Invisible Ties | Fire Emblem Awakening (Novelization)

Chapter 14: Dark News

Robin

The night Emmeryn left us, I watched Cordelia look up at Chrom from under lowered lashes as we sat down for dinner, and I understood what jealousy was.

I looked at her long, red hair and her baby blue eyes, and I turned hot with anger. Then I felt stupid. I was the woman at Chrom's side, not Cordelia. She was sitting with Sumia and Stahl, who were trying to rouse her from the misery that the loss of her knight-sisters had inflicted on her. Frederick and I were performing a similar job on the other side of the campfire. Chrom said and ate little, and spent most of the evening staring vacantly into the flames. It was obvious that he wasn't in the mood to admire Cordelia, even if he did like her.

But as the week dragged on and his dark spirits lifted by a few inches, he still didn't look. In fact, he seemed oblivious. While Cordelia watched him hopefully, he watched me, and he stuck to my side like glue. It was straining what could have otherwise been a perfect friendship between Cordelia and myself.

Whenever we set up camp, Sumia would push us both together and practically beg us to become best friends. As she had predicted, we were getting along like a house on fire – on every topic other than Chrom. It was only our second night when Cordelia confessed her crush to me and started asking about him. She watched him very carefully, she said, and he spent a lot of time watching me. She'd never seen him look that way at a woman before.

And there was one thing that she didn't need to say, that hung in the air between us: she was bitter about it. She never tried to draw him away from me, and she never said nasty things, but I could sense it. It was starting to make me feel guilty whenever Chrom followed me around. He always pretended that he had a reason, but both Cordelia and I could see that he was going out of his way to be in my company. It was one of the only things that could make him smile.

I just hoped that Cordelia would never realise how intimate I had already been with him. She spoke about her crush a lot – mostly, I eventually realised, to take her mind off her deceased knight-sisters – and Chrom's kiss was always the first thing that would leap into my mind. Then I would blush, which would only break her heart even more. She could see that I was infatuated with him.

We weren't the only people in camp who harboured crushes. While everyone was worried about Emmeryn, most of the Shepherds were less morose than Chrom. They ate and drank and were almost as merry as usual, and some interesting looks were even starting to be exchanged over our campfires. Lon'qu, who usually liked to keep a mile between himself and women, would sometimes talk with Lissa. Her usual bouncy attitude was now nothing more than a cracked façade, but Lon'qu could bring out a real smile. Sometimes, I caught her looking at him appreciatively, and I'd taken to teasing her about it to keep her mind away from the fate of her older sister.

Then there was Stahl. Cordelia would speak of her grief with both Sumia and me when we gathered to talk, but she was also offloading some of it on the friendly cavalier. He watched her, and she watched Chrom, and Chrom watched me. But while the gazes of Stahl and Cordelia said love me, Chrom's said something else. Help.

***

We reached Regna Ferox at the end of that week, achieved only by Chrom's ruthlessness in pushing us to walk quicker, camp later, and sleep less. It was like the journey to Ylisstol after the cataclysm all over again.

As soon as we arrived at Castle Ferox, Flavia began to prepare the army with urgency. The Shepherds waited in the Great Hall, either taking a seat or meandering around and looking at the decorations. I was in the latter category, so Chrom followed me. Frederick followed Chrom, and Sumia followed Frederick, and Cordelia almost followed Sumia, in which case Stahl would probably have joined her and we might as well have all done the conga. However, Cordelia's gaze drifted from her best friend to Chrom and me, and she chose to sit down. Stahl kept her company while I led my small procession around the room's perimeter, feeling extremely popular.