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I. Petra
Dear Helene,
I have heard from a letter from Dorothea that you have become a chosen-sister. Congratulations!
I should explain. From what Dorothea tells me, there is no word in Fódlani for women like you, or at least no word that is ever spoken in kindness. In Brigid, we have a word that translates to Fódlani as “chosen-sister,” because you are someone who has chosen to become a sister. My stepmother, Sorcha, is a chosen-sister. I am proud to count you as a sister, Helene.
I have spoken with my stepmother about how I might help you. She thinks that perhaps Fódlaners do not know the secret of how chosen-sisters change their bodies. I have enclosed with this letter her recipe for sister-brew, with instructions for the spell to cast on it before drinking. Some of the ingredients are not very nice, but Sorcha says that when you filter it through a fine cloth and cast the spell correctly it does not taste bad at all. I am sure that if you show the recipe to Linhardt or Manuela they will make sure it is safe for you and your body.
I have also enclosed my translation of a Brigidian story about a chosen-sister named Alannah and her many adventures on her swift canoe. I know from many years living in Fódlan that it is very hard when there are many stories and none of them are about people like you. I never heard stories about chosen-sisters when I was living in Fódlan, so I thought perhaps you would like to read this one.
I hope you can visit Brigid someday soon. You are very pale and could use some Brigid sun, I think.
Your sister,
Petra
II. Linhardt
“Well, I followed the recipe, and I tried it on some male mice, scaling down appropriately by body size,” Linhardt said, “and it seems to have the desired effect.” I deliberately did not ask exactly what sort of changes he had observed; I had no wish to compare myself to a feminized mouse. “I wonder what effect a half-dose would have—I should write Petra to ask.”
“Why does it matter?” I asked. I did not want a half-dose; if anything, I worried that my body was so harsh and angular and narrow-hipped that I would need a double dose to achieve any sort of femininity.
“I think you have the right idea, walking away from manhood,” said Linhardt, casting white magic spells on a bottle of the sister-brew to check its potency. “It’s so much fuss and bother for so little reward. But being a woman just seems like a whole new heap of trouble. I wonder if I could try just being neither.”
“Hmm. What would we call you, then?”
“Well, I’m no kind of lord anymore, and I’m to head up Edelgard’s new institute once construction is finished. Professor is a gender-neutral title. So Professor Linhardt would do nicely, I think.” Linhardt turned from the bottle to look at me. “You know, one aspect of construction that got finished early is the icebox for Crest blood samples. It’s got very stable ice magic on it, and I can reserve some space in there for you.”
“I do not know what you believe my work entails, Linhardt, but I have no need to store blood for later.”
“Not blood,” Linhardt said, rolling his eyes. “You have a one-track mind, you know that? Surely you’ve worked out that this treatment reduces fertility. Bernadetta might like to have your hellspawn one day, you know.”
“No child of Bernadetta’s would be hellspawn,” I replied automatically, before the implications had fully caught up to me. It was a prototypical Linhardt statement: a kind offer phrased in a manner that made me want to throttle him. “Oh. You mean you can store my…”
“I never took you for a squeamish woman. It’s not nearly as disgusting as blood, if you ask me. I really don’t mind.”
An image passed through my mind of Bernadetta holding a green-eyed infant. Might she truly want such a thing? I did not know, but if I did this, I could give her the option. “Very well,” I rasped. “What do I do?”
Linhardt passed me a small jar and a funnel. “In case your aim is bad,” he explained. “The private exam room on the left is free. And once I’ve stored that away…” Linhardt pointed to the bottle of sister-brew. “I can give you your first dose.”
III. Dorothea
Dorothea brought it up delicately over lunch in the garden. “Yuri told me she knows of a certain clothing boutique that caters to a certain type of girl. The girls at the Mittelfrank gave it their approval when I asked around. Yuri and I could take you there for a fitting.”
“‘She,’” I repeated, caught by surprise. When Dorothea had asked if she could make discreet inquiries on my behalf among like-minded people, I hadn’t expected them to be with Yuri Leclerc, despite the flamboyant maquillage.
Dorothea waved her hand. “He, she, it’s all the same to Yuri. What is it he likes to say? ‘I failed out of manhood, but I never passed the girl certification exam.’ You know what he’s like. The point is, she knows where to buy skirts and things without questions or judgment.”
“You would assist me,” I said, feeling like a lost child who wanted a minder.
“Of course! I’ve been with you every step of the way. I won’t abandon you now.” She crunched at a forkful of salad. “Do you know what you’d like to wear?”
I stirred my salad listlessly with my fork. “I have always dressed for practicality.”
“That’s what you’ve done before,” Dorothea said. “What about now? Don’t tell me you don’t know about women’s fashion; you helped Edie dress for years and years.”
I slowly ate my lunch and thought about the women whose style I admired. Shamir, with her dark, fitted, armored clothing, all business except for her elaborate decorated collar necklace. Ladislava, in the practical yet elegant browns and reds she wore off the battlefield. Bernadetta’s shoulder-bags embroidered with carnivorous plants and stinging insects. Every outfit I had ever fitted as dignified armor for Lady Edelgard’s scarred, aching body. I said, “I had significant input on the design of Her Majesty’s red dress.”
“The red dress? How did I not know this?” Dorothea said, astonished. “Great job, Helene.” She pointed at me. “Wait. Is this your Helene way of telling me that you want a dress like that?”
A flush crawled up my neck. “I would prefer it in black, of course. With a less voluminous skirt. And I suppose there is no need for me to cover my forearms and hands entirely.” I had always covered myself up because I had never liked the way I looked, and did not want to look at my body any more than necessary. Now that I had some insight as to why, and was doing something about it, perhaps that could change. I poured the sister-brew from my hip flask into the empty cup beside my salad plate, and cast the spell. It was neither white nor black nor dark magic, but a Brigidian practice called spirit-calling. Sorcha’s instructions said it called on the spirit of sea and blood, and when I drank the brew, it had a briny taste like kelp.
Dorothea’s eyes lit up in delight. “I knew it! I knew it all along! You have opinions about fashion. Oh, I have to tell Ferdie, he’ll be so happy to hear it.”
I met Dorothea and Yuri on the weekend in the morning. I had not seen Yuri recently, not since everyone had been relocated out of Abyss to more suitable living situations after the war. He wore his usual magenta eyeshadow, high-collared dark jacket, and burgundy cape, but also layered skirts, black over frothing underskirts of white, and heeled boots. Evidently, she did know where to find attire for a chosen-sister.
“Hello girls,” Yuri purred. “Let’s go shopping.”
We did not turn toward the fashion district, but to the students’ quarter around the Enbarr School of Sorcery. Yuri and Dorothea kept up an animated conversation about their efforts to start a touring opera company with a low price point for the common folk to enjoy. I had some interest in this venture of Dorothea’s as a front for covert operations, but I kept quiet, as I did not feel entirely at ease with Yuri despite our cooperation in helping Abyss. The tailor shop was a humble one down the street from a student accommodation. The clothing displayed on the mannequins was far too garish for my taste, but Dorothea waved me in encouragingly.
I could immediately see why Yuri had recommended the place. The seamstress was a chosen-sister herself, nearly as tall as me. “Welcome,” she said, rising from her sewing to curtsy deeply; she likely didn’t get nobles here often. She was elderly, with waist-length gray hair and a kind weathered face. “How may I be of service?”
Looking around, I could see dresses that were clearly intended for larger women. Yuri was already drawn to a display of silk stockings, some of which might fit me. Dorothea said, “Good morning to you, ma’am. Helene—that’s the lady with the black hair—has been working on some sketches of a formal dress with me, if you’d care to have a look. Helene, dear, feel free to browse and try things on while I explain everything to—I’m sorry, ma’am, what’s your name?”
“Ernestine, miss,” said the seamstress, curtsying again.
“I’m married, so I guess I’m a ma’am,” Dorothea said, laughing. Properly it should be my lady, since she was Empress Consort, but this was neither the time nor the place. I decided to let Dorothea elaborate on my black gown design, and joined Yuri to inspect the stockings.
“You like the black lacy ones,” Yuri said, after very little time had passed. “You should try them on. You’ll need a garter belt,” she said, taking the items from the shelf, “and these,” taking more. “Me, I’m more of a practical kind of gal,” she said, taking down a pair of plain black silk stockings, “but I respect a bold choice. Let’s go.” Before I could object, or my mind could start screaming that this was not something that I was permitted to do, Yuri took me gently by the forearm and steered me behind a floor-length curtain to try them on.
She produced from her shoulder-bag a set of cloths that looked like swaddling for a baby. What proceeded was an excruciatingly embarrassing demonstration of how to arrange my undergarments to ensure a ‘ladylike contour’ under a dress or skirt. I made my own attempt while facing away from Yuri, using my cape as a shield, but I could see Yuri’s fox-like grin in the mirror.
“Do you get off on humiliation? Is it some kind of fetish?” I sneered, in a desperate attempt to preserve my dignity.
“Not at all. I don’t think any of this is humiliating; one’s first time buying one’s own lady’s clothes is wonderfully freeing. The only thing that’s embarrassing,” Yuri said, gesturing toward the curtain and the wider world, “is playing at being a man or a woman your entire life just because your parents told you to.”
It was a good thing I had more or less successfully gotten myself tucked neatly up in my undergarments, because I found myself laughing helplessly, my low wicked laugh that so frightened Bernadetta. Yuri was right. Playing at the Vestra nobleman my father had taught me to be was far, far more demeaning and absurd than merely winding swaddling cloths between my legs in a tailor shop.
The garter belt and stockings were easy, after that; I had helped Lady Edelgard with those often enough. Yuri had brought a plain black knee-length skirt, which I put on over the stockings. Slowly, I turned toward the mirror.
With my high-collared shirt and bulky black burgundy-lapeled traveling jacket over the black skirt and lace stockings, I looked rather like a taller, more subdued Byleth. My hair was a touch longer than hers by now; I liked how the dark waves around my face softened my jawline. The sister-brew had had no appreciable effect, not after only two weeks, but even so—even so.
Behind me, in the mirror, Yuri grinned like a fox again. “Lady-bird!” she called. “Come have a look. I’m going behind the other curtain to try on my own set of stockings. You’re paying for them, Lady Helene. For my trouble.” The curtains rippled, and she disappeared.
I saw the silhouette of Dorothea beyond the curtain. “May I?”
“You might as well,” I allowed.
Dorothea came in and gasped. She strode forward and held me by the upper arms, looking me up and down. “Helene,” she whispered. “You like fancy things. You like lace. Oh, we have to add some to the gown. Around the neck, I think. Oh, now that I know you like lace, I want to see you in it all the time. Your legs are so long and pretty in it.”
A flush rose to my cheeks. The sister-brew had had no effect on my reflection, but it did make my emotions rise to the surface more easily, even after so few cups. Hearing these words from Dorothea meant more than they might have even from dear Bernadetta and doting Ferdinand, not because I loved her more, but because I knew very well that she preferred women. I had never seen her look so taken with me, not since the fateful night I had put on a pegasus knight costume from the Mittelfrank wardrobe at her request.
“It’s not practical,” I said, the last vestiges of guilt sticking in my throat. “I need clothing that moves—so I may protect Her Majesty—”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Helene,” Dorothea said. “Byleth’s murdered tons of people while wearing lace stockings. Now come on, Ernestine needs to take measurements for the gown!”
IV. Edelgard
As Lady Edelgard and I convened over the planning of her schedule for the week, she said, “This week, I’d like to start training with a pegasus.”
My pen hovered over the space in her schedule where I usually placed her first training session. “Your Majesty?”
“It’s an area I neglected when we were at the academy,” said Lady Edelgard, “and you have to admit that it would be convenient if I could rapidly transport myself around Fódlan instead of needing to ride in tandem with a pegasus knight in the case of an urgent matter.”
“Your reasoning is sound,” I said. “If you could ride a pegasus, it would enable extraction in certain assassination or rebellion scenarios.” I marked it on the schedule. “Do you have an instructor in mind?”
“Petra recommended Sir Ermentrud,” said Lady Edelgard. “She’s a tough old battleaxe who’s been training pegasus knights for twenty years.” She looked at me sidelong. “Petra also said she’s very good with students who are afraid of heights.”
“Ah. A clever scheme, Your Majesty. I commend you. It does have one flaw, however.” I cleared my throat. “I must confess to a deception, Your Majesty. I am not afraid of heights.”
Lady Edelgard’s mouth fell open a little. “What? You aren’t—but why would you pretend to fear something that you don’t?”
On this point we understood each other perfectly: we both would rather pretend not to have a fear than the reverse. “I know you remember a little of the days when we used to play at pegasus knights with your sisters. Do you remember when I stopped playing those games with you?”
“I don’t remember it exactly, no,” Lady Edelgard said slowly, “but it was around the time you developed your fear of heights.”
“Your sisters used to tease me for joining in your games. You would rebuke them for it,” I said fondly, “and I did not mind the teasing so long as you remained my ally. But there came a day when the royal nursemaids took me aside and told me that if I continued to behave inappropriately for a Vestra boy, they would inform my father. You were a most ferocious young girl, and you could readily defend me from your elder sisters. If I had told you the truth about why I would not play that game anymore, you would have tried to defend me from my father. And from him, you could not have protected me.” I did not need to add: nor was I able to protect you from him.
“So you lied about a fear of heights to protect me,” said Lady Edelgard. She smiled ruefully. “You started young.”
“I am endeavoring to be more honest with you,” I said. My appearance this morning spoke in my favor. For a week after my trip to Ernestine’s, I had been reluctant to wear my new clothing in front of Her Majesty, thinking that perhaps my unchanging presence at her side was a comfort to her. Finally, she had begged to see me in the dress her wife helped me design, and after she peppered Dorothea in grateful kisses for the way it made me look, a dam had broken. Today I wore dark red silk stockings, a knee-length skirt, and a cropped, high-collared jacket that buttoned on a daring diagonal line to obscure the flatness of my chest. Yuri had shown me how to apply eye makeup, and I wore kohl and a lip rouge the color of venous blood.
Lady Edelgard softened. “You are.” She hummed a little in thought. “Then what about wyverns? You always talked Byleth out of it when she tried to assign you to sky watch.”
I looked down at the desk. “Riding a wyvern alongside Petra or Flayn on a pegasus would have only served as a bitter reminder of what I was denied.”
“I will not deny you, Helene, nor will any pegasus knight who serves at my pleasure,” Lady Edelgard said fiercely. “If you have no fear of heights, then you have all the more reason to join me for pegasus training!”
“Your Majesty,” I said, heartsick and trying not to show it. “Pegasi only tolerate the company of women.”
Her eyes flashed in defiance, a look I knew and loved well. “I have consulted Marianne and Hapi about this. They say that there is an odor in men’s sweat that is distasteful to pegasi—but they can be trained out of it, just as they may be trained to tolerate the blood and chaos of battle. And in any case, you have been drinking your sister-brew for three months now; surely you must no longer smell the same as you once did.”
(Did I smell different? It was not a thought that had occurred to me. I would need to find a way to ask Ferdinand without too much injury to my pride.)
Lady Edelgard went on, “I won’t hear you speak about yourself like that, Helene. You are a woman, and you may ride a pegasus alongside me. In fact, I’m going to prove it to you.” She took a sugar lump from her tea tray and passed it to me. “The weekly schedule can wait. We’re going to visit the pegasus paddock.” She took me by the elbow and led me out of the office.
“Your Majesty,” I said, “we have less than half an hour in which to finalize your schedule…”
“I’ll fill out the rest when we get back,” Lady Edelgard said decisively. Out of the palace we went, out onto the grounds, to the paddock where pegasi peacefully grazed, wings folded. There was a stablehand, a half-Dagdan girl who had once lived in Abyss, carefully checking the hoof of a red roan. Lady Edelgard peeked her head in through the paddock fence and called out to her. “Excuse me, miss. Do you have a moment?”
Apparently satisfied with the state of the hoof, the stablehand let go of the pegasus and looked over her shoulder. Her eyes widened as she recognized Lady Edelgard. She curtsied. “Yes, Your Majesty! How may I be of service?”
“Minister Vestra and I wish to meet a pegasus,” said Lady Edelgard. “Which of the pegasi in this paddock has the calmest nature?”
“Oh!” said the girl. “Hmm. I guess that would be Moonlight.” She pointed out a bright white pegasus, much like any other, who was currently enjoying the shade of a stubby tree.
“Thank you,” said Lady Edelgard. “We will interfere with your duties as little as possible.” She turned to me, eyes sparkling. “Moonlight. Helene, you simply must meet him.”
I knew the reason for her delight. She had chosen my name for me, at my request. She named me after Sir Helene, the pegasus knight protagonist of the opera The Lady of the Night. Sir Helene’s loyal steed, usually portrayed on stage by two people inside an elaborate paper mache construction, was a white pegasus named Moonlight.
“If Moonlight decides not to act like his namesake,” I said, “we are giving the girl a generous tip for the trouble we cause.”
“Of course,” said Lady Edelgard, and opened the paddock gate.
I wove between the pegasi toward Moonlight and the tree, giving them a wide berth in case my scent should spook them. Lady Edelgard approached Moonlight first. The pegasus was entirely absorbed in grazing, and reacted with no more than a flick of the ear when she reached out and patted his shoulder. Lady Edelgard smiled at me encouragingly. “Go on,” she said. “I gave you a sugar lump.”
“Give him some space,” I said, “in case he wishes to flee.” Lady Edelgard took a few paces backward. I withdrew the sugar lump from my pocket and remembered the way Ferdinand approached nervous horses. He moved toward them slowly, and greeted them gently, like a shy child. “Hello, Moonlight,” I said, approaching with caution. “My name is Helene.”
Moonlight’s ears pivoted in my direction. He stopped grazing and lifted his head. His nostrils flared. For a moment, I hesitated, but his wings did not unfurl. Unexpectedly, he began to move toward me. I briefly wondered if he meant to trample me for my audacity. Then he butted his nose against my fist that held the sugar lump, snorting impatiently.
“He can smell it,” Lady Edelgard laughed. “Let him have it!”
I raised my hand and opened it. Moonlight ate the sugar lump, then proceeded to sniff me, perhaps hoping I had more sugar hidden on my person. If my scent displeased him, he did not show it. I raised my hand to his snowy neck and stroked it. Now that the moment of truth had passed, and he had accepted me, I allowed myself to admire the creature, for I had never seen a pegasus from so close. He was streamlined and delicate so he could move aerodynamically through the sky. He had long eyelashes to keep out swift-moving dust on the wind. He must have seen sights with those dark eyes that I had only ever imagined: entire vistas of Fódlan, like an impossible map that perfectly captured the territory.
“Helene,” said Lady Edelgard, astonished. “Are you crying?”
I was not, but my eyes were sore and wet around the edges. “I am going to write Petra’s stepmother a complaint,” I said, though we both knew I would do no such thing.
V. Bernadetta
“And this,” said Bernadetta, reaching into her enormous case of samples, “is ironwood pine!” She produced a thin, dried cross-cut of a large tree branch. The wood was grayish-brown, the bark nearly black. “Dedue uses two canes and a shin brace made out of it. House Kleiman clear-cut a lot of them to build the mines, but Dedue says his people are going to try to restore the forest, because the trees can stop the run-off from the mine from getting into the water so much. You’d like the ironwood forests! They’re so black, like the trees are all shadows even when it’s the middle of the day.”
I didn’t normally pay much attention to plants that weren’t poisonous, but Bernadetta’s enthusiasm was infectious, and I had come to appreciate them more through her. I ran my fingertips over the bark and the grain of the wood. I said, “You preserved it well.”
“Th-thanks, Helene. I, um. I also have something I made. For you.”
“Is it something you would give to a female friend,” I teased, “or someone you had romantic feelings for?”
“Both,” said Bernadetta, opening a compartment in her case. “Definitely both.” She held up her hands and showed me a hair band decorated with a crown of cloth flowers. I leaned in to have a closer look, and saw that the flowers had been worked with careful detail to resemble black hellebore: dark, beautiful, and very poisonous.
“Hellebore,” I said, taking up the hair band, and Bernadetta smiled at the correct identification. “I suppose I won’t scare you even a bit if I wear so many flowers at once.”
“That’s not why I made it!” Bernadetta cried passionately. “You’re not scary!”
My lips twitched. “When did that happen, pray tell?”
Bernadetta stared at the floor and spoke in a half-whisper. “Part of why I thought you were so scary back then was that you were like… my worst nightmare of who my father might force me to marry. A big, mean, cold m-man.” She finally managed to look up, and her eyes shone with tears. “But you’re not mean, or cold, or a man at all! I had you all wrong! I must have hurt you so much, Helene. I’ve always been less scared around girls. But I was so scared of you, for years, even after I started feeling relaxed around Edelgard and Dorothea and the other girls.” She cupped her hands around mine, enclosing the hair band in both our sets of palms. “I don’t want you to have this because I think you’re scary. I want you to have it so you can feel nice and cute and girly, but in a Helene kind of way. Because I get it now. I get who you really are.”
“And who am I really?” I said softly.
“You’re like me,” Bernadetta said. “A girl who likes weird scary plants.”
My heart ached with tenderness. My eyes stung. I leaned down and kissed Bernadetta on the forehead. “So I’m not mean or cold or a man,” I murmured against her skin, “but I am big.”
“Well, you’re big this way,” Bernadetta said, gesturing up and down. She waved her hand side to side. “This way, you’re kinda… noodly.”
“I prefer to think of myself as spindly,” I said, flashing my spooky smile like the point of a needle in the dark. “Like a spider.”
Bernadetta hummed contentedly. “Like a black widow spider that bites to protect its nest!” She touched the hair band I held carefully between my hands. “Can I put it on you?”
“Of course,” I said. I gave her the hair band and sat on the ostentatiously upholstered couch that Ferdinand had procured for the front part of my office rooms, where I took visitors. Not that Bernadetta was just any visitor, but technically she was here to report her findings from her trip to Duscur.
To my surprise, and secret delight, she climbed up onto my lap to put the hair band on—though if she kept it up for long, my delight would not remain secret. Looking down at me from that vantage point, she pushed my hair back from my face and tied the hair band so both my eyes were exposed. She stroked my cheeks with her thumbs. “Your skin’s gotten so soft since the last time I saw you,” she murmured. “Your eyes are amazing. They’re so bright…” I remembered my vision of the green-eyed baby and flushed. “Why do you hide your face all the time?”
The truth was that I was that I had always found my own face ghoulish, for better and for worse, and it had always seemed best simply to embrace that fact. Obscuring my face in darkness—wasn’t that what a ghoul would do? But with Bernadetta in my lap, I did not feel ghoulish at all, so I said instead, “I am a creature of the night, am I not? Should I not cloak myself in shadow?”
Bernadetta cupped my face in her hands and gazed down at me. “In Brigid, there’s a giant water-lily that only blooms at night. They’re as big as two of my fists, and bright white like the moon, and when they open up, there are bats that come down to the lily-pads to drink the nectar. The bats live inside dead trees, and they have cute little squashed up faces and they look so cozy rolled up in their wings together inside the trees.” She rained down little kisses on my exposed face. “I love creatures of the night. I think they’re so pretty. I stay up for hours and hours just to catch one little glimpse of them. Please, please, please let me see you.”
I trembled in her grasp, full of terror and longing. Just as I had done for her so many times, Bernadetta held me, and stroked my hair, and told me there was nothing to be afraid of.
VI. Caspar
I was not so addicted to the training ground as some of my compatriots, but I kept up a regimen of pegasus training with Lady Edelgard, magical target practice, and precision knifework. I was throwing knives at targets, and found to my frustration that the knives hit their targets, then bounced off and fell to the floor, when they had once buried themselves deeply.
“Hey, Helene!” Caspar called out cheerfully, bounding up in his workout breeches and training gauntlets.
He had been Bernadetta’s traveling companion from Duscur, and was taking some time to catch up with friends and family before setting out on another of his adventures. He had earned a surplus of goodwill in my books for escorting Bernadetta safely to Enbarr, so I smiled and said, “Hello, Caspar.”
Caspar caught sight of the knives scattered on the ground of the practice range. “Oof. Rough one. You gotta throw with more strength.”
“I am throwing as hard as I can,” I grumbled.
“Hmm,” Caspar said, looking me up and down in my loose, sweaty exercise clothing. “You’ve lost some muscle in your shoulders since I last saw you. Oh! Is that ‘cause of your lady drink?”
I laughed. “Yes, Caspar. It’s because of my ‘lady drink.’”
“You can still be strong enough to hit those targets,” Caspar said encouragingly. “Just look at Bernie! Her arms are toned! Ladies just need to work harder for upper body strength. If you put in the work, you’ll be strong enough to do everything you wanna do. That’s what I always told any ladies in my battalions who worried they couldn’t keep up with the guys! Want me to show you some exercises?”
Part of me wanted to sneer at Caspar and ask what he would know about it. But I knew this part of me was lashing out without cause. As a general in the Imperial Army, Caspar had been enthusiastic about training all his soldiers, noble or common, and he’d placed a particular emphasis on self-defense for fighting women. Several times, he had brought to my attention particular commanders who permitted abuse of their female subordinates—usually after Caspar had beat them up himself. Strength training for women was a topic he genuinely cared about, not as a sop to my pitiable performance with the throwing knives.
Caspar demonstrated an exercise with his arms bent behind him on a bench and his legs out in front of him, using his arms to dip his body up and down. I imitated him and did the same, and he carefully adjusted the space between my arms on the bench. He watched me sweat my way through a set of repetitions and said, “I’ve only been back a couple days, but I’ve heard some people around the palace call you some pretty nasty things. Not the normal stuff about being a scary vampire or whatever. The kind of stuff that made me slam ‘em up against a wall. You shouldn’t let people say that stuff about you! If I’d told you about one of my commanders saying something like that, you would’ve had them out of the army with no severance pay. You gotta show ‘em what’s what!”
I had been vaguely aware of people saying such things where they thought I wouldn’t know about it. Of course, I could and did fire anyone in my employ who disrespected me. But during the war, Lady Edelgard and I had done more than simply fire those officers who mistreated women; we had actively recruited women as officers, and made it very clear in basic training what the consequences were for such misconduct. It had been easy to implement those policies when I had done it for the benefit of Lady Edelgard and the other women who fought for the Empire, anybody but myself. Now that it was for my own benefit—
But Linhardt worked for the Adrestian government too, as a Crest researcher, and was now taking a sister-brew adjusted for a milder effect than my own. So it wasn’t only for my benefit, was it?
“You’re right, Caspar,” I said, once I had finished my set. “This is behavior Her Majesty must not tolerate in her government.” I wiped the sweat from my hairline on my sleeve, then smiled slyly at Caspar. “There is one name they now call me that I rather like, however.”
“Oh! I think I heard that one!” Caspar raised his hands like pincers. “‘The Black Mantis’! So cool.”
The new moniker would delight Bernadetta, if she were to hear it. It would dismay Ferdinand, but I would just have to defuse the tension with a suggestion that he, like a praying mantis’s suitors, might like to be devoured.
VII. Ferdinand
I hadn’t seen Ferdinand for a few days, even though we lived together, which could mean only one thing: he had taken on a new passion project that was going to improve the world in some way large or small, and drive the man himself unto madness. I sent a courier to his office to warn him that I was inviting myself to his office for afternoon tea, and he had better have the tea service ready.
When the courier returned, he spoke while avoiding my gaze. Wearing Bernadetta’s hair band, I had found that those already well-disposed toward me were pleased to see my face entire, while those who feared me as an evil vampiric mastermind were scared stiff by the stare of both my eyes at once—an all-around win. “The Prime Minister says, quote, ‘you are as magnificent and as dastardly as Bluebell,’”—a blue roan mare in Ferdinand’s care who had a splendid feathery mane and a resentment of all humans— “and you must give him at least fifteen minutes to put together a tea service if you are not an utter villain.”
“Your honest reporting is noted and appreciated,” I said, for I could always tell when the couriers softened the edges of what Ferdinand said in a useless bid to appease me. I put a tick mark next to the courier’s name on one of my papers.
Unfortunately for Ferdinand, I was an utter villain, so I did not give him fifteen minutes. But when I arrived in the front room of his offices, a gleaming tea service was laid out on the table, and the air was redolent with a spicy Brigidian tea blend called masala, which I liked far better than the cloying sweetness of most Fódlaner tea. “Aha!” said Ferdinand, smug in his seat at the table. “I knew you would come early, villainess! That is why I allotted myself fifteen minutes to put together a tea service in my message, when in fact it takes me only ten.”
“That trick will only work once,” I said, taking the other seat. “Now I know your secret.”
“No doubt it will be a terrible hardship to prepare the tea with a beautiful woman distracting and bedeviling me,” said Ferdinand. He checked the teapot. “Well-steeped enough for me, but not quite black enough for your soul, my sorceress.” He poured for himself, and added enough milk to make the tea beige.
“I shall take my sister-brew in the meantime,” I said, pouring it from my hip-flask into a glass beside my teacup. I cast the spirit-calling spell, and its harsh smell mellowed to a drinkable brine.
“You did not object to either ‘villainess’ or ‘sorceress,’” noted Ferdinand. “I shall add them to my list of pet names you will tolerate. Two in one day is a breakthrough indeed!”
“My list of insults you will not tolerate is very short. What does that say about you, I wonder?” I taunted, drinking the sister-brew.
“It says that love makes fools of us all,” Ferdinand said, pressing a melodramatic hand to his heart. He watched me drink. “Marianne wrote to Petra in the wake of your success with this medicine. She wishes for Brigid to send a healer to teach these methods at the medical college in Leicester.”
I did not know how to reply. I knew that with my prominent position, I was a trailblazer for chosen-sisters, and those akin to chosen-sisters, like Yuri and Linhardt. But I was not comfortable in that role; I was far more accustomed to shadows. Therefore, I watched him pour for me, masala tea now black as my soul desired, and said, “Bernadetta and I slept last night with our blankets blissfully unstolen. Pray tell, what granted us this unexpected reprieve?”
Ferdinand pouted. “Do you mean to tell me that you did not pine for me when I cruelly abandoned you? Did you and Bernadetta not clutch at each other for comfort in my absence and curse me for a villain?”
“We certainly clutched at each other,” I said, just to watch him bite his lip at the mental image, “but why would we call you a pet name when you had cruelly abandoned us?”
“I had hoped to show you the fruits of my efforts when they were more fully ripe, but perhaps you will change your tune when I show you what has so occupied my time.” Ferdinand stood up to retrieve something from his desk. I added a few drops of milk to my tea and drank. The whole world was different under the influence of sister-brew, even taste. I could swear I could discern new nuances in the spice blend now that were unknown to me before.
Ferdinand returned with a stack of papers, which he placed carefully separate from the tea tray. “I have been helping Manuela reform the rites and ceremonies of the Church.” He took a drink of his beige tea.
“I shall convey my congratulations,” I said. Since she became Bishop of the Southern Church (there was no longer an Archbishop or a Central Church), her time had been primarily occupied with unearthing and publicizing buried secrets of the Church, all of which had been appalling even to myself, let alone to so devout a believer as Manuela. This sort of work had to be far closer to what she’d had in mind when she’d taken on the position.
“The rite for consecrating Crested babies had to go, of course,” said Ferdinand. “We shall strike it from the sacraments altogether. The wedding rites require significant revision—they are filled with dreadful pablum about the wife’s duty to pass on the Goddess’s blessings through flesh and blood. Oh!” Ferdinand’s amber eyes brightened. “Now that you may fill the role of a wife instead of a husband, are you more kindly disposed to the idea of marriage?”
My heart pounded; I drank more tea to calm myself. “I might consider it,” I said, low and silky, “but the idea of accepting such a proposal as an offhand comment fills me with revulsion.”
Ferdinand flushed. “Ah. Of course. Forgive me.”
“And you had better speak with Bernadetta about your fanciful notions before you present them for my consideration.”
“In my exuberance, I spoke in undue haste. It is a flaw you often point out. For now, I have something else I wish to present to you. It is a new rite, one that I have proposed, and Manuela and I have produced a first draft of the text, though the precise actions of the ritual have yet to be determined.” He passed me the top paper from the stack, and his soul was in his eyes, huge and shining, making a boundless offering of himself. “Both Manuela and I would very much like to know what you think.”
I set down my teacup and read.
Personal Rite of Rebirth
Blessed are you, our Goddess, Wolf-Mother, the Resurrecting One to those who burn to ash and resurrect themselves anew.
I, <new title> <new name>, present myself to the Goddess reborn.
Blessed are you, our Goddess, Wolf-Mother, the Reborn, for making me anew in your image.
“The people will never accept this from the Church.” The words fell from my mouth unbidden. “The word most people use for me is not chosen-sister—”
“That is exactly how I once spoke to you about Edelgard’s reforms,” Ferdinand said. “‘The people will never accept this,’ is what I said. Do you remember what you said in reply?”
I exhaled slowly. “Change comes before most people are ready to accept it. All we can do is educate people so they may understand it, and envision what comes next.”
Ferdinand reached out and clasped my hand that wasn’t holding the paper in both of his. “You deserve that understanding as much as Edelgard or Dorothea do. We have done much to make the world a better place for them. Let me and Manuela do this to make the world better for you. If the sacrament as written pleases you, then you may be the first to perform it. It would be Manuela’s pleasure to witness.”
“I don’t believe in the Goddess,” I said hoarsely, unable to meet his shining eyes. A terrible pressure was building inside my head. “The Archbishop built her church on lies. It was all a fairy tale to consolidate her power.”
“If that is truly what you believe,” said Ferdinand, “then why did you bring a talisman of the Goddess for your strike on Shambhala?”
I could hardly remember coming home from the attack. I had set out with Edelgard, Shamir, Byleth, and Jeritza in utmost secrecy to foil any Agarthan spies who might have been watching. I had warped home afterward with the last of my magical strength and collapsed in my foyer. Ferdinand must have peeled off my bloody clothes and helped me into bed. Ferdinand must have seen the talisman I’d worn.
Damn the sister-brew to Ailell—I started to cry. No, it was more than crying—it was full-on weeping, starting from my diaphragm, heaving my torso like a ship on the waves. Ferdinand moved his chair closer and embraced me. I buried my face in his hair—gardenia-scented, the ridiculous man. He was marvelously solid, and he hummed in his lovely tuneful voice while stroking my back in a steady rhythm.
When my sobs gave me back enough breath to speak, I said, “I prayed to the Goddess for so many things as a child. I prayed to become a pegasus knight. I prayed for Edelgard to return to me safe and well. I prayed for the downfall of her wicked captors. None of my prayers ever made a difference. And yet…” And yet I held onto that goddess talisman despite it all. And yet I howled to my enemies on the battlefield that we would burn together in Ailell.
“And yet Edelgard is free from Thales, and she is about to undergo the procedure to remove her Crests,” Ferdinand said fiercely in my ear. “And yet you have trained beside her on a pegasus.” He loosened our embrace so I could see his face. “Perhaps the Goddess answered your prayers after all—through you. Through us.”
“Alone,” I said. “I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all you have done, but I shall do it alone before the altar. Then, even if I feel the Goddess’s absence, as I have so many times before—then, at least, I shall be reborn in my own eyes.” And then, at last, I could truly believe what it seemed all my best beloved already knew: that I had found my own path to walk, beside Lady Edelgard, as her chosen sister.
VIII. Helene
I had been reluctant to buy the mirror for my offices; it had seemed like an excessive vanity. However, I regularly had incidents in and around my office rooms that disarrayed my appearance, from poison experiments gone awry to foiled assassination attempts against Lady Edelgard, and against all odds, I found I now cared about the way I looked, beyond my capacity to frighten potential enemies. So I bought a small mirror on a stand to keep on a shelf above my desk, to be taken down when I wished to have a look at myself.
I stood my new mirror atop one of my filing cabinets, bringing it to about eye level. My hair fell past my shoulders in glossy, defined waves, thanks to Ferdinand’s expert hair care. I kept it from falling over my eyes with Bernadetta’s hair band of black hellebore flowers. I had painted my lips that morning with a lip rouge recommended by Dorothea, crimson-black like blood from a vein. My face now came to a point at my chin instead of a square, and while my cheekbones still stood out beneath my eyes, my cheeks rounded down to a soft jawline, which I waxed with ferocious precision every other week. There was a glimmer of a silver necklace-chain visible through the high lace decolletage of my dress, which held not a Goddess talisman but charms of a horned crown, a beating heart, a horse, a flower, a musical note, a fish, a fist, and a flame spirit, because the Goddess acted, if at all, through all of us.
I did not look like the pegasus knight I had vaguely imagined as a child while flying around wooden pegasus toys with Lady Edelgard and her sisters. I looked like something far better than that: like myself.
I left the mirror where it was, at eye level on the cabinet. Perhaps I did not need to stash it away on a high shelf after all.
