Archive of Our Own

A short cry pierces the afternoon quiet. 

It is nothing really—a high yelp of surprise, quickly bitten off. Dimitri looks up to spot the source. Far below the high terrace where he is working, Garreg Mach’s orphans are practicing their riding. Dimitri scans the grounds with his remaining eye and finally identifies that Jory has slipped off of the pony he was learning to ride. 

It is not a bad fall, Dimitri assesses with relief. He is already clambering back to his feet. Nothing but skinned palms and knees that will scab over and heal cleanly. The Church of Seiros ensures that the orphans under their charge are given the best care and the best education that the treasuries will allow. And Jory is a tough boy—a former street-brawler with a missing front tooth who looks Dimitri in the eye with a kind of brash audacity that not even a Crested noble would dare try with the Savior King of Fódlan. 

But then, in a flutter of white skirts and flapping hands, a woman comes racing across the riding green. She is a local innkeeper’s wife, Dimitri recognizes, and he remembers her nearly ten years younger. She would sing and her son would play the fiddle for the Officers Academy students who came through her door for the strong, dark ale. The war has sapped all the color from her cheeks, and Dimitri has been too occupied with his royal duties to notice until now that her clever little son with the fiddle is no longer by her side. 

“Jory, oh by the goddess, look what you’ve done to yourself, oh, you’re bleeding, your poor palms are scraped raw!” 

Jory, who had until that moment been grimly expressionless, unexpectedly bursts into tears. It is as though the pain has only just set in. As though he has only just noticed that he is hurt. Or, Dimitri considers, that he has only now understood that he is allowed to be hurt. That it is safe now to feel his pain. 

The innkeeper’s wife cradles the boy’s head against her shoulder, not seeming to mind that he is leaving bloody, dirty handprints on the back of her white dress. In another fortnight, Dimitri thinks, she will bring Jory home. They fit together so perfectly. The orphan who is learning how to need a mother, and the mother who has never forgotten how to need a son. 

Dimitri smiles, although there is a little pain there. In the four years after the war, he has learned to handle that better. Let the hurt be—don’t try to numb it, but don’t press on it either. 

He tells himself that it is neither shameful nor enviable that when he sees a mother and son holding one another like that, he still feels an old twinge of longing for a woman who never seemed to fully accept the love he tried to offer her. A step-mother who would have held him if he was hurt, but her eyes would be far away, long ago, elsewhere. 

The slight bitterness of jealousy rises up and he savors it for as long as it needs before swallowing it back down. 

And then the moment is over. Archbishop Byleth is waiting at the door with a pot of tea to pull him from his paperwork, formal diadem carelessly askew. King Dimitri smiles in greeting, rises to stretch his legs, and turns away from the mother who has just finished drying the first ever tears of her new son. 

—

The decision to move the administrative capital to Garreg Mach came a year after the war. The aftermath of the battle of Enbarr had been bloodier than he had expected, little rebellions flaring up across the former Adrestian Empire, skirmishes breaking out along the old borders. If they were to make a genuine attempt at unity, Dimitri and his counselors had decided, he could not remain in Fhirdiad. The city was too remote, too cold, too cramped and provincial in comparison to Enbarr or Derdriu. 

Dimitri does not entirely mind the change. He still returns to Fhirdiad for a part of every year, but as much as he loves the old city, its topography is too often overlayed with difficult memories. All the better that he cut his new path at Garreg Mach, the place where he took his first halting steps out from the misery of his old life. All the better for the rest of the continent too. 

The unexpected result of this decision is that he now spends most of his year in the company of Annette and Mercedes. Dedue is at his side as often as he can be spared from his duties overseeing the restitution of Duscur, and Sylvain, Ingrid, and Ashe visit whenever they can escape the demands of governing their own territories. 

Mercedes, however, has taken vows to the Church, while Annette has stepped away from her obligations to House Dominic to teach the first generation of students to return to the Officers Academy since the war. Dimitri is immensely grateful for their company, if somewhat bemused to find himself increasingly included in pastry tastings and shopping excursions for new hat ribbons.  

It is a few days into the waxing of the Red Wolf Moon when he finds himself pried away from a long line of demanding minor gentry by Annette, who insists that he is urgently needed elsewhere. The open audience has lasted an hour past sundown already and so Dimitri relents, flashing his most apologetic smile and allowing himself to be tugged out of the court by Annette’s tiny hand. 

“Sorry everyone,” she chirps over her shoulder. “We have some pressing Savior King business that simply must be addressed at once.”  

Said ‘pressing business’ turns out to be a winter market that has sprung up around the old monastery pond, which has finally frozen over. The weather is turning cold early this year and the rime of frost at the edges of the water has spread into a thin lace of ice. It is not yet thick enough to skate on, although Dimitri catches a few of the students testing it longingly, but the locals have set out paper lanterns across the water. They shimmer on the dark surface, slowly melting down, cracking the ice beneath them as it warms. 

Mercedes is huddled in a thickly knit shawl, awaiting them with steaming mulled cider that smells something near to divine. 

“Oh, Dimitri, so wonderful that you could join us!” Mercedes exclaims as Dimitri warms his hands on the mug and shakes off the stupor of his long hours. 

“Annette said it was a top priority. That you needed royal assistance,” Dimitri replies dryly, too grateful to be truly irritated. 

“It is!” Annette exclaims. “Mercie and I are making mittens; well, Mercie is doing the knitting, but I need your help picking colors for everyone if we’re going to finish before the end of the year!” 

“Why not blue?” Dimitri suggests. “Everyone seems to like blue.” 

Mercedes giggles at that and offers him a fond pat on the arm before she links their elbows together. 

“I’m sure they do, but there are a lot of blues to choose from,” she says. 

“And a half-blind man to misjudge them all, I fear,” Dimitri mumbles as he is guided off to peruse the market stalls. 

By the time they finish with this errand, the moon has risen and the stars emerge from the thin shreds of cloud. Dimitri swallows the last of the cider, savoring its fragrance, and then he leaves his head tilted back to consider the night sky.

Behind him, Annette is debating her final purchase, agonizing between a burgundy or deep green yarn for Sylvain. Dimitri has already warned her that Sylvain is sensitive about clashing with his own hair, but she insists that, as a fellow redhead, she has a more nuanced perspective. 

The stars are perfect—crystal clear, so bright in the freezing air that they feel almost sharp. His breath mists up and over them, blurring their razor gleam.

In Faerghus, some of the old folktales say that the stars are candles in the windows of a great city in the sky, impossibly large, impossibly beautiful. It makes their light seem more distant, he thinks, more sad, more lonely than anything else in the world. A shining place that he can never ever reach. 

A memory pricks him then, sharp enough that he flinches away from it instinctively.

Long ago, looking up at a clear winter sky like this, afraid, but not alone. He had been shivering then, colder than he can ever remember being, except for the blazing warmth in his right hand. Like one of those faraway candles had fallen down beside him and he had gripped a star between his fingers.

“Dimitri?” 

Mercedes’ voice interrupts his thoughts and he quickly arranges his face. 

“My apologies,” he tells her, “I was lost in thought.” 

“That’s alright,” she says gently, seeming to understand that the type of thought he is prone to is seldom pleasant. “Annie decided on the burgundy.” 

Dimitri smiles wryly, but does not protest as Annette returns from the market stall, laden with skeins of yarn. The three of them linger a moment longer on the edge of the pond, waiting in companionable silence as the market winds down around them. 

“I ought to retire,” he says eventually, glancing around. “I leave for Fhirdiad in a fortnight and there are somehow still arrangements to be made and letters to be written.” 

“We were actually wondering… how do you intend to travel this year?” Mercedes asks. Her tone is calm, but he catches an edge of something in the abruptness of the question. Like she has practiced it. 

“By horse?” Dimitri replies, unsure why he feels his pulse beginning to climb. 

“We mean are you planning to go to the north or to the south? Will you take the Magdred Way or the pass at Galatea?” Annette clarifies, and Dimitri detects a nervous quiver in her throat. He furrows his brow, realizing that they are circling some difficult topic, some unpleasantness that they must find an elegant way to broach. 

“I had intended to go north,” Dimitri says cautiously. “Perhaps to visit Ingrid along the way. What is this about, Annette? If you have need of a courier to deliver your mittens…” 

But the joke does not raise the exasperated smile he had hoped for on her lips. Instead, she glances at Mercedes again, as if seeking counsel. 

“We think, Dimitri, that it might be prudent for you to take the northern road, but stop for a night in Fraldarius lands,” Mercedes finally says, choosing her words slowly. She does not seem as anxious as Annette, but oddly… careful. 

Dimitri feels suddenly very aware of his neutral expression. 

“I am not sure that would be wise,” he says, his voice entirely blank. 

“It doesn’t take you far out of your way!” Annette protests. “And… look, Dimitri, Felix never comes to Fhirdiad anymore, so—” 

“And I respect his wish not to,” Dimitri interrupts, more brittle than he intended to sound. “I will not impose my presence upon him when I know he takes great pains to avoid allowing our paths to cross, Annette. He minds his territory diligently and I have no cause to interfere.” 

“Dimitri, he avoids everyone.” 

Annette speaks softly, but the crowd around them seems to quiet in the aftermath. Or maybe that is just his ears, suddenly muffling reality, whispered voices licking at the edges of every sound. Annette continues after a brief pause, her voice small and worried. 

“I thought it was just me too, at first,” Annette continues. “I thought that maybe he was upset with me for… I don’t know. For abandoning Faerghus to become a professor? But then I brought it up to Ingrid and to Sylvain and neither of them have heard from him either. He answers letters, but it’s obvious they’re written by his secretary. He never visits anyone.” 

“And… what?” Dimitri stammers out. “He has always had… a taciturn streak. And he has certainly never made any secret of his disdain for the more ceremonial aspects of court.” 

“You know that isn’t it.” Annette shakes her head, her small face so serious that Dimitri has no choice but to admit that she is right. Felix never much enjoyed a formal ball, but he wasn't shy. He always wanted to be in the thick of every conflict or the frontline of every battle.

“You think he is… could he be ill?” 

“I don’t think so,” Mercedes cuts in reassuringly. “The knights and servants would surely gossip if that were the case. Annie even wrote to his uncle to be sure, and he claims Felix is as hearty as ever, training and riding and hunting.” 

“Then what is it?” Dimitri asks. “And what would my presence do to alleviate this...? Ah, I know not even what to call it. This lapse of communication, I suppose. Sylvain would be better suited. He and Felix have always been dear friends and comrades since they were very small.”

“Sylvain thought it should be you,” Annette sighs, tacitly admitting what Dimitri is beginning to understand—that everyone else has already been informed of this problem, that he is the last one to notice that Felix has apparently retreated from the face of Fódlan. Because, of course, he had been so certain he was the cause of it. 

“Dimitri, you know Felix very well, I think,” Mercedes points out, and Dimitri swallows a bitter contradiction down, an urge to amend the statement to the past tense. “Beyond that, you are the king. You might remind him of the kingdom he fought for, and of the people outside of his borders who still need him. And you, perhaps better than anyone, you might understand.” 

“Understand?” 

“You spent time alone,” Annette barely whispers, eyes closed as she speaks. “When you were… you know.” 

“I see,” Dimitri nods, a heavy lump forming in the pit of his stomach. 

“Just consider it,” Mercedes murmurs, giving him a firm squeeze on the arm, as if that can erase the memories they all share of Dimitri’s state after five years of living half-mad in the Faerghus wilderness. “We really did not intend to worry you or to make you feel at all uncomfortable. I simply thought that, if you were passing by, stopping in for a visit might be enough.” 

The ice at the center of the pond cracks, swallowing up one of the paper lanterns. 

Dimitri breathes slow and even, wishing that he could think of any good reason to say no, and a part of him not quite wanting to find one. 

—

The last shred of the Red Wolf Moon is waning in a sky heavy with dark grey clouds when Dimitri pulls his horse up at the crossroads. 

To the east, he can see the peaked roofs and palisades of a city coating the walls of the valley around the white shimmer of the Danu river as it rushes down towards the sea. Above it, the Ducal castle looms on a pine-covered ridge, well defended against any invading army. Well defended against him. 

The choice has already been made, Dimitri knows. It is too late to arrange other lodging and his knights will not permit the king to slink off and take shelter in the woods. Still, he hesitates, his horse pawing anxiously as she senses his indecision. 

It is not such an unusual request. The old kings of Faerghus often kept their courts mobile, traveling to every territory in the Kingdom so as to learn the customs and challenges of all their people. Dimitri has already sent a courier ahead to announce his coming. And there are no Fraldarius knights standing guard on the road, ready to block his passage. All he needs to do is take the reins, spur his horse, and ride up along this terribly familiar path up to the castle. 

The sky above is so dark, like it's empty, like the moon is about to be swallowed into an ocean of inky black. The patch over his eye itches, as though it is tempting him to tear it off and let the hole in his head show. 

“Your Majesty?” 

“To the castle,” Dimitri commands, the horse beneath him already surging impatiently into a trot. “Before we lose the last of the light.” 

—

The steward of Castle Fraldarius is an ancient wisp of a man with a voice so quiet that Dimitri struggles to hear him over the inevitable clank of armor through the high-ceilinged hall. 

“His Grace regrets that he is not able to receive you with better hospitality. A cold repast can be brought to your chambers should you wish, but His Grace requests that your retinue do not dine in the hall tonight. The Lady Fraldarius is already abed and does not wish to be disturbed by noise,” the steward rasps out, and Dimitri is forced to pause to listen over the jingle of chainmail. 

“I see,” he mumbles back, instinctively matching the old man’s muted volume. “My apologies, we did not mean to arrive at such a late hour.” 

“Should you wish a merrier evening,” the steward offers, pausing hopefully, “His Grace has asked me to also procure lodging for you and your knights down in the city. I can assure you the accommodations there are quite comfortable, perhaps more so than an old house like this.” 

This catches Dimitri off guard, the inevitability of this long-imagined meeting suddenly cast into doubt. 

“Duke Fraldarius would prefer that my knights spend the night in the city?” Dimitri asks, hoping for some clarification, but the old man gives none. 

“His Grace asked me to present you with the option.” 

Dimitri considers the castle around him, so silent that all of the other servants must have already been dismissed to their quarters for the night. The church bells in the valley have not yet wrung for compline, which means it is not so terribly late yet. But the nights this far north are long in the winter. The castle feels like it is already sunk deep into sleep. 

“Yes, yes, I think—” Dimitri begins, but then reconsiders. “If you would be so good as to escort my knights to lodge in the town, I believe they would enjoy a mug of ale before bed. However, I find myself in need of quiet. Perhaps you might inform His Grace that I wish to confer briefly with him before I retire?” 

“Of course, Your Majesty,” the old man whispers, and his retreating footsteps are as soft as if the flagstone floors were velvet. 

Dimitri gives orders to the commander of his knights that he will be prepared to leave by midday on the morrow and watches as she follows the path down into the valley, reluctance and relief mingling in the set of her shoulders. As the guards allow the portcullis gate to slide shut, locking them securely within the castle’s walls, Dimitri spots a few flakes of snow gusting on the wind. He raises his shoulders against the cold, and finishes rummaging in his saddlebag, fishing out what he needs for the evening. 

The steward escorts him up the stairs, down a few corners he knows so well he could walk them blind, and Dimitri realizes that they have allotted Glenn’s old room for his use. He braces for the pain of seeing it again, but there is only a brief twinge when the old man opens the door. The furnishings are all new, the bed arranged against a different wall. Nothing much to remind him of the boy who died so far from his home, choking on blood and smoke. 

After a silent bow, the steward retreats back up the corridor and Dimitri is left standing on the threshold. As promised, a tray of food has been left for him beside the fire, which does look invitingly warm. 

This place is not as he remembers it. He does not know if that is the fault of his memory or of some recent change. The Castle Fraldarius that he visited every summer of his childhood was a loud place, full of talk and clashing blades in the courtyard and footsteps running up and down the stairs. The Duchess had visitors nearly every day, unless she and Lord Rodrigue were out riding through the countryside. 

Perhaps it is just the winter, or the hour, or the war. But Dimitri cannot help but feel that he has stumbled loudly into a mausoleum meant to commemorate a once vibrant home. 

He takes a step back, back into the corridor, a few paces to the corner and then to the left. His feet already know the way, carrying him automatically towards—

“What are you doing?” 

Dimitri stops, frozen as Felix stands at the doorway to his chambers, a small brass lantern in one hand, burning down a single candle. His voice sounds deeper. Maybe it is just hoarser, like he is trying to keep it quiet. 

The sight strikes him mute. For too long, Dimitri cannot speak and he cannot stop himself from staring, drinking in every detail, every little change, as though his single remaining eye must make up for the other’s absence and see every part of Felix twice. 

His clothing is neat, a fur-lined surcoat in dark indigo, strangely plain without his usual sword belt and pauldron. And his hair seems longer, less jagged in the front, a few stubborn strands swept back behind one ear. The little mannerisms remain the same—the slightly cocked hip from the way he shifts his weight restlessly from leg to leg, the coiled readiness in the hand that holds the candle, as though he expects to drop it and reach for a blade at any moment. 

His face, however, is ineffably different. It takes Dimitri a moment of staring to be sure that there is no scar that has altered it.

But no, there is something about the press of his lips, the eyes that will not ever quite meet his, the tense set of his jaw, that gives him away. And as soon as Dimitri recognizes the look on Felix’s face, he knows that Annette and Mercedes were right. 

Felix looks beautiful, beautiful and proud and strong and miserable . So, so miserable. 

“I was looking for you,” Dimitri finally responds. 

“Well,” Felix shrugs. “You found me.” 

He sounds tired, his voice devoid of its former acid. No more words meant to lash and lacerate; Felix speaks like he hopes each word will be the last one expected of him. Like they are strangers. Like Dimitri is just some traveler at his gate that he hopes to placate and send on his way. 

“Thank you for your hospitality tonight,” Dimitri says, which earns him only a curt, polite nod. “I thought that perhaps we could… I should like to hear how Fraldarius has been faring in the years since the war.” 

“If you wish for a report, I can have one sent to you by the morning. There is little to say. The territory has its issues, but we’re fine. Nothing I cannot handle.” 

Felix is already retreating, one hand poised to close his chamber door. 

“Wait, please, Felix,” Dimitri blurts out, taking a step closer. Felix withdraws another inch, almost instinctively. “I have… it has been a long time since we have seen one another. And you so seldom come to Fhirdiad, never to Garreg Mach, so I…”

“Because I am occupied here,” Felix interrupts. “Nothing unusual about that. This is my home. That was the whole point of it, right?” 

Dimitri does not have to think hard to grasp his meaning. They had fought in the bloodiest war in eight hundred years, taken dozens of lives, seen friends and former allies piled with the other bodies to be burned, buried the man who had essentially raised them both. This was the reason, the only reason that any of that made sense. All of that suffering would mean something if, in the end, they could go home. 

“Yes,” Dimitri breathes. “I understand.” 

“So unless you have some pressing question for me that could not be better answered in a letter,” Felix continues, a hint of his usual bitterness now detectable, “then I’m not sure what you want with me.”

Dimitri’s fingers clench, which reminds him of what he is still holding, what he brought up from his saddlebag. He holds them out, his only excuse. 

“Mercedes made these for you. Annette chose the color. I told them I would ensure you received them. Here.” 

The mittens are blue-green, the yarn thick and warm against his fingers. Felix looks at them for a second, as though there is a venomous serpent coiled on Dimitri’s palm. 

“Oh,” he finally grits out, vitriol fading back to blankness. He plucks the mittens cautiously from Dimitri’s hand so there is no risk of their fingers brushing. “She shouldn’t have gone to the trouble.” 

“They are a little impractical for holding a weapon, I know,” Dimitri offers with a tentative smile. “But if you ever… I don’t know if you still go out to fish on the ice, but they are well-suited to that.” 

Felix seems to forget himself for a second, and his eyes soften. 

“I still do,” he confirms, then reluctantly continues. “Tell her… tell them both, they’re well-made.” 

Dimitri nods, and he does not force the point any further when Felix’s hand returns to the door handle. 

“I see you are tired, and that I am disturbing you. I will not trouble you for long, I promise. Goodnight, Felix,” he murmurs. 

Felix pauses, nods, and then finally shuts the door. But the light of his candle seeps through at the sill and Dimitri hesitates, watching for a moment with bated breath. Felix’s shadow remains, lingering on the other side of the thick wood, as if he has something left to say that he cannot quite force himself to say. 

They stand there in silence, neither able to break the spell, until the bell finally does strike compline and Felix’s shape retreats, startled back and away. The corridor goes dark. 

Dimitri returns to the bedchamber that someone has gone to so much trouble to disguise as Glenn’s and sits by the fire for another hour until his head begins to nod down to his chest. His thoughts swirl in heavy circles. 

He is not the right person for this. Mercedes and Annette were wrong about that aspect. His presence is an unwelcome invasion, a violation, not a balm. Unlike him, Felix has never been the sort to stew upon the past. Anything that Dimitri can think to say would be dismissed as more wallowing, more macabre gloom, or, worst of all, pity. He is the wrong man for this. 

Better to return to Fhirdiad, find some excuse to appoint Felix to a new position that will give him a challenge, a purpose, and a reason to collaborate. Better to ensure that Felix never knows he had any hand in such a thing. 

He falls asleep with a half-hearted prayer for a swift dawn and an easy road. The faster he reaches Fhirdiad, the faster he can do anything of real impact. 

And Castle Fraldarius sinks deeper into its quiet slumber. Outside, the flurries of snow become thick tumbling flakes that pile onto its roofs, coat its windows, and muffle the entire hillside in a soft white shroud. 

—

When morning comes, the snow has not abated. 

It keeps tumbling down from the heavy grey sky, whipped around by fierce winds that reduce the visibility to only an arms length in front of a man’s face. This is a once-in-a-generation blizzard, people will later say, an event that they will recall in fireside tales to their grandchildren. 

Dimitri stands on the wall of Castle Fraldarius and looks out at the blinding white horizon with something close to despair. 

There is no chance they will leave at midday, he accepts. But, given the drifts already forming where the road ought to be, he is beginning to understand that there is no chance they will leave within the week. This is the last place in Fódlan he ought to be, and so naturally there is no way to escape. 

He is in the stables, halfway through packing his bags for a hike down the hill, when Felix finds him again. In the morning light, he seems more like his old self. Less rigid, a little color in his cheeks from the cold. Only a hint of that calcified pain hiding behind his eyes. 

“What are you doing?” he asks sharply when he sees Dimitri’s saddlebag. “You can’t expect to ride in this weather, let alone make it to Fhirdiad.” 

“Of course not,” Dimitri nods, “but I should be able to at least make it down into the valley where the rest of my knights have taken rooms in the city. I do not wish to make a nuisance of myself or abuse your hospitality.” 

Felix does not reply for a second, although Dimitri sees his throat working. Dimitri turns back to the baggage. 

“By the saints, you fool, stop that!” Felix finally snaps, slamming a gloved hand against the doorframe and causing a few horses to snort irritably. “I’m not going to let the King of Fódlan go sliding down a ravine to his death in this storm. We have the space. I’m not such a pauper that I can’t keep a kitchen stocked for three.” 

Dimitri pauses, although he is still poised with his hands ready to buckle the last of the bags shut. 

Felix glares him down. 

“Felix, I’m sorry,” Dimitri offers quietly. 

“Stop it,” Felix cuts him off. “There’s no problem here. You’ll stay until the roads are clear. Now can you please come inside before we both freeze to death?” 

Dimitri has no choice but to relent. Felix leads him back through the great hall, watching as though he suspects Dimitri will attempt to sneak back out into the cold if he turns his back. The smell of cooked meat is wafting from an open door that leads into the drawing room and Felix gestures vaguely for him to follow in that direction. 

Breakfast is laid out on the table at the center of the room and a fire has been lit. The curtains are mostly drawn to keep the heat in, making the space feel private, secure, even cozy. Dimitri takes a moment to admire the familiar Zoltan blade displayed over the mantle. 

“Food, if you want any,” Felix offers tersely, before occupying himself with the task of spearing sausage links onto his plate. 

“Thank you,” Dimitri nods, and then, to break the uncomfortable silence that follows. “I did not realize I was making you late to breakfast.” 

“It’s down here every morning. Easier to keep this room warm than the hall,” Felix replies wearily, his belabored tone warning Dimitri that his next wincing apology will be met with a harsher rebuke. “Sit where you like. Plenty of space.” 

He takes a seat beside the table, putting Dimitri in the precarious position of deciding how much proximity they can both withstand. 

“Will Lady Rowena be joining us?” Dimitri asks, hoping for some hint. 

He is hovering, torn between sitting directly across from Felix or risking offending him by choosing a spot on the settee beside the hearth. If Felix’s mother were here, this would all be simpler. 

From his earliest memories, he recalls Rowena Fraldarius as the powerful roots that anchored the Fraldarius family tree. She was a stern authority to wild young boys, but she was also the gentle refuge they could seek out whenever they needed a place to hide. 

Dimitri remembers her as fearsome, yet quick to smile. Eyes flashing like lightning when he and Felix snuck out to climb the mountain that winter, but her hands so soft as she rubbed warmth back into Felix’s tear-stained cheeks. Always quick to smooth away any rough patch and scrub away any blight that threatened to ruin a good day. Steadfast, clever, eternally durable, she was the wife of a Faerghus Duke, through-and-through. 

Even after Glenn’s death, Dimitri realizes, he never once saw her falter in her duty to the family. He has not seen her in years, but a childish part of him still has complete faith that with Rowena Fraldarius in the room, nothing can go wrong. She would keep them safe, somehow. 

“She takes breakfast in her chambers,” Felix answers before filling most of his mouth with a tough bacon rind. 

Left with no other recourse, Dimitri sinks down onto the chair opposite Felix, although not quite directly across from him. Felix continues to study his food, his gaze carefully elsewhere as he eats in fast, efficient bites. Dimitri, at a loss, lowers his head and does the same. 

He does not ask the question burning in his throat. He has never known Rowena Fraldarius to miss a family meal before in her life, particularly not when she was hosting a guest of any note. And perhaps that is still the case, and she is just ill or exhausted from some recent journey. 

Or, Dimitri thinks as he struggles to choke down a few mouthfuls of blisteringly hot porridge, perhaps the memory of what he did at Gronder, what, or who her husband died for at Gronder, would turn even her stomach. 

He tries to let the hurt of that possibility go, but it sits inside of him like a barbed hooked, wedged too deep for him to safely rip out. 

—

The snow keeps falling until midday. By the time that the blizzard abates back into a thin flurry, it has reached the first-floor windows. 

Dimitri stirs about in Glenn’s old chamber for most of the day. At Garreg Mach and Fhirdiad, he is always so pressed for time, rushing from one appointment to the next, filling in any gap in his schedule with more, more, more. To be suddenly bereft of that work is terrifying. 

And, he slowly realizes, oddly rejuvenating. It is the first time in a long time he has had to be still, and he finds that it quiets the jittering voices to nearly subliminal tones, rather than magnifying them. 

Without meetings to attend, charters to sign, letters to compose, Dimitri wanders to the old library and selects a few volumes: a romance of the War of the Eagle and Lion he remembers perusing as a boy and a cheaply bound collection of ballads that must be a recent addition to the library. He quickly loses interest in the war epic, finding that its descriptions of the gloriously bloody victory fields leaves a sour taste in his mouth. 

The ballads, however, are fascinating and funny and thoroughly enjoyable. One of them he actually remembers. Some of his battalion would sing it around the camp, a boisterous tune about an old soldier who returns home from war to find his farm completely overgrown with blackberry brambles. Dimitri is fairly certain there is at least one innuendo hidden in its lyrics. 

He hears the sound of the gates creaking open once the snow has diminished to a thin sprinkle. Through a tiny gap in the ice coating the glass of his window, Dimitri can make out the dark smudge of a figure trudging out, dragging a sledge behind him. In one hand, he makes out the shape of an axe. 

Someone must be going to cut more firewood, he realizes, despite the abysmal conditions. He gives his own well-stoked fire a guilty glance.

This would be something, someway that he could at least make himself useful, he rationalizes. What use is his Crest when he sits all day in a library? The least he can do is offer some of that strength to the service of Castle Fraldarius. 

He struggles quickly into his warmest clothes and boots, and then hastily follows. Once he reaches the courtyard, pushing through the heavy snow slows his progress even further. But the woodcutter has left him an easy trail to follow, and so eventually, hatchet in hand, he finds himself struggling up the ridge and towards the edge of the evergreen forest. 

It is completely silent, as though even the birds have been buried in the masses of snow. Then, the sharp chop of an axe rings out, piercing the quiet. Dimitri wades towards it, following the tracks ahead of him until the hooded and cloaked back of the woodcutter comes into view again. 

“Good afternoon!” Dimitri calls out, his voice as piercing as the sound of the iron blade sinking into wood. The woodcutter spins around. “I thought I might be able to…” 

The woodcutter is Felix. 

“...help,” Dimitri finishes meekly. 

Felix stares at him with an expression close to horror, the edge of his axe wedged in an enormous log that he is caught in the process of splitting. As though Dimitri has caught him in the middle of something salacious, something humiliating, rather than utterly mundane. Dimitri clears his throat uncomfortably. 

Finally, Felix shrugs, his mortification fading to mere discomfort, and he gestures to the tree he is cutting branches from. 

“Townspeople will need wood. It’s a long walk up here from the valley,” he finally mutters, turning his attention back to working the blade of the axe deeper into the log and then finally splitting it with a low grunt of effort. 

“Then I suppose it is my responsibility as well,” Dimitri says evenly, testing a likely looking branch. “And I could use a chance to stretch my arms.” 

“Just make sure you don’t uproot half of my forest, boar” Felix warns him, but this is a tolerant, even friendly sort of grumble. 

It is easier like this, Dimitri thinks, when they both have something else to do. Some reason to stand beside each other in silence, slowly acclimating to the other’s presence, growing accustomed to the shift of someone else’s boots in the snow. Felix does not appear so obviously pained by his presence once they settle into a rhythm, and it feels good to watch the sledge slowly filling with logs. 

While some of the Adrestian gentry might have complained that it did not befit a king to blister his hands and wet his brow like a peasant laborer, Felix is the last person who would make such a comment. Rodrigue always set him and Glenn to help in the fields when it came time for reaping and sowing, and Dimitri’s hands were calloused before they were ever scarred. In Faerghus, even the nobility find peace in the steady tempo of work. 

The cold seeps in, fighting against the heat of his burning muscles. Dimitri’s toes start to ache first, and then his fingers and the tip of his nose. He ignores it, throwing himself into ripping apart branches and splitting thick logs.

Beside him, he sees that Felix is working harder as well, perhaps to keep warm, perhaps to keep up with him. That thought brings a slight smile to Dimitri’s face. 

By the time that the sledge is full, they are both sweaty and tired and gloriously hot and cold at the same time. Dimitri rubs his hands together and spares a quick glance to Felix, who is brushing a few chips of bark out of the folds of his hood. 

While there is no particular expression on his face, just the focused stare of concentration, Dimitri thinks that he holds himself a little lighter. His mouth is not pulled into that thin grimace anymore. 

On the way back, without the repetitive music of their axes, Dimitri finds himself humming a tune under his breath. 

“What’s that one?” Felix asks unexpectedly, the first time that they have spoken in so many hours that Dimitri visibly starts. Felix’s eyes go narrow and strained again and he looks away, turning his face to the valley below. “It just sounded familiar.” 

“An old ballad,” Dimitri confesses with a bit of embarrassment. “Something about blackberries. My apologies, it might not be to your taste—” 

“Right, of course,” Felix nods. “The Battle of the Bramble. Couldn’t go a day in camp without hearing that one. Absolutely foul.” 

But Dimitri hears the smile in his voice. And a moment later, he hears something even more incredible. Quietly, tunelessly, Felix hums the next bar. After such an offering, what can Dimitri do but join him? 

So they walk back along the ridge, dragging along a heavy sledge through the thick snow, their rough voices wavering through a half-remembered song.  

—

Dinner that evening is an informal affair once again. Rowena Fraldarius does not join them down in the drawing room and so Dimitri sits across from Felix in silence. 

He does not mind quiet companionship. With Dedue, it provides a certain respite from the constant pressure to find polite words and smile through long winded reports. Their friendship has always been one where words were secondary. Before they had even learned to speak the other’s native tongue, they were already accustomed to bleed for each other.

With Felix though, words have always flowed freely. Too freely even. As children, they would often find themselves talking all night, sneaking out of their tents on hunts to continue whispered conversations until they were both too tired to form words. Then later, those words turned cruel and cutting, but they never stopped. At the Officers Academy, Felix never tried to restrain the little verbal needles and barbs that poured out of his mouth. During the war, Dimitri stopped bothering to ignore them, lashing back with equal fervor. 

That, Dimitri decides, is what bothers him about this. If it were simply that Felix had nothing left to say to him, he could be content with that. But to sit and know that Felix does have words that he has locked up inside of him for some inscrutable reason is unbearable. 

“Will you need more firewood tomorrow?” Dimitri asks, as Felix is occupied with scraping the remains of the roast from his plate. “I would be happy to go out again if the townsfolk require it.” 

Felix opens his mouth and then closes it again. He seems to struggle over his answer for a moment and then he sighs raggedly. 

“You don’t need to pay for your room and board,” he says stiffly. “I’m more than capable of keeping my own people warm during a blizzard.” 

“Of course. I simply meant that… well, I enjoyed the afternoon. That’s all,” Dimitri replies. 

Felix looks up and studies his face for a moment, like he is searching for any sign of a lie. His resolve wavers and then he points reluctantly to a decanter on one of the side tables. 

“Nightcap?” he bites out, brusqueness belied by the vulnerability Dimitri sees etched into the lines beneath his averted eyes. 

Dimitri considers reminding him that any fine liquor will be like drinking so much astringent to him. He thinks better of it. 

“A small glass, certainly.”

Felix nods, looking about to relent on some internal debate, to make some suggestion, when they both hear a distant scream from upstairs. 

Felix is on his feet immediately. Dimitri starts to follow, but Felix shakes his head. 

“Don’t get up,” he snaps, his tone as fierce as Dimitri remembers from the Officers Academy. “It’s probably nothing. I’ll attend to it.” 

Before Dimitri can question him, he has gone striding out of the room. Dimitri hears his footfalls break into a run when he reaches the stairs. 

Dimitri waits for a few seconds. There are no further screams from the upper floors, which might mean that everything is alright, or it might mean just the opposite. His pulse is pounding in his ears and he glances to the blade over the mantle, the handsomely displayed Zoltan. Ruling Fódlan has not been without its risks. There have been attempts on his life before—some entirely incompetent, some far too skillful for comfort. 

Felix told him to stay, but Dimitri cannot leave him alone right now, not if he is the one who brought danger into this peaceful home. Felix has nothing but a dagger to defend himself with; Dimitri cannot simply sit and wait and not know. 

Dimitri lifts the Zoltan down and follows, stepping as quietly as he can. Once he is in the stairwell, he hears a muffled pair of voices echoing down, probably up in the corridor above. He holds his breath and takes a few steps closer, straining to hear what they are saying. 

“--can’t take much more of this, Your Grace, I’m sorry, but I can’t!” 

“I’ll speak with her.” 

“Milord, she threw the glass at me. Broken glass all over the floor! I told her I have to come in sometimes to clean, but she won’t listen. It isn’t safe, I just… she isn’t safe!” 

“I said I’ll speak with her. It won’t happen again, I swear. You’ll be paid to replace the dress and I’ll add three gold to your weekly pay if you stay.” 

“...I can’t do it, Your Grace. Please don’t send me back to that room. I’ll cook in the kitchens. I’ll do the laundry. Just please don’t make me go back!” 

The first voice, a young woman, dissolves into sniffling tears. 

“Alright. It’s alright. Go back to your quarters and change. We’ll find… we’ll find a different position for you in the morning. I’ll take care of the rest.” 

Dimitri does not stay to listen longer. He retreats down the stairs, back to the drawing room, and replaces the Zoltan—the sword he was never supposed to touch—over the mantle with shameful, trembling hands. Then, not knowing what else to do, he sits back down. 

What he has just overheard was not meant for him and it gives him a sick, cramping sensation in his stomach. And he has no choice but to keep sitting there, keep pretending that he has never moved, while Felix is upstairs picking broken glass out of a carpet. 

While Felix is upstairs with his mother, with the unshakable Rowena Fraldarius, who has just thrown a glass at her chambermaid. 

He wants to help. He needs to help. And he cannot do anything to help. 

Felix returns an hour later, wearing a different pair of gloves and an expression like a walking corpse. Dimitri pretends to be deeply absorbed in reading a pamphlet on coastal tariffs he found tucked into the drawer of a side table. 

“Is everything alright?” Dimitri asks, as gentle and casual as he knows how to be. 

“Servant dropped a glass,” Felix replies shortly. “I’m going to bed. Help yourself if you still want that drink.”

“Another night,” Dimitri assures him, because that is all that he can think to say. That he will wait. That he can wait until the snow melts, at least.  

—

Fraldarius begins the slow process of unburying itself. The snow has turned hard and heavy from the cold, and the longer it sits, the more likely it is that a roof will collapse. 

One of the Blaiddyd squires struggled up the hill to ask for updated orders, and Dimitri draws up a plan to have the knights assist the city first before they begin to worry about clearing the main road. The local priest is already overwhelmed with twisted ankles and strained backs. 

Felix is nowhere to be found, either rising very early or sleeping very late. Or, Dimitri wonders as he glances up at the curtained windows of the manor house, he is attending to his mother. 

A few of the hostlers are clearing the snow from the stables in the courtyard when Dimitri goes to check on his horse. They snap to immediate attention in his presence, and Dimitri decides that perhaps he could leverage their nervous deference to better understand his situation. 

“The Lady of Fraldarius,” he mentions lightly, “His Grace’s mother. I have not seen her around the house much. Is she in poor health?” 

The elder stablehand exchanges a glance with the boy and then leans his chin over the hands folded across his shovel. 

“Nothing so terribly serious,” he replies. “She prefers the quiet, I think, after losing Duke Rodrigue in the war. But she is a great lady, Your Majesty. A great lady like that endures plenty of heartbreak in her time.” 

“I see,” Dimitri presses, “I just recall that she was formerly so fond of hosting guests. She would call in scholars and craftspeople to debate ideas, manage disputes between the minor lords, organize balls… is it not so anymore?” 

“His Grace takes good care of his lady mother. Just as he takes good care of all the territory,” the stablehand replies firmly, which does not answer the question at all. “That suffices for our part, Your Majesty. Best for common folk not to meddle in family matters, I think.” 

Loyalty and discretion, Dimitri thinks, ought to be worthy of praise. Yet he remembers too well how it felt in his uncle’s lonely household, a hundred watching servants all politely ignoring his screaming night terrors, Rufus’ mounting little cruelties, Cornelia’s growing malignancy. 

“Thank you,” Dimitri tells the hostlers, because it is not their fault, not really. “Please, allow me to help sweep the aisle, at least. It is heavy work.” 

There is no good way to broach the topic with Felix. In their current state, Dimitri doubts it would even help to try. Their old trust is long shattered and their tentative truce stands on uneven ground, the foundation laid over Rodrigue’s too-recent grave. Felix was always the one with the courage to remind him of where it hurt most, cut into the abscess in hopes that it could drain that way. Dimitri cannot do that. He does not have a surgeon’s temperament. He falters at the thought of hurting in order to heal. 

And so instead of asking, instead of peeling back the silent shield that Felix has raised between this place and the rest of the world, Dimitri finds himself blurting out an entirely different question when he finally encounters Felix again passing through the great hall. 

“Would you like to go and look for chestnuts?”

Felix gives him a strange, searching look. But the suggestion is too benign for him to simply slap it away. 

“I’ll get a basket.” 

The chestnut groves are far deeper into the forest and they walk for at least an hour through the quiet woods before they find any. The only sound is the crunch of snow beneath their boots and the labored strain of their breath as they climb the hill. 

The forests are beautiful in the snow. The pines are frosted in silver, outlining every needle in a perfect sculpture of glass. Their breath fogs in the cold, floating up to a featureless pale sky. 

As they pass beneath an old spruce, its bows finally buckle under the weight and send a small avalanche of snow down onto their heads. It is cold and glittering and beautiful. Dimitri laughs softly as he brushes it out of his hair and he catches Felix’s mouth twitching into something near to a smile. 

Eventually, Felix points to a patch of chestnuts, their bare branches shimmering with a glaze of ice. Most of the fruit has already fallen, and so they are forced to scrabble through the snow for their harvest. A robin joins them, waiting until they dig down to the ground before flitting in to steal their quarry. Felix waves the bird away, and it flutters over to a half-buried shrub covered in bright red berries. 

“Poison?” Felix asks, nodding at the berries. 

“Actually…” Dimitri takes a few steps closer, examining the fruit. “Edible. It’s hawthorn. The berries are sour, but you can sweeten them to make a preserve.” 

“Oh,” Felix blinks. “I remember, when we were young, my—” 

He breaks off abruptly. 

“Rodrigue was very fond of them,” Dimitri finishes the thought for him. “I remember that too.” 

“There are more of them, hawthorns, I mean, down by the old chapel on the eastern slope. That’s where he… where they put the barrow, I mean,” Felix says slowly, as though he is not entirely sure why he is speaking. 

The branches groan in the pause that follows, ice rubbing against ice. 

“We could go and see it,” Dimitri quietly offers, but Felix immediately shakes his head. 

“I’m not traipsing through the frozen woods for any longer than I have to,” he bites out. “We’re here for food, aren’t we?” 

“We are,” Dimitri affirms without conviction. 

He turns away from Felix, who has already returned to scraping the last few surviving chestnuts out of the snow. Careful not to disturb the little robin, he reaches out and picks one of the hawthorn berries. He does not taste its sour flavor, but it has a dry, puckering quality in his mouth. 

Four years ago, all alone and halfway to starvation, he had eaten hawthorn berries by the handful, stuffing them into his aching empty belly until he nearly heaved them back out. His stomach had cramped for hours after and his gums were sore and tingling from the tannins. When he had wiped his mouth, his hand had come away red. 

The memory makes his throat close, as though the single fruit he has just eaten is burning a hole down his gullet. 

It is not poison, but it feels like one. Let it hurt, he reminds himself. Let it be awful. And then let it be forgotten. 

He leaves the hawthorn alone, cedes its fruit to the birds, and goes to collect a few bundles of pine needles for tea. He remembers that Felix has always been partial to that flavor. 

On the way back through the rapidly encroaching twilight, basket laden with chestnuts, Felix pauses for a moment and kneels down. 

“Is everything alright?” Dimitri asks. 

“Tracks,” Felix notes. “Deer, doing what we’ve been doing. Looking to fill their bellies digging under the snow.” 

“Shall we leave them a few chestnuts?” 

Felix does not laugh. He stands up, takes a deep breath, and crosses his arms over his chest in a gesture that might not be entirely from the cold. 

“We could hunt. Tomorrow and the next day, maybe. Find some game for the table, keep the dogs in the kennel from getting bored.” He shrugs, then rapidly adds, “if you’d like that.” 

“I would,” Dimitri assures him, a warm glow rising up in his chest. “It’s peaceful out here in the snow.” 

“It’s cold and dull and hazardous.” 

“It is,” Dimitri smiles, “and I like it very much.” 

Felix cannot resist a snort of repressed laughter at that. He rolls his eyes to cover the sound. With the cold already pinking the tip of his nose, the flush that darkens his cheeks is nearly imperceptible. 

Distantly, the robin is chirping and chirping, chipping away at the silence of dusk. 

—

The walk back to the castle is painfully cold and laborious, and Dimitri does not want it to end. Despite the weather, there is a perceptible shift in Felix’s demeanor towards him. Walking through the dark together, watching the snow turn cool blue and then shining bright where the castle’s torchlight hits it, sensing the steady comfort of their alliance—it is better than any roaring fire or sheltered hall. 

It must end, though. The gates draw closer and Felix’s steps grow faster with it, as though he is realizing that they have stayed away too long, gotten lost too deeply in the calm of the wood, in the gentle concord of each other. 

“I’ll let you change before dinner,” he offers, eyes fixed on a curtained window on the second floor. “I should be down shortly after. Need to take these to the kitchen.” 

“Take your time,” Dimitri nods. 

Felix pushes through the door into the hall, one hand unclasping his cloak, peeling a glove off of the other with his teeth. It is a gesture so graceful in its gracelessness and so distracting in its distractedness that Dimitri nearly overlooks the obvious. 

Sitting at the high table, all alone in the center of the gloomy great hall, is Rowena Fraldarius. She is dressed in a thick black gown with a white fur collar, silver clasps gleaming in the candlelight. Her hair is long and dark, partially pulled back so that the white streaks that start are her temples frame her face like horns. She looks elegant and upright and perfectly like the stalwart widow of a Faerghus Duke. 

As they enter, she traces the rim of a pewter goblet, making it squeak and squeal against the pad of her finger. 

“You’re late to dinner tonight, Felix,” she muses. Her voice is low and dignified, just exactly how Dimitri remembers it, although perhaps a little colder now. 

“Mother,” Felix says, looking oddly stricken with his winter clothes still half-on. “You—” 

“I was hungry,” she continues. “I’m afraid the soup is already going cold. Come. Sit down.” 

“I’ll eat later.” Felix shakes his head, already at her side, looking desperately towards the stairs. “It’s too cold down here. Let me bring this up to your chambers.” 

“I dine every night in my chambers,” Rowena protests with a scoff so reminiscent of Felix’s that it would have been charming in any other context. “Haven’t you been complaining that I spend too much time there? Do you not enjoy my company anymore, Felix?” 

“I do. I have. But you aren’t—” 

“Come now, Felix. Sit with me. Sit. Sit !” 

The last word rings out, loud enough that Dimitri has to focus to avoid flinching. In all of this time, she has not even glanced at him. Her light brown eyes have skipped over his shape in the room, sliding off like rain from a roof. 

Felix takes a deep breath, then he puts a hand on her shoulder. He gives it a small squeeze. Rowena’s composure cracks slightly and she picks up the pewter goblet, draining it in a few swallows. 

“I’ll come eat with you. I promise,” Felix tells her, soft and insistent. “But we have a guest. The King is here, remember?” 

“Is he? I thought the hall smelled of swine,” Rowena remarks, then lets out a sharp burst of laughter. 

Felix closes his eyes, like he hopes that he might open them to find all of this gone. 

“Mother, will you please go back upstairs? If you just go upstairs, I can—” 

Rowena does not let him finish. Her sharp, polished mask cracks, and her lips quiver. She stumbles upright, fighting with her skirts, knocking the empty goblet across the table. Her breathing is fast and ragged, the sound Dimitri associated with soldiers whose lungs have collapsed, air leaking out around a puncture. 

“You wander about all day. I’m not a fool ! You treat me like a fool, but I know, I know everything , I am the Duchess Fraldarius! This is my house, my land, and you despise it. You’re so desperate to leave, I know it, desperate to get away,” she hisses. 

Felix waits, completely still. Dimitri tries to catch his eye, to wordlessly ask if he should stay or leave, but Felix does not spare a glance in his direction. 

Rowena takes a few steps back from the table and Felix catches her, steadies her, constrains her. She looks for a second like she might scream, might jam her fingers into his eyes, but instead, he watches as she fades instead. She goes as pliant as a doll, her face drooping, aging her a decade in a single moment. All of the seething rage burns to ashes, and she becomes listless, a faded shadow of herself. 

“Please, just come upstairs,” Felix whispers. “I’ll stay with you until you fall asleep. I promise.” 

He leads her out of the room, supporting her on his arm, and Dimitri is left with the mess on the table and the empty hall. 

It feels far too warm, and he realizes that he has not yet taken off the thick fur mantle around his shoulders or the hood on his head. He sheds them slowly, methodically folding each piece, waiting as long as he can. 

A servant enters the hall after a few minutes and begins clearing away the dishes. Furtively, Dimitri steals past her, back to Glenn’s old bedroom, and shuts the door. He stokes up the fire and sits beside it, massaging warmth into the tips of his stiff fingers and toes. 

He remembers Rowena Fraldarius as he had known her before. She had been a pillar, a mighty Faerghus oak, a woman who knew what it meant to bear a Crest. He could not imagine her so naive that she would not have known when she married into the Fraldarius line what that meant. 

A Crest meant knighthood. And knighthood meant a code, a system of chivalry and sacrifice and… 

And death. There was no gentle euphemism to get around it. Felix had never let anyone forget that fact. Blaiddyd and Fraldarius were nothing but a long line of sons who lost their fathers too early and mothers who had to bury more than their share of children. 

She would have understood that. And she had survived losing Glenn. She was no stranger to loss, no coward in the face of danger. 

But, he thinks with a sudden awareness, did that make it any better? Had calculations of probability and risk helped him when he was the one kneeling on the side of a road, too afraid to touch the severed head that had once belonged to his father? 

A history of tragedy is a cold comfort, he knows from experience. Pain cannot inoculate one from pain. It steals in like cold, forever raising the threshold, making you numb. They say that men’s bodies are sometimes found in blizzards stripped naked, as though the freezing wind had felt to them like a balmy summer’s day. 

The people had called her son’s death a noble and worthy one. They said the same of her husband, perhaps even praised it more highly, as he had not merely saved a Prince, but redeemed a King. Could anyone endure the perpetual celebration of such monumental losses without going at least a little mad? 

Dimitri is near to dozing off when he hears a knock on the door. The fire has burned down to charcoal and he has to find a match for light before he goes for the door. It feels very late suddenly. 

“You didn’t eat,” Felix says when he opens the door. He is standing in the hall, rigid and formal and holding a covered tray. His face is very carefully composed, but the bags under his eyes betray his exhaustion. 

“I would have been… oh, Felix, you shouldn’t have…” Dimitri begins, but Felix shakes his head very fiercely. 

“Can I come in?” he asks stiffly, pressing the tray into Dimitri’s hands. “I know it’s late, but I think you deserve an explanation.” 

“Of course,” Dimitri says, stepping back and placing the tray down carefully on the small table by the chair. 

He sits, but Felix does not pull up the other stool, instead standing with his hands behind his back, eyes fixed on the smoldering coals. 

“You need not explain anything if you do not wish to,” Dimitri offers after a pause. “I am happy to listen or to help if I can. But I did not come here to invade your privacy. I hope that you know that, Felix, I never meant to pry where I was unwanted. I never meant to stay so long.” 

Felix takes a sharp breath in at that, but when he speaks, his words come slowly. 

“It’s not that I’m embarrassed. I want that to be clear. I am not hiding her because I am ashamed. I’m… it is my responsibility to protect her. To protect all of Fraldarius, but especially her. And I can manage it. We have been fine here. We’re getting by.” 

“For how long?” 

Felix bites the inside of his cheek. 

“Since the war,” he says, his real meaning unspoken. Since Gronder, then. “When I returned, I could tell. She was herself, and yet not. She quarreled with my uncle, told him never to set foot within the castle again. Before, she was always the one to smooth over things like that. And it just got worse. She sent everyone away. Wouldn’t leave her room. Wouldn’t speak a word. Whenever I would leave to visit another part of the territory, the servants said that she would stay awake all night, pacing and scratching her arms.” 

“She is grieving,” Dimitri suggests and Felix nods. 

“She is,” he affirms. “And my duty is to take care of her until she isn’t anymore. So that’s what I’ve been doing.” 

“All alone?” 

“I am the Duke of Fraldarius,” Felix counters a little coldly. “I have led my people through a war and kept you from driving our army into ruin. If you’re asking if I am capable of taking care of my own mother—?” 

“Of course you are,” Dimitri assures him. “I only meant to say… what I am very poorly attempting to express is just… I understand. Not exactly, but… I was unwell myself for a very long time.” 

Felix finally does look at him then and his face has gone slack. He looks his actual age suddenly, so terribly young. 

“And you got better,” he says, a hint of urgency in his tone. “And so will she.” 

And who will it cost to make it so? Dimitri wonders silently. But he nods, he nods firmly, so that Felix will believe him and stop making that face like a lost little boy on a cold mountain, clinging to his hand like it is the only thing that can save them. 

“Anyways, that’s all I came to say,” Felix clears his throat and turns away. “You know the situation now.” 

“Would it help at all if I were to speak with her?” Dimitri offers. Felix’s mouth hardens to a narrow line. 

“No,” he says reluctantly. “I don’t think so. You should eat something before you go to bed.” 

He brushes out of the chamber in a rustling swirl of surcoat and cloak. Dimitri takes the cover off of the tray and finds a bowl of roasted chestnuts. 

They are soft and buttery smooth in his mouth, and, while he cannot truly taste them, he knows when he is swallowing them that they are sweet, so very sweet. 

—

The last conversation that Dimitri recalls having with the Duchess Rowena Fraldarius occurred when he was just thirteen years old, in the strange, stumbling aftermath of the Tragedy when time was unreal and he expected at any moment to awaken from his nightmare. 

They had buried Glenn in the cathedral at Fhirdiad, as an honor. That was the intention, at least. The knights who died in service of the king would have the privilege of lying alongside their lords, far from home. 

After the ceremonies, Dimitri had been trying to pray in the sanctuary, but the words would not come. He could not thank the Goddess for saving him. 

Rowena had come in behind him, a sheer black veil overlaying her already dark hair. She had been poised, an elegant pillar of cloth. Her eyes were dry, but her face was grim—just right for a lady of Faerghus, who must know pain but never buckle beneath it. 

“Are you here to pray, Your Highness?” she had asked him and he had flinched. 

“I’m praying for Glenn,” he had lied. 

“A very good prayer,” Rowena had nodded as she sat down beside him, at the far end of the long stone bench. 

“Are you praying for him too?” Dimitri had asked, because if she was, maybe she could teach him how. 

“No,” she had shaken her head with a smile. “Glenn does not need our prayers.” 

“But,” Dimitri pointed out, his voice very small, “but it was my fault. I need to ask for forgiveness, because it was my fault. They all died because of me..” 

“No, child, no,” Rowena had told him, and for the first time in weeks, Dimitri had felt suddenly close to tears.  “Never let anyone tell you that. I would never think such a thing. Never.” 

“But—” 

“Dimitri, enough.” 

The firmness of her voice had made him choke on his objection and he sat there with his fists clenched on his knees, trying to stay composed. 

“I know that the Lord Regent has pledged to guard the throne for you until you are of age,” Rowena had mentioned then, a little uncertainty. “But you have spent so much time in our household. I hope that you remember that you are always welcome there as well, and so… I suppose what I mean to say is that… you must write to Lord Rodrigue and I if you are ever in need of anything. Do you understand?” 

Dimitri had nodded. It was too kind of an offer. Too kind when Glenn is still gone. 

“What are you praying for?” Dimitri had asked her at last. 

Rowena had sighed and clasped her hands over his chest. 

“For Felix,” she admitted. “This is so hard for him, but I know he will understand one day. He’ll grow stronger. Just like you will.”

“I don’t know if I will,” Dimitri had confessed, the first and only time he would ever admit it. “I am afraid. I worry that something is wrong with me.” 

“Nonsense,” Rowena had shaken her head. “You have your father’s blood in you. As far as I am concerned, Faerghus should have no fear for its future.”

Her words had made him smile. But he had not really felt much better.  

“Glenn was fearless,” Rowena had added, smiling a resolute smile as she had looked up to the altar and the mosaic of the Goddess on the domed ceiling above. “I taught him to be fearless.” 

He screamed, Dimitri thought. No one else still alive had heard it, but when the fire was catching in his clothes, Glenn had screamed. 

“That is the only way to live in this world,” Rowena had continued, speaking like she did not realize her words were coming out aloud. “It can be a cold, cruel place. And so we must be fearless. I pray to the Goddess that she will give us all such courage when the next storm comes.” 

—

The snow persists, heavy and unassailable, and so they do go hunting. 

Felix wakes him early as dawn is barely beginning to encroach upon the horizon. They dress quietly, neither of them acknowledging who they are trying to avoid waking, just lacing their boots by lantern light down in the dark hall. 

No servants accompany them to help dress the kills, but Felix lets out a pair of lean, wire-coated wolfhounds from the kennel. The dogs plunge into the dark, racing ahead and snuffling their noses into the snow. Dimitri laughs quietly as one of them comes circling back to lick his hands. 

Along the top of the ridge, the sun finally breaks over the eastern horizon and Dimitri catches a glimpse of the Whitehorn sea through the pines. Felix stands beside him, squinting a little in the light, and there are snowflakes caught in his eyelashes. 

They find tracks leading south and follow them down into a stony dell. The dogs take up the trail, and Felix strings his bow, fingers fumbling a little in the cold. A few words pass between them, but they are easy words. Just “steady” and “hold this” and “watch your step there.” 

The sun dapples the snow in glimmering spots. Somewhere overhead, a hawk plunges for a kill. Dimitri never wants to leave. He wants to keep walking forever and never find anything. 

But, eventually, the dogs do scent an animal downwind. They approach slowly, now keeping silent with purpose. Through the glossy sharp leaves of a holly, Felix takes aim into the clearing beyond. 

There is a deer standing in a beam of sunlight, head stretched up to graze on the lower branches of a cedar. It is a perfect angle, the crease of the animal’s shoulder right in line with the arrow, ready to pierce through the heart. 

Felix exhales slowly through his nose and draws the bow back, his hands steady, his eyes focused. But then Dimitri hears a shift in the snow on his blind side, the soft stirring of branches, and he turns his head so that he can see. 

A fawn, born too late in summer, its last few spots still faintly visible through a thick brown winter coat. It is standing up from the brambles, picking its way towards the doe, towards its mother. 

Dimitri reaches out instinctively, his hand colliding with Felix’s arm, and the arrow flies low, sinking into the ground. The deer bolt immediately, and the dogs start after them, but Felix stands up and calls them back. It is too late for another long chase. The hounds return to his side, panting and frustrated. 

“I’m sorry,” Dimitri says as Felix turns back to the ridge with a resolute sigh. 

“Don’t be,” Felix mutters. “It’s not like we’re starving.” 

“I wasn’t thinking. I ruined your shot.” 

“It wasn’t the right time,” Felix replies, his meaning not entirely clear. “We can go again tomorrow.” 

Sunlight hits the trees around them and the branches begin to drip, falling into the snow like diamonds.

—

The next day, leave at dusk instead. The herd likes to run through the western trails after sunset, Felix claims. 

Down in the city, Dimitri’s knights have made good progress on the roads, but the snow still lies too deep in the countryside for safe riding. There is nothing left to do but cut more wood for the fire, open up the casks from the cellar, and settle in. People spin yarn and tell stories, clustered around their hearths. Dimitri spots a line of swaddled children on the hill with sleds, racing down the slopes for a few moments of breathless joy before beginning their long journey back up again. 

By sunset, though, the town below is quiet, lights twinkling in the windows. Like that far-off city above, Dimitri thinks, always within sight, but too distant to ever reach. 

Felix finds him again and they walk out into the gloom of twilight. The snow is lavender and blue at this hour instead of harsh white. Without the sun, the temperature plunges and the wind howls over the ridge. Dimitri puts a hand up to try to shield his face from the sharp crystals of ice, and Felix wraps his rabbit-fur mantle up and over his mouth. 

It is a harsh night. All of their focus must be on keeping their footing. When Dimitri slips, he feels Felix’s hand reach out and almost wrap around his arm. But he steadies himself, and the hand withdraws, the gesture so swift he almost thinks that he imagined it. 

When they reach the deer trail, they dig out a little shelter in the snow to sit in. It provides a better break from the wind, but once they are no longer walking, the cold seems to steal in faster, finding new gaps in their cloaks and racing greedily inside. Clouds flit over the moon. 

“It’s too cold,” Felix says, his teeth clicking slightly from an involuntary chatter. “The deer might not even run.”

“I can wait a while longer,” Dimitri assures him, although he is also resisting the urge to shudder. “I’ve endured worse.” 

“Do you remember when we got lost in the mountains?” Felix asks. The question is so benign, so simple, but it makes Dimitri’s heart clench. 

“I do. I remember the scolding we received afterwards, as well,” Dimitri smiles, trying to keep his answer in safe territory. 

“We were fools,” Felix nods, but he doesn’t leave it there. “I was certain we were going to die on that mountain. But then… Do you remember the lights?” 

Dimitri has never forgotten them. He had been walking blindly through the snow, looking up to the sky in search of some familiar star or sign that would lead them home, Felix’s hand clenched in his so hard it must have hurt. The stars had wheeled overhead and his eyes could not find an anchor and he knew that he was lost. 

But then the sky had changed and, for a second, there had been a ribbon of bright, rippling green. And in that moment he had been certain that the goddess, that mighty Sothis herself, was going to descend from the heavens and save him. 

She hadn’t, though. The lights remained in the sky, but they were unconcerned with the fate of two Faerghus boys. Their strange beauty had no interest in the mortal world below that looked up and wondered. 

“I remember that I was terrified,” Dimitri admits softly. “And that the lights frightened me even more.” 

In the dim evening, Felix’s barely visible face creases into a strange expression. 

“I never knew that,” he murmurs. “You seemed so… I thought you were certain we would find our way.” 

“Well, you know me better now,” Dimitri says wryly. “Even back then, I was very good at pretending that I was stronger than I really am.” 

“Because you were with me,” Felix adds. “Because I was afraid.” 

“You held my hand,” Dimitri whispers, so quietly that he almost hopes Felix will not hear him. “You took off your glove and put your hand in mine and it was the only part of me that stayed warm.” 

Hoofbeats shatter the quiet. A few bucks are breaking through the evergreens with their antlers. 

This time, Dimitri is the one who gives Felix the arrow, and, despite the dark, despite the rushing confusion of motion, Felix makes the shot. 

—

They arrive back at the keep after dark. The deer is dressed out in the courtyard, staining the snow around it pink, and then taken to the larder to hang. 

Both of them are painfully cold, tired, damp with snow and sweat and blood. They shed their boots and cloaks at the door, but even beneath the thick furs, Dimitri can feel that his tunic is damp and half-frozen. 

“The drawing room,” Felix chatters out. “Kitchens should be sending up something in a moment.” 

As soon as they step through the door, the warmth of the fire is palpable. The curtains are drawn and the walls are layered with tapestries to keep the heat in and the fire is blazing high. Felix closes the door behind them and then gestures for Dimitri to sit on the upholstered settee positioned close to the hearth. 

As Dimitri sits and brushes some melting ice from his hair, Felix pours a brandy from a decanter on the side table with trembling hands. He holds a glass out to Dimitri and then pours another for himself when Dimitri accepts. 

After that, he huddles at the other end of the long bench, drinking a mouthful before extending his hands forward to absorb more heat from the fire. Dimitri notices a few droplets of water melting down the sides of his face, soaking into his damp fur collar. 

“Please do not stand on any ceremony with me, Felix,” Dimitri says, coming to a decision and then beginning to unfasten the clasps on his tunic. “I do not want you to sit and shiver in damp clothes, come now.” 

“I’m not—” Felix breaks off as a shudder runs through his body, spilling a few droplets of the brandy over his fingers. 

“You’ll warm up faster if you aren’t covered in soaking wet wool,” Dimitri reminds him. 

Reluctantly, Felix begins peeling off his surcoat. For a moment, the only sound is the jingle of buckles and the brush of fabric. Eventually they are both down to their trousers and undershirts, the pale lace of old scars and poorly healed war wounds finally visible at their collars and along their forearms. 

“That’s better,” Dimitri groans, shifting closer to the center of the settee and extending his hands to the fire as well. The heat is sinking into his bones now, unraveling the tension in his muscles and moving blood back to his face and his extremities. 

“Toast,” Felix suggests, raising his glass of brandy again. 

“To a fine shot,” Dimitri nods, extending his own glass towards Felix. Felix withholds allowing them to touch, however. 

“To… to good company,” he says and then he clicks the glasses together and drinks. 

The brandy burns down Dimitri’s throat like dragonfire. The warmth radiates out and through his chest. It catches him by surprise and he is forced to cough a few times, which makes Felix smirk. 

“It’s supposed to make you warm,” he informs Dimitri, an edge of amusement in his tone. 

“Unfortunately, I’m not sure the back of my throat was feeling particularly chilled,” Dimitri smiles painfully, before taking another, more cautious sip. 

Felix shivers again and wraps one of his arms tightly across his chest. 

“It’s good to have you here,” he admits. 

“I’m glad to hear it,” Dimitri lets out a soft sigh of relief. “I feared that I was making myself a terrible inconvenience to you. That my plan to come here was a miscalculation.” 

“Probably was,” Felix shrugs. “Still. You know how to make yourself useful and it’s easier when I don’t have to explain everything.” 

“You have no idea,” Dimitri laughs dryly, “what a compliment it is to tell a king he is useful. Truth be told, I have rather enjoyed the work. When we were young, it was so simple to steal away to the woods for an afternoon.

“It was easier. I’d almost forgotten how easy it used to be.” Felix’s face turns pensive as he turns his glass around a few times, watching the dark liquid shift back and forth. 

“What do you mean?” Dimitri sets his own half-drunk glass down so that he can rub his hands together, flexing his numb fingers until they start to come alive again. 

“Me and you,” Felix adds. 

“Felix,” Dimitri says, then breaks off. 

But no, now is the moment. There will be no better moment. 

“Felix, I… I wish I had spent more time here, or with you, anywhere, after the war. We were, I thought, just starting to make things right. But then you came here and I started to think that maybe I had just imagined it. That you wanted nothing more to do with me." He takes a deep breath. "I should have just asked. I never wanted this silence to go on for so long.” 

“Not your fault,” Felix replies dully. His shoulders hunch up defensively. “I’m the one who kept it that way. For my own reasons, not because of you.” 

“And I understand,” Dimitri tells him earnestly, trying so hard to show him that he means it. “And I trust you to take care of yourself and your family and your people. Have no doubt about that. But I do worry… do you not feel at all lonely?” 

Felix shivers again, but he draws back from the fire, his posture tight and rigid. 

“Of course. Of course . All of the time. Every day. But it doesn’t matter.” 

“It does—” 

“It doesn’t matter because I cannot fix it,” Felix interrupts, shaking his head before Dimitri can speak over him. “I am not going to just abandon my last living family. I’m not going to give up on her. She needs me here. If I tried to bring her to court like this…” 

He drags his hands down his face and presses his stiff, nearly frostbitten fingers into this temples. 

“It’s pointless to complain,” he concludes. 

“Just because you can endure it, Felix, doesn’t mean you should have to,” Dimitri tells him, turning to face him, trying to close the distance without knowing how to begin.

Felix keeps himself knotted into a compact, defensive stance, angled just slightly away. 

“There is no virtue to be found in suffering. I know you believe that. You’ve said as much to me a hundred times. Even if you can survive it, burdening yourself with the pain of everyone else, of a past that you can never change, you don’t have to—” 

“Except that my mother is alive. She is still alive and she needs me,” Felix cuts him off. 

Then he laughs very bitterly. He finishes the brandy with a grimace, sets the glass down slightly too hard, but it does not seem to stop his occasional shivering spasms. 

“Besides, isn’t this exactly what I sought to accomplish?” he asks, his eyes finally flicking over to meet Dimitri’s. His pupils look very large and dark, his iris’ nothing but a thin sliver of dark gold around a well of black. 

“You don’t have to do this alone, Felix.” 

“But that’s what I always wanted,” Felix objects. His face is flushing now too. “Don’t you understand? It’s fitting. Everything I said back at the Officers Academy, all of the awful things I had to do during the war—it was all supposed to be for this. So I could grow strong on my own, so I wouldn’t need anyone else, so I wouldn’t have to die like damned knight. And I said things to you—to everyone, but the worst of it to you—that was supposed to make you want to stay away from me. And it worked. It worked perfectly.” 

Felix swallows hard.

“Until I finally understood that keeping you away was never what I really wanted,” he adds softly. "But it was too late by that point. Years too late."

Then he shivers again, this one severe enough that his breath shakes and his jaw clicks painfully shut.

“No more of that, Felix,” Dimitri says. Felix shudders again, like he cannot stop. “Come here. You’re freezing, come here.” 

To his surprise, Felix lets him draw close. Felix lets him press forward, tangle their legs together, pour some heat into his cold, trembling limbs. 

“You don’t have to do this alone,” Dimitri tells him again as the tense, shaking lines of his shoulders finally relax. 

The wind outside shrieks through the valley, rattling the glass. But the drawing room is warm and safe, the fire crackling beside them, thick curtains shielding them from the blowing snow. It has been a long time, Dimitri realizes, since he has been so close to anyone. 

Felix pulls back a little and lifts his head. Dimitri lets him go, thinking that he is going to stand up, to take back some space, maybe even leave the room to compose himself. 

Which means that Dimitri  is entirely unprepared when what Felix does instead is kiss him on the mouth.

“Sorry,” Felix immediately flinches back. His expression is beyond mortified. His eyes are like dark wells of aching, hungry sadness. “Sorry, sorry. Damn it. I shouldn’t have—” 

Dimitri ends the unwanted apology with another kiss. Felix’s mouth is hot, his lips wet from the melting snow, and his skin is feverishly damp when Dimitri pulls him in closer.

They shift awkwardly against each other, hot and cold mingling as Felix's frozen nose presses into Dimitri’s burning cheek and Dimitri’s cold hands thread into the heat of Felix’s hair. It is all angles and friction, small discomforts mixed with a ravenous, frenzied desire for more. 

Slowly, they grow tangled in each other, shedding even more of the clothes they are barely wearing. Dimitri untucks Felix’s shirt so that he can better feel the heat and shifting muscle of his back. Felix undoes a few buttons at Dimitri’s collar so that he can lean close and drag his lips down Dimitri’s throat, a gesture that generates a shudder that Dimitri knows has nothing at all to do with the cold. 

“Is this alright?” Felix asks him hoarsely at that, pulling away. 

“More than alright,” Dimitri breathes back, unable to resist the temptation to trace his fingers along Felix’s jaw and then back into the dark hair gathered at the nape of his neck. “I’m not very, um, well I haven’t had much experience with this, I suppose.” 

“I haven’t either,” Felix says, his lips parting even as he seems to be trying to restrain himself from leaning back in. “I just… I’ve been so… I’ve thought about… and I… I never…” 

His words catch in his throat, uncharacteristically betraying his entirely unraveled state, how near he is to breaking. And Dimitri will not allow Felix to hurt like that, which means that he has no choice but to kiss him again and again and again. Slow and warm and syrupy, until they are both melted away. Until Felix is lying on top of him and the room is so warm they are starting to sweat. 

“I’m here,” Dimitri reminds him every time that they pause for a few gasps of air. “I’m here. I’ve got you.” 

Until, of course, someone knocks on the door. 

Felix wrenches himself away, frantically stuffing his shirt back into his trousers. His lips are swollen, his face is flushed all the way down his neck, and his hair is completely undone from its binding. 

Dimitri can only assume that he looks in an even worse state. With a jolt of alarm, he realizes that the patch over his empty eye socket has fallen off, and he scrambles under the settee to find it. 

“What?” Felix demands at the closed door. 

“Dinner, Your Grace. The kitchens have sent up a late dinner, as you requested,” the dry voice of the steward replies. 

Felix curses silently and then scrapes his hair back. A few seconds of panicked searching reveals that his surcoat has ended up flung across the floor and he shrugs it back over his shoulders before going to answer the door.  One sleeve has a hole scorched into the fabric from the fire. Dimitri attempts to slide the patch back over his former eye, but the leather cord keeps twisting and flipping in his fingers.

“Thank you,” Felix says tightly, forcibly accepting the tray of food himself through the narrow entrance. Then he shuts the door again before the steward can reply. 

Dimitri tries to conceal his guilty smile, but his hand is occupied shielding the empty socket of his eye. 

“What?” Felix snaps. He sets the tray down with a rattle of silverware. “You think this is funny?” 

“Of course not,” Dimitri immediately schools himself, his giddy amusement fading as he realizes the hundreds of reasons why it is not funny. “I’m sorry, I did not—”

“They’ve sent up Daphnel stew, Dimitri,” Felix growls darkly. “Which means we’re both going to taste like onions for hours.” 

This time, Dimitri does not bother to hide his laughter. Felix offers him a brief, somewhat rusty smile. 

“Here,” he adds, sliding the hopelessly tangled eyepatch off of Dimitri’s head. “Just leave it off for a while.” 

And so they eat, scraping their bowls clean, then basking in the glow of the dying fire, until Dimitri is nearly asleep on Felix’s shoulder. And Dimitri mumbles promises that the next day they can go out to the lake to catch fish through the ice and then the day after that they can hike down to the coast and look for bird’s eggs. 

And they talk until they cannot anymore, pretending that the snow will never melt and that this, this place, is the only world that will ever exist. 

—

The ice on the pond breaks faster than they expect. Overhead, the sun shines unobstructed by clouds, brilliant blue breaking the monotony of grey and white. The forest is a shower of dripping branches. Down in the valley, the river rushes high in its banks. And, along the roof of Castle Fraldarius, icicles form and lengthen into a row of razor teeth. 

Dimitri pretends that it means nothing, even as he kneels on the ice and cuts through to the dark water beneath. Still, he cannot help but sense that things are changing, that the world is softening, that the winter’s armor is about to break, and that will mean freedom. But armor does more than just weigh you down, he knows. 

He keeps touching his hand to his mouth, as though he expects his lips to feel different. When he went to bed the night after, they had been buzzing. The sensation has since faded, but he reaches up every now and then to check. 

Sylvain used to tease him that he was clueless in matters of romance. He had endured the good-natured ridicule without much comment. After all, he had been so sure that Sylvain was wrong. 

It was not, he had rationalized, that he was confused by matters of love, but rather the fact that he did not anticipate living long enough for it to matter. He would avenge the dead, he would rebalance the scales set askew by the Tragedy, and then, if anything was left of him, he could only imagine that it would melt away and his body would dissolve into nothing but bloody dew. 

Better not to drag anyone else down with him. Better not to love anyone who still had a pulse, when he was doing his very best to freeze his own heart to ice. Better to remind himself that this life is not really his anyways. 

Now, he is beginning to worry that Sylvain had proven to be, yet again, far more perceptive than he seemed. 

How had he ignored for so long the thoughts that always rose up from the depths of his mind when Felix was around? He was so used to scolding himself for noticing things like the warm color of his eyes, the shine of his dark hair, the surprising gentleness of his way with cats, or the sharp contrast of his rare smiles. Felix would not want him to notice, he had always told himself. Dimitri’s admiration would be like a poison to him, like a breath of foul air, like a plague. 

But he is growing more comfortable with the notion that desire itself is not always an evil thing, to be caged and tormented until it withers and goes away. He is starting to see that wanting, wanting people, wanting closeness, wanting a place near to the fireside, it is not the savage hunger of a beast. It is the most human feeling of all. 

Let yourself feel it, he reminds himself. And if it turns out to be good? Then let it be good. 

Dimitri puts a hand to his mouth again. He feels the rough texture of yarn against his lips from Annette and Mercedes’ dark blue mittens. His breath is warm even through the fabric. 

“Cold hands?” Felix asks from beside him, momentarily distracted from watching their fishing line. 

“Yes,” Dimitri lies. “That’s all.” 

“Come on then,” Felix says, reluctantly holding his own mittened hand out. 

Dimitri takes it. 

Never before in his life has he ever wanted so badly to extend a single moment in time. But time, of course, cannot freeze. Only melt. And melt. 

—

“Tomorrow? You really think… so soon?” 

“The snow is melting fast, Your Majesty. If we wait too long, we’ll be wading through mud instead.” 

Dimitri nods and resists the compulsion to fidget with a lost string on the sleeve of his coat. The captain of his knights is studying him. 

“Midmorning tomorrow, then,” he agrees. “If we ride at the warmest part of the day, we should still be able to make it to Fhirdiad by dark. Have you been comfortable down in the city? Is there anything that your battalion needs?” 

“Plenty comfortable,” the captain nods. “Bored, I suppose. But I think the knights enjoyed the chance to rest in the end. You could join us if it would please you, Your Majesty. It is somewhat more… it is a lively town.”

Dimitri glances around the courtyard, silent as a sepulcher apart from a few furtive servants. He shakes his head with a smile more tinged with melancholy than he intends. 

“No, I will remain here. Duke Fraldarius and I still have matters of state to discuss.” 

The captain’s brow creases, but she mistakes his intentions. 

“The knights would consider it an honor, Your Majesty. They are proud of the man they serve.” 

“Send them my apologies, then, Captain,” Dimitri tells her with just enough firmness so that she knows this decision is final. “And be careful on the path back down. Once the sun sets, all of this will freeze to solid ice.” 

Felix has been occupied that afternoon by a letter from his uncle concerning a few of the minor barons whose villages were robbed during the blizzard. It had been pressing enough to arrive by a pegasus courier from the northeastern border, and Dimitri knows that it is prudent to address such a problem swiftly. Bandits often take advantage of hard times, or perhaps hard times rather take advantage of desperate men.  

A part of Dimitri dreads returning to the same difficult choices, the same thorny justice, but another part of him understands that this brief interlude of quiet was only ever meant to be a pause. He and Felix are not yet men who can be content with stillness for very long. When he returns to his throne, Dimitri knows that he will feel both bereft and relieved. 

In the morning, he will ride to Fhirdiad. Which means that tonight, he must find a way to convince Felix that this is not another goodbye. 

Which it isn’t. It can’t be. 

It might be. 

Dinner that evening is venison, a decadent indulgence after so many days of salt-preserved meat and root vegetables from the cellar. It sits heavily in Dimitri’s stomach nevertheless. They are sitting in the great hall rather than tucked away in the privacy of the drawing room, because this is meant to be a formal meal, a tradition to honor a royal guest. 

The servants do not stand close and listen, but Dimitri is far too aware that he is being watched. 

Likewise, Felix appears more dour than usual, restlessly picking at his food without any of his usual pleasure in fresh-caught game. 

“I know it is rather short notice, but I wondered if you planned to come to court at all during the Ethereal Moon?” Dimitri finally asks after the wine has been poured and the cavernous hall is briefly empty. 

“It is short notice,” Felix replies evasively. 

“Or perhaps… perhaps I could stop here again upon my return to Garreg Mach?” Dimitri suggests. It does not have the desired effect. 

“That’s moons away,” Felix says tightly, sawing at his venison with sudden ferocity. “I have no sense yet of how… of how the territory will be fairing by then.” 

“Even if it is a troubled time,” Dimitri adds quietly, “perhaps especially if it is, I would be glad to be here.” 

“You have duties as well,” Felix points out. “I have mine. I’d rather not speculate about the future. It’s a useless endeavor.” 

“A promise is not a speculation.” 

Felix’s fork clatters out of his hand. He picks it up quickly. 

“Just let it go for now, Dimitri,” he grits out, rougher than normal. “I want to keep my mind on tonight, not on a couple of moons away.” 

Reluctantly, Dimitri nods. The venison sticks in his throat when he tries to swallow. 

By the time that the wretched dinner is over, Felix seems to have softened a little. He stands up and inclines his head towards the stairs. 

“If you wouldn’t mind waiting a moment, we could continue our conversation in my study,” he concedes. “I need to check on my mother first, but I’d like to… I’d like to consider some of what you suggested.” 

“Of course,” Dimitri agrees, a heavy lump of tension seeming to dissolve in his gut. 

Felix offers him an apologetic grimace, acknowledging that he is fumbling through this badly. Dimitri smiles back to try to show him that he is equally out of his depth, that all he is really asking is for a way to keep trying. 

The study upstairs Dimitri remembers as Rodrigue’s, although now the room is unmistakably occupied by Felix. A few blades are laid out on an oil-stained cloth, in the process of being sharpened and cleaned. Muddy boots sit drying by the fire. Aegis hangs on the wall, but the rest of the room is spare and undecorated. Felix has covered the round window with a curtain, a delicate creation of glass imported from Charon that Dimitri remembers depicting the hero Fraldarius. 

On the desk, though, there is one thing out of place. A slightly tattered owl feather. One of the Professor’s odd little gifts. Dimitri smiles at the little hint of sentimentality Felix has always gone to considerable lengths to conceal. 

The side door is also open, Dimitri notices with a sudden acceleration of his heartbeat. That would be the door that leads back to Felix’s bed chamber. Dimitri resists the urge to unbutton his collar. Everything suddenly feels overly warm. 

He waits, too nervous to sit, and too shy to explore the room any further. After pacing a small rut in the carpet, he finally decides to peruse the bookshelf. It is right as his back is turned to the door that it flies open. 

“She’s gone,” Felix begins, his words a strained rush. “Dimitri, she’s not in her room, she’s gone, she’s just—” 

Dimitri turns around. Felix is standing in the doorway, his face as pale as candle wax. His eyes are wide and frightened, the eyes of a scared child, of a lost boy with no memory of the way back home. 

“We’ll find her,” Dimitri swears, although his chest is shrinking in, his ribs squeezing his lungs, as he says it. 

“She never leaves her rooms, never, not in years,” Felix insists, breathing shallow and fast. “Except…”

“Except that I am here,” Dimitri finishes the awful thought. “Could she have gone down to the town?” 

“It’s going to freeze tonight. Dimitri, it’s going to freeze, and she isn’t here. I've already checked, she’s not in the keep and… I don’t…” 

“Call the servants to search the castle grounds again,” Dimitri cuts him off. “Find your fastest runner. Send them down to the town and summon the Blaiddyd knights. Tell them to bring torches. We’ll get the hounds from the kennel.” 

Felix curses, then takes a sharp, frustrated breath. 

“She’ll be alright,” Dimitri promises, “we’ll find her.”

He tries to reach out and put a steadying hand on Felix’s shoulder, but Felix has already turned and is racing down the stairs. Dimitri takes a shaky breath and then follows him. 

They set the older servants to search the house again, just in case, just on the off chance that Rowena Fraldarius has merely secreted herself away into an unusual storage closet somewhere. Dimitri forces Felix to stop for long enough to pull on thicker gloves and a hood over his head before he goes out into the snow. 

It is a bitterly cold night, Dimitri realizes with sinking dread. The snow has a thick crust of ice sitting atop it now, making it nearly impossible to move quickly over the wooded hills and slopes. 

“How long has she been gone?” Dimitri asks one of the guards. “Did anyone see her this afternoon?” 

The man’s face is creased with shame. 

“We do not know, Your Majesty. His Grace usually attends to Lady Rowena personally. No one has seen her since he went to her chambers this morning.” 

“Then we cannot afford to wait,” Dimitri decides. “His Grace and I will start with the dogs along the ridge. Once reinforcements arrive, have each knight bear a torch and move down the slope into the valley in a line twenty paces apart. Do you understand?” 

The guards nod jerkily, guiltily, helplessly. 

Felix is already through the gates and halfway to the treeline. 

“Felix!” Dimitri calls out, but he does not slow. Dimitri breaks into as close to a run as he can manage in the heavy, icy snow. By the time he catches up, his lungs are burning from the frigid air. Felix is pressing furiously forward, shoving his way through the frozen branches and the difficult brush. “Felix, wait!” 

“There’s tracks!” Felix shouts back. “Leading this way, come on!” 

“Slow down for just a moment—” 

“I should have checked,” Felix shakes his head, slamming his way through an icy patch of brambles. A cut opens up on his cheek, but the blood beads and then freezes before it drips.. “I should have spent more time with her. I was selfish, so stupid, letting myself pretend that this… that we could ever be anything more.” 

“It isn’t your fault,” Dimitri wheezes, trying to keep up as he twists through the broken twigs in Felix’s wake. “Please, be careful. It does her no good if you do yourself harm before you find her.” 

“You’re not a part of this!” Felix shouts back, finally pausing so that he can whip around and snarl at Dimitri. There it is, Dimitri thinks with heavy recognition, that old knife-twisting salt-in-the-wound anger. 

“I am, Felix,” Dimitri says softly. “If you’ll let me be, I—” 

“No,” Felix chokes out, teeth bared as his throat works and his clenched fists shake. “You have no idea. Because you… you did this too.” 

Dimitri opens his mouth, about to protest, to indignantly object that no, of course he has never gone wandering out into a blizzard in the middle of the night. 

Except that, of course, he has. And he let Felix and Ingrid and Sylvain trace his footsteps through the dark woods not for a single night, but for five years. 

“Keep following the tracks,” Dimitri says instead, after a moment of nothing but strained breathing. “Maybe the dogs will catch a trail along the way.” 

Felix’s lips tremble. Eventually, he just dips his chin in reluctant agreement, and keeps walking. 

They cannot move quietly anymore. For nearly an hour, the peace of the forest is punctuated with their calls, but none of them are answered. Rowena Fraldarius' voice does not echo back, although they both shout until they are almost hoarse. 

The dogs keep their noses to the ground, but despite the footprints sunk into the snow,  neither of them picks up a scent. Their wagging tails go limp and ashamed the longer that the search goes on. 

At the height of the ridge, Dimitri realizes the problem. 

They pause in a familiar clearing, the tiny glimpse of the sea nothing but a dark void at this hour. Felix stumbles over a buried branch. The torch gutters out where it falls and he does not reach out to relight it.

Instead, he just kneels in the snow, gasping raggedly. He doesn’t look on the verge of panic anymore. His eyes are glassy, corpse-eyes, like an empty husk. 

“Our tracks,” he finally says, as though speaking it aloud might make it not real. 

Dimitri closes his eye and cannot deny it. 

“We’ll keep walking south,” He suggests instead, although he has no real rationale for it. He just wants to keep Felix moving, keep him hoping. “Here, come on, we’ll keep going another hour. Then we can rejoin the knights and try the west.” 

He offers a hand, but Felix does not take it. 

“Why didn’t she stay?” he whispers. 

Dimitri takes a deep breath. He has no answer for Rowena Fraldarius. But he thinks he might have a few words that he should say to Felix on his own behalf. 

“Because she wanted to stop hurting you,” Dimitri says softly. “And even when you know in your heart that what you’re doing is only making it worse, that the cure is worse than the disease, it still feels like the right thing to do.” 

“I never left. And I lost them too.” 

Dimitri cannot reply to that. He reacts on pure instinct, collapsing into the snow beside Felix and taking both of his hands, squeezing them as tightly as he dares. Felix does not squeeze back. 

“I’m so sorry, Felix,” Dimitri begins, his voice too thick in his throat, his lashes sticking together as a few welling tears freeze in the cold. “It isn’t fair. It just—” 

He pauses. Felix’s pale, hollow expression shifts to a look of confusion. 

“What?” 

“Your father’s grave,” Dimitri realizes. “The old chapel, you mentioned, with the hawthorns. Could she have tried to walk all the way out there?” 

Slowly, a little tremble of life comes back into Felix’s face. 

“I don’t know,” he rasps out. “It’s a long way. In the snow, it’s so steep.” 

“She’s your mother,” Dimitri assures him, as firmly as he can without truly telling a lie. “If she set her mind to it, she would have made it there.” 

Felix leads him down the eastern slope along a winding, slippery path. The temperature keeps dropping, and while the exertion is keeping him warm enough, Dimitri can feel the skin on his face burning with the beginnings of frostbite.

When the shadow of the chapel finally comes into view, Dimitri wastes no more time with caution. He slides down the side of a boulder and staggers into the dark interior of the old building. 

It is an ancient place, Dimitri can tell at once. Probably built in the time of the 10 Elites. Perhaps even earlier. There is a facade of stone, but the structure is cut back into the side of the hill, keeping the graves better protected from the elements. 

At least, that is what the priests of Seiros say. But Dimitri remembers what the old hunters whisper to one another about these places. That in the old times, the tombs went deeper and deeper, down into an empty, frozen land of ghosts. A place where the bones of great demons lay in perpetual slumber down in the black, out of sight of the goddess’ star. 

“Lady Rowena?” Dimitri calls out. 

There is no answer, just the quiet of a tomb and of stone wrapped up in tree roots. His own voice does not even echo. The endless dark passage swallows it up. 

“Duchess Fraldarius!” Dimitri tries again, his heart sinking with every beat. He takes a step forward, entirely blind. 

His foot catches on something and he has to reach for the wall to steady himself. When he bends down to seek out the object he has encountered in the dark, he finds that it is the edge of a long stone box. A coffin. 

“Dimitri?” Felix’s voice calls from outside. “Is there anything, is she…?” 

He does not want to ask if there is another body, Dimitri understands. He does not want to step over this threshold, while Dimitri has been lingering on the edge of it for most of his life. 

Shouldn't be here . 

A whisper breaks through, one of the voices he has never managed to entirely block out. This close to the land of the dead, he thinks, they seem louder. 

Or, was it one of his? 

Dimitri feels along the surface of the tomb, tracing the carved stone relief, the face he knows was meant to be Rodrigue’s. There, in cold granite, is the late Duke’s lance, his shield, his… hand? 

Dimitri grips the freezing cold hand and pulls. And he hears a rattle of breath. 

“She’s here!” he shouts back, voice cracking from the strain. Fumbling in the dark, he lifts the stiff body into his arms and feels nothing but icy cold. But she is moving. Breathing. She is breathing. “She’s alive!” 

There is no time for any hesitation. He strips off his cloak, opens his tunic, and presses the woman’s chest against his, wrapping her as tightly as he can in the thick fur. When he staggers back out into the moonlight, Rowena Fraldarius is shivering against him, half-conscious and muttering. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” she whispers. 

The dogs begin to howl. 

Felix cries out in what remains of his voice for help, for a healer, for someone to find them, and Dimitri runs until he sees the lights of other torches descending towards them. 

—

A crowd awaits them at Castle Fraldarius. Apparently half of the city has been out on this freezing night, searching for the lost Duchess. The priest has already climbed the hill and is waiting in the keep’s great hall when Dimitri brings her in. 

He is half-frozen too, by that point. His knees shake unpleasantly as he tries to sit down. For an indistinct amount of time, he just sits and waits, too tired to remember to remove his damp clothing, too overwhelmed to seek out a warmer room. 

Eventually, one of the servants finds him. He registers her voice as that of the young woman who had been Rowena’s former chambermaid, although now she speaks in a calm, gentle tone, as though he is a young child. She fusses at him to wrap up in a dry blanket and drink some hot broth, so he obeys. His hands are red with chillblains, although they burn like he has plunged them into fire when he tries to hold the mug of soup. 

“Your Majesty, I think you ought to let the priest examine you as well,” the maid suggests after he has sat in the warmth for a while. 

“Is Lady Fraldarius alright?” Dimitri blinks a few times, not entirely sure how much time has passed. 

“She is recovering,” the maid assures him. “But you were out in the cold a very long time yourself, and without a cloak to cover you.” 

“I was,” Dimitri tells her slowly, each thought emerging as slow as a bubble of air in an overturned jar of honey. “Five years.” 

“I mean this evening, Your Majesty,” the maid reminds him. “You carried Lady Fraldarius all the way back.”  

Dimitri is enough himself to wince with embarrassment at that. He shakes his head, orienting himself to now instead of the long years of then. 

“Where is Felix?” he asks. “Duke Fraldarius, I mean.” 

“His Grace is at his mother’s bedside.” 

Dimitri rubs his face, rousing himself from the stupor of cold and exhaustion that threatens to steal over him. 

“I would like to see them,” he says, slowly rising to his feet. He is very sore and his hands feel tight and chapped, but he is alright. At least, he has had worse before. The threshold is high, he remembers, perhaps too high. “Just briefly. I do not want to intrude, but it would… reassure me to see them.” 

“Very well, Your Majesty,” the maid says, clearly reluctant but unable to conceive of how to deny a king. “I’ll bring you up.” 

A few servants are lingering on the landing of the stairs, ready to jump to attention if anyone should request a warm blanket or a cup of tea, but within Rowena Fraldarius’ bedchamber, there is only Felix and the town priest, a small bespectacled fellow. When Dimitri enters, the priest is speaking to Felix in a hushed voice. 

“—should not be any lingering damage now that I have seen to the toes and fingers, but send for me at once should they get any worse or if you notice any sign of trouble with her breathing. Take comfort, Your Grace. She was warmly dressed and her constitution has always been hardy.” 

As Dimitri steps in, Felix glances over, clearly anticipating another servant, but his eyes widen when he realizes it is not. 

“Thank you,” he tells the priest. “Would you give us a moment? My steward can show you to your quarters for the evening.” 

“I’ll be back to check her again in an hour unless there is any change,” the priest assures him, then bows to Dimitri. “Your Majesty. The people of Fraldarius wish to express their gratitude for your deeds tonight. May the Goddess bless you for saving our dear Lady Rowena.” 

Dimitri gives him a strained smile, letting him pass without comment. The priest closes the door, and Felix immediately steps forward, reaching out to roughly examine the frostbitten tips of his fingers and feel the temperature of his neck. 

“You look awful,” he mutters. “Hasn’t anyone seen to you? You’re the King, by all the damned Saints, someone should have healed these.” 

“Your mother,” Dimitri asks, pushing away the urgent hands, still seeking out any sign of damage, “how is she?” 

As he looks over Felix to the bed, he realizes that Rowena Fraldarius is not unconscious as he had assumed. She is propped up on a few pillows, her arms left out while the center of her body is wrapped in heavy furs and blankets. He sees the shine of ointment on her hands, probably a medicinal tonic used to ward off the blackening of flesh. 

“He shouldn’t be here,” she croaks out, raising one weak arm to point at him. “He is the one who took them, who will try to take you.” 

“Don’t say that,” Felix tells her weakly, turning around to stand between Dimitri and the bed. “Try to rest. Please, mother.” 

“You killed him,” Rowena Fraldarius murmurs, her eyes boring into his from her sunken, windburned face. “My son. My husband. You’re the one who killed them both and now you dare to come here and try to take the only child I have left.” 

“She doesn’t know what she’s saying,” Felix objects, shaking his head as he looks pleadingly at Dimitri. “I’m sorry. In the morning, I’ll find time to come to you, we can—” 

“It’s alright,” Dimitri says, and then steps around Felix so that he can kneel down beside the bed. “I want to hear you. Tell me what you need to say.” 

Rowena takes a few breaths, then she pushes herself up against the pillows. Her long, silver streaked hair is loose over her shoulders. 

“You must think I am a monstrous person,” She curls her lip back, exposing a white line of teeth. “Because I am not supposed to feel this way, am I? The north is cold and the soil is poor, and so everyone is required to make sacrifices. Who am I to complain? A Faerghus widow should give thanks to the goddess, they say, for her kin to die with honor. What a blessing. How proud I must be.”

“Enough of this,” Felix shakes his head. “Just stop it.” 

“I don’t think that,” Dimitri replies, before Felix can attempt to wrestle him up and out of the room.

“I did try, you know,” Rowena tells him hopelessly, still grinning her rigor mortis grin. “I tried to forgive you. I even tried to love you like you were another son. But I couldn’t do it. Every safe place I tried to build, I couldn't keep. And you are just another reminder of the danger I could never keep out.” 

 “I never asked for that,” Dimitri says earnestly. “I never expected it. And you were right. I was a danger. Perhaps I was not culpable for your son’s death, but I am for Lord Rodrigue’s. And I am sorry for that, so incredibly sorry.” 

“And yet here you are to try to take the rest,” Rowena leans forward as much as she can. A bit of spittle glimmers on her lips. “That is what I cannot stand about you. Heartless boy. You can’t stop asking for more. The worst thing that a soldier ever has to sacrifice is his life, but a mother? How much am I supposed to lose? How many more do you require, Your Majesty, before you decide to swallow me whole?” 

“Don’t speak to him like that!” Felix explodes.

 While Dimitri has heard him brazenly defy his father a hundred times over, his attempt to admonish his mother comes out in a few quavering bursts. 

“He saved your life, mother. He carried you back himself in the freezing cold. Without him, you would be… you could have…” 

“What can I do?” Dimitri asks Rowena, leaning forward, trying to make sure she understands that he is listening. That no matter how much she hates him, he is still going to listen. “How can I stop hurting you?”

“You can have a dozen children,” Rowena laughs with the restrained dignity of a great lady, an ugly sound. “And you can throw them into a great fire. Listen to them screaming. Wait until they stop. And then you can dig their ashes from the coals with your hands and send them to me in an iron box. Then we will be on equal footing again.” 

“You should be thanking him. He saved your life, he brought you back—!” 

“Why did you walk out into that snowstorm?” Dimitri asks softly. 

Rowena’s mouth twists into a familiar sneer of disgust, a look he has seen on her son’s face whenever he is backed into a corner. 

“The scriptures say that when the goddess was beset by wicked gods, she raised up a mortal man to defend her” she replies with icy politeness. “But then he took the blade she had crafted and used it to slaughter her children. And so the great Sothis left his world behind and retreated to the furthest star, so she would never again have to look upon this world, this gravesite, this race of killers she had herself nursed.” 

“Why did you go alone to that chapel?” 

“Did I not do the same? Did I not spend my whole life forging blades used to slaughter my children? Telling them to be fearless, to be strong, to never run when death is stalking close behind. And now the beast I suckled is howling at the gate. The only course left to me is to turn my back upon it all. To go as far away as I can.” 

“If you wish for me to leave you alone, I will,” Dimitri swears. “If you wish for me to release Fraldarius from my Kingdom, to grant it perpetual sovereignty, to never again summon your bloodline to my armies, I will.” 

“I wish for you to erase yourself from my son’s mind!” Rowena screams, her composure abruptly shattering. “Because he will leave me. I know it. I taught him to do it. He will leave me to follow after you again. He is waiting for me to die so that he can finally have a reason to throw himself onto your spear—!” 

Felix finally discovers a way to silence her. He begins to sob. 

The room is entirely still for a second. Felix is still standing, hunched over like someone has stabbed him in the gut. His hands are covering his face and he makes very little sound apart from the shaking noise of air being forced in and out of his chest. 

Dimitri stares, unsure if he should reach out, too terrified to actually touch him. This is all wrong. He has broken something again, shattered the last of Felix’s waning self-control in his overbearing grip. He does not know how to fix this. 

It has been so long since he has seen Felix like this. Dimitri knows that he hates being reminded of how often he used to cry. That old habit is a chink in his armor, a memory that undermines his untouchable strength. But when he was a child, no one ever disparaged his tears. And someone was always ready to comfort him, to wait patiently while he pieced himself back together. 

And while Dimitri is slow, Rowena is already moving.

She untangles herself from the blankets, staggers upright on frostbitten feet, and drags him into her arms. The rotten, venomous sadness is suddenly gone, and Dimitri sees again a woman he remembers. A woman who would defend her family until her last breath if she could, but never has had the chance. 

She cradles Felix’s head against her shoulder and strokes his hair. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m sorry.” 

Dimitri thinks of another mother and another son very far away. He thinks about a boy learning how to hurt, learning that it will get better, and of a woman who is trying to show him that he is worth just as much to her soft and gentle and alive as he is as a stone effigy. 

“I thought you were gone,” Felix whimpers through his hitching sobs. “And he brought you back. Don’t you understand?” 

“I didn’t mean it, I’m sorry.” Rowena’s voice breaks as well. “I speak nonsense sometimes, you know that. But I never meant it.” 

“I won’t leave you. I know you think that I intend to, but I won’t,” Felix tells her. “But I can’t… I take this. I don’t know what to do anymore!” 

That wrings a few deeper sobs out of him. Rowena hugs him tight against her, her eyes squeezed shut. 

Dimitri waits for another second. And he feels it just beneath his ribs, that frustrating spike of pointless jealousy. When he ought to be moved, when he ought to be happy, and still his mind asks: why could no one ever love me like that? 

He leaves the room, closes the door behind him, and lets them have their moment unspoiled. 

He thinks of Patricia for a second, who was probably grieving too, probably mad in her own small way, probably unable to escape the shame of surviving. Living all alone inside of herself, he sees now. It hurts to think about, and it won't get better, but it helps something else click into place. People have always said, despite the fact that they shared no blood relationship, that he looks like her. 

—

“The Lady Rowena would like to speak with you.” 

This unexpected message is delivered as soon as Dimitri has had his hands reexamined by the priest. The small fellow kept him for far longer than he thought necessary, bemoaning the many scars, the damaged nerves, the crooked fingers that were never set quite right, the fingernail that he did lose to cold and has not yet returned. Dimitri considers reminding the man that there is a reason so many of the Savior King’s closest allies tend to gift him with gloves. 

Dimitri arrives in the Duchess’ rooms with his hands wrapped only in bandages, smelling like oil of poplar. He finds her still in bed, although now more properly attired in a fur-lined robe. Her hair has been pulled back from her face and her expression is composed, although he senses a slight tinge of embarrassment in the way that she cannot quite bring herself to look at him. 

“You asked for me?” Dimitri finally says, when it seems unlikely that she is preparing to speak first. 

“I wished to offer an apology,” she says flatly, “Your Majesty.” 

“Please, none of that,” Dimitri grimaces at the title. “You have known me since I was small.” 

“I have,” Rowena acknowledges. “Although sometimes I find it difficult to connect that little boy who always forgot to take off his muddy boots to the King of Fódlan.”

“I still find myself tracking mud through my palace sometimes,” Dimitri shrugs. 

Rowena sighs, the tension now broken enough that she seems better able to face him. 

“My late husband would be ashamed of me, I think,” she finally says, “for how I have behaved towards you.”

“I do not blame you. You were under no obligation to—”

“I wanted to be better,” Rowena interrupts. “To be strong enough to handle it with grace. A part of me still does not understand why I could not this time.” 

“There might not be any reason to it,” Dimitri suggests. “When we build up here, you know, there are always risks. Every winter the ice returns, expands inside of the walls, and then drains back out. The stone eventually crumbles even when there has been no great blow.”

Rowena lifts an eyebrow at that.  

“You know, I thought myself prepared for the time when I might lose my husband,” Rowena smiles tightly. “I trusted him to be kind, to be brave, to be my ally and my friend, but I could not find the courage to recklessly offer up my whole heart. Not like my son does with you.” 

Dimitri tenses, unsure of how much he ought to deny. Rowena’s eyes tell him that any evasion will be pointless, however. 

“We have to be more careful with him,” she says firmly. “Both of us. I thought that I was… that I might give him a better life without me, but…” 

“I understand,” Dimitri tells her, seeing his own darkest despair reflected back in her face for a moment—the temptation of the sheltering earth, hidden from all those terrible lights in the sky. 

“How do I stop it?” she whispers. Her voice does not tremble or break, but he hears it fraying. 

He does not know how to answer her for a second. 

“How?” she repeats. “How do I stop wanting to be done with all of this? I cannot just pretend that it will be easier. It never has been. It never will be. But he is my son. My youngest child. I need it to be better for him.” 

“I don’t have an answer,” Dimitri admits and he watches her deflate, falling back into the pillows. “But I can tell you that you won’t find it alone.” 

“I am not very fit for company,” Rowena laughs darkly. 

“You are as fit as I ever was,” he says with a painful smile. “I once thought of myself like that, like an affliction. And I knew in my heart that if I reached up to the heavens, my prayers would float away on the empty air, and no warm hand would ever descend to pull me to my feet. But when I did try to grasp for something, for anything, with the last shred of attachment I still felt to my life… someone was there.” 

Rowena does not respond to that at all. Dimitri cannot think of what to do next, and so he lays out his bandaged hand on the edge of the bed. She does not take it. He thinks, though, that he sees her fingers twitch. 

“Your husband’s brother,” Dimitri finally suggests. “Your sister. Your nieces. An old friend from school. A new friend right here in town. Or, if you would prefer, a physician from Fhirdiad or Garreg Mach. Just find someone to walk with you for a while until the sun rises a little higher.” 

Rowena clears her throat, reaches up to smooth a strand of hair back behind her ear. 

“Felix is working in his study, I believe,” she says pointedly. 

“Would you like me to bring him here?” 

Rowena Fraldarius sighs very heavily. 

“Not just yet.” Her eyes flick down to Dimitri’s partially extended hand. “For all of your new-found wisdom, Dimitri, honestly—” 

Dimitri abruptly understands and flushes up to the tips of his ears. 

—

“The frost is melting fast,” Felix observes. 

They have been sitting together for a while, placed on opposite sides of the long wooden desk in Felix’s study. Both of them are oddly shy, neither sure how to approach the real subject. 

Instead, they have spoken of other things—family and physicians and new options to try. All immensely practical. All entirely irrelevant until one of them asks the more important question. 

“I doubt the thaw will last until spring,” Dimitri replies, “although it will clear the roads for a while.” 

“You’ll wait until you’re in fit condition, of course,” Felix says, nodding to Dimitri’s bandaged fingers. 

“I likely could be ready by—” 

“At least until the end of the week.” 

“If,” Dimitri offers cautiously, “that is something that you want.” 

Felix makes a face like he is trying to swallow something stuck in his throat. 

“Course I want it,” he finally says roughly. “But I don’t want you thinking that I can’t… endure without you around. Maybe I haven’t given you the best impression lately, but I’m not usually so…” 

He makes a vague hand gesture that Dimitri takes to mean utterly, utterly desperately miserable. 

“About last night,” Dimitri begins, but Felix's face morphs into pure terror at that. 

“Let’s forget about that,” he says sharply, although his eyes are pleading more than demanding. 

“One of the worst mistakes I think we make in this land is assuming that enduring means strength,” Dimitri pushes on. “I lived through things that might have killed me, and it did not build me up. It broke me down, Felix. All those dark, cold nights that I survived, they broke me down.” 

Felix’s mouth tugs down, dangerously close to tears again. 

“I don’t want that to ever happen to you,” Dimitri concludes. “I care for you too much to allow that to happen.” 

Felix folds his arms over his chest, like he means to protect himself. 

“Then stay, I guess,” he concedes. “When you can. And come back… when you can.” 

“And come with me, when you can,” Dimitri adds. 

Felix nods very fast, blinking rapidly. 

“And let me kiss you again, when you can,” he blurts out, a request which Dimitri is already ready to obey. 

He vaults over the desk between them and Felix makes an indignant, very endearing noise as his papers scatter across the floor. 

Dimitri kisses him again. Outside, the icicles are dripping like rain. Dimitri kisses him again and then again. Once more, just to be sure. 

Felix’s hands are woven with his, no more hiding the damage, no more careful distance. Just warmth. A fallen star right in his palm.

A little thaw that promises a spring that isn’t here yet, but it is sure to come soon, surely very soon.