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Emmeryn is ten. She is scared of heights and darkness and spiders and blood.
Her mother says she's going to be Exalt and she has to remember her studies, and she doesn't understand why. Her teachers have always said she's an intelligent girl— why doesn't she understand that she's next in line for the crown?
"Emmeryn, my darling," Florence tells her, and Emmeryn knows she's going to die soon because her baby sister grew in wrong and it's a miracle she even survived her first three days, but people keep dancing around the issue because she's ten and that's not old enough for adults to stop mincing words, apparently. "You have to be strong. You're going to lead the people."
"Can't the people lead themselves?" Emmeryn asks hopefully.
Florence gives a wheezy laugh. Florence is thirty-two, and too young to sound so old. "My dear girl, if only that were the case. You remember what I've told you, certainly?"
Emmeryn twists her small hands in the chunky knit of her green sweater, and stares at the bedspread. "The people are scared," she recites. "They are scared because their friends and siblings and parents and children are leaving to fight in a war that nobody is winning, and they are never coming back. The hope of the people is drying with the fields, and it seems to them as if the sun is not going to rise again in the morning."
Florence nods. "And what else?"
"The Exalt is—" Emmeryn's voice, still young even to her own ears, breaks. She looks to her mother for support, sees little other than expectancy for her to pick up and continue, and swallows. "The Exalt is the beacon of faith in a land burned of it. It is my job to lead the people into a new age of hope, after years of fear. I cannot falter."
"You cannot," Florence says. "It will be hard."
"I know, mother," Emmeryn says.
"There will be those who judge you at every turn," Florence continues. "They will hate you for where you come from. You must remember not to hate them, no matter how bad it gets. They are your people, and you must lead them away from hate."
"I know, mother," Emmeryn nods. "I won't hate them. They're scared."
"You have to show them there is nothing to fear," Florence tells her, taking one of Emmeryn's hands in her own. "Don't be afraid, Emmeryn."
Emmeryn is anyway. But she nods. "I'm not, mother."
"Good," Florence says. She pulls her hand back. "Good."
It is the last time Emmeryn hears her mother speak.
Emmeryn is twelve. She tells herself she's not afraid of heights or darkness or spiders or blood, but she is.
She studies. Her tutors double up her academics lessons with studies of politics and history and ettiquette she must know if she is to be Exalt. She has very good advisors, only the best, and when she comes across a problem she does not know how to solve, they advise. Emmeryn makes sure to thank them.
Chrom is six. Lissa is two. Emmeryn did not, at first, want anything to do with her sister, but she knows it wasn't Lissa's fault their mother died. It is the whispers and glances others give the little girl, rumors that she is illegitimate, rumors that she's not of the Grace bloodline after all because of the fact her Brand has not shown, that make Emmeryn determined to shield Lissa from all of that.
So when she has the time, she plays with her siblings. Everything is amazing to Lissa, and she has a grin like the world is a beautiful place. It's nice, Emmeryn thinks, to hear that.
Chrom was young, very young, when their parents died, but he remembers. "Emm," he says to her one day, "Emm, you don't smile so much anymore."
He is right. Emmeryn does not answer.
Emmeryn is fourteen. She thinks fearing heights and darkness and spiders and blood is silly and childish (even though she still does fear heights).
The people have stopped throwing rocks, mostly— but it happens, sometimes. She has traveled to many edges of the country speaking of peace and hope. She has brought soldiers home. Recovery is tentative; coin is flowing and crops are growing, but scars still remain. It was a long and hard and dirty war her father raged. Some throw rocks. Some rocks hit and bleed. She waves off the staves and tends to them herself.
Her sleeves are pushed up to her elbows. Her fingers are stained with blood. The stuff drips from a cut under her left eye, because if there's anything Emmeryn has learned from her medical studies, it's that cuts to the face and head tend to bleed a lot and look worse than they are. Her needle is a thin silver thing; she stitches the cut with fine silk thread that glimmers when the light from her candle hits it right.
Blood runs from her index finger, over the bump on her palm made by her thumb, down her wrist. She is not afraid of blood.
Emmeryn finishes the last stitch, and washes her hands in the bowl of water on her dressing table. She is fourteen, but has been far older than that for a long time. Does it show? Her blue eyes, bright eyes that hold worlds of knowledge, are hard— if eyes are windows to the soul, hers have the shutters closed.
Good, she tells herself. Good.
Emmeryn is sixteen. She tells herself and the world that she fears nothing, but that is both true and false. One can fear nothing when one feels nothing, but some primal part of her fears what she has become.
She meets the Pegasus Knight-Captain's Lieutenant when she is sixteen. They've spoken in passing before, but Emmeryn does not know her name. She is nineteen, broad and sturdy, though not especially tall, and tanned— the Lieutenant is of minor noble birth, here in Ylisstol, Emmeryn knows, and a second child. A younger twin. What was her surname, again? Windmere? Skyburgh? Something ironically apropos for her training.
The Lieutenant has just been appointed Emmeryn's second bodyguard. It's mildly annoying to Emmeryn that she even needs more than one, given that Frederick does his job well, but she supposes it wouldn't hurt not to have him spread so thin.
"Your Grace," the Lieutenant says.
"Call me Emmeryn," Emmeryn tells her.
The Lieutenant does not. "If I may bring something to your attention, your Grace," she says. Then she stops, waiting for permission.
"Continue," Emmeryn says. This isn't so unusual. Bodyguards always bring up their concerns; certainly Frederick does, and he has many concerns.
"Did you eat dinner tonight?" the Lieutenant asks. She tilts her head, eyebrows furrowing. Her eyes are red, the same red as poppies and tulips and ripe strawberries. Her features betray nothing but concern— but Emmeryn notices is that they betray all of what their owner is feeling. Her face is soft, kind, open. She does not bother shielding her thoughts and feelings from sight. This, to Emmeryn, who (she supposes) has been closed off for the past six years of her life, is curious.
Emmeryn narrows her eyes.
"I noticed, your Grace," the Lieutenant continues. "That you didn't take your meal in the great hall with your siblings. Ser Frederick tells me you often take meals in your study, but— I was concerned, is all. I'm not certain you're eating enough."
"You are not my nursemaid," Emmeryn says, and perhaps it is snippy. "You don't need to monitor when and what and where I eat. I get that enough from Frederick."
"Perhaps not," The Lieutenant admits. "But I am your bodyguard, am I not?"
"What does that have to do with this?" Emmeryn asks sharply.
Her sharp edges do not cut the Lieutenant's softness. She looks at Emmeryn evenly, an inch or two taller, in shining silver plate and mail bearing the Ylissean coat of arms; two broad, white wings mirroring each other, their curves forming the shape of a heart.
"It is my job to protect you," the Lieutenant says. "Not all threats are external."
Emmeryn stares. She is quiet for a long time. She folds her arms, squares her shoulders.
"What's your name, Lieutenant?" she asks.
"Phila," the Lieutenant says. "Phila Gale."
Emmeryn thinks, just for a minute, that she is afraid of Phila Gale.
Emmeryn is seventeen. She tells herself she is not afraid of heights, darkness, spiders, or blood, but she cannot delude herself into saying she is not absolutely terrified of Phila Gale.
Phila is not intimidating. She is formidable, yes, like any knight should be, but that is not what's scary. Emmeryn does not fear people, because she knows she can burn them to crisps with a snap of her fingers. Even those she cannot, due to social conventions, are not scary. They're all only people, doing the best they can at whatever it is they're doing, that hate and fear and hope and love. (She watches them without feeling of her own; understanding, yes, but it has been a long time since she found herself with what feels like empathy.)
Phila is soft. Phila is kind. Phila smiles at her in the mornings and asks if she slept well. Emmeryn makes polite conversational sounds and smiles to social satisfaction, and Phila keeps talking. She talks to Emmeryn about her family, her friends in the Pegasus Knights, how different it is being a bodyguard from being the Captain's Lieutenant, anything that pops into her head. And Emmeryn responds where appropriate, and Phila seems satisfied.
But Phila is loving and open and emotes with her whole self, feels everything in her very core, and Emmeryn has found herself loving that. She is not certain if it's the love she feels for her siblings (because, try as she may to tell herself she feels nothing, she does love) or something else, but Emmeryn can name what she feels as love. It makes something in her ache when they are together, in a one-sided (by Emmeryn's design) conversation, and Emmeryn asks herself, what if I hurt her?
So she withdraws. It is not hard. But she is seventeen and loves someone and has never been told it is okay to feel, so it hurts.
She is seventeen when she sentences a man to death. She has known Phila for a year. (It does not feel like a year; time does not feel quite real. It's strange, few things do.)
"Justice," Emmeryn says, when Phila questions why. She does not meet Phila's eyes. "He cheated countless out of their savings. Say it was harsh, but do you disagree?"
"I don't question that you did what you thought was right, milady," Phila says. She is frowning. "But is there no better way to deal with a swindler? He had reasons and ideals of his own, reasons that led him down the path he lived."
"And it ended the way it should have," Emmeryn says. "Swift. Clean. Painless. It is just."
"It is cruel!" Phila says. "Do you not think on what a waste of a life that is? Don't you feel anything for these people? I know you do what you think is right, but— but what is that? What do you think? What do you feel? Gods, I've known you for a year, but I can't tell if you're even human or not!"
And at this, Emmeryn turns. Her eyes blaze for half a second, ice-cold and burning hot at the same time, and Phila does not crumble. She is soft but unyielding, feeling deeply and not caring for the consequences.
"Don't you feel anything?" Phila asks again, and her voice cracks.
Yes, Emmeryn wants to say. Yes, I feel, and I'm scared of the way you make my chest ache the way you speak with me like I'm not a faceless symbol of the people's values, the way you let me know you care enough to ask if I'm eating, if I'm sleeping well, if anyone is bothering me, I am in love with the feeling you give me because I feel like a person around you and it scares me because I've never known such a feeling before and I don't know what love this is because nobody has told me what it feels like, and I am scared, so scared of hurting you because of the way you feel with your entire being, unafraid of the cruel and hurtful world we live in, and I am scared that you will hurt and hurt deeply because that is the way you feel when you find out I have not felt like anything I can remember for a long, long time for reasons even I don't understand anymore, and I am so, so scared of myself because I have the power to hurt you in this way nobody deserves to be hurt.
"No," she says. "I can't."
Her voice shakes. It is harder than it has ever been to keep it steady. Her hands tremble. Her vision blurs. She has cried before, silently, at night when nobody is around to hear her— this is shameful, she tells herself. She must be strong. She cannot be afraid. She must lead the people. Stop crying, she says.
I can't, she replies. And she can't, because there are tears running down her cheeks and her chest is shaking and her chest aches, aches as if there is a hole in it, and as if everything she's ever felt since her mother died has caught up. Suddenly she is ten years old and staring emptily at her mother's pyre, watching the fire burn, feeling nothing. She feels all she would have then, twisted into something dark and angry and painful.
It is too much. Stop breaking, she demands as she sinks to her knees in the empty castle hallway, the soft, fine whites and greens of her gown pooling on the time. I can't, she replies. I can't. It's too much. I can't.
She buries her face in her hands. Stop, she begs. I can't, she replies.
Phila clanks when she kneels in front of Emmeryn. Blood is rushing in her ears too loud for Emmeryn to care.
"It's alright," Phila says, taking her hand gently, when Emmeryn is sure she must be running out of tears and her throat hurts. "I know you feel things. You're a person. Everybody feels things. I was wrong to ask you that, like you didn't."
But I really didn't feel anything, is her first thought. You did absolutely nothing wrong, is her second. Please hold my hand tighter, yours are so soft and kind like the rest of you and it feels so nice, is her third.
Phila helps her up. She feels dizzy and sick. But Phila is soft, so soft, and so warm Emmeryn wonders if she's not just a warm blanket somehow enchanted and turned into a person. Phila leads her, gently, to her chambers. She fills a mug with water, and Emmeryn drains it in half a minute. Phila fills it again.
"My mother told me, just before she died," Emmeryn finally croaks, "That I cannot falter."
"I don't agree with that," Phila says. "Everybody falters. You're still young, you have time to make mistakes."
Emmeryn is quiet. "I suppose," she says. "Young doesn't always mean what you think it means."
"Alright, then, you're not going to drop dead in ten years," Phila says. "Is that better?"
Emmeryn nods.
(Phila is right. It's eight years.)
Emmeryn is eighteen. Love is still scary. Spiders aren't.
The daffodils are in bloom for Lissa's eighth birthday. Both Lissa and Chrom know Phila and Frederick as well as they know any of their teachers or nursemaids by now— Chrom has tried to duel both of them, because he keeps saying he's old enough now to be a knight like them, but as long as Emmeryn can, she'll forbid it.
She's told Phila she's scared to lose her siblings. Phila is the only one she's told, and even that took awhile— but she finds she trusts Phila, trusts her with her life, and whatever love it was she has felt has not faded with that trust. She still isn't sure what love it is, but she and it have come to a tentative acceptance truce. Whatever it is, it makes her heart beat loud in her chest when Phila is around, and it makes something in her stomach flutter when Phila laughs.
She is safe. She is warm. Talking to her feels like coming back to a home she didn't know she missed.
Emmeryn is eighteen and she is in love.
It is late at night when she whispers it. She's in her study, and Phila is with her, because Phila always keeps an eye out for her on those late nights— she makes sure Emmeryn goes to bed, no matter what. It's a tough job, sometimes.
Her candle is guttering and her eyelids are heavy. She'll have to rewrite this letter in the morning.
"It's getting late," Phila murmurs, setting a gentle, calloused hand on Emmeryn's shoulder. Phila tries to stifle a yawn and fails.
Emmeryn hums. "I think I love you," she murmurs, not quite awake.
"Me too," Phila replies. "I'm glad. You're wonderful to love."
And then Emmeryn's head leans against Phila's arm, and she's too tired to protest.
The next day, Emmeryn wonders if she remembers. And from the way Phila is avoiding her eyes, she is.
"It was stupid and inopportune," Emmeryn says when they have a secluded moment, and Phila visibly deflates. "But it's true. I think… I think I love you. I didn't know I did. I didn't know I would, but I do."
And Phila looks up, and nods, and gives her a soft smile. "I feel the same way," she says. And maybe she says something after that, but Emmeryn doesn't hear it, because her arms are around her neck and she doesn't want to let go, ever, and she's happy and dizzy and scared, but somehow she knows it'll work out.
Hope. And for all she's preached it, it has never felt more real.
They move things quickly from there. Emmeryn is nineteen when they marry. Twenty-two when she has her first child. Twenty-four when she has her second. Chrom starts a militia with some friends and Frederick, and Lissa finally convinces Emmeryn to let her join after her fourteenth birthday. The years have moved quickly, and Emmeryn does not fear love any longer, but she still isn't a fan of heights. She feels okay. Perhaps things will be better now.
Fate remains cruel and does not give her time to enjoy it.
Emmeryn is twenty-four. Her death is quick, perhaps mercifully so. But Phila is gone and there is so much she has not done, so much she has yet to do, so many she has left behind. She fears darkness. It has gotten very dark.
Emmeryn is twenty-four. Perhaps next time will be different.