"It would be for the best to avoid engaging with His Majesty as much as possible."
Ingrid stopped dead in her tracks. Resolute merchants and bards playing off-key bustled around the streets of the capital to the point where the noise reached the royal stables, and yet she had heard Philip's words distinctly. She wished she hadn't. As her husband took a few steps forward, she expected him to turn around and confirm that this was only his terrible attempt at a jest, but, when he looked over his shoulder, his gaze set firmly on hers and a frown tarnished his features.
He was not joking.
"What? Why would you say that?" she snapped, her confusion boiling into anger.
Philip sighed, glancing impatiently at his wyvern. "I'm doing this for your protection, Ingrid," he said, as if she had no choice in the matter. As if she would just sit around and watch as another vital part of her life was ripped away.
"My protection? Are you implying that His Majesty would harm me? That he is a threat to us?"
His silence spoke volumes.
Ingrid strode over to him and lifted her head to look the towering lord in the eye, refusing to be intimidated. "Your behavior back at the assembly was already unbelievably rude, but your allegations against the Savior King could be considered blasphemous. Don't you understand?"
Philip regarded her with an infuriating mixture of annoyance and pity. "Savior King," he spat. "I had hoped you weren't as ignorant as everyone else, but clearly I was foolish."
"Pardon me? I have known His Majesty for my whole life and have fought by his side countless times, so don't you dare—"
"Then how can you be so blind?!" He pressed his lips, his nose crinkling in disgust. "If you have seen his atrocities yourself, how can you defend that wretched excuse of a man?"
Ingrid stumbled back a step, trying to process his words. Her own husband, a servant of the Holy Kingdom, vilified one of the bravest and kindest men she knew. She crossed her arms, her face twisting into a scowl. "You better explain yourself right this instant."
Philip let out a frustrated sigh. "During the initial years of the war, ours was one of the few western Houses that refused to ally with the Empire. We bred and trained hundreds of pegasi and wyverns for the anti-Dukedom forces and deployed the few soldiers that we had, myself and my family included."
Ingrid kept quiet, growing increasingly annoyed at the ill-timed history lesson.
"I garrisoned my troops in a small town of the Rowe County, where we brought food and blankets. If we could have helped the people survive through the winter and protected them from the Empire, it would have been enough..." He ran a hand through his hair, then let it fall limply at his side. "The enemy ambushed us one night. We were evacuating the villagers when…he appeared."
A freezing dread flooded Ingrid as she thought back to the day of the Millennium Festival.
"He was large and his grimy hair obscured his face, but he had such a raging fire in his eyes…" Philip perfectly described the deranged prince who she herself had encountered long ago. "He seemed to only be after Imperial fighters, so we thought it best to leave him be. And then, he started his slaughter."
He was talking about her lord. He was talking about her friend, and yet Ingrid could not find it in her to be furious anymore. Since she could remember, her coping mechanism of twisting somber realities into placid fantasies blinded her to the suffering around her. To uphold her chivalric ideals, she had refused to believe that Glenn had died with regrets and overlooked the sorrow that had consumed her loved ones after the Tragedy of Duscur. Now, she would not allow herself to create a romanticized, crooked depiction of a man with unquestionably bloodstained hands, no matter how much she wished it wasn't the case.
And so, she continued to listen.
"That beast tackled the soldiers to the ground, crushing their skulls," Philip's voice trembled slightly, as if the horrifying image in his mind was as vivid as the day he saw it. "If any of them miraculously survived, it would tear their limbs off, one by one. And all with a wide smile, like it was enjoying every second…" He lowered his head, his eyes closed shut. "We tried to stop it, but that only made things worse. It trampled my men, the old as well as the young recruits. We had no choice but to take the village kids we could and escape."
Few things could render Ingrid speechless. As maddening as it was, she could not fault Philip for using the word "it" to describe the Dimitri of early wartime, since the scene she recreated in her head warranted nothing but the degrading term.
"The day Fhirdiad welcomed that beast back, as their king, no less, was the most repugnant day of my life, Ingrid. He's emotional and unstable. You saw it yourself, how he almost lost control back at the meeting. How can such a bloodthirsty killer lead Faerghus?"
Stay calm, she repeated to herself. The monster he was talking about no longer existed. Even if Dimitri struggled with his grief, he was dedicating himself to his atonement, and would not rest until their entire continent saw prosperity.
But the irreversible scars of the past ran deep. Ingrid shuddered to think about the uncounted lives that fell to the lord she pledged her own to. Men and women, adults and children… Just how many had his blade claimed along those painfully long years?
Philip took a breath through gritted teeth and began untying the rope that bound his wyvern to a fence. "Let's get going. There's no point in discussing this further."
Ingrid had trained herself to keep quiet and obey. With practice and determination, everything became easier, or so she thought. During the months following their return to the Reiner Barony, black-robed mages like the Crest examiner began to visit their lands, requesting to speak with the house's master and loitering around their domain for days. The oil lamps of the guest rooms burned until the earliest hours of the morning, making her wonder what could have them so intensely occupied. Worst of all, their gazes always lingered on Julia for a second too long. Ingrid could not shake off a creeping uneasiness, and her dismissive husband didn't do much to help with her worry. For that, she found that she needed to detain herself and evoke the reasons why she had led her life down this path.
She remembered being no more than seven or eight, sitting at the great hall's table and looking over at her father's plate, wondering why it was so much smaller than hers. She remembered detangling herself from his grasp and sneaking into a secluded alleyway in town, where an elderly woman lay on the floor, her ashen skin cold as ice. She remembered playing catch with Sylvain and Felix, trying to get her older brother to run with them and noticing that the pain of hunger prevented him from even walking.
From her armchair in the solar of Reiner Manor, Ingrid watched the little boy who smiled brightly as he taught the little girl beside him how to play, the leather ball now old and worn, but just as perfect as she recalled. Even when she was young, she had understood why she was never supposed to choose her own fate. If it meant that her family—her children—would grow happy and safe, a lifetime of captivity would be a worthy cost to pay.
Then, more mages came.
Ingrid would not deny the omnipresent anxiety that the war had cursed her with. There was not a single night in which she had indulged in a peaceful rest, instead forcibly recreating the gruesome battles, severed bodies and ear-splitting cries that were ingrained in her mind. She tried desperately to ignore these visions, assuring herself that it was all over, but, as the deathly pale warlocks arrived at their doorstep, one nightmare eclipsed the rest.
One in which she stood among the scorched pillars that bolstered the ancient Palace of Enbarr, battling figures that were not wearing the red of Imperial uniforms, instead clothed in black.
She could not take it anymore.
"Who are these people, Philip?" she asked for the hundredth time, now truly intent on getting real answers. "What do they want?"
"I told you before, haven't I? I'm repaying a debt to them." Her husband instantly looked as if he would rather be anywhere else. "Ingrid, I really don't have time for this now. If you will excuse me."
She wanted to shout, to tell him that she had witnessed the horrors these monsters were responsible for, like the violent human experiments in Remire and now the western villages. She wanted to chastise him for his carelessness and scream that their entire household was in danger.
But she buried her demands deep within her. One wrong step, one angering remark, and her children would suffer the consequences.
"Philip, please don't hide things from me," she spoke softly, tugging on his sleeve. She hoped that her eyes conveyed the innocence and tenderness she was faking. "I know they aren't loyalists to the King. What are they asking for?"
Her husband stared at her for a moment, the sharpness in his eyes diminishing. An intense irritation urged Ingrid to keep pressing on, but she held her tongue.
Finally, Philip uttered a single word that chilled her to the bone. "Julia."
Ingrid stepped back for a moment. The image of the grotesque creature that she had fought back in Enbarr, the distorted remains of Edelgard, surfaced in her mind like a dire warning.
"What do they want with her?" A voice she recognized as her own mumbled.
"Her Crest. The blood of Crest-bearers is perfect for their investigations."
"Why are you allowing this to happen?"
"I know about the risks, Ingrid, but I don't have the luxury of a choice!" he snapped, his tall frame looming over hers like a predator. He seemed to become aware of his foul temper, though, since he breathed deeply and continued in a gentler tone, "If everything goes as they say, Faerghus will actually have a future. Under that beast's command, there's no hope for any of us. This is the only way."
Ingrid was never meant to choose her own fate. From an early age, she had accepted her role of the coveted prize that, once bestowed to its rightful owner, would save her family. Even if she dreamed of becoming a knight in service of the King, she found comfort in the idea that sacrificing herself to protect her loved ones was the knightliest thing she could do.
The moment Philip's words sunk in, she found out that there was nothing that could stop her from following her calling.
Over the course of the next days, Ingrid concealed food in the folds of her dresses and placed it in the satchel on her pegasus. She took a sharp kitchen knife and hid it under her nightstand. Remembering her times scolding Claude von Riegan for his undetectable stomach-turning concoctions, and his explanations of the dubious brewing process, she gathered the ingredients in town and prepared a cup of tea that she instructed a servant to deliver to Philip.
In the dead of night, as her husband lay on their bed passed out from the pain, Ingrid slipped out of the great chamber.
Careful to make her steps as faint as possible, she maneuvered around the manor in complete darkness, feeling along the walls and trusting her knowledge of the layout. Finally, she arrived at a hallway with a weak light flickering from behind a door on the far end, and took a moment to thank the goddess above that the guest rooms were located far away from the servants' quarters.
Her hushed knocking was the only sound among the tense silence.
Shortly after, the door creaked open to reveal the same cadaverous man that had tested her children for Crests. Deep bags darkened the skin around his eyes, as if he had never known sleep, and a perpetual frown bore into his aged features, but, otherwise, the mage just seemed intrigued at the Lady's peculiar visit.
"Sir, I'm sorry for disturbing you at such an hour," Ingrid began, trying to keep her voice from quivering, "but there's an urgent matter that I need to discuss with you. May I come in?"
The man pondered her request for a second. Then, without a word, he took a step aside. When she entered with a muttered "thank you", he turned to close the door.
She did not waste a single instant.
As soon as the entrance clinked shut, the former soldier clutched the mage's wrists. With a swift motion that she had honed during the war, she tackled him to the floor, rammed her knee against his back and held her weapon just below his jaw before he could make any more noise.
"Don't speak," she whispered. "Don't struggle. Answer my questions and I won't dig this deeper into your neck." She drew blood with the blade's edge, emphasizing her point. "Who are you? Why were you allied with the Empire?"
The warlock writhed, but she tightened her grip until a painful crack of his bones stopped him from moving.
"What do you hope to achieve with your human experiments?" she snarled. "Answer me."
No response. Ingrid grew angrier by the second, wishing to immediately end the beast that not only haunted her nightmares, but dared to harm her kids.
"You turned Edelgard into a hideous monster," she said, wondering if her little ones would have suffered the same fate.
He looked at her from the corner of his eye. Then, the most terrifying smile slowly broadened on his face. "Heh, the Emperor was a failure. A waste of our time."
She grasped the handle so hard that her knuckles turned white.
"You and your kind have ruined this world," he hissed. "You are scum… And your touch is insufferably revolting!"
The man moved to the side frantically, freeing one of his hands from her grasp, and reached for the weapon.
Ingrid plunged her knife into his neck.