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Felix slammed his bedroom door behind him, ripped his sword belt off of his waist and threw it toward a nearby chair with so much force that the metal bounced off of the upholstery and clattered to the stone floor below. Of all the days that had to be ruined by his father’s stupidity, it just had to be this one. It had started off so promising: fair weather, an extra long training session, a pleasant lunch that he got to spend alone. Then Duke Fraldarius and his twisted, scheming brain had to go and ruin it. 

The absolute gall of his old man. 

Falling back onto the chair at his desk, Felix let out a gruff sigh in place of the scream he would much rather let loose. Last time he had not-so-quietly stormed out of an argument with his father, he scared a maid so badly that she burst into tears and dropped all the laundry she’d been struggling with. It was an accident, of course - he was under the impression that he would be alone when he stalked into his bedroom - but he felt bad none-the-less. Now, to err on the side of caution, he had resorted to tempering his anger in the immediate aftermath of those fights. If only to benefit the unwilling staff members just trying to get by. 

Holding in that scream did nothing to quell the fire raging in his chest. He dragged his hand down his face, frowning at the scratchiness of his chin. He needed to shave soon, though he didn't necessarily trust his fidgeting hands at the moment. Instead, his roaming eyes lingered on the correspondence on his desk he had been unable to finish the previous night. 

Ingrid. 

Felix had been part way through telling her about his last clash with the Dukedom - back when his father let him pay frequent visits to the front lines and he was able to put his skill to use. Now, he realized, she was going to have to suffer through a collage of chaos: half detailed battle accounts, and half emotional, raging word-vomit. Requests for advice on how to get out of an unwanted engagement included. She was an expert, after all. 

Engagement. Even the thought of it was ridiculous. Who in their right mind would think a wedding in the midst of a political coup was a good idea - was a solution to anything?

Felix grabbed his pen and drew a harsh line through the middle of the page. 

Unfortunately, any details of the end of that battle will be forever forgotten, because by the time you read this I will likely be locked away for patricide. Father has decided that all of intense military training should be pushed aside to wither and die while I fulfill my destined role as his sedentary, political puppet. He has decided that I should be wed to one Sophia von Haas - some minor noble from Adrestia whose family defected and is looking for asylum. 

She has a crest, and information on the enemy, and that’s good enough for him to sell me off, apparently. 

Please come break me out of prison. I probably don’t deserve it, but that’s never stopped you before. 

- Felix

Felix glared down at the finished letter. Writing it down hadn’t helped. In fact, it only irritated the anxiety that was festering deep in his stomach. 

What hurt most wasn’t the fact that he was now doomed to a life he was always fated for. It wasn’t the fact that he was, after all this time, being forced to marry some nameless woman in the name of an ideology he didn’t believe in. No, what hurt most was the tiny sliver of hope Felix had that his father was coming to his senses. 

When the war began in earnest, many of the Blue Lions were called back home. Leaving Dedue to handle the raging boar, Felix rushed back to find his father deep into defensive planning. Those first few months were painless - devising strategies and organizing troops and overseeing their army’s training. Some weeks Felix barely saw his father. Some weeks they would be trapped in strategy meetings for days on end. And it was fine.

Until tonight. 

Felix pinched his eyes shut, trying not to get lost in the swirling moment of impact, right before his vision went red. They’d been discussing the movements of Empire troops, and the quickest route to Arianrhod if Fraldarius troops were needed. Between ration discussions and troop formations, his father casually mentioned that they would need to be sure the march didn’t impede on the upcoming wedding. His upcoming wedding. 

“I won’t do it,” Felix had insisted, once his father had gone through all of the reasons why it was a necessary arrangement. 

“It wasn’t a request.” Rodrigue had stood with a cold, steely stare often reserved for the battlefield. “I will send the acceptance letter tonight and when I hear back on a date we will prepare for their arrival.” 

The tone that laced his voice was so callus, so final, that Felix was reminded his father didn’t really care much about anything other than salvaging what was left of a dead king’s legacy. 

He skipped the rest of the meetings that night on principle. The house was host to a number of local lords that week, all gathered to finalize their plans to strengthen the western front, and to finally set off on the suicide mission to search for the boar’s ghost.

Instead, Felix passed the time by doing something useful. He finished the handful of letters he’d be putting off. He trained on the antique dummy that was gathering dust in the corner of his room. When his stomach growled, he snuck into the kitchen, swiping anything they had lying around after their guests had finished supper. The cook tried chasing him away when she caught him piling a plate full of mutton, but he slid past her quickly, her scoldings following him down the hall as he trekked back to his room. 

Now, Felix’s plate sat empty and cold on the table beside him as he lay across the couch. He stared absently at the ceiling, the hours ticking by lazily in the confines of his own, personal hell. The war council was scheduled until the late hours of the night, meaning that leaving wasn’t an option if he truly wanted to avoid his old man.

Felix was considering turning in for the night when the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. 

Subtle, cluttering caught his attention. The ambient sounds of Castle Fraldarius disappeared around him, until the slight creak of wood sounded off on the other side of the room. Felix studied the old bookcase opposite his bed. It was never dusty, not with how thoroughly the staff had always cleaned his room, but it might as well have been. Books often went unused in his presence. Why read in a book what you could learn from real-life experience? 

He remembered, suddenly, that there actually were some useful volumes on those shelves: old tactics primers that he had been forced to study in his younger years that might be useful now. 

Swinging his legs over the side of the couch, Felix pushed himself upright. Heels clicked against the stone as he carefully made his way over, devising a number of excuses to shake that fight-or-flight feeling creeping up on him: It was an ancient piece of furniture. The window across the way was open. Perhaps the stiff, spring breezes were enough to rattle the old wood. Though, it had never made such noises before…

Just as he remembered, old books lined the shelves: tattered copies of strategy references, notebooks from his childhood that he hadn’t bothered tossing, a handful of fables he wouldn’t be caught dead reading now. Felix dragged his finger across the most familiar title: The Sword of Kyphon. It sat forgotten underneath an old, wooden box. Ashe had always droned on about that one back at school, pestering him to give it a chance as if Felix hadn’t had the entire thing memorized already. 

The memento box rattled, a sound as light and gravely as pebbles under footfall. Felix flinched backward, startled by the vibration. He studied it carefully, squinting at the carved, worn lid for any hint of movement. Until the wood of the bookcase groaned a little louder, and the stillness in the air and silence of the rest of the castle shattered. 

Hesitation was pointless - deadly - but even Felix paused when he reached for the old, iron handle disguised as a decorative bookend. In his childhood, he had been so strictly warned against ever touching it that some lingering trepidation seemed to pull at him to stop. He huffed at his own pause, pulled out the lock, grabbed the handle, and wrenched it forward. 

He had never been totally certain how that old, secret passage worked, but he hadn’t been expecting hinges. When the bookcase swung toward him he pitched back quickly. It was the only thing that saved the intruder in the end. He was sure that, had he not been momentarily distracted, he would have reached for the hilt of his sword much faster. It absolutely was not the person herself on the other side of that bookcase that startled him into forgetting his basic self-defense. Absolutely not. 

“A-Annette?” 

“Felix!” 

Annette Dominic stumbled forward from the passageway, reaching blindly for anything to hold her upright and falling gracelessly into Felix’s chest. His arms shot out to steady her instinctively, face burning when he realized he could feel the warmth of her cheeks through the thin fabric of his shirt.

Salt air floated into the room behind her, carried in by the cold, damp breeze off the northern sea. It shifted through her hair, blowing her curls over her shoulder and momentarily stunning him into an idiotic silence. 

When Annette finally pushed herself upright, Felix was startled at how much he remembered about her: The freckles dusting her nose, the shape of her eyes, the way her mere presence filled the room. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” he managed. He tried not to cringe at the crack in his voice. “What…how did you know about the caves?” 

“Sylvain,” she answered simply. With one last stumble she stood at full height, brushing down her skirt and straightening her spine proudly.

“Sylvain?” 

A brief memory sprung forward, one muddled by time, of Sylvain and Glenn whispering about secret passageways and sneaking out to the beach on balmy summer nights. They were meant to be used for invasions - for the Duke and his family to retreat in cases of dire emergency - not sneaking out in the middle of the night. Or sneaking in…

It didn’t clarify anything, of course. Last he heard, Annette was living in Fhirdiad, working some kind of underground spy network for Gautier. She and Mercedes had posed as pious volunteers at local shelters to try to smuggle the city's women and children out into safer territories. It provided service, and helpful intel from fleeing citizens. It was also rather dangerous - something Felix had scolded Sylvain for the last time he stopped in Fraldarius on the way to meet them. 

“Why…why would Sylvain tell you about a secret passage to my bedroom?” 

“You don’t need to make it sound so sordid!” 

“Is he okay?” 

“He’s fine, Felix.” 

Annette pushed past him to venture further into his room. He tried to offer her a chair but she waved him away, insisting on catching her breath on her own two feet. 

“What’s going on, Annette?” 

She looked the way he always remembered her: flustered. Her dress was wrinkled, stained with salt water. Her hair stuck up on one side, and he flexed his hand to fight back the urge to smooth it down. She was mumbling something, he realized, once he dragged his attention away from her hair. Something that sounded like the little pep talks she used to give herself on the training grounds. 

“There’s…talk,” Annette finally admitted, crossing her arms and pointedly avoiding his gaze. “In Fhirdiad.” 

Felix leaned against the corner of his desk. “Talk,” he parrotted.

“You know. Like gossip.”

Like intel. Like information that was so important it required her to travel all the way to Fraldarius without waiting for Sylvain to collect it? He would have to see his father now, if it was something that important.

Annette had taken to pacing now. She wandered briskly around his desk, and Felix wondered why that made his heart stutter. She was looking in every direction but his, scrutinizing the wall decor and the curtains and expensive-looking quill at the edge of his desk. It might have been like her to be so fidgety, but it certainly wasn’t like her to be so…quiet. 

“What kind of gossip?” he probed. Maybe it wasn’t that bad. Maybe it was something he could take care of himself. 

“About…you,” Annette finally admitted, still too fascinated by his things to meet his gaze. “That you’re…engaged.” 

Felix’s blood ran cold. Instinctively, he whipped around toward the surface of his desk, where his letter to Ingrid lay open and unsent. Even if he had sent it, there was no way the rumor mill moved that quickly. Not unless his father had been discussing behind his back for months.

Annette looked at Felix so abruptly that he realized he had been staring, open mouthed. She was waiting for him to say something. 

He had to say something.  

“Engaged.” he stuttered uselessly. 

“To Sophia von Haas,” she clarified. 

“To Sophia von Haas.” 

“Well?” There was something wild in her eyes. Anger or worry, he wasn’t sure which. 

When he didn’t deny it she huffed. 

“Oh, god, you are , aren’t you? You’re engaged? To her? But - but she’s awful, Felix. Just awful! I went to school with her in Fhirdiad and…you’d hate her! She’s all…frills. And lazing about. And - and one time, during our reason lesson, she dropped a spot of ink on my chair before I sat down and everyone laughed when I stood up to leave for lunch.” 

“Annette.”

“And she didn’t even earn her grades! I had to fight tooth and nail to get in, and I overheard her bragging to her friends about how she didn’t even take the entrance exam. She just -” 

“Annette!” The slight raise of Felix’s voice silenced her, and his brief moment of relief shattered when she fixed him with a stern, unamused glare. 

Right. She hated when he raised his voice. 

“I’m not marrying Sophia von Haas.” 

Those big, stormy-eyes blinked up at him and his heart clenched again. “Y-you’re not?” 

“No.” Then, realizing it wasn’t so simple, he sighed, and trudged over to the sofa. “I didn’t agree to anything. My old man just…set up some stupid arrangement behind my back. Then casually mentioned it before dinner today.”

The seat dipped beside him, and he gathered enough courage to peek at Annette perched at the edge of the cushions. “So…you are engaged.” There was something almost pleading in her tone. Something sad.

“No,” he said more firmly. “He’d have to drag me down that aisle kicking and screaming. I just -”

“We’re at war, Felix,” Annette reminded him. Her hand twitched toward his, but she flinched it back, cradling it close to her chest instead. “We all…have to do things we don’t really want to do.” 

Felix studied her profile in the firelight as she averted her eyes at the hearth. He didn’t like how close to home that sounded - didn’t like to imagine the things she’d had to do to survive life in Fhirdiad, to make it in her own failing territory. Briefly, he wondered how many arrangements she’d had to dodge. Was she speaking from experience? Had she already met that same, cruel fate? 

The idea of Annette Dominic married to some stranger sent something hot and annoying through his chest. Anger, he assumed. Then dread. She didn’t deserve that kind of ending: the wife and pawn to some low life noble that didn’t know the first thing about her. She deserved a happy ending - as much of a happy ending as one could get in the midst of unrest. 

“Well I’m not marrying her,” Felix assured, pulling her attention away from the fire. He didn’t particularly want to go back to discussing the topic of that arrangement, but it was better than dwelling on the anxious twist in his stomach he kept getting when he looked at her. “So…why are you here?” 

“I’m…well I-”

Sufficiently out of words, Annette huffed, reaching up to push her bangs out of her face. It was a tick she often displayed, one that Felix had missed. There were lots of little things about her he’d missed, though he tried to push that revelation aside. Because something more important was gnawing at him. 

Annette knew. She knew he was (unjustly) engaged before it had even been finalized. And when she found out she’d traveled all this way to…what?

Felix frowned down at her hands when they fell back toward her lap, catching her wrist and pushing her sleeve up just enough to get a look at the discoloration that caught his eye. Just above her wrist was a pale, puckered scar. A purple bruise bloomed around its edges. 

“It’s not as bad as it looks.” She tried to pull it from his grip but he held firm, dragging his thumb lightly against the scar. 

“Who did this?” 

Felix looked up, ready to demand a response, but before he got the chance he felt something tugging at his shirt, pulling him forward until his lips crashed against hers. He tried to pull back - to distance himself and apologize - but when he stumbled backward against the arm of the sofa Annette went with him. 

A spike of panic rushed through him, soothed only by the feel of her lips molded against his, and the little sigh she let out when he regained his bearings and leaned into her. It dawned on him then that she was the one gripping his shirt, that she was the one kissing him , and Felix hadn’t really done anything worth apologizing for in the first place. 

Of course, there was nothing she needed to apologize for either. 

“Please don’t marry her, Felix.” Annette’s voice was a whisper, a breath of its usual brightness. Each word dragged her lips against his, urging him back in.

“Okay,” he said absently, too spellbound by the flood of warmth in her eyes as they searched his to think of anything more concrete to say. 

He had never actually planned to marry Sophia von Haas, but at that exact moment that fact didn’t seem so important. Because all Annette Dominic had to do was say “please”, and Felix was sure she could get him to do just about anything. 

He chased after that kiss without much convincing, raised his hand to the back of her head until her hair threaded through his fingers and he pressed her closer. It felt just as clumsy as the first, but the awkward anticipation soon gave way to a longing that he dared not dream of, even when their biggest problems were test grades and weekly chores. Even when he used to follow her around pathetically at school - desperate to catch a glimpse of her silly little songs and their surprisingly fluid dance steps - never did he imagine this could be an outcome. 

Felix felt faint - drunk on the way she breathed his name when their lips parted for a heartbeat. He felt a pulse of bravery when Annette’s hand curled around his neck, and he let his left hand wander down the curve of her back, resting on the dip of her waist. She was the first to pull away, peering up at him through pale lashes, looking as glassy and dazed as he felt. 

“I’m here because I…” 

He pulled back just enough to get lost in the blue of her eyes again; dark but clear, like the waters that raged along the rocky, Fraldarius coast. 

“Yeah?” he prompted, suddenly incredibly interested in her reasoning.

“Because I heard that you were going to be married and I…”

His thumb twitched against the back of her neck, momentarily distracting her. 

Annette’s gaze fluttered down to his lips again. 

“And you…” 

“And I…I thought that it would…be a terrible shame. If you did that before I got the chance to tell you that…that I love you. Actually.” 

The word alone sent a jolt through Felix’s body. It ignited his veins and left his heartbeat stuttering. Most of the affection in his life was intrinsic, logical: Ingrid’s steadfast support, and Sylvain’s brotherly pestering, and his mother’s natural fondness. But love? Born out of something other than duty? That had always seemed like a pointless distraction. Uninteresting and unworthy of his time. But if it was Annette…

“Oh god,” she whispered, pulling back enough so that Felix missed the warmth of her breath against his skin. “What am I doing? Why would I…who in their right mind would break into someone’s room in the middle of the night and beg them to break an engagement?”

His hand tightened around her waist when she pushed herself upright. “And? Who says I wouldn’t?” 

Annette somehow stumbled to a stop from her sitting position. She reached out to steady herself on the back of the couch, but Felix caught her hand and held it firmly between both of his. 

“You would…you mean you would actually break off an engagement just because I…just because I asked you to?” 

“Especially because you asked me to,” he admitted a little too quickly. He could feel the heat crawling up his neck. Not the pleasant heat from before, either, but the embarrassed kind that made him want to crawl out of his skin. How was he always so easily swayed by her?

“That’s very foolish of you, Felix,” Annette whispered. 

“Maybe,” he agreed.

“Then…what do we do?” 

“We could leave,” he offered. “Just grab a horse and run. No one has to know anything.” 

“We can’t just leave , Felix. Where would we go? The entire continent is in shambles. And…and this was very foolish. And impulsive. And I probably shouldn’t have come.” 

“If you hadn’t, I would have been shipped off to marry Sophia von Haas,” he reminded her. 

And he might not have gotten to see her again. And he definitely wouldn’t have gotten to kiss her. And he wouldn’t have realized that his little teenage curiosity was potentially more than the crush Sylvain had always teased him for. 

The shimmering disbelief was starting to clear from his head, forcing Felix back down from the high he’d been stuck on. Enough so that the actual reality of the situation was starting to sink in. 

He was in love with Annette Dominic. He was engaged to Sophia von Haas. 

This was his worst nightmare.

“Father plans to send a letter to Haas tonight,” Felix noted.

“Tonight?” The frantic timbre was back in Annette’s voice, high and shrill and a little more panicked than he would be. Maybe he should have been more panicked. “That’s not…that’s like, no time to come up with a plan, Felix!” 

Running away still seemed like a feasible option. He could leave a quick note, grab a horse and be out of there before the messenger even left. They could make it to Alliance territory in a couple of days. Maybe even join up with Reigan’s attempts to hold back the Empire - close enough to fight against Adrestia but far enough to escape the reaches of his father. 

Annette pursed her lips, her gaze fluttering around the room the way it used to when she was trying to piece things together during tactics lectures. Until she seemingly came to a sufficient conclusion, and the hand that was still gripping his shirt tightened. 

“I have an idea.” she muttered.

She had pulled him from the couch and out into the hallway before he had the chance to offer his response. 

Their class had been to Fraldarius just once before, on a mission to help one of their local villages weed out some bandits. Annette, it seemed, had memorized the entire layout of the castle in the two nights they had been there. She dragged Felix into the main stairway, through the old, stone columns that decorated the landing. She turned right when they entered the East Wing, and headed straight past the library.

“Annette, I-”

“Just trust me, Felix! It’s a good idea. Or an idea, at least. Where was it, was it this one?” A sharp turn down the final hallway led them to the longer hallway, adorned with the large, wooden doors of the library and the castle’s main study. 

“A-Annette!” Felix’s tone was harsher than he’d intended, but it stopped her from bursting into the room. “My father is a stubborn man,” he reminded her. “Whatever you’re thinking…he’s not going to back down that easily.”

“I am not a quitter, Felix Fraldarius,” she said, poking his chest once for emphasis. “And I’m…great at plans. This will work.” 

None of his excuses had shattered that determined pout that adorned Annette’s lips. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. What he was sure of was the fact that it did something funny to his stomach. 

And if there was one person in the world more stubborn that Rodrigue Fraldarius, it might have been her. 

She moved too quickly to be stopped as she pushed her way through the study doors. 

The room itself was more sparse than Felix had thought - a small blessing. The meetings must have adjourned for the night, leaving his father sitting in his chair at the head of the table, arms folded, deep in conversation with the person to his right. 

Oh no. 

“Hello, Your Grace.” Annette curtseyed toward his father, her head turning briefly toward Gustave before zeroing back in on her target.

“Miss…Miss Dominic?” Rodrigue stood rather quickly, the legs of his chair scraping gracelessly against the stone floor. He glanced at Felix, studied him a little too closely, then shook his head. “What are you - I…I’m sorry, dear. Pardon my stuttering. But I…didn’t realize we had any other guests.” 

Annette nodded, likely having gone completely deaf to her host’s stumbled greeting. “I’m here to tell you that Felix can’t get married, actually.” 

Rodrigue merely blinked, shaking himself from his stupor when he caught up to the conversation. “Miss Dominic -”

“He can’t get married because he’s already engaged.”

Rodrigue fell back into his seat slowly, his arms guiding him down like his legs were going to give way beneath him. “He - excuse me?”

“Yup! To me. Already engaged to me.”

Felix dug his nails into the palm of his hand to prevent himself from choking on his own surprise. Engaged. To Annette. That was her plan?

The worst of his surprise was realizing the idea alone wasn’t that…outlandish. He admired her after all; she was smart, talented, and beautiful. He thought about her an embarrassing amount since they’d last parted. Her absurdly whimsical songs about food and cute little bears played in his head constantly but - 

Oh no.

Annette was still talking. Still standing her ground and…was she taller than before or was it just her posture? 

“So it would be quite rude if he got married to someone else if that’s the case,” she pointed out.

“Indeed…” Rodrigue’s suspicious gaze fell back onto Felix, who was now painfully aware of his own posture. He felt fidgety under his father’s gaze - caught in a lie he didn’t know he was telling. 

“Right.” Annette twitched into a curtsy that was entirely too abrupt and entirely too short. She looked toward the corner of the room and nodded once. “Well…thank you,” she said finally. “For your…consideration. That is all.”

With one, final, swish of her skirt, Annette was across the room and out the door. Felix eyed it carefully, cautiously moving to follow her in hopes that his slow movements would spare him his father’s obvious (and maybe a little rightful) questions. 

“Felix.”

No such luck. 

When Felix turned to face his audience, Rodrigue was fixing him with a distressingly stern look. A skeptical look. Gustave was making himself busy with the papers in front of him, stacking and restacking them into an overly neat pile while Rodrigue crossed his arms and quirked his eyebrow, waiting. 

“What?” 

His father gaped at him. “What do you mean, ‘what’?”

Felix only shrugged. “You heard her.” 

“Yes I heard her, Felix. I am just having a hard time believing her.” 

Felix was trained in espionage, and in the gruesome tradition of old, forgotten battle tactics. He had been trained to take down an opponent with startling speed, had been trained to sneak in and out of a room without its inhabitants having a clue. He could, conceivably, put up with an unsettling amount of torture at the hands of his enemies. 

He had not, however, been able to successfully lie to his father at any point in his twenty years of life.  

He shrugged again. 

“Saints, Felix, I want an answer out of you. What is the meaning of this?” 

Lying was not an option. But it didn’t necessarily have to be a lie.

“I’m engaged to Annette Dominic,” Felix said firmly.

No. It was far too easy to be a lie. 

Rodrigue sighed, leaning back in his seat and rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “Did you know about this?” 

Gustave straightened, and shook his head. “I did not. Though I am not particularly well versed on…that aspect of Annette’s life.”

“Well, putting aside the fact that the timing of all of this is particularly suspicious. It’s not…the worst thing in the world.” Rodrigue lifted his head after a moment, his gaze focused somewhere in the middle distance. Turning toward Gustave, he added, “An alliance with Dominic could be useful right now.” 

“My brother is in a precarious position,” Gustave agreed. “He will have to fall to the whims of the Empire eventually to protect Dominic’s citizens.”

“But if there was a strong enough alliance with the Northern houses,” Rodrigue continued. 

“Then he would feel more confident in pushing back. Especially if such an alliance strengthened his own guard.”

His father nodded. “I would have no qualms with sending Felix to Dominic until he is needed here. They could have another general. More troops.”

“And a stronger alliance with one western territory could, in turn, strengthen the resolve of the western lords as a whole.” 

Rodrigue nodded absently, his gaze still fixed out the window at the fading moonlight. “And what do you think, Gustave,” he pressed. “Personally?” 

Gustave cleared his throat, studying the papers in front of him again. “I would not push such an arrangement solely for the benefit of my house. But…I have no objections. If that’s what Annette truly wants.” 

“Can I go now?” 

Both men turned to Felix, seemingly having forgotten his presence entirely. 

Straightening his posture, Rodrigue nodded. “You may go. But be warned, Felix. If I find out that this is some kind of scheme -”

“It’s not.” 

His father studied him once more. It felt like a threat. “Then we have nothing to worry about. You’re dismissed.” 

The door clicked softly behind him, and Felix turned to see Annette pacing just a few doors down. She glanced up when she heard the pop of the latch. 

“What did he say?” she asked, rushing forward to grab his forearms. “Did he…did he buy it? Did he say no?” 

“He bought it,” Felix assured her. Suddenly, the press of her hand felt like too much - a touch too improper and undeserving for a fake engagement. “He thinks it’s a…strong political move, actually.” 

“Oh.” Annette lowered down from her toes and gazed off toward the door “I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse.” 

“That he only accepted an engagement as a political move? That’s my father’s version of romance, unfortunately.” 

“Huh,” Annette hummed. “It actually worked.” She leaned heavily on the door behind her, only bothering to look up when Felix leaned against it too.

“It did,” he agreed. 

“Although I guess…I guess it means we might have to, you know, get married now. I suppose I should have…thought about that. Consulted you first.” 

“I could think of worse things.” 

Felix, on principle, didn’t sugar coat things. He also was smart enough to know when his own words fell flat of their real sentiment. How utterly ridiculous it was to insinuate that the idea of marrying Annette was anything less than his wildest dreams come true. 

He cleared his throat. “That is…u-unless you don’t want to.”

A smile flickered at the corner of her lips. “Felix Fraldarius, I rode all the way up here in the middle of the night because of a rumor that you were engaged to someone else. I think it’s embarrassingly clear what I want.” 

Felix smirked, reaching for her hand and grazing his lips across the scar on her wrist. “My hero,” he whispered.

It looked worse in the low torchlight of the hallway. The shadows exaggerated its uneven edges. It didn’t look like a blade, or some kind of confinement like he’d originally thought. 

“It’s from the trip here,” Annette offered. 

Felix hummed and cradled her wrist in both hands, dragging his thumb along the raised skin again. 

“I ran into a demonic beast - one of those awful wolves. I killed it, but not before it landed a pretty decent hit. My arm was pinned against some jagged rocks. And I can only do so much healing on my own.” 

He frowned, gesturing a little too aggressively with her wrist. “You took on a demonic beast by yourself and this was the only scar you got?” 

Annette nodded, bashful but proud. 

“Damn,” he breathed. He stopped himself just before the rest of his thought came tumbling out.

Though, there was no use in holding back now. 

“I, uh, love you too,” Felix mumbled toward their feet. “I probably should have said it when you did earlier but…I didn’t know, I guess.” 

“You loved me, but you didn’t know it?” she teased. 

It sounded ridiculous when she phrased it like that. “I’m not very good at affection,” he reminded her.

When he looked back up Annette was beaming; a sliver of summer in the middle of a cold, gray, Fraldarius spring. She leaned into his shoulder, pivoting herself around so he could feel the press of her body against his. 

“You’re not as bad as you think, you know.”  

Felix was all too happy to oblige when she pushed herself toward him, pressing her lips carefully against his. He could feel her smiling - the kind of giddy cheery that was horrendously contagious. 

“You have to ask me properly, though,” he cut in when she parted for a breath.

“What?”

“To marry you,” he clarified. “You never actually asked me.” 

Annette groaned, swatting his hands away from her waist but smiling all the same. She wrinkled her nose. She pouted. 

Felix fell in love all over again. 

“Fine,” she huffed. “Felix Hugo Fraldarius. Will you marry me?” 

The smile that curled up his cheeks surprised even him. “Okay,” he agreed.