Ryoma turned the log in place using the iron poker, knocking loose embers that glowed orange and yellow and white before settling into the bed of ash and fading to a bright red. Sakura watched him, wondered at how peaceful he seemed while he did that. He had dismissed the servants that normally tended to these duties—Jakob had objected, but had eventually relented because Corrin was not actually in the room—and by all appearances had done so just to tend to the fire by himself. He put another log into the fire, turned it, and sat in the high-backed wooden chair to watch it burn. The act of feeding the fire and nurturing it was almost meditative, or seemed to be. Sakura did not understand, wondered if she would if she tended to the fire herself.

The glow of the hearth lent the common guest area a certain warmth it would not have had otherwise; red light and life-giving heat gave color to dark stone, cut through the bitter cold of the Nohrian air. The Nohrian climate was harsh, no less now than it had been when she had first followed Corrin over the border all those months ago, but as Sakura sat in the cushioned chair on one side of the room she could close her eyes and think of home. The snap and hiss of the flames was not a sound that she thought of as normal, but it was veryy comfortable.

The four royal siblings and their retinue had arrived late in the day, considerably later than Ryoma had originally intended, but their quarters had been waiting for them and the fire already roaring. They'd been given free run of the castle, assured by Leo that they would be treated as honored guests and friends, but the air of Krakenburg and the mien of its soldiery had made her nervous and Ryoma had elected for them to spend the evening in. Each of them had been brought food, opting for Nohrian cuisine even when Hoshidan food was well within the skillset of their chefs, and Sakura was still nibbling on an assortment of cheeses. An acquired taste, and the smell was repugnant, but Jakob had brought it to her with assorted fresh-sliced fruits and the tastes complemented each other very well. Her siblings had long since finished their own food, eating to sate their hunger more than anything else, and had settled into activities that suited their proclivities for the evening: Ryoma tended to the fire with a distant expression in his eyes, Hinoka was going over a checklist of things that her retainers would need to be properly cared for, and Takumi was reading a thick tome of Nohrian military history that had apparently come from Leo's personal library. Sakura thought she would have liked to read something, too, but didn't think she'd be able to read anything that had been written in Nohrian script; Nohr and Hoshido shared a common spoken language, but their written languages had never converged in the same way, and so one had to study to be able to partake in the literature of the other nation. She had never been studious in that way, not to the degree that Takumi had been. That was fine, though; the quiet, the taste of the food, the nearness and safety of her siblings was enough.

Corrin and Azura were not with them at the moment, had gone to tend to some duties related to old possessions they still had in Krakenburg, but would be returning before the evening's end. Corrin had never been given proper quarters in the castle before being sent out by the late King Garon, and Azura's rooms had long ago been converted to Elise's quarters. Sakura wondered what they could have been doing that was more urgent than spending time together, then realized they probably wanted to see what had become of their Nohrian family in their absence. She felt a pang of jealousy there, deep-seated and small. She would have tried to smother it but didn't, instead turning it over and over in her head, wondering why she felt it in the first place. The word had been her choice, not Corrin's; ever since they had returned from Valla, Corrin had stopped using the word "family" to describe the people who had raised her. She still thought of them that way, and spoke so warmly about each of them, but whenever that word passed her lips she caught herself, changed the subject, shifted to another thought as smoothly as she was able (which was to say, not very). It hurt her to see her sister hurt so, the guilt she apparently carried for events that weren't her fault, but at the same time Sakura took comfort that it was most definitely her Hoshidan family—her real family, though Sakura did not like that she kept returning to that phrase in her own thoughts—that she referred to as such. Why did that make her happy, when it made Corrin so sad? Was it just that it meant Corrin wasn't likely to leave them, leave her? If she was honest with herself the answer was yes, and that was small and petty and selfish and even cruel but it was true and she wouldn't deny it.

A knock at the door, and all four of them looked up at once. Saizo and Kagero shifted in the shadows, just enough to remind their lords that they were present, and Ryoma answered for the group. "Come in."

The door opened inward with a soft groan and Leo stepped through, a bottle of wine and two glasses gripped in one hand while an enormous bundle of differently-colored envelopes was tucked under his other arm. He spoke in low tones to Ryoma, high enough to be heard by Hinoka but low enough that Sakura didn't catch it. Takumi went back to the book in his lap while Sakura strained to hear, but no words drifted to her as Leo walked over to Ryoma. Some pleasantries, she guessed, inquiries about their quarters (which were very nice, if strange to her taste) and the state of the food and other small things. But Ryoma's eyes darted to the papers under Leo's arms more than once, and after a minute of conversation the Nohrian prince reached over with his wine hand, pulled out one particular envelope from the bundle, and handed it over to the high prince of Hoshido. Ryoma accepted it with a nod and a word of perfunctory thanks, then turned it over in his hands as Leo walked away. Ryoma's expression was odd, thoughtful in a way Sakura wasn't used to seeing save when he was dealing with matters of state. Is that what this was?

Hinoka looked up from her own writing, and her tone was formal but warm. Sakura didn't catch all of it, but she heard Leo ask about the writing supplies, Hinoka saying that they were exactly what she needed, and would she be able to procure these supplies for her retainers, and so on. Lower tones, tones beneath her hearing, and Sakura watched as Leo pulled out an enormous envelope, almost a package, so full it had been tied shut with string in addition to sealed with wax, and passed it to the elder Hoshidan princess. Hinoka set down her writing utensils, took the package in both hands, stared at it in confusion as she set it on her lap. Past her, Ryoma was finally breaking the seal on what Sakura now assumed was a letter.

Leo stepped over from Takumi, who did not look up from his book, and Sakura winced at his rudeness.

"Enjoying that?" the Nohrian prince asked, in a tone that said he was not very interested in the answer.

"Hm."

"I have a letter for you. From my brother."

That made Takumi look up, eyebrows raised, head tilted. "A letter for me? From Prince Xander?"

"The very same." He pulled it out from the stack, handed it over with crisp and impersonal movements. Takumi reached out as if the envelope might bite him, taking it gingerly in his hands, and Leo did not wait to see his reaction or to be acknowledged. He walked on, leaving the younger Hoshidan prince staring at the seal of the crown prince.

Leo made Sakura nervous, though probably not half as nervous as he made Takumi; he was given over to a different kind of studiousness, a different sort of projected wisdom than any of Sakura's siblings. Ryoma was a ruler, and the hearts of the people were with him even now, weeks away from his coronation, but Leo had the air of a man who knew how to run a kingdom in ways that escaped most monarchs. He had that same air now, the analytical weighing of choices and circumstances, as he walked toward her. She set aside her food, folded her hands in her lap, wondered what he might say to her.

Then he stepped past her, walked over to another small table, set the letters down on top of it. He dragged the table over, setting it next to hers so that she could grab any of the rest of the sizable mound of correspondence if she was willing to reach over her plate of fruit and cheese. Leo stepped away again, came back with another chair, set it down across the tables from hers. They were both facing the fireplace, looking in the same direction, and she noticed that this meant that Leo would be able to see all of her siblings, too.

He took his seat, staring at the fire from their little distance, idly moved the hand holding the wine and glasses back and forth, seemingly lost in thought. She had assumed he would say something, but that silence stretched on and on, promised to stretch out into the night.

"Um." A sound, to break the quiet, to interject something besides the pop and hiss of logs on the fire.

"Forgive me, Princess Sakura." He didn't turn his eyes from the fire, seeming to take some comfort in it, his shoulders more relaxed now. "I have not been at ease since my brother's funeral. Camilla and I were not aware of how much of Father's work he had already taken on his shoulders, how much of the day-to-day running of the kingdom was beneath the king's notice." He finally looked over at her, passed the wine bottle into his free hand, held up the glasses. "May I interest you in some wine to go with your meal?"

"Th-thank you, Leo, but I, um, I don't really... like... wine." When she said his name he looked at her, eyebrows raised, as if she'd said something wrong or strange.

"So I've heard," he said, setting one glass down on her table, beside her plate, and the other on his own, next to the letters. "Our kingdoms take pride in the different ways we let our food and drink curdle while still managing to choke it down. Cheese is an acquired taste of that kind, but wine is its own problem. Nohrian palettes have trouble dealing with Hoshidan liquor, too." He held up his bottle, the label of which bore a crest that looked like Elise in silhouette, head tilted slightly upward. "This is a special wine. When Elise was younger she wanted to drink with us but couldn't stand the taste, and so Xander had this particular vintage made to suit her. But she... outgrew it, I suppose." He looked at the wine, reached up with his hands, popped the cork with the fingers of his gauntlets. "Now only I drink it, because I prefer the taste. It's only good for a few months out of the year, its shelf life is shorter than any other wine, but I think that makes it more precious in its own way."

He poured in her glass, and the liquid was a dark purple, so dark it was almost black, and it left behind no residue as it swirled in the glass. He poured for himself, then, and replaced the cork, setting the bottle aside.

"It's best served chilled," he said, almost as an afterthought, and reached over and tapped her glass lightly with a fingertip. At his touch a layer of frost spread across the exterior, not quite extending down to the stem. He tapped his own glass, chilling it, then took a drink. He sighed out through his nose, seeming to be content. "I suppose this may be the last year of this vintage, since it was produced at Xander's order. Perhaps Camilla will commission it to be carried on. Perhaps I will, since I'm the one who drinks it now. Or perhaps I'll let it slip into memory, just one more thing to let go."

"I'm sure you'll m-make the right decision." She didn't know what else to say. Who could speak to that? Who could pretend to understand that much importance invested in a glass of wine? She didn't drink from it, still, didn't like wine, but she took it up in her hands and smelled it. It was not a smell she expected from that sort of drink; fresh, and sweet, and a little sour, not at all a red wine sort of smell.

He said nothing else, but looked at the fire, and with his free hand he took a letter from the top of the pile and handed it to her. She tried not to seem eager as she set down her glass and took the envelope, tried to seem surprised.

And then she was surprised, and not pleasantly. She looked at the wax seal, bearing the mark of the prince's crown, and it was cracked in half along its length. "This... this has been opened," she said.

"Of course it has. I read it."

"You did what?" Color rose in her cheeks, then, indignation flaring in her chest. "You read a letter meant for me? Why would you do that?"

He sipped again. "I have read all of the letters, Lady Sakura. I found those letters in his study, not long after we said our goodbyes. My brother wrote these months ago, before he was taken by Anankos—before our little coup had been enacted, but not long before." He leaned forward, shifted his shoulders, the cushioned back of the chair apparently not agreeing with him as he traced a finger around the rim of his glass, frost crawling down from where he touched it. He liked his drink very cold, she managed to think through her anger. "My brother was in a state where he believed he would be saving the nation by doing tremendous harm to himself and potentially to our family. I read those letters to be sure that he would not regret me giving them to you." His eyes turned to her, then, and there was no apology there. "I cannot be sure if he meant to send them, you see."

"But that's..." She stopped, not reaching for words to describe her indignation, as something occurred to her, looking over at Ryoma, who was running his hand through his hair while reading. "Why didn't any of my siblings say anything? Th-this kind of breach of etiquette wouldn't stand for any of them."

"Because I resealed theirs." He was still looking at her, watching her, that same balancing analysis carrying on from moment to moment. "I replaced the wax, pressed in my brother's seal. Reusing the original envelope, preserving his handwriting, was the only real trick. All of it was child's play." A sip, a swallow, a sigh. "I did not do that with yours, Lady Sakura, because I don't believe he would have wanted me to. Not to yours, specifically."

She felt her anger draining out of her, already lost, no longer holding its potency, but he didn't seem to understand that he had caused offense, or at least was ignoring that fact. "But you can't just... you know what all of the letters say. These letters are supposed to be in confidence, one soul speaking to another!"

A long pause, and his finger was still on the rim. "Would you like to know what they said?"

Of course she would. "No! How could you even ask me that? It would be like I was participating in—"

"Pardon me, Princess," he said, and leaned back in the chair, closing his eyes. "In the quiet, here, listening to the fire, it is as if I am alone. As if when I speak, there will be no words that pass from me to another."

"They will pass to another!" Takumi looked up from his own letter a ways away, and she realized how loudly she had just spoken, and shrank back into her chair.

"It is as if," he ignored her, "I speak only to the empty air." She was about to protest, to tell him to stop this foolishness, to stop stepping all over every sense of propriety that was supposed to dictate how two people spoke to each other or passed messages or even spoke of the dead, she had never been so frustrated with a stranger before, but then on the other end of the room she saw Ryoma take his letter in his hands, fold it carefully, and put it into the fire. "The letter my brother wrote to Prince Ryoma detailed his place behind the efforts in the war on Hoshido; how he had spurred the war with his own hands, driven the King to invade across the northern borders, engineered the attack on the fort at the Bottomless Canyon. How he planned, after killing our father, to march into the very heart of Hoshido and burn it to the ground, and... other things, which I won't repeat."

"That isn't true," she said, and it took her a moment to realize she was whispering, that there were tears in her eyes.

"It was a complete lie." He looked at her, stared at her, and she wished he would stop but the force of his gaze was too much to tell him to look away. "He said those things to take the guilt of the war onto his shoulders, so that when he was dead there would be no more reason for us to fight. We would execute him, or give him over to you to be executed, and there would be peace."

She did not want to believe that that would have worked, that her brother or that anyone would have believed such a thing of a man like Xander, and she could see in Ryoma's face that he didn't believe it now, but maybe belief hadn't been the point. Maybe it was just a matter of saying it, of making lies truth because that was what kings did when they had to protect the people beneath them.

"To your elder sister," and Hinoka rose up then, taking her letters with her, and went into the adjoining chamber which served as her room, "he wrote that she would never know Corrin as she had been in childhood. To illustrate the point he told a story of when she was young—I can't remember which, because then he wrote another, and another, on and on, spinning out every tale he could think of. Two hundred pages he spent telling stories, and after reading them you might know Corrin as a child better than she knew herself. Every experience of being her family, and he tried to share them."

"Your second brother he accused of lacking the strength to protect his family, of the integrity to protect his sister after she had come home." Takumi's letter was on the floor next to him, crushed into a ball, and Takumi was fuming, staring at nothing. "I don't think your brother will pick up on the subtext, but the effect of it—that he should protect Corrin like blood—will be the same, if only out of spite."

"And to me?"

Leo looked away then, drank deep, set down his empty glass, refilled it. "I won't say. You should read it for yourself. But I will say that he entrusted you with all of these, too." He pat the stack of envelopes, in total thicker than the manuscript Hinoka had carried out.

"What...?"

"Letters to Corrin." He drank, stopped, chilled his glass, drank again. "He wrote them to her throughout his whole life, ever since she was brought to us. Every secret he ever kept, every truth his duty would not let him tell her, every pain that he held in his breast... it's all there, as naked and raw as you please. He wanted you to read them, to judge if they could be given to her, and then to deliver them if you saw fit. To Prince Ryoma he gave his legacy, to Princess Hinoka he gave his memory, to Prince Takumi he gave his duty, and to you." He wouldn't look at her, set his glass down, stared at nothing. "To you he gave his heart. If you think she can bear his words, I urge you to pass them on to her. But if you think it would hurt her, that she would find only pain in the voice of a dead man." He waved his hand in the direction of the fire.

"Why me?"

"The same reason I'm telling you the truth, Lady Sakura, the same reason he lied to all of your siblings but not to you, and the same reason I left your seal broken. Because in you he saw a kindred spirit."

"We'd never spoken before." Not even that day on the northern border, when all the bloodshed began in earnest.

"No... but his intelligence network was impressive, even compared to mine. He knew enough about you. I can't speak as to why, exactly, but... I think if you had been born first in your family, if you had been subjected to the same expectations of court and crown, then you would have been a ruler very much like my brother." He stopped. He didn't seem to know what to do with his hands. "I wonder how differently things might have gone."

She looked at the envelope in her hands, the broken wax seal, and turned it over. Her name was written there, but not in Nohrian script. She raised her eyebrows, looked to Leo—and he was on his feet, taking his glass, leaving the bottle.

"He knew you can't read in Nohrian very well. If you want to read those letters to Corrin you'll need to brush up a bit, but for your letter... the sword was only ever his second discipline. His first was penmanship. I've been told his calligraphy was very good." He nodded to her. "Goodnight, Princess Sakura. Please excuse me. Perhaps I will see you at the coronation tomorrow." In the end he would not, but neither knew that.

Then he walked. Takumi snarled at him on the way out, and Ryoma said nothing but looked at his back as he passed through the door. Then it shut, and he was gone.

It took a long time for Sakura to take her letter out of its envelope, and another long time before she unfolded it. The rumors were true: Xander's calligraphy was exquisite, every stroke emotive and meaningful and precise.

She began to read, and reached over, picking up her still-frosted glass. Without thinking she sipped from it, flinched in surprise, then sipped again, much deeper this time.

"Oh," she said to no one. "Grape juice."

Every person in Windmire had gathered outside of the high walls of Krakenburg, a teeming mass of humanity that packed full the wide road leading up to the castle, and then further back. There were no room for stalls, though people were selling food, and there was barely room for anything else. Takumi had never seen so many people gathered together so tightly for any one thing. Would the people of Hoshido turn out in such numbers when Ryoma was crowned? He wanted to think so, but had trouble imagining what that would look like. The press of the bodies, the up-turned eyes, the heat, the smell, was so much more than what he was used to. He and his siblings—he caught himself using the word when he thought of Corrin and Azura, found he didn't mind—were standing on a balcony overlooking the courtyard and dais where the coronation would be taking place, and that was the only reason the people beneath him didn't bother him even more.

But there was work to be done in Hoshido, still. Castle Shirasagi was better-defended now than it had been in a long time, but it needed its protectors there. Everyone was so convinced that there no more threats to be wary of, but Takumi knew better; he knew that time was never a luxury they could afford.

"Remind me why we're here again," he said.

Ryoma looked over at him, and the lines of his older brother's face looked odd out of his armor, which he had worn nonstop for so many months. Ryoma, like the rest of the family, was dressed formally and brightly, the colors of their kimono reflecting their better moods. In spite of the finery and the mood suggested by it, Ryoma's expression of reproach still hit like a stone to the head.

"We are here as a gesture of good faith and friendship," Ryoma said, turning his attention back toward the dais. "Our presence is meant to signify that there is no ill will between our kingdoms, and that in the washing away of old blood we might find some new peace."

"And," Hinoka said, "we're also hoping that our Nohrian allies might repay the favor when Ryoma is crowned!"

"I-I thought they'd already said they were coming." Sakura's eyes were red, her face blotchy as if she had been crying for hours the night before and not quite gotten over it, but she wouldn't say anything about it when pressed.

"They have." Azura's eyes were locked, not on the dais but on the doorway behind it. "Leo and Camilla won't miss an opportunity to promote peace between the kingdoms, and I don't think Elise could be kept away from Corrin for too long no matter what anyone said."

"She's coming!" Corrin's eyes were wide, and it was plain she was resisting the urge to point. "Look, there she is!"

They all watched as Camilla stepped out from the shadows of the doorway. In spite of himself, Takumi was arrested, his breath caught in his throat.

At that distance he could not see her face very well, but she had set aside the iron-wrought mask she had taken to wearing over her scars. Her hair had grown back, though it was short still even for a man's cut, nothing like the cascading locks she had carefully cultivated before. Her own armor had been set aside, and now she wore a formal black military ensemble, not unlike her later father or brother's save that it had been made to her proportions. Camilla was as tall as Ryoma, but in that armor she looked bigger, somehow, filling the space around her with a sense of presence that was hard to quantify. She wore the cape of her station, black felt trimmed in ermine, the collar so high it would obscure her face from behind.

"Gods," he said.

"She cuts quite the figure," Azura said, and he didn't need to say how big an understatement he thought that was.

Some priest or other was behind her, stepped to the dais, said some words about the lineage of the dusk dragon, but Takumi heard none of that. He watched Camilla, his archer's eye taking in details others might not notice: how her smile did not waver but her eyes went over the crowd over and over, taking in the sea of humanity beneath her. In spite of her ensemble, in spite of the high-pointed black crown that the priest set on her head, in spite of everything about her station and her scars and the circumstances of her coming to power, she looked at those people like a mother looking at her children. It made his chest hurt, and he reached up to feel if the pain was physical.

Finally she stepped up to the dais, and the people roared for their queen, and she basked in the sound for one moment before raising her hands. The roar died away almost instantly.

"My people," she said, and the roar was back, as if the entire crowd was a single animal calling out to her, shaking the stone on which Takumi stood. "My people, beloved children of Nohr, thank you for joining me today. Thank you for joining me to commemorate the passing of the Crown of the Dusk Dragon, and to celebrate the end of the decades-long war between Nohr and Hoshido. Each of us has suffered for the sake of this war, and each of us has lost to it, in security or blood or the faith of our hearts."

She went on, but Takumi was not really listening. It wasn't that it was a bad speech—a bit overwrought, maybe, but what new queen wouldn't be a little overwrought when speaking to her people for the first time? The words she spoke about the ravages of war, about the shackling of Nohrian satellite states and the strained relationship between Nohr and Hoshido causing more hunger than could be allowed, were certainly true. He didn't disagree with her; he just knew what she was going to say before she said it, expected the words of her, was too arrested in watching her. For the first time since her elder brother's death she was wearing Siegfried at her hip, its scabbard bouncing off of her thigh every time she shifted her weight. The blade was so heavy that it was denting the armor there, even though the plate had been reinforced for that exact purpose.

Months ago, even weeks ago he would have preferred to believe that this speech was just the honeyed words of a beast seeking to return to the good graces of its populace. That wasn't true, had probably never been true of Camilla or any of her siblings, but he in no way regretted the thought. Some twinge of discontent, of fear, still tugged at his chest at the way she gestured with her hands as she spoke, at the affection she used for people she'd never met. It was genuine, as near as he could tell, but how could it be? No one's capacity for that was bottomless.

He shook himself back to awareness as her body language became more reserved. It was ending.

"...And in honoring our brothers and sisters in the many other cultures contained in Nohr's borders, in negotiating new trade with our neighbors in Hoshido, we will open new opportunities for every citizen to have a better life. It will be hard, and it will take time, but no longer will any advantaged people prosper from the suffering of others. No one shall grow fat while even the poorest child goes hungry, and none of Nohr's people shall have reason to fear her attentions. Together we will work toward a brighter tomorrow. I cannot promise you eternal peace, or eternal plenty, but I promise you this: between our nation and the ravages of war, I will stand. Between the citizens of Nohr and the specter of hunger, I will stand. Between you and fear, my darling people, I will stand." Their voices began to rise and she raised a hand and they were quiet. "Save your jubilation for the ninth bell, when we will feast as one family. May the gods light our path through the future. I love you all."

They did not save their jubilation; their voices shook the world as Camilla turned away from the dais, and shouts of adoration for their new queen nearly deafened Takumi as she stepped back into the shadows of the castle.

"A good speech," Ryoma said, smiling faintly.

"I thought it was a little... scary," Sakura said. "Sh-she's so intense."

"She's definitely that," Hinoka said. "No less than her elder brother. She'll be a strong queen."

Corrin said nothing, wiped at her eyes, and for one long moment Takumi thought about putting an arm around her shoulder but then Azura moved in and did it instead. Ah, well.

"Big brother." Ryoma nodded to him. "Do you think she's serious, about opening up trade with Hoshido? About making it as fair and even as possible, after all these years?"

"I think that Queen Camilla is more serious about feeding her people without bloodshed than any other monarch I've ever heard of," Ryoma said, and now he winced, almost in pain. Hours before the coronation, Ryoma and Yukimura had been at the negotiating table with Camilla, who had been advised by her brother. Ryoma was a forceful personality, and Yukimura was a shrewd and clever man, but if Camilla and Leo negotiated like their personalities suggested they would, Takumi felt bad for his older brother and his adviser. "The agreements we came to will form the guidelines for later, more specific trade negotiations, but based on the time I've spent speaking to her as heads of state, yes. She is very serious."

"I should hope I would be, dear." Takumi flinched as the Nohrian queen loomed from the shadows of the balcony, stepping among them. Gods, how did she move that fast? She had even changed, putting aside the ceremonial armor of the monarch for her more familiar ensemble, though Siegfried was still at her hip. "Did you see me, Corrin? Did I sound appropriately regal, sweetheart?"

"You sounded amazing, Camilla!" Corrin embraced the queen, stood on her toes to kiss the other woman, who seemed taken aback and very pleased. "Listening to you, I believe you'll be able to heal the country. You're going to fix everything that's been wrong here for so long."

"Love cannot make land arable, my sweet girl, but I suppose I can try." She looked to Ryoma, then. "You are certain you need to go now? The roads are much safer than they were during the war, but if you wanted to wait until tomorrow I would happily give you an honor guard to escort you to the border."

"I'm afraid we must, Queen Camilla," and Takumi found himself actually relieved. He was nervous. Why the Hell was he so nervous, bad enough to make him glad to be out of this kingdom? "There are still many matters to attend to at Castle Shirasagi before I assume the crown. I pray that this does not offend."

"Of course not," Camilla said, and then she turned and looked at Takumi and he could feel heat rising in his chest. The Bölverk's powers had nearly torn her apart, and the scarring on her face was not superficial, forming canyons of deep puckered scar tissue that criss-crossed her previously immaculate features, but it had not robbed her of her beauty, just framed it in a different way. Her eyes were warm, and inviting, and as she smiled at him there was a quality he couldn't name, a sensuality that reached inside of his chest and squeezed, making him both afraid and very, very curious. She reached out with one mailed hand, cupped his cheek. "Need all of you go, though? A queen needs a consort, after all."

He felt the color rise in his face as his brain promptly stopped working. His mouth, confident he'd have something witty to say, did not stop in kind. "I don't. Uhm. I."

She laughed, stroking his cheek gently before withdrawing her hand. "I'm only kidding, Prince Takumi. That sort of talk can wait until a little later, I should hope. Perhaps I can give you some pointers on how to treat a Nohrian bride." This to Ryoma, and color rose in his face too, and Sakura was hiding behind her hands while peeking between her fingers, and Takumi was too distracted to wonder what all of that meant.

"Camilla." Corrin stepped toward the queen again, looking up at her with familiarity and nervous trepidation. "We don't... we don't all have to go. I could stay, for a little while, and at least help out Elise and Leo with the feast tonight. I'm sure it would be all right if I caught up with everyone else tomorrow morning."

"Oh, my darling." Camilla placed a hand on Corrin's shoulder, and toward anyone else it would have been very intimate but with Corrin he could feel the distance between the two women. The younger woman looked at the queen's hand, then at the queen herself. "I will take care of the feast. Listen to me: I promise you that as long as I live, as long as Leo and Elise live, as long as Xander's memory patrols these halls and stories are told of what you've done for us, you will have a place here." Camilla smiled, but it was not maternal, and it was not intimate; it was sad, sadder than Sakura's red-rimmed eyes. "But for right now... go home, Corrin. Go, with your family."

She said nothing else. She kissed Corrin's forehead, turned, disappeared back into the castle, leaving a quiet in her wake. The sharpness of it shook Takumi out of his mood, and he saw how Corrin looked at the floor, at her hands, was trying desperately not to cry. Words written in precise lettering flashed through his mind, and he would deny them.

He stepped over to her, put an arm around her. She embraced him, put her face against his shoulder, and he stroked her back as her body shook.

They left as a train, with Corrin and her retainers bringing up the rear, and Leo watched them from one of Windmire's guard towers. The road before them was open, and his informants told him there were no bandits for the long stretch between Krakenburg and the northern border. Niles and Odin were at his back, waiting, watching, but right now they had the grace to say nothing. The woman he had called sister was leaving, and Leo had not gone down to say goodbye.

Elise had, and her relentless affection had been so intense that Corrin hadn't been able to cry, or even to be sad. He hadn't been present to hear what Elise had said, but knew her well enough to guess: she would come visit as soon as possible, and she'd bring the whole family with her. She'd forgotten that they would visit for Prince Ryoma's coronation, but that was all right. Let her have her excitement.

Leo had decided that in a year's time, once she had gotten used to traveling back and forth between the two nations, he would suggest that Elise would be a perfect ambassador to Hoshido. Camilla would agree with little convincing, and Elise would jump at the opportunity to have two homes. If anyone's heart had the capacity to encompass two nations in truth, it was hers. He had spent days already going over possible designs for a teleporter ring, drawing on the considerable power of the wearer instead of an inherent magical charge, that would allow Elise to move instantly between the two countries. In theory it would work, and it would make Elise very happy, and it would leave Castle Krakenburg just that much emptier.

He hadn't gone down to say goodbye, and was honest enough with himself to acknowledge that it was for his well-being as much as Corrin's. Even seeing her from this high up, just one white-armored figure riding on a white horse, made him want to ask her to stay, to argue with Camilla that this was her home, would always be her home.

But she had chosen her home. He wiped at his eyes, thinking of that, and was grateful that his retainers either didn't notice or had developed enough discretion to say nothing.

The train rode down the road, shrinking until they were nearly gone, and he stood and watched in silence. It was better this way, he tried to tell himself. Let it be without goodbyes. They would meet again. There was no need to have farewells.

Far away, a white-clad figure on a white horse rose in the saddle, and he thought perhaps she turned.

Like a child, without thinking, he raised his hand and he waved.

Like a child she waved back, and he thought of those times he had ridden away from the Northern Fortress, when she would wave to them from the highest tower, calling out her goodbyes in a voice that was carried into the mountains by the wind. How lonely the view from so high, he thought.

Then the company rounded a hill, and she was gone. He lowered his arm, breathed out slowly, found he was at peace.

"Lord Leo," Niles said behind him. "It's getting late. The feast is in a few hours."

"A feast most momentous, for no other coronation celebration has been graced by the—"

Leo held up his hand. "Not right now, Odin. Please."

"But my Lord, I..." He sighed. "You've got it, Lord Leo."

"Thank you." He turned back to them, to his retainers, and tried to take them in as they really were, at Odin's beaming pleasure at being there and at the heavy concern in Niles's eye. "Come on, then. All that food isn't going to monitor itself. I trust the two of you will aid me in serving our many guests."

"Assuming we can keep the best bits for ourselves," Niles said, grinning wide.

Odin's grin didn't quite match, but it made him seem younger. "Seriously. Seems like we only ever get scraps at these things."

"We'll see. Our queen did say no one would go hungry, didn't she?" He led them down from the tower, back into the heart of the castle. Soon, the moon would begin to rise.