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“And that concludes my report.”
“Thank you, Hubert.” Edelgard refused to wince, even as Hubert began working another sectioned-out piece of her long hair into the tight braid he was winding around her scalp like a crown. He had been doing this for far too long to be gentle with her now, and he would only flagellate himself if she cringed or complained. The Adrestian Emperor had never needed or wanted to be treated delicately.
Besides, the style wouldn’t hold unless she walked out of her bedroom with a braid so tight it gave her a headache.
“But I can’t help but feel—” she paused, tilting her head to give Hubert access to the hair at the nape of her neck, “—that you’re keeping more secrets from me.”
Hubert hummed, noncommittal. Sitting as she was on that plain stool in front of her armoire, her head didn’t even come up to his chest, and Hubert was bowed over her, his dark hair falling in his face to conceal his expression. Which was precisely why he cut it the way he did, of course. As ever, he strove for inscrutability, and Edelgard found herself infuriatingly stymied. He was not supposed to be inscrutable to her .
“I am the Emperor, you know,” she continued haughtily. “And you are my Minister of Imperial Affairs. I could have you executed for insubordination.”
They locked eyes in the mirror. Edelgard straightened her back, glaring fiercely at him. His hands stilled in her hair, the white strands nearly translucent over his pale skin. Hubert could only hold her gaze for a few moments before his thin-lipped composure broke, and he ducked his head as if that would help hide his quiet laughter.
“Of course, Your Majesty,” he replied, suppressing a soft smile that Edelgard saw so rarely in recent years. “I would gladly offer my neck to the guillotine.”
A thin sigh escaped her despite her best efforts, though Edelgard couldn’t help but smile back at him, if only for the pleasure of seeing him express an emotion other than a tired, vague menace. She sometimes felt like she was trying to train an especially haggard, consternated old guard dog; set in his ways, but sometimes responsive to highly-valued treats.
Unfortunately, it seemed the only thing he valued was his Lady Edelgard’s continued health and happiness.
“I worry about you, Hubert,” she tried again. Her stare didn’t falter, but she spoke more softly, calling to mind how Ingrid cooed at her horse when she thought no one was watching. “You claim that I’m the center of your world, but you don’t trust me with the burdens you bear.”
“You have enough weight on your shoulders, my Lady—”
“And I’m more than capable of carrying it,” she replied. “I’ve spent a lifetime learning how. If you think I’m blind to the blood you spill on my behalf, then I must fall far lower in your esteem than I realized.”
“Your Majesty,” Hubert protested, “you must know that I hold you in the highest—”
“‘We walk this path together, side by side.’ That’s what you told Dorothea, no? You are my partner, Hubert. I place the utmost trust in you. I need you to place that same trust in me.”
He leaned forward to take three pins from the armoire, holding two between his lips as he carefully positioned the tightly-wound end of Edelgard’s braid and secured it. Another at its midsection, to help keep the crown of hair about her head; then he held the last between his fingers and studied his handiwork as if somehow displeased that the third pin wouldn’t be necessary after all.
“I did not realize that you held such intimate conversations with Dorothea,” he said waspishly, glaring at the offending pin.
“Ah, well,” Edelgard said, flushing faintly pink. “Not with her directly, I suppose, but I have my sources.”
“And where would Sir Galatea have heard such a thing?”
She tilted her chin up imperiously to narrow her eyes at her retainer, willing the heat rising up her neck to disperse. “She takes tea with Mercedes quite frequently, as you well know.”
“Jeritza,” he said, allowing the revelation to fall from his mouth as if it were blood and bile: lingering and cursed.
“—is irrelevant to the topic at hand. You’re done; put the pin down and look at me, Hubert.”
Something about her tone made him listen this time. He perched obediently on the edge of her bed as Edelgard turned to look directly at him. He was like an oversized bird sitting there on her thin mattress, too tall and too gaunt to look anything other than uncomfortable when he wasn’t looming over the rest of the room. Edelgard crossed her legs and said nothing.
“I did not wish to burden you further,” Hubert said hoarsely. Every word sounded torturously wrenched from his throat; it made Edelgard wonder when, exactly, he had last laid any one of their burdens down. If he ever had. “But if it is what you desire, then I will tell you everything. Even— the person I love—“
“You have killed, lied, bribed, and tortured for me, for my vision,” Edelgard said, folding her hands in her lap, “but you know it is our vision, our goals, and I have done no less—wait, you love someone?”
“I burned the soles of the feet of a captured agent of Those Who Slither In the Dark over the course of three days in an attempt to gain information,” Hubert offered weakly, but Edelgard only waved that away.
“Yes, yes, I know, but Hubert. ”
“You know —Lady Edelgard, I captured that agent with no witnesses and held them at a secret off-site facility that only I know the precise location of—“
“You’re very secretive, yes, but my informants are very good at hiding. Hubert—“
“Bernadetta,” he realized, and he could not hide his dismay if he tried.
“I named no names. Hubert. ”
“You are interrogating me for keeping secrets when you have Bernadetta stalking me.”
“As is my right as your Emperor and your friend, to whom you have been lying , and you are trying very hard to change the subject when I do not wish it to be changed.”
Hubert pressed his lips together so thinly they almost disappeared. For a long while neither Emperor nor Minister said a word, until Hubert sighed, and Edelgard silently triumphed. She waited patiently for the spoils of her victory.
“The person I love is you, Lady Edelgard,” Hubert said quietly, staring at the ground. “Did you ever truly doubt?”
Edelgard opened her mouth,
closed it,
and then she choked back a laugh, poorly disguising her amusement with an ill-faked cough.
“Oh, Hubert, ” she teased, pretending to swoon, “you—”
“I understand that the feeling is not reciprocated,” Hubert interrupted stiffly, “and forgive me for my impertinence, Your Majesty, but I am not in the mood to be mocked.”
Edelgard’s scalp throbbed. Braiding it so tightly was the only way this style would stay secure, a crown about her head, but she did faintly wish it didn’t give her such a headache.
All she could think to say was: “You don’t love me.”
But Hubert looked so miserable, indignant and bristling and made vulnerable like a vulture plucked bare, that Edelgard immediately backtracked.
“Not in the way I assumed you meant,” she continued more carefully, like soothing a colt with ambitions of being a warhorse. “As I said, you are my partner in this war, and I care for you as I cared for my brothers and sisters. I loved them. I love you. But I thought we were speaking of--operatic love. Love for someone you want to spend your life with.”
Hubert said, as if each word was a tooth being extracted from his mouth, “I do not want a life without you.”
“Which is not the same as wanting a life with me.”
The dim morning sunlight began to filter through the curtains drawn across her window, bringing with it the true beginning of a new day. They had business to attend to; their war would be won not on the battlefield but in meeting rooms, on supply routes, from information wrenched from the lips of darkness begging to die.
Edelgard rose from her stool and retrieved her dress from where it hung off the side of her armoire. Hubert followed, taking over to fasten the clasps up her back that the stiffness in Edelgard’s muscles refused to let her reach. Her breastplate she left on its stand, and Aymr hung in solitude on her wall.
“The Immaculate One will die, and we will win this war,” Edelgard said, tugging on her boots. She said the words like a mantra. Like a prayer. “When Fódlan is unified and the alliances of Brigid, Almyra, Dagda, and Duscur are secured, we will eradicate Those Who Slither in the Dark and usher in an era of peace, prosperity, and true equality.”
“That is the plan, Lady Edelgard,” Hubert replied quietly, offering up her gloves.
“It is inevitable.” Neck to fingertip to toe she clothed herself, covering up all evidence of injury, all the scars both of her weakness and her strength. Not a single hair strayed from her crown. Gone was the girl who blushed so sweetly at the mention of her loyal knight; the Emperor now stood in her place. Her will was iron, strong and true. “There will be a life after this war, Hubert. I intend to see you live it.”
He said nothing. He handed over her papers—a schedule and notes on the day’s meetings—which Edelgard took, and then she rose up on the tips of her toes to press a dry kiss to Hubert’s cheek.
“Thank you for your honesty,” she said softly. “I hope you will strive to be as honest with yourself."
Edelgard left, her cloak billowing behind her in the chilly dawn breeze as she made her way from her monastery dorm room towards the dining hall. Not a minute passed before Ingrid fell into step beside her, whisked away her papers with a quiet let me carry that for you , and began to fill her in on the events of the day thus far. The Professor had returned with Linhardt and Leonie, exhausted and proud and richer one legendary bow; Ferdinand had accompanied them and was now seeking out Hubert, bemoaning some travel complications and the delay of their weekly meeting in the garden. Mercedes joined Edelgard and Ingrid for breakfast, quickly followed by Annette, who was rambling to a rapt Lysithea about some breakthrough she’d had in her study of faith magic.
“El—I mean, Your Majesty, are you feeling well?” Ingrid gave Edelgard a quizzical look, her eighth strip of bacon in hand. “You’ve been very quiet this morning.”
“I’m quite well, thank you, Ingrid,” Edelgard said, a faint smile tugging at her lips. She picked up a piece of bacon from her own plate and moved it to Ingrid’s; it was worth the sacrifice just to see the goofy excitement bloom across her knight’s face. “I just have a lot on my mind.”
“Minds can be very tricky that way,” Mercedes agrees. “Always so many thoughts running around. It’s rather difficult to keep track of them all.”
Edelgard hummed in commiseration, transferring another piece of bacon to Ingrid’s plate.
“I have to go,” she said after a moment, rising from her seat. “I have a meeting with the esteemed Duke von Riegan regarding Almyran forces and supplies.”
Mercedes only smiled beatifically, while Ingrid wrinkled her nose.
“Knowing him, you’ll be in that meeting all day arguing over nothing,” she said, just stoically enough to avoid the sound of complaint. She started to reach for Edelgard’s hand, but aborted the gesture as if thinking better of it. Edelgard took her hand anyway.
“Then I’ll see you tonight,” she said, pressing a soft kiss to the crown of Ingrid’s head. Her knight flushed red.
“O-okay,” Ingrid croaked, her fingers trembling.
Lysithea and Annette were now arguing loudly over the efficacy of Hades versus Abraxas, and Lysithea was holding a rather large tome out of Annette’s reach. Mercedes pointedly turned away from the Emperor and her knight, staring shamelessly at the intensifying fight beside her.
Edelgard squeezed Ingrid’s hand and turned to leave, but Ingrid held fast, rising up halfway out of her seat to follow her.
“Your Majesty, I—“
“Enjoy your breakfast, Sir Galatea,” Edelgard said, gently pushing her back down. “We have a war to win.”
Ingrid swallowed, nodded, and sat back down.
"And a life to live when it is done," she replied softly—call-and-response, like a prayer.
Edelgard bent over to kiss her, chapped lips greasy with bacon fat, thieved a buttery piece of toast from her plate, and swept away with flushed cheeks and a thrumming heart. Ingrid watched her go, staring like a drowning man yearns for land, until Mercedes gently reached across to entreat her assistance in separating the flailing mages on her side of the table.