Chapter Text
Felix used to wonder if anyone was really born in Enbarr. Or had they all crawled there hand over knee, ex-pats looking for a home, just like him? After a few years of living in the red-lit city, though, he knew how to spot the natives. It was a matter of professional courtesy; he never picked the pocket of a local.
Beneath a veneer of gold-dust, Enbarr natives were scrappy and warlike. Even the prettiest rose among the jazz singers carried a pistol and snorted her coke off a sword-edge. That local brass—he could taste its metal in the air.
The casinos of Enbarr were an ecosystem where the shadows fed on everything that slinks—barebacked but never exposed—beneath the neon lights. Leicestrians threw down the cash they harvested from overseas trade. Faerghans hunched on barstools to drink the daylight away. Seiros businessmen poached the best lays from a locale where plastic surgery was a standard procedure.
Standing in the middle of the casino floor, Felix watched a pair of Seiros men in tan suits walk by. Colors dulled where they went. Even the jazz playing from overhead speakers quieted as they passed.
In their wake, Felix watched a woman shift from a roulette wheel to a blackjack table near him. Her green hair clashed against the red carpets. That wasn’t a good sign either.
News blared from one of the casino bar units:
Tightening security around Garreg Mach; increased tariffs between Faerghus and Adrestia; Leicester Alliance obscuring the numbers on its oil holdings. ‘MORE ART CRIME?’ ran scrolling text across the bottom of the screen: ‘Expert appraiser Ignatz Victor has discovered a counterfeit among the Royal Museum of Fhirdiad’s Rembrandt collection.’
Felix already knew about that last one. It was why he was currently stalking the art critic through every casino in Enbarr.
He was still standing by the blackjack table when someone wearing too much gold leaned over the railing of a balcony above. Messy bangs framed a tan face known for being as clever as it was attractive with doe eyes and a perfectly maintained beard along the jawline. Claude winked from the balcony and sauntered off.
Fuck. He’d been made, and by the boss of his mark, no less.
From the corner of his eye, he saw that same green hair flash at the blackjack table. The woman was also looking up at the balcony Claude had just vacated.
Double-fuck. That just figures—blackjack was the natural habitat of manipulative, card-counting thieves.
She looked straight at him. Green hair, green eyes, poison half-smile. Shit.
It was barely a second before she was on him.
“Welcome me to Enbarr, Fraldarius?”
Her voice whispered among the electronic siren-calls of slot machines. Even after five years and hundreds of sweaty fantasies, which ranged between tying her up to kill her slowly and chaining her down to fuck her gently, there was no mistaking it.
Nor was there any mistaking the flat steel of a knife at Felix’s neck making the little hairs stand up like they wanted to be shaved, and god-fucking-damn-it he was a little aroused.
He leaned into the knife and braced himself to feel it cut into his skin. His threat worked, however, and her hand slipped away from his neck. She had never intended to cut him, but it didn’t stop her from being too fast for her own good. In a second, she had stepped around him from behind. Her fist pulled the lapel of his teal jacket.
“Fancy meeting you here.” A vein pulsed serpentine through his neck.
“A welcome surprise?” Out of old habit, he scanned the corners of her mouth for the secret smiles she tucked away.
“This time, no.”
Byleth’s perfume smelled like leather, spice, and tobacco and she had slinked her perfectly molded body into a black cocktail dress with off-the-shoulder straps. Don’t look down, he told himself, knowing that he was standing on a precipice over the world’s most deadly cleavage. He watched her slip the knife back into the green bun bound on her head by pearl-edged pins.
“How long have you been watching me?”
“A few days. What are you doing tailing Ignatz Victor around this sin-hole? It’s a waste of your talents.” He jerked his head back, as she tucked some inky hair behind his ear. “It’s been nice, though. You look so good in your new get-up—this Adrestian style. They use a lot of metals, don’t they? Never thought I’d see you wearing golden accents.” She said it almost pensively and ran a finger down the brassy buttons of his jacket.
When he didn’t say anything, she grabbed both lapels and tugged the jacket to rest it back in place, smoothed of all wrinkles. He thought about giving her a big ole kiss with his fist. “Forgive me for being so familiar when I haven’t seen you since...”
“Five years ago. You fucked me, said you loved me, and ran out with the papyrus scroll intended to fund our honeymoon.” He grabbed her wrists to push her hands away and dropped them in the air. “Fond memories. Do me a favor and go away.”
Instead, the bitch leaned in, her lips centimeters from his. He prepared to headbutt her.
“I can make it up to you. I have a much better job for you than tailing the Confidence Man and his Art Critic—”
Felix’s mind zip-lined between the self-loathing intrigue that made his eyes flick away from her and the absolute disgust that made him squint right into her eyes.
“You saw him too?”
“Von Riegan? Hard to miss him in that garish yellow suit. I swear, that man will be buried in gold.”
“And you? Buried beside him?” He watched Byleth savor his jealousy. She bit her lower lip to keep from smiling. Goddess, he hated her.
“Not in this lifetime.” Truth, he guessed. She looked away and stepped back from him. “You could bury me in teal, though.” Too coy, a lie. “I have an opportunity for you, a big one. All you have to do is get me out of here.” Most likely a truth. If Byleth was good at nothing else, she could line your pockets with cash.
Felix’s eyes flicked around the casino behind her. “You seem to be getting around fine.”
“I need out of Adrestia.”
“So I’m your getaway driver now? Who are you running from? Some sucker you abandoned in a hotel room? Did you rob him of everything but your declarations of undying love?”
Her eyes feasted on his bitterness. Her hands began drifting toward him again. “No, that gambit was just for you. Listen, I’m planning something and I swear the payoff will be big. And, I’ll let you keep it this time.”
Before she could take more than a step backward, he leaned in and gripped her shoulder. His claw was tight enough for her to feel his callouses as his nails left half-moon fingernail impressions in her skin. She didn’t even flinch. “Why me, professor?”
Her eyes flickered as she noticed the nickname. So he had been keeping tabs on her too.
“You’re the best burglar in the game.” Her voice was full of winter and too many memories. But if skill was what she needed, skill was the only thing he was selling those days.
“Fine, I’ll lend a hand. We’ll catch up later.” He loosened his hand on her shoulder and pretended to direct her through the busy casino.
“Follow my lead and stay close.” She hissed up at him before eyeing some unattended chips on a poker table, and even better, a whole wallet. “If only this dress had pockets.”
“I’m not stealing for you. This place is air-tight with cameras.” Felix nodded curtly to a man in Faerghan blue who was checking Byleth out, clearly assuming she was an escort from the distanced way Felix led her around.
“I have them on a loop and my girl’s watching out for us.”
“What? Who hacked them?” Felix asked. He hoped she could feel his annoyed glare through the back of her head.
Byleth directed them to the attached shopping mall. “Annie D., of course.” A wired security guard passed close, looking them up and down. On cue, Byleth leaned languidly into Felix’s stiff body, pretending to have drunk too many free rum-and-cokes.
“Fuck, Byleth, are we in the middle of a job right now?”
“What did you expect, that I was just here to pick you up?” She pulled him toward a cheap tourist store. “Cover my back.” She greeted a woman with fuchsia hair whose name tag said, Anna. “Hello, I need to buy a parasol. It’s so bright out there, and I want to sit by the pools—but my complexion, you know?”
Felix rolled his eyes. Complexion was obviously the code word. Five years and Byleth’s tactics hadn’t changed.
“I have just the one for you,” the woman said enthusiastically. Instead of reaching into the bin with the rest of the parasols, though, she pulled one from beneath the counter. Byleth paid for it and walked her sprezzatura-feet back to Felix at the storefront.
“Let’s go,” she hissed. “Annie’s out at the 9th street entrance.” As they walked from the mall, heels clicking on polished tiles to the lazy tones of jazz muzak, Byleth held the parasol as nonchalantly as she could. Something about it, though, was burning up in her hands.
Mistaking his glares for something more personal, she said, “Would it help if I said that there’s a reason I did what I did?”
A guard was tapping his hand against his side and watching Byleth through reflections.
“Save it,” Felix said. He rubbed his hand over his hair. “That guard has you spotted.”
“Shit, I knew I’d been rumbled. This is Claude’s doing. He must know we’re here.” Her tone remained level as if she was simply expressing the desire to eat a croissant.
“We? I’ve been here for years and no one’s cared.”
She looked at him, words forming on her tongue, mouth about to open, then her face closed on it: “Right.”
“Don’t you have a backup plan?”
“I always have a backup plan,” she echoed fiercely. It might have been the first real emotion she had shown. “Go catch Annie’s get-away car. She knows how to meet me.”
“And if I choose to just cut out of here.”
The security agent shifted to see her better through another storefront reflection. She shrugged while laughing loudly. It was all a display, and when she spoke her tone was calm again. “I’m counting on your curiosity, but if you don’t show up in the getaway car, I’ll have to track down another burglar. Maybe Leclerc, he’s been making a name for himself.”
Felix scoffed. “You know, if you make it out of this, I’m not kissing you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You know how you get after pulling off a job.”
— —
Five years ago, Byleth had the papyrus scroll strapped to her back like the world’s most potent aphrodisiac. It would pay for their honeymoon on the canals of Derdriu. It would buy them property. They were leaving behind this life of crime.
The scroll-case bounced, as she pushed Felix into the elevator. He was so fucking beautiful as he stumbled backward to stand in his sexiest contrapposto. She straddled his leg, and he put both hands under her ass pulling her closer, while she dropped her fingers to press between his legs.
Her other hand was tugging, pulling, trying to undo his belt. “Can you wait until we’re in the room before undressing me?” More a tease than a plea, and more flattered than anything. But Byleth’s mouth was occupied with attempting to suck his soul out through his throat, so it was up to her hands to respond, as they freed his belt and slipped inside.
— —
As the memory dissipated, Byleth’s smile was real, not her grifter’s purring and grinning. It reshaped her face into those same beautiful features that had once tugged him under the guillotine of love.
Felix felt a phantom touch at the back of his neck. He shivered and shook it off like a cat. Oh how he hated her.
“No kissing—now we know our boundaries. Get move on, that guard’s more suspicious every moment.”
She was right. The security guard was shifting from one foot to the other, and his eyes were drawing Byleth’s outline in the shopfront reflection. He was about to make a move. Byleth stepped away from Felix and staged a show for the security guard by blowing him a kiss with all her fake smiles. Then she walked away, parasol spinning in front of her like a baton.
As the security guard went after her, Felix grimaced and ducked away toward the 9th street entrance, his mind churning up reasons why Claude might call security down on Byleth and not himself.
— — —
For every plan, there are a hundred backup plans. Each strategist will have their own style. Some will be flamboyant (fireworks and hang gliders), others will depend on distraction, dense shadow, and a knife in the dark.
Take it from the daughter of a Legendary Thief, the simpler the backup plan is, the better off you’ll be. Pare your heist down with Occam’s razor, or you might just find yourself carving tally marks into the wall of a jail cell to keep track of the days.
On the way toward the pool, Byleth pulled out a tiny burner phone and keyed in Annie’s number. She waited to hear the 90’s hip-hop beats bouncing in the background before starting in, “Annie, I’ve been rumbled. Felix is headed your way. Pick him up and meet me at the backup location.”
“I’m your girl,” came Annie’s chipper voice.
Byleth trashed the phone and crossed the mall, riding the escalators toward the poolside. She insinuated herself into a group of women wearing thin bathing wraps.
Your backup plan revs up when the main exit strategy is compromised. Good plans detour through a safe zone that allows you to spot the pursuers from the civilians.
A poolside detour is excellent for this. It takes some truly improbable skill to conceal a firearm in a bikini or pair of trunks. That means anyone who’s not practically naked could be packing heat, and you can ignore the rest.
Adrestia’s plastic surgery specialization kept a constant crowd around the pools. People leered; people drank; tits everywhere. It took a lot to impress Byleth, whom providence had blessed with her own set of jaw-dropping knockers. The thing was, if you found a really good pair in a bikini and slipped behind them, you’re almost sure to lose the aggro of most security guards. Distraction at its finest.
So that’s what Byleth did.
Satisfied that she lost the guard tailing her, Byleth opened and twirled the parasol. The cheap lace speckled spots of sunlight around her feet. Each dapple was a whimsical consolation for seeing Felix again. What had she expected, that he would hug her? Lift her up and spin her around—a long-lost treasure plundered from the vaults of the past?
She spun the dapples of the parasol counter-clockwise. They whirred by her feet. What she wouldn’t give to turn back time. Haha, what a joke. Everyone knows time travel is bullshit. But it sure helped to take her mind off things.
Up to the hot tub area and down the steps that led to the other side of the complex. She backtracked through the casino, past the hotel lobby, and through the service door. Byleth banked on looking like a dour cocktail waitress, as she walked into the kitchen and beelined for a back exit that led—everything according to plan—to the valet entrance on tenth street. Annie D.’S getaway car was waiting for her.
“Back seat, back seat,” Annie sang along to her beats as Byleth opened the door. The front passenger seat was occupied by a chunky laptop computer and a dozen gadgets for creating Wifi hotspots, a massive DSLR, recording and voice muffling equipment, and other techie things Byleth couldn’t identify.
Relief. There was another backseat passenger: a surly, long-haired thief. She dropped into the low seat, one of her burdens gone. Sure he looked huffy, pissed, maybe even slightly glad to see her? No, not in the least.
He shifted his eyes toward her and away again. Then, he glared at the bass speaker busting vibrations into their leather seats.
“Buckle up, By, I’m pulling out!” Annie tapped the car’s ceiling for good luck. Byleth suppressed a smile. Felix looked annoyed.
“Annie, can you turn that down!”
“Sure sure.” The base speaker chilled its rumble.
Byleth peeked furtive looks Felix’s way. His hair was longer than hers and tied into a decadent Adrestian-styled pony-tail. Part of it was braided over and tied with golden pins and clips.
The pangs of missing his man-bun were quickly assuaged once she began to imagine taking the pins out one by one. She imagined teasing his skin with their pointed ends. And the hair would feel so soft coming down around her face, like feathers. His skin had a little color from the hot Adrestian sun, which only made his amber eyes blaze hotter and—
“What?” Voice harsh, jaw clenched to fracture teeth.
“You really went local, huh.” Felix shrugged and turned his head to look out the car window. “So, you decided to come with us?”
“I expect this to save me from boredom,” he told the window. “Don’t make me regret it.”
“I promise it will be worth your while.”
The cane crook of the parasol was an easy twist-off. Byleth sank low in the seat and set the crook aside as she banged the hollow tube against her hand, the top of the parasol hitting awkwardly against the roof of the car.
“Did you get it?” Annette asked, glancing back as the car took a swerve toward the curb.
“Eyes on the road,” Felix growled.
“Just like old times, huh Felix?” Annette giggled. The car took a sharp swerve to the right.
A roll of thick handmade paper fell into Byleth’s hand, “There’s something in here alright.” She pinched it and pulled.
“Shouldn’t you be wearing gloves?” Felix looked over.
“Ever the stickler,” she disparaged him, as she unfurled the paper in her hands. Felix opened his mouth to retort but all that came out was errrhm-tch.
The mark was exactly as described, a page from the manuscript of a 15th-century saint’s lives on the deeds of Saint Chicol. The page was well-preserved enough for the red gouache and gold-leaf to still shine through the centuries.
Felix leaned his head in to look at it. His expert attention drawing to the most impressive element, the large illuminated letter “C” surrounding a miniature portrait of the Saint Chicol holding a tall winged spear.
“Is that a forgery?” Felix asked, falling back into his side of the car.
“It better not be. Annie, do you have that portfolio? I need to flatten this out.”
“It’s here,” Felix grabbed the portfolio from beside his feet and handed it over.
Byleth flattened the manuscript page and snapped it shut. “I need you to stay with us at least into Faerghus.”
“Why?”
“Let’s just say my generous benefactor is more interested in you than me.”
“Fuck me,” She side-eyed him: gladly. “You mean you have the Boar as your backer? What, you’re going to hand me over to him?”
“He’s not taking you into custody, Felix. It was part of our negotiation that I bring you back into Faerghus. Once we cross the border, you can leave for all I care.”
Quiet filled the car, interrupted only by trap beats and Annie’s jittery swerving.
“That’s why you came to find me after five years? To turn me over to my dad’s old employer?”
“No,” Byleth said quietly. “It’s not like that.”
“Calm down, Felix,” Annette called back. “We want you to join the crew again. Byleth has a big job planned!”
“You know why I came to find you.” She didn’t mean for it to come out at a whisper.
“Because I’m the best.”
“Exactly.” The car pulled into the lot of a hotel far off the strip, and Byleth held out a cash card between her fingers. “Take this and get yourself a room. Meet us in 426.”
“And if I don’t?” he asked, long legs already out the car door.
“The show goes on without you.” Byleth pretended to focus on the manuscript page as Felix walked away.
“Professor!” Annette turned around from the front seat to meet Byleth’s eyes. “I think he’ll show.”
— — —
Before knocking on door 426, Felix put his ear to it. His eyes drifted downward to fraying carpet patterned in red circles.
Byleth always stayed in the cheaper hotels off the strip. Not because she couldn’t afford the glitz’n’glam of the von Hevring building with its giant lily-pad pools or the Aegir tower, known for its world-class tea room. It’s that, once you got down to brass tacks, each of those places was owned by Edelgard von Hresvelg, and Byleth wouldn’t stay anywhere that von Hresvelg owned.
She had once joked that if she was lucky enough to wake up in one of Edelgard’s hotels without her throat slit, she certainly wouldn’t be leaving through the front door without handcuffs. Besides, it was easier to buy off the staff in the cheaper hotels.
He could hear her voice through the door: “Claude rumbled me. I’m sure that didn’t help… So he’s jumpy and conflicted, but I think he’s ultimately intrigued. Until he flies the coop, though, we need that per diem for him. We’re stretched a little thin…” Silence and the pacing footsteps of a phone call, “If he does cut out, this would be the best time for it…” More pacing and then sounds of her taking a seat. “I’m doing the best I can, just send the money, Dimitri.”
Her hand would be wound up in her hair right now, clawing her head into a self-accusatory cradle. Felix’s memory leapt back the years to that green hair spreading across his pillow.
— —
“Adrestia,” she had said, “is fragmenting not because of the haves and the have-nots, but because of I-wills or I-won’ts. Edelgard will act like she’s mobilizing the proletariat, like she isn’t another CEO mogul, but the only people she intends to liberate are those already of her standing. And to do it, she’s going to drive a conflict that could devour the whole continent.”
“Pity.” Felix’s head rested on her chest while she stretched the politics wide across the ceiling, fingers gesturing upward as if pointing toward a map that they could both see.
He had his own way of thinking about it: vengeance. Edelgard was vengeful, Dimitri was vengeful, Claude’s vengeance was in having something to prove, Rhea of the Silver Snow Group was perhaps the most vengeful. Even Byleth had it a little bit. So he—Felix—wouldn’t be.
“All we have to do is decide whether we’re to be Robin Hood or the art thief?” She asked.
One hand came down to stroke his hair. He leaned his head into it, revealing a tattoo dripping down his shoulder: coded lines of thieves cant surrounded a long blade.
“Robin Hood sounds too chivalric.”
Her fingers traced the black ink of the blade, brushing over the stippling. It offset the Crest of Fraldarius that was tattooed into his right lat. For years, he had considered a cover-up for that Crest tattoo, but he was always too busy to schedule the appointment.
“Indeed, even as outlaws, we must always eschew chivalry.”
“You asked me what I want—that’s what I want.”
“Art thieving it is then.”
— —
Felix knocked on the door, and Mercedes opened it, “Oh, Felix.” Mercedes didn’t hesitate to hug him, hitting a little kiss against his blushing cheek.
Byleth looked up from a table strewn with papers and held his gaze over Mercedes’ shoulder. The moment protracted, and he thought he saw a real smile twist her lips before she banished it. But Byleth was a liar.
“Mercedes, arrange it with Dimitri,” Byleth held out a phone to the blond coordinator. “I’m bringing Fraldarius back to Faerghus. It’s time to get us out of here.”
“You got it, Professor,” Mercedes said, taking the phone and going into a different area of the suite. Felix could hear Mercie putting on her most sugary-sweet voice.
Byleth leaned forward over the table and ticked something off a list. She had changed from her cocktail dress into a pair of black leggings and a much-too-large button-down. Around her neck was a thin golden chain, and as she leaned back, she clutched whatever hung from it to keep it secure beneath her shirt. A strange gesture from Byleth, uncertain and soft.
He had once thought he could tell her truth from her lies. There was a tone, a flutter, a squint. Now, though, he wasn’t so sure.
Byleth would do anything for her strategies. If she ever thought with her heart, he suspected she would shrivel and die from the exposure to feelings. Salt poured over a slug. So why was he even there? It’s possible he wanted to expose her, once and for all, and rip that silver tongue right from her throat.
She gestured for him to sit at the table. “I have a question for you.” Her large eyes were now steady, calculated; her gestures as far as possible from that vulnerability they had exhibited around the necklace.
“Hit me.”
She smirked, “You have a partner out here in Adrestia. A guy by the name of Ashe Ubert?”
“So?” No point in wondering how she knew about Ashe. If she had been tailing him, she would know about everything.
“Is Ubert as good a safe-cracker as you think he is?”
“Oh—oh yeah. Not by your dad’s standards, but he’s a natural talent and willing to work hard.”
“And you trust him?”
“More than I trust any of the rest of you.” In a room full of criminals, trust was a four-letter word.
“Want to give him a call, then? We could use someone of his skills.”
“What’s his name?” Annie asked, popping her headphones off one ear. Computer in her lap, she was gearing up to run a background search. Her fingers were already tap-typing across the keyboard in rapid stutters. “Ashe Ubert,” she muttered, “Picked up twice for pickpocketing, once in Faerghus and once here in Adrestia. And… suspected for robbing a bookstore,” she looked at Felix incredulously. “That’s a low blow.”
“He likes to read. And he returned the books.”
“Kid needs to find a library.” Annie flicked through the background search. “You really think we should take this Ubert guy to steal the Chalice of Beginnings? He looks pretty green…”
Byleth looked at Felix to ask his opinion, but Felix’s mouth had dropped open. “We’re stealing what? That’s our mark?” He picked up a photo of the Chalice from the table. “But that’s in Garreg Mach!”
Byleth could read the headlines across his face like the 6 pm news,
GARREG MACH TIGHTENING SECURITY: Hiring Foreign Mercenaries?
Garreg Mach, the former seat of the church of Seiros, says it won’t tolerate any more theft of its sacred relics. A representative from the administrative office, Seteth, informs us that they plan to keep the galleria and the private art exhibits open. However, much of Garreg Mach’s historical holdings will be out of reach for the average citizen. Nonetheless, that won’t stop the chapel from hosting those elaborate wedding ceremonies that provide the financial backing to keep the monastery’s staff in uniforms…
Byleth leaned her chin on her fist and watched him.
“You think you’re up for it?”