Title: Compromise
Rating: mildly NSFW (fade-to-blackish sex)
Pairing: Hilda/Leila
Summary: Hilda adapts to the demands of queenhood and discovers that Leila has somehow become a constant in her life.
Note: Written for lassarina for the 2013 round of FFEX. Which was, um, a while ago? WHAT IS MY LIFE LATELY.

She wanted a bath to wash away the traces of her captivity, to breathe steam and free air until her breaths recalled nothing of the staleness of her cell, but all the luxury she could allow herself was a moment's wistfulness as she scrubbed the dirt from her face. The ship would make port soon, and she could not delay in appearing before her people. Act now, she told herself, and feel later.

As she braided her hair, she studied her reflection critically. The lingering darkness under her eyes she could not erase, but she spent a moment adjusting the angles of her expression until she was properly Hilda, dauntless and determined. What she could not be, she could bury.

The knock at the cabin's door could only have been Gordon. She smoothed her hair, steadied her mouth, and turned to face him. "Come," she said. "We have strategies to discuss."

The door opened on his frown. "Shouldn't you rest? Your father—"

"We should focus on retaking Fynn. If we fail to seize this opportunity, we may never find another." She met his concern solidly, voice firm and shoulders straight, and let it find no purchase. "I trust the army waits in readiness."

He nodded. "I left Leila in charge."

"Who?"

Leading a rebellion necessitated strange bedfellows; against the overwhelming numbers of the empire, anyone who could hold a sword and follow orders had value. The ranks of the Wild Rose army swelled with petty criminals, political dissidents, and plucky orphans, the desperate, the dissolute, and the daring alike. Any who posed a greater danger to Palamecia than to themselves and to the rebellion as a whole would not be turned away.

But Hilda reserved leadership for those who proved themselves worthy. It was one matter to let a thief fight alongside those who had once arrested him, but quite another to put a pirate in command of the world's last hope for freedom.

The pirate in question looked as if she'd dressed herself by flinging a handful of scarves against the wind. She appeared older than Hilda, though it was difficult to pinpoint her age; her eyes were ringed thickly with kohl, and the weathering of her skin might have been the fault of any combination of time and weather. She grinned with presumptuous familiarity as Hilda and Gordon approached across the training grounds, and she made no move to bow or salute along with the soldiers.

"Bring her back proper this time, did ye?" she said to Gordon, clapping him on the shoulder. He seemed not to mind. "Or did ye want me to check for a tail?"

"That won't be necessary," said Hilda.

This drew Leila's attention and a rusty bark of a laugh. "Good to see ye true and in one piece, then. Ye look like hell, but just one piece of it."

Hilda fixed her with the steady, apprising look that usually either snapped people to attention or sent their gazes flicking away. Leila remained at ease, weight on one foot and one arm akimbo, and matched the look unwaveringly, as if Hilda were the one seeking approval. Her eyes were the shade of the sea beneath a gathering storm.

Gordon had begun to shift uncomfortably by the time Hilda said, "Prince Gordon and I have returned to lead the army. The Wild Rose Rebellion appreciates your assistance in our absence."

"Nothin' to it," Leila drawled. She waved her hand, which glinted with mismatched rings, and winked. "Yer boys are a fair sight easier to boss around than me own. Ain't had to keelhaul a one of 'em yet."

Nothing was on fire or obviously ransacked. The troops weren't disrespectful, drunk, or deserting. Hilda nodded with cautious approval.

It was strange that Gordon had been bold enough to take the risk, but reassuring that his gambit had proven successful; she had not been wrong to trust him. Some men never knew their own strength until they were forced to rely upon it. Still, a successful pirate was a patient pirate, and it would be foolish to assume that Leila's loyalty now wasn't a prelude to a greater betrayal.

"If you still count your sword in service to the rebellion," Gordon said, "we could use it on the front lines."

Too trusting, still. "You're not obligated," Hilda added.

Leila made a show of bored deliberation, then held Hilda's stare and winked. "Aye, I've naught better to do now."

Hilda watched her saunter away, fabric trailing and baubles jangling in the wind, and told herself that her gaze lingered out of suspicion.

The army made camp just beyond the gates of Fynn. They had gambled well; Palamecia defended her prizes less fiercely than she claimed them, and the Wild Rose Army seemed poised to conquer without a protracted siege or a battle of attrition. Now they had only to wait for Firion's strike team, which had been somehow delayed, and plot the outlines of the final assault. Gordon and Hilda sat together in the command tent and sketched with chalk over slate, while he blushed and apologized, repeatedly, for making suggestions that ran counter to hers.

"Don't second-guess yourself so," she said at last. "You have a talent for this."

"I don't like to speak against you."

"What kind of queen will I be if I can't discern sedition from good counsel?" She smiled, which seemed to make him more nervous. "Here," she said, sliding the slate toward him, "I'm in need of fresh air. Show me what you what would do, if the decisions were yours alone."

He hesitated, but finally nodded. "As you will."

At the very least, there wasn't space to annotate every move with "sorry." Hilda left him bent over his work, lit warmly red by the light of the lantern, and stepped out into the deepening twilight.

The nearest guard saluted her. "Your Highness, we've spotted a ship just off the coast. We believe it's ours."

"Mine." Leila's voice came from near enough to make Hilda start; she was perched atop a barrel in the shadow of a tarp, her knife glinting occasionally as she picked at her nails with it. Even in the low light, her grin gleamed. "Still me ship, no matter who I let steer her."

Hilda chose to ignore this. "Thank you," she said to the guard. "Prepare for their arrival."

As he set off to obey, Leila slipped off the barrel and sheathed her knife. Hilda kept her posture purposefully relaxed as Leila approached, though she let her eyes flit over the soldiers passing through and standing watch. No need to be tense, regardless of Leila's deeper intentions.

Leila followed her gaze, then drew it back to herself with a sidelong smirk. "Ye don't trust me." As Hilda considered a response, she added, "Good. Hate to think I threw me lot in with a fool."

"Easy trust is too great a luxury for our circumstances," Hilda replied. "It's nothing personal."

"Ain't it?"

It was important not to break eye contact; looking away was as good as conceding, and no other part of Leila seemed particularly safe to stare at. By weight, she had to be wearing more metal than fabric.

When the silence began to itch, Leila said, "Damn shame if it ain't," and slipped off into the dark.

Coming home broke her heart open along all the cracks she'd been struggling to smooth out. It would rebuild her heart, too, she was certain, once she could think of her father's throne as her own. Once the blood was scrubbed from the stones and the burnt wreckage cleared from the streets. Once she could hear "Your Grace" and not expect, deep down, that her father would answer.

She talked to Gordon about Kashuan and how it felt to walk in a broken place that had once felt unassailably safe. She felt selfish for wanting to talk to her team of orphans about how it felt to be home but unwhole, but there were, as always, more pressing matters for them. A solid day's rest, and she sent them away again, with Leila in tow. (Firion obviously trusted Leila. Even Maria, who seemed more sensible, didn't express any misgivings. It had been strange to see them so at ease around someone who always left Hilda so unsettled.)

To her people Hilda spoke only of valor and gratitude and the road ahead. As the queen, so the country; this fragile victory could be undone by knives as subtle as frayed nerves. She wore her crown over her helmet and let no one see her flinch.

"Some of the men are restless," Gordon told her one night in the security of the strategy room. "They say that if we took Fynn so readily, we should march on Castle Palamecia instead of waiting for a group of children to chase myths. They call us cowards huddling in fear until we are attacked again."

"Empty words from foolish men."

"Even so, if enough speak it, it will begin to sound like wisdom."

Hilda sighed. "Do we know the source of this? Addressing the issue myself would only fan the flames, but we might stamp it out through their commanding officers."

"I hear nothing nearer than third-hand."

What good were informants who either failed to pay attention or failed to pass along their findings in full? "You've worked closely with the army of late. Are there any you trust who might keep their ears purposefully open?"

"I'll do all I can."

"I've no doubt of that," Hilda replied fondly.

Before Palamecia struck, her father had been in talks with Kashuan about a marriage to cement their long alliance. Gordon seemed the obvious choice—send the younger brother to rule at Hilda's side and find the elder a queen who was not already bound to her own throne—but Kashuan had hesitated. There had been talk of letting the rule of Kashuan slip pass to Gordon and offering Scott to Fynn. She had wondered, at the time, if Gordon didn't understand political matches. He certainly wouldn't have been the first of Kashuan's line to refuse a good match for love.

Now Hilda wondered if she had misjudged him, as they settled into the routine of something near enough to royal marriage. They sat upon the thrones of reigning monarch and consort, slept in adjacent chambers, kept private counsel, and presented a united face to Fynn. With a ceremony and the need to produce an heir, they might easily have been her parents.

He was a good match, a competent leader, and a trusted friend. She could ask for no better, she knew, when the world was safe again for ceremonies and heirs. But what would become of the ruins of Kashuan if her last son were folded into Fynn?

"You seem thoughtful," said Gordon, a touch nervously.

"It's nothing of consequence." Hilda shuffled through her papers until she found the most immediately pressing. "While the troops gossip, we're developing a shortage of—"

A knock came at the door. "I regret to disturb Your Grace," a guard called through it, "but I'm afraid this is urgent. It's about Firion."

Leila looked half-dead, and as if she'd fended off the other half of death with sheer orneriness. She had been badly dehydrated, the healers said, near-starved, mildly hallucinating, and a biter. It was a wonder she was alive, let alone already recovered enough to talk.

"Hallucinating" clung comfortingly to the back of Hilda's mind as she asked, "So they were devoured by a fish?"

Leila scowled. In a sickbed, without her usual approach to kohl, her features were less stark and her glare rather less menacing. "Not a fish, ye lubber. Bloody iLeviathan/i. Swallowed up yer boy and yer girl and yer lunk iand me ship/i quicker than winkin'. I was up in the masts and shook clean off into the sea."

"We tell tales of Leviathan in Kashuan, as well." Gordon was, as usual, quicker to believe. "In my grandparents' day, one of our scouting vessels sent word of finding a great treasure, then vanished from the face of the earth. Leviathan is said to be enticed by rare cargo."

"Aye, that's why ye bury yer treasure."

"A ship might vanish for any of a thousand reasons," Hilda pointed out, and hoped she didn't sound desperate. "Even the most mundane storm can inspire fantastic tales in survivors."

Bare eyes narrowed, Leila fixed her with a withering look. "Ah, so that be the way of it? Ye think Leviathan a monster made only of sun and salt? Ye think the pirate can't tell truth from madness? I been mad enough to drink seawater and see mermaids divin' down from the moon, and still I knew better than to kiss 'em. I know what I seen true and what I ain't."

There was no good in upsetting a convalescent for the sake of a tenuous hope. Hilda bit her lip, then steeled herself against such displays. "If they are truly lost, then we—"

"Never said they was dead." Leila grinned. "Ha! Ye could blast that lot straight to hell, and they'd come roarin' back up with the devil's balls, they would."

Hilda did not find this reassuring. The gentle weight of Gordon's hand on her shoulder suggested that she wasn't doing enough to suppress herself. "Then surely we'll see them again," she said as evenly as she could, "but let us plan for the interim. Gordon, if you would?"

Would what, she wasn't sure, but he worked more closely with the increasingly fractious army. He nodded and smiled encouragingly at her before excusing himself from the infirmary.

Leila watched him go, then flicked her gaze back to Hilda. "How long afore I can get to me feet without yer fussy mages rushin' in?"

"They say you're recovering quickly. Please be patient just a little longer."

"Best not be too long. Layin' about makes me arse itch."

She'd crawled to the outskirts of Fynn, the healers said, and might have died there if a patrol hadn't recognized her. Hilda watched her quietly for a moment before asking, "Why did you come back here?"

Leila scoffed, which triggered a coughing fit. Once it had passed, she rasped, "Where the hell else would I go?"

Gordon put a hopeful slant on his reports, but he never tried to obscure the extent of the trouble. Poft, already devastated by the Dreadnought, had been blasted from the face of the earth by a vast cyclone that now raged toward Paloom. Restlessness grew in the army's ranks; surely this was an Imperial device, and surely Fynn would be obliterated unless the Empire were destroyed first.

Evidence pointed to a ringleader gathering support to break away from the Wild Rose Rebellion and lead his own siege of Palamecia, though no rumor that reached Gordon held any hint as to his identity. Hilda redoubled her efforts to boost morale, but the bulk of her troops were hot-blooded rebels, not the stuff of a standing army. When asked to wait, they stared nervously at the sky.

Still no word came from Firion. Leila claimed not to be worried, and now that she was well enough to be underfoot, she claimed it loudly and often enough that Hilda was certain of the concern hiding behind the bravado.

"Bloody layabouts, the lot of 'em," Leila mused from her perch on the edge of Hilda's desk. She was still too thin, but her hands were steady enough now to line her eyes and twirl her knife between her fingers. "When a sea monster swallows ye, ye start hackin' yer way out and don't stop for love or hell. Lazy lubbers must be quittin' every hour for a picnic."

"I'm sure they're," Hilda began, then stopped, because she wasn't sure of anything about them now. She went back to reading.

Leila cleared her throat. "Oy, chin up now. If a one of 'em's dead, I'll eat me bandanna. Ye want somethin' to worry about, worry about me poor ship."

"I've plenty else to worry me," Hilda replied.

Before she could explain that this meant she needed some quiet to focus, Leila had sprawled forward across the table, propped herself up on her elbows at what appeared to be an untenable angle for her cleavage, and put her hand over what Hilda was trying to read. "Me arm's a bit rusty, but tell me what troubles ye and I'll run a sword through its source, sure as sunrise."

"I'd rather it didn't come to that." Hilda realized that she had leaned back in her chair and chided herself for it; Leila was studying her every reaction and no doubt amused by her discomfort. "For now, it's still an issue of reconnaissance."

"Aye, I'm a fair hand at that, too." Leila leaned forward with a sloping smile. "No pirate captain lasts long without a keen ear for scuttlebutt."

Hilda didn't want to know what that word referred to, but she spent a moment mulling over her circumstances, trying not to appear uneasy under Leila's unwavering gaze. "When you briefly led the army," she asked at length, "how did you get on with the troops?"

"Like a bolt fish in a storm. Ye want secrets out of 'em, give me an evening, a tavern, and me lady's treasury to pay the tab."

Something in the intonation of "me lady," the joke that wasn't quite, gave Hilda pause. It began to occur to her that Leila had indeed been playing a long game, though not the game that Hilda had first assumed.

Hilda folded her hands and watched Leila steadily. Her reactions were her own to control; she had learned from an early age how to keep her eyes dry and her lips still and her blood from rushing to her cheeks. "I'll trust you," she said, and noted that Leila didn't control her face nearly so carefully.

Leila hadn't exaggerated; she slipped into Hilda's room the next morning even before the sun did, after Hilda had assured the guards that Leila should be allowed to come and go as she pleased, even if she was still a little drunk. She staggered along, proud as a cat with a mouth full of feathers, and flopped backward on Hilda's bed. "Found yer trouble," she announced.

Hilda hadn't been awake long and was still in her night clothes with her hair still braided loosely down her back. She shrugged on her dressing gown before asking, "Do you have names?"

"Aye, but only one matters. Got a loudmouth rilin' up yer stupider boys. What's the word, icharismatic/i. Take that bastard out, and everyone else'll shut up right quick."

"His name?"

Leila sat up amid a jangle of jewelry and gave Hilda a look made even more intense by candlelight. "Why, so ye can wring yer hands over him? It's one of yer grunts, not one of yer trusted few. Keep yer hands clean and let me take care of it."

It wasn't easy to look regal in a dressing gown, but Hilda had practice. She held cold and still, waiting until Leila fidgeted to say, "I intend to keep my hands clean. I tasked you with bringing me names."

Leila's gaze flitted down to her knife as she began to twirl it. "Tch, as ye will. Marzell."

Not one of her rabble, but one of her soldiers. A jolt of surprise gave way to weary realization: Marzell had distinguished himself in the flight from Fynn and deflected a blow that would have killed her father outright, but he had always been too reckless for command and, Hilda now suspected, consequently resentful. He justified it to himself, she was certain. Here he had defended land and liege fearlessly for years, and now he was told to wait while children played at their first war.

Quietly, Hilda said, "I should talk to Gordon."

"Oh, aye, then ye can wring yer hands itogether/i." Leila snorted and stilled her knife. "While ye talk, so will he, and his talk ain't all frettin' and circlin'. He'll talk himself a neat little army, he will." When Hilda didn't immediately respond, she added, "Ye can't suffer mutineers. Ye know that, or damn well ought. Ye don't put a fire out by lettin' it burn low next to a bucket of pitch."

Hilda breathed deeply and refused to let her hands curl into fists. "If he has a following, the situation is delicate. I can't afford to make a martyr of him."

"Aye, there's yer trouble with not rulin' by fear. Nobody loves a martyr if it's liable to mean bein' next." Leila leaned forward, face muted pale in the first milky light of dawn. "So let me handle it, aye? Quick and clean and no one ever knows."

Gordon would say... No. Gordon was not, in the end, the Queen. Hilda didn't allow herself the luxury of looking away. "Be careful."

"Aye." Leila smiled, wry and oddly soft, as she set her feet to the floor. She stood in silence for a long moment before suddenly taking Hilda's hand and pressing a quick, dry kiss to the back of it. The coarse tangles of her hair brushed Hilda's arm. "No one knows, least of all ye."

It had all been obvious yesterday from the moment of offering and acceptance, and Hilda would not pretend now that it hadn't been.

One of the soldiers—the professionals, not the makeshifts—appeared to have deserted, Gordon told her. It had come as a shock; some suspected foul play, though the evidence weighed against it. The deserter been popular with the other men, and spirits were low this morning in the barracks. If she could spare an hour and a few stirring words...

He didn't share the name and paused heavily between details; Hilda did not doubt that he suspected and was testing her. Telling him was a risk, however irrationally small. He might approve of Leila only when she operated within the law, or he might assume that he was entitled to a say in all the business of Fynn. Or he might accept her judgment with good grace and be troubled only that he had not been able to solve the problem on his own. He surprised her, quite often.

In the end, she was Queen, and he was not even King Consort. She wondered what he'd say when the dissenters began to fall quiet, if indeed he'd say anything at all. There was a coolness about him today, a distance disproportionate to his exclusion.

Hilda had always been good with words, as long as they were grand and abstract and outside herself. She watched the faces of the men who seemed most distraught and focused on them, trying not to think about what they might have whispered about her in the dark. iBe patient just a little longer/i, she couldn't say in so many words. iJust a longer little, and all our hopes will be either fulfilled or blown away to make room for new ones./i How long now had they all waited?

Word came that nothing remained of Altair but rubble. Refugees from Gatrea already knocked at Fynn's gates, though her stones would provide no shelter from the coming storm.

In the evening, Hilda retired early to her chambers, exchanged her formal gown for a robe, lit candles, and sat at her window without otherwise preparing for bed. The horizon was still orange when Leila sauntered in.

She looked cheerful. There was no sign of blood on her. "Ye well?" she asked, helping herself to a seat on Hilda's bed. "Ye look a mite less... statute-like than yer usual."

In older, darker times, Fynn's royal families had prevented brutal succession wars by assassinating children. The Empire slaughtered innocents in droves. If the worst Hilda ever did was mark dissidents for death during wartime, her conscience would be crystal by comparison. It shouldn't have troubled her at all, but she found "What did you do to him?" on the tip of her tongue and had to bite it back. What was the point of keeping her hands clean if she went digging in the dirt afterward?

Instead she said, "I'm only tired. It's no cause for concern."

"Should I leave ye to sleep, then?"

"No, stay." Alone, she might wonder what her father had asked of his shadows, and what else she might have to ask of hers. "Today I've been reminded of harsh truths, and necessary ones." She fell quiet again, watching the color bleed out of the sky, then said, "I should thank you."

"Eh, don't bother. Ye don't mean it yet, and thanks be poor coin to a pirate."

Hilda's gaze returned to her. "Did you expect a more solid coin? Our treasury dwindles, but—"

"Nay, nay, with ye I'd sooner trade hidden deeds for hidden thoughts." Leila leaned forward, elbow on her knee and chin on her fist. "Tell me true what troubles ye tonight."

That there was still no sign of Firion and the rest, and no path to salvation without them. That she had driven a rift between herself and Gordon and that it wouldn't have happened if she hadn't drawn him too close in the first place. That she would wake tomorrow to a darkened, screaming sky. That she had needed to deploy a shadow agent against one of her own people, that she was soft enough to be troubled by it, and that she had probably somehow managed to take advantage of Leila in the process.

Hilda let it all tumble in her head until it condensed into, "That I've scarcely taken the throne and already question my own control."

"Eh," said Leila, with a broad shrug, "I never seen ye aught but controlled. Ye got control enough for six thrones and half a dozen of yerself. Might do ye good to cut a sail loose and let the wind take it."

"We're at war. There's nothing I can afford to cut free." The air had grown cold; Hilda drew the curtain over the window and left the room darker, warmer, and redder in the absence of starlight. Once she had sat back down, she said, "Tell me true why you returned here."

Leila shifted in her seat, pushing her chest forward. "It ain't obvious?"

They were at war, and the world was caught perpetually on the brink of shattering. Something needed to bend without breaking; something in Hilda need to yield under pressure instead of drawing tauter. If she couldn't trust Leila now, among shadows, when could she ever?

"Show me," she said.

Leila's eyes lit as if she couldn't believe her luck, as if the sea had started spitting its treasures directly onto the deck of her ship. She slid off the bed and approached slowly, hips swaying, to kneel at Hilda's feet. "As ye will," she said in a low voice, and gazed up through her eyelashes at an angle that made Hilda's pulse quicken.

She gripped the braids on either side of Hilda's face and tugged, pulling Hilda's mouth down against hers. Alarm began to stiffen Hilda's muscles, but it melted away almost instantly in a flood of heat. Hilda sank into it, down beneath thought, deep enough to drown with her head held under and her breaths thickening.

The world returned when Leila slipped loose, leaving a lingering electric ache, and said, "I've yearned to do that since I first clapped eyes on ye." She smiled with darkened lips, then looked suddenly uncertain, an expression that fit her face poorly. "Too bold of me?"

"Not—not at all." Hilda's breaths raced ahead of her, and she wished she didn't have to drag them back for speech. "I'd not object to bolder."

"Whatever me lady pleases." Leila curled her fingers around Hilda's, eliciting a shiver, and tugged gently as she rose. Hilda rose with her, trembling again as Leila's free hand pulled idly at the tie of her robe. "What does me lady please?"

It was all already obvious, so there was no sense now in uncertainty. "Take charge of me."

Leila's eyebrows arched, first slightly, then at exaggerated angles. Teasing, to cover surprise. "Thought ye weren't even a bit keen to lose control."

"It isn't losing if I choose to surrender it."

With a breathy laugh and a flick of her wrist, Leila opened the robe. "An unconditional surrender, aye?" Her voice pitched lower, too much of a growl to be a purr, as she stroked her hand over the bare curve of Hilda's waist. The calluses on her fingers sent tremors through Hilda's skin. "Throwin' yerself on me tender mercies?"

Hilda tried to steady her voice, then let it stumble out as it pleased, trembling like her legs. "I trust—"

"Shh." Leila's mouth covered Hilda's again, to nip and lap at her lower lip. "No more out of me lady, now."

The rough wandering of Leila's hands slid the robe from Hilda's shoulders sent it whispering to the floor. Hilda let herself be led around it, heart stoppering her throat, then arched into Leila's tongue as it traced her collarbone. Hands that had killed at her word seized her wrists; the pressure of Leila's thigh nudged the backs of her knees against her mattress.

She fell back with Leila's fingers around her wrists and Leila's weight on her hips. "I got ye," Leila whispered into her ear, then nipped at the shell of it. "Buck and writhe and still I got ye. Don't ye worry."

The heat coursing through Hilda melted the words from her sounds, the ice from her eyes, and the sharp edge from something buried and brittle.

Hilda was in the bath, examining the band of bruises on her right wrist, when word came of a familiar canoe paddling up the river. She hastened to put on a formal dress with sleeves that reached her knuckles and draped a scarf around her neck, just above where her cape ceased offering coverage. Leila might laugh, but at least she wouldn't be stupid enough to brag.

The sky over Fynn was still clear. Hilda wondered about the sky over Gatrea.

In the throne room she waited for storm or salvation. Leila skulked nearby, as had become her wont, and after a few restless minutes sat on the arm of Hilda's throne. Her long, slow smile and lowered eyelashes were briefly ominous, but the worst she said was, "Me lady looks well rested this morning."

Hilda responded purely politely. From the consort's throne, Gordon glanced at them, and just as quickly glanced away.

"What ihappened/i out there?" heralded Firion's arrival.

As he, Maria, and Guy approached alongside a stranger, Leila waved down at them and said, "Oy, mates! Knew ye'd be along sooner or later. No girl of mine stays down!"

"Girl?" Firion's confused look lasted until Leila rolled her eyes at him and added, "Me iship/i, ye great boob."

Hilda felt a flash of jealousy and immediately felt ridiculous for it. "We're relieved to see you all safe. But what befell you? Did you not find Minwu?"

They had all indeed been swallowed by Leviathan, it turned out, but still managed to complete their mission and release Ultima, losing Minwu and acquiring the last living Dragoon in the process. Nothing was ever straightforward with this group. Hilda pushed it all down and focused on the urgency of the moment; there was no good in mourning Minwu while death still roamed unsated.

Gordon explained the cyclone, which made Maria burst into tears.

"If we'd been here," Firion said miserably, face gray, "we could have done something, I'm sure of it. God, iAltair/i."

Hilda had been certain of the same, if no clearer on the something. "Our army is useless against it. Might Ultima disperse it?"

"It's not—" Maria caught her voice mid-sob— "Ultima's not that kind of spell. But the Emperor must be controlling that awful thing from inside, and Ultima would do plenty to him."

Leila leaned forward and sounded not the least bit sarcastic as she said, "Aye, then get yer arses inside it! How else ye mean to top hackin' free of Leviathan?"

"Speaking of hacking," Gordon said heavily, "the cyclone shreds anything that crosses its path. You'd be throwing your lives away if you approached."

"Any wyvern could navigate to the center of that storm with ease," the Dragoon said. "Alas, Deist—"

"Oh!" Maria's hand flew to her mouth, then wiped at her eyes. "I've got an idea. Firion, that pendant—"

They talked over each other and made a great ruckus digging through their packs, but when the group took off running toward the great mirror, Hilda had a clear enough idea of what they meant to do.

Gordon sighed. "We've no choice, but surely one of these mad missions will eventually get them killed."

"Aye, I'd raise a fuss if they tried to take me ship on this one." Leila shrugged and added, "But I'd bet ye yer own treasury they'll come back not more than a wee bit scuffed."

"I'd not bet against you," Hilda replied, which was the best she could say with sincerity. After a pause, she added, "They've no need of your ship in this, if you wish to consider it returned. You've no obligation to remain here."

"Ye think?" Leila replied, noncommittally.

Wish in one hand, Hilda's father used to say, and carry a back-up plan in the other. She'd been nearly an adult before she found out how the saying originally went, but she liked her father's version better; it offered a more optimistic pragmatism.

While Firion's party tackled the logistical issues of loading supplies and fully armed passengers on a young wyvern, she and Gordon updated evacuation plans to account for the destruction of Gatrea and the current trajectory of the cyclone. They had no delusions of hope—in the best case, perhaps a tenth of the population might survive—but it would be better than accepting annihilation.

She focused on maps and numbers and tried not to wonder where Leila was, or where she wished Leila was.

"I pray we never use these in earnest, but they've already helped," Gordon said, almost conversationally. He seemed less guarded now that Firion had returned. "I've been running evacuation drills with the men to keep them from idle fear. The army's mood seems changed now."

He didn't probe, and there was no bitterness to the observation. They could strike a balance again, Hilda decided. Pull into the light what thoughts were not inextricably bound to shadows and work together to reshape them. The world was yet warm, and perhaps malleable.

To that end, she breathed deeply, seeking control without brittleness. "You've been invaluable, Gordon," she said, keeping her gaze on his face. "I cherish our alliance, and our friendship as well. I haven't always made clear, even to myself, what this should mean for us and our kingdoms."

Gordon said nothing for some time, and his face was difficult to read. "I never thought of myself as a brave man," he said at last, "until I went into battle for you. I never thought myself capable of leading until you made a place for me at your side. Perhaps I assumed too quickly because I could not see myself apart from you."

"Perhaps I forgot too quickly that you carry Kashuan with you and must return to it, in the end." He looked faintly surprised, so she pressed on: "When this war ends, you should rebuild Kashuan. You shouldn't sacrifice her future for Fynn's."

"I wouldn't. But I would let her lie dormant for a generation longer for your sake, if you were to ask."

There it was plainly. Hilda kept her tone firm, gentle, without regret: "I would not ask."

"I know." There was a hint of the coolness again, but already thawing. "There are things of Fynn that are Fynn's alone, and so also with Kashuan. I have no wish to let them come between us."

She smiled at him. "Nor do I. Come, let's see our orphans off."

The cyclone was visible on the horizon now, a golden gash in the gray. Distant yet, but nearing. The wyvern had taken flight hours ago, and must have long since met whatever fate awaited it within the winds.

Hilda let her curtain fall back across the window as the door creaked open behind her. She supposed she should clarify to the guards that Leila could come and go as she pleased, provided that she bothered to knock.

Leila cleared her throat. "Me lady."

"You stayed." This didn't seem strong enough, so Hilda tried again: "You stayed when your ship is waiting unattended and there's a cyclone raging toward Fynn."

"Aye, well." Leila leaned over the back of Hilda's chair, draping her arms over Hilda's. "It's personal now, ain't it?"