When morning came, it brought with it the lifting of the curfew, meaning that the group that had been stuck at their restaurant overnight were finally able to leave, after giving many, many thanks to the couple who owned the place for allowing them to sleep in their home above the restaurant for the night. "I'd never thought that our fancy night out would end with us being stuck out in our fancy clothes," Raphael laughed as they were on their way out the door. "Who would've known that once nine hit, they wouldn't let us out even to go back to our hotels."

"Probably anyone who has any idea of how curfews work," Lorenz replied, sounding just as bitter as he currently felt, having been relegated to sleep on a makeshift bed created from some dining chairs, which was something that he would never willingly do in any other situation. There had been one bed-like place for them to sleep, that being the couple's couch, but the guys had decided as a whole that the sole woman there with them had deserved to get to sleep on it. "I wish we had been more aware of our surroundings as the time grew closer, if we'd noticed that everyone else had left, we could have been back in our rooms long before we got locked out."

"I think it was a great time, even if it went completely off the rails when we got locked in!" Just happy to be included with the other group, Ashe had been nothing but smiles since they'd originally left the hotel the night before for the meal, and he'd been the one to take the unfortunate change in sleeping arrangement the most in stride. He had been beyond happy to sleep on the floor, listening to everyone else talking while he tried falling asleep, and even though he'd been uncomfortable all night, he still woke up in as high of spirits as he'd fallen asleep with. "You are all so much more welcoming than the people I normally spend my time with, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart."

Leonie gave him a thumbs-up, accepting his compliment without question. "That's such a sweet thing for you to say, Ashe! We're glad you came with us, even if it all got crazy because of the curfew. Guess we know for next time that we need to go out earlier if we want to sit around and talk for a while after dinner, right?"

"We're not going out again, are we?" Ignatz asked, almost like that concept hadn't occurred to him up until that moment. "It was already expensive to pull this one off, we can't exactly afford another meal of that sort across the board, unless…" His eyes glanced over toward Lorenz, who was expecting that suggestion and firmly shook his head. "Yeah, I didn't think you would be interested."

"If there was one or two less of you, I would be more inclined to open my wallet to the cause, but with this group, at that price? No thank you." Lorenz seemed firm on his denial, but nobody could particularly blame him; they'd all seen the prices they were paying for the meal they had gotten, and even knowing that it was partially covered by stipends the job gave them, it wasn't cheap for any of them.

As they continued walking back to the main hotel, they began to throw around the idea of going somewhere less expensive as another meal, just to have a similar experience of dining out but not with the obscenely expensive bill at the end. Everyone was on board, more or less, with the exception once again of Lorenz, who didn't want to dine somewhere that wasn't considered high class. "You act like you do classy dining all the time back home, which you don't." Clasping a strong hand on Lorenz's shoulder, Raphael almost knocked the guy over with the force he'd exerted on him. "Uh, sorry about that. But I mean what I said, I've seen you be just as happy to dine at the taco truck as you were to dine out last night."

"Please don't share such blatant lies about me in front of a new friend," Lorenz hissed, even though everyone minus Ashe knew that it wasn't a lie at all, and Ashe wasn't going to care if it was the truth. "I would never be caught dead somewhere that has no standards of quality or cleanliness, you should know that."

"I can settle this right now!" Leonie chimed in, pulling her mostly-dead phone out from her tiny little purse she'd been given for the dinner, the size being part of why she didn't have her phone charger in the first place. With fast fingers, she went into her gallery and pulled up a picture of Lorenz at a picnic table outside the taco truck Raphael had referred to, showing it to Ashe, who smiled at it. "Proof that he does eat places that aren't as fancy as where we were last night."

Laughs were shared at Lorenz's expense, which was fairly standard fare in their group, but the biggest culprits for that sort of behavior were missing and so it felt slightly abnormal. "I wonder what the others ended up getting up to last night, while we were having our fun," he said as they came to the hotel's front doors, the normal traffic going out at the morning hour. "I don't seem to have heard anything from them at all overnight."

"Did you even check your phone once? I can't say I saw you pull it out at any point," Ignatz recalled, having been right there with Lorenz for the whole endeavor. "Maybe someone tried calling you and couldn't get through because you didn't answer. That happens a lot with you, after all."

Lorenz scoffed, reaching into his pocket for his phone. "Please, as if that would happen. Let me just show you that—" He turned the screen on and showed the telltale sign that the phone was dead, having lost all charge at some point overnight, and he paled. "—huh, how about that, if anyone did try to call I wouldn't have gotten it anyway. What a shame."

"Nobody called any of the rest of us, so I'm sure it's safe to assume that no one tried calling that loser," Leonie joked, knowing that at least she was speaking the truth in regards to herself, and she was able to get another dig in at Lorenz before they were in the hotel lobby, deciding if it was best to go their separate ways and return to their individual rooms or find something else to do.

They were accosted by an unlikely trio after getting inside the door, Hilda looking a mess while Marianne seemed relatively normal, and Sylvain tagging along behind them like he wanted nothing to do with any of them. "Hey, where'd you guys end up last night?" Hilda loudly asked, catching their collective attention and causing them to all try answering her at once. What she was given was a garbled response that sort of sounded like "restaurant", so she rolled with that. "Sounds like a treat. Guess where we ended up!"

"A different restaurant?" Ashe suggested, thinking that it was the most logical answer given how she'd posed that challenge after hearing that's where they'd ended up. "Or maybe a store, even though I've noticed they all have closing times that are early enough to avoid being stuck out after curfew."

"He's cute, wish we'd gotten stuck with him all night." Blowing a kiss in Ashe's direction and watching him blink in surprise at the behavior, Hilda let her words linger in the air for a moment before explaining. "No, we got trapped in Marianne's room upstairs last night, because some dumbass decided to break the door after maintenance had all gone home, and we couldn't get out until this morning. What a fun time, right?"

"That sounds like it could have been worse," Leonie replied, looking at Sylvain and being unaware of what kind of person he really was, and him giving her a wink right back. "I mean, you guys could have been trapped with a murderer or something."

"You and I will have to have a long talk later," Marianne mumbled, wanting to save Leonie from managing to make the same mistake they had the previous night by trusting in the supposedly suave gentleman they'd let walk them upstairs.

Shaking his head to interrupt his thoughts—entirely about how lucky Sylvain was to have gotten locked in the room with two beautiful women, even if one of them was Hilda—Lorenz said, "I know that we all appreciate this sort of conversation from time to time, but I need a shower and a nap in my own bed. I apologize for breaking up this talk but I'm heading to our hotel, anyone joining me?" The question was posed to Raphael and Ignatz, both of which hesitated on answering before deciding to go with it, and they were joined by Ashe, who was interested in going back to his own hotel for the same reasons.

As the four of them walked toward the shuttle entrance, they heard someone screeching for someone to stop, and without any reason to assume it was for them, three of them continued walking. Ashe, however, recognized the voice and told them to wait a moment, looking over his shoulder to see what was going on. "Hey, Annette's trying to wave us down," he said, just loudly enough that Raphael was interested in seeing why, and he grabbed Ignatz to stop him from keeping going, which meant that Lorenz made it all the way to the door before realizing he'd been abandoned by his friends.

It was indeed Annette, who had been watching from up on the second floor everyone gathering there in the lobby, and she'd gotten downstairs as fast as she could to try and stop the whole group from separating. "Guys, you have to hear about what happened last night!" she started once she had all of them back together, all eyes focused on her and her bright smile. "Mercie and I got to sleep in the royal suite!"

"Mercedes got stuck here last night? But I wasn't at our hotel either," Ashe told her, a fact she was well-aware of and that she knew was going to be followed up in a certain manner. "I hope that Ingrid was there, if none of us were around who knows what could have happened to our rooms."

"She had to have been, I don't know where else she could be if not there." There was no way that Annette was going to tell the truth of what she knew in front of this whole group, but she was going to maintain her stance that everything was fine no matter what. "Anyway, so many people were missing last night from where they were supposed to be that we just kinda got an upgrade in our sleeping quarters for the night. How cool is that, right?"

The general consensus, from everyone minus the other two who'd been able to sleep in a bed the previous night, was that it was cool but rather poorly-timed in being shared. Chirping an apology for what she'd said, Annette peeked by everyone and saw the doors to the shuttle stop open, Ingrid and Claude coming in one after the other looking like they'd had a rather uneventful night, and she waited until neither of them were in places that would make their proximity suspicious before she told everyone that she'd only had that to tell them, and that they were free to go.

No one knew to think anything of her distraction, so they took it as her just wanting to update everyone on the night before and how crazy it had gotten and all went their different directions yet again. While he did see Claude just kind of milling around the lobby as they went to catch their shuttle, Lorenz figured he'd come down during Annette's gathering moment and didn't know to join them, so it was a rather out of sight, out of mind sort of thing. That changed when they were back at their hotel and he got up to his room, finding it completely different from how he'd left it when he headed out the day before. His bag, which he'd organized in a specific way as to deter any thieves from messing with his stuff, had been rifled through, and there were clear signs that at least one person, if not more, had slept in his room.

It wasn't until he plugged his phone in and let it turn back on with some charge that he received Claude's voicemail from the night before, and as he listened to the explanation that he was given about what had happened, Lorenz knew that what he was being told, and the truth, were two completely separate occurrences. The only problem was that Claude didn't mention who else was staying there with him, just that there was a someone else.

That had been done intentionally on Claude's part, because he'd not wanted to start drama between the two groups of guards by admitting to being anywhere close to the same place as Ingrid the night before. And if, for some reason, it came out that they'd been together, he had quite the story to tell about what they did there in that bedroom: specifically, about how they'd decided somewhere in the middle of the night, when they both couldn't fall asleep, to trash the place a little to confuse Lorenz when he got back in. Sure, going through his bag to see what kinds of things he had in it that were in hopes of getting laid was a bit harsh, but it was something that the group had been doing to Lorenz in specific for years, so he shouldn't have been thrown off too much by it.

At any rate, Claude was back at his hotel, where he belonged, and while he hadn't gotten upstairs at that point he still felt a small victory in just being back. He could see that Annette was down in the lobby as well, but with so many others around just casually strolling up to her and asking what her deal was and why she'd conspired against him how she had would turn too many heads. That would have to wait for another moment when they could get alone, so that he could get a proper explanation for why he'd been forced into a night alone with Ingrid, of all people.

Speaking of Ingrid, she was around as well, trying to decide what her best course of action would be. She considered heading up to the royal suite to let Dimitri know what had happened the night before, a failure of her service as a guard to be in the right place when she was told to be there, but she was unaware of all of the other nonsense the previous night had brought, so she had no idea that telling him that would have been expected. For all she knew, the only people where they didn't belong were herself, Claude, and Lorenz, and seeing as only one of them was supposed to be staying at the main hotel, that didn't seem like too big of a problem to report, especially to the person who refused to give her the position and power she'd been promised.

Also on the table for things to do was to head up to the board room and see if there were any foods set out for them yet, because she was starving from the previous night of no snacks in the room and no cash on her to buy snacks from the vending machine on the floor. She was also considering just going back to her room and sleeping for a while to make up for how hard it was to sleep knowing Claude was right there next to her in the bed, but being missing for longer would only make her more suspicious, she felt. That left no choice but her second option, and so she headed to the elevators and went up one floor, finding that breakfast had indeed been served, but that no one was in there enjoying the food. "Oh, sweet, all for me then!" she cheered, running inside the room to grab herself a heaping plate.

Partway through loading her plate with anything she desired, Mercedes walked into the room, nodding at Ingrid when they locked eyes for a moment. "Good morning, hope you slept well," she greeted, grabbing a tea bag and pouring herself a piping hot mug of water to steep it in. "Have you heard about all of the things that happened last night?"

"Can't say that I did, or that I have," Ingrid replied, finishing off her stack of food with a cherry on top, carrying it carefully to a spot at the table and sitting down to eat. "You going to tell me what all happened, or am I going to have to wait to find out?"

"Goodness, aren't you impatient? I was planning on telling you, certainly, but can I ask why you didn't sleep well? Was it the fact that neither Ashe nor I were in our rooms and you had to hold down the fort yourself?" Ingrid really shouldn't have immediately started eating upon sitting down, because when she heard that question she nearly choked on the bite she'd taken.

After swallowing it down and weighing the consequences of admitting where she was, Ingrid decided that what Mercedes didn't know wouldn't hurt her. "I had no idea neither of you made it back, I didn't think to check after curfew to see if you were there. My mind must've figured it out without me actually knowing, though, because that definitely checks out."

"Yes, yes, we both weren't able to make it back for different reasons. Ashe and his new group of friends were stuck at their dinner reservation, and I was here after barely making it back into the hotel on time with the king and queen after ours. Annie and I actually ended up sleeping in their bed to give Dimitri a bit of peace of mind, with how many people were missing last night." Smiling over at Ingrid, who'd made the mistake of trying another bite while listening to the recap and nearly choked a second time, Mercedes went on. "No one's heard from Felix or that Lysithea gal since last night, and we found out that Sylvain was stuck in the room with the receptionists from the Leicester group, so he wouldn't have been of use to any of us. On that note, their leader was missing as well, we found his room wide open with no sign of him anywhere."

It took a lot of strength for Ingrid not to say that she knew where Claude had been because she'd been with him, because she'd already given the lie that she'd been in her room and that would mean that he too was in her room. The last thing she needed was for Mercedes to think that she'd been up to anything with a guy she'd barely met, even though they had slept together in the bed sharing sense. "I saw him down in the lobby when I got here, so he's safe and sound at least. Really sucks that so many people bailed out on their jobs last night, but I'm glad that you and Annette were here to keep things running smoothly. It's what you two seem to be great at doing."

"We do have a job to keep our minds focused on," Mercedes replied with a tiny nod, stirring around her tea to try and disperse the flavor a bit quicker. There was a perfect opening there for Ingrid to make a joke, about how Annette was doing a bad job at focusing on her work when she was trapping people elsewhere at curfew, but she swallowed that down easier than her food. "I'm glad that you were in the right place at the right time last night, but let's hope that everyone does the same tonight, with less getting locked in rooms."

"Agreed on that, we're here to work, not to get trapped places that have nothing to do with our job." Never mind the fact that she'd done exactly that to some extent, even if the room she'd slept in was being used by someone else who was doing the same job as the rest of them. "Do you know what today's plan is? Did they attempt to reschedule that meeting with the emperor or are they just going to wing it?"

"From what I've heard, Dimitri has been in contact with some others here in Enbarr trying to get something put together to make this whole trip worth it, but as it stands his only meeting with the emperor is going to be in a few days." Stirring her drink again, Mercedes finally took a seat at the table across from where Ingrid was, figuring that she was going to be there for a while longer. "With how difficult communication and scheduling has been, I'm honestly surprised Dimitri hasn't made any rash decisions about the whole trip."

"It's all for the idea of diplomacy and bringing peace to all of Fódlan rather than tense borders, he'll try to save face with the emperor if it means people back home are happy." That was how politics needed to work, sacrifices being made for the better of the people, but Ingrid firmly believed that the whole situation was beyond stupid. There was no reason that there was so much avoidance and anger between the leaders of the two parts of the country, and they'd traveled to fix things and it just didn't seem to be working.

She began to focus on eating, Mercedes just sitting there with her not saying anything more. Others started to come into the room, all people who were staying there at the hotel, but none were as surprising as Byleth coming in on her own, sitting down right next to Mercedes without stopping first to grab something to eat or drink. "We still haven't heard word from Felix," she said, resting her head on the table as she looked at her personal guard with blank eyes. "Dimitri had wanted to go out into the city today and without both of his guards and both of mine, he won't be interested in doing it. What should we do?"

Mercedes glanced from her queen to Ingrid across the table, an idea forming in her mind. "I know someone who would be willing to step in to relieve Felix in this situation," she said, noticing that Ingrid didn't seem to be paying attention to what was said. "Do you think Dimitri would go out if he had someone else there instead?"

"We could try presenting the idea to him, but there's no guarantee it'll work. You know how stuck in his ways he gets sometimes, this is bound to be one of those occasions." Not lifting her head, Byleth sighed, scooting the chair she'd sat down in as far as she could without needing to get out of it, sandwiching herself tightly next to the table. "He's still up in the bed, or at least he was when I left him. He won't admit it, but he's worried about what happened to one of his men."

Still looking toward Ingrid trying to come up with a way to approach the suggestion to include her so that the people who'd been committed to their job were still the ones working (even though she didn't know the truth about how Ingrid was lying through her teeth about where she'd been the night before), Mercedes gave a low hum to show that she was deep in thought. "I know that Felix is a personal favorite guard of his, mostly because of Felix's willingness to treat the job seriously and not rely too much on personal relationships, but maybe Dimitri should call on someone else that would work just as hard."

"I'm thinking of asking Claude if he would be interested to do it, and if not him, if he has any personal suggestions for who it should be." With those words, Byleth made it clear that she hadn't thought at all about the offer being extended to Ingrid, and Mercedes dropped her gaze now that she knew there was little reason to let any hopes get up. "Personally I hope he agrees to the role, Dimitri seems to instantly trust him, but I don't know what he was up to last night and—"

"Guess who just strolled into the lobby like nothing's wrong?" Sylvain burst into the room, sounding rather amused. "Looks like roadkill and isn't acting like himself, but he's back at least. We sent him right up to his room so he could sleep and he was more than happy to do it, but I don't know if he's going to be good for anything today."

"—excellent, because we were just talking about how to replace him for what we wanted to get to do out on the town. Do you have any preferences for who you'd like to be working with?" Byleth didn't seem all that bothered that she'd been interrupted, sitting up in her chair and scooting it back so that she wasn't quite as restrained, feeling a little less pressure on her shoulders. "You can suggest anyone, it's not necessarily going to be who we call on but it gives us a place to start."

While Mercedes hadn't been brave enough to throw a certain name out into the ring, Sylvain had no such reservations about things. "I'd think me and Ingrid would make for a good team, seeing as we've been working together since before we got into the guard business, but that's probably a no-go in Dimitri's book."

At hearing her name, Ingrid's ears perked up a little and she looked at Sylvain, almost in disbelief of what kind of suggestion he'd just made on her behalf. But her enthusiasm came crumbling down when Byleth replied, "I understand that, but he would prefer you not working with a woman in this situation. I'm sure that you know exactly why that is."

"Definitely can say I do," he chuckled, giving a small shrug in Ingrid's direction as if he'd only thrown her name out there because she was there. "But other than her, I'd be fine with anyone you want me working with. I'm a pretty flexible guy."

If that meant that she was going to be passed up for a role she'd always wanted to get to take on, then Ingrid felt she had no reason to stay in the room any longer. Even though she'd still been in the middle of eating, she stood up and headed for the door, hearing Byleth once again run through the plan of asking Claude to fill the gap in Felix's place. She didn't care that she was being rude to the queen by walking out on her, because she felt the whole royal establishment was being rude to her by excluding her like they were. It didn't occur to her until she'd gotten on the elevator back down to the lobby that she could have outed the fact that she knew where Claude had been the previous night, but by then it was too late to make that feel anything but spiteful.

Part of her wanted to find someone who had some sway in the situation and give them the whole rundown of what had been going on; another part wanted to go back to her room and spend some time on her own. Torn on which part to listen to, she stood just outside the elevator in the lobby and watched as normal life for the people in Enbarr went on around her, everyone blissfully unaware of who she was and why she was there. The voices in her head attempting to give her direction on what to do, where to go, and why she should run back upstairs and admit everything needed to be silenced, but Ingrid wasn't sure how she'd accomplish that without making herself look bad.

That was how she ended up walking the streets alone for a while, just trying to get herself into a mental space that was suitable for someone of her position. She was a complete stranger to the society in Enbarr, so people steered clear of her and never dared approach her, and she knew better than to walk into shops and stores on her own in case they were a front for someone nefarious. Her one lapse in judgment she made was waving at a friendly woman who'd let her cross the street in front of her, the woman's eyes locking with hers as she did and freezing their kind gaze in her mind. She'd grown up hearing horror stories of Adrestia, due to the war and the tense situation the country had created on the whole continent, but if people like that lived there, it couldn't have been all that bad.

Eventually, hunger drove Ingrid to start on her way back to the main hotel, not wanting to be caught ordering food from one of the pop-up restaurants she passed on her way if she didn't have someone there to support her. She didn't want to let her guard down long enough to eat a meal, in case that was when someone who did know who she was or where she was from decided to attack. Her hunger was an excellent motivator, especially as the heat of the day began to build and her body craved more energy; alas, there was no way that Ingrid was making it back to eat in the safety of the hotel as she'd gotten hopelessly lost and turned around in the unfamiliar streets.

Right as she was about to call for help, she passed by a vehicle that stood out to her as notable, and after giving it a double-take, she noticed the woman behind the wheel as the one from earlier. "Do you need someone to guide you around Enbarr?" the woman asked, her driver's side window rolled down so she could speak to Ingrid. "I've been watching you go around and around in circles for a while now."

"Heh, me, going in circles? I'm not lost," Ingrid asserted, a bit worried that she'd been being trailed, "but a ride back to my hotel would be better than having to walk."

"You've stumbled upon the right person, if that's the case." Gesturing to her empty front seat, the woman was clearly making an offer to Ingrid, who with her best judgment should have denied it and kept going on her own without hesitation. "I promise that I mean no harm, but I'd hate to see a foreigner stranded in this dreadful city without a guide."

The use of the word foreigner was enough to throw a red flag up in Ingrid's mind. "How did you know that I'm…not from around here?" she asked, coming closer to the car. "I could have sworn it wasn't easy to figure that out looking at me."

"Your choice of clothing isn't Adrestian in nature, that was my first clue, and secondly I've spent enough time in Faerghus myself to recognize a native to the country." Damn, she'd correctly called out Ingrid's lack of local-ness and her actual country of residence, this woman was more knowledgeable than she should have been. "Now please, accept my offer of a ride before you get more lost."

After debating on turning tail and running for a moment, Ingrid decided that cutting her losses and hitching a ride with this friendly stranger couldn't have been too bad, especially since the woman had been watching over her. That decision was regretted the moment she'd gotten in the car and the doors were forcibly locked. "Tell me where you're staying," the woman said, putting the car in drive and rolling down the street. "And don't tell me the grand hotel downtown, I already know that isn't true."

"That's where I'd like to go, though." How this woman knew she wasn't staying there specifically, Ingrid wasn't going to ask, but it was obvious that the world was aware of the royal couple and their entourage using that hotel as their base. "Won't you just drop me off out front?"

"See, I'm not gullible, even though I've been told all about the large delegation currently staying there. You're at one of the sister locations, I just am not sure which one." Shaking her head as she took a turn down a one-way street, the woman's eyes glanced up to the mirror, checking behind her for anything suspicious. "I'm sure that you'd like to know how I know that, hm?"

"I think I would, yeah." Ingrid was feeling completely unsafe as she sat in the woman's car, completely at the mercy of her actions. Now that she'd gotten a closer, sustained look at her, she couldn't help but think that this woman was familiar in some way, but she couldn't place why; as far as she could remember, she hadn't run into anyone with large sunglasses and a high brunette ponytail before then. "Look, if you're some jilted ex of the guy I shared a room with last night, I'm sorry but I didn't have a choice on that."

Over the rim of the sunglasses raised the woman's eyebrows, showing her surprise at such an admission to a complete stranger. "I hadn't known about any of that, but I promise that the only members of your little group I'm familiar with are the king and queen themselves, and only in passing at that."

"Right, that…makes a lot of sense." Feeling a bit ashamed of herself for saying that without having been asked to divulge those secrets, Ingrid began to fidget with her hands, wanting to get out of the car and as far from the woman as she could. "But I would like to know how you know about everything we've been doing as a group. I thought security was the primary concern with this visit."

"Loose lips, that's how," the woman replied, her own lips curling into a smile. "Funny you mention me being someone's jilted ex, because it's the fault of the jilted ex of the emperor herself that I know anything. Him just happening to share all of the confidential information to a trusted advisor, who then shared it with me." She laughed, while Ingrid's face fell at the understanding that it was likely their whole operation was in peril. "Don't worry, Ferdie only shared it with me so that I could get the explanation for why I'm losing my revenue this week, the knowledge ends with me."

"How can I know that you mean that, though?"

The woman didn't speak for a few moments, humming to herself a song that sounded strangely familiar to Ingrid's ears, before she brought the vehicle to a stop and pulled her sunglasses down. Green eyes, shining brilliantly much like emeralds in the sun, met Ingrid's and told her all she needed to know about who this woman was. "My primary concern here is not getting paid, I'm not about to throw Fódlan into war over my money. But Ferdie did mention something else to me that I needed to get to the ears of the delegation without being too obvious about it, and you, dear, you seem like the perfect way to get it to your king."

"I mean, I have known him since we were children, I guess I'd be a good way in," Ingrid said, almost in disbelief that she'd been picked out of the crowd at random to fulfill such an important job on behalf of an actually famous singer. "But, uh, miss Arnault—"

"Call me Dorothea, there's no need for formality here."

"—okay, Dorothea, how can you be certain that what you've gotten told by this Ferdie guy is the absolute truth?" With her standing in the guard ranks already in such contention, Ingrid didn't want to be penalized further by sharing bad information with everyone. "Is he a personal confidant or something of yours?"

"He's a rival and advisor of the emperor, and often considered the reason she broke things off romantically with her slightly more trusted advisor, the one who knew too much. Ferdie wouldn't do anything that would potentially damage Adrestian lives, but the person he heard this from would. And…" Dorothea pushed her sunglasses back up on her face and began driving again. "I have every reason to trust him when he says that our emperor fully intends to make an attempt on your king's life at their meeting."


The moment Claude had been summoned into a meeting with the king and queen, he assumed nothing but the worst. He'd been sleeping in a bed in someone else's room, sharing space with one of their trusted guards who was clearly slacking on her duties, and he figured that he'd been caught and was about to be reprimanded. It never once occurred to him that they had no idea what had transpired the previous night between himself and Ingrid, and that they wanted to speak to him for a completely different reason.

That also meant that when they did tell him that they were curious if he'd step in to fill Felix's role for the day and be a personal guard for them, he loudly let out a sigh of relief that he needed to explain without ratting himself out. "I'm thankful that you didn't call me in here to tell me my services are no longer needed," he quickly spat out, it nowhere near the truth but convincing enough to not be questioned. "But, truth is, last night I didn't get the best night's sleep and—"

"That's right, no one knew where you were last night," Byleth interrupted, shaking her head. "Would you mind telling us where you ended up?"

He froze, his mind working at double speed to come up with another convincing explanation to save his skin. But, he quickly realized, the truth was plenty acceptable as long as certain details weren't divulged. "I got stuck over at the hotel my guys are staying at, ended up bunking in Lorenz's room because I have a key and all that. Dude's got a nice room to stay in but I couldn't sleep knowing I wasn't where I'm meant to be."

"Rather noble of you," Dimitri said, sounding completely unamused and making Claude flinch at the use of one specific word, "but what were you doing over there around curfew time? Weren't you aware of when it was?"

"Apparently it snuck up on far too many of us last night." That was true, and it was something that everyone knew by that point. "Tonight'll be better, so if you have that gap you need filling tomorrow, I'll be able to do it. Today, though, I plan on taking things nice and easy around here to make up for lost sleep."

"Told you we should've gone with Ingrid," Sylvain slyly remarked, having been in the room the whole time as to not mysteriously disappear and cause more of a headache for everyone. "She was actually here, and willing to do it, and you turned her down, and for what? Getting turned down by this guy here?"

"I would have figured that someone from a regal background such as him would understand the necessity of having good guards around to fill a gap, but perhaps I was mistaken." Dimitri, still unamused at what was happening, glanced over to Byleth to see her giving him a "told you so" look in return. "I still don't want Ingrid acting as one of my guards, that part I'm not budging on. Perhaps we'll be perfectly safe with Sylvain, Mercedes, and Annette watching over us."

Slowly, Byleth shook her head, shooting that idea down as she motioned for Claude to leave the room. He did so with haste, the last thing he heard being something about how that wasn't an option either, but he couldn't be bothered to care about the outcome. He'd rather enjoyed his night with Ingrid, and to hear her getting shot down like that by the man who employed her made him feel sorry for her. She was so dedicated to her job that she deserved better than being pushed aside for whatever reason the king was pulling out of his ass to deny her what she wanted.

Right as he got to his room's door he heard someone coming out of the elevator and stopped to see who it was—and when it was Ingrid herself, beginning to come down the hallway at a full sprint, he knew what he needed to do. Causing a collision in the hall wasn't physically smart, but having her barrel straight into him with their final destination being the floor on top of each other was completely worth it. "Claude! What was that for?" she breathily asked, her momentum broken by the fall and her needing the time to catch her breath. "I have somewhere incredibly important I need to go!"

"Running in the hallways isn't very ladylike," he teased, rather liking having her on top of him, even as she was trying to scramble back to her feet. "Come on, tell me what's going on that's got you all worked up, whoever you wanted to tell probably doesn't want to hear it anyway so I'll be all ears for you in their place."

All of the resistance and eagerness to get up seemed to vacate Ingrid's body at that statement, as she remembered that she was underappreciated by the couple she was actively trying to save. "Well I…suppose I could tell you instead," she meekly said, before tacking on, "but not right here. I can't be caught out here in this position."

"My room's right there," he pointed out, gesturing by moving his head to the door he had opened before hearing Ingrid arriving in the first place. "We can step in there if it'd make you more comfortable."

"Oh, yes, because being alone with you in yet another hotel room is exactly what I want." Still, Ingrid went along with it, getting off of Claude and offering him a hand to get up as well before following him into the room, making no remarks about how small it was but going right to the window and standing facing him and the still-open door until he'd closed it. "Ahem, so I had quite the time out on the streets of Enbarr today."

"Make any money?"

Her jaw dropped as he profusely apologized for the joke, and after she'd regained her composure she continued. "No, but I found someone who isn't making money because of the silly curfews put in place due to our presence here in town. Someone who knows of the specifics about who is staying here and where everyone else is staying as well."

"That's…strange, I'd think that only people directly involved in the planning of this diplomacy trip would know about that," Claude remarked, stroking the sides of his face as he thought about what kind of nonsense that could mean. "Who was this person, anyway?"

"Dorothea Arnault, opera singer and apparently close contact of the emperor." Ingrid wobbled one of her hands at the last few words. "Or, anyway, close contact of a close contact of the emperor, but I've never heard of a Ferdie in the Adrestian government."

Claude's eyes darted side to side as he thought about that name as well, before they widened at the realization of who she was speaking about. "Uh, Ingrid, she's talking about Ferdinand von Aegir, I'd bet. Who definitely is a close contact of the emperor, seeing as he's a minister underneath her. What did Dorothea say she knew from him?"

The grimace that crossed Ingrid's face let Claude know more than enough about what was to follow, but she still broke into the specifics of what she'd been told, even consulting her phone for the notes she'd taken upon Dorothea's insistence. By the time she'd given the quick and dirty version of what she'd heard, Claude's face was also carrying a similar grimace, even though he didn't look too panicked overall. "So that's why I was running up here," she concluded, tucking her phone back into her pocket. "An act that you so rudely interrupted me in."

"Yeah, yeah, I hear you on that, but…" Claude's head was shaking slightly as he thought about how to proceed now knowing this information. "Something tells me that if they hear it coming from your mouth, they're going to think it's you being angry you got shafted like you did. Can't exactly expect the king to listen to the guard he wants no guarding from, you know? So here's the plan, you let me go in there and do the talking, save his life, all that jazz. Good plan?"

Even though she was still very determined to do the right thing, Ingrid's whole spirit fell to the floor when she heard Claude dare suggest that he take credit for her life-saving measures, and she adamantly put her foot down about it. "No, it's not a good plan. In fact, it's the single worst plan I've ever heard, and that's saying a lot given that I work with Sylvain and Felix for a living."

"I'm just trying to make what you're saying get across, that's all. I don't mean any harm by it, but do you really think they'll listen if you're the one talking?" He raised an excellent point, but just because it was excellent didn't mean that Ingrid had to like it. She opened her mouth to counter him but he came closer to her, almost like he was trying to intimidate her with his height, which wasn't too much taller than her own. "Come on, Ingrid, think with your rational brain and not the one that wants glory. Who's going to need to do the talking in order for them to care?"

Her mouth trembled as she tried to force out the words, swallowing several times in her aversion to admitting that she wasn't the best choice for a role, but the chance to actually speak never came; right as she accepted defeat, the alarm in the room began blaring, and she instinctively reached up to grab her ears, while Claude grabbed her and dragged her toward the door. Out in the hallway everyone who was assigned to that floor, as well as the royal couple and several visitors, had gathered in their attempt to escape, some much groggier than others, but outside of the rooms there were no alarm sounds or lights. "I'll call down to the desk and ask if we need to evacuate," Marianne said, having come out of Leonie's room when the alarm sounded. "But I…can't tell if we should do this here or on our way downstairs."

"It could be a ruse to get us out of this secure location," Byleth mused, looking to Dimitri with a bit of worry in her eyes. "I'm beginning to suspect that we should stay here for today and try an excursion out on the town tomorrow."

Had she not been covering her ears, the sound of the alarm having given her mind an overload it needed time to recover from, Ingrid would have heard that idea and been able to jump into the conversation with her own knowledge. But because she was currently trying to root herself back in reality and not in some overloaded place, Claude had to step in and do the honors much like she hadn't wanted him to. "That'd be for the best, there's apparently rumblings out there about attempts on your lives," he announced, catching the attention of both the king and queen for it.

"And how, exactly, would you know that? Did you see it on the news or something?" Dimitri sounded like he was planning on discrediting the idea no matter what, but Claude knew he needed to not take ownership of the information.
"Ingrid heard it while she was out earlier, came up here to tell you, found me and told me, and then all this happened. Pretty convenient, don't you think?"

It was obvious that just mentioning Ingrid made Dimitri believe it even less, but Byleth took his hand and gave it a squeeze. "I think that we should listen to what Claude's telling us and trust Ingrid on this one. The worst that can happen is we lose out on a day in the city, but think of all of the bad things that could happen if she really is telling the truth and we ignore her for whatever reason?"

"She's coming up with these things to make me rethink denying her the roles she thinks she deserves," Dimitri grumbled, but he didn't fight against the idea further. When Marianne told them that the alarms going off in the rooms was an accident and they were safe to stay where they were, he immediately stomped his way back into his room, Byleth profusely apologizing before following him with Mercedes, Annette, and Sylvain all close behind.

As the rooms quieted down, everyone else returned to what they had been doing. Ingrid, after she'd calmed herself, left the floor entirely without a word to anyone that was there, but before Claude could even miss her presence he was accosted by Hilda, her eyes shining with delight as she saw him. "So, what was that all about?" she sweetly asked, batting her eyelashes and making Claude realize that she'd seen more than she should have. "You find yourself a girlfriend from Faerghus already?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he replied, trying to brush her off as quickly as he could, having no interest in dealing with whatever drama Hilda was going to try and create. "I've made a friend, if that's what you're looking for, but a girlfriend? Kind of requires some actual attraction between us."

"Don't you try lying to me, I've gotten to know you far too well to know that you've got nothing but the hots for her, and she's not exactly lacking them in return for you." Tsking a few times as she waggled a finger up in Claude's face, Hilda's mouth erupted into a giant smile. "Just let me play matchmaker, get the two of you set up together for real, it'll all work out if you let it."

"Thanks, but no thanks. Don't need a romance messing things up for me and my job while we're here." He didn't mention it, but he also didn't need a second person trying to play matchmaker with him and Ingrid, especially when Annette was already doing the job pretty well, if the previous night was any indication. "Ingrid and I will make great penpals when this is all said and done, but—"

Hilda's waggling finger quickly became a shushing one, pushing itself against Claude's lips to get him to shut up. "You're going to be exchanging romantic letters pining for each other, and eventually it's going to end up in you visiting her and never coming home, don't even try to pretend otherwise." His eyes were widening at how aggressive she was at keeping her finger against his lips, and despite her short stature Hilda was trying her best to get up close to his face. "Just come out and admit that you're dying to know her in more ways than just professional ones, you're not fooling anyone."

It was painful how right Hilda was, but Claude wasn't going to let the truth be out in the open, no matter how much she wanted him to play along with his game and admit it. "Sorry, but you've got that wrong," he managed to say with a muffled voice, the inability to move his lips because of her finger's pressure a bit awkward to work with. "Just let me live my life, Hilda, you can't control it forever."

"Sure I can," she teased, pulling her finger back, only to change to flicking Claude's nose, "but maybe I won't if you ask nicely."

"Sabotaging and managing my life's a lot more work than you want to sign yourself up for, that's all I'm going to say to you." There was no way that Claude was going to result to begging Hilda to leave him alone, so he knew he was going to need to play dirty. "You're going to get in far over your head and interest level that you're just going to get bored and decide to do something else."

She narrowed her eyebrows, clearly not enjoying being called out like that. "You have no place to tell me those sorts of things, but I guess I can back off for a little while. Until you do something stupid with that girl you're totally, definitely interested in, then I'll be right back ready to tell her everything about why you're the worst guy she could ever get involved with. You think she knows your little secret?"

"No, and because there's never going to be anything between me and her, she's not going to be finding it out from me. She learns about that, it's gonna be from her boss' mouth, not mine." Claude was never going to be the one to mention the side of him he'd rather forget, and the fact that it was yet again being held over him like a ball and chain was infuriating, to say the least. "Now get back to whatever you were doing before the alarms went off, I'm sure Marianne's worried about what you're up to."

Hilda huffed but she went otherwise quietly, not wanting to cause more ruffled feathers than she'd already created. The moment she was back in Leonie's room with the door closed tightly, he went back to his own, ready to plan out the rest of his day and see what there was he could accomplish before curfew hit. Unfortunately for him, the more he thought about his possibilities, the more he realized that there wasn't much he wanted to go out and do on his own, which meant that he'd need someone to go with him. While there were plenty of choices for people to go do things with, he needed to think about the possibility of being trapped somewhere with them for the night if they got the curfew time wrong; there was really only one person he would be satisfied being stuck with, but he wasn't going to jump through hoops to try and arrange that.

That was how Claude ended up on a lonely shuttle over to the other hotel, to see what Lorenz and the others were doing with their day, and how he ended up getting to hang out with them by their pool for a while until the night started to grow dark and he knew he needed to get back before he was stuck in Lorenz's room for a second night. "It's been real, gentlemen," he told the trio as he headed back toward the shuttle station, "but I've got to get going. Can't miss another night in my own room."

"It's still an hour until curfew, isn't it?" Raphael asked, sounding genuinely confused at why Claude was making moves so far in advance. "You've still got a whole bunch of time before you need to get going!"

"I'd rather him play it safe and not have to crash in my room again," Lorenz replied, echoing Claude's exact reasoning without having been prompted. "I am all for his early departure. Travel safe, we can meet up again tomorrow."

"That's the plan." Claude gave a small salute and made his way back to a still-lonely shuttle, the driver the same one as before, who didn't say a word and didn't seem to have any interest in making small talk with the single passenger on board. The whole way back to the downtown hotel, all Claude could think about was how he wished he could pull some strings to make his night more interesting than it was going to turn out to be. He was doing things smart and safe and was going to have a boring night because of it, but after the previous night, perhaps a boring night was in order.

He disembarked the shuttle right as Ingrid was approaching the stop, looking like she'd had a fine night on her own given that she was carrying quite the bag of food with her. "Hello again," she greeted with a brisk nod, before brushing right past Claude on her way. It was a split-second decision, and one that he knew he shouldn't have been making, but time was on his side for a change—and so Claude did a full one-eighty and followed Ingrid right onto her shuttle bus.

"What was that for, not even a good night?" he asked her as he sat down in the seat across the aisle from the one that Ingrid had taken for herself. "You wound me, honestly. Did the alarms going off really sour your attitude toward me that much?"

For a moment, Ingrid looked at him confused about what he was talking about, but when it clicked in her mind that she'd been followed right onto the bus, she reached up and grabbed the side of her head in distress. "No, it wasn't about the alarms, it was about making it on the bus before curfew hits."

"That's…quite a while from now," Claude told her, not buying her excuse even for a moment. "Unless you think that you'd get lost in conversation with me for almost an hour, I highly doubt you'd be risking missing curfew for a second night if you'd just said more than hello when you saw me."

"What are you talking about? I was just kicked out of a restaurant because they didn't want to be stuck harboring people past curfew, which starts…" Ingrid's voice trailed off as she looked around the bus to see if there was any indication of what the current time was, which only made Claude think that she was trying to yank his chain. He knew when curfew was, he knew that it was still plenty of time between where they were and when they'd be locked in wherever they were at the moment.

The bus driver, focused on the road, was the one to provide a rather unwelcome answer to Ingrid's query. "Eight minutes from now," he said without any inflection in his voice. "Emperor Edelgard made the announcement roughly three hours ago that it would be half an hour earlier tonight."

"You're kidding," Claude said, realizing that he'd just sent himself off into being out of his room for a second night, something he'd just been teasing Ingrid about doing. "Well, guess I'm in need of someone small, blonde, and adorable to let me room with her tonight, and would you look at that? I've got someone who fits that description right here!"

Ingrid forced a laugh, sounding like she would rather commit crimes than do such a thing a second time. "Sorry, but if Mercie's in her room then you're out of luck on that, she'd rat us out to Dimitri faster than you'd believe. You'll have to bunk with Ashe, but don't worry. He may not be small and blond, but he's adorable and you'll have the time of your life hearing all about his fictional heroes and how he strives to be like them."

"Can't say I'm interested in sharing a bed with him, sorry." If he was going to have to be outright with it, then so be it, but this information had just thrown a wrench in Claude's whole split-second plan to chase Ingrid back to her hotel and he needed to find some good in it. "However, if Mercedes'll be a stickler about me sleeping with you, how about I just cozy up next to her instead, hm?"

"That's your decision and I respect it, but I feel that you'll get a fair number of our guards wanting your head on a pike for it." If there was more to what Ingrid wanted to say, she didn't say it when her phone started to ring in her pocket, distracting her long enough to derail her thoughts. She scrambled to get it and answer the call, the small noises of understanding she gave to the person on the other side letting Claude know that it was not a conversation she had much control over. When she hung up, she gave him a serious side-eye that looked almost deadly. "That just happened to be Mercie, who got caught off-guard by the change in curfew and won't be making it back to her room tonight. Which means that, since I know Ashe won't care either way, I…would be wrong to leave you without a room to sleep in tonight."

"Young love," the bus driver remarked with a cough. "Makes me sick."

"No one said we were in love," Claude corrected, raising a hand, "but perhaps exploring something a bit less…committal, if we're being honest. Two nights sharing a room has to amount to something, don't you think?"

"I think it means that we're horrible with paying attention to curfew."

Truer words were never spoken, and even though Ingrid didn't seem like she was thrilled to be opening up her room to Claude, she wasn't anywhere close to as combative about their sleeping arrangement as she'd been the night before. At least, this time she didn't argue when he mentioned actually sleeping in the bed with her, even if she rolled her eyes and told him that he needed to keep hands and feet to himself.

If that was the case, then it should have gone both ways—yet Claude fell asleep with Ingrid's hand gently resting on his arm, and woke up with her draped over him like the blanket they'd lost overnight. Failing to meet curfew was one problem, but falling hard and fast for one of the other guards was a completely different beast, and he needed to control it before it got out of hand.