Chapter Text
I.
Ever since she was old enough to remember, weaving between the legs of startled adults as she tore after her siblings throughout the imperial palace, Edelgard had been told time and time again that she was the light of House Hresvelg, chosen for an honor few could match.
For years, she hadn’t known what that meant.
It was a rite of passage for every infant of the nobility to be brought before the High Priestess at Garreg Mach and blessed. But to be singled out by the High Priestess? To be chosen as tribute by the gods themselves, recognized as the most virtuous of your house? To be summoned back to the temple on your fourteenth birthday? To enjoy a lifelong place of honor at Garreg Mach that was yours and yours alone?
Well, that was a blessing many of the faithful would kill for.
It was an honor, everyone had said, and to look at the newest girl now, sandwiched between her greying father and temple guards with shields taller than she was, as she was presented to the High Priestess, it almost appeared like one too.
The guards’ silver helmets, cuirasses, and shields were so polished, they shone like mirrors. Colorful flower petals were littered everywhere. Exotic delicacies and extravagant centerpieces adorned every table in the great hall, where priests, priestesses, tributes, and honored guests sat shoulder to shoulder. Even the incense was perfect, like dining in a field of wildflowers.
The lilies woven into the girl’s dark brown hair were white and pink, and her chiton a beautiful and luxuriant purple. She approached the High Priestess’s table slowly, tentatively. When she bowed, Edelgard couldn’t help but shiver.
Dressed up and paraded around like the animals they sacrificed on feast days.
It served as a painful reminder of her own welcoming ceremony, and how important she had felt wearing a wreath of roses and carnations in her ashen-brown hair. As if she was finally stepping out of her elder siblings’ shadows, like a reigning queen or heroine of legend. The feeling had been euphoric. If the temple at Garreg Mach was Fódlan’s heart, then — for one intoxicating moment — she had held the whole continent captivated in the palm of her hand.
Edelgard bit her lip. Gods, had she really been that young and naïve once? It felt like a lifetime ago. How could she have not seen through the veneer?
When the girl rose and smiled up at the High Priestess in all her resplendent glory, Edelgard clenched her goblet so hard her knuckles turned white. She looked away, eyes falling instead upon the girl’s father. His tired eyes and stony face belied the joy in his daughter’s. The more Edelgard stared, the more she saw her brother, Egon, in the man.
As the imperial heir, it had fallen to Egon to accompany her to the temple, and he had grown increasingly sullen and withdrawn as they drew nearer. At first, she had thought he might be jealous, but his last words to her had been said with teary, grey eyes and whispered after pressing a kiss to her forehead: “El, yours is a sacrifice I shall not forget.”
Only now did she know why. It was for the same reason that he never visited, not even for the Rite of Rebirth. Their siblings tried to reassure her that affairs of state kept him perpetually busy, but Edelgard knew the truth.
It was the guilt that chased him away.
As always, Hubert was quick to notice her deepening scowl. “That is Lysithea of House Ordelia, I believe,” he drawled, “from the Leicester Alliance.”
“She’s so tiny.”
“Indeed,” Hubert chuckled, “though you’re hardly one to talk. You were around her size when you arrived, too, as I recall.”
Edelgard glared at her friend and pursed her lips but said nothing. Instead, she swirled the wine around in her goblet and took a pensive sip. She could not remain angry at him for long. All things considered, she was glad, selfishly glad, that Hubert had been the one chosen as House Vestra’s tribute rather than his brother or sister, if only because he was her oldest and dearest friend. His presence at the temple was a constant comfort.
Together, she and Hubert watched as the High Priestess received the newcomers from her raised table. Her long, flowing gown was an immaculate white with gold trim, in sharp contrast to her emerald hair, and her elaborate crown sparkled as she flew to Lysithea to kiss her on both cheeks, like a devoted mother welcoming her child home. With a serene smile, she held Lysithea’s hands in her own.
Edelgard’s stomach twisted, and a chill crawled down her arms.
The High Priestess was making a spectacle of herself as she always did during these ceremonies, but it was all games and theater in truth. Rhea played the part of gentle matriarch very well when it suited her. She ushered Lysithea to one of the empty chairs beside her throne, awarding the girl the seat of honor for the evening. Lysithea blushed furiously as she sat down.
“What a tiresome song and dance,” remarked Hubert as he speared a piece of fish with a knife.
“It’s revolting,” said Edelgard under her breath, low enough that no one else would hear. Lysithea’s smile alone could have lit up the entire hall.
She forced her eyes downwards and picked at her food, trying to avoid looking at the High Priestess’s table: Other than Lysithea and the High Priestess herself, there was Rhea’s second-in-command, Seteth, and his sister, Flayn; the reluctant captain of the temple guards, Jeralt; the elderly Master of Records, Tomas; the reserved First Priest, Aelfric; and the one chair that still sat noticeably empty.
Her chest clenched with worry every time she thought of that empty chair.
It wasn’t long before the hall fell silent and the only sound was the slither of steel on stone. Edelgard looked up to see a travel-worn procession of temple guards pass by their table, dragging a young man between them. His clothes were stained and dirty, and he hung limply in their iron-like grips.
Despite his battered face, Edelgard recognized his braid and tousled mop of brown hair at once. It was Claude.
“I told you he would be back,” said Hubert. “The fool . It takes more than cleverness to trick the Ashen Demon.”
Her heart sank with hopelessness. If anyone could escape Garreg Mach, she had thought when he first disappeared, it was Claude. She had hoped that he had somehow evaded the temple guards and made it back to Almyra.
The temple guards were led by Gilbert and Byleth, the Ashen Demon herself, wearing her pitch-black armor, black cape flowing behind her, and with her plumed helmet carried under an arm. She strode through the great hall boldly, and heads turned as she passed by. Beautiful and terrible to behold, Edelgard sat transfixed.
It wasn’t the black armor or the fabled title that made her heart stutter. It was the way Byleth never once looked her way as they dragged Claude forward. Not even in passing.
Byleth, Gilbert, and the temple guards dragged Claude straight to the High Priestess, whose smile had already started to crack. Gilbert walked with solemn gravitas, and Byleth’s eyes seemed to be looking everywhere but the crowd. As Rhea addressed the new arrivals, Edelgard would have given anything to be seated at a table within earshot.
Lysithea began to frown.
With Claude being Claude, there was little chance that it was a polite discussion. But it did get louder.
“I didn’t realize we’re still pretending that this is a temple and not a cage!” Claude yelled, his voice cracking towards the end.
A temple guard cuffed him across the face for that transgression, and Claude spat out the blood in his mouth. Rhea made one final pronouncement then Gilbert and the temple guards dragged him away like a sack of lentils. Claude offered no resistance, but his green eyes glittered with disdain. The kind that started wars.
Edelgard picked again at her food but made no effort to eat. She wondered where they were taking him: the dungeon or the abyss. She knew better than to ask. He had dishonored House Riegan gravely, but it was unlikely that he would be executed for doing so. Most of his remaining family had already fled to Almyra to escape Rhea’s grasping claws.
Lysithea looked as though she had been slapped. As if a long-held dream had shattered right in front of her eyes.
So she was already starting to see the truth. Good. The sooner the illusion shattered, the better.
This was only an honor for children. Something to hold over the heads of siblings and cousins, and revel in the knowledge that you had been chosen for a greater purpose. That it was your destiny to fulfill your family’s most sacred duty, that you alone had a place at Garreg Mach by the side of the High Priestess herself. It had to be beautified and given the highest honorifics, lest you remember that it was not by choice that you came to Garreg Mach after all.
To everyone else, it was a known sacrifice. As Rhea’s handmaiden, Edelgard had learned that lesson not long after arriving at the temple.
It took wisdom to realize that your crown of gold and flowers was not something you wore on your head but around your neck instead. It was a collar, not only for yourself, but for your entire house: a symbol and a shackle both. A leash to keep the nobility tame and loyal to the High Priestess. It was a means of control that went back millennia, as House Ochs had learned this year and House Gaspard had learned several years ago.
It was an elaborate balancing act.
As it turned out, “tribute” was just another word for “prisoner,” and Rhea had no qualms whatsoever in sacrificing them all to the abyss below the temple. One misstep was all it took, one noble house stepping too far out of line. In return, the tributes were expected to maintain the temple, perform their holy rites, and bring honor to their names. Thus, the gods’ will reigned absolute, a divinity enforced by an iron yoke.
A niggling feeling at the back of Edelgard’s mind warned her that she was being watched. She looked up and caught a pair of blue eyes staring intensely from the High Priestess’s table. Their eyes met, and Byleth, who had taken her rightful place in the empty chair by Rhea’s side, gave her a questioning look.
Her stomach twisting, Edelgard nodded.
If Hubert saw this exchange, he wisely kept his doubts to himself.
The rest of the ceremony passed by in a blur. The High Priestess tried to smooth over the interruption and return to the festivities, but Lysithea still appeared unnerved after witnessing the manner of Claude’s return. As the evening progressed, Edelgard found herself growing giddy with excitement.
Soon enough, Rhea was taking her leave for the night. “Come, Edelgard,” she said. “Let us retire for the night.”
Edelgard found herself scrambling to her feet. “Right away, Your Holiness,” she mumbled.
It wasn’t like she could refuse. She followed Rhea back to her chambers and rushed through her nightly duties of helping Rhea undress and prepare for bed, only feeling relief once she stepped inside her own room.
Rather than prepare for bed, she began to wait.