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It took Lysithea von Ordelia five years to set her house’s affairs in order. It felt both too long and too short, the time it took to ensure the world would go on without her. Five uninterrupted years felt like an unearned blessing following a war where every day might have been her last, but the mundane, safe work of rebuilding land, rewriting laws, and appointing successors was taxing in a way she hadn’t anticipated. She felt a strange sense of relief when she finally realized that Ordelia would no longer need her.
It was her mother who originally suggested she travel to Garreg Mach personally to inform the church that she was relinquishing her title. Lysithea suspected that her family thought the process of delivering the message would be a kind of symbolic closure for them all. They might have been right.
She wrote the Byleth to arrange an audience announcing her abdication. Then she wrote to Cyril and told him that, if he wasn’t too busy with his work as a knight, she would be in towns for a few days.
He was waiting for her at the front gates when she arrived at the monastery.
“You didn’t have to wait for me,” Lysithea said as soon as she was in earshot. “What if I’d arrived after dark? You would’ve wasted your whole day.”
Cyril smiled at her, a slow, sleepy smile that told her he wasn’t taking any of her reprimands particularly seriously. He was wearing a knight’s uniform and holding a lance, which Lysithea realized he must have been polishing while he waited. He held it carefully out of the way as he pulled her into a one-armed hug. Lysithea ignored the crowds and propriety and threw her arms around him, tucking her chin against his shoulder and sighing. His hugs also felt familiar and strange all at the same time.
“I figured I could ride out to meet you if you took too long,” Cyril said. “No missions today, anyway. And I’ve never known you to be late.”
Lysithea pulled back and smiled. She’d half expected Cyril to be gone on some mission or too busy to meet her. She didn’t want to admit how happy she’d been to receive his reply, demanding exact dates and times in a scrawling but confident handwriting that she could hardly believe was his.
“So, here to talk to Lady Byleth?” Cyril asked. He reached for Lysithea’s day bag as they walked in through the monastery gates, and she let him take it without thinking. “I can take you to see her.”
Lysithea wrinkled her nose at the strange title applied to their professor. It was a change she would never get used to, but Cyril approved of formalities.
“She must be busy,” Lysithea said, frowning. “I can always meet with her tomorrow.”
“Nah, she’ll kick out boring people to see people she likes. And she likes you, obviously,” Cyril said. “So are you not a noble now, or something? I always thought you were stuck with that sort of thing for life.”
“I’m abdicating my title, yes,” Lysithea said. “I have a third cousin who’s officially the head of House Ordelia now.”
“That always seemed too stuffy and boring for you, anyway,” Cyril said cheerfully, and Lysithea grinned, because he was the only person she knew who seemed to think this was a good idea. Her smile faded at his next question. “What will you do now?” he asked, just as casually, as if he were asking about the weather or how her trip was.
“Well, you know,” Lysithea said hesitantly, wishing she’d practiced this answer a bit more. “I might travel a bit. Hilda’s been bugging me to come to Goneril. The Rhodos Coast is beautiful this time of year.”
She didn’t have plans, if she was being honest. She didn’t think she’d live long enough to make plans. But of course, Cyril didn’t know that. And he probably thought she was still the sort of person with big dreams and specific ambitions, the way she’d been at the academy.
But if he was surprised by her answer, he didn’t show it. “I’ve never been out to the coast; I’m jealous,” he said. He pulled open a giant set of double doors leading into the audience chamber. “Maybe I could get an assignment out that way.”
He trailed off as he realized Lysithea wasn’t following. She stood staring up at the archway into the audience chamber, feeling suddenly overwhelmed by the conversation she was about to have. Her whole life, in a way, had been leading up to this point. She hadn’t prepared to actually meet it.
“You okay?” Cyril asked, cocking his head to the side and raising an eyebrow.
“I’m fine,” Lysithea lied quickly. “It’s just . . . you’re sure Byleth doesn’t have things to do right now?”
Cyril smiled again, a sight that was warm and familiar and, she knew, rare for anyone but her. “She can’t wait to see you,” he said. “Come on.”
***
Byleth took a sip of tea and smiled faintly to herself before setting it back in its saucer. Even at the academy, when she’d known her way around weapons more than manners and she slept on the ground during camp with the rest of them, tea had always been Byleth’s one vice of any extravagance. Still, she’d chosen a modest blend of cinnamon and apple today, rather than anything particularly expensive. It was one that Lysithea had always liked. She wondered if Byleth remembered.
“So let me see if I have this all straight,” she said, turning her faint smile towards Lysithea. “House Ordelia is stepping down from the Alliance, and your family is stepping down from House Ordelia? This isn’t going to cause any power disputes I need to worry about, is it?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” Lysithea said, a little offended Byleth didn’t trust her to set things in order properly. “At this point, it’s mostly a formality. My parents like to do things by the book. And I suppose they thought, if I was refusing a title, I should have to say it to someone’s face.”
“Another ceremonial gesture, then,” Byleth said. Her expression was unreadable, but then it softened. “And how are your parents, Lysithea? Where will they go?”
Lysithea paused. She hadn’t been expecting the question. “They’ve taken a house near Goneril, where you can see the mountains,” she explained after a moment. She reached to pour herself a second cup of tea. “They’re – they’re good, I think,” she added, and felt a sudden, surprising prick of tears in her eyes, a burning at the back of her throat she wasn’t expecting. “They’ll be good. They’ll be happy,” she said, hurrying to swallow the first sip of tea to stop herself from having to talk more.
“That’s good. And what about you?” Byleth gave Lysithea another of her smiles, small and enigmatic. “Where will you go?”
That question again. Lysithea was still not prepared for it.
“I figured I’d wander around for a bit,” she said, and she could tell her voice was too high and tense as she spoke, but she ignored this. “I haven’t really thought about it.”
Byleth raised an eyebrow, her expression otherwise blank.
“I’ve heard from Hanneman that you’ve had . . . little luck researching your second Crest,” she said. “I would have thought you’d be looking into that.”
Byleth always cut straight to the point. Lysithea sagged against her chair, looking down at the half-eaten cookie in her hand rather than up at Byleth.
“My whole life has been about putting things back in order, solving things,” she said quietly. “The war, my parents, my territory – they were big problems, but in a way, they all seemed like problems that I could solve.” She looked up at Byleth and shook her head. “I’m not sure I can take on an unsolvable problem. So I don’t know what to do instead. I suppose that sounds pathetic. But I’d rather enjoy whatever time I have left, even if I don’t know how yet.”
“You could always stay at the monastery, for a little bit,” Byleth suggested. “Maybe give it some time to figure out your next step.”
Lysithea looked around the office, peeking out into the grand throne room outside the doors and the large double windows that looked out over the grounds. She had been happy here, once. It had been an unhappy time, but she had been happy.
She shook her head. “I don’t think I belong here anymore, Professor,” she said. “I’m not sure I belong anywhere.”
Byleth took another sip of tea, but did not reply at first. She had never been one to rush to an answer or to speak to fill the space. Lysithea had found it unnerving, at first. Now she found the silence more comforting. There was something to be said for not saying anything.
Finally, Byleth set her teacup down in its saucer and sighed. “You don’t need to do this alone, you know,” she said. “You have many friends, Lysithea.
Lysithea shrugged. “They don’t need this,” she said simply.
Byleth’s frown was as slight as her smile. “Perhaps not,” she said slowly. “But I hope, now that the war is over, that you’re able to think less about what people need and more about what people want. Including what you want.”
Lysithea frowned. She remembered now that Byleth had a habit of speaking in riddles. It may have been good advice, but she wasn’t entirely sure how to follow it.
She reached for another cookie. She knew, at the very least, that she wanted that. It was a start.
***
Lysithea ran into Cyril in the hallway outside the audience chamber. He was carrying four knights’ worth of jousting equipment, for reasons she could not possibly fathom. He peered over a spare helmet and gave her the slightest smile.
“That went on longer than I expected,” he said, moving a lance from one arm to the other so he could see her as he fell in step beside her. “How’s Lady Byleth?”
“Pleasant and unknowable,” Lysithea replied. She reached for the most precariously balanced shield. “Let me help you with those.”
Cyril let her take two shields – she suspected just to placate her; they weren’t very heavy – and they walked down the corridor together.
“So when do you think you’ll leave for . . . Rhodos. Goneril. Wherever.” Cyril shifted the stack of weapons and armor to one arm so he could open the door for her, and for a moment she lost sight of him behind the pile of helmets.
“A couple of weeks, I guess? I hadn’t really thought about it,” Lysithea said. Her conversation with Byleth had felt like an ending point for so long that she felt strangely adrift now that it was over.
“A couple of weeks would be nice,” Cyril said cheerfully, again not appearing to notice the way Lysithea stumbled in her answers.
“Mm,” Lysithea agreed.
“You could stay here longer,” Cyril said. “At Garreg Mach. If you wanted.”
There was a pause before he said it that made the suggestion seem more significant. Lysithea glanced over at him sharply, but he was looking straight ahead, not at her, and his expression was hard to read. She paused before she answered, and for a moment she thought she might say yes.
“I don’t think . . . I can,” she said finally, and the answer seemed to surprise her more than it surprised Cyril, who only nodded. She hurried on. “I thought coming here might help me – well, figure things out. But I feel like I can’t stay here, any more than I could stay in Ordelia. Everywhere I go, the world has moved on, and I’m just stuck.” She frowned. “I’m sorry. You don’t need to hear all this.”
“I want to hear all this,” Cyril assured her.
Lysithea looked at him sharply, peering over the two shields she balanced in each hand. But Cyril was busy trying to shift the jousting equipment to one hand so he could open the door to the knight’s hall, and if he thought what he’d said was significant, his face didn’t show it.
“I'm sorry,” Lysithea said again as they walked into the knight’s hall. “I made it sound like I have all these ideas and plans, but the truth is, I don’t really have much of anything at all.” She sighed. “No goals, no title – no future, really. It’s just me, now.”
They’d arrived at the back corner of the hall now, and Cyril carefully began stacking the weapons he’d been carrying. Lysithea stood next to him, holding the shields and feeling rather useless.
“I’m honestly jealous,” Cyril said, pausing a moment before he took the first shield from her. “You’re acting like you don’t have options at all, but if you think about it, you can have anything you want, now. Not a lot of people get that.”
Lysithea frowned. “It sounds nice when you say it like that,” she said.
“And you should still stay here for those couple of weeks. I’ve missed you,” Cyril said, turning back to stacking the shields, his face once again unreadable.
Lysithea felt the weight lift off her shoulders ever so slightly. Cyril always saw the world so strangely. But he made the next step seem easy, and the step after that seem manageable.
She wanted to feel that way. She wanted to see the world the way he saw it. And maybe, for now, that was enough.
Cyril turned towards her and reached out to grab the remaining shield she was holding. Lysithea loosened her grip on the shield, but slid her hand up to rest against his before he could pull away. Cyril looked at her in surprise, and Lysithea gave him a small smile.
“I’ve missed you, too,” she said. “And you’re right. For now, I think I’d like to stay.”