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Byleth thinks the leader of Leicester is a strange man.

She doesn’t understand him. The only one she understands is Jeralt, and Jeralt is simple. He likes liquor and a good meal, and he smiles at Byleth as if he holds the world in his mouth, and he pats her on the head and tells her you did well, kid after every battle. Jeralt is simple because he’s Jeralt. Her caretaker, her father, the one person who’s always been there and who she hopes will always be there. The other mercenaries never really got too close to her; they would come and go. They would share a beer with Jeralt one night and then become a pile of gore and bones the next. It’s always like that.

Jeralt is simple. The King of Leicester is not.

“Why are you smiling?”

“Oh, no reason.”

The King of Leicester asked her to spar with him. And she agreed. And she swept him off his feet and defeated him almost instantly, and Byleth knows when someone is not trying. He was not. And he lies on the ground now, blood smeared on his cheek, the dull, scratched blade of her training sword pressed against his jugular. She straddles his waist, and he smiles at her.

And it’s a smile different from Jeralt’s. Very, very different. Byleth doesn’t understand it; how can smiles be so different? The King of Leicester has been defeated, and there’s blood on his cheek, and she holds a sword to his throat, but he smiles at her. And his eyes are lidded, the deepest shade of emerald she’s ever seen, summer and greenery and life, a forest set on fire. She doesn’t understand it.

“Why are you smiling if I’ve defeated you?”

“It’s an honor to be defeated by the Ashen Demon.”

Byleth has never really liked that title.

But his army had defeated her and Jeralt, and that’s why they’re here now. Fighting for a federation they never quite cared for, fighting for someone who’d been an enemy just yesterday. Fleche had wanted the king’s head, but she perished, instead. It’s always like that. The mercenary life has always been a lonely one, void of any true loyalty, Jeralt says. 

“You will not win,” she tells the King. “You will not win the war if you’re so easily defeated by me.”

His smile gets even wider.

“Which is why I’m grateful you’re on my side now.”

She doesn’t understand him. He’s confusing, and she’s never quite seen anyone like him before. He’s not too tall or too broad, and his hair is always neat, slicked-back and tickling at his nape. He has an earring in only his left ear, not his right; don’t people wear them in both? He’s adorned in purple and gold silk, colors of royalty, colors fit for a king. Or, at least, that’s what that pink-haired lady always says. The King of Leicester is handsome, the pink-haired lady always says. Handsome?

Byleth’s only point of reference, thus far, has been Jeralt. And maybe Jeralt is handsome. He always says that Sitri thought he was the most handsome man in Fódlan. Some of the mercenaries are handsome, Byleth guesses. But they’re never really around long enough for her to memorize their features. The King’s features she has memorized, almost like they’re seared into her brain, a pattern she sees every time she closes her eyes. Wide, forest fire irises. Thick brows. A long, sharp nose. Rosy, puffed lips that are always curled up at the ends. Always. He’s always smiling, like it’s as easy to him as breathing. 

The King of Leicester is handsome, Byleth decides. And she doesn’t know what to do with this decision.

“How do you think we should approach this?” he asks, and everyone’s attention turns to Byleth. And she doesn’t know what to do with it, because she’s so used to blending in with the shadows, disintegrating quite like a ghost would, and really, Jeralt would’ve been a better participant. But the King is strange, and he said he wanted her to attend this meeting. He stands at the head of the table, leaned over a scattered array of maps and other documents. The mercenary looks at her. The pink-haired lady looks at her. The purple-haired, angry man looks at her. And the King looks at her, his eyes dancing with the ashes in Byleth’s chest, and she doesn’t know what to do with it. Absent are his coat and gloves and everything else that makes him look royal or kingly, and he just looks like a man. A tired, tired man, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled to his elbows, exhaustion painted under his eyes in heavy, blue bags.

“I…”

“I wanna hear your thoughts, as well,” the mercenary says, and her smile is different from the King’s or Jeralt’s. Or maybe, it’s more like Jeralt’s, and it makes Byleth feel warm. Welcome. “You’ve got a lot of battle experience.”

Perhaps she does.

“I think…” Byleth begins. “I think we should flank them from the rear.”

The King’s smile grows wider, and he blinks at her, but with only one eye. And it’s strange, because don’t people blink with both eyes? And don’t people wear earrings in both ears?

“I like the way you think.”

There is nothing in Byleth’s chest. She has a heart that does not beat. There is nothing there but a cave of emptiness, but something moves. Something flips. Something whirls like a storm would. Something feels hot in her face, like her skin has been kissed by the sun. She doesn’t understand it.

Purple-haired, angry guy snarls. “I just suggested that, Claude!”

The King waves his hand. “No, you didn’t.”

“I just did! Hilda!”

Pink-haired lady hums. “Well, Lorenz, you used a lot of big words, so you kinda lost me.”

Purple-haired, angry guy begins to throw a tantrum. Pink-haired lady yells back at him. Mercenary tries to calm everyone down. And the King looks at Byleth. Smiles like it’s the easiest thing in the world for him to do, and it’s this kind of smile that plants itself into Byleth’s empty, empty chest. Carves itself into her bones like she’s made of wood, tree branches and leaves and the most beautiful shade of green she’s ever seen. Gemstone green, forest green, Claude von Riegan’s green.

She doesn’t understand him.

He’s often awake in the very early hours, she’s noticed. Drowned in the silence of a dark sky, crested in waves of silver light, as if he exists not in reality but in the strokes of paint on a canvas. Sometimes the mercenary is with him, chattering, chasing away the loneliness of the moon. But always, he holds a glass; liquor, probably. And always, Byleth passes him by, treats him like a fleeting memory. She doesn’t much care for sleep, either. 

Tonight, she goes to him. And she lingers. He greets her with a short nod, and his lips are not quite in his King Smile yet, but they’re halfway there. 

“Ashen Demon.”

Byleth feels something pull in her brow.

“I don’t like that name.”

“Then Byleth,” he amends, and her name feels odd on his tongue. Feels like it doesn’t even belong to her. She finds his voice to be odd, as well. It’s not deep and full of a booming bass like Jeralt’s, but it’s not high, either. It falls somewhere within a comfortable middle, light and airy but still husked and rumbling. Like sugar dusted into her throat. “Although, it’s not much different. Tell me, do you know of the faith the people on this continent held before the Goddess came around?”

Wordlessly, Byleth shakes her head. Until a little while ago, she hardly knew anything about even Sothis.

“Of course not. Why would anyone in Fódlan care about anything other than their precious Goddess?” He takes a sip from his glass. Gold, like the silk draped over his form, like the metal looped into his ear. One ear, not two. “I’m not faulting you for being unaware, but man, I wish the people here understood that there’s more to the world than their Goddess.”

He speaks as if the people of Fódlan aren’t his own.

“People around the world believe in all sorts of different things.” He sets his glass onto the ground, and he leans back on his palms, cranes his neck to stare at the sky above him. Byleth looks at him, and the stars are jumping into his irises, glittering like bursting little lights. “Some believe in a god, not a goddess. Some believe in multiple gods and goddesses. Some don’t believe in a higher power at all.”

“And you?” The gush of her voice shocks even her. She doesn’t know why she asks. “What do you believe in?”

He turns his head to look at her, and there it is again. The flip. The storm. The confusion, because her chest is empty. There is nothing inside. But his gaze, his smile, everything about him makes her feel like there is. Makes her feel full. Human. 

His King Smile returns, wide and spread over his teeth. He blinks with one eye, not two.

“I believe in burning the Goddess and her Church to the ground. It’s the only way to get what I want.”

He’s strange. Terribly, terribly strange.

She doesn’t question his goals. She fights for him simply because she has to. Because a mercenary’s loyalty lies in whoever has enough coin to pay for it. Because he’s her employer now, and she fights in a war she never cared for. Soaks the ground beneath her in blood, until it squelches in her shoes, and it comes easy to her, killing. The other mercenaries moan and howl, but Byleth never does. Never does she stagger. Never does her blade quiver as flesh and bone yield to it. Never does she mind the fear that looks back at her. The eyes, always frenzied, always glossy, until they’re not. And then they’re still and pale like glass, lifeless along with the rest of the body, and idly, she thinks of the reflection that stares back at her every morning in the mirror.

Killing is easy, Byleth thinks. She’s good at it.

The King of Leicester, however, is not.

“Why do you hesitate?” She slices down a soldier who comes barreling at her, cuts the blue uniform from his left thigh all the way up to his right shoulder. 

The King lets out a sound. It is too strangled to be a laugh, but there’s nothing else Byleth can equate it to.

“It gets easier,” he says, and he shoots an arrow into the skull of a Seiros knight, blood and brain gurgling out of the wound as the body falls limp. This time the King of Leicester gives a real laugh, a true laugh, and still, Byleth cannot understand the hollowness of the sound. He smells thickly of iron and sweat when he comes near her. “Killing. The more you do it, the easier it gets, like with most things. But that doesn’t mean it stops hurting. That’s just the price of war, I guess.”

Hurting. Byleth does not understand what he means. Hurt? How can it hurt him when he is the one doing the killing? He is unharmed. The gold and purple of him is pristine. He is unharmed.

Until he isn’t. And Byleth is never sloppy. Never hesitant. Never moans or howls, because killing is easy. It’s simple. The King of Leicester is not.

“Look out!”

A blade shreds right through the pristine purple and gold of him. Royal colors, kingly colors dyed a sickly red; his body folds towards the ground, and when she regains her solid footing after his shove, she feels different. Something flips, something comes alive like a storm, something snaps and breaks, and she screams. The sound rips itself from her throat before she can stop it, and she runs. She runs and runs until her lungs collapse, and the soldier is powerless against the steel of her blade. She slashes. And slashes. And slashes, and she likes the shred of viscera and the shatter of bone, the wails of pain, the fear, the frenziness, the glossiness, beautiful and fulfilling until the moment it disappears into glass.

Byleth stands above what used to be a human body, and it does not hurt. Nothing hurts.

“Why did you do that?” Her voice heightens at the last syllable. The King smiles around a cough, and she kneels beside him, legs in the dirt. “Why did you take the blow for me?”

“I wanted to,” is all he says. The gemstone green of his eyes dances and dances and dances, as if he isn’t lying in a field of corpses, as if the gash in his chest isn’t weeping. 

“But why?”

“Do I need a reason?”

She doesn’t understand, she doesn’t understand, she doesn’t understand.

The blue-haired lady tends to his wound after the battle, his body shimmering in the slightest hue of white gold as her magic slithers through his limbs. She does her best, and she wraps him in bandages, and the camp is quiet afterwards. Eerily still, as if even the ones who returned alive lost their souls somewhere within the chaos of the battle. When Byleth comes to his tent, she spots the mercenary running out of it.

“I’ll go get Marianne or Linhardt!”

“Shez, I told you I’m fineーouch!”

The King of Leicester’s bandages are soaked through with blood. Byleth isn't much good with white magic, but she’s spent her entire life patching up Jeralt’s wounds. She takes the dagger off her belt, and slowly, the wet bandages break open by the blade and unravel off the King’s torso. She wipes up the blood with a towel, and his skin is soft. Hot, rippling, thinly spread over hard, chiseled muscle. His skin is tanner than hers, much tanner, but the scars are all the same. Scattered like constellations in a living, breathing sky, some long like the open gash in his chest right now, some round and blunt like burns. He watches her through his lashes as she spreads an herby ointment over his wound. A wound he never should have gotten in the first place.

“Why did you do that?” she asks again, because she didn’t quite like the non-answer he gave her on the field, and she doesn’t understand him. “You are the king. You can’t be so reckless.”

The King Smile comes back. Wide. Easy.

“I wanted to protect you.”

But why? Why, why, why, why, why?

Byleth’s hands tremble as she wraps the fresh bandages around his torso. Something hot licks at her cheeks to the tips of her ears, and if she had a heart, would it be thundering? Would her knees buckle underneath her? Would she feel like she’s smitten, like Jeralt says he always was around Sitri? 

“I don’t know what it is about you.”

The King lifts his hand, and it goes to curl against her cheek. 

“If I’d met you back then, I wonder if I’d be different now.”

She doesn’t understand him. He’s strange, so, so, strange, and why does he press his lips against hers? Jeralt never talks about things like this, and she’s only ever seen it in villages they’d stop at during their travels. People in the street, sometimes old, sometimes young, their mouths pressed together, and they’d be smiling, and she’d watch them like she was in awe, like she didn’t exist in the same realm of consciousness as they did. Love. Was it love? Is it love? Do people only do this when they’re in love? She doesn’t know, but the King does it to her, and she lets him. He tastes like blood. Metal, iron, the scent that never quite leaves her, that’s soaked itself into the fibers of her being. But she lingers, and she starts tasting some kind of sweetness. Like the sugar his voice always leaves behind in her throat, like the softness of leaves against her skin, tree leaves and greenery and life, all in one breath, all tumbling out of his mouth and into hers.

She doesn’t understand it. But she lets it happen, until she feels almost suffocated, feels like he’ll swallow her entirely. He gets harder. Deeper. A bit rougher, holds her by the back of her neck and swipes his tongue at hers. And she feels hot, drowned in the swelter of a summer sun, her body pulled tight like the strings of a puppet. It’s strange. It’s all strange and new and overwhelming, too much for the nothingness in her chest to bear.

And the most troubling aspect of it all is that she does not hate it. No, not at all.

He pulls away from her when the mercenary comes back, a green-haired, sleepy man in tow. And Byleth doesn’t understand why her lips are tingling. She doesn’t understand why the memory burns itself into her brainstem, doesn’t understand why it feels like the King burned himself into her, tattooed his lips into her skin as if they were always meant to be there. He steals kisses from her often. Pulls her into the shadows of the trees and presses his mouth against hers, sometimes soft, sometimes hard. Usually he’s hard after the war meetings, will dismiss everyone else but tell her to stay behind with him. 

And she does. She always does.

His grip is hard but not harsh. Byleth likes the way he holds her. It’s different from how he holds his bow, or how she holds her sword. His hands cradle her with a sort of tenderness, something like Jeralt’s hand whenever he pats her on the head after a job well done. But it’s different. Very different, and she’s never experienced this kind of thing before. Being held by a man. Being pinned down by a man and gasping into his mouth. Touching living flesh under her fingertips, pulsing skin instead of the shredded remains that’d often be caught on the steel of her blade. 

Byleth isn’t suited for this, she thinks. She’s suited for war. Bloodshed. Killing. Not this. Never this.

“Why do you do this?” 

She settles onto the table, perched on documents he’s long forgotten. He steps between her spread legs, lips bitten red by her teeth. 

“Do you not enjoy it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

The King kisses her again. This one is shorter, a bridge between their words and the silence. 

“I like you,” he says, and she’s not good at reading him, but it feels honest. “You’re strange. I want to figure you out.”

He holds her neck with both hands. A gentle, tender grip, his fingertips dancing with the hairs at her nape. He smiles, and Byleth’s breath shudders; it never, ever shudders.

“I want you to stay by my side.”

“Why?” she asks, the word biting at the tip of her tongue as it leaves her mouth. Why, why, why? “I’m a sellsword. Once the war is over…”

“You’ll leave me,” he finishes for her. “You’ll leave me and move onto the next job.”

Mercenaries live lonely lives, Jeralt always says.

“Yes.”

“I’ll win,” he tells her. His King Smile rests in his lips, but not easily. It’s a strained twist, dim but handsome all the same. The King of Leicester is handsome. “We’ll win. And once we do, I’ll finally create the world I’ve always wanted.”

“What world?” she asks. His hands slide down her shoulders, down her arms, until they’re nestled within her palms. “What kind of world?”

“A world where everyone’s differences are respected. A world where you can worship a goddess, or a god, or ten goddesses and ten gods, or nothing at all. A world where nobody has to suffer because they don’t belong.”

His King Smile falters, cracks and shatters quite like bones do under the brunt of a sword swing, and Byleth doesn’t know what to do with it. It splinters into her chest, cuts up the heart she doesn’t have, and something lurches in her stomach. What’s wrong with her? What’s wrong with her?

“Ah, maybe I’ve said too much. You’re easy to talk to, you know. Like Shez.”

Do you kiss her like you kiss me?

The lurching feeling in her stomach tightens, solidifies into something heavy enough to sink towards her intestines. It worsens when he kisses her. Again and again and again, and she holds his dreams of a better world in her palms, between his soul and hers, and she doesn’t know what to do with them. A world where nobody has to suffer because they don’t belong. 

She wonders if she’ll stay to see him create it. Mercenaries never stick around very long, though. 

“You know, this is hardly appropriate behavior for a king.”

“Whatever do you mean, my friend?”

The mercenary gnaws into a bone, washes the cooked game skin down her throat with the water in her cup. She looks at the King with a frown bitten into her brow.

“We’re your employees, Claude.” She throws a quick glance at Byleth. “Not your consorts.”

Does he kiss you like he kisses me?

The lurching feeling returns. The only thing Byleth can really liken it to is a burn. Fires charring at her skin, because pain is simple; it always has been. A fire in her chest, fires in her veins, forest fires in his green, green eyes, and she chokes on the ashes of them, coughs up gemstones until her mouth bleeds. 

He stills next to her. Stiff, as if he’s a corpse.

“The heart wants what it wants, Shez.”

The heart. A heart. Byleth doesn’t have one.

The mercenary lets out a noise. A laugh of sorts, but don’t people only laugh when they’re happy?

“Don’t make me tell Judith on you.”

“Don’t tell Judith,” the King says.

They wander towards his tent after the meal. The mercenary excuses herself to the training grounds with Jeralt’s apprentice, and the King’s hands are on Byleth as soon as she enters his space. Warm hands, big hands, much bigger than hers and also much softer. The tips of his fingers are calloused from neverending pulls of his bowstring.

“Do you do this with her?”

His mouth pauses at the base of her throat.

“With who?”

“The mercenary.”

“Shez?” He laughs his kingly laugh, one that belongs distinctly to him, one she’s maybe finally come to understand. “Of course not. Why, are you jealous?”

She wonders if he’s teasing her. That’s what that laugh of his often means. His question brings heat into her face.

“No.”

“I’m yours, By.” His hands fiddle with the buttons holding together her shirt. “Everything. I belong to you.”

Belong to you. What does it mean?

“You are a king. Shouldn’t you belong to your nation?”

The King Smile curves against her breast, the stubble on his chin brushing against the newly hardened peak of her nipple. 

“Sometimes men are selfish, Byleth. It’s human nature.”

She doesn’t understand what he means. Because maybe, she’s not all that human. But the King makes her feel human, makes her feel full, full of chaos and storms and fires. He makes her feel like she has a heart. And she doesn’t understand it, doesn’t understand why he said he belongs to her, why he touches her the way he does, gentle, tender, not like he would hold a bow or a sword but something much more innocent, much less bloody. He kisses her everywhere. Down her neck, down her chest, down her stomach, suckling in his bruises and pulling gasps out of her. Gasps, moans, quivers, and she never moans. She never quivers.

The King makes her feel like she’s dizzy. Like she’s crazy. And she soaks in all that he offers until her veins are bursting in tune with the erratic rhythm of his breathing.

“Your Majesty.”

“Don’t call me that,” he says, and he wipes wayward hairs away from her eyes. The fit of him inside of her is tight, but the stroke is addictive. Byleth has never done this before. There was no time for it, not for her, never for her. She’d often hear the mercenaries tell stories about how they bedded women, and she never understood it, because were they in love? Did they do this because they were in love?

The King looks at her, and his eyes are soft. Nearly colorless in the moon cast over his form; the candle he lit has long burnt out, but Byleth doesn’t need the light to map out his features, every crease, every lash. Quietly, her fingertips come to touch his face. First his cheek, and then the long slope of his nose, and then his earring (only one, not two). And then his lips, and he takes her fingers into his mouth, kisses and sucks and drives her manic in a way she’s never been.

“Claude,” he says against her palm. “My name is Claude, Byleth.”

Claude. Claude, Claude, Claude, Claude, Claude.

Maybe it’s love. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know what that is.

She cries out his name, lets her voice bounce against the silence of the night outside. He’s a bit less gentle, a bit less tender, grabs at her thighs and breasts and carves himself into her skin, and she likes it. Being held by a man, being pinned down by him, feeling him thrust into her and reach the far depths of her body. She likes it. She likes it. She likes it. Something builds and builds and builds until it unravels all at once. Until she falls to pieces. Until he does as well, chanting her name and spilling into her.

It’s strange. Strange, strange, strange. She stays in bed with him, his name hanging off her tongue in the quietest of whispers. Claude, Claude, Claude, not a king but a man, a man who belongs to her.

It happens often. Always in his tent, never hers. He’ll seek her out after a meeting. He’ll pull her away from an after-battle feast. He’ll have her whenever he wants her, and she always, always wants him. Like a craving, and he isn’t food, is he? But she longs for him like he is, and she can go days and days without him, but the need gnaws at her, rumbles over her senses until it’s all she can think about. Byleth feels like she’s addicted. Feels like she’s eaten one of those hallucinative berries Jeralt always told her to stay away from, feels like Claude’s warmth and kisses and smiles are gripping onto the very mineral of her bones. It’s the same tonight. Like it always is. He grabs her wherever he can reach. Paints her skin in kisses, long, indulgent trails all the way down to her thighs. Slides into her, thrusts into her, slams into her, and the fit is always tight, but the pleasure is maddening. And she’ll unravel, over and over and over until the entire world melts into nothing around her.

And she stays in his arms after it’s over. Sleep never does come easy to either of them, even though the fatigue is thickly-hooded and blue under his eyes. Swaddled in his arms, she counts the stars in his irises and fiddles with the earring in his left ear.

“Why do you wear only one?”

He smiles at her. “Where I’m from, the men wear only one. In the left ear.”

“And where is that?”

“Ever the curious creature.” He kisses her on the forehead, right where her hairline begins. 

“Is that bad?”

“Of course not. It’s one of the many things I love about you.”

Love. Love. Love.

“I’ll take you there, one day.” He comes back over her, and she realizes now how much she likes the press of his weight on top of her. “Where I’m from.”

“What is it like?” she asks. He hums against her throat.

“Hot,” he says. “Fucking hot. A lot of deserts. We like drinking liquor, riding wyverns, and fighting wars. Maybe you’d fit in.”

She feels a frown drag down the corners of her mouth. “I don’t know how to ride a wyvern.”

He grins. Easy, wide, toothy, a summer sun, neverending deserts, forest fires, everything beautiful. Maybe Claude is not handsome. Maybe he is beautiful. So, so beautiful, achingly beautiful, and that’s okay, because she’s used to pain. She never gets tired of looking at him, of drinking in the golden glitter of his King Smiles.

“I can teach you.”

And all night, he talks about the world outside of Fódlan. Of Almyra’s red deserts, of Sreng’s bone-chilling tundra, of Brigid’s ocean breezes. And Byleth listens, hangs onto every word, the airy lightness and husked rumbling of his voice soothing her, drifting down her spine like waves crashing on a shore. She stays in his arms, and he doesn’t let go, and she falls into a peaceful sleep. A dreamland full of nothingness.

She wonders if this is love. If this, whatever they have, is whatever love is supposed to be. 

“Love?” Jeralt looks surprised. It’s always been easy, reading his expressions. “Why’re you suddenly asking me about that, kid?”

Because the King said he belongs to me. Because the King said he’ll take me to his homeland one day. Because the King said he wants me to stay by his side.

She doesn’t say any of it. 

“There’s no reason.”

“You wanna know more about your mother?” Jeralt brings the rim of his beer mug to his mouth. “Well, I think I was in love with her from when I first laid eyes on her.”

Jeralt’s eyes are different from Claude’s. Jeralt’s smile is different from Claude’s. Jeralt’s smile is not a smile. It does not reach his eyes, and shouldn’t people smile only when they’re happy?

“Her smile. I think it was her smile. She never smiled much, but whenever she did, I always thought to myself that I’d do anything to protect it.”

Protect. Protect her smile? Her smile?

“It’s crazy, how much you resemble her now.”

Jeralt smiles at Byleth. This one is happy. This one is like her world, the only world she’s ever known.

“She loved you. Just as much as I do now.”

Byleth doesn’t understand. How can someone who doesn’t have a heart know love? She lives and she breathes and her skin is warm but her chest is empty. There is nothing there. Nothing, nothing, and her stomach lurches, and she feels like she’s caught in a storm whenever Claude kisses her. Whenever he holds her, whenever he touches her, whenever he slides into her and whispers her name. She feels warm whenever he smiles, warm like she’s bathed in a summer sun, and her world isn’t just Jeralt anymore but forest fires. Loud, terrible forest fires, flames that consume everything in their path. Achingly beautiful flames, beautifully greens, gemstone greens, Claude von Riegan’s green. 

Byleth kills. She kills, and kills, and kills, because it’s her job. Because it’s all she’s ever known. Because she’s good at it. And why, why does it hurt? Pain should be simple because it’s pain. But it isn’t. Nothing is. Not anymore. And every flicker of fear in every pair of glossy, frenzied eyes shrieks inside her, cuts up her organs until she’s coughing all of them out. She hesitates, and she staggers, and she moans, and she howls, and she can’t stand to look at all the glass eyes beneath her feet.

What happened? What’s wrong with her?

I’d do anything to protect that smile.

King Claude is her employer. Mercenaries are not loyal; they can never afford to be. They go wherever their pockets take them. It’s always been like that.

“You all right?” Claude asks her, coming to her and taking her face into his hands. Gloved hands, white silk wet with blood, and she misses the soft touch of his fingertips, calloused as they are. “We’re almost there.”

Almost there. Almost done. Almost at the end of the bloodshed. Almost at the world he wishes to create. 

She will watch him create it. She will.

Her voice flees her at the moment. She nods at him, the battlefield’s chaos knocking viciously against her skull. In her peripheral, she sees a Seiros knight leaping towards her king. And she lifts her sword, and the heaviness of it fights against her muscles as she swings. Slashes, slashes, slashes, and the blood is still warm as it seeps into her clothing, and it hurts. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. Why does it hurt now?

She looks back at Claude, and he smiles at her. It is not a happy smile.

“Almost there,” he whispers again.

Even still, it’s beautiful. As beautiful as it is sad. And she’ll drown the world in blood and dead, glassy eyes if it means she can protect that smile.

.

.

.