Chapter Text
Felix preferred to avoid Fhirdiad society on principle, but circumstances after the war being what they were he’d had no choice but to participate.
And if he was honest with himself it wouldn’t all be unpleasant, not if—
“Unhand me, you—you boor!”
—she was in the city too.
Out of sight Annette’s voice never failed to fill him with emotions he’d once avoided too. This time it was a hot, rousing anger that only strengthened when a quieter, placating male voice followed hers. Felix stepped faster and rounded the corner.
The sight he found made him sick to his stomach.
A slight man he might’ve vaguely recognized as a noble from Leicester gripped Annette’s wrist and dragged her further down the corridor over her loud protests and struggles.
Or tried to, for before Felix could intervene further than his hand curling into a fist Annette swung her own and landed a solid blow against the man’s jaw.
He recoiled with a startled gasp but failed to let her go. But that wasn’t the end. His eyes darkened with fury, though Annette wasn’t intimidated. She reached and grabbed a nearby vase by its neck and crashed it over the bastard’s head.
The vase shattered and the man crumpled instantly, collapsing to the floor with a dull thud on painted ceramic shards. Annette stepped away from him with an audible relieved sigh before mumbling, “Sorry about the vase, Your Majesty.”
Shards crunched under his boot as he approached her. “He won’t mind,” Felix said.
She spun around, her eyes widening as they fell on him. “Felix!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
He shrugged before admitting, “Avoiding the party.”
“I’m surprised you even bothered attending then,” she said. She smoothed her hands over her skirts, drawing his attention to her clothes.
It wasn’t as if Felix had an eye for fashion, but her dress suited her. The dark green fabric brightened her eyes, but the long sleeves surprised him. Noble ladies seemed to wear nothing but short ruffled sleeves these days, and he knew Annette enjoyed being fashionable.
Not that he cared either way. She would be the prettiest one at a ball if she attended wearing a flour sack for a dress and apricot pits for jewels.
When her cheeks colored slightly he realized he was staring. He tore his gaze away and wondered, “Did you get lost?”
“Of course not,” she said, scowling at him. “My feet ached from dancing, so I stepped out for a break.”
“All the marching we did during the war and dancing is what exhausts you?” Felix asked.
“Yes, it does,” Annette said, “especially if I’m briefly the captive audience of men who think their conversation is the most riveting and fascinating collection of words to ever grace my ears.”
An amused snort escaped him. “I see,” he said. He glanced down at the prone body of her would-be assailant, his good humor instantly evaporating. He nudged him with his boot and asked, “Is this bastard one of them?”
“Unfortunately,” she said. She crossed her arms and sighed. “He ambushed me when I left the great hall. I think he had a little too much to drink.”
“That’s no excuse,” Felix said. He leaned down and checked the man’s pulse - as a matter of course, not because he really thought Annette had managed to do more than knock him out with the vase - before grabbing his arms and dragging him to lean against the wall.
“I’m…worried what he’ll say when he wakes up,” Annette confessed from behind him.
“Don’t be,” he said. “This is that Weathervane bastard Gloucester always complains about. That ugly vase was more trustworthy than he is.”
To his surprise - to his delight - a giggle burst from her. “That’s true,” she said.
“And if he does say anything he shouldn’t,” Felix added, “I’ll sort it out.”
Her gaze met his, something serious in them. “That’s a reckless promise for someone like you to make, Felix.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded with a frown.
“For you I don’t know if that means dueling him, killing him, or throwing money around.”
Felix shifted uncomfortably then, the weight of Fraldarius’ problems - a weight that had so briefly lifted from speaking to Annette - returning. “I would start with a threat, at the very least,” he said.
“That does sound a little more reasonable,” Annette said with a smile. She approached him then and wondered, “Escort me back to the party?”
His lips parted with surprise. “I thought you were taking a break.”
“I think my feet are sufficiently rested,” she said. “Besides, I think I’m done dancing with noblemen I don’t know for tonight.”
“A-all right,” he said. He extended his arm to her.
When she slipped hers through his and her gloved hand rested gently on his arm, something in his chest lifted.
While they walked, she talked - idle conversation about her work, her family, her friends. They were between terms at the School of Sorcery so she found more time for social events, she said, but still somehow often worked late into the night.
“Sounds like you haven’t changed much,” Felix observed.
“And you have?” Annette said. Then she seemed to reconsider her words, for she added, “That’s not right.”
He stopped mid-step, stunned, and turned to face her. “What?” he said. “How have I changed?”
She withdrew her arm - to his grief - and frowned thoughtfully. “You just seem…more measured,” she said. “I don’t know if you’re calmer, but you feel more…restrained.”
“Restrained?” he echoed.
“I-I don’t know,” Annette said. “This is the first time I’ve seen you since you accepted your title, so maybe I’ll change my mind or find other changes. But Felix, I…never mind.”
“What?” Felix said.
She shook her head and stared past him, down the corridor towards the indifferent party. “Nothing,” she said. “I’m sure it’s just a rumor and—“
He grabbed her gloved hand, forcing her gaze back to his face. “Tell me,” he said. “What’s bothering you, Annette?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it, then said, “There’s a rumor going around Fhirdiad that you’re looking for a-a wife, and that it’s because House Fraldarius is on the verge of financial ruin.”
Felix blinked, then lowered his eyes and dropped her hand. A sigh escaped him before he confessed, “It seems the gossip gets some things right.”
“What?” Annette said.
“The war stretched us thin,” he explained. “My house fielded more soldiers and spent more coin on training and supplies than anyone, but my father overextended our finances. Any wealth we had is all but gone and we’re one bad harvest away from ruin.”
“So you need to marry money…”
“I need an investment,” Felix said. “Unfortunately to secure one I might…probably…have to marry someone for it.”
“Oh,” Annette said hollowly, something almost…unhappy in her voice. “Will you marry a stranger then?”
“I might,” he said. “I don’t know. It’s hardly ideal or desirable, but—“
“Would you rather marry a friend?”
Felix stared at her. Something in his chest tightened, because he didn’t know how to say that if his circumstances were different, if House Fraldarius wasn’t desperate and he had the luxury of choice, he would choose—
“I—my family has money,” Annette blurted. “Not enough to support a territory as big as yours indefinitely, but enough to see you through winter till the next harvest.”
Was—was this really happening? Was she saying what he thought she was?
Was it - everything he needed, everything he wanted - really that simple?
“I-I even have my dowry,” she added. “My father set it aside years ago, so—“
“Is that a reason to marry me?” Felix wondered over the voice in his head that screamed at him to agree. “You have your own life at the School of Sorcery, and being my wife—you’d be a duchess.”
But also his wife. His wife, Annette - Annette, his wife .
“I’ll find a way to do both,” she said with a smile, with a stubborn set to her jaw. “At least now is the perfect time to get married since I have another two moons till the next term starts.”
“Why?” Felix said, still hardly daring to believe it. “Why do this for me? Why would you tie the rest of your life to mine just as a favor for a friend?”
Her cheeks turned pink, and she bit her lip. “I’ll tell you one day,” Annette promised, “if you agree.”
If he agreed. And what choice did he really have? He would’ve been trapped marrying eventually, so to marry Annette…
Only in his wildest dreams had he entertained such a thought. Only his worst fears held him back from taking her hand and agreeing to her mad plan now.
He didn’t want to burden her with his problems, even if it meant she could help him solve them. And for what? He would ruin her future and any other prospects she might have, if she preferred someone else the way he preferred her.
But marrying Annette also meant claiming her as his. No man would dare touch her the way that bastard from Leicester had tonight, and if they did he’d be well within his rights to retaliate.
So he agreed and tried not to fear he’d condemned her to future regret and unhappiness.
After they decided to marry, Annette insisted on a few conditions - and he was loathe to refuse her anything.
“I’d like the final word if you’re spending above a certain amount of my family’s money at once,” she said.
“Above a certain amount?” Felix asked.
“Yes, well, obviously you don’t need to bother for little things like small repairs or procuring supplies or necessities like that,” Annette said with a wave, “but if it’s something big I want to be involved.”
“Obviously,” he said, a little rankled she needed to ask. “It’s even written into my house’s code that Duke Fraldarius needs to ask his wife for permission to march into battle, or his mother if he has none.”
Annette ogled him. “What? Is that true ? And what if he has neither? Does that mean I can reject a command from the king ?”
He laughed despite himself. “Well, no,” he admitted. “If the boar personally commands me, you can’t forbid me. And without a wife or mother, I wouldn’t require permission.”
“I see,” she said. “Well, now I feel powerful.”
“It hasn’t happened as much as you think,” Felix said. “We’re a family of soldiers and knights. Anyone that marries into our house, man or woman, understands this.” He pressed his lips together and swallowed against the sudden deluge of emotion welling in his throat. “None of us tends to live very long either.”
Annette’s eyes burned into him. “I’ll make sure that changes now that the war’s over,” she promised.
Despite his own logic tempering it, he believed her.
More than that, he wanted to believe her, wanted to believe he’d live a long life he didn’t have to fight tooth and nail for.
“Anything else?” he wondered.
“You were right when you said I have a life here,” Annette said immediately.
“A-are you changing your mind?” Felix said, something like fear seizing him.
“No, no!” she said. “I just wanted–I want to keep that life, somehow.”
“How will you do that?”
“For now at least I want to keep my appointment at the School of Sorcery,” she confessed. “I-I know it’ll be difficult to do both, but it’ll be another moon and a half till the next term starts so I’ll have time to settle into Fraldarius with you first. And in just two years I’ll be able to apply for tenure, which means I’ll have more freedom and can take entire terms off without losing my professorship, so–”
She cut off when laughter huffed from him. Her eyes sharpened into a glare as she demanded, “What’s so funny, Felix?”
“Nothing,” he said, coughing. “I just–don’t give up your ambitions on my account.”
“I know Duchess Fraldarius must be as demanding as–”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I doubt my mother is as eager to give up the responsibility, if not the title, as you think, and if she is I can convince her.”
Annette raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “That’s not very filial of you, Felix,” she said.
The tips of his ears warmed with embarrassment. “I know my own mother, Annette,” he said. “She enjoys bullying people and wringing every last coin out of our pathetically dwindling coffers that she can. She won’t begrudge you two years.”
(He didn’t bother mentioning that he thought his mother was using the work to deaden her grief for his father’s death.)
“Well, I suppose I can verify with her when I finally meet her,” she said with a tremulous smile.
“Any other conditions?” he asked.
She bit her lip, her brow furrowing with worry. When he cleared his throat expectantly, she said, “I…wonder if this one is too selfish.”
“It’s a condition,” Felix said. “It’s supposed to be selfish.”
“But this one is really selfish,” Annette said.
“Ask anyway,” he insisted, rolling his eyes. “I’ll be the one to decide that.”
Her eyes darted to and from his face, driving him insane with curiosity and impatience, before she took a breath and blurted, “Please don’t ever take a lover.”
Felix hadn’t known what to expect, only that it wasn’t that. He opened his mouth to protest that he wouldn’t do such a thing if he was married, only to realize that wasn’t as much of an assurance as he wanted it to be.
He knew taking a paramour was practically a matter of course for Adrestian noblemen, and that Adrestian lords didn’t bother keeping it quiet out of shame or regard for their wives. Nobles from Faerghus, at least, tried to keep their own affairs clandestine - and disloyalty in vows of marriage was treated almost as disdainfully as disloyalty to king and country - but rumors always spread.
(Sylvain’s mother was notorious for her unfaithfulness; his father was notorious for his indifference.)
Marriage didn’t count for much for some people, but he hoped Annette would understand it would for him. “I won’t,” he said. “You’re the only–you’ll be my wife, Annette. I don’t need to look at anyone else.”
You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted anyway.
They married within a fortnight, arrangements made hasty with both the king’s and the archbishop’s blessing. The wedding was small and simple with only their friends and family in attendance.
As far as Felix was concerned it was a perfect wedding, or as perfect as a wedding could be. A pared down ceremony, simple vows he and Annette both spoke solemnly, sincere congratulations from their baffled guests, a small feast afterwards.
Not that he had much appetite to enjoy the food. Between her offer and the whirlwind of activity in the days leading up to the wedding the gravity of the future now upon them only just began to grip him.
It didn’t begin with swallowing his pride and asking her father for permission to marry her, because he knew Annette would appreciate that. It didn’t begin with Annette’s mother hissing into his ear that he’d have hell to pay if he ever hurt her when she forced a congratulatory embrace on him. It didn’t begin with the boar teasing him for being the first in their cohort to get married (though Dimitri himself was already engaged to the Edmund girl), nor with his mother assuring him he’d made the right decision for House Fraldarius after she met Annette.
It didn’t even begin when the archbishop bid he and Annette kiss before their audience, when he pressed his lips to hers for the first time with his pulse thundering in his ears and felt how soft and warm her mouth was on his.
It began in increments in the days before while he made arrangements for her belongings to be sent to Fraldarius from Fhirdiad, when he saw her only for brief stolen moments and realized how much he’d missed her since the end of the war.
It began when Annette offered him a strange smile during the feast and he remembered they’d been friends for years yet he had no idea how to be married to her. It began when he thought about spending so long wanting to touch her and now being unsure if he really could.
Sylvain’s unwanted “advice” didn’t help.
“I know it’ll be tempting to just get down to business on the wedding night,” he said, “but trust me when I say you need a little more subtlety. You can’t just jump into it, you have to seduce her.”
“I’m not seducing Annette,” Felix snapped even as all the heat rushed to his face, even as he couldn’t help but wonder–
Why did she always wear long sleeves these days, and not the shorter, gauzier sleeves most women in Fhirdiad favored this summer?
“I don’t mean that you have to coerce her into bed,” Sylvain said. “I only mean you shouldn’t neglect the foreplay, for her sake if nothing else.” He winked.
It was hardly the most graphic thing he’d ever shared to his extremely reluctant audience; nevertheless Felix wanted to pour lye into his own ears.
The feast ended too quickly, and before long their friends bundled them into a carriage along with their well-wishes. Annette returned with promises to write once they were settled in Fraldarius and with promises to visit very soon once term resumed at the School of Sorcery.
Felix waved away Sylvain’s last-minute advice and warnings and could only offer a tight nod when Ingrid insisted he treat Annette well.
As if he would ever hurt her on purpose.
There was no honeymoon - they’d both agreed it was unnecessary and a waste of time and coin he couldn’t spare - and they didn’t bother lingering in Fhirdiad after the wedding. They quit the city the very next morning.
Somehow they silently agreed to skip the wedding night too. He let Annette have the bed to herself while he slept half-clothed on the settee in the next room, pretending he didn’t feel her eyes burning into the back of his head.
He almost turned around then. He almost asked her if she wanted him to stay, but she said nothing except a soft good night and he only nodded.
To his relief, some of the awful tension faded by morning, and once they began the brief journey to Fraldarius it was easy to fall into their usual rapport.
It was mostly Annette asking questions - about his living family, about his territory’s people, about his duties and what hers would be. Intelligent questions too, and some even he wasn’t sure how to answer.
“I doubt my mother will be quick to relinquish the things she’s been doing since she became duchess,” he admitted, “so it’s not as if you’ll have to learn how to do everything all at once.”
“Still, I have the most time now,” she said. “In a moon term will begin at the School of Sorcery and I’ll be back in Fhirdiad.”
Felix wasn’t sure what to say to that, only that his chest tightened at the reminder.
When they reached Fraldarius, after Annette went through the greetings and other formalities with the castle’s dwindling staff, his mother pounced.
They met briefly just before the wedding - when she complained to him at the short notice he’d given her, about how he’d failed to even indicate that he fancied someone when she’d asked - but Annette looked so alarmed and overwhelmed with her eyes wide and her spine stiff that Felix couldn’t help intervening.
“Mother,” he protested, “we’ve been traveling for three days. Might Annette rest for a few hours?”
“I suppose I can save the tour for after dinner,” his mother agreed with obvious reluctance. “Unless you’ll show her around yourself?” Her lips stretched into the same almost smug grin that Glenn had flashed him before every lost sparring match.
Felix wasn’t sure what he was about to lose now, but he stepped between his mother and Annette and wrapped his arm around his new wife’s waist. “I’ll start with showing her to her quarters,” he said.
“Don’t let me see either of your faces till dinnertime,” she called after them as he dragged Annette away.
His face warmed, and though he avoided looking at her he didn’t doubt Annette looked the same. “Bear with it,” he mumbled. “She’s impossible to argue with.”
“D-does she think we’ll do–before dinner ?” Annette hissed.
“We’re newlyweds,” Felix said. “I suppose she thinks we have no reason not to.”
She jerked herself away from him, so abruptly his arm curled around nothing, and faced him. “Does that mean she doesn’t…know?” she said.
“Know what?” he asked.
“Know that we don’t–that we’re just–that this is an arrangement between…friends?”
It was true, and yet her words struck him through the chest. “She…knows,” Felix said. “Of course she knows; she’s the one who insisted the best way to solve House Fraldarius’ problems was for me to get married.”
“If she knows, then surely–”
“She’s old-fashioned,” he said, hunching his shoulders. “To her, once you’re married you start in on the whole…bedding thing, regardless of your circumstances.”
“Bedding thing?” Annette echoed with a snort.
“I can’t think of any better word for it that isn’t something Sylvain would use,” he retorted, rolling his eyes.
“You surprise me sometimes, Felix,” she said, laughing in her sweet, singsong way. “You have no problems making the most vile threats sometimes, but when it comes to, ah, physical intimacy the language you use is downright polite.”
He crossed his arms and scowled. “Would you prefer I say something uncouth?”
“I didn’t mean that,” Annette said. “I just meant that it’s…surprising. And sweet.”
“ Sweet ?” Felix blurted incredulously.
“A-anyway!” she said, pointedly ignoring his protest. “I don’t think it’s particularly old-fashioned. It is generally expected that married couples do…that.”
“Then why were you so surprised?” he wondered.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I think I’m just not used to the idea of us being…married yet, much less doing everything that entails.”
“We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Felix said.
“Do you want to?” Annette asked then. When his eyes widened, she turned her crimson face away. “I-I just meant…you’re framing that question in a way that puts the–the onus on me, so–”
“I didn’t mean to,” he said.
“Then that means–what does that mean?” This time she looked at him properly, head-on, her eyes sharp and discerning.
Felix could only look back, his mouth dry and his back stiff, anything he could say catching in his throat.
But he’d always been better with his actions than his words, so what could he do ?
He imagined it now. He imagined marching towards her till the gap between them disappeared. He imagined cornering her against the wall, right there beneath the faded tapestry of his great-great-grandfather hunting a Demonic Beast, right there between the two antique suits of armor, feeling the way her body lined up with his and capturing her lips the way he’d wanted to since her voice so ensnared him.
Then she would know that he hadn’t been thinking of his responsibility to his territory when she offered to marry him. Then she would know he only wanted her for himself.
Except he couldn’t do it, and not for lack of desire. But he wasn’t sure if he lacked the nerve, the boldness, the courage, the confidence to do anything right when he’d done so much wrong.
And Annette herself looked so painfully unsure in that moment, her fingers fiddling with the hems of her long sleeves, her brow furrowed, as if she only now considered it with him.
To cross a line they’d never crossed, a line they could never cross back over.
All he knew was that he wanted Annette to choose to cross it with him, whether she told him with so many words or took his hand and dragged him across.
“I don’t know,” he eventually lied, “but we have the rest of our lives to figure that out, don’t we? We don’t have to run at a gallop like we’re expected, do we? We can wait.”
He wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to say, but then Annette nodded slowly and a small smile pricked at her lips. “You’re right,” she said. “We have time to get used to…this.” She gestured between them.
“So get some rest for now,” Felix said, reminding her of their original reason for walking to this wing of the castle. “I’ll come find you in two hours for dinner.”
“All right,” she said. Her smile widened, so much a dimple formed in her cheek, and something horribly warm pricked his chest. “Thank you, Felix.”
Then she disappeared inside her new rooms.
He wondered if she took something of himself with her.