Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

At the Glenbrook tourney, Avlora had been instructed to lose. Carefully, said Gustadolph. Genuinely, if you can.

She looked up at him, affronted. There was no shame in a meaningless loss, but she’d been raised to believe there was shame in not trying. Shame in dishonesty.

His lip curled. They see this as a chance to prove their might, he said. Let them.

She didn’t know of his designs then, or how they would be put into motion, but she’d known enough. A nation like Aesfrost was already easy to underestimate—it was in their interest to make it as easy as possible. When the time came, it would carry them.

She should have known, then, shouldn’t she, the danger of underestimating an enemy? The failure at Wolffort falls on her back.

In the golden throne room that Gustadolph now occupies, Avlora bends her burning knee. She grovels and swears. She rises, humiliated, yet with mercy. There’s work to be done yet, and despite her failure, the Archduke trusts no one else to do it.

As she heaves open the doors to leave, there’s a sharp squeak outside.

It’s been a long time since Avlora has startled at anything, but she does stop. The little princess, frozen a few feet away in the hall, lowers her head as she looks down at her.

“I was just on my way back to my chambers, General,” says Cordelia. “I apologize.”

Avlora doesn’t doubt Gustadolph’s bride has been taking advantage of her absence. There’s little that Cordelia can do while confined within the palace walls, but doing it without a chaperone must be the closest to freedom she’s felt for some time. “Very well.”

Cordelia bows even further and straightens up, and then she gasps once more.

Avlora glowers down at her as she stares. She knows her face looks horrid. This is a look she’s going to have to get used to. It will be easier in battle: Gustadolph might be keen to be underestimated, but Avlora thinks she might prefer looking more fearsome than feminine.

When she offers no explanation for long enough, Cordelia opens her mouth. Shuts it, opens it again.

“Why—you’re burnt!”

Not badly, all things considered. Avlora was far better-protected against such things than her men had been. Far less replaceable. Many of them will need to be replaced, and the consequences of her failure pang her chest. But she cannot mourn her men in front of the girl whose brother she’d felled, whose kingdom she’d conquered.

“I am,” she says.

“Have you seen a healer?”

Not yet. There are only so many, and they’re busy with the survivors. And beyond that, in a way that she’s unwilling to explain to someone as soft as Cordelia… A part of Avlora wants these burns to remain. They would join the dozens of reminders her body carries already. Notes from lessons hard learnt. The old wound on her side, from the spear of the first soldier she’d killed. The thick rope of scar tissue across her calf, where as a child she’d swung a sword too big to handle. These burns would remind her that no enemy is to be underestimated, no matter how outclassed. That desperation is the keenest blade.

“No,” she says.

Cordelia lifts her hand, lingering inches away from the gnarled skin.

“I know some healing magic,” she says. “Pray, General, let me see your wounds.”

Avlora narrows her eyes. The way that Cordelia speaks to her sometimes makes her feel the princess must see her as a girl more than a general.

She can understand it. Surely Cordelia’s desperate for a companion in this prison without one. Perhaps she’s desperate enough that her mind shapes one from the closest captor.  Avlora’s familiar with the way that her womanness drops adversaries’ guards, the way they look at her with a gentler trust than they would a man in her position. She’s never occupied a kingdom before, but she’s occupied forts, occupied towns—she’s often the face of the operation.

She expects Gustadolph has trusted her with Cordelia’s keeping for this specific reason. Pacification. It’s in all of their interests, she supposes, that she play along.

She was instructed to rest herself, after all. “Very well.”

Cordelia’s eyes widen for a flickering moment. A surprise that she’d agreed, Avlora imagines, even though she’d been asked.

“Alright, then.” Cordelia turns, striding off across the hall. “My staff is up in my chambers, if that’s alright—oh—"

She looks back to see Avlora following her with a careful, limping stride. She frowns.

“Your wounds go beyond your face?”

Plate armor protected Avlora’s torso from the worst of it, but her skirts had caught fire. Her legs are burnt and blistered. It will heal, in time, but that time has not yet passed.

“Yes,” she says.

After a second, Cordelia nods purposefully and turns again. “No matter.”

She takes the staircases more slowly. It’s an infuriating feeling to be accommodated to by as weak a thing as Cordelia. Avlora snorts, but follows nonetheless.

“Come in,” says Cordelia as they reach her door. “Sit down.”

The princess’s chambers are still outfitted as they were when she lived here in peacetime. Avlora has always felt unwelcome here, as a knight. The halls of Aesfrost were always darker, harsher. Her existence felt less violent there than it does within Whiteholm’s filigreed walls. The young princess’s bedroom is the most delicate of them all.

Cordelia lifts a fine staff from against the dressing table.

“May I see?”

Slowly, with some difficulty, Avlora removes her boots. She hitches her fresh skirts up to her hips and carefully lowers her leggings over the tender blisters. Cordelia stares.

Avlora sits on the end of the bed, staring back.

“Do you have the skill or don’t you?” she asks shortly.

A dutiful frown on her lips, Cordelia pulls over an ottoman to sit before her. “I believe so,” she says, gripping her staff.

“You have experience?”

“I used to—” Her voice breaks. It takes her a moment to regain her conviction. “—I used to practice on Roland when we were younger, you see. But I’m afraid he never had injuries like these.”

Avlora had pierced Prince Frani neatly through the heart. Brave though he’d been to charge her, he hadn’t been much of a swordsman. Simple to kill with efficiency. Dead before he hit the ground, before he could be healed. She wonders whether Cordelia had hoped to try.

“I see,” she says.

“But the principles are the same,” Cordelia insists. “If you won’t trouble the professionals, I insist upon trying myself.”

Avlora swallows, watching her lift her staff.

The glow of her magic soothes the pain at once. Slowly, Cordelia’s staff moves over her body, relief spreading after it like a thick, cooling wave. As much as she values her scars, Avlora has always found the process of healing magic satisfying to witness. She watches the burns on her legs melt away. She lifts a hand to the gnarled skin of her cheek to find it smoothed the same.

Lord Svarog’s son had been a scholar of magic, as was much of their family. Avlora has seen the work that such ability requires.

“You’re very skilled,” she says.

Cordelia looks up at her, clearly surprised, but doesn’t say so. She looks back down at her staff.

“I’ve never been the politician that Frani was,” she says, “nor a rebel like Roland. I’m afraid I had little else to do but study.”

Avlora can’t claim to know what sort of a politician Frani Glenbrook was, but she doubts that Cordelia fell short of him. She also doubts that anyone had ever told her that—or, in fact, that they’d ever noticed. She doubts they’d even noticed her magical talent.

A shame. If Cordelia lived in a society like Aesfrost, she might have been recognized for it.

“Tell me,” says Cordelia softly, surprising her. “Does Lady Frederica yet live?”

“Lady Frederica?”

“Was it her magic that did this to you?”

Avlora had been raised among the Aesfrosts. Fire lay at the root of their family like a hearth in a home—she’d seen their magic all her life. She knew Lady Frederica’s talent even before she’d faced her in battle. Perhaps she and the Wolfforts were made for each other.

She shakes her head. “Lady Frederica lives, but it was not her magic that burnt me.”

Cordelia tilts her head. She doesn’t ask—but the unfathomable gentleness makes Avlora need to tell her. Overcome with bitterness, she clenches her jaw.

“Wolffort Town is now naught but ash,” she says, “and by it’s lord’s own hand.”

“What do you mean?”

There’s a petty pleasure to say it. “Your kingdom flooded the homes of their own people with oil and lit them aflame,” she continues. “Traps devised and employed by your noble father’s lords, to sacrifice their subject’s livelihoods for their own safety.”

Cordelia sits back, lips parted in dull horror. “That’s…”

“Cowardice to the worst degree.” Emboldened, Avlora lifts her chin. “At the time it shocked me that Lord Wolffort would stoop to such methods, but I must admit, I’ve seen little else from Glenbrook thus far.”

“What do you mean?” snaps Cordelia.

“Their king sacrificed for his country.” Avlora inclines her head toward her. “Their princess sacrificed for her rogue brother.”

Cordelia glowers back at her. The bitter fury looks strangely at home in her doe-eyes. “Sacrifice is not the word I would use.”

“Is it not?” Avlora replies, cold. “Could your gallant Ser Maxwell not have protected you along with Prince Roland? Your rogue lords still protect him, despite full awareness that it puts them all at risk. And yet no one has put themselves at risk for you.”

“There was no way.”

She’s trying to speak firmly, but Cordelia’s voice trembles. She believes it—but she’s wondered.

“There was no reason to fear for my safety,” she says. “My brothers serve no use to the Archduke. They’d be—” She swallows. “—Killed.”

They would be. There had been no attempt to disguise that when requesting the prince’s surrender, and the worth of his life to House Wolffort had been made clear. Nothing Avlora had heard about Prince Roland would justify it—but things she’d heard about his friendship with Lord Wolffort might.

Cordelia shakes her head. “But my father and the others, they knew I would be wed. I would be kept alive, for long enough to—”

It occurs to her that perhaps she ought not to speak of revolution in front of the occupying general, even now that the hope of it is so meager. She does not finish her sentence.

“That’s a harsh gamble,” replies Avlora with a snort, “when one considers what marriage entails.”

This, she regrets saying. The hard look on the princess’s soft face makes her stomach clench. Avlora had been disrespected in the military, of course—for years upon years, to various degrees. But she’s never known the kind of violation that Cordelia now knows regularly. She’d been threatened with reduction to a womb, but it had never been made true.

It’s really little worse than a princess’s fate would have ever been. The only difference is that the man who now owns Cordelia has her father’s blood on his hands, rather than his blessing. To someone like Avlora, who had never known such confinement, the difference seems negligible. To Cordelia, who was raised for it… Avlora imagines that it’s all the difference in the world.

“Your Archduke is no kinder to his allies,” snaps Cordelia.

Surprised at the naivety, Avlora laughs aloud. “You are not his ally, Princess—”

“Of course not!” Cordelia sniffs. “You are.”

Avlora has spent a lifetime in service to Aesfrost—and even now, it’s odd to think of herself that way. She supposes it’s true.

“I know not what cruelty you speak of,” she says.

“Gustadolph would sacrifice any one of you if it suited him,” says Cordelia. “Even any one of his kin. Is that a man any better than the cowards of Glenbrook?”

“That’s a heavy accusation, Princess.”

Cordelia looks sharply into her eyes. “I’m certain that my father did not order the death of Dragan Aesfrost.”

Avlora is certain of that as well. Dragan’s death had been an easy pretext, a tragedy easily blamed. Regna Glenbrook was less guilty than he was simply overpowered. She knows this. She has refrained from speculating more.

“I heard him threaten you when you arrived,” says Cordelia to her long silence.

That’s what she had been doing earlier: eavesdropping. Avlora hunches her shoulders, defensive. She prays Cordelia had not heard her beg. She knows she had.

“The Archduke was not cruel to me,” she says, stiffly. “He was kinder than I deserve.”

“You consider it fair to dismiss a general so renowned as yourself the moment she loses one battle?”

“One battle lost to a band of unorganized ruffians? Yes. I do.” Avlora clenches her jaw. “A general is only as useful as her last victory. The Archduke’s criticism matters not. He treated my failure with generosity.”

“I believe he was practical more than generous,” Cordelia replies. “No one in his ranks surpasses your skill. To replace you would be far more foolish than it would be to trust you. And for that matter—you have not failed.”

Avlora glances skeptically down at her bare legs, and back up into the princess’s eyes.

“You have survived,” says Cordelia firmly. “And in doing so, you have learnt the Wolffort army’s numbers, and skills, and strategies. You’ve learnt who you’re facing in a way that a peacetime tourney cannot teach you. Tell him this.”

Baffled, Avlora stares back at her. Why would she say such a thing, when the Wolffort army holds all of her own hopes within it? Looking into those eyes, it’s impossible to tell whether Cordelia is stupid or brilliant. Perhaps both.

Avlora clenches her jaw uncomfortably. “I believe you’ve completed your task, Princess.”

“Oh—” Cordelia’s gaze flits back down from her face. “You’ve no more pain?”

She reaches out to touch her leg. No ache remains, but Avlora tenses as the hair prickles under the princess’s fine hand.

“You’re fighting fit again?”

Avlora keeps the small scalds from red-hot chainmail on the insides of her arms to herself. She can keep those reminders. This is something she wants to remember.

“I believe so,” she says, rising.

Cordelia politely turns to busy herself at the dressing table as Avlora lifts her leggings and lowers her skirts.

“All that’s left is your hair, I suppose.” Cordelia reaches out as she fastens her boots. It had been singed in places. Avlora watches the ends break off in her fingers as she slides them through, leaving streaks of ash on her skin.

“I’m afraid I can’t heal that,” Cordelia says. “Hair is dead already, you see. But if you’d like me to cut it, I could—”

“I will cut it myself.”

Knitting her brow under Avlora’s sharp gaze, Cordelia opens her mouth—and then remembers her position. As fine as her cell is, she’s a prisoner. One who might resort to violence for her freedom, who would be justified in it.

“Yes,” she says thinly, “I suppose that’s reasonable.”

Chastened, she sets her staff aside. And only as she does so does Avlora realize how foolish she had been herself. She’d recognized the danger in a blade, as a bladeswoman—but how could she have let an unknown mage approach her with a staff?

Cordelia’s womanness had softened her, as her own had softened Cordelia. Intentional or innocent, it bothers Avlora to fall for such a trap. She’s no man. She’s meant to be colder, cleverer.

She straightens up and bows, hand on the pommel of her sword. “Thank you kindly.”

“You’re very welcome, General.” Cordelia gives her a small, bleak smile. “I haven’t lately had a chance to do much of use.”

Avlora nods once more and turns, closing the door behind her.

She pauses there to dwell on the princess’s last words. It’s a strange sentiment. Cordelia’s very existence is of great use at all times. Her presence at the archduke’s shoulder is keeping Glenbrook at heel. She’s of use to an enemy, of course—but is that enemy’s general not cut from the same cloth? Why should she wish to be of use to the blade that cut her kingdom’s throat? Has the isolation driven her so mad?

Unsettled—but without pain—Avlora strides off.

Chapter Text

Cordelia had never dreamt of her wedding. For a royal, there was no romance in it. In another life she might have been more taken with the idea, but as her life was, she hadn’t ever given romance much thought.

A prince, perhaps, might have been able to find romance outside of marriage. Roland, ever spiteful toward duty and decorum, had shown interest in that sort of thing. But a princess’s mistakes could not be so easily ignored. There was no point longing to be swept off her feet. Cordelia’s greatest dream had always been a practical comfort: that those who held her life in their hands would be kind.

She had no fantasies, but she did have expectations. Since childhood she had known her marriage would be grand. It would be the most important and visible act of her royal life, the most glorious, expensive event she would ever see. Dignitaries from every corner of Norzelia would visit for the happy occasion. The commonfolk would celebrate in the cities and the countrysides. She’d never asked for it, nor been excited for it—but to experience the opposite still puts her ill at ease.

Her wedding is not well-attended. Herself, her solemn groom, an Aesfrosti priest. Two guardsmen outside the room, General Avlora at the door within. Cordelia wears no veil, no bridal gown. She walks no aisle. Gustadolph stands stiffly at her side as he might have beside a war table, mouth drawn in a serious frown.

She hopes he’s uncomfortable, but whether he is or isn’t doesn’t make a difference. She’s asked for her consent first, under his dark, expectant gaze. She gives it.

He doesn’t kiss her. He doesn’t even kiss her when he leads her by the arm to the chambers that not long ago had been her father’s. Cordelia has been bracing herself for it for so long that it surprises her. It hadn’t occurred to her that the pageantry was unnecessary.

In a strange way, she’s relieved that Gustadolph had—or at least that he has the power to disregard it without consequence. She thinks that the act of a marriage would have been more intolerable than anything. She can endure whatever he does to her as long as she need not smile.

Days later, when General Avlora comes to fetch her for luncheon, she extends her hand. A necklace hangs from her fingers: a heavy gem on a short cord.

“What’s this?”

“A gift,” says Avlora shortly.

“From you?” Cordelia might have expected jewelry from the man posing as her husband, but never from the guard at their door.

“Yes.”

“Whatever for?”

“Brides receive them, do they not?”

A common bride might receive housewares, a royal one tokens of political goodwill. But Cordelia won’t argue. Perhaps things are done differently in Aesfrost. Or perhaps Avlora had simply wanted to do something for her—do what little she could. Cordelia’s spent some time now watching the general. A gruff, impotent act of pity isn’t out of character.

Cordelia takes the necklace in hand, and the moment she does, she can feel the weak pulse that flows from it. She looks up in surprise.

“This is magical?”

Avlora sniffs, glancing away. “Yes,” she says. “It’s a protective charm.”

This makes a little more sense, but on the other hand, Cordelia can’t help but find it chilling. What does Avlora think Gustadolph is going to do to her? Has she known him to mistreat women in a way that such a charm might protect her from? It’s hard to picture. Frankly, the thought of him with a woman in peacetime is almost bizarre. He doesn’t have the spirit for it. He seems too concerned with his own ambitions to want anything to do with others, even sex. Even sadism.

“May I fasten it, Your Majesty?”

Cordelia hesitates. She glances back into the vanity mirror behind her, where Avlora stands stiffly in reflection.

“I suppose,” she says.

“Very well.”

Avlora doesn’t remove her gloves. Cordelia holds her hair aside, but a few strands snag on the plates as the general lifts the necklace over her head.

A protective charm. She’s never needed one less.

This feeling of safety is a peculiar one. Even with a string around her neck—or, for that matter, hands that could snap it in an instant… Cordelia knows that the woman who had cut Frani down in a single stroke won’t harm a hair on her. She can’t. None of them can. Her kingdom’s blood stains every hand she sees, and she’s never been safer. Not even her husband can hurt her—yet.

Yet. Once she’s borne a child she’ll no longer matter, but until then, her security is paramount.

She’s never been so vital to anyone in her entire life. As Glenbrook’s princess she’d been an afterthought, when she was a thought at all. Neither an heir nor a hellion: politely irrelevant. This isn’t freedom, of course—but to a girl who’d grown up as she had, in a strange, seductive way it feels like it. She hadn’t even been punished for open treason… How far could it go?

Cordelia stares at herself in the mirror, mind spinning. She could do anything—she could do anything. If she were quick enough right now she could stab Aesfrost’s premier general in the neck with a hairpin, couldn’t she? She pictures it as Avlora knots the cord at her nape: the scream, the recoil, the blood.

Even then, she knows Avlora wouldn’t retaliate. Cordelia’s blood is more valuable now than any soldier’s, even the best of them.

She glances at a loose pin.

(Why doesn’t she?)

(Why doesn’t she?)

(There’s no one else she could use, when she needs to, in the way that she thinks she might be able to use Avlora. To kill her would hamstring her own goals just as much as Aesfrost’s.)

(But… It isn’t that, is it?)

The odd gem is heavy on her breastbone. Cordelia looks up into the mirror and watches Avlora step back.

As a wife, very little is required of her. Her husband doesn’t even undress her, and he doesn’t seem to care if she closes her eyes.

She never knew much about the bodies of men before Gustadolph, and she hasn’t learnt anything more from him about why women are meant to find them enticing. He has no interest in teaching her. It doesn’t matter one bit. It would never have mattered with any husband.

At first it hurt. In a strange, sickening way, she misses the pain. Cordelia wants to feel anger, violation, righteous fury. She doesn’t want to get used to this, and she wishes she’d been able to hold onto the physical sear that made it impossible. Now it’s little more than tedious.

It's a dreadfully undignified process. He rubs himself until stiff, and then he rubs her until slick enough for his liking, then spreads her open and sticks her until he shudders.

Cordelia doesn’t envy him. Of course—she imagines that to have the man’s role would feel much less invasive. Much more violent, which might be a nice feeling to aim her loathing toward. But to be the man would also be far more humiliating. Pleasure doesn’t affect her ability to conceive: she need feel none of it. She need not give him the satisfaction. She doesn’t.

They wait. Weeks, then months. Cordelia knows so little about conception that she’s not sure whether or not to worry. Would a normal couple have sought an explanation by now? Each month that comes unburdened is a relief as much as a concern.

Cordelia, as the youngest, had never seen a younger sibling born. There had been years between all of their births, but surely that time had been used to raise an infant rather than trying at once to bear another one? She finds herself full of the sort of questions a girl might ask her mother, should her mother be there to answer.

The thought hadn’t ever occurred to her, but now she realizes she has no way of knowing: can she bear a child at all?

If she were to be infertile, what would become of Glenbrook? Would she be killed outright? Or would pregnancy become just one last act before she was? Gustadolph had gone to great lengths to take control of her kingdom, after all. His plot had been years in the making. Now that he’d come so close, he would never let a thing like honesty stand in the way of making his claim undisputed.

Would it be worth playing along, she wonders? There’s nothing left for him to hold over her head but the welfare of her people, and perhaps she could better serve them by exposing him as a fraud. But—would such a thing even matter to the people of Glenbrook? If there had been no riot when their king was beheaded, there would be no riot when their princess made much less dire claims. Gustadolph strikes her as a man most dangerous when disagreed with. Speaking against him would only be worth it if it would inspire her people to fight.

Cordelia fingers the gem around her neck. No magic could protect against any of these ends that await her, but the gesture had been kind.

She wraps her hand around the pendant and squeezes it in her fist. It’s warm. It’s always warm, more than body heat: the feeling of a charm doing its job. It hasn’t left her neck since Avlora tied it there. In the last few months, Cordelia has found the warmth comforting.

But—now—

The bottom drops out of her empty belly.

When Avlora comes to rouse her next, Cordelia has untied the pendant from her neck. From her seat at the dressing-table, she holds it out in her open hand.

Frozen at the doorway, Avlora forces a calm tone. “Would you like me to tie it again, Your Majesty?”

Cordelia shakes her head. “Before you do, General, may I ask—what, precisely, this charm protects me from?”

Avlora doesn’t give an answer, which is as good as one. Cordelia watches her for a moment before she looks down at the pendant in her palm.

“Was this not a rather treasonous gift?” she asks. “If I were to tell the archduke what you’d—"

“Please—"

“You had no right.”

Looking up again into General Avlora’s wide-eyed face, Cordelia almost finds a novelty in it. Avlora allows surprise to grace her features so rarely, but there’s open shock in the stare she’s giving her now. She hadn’t expected her princess to be ungrateful.

“I apologize,” she says, gruffly. “You had no way of acquiring such a thing yourself.”

She certainly hadn’t. In another circumstance, such measures might have occurred to her, but Cordelia had grown too used to imprisonment to consider it. And now that it’s been some time, she no longer wishes to entertain the thought.

“Very well.” She holds the necklace out to Avlora, dangling from her fist. “Perhaps you can sell it back. I hate to see you waste your own money on gifts for me.”

Avlora, still stunned, takes the necklace in hand. She stares at Cordelia, and then she speaks more gently.

“Do you understand what it is to bear a child?”

Cordelia knows as little about childbirth as she does about marriage. Her female mentors were maids and tutors and governesses, all of whom were unmarried, for all of whom pregnancy was a fireable offense. She considers Avlora: raised at the feet of the Archduke’s family, since before the birth of the younger generation. Had she seen them born? Had she seen their mothers dead?

“I understand that it is required of me,” she says. “I understand that my failure to conceive puts me at risk.”

“But surely you understand that your fate following childbirth is far more certain than any risk before it?”

It’s Cordelia’s turn not to answer.

Avlora steps closer, and she lowers her voice to a dark murmur. “I know you don’t wish to have his child.”

“It doesn’t matter whether or not I wish it,” Cordelia replies. “You knew that I would disagree with you, which is why you didn’t offer this option openly.”

“I knew that you are given to unwilling sacrifice.” Avlora clenches her jaw. “I didn’t want to see you used in such a way, against your will.”

“You decide for yourself what my will is?”

 She looks away again, and she sighs.

“…I cannot understand,” she says after a moment. “Perhaps it’s my nature”

“Your nature?”

"As an orphan of no consequence, I was lucky to be born in a place like Aesfrost. Where, with enough effort, I could make my own way. But the way I chose was unusual, and ill-suited to young girl.”

“I see.”

“Countless times I was told that my body was a cleverer path to success and comfort, either by marriage or by sexual favors.” She looks back into Cordelia’s eyes. “I suppose I’ve grown hostile to the idea of exploiting oneself in such a way.”

Cordelia can’t help wondering whether Avlora had ever fantasized about romance. Was that on the table for knights? The men had formed a literary genre around it, but the women bore the same risk a princess did. The women bore the same judgment any woman did. It’s no surprise, is it, that a woman like Avlora would divorce herself from the concept entirely?

“Exploiting oneself,” Cordelia repeats. “You risk your life and limb each day on the battlefield, General. Is that not much the same?”

She did not enlist in an army. She was born into it, as were her brothers, as was her father. They’d been killed with the businesslike, impersonal dispassion that one kills an enemy soldier. Frani, facedown on the marble. Roland, waterlogged and mangled. Her father, headless—the neck hidden behind his bloodstained mantle such that for the moment before he fell he could’ve been bent over a book.

None of them had chosen their lot, but all three of them had been trained as half a soldier at least. Cordelia’s battlefields were different.

“I, like you, risk my safety each day for the country I love—"

Avlora scoffs, clenching the necklace in her fist. “You do not risk it, Princess, you give it up—"

“It is taken from me.”

Chastened, Avlora sharply closes her mouth.

Cordelia clasps her hands in her lap, looking down at them. “You ask why I don’t wish to prevent a pregnancy, even by such a loathsome man?” She snorts weakly. “Once I am pregnant, he will stop trying.”

Avlora takes another step forward, and for a few seconds Cordelia is sure she’s going to reach for her. Maybe even wrap her arms around her, like someone so protective might have done in any other world. But General Avlora is too decorous for such a thing, too restrained. She stands there, helpless.

And then she sinks to one knee, looking up at her queen with deep, anguished eyes. Cordelia stares back at her.

Removed from circumstance, she might have savored this feeling. Now that she knows something of sex, her thoughts of what it could be have taken firmer shape. She wonders in more detail now. What the general might feel like beneath her armor, the roughened femininity of her. Cordelia still dwells on the sight of Avlora sitting bare-legged before her that afternoon, fresh new skin on thighs spread with knightly swagger. Sometimes, in dreams, that afternoon ends differently.

But now that Cordelia knows something of sex, she finds this feeling repellent. Not in place of arousal, but beneath it, like rot. And as Avlora keeps her distance, Cordelia wonders how much she knows of such a feeling.

She lowers her eyes and nods toward the necklace in the general’s hand.

“You understand as well as I do that I could never protect myself indefinitely,” she says softly. “You’re not a short-sighted woman, General. And yet you gave me this charm with no intention of removing it.”

Cordelia looks down into Avlora’s hard face.

“You expect it not to matter, given enough time,” she says. Accuses, perhaps. “You expect Serenoa to triumph.”

Once more, Avlora replies with her silence.

It’s obvious now. She understands each player more than anyone, she’s done the calculus. Open defection now would do more harm than good, and Avlora still loves her country regardless of who leads it—but there’s no longer any loyalty in her actions. No longer, if there ever had been.

Still silent, Avlora opens her hand. Offers the necklace again. But Cordelia reaches out her own hand to gently push Avlora’s fingers closed.

“I don’t know that I share your optimism,” she says. “But I pray that you're right.”

Avlora looks back down at her fist for a long time, even after Cordelia’s withdrawn her fingertips. Then she rises, and stiffly bows.

“Once more, I apologize.”

“No harm done,” says Cordelia. “That is, so long as you’ve learnt to include me in any of your designs, going forward.”

“I have no more designs, Princess.”

“Then perhaps I will have to come up with some.”

Avlora makes an odd sound, almost a laugh. Necklace still clenched in her armored fist, she takes her leave.

Cordelia looks at herself in the mirror, once she is alone again. She tucks a loose strand of hair back behind her ear, fingertips lingering on her bare neck as she lowers her hand.

General Avlora feels for her. It’s more profound than pity. General Avlora cares for her—and that’s the greatest weapon she’s held yet. It’s a weapon she might be able to do some damage with.

Avlora is gone.

Cordelia’s home is her own again. Roland’s again, more precisely. Her brother had returned from the dead, and her kingdom from occupation. Everything she’d been longing for had come to pass—but it hadn't come to pass without pain.

When she gets a spare moment, Cordelia descends into the Whiteholm kitchens.

Days after she’d given back the necklace, Avlora had left a small jar of tea leaves on her dressing-table. “Should you change your mind,” she’d said.

Back then it had amused Cordelia to picture Avlora shopping for these things, as serious and businesslike as she was. How had she navigated the word-of-mouth dark market of an occupied town? Had Avlora explored this industry before elsewhere? Had she needed to?

But now, looking back, the affection in the gesture overcomes her. Avlora had gone to such effort, so far out of her own way, for her prisoner queen.

Thank you. For everything.

Cordelia sighs, staring down into her pot as tiny bubbles line the inside.

There’s no way for her to explain this feeling to Roland. She’d say he’d been chasing vengeance for long enough to blind him, but that’s a ridiculous way to frame it. He was never blind. Avlora was the enemy general who had personally taken everything from him. He was right not to forgive her. He was right—but Cordelia is soft, and she’s heartbroken.

As she watches her water begin to boil, she caresses the little jar that Avlora’s hand had once held.

The last time she prepared her own tea, she was young enough that Frani came down to scold her for getting underfoot. It’s been years since then. She doesn’t remember how to tell when the tea is ready, and when it’s dark enough as to seem undeniable, she can’t remember how to get the leaves out. She swears under her breath as she spends a minute trying to scoop them out with a spoon.

Her tea smells surprisingly pleasant, but when she takes a sip, it’s bitter. Cordelia grimaces, but she doesn’t dare add sugar. She knows enough about magic to know potions are a finicky business.

She takes a bigger sip and swallows quickly. She looks out over the water from the kitchen window.

Her body will be her own again.