurry towards her, that she has dropped her water flute. It has broken. She stepped on the glass. The connecting door between her and Hubert’s quarters swings open. Ferdinand, in only a dressing robe that he holds shut around his lower waist, looks about wildly.
“Your Majesty, what –”
“That song,” Edelgard says, and she steps forward again, the glass unheeded. “How do you know that song?”
Ferdinand pauses. He looks at Edelgard’s feet. He opens his mouth. Closes his mouth. Opens it again. In the dim lighting, his teeth are very bright.
“Your foot –”
“Answer me,” Edelgard says.
It is a command. Ferdinand stiffens. Edelgard rarely gives him commands these days. They have long moved beyond their stations, and the titles they wear in public are more for show than function. Ferdinand is able to make his own decisions. Edelgard trusts him. She trusts Hubert and Ferdinand more than anyone else in the world.
She commands him because she feels she may blow apart.
Ferdinand straightens. He regards her for a long moment. His hand, which holds what Edelgard now recognises as Hubert’s dressing robe, tightens and does not loosen. Ferdinand holds very little back from her. He only keeps close and secret the things that hurt him to recall.
A part of Edelgard not submerged in Henrietta’s dead eyes regrets this.
“Lora. My nursemaid. She…”
Edelgard feels herself blink. Henrietta’s eyes were a light, pleasant brown. Edelgard’s eyes were darker, taking after her father. Ferdinand’s eyes are the strange, unique orange of his line.
Ferdinand isn’t looking at her anymore. He is looking at his hand. His knuckles are white.
“She cared for me from when I was in nursery until I turned eight,” Ferdinand says, and Edelgard cannot see his face fully because his hair falls over his face, but she can hear the old grief as he continues with: “I was too old then, and my father liked her too much, so even though my younger sister was on the way, Lora was dismissed.”
I’m sorry, Edelgard wants to say.
At least they didn’t take Hubert from me, Edelgard wants to say.
But what comes from her lips is:
“My sister knew that song.”
Ferdinand looks up. He doesn’t straighten. His eyes, so unique to his line, are wide and surprised. Looking into them, so unmistakable, Edelgard feels something inside of her chest ease.
“Henrietta was my favourite sister,” and it is easy to say, even though for twenty years it has been a wound so deep within. “She was talented in the sword, and her voice was beyond comparison. I wanted to be just like her, but I was not so ladylike. She died in my arms, singing that song.”
Ferdinand blinks. He does not say anything. He is pale and there are faint shadows under his eyes.
Beneath her foot, Edelgard is suddenly aware of how much the glass hurts.
“She is why the Flame Emperor was born.”
Hubert comes to them after Ferdinand has gotten dressed in sleeping clothes, returned to the reception room, and retrieved the well-stocked medical kit from beneath Edelgard’s personal writing desk. He appears in the adjourning door with scrunched, worried eyebrows, taking in Edelgard sitting in her reading chair and Ferdinand bandaging her right foot. His hair is wet, and he wears only his evening shirt and trousers. His feet are bare.
“What happened?” Hubert asks, moving to enter the room.
“Watch out for the glass,” Edelgard says because he has not looked yet at the ground.
“The…” Hubert starts, looking down and around; he stares for a long moment at the broken flute and blood. “What –”
“I dropped my evening water,” Edelgard says as Ferdinand sets her bandaged foot down on the ground. “We are out of vulneraries.”
Hubert frowns at the glass. He moves to join them at the writing desk, his hands opening and closing at his sides. Ferdinand stands, head tilting slightly as he senses the awkward, unusual restraint between them.
“What happened?” Hubert asks, and he looks to Edelgard with a rare spike of anger. “Have I not always served you –”
“Hubert?” Ferdinand starts, very taken aback.
“Hubert,” Edelgard says, and it is soft and draws both his and Ferdinand’s gaze to her, “I was just startled. Ferdinand was singing a song I have not heard since I was young. It was a favourite of Henrietta. Do you remember her?”
“I do,” Hubert says, and the brief anger subsides immediately; Ferdinand glances between them, still uncertain. “And I remember her singing. She was pious. The court favourite.”
“She was my favourite,” Edelgard says, gently because Hubert’s memory of the court is extremely judgemental and occasionally warped. “Some of the songs she sang were balms to me. We were locked in the same cell in Shambhala.”
It hurts much less to speak these truths than Edelgard would have thought. Hubert’s gaze is soft and very kind. Ferdinand watches them both. He is less soft and more reserved, but it is not judgemental. Between the three of them, he remembers things as they are the best. He will remember this, too.
Edelgard needs them. If she is to move forward, if there is to be a place for her in this new Fódlan, if she is to finally be herself, just Edelgard, with none of the other terrors and trappings that she donned as the Flame Emperor, to fulfill her ambitions:
“It was good to hear that song again,” Edelgard says because it was. “I wouldn’t mind listening another time.”
Ferdinand makes an awkward noise. Hubert glances at him, an eyebrow raised. Ferdinand grimaces.
“I would be willing to sing,” he says, turning faintly pink in the face as they both gaze expectantly at him. “Not right now!”
“But you were singing,” Hubert points out, smiling somewhat lopsidedly.
“To myself!” Ferdinand says, looking to Edelgard. “Do you really –”
“Not now,” Edelgard says, and she feels great warmth in her chest, nestled against her beating heart. “You traveled today, and we are all tired. I would like to get to bed.”
“Do you need –” Ferdinand starts as Edelgard stands.
“We both know bandage is not truly necessary,” Edelgard says because the vulnerary in the kit closed the wound. “Hubert, I will take care of the glass tomorrow morning. Good night, the both of you.”
“Good night, Edelgard,” Ferdinand says before Hubert is able to come up with something else to say; he closes his hand upon Hubert’s elbow. “Come now. You promised you would attend me.”
Hubert’s mouth opens. Closes. He turns an odd plum colour. Edelgard does not hide her smile as Ferdinand successfully pulls him away. They shut the adjourning door behind each other, Hubert sputtering as Ferdinand laughs.
Edelgard stands still for a long moment. She listens to the faint, inaudible mutterings through the wall. It is not to eavesdrop. There is simply something pleasant about knowing Hubert and Ferdinand are so near. It makes Edelgard feel as if there is nothing to fear.
She looks up. The dim light from her evening lamp lights the eagle and the snake. The eagle’s head and beak are proud and vicious. The snake, caught and doomed, still struggles. They are vestiges of the world that Edelgard created the Flame Emperor to defeat.
Very softly, Edelgard hears Hubert laugh.
Edelgard lowers her head. Smiles as she turns back towards her bedroom.
She does not need the Flame Emperor.
Edelgard is victorious.