Archive of Our Own

“Fitz,” Kettricken said quietly. Her voice was suddenly that of a friend, not the Queen. “I speak to you as a woman, to tell you that although you bear scars, you are far from the grotesque you seem to believe yourself. You are, still, a comely youth, in ways that have nothing to do with your face. And were my heart not full with my Lord Verity, I would not disdain you.” She reached out a hand and ran cool fingers down the old split down my cheek, as if her touch could erase it. My heart turned over in me, an echo of Verity’s embedded passion for her amplified by my gratitude that she would say such a thing to me.

“You well deserve my lord’s love,” I told her artlessly from a full heart.

“Are you sure of that?” she asked weakly, her heart clearly torn and bleeding from the wounds her spirit she had suffered. Her confidence had faded. Her hand still rested on my shoulder from where it had fallen from my face, and the fingers twitched as if she wanted to move them, but dared not. I wondered why that could be so.

Her words registered finally in my mind, and as my mouth opened in surprise, I grabbed that lonely hand in a tight grip. “How can I doubt it? What other woman in the Six Duchies would have done what you did?”

“Lost the King’s heir, and ruined any chance for our people to recover themselves from what Regal the usurper wrought?”

Her calluses scraped my palm, and her face crumpled in a way that I had not seen before. Or maybe I had, months ago, and only now did I have that ember of love in my heart to be stricken by it. Verity’s love. “Traveled,” I said firmly, “pregnant and weary, with only the Fool to accompany you through all the miles of countryside, chased by pursuers who would have no compunctions in murdering you. Arrived safely to the Mountains, prepared to find your husband. Mourned him as dead just as you learned you would have to mourn your son.” Her mouth twisted, and I wished there was something I could do to smooth it. “And now you travel on a near-hopeless quest to find him again, full of faith and trust. If I were Prince Verity, I would find you deserving of my love indeed.”

Kettricken stared, and the silence after my speech was resounding. Both of my hands squeezed hers to my chest in an attempt to convey my sincerity. I knew she was astonished at my words, but more than the content - I thought she might have been surprised at the vehemency. I was not. Had I not been admiring her courage, even as I strained against the collar that she wished to put onto both me and my little daughter? The anger I felt towards her was content to fade into the background as we struggled down this oddly made road that threw my mind to pieces.

Still, I had not spoken to her of my regard for her since before Shrewd’s death. No wonder, then, that she had no certainty of it – all the things she believed she had failed in had happened after that event.

Her mouth worked, a startling red from the cold (I assumed), as she sought for words. I found myself staring at my queen and not knowing how to rescue her. All of a sudden I could not recall exactly what I had last said. Was it really so shocking? I thought I had said something about being worthy of Verity?

“I –” Kettricken said, and cut herself off. “Trust in my husband, yes. What other course can I follow? But full of faith? Or rather, faithful?” Her eyes filled with water, and she stepped back out of my grip. Cold rushed over my palm. “One who Skilled into my mind would well know the dubious truth of that.”

I watched my dear friend rise and leave the tent, holding the precious map, and I was astonished to find that it looked like a retreat. But what could she have to run from? Me?

I was jolted from my thoughts by the entry of the Fool, who tumbled into the tent in a cartwheel, still riding the high of our water fight in the stream. It was so odd that I had, only minutes ago, been rolling in the warm affection between us that is so often stirred up by the disappearance of winter, and now I was only annoyed that he had interrupted – what? Nothing at all, only my thoughts.

I became aware that I wasn’t quite breathing normally – just a little too deeply, and a little too quickly. The Fool raised a brow.

“As I know I have not just stumbled in on you post-tryst, I can only imagine you have been doing jumping jacks for the pleasure of the queen.”

“Tryst?” I said, jaw hanging. The idea was so alien to me that I had no words to respond to the Fool with, and was hardly irritated by his jest. Imag – imagine that! I thought to myself. I could not. My mind practically repelled the idea, and I huffed a false laugh for his sake.

I can, easily, said Nighteyes as he slunk into the tent. He curled up next to the cookpot, eyes gleaming.

Nighteyes! I said, flushing deeply, and then I noticed the Fool watching me with a look of dawning realization. Almost trepidation.

“What.” I asked flatly. I was used to the Fool having little flashes of insight that I, unfortunately, did not receive the benefit of understanding. But I associated him feeling fear with those dark days at the end, in Buckkeep, and I did not relish the idea of him giving me some kind of bad news.

“Only – have you ever thought that if you had not died, you might now be King?”

A horrified thrill ran through me at the thought. “Of course not.” Liar. “Regal would be King.”

“Except, as you’ve said, the Dukes supported you. Did they not? Who is to say…” he trailed off, eyes unfocused. Abruptly he returned to me, and began to gather up his carving tools. “Well. Certainly I am stumbling through a fog. This dream was not at all likely, but I shall be the catalyst this time.”

He beamed at me and somersaulted to the doorway as I watched, bewildered. “The Catalyst?” I asked. “I thought you said that was me?”

He stepped out of the tent, holding the flap as a dress wrapped around him and peeking back inside coquettishly. “Ah, yes, usually. But that is a tale for another time! Now I will only say – consider who you would have married had you been crowned by the Dukes.” And with a wagging finger, he slipped away.

I sat down slowly on my pallet and stared into the firepot. Free from any higher authority, I would have married Molly, of course. After I found wherever she had hidden herself and her new lover, as at the time, I wouldn’t have known that she had instead been hiding her pregnancy.

Immediately Chade’s voice came into my ear. Are you an idiot, as well as lovestricken? He would say, if I announced my intentions to him. The King of the Six Duchies is going to marry a peasant girl?

I would hold firm, of course. Molly was already my wife in all but name. There was no other woman for me. Celerity of Bearns had been my grandfather’s choice, and truly, she was everything a woman should be, but – I suddenly realized that in this situation that the Duke of Bearns would be especially eager to have me honor my grandfather’s word and marry his daughter. I imagined refusing him. Offending him. Offending her. Breaking faith with Bearns just after he had risked his neck to support me. The conflict would almost certainly leech into any efforts we made to fight the Red Ship War.

So, if you don’t want to marry Celerity, how can you reject her hand, and maintain good relations with one of your most important dukes? Imaginary Chade prompted me.

Marry someone else, I thought. Marry someone who was clearly the better choice. Marry Molly, my heart said, but my mind understood that she was the inferior choice in the eyes of everyone who mattered. It tore at me to acknowledge it.

Why would you take a mate at all if you do not want it? Nighteyes asked, nudging his head under my hand. I scratched his ears absentmindedly. If you are the leader of the pack, they do what you say.

It doesn’t work like that for humans, I responded, but no matter how many times he asked me to explain it to him, I could not.

My mind was stuck on the problem, worrying over it like kneading bread. What other woman would the court see as the better choice for their King? What other woman was stronger than Celerity, more prepared to defend the Duchies from Red Ship Raiders? What other woman was beautiful, and kind, and clever, and…

I felt it as a physical blow when I understood what the Fool had been saying. My lips flattened and I sucked in a breath through my nose at the thought of marrying Kettricken.

She was the only woman for whom the Dukes would understand breaking my understanding with Celerity. My uncle’s bereaved wife carried the heir to the throne, and I would only be regent until the child was grown enough to be King- or Queen-in-Waiting. And then, when little stillborn Sacrifice was born, the country would be thrown into instability. Kettricken, mountain queen, would have no diplomatic connection to the people of the Six Duchies anymore, with husband and son dead, and the long efforts of my father, uncle, and grandfather would have gone to waste. The Mountain Kingdom would have no reason to honor an agreement to become the Seventh Duchy if their Sacrifice was not also Sacrifice to us.

I could picture Chade being sympathetic but firm, telling me that if I was to be the King the Six Duchies needed, then I would have to do what was right for the peoples I governed, rather than what I felt was right for me. I could picture Duke Bearns bowing solemnly, unhappy but understanding that I made the wise decision in marrying Kettricken. And I could picture her face when Chade explained to her and I, sitting there together in her audience room like chastened children, that everyone expected me to either marry her or Celerity, and it was more politically even-handed to marry the previous Queen-in-Waiting.

I pressed my face into my wolf’s fur as I thought, unsure of what expression I was making but terrified of it being seen by Starling or Kettle.

Ever since I had met Kettricken, I had admired her. Her philosophy of Sacrifice struck a chord within me that I had never known was there, and all of Buckkeep knew of her vivacity and her ferocity in protection of her people. Often, I had felt my heart stutter in my chest at the sight of her, as a remnant of how Verity lingered in me. But then, I realized – I had lost connection with him several days ago. Any time we met through the Skill now was because I had been drifting out to fight against the raiders with the people on the coast, so he did not remain in me any longer. And there were no others of his emotion that had been trapped inside me.

My thoughts jumped uncomfortably to the fact that I remembered what it felt like to have Kettricken’s scent all over me, from a Skill connection that had been allowed to grow beyond intention. At the time, it had been euphoric. I breathed in Nighteyes, now, trying to clear that smell from my nose.

You fear that you will take the pack leader’s mate as your own? he asked.

My mind skittered around the idea, jaggedly. This was something I had quite firmly dismissed after my first disastrous trip to the Mountains. There had never been a need to consider it again. “No.” I said firmly. “I know in the depths of my being that I would never do that.”

But you wish you could?

Unbidden, my mind imagined Kettricken standing in my arms, her own hooked around my neck, our lips brushing lightly.

I banished the thought with a frisson of what had to be horror.

I knew it.

Guilt grew in me like a deep bruise as our journey progressed, the kind that holds a fascination which compels you to press it again and again just to feel the pain. Kettricken frequently stepped away from our camp in the evenings, and the only reason that I knew she wept over her husband was the snippets that Nighteyes gave me after he returned from sitting with her. I scolded myself for thinking of how lovely she was to me, for after I had acknowledged it once, imagined it once, I was never able to dispel it. I know I was sharp with the Fool in those days, unfairly blaming him for bringing a hidden part of me into the light.

It only irritated me more when Starling apologized for poking at me about the Fool’s gender, for she said that it “seemed so obvious to her that the Fool was in love with me, and she was only trying to help me realize it.”

“It seems obvious to me,” I retorted, “that I told you I was married, and whatever you were trying to do for the sake of romance would instead be a disaster.”

Starling had pursed her lips. “You yourself are worried that your ‘wife’ will not take you back. And you fear that your daughter will be taken to Buckkeep to live as royalty.” She hesitated, and I caught a glimpse of genuine emotion from her. “Do you still blame me for speaking of your child to the Queen?”

I sighed. My anger with her had faded, just as my anger with Kettricken had faded. Somehow the physical journey made my mind feel far away from Buckkeep, including all its cares and concerns. And more importantly, Starling was a minstrel. It was my own fault for trusting a minstrel with a secret. I still marveled that I had blurted everything out to her – but then, she had a knack for getting you to admit things in vulnerable moments.

I had been silent for too long, for Starling huffed. “You would think that you’d be grateful that I was trying to figure out the truth so you’d know if yet another woman was in love with you.”

“What?” I said, alarmed. “She’s – she’s not –” I stuttered horribly. “What are you saying, Starling?”

Starling raised an eyebrow, extremely interested in my discomfiture. “I was only referring to your lady back in Buck. What did you think I was saying?”

I cursed myself for the overreaction. I prayed Starling would not understand that I had jumped to the conclusion that she thought Kettricken was in love with me.

I pressed that bruise of guilt again and thought of Verity.

“It only just hit me, what you meant, that you think the Fool is in love with me,” I covered sloppily. “We are dear friends, that’s true. But the Fool’s gender is no one’s business but his own,” I said, firm, warming to the topic. “And I think he did say something like that to you about it, too. So maybe you should leave it alone.”

Starling looked annoyed, but the conversation ended there, and thankfully, the icy atmosphere between us dissipated. That evening, Kettricken saw Starling and I speaking perfectly peacefully together over dinner, and gave me a smile that warmed me to my toes.

She wants you, Nighteyes said later, slipping into the tent in the late evening.

I felt a river of something I did not want to name rushing through me at his thought, and hoped no one noticed the redness of my face.

How in the world did you come to that conclusion? I thought back.

She asked me to find you, he said, confused, and huffed air sharply through his nose. Go find her.

Oh. I felt stupid and slow. I stepped out into the twilight air, and noticed how the flicker of her shadow rolled over tree trunks as she wandered her way out of the small clearing. I followed after her slowly, admiring how the half-light cast the forest into new colors.

She perched on a boulder by the nearby stream and buried her face in her knees. She seemed younger than me when she allowed herself to grieve.

The seat was covered in a thick layer of moss and was wide enough for two. When I sat next to her, she glanced up. Her eyes were huge, until she realized that it was just me, and her body visibly relaxed as she turned to stare into the flowing water.

“I was just telling Nighteyes that I wanted you,” she said quietly. “He’s so intelligent. He’s been a great comfort to me, you know.”

“To me, as well,” I said, matching her low tone. The world seemed heavy around us, the camp far away. It was a time for soft words. Reminiscences. Comfort.

She slid her hand into mine, interlacing our fingers, and I was abruptly, acutely, afraid.

“Fitz,” she started, and then drifted off.

I swallowed.

“When did you go to Buckkeep?” she asked, and I blinked. Surely someone had already told her all about the origins of her little bastard nephew. I felt strong affection for her at the thought that she wanted to hear it from me.

“I was about six, I think.”

“And how did you come there?”

I did not like thinking about the time in my life before Buckkeep. In fact, only a few weeks after that evening, I would block out memories of it nearly forever. But now, I remembered enough, and I found myself willing to tell her.

“My grandfather brought me to the keep at Moonseye. I remember… I remember him clutching my hand in his grip, like this.” I used both hands to encase hers within my own, and a spark of amusement lit her face for a moment. I shifted back to interlock our fingers again. “It was so huge. He walked up to the door of the keep and told the guard there that he was tired of feeding another man’s get, and if Prince Chivalry was man enough to get a son on his daughter then he was man enough to feed and shelter him too. And then -”

My voice stuck. She squeezed my hand.

“And then my mother came up behind us, pleading for him to give me back. ‘Father, please!’ I remember her saying. And my grandfather picked up a chunk of dirty ice and threw it at her. It – it must have connected, as she didn’t say anything else. But I didn’t look.”

I cleared my throat. “That was the last time I saw her.”

Kettricken looked at me. The treetops outlined against the still barely-light sky were reflected in her eyes. “Do you remember her well?”

“Not well,” I said, and looked down, scuffing a boot against the moss at the base of our rock. I would not have admitted this to many people besides her. Later I would angrily tell others that I had no memory of my mother.

“What do you remember?”

“She was a Mountain girl,” I said. “Our age, though at the time, of course, she was just Mere to me. She had blonde hair like yours, and she was slender. She loved to sew.” My breath hitched as a new memory came to me. “She embroidered all my clothes. She – she put my name on the hems so if they got lost people would know where to return them to. Or if I got lost.”

“I wondered… Fitz. Surely your mother didn’t call you Fitz. May I… do you remember your name?”

My eyes felt hot and wet. I sucked in a shuddering breath, and my voice broke as I said, “No.”

“Oh, Fitz,” she said, and turned my face into her breast as I cried over something I had not thought of in years. She shuffled sideways to sit on my lap so that we fit together more easily, and she ran her fingers through my hair. It grew damp quickly.

“Verity had no name for me,” she said quietly. “Other than Kettricken. I often wonder if he would have had a little name for Sacrifice. Did he give you one?”

“No, just Fitz,” I managed to say. I refused to mourn one more thing lost, especially not one that I hadn’t even known to miss.

“Does it hurt you?”

She was not very specific, but I understood.

“No. It’s what I am. And by now it really does feel like my name. Even Fitzchivalry sounds strange to me.”

I could not tell if that bothered her or not – after all, she called me Fitzchivalry more than most. She moved on. “I’ve never had a nickname.”

“No one ever called you Kett?”

I became aware of the fact that we were still embracing tightly, and her hand still carded through my hair. I couldn’t bring myself to move. I reasoned desperately that I would be able to sense someone coming near through the Wit.

“No,” she sighed out, and did not elaborate.

“Did you want them to?”

She was silent, and I glanced up to see her mouth flattened like she was trying not to let words out.

“Well, we’re family, so.” I almost choked on the words. “I’ll call you Kett when it’s just family.”

I dared to look up at her again and my heart stopped at her shining face. I wondered if nicknames were a little more significant in Mountain culture than I’d been led to assume, but none of that mattered when she took my head in her hands and pressed a kiss to my forehead like a benediction.

“Thank you, Fitz,” she breathed, and like she couldn’t resist, placed another kiss on my cheek quickly.

I believe that’s when I truly realized how much trouble we were in. For if I was attracted to her, then that was fine. It didn’t matter if one person felt love for another silently and secretly. But if she was attracted to me, then… it became a battle not to give in.

Or perhaps a war, for we lost a battle that evening. I cupped her face, threading my fingers through pale hair, and pressed a return kiss to the center of her forehead. Her eyes were closed, and I was overcome by the sight of her light eyelashes lying on her cheeks. I pressed another kiss to an eyelid. The other. The tip of her nose.

Her eyes opened, and our noses brushed. Her gaze was not hazy or desirous, but instead clear, as she bent forward slightly to press her lips to mine. I closed my eyes rather than see her decide to betray my prince with me.

Her mouth was warm, and rough from her habit of biting her lip. A flood of heat rushed through me and woke things that I had not felt in a year. I shifted my lips over hers, capturing them again tenderly, willing my deep affection for her through them.

Maybe she felt it through the Wit, for abruptly she gasped and jerked her head back from me, only to instantly clutch at my shoulders and press her face into my hair. Almost immediately new tears reached my skin.

“I’m sorry,” I said desperately. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I can leave.”

“No!” she said, pulling back to look at me. “Oh, Fitz, the fault is not yours alone. It almost never is. We’ve done this horrible thing together.”

Hurt made me grimace, and then left me quickly, leaving only shame behind that the truth could wound me so badly.

“We have,” I agreed quietly. “And we won’t do it again.”

Kettricken’s gaze caught me, and I could read how distraught she was. “I’m sorry, Fitz,” she breathed. I found myself savoring what could be the only quiet moment we would ever have like this. “What a twisted tangle we find ourselves in.”

I wrapped my arms around her waist firmly, and used the Wit once more to confirm that no one drew near. “I hope you know that I… I feel such an affection for you.” I cursed my inadequate words. “And respect. You are my Queen. My… my Kett, if you wish, even though we will not –”

She put a finger over my lips to stop me from speaking. I was grateful, for I didn’t want to have to describe it.

“Yes,” she said with a gusty sigh, and it was so unlike her that I wondered how much she restrained her personality even now. “Yes, I wish that. I wish many things, and most of all I wish I did not feel so guilty for wishing that my Lord Verity were…”

She trailed off, but I understood. Slowly, slowly, I moved her back to sit on the moss beside me. “A tangle, indeed,” I said ruefully, and smiled at her. I stood and wandered away, for all that needed to be said had been said between us, and so it would end like a caterpillar trapped in its chrysalis.

“Sorry,” Verity said quietly, and it was in his own voice.

I looked up to find him looking down on me. I stared up at him mutely. I could smell Kettricken’s scent on my skin. My body was very tired. I knew a moment of total outrage.

I could not hold onto it for long – or rather, I banked it away like coals. Verity refused to apologize, but all I could do was breathe in the smell of her as slowly and subtly as possible. I barely heard him. It truly felt like my heart was being ripped inside my chest. Gods.

“Fitzchivalry. Are you all right?” His voice broke through the cloud of emotion, concerned yet not without triumph. And the guilt that once had been a bruise, and had recently become a bleeding wound, closed up spitefully into a scar.

“Of course not. Of course not.” And I walked down to the stream to scrub off the remnants of her that could have been mine alone.