The brothel was quiet when they arrived. Not dead—no. It pulsed low, like a heartbeat in the walls. Like something waiting.

  Bernadetta did not see it from the outside.

  One moment the desert stretched on before them, wind-stilled and burnt flat beneath the noonday haze—and then the gang rounded a half-buried ridge and the stone gates rose from the dust like teeth. Square. Impenetrable. No sign had been hung. No name carved. Only a small metal crest affixed to the doorframe: a coin stamped with a two-headed eagle, one face scorched black.

  Inside, the light changed. Red lamps burned low in wrought-iron sconces. The windows were shuttered, the air thick with sweet tobacco and desert spice. The scent of oil. The warmth of low fires. Velvet curtains stirred in the draft. Boots thudded against thick rugs. No music played.

  The women moved like ghosts.

  They did not look afraid.

  The men of the gang trickled in, one by one, eyes darting, guns checked at the door by a silent man with one silver eye. Some removed their hats. Others didn’t bother. They were shown to rooms or to corners or to tables with wax-dripped candelabras where drink already waited. There were no overtures. No barkeep. Just presence. Just order.

  Bernadetta stood in the entryway. Cloak wrapped tight. Rifle still slung on her back.

  Edelgard had already vanished into the halls.

  And the Judge smiled as he passed her, the fire catching strange in his eyes. “The house is warm, young cub,” he said. “Best not loiter in the door.”

  She did not follow him.

  She moved to the wall and sat there on a bench worn smooth by time. Her bones ached from the ride. Her boots left little puffs of dust where they rested. From somewhere deeper inside came a muffled laugh. Then silence again.

  The brothel was not what she’d expected. It was not desperate. It did not want. It had been built to last. The kind of place that did not just weather the world—but shaped it.

  She had been in it five minutes and already she felt small.

  And then Petra appeared.

  She stepped into the hallway from one of the shadowed side rooms, moving like water under moonlight—deliberate, quiet. Her boots made no sound. Her braids had been redone. Her clothes were still marked with dust and blood but she wore them with the pride of a soldier who had chosen her path and would not step from it now.

  She saw Bernadetta and paused.

  They had not spoken since the ambush.

  Petra approached slow. Not hesitant. Not proud. Just... careful.

  Bernadetta looked up, then away.

  “You fought well,” Petra said.

  Bernadetta shrugged. “You switched sides.”

  Petra nodded. “Yes.”

  “You shot your own people.”

  Another nod.

  Silence.

  Bernadetta’s mouth twisted, but she said nothing more.

  Petra sat on the edge of the bench, not too close. Her eyes were still on Bernadetta. Something in them unreadable. Something ancient.

  “I remembered you,” she said softly. “In the smoke. Not just who you are now. But before. When we were—”

  “We weren’t,” Bernadetta cut in, quick. Her arms curled tighter around herself. “I mean… I don’t remember.”

  A pause.

  Petra didn’t challenge her. She only said, “That does not mean it was not real.”

  Bernadetta breathed out hard. “Why are you here?”

  “Because she is here,” Petra said. Her eyes drifted to the hallway Edelgard had vanished down. “And because I chose. And because something in me says this is where I must be, even if I don’t know why.”

  Bernadetta glanced at her again. Just briefly. “You talk weird.”

  Petra smiled, faint. “I always have.”

  Then she stood.

  “When you remember, I will be here.”

  And she left, vanishing back into the dark.

  Bernadetta sat alone.

  A woman passed by with silver chains at her throat and a candle in each hand. The flame flickered as she walked. Behind her, shadows lengthened.

  Then the hall shifted.

  A door at the end opened, and Edelgard stepped through.

  And not alone.

  A man followed at her shoulder. Tall. Severe. Black hair combed back like ink poured and hardened. A coat of dark cloth buttoned high. Hands gloved. Eyes sharp as drawn blades. He moved with the silence of a man who did not need to announce himself, because his presence did it for him.

  He held a rolled map under one arm and a sealed envelope in the other.

  Edelgard looked unchanged. Or maybe she looked more herself than ever. This place suited her. It curved around her. She had not raised her voice, but already it was clear—this was her court.

  And now she had summoned her spymaster.

  The brothel-fort wore its purpose like a velvet mask over a steel jaw. Bernadetta watched her walk, something cold and awed and aching stirred in her chest.

  She wandered through it in silence, a ghost among satin and gunmetal. The halls were too quiet. Too clean. The curtains were real silk, the floors tiled and swept. Candles burned low in wrought iron sconces shaped like twisted roses. She passed doors that stood open, revealing parlors with red velvet chaises, sitting rooms with maps pinned to the walls, a mirrored gallery strung with little crystal chandeliers.

  The Judge followed her distantly like a man touring a mausoleum, his pale scalp catching red in the lamplight. He paused beneath a dangling iron-wrought lantern, eyes trailing over the sights velvet and polished gunmetal, the women who wore corsets like armor.

  And he spoke:

  “This is no house of pleasure. This is a temple to dominion. These walls remember older hungers. The stone bears it. The air breathes it.”

  He turned, slow, voice rising just a shade.

  “Man will dress his conquest in rouge and ribbon. He will paint his slaughter in the colors of empire and call it providence. But the bones beneath the paint are the same.”

  A hush followed.

  Then he smiled, faint and terrible.

  “Even in the cradle of the world, there were whores before there were kings. And in the end, it was they who taught the kings how to rule.”

  The girls here didn’t look like the ones in other towns. Their makeup was immaculate, their dresses tailored. They walked the halls with straight backs and steady eyes, speaking in low voices, their laughter infrequent but genuine. A few had rifles slung on their backs. One wore a sabre at her hip like a duelist. A man leaned in to whisper something crude, and she cracked him across the jaw with a fan that flashed with hidden metal.

  No one looked at Bernadetta twice.

  She saw a girl—maybe seventeen, maybe thirty—who passed her with a cloth bundle tucked beneath one arm. From the folds spilled paper: names, directions, stamped seals. Another leaned over a rail on the upper gallery, taking notes as two men argued in a room below, their words too soft to reach.

  And overhead, carved into the lintel that crowned the inner sanctum of the fort, she saw the emblem of a crowned eagle—wings spread, claws open, its eyes wrought in dark iron.

  Bernadetta stood beneath it a long time. She couldn’t say why.

  Then a voice reached her from behind.

  “The Madame would like a word.”

  She turned. A boy stood there—young, cleanly dressed in a red vest with the brothel’s sigil stitched into the breast. He did not bow. He only waited.

  Bernadetta nodded, uncertain.

  He led her down a corridor Bernadetta had not noticed before—one that sloped downward, subtly, the way catacombs or wine cellars do. The air changed. The scent of perfume gave way to lamp oil and dried ink.

  They came to a door bound in rivets and painted black.

  The boy knocked once. Opened it.

  Inside was a war room.

  Not a mock-up, not a makeshift. A real one. Cold stone walls lit by oil lanterns. A long table at the center strewn with maps, ledgers, inkpots, and open files. A strange tension in the air—not combative, but charged.

  Four people were gathered around the table.

  Bernadetta recognized only one.

  Edelgard stood at the head of the table, reviewing a spread of maps beneath the low lantern glow.

  “Dorothea will be joining us later,” she said, not looking up at the sound of the door, her spymaster adjusting a stack of sealed dispatches at her side. “She is tending to our guest accommodations. As I’ve been informed, there were... misunderstandings.”

  Not distracting from the documents he was organizing, the spymaster muttered just loud enough to be heard: “Misunderstandings, yes. That’s what we’re calling it now,” his voice dry as old paper.

  A man seated across snorted. Another, stood to Edelgard’s right, rolled his eyes with great restraint.

  But Edelgard didn’t so much as blink.

  Then talks commenced.

  The man seated to Edelgard’s right, clad in a uniform of fine cut and crowned with hair like burnished copper, furrowed his brow in quiet disapproval.

  He gestured toward a map on the table as he spoke—precise, measured. “To deploy a full battalion here would antagonize every clan in the northern range. Even if we pacify the west, we’ll bleed for it.” There was something tight in his shoulders, like a man giving ground he did not want to lose.

  Edelgard’s response came cool and measured, the sort born of long calculation.

  “I do not ask for a solution—only a cover.

  The band I travel with has already been waylaid by riders once. We suffered many casualties.

  If I hadn’t taken up a rifle and moved to the front myself, it could’ve gone far worse. But a single arrow might have ended everything we’ve been working to build.

  We must be protected, even in secrecy.

  If I fall, the Agarthans will strike.

  Without us to stand in their way, they will sweep in and set the earth ablaze.

  You know they’ve already begun.”

  The spymaster grinned faintly, stroking his chin–like a man admiring a beautiful ruin. “They’d love a martyr, wouldn’t they? Clean. Inspiring. Easy to parade around while they make monsters in the dark.”

  “You mean the testing camps?” said a boyish man with sunbrown skin and cropped hair, lounging with his boots crossed on the table. “Oh yeah. Got a cousin who stumbled on one during recon. Whole valley of folk herded like cattle.”

  He paused.

  “Anyway. He’s dead now.”

  “Then I assume your father still supports our position?” Edelgard asked.

  The man shrugged. “He’s no rancher.”

  The fourth figure sighed without looking up from his papers—a man slouched with the indifference of the terminally bored, ink on his cuffs, his hair tied back with a scrap of ribbon. “If they catch me leaking records again, I’ll be hanged. You know that, right?”

  “You’ve said,” Edelgard replied.

  “I’d just like it to be noted for the record.”

  “You are the record.”

  A pause. Then a long-suffering groan. “Fine.”

  The meeting didn’t so much end as unravel. Voices lowered. Pages turned. The sharp lines of debate blurred into murmurs and the scrape of chairs. They spoke now in the language of strategy—numbers, routes, regiments. Things Bernadetta barely understood, and things she felt she had no right to hear.

  She sat still, tucked in the corner like a misplaced piece of furniture, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes flicking from face to face. These were people who belonged here—who spoke with purpose, moved with direction.

  They had weight. They had names.

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  And somehow, she had been placed among them.

  She didn’t know why.

  She shifted in her chair. No one had looked her way, not since she'd arrived. She wasn’t even sure they remembered she was there.

  Maybe that was for the better.

  Maybe Edelgard had made a mistake.

  The room settled like cooling stone. The tension had passed, but a strange charge remained, humming just beneath the surface.

  As the meeting neared its close, the last embers of argument smoldered low. The redhaired man reclined in his chair, one glove off, fingers tapping slow against the table’s scarred oak. The boyish man with his energetic air leaned forward, leg jittering, both elbows planted like fists on a prize ring. The dour scribe, half-curled in a velvet-backed chair, stirred from his long silence only to scratch something with a quill in the corner of a ledger he’d seemingly conjured from thin air. The air in the room buzzed faintly with oil smoke and sweat and strategy.

  Bernadetta sat quiet in the corner, a shadow in the room’s high paneled wall, feeling again that sense of quiet misplacement—like a servant girl who’d stepped into the wrong parlor and was too scared to flee. Though it wasn’t the gang’s eyes that had followed her here. It was Edelgard’s. And that somehow was even worse.

  At the head of the table, the pale-haired woman, the madame, Edelgard, stood with arms crossed, her bearing upright as a blade buried in stone. She gave no closing remarks. She didn’t need to. The room had already begun to bend to her shape.

  Then: a faint scuff at the threshold.

  Bernadetta looked up.

  Petra had entered without sound or ceremony. No knock, no beckon.

  She stepped in like a ghost returning to its bones.

  The redhaired man blinked, straightened. “Ah—Miss Petra. A timely entrance, I daresay.”

  She inclined her head. “I can move freely among the nearby tribes. Sew the seeds of peace. If that would be of helping to the mission and put your mind at ease, Ferdinand.”

  The man paused.

  His eyes narrowed—not in suspicion, but surprise.

  “I... do beg your pardon, Miss Petra. But I must confess to my befuddlement, as I don’t recall having yet formally introduced myself to you.”

  Petra turned her gaze to him.

  And then, to Edelgard.

  A small smile touched her lips, half wistful.

  “I remember all of you,” she said, her voice soft as wind through stone. “From a different place. It is difficult to explain. But just know you are my cherished friends.”

  She turned to each in kind.

  “Caspar,” the boyish man, he blinked and gave a dumb little wave.

  “Linhardt,” the scribe, he only raised one brow.

  “Hubert,” the queen’s long shadow, he merely stared, unreadable.

  And lastly, Petra looked to Bernadetta.

  “Bernie,” she said. As though the name had never stopped fitting.

  Something caught in Bernadetta’s chest.

  Petra’s gaze swept over the room, serene, like someone returning from a dream. “To be seeing us all gathered together again like this... it is like destiny.”

  A hush followed—gentle, expectant.

  Caspar blinked. “Wait. You’re saying… we’ve met before? You remember something I don’t?”

  “Not all the days,” Petra said, nodding. “Not all the faces. But the feeling. The bond. It is like a fire remembered by its warmth, even after the coals have gone cold.”

  Caspar scratched his cheek, his mouth twitching. “Huh. That’s… something. Not sure I buy it.”

  Linhardt glanced up from his papers. In doing so, he unleashed a yawn–so operatic in scale–it came with a languid stretch, arms overhead, spine arched, the picture of a housecat awakened too soon from some noble dream. “Well, no wonder I’m always feeling so tired,” he said, struggling through the tail end of this monumental exhalation like a man pitted against a hurricane, “as I’ve apparently already lived a whole other life without even knowing it.”

  That got a few soft chuckles.

  Even Ferdinand gave a reluctant smile. “I suppose if any gathering might echo through time,” he said, “it would be this one.”

  But Hubert didn’t look at her, didn’t laugh.

  “A charming delusion, if true,” he said, adjusting the seal on a half-rolled dossier. Then nothing more.

  Petra turned again to Bernadetta.

  “Bernie,” she said, with that same quiet certainty. Like a name spoken in prayer.

  Bernadetta froze.

  The room seemed to fall away for a moment. Not in fear. But in some deeper ache she could not name.

  Petra’s voice, when she spoke again, was softer still. “Even if we forget, something in us remembers. I know you see me through different eyes now. But I am no less glad to be with you again.”

  Then she turned to the others once more. “To fight beside you.

  To share this path.”

  The room held that particular stillness—not awkward, not disbelieving, just… tender.

  And Edelgard, watching from the head of the table, gave the faintest nod. Her hand lifted.

  “This,” she said, “is our newest Black Eagle.”

  Her eyes on Bernadetta.

  “Bernadetta.”

  All turned to look.

  And something in that moment felt like a circle closing.

  For a moment, no one moved.

  Then Ferdinand inclined his head, smiling. Caspar gave a small two-fingered salute. Lindhardt muttered something like a greeting while dozing off. Hubert was a thing she did not deign to look upon.

  Bernadetta stood very still.

  She had no idea what any of this meant.

  But Edelgard was smiling. Just faintly.

  And for a moment, that was enough.

  But It passed just as it came.

  And then she was with the gang again. Returned to the world of the unloved, they were riding west by the light of the dying sun. The brothel-fort had vanished behind them, swallowed again by dust and silence. The trail turned narrow and the sky vast. Glanton rode apart from the others, slouched in the saddle, his wound wrapped tight in fresh linen. He barely spoke. Even Dorothea’s voice, once a balm, was met now with dull grunts and squinted stares. Whatever fire had burned in the man had guttered low.

  The others kept pace in pairs and silence. Petra near the front. Hubert further back, a feral black hound nipping at the heels of civilization. The Judge, somewhere behind, was unreadable as ever. And near the middle of the pack, side by side: Edelgard and Bernadetta.

  The road had lost its voice.

  Hooves struck soft against the dust, muffled by distance and wear. No one spoke. The land around them yawned open, wide as any grave. A few mesquites clung to life at the roadside, twisted and low, their branches clawing shadows on the earth. Somewhere, a bird called once and did not call again.

  Bernadetta glanced across the horizon. The sky was stained in bruise-purple and lavender. Already half-swallowed by the hills, the sun painted their shapes in molten silhouette.

  Behind her, a man coughed. Another swigged from a flask. Far ahead, Petra adjusted something at her saddle without breaking stride. The sound of it—a small, metallic clink—echoed louder than it had any right to.

  She looked to Edelgard.

  The other woman rode straight-backed, eyes forward, one hand loose on the reins. Her pale hair had caught the last of the sun and burned like a crown. She looked not like someone returning from battle, but like someone already galloping toward the next. And beside her, Bernadetta’s own posture seemed to fold in on itself just a little more.

  They crested a hill.

  Below, the land unfolded into a narrow basin rimmed with red stone. A dry riverbed cut across its heart like an old scar. On the far end, weatherworn wooden pylons jutted from the ground—signs of a long-dead fence or a failed settlement, lost to dust and neglect.

  Glanton raised a hand. The gang slowed.

  No order was given. No camp declared. But it was clear: here, they would stop.

  Curled like a fingernail astride the basin was a rise that overlooked a broad sweep of the desert. The sand below caught the sun like hammered copper. In the distance, dark shapes of mesas rose like half-sunken ships, their shadows bleeding eastward as the light died.

  Bernadetta dismounted and sat on the edge of the bluff. The wind tugged at her hair. Her rifle rested across her knees.

  She didn’t hear Edelgard approach.

  “You’ve been practicing.”

  Bernadetta jumped slightly. Edelgard was beside her, arms crossed, eyes on the horizon.

  “I—” Bernadetta looked down. “Just… trying to keep up.”

  A pause. The wind whispered through the brush.

  “You’re improving,” Edelgard said. “Good work.”

  Bernadetta flushed. “Still nowhere near as good as you.”

  A long beat of quiet.

  The sun sank lower. The sky shifted to wine.

  Edelgard sat beside her.

  Bernadetta’s voice came small, almost lost in the wind. “Can I ask you something?”

  Edelgard didn’t answer, but she didn’t look away either.

  “Why me?” Bernadetta said. “Back there. In the meeting. With them. You called me… a Black Eagle.”

  She paused, bit her lip. “I’m not like them. I’m not brave. I’m not smart. I’m not anything.”

  Edelgard was quiet for a long time. Then:

  “You are still becoming. That’s not weakness. That’s potential.”

  Bernadetta blinked.

  Edelgard went on, her voice low and steady. “This world was not made for people like you. That is not your fault. But it will still crush you if you let it. I’ve seen it happen. Over and over.”

  Her gaze was fixed ahead. The last sliver of sun burned red above the plain.

  “I want to change that,” Edelgard said. “I want to build a world where those who have suffered do not stay small forever. Where merit is what raises you—not birth, not wealth, not cruelty.”

  She turned to look at Bernadetta then, and there was something fierce behind her eyes. Not pity. Not kindness. Fire.

  “You represent that world. Not because you’re perfect. But because you keep going. Even when you’re afraid. Even when everything in you says to run. That’s what power looks like. Not force. Not pride. But endurance.”

  Bernadetta’s throat felt tight.

  “I see it in you,” Edelgard said softly. “And I hope… you see it in me, too.”

  Far behind them, the Judge watched without blinking, as if appraising a machine that had finally begun to move.

  By morning, the world was moving again. No words spoken. The hooves of their mounts stirred only ash and silence. The desert stretched silent and unending as the gang rode through the remnants of another nameless settlement, now reduced to smoldering ruins. Charred beams jutted from the earth like broken ribs; the air was thick with the acrid scent of burnt wood and something more sinister.

  The Judge reined in his horse, surveying the devastation with a detached air. He dismounted, boots crunching over blackened debris, and turned to address the assembled riders.

  "Behold," he began, spreading his arms wide, "the wages of sin made manifest. A testament to the impermanence of man's endeavors and the folly of his pride."

  His voice, resonant and commanding, held the gang in rapt attention. Even Glanton, nursing his wound, managed a derisive snort.

  Bernadetta, however, felt a prickling unease. Her fingers tightened around the stock of her rifle as her eyes scanned the shadows cast by the dying embers. It was then she saw it—a flicker of movement amidst the rubble.

  Without thought, without hesitation, she raised her rifle and fired.

  The crack of the shot echoed, shattering the stillness.

  A gasp.

  A body crumpled to the ground.

  The gang turned as one, eyes locking onto the figure now sprawled in the dirt. It was a man—gaunt, clothes hanging off his skeletal frame, eyes sunken and wild. No weapon in sight. Just a man, now bleeding out from the hole Bernadetta's bullet had torn through him.

  Silence hung heavy.

  "Poor bastard," someone muttered.

  "Should've stayed hidden," another added.

  The Judge chuckled, a low, mirthless sound. "Even the damned have their appointed time."

  Bernadetta's breath came in shallow gulps. Her heart hammered against her ribs. She hadn't meant to—hadn't thought—

  Edelgard approached, her steps measured and unhurried.

  She stopped before Bernadetta, eyes unreadable, and extended a hand. In it was a knife. Ornate, its hilt inlaid with intricate designs that caught the dim light.

  Bernadetta stared at it, then at Edelgard.

  Their eyes met, and in that gaze was an unspoken command.

  Finish it.

  Her hands trembled as she reached out, fingers closing around the knife's hilt. It felt cold. Heavy.

  She turned toward the dying man. He lay on his side, each ragged breath a struggle. Blood pooled beneath him, dark and viscous. The gang watched, a circle of silent spectators, as Bernadetta swallowed hard, stepping closer.

  She knelt beside the man, the knife's blade glinting.

  "It's... it's mercy," she whispered, more to herself than anyone else.

  The man's eyes fluttered open, meeting hers. There was no anger there, no accusation. Only a distant, fading light.

  She raised the knife, positioning it at his throat, just as she'd seen done to wounded animals back home.

  But as she applied the slightest pressure, she realized—

  He was already gone.

  A shuddering breath escaped her lips. She withdrew the knife, staring at the lifeless form before her.

  Toadvine spat into the dust. "Waste of a good bullet."

  Edelgard's voice cut through the murmurings. "We move on."

  The gang began to disperse, mounting their horses, the incident already fading into the tapestry of their brutal lives.

  Bernadetta remained kneeling, the knife still in her grasp, its weight now unbearable.

  Edelgard lingered a moment longer, placing a hand on her shoulder.

  "You've chosen," she said softly, then turned away.

  Bernadetta closed her eyes, the distant hoofbeats echoing in her ears as she knelt beside the man she'd killed, the desert wind whispering secrets only the dead could understand.