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A steady drizzle falls from a light gray sky, not unusual for northern Faer—for northern Fodlan this time of year. It patters against stone, damp spots spreading and drying just as rapidly, before more raindrops take their place.
It’s refreshing, Annette thinks, how it washes everything away. The rhythm of the rain eases her residual nerves as she weaves between gravestones, her gaze fixed on the dark silhouette ahead of her.
Felix stands perfectly still, heedless to the water hitting his head and face. His shoulders are slightly hunched, and he has his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He doesn’t glance up as she approaches, not until her toes bump against a nearby gravestone and his hand shoots out to grab her elbow and steady her when she yelps.
An embarrassed heat rushes to her face as her heartbeat picks up. When she clears her throat - when his eyes flit to her before drifting ahead again - he lets her go.
Annette grasps her arm where he touched it, as if she can hold any remaining heat from his fingers there, a guard against the rain. She sighs as she steps abreast of him and, feeling bold, slips her arm through his.
He stiffens so slightly she wouldn’t have noticed if she didn’t hold onto him, but he doesn’t pull away.
“How are you?” she wonders in a low voice. She pinches her lip between her teeth, and when he won’t look at her her chest aches like it did yesterday, when he revealed his plans.
Before he changed them…at her tearful request.
Felix’s jaw tightens. He brushes a loose strand of hair from his face and, at last, spares her a more lingering glance. “Well enough,” he tells her. “And you?”
She shrugs, but a smile pushes at her lips. “I’m all right,” she says. “I’m…glad.”
He quirks an eyebrow at her, and she dares to lean a little into him and the warmth he emanates, so much more pleasant than the slight nip in the air that comes with the rain. “For what?”
Annette presses her forehead against his shoulder. “That you’re coming with me,” she says, simply. Maybe it’s silly, for she doesn’t feel nearly as miserable as she did earlier, but heat pricks at her eyes. “What else is there?”
She freezes when his hand rests on the back of her head, holding her closer. “I can think of a few more things,” he admits with a sigh. “Annette…”
She lifts her head to look up at him, to note a hint of pink high in his cheeks before he turns his face away again. “What is it?”
“I’m done here,” he says, and at last he tugs his arm from her grasp and steps away from her, leaving her colder than before she held onto him. “Did you want to find anyone?”
Annette swallows her disappointment - now isn’t the time for her own foolishness, she insists - and glances at the gravestone. A small, unwrapped bouquet of white chrysanthemums rests on the soil over a freshly dug grave. The sight tugs at her, threatening a new rash of tears, as if she hasn’t cried enough in the last day or two for a whole year.
She forgot to bring her own flowers, she realizes, and that thought alone nearly makes a sob burst from her throat. Instead she takes a shuddering, bracing breath and turns her back to the new grave, prepared to search out another.
She doesn’t want to be alone when she finds it, if she can find it, so she offers Felix a smile she doesn’t truly feel and nods.
This time when she finds her father she knows she can’t convince him to come home.
Annette’s coat flutters behind her as she jogs to her first class. She struggles to tug it through her arms while her bag bounces against her leg with every step. “Ugh,” she groans. “I’m late, I’m late, I’m late.”
The cathedral’s bell tolls, low and ponderous and reverberating through her bones. It’s a shock to her system, and deja vu creeps over her as she remembers another time - but not another place - where she overslept after a night spent too late studying.
(She almost wishes she can make the same excuse this time.)
She doesn’t pause even at the sound of footsteps thundering after her, but she halts when someone calls out, “Wait, Professor Dominic!”
Annette taps her fingers against her bag, feeling the sharp edges of course texts and notebooks dulled through the fabric, as she turns to face a student. She plasters her most pleasant smile onto her face as the girl approaches.
Lute, a commoner from Enbarr whose mother is a Dagdan merchant and whose father hails from…well, Annette can’t remember at the moment, but she’s sure he’s from the old Leicester territories. She’s clever too, with a good head for languages and figures - must come from her mother - but absolutely no aptitude for magic.
Lute clutches her own jacket close as she holds a folded paper out to Annette. “I think you dropped this, Professor,” she says.
“Oh,” Annette grabs it, frowning. She doesn’t recognize it as something she packed last night. “Thank you, Lute.” She unfolds the note, her lateness forgotten, and scans its contents. Her eyes widen with each word she reads when she recognizes—
“Isn’t that Professor Amiti’s handwriting?”
Annette’s head jerks back at Lute’s question. “What?”
Lute tucks her books under her arms, a spark in her eyes that Annette learned to recognize in students…and one she doesn’t trust at all. “That looks like the weapons instructor’s writing,” she explains, smiling. “Does he write you love letters, Professor? He’s nicer to you than to any of us.”
“W-what?” Her jaw flaps uselessly as heat rushes to her face. Lute’s smirk only widens, but that forces Annette’s mind back to the present - away from some bizarre realm where Felix, of all people, writes her love letters and slips them into her bag without her noticing. She clears her throat and wonders, “Shouldn’t you be in class now, Lute?”
She expects her to act defiant or to brush off her concern, so it’s no surprise when she looks away and retorts, “You’re late too, Professor.”
Annette smiles as she - as subtly as she can - tucks Felix’s note into her bag. “You got me there,” she concedes. “Shall we head to the academy together then?”
“Yes, all right,” Lute agrees with remarkable cheer, though her tone changes as she asks, “You don’t think Professor Hevring will mind that I’m late, do you?”
Annette can’t help her unladylike snort. “If he does, he’s a hypocrite.”
The note’s presence burns a hole through her bag and into her mind the entire walk to the classrooms, even after she sees Lute to Linhardt’s - he looks more alert than usual, she can’t help noticing - and makes it to her own. Her students mill about, chatting about assignments and rest day plans and certification exams and the end of month mission, but when the door shuts behind her they quiet, from a discordant choir of clashing voices to silence.
“Good morning!” Annette greets them as she strides to the front of the room. A few students return to their seats as they all chorus a reply. “I’m so sorry I’m late. I’m as prone to oversleeping as anyone else, it seems, but let’s not waste anymore time and get started. If you’ll please take out Practical Reason…”
Later, as soon as the last student slips from the classroom, Annette digs through her bag. Broken quills, scraps of parchment, a loose earring, and an old makeup kit tumble out before she locates the note Lute handed her. Though she glanced over it earlier, her heart still skips a beat as she opens it.
“Really?” she mumbles when she reads it over. Though disappointment tugs at her chest, she can’t help laughing over Felix asking for advice on motivating his students in a note he sneaked into her bag when he could’ve just asked her in person.
A cooling cup of tea, forgotten, sits at Annette’s elbow when she knocks it over while reaching for a fresh pot of ink. Its contents spill onto her desk as a startled gasp escapes her and she scrambles to move her students’ essays out of its destructive path.
Felix, sitting in a chair across from her, glances up from his book - has he been on the same page this entire time? - when she jumps up and kicks her chair over in her haste.
It connects with her shin, and she yelps in shock, a tremor traveling up her leg and nearly bowing her with the sudden pain. She curses her own clumsiness.
Felix stands and leans over her desk, eyes wide and worried. “Annette?” He reaches for her, hand outstretched.
She takes it, and despite the dull throb in her leg a smile pushes at her lips. “I’m fine,” she reassures him with a dismissive wave of her other hand. “This is nothing! I already have so many bruises, what’s one more?” She straightens, though her smile falters when she notices she nearly crumpled the essays she’d just rescued from her spilled tea. “Goddess, I’m tired,” she complains.
When he lets go of her hand she misses its warmth, although he tugs a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and starts mopping up the tea. “It’s late,” he observes. “You should sleep.”
“But I have all these essays to score!” Annette says, waving the stack around. She sets them down and smooths the top one as best as she can; they’re salvageable, she thinks, as the writing is still legible (and if not the student’s penmanship is at fault), though she hopes their writers won’t mind the wrinkles when she returns them. “I still have”—she flips through them, her tongue poking out—”ten more to read? Then I can go to bed.”
Felix sighs. “Annette, it’s almost midnight.”
“Then you go to bed,” she tells him without looking up.
It’s almost funny how often they’ve had this conversation - or quarrel - even in their own days as students, when Felix sometimes found her in the library nearly nodding off into her notes. Nostalgia creeps over her, as bitter as it is sweet, and not for the first time Annette wonders why he bothers.
They often spend evenings like this, with her scoring essays or exams or preparing future lessons and with him sitting across from her with a book it takes him ages to read or a sword he polishes until it reflects his face when he raises it. Sometimes she’ll sing and he’ll listen, though more often she’ll hum while focusing on her own work, and sometimes they’ll talk about one thing or another.
Other nights, when Felix is absent, Annette knows he’s at the training grounds instead, while it’s past student curfew and he’s alone and he doesn’t want even her to disturb him. Those nights are the loneliest, when she has to stop herself from searching him out and reassuring herself he hasn’t fled Garreg Mach yet.
She tries to read through another essay, but the words slip into her mind without it absorbing anything. Maybe Felix is right, she supposes, so she ties the unmarked essays into a bundle and tucks them into a desk drawer.
Felix glances up at the sound of it shutting. The corner of his mouth lifts, and he says, “Off to sleep?”
She hums, reluctant to concede just yet, and folds her hands into her lap. She licks her lips, troubled, and asks, “Do you…um, do you regret it?”
She wonders if she imagines the dark cloud that seems to fall over his face, but then his eyes flick over to her. “Do I regret what?”
Annette’s heart races as she searches for the words, suddenly unsure of herself, of what she wants - or needs - to know, if she deserves to. They’ve been through so much together and apart since their own school days, between the war and the moons leading up to it and the moons after; yet she can’t help fearing that in this question she crosses an invisible line drawn between them.
One she drew herself.
Still she plows on, “Do you regret coming here, to Garreg Mach?” Her gaze slips to him in time to see his eyes widening, and she hurriedly adds, “You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to! I, um, I don’t even know if I want—”
“No,” he says, easily, simply, without smiling. Annette’s breath catches when he fixes his eyes on her, when he continues, “If there’s one thing I don’t regret, it’s coming here with—it’s coming here.”
A breath escapes her, and the tension eases from her shoulders. She can’t help smiling, but she hopes the classroom, lit with only a few candles and lamplight spilling in through a window, is dark enough to conceal the blush she doesn’t doubt creeps over her face.
As they do most nights, they walk back to the faculty dormitory together. Felix’s usual pace is brisk, always a man on one mission or another (even if that mission is eating breakfast at the dining hall), but he slows for her. The lanterns lining the path cast their shadows in every direction, and to Annette it almost looks as if they’re dancing. It’s a few months till Ethereal Moon, she realizes, and vaguely she wonders if the Officers’ Academy will still hold the ball.
They walk in silence, the only sound the chirping of crickets in shrubs and their footsteps. A yawn splits her jaws, and she stumbles a few paces as tiredness washes over her more intensely than ever.
“Careful,” Felix warns her. His arm wraps around her back, holding her against him. “Did you trip over an invisible barrel?”
Annette scowls even as she sinks into his warmth, unable - and reluctant - to resist its pull. “No,” she retorts. She tries to think of some excuse, because the last thing she wants to do is admit how tired she is. “I was just…thinking.”
“Thinking?” Felix’s grip on her slackens, but he doesn’t pull away. “You’re always thinking; what is it this time?”
“Remember the ball?” she wonders. She looks up at the moon in its last quarter, but still a brilliant white that overpowers the dimmest stars. “You said it was ‘too much merriment’ and a waste of time while there was more to worry about?”
She regrets her words when Felix drops his arm and leaves her bereft of his heat. “I remember,” he says. “What of it?”
She pinches her lip between her teeth. “Well…nothing so, um, insane is happening now,” she explains. “Do you think it would be such a waste this year?”
Felix shrugs. “I suppose not,” he says, “though I still think it’s unnecessary.”
“Oh, come on!” she chides him. On impulse she grabs his hands in both of hers and, emboldened when he doesn’t immediately yank them away, swings them. “There’d be food, and music, and dancing!” She steps towards him, grinning. “Think of all the students that would be dying to dance with you, Felix.”
He snorts, though she dares to think there’s a trace of amusement on his face. “With me?” He rolls his eyes. “They’re all afraid of me, and if one of them is bold enough to ask, they’d be better off using that boldness to challenge me to spar.” His face falls then, and that bare flicker of something like laughter fades. “But you…”
“But me?” Her brow furrows, even deeper when his hand reaches up. She freezes as Felix seems to consider something, his eyes flicking from his raised hand to her face.
She’s still holding onto his other hand, Annette realizes. Her heart skips a beat, and he stands so close and his face drifts even closer
She tilts her head back without thinking, only knowing that his touch, even something as simple as their fingers tangled together, excites her almost as much as it grounds her and reminds her that he’s here, he’s with her, and he never left her behind.
Felix’s eyes are dark, but she can still see that sliver of copper iris. The darkness dulls his sharp features, and his lips—
Her eyelids flutter shut when his breath washes over her face, when all she can hear is her heartbeat in her ears and her own shallow breathing. Something lighter than a feather - his hand - brushes her cheek.
He touches her so hesitantly it makes her chest hurt. She tightens her grip on his fingers, hoping to reassure him, to spur him to narrow this awful distance between them.
A twig snaps.
Annette gasps as if someone doused her with a bucket of melted snow, her eyes flying open. Felix lets her go and steps away from her, his hand falling to the hilt of the sword he still insists on carrying as he scans the shadowy hedges surrounding them, his eyes wide and startled.
His arm flies out to shield her - as if she doesn’t have a Wind spell already humming at her fingertips - when a figure emerges from the bushes, stumbling along in an unsteady gait. Robes flap about them, and the silhouette coalesces into something more solid as they approach.
Manuela, her hair slightly disheveled, squints at them. “Oh,” she says, and Annette suspects she’s only just returned from a late night at the tavern or with some beau. “Good, it’s only you two.” She straightens a little and straightens her robes. “I thought maybe students out after curfew or, worse, Seteth.”
“No,” Annette offers her. She steps around Felix - who for some bizarre reason still stands between her and Manuela - and towards her. “Do you need someone to walk you back to your quarters, Manuela?”
(It still feels odd, sometimes, addressing one of her past teachers by her given name.)
“Annette—”
“No, no thank you, Annette,” Manuela says. She offers them a smile that looks a little strained. “I’m quite used to this late-night walk, and I never meant to interrupt you and Felix’s…evening plans.” Her gaze flicks between them.
Inebriated she may be, but there’s still something sharp and insinuating in her eyes and her words. Annette’s face warms, and she stutters, “O-oh, all right then. Good night, Manuela. I’ll see you at the faculty meeting tomorrow.”
“Assuming I don’t sleep through it…” She waves at them before continuing on her way. A few moments later, a door shuts, the sign that Maneula’s finally found her quarters.
It’s a sign that Annette ought to be heeding too. She toys with the strap of her bag, unable to look at Felix in that instant. The ghost of his touch lingers on her hand, on her face, and she isn’t sure if she wants to laugh with glee or cry with despair.
“I, um, good night!” she manages to eke out, though she winces when her voice pitches higher.
“But—”
“My room is right there, Felix.” She gestures to it, just a few paces away, and plasters a smile onto her face. “Thank you for the escort, but I think I’ll survive on my own from here.”
His brow furrows, and it hurts to think she might be the reason, but before she can backtrack, he sighs and says, “All right. Watch out for those invisible barrels.”
Annette scoffs. “Villain,” she grumbles, but the normality of his teasing loosens the spring coiled in her chest.
It compresses again once she’s alone behind her closed door. Her hands tremble as she stares at her face dimly reflected in her small mirror, her heart racing while her mind replays the moment Felix almost kissed her.
The weather cools as the season changes, from the heat of summer to the chill of autumn to the creeping winter that can’t compare to winters endured in what was once Faerghus. Frost still tips the grass in the morning, but it melts away as the sun rises.
On her morning walks Annette clutches her cloak a little closer. Her breath mists out in front of her, and she finds herself retreating into the greenhouse despite the heavy air within. At least it’s warm, she thinks, though the rows of flowers and vegetables are a little barren this time of year.
Despite the cold, a festive atmosphere hangs over Garreg Mach. As she predicted (and hoped) the once-annual ball is tonight, and though Annette has no illusions that something, well, magical will happen, she can’t help looking forward to it.
(At least there’s no cloud of hostility this time.)
The prospect fills her with anticipation, and she greets everyone more cheerfully than she might otherwise. Students and faculty alike enjoy the extra day of rest, and the academy grounds are quieter than usual at this time of day.
She’s just busied herself with a watering can and humming her favorite gardening song when the greenhouse door rattles in its frame. She pays it no mind except to quiet her humming, expecting the greenhouse keeper or maybe a student arriving to complete their chores, but instead a familiar voice wonders, “Why did you stop singing?”
Annette jumps, her heart jumping with her, and spins around. “Felix!” She fumbles for the watering can, but it still slips from her grasp and falls to the ground, spilling its contents and soaking the hem of her cloak.
She stares at it and sighs, wondering what she did to offend it (other than dropping it).
She rests her hands on her hips and glares up at Felix. “Look what you did! I dropped the watering can!”
“That sounds like something you did,” he notes with infuriating calmness.
“Thanks to you,” she retorts. She bends to rescue the can from its puddle and lifts her cloak and dress when the rows of feeble plants prove too crowded for her to side-step. She stores the can back in the cupboard, deciding she’s done enough watering for the day, and glances over at Felix. “What are you up to here anyway? It’s not like I was singing, and it looks like you just finished training.”
He’s dressed in his training gear, the light breeches and shirt and simple leather pauldron with a sword dangling from his hip and his hair tied back (though that’s how he usually wears it). He probably smells of sweat and the oil he uses to clean his weapons, and dirt streaks his cheek. Annette for a moment entertains the fantasy of wiping it away with a handkerchief.
“I was going to the bathhouse,” he tells her, disrupting the image in her head. “I saw you walking in here, that’s all.”
“Oh, and you just wanted to say good morning?”
Felix shifts his feet then, his gaze drifting around the greenhouse without landing on her, visibly uncomfortable. “Something like that.”
Annette is terribly - wonderfully - reminded of a scene from not so long ago, of a red-faced Felix caught eavesdropping and her own cheeks warming to mirror his. An alien giddiness filled her then, as flattered by his attention as she was stunned by his sudden vulnerability, but now bitterness taints the memory.
The air in the greenhouse, thick as always, threatens to stifle her now that she still can’t stop replaying that night outside the faculty dormitories in her head.
“Well, I’m off to, um, write to Mercie before I prepare for the ball,” she announces.
He doesn’t call her on her feeble excuse, though he knows her well enough to recognize it, she’s sure. But his face falls even as he steps aside to let her out of the greenhouse’s one and only door. “I’ll see you later?” he says, so cautiously it tugs on something in her gut. “The ball will be odious enough without…”
Annette smiles, relieved she doesn’t have to force it. “Yes, you’ll see me,” she promises, “so long as you dance with me too. You never did before either, and you did make me drop the watering can just now, so you owe me.”
Felix rolls his eyes but agrees, “Fair enough.”
His fingers brush her arm, sending a wave of heat through her skin, but she tells herself the touch can’t be deliberate.
The ball commences without issue. Annette splits her time between making sure no student causes trouble - Seteth insisted - and chatting with them and her colleagues. A few students are bold enough to ask her to dance, and though she itches with unspent energy, she declines their invitations. She allows Linhardt a dance though, if only because he concedes it’ll help keep him awake until he can make an excuse to leave.
He’s a better lead than she expected and, unlike Caspar from years ago, never treads on her toes. However, also unlike Caspar, he’s not much fun as a partner…and he’s not the partner she wants tonight either.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Linhardt says by way of starting a conversation as they step in time with the music.
“Does your Crest allow you to read minds?” Annette can’t help her tartness; Linhardt tends to aggravate her whether he means it or not.
“No, of course not,” he says, oblivious to her sarcasm, “but I think after working together I know you reasonably well enough to make an educated guess.”
Annette, too busy scanning the edges of the reception hall in search of someone else over his shoulder, only hums in response.
“You’re either thinking that I’m a better dancer than you expected,” Linhardt explains, “or that you’d rather be dancing with anyone else.”
At last she looks up at him, a frown on her face. “Then why did you ask me to dance?”
“Why did you agree to dance?” he retorts.
“I don’t—I don’t know,” she admits. Her gaze drifts back down as the song winds to an end. “I needed a distraction, and you offered one, so…”
“Well, I won’t keep you any longer,” Linhardt says, “though my offer from the end of the war still stands.”
“Your offer?” Annette’s face heats up, though she’s more annoyed than flustered. “How very generous of you, Linhardt.” In her haste, she forgets to curtsy before storming off.
She busies herself with grabbing a glass of fruity punch, the station manned less than diligently by Manuela. She offers Annette a smile before wondering, “What did Linhardt do this time?”
“Oh, you know, the usual,” she says, sipping from her drink. It’s deliciously sweet but not so cool as to be refreshing. “Every so often he thinks he can, I don’t know, remind me he proposed once and think I’ll change my mind.”
“He proposed, huh?” Manuela leans forward across the table, an air of wistfulness about her. “And you won’t accept?”
“Why would I accept?” Annette demands. “I prefer him as a colleague, or maybe a friend.”
“Surely you at least told him you’re already…”
“Already what?” Annette prompts, raising an eyebrow. “I’m not already anything.”
Which is a big fat lie, and it weighs on her every day she has to lay eyes on Felix and remember him calling himself her captive in the greenhouse and how he froze when she begged him not to leave and his quiet bereavement and how he so often sought her company and that night a few moons ago when—
“Annette?”
The way Felix says her name in even the most innocuous of circumstances never fails to make her breath catch, which frustrates her more than anything. Still she glances at him, standing nearby in his formal jacket and trousers but with his hair tied up just like always.
For a moment she freezes and remembers what it was like seeing him for the first time in five years, less like a woman reuniting with a lost love and more like a youth noticing his change from the boy to a man.
“What?” she says, irritated he caught her thinking so intently of him, as if he knows what he’s done.
He blinks at her, and Annette feels some shame for her tone. “You wanted to dance,” he reminds her, “or have you changed your mind?”
Some petty part of her is tempted to say she has, but Felix offers his hand and, Annette knows, she’s always been weak to him, as much a captive as he claimed himself, no matter how little she wants to admit it.
She slips her hand into his and lets him tug her away from Manuela’s questions and the punch bowl. A smile finally makes its way onto her face, and it only grows wider when his hand rests on her waist and he pulls her a little closer.
His highborn upbringing shows in how he dances. He stands stiffly at first - because noble birth or not, it’s still Felix - but relaxes as the music winds on. He’s graceful too, Annette thinks, just like he is when it’s a sword in his hand rather than her own hand.
“You’re a good dancer, Felix,” she tells him. She smooths down an invisible wrinkle on his shoulder, and when he glances sideways at the motion, she flushes. “I hope I don’t step on your toes now.”
“I’m unpracticed,” Felix says, though pink dusts his cheeks at her compliment. “I haven’t danced in…” His nose wrinkles, and he admits, “I can’t remember the last time I danced.”
Annette laughs and says, “Well, I can. A few minutes before you found me, actually!” Distantly she wonders if he saw her dancing with Linhardt, if he felt anything if he did.
He frowns. “With…whom?”
So maybe he didn’t see. “With Linhardt,” she says. “He’s fair enough, but I think you’re better.”
“O-oh.” Felix’s grip on her hand tightens, and he pulls her a little closer than the dance demands. His breath warms her forehead, and her heart skips a beat when she realizes they haven’t stood so close since that night outside the faculty dormitory.
It’s silly, she thinks, how much she can miss him though he’s right here in front of her, in her arms.
It begins as a routine end-of-month mission with her students. A Demonic Beast, starving with the winter leaving its usual hunting grounds with such slim pickings, descended from the mountains to harass a village some leagues from Garreg Mach. Seteth, acknowledging that a single Beast posed little danger to supervised trainees, saw fit to send Annette’s class to deal with it.
But predators are at their most dangerous when desperate, and this Demonic Beast wasn’t so alone.
The second giant bird swoops from the sky, its great flapping wings whipping up a gale that stirs up a cloud of dust. Annette coughs as dirt bites at her skin, and behind her her students yelp in alarm as they try to stand their ground.
A pattern of a sigil glows under her feet as she summons her own Wind to rival the Beast’s. They clash violently, its force nearly knocking her off her feet.
“Professor!” a student - Lute, she thinks - shouts.
“Stay back!” Annette warns her, holding her arm out. “Neimi, we need to—where’s Neimi?” She spins around, scanning her standing, exhausted students with their weapons and arms drooping, and doesn’t find the one she’s looking for.
“She passed out,” Brady explains. Dirt streaks his gray priest’s robes, and he looks more exhausted than the rest. “We dragged her away, but—”
“Go stay with her!” she tell hims. “Everyone else, on your—”
“Professor!”
Something slashes at her back. Her robes tear, and her skin—
Pain lances up her back, as sharp as the Beast’s wicked talon. Annette gasps and lashes out against it, but with her heartbeat in her back and her pulse in her ears nearly blotting out an unholy screech, she can’t concentrate enough to muster anything more powerful than Wind.
Excalibur, she thinks as the Wind breaks uselessly against it, only serving to anger it. Winged Beasts are weak to a well-placed arrow, but while her archer is absent then a spell will do.
The air stirs at her feet, circling her as she siphons it into a gust, the circle of glyphs before her aglow with the same energy she draws from within herself - the same energy seeping from the gap in her back. She grits her teeth against the pain, concentrating on the Beast and on protecting her students.
She unleashes Excalibur, the blast of air strong enough it stuns the Beast. Its wings falter, and it falls with a terrified screech that sends a primal shiver up Annette’s spine.
On its way down it crushes a wooden shed. It lies there, taloned feet and feathered wings twitching. Annette, after one last order to her students to stay put, approaches it warily, waiting for it to dissolve into smoke and stone.
Her head spins after unleashing the most powerful spell in her repertoire, and probably thanks to the blood seeping from the wound in her back. She doesn’t know how deep it is, only that the skin on her back stings at the slightest tug.
But the Beast still lies there. One last Wind spell should finish it, feeble as it looks, and she has the energy left for that much. She raises her arms, preparing a circle anew.
The Beast stands faster than she weaves her spell. A gasp escapes her, and its red eye, malevolent and so cunning it freezes her to the spot, fixes on her.
Was it once a man or woman too? Annette wonders idly. She remembers her first mission with the Black Eagles, remembers Miklan Gautier clutching the Lance of Ruin so tightly she wondered if he would - if he even could - snap it in half, remembers the black cloud oozing from the Crest Stone in the Lance’s shaft before it consumed him. With this Beast’s eye on her now, she can imagine another awful, unfortunate person’s intelligence lies behind it.
Annette hesitates.
The Beast lunges with its great beak.
Thunder crackles, and the air stinks of lightning before a single, white-hot bolt strikes the Beast’s breast. It recoils as it oozes smoke before falling, and this time it’s only seconds until its body is no more.
Annette’s hair stands on end as she spins around to find Felix standing there, Thoron sigil fading between them but his arm still outstretched. His eyes, sharp and angry, drift from the shed the Beast crushed beneath its weight to her.
“Felix,” she mumbles, too low for him to hear, although perhaps he does, for in the next heartbeat he shakes his head as if a cloud fell over him. His gaze lingers on her, intent, as he strides towards her as purposefully as he ever approached an enemy in battle. It makes her heart skip a beat, or maybe it’s just the intensity in his eyes. She offers him a smile, ready to reassure him she’s all right, it’s just a scratch, or maybe to thank him for helping her finish the Beast, but—
He kisses her.
Annette freezes as he cups either side of her face, his hands somehow rough and gentle at the same time. Her heart pounds in her ears and heat rushes to her cheeks as her mind - buzzing with the adrenaline of battle or his Thoron spell or both - struggles to comprehend what’s happening.
Felix is kissing her, a little haphazardly, his lips pressed against hers. The knot perpetually coiled in her chest while around him loosens as she touches his jaw and melts into him.
Finally, a part of her exults. She feels his fear of losing her as if it’s her own - and it is her own, as she’s always feared - still fears - losing him. Her own emotions threaten to overwhelm her and take over, spurred closer to the surface with every brush of his lips on hers or his fingers in her hair.
When he pulls away, a smile pushes at her lips, though her head spins with giddiness. Felix’s touch is gentler than the kiss, and he smooths her sweaty hair away from her cheeks, his gaze scanning her face, before he wonders, “Are you all right?”
“Better now that—”
“Professor Dominic!”
Annette jumps away from Felix, her heart leaping into her throat as she turns in the direction of her name. Lute jogs towards them, her face red with exertion, but her sword, at least, is sheathed at her side. She pauses in front of them and bends over while gasping for breath.
“You need more conditioning if you’re out of breath from that short run,” Felix scolds her.
Annette jabs him with her elbow, but Lute, her ears tinted pink, says, “S-sorry, Professor Amiti. I’ll train harder from now on.”
“As you should.” Felix rolls his eyes and glances over his shoulder towards where the Beast dissolved into smoke. “All of you need it if you want to survive fights like these.”
“Felix…” Annette warns him, but he ignores her. His teaching style isn’t like hers, but she knows he cares about his students the same, in his own…harsher way. To Lute, she says, “What’s wrong? Please don’t tell me there’s another Beast…”
“No, no.” Lute straightens, the redness in her face almost gone. “Captain Rangeld sent me to make sure you and Professor Amiti are all right.” Her eyes flick from her to Felix.
“By yourself?” Felix demands. “What was he thinking? What if there was another Beast lurking about?”
“Um…” Lute shuffles her feet, obviously awkward at the turn of conversation.
Annette rested her hand on his elbow. “It’s fine,” she reassures Lute. “We’ll rejoin everyone else. Is Neimi all right?”
“She woke up,” she tells her, “but I’m not sure she’ll be able to walk back to the Monastery. Brady thinks she twisted her ankle when she fell, and he doesn’t know how to set it.”
Annette sighs, but she and Felix follow Lute back to their students and the Knights of Seiros that, along with him, came to their aid. She takes account of everyone, helping Brady and a priest with the Knights patch up what injuries they can - thankfully none severe - while tuning out Felix berating Alois for allowing a student to go off alone when another Beast could’ve attacked. Alois, at least, takes it in stride, until he asks, “Annette, what’s happened to you?”
“Huh?” Annette straightens from where she tends to a scrape on one of her student’s arms. Her hands glow with white magic, but it fades when she feels the heat of Felix’s gaze on her. “What?”
“You’re wounded.” Felix’s hand rests on her shoulder, holding her in place, and when she glances at him he’s scrutinizing the tear in her robes…and on her skin.
“It’s nothing,” Annette lies. “I barely even feel it anymore!”
“You”—Felix points at the priest that came with the Knights—”she needs healing.”
“Uh, right,” says the priest.
“No, students first,” Annette insists. “I can at least wait for Manuela to see to it when we return to the Monastery.”
“Annette,” Felix says, turning his piercing gaze onto her - it’s enough her jaws snap shut with a click. “Don’t be a fool. Your health is important too.”
For some reason, the way he says it sets her face aflame. Maybe it’s because she can still feel the ghost of his lips on hers, or maybe his hand is still on her shoulder, but she finds herself nodding in agreement even as she glances away.
The priest mends her wound, though blood still stains her torn robes. As they trek back to the Monastery - after the village elder thanks them for intervening and Alois pays him for damages - Felix carries an ailing Neimi. Her eyes shine with unshed tears even as a few slide down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry, Professor,” she tells Annette in the smallest voice she’s ever heard. “I-I failed when y-you needed me, and when y-you were counting on me, a-and—”
“It’s not your fault,” Annette reassures her, smiling, at the same time Felix snaps, “Then learn from your mistakes.”
“Y-yes, sir,” says Neimi.
Annette crosses her arms and scowls at Felix, but when he doesn’t bother looking in her direction - and Neimi seems no less upset than before - she lets it go.
But she can’t let go of his kiss, not even when he refuses to look at her the entire way back, and not when the knot in her chest tightens more than ever.
Lone Moon wanes on, drawing ever closer to graduation at the end of the month. Garreg Mach buzzes with an expectant energy as distracted and excited students submit final (and rather lackluster) essays and sit one last certification exam.
Annette muses that it’ll be her first graduation at the Officers’ Academy as she missed her own thanks to the old Adrestian Empire declaring war on the Church of Seiros (though she still officially graduated and can prove it thanks to a very belated certificate with the Archbishop’s seal). So much has changed since then, not least of which is the very face of Fodlan. But united kingdom or not, nobles still do what politicking they will, and her uncle is no exception.
The letter from Baron Dominic lingers on her mind even a week after she received it by care of Pegasus post. It’s rare her uncle writes her - more often she receives letters from her mother in Dominic territory or from Mercie in Fhirdiad - and it was immediately obvious why he bothered this time.
She has yet to determine how she ought to reply, especially with someone else occupying her thoughts.
The tip of her quill drips ink onto her clean parchment, but she pays it no mind as she glances up at her classroom door. She can’t help the hope that swoops in her chest every time she looks up, though the door remains closed. That bubble of hope pops, and Annette sighs.
She can’t remember the last time Felix sought her out, or the last time they shared a meal. A few weeks ago, she thinks, sometime after the ball in Ethereal Moon, perhaps around his birthday, but not since—
Not since he kissed her.
That would be impossible to forget with the way it haunts her, how in that moment she could almost convince herself that he loved her as she loved him, that they could stop dancing around each other, that her confusion could end. And yet here she sits in a dark, empty classroom, waiting.
Always waiting.
Annette’s so tired of waiting.
She scratches her chin with her quill nub, then swears when ink smudges on her skin. “Ugh!” she groans before tugging her uncle’s letter from the drawer and slamming it shut. Frustration crawls under her flesh, and maybe that’s why she snuffs out her candles and storms out of her classroom.
Her feet lead her to the training grounds, a familiar path she hasn’t walked in a few moons. Her heart races in anticipation of…something, because she knows exactly who she’ll find haunting the grounds so long after dark.
She dodges a student leaving the training grounds, doesn’t even pause when he shrinks away from her mumbling something about it not being past curfew just yet, and strides in, following the sound of wooden weapons clashing.
She halts at the sight before her, of Felix with his arms crossed, appraising two more students mid-spar. The girl with the ax has the upper hand over her lance-wielding opponent. Felix calls out to him, “Fix your stance! What use is being light on your feet if she can knock you down so easily?”
The boy grits his teeth and dodges a heavy blow from her ax. His feet shift, kicking up dust, and he jabs under the girl’s arm to strike her side, only for her to knock his lance away. She’s not as swift, but she makes up for it with blocking his weaker strikes.
It’s a scene Annette’s viewed many times, but something about it seems different now. Maybe it’s because Felix looks more at ease overseeing students than he did when they first began together at Garreg Mach, or maybe it’s because he hasn’t so much as looked at her in the weeks since…since then. Her chest aches watching now. His expression isn’t set in displeasure or in a scowl so much as a flat line, and he’s not afraid to bark at them or scold them for not giving their best.
She once advised him he ought to try being gentler, that his students wouldn’t learn as much from him if they feared him more than they respected him, but maybe she needn’t have worried he’d never settle in.
It brings a smile to her face, and despite their issues - despite the pain of his latest avoidance - relief sweeps over her.
It evaporates when Felix’s gaze drifts past the sparring students to land on her. His eyes widen at the same instant her own chest seizes, and she wonders if maybe this wasn’t her best idea.
But he doesn’t look away when he says, “That’s enough for tonight. Stretch and find a snack before you sleep.”
“But the dining hall is closed by now,” the girl with the ax complains.
“Not my problem,” Felix tells her. He waves them away, ignoring their thanks for the extra tutoring before they replace their training equipment on the rack on the wall and depart.
The air inside the training grounds freezes when their voices fade, when it’s just Annette and Felix facing each other. Her breath catches in her lungs, every word she could think to say to him evaporating.
His eyes scan her face, searching her, before they fall. It hurts so much seeing him now so deliberately distant, but she doesn’t know how to break the silence while her stomach twists and turns as if she’s riding a wyvern spinning through the clouds.
But one thing she’s learned from her first year as a teacher is how to speak her students’ languages, and perhaps inspired by what she just witnessed, she wanders over to the rack of weapons. She hasn’t bothered with an ax in years, and the haft of it feels clumsy and uncomfortable in her hand, its head trying so hard to connect with the packed earth beneath her feet even as she picks it up. Still, she’s determined, so she steels herself and spins around to find Felix watching her with wariness in his gaze.
“Spar with me?” she suggests, trying to smile.
“What?” he says.
“And don’t go easy on me!” Annette adds. She raises the ax and walks down the steps to the center of the grounds until they stand a few paces apart.
Felix’s hand rests on the hilt of his sword, wary of her in the same way he would be of a potential threat. “Annette…”
She hasn’t heard him say her name in so long…she wants him to say it more, but one thing at a time. “What?” She smirks and goads, “You don’t think you can beat me? Is that it?”
He rolls his eyes. “If magic is off-limits, you wouldn’t be much of a challenge.”
“Well, that’s just evil, Felix,” she whines, though he is, unfortunately, correct.
His lip twitches, and it’s the closest thing to a smile she’s seen from him lately that her heart lifts. Still, she steps towards him, and he steps back.
She raises the ax higher and, throwing caution to the wind, runs.
There’s nothing refined about fighting with an ax (not that killing can ever be considered refined), and maybe that’s why Annette prefers magic. Axes are all brute force and heavy blows meant to beat an opponent into submission, with a head so heavy it always threatens to upend her along with it. But she swings it around with all her might, a battle cry torn from her throat.
Felix steps aside, and the force behind her swing jerks her off-balance. Annette stumbles but recovers her footing and raises the ax again, only for Felix’s hand to close around her wrist and raise it over her head.
The ax slips from her grasp and lands with a thud on the ground, but Annette barely registers it, let alone her empty hands, with Felix suddenly so close the scent of leather and his sweat fills her nose. Her breath stutters in her chest and heat rushes to her face, and she’s not sure if the source is her or him, somehow.
“I y-yield,” she says, though it escapes as a sigh. It would be embarrassing, humiliating, if she wanted - needed - to be near him less.
Felix seems breathless too, though he barely exerted himself from what she could tell. His grip on her wrist tightens for a heartbeat before he drops it and all but stumbles backwards from her, raking the loose strands of his hair away from his face. “Y-you got your spar,” he tells her, and how his eyes veer away from her is an obvious dismissal.
Annette’s heart plummets. This isn’t going how she wanted at all, but she refuses to let it lie, to continue as if—as if they don’t mean something to each other.
She snaps, “So I received a letter from my uncle a week ago!”
Felix pauses halfway through turning away from her. He looks at her over his shoulder, a tacit invitation to go on.
Pleased she finally has his attention, she says, “He asked me if I—if he could—if—ugh!” She throws her arms into the air, frustrated as she stumbles over her words like she stumbles over barrels and how her cheeks flame with the humiliation of bringing this up. “Before I reply to him, I need to know something from you, Felix.”
“From…me?” He faces her properly again, and that alone is encouraging even as he wonders, “What could I possibly have to do with your uncle?”
Annette inhales, as if that’ll do anything to steady her pounding heart, before demanding, “What are your intentions towards me?”
“My…intentions?” Felix echoes. He pouts very slightly, and if she wasn’t so insistent on having this conversation she might find it cute. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Annette pulls the letter from her pocket and scans its contents like she scans her lesson notes before instruction. “My uncle wants to arrange a marriage for me,” she admits. “He, well, he already has someone in mind.”
Felix’s eyes widen, and his whole posture shifts, almost compressing like a spring. “Oh,” he says, sounding almost hollow for all the tension visible in his body. “I…see.”
“What?” His lack of reaction frustrates her almost as much as his avoidance. She stuffs the letter back into her pocket and strides towards him. “I-is that really all you have to say, that you see?”
“What else do you want me to say?” Felix wonders with a broad, sweeping gesture that takes in the entire training grounds. “Do you want me to congratulate you? Because I will not.”
“No, I don’t want you to congratulate me!” Annette says, her voice pitching higher alongside her straining temper. “I-I want you to—to give me a good reason to refuse!”
“Why not just tell him you don’t want to m-marry?” Felix suggests. “Is that not the obvious solution?”
Is he really so obtuse? She doesn’t know, but his words both irritate her and make her chest tighten. “Felix…”
“What?” His voice is terse, like any control he has over it is fracturing.
“Why are you avoiding me?” Annette dares to ask. She grips the hem of her blouse, her back stiff while she stares at him, waiting for him to explain himself. “Is it—did I do something?” The prospect frightens her, that she might’ve done something to drive him away, just like—
“No,” Felix denies immediately. He shakes his head, even steps forward. “You didn’t do anything.”
“Then why?” she presses. “Please, Felix, just tell me why you’ve barely looked at me since—since…” She can’t say it, unsure what will happen when she does. Perhaps she imagined it all, some post-battle delirium conjuring a fantasy of Felix kissing her, of that moment of closeness and care, and that speaking it aloud will give him the chance to deny it.
“You—you kissed me,” Annette says at last, when all he gives her is silence. Even now, when it does her less good than usual, her face warms. “Why?”
He doesn’t look at her, and she hates how guarded he looks now after all the times she saw him more vulnerable. “It was—it was just the heat of battle.”
“Oh, of course.” Her shoulders droop. She pushes her hair away from her face and bites back a sigh, but she can’t do anything to dispel the disappointment, the absolute dejection, that weighs her down more than the training ax did. Still, she retorts, “Then it was awfully rude of you to do it with no intention of doing it again! To think, we’ve fought together so many times, and you never kissed me before.” She snorts and rolls her eyes before deciding, “I’m not sure I believe you, Felix.”
“Believe what you like,” he tells her. He turns around, already walking up the steps towards the training grounds’ exit.
His dismissal cuts deep like he drove his sword through her chest instead, but Annette’s nothing if not stubborn. She refuses to let this rest without her answers.
“I-I dared to hope that there was…something between us,” Annette calls after him, hoping he doesn’t hear the tremor in her voice, “but I didn’t want to push you in case I was wrong, or in case it made you want to leave after all.”
Felix spins around. “I’d never—”
“But then you kissed me,” she continues with a hiss of frustration. A lump sticks in her throat, and she curses herself for losing her composure so quickly. “I-I thought that maybe—well, does it even matter what I thought anymore?”
He says nothing for a long moment, his face angled towards the ground and his jaw clenched. Annette stands there, waiting, her heart thumping painfully against her ribs.
Then Felix all but murmurs, “You deserve better.”
Her breath catches. “What?”
He sighs, and his eyes slip shut. “I don’t have anything to offer you,” he explains in a low voice. “I’m just a sword you helped re-purpose as a teacher, and I’m not even very good at that.”
“Felix…”
“I can’t make you happy, Annette,” he says. “Your feelings are wasted on me.”
“But you do,” she insists, though she’s sure her itching nose and burning eyes and how absolutely awfully her stomach flips put the lie in her words. She inches closer to him, encouraged when he makes no more move to leave.
Felix frowns, his eyebrows drawn together, and somehow he manages to look more miserable than she feels. “You’re not happy now.”
“And I haven’t been for the last few weeks!” she retorts. “Thanks to you, you playing with my feelings, you—you scoundrel!”
He snorts and scoffs, “That’s a new one.”
Annette rolls her eyes. “That’s not the point. Y-you do make me happy, Felix,” she says. “I just—I want to know if I make you happy too.”
He glances down, at the earth between their feet and their shadows, barely touching. Annette’s nearly at the base of the steps, and she can be at his side in a heartbeat.
“You—you do,” Felix admits. His boots scuff against the ground as he seems to search for what to say. “More than I deserve. I’m sorry.”
“Enough of that…deserving,” Annette tells him, all in a rush before he can turn and make good on his unspoken promise to flee the training grounds. “Do you think I deserve some random knight my uncle’s picked out for me and who might think teaching is an unworthy profession for his wife?” She narrows the distance between them, though she has to look up even higher than usual to see his face. “Do you, Felix?”
His lips press together, pain written all over his face. “Don’t ask me anything like that,” he says. “I don’t want to lie to you.”
“Then don’t!” Annette treads up the steps, in a rush to reach him, to hold onto some part of him and convince him that she wants him with actions if words won’t work. But she misjudges the distance, and her foot falls through the air thinking there’s one last step.
Her heart jumps in her throat, a gasp torn from her. Her hands fly out to brace herself against the ground.
Felix catches her first. She lands against him with an oof, his chest warm and solid under his shirt, his arms secure around her waist. Her heartbeat stutters, as off-beat as any of her songs when she realizes he’s eavesdropping, and her hands close around his arms as she rights herself.
When Annette looks up, Felix looks down. His jaw twitches, a manifestation of some internal conflict she’s not privy to, but he doesn’t let her go or look too far away.
“Maybe I do deserve better,” she mumbles, because with him so close she needn’t raise her voice, “but so do you.” She rests her hand on his cheek, the barest hint of stubble tickling her palm.
Felix closes his eyes and leans into her touch, and his grip on her tightens. “I don’t know if I believe you.”
“Too bad,” Annette says, “but I’ll make you believe me”—her breath catches and her heart stutters on these words she’s never spoken aloud, not even to the mirror—”because I love you and—and I’ll remind you that you’re being f-foolish as often as you need me to!”
“Annette…” His eyes slide open, intent on her face, and though he still frowns, his cheeks flush a faint pink. His fingertip brushes a loose strand of hair away from her forehead, and Annette can’t breathe.
“If I k-kiss you, will you just…avoid me again?” she wonders, her voice smaller than she’d like. But the prospect scares her; she doesn’t know how long she can suffer him acting like they’re strangers when she knows how it feels for him to hold her like this.
He shakes his head then, and that action alone loosens any tightness lingering in her chest. “No,” he says. “No.” He cups her face, like he did the first time he kissed her, and his warm breath sweeps over her lips. “Never again,” he promises. “I’m still your—still your captive, aren’t I?”
A smile pushes up her mouth, and she’s sure the tears that prick at her eyes aren’t unhappy. Her fingers close around his wrists, holding him there, and she says, “Then you’d better not get far.”
Annette doesn’t know who moves first, only that in one moment distance still lingers between them, and in the next his lips mold onto hers. A sigh escapes her, of relief or of pleasure, and she winds her arms around Felix’s neck to tug him closer as one of his slides into her hair.
Finally, a part of her thinks all over again, reveling in the feeling and the taste of him like she couldn’t last time. Heat fills her, and when Felix pulls away, his chest brushing against hers with every sharp breath he takes, she grins up at him.
“I missed you,” he admits in a low voice that makes her toes curl in her shoes. His forehead falls against hers, his eyes shut again, but the slightest hint of a smile crosses his face. “You, your voice—”
Annette snorts, more from amusement than any real irritation.
“—your company.” He kisses the corner of her mouth. “Let’s…start making up for it?”
She nods - right now she’s almost certain she’d agree to anything short of murder if he asks, and even that can be up for negotiation - before frowning slightly and, hesitantly, saying, “Tell me that you love me first? Please, Felix?”
His hand holds her jaw, the tip of his thumb skirting under her eye. His own gaze is low, almost contemplative, as he murmurs, “I do, I…love you.”
They kiss again, and again - until Annette forgets her uncle’s letter and the last months of heartache, until they finally find the wherewithal to leave the training grounds and wander towards the faculty dormitories with her hand warm and secure in his, the waning Lone Moon their only witness.