Something Borrowed, Something True

by glittrcrittr, GoldenThreads, phantomdoodler

Summary:

On the occasion of the Prime Minister's wedding, Hubert arranges a surprise for the lucky bride.

Notes:

Welcome to the hot new polyam pairing: Hubannnand. Doodler provided the original mega-brained prompt, and the rest of us came meowing like catnip-drunk kittens with much joyous screaming. May our extreme delight & affection shine through in every inch of this piece!!

Art by PhantomDoodler, Annette POV by glittrcrittr, and Hubert POV by GoldenThreads. Our thanks to the reverse bang moderators for enabling our ultimate indulgence!

Chapter 1

The time for beauty sleep had long since come and gone, so even though it was the night before her wedding, Annette attended to the pile of paperwork she wouldn’t be able to address during her honeymoon instead of dreaming about everything she’d be doing with her handsome new husband. While a honeymoon was ideally a once-in-a-lifetime event, so was the formation of a free public schooling system in a nation that had never considered such a radical reinvention of education. The typical bride would have let the incredibly real importance of her marriage to the young prime minister of a once-rival nation wash over her like a flood, either guiding the torrential flow of this symbolic union or letting it overwhelm her, but Annette had discovered that not only was Ferdinand perhaps overly involved, the emperor’s right-hand man came from a long line of event planners. From everything she’d managed to gather, the party was going to be a breathtaking affair.

A part of Annette believed that as long as she kept her participation with her own wedding to a minimum, it would all turn out beautifully. The key to not fouling up a situation was Annette Fantine Dominic removing herself like the bitter pit of a fruit.

No, Annette thought with a shake of her head, that wasn't really true. It just felt like it sometimes, when she was tired and full of highly caffeinated tea spiked with doubt.

Besides, she’d be Annette von Aegir soon. The reign of Ms. A.F. Dominic the Disaster was at its close. As long as I put in the hard work now, everything will be easier later had been the motto of her life thus far, but she was electing not to think about that. There were too many boxes left to check in the list she’d compiled when they’d finalized their wedding day. She was equally not thinking about whether or not it’d been a list any one human could complete in the lead-up to the happiest day of their lives, naturally. It was only setting herself up for failure if she didn’t succeed, and all things were possible through hard work. That this was the combination title of her motto probably could explain much of her life thus far, for better and worse.

She set down her pen, grinding at the crust sleeplessness had left in the corners of her weary eyes. She exhaled all the breath in her lungs, told herself she only had a little bit of writing left to get done, and when she opened her eyes again—

It was morning. She'd fallen asleep at her desk. Again.

The slant of sunlight caught her by the throat. She wasn't too late for her prep and dressing—not yet—but it would be a close thing.

Annette threw on her robe in a whirlwind, regretfully pulling one sleeve’s stitches partially out from the bodice. It was a shame to harm the so-lovely brocade, but it’d give her an excuse to see Mercie again before they left Enbarr. Mercedes had switched her father’s name out for the slightly-tarnished auspices of House Nuvelle, so she’d be there when they came back from their honeymoon. Annette would have been lying if she said that hadn’t influenced her decision to look for a spouse outside of Faerghan nobility. Mercie had been mending and embroidering Annette’s clothing for too many years for her to want to break old habits now.

Hurrying downstairs from her little rented room, Annette was met by the spiced-custard scent of a comforting sweet treat. She’d planned to grab a handful or so of dried fruit and nuts—just enough to ensure she didn’t swoon in front of too many foreign and friendly dignitaries—but she’d gladly accept golden toasts instead. Mercedes always made the labor-intensive treat whenever she could sense Annette needed it most.

The recipe for golden toasts was the height of excess: hearty bread squares were toasted by the fire, then soaked in a mixture of sugared eggs, fried in fat—carefully, turning almost constantly—and topped with rosewater sourced from the expert distillers of Gloucester, colored gold with saffron imported all the way from Almyra.

Why she might need to be indulged with golden toasts on her wedding day was a thought that Annette immediately abandoned on the very crowded shelf with everything else jittering out from the sleep-deprived pit of her anxiety. She found her smile, Mercie’s name on her lips, and found Ferdinand on guard at the stove instead.

He was so singularly focused on the task at hand, watching the neatly cut cubes of bread sizzle merrily in the pan, that he didn't hear her approach. Annette watched him for a moment, her surprise flattening all of her many-many thoughts into a blessedly silent paste. It was difficult to mistake Ferdinand von Aegir, even from behind, but only the impossible distance of years saved her from mistaking him for another redheaded knight with a love of baking. The tumble of Ferdinand's clover-honey hair swung as he moved, just out of time with the song he was humming to himself—a part of the Beastie Opera she was working on with Dottie, embarrassingly enough.

Gustave Dominic never sang as he cooked. Annette had been filling the silence around her father since long before his self-exile, so her husband-to-be could only claim a passing resemblance to him.

“Hello?” She heard herself say, faintly. She could have said something pretty, but her jumbled-up love and surprise pressed most words out of the way. The surprise was both sneaky and obvious: clearly, she hadn’t expected her husband-to-be to appear in her home unannounced—he wasn’t the type, on several levels. Annette had been fairly certain she’d locked the door, but not certain enough to be positive Ferdinand hadn’t found a creative way into her kitchen. That he, not Mercedes, had come to wake her up with her favorite breakfast begged several questions Ferdinand’s swift hug didn’t give her time or space to ask.

It was so hard to object when he scooped her up like she weighed about as much as a teacup. As a recipient of a strength-based Crest, Annette was very familiar with the power required to wield, say, a giant hammer, but being on the receiving end of a boosted embrace had yet to lose its novelty.

“Oh, Anne! Hello! Good morning, my dear dove! You’re looking positively radiant today.”

Annette felt like a dish rag that’d been wrung out a touch too forcefully, but his effortless praise loosened the knot wedged between her shoulders. She had to accept his compliment, torn sleeve and doubtlessly pronounced eyebags implicitly included, because it’d come from Ferdinand. Early on in their courtship, he’d made it clear that he was direct in all important things. He never wanted his honesty to be in doubt, and she treasured that.

“Did Mercedes tell you I love golden toasts?”

“No? I thought—well, my mother—” Ferdinand looked flustered, left almost too vulnerable to have been caught just unprepared to answer something so simple. “They always marked a special occasion when I was young. Surely today qualifies as such, do you not agree?”

“I couldn’t agree more!” Annette said, and found that she really did mean it. There was a brief delay between her surges of emotion and knowing how it felt, and she was afraid she couldn’t blame all of it on sleeplessness. She wondered if it’d be different if this were not an arranged marriage—if she’d thrown enough away to justify calling it ‘all in the name of love'—but it was only an idle thought, because they’d arranged their own marriage. This, too, was revolutionary in its way. Ferdinand was kind, and their goals aligned. Not even her father could say it was a bad match.

He didn’t have to love her. Or, more importantly, their shared aspirations brought her enough happiness that she didn’t need there to be the kind of love she read about in romance novels. The practical outweighed the irrational.

Ferdinand pressed his lips in a firm line, his dimples briefly puckering.

“So you are happy, then? You want to see this marriage through?”

“Excuse me?” Annette demanded, almost breathless in her disbelief. Ferdinand flapped his hands to calm her, then quickly abandoned his turning fork before he potentially splattered them both with hot oil.

“Please, do not be angry. It is simply that I—I have noticed how infrequently you sing, lately. Privately, I have feared myself to be a possible cause—me, or our upcoming nuptials. And I thought it was only right to ask now, before much becomes irrevocable, if you still envision a future happiness with me.”

Beyond everything superficial, the main reason Annette had responded to Ferdinand’s first halting offer of marriage with an enthusiastic yes was how incredibly alike they both were.

“Oh, thank goodness. You’re out of your mind with nerves, too?” Annette exhaled deeply, a hand pressed to her chest. “How much sleep did you get last night?”

Ferdinand’s smile wobbled a little.

“I fear you would scarcely like my honest answer.”

“Well, it makes me feel a tiny bit better to know I’m not the only pea in this pod,” she said, and took his hand in both of hers. She had never thought she’d meet an Adrestian noble with hands as well-worked and calloused as any Faerghan who still worked the land alongside his people. She had no doubt Ferdinand would do just that if she ever mentioned the old practice of her homeland. “I’ve had a lot on my mind. Mostly in a good way, and most of the not-good-way stuff is in a way that’s totally natural considering the big ways our lives are about to change.” Annette squeezed his hand, simply appreciating his warmth. “It eases what few doubts I have to know that we both want this to be the start of something that will bring us happiness.”

There had never been a time in her life where she’d believed she would decide her own spouse. The oldest lords feared the day the Elite bloodlines lost the first of their number, and Annette was convinced they thought Dominic would be the unlucky line to peter into complete obscurity. As one of the only two legitimate bearers of the Crest of Dominic in their generation, Annette had always been something of a commodity. The low standing of her family and her father’s desertion had only made her marriage that much more of an eventuality.

But Ferdinand had told her his plans for a new future with stars in his eyes. He wanted her to follow him down this path not because of her Crest, but due to her belief in hard work as the most crucial determinant of a person’s fortune, and their responsibility to reshape society to make that fairness possible. She’d chosen that, and him, and she was as prepared to prove that as anyone could be on three hours or so of restful sleep.

Her grin seemed to shore up the crumbly edges of Ferdinand’s own smile.

“It’s quite scandalous, you know,” she teased, wrinkling her nose. “Duke Aegir, sneaking into his bride’s private apartment! Someone might think you couldn’t wait until our wedding night.”

Annette caught his gaze, expecting his usual adorable floundering, and found heat instead. He watched her raptly, copper eyes bright and curious, and Annette found herself imagining what if.

What if he didn’t wait? What if, to prove how ardently he believed in their union, Ferdinand chose to pick her up? What if he spread her there on the floor, leaving purpled marks with his gentle hands and veracious, voracious mouth everywhere her dress would cover, a shared secret as the first link built between them before they exchange their vows in public?

Ferdinand von Aegir’s courteousness had been the first thing Annette found attractive, but it wasn’t anywhere near his last positive trait, nor his greatest. He was well-bred and well-groomed, and she appreciated it more than she’d thought she might. Other possible suitors had made her worry for the implied duties owed to a new husband as part of the legal and physical covenant of marriage, but Ferdinand…

Well, she’d admit to a certain eagerness on her part, but only to Mercedes.

She didn’t know how long she’d been staring fixedly at Ferdinand’s forearms, but the way his cupid’s bow lips had half-parted in question was too much of a distraction for her to contemplate anything but her odds with the man she was promised to bed that night either way.

Annette began to offer him something—she didn’t know what, be it fresh-squeezed berry juice or her cunt on the table—but she didn’t have to find out the extent of his decorum because she immediately choked on fat-scorched smoke the moment she opened her mouth.

“Ah! Goddess bless it!” Ferdinand swore, and turned back to the golden toast just as the pan caught fire. It was easily smothered, but there was no saving the blackened sweet.

“I need to change!” Annette announced, feeling too warm in her robe. The impromptu armpit vent didn’t do enough for temperature regulation. “Constance is expecting me.”

“Must you go so soon? It would not take me long to whip up another batch,” Ferdinand said, wavering between addressing the briquettes of toast and Annette herself with his terrifically dejected gaze.

It was no surprise that the Aegirs had a floppy sort of dog bearing their family name. Annette suspected they would’ve earned the appellation just through the ferocity of Ferdinand’s sad hound eyes whenever he was emotionally inconvenienced.

She could love that about him. She could love him, even when that came with nonnegotiable complications.

“Thank you for this, sweetheart—I mean it. I can’t wait to see you later,” Annette said, standing on tiptoe. She kissed the round of his broad shoulder, chaste and familiar, before heading back upstairs.

Ferdinand was better than even the most loyal knight of Mount Gwenhwyvar.

Well. Loyal might not have been the right word. Not quite.

“And I you!” Ferdinand called up after her, his voice faltering just a little.

---

An ideal bride would have given the wedding preparations her all and then some. This troubling truth rested heavily against Annette’s breastbone, impossible to shift with forced laughter. Many female mages went to the School of Sorcery in Fhirdiad with the intention of finding a husband whose studies required a feminine touch. Instead of locating a man whose name would precede hers on their published works, Annette had chased her curiosity like it was the only game that mattered—and in many ways and for many years, that had been the case.

Mercedes had shushed her most anxious late-night cries over this particular selfish streak, promising that seeking knowledge for its own sake, for her own happiness, was neither ungenerous nor a waste. Annette had gone to the School of Sorcery to earn a referral to the Officer’s Academy, because the only man she’d sought had been her father.

"Are you sure it's—ah—" Annette winced, marveling once again at the impossible sharpness of Constance's fingers. "—it's not fancy enough already?"

Constance's harrumph would have been answer enough, but she chose to punctuate it with a further twist of Annette's curls.

"You are the prime minister's bride," Constance said, her sigh encompassing the long and storied Adrestian history Annette would inherit through her imminent marriage. "It would be something of an embarrassment to have our dear duke's coiffure outshine yours on this special day, do you not agree?"

Annette was stunned by Constance's bluntness. Typically, she appreciated the way Constance batted away pretense with verbal flicks of her feathered fan, but her comment plopped a new and weighty problem directly into Annette’s lap: What if she wasn’t beautiful enough?

It wasn’t a metric she’d measured herself against—not like this, and not to this extent. Coos and compliments had followed her throughout her life, to the point that she’d never questioned whether or not she was sufficiently feminine. Her interests in makeup and fashion were frivolities her father had chided her for, back home. Adrestia’s court was gilded, from luminous lowered eyelids to dripping sleeves, and it’d never occurred to her how she might be considered plain.

But so plain that her husband would make a lovelier bride? Annette’s stomach clenched hard at the thought. There shouldn’t have been even the tiniest kernel of truth there, but Ferdinand von Aegir was a singular specimen.

Mercedes flapped her hands at Constance with a laugh, her smile steady. "Don't be silly! You look gorgeous, Annie."

"Yes, of course. It is only that I am, perhaps, a touch protective of my dearest friend. Ferdinand asked that I see his bride amply prepared, and I shall not fail him," Constance said, her oblique apology circling back around to land as a delicately-offered threat.

Annette knew that she was, at best, half-assembled. This was an Adrestian wedding, as rooted in Enbarr physically as it was politically, so the Empire's rites and rituals took precedence. It'd all been so much less overwhelming on paper.

Then again, she hadn't seen much of the details unless she sought them out. Hubert had acted as a buffer throughout. Strictly speaking, it was more his wedding than hers.

But Ferdinand was not marrying Hubert. Annette wasn't sure why that was—whether it was a choice made for his parents, or for his homeland, or to shield Hubert from the not-inconsiderable scrutiny due to the prime minister's partner—but it wasn't out of a lack of love.

She was never sure if it was a matter of complementary contrast, or something more wondrous than magic itself, but Ferdinand seemed to glow all the brighter when he stood next to Hubert. Annette wondered if her husband-to-be would regard her with anywhere near a similar radiance.

The simple, clumsy answer was that Ferdinand had likely proposed to Annette because he wanted children.

Surprising Annette herself, that wasn't a bitter thought. She wanted kids, too. It didn't count as using each other if it was a mutual goal, right?

Was she doing something wrong if she opened her heart and didn't find the telltale signs of wifely jealousy having taken root there? Was it okay for this to be enough?

"Annie," Mercedes said, both at her side and from very far away, "are you feeling alright?"

Annette blinked furiously. "Yes," she said, forcing herself to breathe. It was anyone's guess when she'd stopped doing that.

"Do you need some water?"

"She does not have time for such frivolity! We are expected by Her Majesty in—"

"I could use some air," Annette said over Constance's increasingly loud objections. She ducked past her friends and pushed out onto the balcony for the only escape still in reach.

Chapter 2

From the open window of the fourth floor gallery, Hubert could easily keep a distant eye on the bridal suite where a half dozen handmaidens fussed over the Prime Minister’s soon-to-be-wife.

Truth be told, he had never imagined making use of House Vestra’s mindless drilling over the intricacies of imperial matrimonial ceremony. Edelgard had boldly declared she would not marry, and the other Hresvelgs had their own Vestra pawns to arrange their affairs, so there would simply be no need for Hubert to perform such duties. As the years passed his only care was in eliminating unwelcome suitors before amorousness spiraled into nuisance. Even now his Lady had no care for such things. And yet, amid the war and the fragile peace that followed, she had opened her heart to admit a few other illustrious souls to the ranks of the imperial family. That Hubert would offer to manage their ceremonial needs with due pomp and prestige was only natural. She loved them, therefore he served.

That he would offer the same to his own lover was…well. That part was perhaps beyond anyone’s imagination entirely.

Without the war, their Eagles would all have been slated for political unions sooner rather than later. The ceasefire allowed Ferdinand to stand up on the firing line alone. He had offered himself as a prize piece of political capital to secure Faerghan goodwill, and when they did not accept his head as recompense, he requested a bride to cement the peace the old-fashioned way.

If Ferdinand was determined to act the same noble and self-sacrificing buffoon that had stolen Hubert’s heart away in the first place, then there was no way for Hubert to do anything but perform his duty to the utmost in turn. Love, therefore service. Hubert could not live with himself if he offered Ferdinand anything less than the best.

Such was the simple excuse Hubert offered whenever Edelgard pinned him down for an update, or Bernadetta came crying about not fighting for what one wanted, or Petra quirked a brow at his pliant surrender, or Dorothea brandished a bottle of honey wine in his face with a command to cry it all out on her shoulder. Each time he demurred with a solemn reiteration: he would offer Ferdinand the best. He would ensure Ferdinand’s happiness. Nothing more remained to be said.

But it was easy.

That was the true shock of it, that this could be a travail so insubstantial as to rank nowhere among the great tragedies of his life, and yet of a magnitude that utterly consumed him. Perhaps ‘topsy-turvey’ provided more accuracy to the experience, the difficulties inverted while the simplicities dragged, as Hubert carved out his own heart only to darn it back into silk hems and handkerchiefs pressed over warm hearts.

Hubert craned his neck another half inch to better his view of the bridal suite down below, intent on the bustling movement of the handmaidens and the heightened frenzy of their movements. Something had disturbed them, but surely she had matters well in hand.

Everyone kept asking Hubert the wrong questions, pitiful interrogators that they were. His true compunctions could be easily derived by three simple inquiries.

Arranging a political marriage with the Kingdom to foster their new peace and trample Hubert’s heart in the process? A matter of course.

Wrangling Ferdinand von Aegir down the aisle to join hands with another without letting him drop of a heart attack at the age of twenty-eight? Horrific.

Accepting Ferdinand’s arranged bride from the brutal wilds of Faerghus?

With a slam of the doors below, Lady Annette Fantine Dominic pushed out onto the balcony and hastily tossed a wall of shimmering, solidified Abraxas behind her. Her curls were only halfway arranged, and a slow grin slid over Hubert’s lips as he caught sight of Constance squawking inside the barrier. How savage to use the daylight against the only mage capable of breaking her spell. Pride thrummed in his stone heart.

Frightfully delightful.

The gentle breeze ruffled through the pristine white silk of Annette’s layered chemise, billowing at the open falls of her shoulders and the tiers draped from knee to ankle. She clenched her hands in the soft fabric at her sides, just once, then remembered herself and gripped at the railing instead. By now annoyance must have bitten her lip raw, yet from afar even her frustration added to her beguiling grace, a wild nymph hemmed in by the strictures of civilization. Soon the handmaidens would make it quite literally so, when they laced her into the outer layers of heavy scarlet brocade and affixed the many diaphanous billows that symbolized Aegir’s gentle seas.

To appease the fashion-fanatical citizens of Enbarr, full plates of the imperial couple’s wedding attire had been delivered to all major newspapers a week before the celebrations. Few of the citizens would understand it for mere pomp, a singular circumstance demanding Crusher’s absence in Annette’s commanding little grip, rather than an accurate representation.

A shame, but only a temporary one. They would learn.

(And if they didn’t, the Emperor would simply challenge the Prime Minister’s wife to a public match. It would cause rather more problems than it solved…but each problem would be particularly enticing, in Hubert’s opinion. Still. A concern for another day.)

Though her diminutive fury was always a gift to the eyes, today Hubert insisted upon a different curl to Annette’s lips. He cupped his hands into a little pit where a pool of Miasma soon boiled. It shifted and solidified according to his will until it resembled a little songbird, pitch black with an iridescent sheen of indigo when the light hit, and then Hubert brought it to his lips to feed it his whispers. The shadow raven flung itself from the window and skittered through the courtyard, clipping through space itself on its warped wings until it splattered against the hand rail next to Annette’s clenched hands.

From above, Hubert watched her gather up the eerie bird and pluck the message from its sharp little feet. No matter how scathing the words he sent, nor how monotonous the request, her face always lit up with a laughter that cleaved open his chest like a rainbow shearing through storm clouds.

Annette began to search the courtyard, nearly tumbling over the railing in her search for a better vantage, and Hubert quickly ducked back inside before her smile could skewer him, too.

She was raised for this. Both nations saw her only as a skittish Faerghan mare now stabled alongside an Adrestian stallion, livestock the both of them no matter their pride. It was a lighter burden than poverty, of course, but considering pride and poverty were all that Faerghus had, perhaps he should not wonder that Annette never once complained. Conversely, Adrestia offered certain relative freedoms compared to the socially frigid isolation of the Kingdom, and yet she never squeaked a word of excitement for that, either. Throughout the entire engagement, the only thing upon her mind was—

“Ferdinand!”

Caspar hollered from within the groom’s suite, just as Ferdinand’s own plaintive groan echoed out down the hallway.

“There is no point,” Ferdinand wailed, lying face-down upon the settee in a dreadful sprawl when Hubert slipped back inside the room. “It is not up to par! It cannot remotely be brought to par!”

“What’s a par?” Caspar hissed at Linhardt behind his hand.

A handful of papers slipped from Ferdinand’s lax fingers and fluttered to the floor, each covered in layer upon layer of ink. The Prime Minister’s 17th set of amendments to the evening’s festivities, by the look of it. Hubert swallowed back his sigh and bent to collect the assorted notes. They had spent many weeks planning the soon-to-be-newlyweds’ first month so that private and public time could be balanced to greatest effect, and the resulting schedule met with even Mercedes’s exacting approval. Yet the moment it was established, Ferdinand’s anxieties shifted back to the wedding itself, to the realities of matrimony, to ensuring all of Annette’s needs were met within a potentially loveless match and promising to never once impose upon her lest she come to loathe him, or worse, her life itself.

“There are not enough hours within which to arrange the necessities, let alone the requirements of the position. At this rate she shall tire of me within the first hour! How am I to proceed as if that is fine? As if any political nonsense can compete with the sheer necessity of my wife’s enduring smile upon her wedding day?!” He sniffled wetly. “No wonder noble marriages are devoid of all care, all cherishing…they are doomed from the very first! Condemned!”

This was precisely why Lorenz had not been allowed entry to the groom’s suite, lest his natural extravagance feed into Ferdinand’s existing frenzy. Not that the current jesters were any better, with Caspar loudly whispering for someone to put Ferdinand to Sleep already and Linhardt happily sketching a perfect resemblance of Ferdinand’s ministerial meltdown upon the back of a wedding invitation.

Ferdinand turned further into the settee, pressing his nose into the crease of the velveteen upholstery, and asked in a small, shaky voice, “Why did I think I could do this?”

Hubert clapped his hands in the air. “Caspar. Linhardt. You are excused.”

“But—“

“Finally.”

After shooing them away on a mission to determine the progress of the kitchen’s towering croquembouche, Hubert locked the door and went to prepare a pot of tea.

“I do not wish to be wed,” came a pitiful whine as Hubert minded the kettle. He hummed his assent.

“The entire construct should be abolished. Please inform Edelgard post haste.”

“Hubert. Are you even listening to me?”

“Not that you should care for me at all anymore. If you harden your heart, I will understand.”

“I could not even manage toast this morning… What if I cannot make her happy?

To that one, Hubert could not repress a snort. Who exactly had illicitly snuck away to prepare breakfast for his betrothed that very morning? He set the tea tray upon the table, then slid onto the edge of the settee and manhandled Ferdinand about until his head rested upon Hubert’s lap. With his fingers threading gently through the copper waves of Ferdinand’s hair, he finally answered the most important of all questions. “You have met her, Ferdinand. Rare is the man who could make her unhappy.”

Even if Ferdinand did, he would simply vanish from Annette’s field of awareness like every other droll thing. There was no room for catty venom or planned malice in her too-crowded head.

“Noble marriages are never happy,” Ferdinand mumbled against the stiff starch of Hubert’s trousers.

True. But noble men were rarely of Ferdinand’s caliber of heart.

Hubert perfectly understood the true fear underlining those words, for he of all men knew the innate terror of growing up to become one’s father. Yet even Hubert’s patience had been strained by these twin comets crashing together. Sometimes it felt as if they feared failing each other more than Hubert feared failing Edelgard, at which point his patience evaporated and the proceedings devolved into a manic carnival of competing compulsion.

For months Hubert had preened and polished their ruffled feathers. He delineated the proper topics of conversation for Annette’s entrance into Adrestian society and had her practice innumerable fascinating reminiscences of her time at the magical academy upon his grim, disapproving visage. He chaperoned the fraught silence of their first meetings, when Ferdinand feared talking over her and thereby opted not to speak at all, and Annette feared filling the emptiness would mean taking up too much space, and Hubert walked away with bruises on his thigh from where Ferdinand had held on to him so tightly in helpless desperation for everything to go right. He edited their love letters, he arranged for a Faerghan pastry chef to endear Annette to Edelgard at once, he drew their every mundane preference out of them like extracting the quills of a porcupine, all so Ferdinand could learn her favorite songs to make his oft-imagined serenades more accurate, or so Annette might rest assured that she would not accidentally stumble over her fiancé’s dread hatred of blue cheese.

And he held Ferdinand night after night, kissed his furrowed brow, and told him in no uncertain terms that Annette was, against all intention and expectation, perfect. That Ferdinand would be perfect for her, too. That Hubert would not go anywhere.

Still Ferdinand did not believe him.

Still Ferdinand did not dare say, But you were the one I wanted to marry.

Hubert carded his fingers through Ferdinand’s hair for as long as he dared. They were running out of time. Only half an hour longer, and they would need to be in the ceremonial hall for the Emperor’s benediction.

“Up with you,” Hubert said at last, disregarding the strange rasp of emotion that marred his tone. Once he got Ferdinand upright, he served the man his tea then circled him with a manservant’s keen eye, reaching out here and there to straighten the cuff of a sleeve or retie a ribbon.

“Hubert.”

He did not allow himself to look down at Ferdinand, at whatever absurdity now swam in those sparkling eyes. He crouched at the man’s feet instead and pressed his face against a warm black leather boot.

Ferdinand’s heavy hand settled at the nape of Hubert’s neck.

I love you, Hubert thought, then snuffed out the resulting desire to kiss Ferdinand silly. He would not let Ferdinand immortalize it as The Final Kiss in his mind. It would not be any such thing.

It was natural in the Empire to continue on with one’s lovers after an arranged marriage, assuming one did not allow any bastards to result, but Ferdinand had made clear he considered that the makings of a loveless home. He vowed to allow Annette anything, freely and gladly, but couldn’t bring himself to voice the question to her in turn. Unfortunate indeed that the impossible standards Ferdinand asked of himself were a crucial part of why Hubert loved him.

Everything would be different once the vows were read.

Yet when Hubert thought of the chiming bell of Annette’s laughter, the fear in his lungs loosened to a shiver of butterflies, a dark iridescence sparkling in the sun.

---

Annette was grateful that she was expected to hover close to Ferdinand, his guiding hand at her shoulder or hip to steer her through the day from the moment she met him at the end of the aisle, because she would have been lost in the dazzling indulgence of it all without him. She might've thought him as supernaturally capable as the other Twin Jewel if she hadn't caught him surreptitiously checking his notes as the evening wore on.

The event's momentousness lit the hall, everyone so keenly aware of the significance of a cross-cultural union that it illuminated the attendees' faces like joy. Weddings were typically an outpouring of happiness, to be sure, but it felt distinctly bigger than a celebration in honor of the prime minister and his new bride: King Dimitri was an esteemed guest, and he kept smiling reflexively whenever he caught Annette's eye.

Amid all of the new beginnings packed into the ceremony, Annette genuinely almost forgot it was supposed to be her special day.

In Faerghus, the majority of feasts were for eating—as an extension of a practical need, they doubled as expressions of wealth and land brags. They were political, too, but in a totally different way. A typical Feast of Saint Cichol sounded similar to this wedding reception in concept—ponderously-laden tables and egalitarian excess—but the type of generosity was tangibly unique. This bounty wasn't meant to shame, but was a natural consequence of the scope of the lands that'd offered their goods to the table.

The wedding feast was lavish, every richness of autumn served candied or golden-baked, glazed and gilded. Annette had never experienced anything like it in the Kingdom, but she had a feeling it was luxurious even by southern standards. The tables practically groaned under a formidable offering of delicacies.

There were baked pheasants and capon, wild boar with mushrooms, and a half dozen types and forms of fish. They served fruits packed in syrupy wines, jellied, and chopped fresh with herbs. Annette could have eaten only bits of the tarts and still ended up having feasted—venison mince, apple, custard, a fluffy, buttery root from Dagda that she'd never tried before. Her favorite ended up being a fig tart, paired with mustard greens favored by King Dimitri himself.

All of these beautiful dishes were presided over by towering croquembouche. The airy pastries had been coated in a ginger-honey caramel, a sweet and spicy encapsulation of the whole meal.

These confections were overshadowed by the massive, almond fondant-covered fruitcake. The magical bakers of House Nuvelle had outdone themselves, presenting a cake fully Annette's own height—taller, including the intricate sugar statue topper Constance had crafted in the couple's likeness. An Aegir hound sat loyally at the groom's feet, while a bird perched on the bride's tiny fingertips. It wasn't a songbird, though.

Thinking of the way her sugar self was reaching toward the flared wings of a black bird, Annette looked up at Ferdinand. "Do you think they'll eat the subtlety without us?"

Ferdinand considered this seriously, patting Annette's hand. He was chivalrous, and she was a little too tipsy to trust her heels or luck, so she'd taken his arm in hers. The feast would go on long without them—likely longer than their Adrestian hosts expected, since there'd been precious little for Faerghus to celebrate in their lifetime. Annette was glad she'd insisted on adding spicy fish balls to the menu, because they'd successfully lured Felix to the party. She hadn't seen him laugh so easily in years.

Decades, maybe.

"It depends on if our guests find it to be a cannibalistic act, or merely rude," Ferdinand said. "Our dear Constance has a deft hand when it comes to resemblance, no? Perhaps uncomfortably so. Or at least uncannily."

"Except the bird. Was it, um. Was it supposed to be an eagle?"

Ferdinand cleared his throat.

"Constance has a contentious relationship with gulls, and all birds suffer for it in her eyes."

Annette smothered a giggle. She didn't want to seem unkind. "Well, I asked about the cake topper because I really loved the bird. I want to keep it, if it survives the party. I named it Hubie in my head."

"Ah, yes. Hubert," Ferdinand said, too blandly yet meaningfully all at once.

"If you're going to share that much of a thought, you might as well finish it."

"It is only that I—I was looking for him earlier. I thought he might dance with me." Seemingly hearing himself a drunken moment too late, he added, "As a colleague, on my wedding day."

Annette bit her lip so she wouldn't laugh at him, either. It wasn't Ferdinand she was laughing at, not exactly, but she wouldn't risk such a delicate discussion so close to their wedding bed. Reaching up, she patted his cheek. They'd only tried sips of all the wines, cordials, and spiced ciders provided by their eager (and proud) guests, but Ferdinand's face still burned with tipsy rosiness.

Annette had spent enough time with Hubert to understand exactly what Ferdinand saw in his fellow Jewel: like faceted obsidian, his brilliance just had to be seen in the right light, from the right angle. It was no wonder how so many people in Edelgard's inner circle relied on Hubert—his competence was as staggering as it was thorough.

She'd given the lion's share of the wedding planning to the Emperor's number one eagle, because he had offered his esteemed services. Annette would have lost her marbles if she'd tried to build a reception big enough to entertain three and a half nations' worth of royal retinue without expert supervision.

She'd wondered why House Vestra was tasked with party planning by imperial decree, an important enough skill to fold it into their very foundation, but now nothing seemed more natural given the Minister of the Imperial House's pledge to the throne. There was power in a seamlessly-executed soiree—maybe even more power than in a literally-executed head of state.

"As your colleague, and as your love—" Annette took a breath, not allowing her tongue to trip. "—as your lovely friend, Hubert has worked tirelessly to celebrate us. He knows better than to try to avoid you, of all people."

"As though he could ever evade me for long!" Ferdinand said, with surprising conviction for a man who'd been moping about that exact thing.

"And why would he ever want to? There is only one Ferdie, and you're—you're so—" Too many words crowded her, impossible to sort effectively when she was whirling with emotions and excellent drink. "You are so Ferdielightfully you."

"A welcome thing, I pray?" He asked, in a way that made her think he had been deemed as less than a Ferdielight by past critics.

"The best," Annette said, squeezing his hand. "The truth is, I never really expected to have a husband who'd care if I was happy enough to sing. I promise I won't take that for granted."

Ferdinand's mouth worked, but he seemed unsure of how best to respond. The idea that he might think she was angling for pity was instantly mortifying, but she couldn't take back what she'd said. Shucking the truth of context didn't always catch all the thorns.

"Come on," she said, tugging at his wrist. "I should take off these heels before I stumble out of them."

"Oh, I did not even think—and with you dancing all evening! Forgive me, dear Anne—" Ferdinand began to apologize, but she shied away from the attempt with a shimmy and a laugh.

"I have enough juice in me to beat you in a race to our room, so don't you make me prove it!"

Ferdinand von Aegir couldn't say no to a dare, even one implied rather than formally issued, but she'd counted on that. She wasn't anywhere near familiar enough with the layout to find her way to the bedroom they were supposed to share, much less beat him there, but she'd only wanted to distract him. It worked, too, until they were presented with the reality of the door: unlocked, but closed. A future waited behind it, and Annette might've hesitated on that last precipice if she'd married someone who didn't bodily reject the idea of hesitation itself. Ferdinand opened the door, and ushered her into the velvet-lined future he'd promised.

Hubert had attended to every last detail. Annette hovered in the doorway for a moment, watching the wheeling shadows cast across the high ceiling of the sweet-smelling boudoir, and allowed herself the indulgence of forgetting all of the complicated parts. This was a room fit for royalty, too fine for the daughter of a disillusioned knight—but expected, apparently, for the mage the prime minister had decided to marry.

And it was attended by the mage he'd sworn oaths to in private, too.

Hubert knelt beside the bed he had prepared for Annette and Ferdinand, as sleek and readied as a folded straight razor.

It was rare that Annette saw Lord Vestra from this angle. The goddess had seen fit to put half a body of height between them, so Annette had never known about the beautiful way shadows gathered in the hollows of Hubert's cheeks when he held his breath, head bowed.

She could reach out, if she chose, and take him by his hair. Unlike Ferdinand's loose waves, Hubert had taken to keeping his hair cut neat and close. There was just enough of a curl to give him a stubborn bit of bang, and Annette had often thought about brushing it away for him. For once, she could reach him. The not-exactly-idle thought startled a gasp out of her.

She probably should have been more surprised by Hubert's presence beside her marital bed in the first place, but that had yet to register.

It just seemed perfectly natural for Hubert to be there, like that.

Chapter 3

The festivities still raged down in the labyrinthine ballrooms of the palace, dancing and drinking aplenty until even the mead ran dry and the men shed their boots to spin on barefoot, but here in the Prime Minister’s suite there was only a candlelit silence. Garlands of ruby mums and fresh rosemary bathed the marriage bed’s canopy in a florid halo, and the sprigs of jasmine beneath the pillows and tied above the threshold lent a heavenly intoxication to the air. All the magelights had been replaced with thrice-blessed candles that flickered from tables and dressers. Twin braziers flanked the doorway to lend additional light. One had been uncovered in the imperial vault and polished until the eagles regained their golden glory, and its twin was of modern construction with lions and griffins rampant. They cast wild shadows upon the walls, the room swimming with prancing heralds.

Hubert’s eyes followed the sweeping shades as they danced over the carpet beneath his knees. His mind hummed with splintered nerves, yet he drifted here in the dark, folded in supplication at the foot of the marriage bed. The razor shards of glass within his heart felt softened by the endless roll of the sea, the scent of renewal bringing back memories he thought lost.

Edelgard’s mothers were happy, he knew.

When the Emperor had taken a new bride, the others wore crowns of sweet jasmine to the ceremonies then braided it into their new sister’s hair in welcome. The scent dragged him back to those easy days unwilling, when he would ache to see Edelgard passed from mother to mother for kisses upon her forehead when she wept. They did not choose each other. They did not choose their lot in life. But they shared their lives just the same, and raised the imperial brood together, and Hubert remembered. Noble marriages were never happy, but happiness could be built.

Longing ached in him, not loss. If Hubert could make Annette happy, then…all his imaginings fizzled away, the image too fuzzy to grasp. He never thought himself enough for Ferdinand. No one could be. The first time he spotted Annette’s small vice grip seizing Ferdinand’s hand to prevent him from gesticulating into the side of a passing carriage, what he felt was the relief of battlefield reinforcements arriving on the cusp of defeat, not the fear of replacement.

Still a grim terror lanced through him when he heard the click of Annette’s heels in the hall. Hubert’s plan would succeed, or it would fail, and the future would find them one way or another. He took a deep breath of jasmine and straightened his back, palms pressed to his thighs.

The door opened.

Limned in the light of the hallway, the newlyweds took his breath away even more than they had at the ceremony—a first look for Hubert alone. Annette did not spot him initially, too transfixed by the prancing shadowplay upon the walls, and to see her glowing with such glee bolstered Hubert’s courage for the absurdity he had to offer. Her veil had disappeared at some point during the reception, and the billowing blue train was now belted awkwardly around her waist to allow her greater dancing freedom; or perhaps Ferdinand had done it, to prevent any other man from pressing their hands against the lithe curves of her waist and the firm muscle beneath.

Ferdinand’s attire had fared better: his cravat hung askew, and he had loosened one of the buttons of his vest during the dinner and forgotten to redo it once the dancing began. His face fared worst. Almost immediately he caught sight of Hubert, and his pose, and Ferdinand’s tongue caught in his throat in a garbled yelp of surprise. That brought Annette’s attention as well, her curious eyes shining in the candlelight.

Hubert dropped into a deep bow so he would not need to face the confusion—outrage?—in their gazes.

“My Lady. My Lord.” His brow pressed to the carpet for five seconds, his back perfectly horizontal in his still precisely pressed suit from the reception. He rose back to his knees and fixed his eyes upon one of the copper curls framing Annette’s cheeks. “A wedding gift for the imperial bride, if she will allow it.”

Ferdinand purpled at once. He knew, intimately, what Hubert was referring to. No ancient tradition was more represented in the kind of salacious novels he devoured on all those long carriage rides.

In days of old, House Vestra not only administered the schedules and ceremonies of the imperial family. They also offered their silver tongues to the Emperor’s bedmates to keep them happy and pliant. A well-fucked consort rarely caused mischief, so the saying went. History said otherwise on that point. To Hubert’s knowledge, the tradition was already distinctly absent from the Vestra toolkit by his great-grandfather’s era.

“Imperial?” Annette asked without affront. Her confusion was that of a perfect student checking her facts after a key precondition came into question.

Being trusted to guilelessly answer her every question never failed to thrill. “Edelgard will never marry,” Hubert explained. “The throne will end with her, and she will not permit in-laws to carry it onward after her far-off demise. Ferdinand is an imperial Jewel—a personal treasure to Her Majesty. Thus, Ferdinand’s is the only imperial marriage of this era, and you the only imperial bride.”

Ferdinand hissed through his teeth, “I thought your gift was the—you know—”

(Un)fortunately, Hubert had recalibrated those plans after discovering Annette actually loved her father. He had also declined to frame sparing Sir Dominic as its own gift. Character growth of the highest order, he felt.

He took a moment to survey Ferdinand’s own reaction: a blush and the first showings of a considerably different manner of personal growth. Blindsided interest, not disgust. That would do.

This arrangement was between Hubert and Annette alone, after all.

“A gift of pleasure.” Hubert reached out, beckoning for her hand, and she stepped forward without delay.

Annette giggled anxiously. “Um, if it’s, tradition!”

He laid his other hand atop hers, bracketing the fine silk of her gloves between his own white kidskin finery. “There is no harm in saying no. Truly.”

“No! It’s fine!” She whipped round to look for Ferdinand’s approval. “If it’s fine..?”

Ferdinand stared at them both like a deer determined to be run down by a barreling carriage, then blurted, “He’s my lover.”

“Well I know that.”

“You—“ Ferdinand choked on an instant welling of tears. He flung the door shut behind him and sagged against it for support, trembling, more overwhelmed by that simple admittance than by Hubert offering to eat out his new bride.

“Everyone knows that,” Annette repeated to herself with a frown. “Is this a test?”

Hubert had suspected, for she was magnificently perceptive when she applied herself, but to hear it so plainly in the open caught his own throat in a vice. She knew all along. Every time she had smiled at Hubert, and taken his hand, and whispered in his ear, and clutched his messenger ravens to her chest—she had known. And maybe she had felt it, too.

Relief, not replacement.

“Merely a gift,” Hubert rasped. It took a decade’s worth of unwavering battlefield poise to keep the words from splintering on his tongue. “For you. For the way you have already brightened his—our—lives. For…”

Annette dove at him sideways, tactical, so that she could pin him against the edge of the bed and not topple him over when she claimed his mouth in a kiss. He laughed his satisfaction against her teeth. So straightforward and earnest; what else should he have expected? He was no morsel to be devoured, but Hubert allowed her to do her worst as his eyes flicked over to the frozen agony of her groom.

Ferdinand had not moved from the door, still barricaded against it like a man holding back the tide as it ripped his treasures from his clutching fists. Uncertainty threaded through his taut limbs—not of his welcome, surely. Of how to behave? His ceremonial slacks did nothing to hide the burgeoning swell of his interest; the uncertainty of a beast, all niceties lost amid the blood drumming in his ears.

As Annette all but climbed into Hubert’s lap and skimmed her perfect little teeth against his jugular, Hubert cleared his throat. “Ferdinand,” he rasped once, then again with the cracks smoothed over by a field commander’s certainty. “Ferdinand. Take her to bed.”

No movement.

Annette pulled back just enough to press her forehead to Hubert’s. She breathed in his space. As if it were safe. As if Ferdinand’s amber eyes did not scald the back of her neck with all Aillel’s heat. She stood and stretched, languid and visibly overheated, before hopping up onto the edge of the marriage bed. The wicked mess of her curls around her flushes cheeks drew them in like simple, mindless moths.

“Hubert,” she said, “Bring my husband to bed.”

The wanton whisper that broke from Ferdinand’s stoppered throat set her shivering, and it dragged Hubert to his feet faster than anything. A thousand times had Hubert dressed and undressed the Prime Minister during his tenure, his touch ever-professional even when his fingers skimmed across all manner of impropriety. It took no thought at all, object to object, Hubert’s hands claiming Ferdinand’s coat, his shoes, his many glittering medals of service.

It took no thought at all, yet he could not stop thinking of Annette’s hungry gaze fixed upon their dance of service.

A trick.

Hubert only realized it the moment he gathered Ferdinand’s hands in his, the prelude to a missed waltz; she had ensured Ferdinand received the dance Hubert denied them downstairs. Clever, clever girl.

Ferdinand looked down at their joined hands then finally met Hubert’s eyes. He swallowed, the perfect bob of his throat obscured by his collar, though Hubert’s tongue knew the shape of this rare reluctance.

“Help me make her happy,” Hubert hummed into the warm silence between their bodies, and Ferdinand’s fingers squeezed tight.

He went to bed easily after that, if not gracefully. A wild exuberance had Ferdinand nearly vaulting onto the bedspread like a brawler taking to the ring, and his last minute correction of course could not fully smooth out the ungainliness of his limbs, as if the man had never perfected the art of sitting, or could not master his extremities when confronted with his disheveled bride. Annette could not care less. The moment Ferdinand’s gravity settled enough for him not to topple with her weight, she rushed in for a kiss to share Hubert’s familiar taste.

Hubert had no need to assume the bed himself; the floor provided the perfect vantage from which to serve. He knelt once more. In the warm glow of the candlelight, his eyes swam with every fold of wine-dark vermilion and gossamer silk. Were he a more religious man—but no, there was no need for such nonsense when his idols bore hearts of mortal blood.

He took Annette’s dainty foot into the palm of his hand felt her pulse thrum just below the ankle bone. She had already lost one of her heels in her own frantic journey to the bed. That would be the extent of any work Hubert would allow her tonight.

“So how does this—oh!” Annette squealed as Hubert’s lips lowered to the bony knob of her ankle, the skin there so very, very thin. His thumbs worked effortlessly into the battle-honed muscle of her calves, her thighs, as his kisses trailed a path of aching gentleness upward. With every inch Ferdinand’s eyes widened, and by the time Hubert crested her knee he had to reach out to interlace his fingers with Ferdinand’s once more, lest the Prime Minister fly apart and spend himself before Hubert had even taken the first of Annette’s garters between his teeth.

The growl that broke from Ferdinand’s throat shocked them all with its animal timbre. A split second of devastating doubt shivered unacceptably through Annette’s expression, and Ferdinand turned to hide his face in her neck at once, soothing them both.

It gave Hubert a moment of pause, worrying at that eggshell blue silk with his incisors. Not quite jealousy, but too close for Annette’s taste when they were this new to the arrangement. She would learn to play the fiddle of Ferdinand’s possessive streak another day, without her own standing and propriety in question.

“Do you think I will steal from you, Ferdinand?”

He kissed at the bare skin of Annette’s thigh above the garter belt. His voice darkened violently, coffee black before a dollop of cream, but he winked when Annette glanced at him. “By all means, have your bride as it pleases you.”

Hubert’s hand slid out from Ferdinand’s grasp only to be caught up more ferociously than before. Against the softness of Annette’s trembling throat, shielded by their bodies against every reason this could not be right, Ferdinand spoke. “This pleases me. The both of you.”

“The both of us doting upon you?” Hubert crooned, sly. “If you prefer to see how well her quick-tongue covers your cock in kisses—”

Annette gasped, and her knee curled delightfully over Hubert’s shoulder to drag him in with the piercing weight of her heel.

“Anne,” her husband rasped into her ear. “He has at least nineteen knives upon his person. Have you any spell to magnetize them to the wall? For all the viper’s tongue, I will have him singing sweet for you.”

Annette bit her lip. “Maybe I could make them vibrate instead?” Her bare toes craned towards the black folds of Hubert’s trousers.

“Impertinence will not earn you any favors.”

“Not tonight,” Ferdinand added.

“Shut him up, Annette, if you bid me continue.”

Her fiercest kisses were barely enough to muffle Ferdinand’s fond laughter, a welcome refrain as the tension slowly wound its way out of his body, and he drank in every shiver of sweet music from his bride’s mouth as her garter was carefully stolen. Hubert twisted it round her ankle, teasing, before secreting it away into his sleeve for later preservation. Then he kissed back up the path it had taken and nosed tenderly at the impression it had left upon her thigh.

With Annette’s leg now strewn over Hubert’s shoulder, there was space enough for him to slowly part the layers of her skirts: the stiff outer brocade in immaculately gilded scarlet, the lace-edged frills of so many petticoats, the soft muslin of her chemise, and then at last his prize came into view—a sodden veil of silk clinging to the quivering heat of her. On instinct he bowed his head for a reverent kiss, and Ferdinand’s unyielding grip was all that kept him upright, kept him from sinking boneless into the pursuit of her pleasure.

But this was for her, for them, and not for his own bliss tonight.

It took Hubert a long moment of panting against her creamy thigh before he could consider himself fully back under control. Some derelict part of his training warned him against feeling so relaxed around a stranger, yet he paid it no mind, dismissed it as easily as claims of religious sanctity. Annette’s desperation to make Ferdinand happy had never felt remotely strange. If anything, it only ever poured fuel on the fire of his desperation to please her in turn.

Dazed, Hubert looped his thumb beneath the remaining garter belt while he watched that silvered patch of pleasure’s proof. Her flesh sang against his cheek. This was madness.

Ferdinand pulled away from her kisses and cupped his palm across Annette’s chin and mouth, intent upon the shallow patter of her breaths.

“My dear, don’t keep her waiting,” Ferdinand chided with a general’s commanding gentleness. “Let us see your vows in action.”

*

Annette should have let the surreal nature of the situation wash over and around her, allowing it the half-syrup buoyancy she typically associated with magic—a reason in and of itself, by definition—but she couldn't ignore the sheer space Hubert took up. There was just so much of him when viewed from this orientation, requiring Annette to spread her legs to the point of resistance just to accommodate him.

She should have let the Twin Jewels have their complicated courtship, around and through her, but Annette couldn't tamp down the urge to ask Hubert if he'd always had such wide shoulders, or if he only broke out these angles for special occasions.

Annette hiccuped, her composure failing her utterly.

"Oh! It's real. Oh, Goddess. I thought this was just in romance novels."

"Beg pardon?" Ferdinand asked, brow furrowed.

There was something inherently ridiculous about explaining the bread and butter of erotic literature to her husband when the shape of his fellow minister's mouth still hummed against the inside of her thigh.

Annette tried to pinch off a giggle, but it slipped out between her fingertips.

"There's a whole sub-genre dedicated to the Adrestian court. The Faerghan royals are monogamous, so the fact that the Emperor has concubines—and that the Minister of the Household manages it—well, there's a fascination—" Annette could feel her embarrassment glow against her palms.

"We are quite aware," Hubert said, dryly. "Ferdinand especially."

The august duke squawked. He waggled his still-gloved finger in disapproval.

"Literature is without sex! Er, well—that is to say, works of fiction are not gendered for specific consumption, and I—"

Annette dissolved into truly helpless laughter.

The truth of House Vestra's historical utility was improbable, but Hubert's very real personal offer felt impossible. Even knowing of the trope, and recognizing the way the Jewels burned brighter by proximity, Annette hadn't wasted a single second of the run-up to the wedding wondering if she'd be more than a necessary inconvenience between them.

But Hubert was looking up at her. Not just past her. He waited for her to breathe, to settle, reminding her of his intentions with the silent pressure of his fingertips against the crook of her knees.

Hubert was too proud to ask or offer again. Instead of apologizing, Annette pulled him toward her by his chin.

Annette worked her fingers through Hubert's surprisingly thick hair, marveling at the way the candlelight failed to warm his eyes. The clarity of his pale eyes resisted all attempts at blunting through shadow or muddying by honey.

He reminded her so strongly of ice wine, she swore she could taste its strange citrus on his tongue.

Ice wine was a delicacy almost unheard of in Faerghus, despite the Kingdom providing the best climate for its cultivation. The risk entailed bordered on obscenity when so many of her countrymen were in want of so much. Ice wine production required land fertile enough to bear grapes in excess, wealth enough to carry a gambling vintner through the end of the year should all fall to ignoble rot, and either the restraint or laziness to put off harvest until first frost gnashed its teeth.

Annette had tried ice wine only once, as a reward for helping save the majority of the crop when Simon's flirtation with winemaking had ended in perfectly predictable disaster.

Ice lashed the vines crystalline, condensing the sugar within the fruit while still in its skin. It'd taken all able hands in House Dominic to strip the feeble harvest before it spoiled, but the memory of the resulting wine outshone the monumental pain of picking frozen grapes in the musty cold before dawn.

If everything went just right, the luminous sweetness of the Great Tree Moon exhaled prettily and impossibly into the goblet.

"I hope you'll help correct any misconceptions about House Vestra I might've picked up from the novels," she said, a more direct way of saying yes, please.

The ingenious royal tailor was an old hand at working with petite frames, so he'd trimmed Annette's train shorter in front than in back—a necessity, given how often she tripped on the hem of the full skirts she loved in spite of their constant treachery. She didn't lose Hubert in the bulk of her dress, saved from worrying about suffocating him under heaps of heavy embroidery. She was glad, because all thoughts of whether or not he could breathe were quickly abandoned.

Hubert hummed toneless satisfaction against her, and Annette forgot about thinking about much of anything for a bit.

If anything, the sordid tales of Hresvelg's hungry lapdogs rather sold their skills short. When he spread her with his fingers, her legs pulsed with rabbity pleasure at the feel of his skin against hers—the knowledge that he'd removed his gloves, that he needed to touch her without interruption, pulled a whine up from deep in her throat.

"Careful. Careful."

Hubert was a gifted mage, but House Hresvelg had opted to keep a non-Crested line closest in their confidence. Annette had to keep reminding herself of this fact, because the links between nobility and Crests were iron-forged in the west—for as many more generations as their blood held out, at least.

Hubert stopped, surfacing far enough to ask, "Is that an instruction, or caution to my benefit? Not the latter, I pray, as you won't find my durability wanting."

Annette hadn't realized her coaching had slipped into external narration.

"Oh, it's—well, you say that, but—" Annette covered her eyes, the embarrassment still rising as thick and readily as fresh cream, despite the years. "But poor Mercie couldn't turn her head right for weeks. I don't know what I'd tell Her Majesty."

The vibration of Hubert's low chuckle worked its way all the way from her thighs to her lips as a high, shaky sigh. His deep voice was a lovely novelty.

Annette was familiar with her own pleasure, and as such she knew that this was not Hubert's first time eating cunt. She could only guess as to whom he'd practiced for—what mattered was that there, against the plush duvet of her wedding bed, she was the primary beneficiary of his eager mouth and graceful long fingers.

She came with the clenched-fist ferocity of a sucker punch, pinpricks of unnamed constellations spinning behind her tightly-closed eyes.

"Remember well that note, Ferdinand." Hubert licked his lips, then wiped his shining chin. "It is a high-water mark you ought seek to at least meet in performing your duties as her husband."

Annette felt Ferdinand tense against her. He was holding himself back, holding himself in. He seemed caught between the urge to fight and the desire to wilt, and while Hubert was trying his best to provide what he needed, he wasn't a lone bridle on their skittish stallion.

"I'm perfectly capable of seeing to my own needs," Annette announced, twisting in Ferdinand's arms. She chided him with a nip at the corner of his mouth, fistfuls of his shirt gripped in both hands.

Relic-bearers whispered awkwardly of their strange dreams, when nightmares caught one of their number and the sufferer needed the reminder that they were not alone. They were primal dreams, of blood and fire, war and ruin—for most, at least. Annette had never shared her Relic-dreams with her peers, because hers were about flying: soaring to the dusky peak of the heavens where the sky thinned, then falling back to earth with all the speed and savage force of Agnea's Arrow. The sensation was without fear, even as she plummeted head-first like a shooting star.

The worst side effect of Crusher's two-way grip was a tendency to leap into things when her heart drank deep of her blood. She only meant to pull Ferdinand to her, but eagerness and the memory of his growl gave her far more strength than was necessary.

Annette tore open Ferdinand's vest and shirt with a spray of fine buttons.

"Oh, Goddess! I'm sorry!"

Ferdinand stared at her for a moment, too shocked by the tatters of his beautiful suit in her hands, then roared with laughter like she hadn't heard from him in weeks. She was pleased, if a bit sheepish.

At least she made him laugh. For much of her life, her mistakes had been met with anger and derision.

She suspected his life had been a lot like that, too.

"It's just that I'm still a little nervous. Has anyone ever told you that you're very handsome! Have I ever told you that?" Annette peppered him with kisses between babbled questions. She paused for a moment, her gaze straying over the edge of the bed, before she asked, "Has he?"

The long curve of Hubert's back was too pretty in her periphery for her to forget about him.

"He would not offer the services of his mouth if he were not clever with his tongue," Ferdinand said, blustering past the beating heart of the question she was really asking. "But you—darling, how might I ease your nerves? You need only ask. Was this—?"

"No! Don't be silly. Nerves aren't always just a bad thing. They're just nerves, you know? Because I want to make you as happy as you make everyone else." She giggled a little, settling herself over his hips. "I'm lucky that my biggest worry today was being a pretty enough bride for my radiant husband."

Radiant was a word she'd picked up through Ferdinand's overuse. He didn't abuse the word due to a limited vocabulary, but because he tried to communicate a specific sensation he frequently experienced and desperately wanted to share: the feeling of beauty so great it generated warmth.

"If you don't cease your unnecessary emotional paroxysms, you might find yourself too knotted to perform. When and if she requests it, of course," Hubert said, coolly.

"And you might find the graciously-extended invitation to my wife's perfect thighs permanently revoked should your lips continue flapping!"

The argument sounded familiar, even if the subject matter was entirely new.

Annette ground herself back against Ferdinand, richly rewarded by the way he choked on her name in return.

"Be good," she told him, firmly. She filed away his great ragged sigh, the eagerness of his relief, to be explored at a later date. "Ferdie, will you help me out of my dress? I'll never be able to look that kind old tailor in the eye ever again if I wreck both of our outfits."

"Allow me," Hubert began, ever the valet, but she kept him in place with a squeeze of her thighs.

"I'd like his hands, too," Annette whispered, like a confession.

"They are yours."

Ferdinand was just as Crested as Annette herself, prone to passion and folly with equal unexpected strength, so his measured pace made her squirm. He freed each button carefully, methodically, murmuring wordless praise against the nape of her neck as he opened her bodice from waist to sternum. She didn't need to turn toward him to know that he had her fixed with the so-focused look of determination that had jellied her knees over breakfast.

Ferdinand unpinned her brooch, loosening the pale blue ribbon that'd symbolized a last nod to the homeland she'd chosen to leave behind. He pressed a kiss to the hollow of her throat, an apology for leaving her bare against the cool evening air. He'd cursed the weather twice on route to their room, like a Faerghan girl would have ever noticed Adrestia's coquettish attempt at delivering an autumnal chill.

Annette had never met anyone who wanted to protect her quite the way Ferdinand did, every day and in a hundred different ways. She wouldn't ask what she'd done to earn it.

He worked her out of the delicate layers of her dress, gathering the fabric up and over her head. Hubert had stoked the fire, so the little shiver that cycled scales with the ridges of her spine had everything to do with the immediacy of the eyes on her naked body.

Laid upon her far-future death bed, Annette would likely still be haunted by the way Constance had clucked her tongue while Mercedes took her measurements, sighing that "we will do what we can with Faerghus's thin soil, as ever", but neither Ferdinand nor Hubert seemed at all disappointed by the sight of her. If anything, the fire in her husband’s eyes had leapt to an even greater blaze, to say nothing of the firebrand straining his trousers.

Annette drew Ferdinand to her for a kiss. She stroked his jaw with her fingertips, tucking a sweaty curl behind his very pink ear. His hands closed around her waist with a telling tightness, clamped to her by propriety and option paralysis. He seemed too polite to explore higher or lower on his own, which simply wouldn't do.

“Do you want to continue your argument?” The words held such tenderness that Ferdinand could make no sense of them at all. Annette smiled at his lust-bedeviled confusion and let her gaze sweep meaningfully toward Hubert. “I’m happy to be the object of your debate. But it would be nice if my husband could win at least one round on my wedding day…”

“Try your best, won’t you, my Ferdielight?”

*

"Don't you think you should thank Hubert?" Annette asked, in a whisper that was meant to be overheard. "He has done so much for you."

Hubert cleared his throat. Unselfconscious embarrassment colored his high cheekbones, perfect angular smears of red like sweetened Noa jelly.

"Rather unnecessary, I'm afraid."

Annette and Ferdinand shared a look, and the realization of what Hubert meant. She smiled beatifically.

"Then why don't you help him clean up?"

Notes:

Thank you for reading. ♡