With their wounds healed, Lysithea and the rest of the students made their way back to Garreg Mach. Unfortunately for her the march was anything less than peaceful.

"So, two crests," Claude commented to Lysithea as he purposefully matched her pace.

"As if I'd speak of this with you," she bit back. She was in no mood to humor her House Leader at the moment. Unlike the professor, Claude enjoyed prying secrets out from people which never made it very easy for her to be around him considering the secrets that she kept. It also didn't help that he constantly belittled her and treated her like a child.

"Woah easy there. I was just wondering how that was possible?"

"The fact that you were chosen as our house's representative shows that the impossible can happen."

Lorenz, who had been standing nearby looked, amused by what she had said. Claude though hardly looked phased. Any insults she could throw against him usually seemed to just roll off his back.

"Well I am a miracle worker after all," Claude replied smoothly.

"More of an agent of chaos," Lorenz replied.

"What's the difference?"

Lysithea picked up her pace and left those two to argue. Though she found Lorenz insufferable with his talk of the nobility and the future, there were times when he served as a sufficient distraction when she needed one.

Unfortunately, that meant she got a little closer to the Blue Lions than necessary. Which might not have been a problem if not for Sylvain suddenly slowing down to be next to her.

Uh, when would these people stop bothering her? She was clearly not in a mood to deal with them.

"Hey there Lysithea."

"If this is another invitation for tea Sylvain then I have a certain spell I'd like to reply with."

The scion of debauchery held out his hands in front of him. "Woah, no need to get violent. I just wanted to see how you were feeling."

Lysithea had a hard time believing him. "Really?"

"Yea, you clearly made an effort to hide your crests. Do you not like them?"

"I do not like them. I abhor them," Lysithea replied. There was no point in holding back her opinion on Crests now that the secret had come out. "I'd sooner be rid of them if I could."

Sylvain's smile suddenly became much more somber. It shocked Lysithea, she didn't think he could ever make an expression like that. It was almost a bit frightening. "If it makes you feel any better, so would I."

"Are you seriously bothering another girl while we're marching!?" Ingrid interrupted before Lysithea could ask him what he had meant by that.

The smile returned to his face and he turned to face Ingrid. "I was just being a gentleman and inviting her to some tea. She pushed herself so hard on the battlefield after all."

"She doesn't need your sympathy Sylvain," Felix said as he joined them. He glanced back at Lysithea. "She can clearly hold her own in battle."

"I'm not arguing with that, but there's nothing wrong with helping her relax once in a while."

"Since when is being around you ever relaxing?" Ingrid replied.

"Please must you three put on such an unseemly display so soon after battle?" Dimitri said as he joined them.

Felix grunted. "Like you can say much, boar."

"Felix if you have any grievances with me then we can address them back at the monastery."

"I would sooner spar with Sylvain"

"Hey! I take offense to that."

Lysithea slowed her pace and rejoined the Golden Deer in their march. She would rather deal with Claude then have be in the middle of whatever that was.

News of her two crests spread along the Monastery like wildfire. Even if her classmates hadn't been the one to spread it, there had been several knights that had witnessed it. Along with Catherine they would have to make an official report of it to Rhea.

Of course, this news would then travel to Seteth who would summon her to his office along with Hanneman.

"It is an official that all Crests a student has must be reported to the Academy," Seteth said to the two of them as they sat in his office.

Lysithea glanced at Hanemean nervously. He was more worried for him than herself at the moment. Keeping such a secret of the church could have him punished for treason.

"I take full responsibility. I was the one who refused to submit a report on her second crest," the scholar replied promptly.

"No!" Lysithea quickly shouted. She wasn't going to let him be punished for her actions. "I was the one who begged him to keep my crests a secret." She had to think of an excuse, anything to get him out of this. "I blackmailed him into keeping it," she lied.

Seteth raised an eye to that. "You… blackmailed him?"

"No, she did not."

"I did!"

"I assure you that everything I did was of my own accord. Lysithea had little say in the matter."

"Oh please I-"

"Quiet," Seteth demanded the two of them as he put a hand between his eyes. "As this has become a game of shifting blame, I'll instead ask why you wished to keep this a secret Miss Ordelia."

Lysithea shifted in her seat before answering. "Because I never wanted them."

"Why do you not want them? Are they not gifts from the goddess?"

"Gifts…" Lysithea whispered to herself as something simmered underneath. "You think these Crests are a gift?"

"It is as the Goddess wills," Seteth replied calmly. "Though it is certainly unprecedented for one to be born with two crests."

"I wasn't born with them," Lysithea whispered.

"What?" Seteth asked.

"And they aren't a gift," Lysithea clenched her fists as her eyes became wet.

"... How did you get them. Tell me that at the very least," Seteth requested.

Honestly… What was the point of hiding things anymore? Things had just fallen apart around her. It was a surprise it didn't happen sooner.

"I never wanted to be experimented on. Watch as all my other siblings died to their experiments as those mages implanted Crests in us. I was the only one that lived, that succeeded in a way. But even then it was only a partial success. These Crests, these gifts that I was given… my body can't handle them."

"These mages, what did they look like?" Seteth asked her.

"Why!" Lysithea asked. "Why do you need to know?"

"Tell me!" he said nearly shouted..

That caused her and Hanneman to freeze. It was the first she had ever heard Seteth raise his voice like that.

She looked up and through her tears saw that his fists were clenched, and his teeth were grit. "They wore black robes and beak-like masks," Lysithea informed him. The sight of them had been embedded in her mind for all those years. "Their skin, what little I could see, was pale like a ghost's."

Seteth let out a tch, an actual tch, before sitting back down in his chair. She never thought that he could actually make such a sound. "You have gone through things that no child should."

Of course she had, that much was obvious.

Seteth stared at her. His frustration fell away to reveal a look of sympathy and something else underneath. "How long do you have?"

Despite her tears, she forced herself to answer. "It's hard to say. Maybe ten years? I'll be a miracle if I even hit thirty."

She could feel Hanneman's hands on her back as he tried to comfort her, but that mattered little to her. It was all over, everything that she had done to try and build some semblance of a stable life at the monastery was gone.

"There is no point in punishing you anymore then they already have."

Lysithea's eyes widened. Was Seteth of all people actually letting her off?

"Hanneman, you will be kept under probation. You will report all findings to me and there will be a Knight of Seiros monitoring your work."

Even Hanneman was being given a light punishment.

"Why are you helping us?" she asked him.

"Because I can understand some of the pain you're going through. And I have some suspicions about the people that have done this."

"Do you know who did this?" It would be an answer that she had been seeking for nearly her entire life.

"I must reconvene with Rhea first. What has been spoken shall not leave this office."

"Do you know who did this?" she asked again.

"I promise that you will be given your answer in time. There is much that we still do not know."

That hardly satisfied her, but it seemed that that was all Seteth was willing to say.

Lysithea sighed as she finally found a quiet corner in the library to sit down and read in. The last week for her had been nothing short of hectic ever since her second crest had been revealed to the Monastery. The invitations for tea she had received had nearly tripled in the last few weeks as nobles bid for her attention. Lorenz especially had gotten particularly persistent with his invitations and it was only after being chastised by Dorothea, who had just happened to have been walking nearby, that he had finally stopped.

Still, despite all the attention she had received she had been completely caught off guard when Hubert of all people had suddenly walked up to her on the way to class.

"Excuse me," he said to her. His words were polite, but his appearance and tone of voice were sending a completely different signal to Lysithea.

"What do you need?" she replied calmly. Or at least her best attempt at staying calm. To say that she was nervous was an understatement. Most tended to agree that if you had acquired Hubert's interest, then you were best off going to the chapel to pray.

Not that she would actually run to the Chapel, which was unfortunately on the other side of the Monastery, but even she would hesitate over the idea of drawing his ire. He was a powerful mage in his own right and though she was confident she could hold her own against in a contest of magic, it was clear that he had many other tricks up his sleeve. The foul-smelling cloth that her Professor had found one day and taken around the Monastery trying to find the owner had certainly been proof of that.

"Lady Edelgard requests your presence this afternoon."

Edelgard? What would the future empress of the Adrestrian Empire and house leader of the Black Eagles need from her? "Why does she need me?"

"I am not at liberty to say."

There was no refusing a request from the future Empress herself, so Lysithea grit her teeth and forced herself to say her next few words. "I happily accept."