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The nights were longer in Garreg Mach in the winter than in Enbarr. The monastery was far north of Enbarr, far enough that Edelgard should have expected, but no, she had not expected it at all. Certainly, Garreg Mach was much further north of Brigid than it was Enbarr. If anyone had the right to complain about how long the winter nights were, it was Petra, and yet, though she had remarked upon it once or twice, she had never complained about it, not really. Spring and summer would return to Fódlan, and the nights would shorten with them to allow the sun to give greater nourishment to the farmers’ fields. It was a matter of waiting.
(Edelgard had never fared well just waiting for something to happen. Passivity did not suit her, not even when it related to something she had no choice but the wait for. But this was part of being emperor, was it not? Certain indulgences were denied her, and impatience not least among them.)
The nights were darker in Garreg Mach than in Enbarr. Even five years ago, when this place was a stronghold of the Church, such was the case. The monastery was a truly massive structure, and the village located within its walls was not exactly small, but it was dwarfed a hundred times over by Enbarr, a city that never truly laid its head down to rest, a city that was always shining bright, no matter the time of night. In Garreg Mach, even in day there were deep shadows, and at night, a darkness almost suffocating in its intensity.
Not the darkness of a dungeon, at least. Not the dank, stale dark of a place that never saw the sun. Here, at least, the breeze touched Edelgard’s face like an old friend, and the stars shone down with, if not genuine love, then not with cold indifference.
Cold.
Edelgard sighed, almost chuckling as she drew her cloak closer about her. What did she expect, reminding herself of it?
The guards stationed throughout the monastery straightened up as Edelgard passed them by, though they did not speak, a fact Edelgard was grateful for. Perhaps it was less than proper for one in her position, but though she did not often wander the monastery terribly often, it seemed that she did so often enough that her presence in the halls no longer provoked questions regarding potential crises or her safety when walking alone. So much the better. Edelgard knew few who wandered their homes—or residences, or bases, and she’d had plenty experience of all three—at night with any desire to be shadowed by a complement of guards. Even Hubert had long since given up complaining, and just ordered the guards to leave her be.
Tonight, Edelgard found herself heading towards the dining hall. It was foolish, maybe even selfish, for her to seek comfort from food, when they still had so little of it that the rationed meals left one so utterly unsatisfied. Maybe she wouldn’t eat anything. Maybe she would sit in the quiet stillness of a place that carried good memories, and find peace from that. Certainly, she was not looking to find warmth; the hour was not such that one would expect to find the cooks awake and the ovens hot.
As Edelgard walked the hedge-lined path from the reception hall to the dining hall, she was struck with a nostalgia so overwhelming she stopped for a moment, just to drink it in. When she had first returned here, the bushes were so overgrown with neglect that groups of people could not traverse the paths except by walking single-file. Now, they had been cut back to the size they were when Edelgard had attended the Officer’s Academy, and if she stood still in the cold night, she could almost imagine that she was a student here again, and that the river of blood she waded through to reach her goal was still a future phantom.
The image was dispelled quickly enough. Edelgard could not blind herself to the construction scaffolding that adorned every building on the monastery grounds. She could not blind herself to anything. She continued on.
What Edelgard had expected was to find the dining hall utterly dark. It was some time after midnight, but really, it was not late enough for the cooks to be up and about. The torches and lamps could not be left burning when the dining hall was empty; the last thing they needed was a fire breaking out and destroying their supply of food. She expected darkness.
What Edelgard saw instead, far off in the corner of the hall furthest from the door she had entered by, was the soft, diffused golden glow of a glass lantern.
Edelgard almost called out for Hubert—how many times now had she stumbled upon him burning the midnight oil, working long after all but the night watch had gone to bed?—before remembering that Hubert typically burned the midnight oil in the library. The person sitting by that lantern looked up. Edelgard caught sight of pale hair, and her mind went next to Lysithea. But no. Lysithea wouldn’t wander the monastery alone at this time of night for love or money.
Silence. The light was too faint to make things out clearly, but whoever it was sitting at that table, far off down the hall, they were looking at her.
Edelgard took a step forward, ready to call out for whoever it was to identify themselves, but then, a smell wafted over to greet her in that person’s place. Apple, mixed with cinnamon, and an undertone of something she thought might have been turmeric.
A small smile curled Edelgard’s lips. She should have known who it was the moment she was met with silence. That smell just clinched it.
“Is it tea, or cider?” Edelgard asked, as soon as she had drawn near enough to hear any response Melusine might care to give.
“Tea,” Melusine murmured, gesturing at the plain white porcelain teapot Edelgard had been too far away to see before. “I don’t like alcohol.” She regarded Edelgard with eyes that had always been piercing, even when they had been slate blue, rather than the vivid green of one transformed (One tampered with, Edelgard thought, with the same clench of the jaw that came when she looked at Lysithea’s bone-white hair). “I imagine you don’t, either.”
“Quite right.” Edelgard nodded crisply as she sat down opposite Melusine at the table. “It’s far too bitter for my tastes.” She laughed ruefully, bringing a hand up to her brow. “Ferdinand had taken to smuggling me fruit juice at banquets or any other functions in Enbarr where wine would be drunk.”
“That’s kind of him.”
Another laugh, softer than it was rueful. “It had spared me the headaches I get when drinking alcohol, but Ferdinand had expressed a desire to save ‘the dignity of the throne’ from any drunken mishaps, so I’m not certain ‘kind’ is quite the word for it.”
There came a barely perceptible twitch of Melusine’s lips. “Whatever works?”
“For now,” Edelgard agreed.
Perhaps he had grown on her a bit, these past nearly six years. Edelgard had gone out of her way to interact with Ferdinand as little as possible before they entered the Officers Academy, though such was not always easily accomplished when dealing with a boy who fancied himself her rival. He was not his father. Ferdinand would have a long trip downhill to make before he began to resemble his father in any real sense. Perhaps he had grown on her a bit more than she cared to admit.
Her eyes drifted down to the table, and Edelgard saw with a jolt that in addition to a teacup filled with apple tea, there were several more empty teacups and saucers stacked neatly off to the side. “Are you expecting someone? If so, I do not wish to intrude.”
Melusine shook her head. “No one in particular.” She frowned down into her teacup, and murmured, almost dreamily, “I just had a feeling that someone else would be by.” Her eyes drifted to the pot. “Do you want some?”
Edelgard was uncertain as to whether it was relief or the aroma of the tea that spurred her on more strongly to give her assent. Steam snaking up from the spout, Melusine poured tea into an empty cup with a practiced grace that Edelgard still could not help but find striking, though she had seen her pour tea in this dining hall many times before. It was never something she expected from a woman who had made her living as a mercenary, though she fought with just the same exacting grace.
“This may not be to your liking,” Melusine warned as she passed the cup over to Edelgard.
“Our milk and sugar can be put to better use than sweetening tea.” Even though Edelgard would have longed for both to sweeten even the sweetest blend. She took a sip, contemplating on the favor. Sure enough, it was not as sweet as she would have liked. But it was hot, a hot drink on a cold night, and that would have been enough even if it was something far more bitter.
They fell into a companionable silence, drinking their tea; Melusine went so far as to pour herself a second cup. As they did so, Edelgard couldn’t help but notice that their teacups did not match, not with the pot, nor the rest stacked up, nor even with each other. The cup Melusine had given Edelgard was a glazed white porcelain with sunflowers painted on. The cup Melusine drank from was a pale green porcelain with darker green vines painted over. The saucers were all plain and unpatterned, in an array of colors that glinted and twinkled in the lantern light.
Tea sets were expensive, especially those of higher-quality porcelain. Dorothea had mentioned once, maybe two years ago, when Edelgard had taken tea with her in a tent near Fort Merceus, that she had spent years amassing her collection. None of the pieces in her set had matched, either, from the rose-printed teapot to her solid black sugar bowl, to one teacup painted gold with little suns around the rim, to another teacup with pale blue sailing ships circling around each other. Even the lids on the teapot, sugar bowl, and creamer did not match the teapot, sugar bowl, or creamer themselves. If you didn’t have a great deal of money at your disposal, you did not buy an entire tea set all at once. Instead, you bought individual pieces, one at a time. A teapot and one or two teacups, to start with. Things like saucers, additional cups, trays, sugar bowls, and creamers could wait until later.
How long had this tea set taken to assemble? Melusine and Jeralt had been excellent mercenaries, so Edelgard doubted they were ever truly at a loss for work or money, but still, Edelgard could imagine them slowly building up the set, one piece at a time. Or perhaps it would have just been Melusine. Edelgard could never be certain, not now (it felt as the most rank indecency to ask questions about the man when he had died at the hands of one of her “allies,” even if they were in practice more the nightmare that had its hooks too entrenched in day to be banished with the sun), but Jeralt had not struck her as much of a tea drinker.
Had Melusine been as picky about which pieces she chose between as she was about which training weapons the strike force used when sparring? Did she have a favorite teacup, and was it the one she drank from now, or one of the ones sitting disused in the stack? Had she always leaned towards fruit blends, or had there been a time when her tastes had run differently?
So many questions, and each new one to arise felt pettier than the last, unequal to the nameless, wordless question that festered in Edelgard’s mind. She regarded Melusine over her raised teacup, drank into the details of her delicately-proportioned, doll-like face, softened and shadowed as they were by the gentle golden light and deep winter shadow.
Is this truly the path you were meant to walk?
Ah, there was the question. Not so wordless or unknown, after all.
Knowing the shape of it did not keep it from carving into her chest like a knife.
“What troubles you?”
She was so quiet. Even when she raised her voice, she was still quiet. Edelgard had always envied Melusine her ability to silence a room just by entering it—not something Edelgard had ever truly been able to accomplish, even as emperor—and she supposed that when you had a talent like that, there wasn’t much need for you to raise your voice. But though Melusine was quiet, so quiet, that voice had a way of getting Edelgard’s attention.
“Do I seem troubled?” Edelgard asked in return, eyebrows raised.
“You’re rarely up and about at this time of night if there isn’t a crisis,” Melusine pointed out. She set her cup down on its saucer with a clink that bespoke slightly more force than necessary. “You can’t sleep?”
“I…” For a moment, Edelgard considered trying to brush aside her concerns. After the moment passed, she dismissed the impulse as futile—and unwanted. She sighed, peering down into her cup, met by the tiny, distorted reflection that stared back up at her. “No, I am afraid I cannot. It’s difficult to find oblivion when thoughts of the future chase me around like the wheeling sun.”
Melusine’s brow furrowed slightly. “Are you afraid?”
“…Yes.” She would never have said as much to anyone else, never allowed herself to falter enough to admit it. She trusted her allies, and she understood that there were certain things she could not allow them to see, her doubts not least among them. Even to Melusine’s trusted face, even to one she knew would never breathe a word of it to another soul, the words were drawn out painstakingly, like blood from something not quite stone. “I wonder, at times, if we will succeed.” She grimaced. “Though she may be but one person, the power of the Immaculate One is not something to be taken lightly.”
And Rhea was utterly without mercy to those she regarded as her enemies. Edelgard sincerely doubted that every single member of the Western Church was complicit in Lord Lonato’s uprising, and she knew there were those who had been uninvolved with the attempted robbery during the Goddess’s Rite of Rebirth. And yet, every single member of the Western Church who had ever been associated with Lonato in any way, anyone who had ever served in the churches identified as “heretical,” had been tracked down and ordered killed, all on Rhea’s orders. Perhaps some had escaped and gone into hiding, but Edelgard doubted they were many.
What did she expect, ruling like this? There were plenty who loved Rhea, for reasons that went beyond blind obedience to the Church. Edelgard could see that; she wasn’t blind. But kindness expressed to individual humans did not excuse the stranglehold placed on humanity as a whole. It was like holding sand in your hand. The more you tightened your grip, the more grains would slip through your fingers, and the time you took to pulverize the escaped grains under your foot drew your attention away from the grains now spilling from your hand.
And what will history make of me? Deposing a tyrant without becoming one yourself was… Edelgard was uncertain that she had succeeded in preventing herself from becoming a tyrant. Her path was paved with tombstones, despised, indifferent, and dear. Blood was the mortar that held it all together. In order to achieve her goals, she had needed the absolute loyalty of her armies, and to that end…
Well.
There had been many who had been persuaded by her words. More than Edelgard had expected, in fact; a pleasant surprise, for once. But others preferred to cling to the world as they knew it, and resented any attempt to erode their power, even if such attempts were for the sake of bettering the world.
Edelgard preferred for Hubert not to act unilaterally. She had reminded him of this, often. But his methods of clearing a path had, at times, proven useful. As had the man who, years ago, stole her uncle’s face.
She could not be rid of Thales, or his underlings. Not now. But at what point did her grudging cooperation with them turn into complicity in their misdeeds?
How would she be remembered?
But that wasn’t the question Edelgard should have been asking herself. This wasn’t about what she wanted, or what she felt she was owed. This was about Fódlan, and Fódlan’s shackles. Glorified or vilified, Edelgard had no right to fret over how she and her works would be remembered.
If she failed, she might be stricken from history altogether.
“There is no foe too great to be defeated,” Melusine intoned, and for a moment, it was like being back in the classroom again, listening to her give a lecture on how best to take stock of an enemy’s weaknesses while engaged in combat. And sure enough, her next words were “You need to determine their weak spot, and press home your advantage as best you can.”
Edelgard laughed in spite of herself. “And then you knocked Ferdinand’s shoulder so hard he fell over.”
Melusine shrugged. “He’s been more careful of his left side in battle since, so I regard it as time well spent.”
Another laugh. “I can never tell if you’re joking. He seems more wary of you coming up on his left side.” Abruptly, though, Edelgard sobered. “It’s not just the clash with Rhea, or…” She paused. There were rats in every wall, and it wouldn’t do to give any rats in these walls too much to chew on. She knew exactly how valuable she was to those who held the rats’ leashes—just valuable enough that they wouldn’t try to kill her for disobedience or impudence until after she had disposed of Rhea for them. That did not mean that her value extended to those she cared for. “Well, I have no intention of trying to fight a war on two fronts.”
For a long time, there was silence, and Edelgard stiffened in her seat, beginning to fear that Melusine hadn’t gotten her meaning, and wondering how she would be able to steer the conversation in another direction without speaking too openly. But then, Melusine nodded, her eyes gleaming with a hard light that seemed to burn with something more intense than any human could muster. “That rarely ends well. If you stretch yourself too thin, you may snap.” She tilted her head slightly to one side, her hair falling over her cheek. “But that’s not all there is.”
“You know me well.” Edelgard tapped the side of her teacup, before just giving in and pouring herself a second cup. The tea wasn’t piping hot anymore, but it was still warm, and the taste left her a little sharper than before. “When our battles end is when the real work begins. The Church, the nobility, the veneration of Crests, all of it is so deeply entrenched in Fódlan that I wouldn’t be surprised if the roots reach all the way down to the center of the earth.” She sighed, hunching her shoulders and setting her hand down on the table. The wood was cold under her skin, rougher than she remembered from five years ago. “It’s the work of a lifetime, maybe even longer, and I dread to think of what will happen after I die, if those who follow me prefer power to reform.”
Melusine raised an eyebrow. “It’s a little early to speak of what happens after you die.”
“Maybe so, but everything that comes before is just as daunting.”
This time, Melusine blinked at her, before resting her hand on the table, close to where Edelgard’s lay. “You don’t have to shoulder the burden alone. There are people here who love you, who would shoulder the burden if you asked.”
She knew that. She knew that they would help her if she asked, even Petra, always longing for Brigid, and Linhardt, eternal layabout that he was. They would help her if asked, without understanding the true weight of what they were volunteering to take on, and that was why she must hesitate. It was not just an abuse of power, but of the friendship between them, and she—
I may not be ruthless enough for my task, after all.
“Would you shoulder it with me?”
Her voice was small as she asked, shrinking with every syllable, and Edelgard hated it. Hated the quaver, hated the uncertainty, hated all that which drove her to ask in the first place.
Melusine narrowed her eyes. It was such a minute change of expression, barely noticeable, but Edelgard still… She noticed these things. Twitch of the fingers, shift of the shoulders, narrowing of the eyes, Edelgard noticed these things. “Yes,” Melusine said firmly. “I chose you once, and I chose you again. Your joy and sorrow, your triumphs and burdens, I chose them. I would not forsake them now.”
“I—“
It was, in that moment, singularly difficult to speak. What Edelgard did instead was ignore the lump in her throat, and take another sip of warm tea.
Melusine did not seem to notice just how close to being completely overcome Edelgard was—or perhaps she did, and her next words were deliberate. “And I would like to see a world like that. I’d like to see a world where the few with power are no longer free to trample the world under their boots. Where women with Crests aren’t in danger of being wed to men who use them as broodmares until they die.”
Edelgard remembered, in ice so cold it burned, her father’s cabinet’s plans for her.
Melusine looked away, to one of the dark windows, and with her next words, Edelgard knew well what she was remembering. “Where a difference of belief is not enough to see you killed.”
After all, there had been violence in the Western Church, but even peaceful heretics were met with the same force. It was hardly unbelievable that Melusine, even having spent the majority of her life without access to an overabundance of reading material, would know about it. The Church had not tried to hide it, after all; there were plenty of books in the library upstairs regarding these crusades.
Sometimes, Edelgard wondered how on earth Rhea never anticipated that she would be challenged like this. If Edelgard had not, someone else would have, sooner or later. How Rhea could have maintained her power all this time, and yet been unwary of challenges to her rule such as this, was utterly beyond her. Edelgard was still having to keep a fairly sharp eye on those members of her father’s cabinet who remained in her cabinet (and contrary to Hubert’s opinion, killing them would not solve their problems), and she had only held the throne for a little over five years.
I must never become so arrogant as to suppose that no one with the might to defeat me could ever emerge.
“Hmm, wouldn’t that be wonderful?” It wouldn’t be easy. The nobles were so fond of their power, the veneration of Crests so deeply entrenched, the Church and all its corruption so deeply tangled in every layer of society, that ripping them all away would be more like cutting off someone’s arm than ripping off a scab. But it needed to be done. It would be done.
And then, Melusine was looking at her again, a faint smile playing around her lips. “You’ve never told me what you want your life to be when this is all over.”
“I told you I would like more time to be idle.”
“That’s not much of a plan, Edelgard,” Melusine retorted. “Though it is just solid enough to be scuppered by enemy action,” she went on musingly.
“Then you concede it’s a plan?” Edelgard fired back, through the smile threatening to stretch into a grin.
“It’s half of a plan,” and her voice was so utterly deadpan, that this time, Edelgard knew she was joking. “Enemy action will scupper half of it.”
“I…” Edelgard let out a huff of a laugh, and her smile slowly died from her face. “I never have formed any real dreams for my life, when all of this is over. Having children never appealed—it was always impressed upon me that bearing heirs would be one of my greatest duties as emperor, but it always seemed that any children I bore would just inherit my troubles. I am not certain of what sort of work I would pursue after stepping down as emperor; it’s vital that my successor not seem as anyone’s puppet, let alone mine, if I truly wish for the reforms to take root, so it would have to be something unrelated to Fódlan’s governance.”
“Is there anything that you want?” Melusine asked softly.
You. “I… Am I entitled to want things for myself?”
“Everyone can want things for themselves. Whether they are granted those things is another matter, but they can always want.”
“Ha!” Edelgard looked away, struggling to keep a jittering noise from escaping her throat. “You’re as reassuring as ever.”
There came a clink of porcelain on wood as Melusine set her teacup aside, on the table rather than one her saucer. The lantern was burning low, and she was half-lost to shadow, her dark houppelande indistinguishable from the dark of night. “Sweet lies are still poison, though they may appeal to your tongue.” She sighed. “I don’t know what you would have me say, Edelgard. But wherever your path may take you, I will walk down it with you.”
“…That’s enough.”