He unbound her wrists and gestured to the table and chairs that stood next to them. She tried to get to her feet, still shaky from her long unconsciousness, and he held her hand and helped her stand enough to be properly seated. She rubbed at her wrists as he sat in the other chair, on the opposite side of the table, and for a moment neither of them said anything. Xander's expression was unreadable, as if he had been carved out of stone by a sculptor who could capture the shape of his face but not the shades of his spirit. She had always been able to tell what he was thinking, or near enough to it, but now...

But that wasn't right either. She had to admit that she had never really been able to read Xander. This moment was just one in a long series of incidents illustrating how little she had tried to understand him. He had been so sorrowful moments before, but now it was if he had buried all of it. Why would he do that?

"Big brother," she said, paused. "Xander. When Garon struck me I couldn't hear very well, but... did I understand his orders? Are you actually going to execute me?"

"Put that out of your mind." His tone was plain and commanding now, as if they were in the training yard and not in one of the interrogation rooms of Krakenburg. "What comes later is of no concern to you, nor to me. For now, this is not an execution, it is an inquiry, and I am your inquisitor. All that concerns me, and all that need concern you, is the truth."

"Xander, please, you know the truth. You know it as well as I do!" That she was speaking at all brought back Leo's lie that she could not do so, the layers of falsehoods that Camilla and Leo had tied themselves in to spare her life for a handful of minutes. "When I was in front of Garon, the things Camilla and Leo said... they had nothing to do with any of this."

"Camilla and Leo," he said, so forcefully she flinched from him, "will answer for any crimes they have committed in a manner befitting the wrong they have done to Nohr, as any of us would." He laid both of his hands on the table, the metal of his gauntlets whispering on the polished grain as he laced his fingers together. "You say I know the truth. Perhaps that is true, but it does not matter. I will hear it from your mouth, Corrin. That day on the Hoshidan border, you chose Hoshido over Nohr, and said so in as many words to my face. You claimed it was because our king is evil, but that is not a full answer. There is no pressure of time here, no chance of us being interrupted by scouts or soldiers or Iago or anyone else. Tell me all of it: why did you leave?"

She had been walking across the entire continent with this knowledge, never having to speak of it—at least not all of it—to anyone. Her Hoshidan siblings shared her sorrow, though not her guilt, for the deaths at the city square. The knowledge was fuel, fed into the furnace of her resolve, and it had kept her warm for a very long time. She had begun to think that would never need to let go of it, feared that one day it would lose its meaning.

Secrets were not something she had kept as a child; they were meant to be shared, like jewels that did not have the same luster or meaning if they were not shown to others. She had always rationed out her secrets like gifts, whispering of dark places to Leo and Elise, or a new bad word she had learned to Camilla, or some frightening dream she had to Xander. Trying to apply that thought, the very concept of precious knowledge, to the secrets she was carrying now bordered on repellent. Still it gnawed at her, an itch that made her think that something could be done, simply by speaking.

"You would hear it all?" Corrin smiled at Xander, and he did not answer in kind. "You would be my confessor?"

"If that helps you to speak, yes." A long silence, and then, "You can tell me anything." When he spoke those words she felt as if a band around her chest had snapped, and she breathed cleanly and deeply for the first time in what felt like a very long time.

"When Garon sent me to the Bottomless Canyon to investigate an outpost there, it was manned by Hoshidans who said that our presence was violating their border treaty. Hans killed one of their border patrol, which started a battle that nearly got me, Jakob, and Gunter all killed. After you arrived, Hans actually did kill Gunter, dropping him into the canyon." She looked down at her hands, afraid to see if Xander was worried, more afraid to see if his expression hadn't changed. "I remember the sound Gunter made as he fell. Then I fought Hans, ran him off. He said that he was acting on orders from Garon." She looked at Xander now: stone, implacable, unmoving, unfeeling. She had to breathe deeply to fight the urge to cry.

He did not move. He said nothing.

"I was captured by Hoshidans after that. The same two that you and I freed. They took me to the capital, and I was brought before Queen Mikoto and Prince Ryoma. I thought they were going to execute me, but Mikoto." This did not hurt, but she stopped and covered her face with her hands and waited until the raw feeling faded. "Mikoto told me she was my mother, and that I had been kidnapped by Garon. I actually remembered it, Xander. I remembered Sumeragi falling riddled with arrows, and Garon reaching out to me. I was confused, and terrified, but she was so happy. She had me taken throughout the city, escorted only by her youngest children, and brought to the square. She began to proclaim me as her daughter, returned from being lost."

She heard him shift in his chair, thought perhaps his shoulders had moved, but saw nothing that she would swear by.

"An assassin appeared, and summoned my sword—the one Garon had given me—to their own hand. The sword was some kind of... of bomb. It killed so many people in the square, Xander. It would have killed me too, but Mikoto threw herself in front of me and all the shrapnel went into her body instead of mine. She, ah." Corrin stopped, wiped at her eyes, coughed. She was not doing well at keeping her voice level. "I haven't talked about this with anyone. Ryoma and the others, she was their mother too, they had all the same sorrows that I did. But she, she died in my arms. She asked if I was hurt, and I wasn't, and she was so glad. She was my mother, and I had just found her again, hadn't even been able to recognize her, and she died in my arms and everyone else lost her too but she died protecting me, she died because of me, protecting me from a weapon that I brought into the city. My mother died because I killed her."

Her silence had been a scab forming over the surface of her pain, giving her a chance to heal beneath it. But the healing was so slow, and she hadn't experienced the real pain of it, and now the scab was off and the open air was a shock, and she buried her head in her arms and did not look up for a long time, not hearing anything over the sound of herself. She wanted desperately to be comforted, for a moment she wanted Camilla who had shushed her broken heart when she was small, but more she wanted Xander, Xander who had helped her learn to cope with pain and fear and guilt and alienation, and he was only on the other side of this table but there was an abyss between them, one she couldn't cross, would probably never be able to cross again. She waited, but he never reached out, never so much as touched her arm, and she knew that if he did then she would be broken entirely but his absence hurt her so much in the moment that she couldn't hold her grief in.

It seemed a very long time before she was able to stop. He handed her a handkerchief, and she cleaned her face, and when she looked at him again her eyes were dry and her voice was smooth and unbroken.

"Garon sent his man to kill me, and used me as a murder weapon against my own mother. I saw the terror of his attacks on the Hoshidan border, and against the Hoshidan people. I could not countenance such evil, and resolved that I would not, because in permitting it I would be taking part in it myself." She drew herself up, squared her shoulders. "I couldn't make that choice, Xander. I could not return to Nohr, not if it meant acquiescing to those acts and what they meant. If you cannot grant me that right, I will bear your scorn gladly."

Xander's bearing did not change, nor his expression, but the crease in his brow was not as deep, and when he spoke it was with a softness she had not heard in a long time. "I would never gainsay you that, little princess. Your pain is yours, and the wrongs done to you are yours, too."

"What?"

"You told me that my father was evil, there on the Hoshidan border, and I did not believe you. But I want you to understand that it is not because I could not believe that of my father; I am a fool, but I am not blind, and have known our king for a very long time. If these things had been done to you, and you left us over it, then your hurt, your need for justice, was greater than your love for us. No," and here he moved his hand through the air in a cutting motion, interrupting her before she could speak, "do not argue. If the only way to stop this war was to kill me, you would do it. That is not an evil thing. What is evil is that all of these things happened to you in spite of me. I am—I was your protector, or I tried to be. But you have suffered so much because I could not shield you from the evil thoughts of a man I stood beside, and that was a notion too heavy for me. I am sorry. I have failed you."

"Oh," she said, and she wanted to argue but instead the two of them were quiet. After a time she said, "You believe me?"

"Every word. There is no reason to think you have lied."

A thread of light there, and she reached for it.

"Then you can... Xander, you know this war is wrong. You know that Garon's aggression is wrong! You've seen what he's done, what's capable of! We can make this right. You can still help me stop him!"

Now he grimaced. "No, I cannot."

Her temples throbbed, the pressure of her anger slamming against the inside of her skull like a thing trying to be hatched. "Why? Why do you keep denying it? I know you can see—"

"There is still so much you don't know, little princess," he said, and there was sorrow in his voice and written plain on his face and her anger died. "I cannot. I know what he has done, but I cannot."

"Then why?"

His turn to pause. "Of the four of us, only Elise was able to continue behaving anything like she had before; she was sad that you were gone, almost unspeakably so, but she turned her love outward and to the people and was able to stand because of that. Leo." The sound of his hands tightening, the creak of leather. "Leo would not see anyone. He threw himself into his studies, into his work, thinking to bring you home by force. He was so hurt by your betrayal that he tried to convince himself he did not love you, and still through all of that he wanted to bring you home."

That much she knew, could see Leo emerging from the darkness of the marsh astride his horse as clearly as if it had still happened. He had been in so much pain, so ready to face his death, so hurtful. He had told her that he had resented her, that he had never loved her, and on the other side of unconsciousness he had spoken lies to his father that would see him killed if they were ever found out, all to protect her. Corrin could feel his hand in hers, even now. She wished that he was here.

"For days, Camilla could not speak, or would not speak. Elise tried to reach through to her and failed. Her sense of duty is stronger than in our younger siblings, she knows well her place in the kingdom, and she knows what our father and his forces are capable of. When she left Castle Krakenburg to crush the resistance in Cheve, she thought to find you, intended to kill you. These words she spoke to me: 'I will kill her, Xander. I will hold her to my breast as she drifts to sleep. It will be free of pain, a mercy that none of Father's men will give her, and when it is done I am going to cut open my throat.'" He swallowed. "Did you know?"

Corrin nodded. She couldn't do anything else. Her voice cracked when she finally asked, "What about you?"

"I prepared myself," he said, and now he was leaning onto the table again, further forward than before, "and I fought for Nohr. Elise and Leo and Camilla and you, in your own ways, went about the business of tending to your own souls. Whatever it took to heal yourselves, to protect yourselves, to make things right and good and just or a little less ugly, all of you did it. Not I. I worked with Father, denying him where I could, and obeying him where I could not."

"Why?"

"Because I am the Crown Prince, Corrin. I am not allowed the sanctity of my own soul. The duty of any ruler and their heir is to tend to the nation, not themselves. I thought of joining you, fantasized about taking Elise and Camilla and Leo and disappearing into the woods to find you, of joining your band and fighting at your side until we brought the war home and ended it all. A fantasy, because it could not be so; even when I dreamed of those moments I could not help but look ahead, to blood-soaked horizons and fields of fire, of the bodies of Nohrian citizens strewn through the grass like discarded seed." Now he was shaking, his right leg rising and falling in a rapid rhythm, his heel tapping on the floor. "Our people are so strong, Corrin, and their livelihoods are so fragile. Every year we are only a small margin away from starvation. All of our expansionism has been for the sake of gathering food, trading what precious few resources we have to keep our people fed. And I, I am not strong enough to depose my father, little princess. I do not have the men to make it into a battle. It will always be a war, and even if I was victorious and stamped out the vipers who would vie to seize the throne for themselves after my regicide, the nation would be devastated, left undefended for decades." He reached up, touched his right temple. "I had Leo do the numbers for me, though I hid their meaning from him. According to his estimates, if I were to move against the king, then half of Nohr would starve to death in five years. Half. Our country would never recover. In a century, Nohr would cease to exist." His knee ceased to shake, and he lowered his hand, and he was as he had been before, immovable, invincible. "Tell me: what measure of justice would be worth that?"

What answer could there be to such a question? That Nohr was poor and without resources she had known, but in her isolation in the Northern Fortress she had also had a measure of protection; if things were truly so precarious, had always been, then she had never been told or allowed to hear such a thing. But if it was that precarious...

"And what if Hoshido wins this war?"

She thought he would stop to think, but his answer was instant: "That is not your concern, my sister. That weight is not on your soul. You are the heir to neither kingdom, and Nohr is no longer your home." He stood, looked down at her, and the weight of his presence was crushing. For the first time, she noticed that Siegfried was not at his hip—it was leaned against the opposite corner of the room. "You would see me as your confessor, and so I will be: you are absolved. Do what you must. Fight for the sanctity of your soul, little princess, because it is the only thing that is worth fighting for."

She rose from the chair, and stepped around the table, and put her arms around him. Then his arms were around her, too, and she rested her head against his chest and breathed in the smell of sweat and horses and iron, the same way he had smelled ever since she was a girl. This was different, could not be more different, but it was not because of where they were or why they were there; it was because she could feel the weight on his shoulders, and how strong he must have been to walk upright beneath it. That was better. It was a better thing. She had been carrying a weight too, and it was growing heavier over time, but seeing his strength made her feel like she could take another step.

Corrin was the first to let go, and Xander released her only after. She stepped back from him, looked up at him, crossed her arms. She felt light, somehow. Peaceful.

"What now?"

"Please, sit." He waited in silence, so she took her seat again. "Our father the king has decreed that, once the cause of your siding with Hoshido has been determined, you are to be executed. I, as the inquisitor, am to carry out the sentence myself." He paused, looking at her. "One thing has not been made clear to me, however. Our intelligence has indicated that, in the aftermath of the explosion in the city square, you transformed into a dragon. In that form, you were not in control of yourself. Can you tell me more of that?"

She nodded, remembering the feeling of fire filling her body, setting her thoughts ablaze. All she had heard were her own screams.

"I was... it is hard to describe. It was like a nightmare."

"Were you in pain?"

"Some. Most of the stress was mental. I had to be calmed by Azura's singing, and afterward she told me that if it happened again, if I lost control of myself, that I would be in danger of losing my humanity. I would be a beast. She gave me my dragonstone to guard against that; it lets me retain my thoughts, control when I go into and come out of the transformation."

"Hmm." He reached into a pouch at his waist, and from it withdrew a shining stone at the end of a pendant, the color of a deep, clean lake. The moment she saw it, Corrin felt the hum of its magic in her skin, soothing her nerves, calling out to her. When he set it down on the table in front of her, it was all she could do not to snatch it up like a hungry child.

"What are you doing?" Her voice would not go above a whisper.

The Crown Prince turned from her. "It would not do for you to be executed in a state where the anticipation might cause you pain, or trigger your transformation. It is for your safety and mine that I give you the stone." He folded his hands behind his back. "I will retrieve Siegfried now, and with that blade I will perform my duty. Know that if you try to run from this place, to leave through that door, that I will surely give chase. You will not be able to get away unless you make a head start for yourself, and right now you cannot."

"Xander? Xander, what is this?"

"It will take me a moment to retrieve Siegfried." He walked over to the corner in a few short steps and stood looking down at his sword, making no move to reach for it. "The weight of it is terrible, and moreso when wielded for a terrible purpose. Please excuse my hesitation."

Iron creaked softly against iron, and Corrin's head whipped toward the doorway. Her expectation was Iago waiting to see her executed, or Hans, or even Garon himself—but the first thing she saw were long ringlets of golden hair, with the head they were attached to peeking around the doorway only a little.

"Elise?" Her voice was barely a hiss.

The youngest princess of Nohr poked her head completely through the doorframe, looking around once to take in the scene of the room, and then finally looking at Corrin herself. She put her finger to her lips, as if to shush her older sister, and then waved Corrin toward her.

Corrin looked to Xander, who still looked down at Siegfried, hands folded. He had not moved at all.

A head start, she thought, and grabbed hold of her dragonstone.

Light and sound blurred the world around her as she leaped through the air, her body expanding to fill it as if seeking a shape more analogous to its true nature. The table splintered behind her, and she had a flash of Elise looking up, her mouth an open O of shock, and Corrin's antlers scraped the ceiling as her transformation fully asserted itself. She flew to Xander, and he did not look up.

"I love you," she said to him in a voice that had a resonance like a violin, and then she slammed into his back with all the force in her body. He was strong, preposterously strong, so she did not curb the force of the blow, but when he crashed into the wall she was momentarily afraid she had really hurt him. Xander fell to his knees, eyes turned to the ceiling, and blood trickled from his forehead.

"Oh, wow!" Elise had dropped all pretense of silence or stealth, not that it would have done them much good anymore. "You can turn into a dragon? That's amazing!"

"Talk later! Run now!" She moved to the doorway, which she could squeeze through in this shape but only barely. "Quick, get on my back!"

"I get to ride on your back!?" Elise only needed to be told once; she vaulted up expertly, leaning down and resting her body against Corrin's neck. "Oh, before I forget, I have a present for you!" Corrin turned her head around just far enough to see that Elise was holding up a long, narrow object wrapped in uncured leather bound with twine. "It's your sword! Xander left it in his room!"

The Yato sang to her too, and Corrin laughed, feeling whole for the first time in over a day. "All right! Hold on tight, we're going to—"

The stone shook beneath her and all around her, mortar drifting down from the ceiling. She and Elise both looked back into the room, and there they saw Xander, standing, his expression unreadable. He was drawing Siegfried, and the world was moaning as the blade met the air.

"RUN!" Elise shouted, and Corrin dashed with all the strength in her legs and the spot where she had been standing a moment before exploded in a roaring cloud of purple fire. She tore down the hallway and Elise's arms were tight around her neck and she felt alive, she was not free yet but she was going to make it, and Elise had her sword and Xander was at her back.

"Stop her!" Xander roared, and his voice carried through the halls of the castle. "Stop the lady Corrin! She has abducted Princess Elise!"

Corrin carried Elise at speed through Krakenburg, and no soldier was able to keep up with her or catch her. Mages threw their magic, but they were the only ones who managed to even make the attempt; only the smallest number of them ever actually struck her, and Elise's magic soothed her wounds as they ran.

No one stopped her as they fled through the main gate, which would have been shut save that the guards had been left bound and gagged in suspiciously enthusiastic ropework. Similarly, the guards prowling through Windmire never reached her; every one meant to be walking the relevant routes came down with sudden and severe cases of food poisoning, and though other garrisons gave chase they never came close.

Mounted figures followed down open streets, one astride a horse and the other a wyvern, both wild-eyed and grim. Anyone who saw them gave them a wider berth, and assumed they had things under control. A third mounted figure trailed them by moments, his cape making his silhouette enormous and his collar laying flat in the wind.

King Garon was waiting for her atop the gate to the city, and the best archers in his command were there with him. He stood watching, but instead of minding the streets he was looking outward, into the field that opened up in front of the city. There was the killing field; there was where she would be laid low.

The young dragon, princess astride her back, tore past the city gate and galloped into the field, kicking up dust and dirt that threw wild shadows in the moonlight. Garon raised his right hand, and every archer drew back their strings.

"Prepare to let loose," he said, and his eyes were wide and terrible as he smiled. Only the thunder of hooves interrupted the moment.

"Belay that order!" Garon wheeled as Xander pulled his horse up beneath the battlement, shouting his order from the ground. "Corrin has kidnapped Elise! Do not shoot!"

Garon's teeth ground together as he looked down at his eldest son, and their eyes met, and not for the first time he felt his hand itch for his axe. "Prepare to fire."

A buffeting wind sent two archers staggering, and then many more fell as a wyvern landed on the crenelation, its talons digging deep into the stone. Camilla was atop it, her hair wild in the wind, her eyes huge and terrible in the moonlight, and her axe was in her hand.

"Whoever looses an arrow at my sister dies," she said, "and it will not be prettily."

"Daughter," Garon said, and he was at the edge of his control. "Which sister is it that you protect?"

"Oh, Father, dear." Her smile was back, cold and distant. "In your fervor for justice, I am sure you have not noticed, but Elise is on Corrin's back."

"Then why. Are you not. Retrieving her."

"I am here to keep the home fires burning," she said, and now her eyes were open again and her smile was gone and she looked her father in the eyes, "while Nohr's heroes go to rescue its princess."

Leo's horse streaked into the night, and Xander's followed, and Camilla stared down at their father. Their breath all hung above them in thick clouds of condensation, dispersed only by the wind of Camilla's wyvern adjusting its wings.

Leo looked back over his shoulder as Krakenburg shrank away, its lights burning brightly against the starless dark. Xander followed him, drawing closer, and he could see the iron determination on his brother's face. That will at his back was a pressure that drove him onward, faster and faster.

Corrin had pulled ahead of them, far enough that they would not be able to catch her unless she began to tire, and they did not even know if she could tire in this shape. The woods loomed before them, representing a darkness they could not pierce, in which they would lose her and Elise, and he couldn't let that happen, not yet. He dug his spurs into his horse's side, giving it nearly free rein as he squeezed hard with his thighs. He had never pushed a horse as hard as he was pushing now, and had no idea how long it could keep up this dash, but the trees drew closer as the field shrank away.

"Corrin!" He tried to shout to her, but the wind took the name from his mouth and threw it back over his shoulder. No, that was no good. She was almost to the woods now, and Elise wasn't looking back, and Corrin wouldn't be able to hear him.

Releasing the reins entirely, Leo reached down to his belt and unfastened the clasp on Brynhildr. He lifted the book up, feeling its warmth flow through him, and in that moment he also felt the roots of the trees at the edge of the forest, over which Corrin's feet were pounding the grass. He reached out to it, called to it, willed his power through the trees—

He could hear Elise squeal and Corrin roar in shock as roots exploded out of the earth in front of them in a wall, just long enough to get them to stop before sinking back into the earth. He breathed out his relief; if he couldn't do this last, then it was all for nothing. He reclasped Brynhildr and drew out another book, one with a well-worn embossing on its spine.

"Corrin! Hold, Corrin!" Finally, finally she heard him, and he was not ashamed of his relief as she turned, and the magnificence of her new form struck him then; she was like a god of the woods, or a lake, or something even older and more elemental. Elise was waving crazily at him, too excited to do much more than laugh. He reined in his horse, heard Xander slowing behind him. "You're lucky that I reached you before anyone else did. Stop running for a moment, I have something for you."

He was not aware of the arrow sailing through the air until it had buried itself in his thigh, stopping only when it struck bone. It stuck out like a ridiculous decoration, and he stared, at first not feeling it. He looked to the trees, was still looking when the pain hit him and he doubled over on his saddle, biting down on the leather of his gauntlet to keep from screaming or ripping the arrow out.

"Leo!" Corrin's voice was much closer, now, and human besides; he had managed to lose a few seconds there. Elise was further away, screaming her outrage at someone at the tree line, someone with ridiculous hair. "Leo, are you all right? Speak to me!"

An arm wrapped around his shoulder and pulled him upright, a heavy weight pressing against his other leg. He looked up, and Xander was looking down at him, calm and attentive after pulling his horse next to Leo's own. "Quickly, Leo. We have no time here. If we try to remove that arrow it will tear your femoral artery, but we need you wounded to sell the reason for our retreat and so cannot heal you by magic. Give her what you need to, before you pass out."

"Yes." He was still holding the book in his other hand, he realized, and nearly lost his grip as he held it out to her. "Spellbook. You should be able to use it, or one of the Hoshidans can. It will carry you and your troops, all of you, for one trip and back. Take it to Notre Sagesse. Find the Rainbow Sage. He will give you the help you need to finish your mission." She was confused, he could see her confusion, and he thought of all the lessons they had taken together as she took the tome from him. "Still so slow on the uptake. Lucky you have us to take care of you. Please, sister. Go."

"I will," she said. "If this Rainbow Sage can give me the help I need to save Nohr from Garon, then I will be back."

"Go deeper into the woods before you use it," Xander said, and his voice was distant and muffled as if he were underwater. But then, so were all sounds, now. "Elise will stay with you. Protect her, as she will protect you."

Corrin said something in reply, but Leo did not hear. He was very tired, now, and had trouble staying awake. Still, he felt it when she took his hand in hers, and he had the strength to squeeze back. Then she was gone, retreating into the woods, and the Hoshidans retreated with her.

"She will make it," Xander said in his ear, forcefully enough to pull him out of his reverie.

"Of course she will," Leo said, and was aware that Xander was pulling him over onto his own horse, a charger meant to hold Great Knights, better suited for carrying two people. "She has the devil's own luck."

Then he slipped quietly into darkness, and only his brother kept him from slipping out of the saddle on the ride home.