Lorenz eventually acquiesced, and a few blocks from the Riegan manor, walking in silence side by side with his father, walked into one of the small cafes along the seaside. He was not discriminant in his selection, mostly picking the one he had because it was quiet. He ordered two cups of tea, and sat down outside, where his father was already in one of the wrought iron chairs.

"Why did you want to walk with me," said Lorenz, more of a demand than a question.

His father quietly sipped the tea that Lorenz had set before him, while Lorenz sat there, seething– his father's calm blue eyes no longer the irate, sharp edge he was used to, the way his braid had become frizzled in the sea humidity, the way there was the faintest hint of a tan on his cheeks and he knew it was because his father loved the beach and had probably sat out, reading. It was hard not to see his father sitting there before him, his life written on every facet of his face and body language.

"I should apologize for my behavior."

Lorenz's father never apologized. He raised the teacup to his lips and took a sip. Tinny, metallic, a bit bitter, but tea was tea.

"You understand, of course, why my ire was thus provoked?"

"I think there have been a number of misunderstandings. I feel no need to rationalize my decisions, because I know when you are a leader, and take my place–"

"If ever I do, because you will likely outlive me."

"If ever you do," said his father, clearly hesitant, "you will grow to understand."

"I hope I never understand."

"You gave Lysithea von Ordelia Thyrsus." There was some silence between them for a few minutes, broken by the chattering of seabirds. "I would have made the same sacrifices for Helene or Andrea."

"But you didn't." His tone was clipped, harsh. "Because you are selfish, hard, and cruel– and even understanding your choices fully now, I cannot abide by them, and I am having a difficult time tolerating even your very presence."

"Lorenz," he said hesitantly, "why do you think I surrendered you to the mages of Adrestia, when first our terms were drawn up?"

"You wanted me to have a second crest. To be the true heir to Leicester, to prove it with blood–"

"No." He shook his head. "I wanted you to believe that. I wanted you to hope for that, at least. It is easier to let you believe that, to make you stronger–"

"You lied to me. All those years, you lied to me!"

"To protect you! And I bought five more years that Helene could spend with her children. Five more. I knew as a father what that meant. And I could not, in good conscience, send her children to die, while I made no sacrifices of my own. They wanted crest blood, and there were no other known bearers of the Crest of Charon in Ordelia territory. What they took after, was because I could do nothing against them without risking the safety of the territory I had given up my son and my friend's children to defend."

"There is nothing worth the lives of the Ordelias," said Lorenz bitterly. "Not all of their land, not all of our land– all the reserves in our stores. Nothing, Father."

"How about the lives of thousands of soldiers?" said Count Gloucester. "Lorenz, what about every drop of gold in our already then-thinning storerooms? Yes, the wealth we came into that rebuilt our estate that your mother managed, came from the Empire. How many people survived famine because our house could afford to buy out Faerghan granaries?"

"What about Godfrey von Riegan?"

"Are you still on about that?" Matthias shook his head. "This is why I didn't speak to you about this. Your mother has been–"

"Keep her name out of your mouth!"

"Your mother has never trusted me." He hardened his gaze at Lorenz.

"And it's no great wonder." Lorenz took a sip of tea. "Look at me. Look at her. Look at our house. I had a great deal of time alone to ponder these things, and while I have spoken to other people on these matters– I understand why she left. In essence, she believes you surrendered me to directly replace me, and she–"

"Lorenz," he said, with a sigh, pressing his thumb to his temple, "the date for your surrender was set long before your mother got pregnant again. Andrea's daughter would have been the heir. And it doesn't matter anymore. I am not going to go crawling to her begging for forgiveness, and she would never take me back. We simply did not manage to make amends for a choice she could not rationalize. The fact that the Round Table once pinned all of their problems with me, onto her, with the sole exception of Helene, no longer matters–"

"What?"

"The Gonerils and Margrave Edmund hate her. She's Dagdan, and Dagdan nobility to boot. Surely you recognize the problems that would stem from that. They believe she's the reason Godfrey is dead. Oswald would have believed anything for an answer. Her disappearance did me no favors, either. My grasp on my seat is tenuous already. And I truly had so little to do with it, that I scarcely realized my involvement until he was already dead."

"What do you mean?"

"The Adrestian mages asked me if they could use my land as hunting grounds–"

"I read those letters–"

"Let me finish. Hunting grounds, yes, for their crest monsters, which they called their creations. I did not realize what they ate. They promised there would be minimal damages, so long as they stayed on my private lands and not in villages and towns. I could not have done anything, even if I tried– what they had on me could have ended our family's power and prestige forever. Why did I keep you inside, you wonder! Because I knew what was in those woods then. The incident with the merchants and Godfrey von Riegan, was their doing– I arranged it at their request, but I thought the package they referred to obtaining would be a crest relic. I knew of their interest in crests. Von Aegir was very insistent that I obtain the remains of crest-bearing house members– and my father had a major crest. I never suspected Godfrey would die, for as much as I had spoken of weakening Riegan military power."

"You didn't kill him." Lorenz stared down at the tea. He could feel his anger beginning to boil over.

"I may as well have." He shrugged casually. "It was my fault. I permitted it and sent him to his death. When they revealed that you had successfully survived the crest transfusion, and that you now had a major crest of Riegan, just as Godfrey's, when he had only died months prior– you can imagine my horror."

"Then why did you– why were you so hard, so unkind, so ambivalent, even as I was suffering?"

"Gloucester men don't fall apart." His father gazed at him over the rim of the teacup, his reading glasses reflecting the light. "You'll understand it one day."

"I hope I never become like you. I pity you." He shook his head. "You took apart everything around you and cannot even find it in yourself, Father, to show remorse or sorrow. Not even to mourn the people you have so discarded. And you want me to– to carry on as you have." Yet now he realized for all his contempt, he did not even feel sorrow. Not like he had been when he had torn the portrait. "The painting. Is it still–"

"I moved it to the attic storage." He sighed. "Is your mother well?"

"That question is a trap."

"Regardless of the terms on which she and I parted–"

"Terms that were your fault–"

"And I have never forgiven myself, do not forget it. I loved your mother, in spite of all things." He shot Lorenz an icy look. "I hope she is happy in Dagda. Kizilkol is a beautiful city. I would return one day, if ever I had the opportunity."

"You made a terrible mistake." Lorenz sipped his tea. "Perhaps if you had surrendered when you had the opportunity, perhaps if you had given Ordelia to the Empire–"

"You would still have your mother and we would still be a happy family and Godfrey von Riegan would be the Duke?" Matthias sneered. "You still believe in the fairy tales your mother filled your head with, and that child who makes promises he cannot keep."

"And you are still a sad, pathetic, coward saving his own skin." But Lorenz would have done anything for Lysithea. She was bossy and overbearing, pushy and a know-it-all, but if Lysithea was in the position her mother had been in– would he not have tried to save her even a little bit of grief? Would he not have spared her five years? "I wish you believed in something. You are spineless. Nothing but a puppet."

"Whatever opinion you hold of me, I've earned, double." He stood up and left the tea. "I thought I should explain myself when my mind was clearer."

Lorenz watched him leave.

He had spent long years blaming his father for everything. He hated him. This last year had only cemented the contempt he felt, the overwhelming pity he felt for him. His father was not some strong-fisted disciplinarian who ruled Gloucester with ease. He was slipping, and had been slipping for some time, desperately trying to make Lorenz into the leader he couldn't be. Without his wife there, he had no true grasp of the intricacies of rule, and was all show, no substance. And Lorenz did hate him. He hated him for hurting him, yes, but more than that, he hated him for never showing weakness, never seeking help, never letting the facade slip, never thinking beyond his own selfish pride. It was sad, he thought, that his father had felt that his only choice with the Ordelias, was to give in. It was sad that he had never learned to be anything but a Gloucester man.

Lorenz finished the tea, in any case.

The evening was coming quickly, and he wished he had the foresight to bring medicines with him when he had left that morning. Then again, he had not assumed he would be out all day. He had planned on a nice afternoon with his mother, then dinner out with the Daphnels. Now his appetite was ruined. He was in some pain, and the thought of walking the whole way made him feel ill. Stress, he bemoaned, but the whole week had been unpleasant for him. Pain and discomfort were elusive when he spent time with others, but alone with just himself, the aching and fatigue was his only companion. He spent a few hours writing, in that very seat at the outdoor table. He did not want to return back to the Daphnels. He wasn't sure who to trust anymore. The most difficult part of it all, for him, was that he knew most of them, if not everyone– had good intentions towards him, with what they knew, and how they knew it. He ended up writing a long, long form poem on birds, a meditation on flight and freedom. And he scrapped it nearly the moment it was finished. Poetry, he grumbled, was never quite as good as he wished it would be. He did not starve for florid description or rhythm or feeling, but it lacked something, and he could never place it. Perhaps it was a more complex problem than just editing could fix. He shut his journal, glancing up at the sunset. It was a beautiful, vibrant red and violet and gold, glowing like a thousand lanterns. He could smell cooking fires and hearths and the clean laundry being brought in and the salts of the fisherman's evening wares. And all alone, Lorenz watched it go down, in a city that was now the vase where the bouquet of his whole life, and his many friends and family, were blooming.

He sighed and considered paying the few silver for a carriage back, before finally deciding a leisurely pace of walking would be alright. He strolled past lit streets of comfortable working class homes, past streets and streets of apartments, past businesses and wharfs and the wealthy side of town, and back to the townhomes of the wealthiest of Leicester's nobility.

He quietly slipped into the back of the Daphnel townhouse, pausing to hang his coat, before he realized that someone was talking in the parlor.

He heard his mother's voice first. It was soft, sing-song, not without dry humor as she observed whatever it was she was saying. He couldn't catch most of it. "He's more like you than he is like me," she said with a sigh.

And then there was his father's voice. Here. Oh, Goddess above, if she existed, spare him this.

"I suppose that is to be his problem for the rest of his life."

"Did you really think he'd be free of that? You wanted a Gloucester man, my love." There was silence for a few minutes.

My love?

"I wish you had said farewell, so that I could at least apologize." He heard his father's voice strain, tense.

"I knew you were sorry. But that wouldn't have changed my choice, Matty."

Lorenz crept closer to the door, feeling more like a child with each second, eavesdropping on his parents.

"Tifara, you would always be welcome-"

"I wouldn't, though. Not in your heart. Not in your home. Not in Fodlan. Nothing would be as it once was. I don't want to go back to those days..."

"What if I returned to Dagda with you? I always wanted to. To live with your family, to see somewhere free, free in a way Fodlan never will be."

"I am not your escape to take when you have exhausted this country. I cannot offer you that." A few moments of silence between them. "Matthias, I love you but I can't forgive you."

Lorenz ducked to peek into the keyhole. His mother and father, in an embrace, his father's glasses gleaming in the hearthlight while his mother's dark hair shone, pressed close to him, like they once had been, long, long ago. Tears stung his eyes, and he was not sure why. It felt invasive to stay, though he could still hear their muffled voices as he left. He walked up the stairs to his own room, where his few things were kept– perhaps one day he'd return to Gloucester to clear out what belonged to him. He regretted outright calling his father a murderer at least, now, but everything else remained true. He lit the lamp on his night table with a match struck, and headed downstairs to make a cold dinner and some tea, abandoning his jacket on the bed and splashing his face in the water closet's sink to hide the redness in his eyes.

A slice of crusty bread or two. Some hard cheese. Whatever fruit Jonquil had laying about– some pears and plums, so he grabbed the plums. A few dried cold cuts of spiced meat. Some cucumbers he sliced in the hopes of perhaps a tea sandwich, but ended up eating raw. It was a regular night-time pantry raid. And as he sliced the very ends of the cucumber, he heard the door open to the back parlor.

His father slipped out the back door, barely even looking up as he grabbed his coat, and his mother, in her long day dress, leaned against the frame of the parlor door. Her eyes glistened with both anger and anguish, whose depths he had not seen so far into in many years. Her dark hair and white gown made her look like a spectre, and he had never seen her so in all his years with her. His mother, always gentle and even tempered and overly careful, now brimming with some darkness he had not known she had as she watched the door close behind her ex-husband. At last, hot, angry tears began streaming down her face in silence.

"Mama," he said softly, walking to her side, and she held up her hand, keeping him at a distance.

"No, my son." She shook her head. "Some things are to stay between your father and I. Go eat something," she urged him, all of the fire he had seen in her seeping away as she was once more, his mom, and not the dread phantom.

"Why was he here?" asked Lorenz, picking up a slice of cucumber and biting the edge.

"To speak to me," she said, taking one of the cucumber slices as well. "What a fine mess we have, Lorenz." She picked with her nail at the dark skin of the cucumber, peeling back the emerald green from the flesh. "Do you remember the summer that your father and I took you sailing for the first time? We were out on this dinghy that your aunt's husband had once used as a kid, and he let me borrow it when we were in Derdriu, and your father told me he would never, ever go out on the water with me, he got too seasick, but I wanted to bring you. And I needed someone to hold onto you and make sure you didn't fall in, since you were so little, and he– he came. And I never saw him greener, but– when the sun was starting to go down on our last day there, I turned around and saw him, holding you up to the sun as if you could reach out across the horizon and touch it."

"I remember when Father fell into the sea," said Lorenz with a little smile. "Because you turned the boat around and went in circles, and you were screaming for him. He lost his glasses."

"Well, yes," she said with a little smile. "Yes, I remember that too. You were very little, I'm surprised you remember."

"My recollections of my childhood sometimes come in great clarity, but it seems that some of it is forever gone." He winced a little. "Though, I have both of you to remember it in my stead."

"I'm sorry." She sighed. "Lorenz, I can't stay with you. I can't stay here."

"I understand."

"That is what is the worst part." She reached up and languidly pushed pearl white hair behind his ear, ever the doting mother. "I wish you didn't understand. I wish that I had been there, so that you might not have grown to feel that you understood why I would leave." She sighed. "But you did."

"Mama," he said, calmly– "what did he say?"

"He's like you." She straightened his shirt, careful, and turned to start brewing tea. "Your father seems to think that if he is sorry enough, if he rights everything, that I will come back, and we will have the world we once did. If he takes the Riegan seat, if he reclaims the Alliance, if he makes the right allegiances. Many ifs." She sighed. "The truth is, for all his wrongs and for all that there is that he ruined, and all that he could right, it would not change that I love him, and that is why I cannot come back. I cannot watch the man destroy himself and bring you with him."

Lorenz sat in silence and took a bite of the buttered bread he had assembled, watching as she puttered through cabinets as if some secret blend of tea she desperately sought was hidden somewhere. "I want to go home," she sighed under her breath before he saw tears welling again in her eyes.

"I never should have brought you here," said Lorenz softly. "I never should have asked you to come visit. It was a mistake."

"No." She turned, a tempest of a woman. "Don't you ever say that. Every moment I have spent with you, I have thanked every god I can name for." She gave him a hug. "I never thought I would see you again."

"Neither did I." He sighed. She was starting to seem to him more human, more fallible than the beautiful, graceful woman he had held on a pedestal, wishing tearfully for her to come home every night to rescue him from his hard unfeeling father. His mother, doting and cagey and fastidious and airy, shoving aside her personal feelings for what she believed was right, and– and leaving him, here, alone. He didn't want her to go. But if she stayed, he had to wonder if he would tire of her and the way she treated him like a child. Doubt was creeping in.

Why couldn't he have a functional, normal family? Would it have been so much to ask for?

"I love you," he said quietly. "I'll eat in the parlor. We can reminisce. I feel rather wistful tonight." He smiled, a tired one.

"I think that would be nice." She sighed and grabbed a glass, pouring instead of tea, sparkling white wine. "For you?"

"Thank you," said Lorenz, and the proceedings were moved to the parlor. "We ought to keep the volume down, I'm sure Jonquil and Judith will be disturbed by us–"

"They're still out on the town," said Theo with a little laugh. "They won't be back until the morning, I imagine, you know how both of them are."

"I don't," said Lorenz, who had made himself a sandwich with cucumber.

"Oh, when they were young, they were so fiery!" She laughed. "Jonquil and Judith got married the same spring as your father and I, but a month before, because Judith wouldn't be outdone. And Jonquil was being herself about it, just as carefree as they come, but Judith wanted everything perfect. And your father and I had already planned our wedding long before the two of them were even engaged– so she had to have it perfect. You know the jonquil is a flower?"

"Mhm," said Lorenz, who saw where this was going.

"Carpets of them. The whole entire cathedral drowned in them. The place was perfumed for months." She giggled. "Your father told me that the two of them had been chasing one another since they were girls, and Judith had to make it perfect."

"What about your wedding?" Lorenz smiled. "I know about the roses–"

"So many roses," she said with a sigh. "They're a lovely flower, they are, but they were everywhere. Roses on everything! And they were always your father's favorite–"

"He likes roses?" Lorenz raised his brow. "I never knew. The gardens began to fade after you left."

"Hm." She looked mournful, swirling the wine in her glass. "We had our reception in that garden. I still remember my mother and Matthias dancing arm in arm. And after it was over, she came and told me she was glad I was marrying him, because he needed a woman with sense." She snorted a little. "One day you need to meet your family."

"One day," he agreed. "What are they like?"

"Well," she said with a softness in her eyes, "your grandmother to start. When I was a girl she was more involved in direct combat, you know. She wore this great studded leather armor and carried a spear and she had a helmet shaped like a serpent, and once, when I was very little, she walked into a temple dressed that way, covered half in blood, and knelt to pray." She softened. "She prayed for swift mercy to come to our enemies. That is a woman with a sense of humor."

"Dagda lost the war on Adrestia," Lorenz said quietly.

"Yes," said Theo. "What a blow to her that was. I still think she retired because her pride never recovered. But in the end she did make the noble decision. A true invasion of mainland Dagda would have been– well, disastrous is a word that does not sufficiently summarize what a catastrophe it would have been." She sighed. "Watching my mother go through that year while grieving you– it was hell."

"I remember very little from that year," admitted Lorenz, "but I do remember the talk about Dagda everywhere, and I remember thinking how afraid I was for you."

"I would have been safe," she said softly. "But I worried for your father and you. The Empire already had its eyes set on the two of you, so I imagined they'd lash at you both for associating with me."

Lorenz didn't realize this was something he had to think about. He had never thought of himself as Dagdan. He did not speak the language, had never seen its shores, had always been kept at arms' length from his mother's culture. It was as foreign to him as a fairy tale. "I wonder if I must one day consider that as a leader."

"You wouldn't be the only one." She shrugged. "Von Vestra's family has some Dagdan relations, and Von Varley's sister married one of the Dagdan princes and lives there even now. The Empire's history as our enemies goes back almost as far as our marriages," she said, "but that's the Dagdan way about things, I think. Love and war, mingling together. If we are not angry, how are we to know we love one another?"

"But you came to Fodlan instead."

"I–" Theo paused. "I hate Fodlan, and love it, in equal measure. How to explain something so splendid and indescribable and ancient, brimming with strange powers that I had never seen– yet so cruel?" She relaxed a little and took another sip of wine. "I had barely even begun realizing the way your father had to live to run a county. Crests and beasts and rival nobility and even land borders seemed like strange fantasies to me, then, and eventually just like more responsibility. Dagda is whole, unified– and has been for many years. Families have squabbles, and even dark corners, but they remain within the family. But yes, there were a number of people who disliked or distrusted me because I was Dagdan, even of the few who knew because of my previous connections. It wasn't public knowledge, but enough officials had an inkling about the second daughter of the Serpent of Kizilkol– that it was something your father couldn't continue to lie about. And I look Dagdan, aside." She pushed her hair up. "I'm sure you've faced some of that– well, perhaps the white hair hides it–"

"I hadn't left the estate often after you left, and the war began that very summer."

She nodded slowly, thoughtfully. "Your father resented making business connections with people like that, on my behalf, but did it anyway. It was humiliating, but I did understand. It's part of the reason I won't return. I imagine he sheltered you from that and covered that as best as he could." She glanced at him and suddenly he could see the features she possessed, that he saw in himself– a narrowness of the jaw (though his was sharper by far), a set of the mouth, the long elegance of his nose. He was her son, and it was like a miracle being revealed to him.

"More or less," said Lorenz dismissively. "If you call hiding it entirely and never speaking of it, protection, yes."

She shook her head and sighed. "My father warned me about this. You would love him. A gentle, sensitive man. Always thoughtful, always so considerate." She softened. "He always had a real soft spot for me. I wasn't ambitious like my sisters. I stayed in the study with him and read, and my sisters were always following our mother around trying to be the next version of her. They were wonderful to grow up around." She sighed and leaned back onto her palm. "He told me about crests."

"What do you know of them?" asked Lorenz, doubtful.

"That they are what makes Fodlan so– well, untenable, I suppose. When we speak of invasion, we do not speak of cunning military strategists or Imperial power. Dagda is more unified and technologically advanced. We speak of people with demonic powers." She hesitated. "Of course, educated people know that Fodlaners believe that crests are holy, that their bearers are not necessarily– demonic, you know." She was antsy, crossing her arms. "They're a facet of Fodlaner religion, and giving it half a thought would suggest that crests are likely a genetic attribute carried the same way magical proficiency is, that has primarily manifested in Fodlan's nobility, and religious beliefs springing up around it are more explanatory, than they are scientific. I know for certain," she said carefully, "that even if you have two crests, a demonic pact had nothing to do with it. Because I was there when you were a small little thing, and you had magic shine in your hand for the first time."

"Mother, crests are gifts from the Goddess," said Lorenz hesitantly.

"Some gift." She scoffed. "And some goddess, Lorenz. Mind it, my dear. Something is wrong with everything they say about crests. And I think Dagdans are closer to the truth than you Fodlaners. Does a fish know that they're wet?"

Lorenz paused. "I too have my doubts. Though, mother, please be careful saying such things."

"I know." She picked up the empty glasses and carried them to the kitchen. "Get some sleep. I know I need it."