Their return to Garreg Mach was a quick one, as there was barely enough time for the trio of Leonie, Dorothea, and Ingrid to get back home and pack for a second trip away before they were on their ride to the nearest port with ships departing to Ylisse. Chasing after Kjelle wasn't necessary, but Hilda had offered to front the bill for it (or, more specifically, she was going to have her brother give her the money to do so), which meant that there wasn't much stopping them from doing it. "It's a week's ship ride there and a week back, so we'll be gone for a while," Dorothea had lamented while in the carriage on its way to Garreg Mach, sitting on her lonesome across from her friends who didn't seem bothered by the timeframe they'd be gone. "I hope we can afford to, well, live when we get back."
"It'll all be fine, don't worry," Ingrid said, before clarifying, "with the money side of things. I am a bit worried about leaving again so suddenly without getting to tell Ashe what's going on. I hope he won't think the worst of what could have happened to me."
"He'll be fine, don't stress about it. When you get back, you'll have quite the story to tell him about tracking down a Ylissean knight in her home country, I'm sure he'll get a kick out of that." Laughing, Leonie seemed fully at ease with what kind of nonsense had begun to transpire regarding her friend she'd made while on the job, as if she found enjoyment in random world-traveling trips. That sense of adventure and excitement carried her for quite a while, even through the rush of unpacking just to repack and riding another day away by carriage to find their ship waiting for them in the port. Of course, unlike the carriage rides, the ship was meant to carry others at the same time, and so for the week's trip over the sea they were stuck with a jolly assortment of vacationers and Ylisse natives alike, all eager to get back on land as soon as possible.
There were so many people of various nationalities and different cultures that by the time they'd landed in the small port that had been built to accommodate travelers coming from other countries with Ylisse's capitol city Ylisstol as their destination, Dorothea had charmed citizens from all over the world with her voice and gained an army of new fans. "What a shame none of them will ever pay to see you in concert, huh?" Leonie teasingly said to her as they disembarked the ship in a throng of others with their same goal location in mind. "You could've made so much money off of them, it's crazy you didn't."
"Well, I don't aim to rob people blind, but I'm sure if they come back to Fódlan they'll come looking for my shows," she replied, feeling a bit jaded that Leonie was talking to her like she had to sell her talent to everyone she met, even strangers on a ship. "Besides, there's always a chance we'll cross paths again on the return trip."
"I wish we could stay on and keep going to their end port, I'd love to get to spend another day or two on the water." Her legs wobbling as she stood on solid ground for the first time in a week, Ingrid's words were betrayed by how unsteady she seemed on her feet. "Where was it that they're going? Some other country, right?"
"Another country connected to Ylisse's land, yeah. Kind of like how Fódlan's technically split into smaller countries, this continent is too. It's a new adventure for us, somewhere new to explore, and I am here for it!" Popping her knuckles, Leonie took in a deep breath and put a skip in her step that the other two weren't able to replicate—Ingrid because she was still getting used to being back on land, and Dorothea because she didn't currently want to be walking alongside Leonie like they were being buddy-buddy with each other. They'd kept their distance the entire time they'd been crossing the sea, the air between them rather frigid due to the whole soulmate thing they still hadn't sorted out. Even though Leonie would put on a fake face and pretend like it was water under the bridge, it was clear it wasn't when they could barely look each other in the eye any longer.
Something had to give, and give it did sooner rather than later. Because they were in a port town that existed almost exclusively to get people to Ylisstol quickly without too much in the way of traversing the country, it meant that finding a ride to get to the city was relatively easy. However, most of the rides were shared with others, and none of them particularly wanted to have to spend a several-hour carriage ride talking about why they were there in the first place. It was decided that they would book a private carriage and get to Ylisstol later than they'd hoped to, which was fine as it meant they got a day to rest and relax after the craziness of their nonstop travel up until then.
The carriage they were given was a lot smaller than anticipated, with only one seat inside that was usable, some storage space on the other side, and a place with the driver that someone could sit if they didn't want to sit three to the seat. Before anyone else had a chance to say they'd sit on the outside, Ingrid staked her claim on it, leaving Leonie and Dorothea to have to share the bench inside, amidst their complicated feelings towards what was going on with them both. While there was tangible tension in the air as they set off, Dorothea told herself that she'd been able to survive the ride on the seat with Kjelle last time, she could easily survive riding with Leonie this time.
Their ride wasn't nearly as long as the one to Derdriu had been, yet it felt more productive the moment Leonie looked at Dorothea with a shake of her head and said, "I know you're probably thinking I'm upset or something about you finding your soulmate in the guy who broke my heart. But I'm not. Just figured you'd like to know."
With a smirk forming on her lips, Dorothea leaned against the side of the carriage, looking over at Leonie and sizing her up, trying to figure out if she was being truthful or trying to ruffle feathers. "Well, good, because he's my soulmate. Even if I didn't find him even slightly charming when we met."
"He doesn't get much better that that, I'm afraid." That decided it, this was Leonie at her most genuine. "In fact, he's always kind of like that. A huge try-hard who wants to flatter everyone but kind of really sucks at it."
"And yet you dated him."
Squishing her face as she considered how that made her look, Leonie slowly went back to relaxing, before scooting over on the seat so that she was closer to Dorothea. "Look, the reason I dated him has a lot more value than just, you know, looking for my soulmate. Dude's got money for days, I was willing to do what he wanted if it meant he helped me out of some financial binds."
Dorothea thought about what she'd seen of her supposed soulmate, how he was assertive and looked rather stuffy even in a more casual situation, then looked down at herself and how she was wearing a fine cocktail dress despite spending part of the day traveling. Her smirk faded as she looked over at Leonie and how she'd been more reasonable in her choice of attire, choosing comfort over style. "Sorry, but I can't say I see why he would choose to date you when you weren't his soulmate and you don't seem like his type of woman."
"I—well, uh—you see, it's—" A bright blush rising in Leonie's cheeks, she covered her face with both hands to try and obscure how flustered she was from the pair of watching eyes glued to her. "Lorenz might be a huge prick, but when he loves someone he really loves them. Until they stop giving him what he wants because they've realized they're not exactly down with it anymore and…yeah. There you have it."
Propping her head up on her arm, which rested at the elbow on the seat as close to the wall as it could, Dorothea continued looking in Leonie's direction, despite seeing how she was not handling her admissions well. "My, my, I never took you as someone who'd open her legs for money, but you learn something new every day, don't you?"
"Shh, don't say it so loudly!" Almost begging in her embarrassed state, Leonie took her hands off of her face after her cheeks had lost some of their color, so that she could meet Dorothea's eyes and try to play everything off as an empowering moment. "I might've been sleeping with him for money, but he's not exactly great in bed. There, that's something fantastic you'll have to look forward to once you get together with him."
"No worries, I can't say that I'm exactly eager to get in bed with him, let alone anyone." That was true, Dorothea hadn't even slept with Ingrid in their time together, even if they'd shared a bed many times over the course of their relationship and lingering friendship. "But it's good to know to keep my expectations low."
Leonie gave a laugh, loud and proud, as she lifted an arm up over her head in a power position. "That's the spirit! You get a guy who's a bad lay who cares less about who he's with than he cares about inheriting his family's money and titles, and there's nothing you can do about it!" She was playing it off as a joke, but Dorothea could tell that there was no real joke in what Leonie had just said. This Lorenz guy really didn't seem like he was going to be great soulmate material, and since she was a prominent star in Fódlan it seemed like she was taking a huge downgrade from what someone in her position should have been able to receive. But of course, this was all based on Leonie's recollection of what he was like during their relationship, so it could have easily been exaggerated for the sake of drama.
Ignoring that possibility, Dorothea decided that she didn't want to talk much more about her soulmate and begin dreading meeting him again, so she turned the tables on Leonie a bit. "Okay, so you've gotten your chance to rag on the man I'm meant to be with, what about your soulmate? You want to tell me all about the horrible person they are?"
She seemed a little hesitant to say anything at all, and right as Dorothea felt justified in making that choice to change the topic, she was proven wrong. "Okay, so you're going to hate me for this, but one of us got saddled with a prince and it sure wasn't you."
Doing a double-take as she made sure she'd heard that right, Dorothea repeated, "A prince?"
"Yep, you heard me." Puffing her chest out slightly, Leonie reached behind her and pulled her ponytail straight up, revealing her soulmate mark with its green color splashed all over it. "And it's someone I know you met too, so you can't even act surprised about who it is when I tell you."
Thinking back to the night at the festival, the word prince kept running through Dorothea's mind, her trying to remember who it was that had said it to her. Then, as if lightning had struck her where she sat, she gasped loudly and leaned forward toward Leonie. "Claude! That's why you weren't interested in answering me when I asked about his eye color, because you already knew he wasn't my soulmate—he was yours!"
"I don't honestly know how we'd gone all those years knowing each other without testing the waters, probably because he always had girlfriends and I had Lorenz until that ended in a flaming mess," Leonie said, putting her hair back down where she always let it rest against her neck and shoulder. "But yeah, I don't know how you already knew he was a prince, but he's got some sort of claim to the Almyran throne. Guess I'll learn about that once I get to talk to him properly about this whole soulmate thing."
"You mean you didn't talk to him about it while we were still in Derdriu?" Not like Dorothea had spoken to her soulmate either, but Leonie and Claude seemed to be on decent enough terms; Dorothea could not say the same about herself and Lorenz, who she'd last seen drunk on wine and trying to intimidate her into further conversation. She almost wished that she just hadn't found her soulmate at all, but then she knew the feeling of loneliness she'd been grappling with for so long would've been overwhelming by that point. "Looks like we're going to have to make a trip back out there, huh?"
"More like, I was thinking of getting Hilda to convince them to come to Garreg Mach with her next time she comes in, so that we could have the conversations we need to have in our home, not theirs." Shrugging at her own suggestion, like she wasn't sure if it was a good one or not, Leonie finally settled back in the seat, closer to Dorothea than she'd been before but not oppressively so. "Glad we were able to hash this out between us, I was really looking forward to getting to tell you all about Lorenz's bad parts to get you prepared for the rest of your life."
"Thanks for that," Dorothea replied, eyes flitting up towards the roof of the carriage for a moment as she thought about praying to the goddess asking if she could perhaps give Lorenz a change of personality before they had to start exploring what being soulmates would look like for them. She ultimately chose not to do anything at all because she didn't want to look ungrateful for finding her soulmate in the first place.
When they arrived on the outskirts of Ylisstol, the carriage driver dropped them and their belongings off, wishing them good luck and safe travels on the rest of their journey. "Why did we get put outside the city?" Dorothea asked the moment she realized they were still quite the distance from the buildings on the horizon. "I thought our ride was supposed to take us into the city?"
"Oh, that's my fault." Jumping out in front of the two others with a smile on her face, Ingrid didn't seem the least bit bothered by the extra work she'd just caused for them all. "I was talking to the driver the whole time about his horses and how often he makes this drive, then I might've asked him if he had any good restaurant recommendations for a group of starving travelers. So, that's why he dropped us off here!"
"Ingrid, I think he might have tricked you," Leonie pointed out, as she looked around at the lack of anything notable around them. "Did he tell you where this place was specifically? What it's called? Anything that tells you it's real?"
"Don't worry about it, it's real and we're already almost there," she confidently replied, waggling a finger at Leonie, before beginning to walk in the opposite direction of where the outskirts of Ylisstol were visible. "It's just in this village."
Turning around to see that they were indeed just outside a village, Dorothea felt a bit more at ease with this food-related detour, but she still wasn't looking forward to needing to walk the distance to the city with her bags. "This place better be worth it," she grumbled, as they all took their things in their arms and walked into the village, finding the restaurant with ease and getting a table big enough for them and their belongings. The food was decent enough, nothing too special compared to some of the fancier foods she'd eaten at home, but Leonie and Ingrid both were able to eat to their heart's content, the meals seemingly endless in terms of portioning.
While they were still eating what they wanted, taking from each other's plates and ordering more just because of how hungry they were, Dorothea took the time to look around the little restaurant they'd ended up in. She couldn't figure out why the driver was so willing to suggest it as a place for foreigners to go, because it didn't look like anything spectacular. She'd been to brand cafés while touring across Fódlan that felt more welcoming than this specific place did, but it seemed to be adored by people who lived in the village. The walls were covered in pictures of visitors with who seemed to be the owner, just based on how often she showed up in the images, but Dorothea didn't see that particular woman being there that day.
What she did see, though, was worthy of her rubbing at her eyes to make sure she wasn't hallucinating anything. At a table on the other side of the dining room was a young girl with pointed ears that looked almost unreal, but it was who she was with that was striking Dorothea as oddest. The other person at the table had long, floppy ears coming from the top of their head, and hair (or…fur?) that was long and popped up on other parts of their body as well. She knew it wasn't polite to stare, but her attention was drawn to this person, curious about why they looked so out of place in the restaurant.
The young girl noticed her staring in their direction, and before she could avert her gaze to make it look like she wasn't doing exactly that, the girl rose from her seat and came a bit closer to the table, her auburn braids swinging as she walked. The girl's face, as she got closer, looked a lot older than Dorothea would have expected it to, so she assumed that she was just a young-looking woman instead of a little girl. But she was still staring, and the woman clearly noticed that, so she mouthed an apology and went back to looking at her friends, hoping that would be enough. "There's no need to apologize, you're not from around here, we can tell." The woman's voice sounded as young as she'd initially looked, and it caught the attention of all three of them at the table, them all turning to see her standing not too far away, hands on small hips. "People actually from Ylisse tend to only come here at dinner when the owner's here, so you're obviously from out of the country."
"What does that girl want?" Leonie asked, mouth full of a bite of food, completely unaware that Dorothea's staring had summoned her. "If she's going to try scamming us or something, tell her we don't have money."
"I can hear you, you're not very good at being stealthy in trying to get me to go away." The woman pulled a chair from another table and drew it right up to next to where they were sitting. "It's been a while since I last saw foreigners in here, so I'm curious about where you're from and stuff like that. You—" she pointed at Dorothea with a small finger, "—couldn't take your eyes off of us so wherever you're from, you must not have non-humans running around. Can't be Tellius, then."
"We're from Fódlan," Dorothea finally said after realizing that she'd gotten them into this particular mess and she needed to be the one to get them out. "Does that answer your question sufficiently?"
"Fódlan…" Tapping her chin, the woman seemed deep in thought for a moment before nodding. "Wouldn't explain why you're looking at me all funny, but my friend over there? Without a doubt. You're not used to seeing his kind. Although, honestly, people even from around here aren't really used to it either."
"Okay then. I don't know what the problem here is, or why you approached us." Her eyes narrowing as she tried to get a read on this woman, Dorothea realized there was something she could ask to try and make progress in a way that wasn't just scouting out people not native to the area. "What's your name, anyway?"
"Nah."
Stunned at the quick and short response, she replied, "It wasn't a yes or no question."
"And I didn't give you a yes or no answer." Standing up from the chair she'd grabbed, the woman put it back and went over to her table, her friend looking over at where she'd gone and them clearly getting into a conversation once she'd returned.
Dorothea figured that would be the end of things, and so after explaining to her friends what had just gone down and why it had happened, they finished their meal, paid the bill, and headed out to start on their way to Ylisstol proper. But before they could start on the road, the woman followed them out of the restaurant and stopped them from going further. "You said you're from Fódlan, right?" she asked, even though she'd repeated it correctly before. "That's not somewhere that people just casually visit from on the regular, you have to have a reason for being here. Mind telling me the reason?"
"We'll tell you the reason," Ingrid said, taking the charge this time after seeing Dorothea's unamused face at a second round of conversation with this deceptively young-looking woman. "But before we do that, you have to tell us your name."
She drew in a deep breath, exhaling it slowly through barely-parted lips. "I already told you, my name is Nah. Something, something, 'yes or no question' something? Yeah, no, that was me answering what I'd been asked." She seemed annoyed with having to give that clarification, so she quickly added, "If you want to take up issue with it, I can direct you to my mother."
"Uh, no thanks, miss Nah," Leonie jumped in, waving her hands rapidly in front of her to show that they really didn't need that. "But why did you follow us out? We were just on our way to—"
"Ylisstol, it's the only place around here worth going." Finishing Leonie's sentence without so much as an apology for cutting her off, Nah turned her head in the direction of the city before slowly coming back to looking at the three women. "Anyway, Yarne—that's my taguel friend, by the way—and I were talking about you being from Fódlan and he pointed out that we know someone who just got back from there recently. What would the odds be that who we know is someone you know? Is Fódlan a big place?"
Dorothea's eyes widened at the possibility of yet another perfect coincidence falling right into their laps, and she struggled to find the words to properly answer Nah's question. "It is pretty big, sure, but do you know where they were in Fódlan?"
"Can't say that I do, unfortunately. We haven't seen her since she came back, but we heard she'd gotten back not that long ago." The timeline added up, but it wasn't quite safe to assume that she was in fact talking about Kjelle until she gave any other indication. "Point is, it's so uncommon that we get people from Fódlan around here that he, Yarne that is, thought that maybe you all could know her."
After the trio exchanged a look that told the others they were all willing to bite the bait being offered to them, they decided that their fearless leader Leonie would have to be the one to bring it up. "Is she a knight for the royal family? Blue hair, shorter than all of us, really muscular?"
There was a moment where it seemed that the description she'd been given didn't ring a bell, where Nah looked down at the ground and kicked at the dirt underneath her feet. "That sounds a lot like her, yeah," she finally said, looking back up at the three with a smile. "How crazy that you all got to meet Kjelle while she was in Fódlan. Let me guess, you're here to see her or something?"
"She left without saying goodbye, we wanted to finish things off properly," Leonie said with a nod, which made Nah's smile grow a bit larger. "We had someone willing to pay for our trip out here, so it's really just a lot of sightseeing and finding our friend!"
"Oh, well, I'd go with you guys to Ylisstol to try finding her, but Yarne and I have kind of made it a point to…stay away from the city." Reaching up to pull on one of her auburn braids, Nah looked somewhat annoyed at something she'd said herself. "But for you all, it'll be fine! Head out to the main carriage-path, there's always someone willing to transport people from the village into town, you'll be there in no time and she shouldn't be that hard to find. Just trust me on that."
With a farewell she ducked back into the restaurant, leaving the three ladies thankful to have been given a bit of new direction on their journey but all questioning just how lucky they'd gotten in finding someone else who knew Kjelle in such a lonesome place. True to Nah's word, when they got out to the main road they'd originally been dropped off on, within five minutes a driver was by, asking if they needed a ride and if their destination was the port or the city. Riding into Ylisstol itself was much like riding into Derdriu, going from lush scenery along the road to buildings with the occasional park scattered here or there to bring greenery to the people in the town, and their carriage driver dropped them off outside of what looked to be the main transportation hub in the city, giving them no directions to anywhere but telling them to be careful when crossing the roads.
Garreg Mach had always felt busy at times, especially when royal conventions or religious events were happening, and Derdriu had a cluttered feel to it, but Ylisstol was a completely different story. Leonie was put off by how crowded even the sidewalks in the city were, while Ingrid compared it to a warmer version of Fhirdiad's downtown area, and Dorothea could best equate it to how busy Enbarr could get when there were concerts happening all across the city. It wasn't even a direct comparison for them, though, because these were unfamiliar streets with unfamiliar places lining the roads, and none of them had a concrete destination in mind.
With their bags firmly kept in their possession, and with the help of a friendly stranger who saw them wandering around and directed them to the closest hotel, they were able to get a relatively cheap place to stay in the downtown area of the city. As they were escorted up to the second-highest floor in the building, employees walking with them carrying their bags so they didn't have to, all three ladies were admiring the views they had of the city out of the windows in each stairwell; it wasn't until they were in their room, though, that they were able to look out a window for a sustained amount of time. "I think we must be pretty close to the castle or whatever the royal family lives in," Ingrid remarked as she leaned against the windowsill, eyes scanning the rooftops she had a perfect view of. "This is reminding me a lot of what Fhirdiad looks like when you're close to the castle."
"That'd make sense, but for the price we're paying here for a night, it doesn't quite add up." Financial decisions never were Leonie's strong suit, and she wasn't aware of the difference in value of currency between Fódlan and Ylisse, but overall the prices weren't too much different than what they would have been paying to stay in a similar area in Fhirdiad. "Anyway, this feels like a good 'home base' while we try finding Kjelle. We ran into someone who knows her while outside of the city, so the chances of us finding someone in the city who knows her as well have to be pretty good, right?"
Dorothea, who was also looking out the window, had let a large painted sign grab her attention, the man carefully represented on it standing tall and firm over the part of the city he seemed to be protecting. The sword in his hand didn't catch her by surprise—she knew enough about Ylisse to know they had a history filled with wars but were in a time of relative peace and had been for a couple decades—but rather his pose and the way his bare arm was pointed so prominently out at the viewer. Perhaps bare wasn't the right word to describe the arm, because while it wasn't clothed, it had the most curious mark on it that seemed incredibly familiar to her, even though she couldn't place where it was she'd seen it before. "Hey, look at that sign, will you?" she told her friends, pointing toward it with her head. "What do you notice about it?"
"Guy's kind of cute, looks like he in royal regalia though so he's probably their king or whatever," Ingrid said. "Definitely something like what Dimitri would be wearing for a portrait, if I'm being honest."
"I think I know what you're getting at here," Leonie added, seemingly playing off of what Ingrid had said until she gasped loudly, "and if that's the case, and that's their king, then why does he have the same mark on his arm as Kjelle's birthmark on her hand?"
The three ladies spent a lot of time sitting in that room, talking about the fact that there were far too many coincidences they'd run into from the start to play off the mark being the same as just another random chance. "I met her when she was in Fódlan working as a guard for the royal family," Leonie reminded the other two, "but she was super specific about talking about the job she worked. She'd never say she was their guard, just a guard. Maybe she actually wasn't the whole time and was just pretending? But that's such a weird lie to keep up to a bunch of strangers…"
"Did you see the color of the hair of their king, though? It's a perfect match for hers. I think the whole time, she's had some sort of fantasy about being royalty that she was playing out. I'd do it if I was in a foreign country looking to get away from things." Dorothea shrugged, not actually sure at all if she would do anything of the sort. "She always struck me as trying to be something she's not."
"But maybe she wasn't trying to be something she's not, and she isn't pretending for even a bit of it?" Ingrid's suggestion was heard loud and clear and yet, after she'd said the words, they were all laughing about it. Once she'd collected herself, she continued, "Yeah, that doesn't really make much sense, why would a princess pretend to be a commoner just to hang out in a different country?"
Biting her lip as she thought about answering, Leonie decided it'd be best to just go for it. "I mean, that's exactly the sort of thing Claude tried to do when I first met him. Pretended he wasn't some sort of Almyran prince just to be seen as a normal, relatable guy, but eventually he gave up the act. Kjelle didn't give up the act, though, and that's why I think she's just trying to feel like she's royalty even though she isn't. It'd explain why she's so worried about her sister's girlfriend being her soulmate, maybe that girlfriend doesn't like her posing?"
"Ooh, good point, but you know what? I thought of a great way to solve this." With her hands, Ingrid acted out the plan she'd concocted, the other two listening and watching intently to pick up all the details. "We go downstairs to the lobby, we ask the person at the desk about the royal family, we get the information we need to decide if she's a princess or a pretender, we decide what to do from there. How does that sound?"
"Sounds pretty good, actually," Dorothea said, while Leonie nodded in agreement. "It's the least effort way of solving things, much better than having to go out into the city again and try to find someone who can point us in a good direction."
Of course, getting the plan to work meant walking back down the flights of stairs and not just going right back up them, but that was a sacrifice they all ended up making later in the night when they grew hungry and in need of finding somewhere to eat. Since getting back out to the main street would put them down in the lobby anyway, they figured they could ask about the Ylissean royal family on their way out and kill two birds with the one stone. But when they walked by the front desk, there was no one in sight and in the place of the worker was a single sign, announcing that there would be no staff at the desk for the duration of the— "Royal Homecoming Parade?" Leonie read, the other two seeing the words at the same time. "That's going to give us answers if we can figure out where it is."
"If there's a parade around here, that's bound to mean everywhere's not serving food for the time being," Ingrid lamented, hanging her head, while Dorothea looked around the lobby to see that, while there was nobody inside aside from them, there were a fair number of people gathered right outside the front doors. "That means that we're not going to be able to eat until this whole thing's over, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to survive that."
She was joking, of course, and it got a laugh going from all of them as they made their way outside into a completely different downtown scene than the one they'd originally seen. People were lined up along both sides of the street, looking from left to right as they were seemingly waiting for the parade to pass. "What are the odds that we ended up with a hotel right along the route?" Dorothea asked, knowing that the odds were pretty great given their luck regarding everything else that had led them to Ylisse in the first place. "Looks like we'll be able to just find a place around here to watch."
"I have a different idea." Pointing across the empty street, Leonie had found a spot that had a bit of height compared to everyone being at surface level. "I know from doing all my guard work that when there's a route that needs patrolling, you want to find higher ground to get a better look at things. Can't imagine that it'd be any different if we're looking for someone who's going to be in the parade."
Finding nothing wrong with that assumption, the trio crossed the street (despite people in the crowd yelling for them to not do it) and went to the spot Leonie had found. It wasn't too much higher than if they'd stayed where they were, but there were less heads that could block their vision of what was potentially coming down the road. Then it was a waiting game, the crowd around them getting restless as they stood in anticipation of the parade passing them by. Before long, though, the sounds of regal horns began sounding through the city, and slowly what looked like the army was making its way down the road, weapons, horses, and armor all in perfect formation.
As the procession went by, the ladies spent their time dodging wildly waving hands and ignoring the screams of people trying to get the attention of the soldiers marching in time with the horns and other instruments scattered among their ranks. Out in the distance was an open-top carriage, pulled by several horses that stretched out far in front of it, and as it got closer all three of them found themselves trying to see exactly who was standing on it. At its front was their king (who the crowd kept calling the Exalt, which must have been their particular term for him), waving with a strong arm that was bare to the world around him, his other hand latched onto the hilt of his sword, just like the picture of him had shown. They were too far from him to see if he really did have that mark on his bare arm, but there was no reason to doubt it.
Behind him in the carriage was another person with blue hair just like his (and therefore just like Kjelle's), her also holding a sword in one hand as she waved with the other. She was younger than the Exalt, but looked very much like a copy of him, down to the way that she stood and looked around at the crowd cheering at them. They were the only two in the carriage, but behind it was a horse being ridden by a woman that, at first glance, seemed to be a body double for Kjelle, minus her faded red hair that shone in the light of the setting sun over the city. She was also holding a weapon, but a lance instead of a sword, and whenever her horse got too close to the carriage, she made it buck up so that she could gallantly raise her weapon high, much to the crowd's delight.
Lastly, between the horse and the second half of the soldiers, was a single soldier wearing a knight's armor, lance held at the ready and marching in time with everyone else. Every so often, when the horse in front of them would rear up, they would stop and point their lance in the direction of the crowd, everyone cheering loudly. It wasn't until everyone had passed and the knight was going by that they were able to see that, inside the armor, was another head of dark-blue hair and a pair of determined eyes that they recognized instantly.
It took a fair amount of self-restraint to not jump from their spot and try chasing her down, but there was no need for making a public spectacle there during her apparent homecoming parade. There was going to have to be another way to get through to the princess that they'd come to find her, but doing that wasn't going to be easy. Even after the parade had long ended, the crowds had fully dispersed, and they'd managed to go find somewhere to eat, they hadn't come up with any ideas for how they'd solve the problem of getting the closure they needed with Kjelle.
"How do people like us, foreigners who don't have a noble title between us, find a way into a castle to tell the princess we miss her and that we wish she'd said a proper goodbye?" Leonie asked over dinner, the other two thinking about the same question without any idea of how to answer it. "Maybe this is the end of the road for this story, maybe we're not going to get to say anything else to her, maybe we'll just have to turn back and call it over."
Defeat felt like the easy way out, and Dorothea didn't want to be the one to say that she thought there was no point in going further. They knew that their friend was fine, they knew she'd gone back to her real life that didn't include any of them, they didn't need to get anything else from her. But there was a nagging voice in the back of her head that told her that defeat wasn't the way to go. "Let's give it a few days and see if the goddess smiles down on us again," she said after some hesitation. "Something tells me that with how lucky we've gotten this far; we're bound to have something else lucky happen."
Ingrid nodded in agreement, before shoving a bite of her sandwich into her mouth. "I agree with that," she said after she'd swallowed down her food. "I'm sure we'll run into someone else she knows that can give us a way in or something. I mean, with how lucky we've been just to know her and to get this far? It's probably less likely that something doesn't happen to help us out."
Perhaps it was not as easy for the goddess to meddle in their lives while they were in Ylisse, but it wasn't until days later, right as all hope was starting to dwindle, that they were given the answer they were looking for to solve the problem. Ylisstol was beautiful as a city, although some of the areas were clearly still reeling and recovering from the past war that people would mention from time to time. That hadn't stopped the three from exploring as much of the city as they could, running into all sorts of friendly faces that were more than willing to give them suggestions of where to go, but nowhere was where they wanted to be directed to. But on that fateful day, as they were walking through a more high-end shopping district of the city, they found themselves stopped in the street to watch a performer along the sidewalk, his skill on his instrument worthy of the attention.
"If we were home, I'd ask him if he was interested in working with the orchestra and get him an interview with the director," Dorothea whispered to her friends, both of whom looked at her and seemed upset that she couldn't do that. "I'm not going to ask this man to uproot his whole life for a chance at working opera houses in Fódlan, you two."
"He wouldn't do it anyway," a voice behind them said, scaring Dorothea into Ingrid's arms while Leonie looked at who was talking. It was a blond man, hair in complete disarray, looking rather out of place in the area of town they currently were. "Sorry for listening in, but this guy sits here every day getting money and attention from cute ladies like you, but does nothing about it. Even got offered a job to work for the royal family and chose not to accept it."
"And we should believe you because…?" Her eyebrows raising at this guy and how he was standing, almost in a comical pose with his hand over his face, Leonie was doing the talking on Dorothea's behalf this time. "I'm sure if someone was offered a job for a royal family, they'd take it over living on the street."
The man dropped his hand a bit, showing the sly look on his face. "Yeah, see, you should believe me because I was there when the offer was made. One of my best friends is a violinist, he performs for the royal family whenever he's around, he was the one who convinced the family to ask this guy in the first place. And let me tell you, when my friend has an idea like that, you're kind of dumb to ignore it."
Something about this man was striking Dorothea as odd, so when she'd gotten out of Ingrid's arms and had thoroughly apologized for her surprised behavior, she asked, "That's lovely, but why are you listening in to our conversation in the first place?"
"Right, I should've known that was coming." The man dropped his arm completely, spun around in a full circle, then resumed his pose, complete with a dramatic laugh. "The answer that you seek will not be revealed in such a public arena! Come, follow me if you want the truth behind everything!" With that, he jumped backward, turned around, and started walking, leaving the three ladies rather confused about what to do.
"He seems a bit off his rocker, maybe we shouldn't follow." Ingrid was acting cautious, but when asked why she felt that way, she blurted out, "I don't want to be led to my death when I've got a real life waiting for me back home!"
Still, deep in Dorothea's heart she knew that following the guy was the right idea. "If you're not going, that's fine, but I'm not letting him disappear. He's got a friend that works for the royal family, after all." She began to walk in his direction, and after looking between each other and deciding they needed to stick together, Leonie and Ingrid were following with her. The man led them into a café right inside the shopping district, taking them into the upstairs dining area and offering them seats in a cushioned booth chair while he sat across from them, keeping up his dramatic persona.
"Excellent, so you come seeking answers," he said with a cackle. "Not every day that I manage to get people to bite with that lead."
"If you're looking to flirt with us, you're sorely mistaken. We've all gotten our soulmates." Flipping her hair out of the way so that she could show him her colored-in mark, Leonie saw that the man didn't seem deterred even slightly by that, telling her that perhaps that wasn't the reason after all. "So, are you going to tell us why you brought us here?"
Even behind the awkward placement of his hand, it was obvious that his face had lit up when she'd asked that question, and so he replied, "Nah."
It took a solid second for any of them to remember that was the name of the oddly young-looking woman they'd met on their way to Ylisstol, and when she'd remembered it Ingrid was smacking her leg as she began piecing things together. "You know her, and she told you about us because—"
"She didn't tell me anything, let's get that cleared up right now." The man didn't seem annoyed as he cut Ingrid off, but rather mildly amused at what direction had been taken. "I may know her, that much is true, but our relationship is strained at best. She isn't fond of my particular brand of theatrics."
"—oh, then how do you know about us?" Taking his comments in stride, Ingrid leaned in to look at him closer. "You couldn't have just randomly walked up to us and thought to play some weird game with us."
"I mean, I could have. Do it all the time." He laughed, dropping his hand yet again but this time keeping it down for an extended period, to show his seriousness. "I, er, don't want to sound creepy when I say this, but I'd been looking for you ladies for days now. Since after the parade. Nah had come into town and told my cousins about meeting you three, and from there I got told, and they knew that putting the great Owain on the case, you'd be found in no time flat."
"Cousins?" Dorothea and Leonie both repeated at the same time, looking at each other in shock, before Dorothea continued, "That means your cousins are princesses? Is that what you're telling us here?"
Gritting his teeth, Owain looked from side to side before nodding. "Right. Didn't know you knew that part of things, so we'll skip a lot of the dramatic script I've been rehearsing for when I found you and get to the good part."
Her eyes widening as she felt herself sinking back into the seat, Dorothea didn't know what else she wanted to say right then. Words just didn't feel like they'd do her conflicting thoughts and feelings justice at that moment, as she stared at the apparent cousin of the friend they'd been chasing. "Get on with it, then?" Leonie prompted, seeing how that reveal had stunned Dorothea. "We don't have all day to sit here and wait for you to tell us this 'good part', you know."
"Sorry for appreciating dramatic tension," he snapped, before shaking out his head and the hand he'd kept over his face for much of the conversation, although he kept it closer to his lap for what he had to say. "The point is, when Kjelle heard you three were here in Ylisse she wanted me to find you to bring you by the castle to see her. She could have done the searching herself, but her little impromptu stay in Fódlan got her in some pretty hot water with the family so she didn't want to risk causing more headaches for them by mucking around in the seedier parts of the city."
"And then you ended up finding us in the rich shopping district, how funny," Dorothea muttered, not fully trusting what the guy had said in the end but knowing that he had enough confidence in saying it to back up his word. "But fine, I think we'll be okay with going to the castle to see her, if that's what she wants from us."
"It is, you have my word." His arm twitching again, Owain eventually raised it back over his face, before barking out a laugh followed by, "I would be doing my royal blood a disservice if I was choosing to betray the wishes of the third in line for the throne of Ylisse. My duty to my family is sacred and I would never go against it!"
His sudden break into this strange character unnerved the ladies, but by that point they had no choice but to go along with what he wanted from them. The character remained intact even as they left the café, the owner calling out a farewell to Owain without seeming bothered that he'd led ladies in and out without buying anything. They weren't too far from the castle at that point, and while they walked he kept talking about honor and blood and how he was the one chosen to retrieve them for specific reasons that he could never tell anyone, not even himself. "I think he's a bit out of his mind," Leonie said under her breath to the others, thankfully not overheard by him this time. "The faster we can get away from him, I think it'll be better."
Out of his mind or not, Owain did exactly as he'd told them he would, taking them straight to the castle. Entering such regal places wasn't exactly a foreign idea to any of them, between Leonie working as a guard, Ingrid being friends with the king of Faerghus, and Dorothea having performed for royalty many times, but the Ylissean palace felt different to them all. There were no guards standing tall at the front entrance, no checkpoints asking them to verify who they were, and nothing stopping them from entering the grand hall unattended. "It's because they saw me coming," Owain proudly told them once they were all in the hall, a stained-glass portrait of a past ruler letting colored light shine in over them. "Now stay put, I shall go find the princess you seek."
Leaving the three ladies unattended in such a regal place seemed like a bad idea, but not once were they approached by anyone looking to see why they were there. It wasn't until Owain came back, waving for them to once again follow him, that they saw anyone at all in there, and it seemed to be merely a guard walking through with a purpose other than approaching them. This time, Owain led them into more private quarters, where he escorted them through room after room until they arrived in what felt like a dungeon of sorts, training materials and weights scattered all around but no one else in sight. "She told me to bring you here, but no further," he said, bowing his head. "I'll be on my way now; my duty is now fulfilled and I should probably let Uncle Chrom know about the strangers in the castle before he finds out some other way."
Hurrying out of the room as fast as he could, none of them were able to say a thank you to Owain before he was gone. "So, uh, now we wait?" Dorothea asked, looking around the dimly-lit room that felt less habitable than somewhere in a palace should. "Unless you think he brought us here just to make us feel like fools."
"This looks like the kind of place Kjelle would like to spend time," Leonie remarked, bending down to touch some of the armor. "And if she's really the princess here, it makes sense that she'd have this sort of high-quality stuff laying around."
"I'd really hoped we could've gone knowing each other without you finding that part out." It was Kjelle's voice, but she wasn't actively in the room; none of them could see her even if they heard her talking. "I'm sorry that I ran off from Fódlan like I did, but I couldn't take pretending to not be who I really am any longer, even if I don't…care for who I really am."
"There's no reason to be ashamed of it," Dorothea said, after thinking over her words carefully for a moment. "Why, I think that finding out you're a princess has only strengthened our fondness of you, not diminished it."
Coming into the room from seemingly right around the corner from the door, Kjelle looked the same as she had back the last time they'd spent time with her, down to the casual way she was dressed. Nothing about her screamed that she was in the castle her family called home, nothing would have given any indication she was royalty to begin with, minus the mark on her hand they now knew seemed to exist in the family. "Thanks, but it's more of a personal thing than anything else. Everyone I've ever known has known me as 'the younger princess' or 'the royal who pretends she's a guard' and you three…you didn't know that. You only knew what I wanted you to know."
She was grimacing as she spoke, almost as if she was regretting what she had done. "Hey now, you never directly lied to us about a thing, you merely kept certain details under wraps until we followed you here ourselves. I'd say that was pretty well done." Smiling, Ingrid held out a hand toward Kjelle, who looked at it before shaking her head solemnly. "Oh, well, I'm trying to help you. You were such a great friend back in Fódlan."
"And now, because we're in Ylisse, I'm suddenly not?"
"I didn't—that isn't—why would you think that?" Her hand closing into a fist that she retracted hastily, Ingrid looked first to Leonie, then to Dorothea. "Can either of you please speak some sense into her before I do it myself?"
The temptation was there to not try and fix anything at all, but Dorothea found herself staring at Kjelle, at how she didn't seem even slightly different from how she'd been before. "I don't think she needs sense spoken into her," she replied, tilting her head back slightly. "I think she knows that we don't care about this whole princess thing in the end and she's trying to mask something else."
"That'd make the most sense, huh?" With a chuckle, Kjelle leaned herself against the wall, reaching up to the collar of her training shirt and pulling it down to reveal her soulmate mark, still as brightly colored as it always was. "Truth is, I figured you were all smart enough to recognize the Brand of the Exalt eventually, it's the Ylissean insignia for a reason and you would be able to piece my identity together. I needed to get back here because of something that…" She trailed off, eyes locking on Dorothea before they shifted upward. "Something that I heard someone say the night before I left. About soulmates being determined for a reason and how ignoring that reason was ignoring your life's calling."
"Must have been someone outside of our group that said that," Ingrid said, her eyes lingering on the reddish mark that Kjelle was still showing. "Sounds too pretentious for any of—"
"Who said it doesn't matter, now does it?" Leonie cut in, before silently apologizing to Ingrid for doing so. "What matters is that Kjelle took it to heart and came back to deal with her soulmate problem. And how did that end for you?"
Her eyes visibly widened for a moment before she cleared her throat to respond. "Well enough. Turns out that after my parents and I left for Fódlan to begin with, my sister had a conversation with her girlfriend about the whole thing and they decided they'd work better as friends anyway." Biting down on her lip, Kjelle looked at the three's reactions, seeing them all eagerly waiting for her to continue. "That's all I've got, actually. Haven't really spoken to her since I got back, my sister's the one who let me in on that stuff."
Right as she was going to ask if they could meet her—meaning the mysterious soulmate—Dorothea heard the sound of footsteps coming toward their dungeon. Into the room came a taller, slender woman with long blue hair that matched Kjelle's perfectly, one of her eyes deep blue while the other seemed brighter. "Owain informed me you have guests today," she said, gesturing toward the three strangers. "Would you prefer to entertain them somewhere that isn't your little playroom? Father is out for the day; you can easily use the dining hall or even a nearby sitting room."
"Not a playroom, and I think that'd be great." Kjelle readjusted her shirt so that her mark was once again covered, before nodding toward the newcomer. "This is my sister Lucina, by the way. Luci, these are my friends Leonie, Ingrid, and Dorothea, they came all the way from Fódlan to…check on me? I guess?"
"Quite the journey to spend on someone you must have barely known," Lucina remarked with a smile, something the trio didn't find it within themselves to return. She seemed so dismissive, like there wasn't genuine kindness behind her smile, that them daring to return the favor would have been admitting that none of them liked Kjelle to begin with. And even though she hadn't liked her for the longest time, Dorothea would have rather been struck down on the spot than insinuate that she still felt that way. "Come now, all of you, let me show you the way to the dining hall so you can make your choice of where to sit, while Kjelle does something to get things set up."
Blinking a couple times as she realized she'd been assigned a task that she hadn't asked to do, Kjelle ended up shaking a fist at Lucina before excusing herself from the room, leaving the older sister to take the three out into a room that felt every bit as regal as the grand hall had. It had a long table lined with chairs on both sides, plenty of space for guests and family alike to dine. "Is this really where you eat your meals?" Ingrid asked, catching Lucina by surprise as she hadn't expected the question. "Uh, sorry, but I have a friend who's a king and he always chooses to eat in smaller rooms when he can help it."
"I can't tell you the last time we all ate in here simultaneously, but Father does invite his friends in here for tea every so often because of how many people it requires the space for. I take it that you aren't interested in using this room?" Embarrassed that her question had been taken that way by the princess, Ingrid explained that she wasn't complaining about the room at all and was merely curious about that one aspect of royal life. "Don't worry, I understand completely. It's always fun to ask questions about lifestyles unlike your own."
"Which is why I try to keep the whole 'princess' thing under wraps if I can help it, can't stand being kind when I have to answer questions about my life." Coming into the room with a tray of cups and little tea cakes, Kjelle looked rather annoyed that she was the one doing the carrying and feigned tripping and spilling everything on her sister's feet before setting it down on the table. "Thankfully, with having a commoner mother, we got to grow up a little less prissy and pretentious than most girls in our position would."
"We also had the benefit of growing up in a post-war era," Lucina added, drawing herself a chair and waiting for the others to sit as well, even though none of them had asked for her to join them. "Wish I could say 'born' in a post-war era, but that's only true for one of us."
Rolling her eyes, it was clear that Kjelle wasn't thrilled with their added guest as well. "And only one of us seems to think that's worth bringing up every time we get on the topic. Now will you let me spend time with my friends, or are you going to intrude like you always do?"
"I'd like to know them and why they're here to see you, and most importantly, why so many other people we know knew they were here before you did." Lucina, smiling at them all once again, was met with an annoyed glare from her sister, leading her to stand up and back away from the large table with hands raised apologetically. "Okay, okay, I get it, you'd rather not have me here for this. I'll check on you later, then."
The moment Kjelle was confident she wasn't going to be overheard, she looked at her friends, gave an amused snort, and told them, "Bet you can see exactly why I was thrilled to get out of Ylisse for a while…and why it was such a problem that my soulmate happened to be her girlfriend at the time. Now come on, Luci had this tray put together for us, we're not going to let it go to waste. Tell me all about your trip out here, and I'll tell you all about mine getting back."
A/N: art for this chapter found on the AO3 version!
