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Felix rides into the Ashen Company encampment feeling, as usual, like an outsider. The mercenaries stop and leer at him like he’s just another noble come to pay their commander; a stranger with a coin purse and nothing of value beyond it.
(He must concede that he is carrying a sum of gold, and he is here to pay Byleth for a job. But that only makes the judgment prickle more keenly.)
Most of them have probably heard stories about how their boss helped the Kingdom drive back the Empire. They’ve heard, in hushed tones, how the Ashen Demon’s genius strategies felled the monstrous Adrestian emperor. Flames, those exaggerated tales had probably attracted these mercenaries to follow Byleth in the first place.
However, now — two years later, long after all the dust has settled and Gronder has returned to blood-fertilized farmland — not many are aware of her deeper connection to the Faerghan aristocracy. They know nothing of her time spent guiding, protecting, and befriending the Blue Lion House.
Byleth had wanted it that way. It would be easier to transition back into a nomadic lifestyle if nobody knew she was ‘chummy with the nobles.’
(Her words, not his.)
Thus, these mercenaries only see him as Duke Fraldarius, lord of this territory, and Byleth as Commander Eisner, their own leader. Not ‘Felix and Byleth, sparring partners.’ Not ‘Felix and Byleth, comrades and occasional lovers.’
That one stings the most.
I know her , he wants to scream, wants to draw his sword and snarl, I know her much better than you sorry lot ever will .
He finds the common soldiers’ and then the officers’ tents, finally arriving at a familiar, vaulted white one at their center. Byleth is outside, reclined in a field chair with her boots propped up on a folding table — and beside her, he notices with a click of his tongue, is that gang leader from Abyss.
They’re lounging next to each other in the same position, half-dressed and apparently sunbathing, with their swords across their laps. Several bottles of wine sit on the table, one already drained, with two goblets nearby; Felix recognizes the bottles immediately. He’d had them sent over from his own cellar last night.
Yuri opens one painted eye, casting it leisurely over Felix and his horse. “Hey, check it out,” he says with a smirk, nudging Byleth in the ribs. “Looks like our esteemed patron has arrived.”
(Yuri and Byleth share a particular talent. They can both take in the entirety of a person in one glance and tally up their total worth — monetarily, physically, or otherwise. They’ve always matched that way; kindred spirits Sylvain had once called them, much to Felix’s ire. Yuri’s doing it now, too, reading the tension in Felix’s frame with a faint, knowing smirk.)
“Hm?” Byleth stirs, stretching bare, muscled arms over her head. He tries not to stare. She brightens when she sees him, hopping up at once. “Oh, Duke Fraldarius! So good of you to join us.”
Felix is deeply, criminally tired of this joke. He was tired of it last year — has been tired of it since she’d first said it, right after his entitlement — but it seems to have only grown funnier to her over time. Even now he can see the mirth swimming in her bright green eyes.
“Don’t call me that,” he grumbles, dismounting and tying up his horse. It only makes her smile wider, and he wonders, not for the first time, if it’s his reaction she truly enjoys and not the joke itself.
Byleth swipes one of the full wine bottles and heads for the tent, knocking her shoulder against Yuri’s on the way. “Be a friend and take the other one back with you. My treat.”
She doesn’t stay to catch his reply; she doesn’t need to. Felix is pretty sure nobody has ever disobeyed a direct order from Byleth Eisner in all her twenty-four years of casual command.
Sure enough, Yuri shrugs and grabs the other unopened bottle without complaint.
“Keep it down this time, yeah?” he mutters with a parting wink, sauntering back down the hill.
Felix clenches his fists at his sides. He’s always disliked this man’s cunning levity, but what had started as an annoying itch has grown to full blown hatred in recent years; ever since Yuri became the Ashen Company’s exclusive supplier.
No, that’s wrong. Hatred he reserves for others — for the likes of Cornelia and Kronya and Glenn’s killers.
Yuri is merely vexing .
“You coming?” Byleth asks, the ends of her green hair poking out of the tent flap.
He’s quick to follow her in — quick to obey, just like everyone else in her orbit — and glad to leave that purple snake behind.
The atmosphere shifts as the canvas falls again, forming a thin but definite barrier between them and the rest of the camp. It’s only a piece of cloth, but Felix swears that the various ambient sounds outside — the hubbub of chatter and revelry, the metallic grind of gear maintenance, the stomping of horses’ hooves — fade as well.
“The wine,” he begins, struggling to vocalize this specific displeasure, but stops just short of blurting out something possessive and vulnerable. He’d lost the rights to both after letting her walk away after the war.
“What about it?” Byleth asks, grinning slyly over her shoulder. Her tone is casual, but her eyes, as always, are sharp. Calculating. She angles her chin down a few coy degrees. “ — Oh, you don’t like to share with Yuri, huh?”
It’s too direct to be anything but a challenge.
You’re damn right I don’t , Felix thinks sourly, but he refuses to fall for such obvious bait. His younger self would have pounced immediately, then rightly bled for it at the lash-end of Byleth’s tongue. Now he knows better.
Usually.
“Good work,” he says instead, tossing a bag of coins at her.
She catches it and sets it aside in one deft motion, not bothering to verify the amount. Neither of them is here for money ; either, or both, could have sent subordinates for such a trivial task.
But they hadn’t.
Now that she’s cast away their frequent and flimsy pretense for meeting, Byleth braces her hands on her field desk and, never breaking eye contact, lifts herself up onto it.
This is how it starts; this ritual they’d never needed during the war. One invites, leaving plenty of room for escape, and waits for the other to respond. It’s a careful sort of dance, both partners wary of breaking the thin string that still connects them.
Are we anything more than a mercenary and her employer today? she asks without words, tilting her head and curling her fingers over the edge of the desk.
(She doesn’t know that he’s been counting the days to this visit, and would rather snap his sword over his knee than leave now.)
Felix slowly peels off his riding gloves in answer, then unclasps his cloak, advancing a daring step with each action. Byleth watches him shed these outer layers, wearing a hungry smile that widens the closer he gets. When he’s within range, she grabs his sword belt and tugs him the rest of the way. He goes, willingly, with a sound that’s halfway between a grunt and a laugh.
He fits so well here between her legs, caged by her strong thighs, one hand at her waist and the other tangled in her wild hair, like the two of them were made to meld together.
But he doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say anything.
Byleth leans back in his grasp, coils, and — like the predator she is — strikes.
---
The road back to Castle Fraldarius is muddy and fraught with disquiet.
Byleth is gone. She always leaves after — after their trysts . Business elsewhere, she says; the Ashen Company is apparently in high demand.
Felix is never ready for it. Somewhere in his mind, he convinces himself that this will be the day that she stays. This will be the day that, emboldened by intimate euphoria, he’ll manage to say the words he couldn’t spit out at Garreg Mach.
But then their interlude together ends. He must get back to his home, and she to her next job, and suddenly there’s no more time for impassioned confessions.
He feels impossibly heavy in his saddle, yet simultaneously like he’d left a piece of himself behind; another little piece, carried off with her toward the distant mountains.
The stables are mercifully empty when he returns. It’s late, almost sundown, so the skeleton staff he keeps on hand should have already retired to their homes.
Good. Felix hates being served and waited on, especially when he’s in a mood. Better to care for himself than have some maid following him around all day. If not for the castle’s specific upkeep requirements — of which he knows nothing, and has zero interest in learning — he’d live with no servants at all.
And so, when he dismounts and sighs loudly into the evening air, he’s stunned to hear another, even louder sigh directly behind him.
“It happened again, huh?” Sylvain’s voice fills the stable, taking a club to the contemplative silence.
Felix jumps, nearly spiking his reins into the interloper’s face — but that would only confuse his horse, so he settles for a scowl.
“ Sylvain ,” he hisses, leading the mare to her stall. “I told you to write ahead before just showing up here — ”
“Hey, I did ,” Sylvain protests. “It’s not my fault you don’t read your letters!”
Felix stops short. There is, indeed, a large stack of unopened envelopes languishing on his work desk, and he can’t quite remember how long they’ve been sitting there — weeks, at the very least.
“Fine,” he relents, waving guiltily toward the keep. “Go make us some tea or something. I’ll be in soon.”
Sylvain flashes a smile and trots off, satisfied, leaving Felix to sweat and brush down his horse.
By the time he makes it to the drawing room — one of the few rooms in the castle that Felix actually uses — Sylvain’s spread out on a sofa like he owns the place. Felix reluctantly takes a cup from the tea tray, sinks into a side chair, and prepares for whatever his friend has to say.
“So!” Sylvain slaps his thighs, jumping in without preamble. “You hired Byleth again. Don’t look at me like that,” he says, laughing, when Felix narrows his eyes. “Whose territory do you think she rode through to get here?”
The connection seems obvious in hindsight. “Galatea,” Felix growls. He’d assumed safety from Sylvain’s prying by virtue of his far-flung territory, but that assumption was clearly flawed. There seem to be no depths to which his friends won’t sink in order to meddle in his affairs.
“Seriously, Felix, how many times is this? At least once a season since the war ended, so, like, twelve? It has to stop.”
“Fifteen,” Felix mumbles. There were several moons when, unable to wait, he’d written to Byleth with a more idiotic, impulsive request than usual.
In the next breath, however, his pride catches up. “But it’s none of your business!”
“ Fifteen ,” Sylvain drawls. “Listen, as your best friend — ”
“That’s generous.”
“ — As your best friend in the world ,” Sylvain insists, “it is absolutely my business. Listen. You fucked up. Ah, ah — hear me out.”
Felix lowers himself warily back into his chair, aborting a lunge for his best friend’s throat. This forbearance, he thinks, is payment enough for missing a letter.
“Byleth isn’t weird with anyone else. Just you. It’s kind of always been like that, right?”
Well.
Back at Garreg Mach, Felix used to love the subtle special treatment she gave him: extra invitations to tea, training sessions outside class hours — and then, five years later, all the little moments they’d steal between battles and war room meetings.
He nods, lips twitching at the nostalgia. “Yeah.”
The timeline shifts in his mind: Byleth is riding off from the monastery after the war while he watches, stone-faced, regretful, and — most crucially — silent.
His smile fades. “But it’s different now.”
Sylvain points with his teacup. “Right. So, since it’s just you, you must’ve done something to make her angry, right? Why not just apologize?”
Felix bristles before he can register it. “Apologize? For what!? She’s the one that’s being weird!”
“You’re being weird, too,” Sylvain counters. “All these ‘problems’ keep showing up in Fraldarius, and its battle-hungry lord happens to be too busy for all fifteen of them?”
Felix hunches his shoulders defensively. “I had things to do.”
“Oh, don’t give me that. You don’t have any hobbies. I’ve seen this castle,” Sylvain accuses, gesturing to the drawing room’s sparse furnishings.
Lacking a rational response, Felix averts his eyes and sips his tea irritably.
“Felix, come on.” Sylvain thinks for a moment, then tilts his head. “Okay, how about this: do you know what Byleth, Ingrid, and I did last moon?”
Far be it from him to admit he’s curious, but Felix does scoot a little farther to the edge of his seat.
“We had tea. In a garden. And talked. Like normal people.” Sylvain enunciates the end of each short sentence. “And, get this, nobody paid each other for it.”
That does sound nice. Felix used to loathe the strict etiquette of tea time, but with Byleth it was different; she’d always allowed him to be himself in all things.
“All right, yes, that’s...normal,” he admits.
Sylvain dips his chin, accepting the point. “Therefore, you fucked up.”
“ How , though? How am I supposed to know if she won’t tell me?” Felix shakes one leg restlessly. “It’s not like I can just ask her.”
“Yeah, no, definitely not,” Sylvain agrees. “The best solution is to just apologize. Works for me most of the time.”
Felix’s mouth flattens to a doubtful line.
“ — Half of the time,” Sylvain amends. “At least .”
Something tells Felix that this won’t be solved with a single apology. Byeth favors actions over words, and he doesn’t even know why she’s avoiding him outside work in the first place. Besides, it’s not like she doesn’t enjoy their time together — in fact, if Felix had to gauge her satisfaction in that arena, he’d say it’s pretty high.
So what gives?
Flushed with the memory of their recent intimacy, he crosses his arms. “I’ll think about it.”
---
(To Felix’s credit, he does think. He thinks a lot in the coming moons. In fact, the only interruptions to his frequent ruminations are Byleth’s visits themselves, in which he never seems to be able to get the right words in edgewise.)
---
The following moon, he hires the Ashen Company to serve as caravan guards while he inspects his territories. He’s already gone once this year, but it’s as good a reason as any to spend an entire nine days at Byleth’s side.
I’ll ask her , he thinks. I’ll just ask her outright . Sylvain was probably wrong.
But fate conspires against him; the villages of Fraldarius run the gamut of terrified to honored that they’ve drawn such attention from their lord, but all of them make some sort of fuss about Felix’s presence — so much so that he can’t catch a break to speak with her in private.
At the end of their journey, when such a time finally arises, it seems they’re both too pent up to talk. Byleth practically drags him into the woods one night on the road, barely mindful of prying eyes. He takes her against a sturdy pine, fingers digging into its bark as they gasp puffs of white breath into the winter air.
The next day, like always, she’s gone. The long red scratches down his back itch for weeks.
---
Dimitri insists that the new year celebration be held in Fraldarius. Felix doesn’t know if his king is deliberately provoking him, or merely worried for an old friend’s solitude — whatever the reason, he accepts without much pushback.
(The shock in Dimitri’s eye is priceless; the suspicious questioning thereafter, less so.)
He’s sent a messenger off to Garreg Mach within the hour, of course. Such an auspicious event requires proper security measures — it's far too daunting a task for the castle’s staff alone.
Sylvain, in his endless meddling, introduces Felix to several highborn ladies over the course of the party, all of whom he pointedly ignores. The approaching swish of their layered skirts becomes a dreaded bell-toll; soon, he’s hiding in his own home, making good use of its lesser known passages.
His friends may fancy themselves familiar with the castle, but Felix grew up here. No one can find him if he doesn’t want to be found. No one but Byleth, apparently.
She stalks up in sleek, formal black, silent as a cat and gleeful at his astonishment.
“What kind of security detail lets the boss out of sight?” she asks, cutting kohl-darkened eyes up at him.
Felix smirks. The obvious — that he could never hide from her, in any fashion, by any means — goes unstated, but he likes to think she understands. When he brushes back her hair, so carefully styled despite her professed apathy toward the job, and her red lips twitch in response, he likes to think she understands.
But then someone barks a laugh in the ballroom, and the tender moment crashes. Her soft smile tilts to mischievous inquiry; her easy grip on his arm, to iron.
Never having been one for propriety himself, Felix answers with a cursory glance in both directions, then a nod.
“ — Really?” Byleth splays her fingers over the ornate embroidery of his coat, trailing them down his torso as she sinks to her knees. This gives Felix pause, if only for the striking figure she cuts against the stone floor, intent written so clearly in her glittering eyes and busy hands.
“Wouldn’t it be unseemly to be discovered like this, Duke Fraldarius?” she teases, tugging playfully at the laces of his trousers.
The moniker jabs, just as it’s meant to. Felix catches her chin between thumb and forefinger — not unkindly, but not quite kindly, either — and mutters, “Don’t call me that.”
She knows this displeasure, too. He sees it in her eyes, as hard and faceted as emeralds; it’s a peculiar, familiar shade of not-quite-jealousy, like with Yuri and the wine — something hard to put into words, but so, so easy to veil.
For the space of a breath, Felix thinks he might be able to ask her, finally, what happened to us?
But it seems Byleth is the one disinclined to vulnerability today.
Her smile turns dangerous. Her voice is a low, tantalizing dare as she pulls him free, nuzzling her cheek against his length. “Why don’t you shut me up, then?”
Felix hisses, not only at the sudden rush of air and the warm silk of her skin, but at the blatant provocation. His hand on her chin tightens; he runs his thumb over her bottom lip and coaxes it downward, feels her shiver in anticipation as she obliges — and then gives her exactly what she wants.
---
“Does it need to be now ?” Felix demands, throwing his cloak onto her field desk. The Ashen Company camp is in a clamor, fresh off another contract, well-paid and well into its collective cups. The noise, combined with an unseasonable spring heat wave, already had Felix sweating and irritable — and now this.
Byleth stands her ground, unflinching. “Yes. I need to beat the snowmelt to the Great Bridge, or we’ll be late for that offer in Varley. You know I take summer jobs in the south.”
“I know, it’s just — ” Felix sinks onto the edge of her cot. It’s flimsy, nearly toppling under his weight; flimsy like everything here, foldable and easy to carry off. Temporary.
He fists his hands in the blankets. “Usually you don’t leave until the end of Harpstring.”
“Yeah, well.” She waves vaguely toward the roof of the tent — to the sky, perhaps, or the goddess. “I don’t control the weather.”
Felix laughs hollowly and hangs his head, wiping the sweat from the back of his neck. He’ll be confronting denial early this year, then.
“...Why?” Byleth asks. “Will you miss me?”
Her voice is so uncharacteristically thin that Felix lifts his head, worried he’d misheard her. She’s standing in the center of her tent’s shabby Almyran rug, arms crossed over her chest, staring at him with more tentative openness than he’d seen for the past three years combined.
Time stops. He imagines a version of himself that says yes ; a version that says of course I will — I’ve missed you for three years — I miss you right now . Words can’t express how much he wants to roll her up in that rug and haul her off to Castle Fraldarius, these mercenaries be damned, and keep her.
But Byleth wants this. She’s been afforded so few choices in her life, but she chose her current situation the same way he’d chosen his: after an arduous journey of self-discovery and consideration. He can’t ask her to give that up.
So he averts his eyes and lets his hand slip from his neck. “I’ll have more work for you by harvest.”
Come back to me by harvest , his heart directs at the floor. Please .
A few breaths pass in silence, then the cot creaks as her knees come down on either side of his thighs.
“You’d better,” she murmurs, gentle like she’s answering his unspoken reply, and threads her fingers back through his hair.
They fall to passion just like that, wordless and soft and suffocatingly hot. Felix keeps one hand on her hip and one gripping the cot as they roll together, anchored.
---
He rides listlessly back to Castle Fraldarius, relying on his horse’s intuition to get them home.
(Felix himself is elsewhere, three years and many miles removed, watching Byleth walk away from him after the war. His fists are clenched at his sides, an emerald ring burning in his pocket, but why ? Why isn’t he running after her, begging her to marry him and stay by his side forever?)
You stubborn fool , he thinks bitterly, dismounting in the stables.
He’s halfway through hanging up his tack when he happens to glance at the adjacent stalls — and blinks owlishly at two unfamiliar horses, both bearing the brand of the Crown on their flanks.
Great. Just great.
“ What ?” he yells as soon as he enters the keep, letting its heavy oak doors slam shut behind him for effect. He’s positive he hasn’t missed any letters this time.
A head of shaggy blonde hair appears around the kitchen corner. It’s Dimitri — because of course he has decided to visit at the most inopportune time — carrying two halves of a metal teapot that looks like it’s been rent by a demonic beast’s claws.
“Felix!” His voice booms around the empty castle, at once friendly and apologetic. “Welcome back. I...I tried to boil water.”
Ingrid steps out, too, and clears her throat. “I wasn’t fast enough to stop him.”
Despite his exhaustion and the dilemma weighing on his shoulders, Felix chuckles — but snidely, lest they form any misconceptions of his acceptance. “You’re both hopeless. Move aside.”
Dimitri follows him into the kitchen like a chastised dog, clutching the sundered metal. “I do hope this is a good time. Ingrid said we should send advance word, but — ”
“She was right,” Felix interjects, taking down a spare pot and re-lighting the wood stove. He can’t fully see Ingrid off to his left, but he does spy the arch of a vindicated eyebrow.
“Well, I didn’t want to risk being stranded by the snowmelt,” Dimitri says evasively, wandering over to an empty spot of counter—ostensibly to deposit the evidence of his ruination, but also several paces off from his wife.
Ingrid, never one to quietly swallow a bad order, quips back, “ Well , maybe that wouldn’t have been a danger had we departed sooner!”
Felix gets the distinct impression that this banter has played itself out before, many times, probably on horseback up the kingsroad. These two are so married, it makes him want to gag; instead he settles for banging the filled pot down onto a burner.
“Whatever, it’s fine. You’re here now. What do you want?”
His question is directed toward Dimitri, under the assumption that the king has come to pester him again about some event or another. But, surprisingly, it’s Ingrid who looks away.
“At the new year, Sylv — ah, that is, I noticed — ” she coughs lightly, “ — you were having some...trouble with...”
The topic seems hard for her to discuss. She trails off, cheek twitching, and a foreboding chill races up Felix’s spine. They couldn’t possibly be here for —
“Uhm. With the professor,” Ingrid finishes, squinting at the ceiling.
Faerghus has a deeply ingrained culture of personal fortitude; it’s never been easy for any of them to discuss their feelings openly. In fact, Felix can count the times he’s done so on one hand — so why in the eternal bloody flames is Ingrid breaking that sacred trust now ?
The water on the stove starts boiling, filling the kitchen with the gentle popping of bubbles. Ingrid leans against Dimitri’s shoulder like she’s utterly exhausted from speaking two sentences. He supports her with an encouraging smile.
Felix swallows the blood he’s about ready to spit.
He focuses his energy on making the tea, then carries their cups to a side table meant for servants. Ingrid and Dimitri follow, worry mounting on their faces the longer Felix goes without answering.
Finally, when everyone is settled, he exhales forcefully through his nose.
“I am,” he admits, each word ground out through millstone teeth, “having trouble. With Byleth.”
Three old friends, each gripping their tea mugs like lifelines, share three identical expressions of discomfort. The national roots of stoicism go back countless generations in this land, difficult to overcome even in close company. That said, the admission does lift a certain weight from Felix’s shoulders; begrudgingly, he thinks he’ll have to apologize to Sylvain.
“Right. Of course.” Dimitri sounds like he’s speaking around a lump in his throat. “Precisely why we’ve come. Do tell us about it.”
Ingrid hides a blush behind the rim of her cup, nodding for Felix to continue.
Goddess, nevermind his problems; how did they ever manage to wed?
He shakes his head in exasperation, then recounts his and Byleth’s odd post-war dynamic as vaguely as possible — but not vaguely enough, it seems, because Ingrid and Dimitri both turn a little green every time he glosses over the premarital intimacy.
“Okay! I — I get it,” Ingrid says after a while, holding up a hand as if begging for mercy.
Felix, though he’s somewhat enjoyed making the other two squirm, halts his retelling of the new year celebration.
“Indeed,” Dimitri concurs, his tone serious. “You haven’t found an appropriate time to propose to her, yes?”
Ingrid and Felix both stare at him, speechless. Their king’s ability to misread intent is truly formidable.
“No. No, what?” Ingrid’s disbelief seems to have snapped her right out of embarrassment. “He’s afraid she’ll reject him!”
Felix snorts into his fist. They’re both wrong, of course, but Ingrid’s closer. It isn’t rejection he fears, but acceptance; he’s afraid she’ll say yes, and then hate him for it.
Silence drops like a weight on the table, and only then does he realize he’d actually muttered the last bit out loud.
Fuck .
“Hate you?” Dimitri asks, hushed.
“Uh.” Felix leans back in his chair like it might offer him some means of escape. The other two are waiting anxiously for him to explain, though, and he can’t really flee his own castle.
“Not at first,” he says slowly. “Over time, though. This isn’t the easiest life.”
The other two don’t need any context to know that this refers to the aristocracy . They all have responsibilities — daily, yearly, and seasonal — that more or less tie them to the land they govern.
“Nobody has ever asked Byleth what she wants,” Felix continues, lit by a spark of resentment on her behalf. “Not Jeralt, or Rhea — ” or even you , he thinks, shooting Dimitri a sharp glance. “Everyone has always just...assumed. I want her to be free.”
A few seconds pass quietly. Dimitri closes his good eye, no doubt recalling the very same time, but Ingrid is frowning into her mug. Eventually she looks up, brows knitted.
“Have you ever asked her what she wants?”
Felix opens and closes his mouth a few times, stunned by her sudden intensity.
“Aren’t you just assuming, too?” Her pitch rises, incensed. (In retrospect, he can see how this issue might have been personal for her.)
He can’t scrape together a rebuttal, even after the shock wears off. Isn’t he—isn’t he guilty as precisely charged?
“Felix Hugo Fraldarius,” Ingrid says, every word an indictment. “You write her a letter this instant.”
---
The Ashen Company is nearly ready to depart. It’s taken almost a week to get all of their supplies and men organized for transport, but Byleth is finally staring down the last few pallets of crates, ledger in hand, checking off their contents one by one.
All the while, Yuri and Hapi are seated on the driver’s bench of a nearby wagon, watching her intently and passing a long pipe back and forth. They’ve been staring at her all day, judgmental in their quietude, while the camp bustles around them.
“Can I help you two?” Byleth asks at long last, swinging to face the wagon. Better to pry out their complaints now, she thinks, than deal with them on the long road.
“Nope,” Yuri says, taking a drag off the pipe.
At the same time, Hapi replies, “You’re being stupid.”
Yuri chokes on laughter, smoke billowing from his mouth, and hoarsely amends, “Never mind, she’s right. You’re being stupid.”
Byleth smiles dryly at all the fun they’re having at her expense. She knows what they’re talking about, of course, and has heard their loud opinions on the subject many times already.
“I know what I’m doing,” she insists, moving to another group of crates, but still feels eyes on her back.
“Really?” Yuri asks doubtfully. “Three years of no progress, and you’re still on track with your master plan?”
Byleth sighs and, realizing they have no intention of dropping it this time, sets down her ledger. “I’ve told you. Felix is — he has his own pace. You know what northerners are like. And besides,” she adds, mostly to herself, “I can’t be the one to ask.”
Hapi makes a small sound of annoyance. “So you’re going to go on suffering alone, all because you don’t want to look like a noble-chaser? Fifi wouldn’t think that way.”
It’s a direct hit. Byleth glares at her friend, wanting to argue, to say it’s more complicated than that, but a small voice in her heart wonders: what if he does?
She’s not highborn like most of the Lions — goddess, she’s not even from Faerghus. Circumstances allowed her to associate with them before, but it’s not so easy to stand uncontested in those circles long-term.
After the war, when people had started flooding Garreg Mach for Dimitri’s coronation, upper officials from both his court and the church were already giving her sidelong looks in the halls, conveying their displeasure through body language and ill-concealed whispers.
It was as if they were all thinking in unison, what is that mercenary still doing here?
Yuri seems to sense the darkened mood, tapping the ash out of his pipe and handing it back to Hapi. “All right, okay. Maybe you’re not sending strong enough signals. Does he know you’re interested?”
Byleth squares up, offended that he’d suggest such a thing, and declares flatly, “Last moon I sucked him off at a royal event.”
It’s hard to surprise Hapi, but she chokes and spits out the pipe. “For real? And he didn’t propose to you right there?” She scrunches up her nose. “What’s wrong with him?”
“A lot,” Yuri says with a tired shake of his head. “ Northerners .”
Byleth chuckles and sweeps a wistful look over the crates. It’s always difficult to turn her back on Faerghus, to know for certain that she won’t see Felix for another season. “Well, anyway, guess I’ll have a while to think up some stronger ‘signals.’”
Just then, as if summoned by the force of her reluctance, a rider enters the camp’s timber portcullis. They’re still far away from the convoy, but their standard’s colors — Fraldarius teal-and-white — are immediately visible.
She doesn’t even have to turn around to know that Yuri is grinning, fox-like, behind her. His voice is impishly amused as he comments, “Oh, I don’t know about that. Better think fast, friend.”
---
Felix paces the keep, restless. He’s been here since early this morning, stomping a straight line from one wall of the grand hall to the other, then back again, glancing frequently out the front windows to scan the bailey road.
She should’ve received his letter yesterday. The Ashen Company’s camp is less than a day’s ride out, and his messenger has long since returned. So why hasn’t Byleth arrived yet?
His steps falter as he considers the possibility that she doesn’t want to see him, that she’d simply departed for Varley regardless of his invitation. And why should she do anything different? She’d told him of her plans. She doesn’t owe him anything.
Ingrid’s accusations hang like a cloud over his head. She is, of course, right; he’s never directly asked what Byleth wants, from him or from her life in general. Since Felix himself speaks with his actions, he’s always assumed — his eye twitches at the accursed word — that Byleth is the same. But no two people are exactly the same in their habits, even when similar.
(So in a roundabout way, Sylvain’s also right: Felix has, indeed, fucked up. And if that’s the reason his and Byleth’s relationship has changed so drastically, Felix fully intends to beg her forgiveness; on hands and knees if he must.)
He tortures himself with this cyclical thinking for another hour until, on one of countless laps back and forth across the scuffed floor, he spots a lone rider on the road.
Right away, he recognizes Byleth’s favorite courser and its distinctive ash-gray tack. Even if she’d been on a different horse, Byleth is one of the only people he knows who would dare approach a castle without a visible standard.
He straightens up, watching her deposit her horse in the stable and then head for the main keep. She looks to be in a pleasant mood, stepping lightly and even smiling to herself.
Felix opens the keep doors as she reaches the landing, launching right into a prepared greeting. “Byleth, I’m glad you came. There’s something I need to — ”
Of course, nothing with her can be so simple. Before he can finish, Byleth has cleanly swept past him, traversing the main hall like he’s not even there. A slight gust of wind is all that announces her, ruffling his hair in passing.
“Byleth?” Felix calls after her, but she keeps going at a leisurely pace, unanswering. As she reaches the back corridor, she turns and flashes him a coy smirk — and then promptly disappears around the corner.
She’s headed for the training grounds, he realizes with a jolt of invigoration, and sets off briskly to follow. They haven’t sparred properly since the war; it had seemed too intimate a request for the distance she’d put between them, and she hadn’t requested, either. But now she has. So it’s fine, right?
It’s probably fine, he decides, since Byleth has crossed this boundary herself.
When he catches up, she’s already shed her traveling gear and grabbed two wooden swords from the racks. The castle’s training area is larger than the one at Garreg Mach, but shares its general design; seeing her there on the packed earth, poised and confident, takes him right back to their fights at the monastery.
(And, just like that, she’s pulled him into her orbit again, cleanly obliterating any trace of a plan he might’ve had before.)
“Hope you’re not rusty, Duke Fraldarius,” she teases, tossing one of the training swords his way.
Felix catches it eagerly, dropping his cloak in the dirt as he steps up to meet her challenge. For all he cares, it can fall directly into the eternal flames — actually, everything and everyone beyond the bounds of this arena can go ahead and burn to a smoking crisp.
“If I win, don’t call me that anymore,” he says, lips curling into a smile against his wishes and betraying his overflowing excitement. Not even Byleth’s tasteless jokes can get him down this time.
She raises her brows and acknowledges him with a nod. He’d expected her to state a win condition of her own, but instead she steals his favorite opening move: a swift forward engagement.
(While Felix will never in a thousand years admit to being rusty , he can admit that certain facets of lordship have cut into his training time over the moons. Byleth, by comparison, has never paused her long career in swordsmanship — and it shows.)
He barely gets his blade up in time to parry. The force of it knocks him back a few steps, kicking up dust around his feet, and he shoves her off with equal enthusiasm.
They clash a few more times, feral and vital in their strikes, the sharp cracks of wood ringing out over an otherwise silent field. But Byleth’s advantage is obvious, and it’s not long before she’s pushed him to the edge of the earthen floor with his back to a stone pillar; the tip of her training blade passes within an inch of his neck.
When he manages to put some distance between them and turn again, she’s smiling and standing still, not closing the gap.
“Why did you leave so quickly after the war?” she asks, and then rushes over.
The question, moreso than the forceful clash of their blades, shoots through him like lightning. His first instinct is to escape from it, but Byleth’s eyes flick to his feet, noting their preliminary directional shifts. He feels like one of the battle maps she used to study at the monastery, and forces an even stance instead.
“If you have breath for talking, fight harder,” he grunts, backing up his words with a series of aggressive sweeps.
Her parries are calm and accurate, but her eyes remain trained on him, as if waiting for an answer.
For some reason, he obliges. The words tumble out of him as if compelled.
“Fraldarius was unstable after my father’s death. I couldn’t leave its people to suffer.” The emergent honesty surprises them both. He follows up with a stiff, “ Somebody had to clean up this mess,” for good measure.
The second half of the reason — I fled from you like a coward — goes unspoken, hidden in the tense line of his jaw.
“Hm,” Byleth says, one side of her mouth quirking upward.
They exchange a few more blows. An ember of indignance in Felix’s heart grows brighter with every connection; she is scrutinizing him like a battle plan, watching closely for...something. But what?
He decides to turn the blade, both literally and figuratively. “Why didn’t you become the archbishop?”
As he asks, he feints to one side. When Byleth goes for a counter-move, her foot slips sideways in the dirt.
Her foot slips.
Byleth Eisner, the Ashen Demon, slayer of emperors, unifier of nations — slips .
Felix finds himself too stunned to take advantage of the momentary opening, but does manage to regain some ground.
“I told Seteth,” she replies coolly, recovering her posture, “that if he wants to steer the church away from militarism, it’d be a bad move to put a hired sword at its head.”
So she says, but her next attack isn’t as steady as her voice, and Felix easily diverts it. Perhaps, like him, she’s hesitant to tell the whole story of her departure from the monastery — but he’s always been able to read Byleth’s emotions through her blade, and now is no different.
A small part of him wonders if it would have been more efficient to just fight from the beginning, rather than perform whatever this strange three-year-long dance has been.
(Tiring. It’s been tiring.)
“Why do you hire me so often?” Byleth asks, and while there’s no annoyance in her tone, it does come through in a rather impulsive thrust.
Felix still can’t figure out what she’s trying to deduce. “You’re reliable. Don’t like the work?”
“I didn’t say that,” she shoots back. “But why not use your own men?”
“They’re not as reliable as you.”
The two exchange blows as quickly as words, maneuvering around one another in that fluid way unique to fighters who have extensive experience with the other’s style of combat. However, Byleth pushes him further to impulsivity with every question, pressing and pressing until he’s answering by reflex.
It’s when he hits this point — maybe precisely because she can tell that he has — that she ventures calmly, “Are you in love with me?”
“ Obviously !” Felix exclaims, burning up with annoyance, taking not even a beat to consider his answer before belting it out.
A second passes, silent save for the harsh breaths of winded combatants, and then Byleth smiles. It is serene and victorious, emblematic of the cat that got the cream, devoid of all the riddle and subterfuge that has plagued their encounters since the war.
She knocks him backward with ease and with absolutely zero resistance, because Felix has suddenly become as dense and frozen as a garden statue.
He hits the ground like that, harshly, but barely registers the sting in his tailbone. He’s too busy staring up at Byleth, eyes wide as saucers, his tongue stuck somewhere between excuse and rebuke. There’s really no taking back such an admission, though, and eventually his hanging jaw snaps shut.
“I...yield,” he says, and means it in every sense of the word.
She offers him a hand up and he takes it gratefully; as he rises, echoes of his younger self rise with him, all repeating this same action. He may be older now, coated in a different land’s dust, but his dumbstruck awe of Byleth is the same — will forever be the same. The midday sun haloes her from this angle, filtering viridescent-golden through her tousled hair, illuminating a face flushed with confidence and exhilaration, and it’s all he can do to force out his intended question, the reason he’d invited her here:
“What do you want , Byleth?”
In this specific circumstance, since he’s just lost a sparring match, it would be easy for a listener to understand those words as, ‘What do you want as a prize for winning?’ And certainly, in the past, this is what Felix would have meant.
Right now he’s asking something quite different, though, and Byleth seems to understand this by the way her eyes widen and her lips slightly part.
But then she calmly declares, “I want your coat,” and he’s not so sure of that conclusion anymore.
Felix looks down, at a loss, to his padded teal jacket. Why would she want that ? Still, he haltingly pops out a few buttons.
“Not that one,” Byleth clarifies. “Your old one. From the war.”
There’s even less reason for her to want that one!
Felix is beyond the point of complete sentences, though, so utterly lost as he is in her misinterpretation of his question. “Okay?” he replies.
Having received permission, she gives him a fondly enigmatic smile — not unlike the one she’d flashed upon arrival — and leaves the room.
A few moments expire in utter stillness, punctuated by the fading steps of boots on marble as Byleth disappears into the castle. Felix wonders dimly how she’s been navigating it so well all day, but then it clicks: the new year celebration.
Of course she’d have memorized the entire layout in that handful of hours; after all, she’d done so inside the Imperial Palace with even less time and under constant threat of ambush.
But the course she’d taken from the training grounds — the audible path of her footfalls, distinct in the absence of any others, and her stated pursuit of his old battle attire — indicates she’s headed for his bedroom .
And Felix is still standing in the dirt, mutely holding a wooden sword like an idiot. What is he doing ? Byleth had clearly come to extract that confession from him, and now the second half of her plot is — it’s —
Well, he doesn’t know exactly what it is, but he does know its general direction.
He hurriedly replaces his training blade on a nearby rack and finally, finally, makes to follow her.
The halls are different as he stumbles down them. Not materially — for the fixtures here were old even in his grandfather’s time — but because Byleth has brought new life to them with her presence. Years and decades have passed in this house without mirth, nor laughter, nor vigor, and now even the stones in the walls seem a more cheerful shade of gray.
By chance, he glances into an antique, cumbersome mirror, the type of corridor dressing that Felix would normally pass without incident. However, his reflection slows him down a few paces.
The man in that burnished silver is noticeably disheveled — he’s sweaty, his hair has mostly escaped its tie, and his jacket is splotched with dirt — but more than that, he looks happy . There’s color high in his cheeks and an exuberant light in his eyes; Felix leans in closer, wondering how long it’s been since he’s looked and felt like this.
Too long, probably.
He peels off his jacket and uses the cleaner parts of its inner lining to wipe his face, then tosses it aside and continues on briskly.
The door to his bedchamber is ajar when he arrives, spilling lamplight out into the darkened hall. He intends to stride right up and push it open, to enter and boldly demand a reply to his impromptu confession.
The first part of that idea indeed happens as he’d envisioned. He crosses the threshold without hesitation and sucks in a breath —
But then his eyes lift from the door handle and suddenly — some might even say predictably — his capacity for speech dissolves once more.
Felix’s bedroom furnishings are plain; he’s never been overly concerned with personal comfort, and what little vanity he possesses isn’t directed toward interior decorating, so there isn’t much in here besides a wide four-poster bed and a wardrobe.
The lack of ornamentation, though, just makes Byleth more of an obvious centerpiece. During her few minutes’ head start, she’d somehow found the time to clean up and arrange herself artfully at the edge of the bed.
And what a pleasing arrangement it is: she sits, legs crossed and hair fanned out around her shoulders, dressed in the promised coat, and only in the promised coat.
This means, of course, that her arms and legs are completely bare, her waist precariously covered by the coat’s asymmetrical side panel — if she moves at all, even an inch, that fabric will surely slide away.
Moreover, this coat was designed for a particular chest circumference, a requirement that Byleth most definitely does not meet. Her generous bosom is barely contained, flushed skin swelling over a low neckline and between silver buckles. Here, too, it looks as if any slight pressure might release those straining clasps.
Felix is stuck again, like his boots have been nailed to the floorboards, and blushing like a damn virgin.
“Wh — ” he tries, but the sound lodges in his throat.
Byleth tips her crossed foot, flexing the muscles in her toned legs, and the teal fabric covering her lap shifts a tantalizing fraction up her thighs. “Round two?” she asks casually, smirking and letting her head loll to one side.
Her voice and demeanor shock him more than the sight itself. This is the old Byleth — the open, eager lover he hasn’t seen in years — showing no trace of defense or reluctance.
Felix nearly trips while taking a single step forward. What happened in the past five minutes to make her revert like this? He’s been trying so hard for so long; had she really only needed him to acknowledge, out loud, that he loved her? How could she not have known that beforehand? He’s obviously demonstrated it a thousand times over, it’s such an easy assumption —
He pales instantly, haunted by Ingrid’s harsh scolding.
No...
Really?
Can it be so simple?
Can it be that what she’d wanted wasn’t an apology, nor an explanation, but merely a confirmation; that the boundary she’d drawn wasn’t a denial, but an invitation?
Byleth, having watched him embark on this complicated journey, laughs softly. Even this tiny rumble is enough to disturb the coat’s taut hold, however, and her rosy nipples peek out over its neckline.
“Stop thinking,” she says, purposefully rolling her shoulders to give him a better view.
Felix can’t help but mirror her laughter; it’s been such a long time — it’s been such a long time — since desire and humor mixed like this, when it used to be a hallmark of their relationship.
He pushes off the doorframe, strides over to where she’s perched, and falls heavily to his knees. Dry-mouthed, trying valiantly to keep his eyes on her face rather than her chest, he mutters, “Byleth, I’m — I’ve been so — ”
“Stupid?” she suggests, smiling wryly. While he sputters, she takes hold of his hands and places them firmly on her waist. “Yeah. Me, too.”
He laughs again, louder, and leans into her, pressing their foreheads together. All of his built-up anxiety, the unsure tension, melts into warm relief; he sighs, and his shoulders relax for the first time in moons.
Indeed, this is the place where he belongs — and so, too, does she.
“Don’t leave anymore,” he whispers, tightening his grip. “Just...stay here. With me. Please.”
Byleth’s breath hitches and her eyes fall closed, almost as if she’s in pain.
“If - if that’s what you want,” Felix hedges, thinking she might be worried about her position, “I’ll make sure everyone in your company finds work — ”
She cuts him off with a tiny, strangled sound in the back of her throat—but when she opens her eyes again, it’s not distress glittering in them, but mirth.
“Felix Fraldarius,” she says with a conspiratorial grin. “Are you proposing to me with a hand on my tit?”
He looks down, horrified to find that she’s right; he’d subconsciously reached for her face, wanting to comfort her, but his hand has ended up perfectly cupping the swell of a breast instead.
His pride won’t let him back down, though. Rather than letting go, he squeezes and replies defiantly, “Yeah, I am. So what?”
Byleth looks like she wants to make fun of him, but her eyes are much too soft for mockery. Her voice is barely audible, her breath tickling his cheek, as she tilts her head to properly meet his gaze. “Of course I will.”
The smile she manages is wobbly and lopsided as she confesses, “I’ve only been waiting for you to ask.”
Felix lets out a slow breath that’s equally unstable. “ You could’ve asked, too!” he admonishes, intending to sound stern, but his words come out delighted.
They’ve really just been waiting for the same thing.
Unbelievable.
He thinks back to every numerous instance in which their friends have labeled them some variant of ‘stubborn,’ and concedes the point retroactively.
“Oh, shut up,” Byleth grouses, and pulls him bodily onto the bed.
---
Their encounters before now have been brief, secretive affairs — first out of necessity, since an active war zone wasn’t the most appropriate setting for romance, and then out of (what he now knows was) mutual fear.
Now, with the rest of their lives stretched out before them, he’s going to take his time.
And he does, despite Byleth’s best efforts. He pins her to the bed and pops those straining buckles one at a time, grinning at the gratified little sigh that escapes her, then bows his head and shows her exactly what it means to be patient.
His hands and mouth travel every inch of her body in a torturously slow path, mapping out the complete canvas of her skin for the first time, memorizing every spot that makes her gasp or twitch. He torments her like this until her breathy cries fill the room — until her back is curved off the mattress in an exquisite arch, her mouth open and panting, strands of damp hair plastered to the column of her throat.
When she reaches her breaking point and flips them over, Felix, as ever, goes willingly.
It’s only after they’re sated, sprawled in each other’s arms and covered in marks and scratches, does he remember the ring. He reaches laboriously for his pants — which have somehow been wrapped around a corner bedpost — and digs around for it.
“Come back here,” Byleth murmurs, only half-conscious, and stretches out an arm. She’s so adorable like this that Felix hovers outside her reach for a moment, just watching her make blind grabs in the air and frown when they come up empty.
One emerald-green eye cracks open in frustration; to appease it, Felix hastily slips the ring onto her seeking hand.
“Oh,” she says, blinking her eyes open fully. Her expression shifts from confusion to joy, though it still carries a hint of guilt. “How long have you had this?”
“Since the end of the war,” he answers, slumping back down next to her. “Goddess, if I had just given it to you then — ”
“Hey. Hey.” Byleth swats his chest lightly. “Stop that. We were both at fault; I won’t have you ruining the best afterglow of my damn life.”
She tugs at the hem of his (ravenously discarded) teal battle coat, adding lightly, “And be careful with this. It’s mine now, remember?”
Felix puffs out a laugh, too endeared for banter. “Everything in this castle is yours, including me.”
It’s silent for a moment as this information sinks in. Apparently, Byleth really hasn’t thought about the ring’s implications yet. It seems to hit her in waves, each one deepening the lines in her brow.
The opportunity is too good to ignore.
“You do know that, don’t you?” he asks, a devilish grin spreading across his face even as hers twists to mortified incredulity.
He leans in close to her ear, savoring the justice of it all, and whispers smugly, “ Duchess Fraldarius .”