Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

There was only one thing Bernadetta found more welcoming than the sight of the officer's academy at Garreg Mach Monastery rising over the horizon at the end of a long day of battle and travel, and that was opening the door to her room after a long day and seeing a half-finished book on her desk and a warm bed waiting for her.

Much to her dismay, she couldn’t be in her room right now. She was in the dining hall squeezed into one of the long tables whose far end had been monopolized by the rest of the Black Eagles house because Caspar had insisted that she join them for drinks and a special surprise. And while saying no to him was pretty easy, making sure he heard it was much more difficult.

And so here she was, surrounded by the other seven students in her house, trapped like a rat in a cage, with a cup of slightly-warm apple cider staring up at her while everyone else’s conversations weaved around each other. Despite Caspar’s insistence that she had to be here, she didn’t see why. Everyone seemed to be having just as much fun as they would have if she’d stayed in her room.

“Well, Bernie?” Caspar asked, grinning giddily and running a hand rakishly through his short-cropped aquamarine hair. “Isn’t this better than holing yourself up in your den?”

“Not really…”

“Oh, come on. What’s better than hanging out with your pals?”

Bernadetta went through a list in her head. There was reading, writing, sewing, sleeping… pretty much anything else that kept her alone in a small room for hours at a time…

“Oh!” Caspar leaned out away from the table and waved. “Hey, Professor!”

Professor Byleth Eisner strolled past the table and came to a stop, looking over the gathered students. As far as professors went at the Officers Academy, she was an odd one. Taciturn, laconic, and dry; a corpselike pallor to her face and blank, hazy gray eyes that never betrayed her mood or thoughts; long hair the color of seaweed falling just past her shoulders. No one knew who she was or where she’d come from, or even how old she was (she didn’t look much older than any student), or anything at all about her other than that she was the daughter of Captain Jeralt Eisner. Rumors abounded about her: Dorothea had once claimed that Byleth had told her she didn’t have a heartbeat and it had been impossible to tell whether or not she was joking.

Bernadetta didn’t know how she felt about Byleth. On the surface, when it came to her demeanor and mannerisms, Byleth was everything she found frightening and threatening in an adult, and that was on top of allegedly being a walking corpse. And yet Bernadetta found herself feeling oddly safe around her more often than not. She was a good teacher, attentive to a fault (she invited her students for tea all the time, and she knew everyone’s favorite flavor), and kind in her own way, if a little unsettling at first glance.

“Care to join us, Professor?” asked Edelgard. Her silvery snow-white hair framed a stern, stony face that nonetheless seemed to soften considerably whenever Byleth was around. “I’m sure we can make room.”

Byleth shook her head and declined; she was busy and had just been passing through. Somehow, Edelgard looked disappointed.

Bernadetta couldn’t help but notice Hubert slip a small, innocuous-looking flask from his pocket, surreptitiously uncapping it and with a flick of his wrist pouring a trickle of amber liquid into his cider. It wasn’t hard to assume the worst. Tall, pale, vampire-like, and a keen student of the dark arts, he invited the aura of wickedness that engulfed him. Was he poisoning that drink? He was, wasn’t he? But why would he slip a drug into his own drink? Was he planning on swapping it with someone else’s? She reflexively dragged her cup closer to her, guarding it with her hand.

She wasn’t the only person who noticed. Before Hubert could slip the flask back into his pocket, Dorothea cast a glance in his general direction and perked up at the sight of it. 

“Making some hard cider, huh, Hubie?” she asked. Despite being the only commoner among the Black Eagles, she showed no fear among those of noble blood and seemed to enjoy openly mocking them, making her by far one of the bravest people Bernadetta knew. Sometimes Bernadetta wondered if Dorothea even knew what a dangerous game she was playing by acting like that. She had to, right?

Everyone else perked up as well. Bernadetta felt the table shake as the rest of the students all leaped from the bench as well. She stayed seated, tried to look as small as possible, and wondered if now would be a good time to run for it.

With all eyes on him, Hubert looked up from his drink. “Yes,” he answered curtly, with not even a hint of dissembling in his voice. He hid the flask almost sheepishly. “It’s whiskey. Don’t bother asking me to share; none of you are of age,” he added, almost reveling in the fact that at twenty he was the oldest student in the house, “and besides, there’s far too little for the entire class.”

A ripple of uncomfortable laughter slithered across the table. No one comfortably laughed at anything Hubert said, probably because they were afraid of waking up with a knife in their back.

“Well, aren’t you full of surprises?” Dorothea asked, bravely slipping her cup vaguely in Hubert’s direction. “Are you sure you can’t spare a finger or two?”

Scratch that—nobody except Dorothea comfortably laughed at anything Hubert said.

“I didn’t think they allowed booze in the monastery,” Caspar commented, a tinge of awe in his voice.

“They don’t,” Linhardt answered.

“I can trust you all not to… rat me out, can’t I?” Hubert asked, his lips twisting in a wry little half-smile as the one pale yellow-green eye not hidden by a lank black forelock roved around the table. He had a naturally sinister gaze, intensified by the eyebrows he didn’t have. He didn’t have eyebrows. Who knew what had happened to them? An accident while shaving? Burned off with acid? Had he never had them at all to begin with?

“Anyone here can keep a secret,” Edelgard said, crossing her arms. “But I expect you to have that disposed of at your earliest convenience, Hubert. You know the rules.”

Edelgard’s glare was perhaps the only thing that made Hubert wither. “Yes, of course, Lady Edelgard,” he said.

“I will dispose of that for you, Hubert,” Ferdinand von Aegir said, holding out his hand expectantly. It wasn’t possible to tell if he sincerely meant it or if he meant to ‘dispose’ of it with a nod and a wink. He acted the very model of a nobleman, but wasn’t completely immune to flights of whimsy. Bernadetta thought he mostly acted seriously to impress people.

Bernadetta pulled her hood over her head and took a cautious sip of her cider. Oh, Goddess, why did everyone have to be so noisy?

Edelgard’s eyes darted in her direction. “Everyone,” she announced, clearing her throat. “I hope that in all this excitement you haven’t forgotten why you’re here.”

Bernadetta felt a part of her soul shrivel up and die like a leaf falling into a fire. 

The rest of her classmates all sat down. “I remember,” Petra said, raising her cup. “We are giving the toast to Bernadetta for clutching the victory in today’s battle!” As a visitor from the faraway Brigid archipelago, her grasp of Fódlanish was not quite there yet, but her idiosyncratic manner of speaking only added to her charm. She was Bernadetta’s opposite in every way—daring, bold, adventurous, making her way through an unfamiliar world without the slightest trace of fear or anxiety…

As all eyes fell on her, Bernadetta wished she was invisible, or at the very least, small enough to slip under the dining hall table. “N-No,” she stammered, “I didn’t mean—I mean, it was just a lucky sh—”

“Here’s to Bernie-Bear, the best damn archer in Garreg Mach!” Caspar chimed in with raucous aplomb, raising his cup high, then grabbing her by the wrist and forcibly smashing the side of her cup into his.

Best archer in the academy? Best in Black Eagles, more like it, and even then only by default because no one else specialized in it. He couldn’t be more patronizing if he’d called her the best in all of Fódlan, or the best in the whole world. Bernadetta knew when she was being lied to or made fun of, or at least she liked to think so. She pulled herself free and went back to nursing her drink.

“Excuse me,” a student from another house snapped as she passed behind Caspar, “can you keep it down? Other people eat here, too, you know.”

“It’s called morale-building!” he shot back, yelling at the back of her head as she walked away. “Maybe if your house did it, you’d win more tournaments, Lysithea!”

“Bernadetta, it is the custom here to be clinking the glasses, no?” Petra asked, leaning across the table and over Ferdinand’s lap to offer her cup to her. “For health and good luck?”

Bernadetta wondered if she would ever wake up from this nightmare. It all felt like mockery. How could there be anything praiseworthy about accidentally shooting a guy, even if the arrow had gone right through his eye? And being sandwiched between the two most obnoxious boys in the house for this ‘celebration’ just added injury to insult. They might as well have tied her to the table.

She just had to close her eyes, try to block out the outside world, and wait for it all to be over. That was how it always worked. Look within, retreat to her inner sanctum, wait for the danger to pass like a mouse hiding in its hole from a cat. If she could just shut out the noise cascading over her like crashing waves on a beach, she could at least brainstorm some ideas for the next chapter of her story…

No use. When she closed her eyes, she could only see that bandit lying on the ground, spread-eagle, limbs akimbo, the long shaft of an arrow rising from the bloody eye socket under the slit-like eyehole of his helm like a flagpole planted in the earth, a ragged bloody halo circling his head.

She’d shot a lot of people since enrolling in the Officers’ Academy, but never in the head. Mostly in the arms or legs, often in the chest, mostly by accident, always with plausible deniability (she could always tell herself they were playing dead, because she’d read it once in a book that most quote-unquote ‘killed’ soldiers just did that when they were wounded). Headshots, though… there was no getting up from one of those.

“Hey, Bernadetta.”

Her eyes snapped open. Everyone was still here, still drinking, still talking. Mostly talking. She wondered if she could just leave, or if someone (i.e. Caspar) would try to hold her back. It was within the realm of possibility.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder. “Hey.”

She glanced over her shoulder and found herself looking up at—Oh, Goddess, not him.

It was Sylvain Gautier, Blue Lions house’s resident louse. He was wearing the quote-unquote ‘charming’ roguish smile he always had around girls. “Hey,” he said, his voice dripping with swagger, a hand rakishly running through an expertly-tousled nest of brilliant red hair. “I’ve been looking for you. I, um, found this in the library.” He pulled out a familiar-looking book from his bag and held it out. “I think it’s yours?”

Mortified, Bernadetta snatched it out of his hands and stuffed it into her own bag, her heart hammering a tattoo against her ribs, barely able to stammer out a rushed ‘thank you’ under her breath. He hadn’t read it, had he? She didn’t write her stories for other people to read them!

“I read it!” he said, grinning like a loon and rakishly roughing up his scarlet hair. “And it was really good! You could be a professional writer!” He leaned over and rested an elbow on the table, wedging himself between her and Ferdinand, still with a practiced ladykiller grin plastered on his face.

She found herself wishing that Hubert had poisoned her drink. 

Ferdinand cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he said, laying a not-so-welcoming hand on Sylvain’s shoulder, “we are busy here. Would you mind not, er, butting in?”

“So, where do you come up with your ideas, anyway?” Sylvain asked, ignoring him. “Your characters feel so real!”

“Bernadetta,” Petra called out to draw her attention away, “I am wondering, tomorrow after class, maybe you could be demonstrating your technique to me?”

“Uh, um… uh… yeah,” Bernadetta answered, so flustered that she momentarily forgot how to say ‘no.’

Ferdinand tugged on Sylvain’s shoulder. “Hey. Do you know who I am?”

“Yeah, you tell everyone three times a day.” Sylvain shrugged. “Well, I gotta go,” he told Bernadetta (thank the Goddess he’d gotten the point), “but I’d love to talk with you more sometime. Creative girls are such a rare catch, y’know?”

“I’m flattered,” she said, though she wasn’t. She watched Sylvain leave. Her pulse was still racing; if her heart beat any faster, she was sure she would die on the spot.

“I did not know you wrote, Bernie,” Ferdinand said, impressed. “What kind of things do you write?”

She wanted to say, ‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ but couldn’t force the words past her lips. Instead, she just shrugged and pulled the drawstrings on her hood tighter.

He raised his cup to his lips, then suddenly slammed it onto the table and shot up to his feet, his hand slamming against the table, his eyes wide with shock. “Is that Lady Rhea?” he shouted out, flinging out his arm.

Everyone fixed their gaze where he was pointing, all at rapt attention, but Her Holiness, the head of the church, her divine majesty Archbishop Rhea was nowhere to be seen.

“Oh, uh…” Ferdinand scratched at the back of his head and sheepishly lowered himself down to the bench as everyone’s gaze shifted back toward him. “I must have mistaken that lamp over there for her headdress.”

As the night dragged on with interminable slowness, Bernadetta took a few more sips of her cider, but as her stomach twisted itself into knots, she found her appetite, or rather her thirst, desert her. Did Caspar have to go into such vivid detail about how many new notches he’d put in the head of his axe this morning? At least Linhardt seemed just as queasy as her.

“I don’t feel so good,” she mumbled, slipping off the bench.

“Alright, see ya in class tomorrow, Bernie,” Caspar said. He sounded so casual and laid-back about it that Bernadetta realized she probably could have gotten away with leaving whenever she’d wanted to.

Goddess almighty, she was an idiot.

Dorothea waved goodbye as she headed out of the dining hall. “Goodnight, Bern!”

“I hope you will be feeling better soon!” Petra chimed in.

Bernadetta waved back half-heartedly and hurried out of the dining hall and into the courtyard. She had barely taken five steps before nearly tripping over a fat orange-and-white cat curled up in the grass. Rudely interrupted from its nap, it hissed at her and scampered off, dragging a limp hind leg behind it.

The last rays of the setting sun bathed the monastery in a soft amber glow, the darkening sky filled with streaks of violet and gold painted across the underside of the clouds. At this hour, the courtyard was empty, transforming it into a welcome sanctuary. A cool breeze whistled through the campus, sending a whispering susurrus through the trees and rustling the tall hedges and thorny rosebushes lining the courtyard. She hadn’t realized how hot and stuffy it had gotten back in the dining hall; the evening air was a godsend. Maybe it would be all she needed to feel better.

No good. She scratched at her forehead as her brain throbbed against the inside of her skull. Now she had a headache, too. And a feverish wave of pins-and-needles rushing under her skin. All signs of some sort of influenza, or maybe something worse…

“Bernadetta, may I have a word with you?”

Edelgard’s voice cut through the air like a knife through butter and struck her in the heart like an arrow. “I’m sorry!” Bernadetta squeaked reflexively, grabbing herself by her own shoulders as if to protect herself. “I-I didn’t mean to leave so early, I just—I’m not feeling okay…”

“I’m not here to accept any apology from you,” Edelgard said, catching up to her. A gust of wind fanned out her long silvery hair behind her. “I’m here to offer you my gratitude.”

“I’m sorry,” Bernadetta insisted. “I know not to expect forgiveness from you—”

“That isn’t what I meant—”

“Please, Lady Edelgard, if you could find it in your heart—”

Edelgard’s hand landed on her shoulder. “Bernadetta, I said, thank you,” she repeated, her icy lavender eyes boring into Bernadetta’s.

“I’m— what?” Bernadetta asked as her brain caught up to her ears.

“I had a lot on my mind this morning,” Edelgard explained, her eyes drifting and focusing on something far off in the distance. “I was distracted; those bandits caught me off-guard. If you hadn’t taken out their leader, I could have been hurt.”

“It wouldn’t have come to that,” Bernadetta said, knowing full well she was being talked down to. Edelgard was a terror on the battlefield; to say she could take care of herself was an understatement if ever there was one.

“Perhaps, but who knows? Surely you know that one well-placed shot is all it takes to fell even the strongest foe. Who strikes first in battle wins; and you have a unique privilege and talent for striking first.”

Bernadetta nodded. She wasn’t sure how else to act. With Edelgard so close by her, most of her brain had just shut down, leaving all higher functions disabled and nothing but the most basic survival instincts running through her head. Being around her was like balancing on a thin plank suspended over shark-infested waters. One misstep, one wrong word, and unless she ran away she’d be a smear of blood floating on the waves. That was how people like Edelgard were…

Edelgard squinted at her. “You’re bleeding,” she pointed out, gesturing to her forehead.

“Huh?” She lifted her hand to her forehead in turn, brushed aside her messy bangs, and laid her hand on her brow; she pulled it away to find a few stray speckles of blood dotting her fingertips and lining the tips of her fingernails. Funny, she didn’t remember her nails being this long, or—she pressed one against the tip of her thumb, ow— this sharp. “Oh. It’s fine. I must’ve scratched too hard,” she muttered.

The way Edelgard looked at her suddenly seemed more suspicious than concerned.

“A-Anyway,” Bernadetta said, feeling all of a sudden more vulnerable by an order of magnitude, “I should really be getting back to my room.”

With that, she hastily made an about-face and marched off in the direction of the dormitories, slipped, and fell flat on her face. The damp grass was cold against her cheek.

“Perhaps you should go to the infirmary instead,” Edelgard said, helping her to her feet.

“No, it’s fine. I just tripped.” Her heels slid up the backs of her boots. Her bootstraps must have come loose. “I just need to lie down for a bit.”

Now she couldn’t tell whether Edelgard looked suspicious or concerned.

“It’s already haunting you, isn’t it?” Edelgard asked as she helped her cross the courtyard on the way to the dormitories. “I can tell. When one aims for the head, it is never a pleasant sight to behold. Until today, you’ve been pretending the worst you did was wound your enemies, haven’t you?”

Bernadetta kept her pace slow and deliberate, her head bowed and eyes fixed on the ground, partly to avoid meeting Edelgard’s eyes and partly to make sure she didn’t trip and fall again. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s only natural. However, as a soldier, you will have to accept that you must fight to kill, not merely to wound.” Even though Edelgard was her fellow student and was only about six months months older than her, she was the head of the house, a position somewhere between student and faculty, and carried herself with an authoritative air and wisdom beyond her years.

“Sorry.”

Edelgard closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Please stop apologizing.”

“Sor—I m-mean, okay.” Bernadetta took a deep breath and opened the door to her room, feeling a wave of relief wash over her at the sight of her own little sanctuary on the other side of the threshold, gloomy as it was with no light but the faint trickle of twilight bleeding through the windows. “So… h-how do I do it?”

A sardonic smile tugged at the corner of Edelgard’s mouth. Bernadetta didn’t think she’d ever seen her crack a smile like that before. “Perhaps you could bite your tongue whenever you feel the urge to say it.”

“No, I mean actually killing people.” Bernadetta carefully trudged through the gloom to her desk and lit a candle, driving the shadows to the corners of the room. She immediately regretted keeping the conversation going. Her headache was back, there was an odd twinge running down her spine, there was an ache that went down to her bones, she felt feverish and prickly all over, like there were insects crawling under her skin…

Maybe she should have gone to the infirmary.

“Ah, that.” Edelgard followed her inside. “Think about the man you killed. What was he?”

“A… A bandit?”

“Exactly. A thief. An outlaw. How many people do you think had already died by his hand, or seen their livelihoods in ruins because of him?” Edelgard’s eyes narrowed, her expression cold and merciless even with the soft, warm candlelight falling on her face. “The life you took today is a child tomorrow who will not become an orphan, a woman tomorrow who will not be made a widow, a man tomorrow who will not lose the means to feed his family. The life you took is equal to a dozen, perhaps more, that you have saved.”

“Um… that’s an… interesting way of thinking about it,” Bernadetta admitted. Maybe she could put that into the next chapter of her story. That was one of the fun things about writing. It was a safe place to deal with real-life problems… as long as no one else took a peek inside, that was.

A sharp, hot jolt of pain jabbed itself deep in her sinuses, throbbing in tune with her headache. Reflexively, she clapped her hands over her nose. What she felt didn’t feel like her own face. It didn’t feel like anyone’s face. It didn’t feel like a human’s face.

…Then what, she asked herself with mounting dread, did it feel like?

This was some sort of hallucination, wasn’t it? Someone must have slipped a psychotropic drug into her drink. Maybe something like those rare mushrooms that supposedly made people think they could fly. She knew she should have kept a closer eye on Hubert…

Unaware of Bernadetta’s ongoing break with reality, Edelgard leaned over the desk, idly inspecting one of the hand-sewn carnivorous plant dolls resting on its surface. Leading her here, Bernadetta realized, had been a terrible idea. Who knew what she was thinking, looking at those dolls? She probably hated them. Those weird, ugly plants, of course they were the weird, ugly girl’s favorites.

She felt dizzy and lightheaded, her heartbeat a frantic tempo, the light dimming as color leeched from the room and dark miasma ate into the corners of her field of view. She wanted it all to stop. The day had started bad, the middle had been bad, the end had been bad; saints only knew what was happening to her right now; and on top of that, even though all she wanted to do was hide under a blanket and wait for whatever the hell was going on to stop, Edelgard von Hresvelg, next in line for the imperial throne, was standing in her room and looking at all her stuff with a silent, cold air of judgment.

Edelgard slipped her finger into the felt pitcher plant’s gaping maw. It must have just been Bernadetta’s imagination, but she seemed to have suddenly gotten just a little taller. Everything seemed to have suddenly gotten taller. “But I wonder, what creates those men? Those people whose very existence destroys dozens of lives as they run their course?” she asked sharply. “What brings them to such a lowly state? Is it a fault in their souls, or is there something more to it?”

“Uh…” Bernadetta answered, backing away toward the far wall and uncovering her face just briefly enough to catch a glimpse of it in the little mirror propped up on the stone windowsill. In the dim light, though wreathed in shadow, she could definitely make out what looked like a snout and whiskers.

Edelgard didn’t wait for an answer. If there was one thing that could be said about her with absolute certainty, it was that she had a Vision with a capital V, and once she started pontificating, she could keep going for a long time. “I believe our society is to blame,” she continued. “A society that transforms men into beasts. For the sake of a just and peaceful world, a society like that must be itself transformed. I will be… we will be the agents of that change.” She turned to face her. Bernadetta covered her face again. “Can I count on you and your bow to stand behind me, Bernadetta von Varley?” Edelgard asked.

“Um… yeah, sure,” Bernadetta squeaked, though her head was so thick with fog that she couldn’t make even the slightest effort to comprehend what Edelgard had been saying. Her voice was muffled by her hands, her breath hot and heavy against her palms.

She had to get Edelgard out of here. But how do you tell the imperial princess to get out? She couldn’t just say ‘leave’ to her no matter how many times she said ‘please’ before it!

“I think I’m gonna vomit,” she blurted out instead as the room spun around her and her legs crumpled beneath her.

Edelgard was at her side in a flash. “I’m going to find the professor,” she announced. “She will know what to d—”

She stopped as though her words had just crashed headlong into a brick wall, her eyes widening and mouth hanging agape in shock. And just as everything went black, Bernadetta heard a horrified scream pierce the air.

Bernadetta woke up to the feeling of a mattress beneath her and a blanket draped over her. What a wonderful thing after such a terrible day. She’d had such a bizarre nightmare, though, so coherent and vivid and yet so unreal and terrifying. Edelgard had been lecturing her about society and rummaging through all of her things, and meanwhile it had felt like her body was soft clay or melting candlewax…

“Are you alright, Lady Edelgard?”

That was Hubert’s voice. What was he doing in her bedroom? And Edelgard, too? But if she was here, then didn’t that mean she hadn’t been dreaming?

“I’m fine, thank you. I merely passed out a little.”

“A little. At any rate, it’s good to see you safe.”

“What about Bernadetta? What… happened to her?”

It hadn’t been a nightmare. What a horrible thing to hallucinate, though—that horrible crawling and prickling under her skin, that ache deep down in her bones, that snout—

Trembling with trepidation, she lifted her hand, stirring under the blanket, and cupped her hand over her snout.

Okay. She was still hallucinating.

“Poison, by the looks of it.”

“…Poison did that.”

“Indeed. It’s something I read about not too long ago. An interesting poison, but a cowardly one—one for people who want to make their problems ‘disappear’ but can’t bear the thought of taking a life themselves. She should count her blessings she received such a small dose.”

A small dose? How much longer would she be hallucinating if she’d gotten a small dose? And what did Hubert mean about ‘making problems disappear?’

“A poison that does something like that… Isn’t there a simpler explanation? Could it have something to do with her Crest?”

“I’ll admit I can’t rule that out entirely. But do you really want me to call Professor Hanneman down here and let him poke and prod at her? Do you think she wants that?”

“No, I suppose not. Poison, though… Who would want to do that to her?”

“Who indeed, Lady Edelgard. Who indeed.”

Bernadetta gasped. Oh, Goddess, he’d poisoned her, hadn’t he? He wanted to make her disappear! What had she ever done to him to deserve that? She racked her brain. Had she slighted him at some point? Did he have some sort of animus toward her because she’d told him he was terrifying once? That was it, wasn’t it?

“I’ll find the Professor. I’m sure she’ll be of help to us.”

“Please allow me to go in your stead. I’m certain our mystery poisoner’s intended target was you. Until we find whoever did this, I think it would be prudent to keep a low profile.”

These hallucinations were unnervingly vivid. She could feel so clearly the whiskers tickling her palm and the long, thin tail wrapping itself around her ankle—

She threw off the covers and shot upright with a strangled, hoarse scream, as though she were trying to pull herself away from a roach or spider that had slipped into the bed. Her heart fluttered, her pulse throbbing in her ears.

Hubert turned to face her, the light from the desktop lamp illuminating only a sliver of his face like a waning crescent moon. Even with his face bathed in shadow, though, the sardonic little smirk on his face was evident. He was so creepy when he smiled.

“Ah, Bernadetta, you’re awake,” he said. “The new look suits you, in my opinion,” he added with a sinister chuckle (he didn’t know how to do it any other way).

Edelgard crossed her arms, unamused. “Hubert.”

“But I digress,” he said, heading out the door. “I will fetch the Professor. You two make yourselves comfortable.”

Edelgard did not look very comfortable and made no effort to make herself less uncomfortable. She stole a glance at her and put a hand over her mouth to hide a repulsed grimace. Bernadetta had never seen her so rattled.

Seized with equal parts dread and morbid curiosity, Bernadetta crawled out of bed to the mirror resting on the windowsill. Questions bubbled up in her head like a swarm of ants pouring from an anthill— why was the bed so wide, and why was it so far off the ground, and why did the window seem to loom over her, and why did her clothes feel so loose, and why was the mirror so much bigger now as she grasped it in her hands?

Her reflection answered every question before she could ask it.

Framed by a comfortingly familiar mop of violet hair was a disconcertingly unfamiliar mousy gray face, one that was pointy and fuzzy and whiskery. She brushed her finger against her whiskers and watched them twitch. Touching even their tips was like touching a part of her face. She felt faint again.

This was the ‘new look’ Hubert had been teasing her about? But if he could see it, too, then that meant…

“I’m not hallucinating, am I?” she asked.

Still pointedly refusing to look in her direction, Edelgard shook her head. “No.”

Well, that was that. It was all real. Bernadetta flopped onto her bed and stared up blankly at the ceiling. “Okay.” 

She’d half expected to scream again or start crying. No. Just, ‘okay,’ as measured as a ruler and as empty as her head now felt.

The door rattled in its frame, rudely jolting her out of her resigned malaise.

“Bernie!” Caspar shouted from the other side, his voice muffled. “I heard a scream! You okay in there?” The door rattled again. “Hold on! I’m coming in!”

Edelgard glanced at Bernadetta, her mouth drawn taut in a nervous scowl, and shook her head and mouthed, ‘No.’ Bernadetta nodded in agreement.

“Don’t worry! I’m here!” The door rattled again to no avail. “I’m, uh…” The door rattled one more time. “I’m gonna get the Professor! Don’t panic, I—Oh, hi, Professor, I was just…”

Edelgard relented and opened the door to let Byleth in. The professor strode in, with Hubert looming over her (looming was his natural state of being) as he trailed behind her. Though he tried to shut the door on his way in, though, Hubert was unable to stop Caspar from worming his way into the room.

Bernadetta groaned. This was just what she needed—more people in her bedroom. One was enough, and only when it was herself.

“Bernie!” Caspar fought his way past Hubert, who was making an unexpectedly-valiant attempt to shove him back out the door. “What happened? You’re, uh…” His brow furrowed, his eyebrows knitting together. “…tiny.”

She suddenly realized that she had shrunk so much that the only part of her uniform that hadn’t slipped away from her was her blouse, and she was swimming in it. Or rather, drowning in it.

She couldn’t burrow under the blanket quickly enough.

While this definitely wasn’t the worst night of her life by a long shot, it was bad in a more unique way than any other bad day she’d ever had, and she could only pray it would end soon.

While this was far from the worst night of Edelgard’s life, it was bad in a singularly unique way that she didn’t think could be surpassed, and she could only hope it would end soon.

She didn’t like rodents. No, it was fairer to say she found herself disgusted by them. To be more specific, it was rats she had a problem with, but when one was locked in a pitch-black dungeon, fatigued yet sleepless in the middle of the night, surrounded by the dead and dying, one could hardly be expected to have the presence of mind or the acuity of eyesight to tell a rat from a mouse. (Time and time again, Hubert had gone to the trouble of pointing out to her the physical features that distinguished mice from rats, but it hardly made much of a difference—fears were not rational things.)

And so understandably, watching one of her classmates turn into a mouse, or at least mostly into a mouse, had shaken her. She couldn’t believe she’d actually passed out, though. It was good that Hubert had come to her aid and not someone else—she couldn’t fathom how embarrassing that would have been if, for example, it had been some other student like Ferdinand von Aegir, or Professor Byleth herself helping her back to her feet instead.

Not that she would have minded having Byleth’s arms around her, but it would simply have been unbecoming of her.

Once he’d sworn Caspar to secrecy on pain of torture and death and removed him from the room, Hubert set to work catching Byleth up to speed. She nodded along to his explanation, although the faraway look in her eyes made it seem as though she were actually listening to someone else whom only she could hear.

“…And so, if possible, I would like to keep this… issue between you and the rest of the Black Eagles as needed,” he concluded, glowering in his usual manner. “I smell a rat. We can’t afford to blindly assume that the culprit isn’t among the faculty. Especially if my theory is correct and the intended target was indeed Lady Edelgard.”

Edelgard gripped herself tightly by the arms and suppressed a shudder. The very thought that such an exotic poison had been intended for her disgusted and unnerved her. This wasn’t the first time she’d had to worry about being assassinated (as next in line for the throne and a woman with great ambitions, she had plenty of enemies in high places), nor would it be the last, but never had she dealt with an attempt on her life tailor-made to prey on her most deep-seated phobia.

It had to be a coincidence. No one knew about her rodent problem save for herself and Hubert. All the same, though, that poison would have been a horrifying thing for her to succumb to—inwardly, she doubted she could take it as well as Bernadetta had. 

She wasn’t fully willing to discount the possibility that it was something to do with Bernadetta’s Crest—those things caused such great pain to the world and to humanity in so many ways—but on the other hand, Hubert knew his poisons, and she trusted his expertise to the end.

It occurred to her that this was the second time today that the meek and unassuming girl from the house of Varley had saved her from an ignoble fate. Once again, she owed Bernadetta her gratitude.

Byleth gave the lump on the bed a gentle, consoling pat. The lump let out a muffled whimper. “You want to investigate this yourself?” she asked Hubert.

“Of course, I’ll accept your help if you’re offering it,” he replied with a formal bow, “but yes, I believe we should avoid involving outside help so as to avoid arousing the culprit’s suspicion. Furthermore…” He turned to face Edelgard. “Lady Edelgard, I have a proposition for you, if you will hear it.”

Edelgard took a breath and rebuilt her shattered composure. “I will.”

“It’s possible that our would-be assassin is unaware that their poison reached the wrong target. If you carry on normally, they’ll know that they’ve failed and will no doubt redouble their efforts.” Hubert stroked his chin thoughtfully, an almost-wicked gleam in his yellow eyes. “However, if you were to… vanish, and your room was found to be empty…”

“You want to pretend their plan worked,” Edelgard concluded. “If they believe they’ve won, they’ll be sloppy and overconfident. All the easier to root out and crush.” 

Hubert bowed. “You took the words from my mouth. Of course,” he added, turning his attention to Byleth, “that is assuming our professor doesn’t mind you missing a day or two of lessons…”

“Well, Professor? What do you think?” Edelgard asked Byleth. Hiding wasn’t exactly her style, but Hubert’s logic felt sound to her, and if it was a solid tactical decision, she would gladly set her pride aside. She trusted Byleth to make the right call in the end. She always did.

Byleth nodded. “I’ll allow it.”

Of course, Edelgard mused, Byleth wanted the would-be assassin found before they could strike again. It was hard enough to teach kids. It would be even harder to teach a classroom full of mice.

“So where,” she asked Hubert, “did you have in mind for me to ‘vanish’ to?” There were plenty of nooks and crannies in the monastery, although she couldn’t say she’d relish the thought of hiding in any of them. Besides, if the culprit knew of her phobia, what other secrets did they know about her?

“Well,” Hubert answered, “it just so happens we have a room available. A room whose occupant is already accounted for and that no one would suspect is harboring two people.” His eye darted around the room, settling on the bed on the lump in the blanket that was Bernadetta, and the long, thin pink tail poking out from under the edge of the tangled mass of sheets. “Especially considering that one is as quiet as… a mouse.”

Edelgard followed the path of Hubert’s gaze and clenched her teeth as the bottom dropped out of her stomach.

“Of course,” she said.

Shafts of early morning sunlight streamed in through the windows of the Black Eagles’ classroom the next morning, coaxing out long, skewed shadows from the two columns of desks lining the room.

Hubert waited for the rest of the class, minus Edelgard and Bernadetta, to settle down and for Byleth to close and lock the door behind her. “I’m sure you're all wondering,” he announced to the other five students, “why the Professor and I have brought you here so early.”

Ferdinand held a hand to his mouth and stifled a yawn. “Nothing good, I take it…”

Caspar raised his hand. “Can I tell them?”

“Where are Edelgard and Bernadetta?” Petra asked, surveying the room. “Bernadetta I understand, but Edelgard is never being late.”

“By the Goddess, you finally did it,” Linhardt deadpanned, slinking into a chair. “You killed them. I knew it was only a matter of time.”

Hubert glared at him.

“Bernie’s a mouse now,” Caspar blurted out. Everyone looked at him as though he’d grown a second head, which wouldn't have been that much more insane of a prospect.

How very tactful of him. This was exactly what Hubert needed.

“Well, not a mouse mouse,” he backtracked as the incredulous eyes of every other student in the house drilled holes in his head. “More like a half-mouse… mouse… person.” He looked at Hubert with pleading eyes. “Hey, back me up. You and Edelgard and the Professor were there.”

Hubert sighed, rolled his eyes, and deigned to explain what had happened last night. Mostly. He played his cards close to his chest; there was no reason for his classmates to know everything he knew.

Linhardt raised his hand. “Hubert, I have a question.”

Hubert crossed his arms as if to say, I’m not a professor; you can just ask.

“Are you sure it’s not a Crest thing?”

“Positive.” Though Bernadetta possessed a minor Crest of Indech, such a birthright generally did not cause such odd transformations. Indeed, the only Crest known to have such an effect had been lost to the ages, if it had ever existed at all in the first place.

“But there is precedent for it. You remember what happened to Miklan.”

“He didn’t even have a—”

“And then there’s the cursed Crest of Maurice—”

Hubert nearly laughed. A Demonic Beast was the furthest thing in the world from what Bernadetta had become. “Have you been listening to Mercedes’ ghost stories again? I know about all those things,” he replied snippily. “I also know my poisons.” There wasn’t a single person, student or faculty, who knew more about poisons than him; only Claude von Riegan, head of the Golden Deer house, came close.

“You are telling us a poison did this?” Ferdinand scoffed uneasily, half-laughing at how ludicrous the very thought was. “That is certainly an exotic poison.”

“Indeed,” Hubert replied, already feeling close to his wits’ end. “It is a work just as much of magic most foul as it is of chemistry. The kind of magic beloved by those who slither in the dark.”

He wondered to himself, could they have been responsible for this? Another thing to keep between himself and Edelgard.

“How can you be sure Edie was the target?” Dorothea asked, still rubbing the bleariness from her eyes. “Maybe some other noble family has it out for House Varley.”

“For the same reason I know for a fact that it was poison.” Hubert could feel his fingernails bite into his palms from how tightly he was clenching his fists and forced himself to remain calm. “I saw someone slip it into Lady Edelgard’s drink yesterday evening.”

A chorused outburst of confusion and disbelief filled the room.

“I didn’t see who,” he continued once the uproar had died down, “but I saw a disturbance in her cup and knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that someone had put an additive in it at some point while we were distracted.”

“I didn’t see anything,” Caspar said.

Linhardt shook his head. “Neither did I.”

Ferdinand, Hubert noted, suddenly looked a little paler, a little less as though he were writing this off as an amusing little joke. He had a terrible poker face. “Nor… did I,” he muttered unconvincingly.

“I was not seeing anything, either,” Petra admitted glumly. “We were all being distracted.”

“I spiked my own drink,” Hubert continued, “to quietly signal to Lady Edelgard that I believed her drink had been poisoned and give her an opportunity to dispose of it. However, I became worried that she had missed my signal when she did not use the toast as an excuse to get rid of it. Therefore, at the next opportunity, I took it upon myself to swap hers with someone else’s.”

Incensed, Caspar shot to his feet. “You what?”

“Why would you do that?” Dorothea cried out, disgusted. “What did poor Bern ever do to you?”

“Not as much as what I’m gonna do to you!” Caspar shouted, putting a leg up on his desk and rolling up his sleeves, a fire in his eyes and a snarl twisting his face. Linhardt grabbed him by the arm in a vain attempt to pull him back; Byleth rushed in front of him and held out her arm, though, holding him back without a word or a change in the ever-impassive expression on her face. Still scowling and filled with pent-up rage, but loath to fight his way past his teacher, he stepped off the desk and jammed his fists angrily into his pockets.

“Of course I didn’t give her the poisoned cup,” he said, raising his voice to be heard above the clamor. Ferdinand, once again, had gone pale, betraying his usual demeanor. “Or, rather, I didn’t give it to her. Isn’t that right, Ferdinand von Aegir?”

The room went silent. Everybody’s eyes darted between Ferdinand and Hubert, tension so thick it could be cut with a knife blanketing the classroom.

Ferdinand scowled and clenched his fists. “You greasy-haired mongrel—you tried to turn me into a mouse?!”

Hubert returned his scowl with a glare of his own. And failed, unfortunately, he almost shot back. “Rest assured, my aim was not to turn you into a mouse—though I’m certain it would be an improvement.”

Before Ferdinand could explode, Dorothea stood up and held him back. “Wait a minute! Ferdie isn’t… a mouse. How did Bern end up with the poison instead?” she asked.

“Yes, how did she end up with the poison?” Hubert parroted, looking Ferdinand right in his angry eyes and knowing exactly what hidden darkness that righteous indignation was hiding. “Perhaps you noticed that your drink had been swapped, assumed the worst, engineered a distraction—such as, say, pretending to catch a glimpse of Archbishop Rhea—and took advantage of the commotion to exchange cups with her?”

“What? Of course not!” Ferdinand hotly protested, his face now burning as red as his carrot-colored hair. “A true nobleman would never—”

Hubert chuckled darkly, knowing full well the role Ferdinand’s treacherous father (and his own traitorous cur of a father as well) had played in wresting political might from Edelgard's father, the current emperor of Adrestia. “Never is a very strong word, Ferdinand. Are you sure?”

“I did not know my cup was poisoned!”

“Yet you disposed of it awfully quickly for someone who had no idea it had been spiked.”

“I thought Sylvain may have slipped something into her drink when he was flirting with her!” Ferdinand shot back. “I switched cups with her to protect her. I feared it was a drug that would knock her out or render her, er, suggestible, and sought to bear whatever ill effects myself…” He glanced at his fellow classmates and Byleth in turn, his brow furrowing with worry. “You… Surely you all must believe me. Professor, you believe me, right?”

Byleth nodded. “I think you’re telling the truth, Ferdinand.”

Hubert was not so trusting, but it was a moot point as far as he was concerned. What had been done had been done, whether or not Ferdinand had acted out of noble self-sacrifice or malicious self-preservation.

“Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, it’s time to find our culprit. The Professor and I have already discussed dividing our forces to cover more ground.” He set a notebook on the table in front of Linhardt. “I’ve copied down the ingredients for both the poison and its antidote in this journal. You and Dorothea, visit the apothecary and ask if anybody has bought any of the ingredients. Get what you can for the antidote as well.”

“Ah, yes, I’ll just put it on my tab,” Linhardt responded blithely, opening the journal up to the first page and furrowing his brow at the sight of the lengthy ingredients list.

Dorothea took a peek at the list. “I can’t even pronounce half of these, Hubie.”

Hubert moved on. “Petra, you and I will investigate the scene of the incident.”

Ever the enthusiastic one, Petra made a fist and slammed it decisively on the table. “No clues will be escaping us.”

Caspar crossed his arms. “Well, General Hubert, any assignments for me and Ferdinand?” he asked testily.

“Keep an eye out for anyone suspicious, especially around Edelgard’s room,” Hubert said, “and stay out of my way.”

“With the utmost pleasure,” Ferdinand mumbled.

With Petra trailing behind him, Hubert made for the dining hall. As he stepped over the threshold of the classroom, though, Byleth reached up to lay a hand on his shoulder.

“Hubert,” she said.

“Yes, Professor?” he answered.

There was a dark look in her gray eyes; even though she had to look up to look him in the eyes, her stern glare still dug into him like a knife. Hubert could understand why she had been nicknamed ‘the Ashen Demon’ in her mercenary days. “Don’t poison other students.”

“Yes, Professor.”

“Once this is over, you will clean the stables every day after class for the rest of the month. At the very least.”

“Yes, Professor,” he answered with only the barest trace of a sardonic grin. Of course, she very well couldn’t let him off easy.

A shaft of morning sunlight fell across Bernadetta’s face like an arrow, the warm light bleeding through her eyelids and forcing her awake.

What a horrible dream! But thank the Goddess it had only been a dream. She sat up and rubbed the weariness from her eyes with the side of her fist and—

Whiskers.

And worse than the whiskers was the sight of Edelgard slumped over in the corner of the room, head bowed, silver hair spilling over her shoulders, knees tucked against her chest and arms draped over her knees. A flash of pain flickered across her face, her brow furrowing and a sharp grimace tugging at her lip for but a second before fading back to the serenity of sleep. A litany of soft nonsense spilled from her mouth as she muttered in her sleep. Somehow, the red half-cape and tights that were part of her uniform had changed color overnight from a vibrant crimson to a muddy sort of grayish chartreuse.

Once again, reality reared its ugly head and Bernadetta was forced to face the truth. Nothing that had happened yesterday had been a dream. Not Edelgard prodding at her collection of felt pitcher plants, not Hubert breaking into her room to talk about poisons, not Caspar barging in and catching sight of her wearing nothing but an oversized shirt, and most certainly not the whole thing about turning into a mouse.

It was real. It was all real! The whiskers, the fur, the tail, and worse than any of that, the imperial princess herself sleeping on the cold, hard stone floor of her bedroom like an impoverished peasant!

Welp. That was it, then. This was the end. She’d had a good run. No, scratch that, she’d had a very, very bad run, and it had been all her fault. She had to have done something to deserve this, after all. Cosmic justice maybe? Justice for what, only the Goddess knew.

“Edelgard!” she squeaked as she scampered out of bed. She wasn’t totally sure how her legs worked now, but they seemed to work in spite of her. “I-I mean, Lady Edelgard, Your Highness, ma’am, I’m so, so sorry—please forgive me, I should have given you the bed—no, I mean, I know I don’t deserve forgiveness, just don’t hurt me too badly…”

As Bernadetta scurried toward the resting princess, Edelgard’s eyes snapped open and she leaped to her feet with a sharp yelp.

“I mean, you can hurt me as badly as you want,” Bernadetta added as Edelgard stared down at her with wide, wild eyes, her chest heaving. “Just, um… I’ll shut up now…”

Edelgard put a hand over her heart and took a deep breath, glancing out the window. “Oh, Bernadetta. It’s just you. You startled me. Is it morning already?”

“I was just saying you can have the bed; it was stupid of me not to offer it to you; I’ll just sleep on the floor…”

“What? No, I don’t—”

“If the floor’s not good enough and you want me out of your sight, I’ll just crawl under the bed! Yes, that’s a good idea. I’ll crawl under the bed so no one has to look at me. Yeah. That’s where Bernie belongs. Under the bed. With the rest of the monsters.”

“Bernadetta.”

“Y-Yes, ma’am?”

“What kind of soldier would I be,” Edelgard asked, “if I wasn’t accustomed to rough sleeping?”

“Um… a bad one?” Bernadetta scuttled backward. “Not that I’m saying you’re a bad soldier! I’m terrible, I’m selfish…”

“What I meant is, I don’t care about the bed—”

“I’m worthless, I’m horrible, I’m—”

“Shut up!”

Bernadetta backed away until she was leaning against the side of the bed. “Shutting up!”

Edelgard leaned against the wall next to the window and raised her hand to her forehead, her fingertips burrowing into her hair and raking her scalp. “I can hardly hear myself think,” she snapped, “for all your self-abasement.”

“Sorry.”

“If you reserved that abuse for your enemies, you’d be unstoppable.”

Yes, Bernadetta knew that, but her enemies weren’t the ones who deserved that abuse.

Edelgard returned to standing awkwardly in the corner of the room, her arms folded over her chest, occasionally stealing a glance at her only to immediately stiffen and look away. She didn’t say anything more.

There was a faint scratching sound at the door and a muffled meow. As quiet as it was, hearing it felt like nails on a chalkboard and sent shivers up Bernadetta’s spine. “What’s that noise?” she asked.

“A cat, probably,” Edelgard muttered.

Bernadetta huddled up and buried herself in what was left of her uniform. She wasn’t sure how much shorter she’d gotten, but it was enough that the hem of her shirt came down to just above her knees, or at least where she was pretty certain her knees were now, which made it into a sort of tunic and at least let her preserve what little was left of her dignity.

This was the end of her life as she knew it. It wasn’t like she could leave her room as long as she looked like this. No more classes at the Officers Academy, no more being around her fellow students; she certainly couldn’t go back to her family. She looked wistfully to the window, lifting her head—

Wait.

She couldn’t leave her room as long as she looked like this! How could she complain about that? To hell with classes and students and her family! She hated all those things! This was the only thing she’d ever wanted from her life!

This could work out. The faculty could just make this room off-limits. She could leave the room at night, when everyone was asleep, and actually enjoy being outside for once. She could be the Monster of Garreg Mach, spoken of only in hushed whispers by the more superstitious students and ignored by any adult with common sense. This could be great for her!

…Although she’d feel a lot better about her situation if her new roommate wasn’t constantly glaring at her and reminding her that she was a hideous monster.

There was a soft knock at the door, jolting Bernadetta out of her reverie. Edelgard glanced at the door, then looked down at her and shook her head.

“Hello and good morning, Bernadetta!” chirped the bright and ever-exuberant voice of Flayn. “I heard from Caspar that you are awfully and indescribably ill and cannot leave your room under any circumstances!”

As the younger sister of Seteth, the second-in-command of the Church, Flayn was the third-most important person in the monastery. And it just so happened that following her abduction and subsequent rescue, she’d insisted on making fast friends with… just about everybody in the Black Eagles house who’d so much as give her the time of day. She’d even been pestering her brother to allow her to officially enroll as a student under Professor Byleth. She was nice to a degree that bordered on saccharine, but she was also so closely watched by her brother, especially now, that one couldn’t risk talking to her without feeling as though they were signing their own death warrant.

Or, at least, that was how Bernadetta felt.

The other weird thing about Flayn was that despite acting so naively and looking like she was no older than fourteen or fifteen, she was extremely cagey about her age in the same way Byleth was, which was why Bernadetta suspected that both of them were actually a thousand years old at least.

“May I come inside?” Flayn asked.

Bernadetta looked up at Edelgard. Edelgard looked down at her and shook her head again.

“I assumed you would be hungry in spite of your terrible illness, so I brought a plate of breakfast!”

She felt her stomach twist itself into knots, so hungry she felt nauseous. She’d had days without food before and this moment brought all of them back to the forefront of her memory. Nonetheless, though, Edelgard crossed her arms and gave her a stern, pointed look that said quite clearly we can’t let her inside without the need for words.

“I was not sure how much food to get, so I made certain I had enough for at least two people!”

Edelgard frowned, her resolve wavering. Clearly, she was just as hungry.

“…Or one person and a very large mouse, I suppose?”

“She knows,” she sighed. “No sense in keeping her out now,” she added as she crept over to the door and slowly pulled it open, carefully remaining behind it so that nobody watching from outside would spot her.

The first thing Bernadetta noticed about Flayn as the young(?) girl sauntered into the bedroom with a plate piled high with food balanced on each hand (how had she knocked on the door?) was that her normally emerald-green hair was the same shade of muddy grayish chartreuse as Edelgard’s cape.

Great. Now she was colorblind. That meant now she’d be even worse at painting. Although at least from now on, Linhardt wouldn’t be able to fault her if she used vermilion instead of crimson. 

Then again, that didn’t matter anymore. That chapter of her life where she had to interact with people no matter how much she didn’t want to was over! What a liberating thought!

Flayn nudged away the cat waiting at the door with her foot and with great difficulty as it tried to worm its way through ahead of her. The sight of the cat filled Bernadetta with the overpowering urge to scurry under the bed. “No, g-get out! Bad kitty!”

Edelgard gave the resilient cat a much more forceful shove with her boot, slammed the door shut in front of it, took one of the plates from Flayn’s hand, and immediately started picking at the food. “Thank you for your hospitality, Flayn,” she said, relieved.

Bernadetta felt her stomach twist itself around her spine as Flayn set a plate down in front of her and the unmistakable aroma of still-warm rashers of bacon filled her nostrils. She picked up a piece and nibbled on it tentatively, not sure what to expect from it. What did mice eat, anyway? Seeds and berries? Did they eat cheese, or was that only in children’s stories?

Flayn sat down beside her, her hands folded in her lap, and looked down at her. Bernadetta realized with mounting discomfort that Flayn towered over her now as much as Hubert had before—she was just more than a head taller now, when just yesterday they’d been about the same height.

To say the least, it was disorienting. To say the most, it was actually kind of terrifying. There was something uniquely and perversely threatening about the sight of such a bright and cheerful face looming over her that Hubert’s dark demeanor simply couldn’t match.

“I suppose Caspar told you everything, then?” Edelgard asked Flayn between mouthfuls, her tone of voice making it clear that if he had, he was not going to get away with it unscathed.

“Yes, he told me everything he knew!” There was a mischievous twinkle in Flayn’s eyes. “Do not worry. He swore me to secrecy and told me that no one else, not even Big Brother Seteth, could know, and I will honor the promise I made with him!”

Bernadetta kept eating. She was so starved that the first few bites actually hurt. Not that she hadn’t gone longer without food before, but perhaps turning into a mouse worked up an intense appetite. The more she ate, though, the better she felt, and the food all seemed to taste more or less the same as before.

“You look like something out of a fairy tale,” Flayn told her.

What was that supposed to mean? Fairy tales were full of grotesque and nasty monsters! “A-Are you saying I look like the kind of creature that could devour children?” Bernadetta stammered through a mouthful of food.

“No, wait…” Flayn backpedaled, thoughtfully tugging on a lock of her long, elegantly-pleated hair. “You look cute, like… hmm… Oh! The Mouse King from Daikonsky’s The Radish Farmer and the Mouse King! Of course, I’ve never seen a ballet before, but Seteth played the songs from it on piano for me on last year’s Winter Solstice Eve and allowed me to look at the illustration on the libretto and I could all but see it in my head… Lady Edelgard, have you ever been to that ballet?”

Edelgard looked startled by the question. “Oh, um… no,” she sharply answered, promptly taking a bite out of a scone and chewing it excruciatingly thoroughly so that she wouldn’t be expected to say anything more.

“I think I will ask Professor Manuela if she has friends in any ballet companies. Perhaps she can invite them to the monastery for a performance this winter we can all enjoy!” Flayn was so giddy with excitement that she was all but vibrating.

Bernadetta was still mentally working through Flayn’s compliment and wondering if it was really all that flattering to be told she looked like a king. What, was she too hideous to be a girl anymore?

She shook her head in despair. Being her was an ordeal. She couldn’t even hear a compliment without twisting it into an insult. No wonder no one liked her. Couldn’t they all just leave her alone?

“May I pet you?” Flayn suddenly asked her.

Bernadetta suddenly felt far too warm for her fur and wished she could pull all of her skin off. “Um… what?”

“It is simply that you look quite soft,” Flayn said, “and it seems that it would help you feel better, since most cats and dogs seem to enjoy being petted. I do not think mice are any different…”

“Um… no?” Bernadetta answered, squirming uncomfortably and mentally preparing herself to run.

To run where?

“Please?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“Flayn,” Edelgard interjected, glaring at her with cold, pale eyes, “you’re making her uncomfortable.”

Flayn stood up and backed away. “Oh! Bernadetta, I am so sorry,” she said, bowing. “I had no intention of offending you. Please accept my apology.”

“It’s okay,” Bernadetta mumbled, picking at the remnants of her food.

“Um… I will return at noon with lunch,” Flayn added, slowly backing toward the door, her face flushed from embarrassment. “Please do take care!”

The door slammed shut.

Flayn’s absence was like a weight lifting from Bernadetta’s shoulders. One less person in the room, one less intruder in her little sanctuary.

“Thank you,” she muttered to Edelgard.

Edelgard’s frosty demeanor did not soften, but as she sat at the desk and gazed blankly off at the room’s stone walls, she seemed slightly more at peace.

The breakfast rush was long past and the lunch rush had yet to begin, leaving the dining hall mostly empty save for a few stragglers who had overslept or who preferred to avoid the crowds and making the late morning a golden opportunity for observing the scene of what Hubert had insisted was an assassination attempt.

Petra treated the room as just another hunting ground, although she had to admit that here she was at a unique disadvantage. Indoors, unless the floor was particularly dusty or the quarry’s boots were particularly filthy, one could not expect to find even such common staples as footprints on the ground.

But she did not draw back in the face of a challenge. A hunter from Brigid could track any animal, even a person. If anybody doubted it, she would prove it to them.

Hubert walked in an arc around the edge of the table the Black Eagles had occupied the night before. “I was sitting here,” he mused, placing a hand on the table. “And Lady Edelgard to my left, and Dorothea to my right… and Petra, you were on the far end here, weren’t you? Next to Edelgard?”

“Yes. And on the other side of the table,” she said, “was sitting Linhardt, Ferdinand, Bernie, and Caspar.”

He nodded as though impressed by the sharpness of her memory. “And you noticed nothing, despite sitting next to Edelgard the entire time?”

Petra shook her head. “No, I was not seeing anything.”

Hubert stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I wonder,” he said, “how our culprit managed to slip poison into her cup with neither of us any the wiser. We were flanking her. Should they have approached from either her left or her right, they would have had to slip past one of us.”

“I do not think our wisdom mattered. It was our alertness we were not having.”

“True. We were caught in the throes of revelry. Yet that is no excuse. If I hadn’t noticed the ripples in her cup, well… A poison like that would be a death sentence with so many cats in the monastery.”

He was correct. One could hardly walk five paces outside without nearly tripping over a cat. Petra couldn’t recall seeing a single rodent within the grounds of the monastery since she had come to the Academy.

Hubert’s expression darkened. “But for a stroke of luck… a flash of paranoia…” he muttered to himself. “I suppose we should ask ourselves who we saw passing by this table.”

“There was Lysithea and Sylvain,” Petra said, “and, of course, Professor. But we are not suspecting her.”

“No, of course not,” Hubert said, although his suspicious squint gave away that he did suspect her, at least a little.

“But…” Petra thought for a moment, then raised her hand across the table. “They all passed by this side. They could not have reached Edelgard’s cup without leaning over all of us. We would all have seen them. So they are not being suspects.”

“No. But they could have been accomplices, unwitting or otherwise. However, that’s a rabbit hole I am currently unwilling to travel down.”

“Of course not. We are not hunting rabbits.”

Hubert’s lip curled in a faintly amused smile, and Petra realized she had misinterpreted yet another Fódlanish figure of speech. “Which brings us, unfortunately, back to zero. Did you notice anybody pass behind us last night?”

“If I had been having eyes in the back of my head, I may have.”

“How unfortunate.”

Petra’s eyes fell to the tabletop and glided to a dark blotch on the wood surface—a stain on the lacquered wood fresher than its long-since dried peers. “Hubert,” she said, “you were thinking Edelgard’s cup had been poisoned. But we were not seeing anything. Why were you having suspicion?”

His yellow eye followed her gaze down to the table. “I saw a ripple in her drink, and…”

“This stain looks fresh,” she pointed out, “and it is where Edelgard sat. I think the roof is taking a leak.”

Hubert’s gaze lingered on the stain. A fresh droplet of water plopped down on it with a barely-audible tap as if to punctuate Petra’s statement. “Then when was her cup poisoned?”

“I do not know. But maybe it was providence of the rain spirit that you were given awareness.”

Hubert chuckled darkly. “Doubtful.”

“I am sorry for being insensitive.” Petra bowed her head. Even in this place, a monument to Fódlan’s religion, she had forgotten for only a moment that the people here did not believe in the spirits spoken of in Brigid’s legends. “I suppose your goddess may have been speaking to you as well.”

“No,” Hubert said, “I simply meant that it wasn’t raining yesterday. Nor is it raining right now. So…”

He lifted his head and looked upward. Petra followed along.

“What,” he asked, “is dripping from the ceiling?”

Petra squinted, focusing on the dining hall’s high, vaulted ceiling. The ceiling towered far overhead, propped up by curved arches and buttresses nearly as regal as those within the cathedral at the far end of the monastery. A gleaming brass chandelier hung over the table, guttering candles lining its perimeter and driving the shadows back to the highest and farthest reaches of the ceiling.

Yet something else gleamed and glittered in the chandelier, not like a tongue of flame but more like the faint twinkling of a beacon to a ship at sea or gold foil resting in the sun.

Petra stepped onto the bench, then onto the table, and reached up, standing on her toes. The lowest point of the chandelier was still far out of reach, though, hanging mockingly just beyond the ends of her fingertips no matter how she stretched and strained her arm. If only she were a few inches taller…

Hubert climbed onto the table. “Here, stand on my shoulders.”

Hubert, Petra thought, was an easy man to misjudge. In fact, he made it easy to misjudge him, as his performance in the classroom had attested. Yet in spite of his sinister demeanor, there was a refreshing earnestness and honesty to his words and deeds. Those he had respect for knew where they stood with him, as did those he did not.

With Hubert’s added height, Petra was easily able to reach the chandelier, though she struggled to steady herself without disrupting it. With the slightest movement, the chandelier threatened to sway to and fro like the pendulum of a grandfather clock, dashing whatever object had caught her eye to the floor and potentially breaking it. The table creaked and groaned ominously under her and Hubert’s combined weight.

It didn’t take her long to spy it. A glass vial resting on its side, short and squarish with a long, thin pipe protruding from its top. An orb of clear liquid as tiny as a single droplet of dew resting on a blade of grass hung precariously from the end of the pipe, quivering, threatening to fall.

She looked down and realized with a twinge of embarrassment that there were people below gawping at her, staring with wide eyes and gaping mouths and unvoiced tongue-clucks; she also realized that her inappropriate behavior, however necessary, called to their minds all of the worst stereotypes of her people as backward, backwater, unrestrained, uncivilized.

Shamed and self-conscious, she hastily snatched the vial up and slipped off of Hubert’s shoulders, landing with a thud on the table below.

Hubert stepped off the table and snatched the bottle from her hand. “Thank you for retrieving this for me, Petra,” he loudly announced to the rest of the dining hall. “I do not know what I was thinking, throwing it at the ceiling like that, but thank the Goddess you were here for me.” He clapped her on the shoulder. “You are a good friend.”

“It was nothing,” she sheepishly answered.

As he and Petra left the room, Hubert kept turning the vial over in his hand, glaring daggers at it and furrowing his brow. “The providence of the rain spirit,” he muttered, his lips curling bitterly.

Petra studied the vial, wondering how somebody could have held that over Edelgard’s drink without anybody seeing them hanging from the chandelier—after all, she had been easy enough to spot up there. And the bottle couldn’t have been set up beforehand unless the culprit had known exactly where Edelgard would be sitting that night… unless Edelgard had not been the target.

She and Hubert had found a clue, and yet she felt no closer to understanding what had happened last night… or who had been responsible.

Keeping an eye on Edelgard’s (empty) bedroom was an exercise in tedium. The second floor of the dormitories didn’t have much in the way of foot traffic save for students in the Officers Academy occasionally entering and leaving their rooms, so the chances of a suspicious character coming through were low.

Ferdinand suspected that Hubert had posted him here with Caspar to waste their time and keep them out of his way, but on the other hand, despite Hubert’s constant insinuations that he was an idiot, he was well aware that the culprit may indeed return to Edelgard’s room.

At least being on such an uneventful stakeout gave him an opportunity to ruminate on the events of the past day. Part of him was still rankled that Hubert had tried to strike such a mortal blow against his character this morning. Of course, Hubert had described what had happened with perfect accuracy, but had told the story in such a way that cast Ferdinand as just as despicable, underhanded, and villainous as himself. Funny how one could be both truthful and a liar at once. Of course Hubert couldn’t conceive of a nobleman actually behaving with honor and dignity.

Yet Ferdinand had to admit that all the same, regardless of the motivations behind his actions, the result had been the same. He may as well have been a gutless, self-centered worm.

Caspar stretched and stifled a yawn. “Ugh. Can’t we stake out a place with more foot traffic? I could fall asleep with my eyes open here.”

Ferdinand barely heard him.

“Hey. Penny for your thoughts?”

“It is nothing.” He shook his head. “I am reflecting on the situation. That is all.”

“Don’t let it get to you. Hubert just needed to cast someone else as the villain before the rest of the class ripped him apart.” Caspar made a fist and drove it into his palm. “Hell, I still might.”

“Language.”

He rolled his eyes. “Heck, I still might. Gotta say, though, I’d never seen you so angry. You looked like you were ready to punch his head off.”

“I tried to exercise restraint. But he did attempt to murder me.”

“Anyway, like I said, don’t let it get to you. You didn’t mean for what happened to Bernie. None of us did. We’ll nab the guy who did this and get everything back to normal soon enough.”

Ferdinand nodded. “Your confidence is inspiring, Caspar. Still, though… my heart aches for poor Bernadetta.”

“Man, you’ve really got Bernie on the brain, don’t you? Does someone have a crush?”

“Most certainly not!” Ferdinand insisted, feeling heat rise to his face. “But… I did know her when we were children,” he added.

“No kidding. Really?” Caspar asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Er… to be fair, actually, I knew of her. She was rather infamous. Other children said she made cursed dolls of her enemies.”

“What, like she turned people into dolls? That’s messed up.”

“No, they were special dolls, and if you poked the doll with a needle, the person it was based on would feel it.”

“So, if the doll’s head got cut off, would the person’s head just roll off their shoulders? Or would it just feel like you’d had your head chopped off?”

“They called her ‘Spooky Bernie,’ and they were all terrified of her.”

“Spooky Bernie, huh.” Caspar scratched his chin. “I think Bernie-Bear is a better nickname. Although I guess we can’t call her that anymore. But Bernie-Mouse doesn’t have the same ring to it. But I mean, it’s not like she was a literal bear before, so…”

“I heard that once, her father tried to set up an arranged marriage between her and the son of another noble family,” Ferdinand said while Caspar mumbled about nicknames to himself, “and the son had nightmares for a week and begged his parents to call off the arrangement until they did.” 

He decided not to mention to Caspar that the noble family had been the Aegir family and the son in question had been himself. Now that he knew Bernadetta a little better, she wasn’t so bad, but all the same, he still remembered those nightmares. Memories like those tended to stick in one’s mind far more tenaciously than good memories or even important memories. He couldn’t remember the first time he’d ridden a horse, and yet…

“Nightmares for a week, huh. Was that one of her powers, too?” Caspar asked.

“Sh—She doesn’t have any powers. You, er… you understand that, right? We called her Spooky Bernie and made rumors about her because she never talked to anyone, never left her bedroom, and kept drawing pictures of plants with teeth.”

“Right. You know, if she did have magic powers, that could explain this whole thing.”

“I simply feel so guilty. I truly did believe that I was protecting her by switching her cup with mine. Instead… what has happened to her is my fault,” Ferdinand lamented. “Poor Bernadetta. Poor Spooky Bernie.” If it had been a lethal poison, he would have killed her.

He wouldn’t be surprised if he had another week of nightmares over this. Another week of Spooky Bernie haunting his slumber.

“I know you didn’t mean to hurt her.” Caspar smirked. “What, you think I’d take Hubert’s word over yours?”

Ferdinand laughed in spite of himself. “Ah, thank you, Caspar. All the same…”

“Look, maybe it’s for the best. I mean, think about it. Better her than you, right?”

“Hmph!” Ferdinand crossed his arms, irked. He should have known his charitable feelings toward Caspar couldn’t last. “I cannot believe you. Were a man to draw a sword on a defenseless girl, of course I would leap in front of her! It is simply my duty as a noble.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Caspar said. “I mean, think about it. Bernie likes shutting herself up in her room, right? And now she has an excuse to stay there all the time.”

“Even so…”

“And on the other hand, if you hadn’t switched those cups and had gotten the same dose as her, you’d be, uh…” He held out his hand about three and a half or four feet off the floor. “This big. And I don’t think you’d like that.”

“It is not the size of one’s body that matters, but the size of one’s heart,” Ferdinand insisted, shaking his head and clucking his tongue in disapproval. Despite his noble blood, Caspar most certainly did not act like it. “I would fight just as valiantly if I were six feet tall, three feet tall, or three inches tall.”

Caspar looked up at him, noting the height disparity between the two of them. “Easy for you to say.”

The two of them kept watching and kept waiting, both hoping that something would happen to alleviate this dreadful tedium. Sooner or later, someone suspicious had to walk past.

“Y’know, if you think about it, it’s all Hubert’s fault for not smashing Edelgard’s cup or dumping it on the floor. I hope the Professor nails him to the wall,” Caspar said. He yawned again and slumped into a casual slouch, but stiffened and stood straight as a ramrod as soon as the sound of footsteps began to echo from the staircase at the far end of the hall and a student emerged from downstairs.

The red-haired girl who came to a stop in front of Edelgard’s door was Monica von Ochs, a student of the Academy who’d been rescued from the Death Knight along with Flayn after having been missing for over a year. Caspar peered suspiciously at her. She peered suspiciously right back.

“What’re you doing standing in front of Edel’s room?” she asked the two of them. “Speaking of, have you seen her? We were going to have tea this morning…”

Caspar glanced at Ferdinand. “She’s, uh, sick.”

“Terribly ill.” Ferdinand shook his head. “She cannot leave her room. We are waiting here so that we may bring her food and water, should she ask for it.”

Monica’s brow furrowed with worry. “Oh, no! Has Professor Manuela had a look at her?”

“Well—” Ferdinand started, knowing there was no good reason why Edelgard wouldn’t have been taken straight to the infirmary if she were indeed ill.

“She’s not that sick,” Caspar answered.

“Then maybe I can see her!” Monica smiled. “I’m sure she’d be happy to see a friend…”

“Er, no,” Ferdinand said, at a loss for what to say. Lying and dissembling was much harder work than he’d expected. Or perhaps he simply didn’t have the talent for it like some other nobles did. “You see…”

“She’s got diarrhea,” Caspar whispered to her. “We had to bring, like, ten chamberpots in there. It’s so embarrassing.”

Monica’s smile shrank by a few molars. “Oh, I… I see,” she said, taken aback.

“Yes, it is all quite undignified,” Ferdinand chimed in, sadly shaking his head. “Cholera is a terrible thing. I would like to ask you to keep this to yourself so as not to sully her reputation. You know how quickly rumors can spread.”

“I guess,” Monica said with a hapless shrug. “You know, dehydration is a serious concern for people in her… condition. Are you sure she has enough water?”

“Uh, yeah, we brought her a fresh jug about, uh… ten minutes ago,” Caspar said. “She’ll knock on the door if she needs anything.”

“Is there anything I can bring her? A pillow, a blanket, some reading material…”

“Oh, do not worry,” Ferdinand assured her. “We have that covered.”

“Oh, you two are such good friends to her.” Monica smiled and strode off. “Let her know I wish her well!”

Ferdinand watched her stride down the hall and vanish down the staircase. He couldn’t help but feel a little uneasy. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something about the way that red-haired girl smiled reminded him of a knife ready to bury itself in somebody’s back. Every face she made, every reaction she had, they all just seemed far too practiced.

No. He couldn’t cast blame on her just for that. The poor girl had been kidnapped and traumatized, for the Goddess’ sake! If she wore a mask, what reason could there be for it other than to hide her tremendous suffering from the world?

He shook his head. Hubert’s rotten attitude was clearly getting to him. That was the trouble with scoundrels and villains. If one spent too much time around them, one’s soul began to tarnish and corrode.

“I think we just found suspect number one,” Caspar muttered. “Lucky us.”

“We, Edelgard included, saved her from the Death Knight. What reason would she have to poison her?” Ferdinand asked. “If anything, she owes us all a life debt.”

“Dunno. We can worry about the motive later.” Caspar shrugged. “Hey, speaking of luck, I’ve been thinking. Isn’t it weird that Hubert jumped straight to poison before he even had any evidence?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he moved Edelgard’s cup because, what, he saw a ripple in her drink and got paranoid? Even if he turned out to be right, that’s a hell of a—that’s a huge leap of faith to make right there. And Hubert doesn’t really do faith, does he?”

Ferdinand felt an unsettling unease in the back of his mind. “What are you suggesting, Caspar? That he is taking charge of this investigation to distract us?”

Caspar’s eyes narrowed and he turned his head in the direction of the closed door directly adjacent to Edelgard’s room. “I’m suggesting we should sneak into his room while he’s out and do some investigating of our own.”

Ferdinand groaned inwardly. Though Caspar had as strong a sense of justice as any proper nobleman should have, his sense of decorum and restraint was on par with a barbarian.

Scoundrels and villains, the lot of them. He was surrounded by scoundrels and villains.

Linhardt didn’t expect to find even half of the ingredients Hubert was looking for at the apothecary, but it wasn’t like there was anywhere else to look within fifty miles, so he supposed he couldn’t avoid doing the legwork. He suspected that Hubert had put him and Dorothea on this quest to get them out of his way. After all, it wasn’t as if he and Hubert got along. Then again, no one got along with Hubert save for Edelgard.

The sky was clear and blue, the sun was bright, and the town that sat in the shadow of the monastery was lively and bustling. Not just the townsfolk, but off-duty knights and students with free time between their morning and afternoon classes took advantage of the good weather to do absolutely nothing at all. Seeing fellow students nestled underneath shade trees and sleeping like logs with their textbooks shielding their faces from the sun filled Linhardt with jealousy. On a beautiful day like today, any of them could have easily been him.

Instead, here he was standing in the middle of the street dressed to the nines and sweating under the midday sun, resisting the torturous urge to scratch at the false mustache glued to his face with spirit gum; Dorothea stood at his side in an equally ostentatious dress she’d pulled from her wardrobe—a leftover from her days with the opera company before she’d enrolled in the Academy—and her long, thick locks of curly chestnut-brown hair tied back in a luxurious mane of ringlets cascading down her back. He had a sneaking suspicion she’d taken a sadistic pleasure in picking out his ‘costume.’ He felt like he had a broom pasted over his upper lip.

Dorothea peered at the journal Hubert had left them, reading through the ingredients list for the poison. “Lin, what’s this one?” she asked, placing her finger on the page.

Linhardt looked at the item she’d singled out. “That one? I think it makes your tongue swell to three times its size.”

“And this one?”

“Severe tooth decay.”

“Is everything on this list so gruesome?” Dorothea asked, grimacing.

“No, this one here makes you, er… euphoric.”

“Oh, so it gets you high,” she said, seeing right through his euphemism. “I’d bet you know all about that.”

Linhardt fidgeted uncomfortably, tugging on his collar. Yes, he had partaken in certain stress-relieving medicinal herbs from time to time, but… “I don’t like what you’re insinuating.”

Dorothea laughed. “Oh, please, don’t act so above it all. Do you really think everyone in the Mittelfrank Opera Company wasn’t getting high after every performance we gave?”

Linhardt saw fit to keep his mouth shut.

“Anyway, so you put this all together and you end up with a drink that turns you into a mouse?” Dorothea shook her head. “…I just don’t understand chemistry.”

“It isn’t the kind they teach in school, at any rate.”

“How does Hubie know about it?”

“I’d ask him, but I like being able to sleep at night,” Linhardt said, taking the notebook as the two of them weaved through the bustling town square to the marketplace.

The apothecary’s shop was tucked away in the corner, overshadowed by its neighboring stores so that even on such a bright day it seemed to occupy its own patch of twilight. A glum, ramshackle building, its roof a patchwork of old and new shingles and bits of bare wood and tin sheets like patches on a mended sock, it was a house that had no doubt suffered indescribable indignities.

If one were looking for illicit potions, one could do a lot worse than to come to this shop first.

The inside of the shop was as gloomy as its outside, guttering candles casting faint and flickering lights on dusty and cobwebby shelves loaded with vials and bottles of grease-colored liquids. The apothecary evidently didn’t care much for keeping his store tidy. Surely he must have sold goods of the highest quality for people to ignore such squalor.

Somehow, Linhardt found it easy to imagine Hubert spending his free time skulking around here.

But Hubert wasn’t skulking around here today—the only other customer browsing the shop this afternoon was a young Almyran boy Linhardt instantly recognized as Cyril, Archbishop Rhea’s servant. Cyril was a hard worker who put even the most industrious student to shame. If there was a mess or something that needed fixing anywhere in the monastery, Cyril was never far away.

“Is that Cyril?” Dorothea whispered in Linhardt’s ear. “What’s he doing here?”

“I gotta get the best rat poison you have,” Cyril told the apothecary, standing on his toes to rest his elbows on the counter.

“I didn’t know we had a rat problem,” Dorothea said.

“We don’t,” Linhardt said.

“Rat poison?” the apothecary inquired, raising a caterpillar-like eyebrow. “Why in the world do you need that? There must be a dozen cats at the monastery.”

“Doesn’t keep ’em out of the kitchen. Or Lady Rhea’s room.” Cyril had a blunt, direct way of speaking that belied his age. Most adults were taken aback at first glance, and the apothecary was no exception. “And I think they’re gettin’ too tough for the cats to handle.”

“I see. Let me check in back,” the apothecary said, shuffling off to the shop’s back room, “and see what I have in the pest control section.”

Linhardt peered at a shelf labeled ‘medicine and tonics’ and watched a hairy spider the size of a gold coin creep across the dusty wood. “I wouldn’t trust anything on this shelf as far as I could throw it,” he said.

“I wouldn’t trust the shelf as far as I could throw it,” Dorothea said.

Hardly a minute later, the apothecary returned with a vial of sickly green liquid. The bottle and coin exchanged hands and Cyril headed for the door.

“Hey, Linhardt,” he said as he passed by Linhardt and Dorothea. “If you were hopin’ to pass for an adult, heads up—your fake mustache looks like a broom. See ya.”

“Kids today have no manners,” Linhardt muttered as Cyril strode out of earshot and out the door, self-consciously adjusting the mustache.

“Oh, don’t let him get to you, Lin.” Dorothea smiled. “I think your mustache is very distinguished. And very real-looking.”

Linhardt took the notebook from her hands and carried it through the shop to the counter in front of the apothecary. “Excuse me,” he said, placing the notebook down. “I’m, er, looking for any of the ingredients on these lists and wish to know if I can find any of them here.”

The apothecary stooped over and peered down at the notebook from across the counter, squinting through glasses as thick as windowpanes and stroking a bristly salt-and-pepper beard. After a few seconds, he took the journal in his hands and spun it around so he was reading it right-side-up, then took another few seconds to stare at it.

Well, this was promising so far.

“Oh,” the apothecary muttered in a concerned tone. “Oh,” he muttered in an even more concerned tone. “Ooohhh…” he muttered in a tone so concerned that Linhardt started to worry there was something illegal on that list.

What was he thinking? It was Hubert’s list. Of course there was something illegal in it.

The apothecary looked up at him. He tried not to look suspicious by smiling suspiciously. “Aren’t you a student at the Officers Academy?”

“Pssh. Me? No,” Linhardt said, shaking his head and desperately hoping his false mustache wasn’t askew or falling off. “If I were a student, I would be over there right now in the middle of the day taking classes… or studying… or napping. Or whatever it is students do. I don’t know; it’s been so long since I was one myself.” He hoped the apothecary’s terrible eyesight made the mustache look at least a little less fake.

“Hmm. What’s your name?”

“Oh, it’s Lin… h… hmm…” Dammit, he was terrible at improvisation. If only he’d taken more time to think about what alias he’d use…

Dorothea wrapped her arm around his as swiftly and tightly as a serpent coiling around its prey. “You’ll have to excuse my husband; he has terrible anxiety. Can’t even say his own name without stammering. My name is Manuela… er, Morgan… Morgan Manuel-Miranda. And my husband is Lin.”

The apothecary squinted at Linhardt. “…Lin Manuel-Miranda.”

Linhardt forced a smile. “That’s me.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Manuel-Miranda,” the apothecary said, slamming the notebook shut and sliding it across the counter, “but you won’t find most of these ingredients in this shop. Half of them, you won’t find outside of the Empire.”

“And the other half?” Dorothea asked.

“You won’t find them for sale anywhere. Least of all here.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, resting her arm on the counter and leaning forward, fluttering her eyelashes coquettishly as she surreptitiously tried to lower the neckline of her dress.

Linhardt rolled his eyes. Although Dorothea had tremendous… stage presence, he was fairly certain this old man was too blind to notice her feminine wiles. “Er, Dor—um, Morgan— honey, perhaps we have troubled this shopkeeper enough,” he whispered to her, tugging on her arm.

“Is there a chance you might have sold any of these ingredients in the past?” Dorothea asked. “Or that you know anyone else who sells them?”

The apothecary’s eyes narrowed. “If you’re asking me if I have any ties to the black market,” he spat, “then the answer is no! Good day, Lin Manuel-Miranda!”

With that, he spun on his heel and vanished into the back of his shop with surprising swiftness considering his age and feebleness.

“Wait!” Linhardt called out after him. “Do you have the medicinal herbs, though?”

There was no response.

“That could’ve gone better,” Dorothea sighed.

The two of them left the apothecary’s shop, blinking and squinting as the sunlight assaulted their eyes. Linhardt sneezed.

While they wandered through the town square and pondered their next move, they passed by Cyril once again. He’d gotten trapped in a conversation with Tomas, the monastery’s librarian, who had cornered him to complain about how many mice he'd seen in the library lately.

“…And be very observant around the dormitories,” Tomas cautioned Cyril, laying a hand sagely on his shoulder. “No one wishes to see a hideous vermin scurrying out from under their bed. Mice can fit through holes the size of a penny. Make certain you lay plenty of traps around the students’ rooms, boy…”

“Something wrong, Lin?” Dorothea asked, pulling Linhardt's attention away from Tomas’ lecture. Though he couldn't put his finger on it, something was worrying him.

He shook his head. “No, I’m fine. Just... Lin Manuel-Miranda?”

Dorothea laughed. “What’s the matter with that? Aren’t you enjoying roleplaying as someone without a ‘von’ in their name?”

“Never mind,” Linhardt sighed. “Let’s keep asking around. The sooner we can find a lead, the sooner we can take a siesta.”

The only reason Ferdinand accompanied Caspar was to talk some sense into him, but unfortunately, he found that to be a challenge too great even for him. Every word he spoke fell on deaf ears until Caspar planted his foot on the door to Hubert’s room and subsequently fell to the floor clutching at his knee.

“What did you expect?” Ferdinand asked, crossing his arms as he looked down on Caspar. “That Hubert would not lock his door?”

“I mean, I don’t,” Caspar said, wincing as he pulled himself up to his feet and cradled his aching knee.

“That is a bold thing to admit to someone. Count your blessings you told me.”

Caspar inspected the door again, placing his ear near the lock.

“Why do you even suspect him, anyway? Hubert and Edelgard have known each other since they were children. He has never shown anything but loyalty to her for fourteen years,” Ferdinand said.

“That’s what makes him the perfect suspect. What would Hubert say? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” Caspar retorted, inserting two thin metal wires into the lock and jiggling them.

“What are you doing?”

“Picking the lock.”

“Where did you learn to do that?”

“Ashe taught me. I was talking to him about taking the certification exam for the thief class…”

“Unbelievable. Give it to me.”

“No.”

Ferdinand grabbed Caspar by the shoulders and tried to wrestle him into submission. “Give me the lockpick!”

“No!”

“Caspar, if you cross this threshold, it will be a point of no return!”

“I’ve almost got it!”

“I will call the Professor if you do not cease this!”

The door swung open, depositing both Ferdinand and Caspar on the floor of Hubert’s bedroom. Caspar, who’d clearly been expecting a chamber of horrors, seemed almost disappointed to find a perfectly normal bedroom with a perfectly normal bed, a perfectly normal rug covering the stone floor, a perfectly normal desk, and a perfectly normal little armoire sitting in a perfectly normal corner of the room.

It could have been anybody’s bedroom.

“All that for nothing,” Ferdinand scolded him. “Are you satisfied now, Caspar?”

Caspar wormed his way out of his grasp. “Not yet.”

Ferdinand grappled with him, digging his fingers into his shoulders, jabbing his knee into the small of his back, anything to pin him down and drag him back, as Caspar struggled toward the armoire and flung its door open.

“You shut that armoire, Caspar,” he growled in his ear, “or so help me—”

There were no clothes in the armoire. Instead, a grid of tiny cubbyholes lined the inside, each labeled with the names of poisons both mundane and exotic and each containing its own little glass bottle save for a handful of empty holes, all listed by effect in neat alphabetical order. Poisons to put people to sleep, poisons to induce vomiting, poisons to paralyze, poisons to numb.

Poisons to kill.

And one empty cubbyhole labeled ‘Polymorphus Muridae’ and another empty one beside it labeled ‘Antemorphus Muridae.’

Words failed Ferdinand. 

Words did not fail Caspar. “Holy fuck,” he breathed. “And I thought Claude had a big collection.”

A heavy hand fell on Ferdinand’s shoulder.

“Well?” Hubert whispered in his ear, his voice a sinister, slithering whisper. Ferdinand felt every ounce of breath vanish from his lungs even though he hadn’t exhaled. “Do you see anything that catches your fancy?”

Ferdinand threw Hubert’s hand off his shoulder and whirled around to face him. “You!”

“Me.” Hubert nodded. “Now if you would kindly step away from my collection…”

“You did it.” Caspar glared daggers at him. “That poison was yours!”

“And?”

“…And what?”

“And what does that matter?” Hubert asked. “If you cared to use that walnut rattling around in your skull, you would have realized that the poison is also missing. How could I have poisoned poor Bernie if the poison wasn’t even in my possession?”

“We don’t know when it went missing,” Caspar said. “Maybe you just forgot to put it back!”

“Do I really seem that incompetent to you?” Hubert stepped back to block the door. “Think about who the original target was. What reason would I have to do such a thing to Lady Edelgard? And if I had planted the poison in her cup, then why did I go through the trouble of switching it?” He turned to face Ferdinand. “Besides, aren’t you a far more likely suspect? Haven’t you always wanted to… cut her down to size?”

“Do you think I would ever mean that literally?” Ferdinand asked.

“I know that rivalry, however one-sided, can drive people to do terrible things,” Hubert said with a wicked, smarmy grin. Now he was just goading him. “But rest assured, Ferdinand von Aegir, even if you had succeeded, you would still always be nothing more than an ant to her.”

Ferdinand raised his fists. This was the second time today that Hubert had impugned his character—two times too many. He wasn’t one to give into impulsive behavior easily, but Hubert had more than earned a beating.

Hubert raised his palm and conjured an orb of black and violet misama that flickered and wavered like flames. “Do either of you really intend,” he asked as a chill settled in the room, “to—what? Punch me in the face? Give me a shiner?” Shadows seized the room, blotting out the sunlight filtering through the windows; violet light danced across the contours of his shadowed face, turning the cavernous pockets of his eye socket and cheekbones into abyssal pools of darkness. His sinister chuckling grew to a crescendo of manic laughter. “Do you think you’re capable of that?”

“Let’s find out,” Caspar snarled. “C’mon, Ferdinand. He can’t take both of us at once.”

Before anybody could leap into action, Hubert extinguished the dark flame, allowing light and warmth to return to the room; just as suddenly, Ferdinand felt as though he could breathe again.

“Ah, Professor,” he called out, bowing politely as Byleth stepped over the threshold with a piercing, accusatory glare aimed squarely at him. “You’re just in time. I caught these two breaking into my bedroom.”

“Hey!” Caspar protested. “We weren’t—”

Ferdinand took him by the shoulder. “We were,” he clarified. “Hubert, please accept my sincerest apology on both of our behalf.” A true noble always knew when and why to apologize.

Hubert glowered at them. “I trust they will be reprimanded,” he said to Byleth.

“Wait, we can’t just let this slide,” Caspar said. “Professor, the poison belongs to him!”

Byleth crossed her arms. “Does it?”

Hubert lowered his head in what almost looked like shame or penance. “…Yes, the poison which changed poor Bernadetta is indeed part of my collection,” he answered, a weary and reluctant tone seeping into his voice. “My room was burglarized during our excursion yesterday. I did not realize it until I returned here after we’d had our celebratory drinks. Fortunately, the deadlier poisons were untouched. Unfortunately… the antidote was stolen as well.”

“You should’ve spoken to someone about it,” Byleth scolded him. “We still have plenty of soldiers keeping watch here.”

“I would have liked to,” Hubert admitted, “but I doubt the faculty would look kindly on my little hobby.” He sighed. “I suppose you’ll want me to dispose of my collection now.”

Caspar all but picked up his jaw off the floor. Even Ferdinand had to admit, he was seeing a side of Hubert he’d never seen before—a side of him who respected another authority beside Edelgard.

Byleth cocked her head as though listening to something only she could hear. “I’ll think about it,” she said. “As for you two, Caspar, Ferdinand—”

“Professor! Professor!” Monica’s voice rang out from outside the room, as shrill and urgent as an alarm. Ferdinand, Caspar, and Hubert followed Byleth out of the room and into the hallway where the red-haired girl stood beside the door to Edelgard’s room, doubled over, hands on her knees, panting for breath.

“Monica? What’s wrong?” Byleth asked, rushing to her side and taking her by the shoulder. “Are you alright?”

“It’s… It’s…” Monica gasped for air. “I… I wanted to see Edel, her door was locked, so I… I climbed the wall to her window and… and…” She shuddered and collapsed into Byleth’s arms, her face ashen, her eyes wide. “She’s gone! Edelgard is gone!”

Ferdinand glanced upward at Hubert to see him cross his arms and smile faintly to himself, as though a piece of some inscrutable master plan in his head had slid neatly into place.

Edelgard figured that the cosmos was punishing her. Just a few days ago, she had been wishing that for once in her life she could take a day, just one day, to shirk every responsibility she had—to her schoolwork, to her empire, to her future legacy—and loaf around gorging herself on sweets.

She’d gotten the day she had wanted, albeit sans sweets, and it had been utter torture.

She woke up from troubled dreams as the cloudless sky outside darkened from azure to deep, velvety violet and the last gasp of the setting sun grew fainter, bathing the room in darkness. The dreams were the same as ever—the cold stone floor against her back; the dying words of her brothers and sisters echoing in her ears, gibbered nonsense amid faint pleas for help filling the air; rough hands clamped around her wrists changing to biting iron manacles as she writhed under the searing touch of the surgical knife plunging into her belly; the screams for her father; the feel of tiny claws pricking her flesh and scabby, hairless tails slithering against her skin as she lay on the floor, corpse-like; the stench of vermin stinging her nostrils as rats whose fangs were stained red from nibbling on the corpses of her siblings crawled over her—

But now the dreams were worse. More real, more urgent, more grotesque; on nights like tonight, they felt like an overblown exaggeration of those years of hell that nevertheless felt more real than her actual memories.

She jolted awake sprawled on the floor, her heart racing and pulse pounding, the rug underneath her just a little too thin to guard her against the coldness of the stone floor. However long she’d been asleep, it hadn’t been nearly enough; she felt even more exhausted now than she had been before she’d collapsed.

She couldn’t even remember falling asleep. The last thing she remembered had been cracking open an adventure novel from Bernadetta’s bookshelf after dinner—anything to alleviate the boredom of being quarantined in a bedroom that wasn’t even her own. She remembered reading maybe three or four chapters. It had been the literary equivalent of candy, stimulating but hardly nourishing, which had been fine by her. The book was lying on the floor next to her, its spine bent, its pages fanned out. She’d lost her place.

She pulled herself up and knelt on the floor, still struggling to calm herself. The remnants of the scars traced across her abdomen and wrists throbbed and ached, sinking their leaden hooks deep into her flesh.

She steeled herself and forced herself to steal a glance at Bernadetta. She was curled up in the corner now, her face tucked into her knees, her hood cinched tight over her head.

The hairless, claw-tipped paws, the sharp, furry snout, the pale gray-brown fur, the forest of fine white whiskers, the naked pink tail almost as long as she was tall curling around her like a whip—

Edelgard took in whatever details she could, forced herself to confront them, but couldn’t help but look away and shudder.

It wasn’t Bernadetta’s fault she looked like a grotesquerie hand-plucked from her worst nightmares. And indeed, Flayn had even said she looked cute, and Edelgard had to admit that to somebody without her past and her emotional baggage, she probably did (beauty was, after all, in the eye of the beholder). That stomach-churning, nauseating revulsion was Edelgard’s burden to bear and hers alone, and she hated to think and feel such venom toward one of her own classmates, one of her own comrades, solely on the basis of her appearance. Bernadetta deserved better from her. Any of the Black Eagles would deserve better. Even Ferdinand.

Perhaps not Ferdinand.

She pulled herself to her feet and forced herself over to Bernadetta, forced herself to reach out for her and slip her arms around her, forced herself to lift her up and carry her to the bed—forced herself to ignore the bristling fur and whiskers, forced herself to ignore the tail dragging its tip across her feet, her heart rattling against her ribcage, her blood singing in her ears, her lungs tightening in her chest and freezing her breath in her throat.

Bernadetta stirred, her eyes opening just a sliver. “Ed… el…?” she mumbled, half asleep, barely alert.

Squeezing her eyes shut and gritting her teeth, Edelgard hauled her onto the bed and threw the twisted and churned-up blanket over her, then fell to her knees, as exhausted as though she had run ten miles in full armor, forcing herself to breathe through the rock-hard lump caught in her throat as she leaned against the side of the bed.

That night, she dreamed that her siblings had all transformed into mice, and all of them looked up at her with beady, pleading, accusing eyes.

Glaring at the purloined vial resting in his open palm as he stood in the hallway, Hubert raised his fist and rapped on the door in front of him. The sharp sound of his knuckles reverberating against the wood carried through the silence enveloping the dormitories. It was so early in the morning that the sun’s rays had only barely begun to seep out from beneath the horizon.

The door creaked open, and Claude von Riegan poked his head out. With his noble brow and bronzed, golden-brown complexion, he had a face some would call ‘roguishly beautiful’ (or at least he would). But at this hour his mop of handsomely unruly dark hair, mussed from fitful sleep, resembled more a rat’s nest; his eyes were bleary and bloodshot.

“Oh. Hubert. Awake at this hour?” he asked, flashing a cheery smile nevertheless. “What’s up?”

Hubert quickly slipped the vial into his pocket. “I hear you’re an expert on ‘peaceful poisons,’ Claude. I wanted to ask you a few questions.”

Claude’s grin widened, his eyes twinkling in spite of his weariness. “Well, come on in,” he said, retreating into his room and beckoning Hubert inside. Hubert shut the door behind himself as he entered. 

As Claude sat backwards on his chair and rested his arms casually over the back, Hubert eyed him with the same sinister, suspicious glare he gave everybody.

“I could use a distraction from all this cramming, anyway,” Claude said, glancing offhandedly at an open notebook lying on his desk beside a guttering candle. He turned his attention back to Hubert and rested a hand casually against his cheek. “So, what do you want to know?”