The second full day of working that security job was just as dull as the first, because the meeting that had been planned didn't go through and the whole group of guards was left finding their own entertainment for the second day in a row. Claude ended up spending his time at the pool at his hotel, knowing that his male friends were doing the same at theirs, but he hadn't wanted to fuss with travel to get to chill with them. That worked out in his favor, as at some point in his sunbathing experience a good majority of the others staying there at the hotel came out as well, the pool deck closed to the public so that the king and queen could get a little time out in the water.

It was while they were sitting in the shallow end that Annette dragged a deck chair next to Claude's and sat in it, tipping her sunhat in his direction. "Boy do I have a story to tell you," she said, just loud enough for Claude to hear it over the sound of everyone else chatting and the water lapping the edges of the pool. "It's one I could tell you now, too, if you wanted to hear it."

"I'm all ears," he replied, not too surprised that Annette was reaching out to talk to him, but if she was willing to say it in the presence of others then it was most likely not something he was overly interested in. Still, though, to give her the impression that he did care immensely about what she had to say, he flipped himself over in his chair so that he was both sunning his back and able to look at her with his head tilted comfortably.

"That's definitely what I hoped you'd say," she giggled, before reclining in her seat a bit. "Okay, so, Mercie called me this morning to tell me all about this, so this is really her story and not mine but she's not here, obviously, so I'm gonna be the one to tell you all about it."

Raising an eyebrow to wordlessly showcase his suspicions without having to say them, Claude immediately wanted to ignore anything that he was about to be told, but there was just a certain charm to Annette and how she was so open about things that he couldn't deny listening to her. "Go ahead and tell me, I'm anticipating it'll be a great story." Something about him twisting her words like that made her puff up a bit, and she grinned at him, shooting him with some finger guns.

The story that she had to share was not the most interesting thing Claude had heard in his lifetime, or really even within the past week, but he feigned as much enthusiasm as Annette told him it as he could, just to keep her content. Her story was clearly slapped together with bits and pieces of someone else's information that had been fed to her in brief messages, but there was something slightly endearing about how she seemed so worried about her friend's safety that she was dumping all of this information on him. The big takeaway was that there was something making a noise that had kept Mercedes awake all night, and she was pretty sure it was a person and not some object she wouldn't be able to confront about it. He didn't think too much of what he was hearing, because his everyday job was hearing about people's problems and protecting them when needed from them, and so when Annette asked if he would be willing to help her solve things, he accepted the request without any sort of second thought on the matter.

It wasn't until after Annette had left to go spend time in the water with the king and queen that it struck Claude that Mercedes was staying at a hotel with two other security guards. He had half a mind to jump into the pool and confront her about it, but he thought twice about it when he considered the impression that would make on the royal couple. The last thing he needed right then was to be looked down on even more by the people that were paying him, so he decided that he would deal with Annette's problem that was really Mercedes' problem at a later point and enjoy his time on the pool deck.

There was just one problem with his plan to do that, and that was that when Annette left, he didn't see her go. One moment, she was still splashing around in the pool and chatting with Byleth about something, and the next she was gone, having headed inside when Claude clearly wasn't looking. He jumped up from his chair to look around at a higher vantage point, seeing that, while the royal couple had moved from the water to chairs on the opposing side of the pool, the only one of their guards in sight was Sylvain, who was a few seats away from his king. Grabbing the sides of his head and lacing his fingers through his hair as he looked around, Claude did the only thing that came to mind and grabbed his things to run inside the hotel, going up to his room to change into proper clothes before trying to find where else Annette could have gone.

Thankfully, he didn't have to search too hard for any sign of her, as when he got to his room there was a note attached just under the peephole, written in a playful handwriting that he initially took as Hilda's until he saw the signature on it being Annette's name. I'm so sorry I left without saying anything else! she wrote, following the words with a drawn frowning face. I got too warm and needed to go back to my room to cool down—it's a problem a lot of us redheads have. I want you to meet me at the shuttle pick-up at 8:30 tonight, so that we can ride over to Mercie's room and check in with her. I've already told her that you're going to help solve the problem and she is so thankful, I bet she'll be thanking you all night for helping her with this!

"Wait, all night?" he said, reading that part and doing a double-take with it. "I know I didn't agree to being helpful all night, but if that's what I'm going to be doing…guess I should go get a nap in now while I can."

It was a solid plan, but one that was ultimately unsuccessful as Claude wasn't able to fall asleep no matter how much he tried forcing himself to do so. Instead, he called Lorenz and the other guys to see what they were doing, figuring that if they weren't up to much, they could come by and hang out with him until dinnertime, at the very least. He got no response from Lorenz except a voicemail box, and Ignatz didn't even have that much going for trying to call him, which meant that Claude had to put all of his hope into getting through to Raphael on the first try. No such luck, as Raphael's phone went immediately to its voicemail, complete with his bumbling message about how they should leave a number so he can call them back.

"Guess I'm going to see if the ladies are available instead," he decided, tucking his phone into his pocket and making sure he was looking presentable for whenever he encountered someone outside of the room. The hallway was empty when he got out into it, but before checking anywhere else, he went to the rooms of his fellow guards to see if either of them were in. Leonie didn't answer her door after a couple knocks, but when he got to Lysithea's room, she was there very quickly to answer him.

"Can you please go away?" she immediately said, her door open just a crack so that her voice could be audibly heard through it. "I've got someone over and I'd rather them not have to deal with you."

Trying to see over her tiny head into her room, Claude was sickly curious about who Lysithea had invited in there with her, but he couldn't see far enough in to know anything about the person. "Fair enough, you have fun with whatever—or whoever—you're doing, and I'll be right on my way."

"Claude! Stop being inappropriate!" With that, Lysithea slammed her door closed, and he chuckled to himself as he headed toward the elevator, but someone else calling out his name stopped him dead in his tracks. Somewhere in that small exchange, Leonie had come out of her room and was looking down the hall at him, confused about what was happening.

She raised a finger, almost like she was going to say something to voice her confusion before shaking it off entirely. "I don't think I want to know what you just did to Lysithea, but were you the one looking for me? Heard a knock that I couldn't catch before it was over."

"Sure was me, don't know who else it could have been," he replied, gesturing to the empty hallway around them. "I was checking if you were in, seeing what you were planning on doing today, that sort of thing. Don't really know what to do for myself right about now."

"Well, I was thinking about hitting the pool later to relax, since who knows how much more time we'll have like this around here, but if that doesn't happen then I'm going to dinner with the other guys." She smiled, clearly hopeful that what she had to offer was of some use to Claude, but he was not finding any sort of relief or respite in her words. "Come on, don't you want to go out swimming, or even just to dinner?"

He thought about lying to save his skin in regards to what he'd agreed to do, but Leonie was pretty good at rooting out the truth from him when he made those broad-stroke lies. "I've already been out to the pool, and I'll have to pass on dinner. Have plans with one of the gals from Faerghus later, you'll never guess which one."

Pursing her lips together as she tried to figure out who he was referring to, Leonie accepted defeat by outright asking for him to just tell her who. When he said that it was Annette, she nodded slowly. "That's the one staying here, right? You sly dog, you're going to get in with her after knowing her for, like, two days. That's pretty impressive."

"That's not what's going on at all, consider her a…gateway to doing a ghost hunt or something stupid like that." Claude was eager to shut down Leonie's mistaken interpretation of what was happening, but he did find it humorous that she'd taken it that way. "She's the middle man between me and her friend staying at the other hotel who needs this ghost to be hunted for her."

"You don't really think there's a ghost involved, do you?" Leonie asked him, after thinking through the scenario. "That'd be the cherry on top of this trip, finding out that ghosts are real and really haunting someone."

"It's not actually a ghost hunt, jeez. Way to take it literally. If it was a real ghost hunt, then I would've turned Annette down because there are two others staying at that hotel, someone else could do this if we're hunting spooks." Claude stared off into the distance past Leonie for a moment, all of the possibilities of what he was actually going to be chasing for the ladies running through his mind. He shook off all of the speculation and continued speaking, referring only to what he'd been told. "There's something making noise over at their hotel that kept Mercedes awake all night, and I've been called in to put a stop to it, that's all."

Once again, Leonie pushed her lips together to process what she had been told, before bursting out into laughter that would have easily disturbed anyone in their rooms if there was anyone to disturb at that moment. "Then why doesn't she have one of the two also staying there try and solve things for her? This sounds like you're being tricked into doing something you didn't sign up for."

"Yeah, I've realized that myself, a bit too late to do anything about it but that's just how it goes." For all intents and purposes, Claude was stuck having to at least meet with Annette that night, and somehow he knew, deep down inside his heart, that he would be seeing this whole thing through to the end.

But Leonie was getting to have her laugh about it, and as long as she was finding enjoyment in things then he wasn't going to be too bitter. "Well, since you've given your night up to some not-so-literal ghost hunt, want to go down to the lobby with me and see if the others are here yet, or see if I can go to the pool without worrying about them already being here?"

"I don't see anything wrong with that." That was how Claude ended up out on the pool deck a second time, this time as the one waiting for the phone call to come through from someone angrily looking for Leonie, while she splashed around in a now-empty swimming pool, having the time of her life keeping cool in the strangely warm Enbarr sun. The call she was anticipating did come through while her phone was in Claude's hands, and while he told her to get out of the water because she was being summoned, he answered the call and surprised the person on the other end by being the one to speak, not Leonie.

Except, as he found out, the call was on speaker so the whole group that had gathered waiting for her had heard his greeting, which had been a very forced gruff voice chiding Lorenz (the caller) for not answering his own call earlier. "My apologies, but we were not anywhere near our phones and I could not possibly have taken your call when you'd placed it," he replied, very clearly trying to keep his composure despite the surprise of who'd answered. "Whatever you needed me for, you clearly have no need for it now, correct?"
Seeing as Claude had found some way to spend his time that didn't involve any of the guys, he was inclined to agree, but he wasn't going to let Lorenz know that. "Oh, no, I could've still used you answering me up until, say, right when you'd called Leonie. I've been bored out of my mind being stuck here with her."

"Hey, I heard that!"

"Sounds like you've offended her as well," Lorenz quipped, which Claude grimaced at. "Have her meet us in the board room when she's finished with whatever the two of you were up to, we have dinner plans in an hour that require a bit of preparation before we can arrive, per the person who'd made the reservation."

Abruptly ending the call when he saw Leonie coming toward him, Claude relayed the message in case she hadn't heard it, and she rolled her eyes when she heard the word "preparation" being thrown around. "I signed up for a free dinner with friends, not something I have to actually work to go to. You think Lorenz'll let me dip out of the whole arrangement now?"

"Seeing as there's a reservation involved? Doubt it. Sorry, Leonie, but you're screwed." He handed her back her phone and watched as she contemplated throwing it down on the ground to break it, choosing to instead tuck it in the pile of clothes she'd brought with her to the pool. Without so much as a goodbye or a thank you, she headed back to the building, and Claude watched her go, sighing once he was completely, totally alone there on the deck. Somehow this day was only getting worse, and he knew that once he was at the other hotel with Annette things wouldn't be getting any better.

Swallowing his pride on that was bitter, but he'd agreed to help her out and there was no turning back from that. All he had to do was find a way to kill time until they were supposed to meet, and from there he wasn't going to be in control of anything that happened until he was back at his hotel, in his room, in the job he'd agreed to take on initially. But, knowing that the fancy dinner crew was in the board room, he wasn't sure what he was supposed to have for dinner himself, since that was where they'd been providing food for the security crew now and again.

What Claude ended up doing was making sure he had everything he'd need for the night on his person before heading out into Enbarr on his own yet again, going down streets he'd previously explored the day before to find some place to eat by himself. The choices were plenty, yet he ended up at a location of a restaurant chain they had back in Derdriu as well, figuring that if it was good food back home, the quality would be the same there. A big mistake, as the food felt stripped of all flavor and spice when he ate it, but it had just enough of the nostalgia going for it that he was able to leave the meal satisfied, although it did make him realize that all of his friends were going to be in for a big surprise with their dinner's quality when it was served to them.

Finally, after feeling like the day dragged on for far longer than it should have, the arranged meeting time of 8:30 fell upon the darkened city, and Claude was waiting at the shuttle pick-up for Annette to arrive. She wasn't there right away, nor was she there five minutes later. The shuttle driver actually left and returned in the time Claude was waiting there, getting in one of his last runs for the night before the city-wide curfew would put a stop to his work. Nearly fifteen minutes late, Annette showed up, acting like nothing was amiss, and she directed Claude right onto the shuttle, telling the driver to go without waiting for anyone else so they could arrive with plenty of time to spare.

That was a red flag in his mind, but Claude didn't think too much of it. However, after half of the ride with silence between them, he knew it was time to break down a wall. "Remind me again why I'm helping you with this," he prompted, unable to keep the question to himself any longer, while Annette sat in the seat next to him humming a tune quietly to herself. "I mean, I don't have a problem being helpful where I can be, but this just screams 'not my job' or even 'not my problem'. Can't Mercedes solve this issue on her own?"

"She could, but she doesn't want there to be any sort of confrontation between her and whoever is making all the noise at night, and she was told by the front desk there isn't anything they can do, so you could accompany her and hopefully do the work in her place so she keeps her hands clean." Annette's words were carefully-stated and Claude could see that it meant something huge if he was being entrusted with a task of that size, especially when members of their own team were already staying at the same hotel as Mercedes. "I told her that you are a great guy and easy to get along with, so my thinking is that you'll be perfect for solving her problem."

"You know what? That sounds just strange enough that it'll work. Why else did I get pulled out to Enbarr to work security for a royal meeting, except to be guarding one of the queen's assistants with her ghostly noise problem? It sounds like the perfect job for me, thanks for roping me right into it, Annette." He sounded sarcastic, which Claude admittedly was trying to be just a little, but he did really find a bit of joy in being the one Annette went to when it came to helping a friend out. So much so, in fact, that he decided he'd even leave out asking why the other two couldn't be of any use in the matter.

Of course, all of that joy was for naught when they got out of the shuttle van and were standing in front of the wrong hotel. He raised an eyebrow at Annette, not having noticed that they hadn't been going to the right place, but she escorted him right inside. "Mercie said she was going to meet us here, don't worry," she assured him, and he chose to accept that as the truth for just long enough to get inside the hotel lobby; once inside and he could see that Mercedes was not there, he was already beginning to doubt Annette's honesty.

"Annette? What are you doing here?" It was a voice that made Claude immediately perk up, whether he wanted to or not, and both he and Annette turned to see Ingrid, holding a bag over her shoulder, walking toward them but looking only at her orange-haired companion. "Isn't it getting late? Like, close to curfew late? Shouldn't you be back at the hotel, not freshly coming into a different place like this?"

"I, uh, you're totally right!" Laughing, Annette grabbed her cheeks and looked between the two, that being the first time that they looked at each other as well. "I'm so sorry, but Claude, you have to catch Ingrid up on what's going on before you ride over with her, I totally forgot Mercie told me about this change earlier! Bye now!" Without any further explanation, she bounced off, heading as quickly as she could to the shuttle drop-off point.

Ingrid, looking at Claude with a bit of disgust in her eyes, shook her head. "Typical Annette, always forgetting to update everyone on the newest plans. And for her to bring you, of all people, into the mix? What a surprise."

"So you're aware of the noise problem Mercedes had last night that she needs my help with?" Claude asked, coming to terms with the fact that he had clearly been deceived by someone he'd thought he could trust from the other team. "Or are you just talking negative to try and make me turn tail and run as well?"

"Noise problem?" Ingrid repeated, as if it was the first time she'd heard those words. "Mercie told me she'd slept like a baby last night and had no problems at all. If Annette's telling you otherwise, she's got some sort of ulterior motive she's working with and she's tricked you into something, for some reason."

Taking a moment to let that sink in, Claude hung his head and snapped his fingers, a sense of distrust washing over his mind. "Figures, first time I think I've made a friend with you Faerghus folk and she tricks me for some reason. What'd I even do to deserve this?"

"I don't know, but it's still getting late so we should probably get going. Don't want to get stuck here because of the curfew." Those were famous last words on Ingrid's part, as by the time they'd gotten to the doors to head out to the shuttle stop, they were firmly locked with an armed guard blocking the way. No matter how much they asked him to step aside and let them go, the answer remained the same: it was nine o'clock, and they were not getting out of that hotel until morning, so it would be in their best interest to find a room and sleep there for the night.

Never once in all of their asking did either of them try to throw the other under the bus for being stuck where they were, as they both knew that Annette was the one to blame for it, with her very obviously fake reason for getting Claude to go there, and as Ingrid explained later, she'd been the one to suggest that she check out the free fitness area that hotel had to offer. "Their website even says it's open to the public, so I didn't have to pull any strings to get inside, and I'd say it was worth the trip over here." A pause, while Ingrid looked at Claude with a bit less animosity than she'd had before. "Maybe not worth getting stuck here, though. I don't have the money to afford staying at a place like this, I'm definitely not finding a room to sleep in tonight."

"Why does the curfew have to be so strict, that's what I want to know," Claude said after meeting Ingrid's gaze and trying to lift her spirits with an eyebrow waggle that she immediately looked away from. "I doubt it was even this restrictive when the war was actively going on outside, they must really think people out in the streets at night is going to cause riots or something."

"I've heard it's because they don't want people gathering in the dark outside the hotels and demanding for the king to come outside, but that just seems silly to me. There's no way that people hold that much hostility toward a man they've never met." Looking around the lobby, Ingrid found a bench that seemed padded and unused and she started walking toward it, her mind already dead-set on needing to sleep there overnight, but after hesitating for a moment on what to do Claude followed her and stopped her forward progress by grabbing her shoulder and turning her around to face him. "Uh, excuse me, why are you touching me? I don't want someone else to steal my bed for the night."

"You're not sleeping on a bench in a hotel lobby in a foreign country, that's just being ridiculous," Claude told her, not having fully thought out what he was going to do. He did have the money to afford a room there at the hotel they were stuck in, but that required there being rooms to rent and based on the long line at the check-in desk, he wasn't sure that was going to work in his favor. "Look, I know that we've gotten off on the wrong foot a time or two, but I can't help but feel like this is my fault—"

"It's not, but go on."

"—yes, well, I have a plan. It's going to be awkward for both of us, but it's a plan and I think it'll work. I just need to make one small phone call before we can act on it." At that point, he allowed for Ingrid to continue on her way to the bench, while he whipped out his phone from his pocket and punched in Lorenz's name, calling him and hoping that he'd get an answer. He didn't, but after leaving a voicemail message explaining what was going on, he was tucking his phone back away and rejoining Ingrid. "I've got us a room," he said, voice as confident as possible to really sell the situation. "It's not going to be freshly made when we get up into it, but if I'm thinking right then we'll have it all to ourselves tonight."

Slightly skeptical, Ingrid asked, "How, exactly, did you manage to get us a room with just a single phone call? You have a direct contact with the person who owns this hotel?"

"My call didn't even go through, he didn't pick up, but let's just say I know a guy who's going to be sleeping elsewhere tonight if he was still doing what he was doing last I saw him, so we're just going to crash in his room in his place." That was the honest truth, and Claude didn't feel the least bit of regret saying something like that to Ingrid, despite her clearly still not buying what he had to say.

"That's a fantastic idea!" she replied, raising her voice to show her feigned enthusiasm. "Except this is a hotel, where rooms are checked out to specific names, and unless you're going to tell me that you've got that hookup as well, we're not getting anywhere close to that person's room."

Reaching into his other pocket, Claude pulled out the three room keys belonging to his three men staying at that hotel, at least one of which he knew for certain wasn't going to be there that night. "Let's just say that being the boss has its perks from time to time."

"Are those legitimate room keys? You're not just bluffing?"

"Why don't we go up to the room to find out for ourselves?" There was still the daunting task of remembering the correct floor and picking which key went to the room assigned to Lorenz in specific, but this was much closer that Ingrid had thought they were going to get to a real room that night and Claude was ready to dazzle her with his position's perk. It took them nearly an hour to actually find the room in question, because of the busy elevators and the sameness of every floor the hotel had to offer, but when Claude was finally able to get the key into the correct door and have it open before them, he felt a sense of relief that was not going to fade away easily.

Of course, leave it to Lorenz to have made entering his room unannounced an awkward affair, as the moment Ingrid came inside and turned the light on, her eyes were drawn to something sticking out of his bag on the floor. "This is the room of one of your men, right?" she asked to clarify, and when Claude told her which man in specific, she continued with, "That's great, why does he have a piece of lingerie in here with his things?"

"Because Lorenz always wants to be prepared, in case he gets to bring a woman up here with him, I guess?" Claude answered, not actually sure for himself but thinking that had to be close to the truth. It definitely wasn't something he was going to be asking Lorenz in the future, no matter how interested he was to know the history behind the bright blue bralette sticking out of his bag. "Not like it matters, dude hasn't had a woman give him the time of day in probably a decade, if not longer."

Taking that answer in stride, Ingrid then looked around the rest of the room and blanched at what she saw. "There's only one bed in here," she pointed out, something that Claude had known but hadn't thought too much about. "And no sign of anywhere else to sleep. You're fine with taking the floor, aren't you?"

"Why does one of us need to take the floor?" he shot back in return. "I've shared beds with people many times, it's not as bad as you're probably making it out to be."

"Oh, yeah, because your bed-sharing experience has probably been the romantic kind and that's totally relevant here." Grumbling as she stared at Claude, waiting for his rebuttal, Ingrid sat down on the bed, pulling off its thick comforter around her. "I'm sorry, but I'm not like that. I've never shared a bed with anyone who isn't family before."

Claude couldn't help but snort in amusement with that statement. "Given how close you seem with those guys you keep hanging around? Something tells me you're just trying to save face, but I really don't care if you've boned 'em both before."

"I would never do that. With either of them. Ever."

There was a venom to her voice that stung with every word she spoke, Claude physically recoiling from her assertion that she was speaking the truth. "Then what gives with that? Dudes act like you're their princess in need of protection, I've seen them being more like attack dogs for you than the king they're here to actually protect."

Ingrid's hands froze in the middle of pulling the blankets off the bed, her eyes glassing over for a moment before she seemingly went right back to normal. "It's a complicated situation that I'm not getting into with you," she said, not quite as venomous as before but still much nastier than she'd been to start. "Sylvain, Felix, and I have a long history that needs to be respected by people like you."

"Right, because I'm going to respect a history I have no knowledge of without knowing that I need to be respecting it in the first place. Absolutely makes sense." He could tell that he'd struck a deep nerve within Ingrid, but he wasn't sure how he was meant to fix things. This wasn't like dealing with Hilda (or any of the other women in the company), because he hadn't been spending years perfecting his approach to their hurt feelings. This was dealing with someone different, someone unfamiliar, someone he'd never wanted to get on the bad side of but seemingly had done nothing but.

Ingrid stood up for a quick second, so that she could finish stripping the bed of its comforter, and once the thick blanket was on the floor, she sat back down and reached behind herself to grab a pillow, throwing it onto the floor as well. "There's where you're sleeping," she told Claude, gesturing to the collection she'd created on the ground with her foot, "and I'm taking the bed. You can probably find somewhere else to sleep if you want, but you're not sleeping with me."

He looked down at the blanket and pillow and forced a laugh. "Yeah, if you want me sleeping down there, you've clearly got the wrong impression of me. I'll just go crash in another room if that's the case, let Lorenz stumble in here in the morning to find a complete stranger in his bed. He might look like a prissy snob, but dude's got some claws on him if he needs to pull them out."

"I…didn't consider that as a possibility. The you sleeping in a different room thing, not your friend having the teeth to back up his attitude." Ingrid looked at Claude, expecting him to explain how he was going to do such a thing; just flashing her the entire collection of room keys gave her exactly what she needed to know. "Well, uh, I don't know how much I want to sleep in here alone, since this is someone else's room and all."

"Can't say I blame you, but I'm not sleeping on the floor." The logical way to solve things would be for Ingrid to sleep on the floor instead, but Claude felt he was too much of a gentleman to demand a woman to do such a thing. There was only one solution to the problem that he was going to accept, no matter how much of a struggle it was going to be for them both, and he made that clear by staring at her, waiting for her to come to the conclusion herself.

"I'm not sleeping, then," she defiantly replied, knowing what was expected of her but refusing to admit to it. "You can sleep all you'd like, but I'll just sit here and watch you."

"Creepy. But that's your choice. I'm not planning on sleeping for a while anyway, so while we wait for the inevitable to happen…shall we get to know each other a bit better? Without your friends and your history dragging you down?" Still being respectful, Claude sat down as far from Ingrid on the bed as he could, watching her squirm as she thought about how to proceed, but slowly, he was able to crack that shell and get her to start talking about herself.

What the rest of the night had in store for them, who knew, but they'd already found somewhere safe to stay in a bad situation, and that was more than expected.


Arriving back at the main hotel with an incurable case of the giggles, Annette was forcibly escorted inside the building by an armed guard who seemed shocked that anyone was still out as the curfew was falling on Enbarr. She didn't mind, though, as she'd pulled off what she thought was one of the best pranks in a long time, tricking some poor guy into thinking he was needed to help solve a problem but really sticking him with someone who'd been having a pretty bad time on the job so far. She considered calling Ingrid to apologize for not telling her what she was going to do ahead of time, but she figured there'd be time for those apologies in the future and right now, she could just leave her alone.

As she was lost in her thoughts, Annette wasn't fully paying attention to where she was walking, and she nearly slammed right into someone who was rushing toward the shuttle entrance, only being stopped by the person's outstretched arms. "Annie, what are you doing? You almost ran me right over!" Mercedes' cheerful voice said, snapping Annette right out of her thinking and bringing her into the real world. "Where were you?"

"The other hotel, I had something I needed to do," she replied, before blinking a couple times to make sure she was staring at the real Mercedes. Her closest friend and fellow confidant of the queen of Faerghus. Someone who was supposed to be back at her hotel and not there at the main one. "What are you doing here? Curfew's already in place."

"I was hoping that perhaps they'd make a bit of an exception for me to get back to my hotel, seeing as I'm only still here because dinner ran late and we barely made it back here before nine ourselves." Dropping her arms so that she was no longer holding Annette in place, Mercedes looked behind her at the clearly-guarded doors she'd been trying to make it to. "I'm going to guess that I won't be able to get that exception, hm?"

Annette shook her head, deflating her friend's spirits. "They totally manhandled me getting me inside since technically I was outside after curfew getting here, so yeah, they're not going to let you leave. I wonder what's even up with this whole curfew thing, it's so strict and the people seem to be used to it."

"Problems with living in a city that's still reeling from war impacts," Mercedes explained, gesturing for Annette to come near her, so that she could wrap her in a large hug. "I'm glad they didn't hurt you for being outside, though, I would be so distraught if my Annie was injured over something so avoidable."

"I'm more distraught over the fact that you can't get back to your room tonight," Annette said while in the middle of the tight, squeezing hug. "I feel bad even though it's not my fault you missed your ride. What are you going to do?"

Letting go so that they could link arms and walk through the lobby together, Mercedes seemed to have already been thinking about this possibility before it had become a reality. "I could sleep in your room, that would be easiest, but I know that Byleth was mentioning having extra space in their room so I suppose I could ask if they'd like a sleep-in guard this evening." Giving a hmmm as she thought about other options, she then added, "Or, if I really wanted to make someone's day, I could ask Sylvain if I could use his room."

"Oh, goddess no, you can share my bed with me!" It wasn't a move made out of selflessness, or even one out of desire, but rather a decision made so that Annette knew that her friend would be perfectly safe all night. "For whatever reason, we were given rooms with big beds in them up on our floor, so we can each get a side and not even worry about falling into each other, it'll be great!"

"I appreciate the offer and will gladly take you up on it, but Annie? Could we possibly make a stop on the other floor and get Sylvain's reaction anyway? Then, of course, I need to let Dimitri or Byleth know that I'm here tonight rather than at my assigned room, just in case they send someone to get me, however unlikely that may be." Pausing for a second, Mercedes looked at Annette, tilting her head slightly. "Say, you said you were at the other hotel, didn't you? Did you see Ingrid and Ashe there?"

This was a problem, as Mercedes was clearly interpreting what Annette had said as being the hotel where she and the other two were staying, not the hotel where the men from the other security group were. But she didn't need to clarify that, because she could answer with honesty and not be too terribly deceptive. "I saw Ingrid! No idea where Ashe was, last I heard he was supposed to be dining with some of the other guys."

"No, that's right, they headed out not long before we did, 'we' being myself, Dimitri, and Byleth, that is. It would have been a national disaster back home if we hadn't returned to the hotel in time, but the restaurant we dined at was terribly slow with their service, even if the food was delicious." Looking toward the front doors of the building, where the guards lined up holding their guns on both the inside and outside, Mercedes heaved a sigh. "I can only hope that he made it back safely, so that Ingrid isn't over there alone tonight. She has been having such a rough go of things since we arrived here in Enbarr, don't you think?"

"I totally agree with you, Mercie! She shouldn't have gotten her role changed on her like she did, but something about this whole trip is still so fishy so I don't think it was anything in Dimitri's power to not make things as they are. But, enough about that, didn't you say you wanted to stop by some places before going to my room?" How badly Annette hoped that her deception wouldn't be revealed by anyone, because the last thing she wanted was Mercedes being worried about what all she'd lied about.

The two ladies boarded the elevator and headed up to the lower of the floors being used by their group, the empty hallway greeting them when the doors opened. They could clearly hear voices down the hall, though, and as they got closer to the rooms they saw that it was because the door to the royal suite was left open, the couple inside having a conversation that wasn't meant to be private, apparently. "You mean that we're running light on guards across the building tonight?" Byleth could be heard asking, and the grunt given in return from Dimitri was the only response she got. "What happened to the safety of royalty being a priority? Why won't they let the guards come back?"

"The damned curfew that Edelgard instated just to terrorize us while we're here, that's why," Dimitri replied, before the sound of something crashing overtook anything he followed that up with. That was the cue for the two ladies to run into the room, finding their king standing over a now-broken table while his wife looked on with a blank expression. They gasped simultaneously, garnering his attention as he stepped over the remains of the table to approach them. "Hello again, Mercedes, and hello for the first time today, Annette. What brings the two of you by? Checking in on us?"

Mercedes bowed her head, letting Annette know she'd be the one to do the explaining. "I wanted to tell you that I would be staying at this hotel tonight, because I figured it would be a detriment to the safety of us all, but given what we heard—"

"What did you hear, exactly? Is it something we need to know?" Byleth interrupted, a liveliness to her voice that was normally absent. "Or are you planning on not telling us that part of this?"

"—oh, what we heard is what you said, about the guards not being let back! I figure that it would be for the best if I was here after all." Putting a smile on her face to show that she was being genuine, Mercedes let her words linger as the queen relaxed and accepted it for what it was, while Dimitri let out a long sigh, shaking his head as he did.

"While it's wonderful that you will be here tonight, the fact of the matter is that we're running with a fraction of the guard staff we are supposed to have here, and that's not even counting the lack of staff at the other properties and the fact that we have several people unaccounted for." He pinched the bridge of his nose, fingers brushing against his eyepatch as he did. "If Dedue was here, none of this would have happened. None of this would have been allowed to happen."

Knowing that prying too far could be a blow to the cover of her lie, Annette had to tread carefully in trying to get information out of others in that moment. "Who's all unable to get back here?" she asked quietly, trying to mask her nerves on bringing it up. "I wasn't aware that people were still out."

"The entire group who'd dined at about the same time we did were not as lucky on returning as we were," Byleth replied, holding up five fingers across both hands. "No one has seen Felix since this morning." A sixth finger. "That Lysithea girl left a note saying she was going to be out tonight." Seven fingers. "I personally have not heard a word from Ingrid since she left this afternoon to go work out, and Dimitri hasn't heard anything either." Eight. "And then, based solely on the fact that his room is empty and his door was left open whenever he disappeared, the other group's leader Claude is also unaccounted for." Nine fingers, all but one thumb raised.

To go along with what she had said, Dimitri added, "I saw Sylvain not too long ago, and the two receptionist ladies of the Leicester Alliance Security Company were in the lobby when we returned here earlier, and now we know where you two are as well. That's it. Of the five of you we know the exact location of, only one is an actual guard, and that spells danger for us if Edelgard and her forces are planning a raid or something."

"Hush, she's not going to attempt to have you assassinated when there's so much cover and publicity of you being here," Byleth assured him, but just the fact that the idea had been brought up at all unnerved both Annette and Mercedes, almost to the point of being unable to speak.

But it didn't fully take away their voices, and even though she knew that it wasn't exactly the most helpful of things to mention, Annette said, "I saw Ingrid not long before curfew took place, she was back at the other hotel, so you can rest easy knowing she's safe." She intentionally made no mention of which hotel in specific, nor did she bring up that she knew Claude was also there. Those details wouldn't possibly remain secret forever, but for now, her involvement in being aware of them didn't need to be public knowledge.

"You know, if you're worried about potential attacks, and we can't get you out of this hotel to somewhere safer," Mercedes said, looking around the room before stepping over to carefully close the door, even though she knew the hallway was as empty as it had been before, "we could always just stay in here with you tonight. There's enough beds across this room that the two of you can sleep in a different part of the room and we can be the decoys here in case someone does come in."

"Oh, yeah, we were going to just be sharing my bed tonight, so what's a change of location if we'll still be doing the same thing anyway?" Awkwardly laughing, as if she was trying to play off her nerves and deceit but trying to make it not so obvious that she was literally lying through her teeth about most other things there, Annette gave a small shake of her head at Dimitri and Byleth, neither of which seemed very impressed with the idea that had been tossed at them.

It was only after a bit more discussion that they relented, deciding that the safest course of action with their limited resources would to be the bed swap, and Annette was sent up to her room to grab her things so that they could be comfortable there in their new room, even if it was for one night only. When she was up on the higher floor, she heard voices coming from one of the other rooms—she knew it belonged to either Hilda or Marianne, but which one it was she didn't know—and while she was tempted to let them know that Claude wasn't missing and that she knew exactly where he was, she decided to hold her tongue and keep that completely to herself.

Had she taken the opportunity to knock on that door, she would have seen that it wasn't just Hilda and Marianne in the room, deep in the throes of conversation, but rather the two of them with a guest that had only ended up in their room because he'd seen them down in the lobby and played the role of gentleman to take them up to theirs. "You ever really stop and think about how crazy it is that we've all ended up here together?" Sylvain asked the two ladies, both of whom were sitting on the edge of the bed. "Like, imagine the crazy star-crossing that had to happen to lead us to being here at the same time."

"I don't really see what kind of 'star-crossing' had to happen, it was just ordained by the goddess," Marianne replied, sounding unimpressed with Sylvain's nonsense. "If anything, you've been reading far too many romance stories to think that there's even a possibility of something like that happening."

"Can't say I'm super into those sorts of stories, actually, because I know they're never going to be as good as the real deal is." He waggled his eyebrows toward Marianne, who stared back at him without so much as a flinch; he would have continued for some time had Hilda not dramatically yawned and stretched her arms, rotating them around a bit. "What, you bored of me already, babe?"

"Don't call me babe, but yeah, I'm getting kinda really bored of you. Got any better attempts at flattery to throw at us, because you're starting to get dry." Hilda was not holding back any punches, but she spoke so playfully that it was hard to get mad at her for her honest opinion on Sylvain's flirtatious advances.

He completely froze after hearing her, though, his mind going over all of the possible ways for him to respond to such a comment. "Wow, you're digging at me just like Ingrid does," he told her with a wink, "and that's not that bad of a thing, if we're being honest. Love me a woman with a bit of bark to go along with her bite."
"I'm not interested in you like that," Hilda coldly replied, making sure that her frigid feelings were very obvious in her tone. "Like, sure, you're easy on the eyes, and you're definitely a pro at the smooth-talking thing, but what else do you have going for you? You haven't said a word about yourself and really? That screams that you're just some loser whose lucky break in life was getting to work with the king."

"Hilda, is that really appropriate to say?" Marianne asked, looking at her friend with a stern side-eye, before turning her sights onto Sylvain, who had let his jaw drop somewhere in the middle of Hilda's callout and never quite picked it back up. "I think you need to apologize to him right now for that, you had no reason to—"

"No, she's right, I'm just some loser who got lucky getting to work with the king." Flopping his shoulders forward, Sylvain just about toppled over onto himself, fake sobbing for a few moments until it was painfully obvious he wasn't being serious with his tears. When that point hit, he sat right back up and laughed. "Never mind the fact that I've known Dimitri since we were kids, grew up with the guy, and always knew that someday I'd give my life to serving him as a guard. That's some real loser-like behavior, don't you think?"

Rolling her eyes, Hilda said, "Yeah, boasting about things that aren't true really is going to change my mind. You're delusional if you think I'm going to buy that crap."

"And you're delusional if you don't buy it, because it's not just some story I created to get in with the ladies. It's the truth, Felix and Ingrid and even Dimitri himself, they can all back me up on it." That was when Sylvain stood up, a look of determination crossing his fake tear-stained face. "Actually, I'll go get the king right now so he can settle this score. You'll have to tell me how your piece of humble pie tastes once you've eaten it."

To retaliate, Hilda stuck out her tongue, before coming up with an even more mature response and grabbed a pillow, throwing it in Sylvain's direction. "Hilda, please! Act your age, not your shoe size, just this once!" Marianne sounded distraught, and even though the pillow missed its target, the fact that it was thrown was not lost on Sylvain, and he made sure to throw it back at Hilda before getting to the door. Unfortunately, she was savvy to the tactic and laid down as far as she could to miss the pillow, allowing for it to strike Marianne squarely in the face.

"Shit, sorry about that," Sylvain apologized, grabbing the doorknob and turning it. It wouldn't budge past a certain point, even with the lock on the door completely disabled, and he tried it a couple times before stepping back, looking at the door overall. "Hey, uh, has this door been giving you ladies trouble before this?"

Neither of them heard him, as they were both dealing with the fact that Marianne had been hit by the pillow and was trying her hardest not to lose her composure because of it. "I said, has this door being giving you trouble?" he repeated, grabbing the knob again and turning it, watching as it went just as far as before, only to click in a way he hadn't ever heard his own door do, then have the handle come off in his hand, leaving a broken mechanism in its wake. It took a moment for him to process what had happened, and when he did realize that the door was legitimately broken with him trapped in the room with both ladies, he did what any reasonable gentleman would do and walked the handle back over to the bed, offering it to the ladies. "Here, a present for you both."

Hilda's eyes widened when she saw the broken handle, her head slowly turning toward the door and seeing that it was missing from where it belonged. "What did you do?" she wailed, a sense of panic beginning to overtake her. "I can't be stuck in here with you, you're going to beat me for what I said, and I didn't mean anything by any of it!"

"You broke the door to the room?" Marianne asked, her voice small as she held the once-thrown pillow over her face, not able to see the knob for herself but taking a guess on what was happening based on Hilda's reaction. "That's going to make getting out of here in the morning rather difficult for me, don't you think? Why did you do that?"

"I didn't mean to break it. Trust me, there are plenty of rooms in this hotel I'd rather be trapped in, this one doesn't even come close to making the list." Sylvain was doing his best to stay calm, even though he knew that this was far from an ideal situation. "Look, I'm going to call the maintenance people, have them come up and open the door from the outside, get me out of here, solve all the problems. You two have nothing to worry about."

There was plenty to worry about, though, as Sylvain sat at the room phone listening to an endless dial tone when he tried calling the maintenance number. Hilda was beginning to pace around, freaking out about her hair and her skin because she didn't have any of her special soaps and oils there in Marianne's room with her, while Marianne remained mostly motionless on the bed, still holding the pillow to her face as if she'd been seriously hurt by the hit she'd taken. It wasn't until Sylvain called down to the front desk, rather than the maintenance line, that he was able to get anyone to pick up, and it was with that call that he was given news he really didn't want to hear, him mumbling words of thanks and understanding to the desk agent he was talking to. By the time he was at that point in the conversation, Hilda had moved on from pacing and was now at the door herself, trying to see if she could open it somehow without the door handle being where it belonged. "This is so stupid, how does something break like this?" she hissed, sticking her finger into the hole left by the missing knob. "I've stayed in so many hotels and this has never happened before!"

"Maintenance isn't here." Three words said as Sylvain hung the phone back up on its old-school receiver. "They're out for the night, front desk has no idea what to do to get us out of here, and since none of us are injured or dying, they're not calling emergency services and paying the fines for unnecessary calls after curfew."

"Are you joking right now?" Marianne asked, sitting up on the end of the bed and finally letting the pillow come off of her face, revealing that she'd never been hurt to start. "They don't have any way to help us?"

"That's what they just told me. Maintenance gets back at six in the morning, we'll be on the top of the request list when they get here." Shaking his head as if he couldn't believe the very words he was saying, Sylvain watched as Hilda came back from the door, an angered glint shining in her eyes. "Look, if you're going to chew me out for breaking the door, just know that I didn't mean to do it. Full stop. If I'd known you were such a two-faced woman, I wouldn't have ever come up with you in the first place, so me being stuck here isn't anything close to something I'd want."

"Six in the morning is far too early for me to be forced to wake up because of you breaking Marianne's door and getting us all stuck in her room," Hilda told him, sounding just as angry as she looked. "When we get out of here, I never want to have to spend even a second with you again, you got that?"

He was paying very close attention to the quirks of her body language, how she had her shoulders raised and her chest puffed out, how she was shaking just enough that it was visible in the long strands of her pink hair, and he knew without question that she meant business with what she said. "Loud and clear," he replied, giving her a small salute that he thought would bring a bit of lightheartedness to the conversation; instead, it brought that same pillow as before straight into his face, Hilda making sure she did not miss on throwing it that time.

"If we're waking up at six, I'm going to sleep now," she said, back in her normal voice to pretend she wasn't still seething over what was going on. "Marianne, mind if I sleep in the bed with you?"

"Of course I don't mind, that's what friends do." Rubbing his cheek where the pillow's tag had hit him and it felt like he'd been sliced, Sylvain opened his mouth to ask if he could join them, but Marianne beat him to the punch. "And you, you're welcome to sleep anywhere but the bed or the bathroom. Might I suggest the floor?"


In all of the chaos that curfew had brought that night, there were two people left completely unaccounted for that no one had the slightest clue of where they were, where they'd ended up, if they were actually in their rooms and ignoring everyone or if something bad had befallen them. While Felix certainly wished he'd been sane about things and had chosen to stay at the hotel that night, there was a certain charm to what he'd gotten thrown into that he wasn't going to deny made it a better use of his time. Why Lysithea had immediately laser-focused on having him as her plus-one for the endeavor, he hadn't been told and certainly hadn't asked about, but she had been adamant that he go out into the Enbarr night with her to find something to do.

He hadn't known at the time that the something she was looking for included paid-for rideshare trips across the city, breaking the curfew with ease as they were in the backseat of an unmarked black car when nine o'clock hit, the driver not worried in the slightest about getting caught being out when they were. "You're never going to explain why you needed someone else with you, are you?" he said to break the silence, one aspect of the entire ordeal that he wasn't thrilled about being clueless about. "That's going to remain just as much of a mystery as why we're here in the first place."

"I needed you here because I'm too young to do this on my own." Lysithea's eyes were glued to her window, looking out at the city in its empty, after-curfew state. "Well, too young-looking, I'm actually old enough to do it, but who's going to believe me? You've got enough of a perpetual grumpy face and look so much older than me that it just seemed like you'd be a perfect partner in crime for the evening."

Narrowing his eyes as he mentally accepted all of that as a load of garbage, Felix wanted to use that opportunity to ask more about what they were doing, and why it required being of a certain age, but he felt he wouldn't get a straight answer anyway. There was something about Lysithea that he didn't trust, but he was far past the point of being able to do anything about that. She seemed to have been hiding something from the very first conversation they'd had, where she had been clearly sizing him up for the job, but he'd never managed to get her to spit it out and now it had them out after curfew together.

The car turned into an area of town that was rather reminiscent of the residential area of Fhirdiad, minus the nearly complete lack of lights that were visible outside. While lights inside of the houses they drove past were on and people could be seen through their windows, it was few and far between when it came to porch lights, and the street lights were off entirely. "You sure you were invited out here?" the driver asked, glancing into the back seat through the rearview mirror. "Not a usual request for people downtown to be coming out this way."

"Yes, we were definitely invited," Lysithea hurriedly replied, tapping her fingers on the door to express agitation with the question. "Why would we be coming out all this way, when we're supposed to be in our hotel nice and safe, if we weren't invited to do so? Have some common sense, will you?"

The driver chuckled at her pluckiness, but didn't ask further questions. A shame, Felix thought, because it would have been much easier for the driver to pry the answers out of Lysithea's mouth than for him to do so. They eventually stopped in a long driveway, in front of a gate that split it in two, and the driver had to open his window to type in a code to open it up. Since he didn't have to ask for it, it seemed like he was familiar with making the approach to wherever it was they were going, which made it feel a little less like they were doing something against the rules.

That changed when they got up to the building itself, a sprawling complex that easily put Dimitri's castle in Fhirdiad to shame, and Felix began to suspect he knew where they were, but the reason for why that would be stumped him completely. The driver was able to open up the large garage and head right inside, stopping in front of the entrance door to the rest of the building as the garage's door closed behind them. "If you're not welcome here, I'll be waiting here for five minutes to get you out. Take any longer than that, and you're their problem for the rest of the night."

"Please, stop doubting me on this, we're one hundred percent allowed to be here!" Lysithea raised her voice to a level that came off as yelling, and rather than apologizing she opened her door and jumped right out, Felix considering just staying where he was to go back to the hotel and not continue to play the dumb game he was in the middle of. His plan was thwarted when Lysithea opened his door for him and told him to get out, saying, "I swear, you're going to have a great time here once we're actually inside."

"The way you're talking about this, it's almost like you've been here before," he replied, getting out of the car with slow, deliberate movements. "But that can't be correct, there's no way you've been to Enbarr, most people from anywhere outside of Adrestia have never set foot in this city."

"You're right in that I've never been to Enbarr, but I have met one of these people over video chats, and the other…well, my history with her is rather complicated, but there's a history that has allowed me—and you—to be invited here without any worries at all. Now do you want to see what's going on inside this place or not?" She was still not explaining herself, and that was beyond infuriating to Felix, but now that they were both out of the car and only had a limited amount of time to decide to turn back around and bail themselves out, there was no use in just standing there.

If the large garage with plenty of space for many cars to park and drive around was any indication, this wasn't just some normal residence they'd been taken to, and that was made all the more apparent when Lysithea opened the door to enter and they were stepping into a giant library, easily the biggest collection of books that Felix had ever seen. "Where exactly are we?" he asked, but Lysithea shook her head, not wanting to focus on talking when there was somewhere in specific she was looking for. As they passed the shelves of books, he found himself taking quick glances at the titles on the spines, finding that the majority of the books were history texts, but there was the occasional one about a random hobby or even just a novel that someone had slipped onto the shelf.

A couple of rows of shelves over from the door was a table, surrounded by chairs, where someone was hunched over sleeping with a book underneath them. Lysithea motioned for Felix to keep his mouth shut, then confidently walked over to the table, cupped her mouth with her hands, and yelled, "Hey, sleepyhead! Wake up, we're finally here!"

The person stirred, lifting their head to reveal a tired face that had marks across it from the pages they'd fallen asleep on. "Greetings, Lysithea, it's a pleasure to finally meet you in person. Can't help but noticed that you said 'we', though, when I don't recall you ever telling me who you were going to bring."

"Check this out, I found the grumpiest guy I could possibly get and dragged him along," she replied, nodding toward Felix, who merely stared back at her. "Figured if I brought any of my friends, we'd get caught doing this, so I thought outside the box and brought someone that definitely wouldn't get me in trouble."

"I'm getting you in trouble the moment I can," Felix assured her, not wanting to play the game a second longer. "Tell me where we are, who this is, something that I can relay back to the boar at once."

She pouted, giving a couple of quick blinks in his direction. "I don't think I like how you're planning on ratting me out for wanting to meet with someone who's been such a good friend to me for years, or the guy who's brewing less-than-legal concoctions in her basement."

"Actually, Lysithea, they're completely legal, as long as you aren't profiting off of them or drinking them anywhere but inside your home." The man stood up, adjusting his long green hair before walking toward Felix with hand outstretched. "I should introduce myself to you, seeing as we've never met in any capacity before. I am Linhardt von Hevring, experimenter of many different things that make people feel more in tune with their bodies. I'm sure you're not interested in telling me who you are, but that's okay, by the end of the night I'll have learned a lot of things about you."

Felix looked at the guy, at his pseudo-lab coat he had on, at how he looked like he needed to sleep for a week, and decided that he'd be friendly and shake his hand, just to ease some of the tensions he'd caused. "Great to know. What are you planning on doing to us?"

"We're just going to be trying some of the newer drinks I've created, that's all. Lysithea has been deathly curious about some of the sweet drinks I've made, which do come with an age requirement but I do believe that you both meet it." Linhardt was nearly drowned out by Lysithea cheering that she didn't look too young after all, but he kept on talking anyway. "The requirements aren't of my own choosing, of course, Edelgard is the one who insisted I put them in place, but—"

"Did you just refer to the emperor by first name without so much as a pause?"

"—why wouldn't I? This is her home, it would be rather weird to refer to her with her title in her own house." Stifling a yawn with the back of his hand, Linhardt watched the very fast triple take Felix did in front of him, almost as if he couldn't believe what he'd heard. "Well, more specifically, it'd be weird if I referred to her with the title in her house, seeing as other people do it all the time."

Not wanting to hear another word of what this clearly deranged man had to say, Felix turned to Lysithea and reached to grab her to pull her back toward the door out of the place. "I'm not putting up with this tonight," he sternly told her, not a hint of sarcasm in his voice. "First you drag me out after curfew, then you take me to some stranger's house, which may or may not belong to the damned emperor of Adrestia."

"It does belong to her, just pointing that out," Linhardt interjected, giving a little wave with the fingers on the hand still covering his mouth. "That part wasn't a lie."

"They're not strangers, either! Seriously, do you think I would be down for breaking the rules if I wasn't confident we would get out of it safe?" Lysithea could see him reaching toward her, and her reaction was to run around the table to Linhardt's side, rather than staying any closer to Felix than necessary. "You're being a giant buzzkill, I hope you know. Thought you'd have more of a sense of adventure than you clearly do."

While Felix had some very legitimate reasons for why being in the emperor's home wasn't sitting well with him, mentioning them where he could be overheard by the wrong sort of people didn't make sense to him. "Yes, well, you can have all the fun you'd like being here, I'm heading back to the hotel. Good night and good riddance, Lysithea."

If only he'd thought to do it sooner, because after finding his way back through the library to the garage door, he opened it to find the car that had driven them over was already gone, the driver having met his promised time limit and leaving them there for the night. Groaning because he realized that meant he had to go back and face the others, Felix considered just roaming the library and spending the night doing his own thing, but the reminder that this was the enemy's house kept him from being comfortable with doing that. He trudged back to the table, where Linhardt and Lysithea were in the middle of a conversation that had to have started immediately after he left, and his grumbled apology for what he'd said fell on their deaf ears.

It wasn't until they'd stopped talking that Linhardt looked over and saw Felix was back with them, and he shook his head. "So much for leaving, hm? Makes sense, I suppose, given that drivers don't want to risk their lives out on the roads, even in the unmarked cars that show they're employed by the emperor."

"We rode over here in one of her personal vehicles?" Felix asked, dagger eyes shooting at Lysithea for leaving that detail out of things. "This whole thing is a recipe for us getting the king killed, and if he dies it's going to be on us."

"He won't die, don't be overdramatic." With a slow laugh, Linhardt gave Lysithea a look that was in all aspects the opposite of the one she was receiving from Felix; it was warm, it was friendly, and it was not accusing her of plotting a murder in any way. "While the political tensions may be high, and I see no way that this week ends with everyone on good terms, I know that Edelgard wouldn't intentionally harm your king, provided he wouldn't intentionally harm her in return."

"Oh, please, as much as I'd love to hurt Dimitri, I know it isn't going to bring me any favor in the eyes of his people." The new voice entering the fray was obviously belonging to the emperor, but she spoke from somewhere that none of them could see her, and while Lysithea and Felix both looked around for her, Linhardt didn't seem surprised to hear her at all. "Are you three going to spend your night in the library, or will you be joining me in the parlor?"

"She's downstairs already, she's talking and listening through a microphone system she has installed across the house." While that explanation seemed to be the most logical answer, the fact that they were being listened in and had been told as much seemed like vindication for Felix, who knew his greatest fear had been realized. Linhardt, noticing his frigid stance once he'd learned about the speakers, followed up his explanation with, "Don't worry, she's not as intimidating in person as she is in her political activities. She's not going to be of any danger to you or your liege."

"That's what you say now," Felix started, but his sentence never went any further than that, him deciding that digging his own grave (or the grave of someone he couldn't personally stand but would die to protect) wasn't worth it. He had zero reason to believe a single word of what Linhardt was saying, especially now that he knew they'd been being listened in to from the start, but he wasn't going to say that. He was going to keep his mouth firmly shut and not let a word escape him that he couldn't control the impact of.

They headed down a grand staircase located right outside of the library and entered a giant sitting area, filled with couches and chairs that seemed to be well-used. The space must have been for entertaining guests, but when Linhardt walked them right through it without so much as a second look, it was clear that they weren't worthy of such a space. He took them down another set of stairs, this one nowhere near as fancy as the previous flight, but at the bottom was a darker room that had multicolored lights illuminating it, and it was inside there that Edelgard sat, her arms folded in front of her as she watched them all enter. "I'm going to save my questions for a bit later," she said, gesturing to the open space on the couch next to her. "First and foremost, welcome to my home. Let's just get that formality out of the way right there."

"Nice place you've got, from what we've seen," Lysithea told her, hanging back even as Linhardt took advantage of the unused seat to go sit for himself. "Not like we've really seen much, though. Just the library and the upstairs gathering place, and now here."

"That's all you need to see, it's all anyone else ever sees. Even down here is off-limits when we're entertaining guests." Rolling her head until a loud crack sounded, Edelgard slumped over into Linhardt's shoulder, him not minding that he had the emperor of his country resting on him. "I can't believe I've even been convinced to let the two of you know of this room's existence, if we're being honest. And on that note, Lysithea, who's this oh-so-charming gentleman you've brought with you?"

Lysithea looked at Felix, thought about her answer carefully, and replied, "He's a new friend I've made since coming to Enbarr on this trip. Brought him with me just in case I needed someone older to get me in."

"He works for Dimitri, does he not?"

"I do, yes," Felix answered, deciding he would speak for himself, but just talking to this woman made him feel unclean, like he was abandoning his morals and his work to have the conversation. "If I had known you would be present here, I would not have come with."

Her eyes narrowing slightly as she heard that, Edelgard eventually let them reopen normally and didn't sound bothered by that statement with her own response. "If I had known you were in town as part of the guard team for him, I would have disallowed your attendance this evening, but what's happened is happened and you're stuck here now, unfortunately."

"Uh, I'm here in town because I'm part of the guard team for the king." Laughing as she raised a hand playfully, Lysithea fully knew the situation and understood the gravity of it, but she was going to make things lighthearted when she could. "But I guess it's different for me because we've known each other since we were young, huh?"

"That, and you met Lin under your own circumstances and have been discussing meeting with him to try some of his treats," Edelgard said, reinforcing the fact that they were there first and foremost for whatever slightly illegal substances this guy had been creating in the depths of the house belonging to the Adrestian emperor. "Which, I suppose if you want to get back to your hotel before people realize you're missing and send out search parties, which is a worst-case scenario given my involvement in your whereabouts, we should get to sampling some of the flavors."

"Are we thinking we want to stay on the legal side of things tonight and progress as future nights allow, or do we want to go all in tonight and expect no further meetings?" While it seemed like a question open to everyone, Linhardt had no interest in hearing what Felix's opinion on the matter was, nor did he seem to care when Lysithea gave her preference. He seemed to be waiting for Edelgard to give him direction, as based on shaking her off of his shoulder and repeating the question until she responded.

Her answer, to start slow and build up to the crazier things that would easily get them in trouble if the guards under her own employment found out what they were doing, was accepted by Linhardt, who stood up from his seat, yawned for a solid ten seconds, and wandered off further into the room they were in. "Don't be afraid to have a seat, I know Lin and I know what sorts of things he'll be providing as an introduction to his work. There's something practical yet magical about the drinks he's learned to make, even if they start becoming rather illegal with their ingredients."

"Are you saying he's down here making drugs?" Felix asked, refusing to sit down even though Lysithea finally jumped at the idea of taking a seat. "Or is he using the drugs to make whatever else he's making?"

Edelgard didn't seem interested in answering that question, but Linhardt was more than happy to once he'd returned with a pitcher of a clear liquid that smelled vaguely like fruit and overly sweet, making Felix's nose turn up at the scent. "Most of the drinks are just slightly alcoholic in nature, but the ones that are dubious in their legality are made from other substances that may possibly include drugs. Of course, how I end up with them to make the drinks in the first place is its own story."

"You're lucky that you have someone who can help you with bending the rules here and there," Edelgard remarked, shaking her head, "and not be doing it with the intention of hurting others that…certain others always wanted to do. I'm willing to have everyone turn a blind eye to what you're doing, because at the end of the day, it's not hurting anyone when it stays right here in my basement."

Finally convincing himself to take a sip of the drink he'd been poured, Felix's whole face contorted from the sweetness, him immediately wanting to pour it out and never taste something so vile again, but he thought about what kind of impression that would leave and decided he'd have the one drink and stop it at that. There was just one minor flaw in that plan, and that was the sheer amount of these buzz-creating drinks that Linhardt had hiding in the wings for them to sample that night, something that both ladies were aware in their own ways but that he was completely unprepared for.

It was going to be a long night, that was for sure.