Work Text:
Moments after Felix’s fist connected with that soldier’s jaw, he realized he’d sparred with the man earlier that week.
It mattered little now, he supposed, as the soldier crumpled to the ground and Felix leapt over his unconscious body. And maybe if the soldier had paid a little bit more attention on the training ground, he would’ve put up more of a fight now.
Felix supposed that if he’d been paying more attention to diplomats and politics and all the cruel machinations of Fhirdiad’s court, he might not be running for his life right now. But he could worry about that later.
Cornelia’s coup had been swift and complete. The boar imprisoned, charged, and executed. The city overtaken by western loyalists. The crown’s supporters driven out. Ingrid had been pacing Felix’s room in the castle, worrying about some logistics of rebellion, when they heard the guards marching down the hallway to drag them off to a puppet trial. Felix barely had time to grab a sword for both of them before the door broke down and guards rushed in to their deaths.
Ingrid was a few lengths ahead of him now, slashing upward at one unfortunate guard while simultaneously kicking another so violently that he collapsed to the floor. It didn’t help with the group of soldiers chasing after them, but it eliminated any interference as she raised the wrought-iron gate. She glanced over her shoulder as Felix finally caught up to her, and together they plunged into the night.
Ingrid’s breath was ragged by the time they reached the stables, and they chose their horses blindly, barely having time for saddles and tack. Felix couldn’t tell if Ingrid’s horse was actually calmer or gentler or if it was just that all horses liked Ingrid and hated him, but she was mounted and ready to go while he was still fastening the saddle and flatly on the ground.
Felix had grabbed the reins and lifted a foot into a stirrup when he remembered. He froze, the realization rushing through him like a thundershock.
Ingrid’s horse whinnied, an extension of her glare. “Come on, Felix, it’s just a horse,” she snapped.
Felix looked up at her, eyes wild. “I left it – Aegis – it's in my room,” he sputtered. “I have to go back for it; I can’t let them –”
“Go back for it and they’ll take your head for your trouble,” Ingrid cut him off. She reached down, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt and practically dragging him onto the horse. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.
The doors to the stables burst open, and Ingrid kicked her horse into a full gallop. Felix followed behind on instinct and adrenaline. The soldiers foolish enough to stand their ground fell under Ingrid’s sword and her horse’s hooves. Felix didn’t wait to see if the others decided to give chase.
They rode out of Fhirdiad and into the night. The stars above them were cruelly beautiful.
***
Ingrid set the course towards the south, and Felix followed her without argument. Fraldarius was closer than Galatea, but if Cornelia was looking for them, the northern roads would be more dangerous. Better to find neutral territory to take stock of the situation. It would be a longer journey, but a safer one.
He was surprised, then, when Ingrid turned them down an unpaved road shortly before dawn. He was even more surprised when it wasn’t a manor home or a country estate that greeted them, but a humble church on the outskirts of a humble town.
He was less surprised when he saw Mercedes von Martritz standing at the doorway of the church, a lantern in her hand and a frown on her lips. By then, the pieces had fallen into place.
“It’s Dimitri, Mercedes,” Ingrid said, almost as soon as she’d dismounted and before Mercedes could even ask. “They’ve killed Dimitri.”
It was a testament to how bone-tired Felix was that he accepted Mercedes’s embrace without protest. It was a testament to how dire the situation was that the embrace almost felt like comfort.
She pushed them into chairs around a kitchen table in the corner of the church, bustling to tend to the fire and the tea and all the things that Mercedes was good at fussing over. Ingrid recounted the events of the past 48 hours efficiently, almost stoically, as Mercedes clucked her tongue and fretted over them both. Felix sat silently, his arms crossed, slouched back in his chair pushing back so it was balanced on its back two legs. He felt uncomfortable in this space, claustrophobic. He was so deep in mentally calculating how long it would take to travel to Galatea tomorrow that he didn’t hear the kitchen door creak open.
“Mercie, is everything alright? I heard voices and – oh!”
Felix turned to see a small, shadowy figure in the doorway. He caught the floor-length nightdress, the dressing gown embroidered with flowers. The messy waves of ginger hair cascading down to the shoulders. It took him a moment to realize how clearly he recognized that wrinkled nose and frowning mouth. He flicked his gaze up to meet the reproachful, surprised eyes that he’d fallen asleep pictured and which followed him into his dreams.
Annette Dominic gave a squeak of surprise as Felix lost control of his chair, tumbling backwards onto the kitchen floor.
***
“You shouldn’t sit in chairs like that,” Annette scolded for the fifth time in the last hour. She tilted Felix’s chin up to angle his head more in the dawn light streaming through her bedroom window. She touched her hand to a scrape above his eyebrow that he almost certainly sustained in an earlier fight, and too much healing magic coursed through his body.
Felix scowled. “You should be in Dominic,” he said. If he had one crumb of comfort in his awful life, it was that Annette was perfectly safe in Dominic. He had every reason to believe she was there. He’d sent multiple letters there. Well, he’d sent at least two.
It was possible Annette was thinking of several unsent letters as she glared down at him.
“You don’t get to tell me where I should be, Felix,” she snapped. She slapped a bandage above his eyebrow with more force than was strictly necessary. Then her anger crumpled so quickly that Felix worried she might cry. “My uncle’s been meeting with Empire troops, Felix. I’m really – all of western Faerghus is like this, I think. I had nowhere to go. And Mercie just said that Dimitri – that Dimitri –”
Felix grasped her hand as he stood up from where he was perched on the edge of her bed. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to tell her – that she always had somewhere to go, maybe. That he would keep her safe. That he heard her voice in his dreams, did she know that?
“I left Aegis behind when we fled the castle,” he said instead. “I didn’t think – and now it’s too late to save it –”
Annette pulled him into the hug before he could finish the sentence, and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close in a way he’d never been brave enough to do at the academy. She was soft and safe and her hair smelled like roses, and it took him a long while to realize she was muttering something against his heart.
“Sorry, say that again,” he said, pulling away from her just enough to look down at her.
“I said we’ll get your shield back,” Annette said, looking up at him defiantly. “If we’re to take back the Kingdom, it’s a logical first step.”
***
“Absolutely not,” Ingrid said.
She waved her spoon threateningly at Felix, flinging bits of porridge in his direction. He’d hoped that approaching her with his plan during breakfast would soften the suggestion, but it evidently just made her angrier. Felix was not intimidated. Ingrid had been flinging bits of porridge at him since they were children. It was hardly going to be a proper intimidation tactic now.
Felix crossed his arms. “It’s not up for debate,” he said. “I’m going back to retrieve Aegis. We can’t let it fall into Empire hands.”
“The Empire’s hands are none of my concern!” Ingrid exclaimed. “What would I tell your father if you get yourself killed going back into Fhirdiad?”
Felix scowled. “Never mind that. What would I tell my father if I go back to Fraldarius without our family’s relic?” He leaned across the kitchen table. “Think like a knight, Ingrid. I can’t leave it behind.”
Ingrid frowned, but he knew he’d gotten her. There were things worse than death, to Ingrid’s chivalry-addled brain. It was almost an unfair card to play.
“How would we even get into Fhridiad?” she asked, not quite letting go of logic yet. “I need not remind you that a fair number of soldiers with a fair number of spears chased us out in the first place.”
“You can borrow Macaroni!” Mercedes said, appearing suddenly behind Felix to set a bowl of porridge down in front of him. “And the cart. We go into Fhirdiad at least once a month to deliver local tithe to the cathedral. The guards won’t even blink.”
“Who,” Felix said. “Or what. Is a Macaroni?”
“Oh, didn’t I explain?” Mercedes said with a slight frown, taking a seat next to Ingrid. “That’s our parish horse. We load up the cart every other weekend and travel into Fhirdiad. If you hide in the back when we go into town, no one will think anything of it.”
“There, perfect,” Felix said, looking back to Ingrid. “I hide in the back, you act all pious and churchlike, they’ll let us in at dusk and we’re out by dawn.”
“I suppose . . . Cornelia wouldn’t interfere with church business just yet,” Ingrid said. She clanked her spoon around her empty porridge bowl, a nervous habit that Felix knew meant he’d almost won.
The realization of the flaw in their plan, then, was even more of a blow.
“You can’t drive, though,” he pointed out. “They’ll be on the lookout for us. Every soldier worth his salt knows what you look like at this point.”
“I don’t mind driving!” Mercedes said brightly. “I visit most weeks, anyway. It’s how Ingrid and I have kept in touch, after all –”
“That works,” Felix said.
Ingrid glared at him, grabbing Mercedes protectively. “You are not,” she said. “Involving a holy woman in your – your – your conspiracy to grand larceny.”
Felix glared at her.
“It’s hardly that,” he said. “It was my shield to begin with. And if Mercedes said she’s willing –”
“She’s just being nice. I don’t know why she’d bother being nice to you, but –”
“Let her speak if you’re so certain –”
“This has nothing to do with her!”
“This has everything to do with all of us!”
“I'll do it.”
Felix and Ingrid twisted mid-fight to look towards the other end of the kitchen table. Annette looked up mildly from her porridge, blinking at them as if what she said was obvious.
“I know how to drive the wagon,” she said, a little more confidently this time. “If Felix hides in the back and I drive it into Fhirdiad, no one will think anything of it.”
“Annette, you don’t have to – it’s far too dangerous,” Ingrid said. Felix was, for once, inclined to agree with her, but Annette shook her head.
“Do you both forget we were at the Officer’s Academy with you, as well?” she asked, her eyes narrowing. “Besides, it’s my duty as a Dominic. If my uncle is too cowardly to stand up for the kingdom, I must set our family’s name right.”
“They might recognize you, though,” Ingrid said. “Baron Dominic’s niece and all.”
“Annie can wear a disguise!” Mercedes chimed in cheerfully. “Felix barely recognized her with her hair down, after all, and that’s such a simple change!”
“Felix,” Ingrid said through gritted teeth. “Is an idiot.”
“I haven’t been to Fhirdiad since I was a child,” Annette said, ignoring Ingrid’s point and Felix’s glare in response. “And they’re not looking for me the way they are for you two.” She sat up a bit straighter, her shoulders set. “I’m the obvious choice,” she said. “It’s the obvious plan.”
And whether either of those things were true, the plan was set into place over breakfast. They would leave for Fhirdiad the following morning.
***
The wagon moved slowly, laden with the latest wheat harvest and, eventually, one stowaway noble. Felix rode up front for the first part of the journey. Annette was unusually silent, but no less fidgety, and she seemed to jump at shadows as the wagon rolled along the northern countryside.
Felix was tempted to ask her if he knew any wagon songs, but she gave him such a glare when he started the question that he thought better of it.
The sun was beginning to set when she pulled the wagon to the side of the road, the gates Fhirdiad now visible in the distance. They planned to arrive in the city close to dusk – darkness could only help them for what they were planning.
“You’d best get in the back now,” she said, looking over at the blanket covering the bundles of wheat. “We don’t want to risk any guards seeing you.”
Felix grunted a reply and hopped down from the wagon. Just before he threw the blanket over his head, Annette called his name. He looked up at her. She bit her lip, and for a second he wondered if she was going to call the entire plan off.
“Just – be careful, okay?” she said instead. “In the castle. I can’t stand – I couldn’t take it if –”
“You worry too much,” Felix cut her off. “I said I’d get Aegis, and I will. We can’t win the war without the relics.”
“I don’t care about that,” Annette burst out, grabbing his arm so suddenly that Felix pitched forward onto some particularly scratchy wheat. “Stay alive, dummy. I’m not losing you, too.”
For a brief moment, Felix was tempted to call off the entire plan himself. They had a horse and he had a sword; if they rode through the night they could be far, far away from coups and kingdoms and Crests by the next sunrise.
He shook his head and shook Annette’s hand off him. “I promise,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “Let’s get going.”
True to Mercedes’s word, the guards were singularly uninterested in a holy woman from a local parish, although Felix gripped his sword tightly at the overly familiar way they addressed her as they questioned where she was going and what she was delivering. Annette’s laughing replies sounded sincere enough to their ears, however, and they waved her through the gates with instructions to go straight to the church, as it was getting dark and a “pretty young thing” like her shouldn’t be out alone.
Annette did not go straight to the church. The wagon jostled along the cobbled streets at an uncomfortably slow pace. Felix was just beginning to worry that Annette had somehow gotten lost when the wagon came to a halt and she pulled the blanket off of him, peering down at him in the moonlight. The castle rose behind her, grand and intimidating.
“This is as close as I could get you,” she whispered, glancing up to the garden wall behind them. “We’re around the back. I could try the front gates if you wanted to –”
“Nope, this is perfect,” Felix said, hopping out of the wagon and walking over to the wall beside them. It would be easy enough to climb, and it was a cloudy night tonight, the moon already partially obscured.
He looked back over his shoulder at Annette and felt an illogical rush of nerves. He knew for a fact that her wind magic could tear most palace soldiers to shreds, but she looked small and fragile beside the wagon, hugging herself against the chill of the night air.
“I’ll meet you back here,” he said, nodding towards the wagon to avoid looking directly at her. “If I’m not back in an hour, go back to the church without me.”
Annette scoffed. “I wouldn’t.”
“I’m serious, Annette,” Felix said. He walked over to the wagon and looked down at her, crossing his arms. “If things go wrong, get yourself to safety. You’re not the only one who can’t afford another loss.”
A shiver ran through Annette, and Felix sighed. He quickly unfastened his cloak and swung it around her shoulders. If he was going to be climbing walls and sneaking through castles, it would probably just get in the way, anyway.
“One hour, Annie,” he repeated, leaning in close so she could hear him. He could feel her breath against his cheek. He tried not to think about it. “Stay safe.”
The lower outer wall of the palace was easy enough to scale. He’d done it several times before as a teenager staying in the palace, breaking curfew to sneak out and avoiding guards on the return. He peered over the wall for a brief moment to make sure the coast was clear before dropping into the palace gardens, ignoring a few trampled flowers as he made his way into the castle grounds. By the time such mild destruction raised suspicions, he would be long gone.
Felix made his way around to the back of the castle. He easily dodged the one or two patrol guards; their routes were predictable and they had little reason to be suspicious. Soon, he stood underneath his bedroom window – or what used to be his bedroom window. He supposed he had no idea what it was being used for now, or even if anyone was staying in there.
He double checked that his sword was securely fastened, just in case the room wasn’t unoccupied. Then he reached for an uneven stone on the castle wall and began to climb.
He knew it was by far the most precarious half-hour of the mission. The window to his room was on the second floor of the castle, and he would have nowhere to hide if his timing failed and a passing guard spotted him. Still, the castle wall was climbable; he’d learned that in his youth. Stones jutted out enough to provide rough handholds and footholds, and the vines growing on the wall could be surprisingly stable, if you were smart enough to check them before trusting them with your weight.
Felix was smart enough, luckily. A well-placed tangle of vines was his salvation as he neared the window, and he gripped the vines with one hand while smashing the window open with his other fist. Once again, the property damage didn’t matter if he left town before it was discovered.
He tumbled into a darkened room, the light from the window negligible as the moon disappeared further behind the clouds outside. Felix held his breath for a tense moment as he scanned the room. He let out a sigh of relief when he saw the bed was undisturbed and unused. But it wasn’t until he looked to the corner that he finally could draw a breath again.
The faint orange light was comforting, or at least, it was heartbreakingly familiar. Aegis had always glowed in sympathetic response to his Crest. It flared violently when his Crest activated and burned brightly when he held it. He left it behind on scouting missions. At the academy, it had been a muted nightlight in the corner of his bedroom after his father had left it in his care. Felix hated to admit that the light was somewhat welcome, that he was more used to sleeping in a room with a pale orange glow than in complete darkness.
Such wretched sentimentality finally had its uses, and Felix was grateful he had kept the shield in his bedroom rather than in an armory. Aegis lay undisturbed in the corner of his room. It was possible Cornelia thought it was still in Fraldarius, that her soldiers took it to be an ordinary shield. Fools.
Felix picked up the shield and the light flickered, overly bright for a few moments before settling into a steady glow. He allowed himself a triumphant, selfish smile. He’d had few of those, recently.
Looking back, he would consider that smile to be the cause of everything that happened next. The goddess never liked it when Felix got too close to being happy.
He heard the voices outside the window even before he made it back across the room, and his heart plummeted. Sure enough, Felix glanced out the window and saw two patrol guards standing at the base of the castle. Felix couldn’t quite tell what had brought them to this spot – a careless footprint, a shard of glass, a broken vine – but they clearly had no plans to leave that spot, and they were currently standing directly on his escape route.
A guard looked up to the window, and Felix pulled away as fast as possible. He bolted towards the door of his room and out into the castle hallways without waiting to see if they had spotted him.
The halls of the royal castle seemed strangely empty – no parlormaids rushing to complete some evening task, no nobles stumbling to bed after a dinner that went late. Cornelia had cleared the castle of Dimitri’s supporters, but she evidently hadn’t had time to invite her own friends yet. Or maybe she didn’t have any. Felix didn’t care – either way, it was a win for him.
He hurried through the halls as quietly as possible, taking stock of his options. The front gate seemed idiotic – he and Ingrid had only left through there because it was the fastest option and they hadn’t had time to think. There were several side exits on the ground floor; he could even exit through the main ballroom and loop around if he got down to –
His thought process was cut off by raised voices from an adjacent room. No, he realized, a single raised voice. A single raised voice that he recognized. Cornelia Arnim was less than 20 steps away from him, yelling at some poor footman or soldier.
Almost without thinking, Felix crept towards the door. His first thought was to charge in dagger-first and see how quickly he could locate her heart. But a small, logical voice in his head, that had possibly belonged to Annette at some point in time, reminded him that he was still trying to get out of the castle alive.
Still. He wasn’t built for spying but it couldn’t hurt to listen.
“Explain this to me slowly, using words small enough that you understand them,” Cornelia spat at whoever was in the room with her. “How exactly did he escape?”
Felix smirked. Was she only now finding out that he and Ingrid had gotten out of Fhirdiad or was she just still angry about it? Either way, it was funny.
“Our guards were outmatched, ma’am; it wasn’t a fair fight,” the guard said, his voice shaking. “He had a friend, you see – we were lucky to escape with our lives.”
“Idiot! More of you should have died, then,” Cornelia said. “I don’t need him out there gathering an army and leading some ill-fated rebellion.”
Felix tilted his head, listening carefully. Fraldarius and Gautier were sure to stand against Cornelia, and to put up a pretty good fight. But she must not have heard much about him if she thought he was in any position to lead an army.
“Let me try those smaller words for you, fool: if there’s no king, then there’s no kingdom,” Cornelia continued. “I don’t have time to chase down loose threads because you couldn’t keep one prince in prison for me.”
Felix’s smile slowly faded as he listened. This wasn’t adding up. She wasn’t talking about him, or Ingrid. But there was only one person she could be talking about, and those words didn’t make any sense.
She could only mean that –
“We have men searching for him as we speak,” the guard said. “Our most competent men. He escaped without an army, even without a weapon. We’ll catch him before he makes it to –”
“Shut up,” Cornelia hissed. But it wasn’t her low, furious accusation that made Felix’s blood run cold.
No, he suddenly realized her voice was much closer. She had moved to stand on the other side of the room, and only a door separated them now.
Felix had already turned and ran as he heard the door crash open behind him and Cornelia’s furious scream of surprise. A bolt of dark magic skimmed past his ear, crashing into the wall beside him and leaving a blotchy distortion of melting wallpaper. Felix rounded the first corner he found and tried to ignore the faint scent of singed hair just above his ear.
He heard the clattering of armor behind him as footsteps echoed through the hall amidst Cornelia’s screaming for more guards. Felix wasn’t sure how fast Cornelia could run, and he didn’t look back to check, but more spells sailed past him, burning holes in the walls and partially melting an unfortunate suit of armor.
Felix made it to the first floor and ran for the front entryway, a strange mirror of his pathway two nights previous. He struck out wildly at the guard at the front door, pushing past him and yanking the door open. He plunged outward into the night air. The front gate was at the end of a long gravel patch, a grand stone archway that had been built by one of Dimitri’s more pretentious ancestors. It was a useful guiding point in the semi-darkness, and Felix put on a final burst of speed as he ran towards the gate. Two guards turned at the commotion and drew their lances. Felix already had his sword drawn, Aegis firmly fixed on his other arm.
The first guard raised his lance as Felix made it to the archway. Felix easily parried the blow, forcing the guard back as he slashed his sword, catching him by the arm. Felix raised his sword to strike a final blow – and that was when Cornelia’s magic finally met its mark.
He stumbled forward as the magic hit his shoulder. He could hear the sizzling of skin as the tendrils of dark magic sunk into him. It wasn’t a direct hit even now, but Felix had never been particularly resistant against spells. His strategy was to just avoid getting hit.
He got hit this time.
“Stand down,” Cornelia barked, and the soldier lowered his lance instead of stabbing it through Felix’s other shoulder, which Felix supposed he should have been grateful for. They soldiers stepped closer together, cast in darkness underneath the archway, pointing their lances at Felix as if daring him to run forward. He didn’t. He wasn’t an idiot.
Felix did turn toward Cornelia, who was walking towards him slowly. If she was out of breath from the chase, she hit it well. She was flanked by half a dozen soldiers that she had picked up while running through the hallways. Felix took an involuntary step back underneath the archway and felt a lance point against his back. The odds weren’t great, all things considered.
“You’re particularly stupid, aren’t you?” she asked, taking a step closer to Felix. She glanced down at Aegis, which was glowing faintly on Felix’s archway. “You’re Rodrigue’s son, aren’t you?”
“What gave it away? The glowing Fraldarius relic?” Felix deadpanned.
“No. The stupidity,” Cornelia said. She crossed her arms and clicked her tongue, looking Felix up and down thoughtfully. “Rodrigue’s a sentimental sap of a man. Normally I’d be pleased as punch to open hostage negotiations, but I’ve had bad luck with holding onto Faerghus nobles recently. It’s put me in a bad mood.” She sighed and snapped her fingers, blackish-blue magic appearing above her palm. “How would you prefer to die? The lances will take longer but my magic will hurt more while it’s happening.”
Felix scowled and drew his sword, holding Aegis out in front of him and angling his sword behind him. The guards tensed behind him, clearly unsure how to respond, and Felix looked back at Cornelia and smiled.
“I’ll let you choose what you try, I suppose,” he said. “You evidently don’t have a very good track record for killing nobles, so it’s only fair to give you the advantage.”
Cornelia’s face became an ugly mask of anger, and her magic flared to double the size in her palm. “You really are Rodrigue’s idiot offspring,” she snarled, raising her hands as the magic grew between them. “It’ll be a pleasure to watch you beg for –”
The green light flashed in Felix’s peripheral vision right before the wind spell hit. It didn’t hit Cornelia, however. It didn’t even hit Felix. Instead, it slammed directly into the underside of the stone archway, causing a long crack to appear and grow along the bottom of the arch.
Felix looked upwards, bewildered that Annette’s aim was so bad. It took him a second too long to realize what was happening before the archway crumbled and stone began raining down.
Luckily, Felix’s reflexes were quicker than his brain, in the moment. He threw Aegis over his head and stumbled backwards, hearing the screams of the soldiers beside him as he pushed through them and ran out of the crumbling gate. There was a flash of blackish-blue light as Cornelia’s spell hurtled by him, but between the surprise and the lost visibility, she missed him yet again. He stumbled out from under the archway just as it fully caved in, leaving a small mountain of stone between him and Cornelia and her soldiers.
Felix lowered his shield shakily and looked at Annette, who was illuminated by the green light of another wind spell that she was evidently ready to cast at anything that moved.
“You almost killed me!” Felix said, stumbling forward to away from the rubble.
“I didn’t!” Annette protested. “You had Aegis; I knew it would protect you!”
“And what if I didn’t have Aegis?” Felix demanded.
Annette shrugged. “Then you wouldn’t have been standing there in the first place,” she said, with infuriating logic. She stepped closer to him and for a brief moment Felix assumed she was attempting to give him a hug, but she simply pressed healing magic into his shoulder with a worried frown, and he hoped it was too dark for her to notice him blushing.
“We have to go, Annie,” Felix muttered. “Worry about that later.”
“Shh,” Annette hissed. “It’ll take thirty seconds.”
It was hard to argue when he finally felt like he could use his arm again, but a crash from the rubble behind him caused Felix to turn and Annette to drop her hand.
“Thirty seconds are up. Let’s go,” Felix said. He looked over Annette’s shoulder and realized with mounting dread that the road behind her was empty. “Where’s the wagon?” he asked.
“Um,” Annette said, looking behind her. She pointed towards the back of the castle. “At the rendezvous point?”
“You didn’t bring the wagon?” Felix said.
Annette scowled. “I heard a commotion! I was worried!” She put her hands on her hips and glared up at him. “You’re lucky I was! Imagine if it had taken me longer to get here.”
In any other circumstance Felix would have gladly stood there and argued – he was pretty sure he had logic on his side here, but it was always hard to tell when arguing with Annette – but at that moment magic exploded through the rocks and rubble, leaving a fairly large opening through the gate once more. Felix could see Cornelia through the opening, preparing another spell.
“Right,” Felix said. He shoved Aegis into Annette’s hands and sheathed his sword. “Hold this.”
Annette blinked down at Aegis in surprise. “What? Why? You’re going to be much better at fighting with – eeek!”
She shrieked as Felix bent down to pick her up, throwing her over his shoulder and breaking into a run away from the front gate. It was possible Annette was a faster runner than he could remember, or that adrenaline would have kicked in to speed things along. He wasn’t inclined to find out.
“The wagon’s left of the south garden, right?” Felix asked as he ran. It would have been easier to cut through the castle grounds, but he wasn’t going to back through the entry gate any time soon. The footsteps and shouting behind them indicated that was clearly not an option.
“Felix! Put me down!” Annette yelped. Aegis smacked against Felix’s back as he ran, and he wanted to tell her to hold onto it with two hands. But then she yelled “Keep your head down!” and he felt the wind pick up around them as she fired a spell at the pursuing soldier. Felix guessed, from the yelps behind them and Annette’s cheerful cackle, that the spell had hit its mark.
“Will ducking really help?” Felix asked as she cast another spell, which caused some sort of explosion he didn’t stop to admire.
“Maybe not,” Annette said. She fired another spell. “Keep running, then.”
The horse was remarkably calm as Felix ran up to it. It was almost insulting, given the evening that Felix was having, but he’d already lost enough arguments with Annette that he didn’t feel inclined to start an argument with the horse. He tossed Annette onto the horse's back and drew his sword.
“Felix! What are you doing,” Annette yelped. “You can’t possibly fight them all!”
In one fell swoop, Felix brought the sword down on the harness connecting the horse to the wagon. The horse did seem a bit perturbed by this, and Annette let out another yelp, but Felix grabbed the reins and swung himself up behind Annette before either could complain too much more.
“The wagon! All that wheat!” Annette protested, twisting back to look at Mercedes’s beloved wagon.
“I’ll promise to make an extremely generous donation to the church when we don’t have a small army chasing after us,” Felix said, wrapping an arm around Annette and pulling her closer. “Hold on to Aegis.”
The voices of soldiers faded into the background behind them, and for a long while, there was no sound around them but the horse hooves on the ground and their own panicked breathing.
***
Annette made them stop only a few hours outside of the city. They’d strayed from the main roads and it was unlikely that they were being pursued now, but Felix still led the horse off the path and into a nearby wooded area, just to be safe. Annette gently set Aegis against a tree and pushed Felix to sit on a nearby stump. Away from Felix, his shield still glowed dimly, though not nearly as bright as when he held it.
She tore the sleeve of his shirt beyond repair in an attempt to get at the dark magic wound, but Felix didn’t protest. He suspected the pain in his arm had more to do with hours of riding one-handed, the other wrapped around Annette as she clutched the shield, but he didn’t mention that, either. It was his own fault - if he’d wanted to be a knight in one of Annette’s ridiculous storybooks, he should have studied riding with more interest. As it was, he accepted the healing magic without complaint, staring grimly at the shield’s glow from across the clearing.
“I ruined your shirt,” Annette said, frowning. “And it’s so cold out.”
“I don’t care,” Felix mumbled.
It was true, but Annette didn’t seem to believe him. She unfastened his cloak from her shoulders – he’d somehow forgotten that she’d been wearing it this whole time – and draped it around him, clicking her tongue with worry as she looked down at him.
“Mercie can patch you up better when we get back to the church,” she said.
“It’s fine,” Felix mumbled again. He shook his arm a couple in a couple of lackluster circles to demonstrate this, but Annette only frowned at him in response.
“I suppose we could spend the night here, get some sleep,” she said, looking around the clearing. “But I’m worried that staying out here with a relic, it just kind of paints a target on our backs, you know what I –”
“Cornelia mentioned Dimitri,” Felix blurted out.
Annette’s fingers tightened around his shoulder, and Felix winced as she brushed newly-healed skin. “Ah,” she said, her voice much more even than her grip. “I suppose . . . I suppose she would be interested in his death. She seems . . . invested in deaths.” Annette’s own shuddering breath cut her off before she could continue, and as Felix grabbed her other hand, she fell silent.
“It wasn’t that,” Felix said, so softly that if they were anywhere besides this abandoned forest in the dead of night, he was sure she wouldn’t be able to hear him. “The way she talked about him – it sounded like he was still alive. It sounded like he escaped execution.”
If Annette’s hand had dug into his shoulder before, her tiny fingers now threatened to break his in half.
“Dimitri’s – alive?” Annette asked, her voice so small and hopeful that it hurt.
“I don’t – I don’t know,” Felix said. Realization hit him suddenly – he was doing, what he was saying, how close Annette’s face was to his own. He stood up abruptly, stumbling back away from her. “I don’t know,” he repeated.
“Felix,” Annette began.
“Just – forget I said anything,” Felix said, turning away from her. “I have no idea what I heard. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m just giving you false hope.”
He stood, facing deeper into the woods, eyes closed in frustration and anger, and he couldn’t have looked back at Annette for anything. She didn’t speak, and he heard her soft footsteps in the underbrush below. He wondered if she was leaving the clearing, returning to their horse to get away from him – he wouldn’t have blamed her. But instead, he felt her hand against his back, and he turned to find Annette staring up at him, Aegis in one hand.
“You’ve always been the person to give me hope, Felix,” she said softly, raising her hand from his back to his face. She ran a finger carefully alongside a cut across his cheek. “And it’s never been false before.”
“Nothing’s like before now,” Felix said, cursing himself for leaning into her touch but unable to stop when her hands were so warm and the night was so cold. “Not anymore.”
“Maybe not,” Annette said with a sigh, drawing her hand away. She held out Aegis to Felix. “But false or true, we’re the only hope the kingdom has left now.”
Felix took Aegis. The light from it flared against his touch, illuminating the forest clearing in coppery gold for one shining moment, and then settled back into the steady hum of light that he was used to carrying into battle.
He kept Aegis strapped to his back as they rode away from Fhirdiad and towards the forming rebellion that Cornelia would grow to despise, whether or not the crown prince stood among them. The warm glow from the shield was the only light in a starless landscape.