Ishgard was much as Odette remembered it. If the opinion of Haurchefant Greystone de Fortemps was to be believed, Odette was much as Ishgard remembered her, too—in the rare cases that she was remembered at all.
Not but a sennight before she had sat in the Camp Dragonhead Intercessory, trying to divine whether or not Aymeric was one of those that recalled her. He had given no sign as he and Alphinaud debated back and forth, and although she had done her best to pay attention to their sophistry, it had proved an impossibility.
Much as it had proved an impossibility in the days after to think of anything else. The Scions’ business should have taken her to and fro, but Colette had all but shoved her twin across the Steps of Faith and bade her take care of her personal business lest it distract her in some crucial moment.
If they did not recognize her, neither did they stop her as she strode toward the seat of the Lord Commander. There was a surety in her step—certainly he would see her. He always had. Still, she paused to knock, and after a moment the door opened.
Aymeric was resplendent in blue. She always had liked it on him—it was a lucky coincidence that his house’s colors so suited him. The crimson of House Dzemael did not wear half so well on Odette, and she had envied him when they had attended formal occasions. There was a look of surprise upon his face, and then it softened.
“Odette,” he said, and then he cleared his throat. “Is aught amiss? I had been told all was well in Mor Dhona.”“It is,” she told him. “May I come in?”He nodded, stepping back from the door. “Of course. It’s wonderful to see you again.”
That was exactly what he had said a sennight before. He had kissed her hand and then left thereafter, and although Odette had gotten used to the idea that most of her old friends didn’t remember her at all after the Calamity, it had been harder to countenance the thought that his recall had been incomplete.
Odette closed the door behind herself, and searched his face for any trace of expression that might give him away one way or the other. She found none. “Do you recall,” she said after a moment, “the midwinter masque just before my grandfather abdicated his counthood?”Aymeric nodded. “We all dressed as saints that year,” he said. “Well, the four of us.”“What else do you recall from that evening?” Odette prompted.He glanced aside, clearing his throat. Though Aymeric’s expression never lost its composure, she could not help but note the tips of his ears had tinged pink.“Ah,” Odette said. “So you do remember.”“How could I forget?” he asked, voice low and throaty.Odette pursed her lips. “The world entire had forgotten me, and you seemed not to recall our shared history.”He fixed his blue, blue eyes upon her. “Forgive me,” he said. “I had not meant to give you such a poor impression.”She said nothing, only looked at him, and hoped her face did not give her away. It would never do, Maman had taught her, to allow a man to see how much she longed for him.
“Of course I remember, Odette,” he said. “With my last breath I will remember, I do not doubt.”“But you gave no sign.”He laughed, and there was a desperate edge to it. “I warred with myself over it,” he admitted. “But what sign could I have given that would not have led me to find myself in a compromising position in Lord Haurchefant’s office?”Odette grinned. “I do not think you know Lord Haurchefant very well,” she told him. “Regardless, we are in your office now. Do you trust this lock as well as your old one?”
It was not just his ears that were flushed then, she had the pleasure of noting in the scant few seconds it took him to close the gap between them. He took his face in her hands and lifted her mouth to his. The kiss was gentle—he always was—but urgent, and in the meeting of their lips Odette felt not just the years that had passed for her since she left Ishgard, but the five more he had endured that she did not recall. If she was guarded about her longing, he did not care to be so, for she felt it in the heat of him and saw it in his eyes when he drew back at last.“Yes,” he murmured, and leaned down to kiss her again.
For @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast’s FFXIVWrite 2019.
[Title]
[AO3 mirror]
She could at least walk to the tea room under her own power. That was a mercy, though Odette still favored the ankle she had twisted some few days before. Still, she dared not wear white as she was accustomed to, dressed instead in a wine-red gown that might not show so obviously if her wounds reopened. As was their wont.
Perhaps instead it was her wont to reopen them.
The servant who announced her was too obsequious for her liking—but then everyone in the house was either unctuous or callous, sometimes by turns. Maman’s influence, she did not doubt. Besides, there was no need to bow and scrape; Odette knew who her caller was. She had only had the one visitor throughout all of her convalescence. Guillaume had written, and a few had sent flowers, but none of them came in person, though she had briefly allowed herself to entertain such hopes about Rielle.
Aymeric de Borel stood, hands clasped gently behind his back, always attentive but somehow more alive when he looked upon her. “Odette,” he said, with such warmth that it could have melted the frost from windowpanes even in Halone’s own moon.
“Lord Speaker,” she greeted him in turn, and if he was stung by her formality he did not show it.
Instead he merely crossed to pull out her chair, offering a hand she refused to take as she settled into it. Odette dismissed the servant with a wave. Winter sunlight streamed in through the windows, glittering on his earring and the pin in his cravat. For a moment she was abashed; the fullness of her splendor was too much to endure getting on with while she was yet recovering, but he had seen her with sweat upon her brow and poppy’s milk in her veins. The thought was less comfort than she hoped, reflecting on it.
“I am pleased to see your recovery progressing,” he said.
“Not as swiftly as I’d hoped,” she admitted. “Nor the rest of the world, I imagine.”
His smile was pained, and for a moment Odette thought he would ask her to come and stay with him again. She had considered the offer—not the first time he made it, but the second or third, when she remembered what troubled her in this house. She even had the sense that in some fevered state she had said yes, but perhaps that was only a dream. If she had, he had waited for her to acknowledge it first, and it bore no mention for her. He spoke not, in the end. Instead his fingers brushed a small box on the table, wrapped in glossy blue paper.
The maid came then with the tea service, and laid saucer, cup, and spoon before them. Aymeric smiled gently at her. “I’ll pour,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” she said, her tone syrupy. She curtsied to him, and then to Odette. “My lady.” Then she withdrew, never turning away, and Odette found herself annoyed all over again.
“Why do they do that?” she wondered. Aymeric chuckled a little to himself, and it was only then she realized the thought had escaped her lips.
He took the teapot in his hands, and tipped it to pour a measure into her cup. As he poured for himself, he said, “You are a hero a hundred times over, and nearly gave your life in the defense of Ishgard and her allies. Why would they not?”
“It’s not as though they’re sincere,” Odette noted with dismay, stirring a lump of sugar into her tea.
“Why wouldn’t they be?” he asked, drizzling birch syrup into his cup.
Odette rolled her eyes. “Maman is not happy,” she said. “She’s concerned about the scar, of course.”
“So she would rather a picturesque daughter than a valiant one?”
She could not help but laugh at that. “Always. Don’t you recall how unhappy she was when I chose to pursue service with the Temple Knights?”
“I had hoped that might have changed, given everything else that has.” Aymeric frowned.
“Estellise de Dzemael does not change,” Odette said; “she merely waits for the world to conform to her expectations.”
She could feel his concern, and the resignation that challenged it, though it would not yield. That was her gift, and her curse; she wanted to flee the room rather than abide one moment more in his pity. But she swallowed the impulse with her next sip of tea, and with it went her own reactions. It was unseemly for her to be afraid. She could not be angry instead, nor cold—it would never be winter in her heart for him, whatsoever she might wish—and so she elected instead to be greedy.
“But what’s this you’ve brought me?” she prompted, gesturing to the package beside his hand.
“Ah,” he said. “A gift.” He offered it up to her, and she set her cup and saucer aside a moment to set it before her. She picked open the white ribbons and carefully unfolded the blue paper, laying it aside—whole but creased—to look upon his gift.
In one small box she found a lacquered wooden pen and a half-dozen replacement nibs; another held a triad of small bottles of ink and a block of sealing wax. The last wooden box was large enough to hold letters, and it nearly did—envelopes and stationary folded to nest neatly. Letters in waiting. Atop them was a small silver charm. It looked like an envelope, and would fit neatly on her chatelaine. She opened it to find stamps, printed with etchings of flora from the Churning Mists. She laid them out in front of her. There she espied the Seventh Heaven blossom, and there a kupo nut, and a cloud mallow. Iceheart’s Tears, too, and for a moment Odette longed to stand once more in the shadow of Zenith. Anywhere but here.
“What is this?” she asked, looking from it to him, then back down again as she folded the stamps back up into their accordion and tucked them away in the envelope charm once more.
“It seems to me,” Aymeric said, “that your convalescence is drawing toward its end and you will soon resume your adventures. When I consulted your sister on the matter, she told me that you possessed no implements to write letters on your journeys, and it was my hope that in providing that which is needful, you might be encouraged to send word now and then.”
Her sister. Of course. Her younger twin had said this to him. It was not a shortage of paper that had stayed her hand; she kept a logbook, after all. But it seemed far too cruel to tell him outright that she did not write because she simply did not wish to. Not when he had made his yearnings plain with this gift. Odette considered what she might say in reply, taking up her tea to sip it. She looked across the table and found Aymeric’s blue eyes intent upon her own. She came to no conclusion even as she stretched out her arm once more, teacup delicately in hand.
She dropped it. The sound of porcelain shattering echoed in the room. She never looked away from Aymeric’s face.
Footsteps out the door presaged someone’s coming, and only then did she remember to dread her mother’s displeasure. Surely she would not be happy to find the family china in shards, and Odette knew a pang of fearful regret.
Aymeric reached across the table, setting his cup on her vacant saucer, and knelt beside the table. He was there when the maid came in, looking concerned.
“What happened?” she asked. “Is everything alright?”
“Merely an accident,” Aymeric said, in that even way of his. “Please forgive my clumsiness.”
They knelt there on the floor, picking white shards from grey stone, and Odette looked on dispassionately. Aymeric glanced at her once or twice, but she gave him nothing. She had nothing to give. He had secured her escape from consequences with his lie, perhaps, and yet something still ached in her heart. She dared say nothing, lest she confess her crimes.
Soon the mess was gone, and the maid too, and the rest of the tea service. They sat there at an empty table, his wishes laid out between them.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. It was barely a question, a gentle entreaty to unburden herself. “What could have possessed you to do that?”
She had an answer, but could not give it—certainly not while she looked into his eyes. “What would you do,” she wondered, “if you returned to Saint Finnea’s cloisters and set all the swans free, but one swan insisted upon remaining? She would eat of your table, should you offer, and shelter beneath the eaves there, and swim in the lake, but she would always peck at you every time you came near?” She stacked the wooden boxes in front of her, looking down at her hands as she worked. “She doesn’t know why, and you have done nothing wrong, but whenever you see her, she pecks you. Wouldn’t you give up, eventually?”
Aymeric said nothing for a long time. Then he said, “Well—does she love me?”
“Her love for you is an agony.”
His brow knit; his face crumpled. “Why should love ever be agony?”
It seemed a naive question coming from him—had he never suffered for love of her? “Do you love me still?”
“Yes,” he said at once.
She shook her head. “It is torment enough that you love me, and torment twice over that I love you. I wish I did not; these feelings are unwelcome to me. But it is not because you are not a good man—rather you are the best of all men, and should be free to choose someone better suited to your happiness.”
He looked upon her then with perplexity, though beneath it she could feel his joy. “You have not spoken of this before,” he said. “What moves you to speak now?”
“I have been reminded much of late of my own deficiencies,” she said.
“In what way?”
Odette considered a long moment. When she spoke, it was bluntly: “Fray and I chanced to meet again. And Gaius van Baelsar is in love with my twin sister.”
Aymeric pressed his lips into a thin line. “I knew that the Black Wolf lived, having been briefed on the subject, but I remain uncertain what connects these two matters.”
“It was not a happy reunion,” Odette said. “Neither of them were happy reunions. Knowing me seems to have done Fray Myste more harm than good, and I cannot see how it would be otherwise for you. And the legatus of the XIVth—though he claims to have shed that mantle; as soon part a wolf from his pelt, I think; it would go more easily.” She cleared her throat. “Van Baelsar is in love with my twin sister. We shared him once, more than gladly. Did you know this? Did I ever deign to tell you? Well, see me now for what I am.” She shook her head. Aymeric seemed on the verge of speech, but she could brook no forebearance lest she lose her nerve. So she continued, “I no longer feel comfortable with that. When last he was made to endure my affections, it felt like an intrusion where I am no longer invited. It is, though I wish it not, an affront to me. But in truth it is only the most natural consequence. Colette is a far more comforting person than I. So far as I know she has left no wounds in her wake like the ones I dealt Fray Myste, who loved me once and no longer.
“But on due reflection,” Odette continued, “what would I do, really, if he were in love with me? If either of them were in love with me? Would it be welcome to me in the least? I was forced to admit that it would not, and my envy of the love they bore others was simplest foolishness. After all, was I not tormented enough by the knowledge of the love you bore me—that you bear for me still? Why should I compound that unhappiness, or wish it upon any other person?” She turned her gaze from his face; from those blue eyes and his moue of concern. Outside the window she watched the sleet drive from the heavens into the city, and longed to feel its sting against her skin. “It gave me no great joy to consider it, and I decided that my feelings, unwholesome and unwelcome as they are, should be conveyed to you nevertheless.”
His hand brushed hers; covered it. She stared out the window. “Of course,” he said. “That all sounds very much like nothing.”
“Oh, do not comfort me now!” Her gaze snapped back toward him. “This is nothing; you have agreed, and it is beneath you to debase yourself by taking my hand!”
Aymeric winced, and lowered his eyes. He lifted his hand and instantly she missed its weight and warmth. “’Twas a poorly considered jest,” he said, but did not reach for her again. “I do not think it is nothing, for nothing you feel is insignificant to me. Least of all this. If my attentions are a torment to you, I will at your word withdraw and never mention my feelings again.” His throat bobbed, as though he too sought to swallow his sorrows as she had done so often. Aymeric looked upon her face once more, and said, “It has been my greatest hope that I might one day prove worthy of your love, but if that love does you harm, then I cannot wish for it. Your happiness and comfort are much more dear to me.”
Odette looked down at their hands, ilms and an entire world apart. “The swan will not leave the monastery of her own will,” she said. “It falls to you to turn her out.”
Aymeric said, “If your affections are elsewhere laid, of course I shall not interfere. My greatest wish for you then would be that you might be recognized for the extraordinary woman you are.”
“I don’t love him!” Odette said, balling her hand into a fist. “I have never loved Gaius van Baelsar, and I am not certain I ever loved Fray Myste! Gaius is in love with my sister—and there is no part of me that wishes for his love, even were I worthy of it.”
Aymeric began, “I see—”
“She is a better match for him,” Odette said. “And Sidurgu a better match for Fray, and Lucia a better match for you. Even Estinien—I sought so tirelessly to save Estinien not simply for my sister’s sake but for yours. Meager though his comforts are, they would certainly serve you better than mine.”
“Lucia is a fine woman,” Aymeric said. “And Estinien is a dear friend. Still, I do not love them as I love you.”
Odette let her hand fall to the table, disarmed of her anger. Of every shield she could conjure to mask her true feelings. What was left? Sorrow, and longing, and uncertainty—none of them becoming on a lady. “Why not?” she said. Her voice was plaintive. “It has been two years since we said goodbye, and since I revealed to you the unworthiness of my heart. Of my behavior. Why not lay your affections elsewhere? I had thought perhaps you would … stop, someday. I still think you will.”
He looked upon her with naked wonder, innocent as a child’s, and as all-enduring. “What could ever persuade me to stop?”
“Your peers will not be kind to you,” Odette said. It was the first of the old arguments. “I know my own reputation.”
“You are a hero of the realm, and people love you more than you can know.” Aymeric lowered his gaze to their hands once more. “And those that do not make no difference to me. I was a bastard adopted by a dowager, and now I am as much a patricide as a hero. But shame has never come to live under my roof.”
It seemed inconceivable to her, an alien world to her own. What came next? “I would not make a good wife to you.”
“We need not marry,” he said, “if that is not your wish. I would gladly forego that honor for the greater one of having you by my side.” That was what he always said, but as with the last answer he had more to add that was new to her: “What makes a good wife?”
She looked at him, frowning as she considered the question. “Composure,” she said; a lady could never be allowed to be as angry nor as sad as she had proven herself before him. “And deference, and all those qualities I lack.”
He smiled a little, though the expression was rueful. “Composure you have,” he told her. “You have shown it in far greater trials than Ishgardian society can conceive of, much less offer. And I do not want your deference anyway; I never have. What I have admired all my life in you is how unafraid you are to speak for your convictions. To knock me back when I am being foolish.”
“You are never foolish,” Odette said.
“I am more a fool than you imagine,” he said. “But I want you for an equal.”
“Even if we were to wed, I am far too old and much too busy to give you children,” Odette told him, the last of all her arguments—and the one she never won.
He laughed. The sound was gentle, warm, as though it was a comfort to him to return at last to the end of this road. “Should you want them, we can adopt. How could I ever object to such a thing?”
He looked at her then, and turned his hand over to offer it up to her. “Do you know why the swan always wants to peck me?”
It was such a sudden change of topics that it took her a moment to recall her own earlier metaphor. “No,” she said.
“It is because she’s afraid,” Aymeric said. “And there is much to fear, especially in a life as perilous as yours. But I want you to feel—and to know—that you are safe with me.”
She looked at that gentle hand, waiting for her to take it. “Why?” she asked. “Why not put the swan out of the monastery? If you would but chase her away, she would never trouble you with her presence again.”
He shook his head, the motion just barely visible in the periphery of her vision. “I faced once the reality of a world bereft of you,” he said. “I would never choose it.”
There was so much being offered to her with that waiting hand. It seemed impossible, thinking on it. And yet … as much as it would betray her innermost feelings—a cardinal sin, her mother had taught her at a young age—didn’t she want to take it?
Odette laid her hand across his palm. “I can’t stay in Ishgard all the time,” she said. “I can’t put this life before my duties.”
“I know. And I would never ask,” Aymeric said. “But if you can spare a moment, you are always welcome.” He folded his fingers over hers, and sat there, hand-in-hand with her.
Go, therefore, like the eye of an angel to awaken his courage
For @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast‘s FFXIVWrite 2019.
[Title]
[AO3 mirror]
It was late in the evening, and the stars twinkled beyond Odette’s window. What they might portend she had no guess; perhaps her twin would know better. But neither of them were content now to rely overmuch on augury—there would be no opportune moments but the ones they made for themselves. Perhaps the Spinner would be kind to two daughters of Halone, but Odette doubted it. There had been too many failures on that score to convince her so now.
It was these thoughts that occupied her as her maid brushed her hair, long and silver, so that it fell in waves down her back. When she had nearly finished, but before she could begin the task of setting it and tucking it into her silken nightcap, Odette lifted one finger of the hand that rested upon her vanity. The girl—or perhaps not a girl at all, Odette reflected, being only a few years younger than Odette herself—stopped at once.
“Bring my jewelry box, please, Brigitte,” she said.
If the maid thought it odd she did not dare say so, only set the brush aside and curtsied. “At once, miss,” she said. When she returned with the velvet-lined trays in their silver box, she set it before Odette and resumed her place at her back.
Odette opened the lid and arrayed the contents before her. A dazzling array of gemstones glittered back, bright as the stars outside. Amethysts and pearls dominated, though there were many pieces older than Odette herself and not quite to her tastes—the Dzemael line was not as given to a particular canon of appearance as was, say, House Fortemps with its dark-haired count and his dark-haired sons. To look at Odette beside her cousin Archombadin, one might never have thought they were related, and it was not merely her mother’s Durendaire blood that made the difference. But such concerns were less material to her now—she perused her jewels not with an eye toward the Scholisticate’s benefactors’ gala or Manon de Hauterive’s next masque, but for something else.
The rings were small, even the elaborate ones easy to secret away. Most of the earrings were the same. Odette ran her fingers along the chain of one necklace, long enough to loop about her throat several times, a brooch with a swan motif she’d been given at her debut; a bracelet with a small reliquary said to hold a splinter of Saint Valeroyant’s lance. In the end she came to a string of pearls with a heavy pendant. Should one wish to disassemble it, Odette thought, it would be simple enough with a goldsmith’s tools to part the pendant from the pearls—to pry back the tines and let fall the stones—even to snip apart the string of pearls. But they would still be a bit too large, a touch too awkward.
Odette lifted the pendant from the tray, the pearls clacking against one another as she did. The candlelight caught on the pink sapphire that dominated the setting, and she ran her thumb along its facets for a moment. She was surpassingly fond of the piece, but it was impractical.
“Brigitte,” she said after a moment.
“Yes, miss,” her maid said, and in the mirror Odette could watch her gaze fall upon the stone in her hand. “Would you like me to have that made ready for the ball next week?”
“No,” Odette said. She turned about in her chair, offering the necklace up. “This is for you.”
“Miss Odette,” Brigitte protested. “I couldn’t possibly!”
Odette shook her head. “You really must,” she said, nonplussed. “There will be no work for you here soon.”
“And a deal sooner if it’s said that I stole my lady’s jewels!”
Odette blinked. Then she shook her head. “I’ll write a letter of recommendation to guard your reputation, but soon there will be nothing for you here. I tell you this in strictest confidence.”
Brigitte laughed, not with joy but merely surprise. “What am I to do with this?” she wondered. “This is fit for wearing to your uncle’s investiture, not any occasion I might attend!”
“Then sell it,” Odette said. Her tone was airy, but there was a part of her that despaired at the idea of her necklace going to market. “I can think of one occasion it might be meet for, though,” she said.
“Oh, and what is that?” Brigitte retorted. Her surprise had made her bold, but that boldness only made Odette smile.
“Your wedding, of course,” Odette said. “You must know that Micheloux is fond of you.”
“And I am fond of him, but what of it?”
Odette simply shrugged. As she stacked the trays back into the silver box, she spoke. “Since Grandpère is abdicating, he’ll have more need of his draftsmen than ever. Micheloux will have steady work, and if you retire from this house on the occasion of your marriage, no one would remark on it.”
Brigitte seemed to consider this, staring down at the necklace in her hand. “My lady is much too kind,” she said.
“Not kind,” Odette said. “Only practical.” Not kind at all.
* * * * *
“Selfish girl,” a woman was saying. Her teacup rattled against the saucer, placed there indelicately by an angry hand. Estellise de Dzemael was perfectly composed in public, but from time to time in private her mask would slip. “What was she thinking? At a time like this.”
“She’s getting married, Maman,” Colette said placidly. She sipped at her tea. “It can’t be helped.”
Estellise huffed in annoyance. “She could at least have waited until after the feast. It’s obvious that Odette can’t dress herself, and I won’t have you embarrassing us on such an important occasion.”
“Whatever could you possibly mean?” Odette asked. She did not meet her mother’s eyes, only looked down at the milky tea still remaining in her cup.
“Look at you,” Estellise admonished. “You came to tea in your jerkin!”
“Yes, Maman,” Odette said. “I had patrol this morning, as you well know. I was lucky to make it back at all.”
“I don’t mind sharing the services of my maid,” Colette said. She reached for one of the little sandwiches set on a tray between the three of them.
Estellise slapped the back of her hand: “Stop that,” she said, “or we’ll have to schedule another fitting, and there isn’t time! Look at you, your clothes barely fit you as it is!”
Odette exchanged a glance with her sister, and in that look was the secret language of twins: it was true that Colette’s clothes perhaps didn’t fit her as well as they usually did, but she’d gone back to wearing foundation garments that made her uncomfortable. The newer replacements were in need of a bit of sewing up, but with a bit of luck they’d be ready before the new count’s investiture feast. Odette doubted that made the remark any easier to bear in the moment, though. Later, she was sure, she would hold Colette’s head against her shoulder and stroke her hair.
For the moment, though, Estellise seemed satisfied that her younger daughter was cowed, and turned her rancor back on Odette. “You had no duties the other day,” she said, “when you joined my sister and I at luncheon, and you were half a mess then too.”
“I thought I looked quite nice,” Odette said. “That gown is your favorite color, and I’ve always gotten compliments on it, so I really don’t know what you mean.”
“A woman with no jewels is half-undressed,” Estellise hissed. “You might as well have showed up naked.”
“There’s a thought,” Odette quipped.
Her mother’s face crumpled with anger. “You didn’t wear so much as a necklace! Where was that gaudy thing you love so much, hmm? It’s ugly, but at least you wouldn’t have looked shabby.”
“It needed a bit of polishing,” Odette said simply. “You won’t see it before the feast.” She wouldn’t see it after, but there was no point in telling her mother that.
Estellise shook her head. “My sister will think we’ve fallen on hard times, to say nothing of how the servants will talk. Why are you always creating trouble for me, ungrateful child?”
“If it makes you feel any better,” Odette said, “I will point out that I’m wearing my favorite earrings right now.”
* * * * *
She was wearing them a few days later, too, when she adjourned herself to the Congregation of Our Knights Most Heavenly. It was not merely House Dzemael which was experiencing a changing of the guard, and the Temple Knights’ headquarters were abuzz with activity. Odette cast her gaze about for the shock of white hair that usually allowed her to pick Estinien out of the crowd. The dragoon had always been closer to her twin than to her, but Odette didn’t doubt but that he could point her where she needed to go—at least for the pleasure of being shut of her thereafter.
Spying a head of pale hair, Odette fair sprinted up the steps. “Estinien,” she called, and that head turned.
It was not Estinien at all, and she didn’t know how she’d made the mistake. The pale hair crowned a woman wearing a silvery circlet. Her eyes were brilliantly sea-green, and would have been beautiful if they did not look on Odette so coldly.
“You’re …” Odette said, groping for an end to that sentence.
“Ser Lucia,” she replied. “And you are Ser Odette de Dzemael. Were you looking for Ser Estinien?”
Odette shook her head briefly, as though she could as easily shrug off her discomfort. “I was looking for Ser Aymeric, actually.”
“The Lord-Commander is indisposed,” Ser Lucia replied.
“Oh, I doubt that very much,” Odette said, laughing to herself as she turned away.
It should have bothered her, perhaps—Aymeric was a year her junior, after all, and though he was a skilled swordsman that had never been what had seen him promoted. It might have been easier to resent him had she not known that the rumors surrounding his birth were true—and had she not known him as he grappled with the implications as he came of age. Instead, as she made her way to the Lord Commander’s seat, she almost pitied him. The old accusations would come up again, like a bad gil, and he would have to weather them alone.
Aymeric’s office as Second Commander sat vacant, awaiting some new appointment to replace him, and so Odette continued to the end of the hall. She pressed her ear to the door, as she’d had long practice doing, but heard no voices within. Indisposed. What had this strange woman thought to do by keeping Odette from him? She shook her head, and lifted her hand to knock.
He really was everything a knight should be, and she remembered it every time he fixed her with those sky-blue eyes. Standing in the doorway to the chambers that were his new seat of power, Aymeric smiled at her. “Ah,” he said. “Odette. To what do I owe the pleasure? ’Tis an early hour yet for lunch.”
Tempting as it had been to slip in at midday for a more proper farewell, Odette only shook her head. “I needed to speak with you,” she said. Then she said something strange: “Lord-Commander.”
He frowned at her, his skin crinkling between his brows. “Of course,” he said, and took a step back to allow her in. He closed the door a moment later, and Odette led him back to the desk—his desk, already stacked with reams of paperwork and reports.
“I met someone interesting on the way in here,” Odette said. “A Ser Lucia? She had told me you were busy.”
Aymeric glanced aside a moment. “Ser Lucia is my aide,” he said. “She was stationed at the Convictory before this, I believe, and recalled to aid in the transition. Perhaps she was simply overzealous in guarding my time. You must imagine there are any number of questions right now, and if I were to answer each one personally, I would have time for nothing else.”
Odette pursed her lips. “No,” she said, “she knew who I was … so she ought to have known you’d want to see me. Besides, I’ve actually come on business for once.”
Aymeric nodded. “What is it?”
Odette drew her sword. She held it loosely in one hand with the practiced ease that came from spending half a lifetime learning its use, but she did not wield it then, merely held it—at least until she laid it across his desk. “I’ve come to tender my resignation,” she said.
He laughed—but like Brigitte a sennight before, his laughter was not borne of amusement but surprise. “Surely you have more faith in me than that,” he said. “Are we not old friends?”
They were more than that, but Odette merely nodded. “I think the Archbishop chose wisely when he elected to appoint you to the position,” she said, “and I think that would be the case even if matters did not … stand as they do.” She set beside the blade a small book bound in leather covers—an illuminated manuscript that contained the text of her commission with the Temple Knights. That had been a gift from Aymeric himself, though he had protested it was from all of House Borel at the time. She slid it across the desk toward him.
“Odette,” he said softly. “I have known you for the better part of my life, and in all that time you have wanted nothing so much as you have wanted to serve the Temple Knights.”
He was right, of course. She had even wanted it more than she’d wanted him—at least she had always been true to her office, if little else. “Things have changed,” she said. “You will have heard that Grandpère is retiring?”
“Of course,” Aymeric said. “Colette told me weeks ago that Count Tarresson was abdicating.”
“Circumstances at the house will not permit my service here any longer,” Odette said.
Aymeric regarded her curiously. “Are you then to be a knight of your house instead?” he wondered.
Odette looked down at the little book, in which had been written all her dreams. She was surprised at the ache in her chest—it had been easy to give up her jewels, and their value in coin at least was far dearer than the manuscript, though she did not doubt it had cost Aymeric a great deal to have it made—especially as a boy of fifteen summers counted such things. “It is because of those events I must withdraw my blade from service,” she said.
“And if I refuse?” Aymeric said softly.
“You would make of me a deserter?” Odette asked. There was a sharp note of panic in her voice.
“Keep your blade,” the Lord-Commander said. “Ishgard may have need of it in the future.”
She shook her head. “Should you call for it, I cannot promise to answer.”
“Ah,” he said after a moment. “So you are leaving.”
A cold thrill shot through her, and she lifted her gaze to his. Others had suspected, perhaps, but she saw his confidence there in those eyes that ought to have been cold. “None have dared to say so,” she replied.
“Not even you?” he murmured.
“I cannot answer your questions, Aymeric,” she said softly. For a moment she felt a pang of heartache. It sat foreign in her breast, so strange that she was convinced for a moment it should have been his. Why should it have been? She had cause to wonder, and found herself turning over in her mind Ser Lucia’s eyes, dark and cold as the deep ocean.
“Keep your blade,” Aymeric said once more, gently this time. “When I hear word that you have gone, you will be gone on a mission, and the duty to investigate will rest with me.”
“Will you come after me?” Odette asked.
He must have gauged the note of fear in her voice. “No,” he said. “Will I see you again before you go?”
“No,” she replied.
“Then may I kiss you goodbye?”
She only nodded, afraid of how her voice might sound if she dared to speak. Aymeric lifted a hand to her chin, his delicate touch tipping her face upward so that he could lean down and let his lips brush hers. He kissed her as gently as morning dew, and she repaid him, and for a long few moments they stood exchanging what would be their last kiss, until the next came, and the next, and in the end he put his arms around her and held her to his chest, his lips brushing her forehead.
Odette had the terrible inkling then that he might ask her to stay—to trade being a daughter for being a wife; one sort of bondage for another. She also had a horrible premonition that if she allowed herself to hear the question, she would say yes. She could not allow that to come to pass, so she retrieved her sword and her commission, and put the Congregation and its knightly commander at her back.
* * * * *
It was at her back when she stood beneath the Arc of the Worthy, her chocobo’s reins in hand. The bird was bridling at the delay, or perhaps at the sounds of a busy square. Odette was more than a little nervous herself—and dwelling on the details was no help. She could feel links of chain pressed against her skin, body-warm through her undershirt. It had taken weeks to sew them in beside the bones of her stays, and she had never been patient enough for embroidery until she had to be.
A few moments later, Finnea’s nervous chirrups were answered by the kweh! of another chocobo, and Odette turned her head to watch her twin approach. She was not alone, Odette was surpassingly annoyed to notice—there was a man sat astride the saddle behind her.
“Who’s this?” Odette demanded to know.
“Nobody important,” the man said. He had dark skin and hair, and his features were not familiar.
“Rempart Myste,” Colette said. “He works in the stables and found me readying my bird.”
“Keen to join us on our ride into the countryside?” Odette asked. “I had hoped to go riding alone with my sister before all the excitement begins back at the house.”
“I dropped one of my saddlebags,” Colette explained. “When he saw what I was carrying …”
Odette turned her eyes on the man—Rempart. “Are you blackmailing my sister?”
“No, miss,” he said.
“I thought you were supposed to be loyal to House Dzemael,” Odette mused.
“I swore my oaths to Count Tarresson,” Rempart replied, “not to his fool son. And unless I miss my guess, you were supposed to be loyal to House Dzemael, too.”
“What do you want, then?” Odette asked.
It was Colette that answered. “He wants what we want,” she said. “He wants out of that terrible house.” Colette hesitated. “He … dreams the same dreams.”
She swung herself up into the saddle of her chocobo and together the three of them passed beneath the Arc of the Worthy. The Steps of Faith stretched out before them, brilliantly white in the morning sun. Beyond them lay Coerthas, vast and green, and beyond that, the whole world.
“Then it’s past time we were gone, isn’t it?” Odette said.
I want 8 and i want a pair that will obliterate my existence in material space
8. Who would stand up at the other’s wedding and say they object.
The Prodigal
What an effort itmust have been, to keep the news of the Lord-Commander’s nuptialsfrom her. A dozen letters she had had from home with no mention, andher twin, too, had been kept by necessity in the dark. Thus she wasfar away at the appointed hour.
But her soul knewthe way home; she could cast herself back, to the frost-rimed spiresand the gaze of the Fury. To him. How wild she must have looked inthe doorway, windblown and wide-eyed, knowing at last and almost toolate what she wanted—if she could but dare speak.
Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her …
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Prompt #27: Fling
Sunset painted the sky in crimson and gold, shadows of deepest blue falling over the wildflowers and the lovers that languished in them. The scar upon his side was the same pale pink as her lips, not yet faded to silver; fresh bruises blossomed black and crimson against his pale skin.
She tipped her chin up to kiss one and heard him gasp, going still. Odette laughed at the way he shivered, laying her cheek against his thigh.
“Vedrfolnir was not kind to you,” she said.
He shook back his dark hair and smiled sorrowfully, a fingertip tracing lines of silver down her arm. The scar looked ages old, for all it had not been there yesterday. Her sister’s arts were peerless, but could not make her perfect. “I think his broodfather offered you no more clemency,” Aymeric said. “How came you to know of this place?”
She turned her head, looking west. The spires of Zenith glittered in the last rays of the sun. “My adventures did not bring me here,” she admitted. “It was my Grandpere Tarresson. I would have thought, Lord-Commander, that you knew something about it.”
He chuckled. “I recall, now. However, the stonemasons I sent all returned their commissions to me. It would seem they would be gladder to rebuild the Brume than teach stonework to the moogles.”
“Yes, Grandpere was quite upset by his pupils’ lack of diligence, and means to take over the project himself. Colette and I gave him our surveys, but he wrote to me of his travels here, surveying the ruins ere work begins.”
Aymeric turned his face from hers, looking to the west—toward the setting sun. He watched the turning of the colossal statue atop its spire, its form like folded wings. Absently, his hand found her cheek, the pad of his thumb stroking along the shell of her ear.
“What is it?” he asked.
“The statue?” she wondered, shivering as the breeze flowed over her bare skin. She lifted her head from Aymeric’s lap, pushing herself up to sit beside him. “Grandpere said the moogles called it the ‘king of the land-dwellers,’ though it looks not like anyone I know,” she laughed. He turned his head to look at her, kissing the gooseflesh on her bare shoulder, and reached for his cloak to drape it about her. “I’ve no idea who built it or when.”
“It would be well,” he said, “to build something that endures so long.”
Odette said nothing, and looked away from his sunlit profile.
“What will you do?” Aymeric asked a moment later.
“When Nidhogg is dead and Estinien returned to his rightful faculties, you mean.”
“Indeed,” he said.
She had no ready answer for him—none that he would care to hear. She was sure of that even without her preternatural sense for what lay unspoken in the hearts of others. Odette could feel the weight of his expectant gaze upon her, and wanted to tear his cloak from her shoulders. She did not, merely pretended to consider the question a while longer. He turned from her, plucking the blooms of wildflowers from the grass around them and laying them before her, and when he had enough he came to kneel, threading their stems into the braid of her hair.
“We will see if I survive my ordeal with Nidhogg,” she told him.
He touched her chin. “Do not say such things,” Aymeric murmured, leaning in to kiss the corner of her frowning lips. “I lost you once before this; I will not allow it to come to pass a second time.”
“I chose to leave, Aymeric,” she said.
“Not then,” he told her. “Your departure to Eorzea I could weather; it was the news of your disappearance that …” Aymeric trailed off, and Odette could not help but consider it a mercy that he did not finish the thought.
“It is well that my departure from Ishgard did not kill you,” she said, “for when this war is ended, my sister and I shall go elsewhere.”
“No force could compel you to stay?” Aymeric asked, hope and sorrow in his voice.
“None,” Odette said. “My compatriots are still missing. The empire still marches. The beast tribes yet summon. Nothing is solved.”
“I see,” he said, his fingertips brushing the slope of her shoulder as he withdrew his hands, those blue eyes directed anywhere but at her.
She felt his grief; she had no choice in that. But she did not share it, and so she simply handed him back his cloak, rose, and went to gather her discarded clothing. Odette would have no regrets about her decision, she resolved. She had been called to greater duty, and would pursue it. Her sole regret where Aymeric was concerned was that he could not see this was needful; that he had mistaken this for something more or other than the desperate fling it was. That he could not see its end.
No matter, she thought, buckling her armor on and hefting her shield to her back. She would return Estinien to him, and the pair could care for one another. Soon he would not miss her at all, would think of her only when her name appeared in his reports. That would be best.
But that future seemed distant when she turned back to see him lingering beside the tree where she’d hitched her chocobo, a bloom as pink as his scars cupped in his hands. When she drew near, he reached up to tuck it behind her ear. She could feel its dazzling astral energy and smell its sweet fragrance—they called these rare blooms Seventh Heaven, she recalled, and felt his heartache all over again.
“For luck,” he said, a roar resounding in the distance.
