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The end of the battle marked, ironically enough, the beginning of their misfortune.
It had gone well, if a bit frantically. This far north, the weather changed faster than you could call it, and they had long since called it—the sky whitening, the air thinning out, temperatures dropping by the minute, it was obvious a blizzard was coming. Margrave Gautier had always claimed he could tell how far off it was by the rate at which he felt his nose hairs freezing. The kids used to laugh about that in private.
In any case, Sylvain hadn’t needed to consult his own nose hairs or anyone else’s to tell that this blizzard would be here soon. They had been sent up to settle a dispute with a minor bordering lord who had been repeatedly causing problems, hoping if anything the impending weather would encourage him to seek out a more peaceful solution, but no such luck. Sylvain had been unsurprised and well-prepared. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst was one of his mottos. Thankfully, their small squadron had managed to subdue the unrest quickly, and sent the lord and his meager remaining forces home with their tails between their legs before things had a chance to get too messy.
“Are we done here?”
Felix appeared suddenly at his elbow, tugging at his gloves and looking impatient. He smelled like ozone, a light smoke still drifting from him. He had his hood pulled up, his narrow face framed with thick fur, but his nose was bright pink from cold. “Just about,” Sylvain responded. “Pops wants us to take a detour through Mervil on the way back so I can drop off a letter to their mayor. Old Teagan—remember him? We’d see him in Fhirdiad when we were little.”
Felix wrinkled his nose. “All for that? Why can’t he send the letter the usual way?”
“Kill two birds with one stone, I guess. Plus, he thinks it’ll leave a better impression to have it hand-delivered, even if it isn’t by him. You know how he is.”
Felix released an aggravated sigh, tipping his head back towards the sky, where the first tiny, ice-cold flakes had started to drift ominously down. “We don’t have time for that.”
“I know.” They were few in numbers and traveling light, but Mervil was farther than Northwood, the town they’d come through on the way up. By the time the group made it there, the storm would undoubtedly be in full swing. “I guess we could wait it out until tomorrow and make the trip there from Northwood.”
“That’s a waste of our time and the soldiers’.”
“I don’t disagree, but what do you want to do, then?”
“Send the others back. You and I can deliver one stupid letter and wait out the storm in Mervil while they head back to Northwood.”
“That’s… not a half-bad idea, actually,” Sylvain realized. “As long as it gets done, Dad can’t complain too much.” He elbowed Felix in the ribs. “Now I know what I keep you around for.”
Felix huffed. “What, because you’re incapable of coming up with even the most basic strategy without me? Really something to brag about.”
“Okay, I guess I set myself up for that one.” Sylvain pulled his collar further up around his neck, trying to stave off the chill. “We can take Maya, although if the storm gets bad we’re going to have to walk.”
“Are you sure she’ll deign to let me sit on her oh-so-distinguished back?” Felix asked dryly.
Sylvain gave him a shit-eating grin. “Sure she will. If you ask oh-so-nicely, that is.”
“I am not going to beg your insane wyvern for the privilege of riding her.”
“I guess she’ll just have to carry you in her claws, then.”
“Never again.”
“Your loss.” Sylvain stretched his arms over his head. “Okay, let’s get moving. I’ll get Maya if you can let the others know the plan.”
They reunited a couple of minutes later, the forms of the rest of the battalion receding into the distance, Sylvain already on Maya’s back. The wyvern gave Felix a suspicious once-over with one sharp yellow eye, bending her head down to inspect him imperiously.
“Well? Don’t you know it’s rude to keep a lady waiting?” Sylvain prompted.
Felix sighed. “Maya,” he grumbled.
“Lady Maya.”
“Don’t push your luck. Maya, may I… please… ride you.”
Maya continued to glare at him for a long moment before finally snorting and lifting her head reluctantly as if to say, If you must. Sylvain reached a hand down, and Felix took it, letting him help him up and settling into the saddle behind him. “Good to go?”
Felix’s knees bumped against his sides. “Let’s get this over with.”
They’d ridden a horse together once, when they were kids—old enough to ride but not big enough that their combined weight would injure the animal. Sylvain remembered the feeling of Felix’s fists balling into his jacket, the wind streaming through their hair as they talked about nothing. At some point the poor horse tripped over something, and Felix had accidentally jabbed Sylvain in the side with his elbow, causing him to fall off the horse. Felix had laughed so hard he’d slid off the horse’s back too, and they’d sprawled out on the ground together, tears in their eyes.
For some reason, Sylvain felt a heaviness in his chest at the memory. He nudged Maya, and she opened her leathery wings, two powerful beats lifting them into the air. Felix’s arms wrapped around Sylvain’s waist, tightening to stop himself from sliding backwards—while the harness was designed to accommodate a second person if necessary, the seat in back was less comfortable and considerably more precarious.
Sylvain had always found there to be something intimate about riding a wyvern together, the combination of solitude and physical contact it necessitated. During his days at the Academy, once he’d gotten certified, he’d taken many a girl out for romantic night outings soaring high over the monastery. Somehow, though, he was more conscious of the intimacy of it now than he ever had been then. Maybe because it was Felix, the most touch-averse person he’d ever met, who never would have tolerated this had it not been strictly necessary.
Either way, those thoughts were quickly driven out of his mind as Maya climbed higher, picking up speed. The wind lashed at Sylvain’s face like a whip, bitingly cold. His eyes watered, and he freed a hand to scrub at his face to keep his eyelashes from freezing together. “Okay?” Felix asked from behind him, raising his voice over the wind.
Even in the midst of a blizzard, the heat of his breath on Sylvain’s ear cut through the cold. “Yeah,” he managed. It wasn’t his first time flying in this kind of weather, and he was built for the cold—he could handle it. Maya pumped her wings a little faster.
But the storm intensified far faster than they’d hoped. Within minutes, the snowfall had become heavy enough that Sylvain could no longer even see a full length ahead of Maya’s snout. They were buffeted by gusts of wind that drove the snow directly into their faces and made Maya’s flight waver erratically, the muscles in her powerful neck straining. Sylvain’s thighs ached, and before long he was forced to make an executive decision. “We’re stopping,” he shouted, guiding Maya down towards a ground below them he couldn’t even see.
She landed heavily, taloned feet sinking into inches of fresh powder and pulling her wings in tightly. Felix slid to the ground, and Sylvain followed suit, trying to rub feeling back into the tip of his nose. “We could have kept going,” Felix muttered.
“You wouldn’t be saying that when we flew straight into a cliff face and got flattened because we couldn’t see for shit.” Sylvain ran a gloved hand over one of Maya’s wings, hoping she hadn’t strained anything. She nudged him with her snout as if to assure him she was fine.
“There aren’t any—ugh, whatever.” Felix kicked at the ground with one boot. “How far out do you think we are?”
Sylvain judged the distances in his head. “Hard to know exactly, but we’ve probably got a couple of miles to go. Maybe one, at the absolute best.”
Sylvain could see the frustration in Felix’s eyes, but all he said was, “Then let’s walk.”
They walked. Wyverns were not fast walkers, lumbering awkwardly in the best of circumstances, but the quickly-accumulating snow and driving wind meant the humans weren’t moving particularly fast, either. “Sorry for dragging you into this,” Sylvain said after a few minutes of trudging in silence.
Felix scoffed. “I blame your father. There’s no point in complaining about it now, anyway. We’ll be there soon enough.”
“Well, in that case, thanks for coming with me. This would be much less fun without the pleasure of your company,” Sylvain said with a grin.
Felix rolled his eyes, but Sylvain didn’t miss the smile on his face. “I was hardly going to let you go tromping off into a blizzard by yourself. Knowing you, you probably would have somehow crashed into a cliff.”
“Aww, are you saying you’d miss me?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth.”
They kept moving, heads down, the blizzard raging around them. Sylvain checked his compass periodically to make sure they were heading in the right direction, the world reduced to a tiny bubble around the three of them outside of which was nothing but amorphous whiteness. He’d been occupied enough until then to keep himself from really realizing it, but he was tired, a heavy sort of feeling beginning to settle in his bones like the snow blanketing the landscape around them. The stupid letter can wait—the first thing I’m going to do when I get to Mervil is find the tavern and get something warm to drink.
The thought brought a little spring back to his step. “Hey, Felix,” he said. “When we—”
What came next was this: a sound. To call it a crack would be technically correct, Sylvain thought, but would completely and utterly fail to capture the essence of it—the shocking volume and depth, the way it echoed even over the howling wind, the way his heart dropped into his stomach and he froze, for just a moment, Felix similarly stilling next to him.
Then time restarted. Maya roared and leapt into the air, and the ground disappeared from under Sylvain’s feet, and then he was falling.
Oh no, he thought, and then, Not a very original last thought to have before you die, and then the impact came. So many sensations all at once: his head hitting something so hard his teeth rattled in his skull and stars exploded in front of his vision, bright and agonizing. Half his body plunging into water so cold it seemed to stab into his skin like knives. Weight falling on top of him, crushing him down as he struggled to breathe.
Then, silence. Sylvain lay still for a moment, panting, stunned. Then, like a lightning bolt, the panic set in. He squirmed, struggling to shake himself free of the pounds of snow that had fallen on top of him. Thankfully, he was able to get free, staggering to his feet.
A wave of dizziness struck him, nearly knocking him back down again as he clutched his pounding head. Once his vision cleared, he looked upwards and felt a sick feeling settle in as he took stock of his surroundings. Above him, nearly two stories up, stretched the mouth of a narrow crevice through which he could make out the white of the storm raging on outside.
Then he heard a rustling noise and a muffled oath from somewhere nearby, and his brain caught up with him, heart leaping in hope and fright. “Felix?!”
A head of dark hair appeared from a nearby pile of snow as Felix clambered out. Flooded with relief, Sylvain tried to step towards him—but the dizziness struck him again, and the next thing he knew, he was on all fours in the snow, feeling vaguely nauseous.
“Sylvain!”
Felix’s voice cut through the fluff in his head. Sylvain managed to sit up as Felix stumbled towards him and squatted, reaching for him, a barely-restrained fear in his eyes that betrayed a kind of concern Sylvain rarely got to see. “Are you alright?” he demanded.
“Yeah.” The word came out all wrong, not reassuring but instead thin and indistinct. Sylvain tried again, forcing a crooked grin to his face. “I think I hit my head. Just a little dizzy.”
That was better—steadier, more convincing. Still, Felix reached forwards and grabbed Sylvain roughly by the jaw, tilting his head up to look at his eyes by the light coming from above. Sylvain froze, pinned by the force of his examination. He couldn’t stop looking at the little furrow between Felix’s eyebrows and the tiny ice crystals frozen into his long eyelashes. I like it when he worries about me, Sylvain thought.
Then Felix released him, and the moment passed. “You need to take your shirt off.”
“Huh?”
“Are you stupid? You’re soaking wet,” Felix snapped, an edge to his voice as he pointed towards Sylvain’s sleeve. Sylvain followed his gaze, suddenly becoming extremely, regrettably aware that his left sleeve and half of his chest were dripping with frigid water. His parka was decently waterproof, but apparently he’d plunged deeply enough into the subterranean puddle to get the water up his sleeve and in his collar, rendering that a moot point.
“R…right.” Forcing his sluggish mind and body to function, Sylvain peeled off his left glove, flexing fingers that were already mostly numb. He started shedding clothes, divesting himself of his parka, armor, and other layers until he was down to his thin undershirt, the only layer that had managed to remain dry. “Goddess above, that’s cold,” he cursed, a violent shiver running through his body.
“Here.” Felix unclasped his cape and pushed it into Sylvain’s hands. “Wrap yourself up in this. It’s better than nothing.”
“Thanks.” Sylvain gratefully accepted the cape, wrapping it snugly around his torso. It helped, although he could tell from the shivering that had already set in that it wasn’t going to be enough for long.
And speaking of… he’d been prolonging the inevitable. Slowly, he tipped his head back to look upwards again, and his initial conclusion was confirmed. The crevice they’d fallen into was deep, imposing icy walls angling up over their heads.
Felix was already on his feet, wading through the mounds of snow that had fallen with them. He cursed viciously. “It’s a dead end over here. Check the other side.”
Sylvain made it to his feet as well, shuffling along the length of the crevice. After only a few yards, it became so narrow that progressing further would have been impossible. “Here too.”
Felix swore again, quietly. They were silent for a moment, the wind howling on faintly from far above them, as the reality of the situation set in. They were trapped in a tiny crevice in the middle of the tundra in the midst of a blizzard and dangerously low temperatures, even for this area of the country. “We have to climb,” Felix said.
“No way,” Sylvain said vehemently. “If this ice was as sturdy as it looked, we never would have fallen through in the first place. Even if we could climb out without any kind of gear, odds are we’d bring the walls down on us—and if that happens, we’re dead in an instant.”
“You don’t know that’ll happen.”
“Do you want to find out?”
Felix growled low in his throat, clearly knowing Sylvain was right. “Mayor Teagan knew we were supposed to be coming today. Maybe when we don’t show up, he’ll send someone looking for us,” Sylvain offered halfheartedly.
“What are the odds of that happening in time? Even if they did come searching, how would they ever find us down here?”
They wouldn’t. Sylvain knew it; he’d had to say it anyway, because to not say it would be giving up, and it was too soon for that. “I hope Maya’s okay,” he murmured absently.
Felix gave him an exasperated look. “You can’t seriously be worrying about that creature at a time like this.”
“Hey, ‘that creature’ is my friend!” Sylvain protested. “I can worry about more than… more than one thing…”
This time Felix grabbed him before he could fall, strong arms bracing him by the sides as he reeled, legs unsteady. “You fucking idiot,” Felix hissed, clumsily lowering him to the ground.
“That’s me,” Sylvain responded faintly, slumping against the wall behind him. His head hurt so badly, and he was so goddamn cold. He wanted that hot drink at a tavern even more now.
“Just sit still and don’t hurt yourself.”
* * *
Time passed.
Felix had started pacing. The space was small enough that he could only take six or so steps before he had to turn around, tight and tense like a caged animal. Isn’t that basically what we are? With no way out in sight, they were reduced to little more than beasts, desperate for freedom, struggling to even stay alive. The thought made his lip curl in disgust.
“Any other ideas?” Sylvain asked. Felix could hear the fear beginning to surface in his voice, and prayed he could keep it together.
“We don’t have anything we could use to send up a signal. There’s no chance we could tunnel out, even if you weren’t concussed.” Felix shook his head, hard enough that a couple stray strands of hair escaped from his hood. “All we can do is wait.”
“Wait for what?” It was bubbling up now, restless and frantic, resisting all his attempts to stay calm. “You said it yourself. No one will ever find us out here. Hell, they’d probably take years to even find our frozen corpses.”
“Sylvain, stop talking,” Felix snapped.
But Sylvain kept going, the words pouring out with an awful, delirious sort of giddiness, his eyes bright with feverish panic. “In these temperatures, we won’t even last a full day. After everything we've been through, it’s all going to end here, in the middle of the goddamn tundra. All we can do is wait? What are we waiting for, Felix? To fucking die?”
A hysterical laugh dropped uncontrollably from his lips. He clamped a hand over his mouth to stop it, his fingers shaking visibly. “God, I’m really losing it. I sound like—”
He cut himself off, but the damage was done. It was obvious who he’d been about to compare himself to. He swallowed hard, dropping his hand and staring down into his lap. “Can we pretend like I didn’t just say that.”
Felix just nodded silently. The unsteady thread in Sylvain’s voice and the spark of panic in his eyes sickened him. As illogical as it was, somehow he felt that seeing Sylvain like this was the worst part of this whole situation. He’d never admit to it, but Sylvain was his rock—had been for so many years now. Even when the entire world was falling apart around him, the one thing he knew he could always count on was that Sylvain would be there at his side, solid and reliable, cracking inappropriate jokes and grinning as bright as the sun.
This wasn’t that Sylvain. This Sylvain was pale as a corpse, dead-eyed, hollow. This Sylvain couldn’t even manage a smile to mask his fear. Felix knew: the crack had been made before this, on that day everything fell apart. But now it was as though everything inside of him was draining out through that crack.
I can’t lose him, he thought.
Wordlessly, he sat down next to Sylvain. “Open up,” he commanded, tapping on the cape wrapped around him.
“Huh?”
“I could see you shivering from all the way over there. We’re going to share body heat.”
“R… Right.”
Stiffly, Sylvain uncurled his arms, opening them. Felix burrowed in, wrapping his arms around Sylvain’s back and hooking his chin over his shoulder. Sylvain went still for a moment, startled, before gently wrapping his arms and the cape around Felix. “Are you sure you’re doing this to share body heat and not because you just wanted a hug?”
It was embarrassing, how much better that little joke made Felix feel. He sounded weak and tired, but he sounded like Sylvain. Maybe that was why, rather than protesting, Felix quipped back, “What a detective you are. You caught me red-handed.”
A soft laugh in his ear. Sylvain’s arms tightened around him, pressing his face into the crook of Felix’s neck. Felix was practically sitting in his lap now, their bodies pressed together at nearly every possible point, a jumble of arms and legs all cocooned in one cape.
And Felix… didn’t mind it. On the contrary, far from the usual prickly, trapped feeling he got from too much physical contact, it was like this calmed something inside of him, relieved some primal need. And based on the deep breath he felt Sylvain take, the same seemed to be true for him. If we are going to die here, it wouldn’t be the worst, to go like this, Felix thought.
It was an absurd thought. He filed it away: regardless of his feelings on the concept of dying in Sylvain’s arms, he refused to give in to the conviction that their deaths were really that imminent. Whether they were or not, thinking that way was only going to make them miserable, or at worst make them lose their sense of reason.
They needed to distract themselves somehow. Sylvain seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because after a few minutes, he said, “Remember that time we got lost in the woods when we were kids?”
“How could I forget? You bragged about that hare you caught for weeks afterwards, even though it was really Ingrid that did all the work.”
“Was not,” Sylvain grumbled. “It was a joint effort at best.”
“Either way, it didn’t end up mattering because we couldn’t get a fire started.”
“I really thought we were going to have to spend the night out there. Thinking back on it, it was honestly kind of a miracle we managed to find our way back.”
“A miracle? That’s a funny way to refer to my finely-honed navigational skills.”
“Oh, don’t make me laugh. You were just as lost as the rest of us.” Sylvain shifted, his hair tickling the side of Felix’s face. “And then when we got back—”
He stopped. Felix didn’t have to ask why. He knew the story; he knew what came next.
But stopping there somehow seemed worse, so he finished the sentence. “When we got back, Dimitri was in tears. The king said he’d been inconsolable ever since they discovered we were missing. He thought we’d been killed by bandits or something.”
Felix had long since stopped trying to parse the way he felt when he thought about Dimitri, particularly that Dimitri—the courageous but soft-hearted child he’d loved so desperately. It had been so intense before, a blistering combination of grief and rage. It was quieter now, but it still took up the same amount of space inside of him. He had come to terms with that, at least.
Sylvain had grown quiet again. Felix cast around for something else to say. “Speaking of Ingrid, she’s going to be furious with us when she finds out about this,” he landed on eventually.
“Us? More like me. Everything’s my fault to her.” Sylvain’s voice sounded drowsy, his words blurring slightly together.
“Maybe I’ll be generous enough to tell her the plan was my idea. That might redirect at least some of her anger.”
Felix felt more than he heard Sylvain’s weary laugh, vibrating through all the places their bodies touched. “My hero,” he said. Then, after a moment, he added, “You… aren’t blaming yourself for this, right? Because it wasn’t your fault, at least not any more than it was mine.”
“I know that.” Felix did know that, but still, it was hard to avoid dwelling on the knowledge that if he’d just made slightly different decisions, they wouldn’t be in this situation right now.
But how was he supposed to have known? Wasn’t that the story of his life? Hindsight was always perfect. It was so easy to look back on past mistakes and berate yourself for not choosing differently.
He’d told himself he was done with that, the day the monastery fell. Looking over his shoulder was nothing but a waste of time when there was a future to work towards, even if he had to claw his way towards it one agonizing hand at a time.
He hoped, desperately, that they still had that future ahead of them.
But all of that was too heavy to say. Hearing Sylvain yawn, he instead said, “Don’t fall asleep. A head injury and subzero temperatures aren’t a good combination.”
“I know. It’s not my first dance with head trauma, at least.”
“There was that time at the Academy, wasn’t there? I forgot.”
“You’re lucky you have the luxury of forgetting. That was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life, and on top of it I had to tell everyone asking afterwards that I cracked my skull like an egg falling off a retaining wall outside the dorms.”
“Except you didn’t. You told everyone it was a wound you got nobly protecting her in battle.”
“And she played along with it.”
“I never understood why she was so tolerant of your foolishness.”
It was largely a joke, but Sylvain murmured, “Because she understood why.”
Her. The other name they couldn’t say, the other gaping hole left behind in the shape of a person they’d never gotten to thank for giving up everything for them. It felt wrong to call her “the Professor” now, too impersonal and no longer accurate, but to use her first name would have been somehow disrespectful.
Felix had never been a skilled conversationalist at the best of times, but now, even with Sylvain, with whom conversation was usually effortless, he struggled. All the topics he could come up with brought up bad memories, long strings inexorably tying back to the things they didn’t want to think about. “How does your head feel, anyway?”
“It’s fine.”
Felix waited. When nothing more was forthcoming, he sighed. “Sylvain…”
Sylvain squirmed in his arms. “Yeah, alright, I know. It’s sore, but I’ve had worse. You don’t have to worry about me.”
“I’m always worried about you.”
The words came out completely of their own accord, startling Felix even more than they seemed to startle Sylvain. He’d always had an easier time saying things like that—vulnerable, ugly things—when he didn’t have to look the person in the eyes as he did it, when they couldn’t see his face. But it was something he hadn’t meant to admit to, as embarrassing as it was true. “Clearly someone has to be,” he added in a mutter, feeling his face heat.
He expected Sylvain to tease, or to insist it wasn’t necessary, but after a long moment of silence, all he said was, softly, “Thanks.”
Time passed, the minutes turning into hours. The blizzard raging on above them slowly began to subside, but as it did, the light coming from the sky gradually dimmed. They had no way of knowing what time it was, but it was clearly getting into evening, and as night fell, the temperature quickly started to drop.
Felix fought to keep the conversation going, but the more time passed, the quieter Sylvain became. Felix didn’t know if his subdued attitude was a result of his physical state or his emotional one, or both, but either way, he didn’t like it.
Felix was flagging, too. Even bundled up together the way they were, he was losing feeling in his extremities, his mind starting to become foggy and sluggish. He wasn’t sure they could survive a full night—and even if they did, what about the following day? He’d shut down Sylvain’s pessimism earlier, but he hadn’t been wrong—what were they waiting for? A rescue that would likely never come?
He didn’t want to die here. After everything they’d been through, it would be so anticlimactic to slowly freeze to death out in the wilderness. They hadn’t even found— he’d never even told —
At some point he decided to just stop thinking altogether.
* * *
He must have been asleep, or had at least fallen into some kind of hypothermic daze, because his next hazy moment of awareness came much later.
His body was so stiff from being curled up in the same position for many hours that he wasn’t sure he could convince his leaden limbs to move. Sylvain wasn’t shivering anymore. He was very still, his head heavy on Felix’s shoulder. Felix could hear him breathing, but it was shallow; barely audible.
Then, something cut through the freezing fog in Felix’s head, and he realized what had caught his attention. The blizzard above them had subsided, nothing above them but a serene dark sky—and he could hear voices.
He sucked in a quick gasp of air and immediately started coughing, the frigid air searing his dry throat. He couldn’t get his voice to work. What if whoever was up there passed right by them, never knowing they were there?
Another shout came from above. The sounds were getting closer, and Felix could make out what was being said. “Felix!” a man’s voice shouted. “Sylvain! Can you hear me?”
The words were echoed by other voices. Felix’s heart leapt, the pulse of adrenaline giving his exhausted body a brief moment of strength. He twisted, tilting his head up, and yelled as loud as his hoarse voice could handle, “Here! We’re down here!”
A pause. “Keep talking!” someone yelled, once again a little closer.
Felix shouted again. Sylvain’s head slid off his shoulder, and Felix clumsily grabbed him, holding him to his chest. He was unconscious, his face snow-white, his lips blue. Felix was gripped by terror. He looks like he’s dying.
But the next moment, powdery snow was drifting down from the mouth of the crevice, and a face appeared above them. “Oh, goddess. I found them,” the man shouted. “They’re in a crevice.”
“Stay back from the edge,” another voice commanded—a voice that sounded strangely familiar. “If it’s collapsed before, it can happen again.”
The first face retreated, and another one appeared—indistinct in the dim moonlight, but still a face that Felix would recognize anywhere. He stared up at it, blankly, uncomprehending. Am I hallucinating all of this?
“Thank the goddess you’re alive,” breathed Rodrigue. “We’re going to get you out. Stay where you are.”
The minutes that followed blurred together in Felix’s mind. The group lowered a man down on a rope, who then lifted Sylvain out, followed by Felix. There was a tense moment when a fragment of the wall broke off, but for the most part, the rescue went smoothly.
It took all the energy and concentration Felix had left in him just to stay on his feet. Rodrigue grabbed him by the shoulders, turning him to face him. “Are you—”
“Don’t touch me,” Felix snapped—or tried to snap, his lips so numb the words fell together in a barely intelligible jumble.
“Felix.” Rodrigue let go of his shoulders but stared intently into his eyes. “How long have you been out here?”
Felix didn’t answer, both because he had no idea and because trying to explain felt too hard. “Sylvain—” he said instead.
“I know. He’s in bad shape. We need to get both of you to warmth as quickly as possible. Can you ride?”
Felix could not feel his hands. Even if he could focus and stay conscious enough to ride, holding on to anything would be nearly impossible.
“Yes,” he ground out.
Rodrigue did not question him. “You’ll ride with Mark. I’ll take Sylvain. We’re barely a mile out from Mervil—the horses will tolerate it.”
As they rode back, Felix barely managing to stay on the horse, the only thing he could think about was Sylvain. When we get back, I have to tell him. He repeated it over and over in his head, the only thing keeping him present, until the lights of Mervil finally appeared in the distance.
* * *
Sylvain was aware, vaguely, when he finally truly woke up, that a long time had passed. His eyes felt sticky and puffy, his mouth dry, his body sluggish and heavy. He stared up at a ceiling, dimly lit by warm yellow lamp light, and was aware that he was lying in a bed in an unfamiliar room.
Well, I’m not dead, he thought. That’s a good sign.
He rotated his head to the side, wincing at the pain the motion brought on—and there was Felix, sitting in a chair, watching him.
“Hey,” Sylvain said, a little groggy.
“Hey,” Felix responded quietly.
He was dressed down to his undershirt and pants, his hair down. His face was raw and blistered, and his eyes were tired, but he was alive and in one piece and that was all Sylvain cared about. “Glad you’re okay,” he said.
Felix scoffed, looking away. “You’re telling me?” he muttered.
Sylvain felt a pulse of guilt race through him—that he’d gotten them into this in the first place, that he’d let himself think for a moment that he liked it when Felix worried about him. “What happened?” he asked.
“Your wyvern somehow made it here, to Mervil,” Felix explained. A hint of a scowl on his face, he said, “By pure coincidence, my father happened to be here on business. He recognized Maya, and when he learned from the mayor that he’d been expecting us, he concluded something must have happened to us on the way here. So he formed a search party. They had already been searching for hours when one of them finally heard me shouting.”
“Wow,” said Sylvain, processing. He didn’t believe in fate, but if he had, he would have said fate had saved them. Everything that had added together to make their rescue possible seemed so unlikely, it was hard to construe it as pure coincidence—hard not to wonder if there was some meaning behind their survival.
He would unpack all that later.
“We’re in Mayor Teagan’s house,” Felix added. “After hearing what happened, he offered to let us stay so we didn’t have to waste money on an inn. A doctor came to look at your head.”
“And?”
“She said you're concussed, which you obviously know, and that you should minimize activity for the next few weeks, which you’re obviously not going to do. It was a waste of time, if you ask me.”
Sylvain had to grin a little at that. “You know me awfully well. What about you? Clean bill of health?”
“We were both hypothermic when they found us, but no lasting effects and no frostbite. I’m… fine.”
He wouldn’t meet Sylvain’s eyes. “Are you?” Sylvain asked.
Felix was silent. “Felix,” Sylvain said gently, in that tone of voice he knew Felix couldn’t hold out against. “Look at me?”
But Felix only lowered his head further, casting his face in shadow. Looking at him made Sylvain ache in a way he couldn’t quite put words to then—a feeling painful, but not wholly bad.
Without really thinking, he stretched out a hand to cup Felix’s face, tilting it up. Felix closed his eyes, brows drawing together, but didn’t pull away. A long moment passed, and then, without saying a word, he moved—getting out of the chair and crawling into the bed with Sylvain.
Sylvain froze, hardly daring to breathe. It was the third time in two days, and yet it could not have been more different. On the back of the wyvern and in the cavern, Sylvain had thought to himself that Felix would never be touching him so much if he had any other choice, had told himself to make the most of it, because it was so rare and it was all he was likely to get. He’d made his peace with that, as much as he could.
But there was no excuse now, no necessity. Only the simple honesty of closeness. Moving slowly as though trying not to frighten away a wild animal, Sylvain wrapped his arms around Felix, feeling his tense body slowly relax, settling in against his. This is different, he thought. This is something new.
Felix pulled back an inch and finally looked Sylvain in the eyes, and they both knew. Something had changed. Sylvain clumsily brushed a strand of hair back from Felix’s face, tucking it behind his ear. “Hey,” he said. His heart was beating too fast. “Can I—”
Felix kissed him. His hands slid into Sylvain’s hair, gripping his sore head just a little too hard and drawing an involuntary gasp of pain from him. Felix immediately jerked back, wild-eyed. “I—I didn’t—”
“Holy shit, get back here,” Sylvain blurted out, cutting him off. The pain had barely even registered, a tiny blip amid the intoxicating feeling of Felix’s lips on his. The kind of feeling he already knew he would be chasing for the rest of his life.
Felix swallowed hard, the relief on his face quickly chased away by hunger, and leaned in to bring their lips together again, more carefully this time. Sylvain kissed him back, holding his face in both hands, consumed by the heat of his lips, his breath in his mouth, the clumsy but desperate gentleness of hands more used to holding a sword than another human being. Something inside of him was growing, was healing, a crack sealing up, something warm blossoming inside, filling up that empty space. In a world where everything was so, so wrong, this was right.
“I’m glad we didn’t die,” Sylvain said aloud, when they finally came up for air. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a thought like that—thanked whatever god or goddess might be listening that he was still here. It had been a long, long time.
Felix snorted softly. His ears were bright red, like they always were when he was flustered by something. “Just because of this?”
“Hey, what do you mean, just?” Sylvain protested, running his fingers through Felix’s hair.
“A kiss? You’ve done that a thousand times.”
“Not with you,” Sylvain murmured, the words coming out heavier than he’d meant them to. “Not like this.”
“Well,” Felix said wryly, after a moment. “If that’s what it takes to keep you going, then that’s what I’ll have to do.”
“I love you,” was the answer that dropped from Sylvain’s lips, honest and easy as breathing. When had it ever been that easy before, to not just say it but say it and mean it?
But he had learned to love Felix before he had learned to hold a weapon, to shave, to flirt with girls. Why wouldn’t it be easy?
Felix looked at him for a long moment, understanding, and sighed. “I love you, too,” he muttered. “…Idiot. Don’t scare me like that again, understand?”
“I’ll do my best. I promise,” Sylvain said, and he meant that, too.
Seemingly satisfied, Felix let his head drop back down into the crook of Sylvain’s neck, right up against where his pulse beat out a steady rhythm. They stayed like that for a long time, cocooned in each other’s warmth, a momentary haven from the cold outside.