Say My Name
By: Amber Michelle
Written for the 'disillusionment' theme at the FE drabble community on Livejournal. Two pairings are assumed. Spoilers up to the end, mostly for around chapter 17.
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Seth knew the princess would be his undoing when she grew and blossomed as he watched, when the years slimmed her limbs, added to her height, and sculpted her into a shape fit for a queen. Her hair tangled around his fingers and clung to the calluses on his hands, her lips were slightly chapped when he first kissed her, in front of her brother and their friends and the subjects of Renais; her wedding dress was snowy satin, each seam sewn with pearls, and the train a river behind her when she walked the length of the aisle to meet Seth on the dais before the throne to place a slender hand on his palm.
He should have said no.
Ephraim gave his blessings, and perhaps he meant every word. Perhaps his toast to their happiness was real-- but he remembered watching Ephraim disappear into her room often in the deep of night, knew he stayed for hours, sometimes until the eastern sky began to lighten and the sliver of the sun rose above the trees, and Seth should have said no, he would not marry the princess, even to preserve her honor.
She always had a smile for him. Eirika's lips turned up when he said her name, even when she was tired. Fatigue often plagued her now, casting dark thumbprints beneath her eyes and abstracting her gaze during long silences. He looked at her flushed cheeks every morning and wished his were the hands to inspire that delicate pink. Seth told her she needed more sleep, that her color was bad, and she said perhaps he was right - then she asked him. You said once my attention to you was inappropriate, she began--
--and he finished for her. You look for a match Renais will approve of.
Tana loves Ephraim, she said, looking resolutely into her tea, fingers resting on the thin porcelain lip. It would be selfish of me to keep him all to myself.
It was selfish of the king, Seth dared to think, to keep Eirika to himself.
Seth married Eirika because he remembered the betrayal of Jehanna and the Demon King's words, and when he held her the first night and tasted her skin the first time, he thought it would be enough - her body, her affection. She was not false; she loved purely, though she did not love him alone. Her hair was sapphire in the moonlight, a river of tears. She smelled like roses and milk and tea.
Rather than the knight of Jehanna, it was Prince Lyon whose image lingered on Seth's mind. Ephraim, the man you envy, and Eirika, the woman you desire. Her breath was moist against his throat, warm.
Seth was not powerless before a greater force as the prince was. Eirika knew only his own name that night, not her brother's; she would whisper it every night, as long as they lived.
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