Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The war has been raging for centuries.

Jade has probably read most of the books in the library, and there aren’t any that don’t mention the war with Derse. Even history books aren’t consistent in their stories for the origins of the war, although they share some commonalities.

Dersites are conquerors. Invaders. It’s no coincidence that Derse is nearly twice the size of Prospit by land mass. As long as they’ve existed, they’ve been taking whatever they could get. Fighting over scraps that they don’t need. They’re not an empire by definition because they don’t make any attempt to rule over existing countries—they take them over completely. Swallow them up. Kill whoever they need to kill until the people surrender and then claim the land as their own, another victorious expansion of Derse’s borders.

Prospit was just the first enemy they encountered who stood a fighting chance against them. Despite their smaller size, the Kingdom of Prospit has a vast and well-trained military, full of soldiers willing to die for their country. Willing to die to keep Derse out at all costs. After the first battles won against Derse’s army, they were able to go to neighboring countries to the west for support, soldiers and money and much-needed resources like food and shelter after many of the northern farming villages had been burned to the ground.

And then there’s the issue of magic. In Prospit, they teach that magic is a corrupting force that poisons the mind until its users are left violent and mad, clinging to power by their fingernails until the magic kills them or someone else does. It is illegal, and if one is caught practicing magic in secret, punishment ranges from exile to execution. In Derse, magic is common. It’s taught to soldiers, clergymen, and anyone wealthy enough to afford private lessons. She’s heard that the monarchs of Derse are the most powerful mages in the world.

Information is too obfuscated in Prospit for Jade to know precisely where magic comes from, but she can’t believe that it’s all evil. Not when she’s felt how warm and bright it could be firsthand. But who could she possibly tell about that?

Then, of course, there’s Grandpa’s story: The war between Prospit and Derse is senseless and endless, a conflict as old as time that no one may live to see the end of. There had been peace negotiations several times in his lifetime, peace negotiations he had been allowed to sit in on as an ambassador from Golgotha and a member of her paternal grandfather’s and then her father’s advisory council, but neither side was willing to budge on their ideals enough to bring a real end to the war. The closest they had ever managed was cold war pacts, much like the one that’s been in place since her parents got married and her father ascended to the throne.

But it seems that he was wrong.

They haven’t been given much of a choice. The first symptoms of her father’s illness started over a year ago, but he insisted that they were nothing to worry about. Now, he’s bedridden, barely able to walk across a room without having to sit to catch his breath, and it’s been weeks since she was able to see him. The physicians that check on him daily won’t talk to her about it, and she can’t do much with the limited information that she has from what she observed when things weren’t so bad and the outdated medical textbooks in the library. If Derse found out he was dying, they would pounce on the disorganization that followed.

She wishes that she could go into town to get more books and do some research. She knows that she could figure out how to cure him if they would only let her. But she’s been under lock and key her whole life, and there’s no way they’re going to let up on that now—not when she’s about to become so important.

As a second child and a daughter, she has no claim to the throne. That’ll go to John, only three months from now in fact. He’s already acting as prince regent. No, the only use that she has in this situation is in marriage prospects, and that’s precisely what they are discussing in the meeting she’s been locked out of.

Her fists clench in her lap as she thinks about it again. She should be a part of this conversation, not forced to wait outside in the gardens.

It was framed as a kind thing to do, having her wait. While John meets with the Dersite royals to discuss the conditions of the arranged marriage and the end of the war, Jade is supposed to be meeting with her betrothed (almost, but not quite yet) in the gardens she’s spent her entire life tending to. They can have at least one conversation before they’re officially betrothed that way.

It doesn’t feel very kind at all.

It feels like she’s letting a stranger into some part of her soul before she hands it over to him. It feels like all of the limited agency she’s had in her life is being ripped away from her without so much as an apology. It feels like her brother doesn’t trust her to participate in negotiations like an intelligent adult or to do what she needs to do to guarantee the safety of her people. That one stings the most.

The only thing she knows about her husband-to-be is that he’s the commander of the army in Derse. She can’t help picturing an older man with a scarred, withered face and grey hair and a no-nonsense attitude. Grandpa was the commander of Prospit’s army before he died, and while he was always kind to her, was one of the only people who didn’t treat her like a delicate porcelain doll at risk of shattering if anyone so much as breathed too close to her, she overheard him in the war room meetings with her father. His reputation as Golgotha’s Terror was well-earned.

And he hasn’t even shown up yet, anyway. She always thought that military men were supposed to be punctual, but she hasn’t so much as heard from a maid that he’s on his way. Her feet are itchy with the desire to get up and creep to the room where John is meeting with the royals so she might be able to listen in on their conversation. Maybe she could even force her way into it.

As if on cue, light pours from one of the doorways to the garden, and though she is tempted to look back, she refuses. It is a full, agonizing minute before she finally hears him approaching, and the first thing that she notices as she holds her breath and waits for him to join her is that he does not sit down. 

She looks over him slowly, almost as though procrastinating looking at his face. The waistcoat that he wears looks like a deep red brocade. Except the embroidery, like little vines all twisting and curling into each other, is black rather than gold or silver. His coattails hang so low they threaten to drag along the ground. His legs are long, emphasized not only by the length of his coattails but also by the tighter cut of his pants compared to what she is used to seeing on her father and brother. When her eyes make their way back to his chest, she notices that a stopwatch is visible in full, hanging out almost intentionally, though she can’t see how he did it. It’s a beautiful but not gaudy golden piece, with gears and clockwork engraved on the metal facing and rubies and amethysts encrusted on its surface in strategic and sparse places.

She doesn’t know at what point she stopped holding her breath, but it catches in her throat when she finally comes to his face. He’s certainly not some gnarled old man. His skin is pale like porcelain and similarly flawless, with freckles lightly brushing over his nose that rival her own. His hair curls just slightly over his forehead, stark white like the moon. The people of Prospit tend toward darker features, and she doesn’t think she’s ever seen someone so pale before, let alone with hair lighter than their skin. Perhaps most startling of all, he wears round spectacles similar in shape to hers, but with lenses so dark she can’t even see the color of his eyes through them. But that’s not what really startles her.

She scrambles to her feet so she can curtsy politely, sweeping the pale yellow silk fabric of her dress up in her hands. After the correct number of seconds has passed, she straightens and can’t entirely stop herself from staring at him. “You’re the prince.”

Jade has never met the prince before. The last time Prospit and Derse held peace negotiations was before she was born, and she’s never been allowed to leave the castle. What opportunity would she have had? But she’s heard of him. The only son of the reigning monarchs in Derse, she supposes he must be next in line for the throne. Why wouldn’t John tell her that her potential husband was the prince?

His eyebrows pinch together so slightly that she almost doesn’t see it, but without any other clues from the rest of his face, she can’t tell what the emotion behind it is. “They didn’t tell you?” He speaks with an accent she can’t quite describe, drawling, almost slurring his words together while somehow managing not to sound inelegant. She simply shakes her head, her own brow furrowing. He looks away from her and toward one of the nearby fruit trees before, after a dragging moment of silence he says, “I’m sorry I was late.”

“I hardly noticed,” she lies, because she thinks it ought to be comforting.

He folds his arms behind him in the picturesque posture of a soldier, back straight as he turns away from the gazebo she’s sitting in and approaches the fruit tree. She keeps staring as he reaches up to pluck a plump pomelo from a branch, figuring that she can’t be scolded for how rude it is if he’s not even looking at her.

They sit in another agonizing extended silence as he carefully peels the fruit, removing the rind in one curling piece. It reminds her of Grandpa, and she swallows hard. Finally, he strides back over to the gazebo, tucking the rind into a pocket of his waistcoat as he climbs the single step to stand in front of her. He still doesn’t sit down, and the sharp, sweet smell of citrus clings to her nostrils even from several feet away.

“So… Tell me something about you. I mean, it’s not like either of us has any choice in this arrangement, but it might be nice to pretend like we do,” he says as he brings one of the pomelo’s carpals up to his mouth, sinking his teeth into it once he’s done speaking.

She considers this for a long while. Somehow, she had thought that he would have a say in this whole thing. She is used to being powerless, but he seems like he should be the sort of important that earns him a say in his own marriage. She wants to ask him about it, but he asked her a question first, kind of, so it’s only fair to answer him. “I spend most of my time in these gardens,” she says after a while to consider, figuring that it’s the right balance of vulnerable without being too sensitive. She doesn’t go on to elaborate that this is one of the only places she’s allowed to go outside the oppressive stone walls behind them.

“It’s impressive,” he says, looking around like he’s only just noticing it for the first time. “We don’t have anything like this in Derse. The weather is… it’s too hostile to really foster plantlife,” he adds. She thinks he must be exaggerating. She can’t imagine a landscape entirely devoid of trees and shrubbery and flowers.

“What does Derse look like, then?” she asks, tilting her head curiously.

He seems to consider this for a moment, with a face like he’s genuinely trying to recall rather than simply looking for the words. She wonders what his eyes must look like behind those spectacles. She imagines they must be scrunched up in thought, the way that his nose is. “It’s big,” he says eventually. “Too big to generalize. A lot of it is evergreen forests. The capital city is on the Southern coast, so it tends to draw in the snowy drafts during the winter, but it’s a little warmer during the summer than the rest of the country.”

“Prospit’s capital city is on the coast, too,” she says, more matter-of-factly than she intends to. It’s not like she has any particular emotion to attach to the place. John and their father have always taken a trip to the capital at least once a year to discuss important political matters and keep up appearances, but the castle that they keep her tucked away in is a little further north, closer to the border with Derse. She guesses it’s an old stronghold from when the conflict was more heated. “Do you ever go out on the sea?”

She remembers stories Grandpa used to tell her about his time on the sea when she was little. He led the royal navy in Golgotha before he was her father’s commander, and he spent much of his time exploring the oceans, discovering dozens of tiny islands. When his daughter married into the Prospitian royal family, he enjoyed a retirement in the castle that Jade would later be kept in, not especially close to any of the four seas Prospit touches. Still, it didn’t stop him from promising her that he would take her out on the ocean when she was older. She wonders sometimes if he would have kept his promise if he had lived longer, or if it was only meant to provide comfort to a bored, lonely child.

“Not often,” he admits. “I’m in charge of the army, but I don’t have much involvement with the navy. I train soldiers on land. Captain Ampora does whatever he wants at sea.” Jade has heard the legends of the Orphaner Dualscar, a devastating pirate who slaughtered hundreds and somehow wormed his way into the royal navy after. The name sends a shudder up her spine, and she tears her eyes away to stare up at the deep yellow, almost golden moon.

“What is it like? Being the commander of an army?” she asks. She can’t imagine having that kind of power or freedom—to be able to go wherever she wants, to have people listen to her and take her seriously, to be invited to the sorts of conversations she is constantly trying to elbow her way into. He is silent for a long time, and when she lets her eyes drop back down to him, she can’t read his face very well. She thinks he looks… conflicted, maybe, if she had to put a name to it. His pale eyebrows, just barely visible over his glasses, are just slightly knitted together, and she thinks the corners of his lips might be downturned, though she could just as easily have imagined it for how slight it is.

“I can’t imagine anything else,” he says eventually, and his voice is so carefully neutral that she can’t gauge if it’s meant to be a positive or a negative statement.

She takes a deep breath and peers conspiratorially around the garden, as though to make sure no one has been quietly dispatched to keep an eye on them. She leans ever-so-slightly closer as she whispers, “What does magic… feel like?”

She remembers the first time she read a book from Derse. It was a children’s book, full of fairy tales where the heroes had magic and the monsters were wild beasts or cruel, wicked kings with no concern for their citizens. In their stories, witches were healers and heroes. They were pretty young girls who offered help to the people of their villages and who defeated the beasts and the kings in the end and then they were made the new queens. In Prospit, witches are ugly, wicked crones who hurt and trick the sweet, kind young princesses. They are dangerous, the sort of bedtime story you tell to warn your children to behave.

Jade remembers sitting up in her bedroom with no one around, her father and brother in the war room she was never allowed to set foot in, and trying to use magic the way the princesses in the Dersite stories did. She dreamed of growing her plants with magic until she could climb them to a kingdom in the sky, of flying out her bedroom window to meet the common people in the villages. She remembers how warm it had felt, trying to be a witch as well as a princess, not yet knowing how much of a burden that would be.

Something in his posture shifts. His shoulders seem to slump slightly, his head is held a little less high. After a moment, he strides toward her and finally takes a seat next to her, leaning in just as conspiratorially as she had. As he starts to speak, she’s hit with the strong smell of citrus from his breath, and something about it makes her cheeks flush and her mouth fill with spit. “I’m told it’s like swimming in the sea at night. The tides try to push and pull at you, and it takes a lot of strength and willpower to stand your ground against them. As you dive deeper, the waves begin to fade and you feel more in control, less like you’re fighting for your life. But it also gets darker and easier to get lost, and it happens fast. The pressure grows and the cold sinks into your bones. It’s important not to let yourself fall that far.”

It feels like he has given her a gift; some part of himself that he would usually keep locked away. But it does not feel like the secret he has intended to share with her. “You’re told?” she asks, resting a hand ever-so-gently on his knee.

If he intends to answer, he isn’t given the opportunity to. There is the soft sound of heels clicking along the stone pathway from the doors of the castle through the garden to the gazebo, and when Jade turns to look, there is a woman who looks very much like him approaching them. There’s an austere manner about her, and she wears a long, deep purple dress with black gloves up to her elbows. A brooch not dissimilar in appearance to his pocket watch is pinned over her throat on a high neckline, but where his pocket watch has gears and clockwork between the gemstones, the metal branches of the brooch are twisted into the Dersite royal family crest.

Despite the fact that the sun has sunk far enough in the sky to paint it in vibrant hues of red and purple much like the clothes on their backs, she holds a black, lacy parasol above her head to protect her fair skin from its rays. Unlike the prince, the Dersite princess’ eyes are in full view, and they are an unusual shade of purple that Jade determines must be magical. “Brother, Princess,” she says, and her accent is so entirely dissimilar to her brother’s that it gives Jade pause. “The council wishes to speak with you.” If Jade looks closely, she can see the traces of a smile on the princess’ lips, like she’s enjoying some private joke. Without waiting for an answer, she turns to start walking back into the castle, only to pause and add over her shoulder, “And you probably shouldn’t let Father see you like that.”

For just a moment Jade is confused, before she realizes how close together they’re leaning and her cheeks flush. She practically jumps away, and then tries to mask it by jumping to her feet to follow the princess, but the prince catches her wrist. She stares down at him with wide eyes and her lips slightly parted, the question of why he grabbed her on the tip of her tongue and a warmth that almost feels like magic creeping up her neck and into her cheeks. He wordlessly presses the last carpal of the pomelo into her palm and then stands and walks toward the castle without looking back.

She stares at the fruit in her hand for a moment, the flesh a vibrant color somewhere between pink and red, and sinks her teeth into it as she starts to follow. It is tangy and bitter and sweet on her tongue, and she licks her lips as she stares at the prince’s back. 

Chapter Text

As Jade follows the princess to the meeting room, she looks around the familiar corridor. This is the way to the library that she spends so much of her time in, and for a moment she allows herself to imagine her brother and the Dersite monarchs all crammed around the single table in there, their knees almost touching as they debate the conditions of the marriage and the end of the war. Of course, this idea is silly. She knows exactly where they’re going.

The walls of this corridor are lined with paintings of various political figures. Advisors, high-ranking soldiers, ambassadors, war heroes. Most of them are men, which always makes the brown-skinned woman with an aquiline nose, an eyepatch, and a predatory grin near the end of the hall stand out. Alyona Serket. Captain Mindfang. The first woman to join the royal navy rapidly became the first woman to lead it. Jade has never met her, but she’s heard about her and her daughter from John.

The last painting in the hall is of her grandfather. He looks much younger in the portrait than he did when he died, but there can’t have been more than ten years between. There are still thick streaks of black in his greying hair, and he’s not yet wearing the square-shaped spectacles she never saw leave his face. His smile is the same, though, wide and showing off all of his crooked teeth that never seemed to quite fit in his mouth. The corners of his eyes are wrinkled, and the emerald green of his irises are a shade too light. She always thinks about fixing it.

She doesn’t realize that she’s stopped right in front of the open doorway to the war room until she feels a featherlight touch on her back. She startles and looks over her shoulder to see the prince staring at her, eyebrows pinched together. She offers him a weak smile.

Crossing the boundary into the room feels like crossing an invisible line drawn in the sand for her years ago. Though she’s pressed her ear to the door for more meetings than she could count, she’s never been allowed inside, and it doesn’t feel like a room that should be in her home. The walls are lined with all of the different banners soldiers have carried into war over the centuries, different splashes of blue and gold fabric. There is a large table in the center with a fabric map spread out on it, and there are tiny wooden pieces with meanings she doesn’t understand lining one side of the table. She guesses they were probably being used for military strategy before the Dersite monarchs were allowed in the room.

On the map, it looks like almost the entire top half has been dyed with dark ink, somewhere between violet and midnight blue, marking Derse's official territory. Prospit’s territory, in sharp contrast, is left undyed, the yellow color of aged paper. It looks bigger than it should be at first, but when she looks closer, she realizes that most of the countries to the west of them have also been left undyed, with only their names scrawled in Dad’s handwriting distinguishing them from the Kingdom of Prospit. Even with that, the undyed portion of the map is still smaller than Derse is. Jade has seen maps before, but like this, it somehow looks so much more daunting.

Far off the western coast, there is a chain of islands dyed dark, dark green that she knows to be Golgotha. On the opposite side of the map, northeast of Prospit, separated by both another country and a sea but touching the southeasternmost border of Derse, is a country perhaps a quarter the size of Prospit, dyed so light a green it would look like a grass stain if not for the name scrawled in the middle of it: Viridan. They were once allied with Prospit, but after the Dersite army ravaged their farming communities like they had with Prospit in the very beginning and destroyed several of their northern strongholds, they withdrew their support, stating that they did not have the resources to be a part of someone else’s war. From what she’s heard, that hasn’t stopped Derse from stealing a significant portion of their natural resources anyway. A thin strip of coast trails down from Viridan’s southern border into a larger land mass, which has been dyed a pale shade of grey. The name in the center has been smudged away, and Jade winces.

The seat she takes places her in front of the grey country, and she looks around at the other people in the room to avoid having to look at it.

At the end of the table nearest to her sits a large throne with the flag of Prospit draped proudly on the wall behind it. She would guess that it is normally her father’s chair, but her brother sits in it currently, looking more bored than she thinks he should. If it were an option, she thinks he would abdicate the throne to someone else. He used to tell her when they were very small children that he always hoped she would become queen somehow, even when she was still sickly and largely locked in a room by herself all day. Now that any children she bears will be half-Dersite, she supposes that’s not a possibility. Then again, she doesn’t think it ever really was.

At the other end of the table sits the Dersite princess. She looks like her posture would be perfectly straight even if she weren’t wearing bodies, head held high, exuding confidence and elegance. A wine glass sits in front of her, the dark smudge on the rim the only indication that it’s been moved at all. This is in direct contrast to the queen, sitting to the princess’ left and slumped so far over in her chair that she would look like she were sleeping if she weren’t holding a mostly-empty wine glass perfectly upright. Jade thinks she must have been pretty, once. Her children both bear a stunning resemblance to her, with light hair curling around her face, high cheekbones, and thin lips tugging just slightly downward in an expression Jade can only attribute to boredom. Her eyes, Jade notes, are vibrant pink.

On the queen’s other side is the king, and Jade can’t help but hold her breath as she looks at him. If Dave inherited anything from him it is the calculated neutrality of his face. She wonders if his nonexpression is practiced or if that’s simply how he looks. His hair is maybe a shade darker than the rest of his family, perhaps closer to the moon as it looks now than the milky white the others are colored with. He wears dark spectacles like Dave does, but the shape is different. They’re sharper, more angular. Somehow, though she knows it’s silly, she finds the shape more threatening.

There are two empty seats to their left separating them from John, and it takes her a moment to identify why this strikes her as odd. Then she realizes, looking to her right, that the prince is sitting to his sister’s right side on her side of the table rather than his family’s, with two empty chairs between them.

He looks entirely different from the way he did in the gardens, shoulders tense, posture straight, and jaw tight. She supposes she can’t blame him for being a bit more nervous and a bit more serious when actually sitting in on the meeting about their marriage arrangement. Even her hands are fidgeting under the table, and she wanted to be in this room more than anything only an hour ago. Neither of them were prepared for this.

“There are some questions I need answers to before I agree to this marriage. Answers only you can provide,” John finally says, breaking the silence the lot of them have been sitting in and looking at her potential betrothed for the first time since they came into the room. He turns his head to look at her brother, which he must think is enough to indicate that he should continue, because he says nothing.

John waits a beat too long to keep talking, as though he also expects the prince should answer him verbally. After a moment wherein he seems to realize that he isn’t going to, he clears his throat and starts, “The Dersite monarchs propose that you and Princess Jade should live in Derse following the wedding, as you have duties as the commander of the army which can’t be neglected.” Jade finds it odd that they focused on his position as a soldier and not as a prince. Just like they did when they were telling me of the arrangement. This is so jarring to her that her chest doesn’t even squeeze with anxiety or excitement at the prospect of being removed from her home. “How will you keep my sister safe from isolation in a foreign kingdom?”

There’s a bitter, acrid taste at the back of her tongue. How could John pretend to worry about her being isolated in a foreign kingdom when he was their father’s number one enforcer of her isolation growing up? He had no problem making sure that he was one of the only people that she ever saw until this meeting. When they were small, he would keep her company sometimes, sitting on the other side of her bedroom door when she was sick and babbling away at her about everything that had happened during the day or chasing her through the gardens with a wooden sword until she would trip and their father would scold him. As they got older and he got pulled deeper into politics, she was left by herself. He never tried to do anything about that.

The prince takes a long minute to ponder his answer, or so Jade guesses based on his silence rather than his expression. His face hardly changes at all. “I don’t have a perfect answer to that question. I have duties to my people which can’t be neglected—duties which require dedicating a lot of time to training and travel. But I will also have duties to my wife. With the end of the conflict between Derse and Prospit, hopefully those things will be easier to balance.”

Her brother seems to take a moment to decide whether this answer is satisfactory or not. It doesn’t offer much in the way of concrete answers, but she thinks it does something equally satisfactory: it shows that Derse is just as committed to peace as he is—or at least, the commander of their army is.

For years, the closest Jade has been allowed to come to political discussions were conversations with her brother. He wouldn’t let her in on everything, but she was one of the only people he seemed to trust with his anxieties for the future. If peace with Derse was even possible, how long would it last? She has to imagine that reassurance directly from the commander of the army that they expect the conflict to end, too, is comforting.

Still, John’s face is tightly wound with the same anxious expression he’s been wearing when he agonizes over a decision since they were children. She wants to reach over and comfort him somehow, but it feels inappropriate in front of these strangers, like casting doubt upon his strength as a future king. Finally, he says, “That answer isn’t very reassuring. She will be a foreigner. She will be Prospitian. A member of the Prospitian royal family. The people are bound to protest her marriage to someone so high-ranking.”

“I doubt that I’m as important to the people as you seem to believe,” the prince says, and Jade’s brow furrows with confusion. How could the prince not be important? “What is important to the people of Derse is ending this war. It is not their place to question the prince’s choice in bride if it accomplishes that goal.”

Jade sees John’s eyes widen and a spark of alarm runs up her spine, making her shudder. “What do you mean, the prince’s choice in bride?”

A flicker of emotion crosses the prince’s face at that, and she thinks she sees his nostrils flare with a breath before he turns to look at his parents and sister. “You really didn’t tell them,” he says, and she can hear anger cracking through the careful calm of his voice.

“Dave,” the princess says, her voice so soft that Jade almost doesn’t hear her. Jade’s eyes flash to the prince again. Dave.

“It wasn’t relevant,” the king says, swiftly cutting off whatever his daughter was going to say. John looks at him incredulously.

“It wasn’t relevant?” he repeats, and she can’t stop herself from wincing at the outrage she can already hear bubbling under the surface, just waiting to burst. John is famous for his temper tantrums, and now would be a terrible time for him to have one. “How could it possibly not be relevant? What you’re proposing is for my sister to become a princess of two separate kingdoms—two kingdoms that have been at war longer than anyone in this room can remember! You would be placing a target on her back.”

“How is it any different from what your parents did?” the princess asks somewhat indignantly, and John turns his fiery gaze on her.

“You don’t know anything about what our parents did,” he hisses, standing and slamming his hands against the table, and Jade winces again. He’s not entirely wrong. Their mother was so far down the line of succession that she might as well have been any other noble. If Dave is the crown prince, Jade would be lined up to become the queen consort of Derse in her lifetime. The people would never accept it, regardless of how badly Dave says they want peace. Still, throwing a fit is not the wisest thing to do in this moment if they want to regain control of the negotiations.

“It wasn’t relevant,” the king says again, his face still perfectly neutral, “because David is not the crown prince. He will never inherit the throne. For the purposes of this discussion, he is a high-ranking soldier. That is all.”

Jade looks back at Dave. His head is tilted down to stare at his hands in his lap, but that’s the only indicator that he’s bothered by the conversation. Now she wants to reach out and comfort him, but that would definitely be inappropriate.

The room is deathly silent for a long moment, and she can practically feel the anger radiating off of John. She looks up and does her best to catch his eyes, and she sees him glance at her for a moment. We don’t have any choice, she tries to tell him without moving her mouth. She doesn’t know if he gets the message, but he sinks back into the throne.

“None of this assures me of my sister’s safety. None of it. In fact, everything you’ve said only points toward more danger for her. A Prospitian. A prince’s wife. A woman in Derse with no magic.” She has to suppress another wince at that. “I want peace as badly as the rest of you, but not at the cost of my sister’s life. What will you do to protect her?”

“I swear that as long as I live, no harm will come to your sister,” Dave says without looking up from his lap. “You have my word. Not as a prince. Not as a knight. Not as the commander of the army. You have my word as the brother of a sister. You have my word, if I may be so bold, as your own future brother. You have my word as one honorable man speaking to another, trying to make the best of a difficult situation as he possibly can.” Somehow, she doesn’t think he’s talking about the war.

She sees something in John’s face soften, and for just a moment, she sees the boy she grew up with. The altruist who swore that when he was king he would put an end to the war. The guardian who would have fought to his last breath to keep her safe, even when they were too young to have to consider such things. He’s still so torn. She slides a foot over to bump against his ankle, and she sees his jaw harden. “I have one more question.”

Dave swallows, and John waits until he finally looks up and makes eye contact (or what they have to assume is eye contact, behind the spectacles) to speak. “Why have you been removed from the line of ascension?”

Dave’s jaw hardens, but what makes Jade’s skin grow cold is the cruel smirk she watches grow on his father’s otherwise stony face. His sister’s eyes flit down to the table to avoid looking in their father’s direction, head still high. He watches his own son like a predator watches its prey writhe on the ground, left to die slowly for their own amusement rather than killed quickly and mercifully. Likewise, if Jade looks closely, she thinks she can see tinges of fear in Dave’s posture. “The royal family is famed for our powerful magic. It is what allows us to guide the people, what shows that we were chosen above all others to lead. I… have no magic.”

Her stomach lurches. No magic? Her worst fear from their conversation in the garden has been confirmed, but what’s worse, it’s been confirmed in front of her brother. Her brother who would turn his back on her no matter how much he loves her if he found out…

Her eyes turn to John, and for the first time this whole meeting, she hopes that he’ll say no. She hopes that he’ll say Dave isn’t fit to protect her if he has no magic, that he won’t condemn his sister to a life as the wife of the black sheep of the Dersite royal family. He can arrange her another match in Derse, or make some other compromise, or do something, but she cannot marry this man with no magic. She cannot bear his children. Because what if they were like her?

John does not look put off. He doesn’t look outraged. He looks… exhausted. He stands from his place at the throne and trails to a chest near the back of the room, plucking a piece of parchment, a quill, and an inkwell out of it and returning to the table without sitting. He hunches over the paper to write, and as he does, he says aloud, “My coronation as king of Prospit is three months from today. The wedding shall be held the next morning. As discussed earlier, the Dersite royal family, with the exception of the prince, will leave tomorrow morning. The prince will stay in Prospit for the three months until the wedding to acquaint himself with the princess. During this time he will also train with Prospit’s military, as reassurance that conflict will be avoided at all costs, even should the wedding fall through, let the clouds forbid. Following the wedding, Princess Jade will return to Derse with her husband.” He writes his signature under the proclamation and slides it to his right to the king. The paper is passed around the table, finally stopping in front of her.

If she signs this, she might as well be signing her life away. Perhaps not immediately, but once she has a child showing signs of magic, she’ll lose everything. Her family will never speak to her again. She’ll never be able to visit Prospit again. She’ll never get the opportunity to finally see the capital city, or the coast, or the lush forests her brother has described to her. She won’t be able to visit the graves of her father and grandfather.

But… magic isn’t outlawed in Derse. There, she could study magic freely. As a member of the royal family, she would have access to any tutor she wanted, to books that even the wealthiest nobles couldn’t get their hands on. She could learn how to heal. She could cure her father before the illness took him.

She signs her name with a steady hand.

Chapter Text

The war between Prospit and Derse is over, but a war still rages inside Jade.

She feels an almost magnetic pull toward Dave, one which is hard to ignore. His laugh is infectious, his tongue is silver, and his air is mysterious. In the entire time he has been staying in Prospit, no one has seen him with his spectacles off. More than once, she’s found her mind wandering to what his eyes must look like behind them when she’s trying to read, and she berates herself for not paying attention. It’s worse when she goes to sleep at night, and sometimes she swears she can almost feel the warm weight of a body settled in next to her even though they’ve never shared a bed. He’s been given a room, one of the ones that used to be made up for visiting ambassadors before the castle became her quarantine area, but she’s overheard gossip that he spends most nights in the knights’ quarters.

She should be glad that she’s so drawn to the man she is going to be marrying. There’s only a little over two months left until the wedding now, and then she’s shackled to him for the rest of her life. Isn’t it a good thing that won’t feel like a prison sentence?

But she’s so afraid of him. No, not of him. She’s afraid of herself. She’s afraid of having children with him and infecting them with the poisonous seed inside of her. She’s afraid that the rumors about mage madness are true, and it’ll tear away everything that she holds dear. She agreed to this marriage because she wanted to learn about magic—because she needs to learn to heal. But what if she made the wrong choice? What if the dark magic she could learn in Derse is incapable of helping her father and she’s signing her life away for nothing? Or what if it jumpstarts another war? A war over the corruption of the princess. A war over her.

Dave doesn’t have any magic. He cannot do anything to teach her or help her. He’s never felt the bubbling warmth under his skin that she’s felt, or the shock of cold that he described to her during that first meeting weeks ago. So what if he resents her? What if he hates her just as much as her own people would for doing what he can’t?

She wants to be close to him, but she’s scared.

She does her best to avoid him, a task made relatively easy by his duty to the knights, but she can’t entirely avoid word of him. The castle staff and the guards have warmed up to him much faster than she expected them to, and they babble about him constantly. Sometimes they tell her about his training with the knights. They tell her that it’s like a switch flips from the charismatic, light-hearted man who can talk with her brother for hours to a fierce, no-nonsense leader. He is not cruel, but he is firm and very clear about what he wants. She doesn’t want to put a name to the flushed cheeks and the tight, almost-nauseous feeling she gets low in her stomach when she thinks about that.

And then there’s her brother. While she can safely lock herself in the library or spend hours tending to the sweeping expanse of the gardens where few dare to disturb her during the days, she is compelled to come to dinner every evening. Even though her father cannot attend them currently, it had been at his insistence that they had dinner as a family every night when she was growing up. Some days, it was the only time she saw another person at all. One of her earliest memories is of being bedridden with an unknown illness, hardly able to breathe or stay awake, and John, Dad, and Grandpa had crowded into her room around her bed so they could still eat together. They did it every night for a week.

The dinner extends past their immediate family now. Karkat Vantas has been her personal guard since they were little, and he’s been there every night since he was first assigned to her. Kanaya, her lady-in-waiting, joined them when she moved into the castle. Their father’s advisor has been with them since the first signs of Dad’s illness. And now there’s Dave.

Karkat mostly seems to look upon Dave with a begrudging respect. He’s spent most of their nights grumbling about their morning training sessions, expressing frustration that the exercises are too easy for his knights and that the prince treats them like children, but she recognizes admiration in Karkat when she sees it. Kanaya has never been as vocal as Karkat, but after so many years together, Jade knows how to read her expressions. She worries her lips, and her brow furrows just slightly whenever she sits at the table with him. Jade doesn’t know exactly what troubles her, but she can tell that she’s not wholly satisfied with the situation. Jade has no idea how to read their father’s advisor.

But John? He’s an open book, not just to her but to anyone who looks at him. There is nothing begrudging about his respect for Dave. If she had to put a name to it, she’d say they were even becoming friends. In a way, she’s thankful for it, because it means that no one notices when she avoids talking to or looking at Dave or when she eats at an impolite pace so she can dismiss herself as early as possible. It means that Dave only tries to chase after her to talk after dinner half of the time, too wrapped up in whatever conversation he’s having with her brother to notice when she slips away the other half of the time.

He must have picked up on this pattern, though.

She’s in the gardens when he practically corners her, and she often loses track of time, but based on the position of the sun in the sky, it can’t even be noon yet. Shouldn’t he be training with the knights? “Show me the village by the castle,” he says, somewhere between a request and a demand. He sounds like a child, not due to petulance but excitement.

She’s been pulling the weeds that have sprung up with the transition from spring to summer for hours. There’s dirt under her nails and smudged onto her skirt, and she thinks she can feel a spot of it on her forehead where she must have wiped sweat away. If he cares, he doesn’t show it. “Right now? But I’m in the middle of weeding the garden. And aren’t you supposed to be in the courtyard?”

“I gave them the day off. We’ve been running exercises and sparring non-stop for weeks. They’ll be useless as soldiers if they’re utterly exhausted, and a day of rest allows for muscle repair.” She opens her mouth to retort even as she doesn’t yet have one ready on the back of her tongue, but any words she might have found die as he grabs her hands, practically cradling them as he says, “Kanaya can take care of the garden. Come with me.”

She’s suddenly extremely conscious of the dirt on her hands, and she carefully pries them away from his and stumbles a step back. Her cheeks flush with embarrassment, and her eyes flit down to look at the ground instead of him as she sheepishly admits, “I’ve never been to the village. I’ve never really left the castle grounds at all.” The really is a way to mask the absoluteness of it. She has never left the castle grounds.

He seems to take a moment to weigh the gravity of the confession, but after a moment, he straightens and offers her his hand rather than grabbing hers again. “We’ll go together as first-timers, then.” She takes a moment to stare between his face and his outstretched hand, but it really is so hard to say no when he looks and sounds like that. She slides her hand into his and his smile widens ever-so-slightly, which sends her heart aflutter in her chest. He could ask her to do anything if he looked at her like that. She scolds herself for the thought and shoves it away.

The ride into the village isn’t as long as she would have expected, only an hour. This is probably for the best, as he rides a horse like a barbarian. She thinks maybe it’s just an excuse to have her pressed against his back and clinging to him desperately so she doesn’t fall off the thing, but she has no way to prove that theory. He slows down once they reach the thin stretch of woods at the border of the village, though, and looks over his shoulder at her. “My family doesn’t visit the villages in Derse, either. I, on the other hand, don’t think it’s proper for royals to keep themselves separated from the people they’re supposed to look after and represent. People whose voices aren’t heard tend to make them heard. Look at what happened in Beforus.” She swallows, eyes drifting to their surroundings instead.

The woods are beautiful. They remind her of the gardens, but... bigger. There’s green everywhere, but along either side of the dirt road that they travel along are wildflowers in all sorts of colors sprouting from the earth and rows of short trees with thin, winding branches and little bundles of light pink flowers at the end. One is shaken by the breeze and a flower drifts slowly to them like a gift from nature to her which she gleefully catches in her hand. She lifts it to show him the little bell-shaped flower, its five petals forming a very shallow cup, and he rewards her with that smile again over his shoulder even as he barely glances at it. It makes her chest squeeze. 

By the time they’re actually at the edge of the village, he slides off the horse and offers her his hand to gently guide her to the ground with him. It’s the first time they’ve stood properly next to each other, and she can’t help but notice how much taller than her he is. Her head only comes up to his chest, and she has to look up at him to see him properly, her cheeks a little warm, though she thinks her darker skin does a good enough job at concealing that. Of course, that doesn’t mask all of the other ways her awe must be showing, from her eyes being just a little wider to her body leaning just slightly closer to his. He doesn’t say anything about it before he pulls away. 

He only has to hold the horse’s lead loosely to get it to follow, and she wonders if he’s brought this one with him from home or if he’s just good with animals. Either seems plausible. Slowly, cobblestones begin to appear along the ground, until eventually they are walking along a stone street and they are surrounded by people who stare at Jade with almost as much awe as she had stared at him with. “Your majesty,” one man says, bowing so low she thinks his nose nearly touches the ground. “That you have graced us with your presence is an honor,” he says as he straightens up. His voice is filled with the sort of reverence one might expect from someone who has never seen their princess before, yet when his eyes slide to Dave his face visually transitions from admiration to contempt. “And the Dersite prince accompanies you, as well,” he says, clearly trying to keep disgust from his voice and failing. 

She feels a cold rush of anger and straightens up a little, holding her head high like Dave’s sister had during the meeting. “My husband-to-be thought it only fitting that a ruler should see their subjects in person,” she says, trying about as hard as the man in front of her to keep contempt from her voice. His eyes widen a little and he grows pale, bowing to her once more and scurrying away like a frightened animal.

Unfortunately, most of their other interactions go similarly. The first place Dave takes her in town (after stables, where he pays much more handsomely than he should to leave his horse for only a few hours) is an eatery. “You can learn a lot about a place from the food. The cooks in the castle are great, but I’d like to know what the common people eat.” She thinks you can learn as much about a place from how its inhabitants treat visitors, and as much certainly seems true when the thin, greasy woman at the door sneers and turns him away before she sees Jade at his side and apologizes profusely, offering to let them eat for free. He pays for the meal anyway, and thanks the woman warmly. 

As they’re walking away from a bookstore where Jade picked out several titles they didn’t have in the castle library (and if most are about medicine and herbalism, Dave is polite enough not to inquire about it), both of their arms full, a man across the little cobblestone street of the market district calls to them, “A portrait for the lovely young couple!” If he recognizes either of them, he doesn’t treat them any differently than he would any other young couple on the street, and she probably shouldn’t find this as comforting as she does.

She’s not in a state for a portrait. Her hair is in its natural loose curls instead of the plaits they stitch it into when she’s supposed to make an appearance (not that that happens very often), and though she had washed the dirt off of her hands when they ate lunch, she had forgotten about the smudge on her forehead until now. Her clothing is simple, gardener’s clothes instead of the intricate dresses she would normally wear for a painting. How had the people in the village even recognized her like this?

She looks at the sky where the sun is just starting to set, and then at Dave, whose arms are full of a tall stack of books. There had been too many for her to carry, with three tucked against her chest, and she can’t imagine how heavy the pile must already be. But she doesn’t want to leave the village yet, not when it’s her very first outing. “We should probably head back soon,” she says, trying not to let any emotion leak into her voice either way.

Dave seems to pick up on her hesitation anyway, and he offers her that smile that makes her stomach do flips. “How long could it possibly take?” he asks, walking over to the man and setting the stack of books down on the ground to offer him a handful of coins. 

“An hour at most,” the gentleman says, somewhere between persuading and agreeing, as he counts the coins and then stuffs them into a coin purse at his hip without comment. “Please, put your books down! Get comfortable!” he yells to her. 

She looks down at the books in her arms, thick medical texts that will surely get exhausting to hold for so long. She thinks of her father back at the castle, stuck in bed the same way she was for so much of her childhood, and clutches them to her chest a little tighter. “I’m alright,” she dismisses, and he shrugs as though to say suit yourself.

When she and Dave squeeze together where the artist gestures, he looks down at her and she thinks something must soften in his face. He brings a hand up to wipe at the dirt smudge with his thumb, and her cheeks flush when he grins at her after. “Yes, stay just like that!” the artist yells, and her cheeks flush just a little bit darker.

An hour later, they’re handed a simple piece of paper with a sketch of the two of them on it. The artist has understated the height difference between the two of them, drawing her as coming up to his shoulder. At some point, Dave’s hand had slid down from her forehead to cup her cheek, but there’s still the faintest traces of shading to indicate her flushed skin behind it. She can’t help but wonder if Dave had really looked so enamored with her as he does in the picture, or if the artist had just taken some liberties with it.

At the stables, Dave haggles with the owner to buy a saddlebag, and even as both of their arms are full of books, the man seems hesitant to give them one in the first place, and then tries to overcharge them when he finally agrees. If she wasn’t so exhausted, she might snap at him. Instead, when he’s gone inside to retrieve one for them, she turns to Dave with her chest tight. “I… had a good time. Thank you… for bringing me with you. And… I’m sorry that you were treated so poorly. I knew that our people didn’t view Dersites in the kindest light, but I didn’t think that they would treat you so awfully. I thought…” She cuts herself off, teeth digging into her cheek. I thought they would be as drawn to you as I am.

“Princess,” he starts, and she’s struck by the desire for him to call her by her name. “Please don’t apologize. I’ve traveled all over the world and this is nowhere near the coldest greeting I’ve been met with. I’m not concerned about it at all. Besides, I’m used to it at home, too.” She opens her mouth to ask him what he means, but before she can get any words out, the man comes back outside with the saddlebag and drops it at their feet. Jaw tightening, Dave stoops down to pick it up, long legs bowing out in either direction. “Come on. The sun is setting, and if we don’t leave soon we’ll be late to dinner.”

He’s right. By the time that they get back to the castle, the sun has nearly sunk completely and there are already maids stationed at the door to fuss over them. John is there, too. “Where were you?” he asks with his best impression of an authoritative tone. 

“We went to the village,” she answers slowly, knowing that this answer won’t please her brother yet not wanting to grasp for a lie. She doesn’t think any other answer would be satisfying, either. 

“The village?” he asks, tone incredulous and voice high with indignance. “What were you doing there? Jade, you know it’s not safe—” 

“Please don’t blame the princess,” Dave interrupts, and John immediately looks torn between his duties as a protective older brother and his affection for the prince. Apparently sensing the hesitation, Dave adds, “I was the one who asked her to show me around the village. I had no idea that she wasn’t allowed to leave the castle grounds. She was just indulging me. Now that I’ve had the tour, I’ll make sure to leave her here for future trips. Knight’s honor.” John’s mouth presses into a thin line, but he doesn’t have time to argue further as the maids usher them all to dinner. Once John’s back is turned, Dave looks at her with that secret smile again and her heart flutters in her chest.

When they settle at the table, Karkat looks at Dave with a raised brow. “I hope you had a pleasant day of rest, Prince David,” he says, voice dripping with implication. Jade gives him a stern look as she sucks on a spoonful of room temperature soup.

If Dave notices, he doesn’t show it, instead giving a chuckle that has an odd tinge to it when he isn’t smiling for them like he’s been smiling for her all day. “How many times do I have to tell you to just call me Dave before you agree? Do I need to beg? Should I cancel this whole marriage and propose to you instead? I’ll do anything you ask of me, Sir Vantas,” he teases, face somehow still completely blank yet simultaneously mirthful. She doesn’t know how he manages to express so much without doing anything with his face, but she feels like she can read him. Then again, maybe she’s just hopeful.

The exchange makes room for a larger conversation to progress, and John inquires as to how the training is going while Jade and Kanaya talk quietly to each other about the gardens. She finished the weeding, which means that Jade will have plenty of time tomorrow to start tearing into her new books.

When everyone has finished their soup and the bowls have been cleared away to be replaced with small white dishes which contain a small cottage pie for each of them, Dave looks around at the table and the empty chair at the head of the table where her father should sit. “Say, is your father ever going to join us for dinner?”

Her stomach twists with nausea as she’s suddenly violently reminded that he has no idea about her father’s illness. She doesn’t know what reason John had given the Dersite monarchs for the sudden peace negotiations, but they both know that the entire thing will fall apart if they find out about Dad. Dave has no idea that she’s marrying him so she can find a way to cure her father. He has no idea that he has the opportunity to be the army commander who finally wins the war. Would he ever forgive her if he found out that she’s lying to him about everything? Guilt sends bile crawling up her throat.

“I’m sorry, but suddenly I’m not feeling very well,” she says, doing her best to keep her voice steady as she pushes herself away from the table and onto her feet. John and Dave wear twin looks of concern, and she adds, “It’s just been a long day. I’m going to go get some rest. Please, don’t stop eating on my account.”

“She shouldn’t have gone to the village,” she hears John hiss behind her as she walks away.

Chapter Text

As the weeks stretch into months, Dave settles more into the castle, and the fondness its occupants have for him only grows. She’s caught him and John walking the halls together and chatting late in the evening after dinner more than once. She’s not sure she’s ever seen her brother bond with anyone like this. She allows herself to imagine what their lives would be like if instead of going to Derse after they were married, they simply stayed here. Maybe he could convince John to let her see Prospit as a whole under his protection. 

It’s a pipe dream, though. The longer Dave is here, the more evident it is that they’re going to be leaving soon. He pushes to see her less and less, spending more and more time with the knights and soldiers that live on the castle grounds for training. Derse’s soldiers have magic to rely on, which she imagines must require stricter training regimens. Combine that with the fact that the majority of Prospit’s military is housed in Skaia, the capital city, half a country away where Dave does not have access to them, and it’s clear that Dave isn’t only trying to train them to his standards, but trying to get them to a level where they can train others to his standards. She supposes this in and of itself must be a compromise, staying here with her rather than riding off to Skaia to broaden his impact. 

She is in the gardens with Kanaya, her fingers buried once more in the dirt, pulling the latest summer weeds away from the plants they cling to the most stubbornly. She grows several plants that serve as natural pesticides, so they don’t deal with the grubs and other insects that her books talk about watching for signs of, but she hasn’t yet found any way to keep the plants trying to encroach on her garden’s abundant space and resources away. It’s frustrating because it eats up the time that she could be spending poring over medical textbooks to find what’s ailing her father. The physicians have been visiting less frequently since Dave has been staying with them, most likely part of the conspiracy to conceal the illness from him, but it means that she has even less information to work with than she already did.

She wipes at sweat starting to bead on her forehead and feels dirt smudge from her fingers to her skin. It’s the peak of summer now, and though it’s not as hot this far north as it is in the rest of the country, Prospit’s climate borders on subtropical. There’s a dampness in the air that practically clings to her skin, only wicked away by the cool fabric of her preferred gardening clothes. With Dave staying in the castle, she’s been stuffed into nicer dresses most days, but those dresses are hot. The outfit that she wears now is simple, leaving her in only three layers counting her chemise, all of them made of breezier cotton and linen fabrics that give her skin more room to breathe and cool off. She thinks again that anyone who looked at her like this would be forgiven for not immediately recognizing her as the princess.

A shout echoes off the stone walls of the castle, less words and more like a loud grunt of pain. Jade can’t help but look up, and she notices Kanaya pause where she’s standing a few feet away watering big, bright flowers to look toward the noise, too. There’s another sound, like two objects clanking together, and then the quiet, serene atmosphere of the garden is gone, occupied instead with yells, grunts, and clacking. She supposes the knights must have started training for the day, most likely on the grounds past the little stone wall surrounding the garden. “What do you suppose it is they do all day?” she asks, and Kanaya shrugs. 

“Training, I guess,” she says eventually, and Jade can’t help but roll her eyes. Yes, obviously they’re training, but training what? What could they possibly need to drill day in and day out when they’re supposed to be ending the war? 

Jade shores up her resolve and straightens, wiping her hands on her skirt. It’s brown anyway, so she doesn’t think the dirt smudges show as much on this compared to her green ones. “I’m going to go see what they’re up to,” she declares, and Kanaya watches her for a moment like she’s debating whether or not she should intervene before she shrugs again and returns to watering the plants. Kanaya is nosy at the best of times, but Jade guesses that her avoidance of Dave, which has outlasted any of the castle’s other occupants, must outweigh that. She makes a mental note to ask her about it later. 

The air inside of the castle as she walks through the corridors to get to the other side of the grounds is cool, and by the time she gets back outside, she doesn’t feel hot at all anymore. It’s inconvenient, because she would love an excuse for the flush to her cheeks as she finds a dozen soldiers all divided into pairs, shirtless in the broad daylight and covered in sweat as they seem to spar with each other with wooden swords like children might use. 

Her eyes scan over the crowd, knights, squires, and pages, until they land on Dave sparring with Karkat. His body is covered in scars of varying sizes and colors alongside some fresh bruises on his chest and arms. His skin is glistening with sweat, but more than that, he’s so pale that he almost seems to be glowing under the Prospitian sun. Jade can see a tinge of red on his shoulders and back that paints a clear picture of him out here like this for hours each day. The thought brings a flush to her cheeks, but she can’t bring herself to tear her eyes away from him, transfixed by the serious expression on his face. She sees what the maids were saying about the complete shift in personality. 

“Sir, I’d like to request a break,” one of the pages says. She recognizes him as Tavros Nitram, the newest recruit sponsored by the Serket family. 

“Do you think there are going to be breaks at war, Nitram?” Dave says, not necessarily scolding but certainly stern. “It hasn’t even been an hour yet. Remember, next week we’re doing all of this in armor.” 

Karkat seems to spot her at this point, and he gestures to catch Dave’s attention before nodding in her direction. Dave looks at her, and he doesn’t smile at her, but she swears she can see some sort of softening in his features. She holds her head up high to mask her embarrassment at the whole scene as she approaches them, and it has the side benefit of meaning she isn’t completely eye-level with his chest when she finally reaches him. “You’re very impressive. It seems that Sir Vantas got a few hits on you, though,” she says, and she grins at the face Karkat makes at the formal title. 

He’d been brought to the castle when they were both children, and Kanaya’s mother advocated for him to be a page. She had spun some story about finding him at the border of Beforus, which was under revolution at the time. He couldn’t have been older than five or six. Jade wasn’t supposed to be listening in, but her grandfather, who usually occupied her time, had only died a few months before. Her father didn’t seem keen on letting such a small child train to join the military, and Jade, desperate for a friend, had burst into the room to advocate for him. With an amused smile, the king said that someone should really keep a better eye on her, and Karkat was assigned as her personal guard and attendant. He worked diligently to rise through the ranks and become a proper knight, and as much as it hurt to watch someone so important to her grow so far away as he became more important, she can’t help but support him anyway. The only thing he’s ever wanted to be was a leader. He’s pointedly clung to his role since the day he got it, all-but forcing everyone to call him by his proper title—everyone except for Jade.

She wonders what the story behind Dave’s knighthood is. She knows that it is common for princes to fight alongside their armies, to train with the knights and the soldiers so they can ride into battle, but she doesn’t think it is necessarily common practice for them to truly become knights. Was this his consolation prize for being removed from the line of succession, or is this simply the only use his family could find for him? Distaste swirls in her gut. 

“He’s a good soldier,” Dave replies, snapping her out of her thoughts. Karkat scowls for reasons Jade can’t possibly determine and walks away from the both of them. He joins the rest of the knights with a sword still in hand, apparently ready to start another spar. 

“One of the best. He’s been my personal guard for as long as I can remember. I’m going to miss him when we leave. I wish we could bring him.” 

Dave’s lips quirk at the corner, which makes her heart flutter nearly as much as his bare chest did. He is never very expressive, which means that her eyes catch on every small change to his face. He only ever seems to smile like this, as much as it can be called a smile, for her. “Vantas is a good soldier,” he repeats, and his voice almost sounds like he’s bargaining. “I’m sure he would be a strong addition to Derse’s army. I’ll make a case for him to come with us.” 

It strikes her suddenly how much she would like to kiss him. She even finds herself staring at his mouth for a moment before she internally berates herself for it and almost misses when he half-turns to face the rest of the soldiers and holds his wooden sword up. Everyone drops their swords to their sides obediently and turns to look at him for orders, and her cheeks flush again. He commands so much respect. 

“Nitram, you’ve got your break,” he says. “Everyone go cool off. Drink some water, get out of the sun. Be back here in ten minutes.” As the knights shuffle inside, he turns back to her, taking her hands in his and sending her heart into her throat. She should have washed them. He doesn’t seem to notice the dirt. “I don’t have much time to talk. Was there something that you needed?” 

She doesn’t want to admit that she had just missed him and gotten curious about what he was doing. Instead, she says, “Kanaya and I were in the gardens when we heard the training start up. I figure if I’m going to be married to the commander of an army then I should know what it is he gets up to all day.” 

He chuckles and brings one of his hands up to rub his thumb against the dirt smudge on her forehead, just like he had weeks ago. “I see that.” Her cheeks flush. 

“Will you have time this evening?” she asks before she can stop herself. “If you’re not exhausted from training,” she adds, trying to offer him an out. 

He seems to consider this for a moment, and then pulls his hands back to himself, one coming up to rub against the back of his neck. “I could probably end training a little early to see you before dinner. I’ll need to wash up first, so we might not have very long. Could I meet you in the gardens around sunset?” 

The thought of Dave bathing makes her cheeks flush and she can only hope that the tinge doesn’t show enough through her brown skin for him to see it. Thoughts of bare skin and dirty water flash through her mind before she can banish them. She nods rather than answering him verbally, and after only a moment of hesitation, practically peels herself away from him. 

Kanaya has finished up everything in the gardens before she gets back, so Jade takes the opportunity to sink into her own bath and scrub the dirt and sweat off of her skin and out of her hair. She doesn’t ask the maids to help her with this, though it increases the amount of time she has to spend washing her hair at least threefold. Flower petals drift along the surface of the bath water as she lathers soap infused with lavender and sage from her garden into her scalp. It takes two hours to fully lather soap into all of her curls, carefully wash it out, and brush them until they’re neatly separated with no tangles in sight, and another for them to dry. 

She spends the rest of the hours before Dave will be free in the library, devouring one of the medical textbooks they had acquired in the village. The section she’s in is about pregnancy, and she cannot help but think of the future of their marriage. What will they do if their child is a mage? She wonders if she should tell Dave. She knows that he does not carry the same prejudices that the people she’s been surrounded by her whole life do, but the idea of anyone finding out has such an ingrained panic response conditioned into her that even considering telling him makes her stomach twist into knots. She turns past the chapter into the next section, which is about cancers.

When the peek of sky visible through the windows is more orange than blue, she strolls out to the gardens to find Dave already sitting there. He’s dressed in casual clothes rather than the formal attire or armor she’s used to seeing him wearing around the castle, and his hair is still dripping wet. She wants to reach out and touch it, but keeps her fingers firmly locked together in front of her, instead just smiling warmly to greet him. “Good evening, princess,” he says, and there’s that familiar twist in the pit of her stomach again. 

“You can call me Jade.” She tries not to sound too hopeful, and he seems taken aback for a moment before he smiles and offers her his arm. She laces hers through it and follows him as he starts to lead her through her own gardens. He smells like soap, without any of the fancy infusions hers has. 

“In a month we’ll be married. I’ve been thinking about it,” he says suddenly, and her heart lurches in her chest as she’s struck by anxiety that he’s going to tell her that he’s decided to call the whole thing off. He seems to sense her swelling panic, because he stops them and turns to her, resting his hands on her shoulders. “Relax." She lets out a breath. “I’ve enjoyed what little time we’ve been able to spend together,” he starts, and she ignores the little thrill that runs through her before he adds, “I won’t be able to spend so much time with you when we’re living in Derse.” 

This makes logical sense to her. Even the past couple of weeks she’s barely seen him, and he’s not even responsible for the Prospitian army. There are perhaps a dozen men answering to him here, and if he trains a small group that he holds so little responsibility for so strictly, it must be even worse at home. She should be thrilled. She’ll have more time to devote to her studies, won’t have a husband pressuring her for children. So why does it feel like such a heavy weight has just been placed around her neck?

“My father sends me away often,” he says, and he tilts his head up to look at something in the space above her head. Maybe he’s just trying not to look at her. She furrows her brow as he continues, “There’s nearly always some sort of conflict somewhere, and sending in the army either sends the message to de-escalate or stops the situation before it has the chance to evolve into a problem.” 

Her mind is spinning at this information. She’s familiar with Derse’s  military demonstrations at the border, but she’d figured it was a part of their extended conflict. With the war between Prospit and Derse coming to an end with their marriage, won’t he have more free time than ever? She asks him as much, and the smile he sends her is different from his usual smiles. It makes something cold ball up in the pit of her stomach. 

“Prospit is hardly Derse’s only enemy,” he says. Then, with a speculative tone, he adds, “If anything, my father might view this as an opportunity to move the soldiers stationed at the border to make moves against some of our other enemies.” Her chest tightens, and it’s not helped by him bringing a hand up to cup her cheek, a touch she can’t stop herself from leaning into. “I’m rarely home at the palace. I just don’t want you to be lonely.” 

“I’m used to it,” she dismisses immediately. She sees his eyebrows knit together and explains, “My father and John think they can lock me in a tower like a damsel in a fairytale and keep me safe from all harm.” 

“I’ve noticed that,” he says, and she tries to ignore the bitter feeling that rises up in her gut. Her father and brother have spent her entire life treating her like a damsel in distress, and now they’re going to corrupt the one person who can finally get her away from that pressure. “Why do they think you need so much protecting in the first place?” 

She hesitates a moment and pulls away from him, turning to look at a nearby bush of white roses so she doesn’t have to look at him. “Our mother got sick when she was pregnant with me. They thought it was just a difficult pregnancy, but she was so small, and then I was born so early and mother…” she trails off, shuddering, as she thinks about it. As much as Grandpa always assured her it wasn’t her fault, she can’t help but blame herself for her mother’s death. “The isolation started as a matter of safety. I was small and sickly. I struggled to breathe. If I was ever exposed to anyone who had even been near someone who was sick, I’d catch something, and then I’d be stuck in bed for weeks. I almost died several times. I suppose that they just didn’t trust it when I finally started to get better.” 

She can feel herself shaking. The air in the garden has cooled off since high noon when she’d first been outside, but it’s still warm and damp. The temperature is no excuse. “You seem cold,” Dave says anyway, resting a hand on her shoulder. “Why don’t we go inside?” 

She nods wordlessly, and when she grabs one of his hands, he doesn’t make any move to pull away from her. She wants to retreat to her bedroom and hide in there for the rest of the night until all of the guilt and shame and bitterness goes away. It would be improper to bring him there with her, though, and she doesn’t want to leave his side yet. She leads him to the library instead, the large wing being perhaps as far away from anyone else in the castle as she can get sans the privacy of her bedroom. They sit on a long couch at the back of the room, leaving an empty seat between them.

They’re silent for a long time, and her mind races as she tries to think of something to say, something that she can ask him so he’ll just talk to her.

“My mother is still alive, but sometimes it feels like a part of her has died, in a way,” he confesses somewhat abruptly before she comes up with anything, and she stares at him. “Our parents weren’t especially close even when Rose and I were kids. It always kinda seemed like they were… friends, maybe? But they just kept growing apart. He barely even looks at her anymore, and she just drinks and wanders mindlessly around the halls in the palace.”

She moves a hand to rest on his knee while she tries to think of something to say, and he gives her a sad smile. Maybe mother-related trauma isn’t the most appropriate thing for them to bond over, but she hates the thought that he might feel how she feels about her mother for even a moment when his is still alive. She hates that his family seems so cold. The way that his father had looked at him during that meeting made her want to run away and hide, and she can’t imagine how it must have felt for him. She wants to kiss him again.

“I’m sure that she must love you very much.” She had hoped it would be comforting, but his face visibly tightens. Swallowing, she tears her eyes away from him and stares at the portrait of her mother hanging over the doors. “I think she must hate me, wherever she is.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she thinks she sees his eyes widen a bit. Then his face settles back into something more neutral and he looks over at the painting, too. “Was that her?” Jade nods once, her grip on his knee tightening a little bit. “You look just like her,” he says, voice so soft she almost wonders if she was meant to hear it.

“People tell me that a lot.” She can’t keep looking at the portrait, so she stares down at her hands folded together in her lap. She takes in a shaky breath and then says, “I wish I had gotten the opportunity to know her. I wish the stories people told me meant anything to me. I wish… I wish I hadn’t killed her.”

There’s a dragging moment of silence. Then, he murmurs, “There was a rumor in Derse, once.” When she looks up at him he’s still staring at the painting. “Nobody had ever seen the Prospitian princess before. People started to whisper to each other that she was dead, that Prospit was lying about there being a princess at all. It was all a ruse to move into that castle, so close to the border. They wanted to keep an eye on us, that was all.”

She feels sick again. “Did you believe it?”

When he looks at her, his smile is sad. “No. Not for a moment. I know what it’s like to be hidden by your family.”

She wants to ask him whether people still believe the rumor. It seems like the sort of thing that could be important, if they’re supposed to be marrying each other and people think she’s a fake. Then again, what difference would it make? The war would still be over, and she would still be Dave’s wife, and he would still never be king. Then, she wants to kiss him. This moment feels so intimate. It would be the perfect time. Maybe their only opportunity.

Instead, she reaches over to pull his head down into her lap and buries her fingers in his hair. It’s something her grandfather used to do when she was little, hold her head in his lap and brush his fingers through her hair until she fell asleep. It’s not a kiss, but she hopes that it’s comforting. She hopes that he can hear her thanking him for listening to her without her saying it out loud, that he can feel how grateful she is that he was vulnerable with her. Eventually, she thinks he must fall asleep like that, and when Kanaya comes to tell them it’s time for dinner, she sends her away without a word.

Chapter Text

For the next several weeks, it feels progressively more and more like Jade and Dave have swapped places. When he first came to the castle, she was so hesitant to get close to him, absolutely petrified of what falling in love with the Dersite prince could mean. She wanted so badly for this to be a marriage of convenience, to ignore the spark of curiosity she had felt the moment she laid eyes on him. And he, in turn, had pushed so hard to spend whatever time with her he could find. He would follow her after she dismissed herself from dinner to talk in the halls, find her in the gardens to ask questions about Prospit and the castle that anyone else could have answered just as easily. He gave the knights a full day off of training just to go on a silly trip into the village with her.

But since the night in the library, she’s seen less and less of him, even as she’s intentionally sought out his presence. More than once, as she’s passed by the war room to go to the library, she’s heard him speaking in hushed voices with John and Karkat, but she can’t make out any of what they’re talking about. She can’t help a sense of terror that she has done something wrong. Perhaps she crossed a boundary that night. But she wishes he would just talk to her about it rather than running away. Of course, she’s one to talk.

When nobles from Golgotha and the South of Prospit start to arrive a week before their wedding, she almost never sees him at all anymore. She supposes it must be overwhelming, being surrounded by so many people he doesn’t know. It’s certainly overwhelming for her.

Guests meant isolation when she was young, days locked in her room until they were gone or it had been long enough that there was no more risk of illness—and the latter case was rare. Some of her cousins would come visit for the summer when they were young, but once they were married off, they stopped coming, until eventually the pool of people Jade saw dwindled to only the occupants of the castle. Now, there are relatives she has only ever known from stories in spare bedrooms that have been empty as long as she can remember and nobles coming from too long a distance to stay for only a day, and she’s not sure she’s ever seen so many people.

And now, it’s her responsibility to greet them.

It was Grandpa’s job when she was little, and became John’s job after he died. But now John is too busy preparing for his coronation to greet guests personally, and ironically, Dad is too sick to do it. The custom is for a member of the royal family to greet noble guests, and so that leaves her as the only option.

Jane is the latest to arrive, and if Jade is being honest, she doesn’t remember the exact mechanism through which they’re related. She was one of the cousins who visited during the summer, but Jade isn’t sure which side she’s from or how many steps removed she is or anything. Jane greets her with a big grin and a hug anyway. “Jade, you’re so big!”

Jade laughs into her shoulder, and as she pulls away says, “I’m not thirteen anymore.”

“No, you’re not,” Jane agrees. “I can’t believe that you’re getting married. It seems like just yesterday you were being chased off back to that room. You haven’t even seen the world yet and now they’re just marrying you off for some military alliance.” Jade can’t help but notice the way Jane’s tone shifts from nostalgic to judgmental. 

“It is a little strange,” she agrees, keeping her tone cautious. “I don’t think I was ever going to be able to see the world, though.” 

Jane waves a dismissive hand. “Oh please. You can ask Jake, I’ve been saying I was going to storm this castle and pull you out of it for years now.” But you didn’t, Jade can’t help but note bitterly in the back of her mind. 

“How is Jake?” she asks instead. Jane’s marriage to Jake had been arranged when they were born (and was he the one who was related to her? Or perhaps they both were?), and Jade is used to thinking of them as a package deal. Jane beams, sliding her hands down to her stomach. 

“Well, he’s about as happy as can be with the baby on the way,” she coos, and Jade’s eyes widen a little bit. 

“That’s great news!” She throws her arms around Jane in another hug while her cousin laughs into her shoulder. 

“Oh, it’s just such a shame they’re shipping you off to Derse before you have the opportunity to meet him,” Jane mumbles against the top of her head, and she feels her stomach sink. The idea that people think of her going to Derse as a bad thing is still one that makes her stomach twist into knots, even if she’s getting over some of her own fears about it. Jane pulls away and looks Jade up and down, and the smile falls from her face. “I should smack John for forcing you to marry that man. I know it wouldn’t change anything, but I just can’t stand the idea of it.” 

The pit in Jade’s stomach grows wider, and she tries not to let her face fall. She’d always remembered Jane being more staunchly anti-Derse than the few other people she’d been allowed to speak to. Maybe it doesn’t have to reflect on anything. “You probably shouldn’t talk about the future king that way,” she says with a half-hearted laugh.

Sympathy paints itself on Jane’s face, and she offers Jade another small smile and squeezes her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be saying this stuff to you, I’m probably just making you feel worse about all of it.” 

Jake finally saves her with a brief greeting and an even briefer hug before he takes Jane to unpack their things in their room. Jade stays rooted in place to keep greeting guests, but her smile feels much tighter and she feels overwhelmingly nauseous. As people arrive and make passively congratulatory statements, none of which seem entirely sincere, she can’t help but wonder if this is how they all feel. How many of them think she’s making a remarkably stupid choice? How many of them think she has no choice at all? How many of them are going to push John to declare war again over her?

She is pulled out of this train of thought by a hand on her shoulder, and she almost jumps before she looks up and sees Karkat. His eyebrows are knitted together in concern, and if Dave looks odd outside of his armor, Karkat looks completely alien. His clothes are not especially nice, but they’re distinctly formalwear. The only thing that disrupts the carefully curated image of just another noble staying in the castle is the sword on his hip, and she supposes he probably fought Kanaya (the only person who could stuff him into these clothes) to keep it on him. “Are you alright?” he asks, and she shouldn’t be surprised that he sees through her. 

“I’m just a little overwhelmed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many people before,” she lies, and she thinks it is at least a believable lie. If he doesn’t believe her, at least, he has the courtesy not to call her on it. 

“If you want to go to your room, I can take over greeting guests for a while,” he says, and she shoots him a coy smile. 

“Lady Serket and her lady-in-waiting are arriving tonight, aren’t they?” He doesn’t answer her with words, but she can tell from the flush to his cheeks that she’s right. “I suppose I could be persuaded to abandon my station.”

Jade doesn’t fully understand Karkat’s relationship with Vriska Serket’s lady-in-waiting. Captain Mindfang is a close friend to Kanaya’s mother (though from what she’s heard, she’s not entirely sure how). For only one week a year, Karkat and Kanaya are allowed to return home to the capital city for the holidays. It’s one of the loneliest weeks of the year for Jade, but she knows how important it is to them. She guesses they must spend it with the Serkets and the Pyropes in addition to Kanaya’s family, because it’s all Karkat can talk about for weeks after. 

She doesn’t go to her room. There’s only one person in the world who can quiet the sort of anxious thoughts clouding her mind now—only one who’s still alive, anyway.

She creeps as quietly as she can down the long hallway to her father’s bedroom, and she can’t help but notice that guards usually posted to keep anyone from disturbing him are nowhere to be seen. She guesses they must be busy monitoring the guests. His door is just barely cracked open, and she can catch a glimpse of him in bed. He’s not laying there pathetically like she might have expected. Instead he’s sitting up, hunched over some papers in his lap. 

“Are you going to come in or not?” he says without looking up, and she pauses for a moment. Somehow with Dad’s illness she forgot how eerily aware he always was of his surroundings, and she guesses if he’s having a lucid moment, it only makes sense that he’d be paying attention to who comes in and out of his room. She also guesses that if he’s having a lucid moment, this is the ideal time to come to him for advice. She pushes through the doorway, and he brightens up when he sees her, setting whatever paper he was holding down and then moving the disorganized stack aside to give her his undivided attention. “I wasn’t expecting to see you before John’s coronation.” 

She doesn’t know if he knows that she wasn’t allowed to come in here, and she can’t think of the right way to tell him if he doesn’t. John sees him at least once a week to discuss whatever kingly matters they have to figure out before he ascends to the throne, but when she tries to come in, the guards usher her away before she can even reach the door handle. It makes something bitter and painful rise to the back of her throat, and she digs her teeth into the inside of her cheek so she doesn’t say anything she shouldn’t. 

He seems to see the emotion flash across her face regardless, because his expression grows more serious and he reaches out to take one of her hands. His hands had always seemed so big to her when she was little, and now they’re more like John’s, thin and bony with long fingers. “Why don’t you tell your dad what’s troubling you?” 

She takes a deep breath and holds it for a second, but then it’s like a dam breaks. “I’m worried that war is still on the horizon. The Prospitian people don’t approve of the prince, and even our relatives who have been arriving the last few days don’t seem to have any interest in getting to know him. They’ve drawn their own conclusions about the type of person that he is, and I’m trying to do everything that I can to make this work and do my duty to my people and be a good bride, but if it’s all just going to make things worse, then maybe we should just call the whole thing off while there’s still time.” She says it all in one breath.

For a long time, Dad just stares at her. Finally, he says, “It’s difficult to imagine that relations with Derse could get much worse—whether that’s because our people think they’ve kidnapped you or because we cancel a wedding at the last moment.”

This thought doesn’t do much to comfort Jade. The only thing that she wants is to spare her people from a war that she’s not confident they can win. It’s not like she expected Prospitians and Dersites to magically get along just because of a wedding, but much like her father, she didn’t think things could really get worse. Now, though, it seems like things are on the brink of boiling over. “What do you think I should do?” 

Dad hesitates for a moment, his eyes flicking over her face while he thinks. Then he turns away from her to grab his stack of papers again, and she feels a flash of irritation. He’s just going to ignore her? The irritation gives way to confusion when he spreads them out in the small space between them. “These are the letters your mother and I wrote to each other when we were first courting.” Her breath catches, and she stares at them with wide eyes. Gingerly picking one up, she looks over the loopy handwriting she guesses must be her mother’s. Her parents had been the first royals in Prospit’s history to marry for love.

Her mother’s letters are filled with an anxiety that almost mirrors her own. Seventh in line for the throne, it wasn’t as if her mother was being clawed over for political gain, but it was still expected that she would marry some Golgothan noble and have children representing the dignity of the royal family. The heir apparent of a foreign country was not anyone’s idea for her ideal husband, but they were in love. Shouldn’t that have mattered more than expectation?

“I have always been so incredibly proud of you for the burdens you’ve borne without complaint. I made a lot of choices as your father in the attempt to keep you safe, and I’ve been thinking about those choices a lot since I got sick. It’s time for you to make your own decisions about your future, Jade. I’m sorry that I didn’t give you the opportunity to do so earlier.” Her eyes feel wet, and she squeezes them shut as she wraps her arms tight around her father in a bear hug that might actually threaten to squeeze the life out of him. That doesn’t stop him from squeezing her back just as hard. 

They peel away from each other, staring for a moment, before, with another deep breath, she stands to leave. Dinner will be soon, and she’ll need to make an appearance. As she approaches the door, he adds, “For what it’s worth, I never wanted you to be trapped in a loveless marriage.” 

She can’t help but think about the comment as she trails through the empty halls in the castle, staring at ancient paintings that haven’t been maintained in far too long. Will it be a loveless marriage? Granted, she doesn’t know Dave very well yet, but she likes the person that she’s seen snippets of—might even love that person, given enough time. She thinks of the night in the library, his head cradled in her lap after they’d just confessed some of their deepest traumas to each other. He had looked so serene in the privacy of that back room with her. And she thinks of how badly she’d wanted to kiss him. She stares at his mouth almost every time that she sees him now. It would be unbearable if it were more frequent.

She doesn’t expect to see Dave at dinner, but he sits at the long table alongside several of the other guests in the castle. On one side of the table, Jane sits next to Jake, murmuring something to him that the rest of the table can’t hear. Kanaya is on her other side, and Jade on the other side of Kanaya. Across the table from her is Dave, with Karkat sandwiched between him and Terezi. Next is Vriska, and then, oddly, Tavros, which Jade will inquire about later (though who she can ask about it, she’s not sure). She can’t help but notice that John has been forced to take the head of the table simply by how many people are sitting at it. 

Dave looks uncomfortable just being here, and she can only imagine what the experience must be like for him. She guesses she’ll be in his same position in a matter of days, but she’s not sure how she would deal with all of those strangers staring at her with contempt.

“So,” Jane starts at a level that is finally audible to the rest of them, and if she’s bothered by the way that everyone turns to stare at her, she doesn’t show it. She’s staring at Dave with a polite but obviously forced smile, and Jade hasn’t seen him so visibly tense since their marriage arrangement. “You’re the prince of Derse that everybody’s heard so much about.” He doesn’t say anything, just sort of stares at her like a cat who’s debating whether or not to run away from something. When it’s clear that he’s not going to respond to her passive aggression, she jokes, “And he’s talkative, too,” earning a snort from Terezi. 

“Well what’s he going to talk about?” Vriska butts in, earning everyone’s stares now. She seems to actively enjoy the attention, leaning just a little bit closer to Dave with her elbows on the table and her fingers laced together under her chin. Jade has always thought the rules of table etiquette were a little silly, but she wants to say something about it now just so she’ll stop sitting like that. “How in love he is with the princess? It’s not like either of them had any choice in the matter.” 

“It’s been three months,” Kanaya practically hisses, and Karkat’s got his eyes narrowed into a glare now, which Jade thinks might have as much to do with his personal dislike of Vriska as it does with how she’s acting. 

“Three months is plenty of time,” Jane says, still in that saccharine sweet and deeply fake way that’s got Jade’s gears grinding. “I knew that I was in love with Jake the moment I saw him.” Jade wants to point out that their marriage was arranged before they ever saw each other, but she grits her teeth instead. “If he doesn’t have anything to say now, he’s never going to. But that’s Dersites for you—they don’t know how to feel anything with all that magic twisting their minds up. All that just goes away, I guess.” Jade would point out the irony that Dave doesn’t even have magic if it wouldn’t feel like a betrayal in front of all these people.

“Maybe he’s shy,” Vriska says in a way that sounds more mocking than defensive. “Three months is hardly any time at all to get to know someone if you can’t even spit words out.” Jade thinks she sees her eyes slide over to Tavros, and she would take the opportunity to cut in and change the subject if she didn’t feel some amount of sympathy for him.

“Or maybe this whole wedding is just a sham,” Terezi says with a shrug, and Karkat elbows her with a stern look (like that will accomplish anything). That’s not enough to stop Jade from shoving herself to her feet, her hands slamming down on the table.

“Enough!” she yells, and now everyone stares at her and the only thing that stops her from shrinking into herself is the rage rushing like ice through her veins. “Dave is one of the kindest and most honest people I’ve ever met. He’s earned the respect of everyone who’s bothered giving getting to know him a chance, not that any of you could say anything about that. None of you have made a single comment about him that was true—you’ve just drawn a bunch of conclusions based on rumors and stereotypes. Even having this conversation should be considered treason. Do you not trust John’s judgment? Or my judgment? The future of Prospit has never looked so secure, and you would all be lucky to see us ruling side by side.” 

She thinks she’s said too much. None of them had voiced doubt about the future of the kingdom, and while she stands by what she said absolutely, she can feel everyone’s eyes on her now that her anger is starting to ebb away into exhaustion from the rant. Her cheeks flush and she swallows. “Excuse me,” she murmurs before she all but runs away from the table. 

She’s such an idiot. If people didn’t approve of the marriage arrangement before, they’re certainly not going to now just because she’s caused a scene at dinner. And does it even matter to any of them if he’s kind or respectable if he’s still the prince of Derse? She’s trying to solve their innate biases against him because of his heritage by bringing up the fact that he’s a nice guy. As if that means anything to a group of people searching for a reason to tear him down and criticize the marriage arrangement. 

She’s halfway through the winding halls to her bedroom before she feels a hand on her wrist, and she wrenches it away from whoever grabbed her as she turns to snap at them before she sees Dave. Her heart stutters in her chest. She wonders how long he’s been following her, and if he’s been trying to get her attention and she just didn’t hear him because she was so lost in thought. “I’m sorry,” she starts, and he looks confused. “I spoke out of turn. I probably embarrassed you. I shouldn’t have—” 

He cuts her off with a laugh, and it cuts straight into her chest and makes her cheeks heat up with shame. “Are you kidding?” he says, and it’s her turn to be confused, her brow furrowing as she stares up at him. “You were incredible. No one’s ever stood up for me like that in my life.” This strikes her as sad even as he doesn’t seem sad when he says it. She hates the idea that he’s faced criticism like that before, and she hates even more that no one has ever cared about him enough to stand up for him. She’s glad that she did, suddenly. 

“I just didn’t like hearing them say all that stuff about you,” she manages to mutter. He may not be upset with her, but this is still likely to cause more problems than it’s going to help. 

“I don’t care what some stuffy nobles from Prospit think about me,” he dismisses. His whole demeanor softens as he adds, “I’m just glad to hear you speak so highly of me.” 

“Well I think of you very highly,” she says, and his face actually splits with a smile—a full, real one, not the barely-there upturn at the corners of his lips that still manages to make her stomach twist and her heart flutter. She realizes after a moment that she’s staring at his mouth, and she forces her eyes down to the floor, her cheeks burning. “I should go to bed…” 

“Will I still see you tomorrow, or should I expect you to hide in your room until the coronation?”

She huffs a laugh. “You’ll see me,” she promises, and he gives her a thumbs up that she barely sees with her eyes glued to the floor. She turns on her heels and manages to walk the rest of the way to her room instead of scurrying, but still practically slams the door behind her with the way she sinks her whole weight against it to close it. She thinks back to her conversation with her father. I don’t feel very trapped. She hopes he can tell, somehow. 

Chapter Text

If there had been any doubt before, Jade has certainly never seen this many people in one place.

Growing up, the castle had served largely as what it was—a stronghold against outside invaders. Castles are not places where people live, they are fortresses where soldiers lock themselves in to hide and rest and strategize. There have been dozens of small, empty rooms throughout the castle Jade’s entire life that she knows would, in another world, be home to knights, squires, and pages, soldiers training and preparing for Derse’s next move. If her mother were alive, if she had not been born small and weak and wrong, then she knows they would live in the ostentatious palace in Skaia where her father was raised and his father before him and every generation of royals stretching back hundreds of years. As it stands, they had needed to put poor, sensitive Jade somewhere no one could get to her, and she’s been imprisoned here since.

Today, though, it flourishes with life in the way that she imagines palaces are supposed to. Under ordinary circumstances, a coronation would be held in the capital city. They would have traveled down to Skaia to show John off to the people as the new king, and then Jade and Dave would have been married in the same place her parents were. It would have been her first time ever seeing Skaia in person.

They didn’t think that Dad could make the trip. Most days, it is difficult for him to even get out of bed, let alone take a two-day carriage ride down to the capital city for a coronation and a wedding. So they had used the wedding as an excuse, explaining that the castle was closer to Derse’s border than the capital city so it would be easier for the prince’s family to come here. Jade thinks there had been an undercurrent of prejudice, too. Do you really want the Dersites in the capital city? Do you really think they can be trusted? When she looks around this room, she thinks she can still see flashes of mistrust directed toward Dave, though it is mixed with blushing young girls practically swooning over him. The staff and guards who have gotten used to his presence either smile casually at him or outright ignore him as yet another figure in the background, but it feels less malicious than it had months ago.

She recognizes a few of the faces, vaguely, as people she and Dave met when they were in the village. Off to one far side of the room, the artist who had sketched them for only a handful of coins stands behind an easel, likely preparing to capture the moment John is crowned. She thinks that most of the people in this room, though, are those who could afford to travel north from Skaia. Most of them are wearing nice clothes, perhaps not to the full extent of a noble, but middle class at least.

Above all of them, on a large dais, her father sits on a throne making his first public appearance in months. Jade thinks he looks like a facsimile of himself. While his attendants have done a decent job of masking his illness with looser-fitting clothing that hides how skinny he’s gotten, excusable due to the summer weather, and some amount of makeup to mask how pale he is, his cheeks aren’t the right color, his hands so thin, his face gaunt, and his eyes lack all of the bright blue lucidity she had seen in them in his room the other day. In fact, he looks like he must not know where he is at all. Dave keeps staring at him, and she feels guilt twist in her stomach as she wonders what he must be thinking. Can he see through the disguise, too? Does he realize now that she and John have been lying to him for months?

Speaking of John, before the ceremony starts he sits in a chair almost like a smaller throne to Dad’s right side. He’s been stuffed into the traditional navy blue and gold formalwear she’s seen on paintings her entire life, and she thinks it looks good on him even as she knows her brother well enough to see on his face how much he wants to run away from this whole situation. On Dad’s left side is an empty chair where she would traditionally sit as the second child, practically the only formal acknowledgement a daughter can get in the Propsitian royal family, which has been robbed from her so she can instead be seen with Dave in public.

It was important, Dad’s advisor had decided, for them to be seen in public together at least once before the wedding. It adds an element of performance to her brother’s coronation that she does not relish as she loops her arm through Dave’s, leans against his side with a bright smile, and spends every moment consciously thinking about how the people around her perceive them. Some are actually bold enough to approach them, congratulating them on their impending union and remarking on how excited they are for the wedding tomorrow. She tries her best to smile and nod, though Dave doesn’t acknowledge them at all.

When the actual ceremony starts, the crowd of people goes quiet to watch John take his vows to protect his country and rule fairly and all of the other empty words that make Jade want to roll her eyes. She loves her brother and she trusts that he will be a good king, but too many bad kings have made the same oaths. He will be a good king because he is John and he is good, not because of these meaningless words he swears to follow in front of a tiny portion of their citizens who, for the most part, already have every privilege they could be granted.

Many of the portions of the coronation that she knows from history books are supposed to be done by her father are instead done by his advisor. The only part of the ceremony that her father really takes part in is the ritual gifting of a sword and placing of the crown on John’s head, which marks the end of the whole thing. She holds her breath when she watches him get up from the throne, half-expecting him to fall down before he’s able to stand. And, granted, he moves a little more slowly than usual, but otherwise seems to get up without a problem even though he has no help. Dave glances at her when she can’t stop a relieved sigh, but he doesn’t say anything.

She makes a big show of saying goodbye to Dave when the whole thing is over so she can go talk to her brother. She holds both of his hands in her own and stares especially adoringly at his face and for a second she almost forgets that they are pretending when she tells him that she’ll be right back. He gives her hands a squeeze that sends a very real thrill through her chest, though he doesn’t say anything out loud then, either. She wants to stay and ask him if something is wrong, but there’s a group of girls who must only be teenagers standing nearby and swooning over him (or maybe them) and that reminds her that they’re being watched, so she just squeezes back and peels herself away.

John is surrounded by people. Nobles and advisors trying to put a stab in for places in his inner circle, she guesses. She can’t help but notice Vriska is among them, standing just a little too close to him and leaning toward him every time he speaks like he’s the most interesting thing in the world. She cuts in, barely keeping herself from grinning, “John, would you like to come outside with me?”

The expression that washes over him is purely grateful. “Please,” he says, with that tone he used to get when they were small children and their relatives would all fuss over him and Dad would ask him to guide Jade back to her room. She used to sneak out on purpose sometimes just to try to give him a break, though proportionally, this was much less often than the times she would sneak out just to try to feel normal. She threads her arm through his and leads him through the castle and out to the gardens. They don’t talk for a while, just looking around at all of the plants that are thriving under all her hard work. She wonders if they’re going to wither and die when she’s gone, or if someone will take over caring for them. Kanaya, she knows, is set to come with her to Derse, where Jade only hopes she won’t feel as isolated as Jade does here. When they get to the gazebo, they wordlessly take a seat on the little stone bench.

“So,” she starts, looking over at him with a teasing little grin. “I see that Vriska has finally taken an interest in you.” He groans, somewhere between embarrassment and frustration, and buries his face in his hands.

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not? You were so enamored with her only a year ago!”

He glowers at her, and she grins back. “Vriska isn’t interested in me. She’s interested in the king. If Dad had been a viable target she probably would have gone after him years ago. And I’m pretty sure she has something going on with Tavros.”

None of this strikes her as incorrect. That doesn’t mean that she isn’t his younger sister and doesn’t have at least some obligation to make fun of him.

“Well, you’re going to have to marry someone now that you’re king. It might as well be Vriska, since you were already obsessed with her.” His glare grows a little bit sharper, and she laughs.

“I wasn’t obsessed with her,” he eventually hisses, and he looks around like he’s worried someone else will be there to overhear him. Jade wouldn’t necessarily put it past Vriska to follow them to the gardens if she was that determined to have John’s attention, but if he’s right that it’s all a manipulation game, she’s also smart enough not to push that hard just yet.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll win her over,” she eventually says with a shrug. Then, with another wicked grin, she adds, “Maybe after you marry her.” He makes a sort of strangled noise at that and buries his face in his hands, and her laughter is loud enough that it echoes back at them off the stone walls surrounding the garden.

There’s a long moment of silence between them. Eventually, John pulls his face back out of his hands and looks out instead at the stars shining in the sky above them. They used to look at the stars together a lot, when they were younger. Grandpa would help them identify constellations. She always had an easier time remembering them than he did, but he had an easier time spotting them in the first place. They made for a good star-watching duo.

“What does it feel like to be king?” she asks, and she’s not sure if it’s curiosity or if she’s simply trying to redirect the emotions from her own nostalgia.

He laughs rather than answering her, and then asks, “What does it feel like to be engaged?” So much for redirecting. Whatever emotions she may have had about her childhood, the emotions she has about Dave and the arrangement with Derse are much more overwhelming.

“It’s not as horrible as I expected it to be,” she says eventually, and it feels like the truth. As much as she’s dreading going to Derse and potentially never seeing her family again, the engagement part of the arrangement has been… nice. Dave has been nice, which is more than she has ever been taught to expect.

“I could gather that much from your speech at dinner the other night,” he says, and her cheeks flush now. Before she has the opportunity to speak up and defend herself or even sink into the pits of embarrassment, he adds, “I’m glad that you seem happy. I’ve seen the way you two look at each other when you think no one is paying attention. Dad always wanted us to be able to choose who we would marry, and I didn’t want to lock you into a marriage you were going to be miserable in, even if you didn’t get to choose. So I’m glad.”

She considers this for a long moment. “It feels like I chose,” she says eventually, and John beams at her brighter than she’s seen him smile since their father first got sick. She feels guilty, but she hadn’t noticed how exhausted her brother seemed the last few months. He’d seemed so vibrant when he was talking to Dave. When she looks at him now, up close, there are bags under his eyes, poorly concealed by the same makeup they must be using to prop Dad up.

Before either of them can say anything else, there’s a rustling of leaves not far away, and she looks over to see Dave brushing a branch with a large purple flower out of his face. “So this is where you two ran off to.” John laughs and rubs at the back of his neck like he’s been called out for something.

“Are people looking for me?” he asks.

“Serket, maybe,” Dave says, and Jade shoots her brother another teasing smile. “Your father left. Not sure what sorta business a former king attends to right after his son’s coronation, but I guess he must have had something going on. I was looking for the princess, anyway.” She blinks a few times as she stares at him, and he grins. “People are dancing. I thought you might want to?”

She looks over at John like she’s asking for his approval, and he smiles at her before smacking his hands against his knees and standing up. “Do you think dancing with Vriska is going to cause some sort of national incident?” She rolls her eyes and elbows him in the ribs. “Hey! I’m the king now. That could be treason,” he teases, and she snorts.

“I would love to dance with you,” she says to Dave, and he holds out a hand toward her that she has to stride across the garden to take.

Much of the crowd from earlier has cleared out, and it makes it much easier to breathe. All of the villagers from the nearby town are gone, and she supposes that those who are going to the wedding tomorrow will need to be up extra early to get whatever chores or work they may have finished. The small orchestra tucked to one side of the room, perhaps half a dozen people holding string instruments, is in the middle of a song that many of the nobles around the room are dancing to. Vriska and her lady-in-waiting are nowhere to be seen, and Jade guesses they must be trying to find where John disappeared to. Karkat is gone, too, which is not especially surprising—he’s always hated crowds, had relished the freedom his position as her personal guard had given him to escape them before he was a fully realized knight and he had obligations among the noble crowds she was forced out of.

Dave is still holding her hand, and he uses it to pull her in tight against him, slipping an arm around her waist. It is not a form of dance she is familiar with, but then, she doesn’t have a lot of experience with dancing. This is the first party of any sort that she’s ever been allowed to go to.

She’s never noticed how warm he is before. Her fingers have been cold her entire life, and his hands bleed warmth into her skin, but it’s more noticeable with the way the heat practically radiates off of his chest to her face. It invites her to sink her head down against his chest, and she lets herself fall for the temptation. He’s solid under her, but there’s still a sense of softness there, like a firm pillow. He’s not bony like she had for some reason expected him to be. She’s seen him with no shirt before, seen the muscular expanse of his chest, but when he’s all covered in formal clothing, he looks so lanky.

“Why did you seem so… detached, earlier?” she eventually asks, her voice low enough that she doesn’t think anyone else can hear it over the music, her head still against his chest where she can’t see his face. She can feel his breath hitch, though, and his hand tightens in hers ever-so-slightly. It feels like the seconds crawl on forever before he replies to her, his own voice just as low.

“We’re getting married tomorrow,” he says, and she holds her breath through the surge of anxiety that he’s having second thoughts because they’ve already had this conversation. After a moment of hesitation, he adds, “And then it’s off to Derse for the rest of our lives. Are you nervous?”

“A little,” she admits a bit too readily. He lets out a breath at that that she isn’t sure how to read, so she adds, “I think I’ll manage, though. I’ll have you and Karkat and Kanaya. I’ll miss John, but I’m sure he’s going to be so busy as king anyway that he wouldn’t have had time for me even if I’d stayed.”

“I can’t imagine him not making time for you,” he says, and there’s something about it that makes her feel like he’s trying to communicate something more than what he says, something that makes her heart squeeze in her chest. “Were you two… close, growing up?” he asks, and it strikes her as odd that they’ve never talked about it before.

“We… wanted to be. It was hard, with how locked up I always was. I did everything I could to make him pay attention to me or make him play with me, but especially when we were little, everyone always acted like I was so fragile, and then as we got older, he got so busy. I love him, but I’m not sure close is the right word for it. Were you and your sister?”

He pauses at this, like maybe he’s not sure exactly how to explain it. She can imagine the uncomfortable expression that she’s noticed he gets whenever his family comes up, and she wants to ask more but she doesn’t want to pry.

“When we were little, we were as close as two people could be.” For a minute, she thinks he’s going to stop there. She lifts her head to stare closely at his face and try to read into his every microexpression. It’s easier than it was three months ago, but it’s still not easy, especially with the way he refuses to look at her. “Eventually, when it started to become more obvious that I didn’t have any magic, our father started training me as a knight instead. He said that it was important I still find a way to be useful to our family. To be useful to Rose. She’s one of the most powerful mages Derse has ever produced, so it just made sense that she was the one who was going to inherit the throne, not me. We were less close, after that.”

Jade imagines for a moment a world where their father declared her the heir instead of John. She would be the first queen regnant in Prospit’s history. She wonders if John would resent her, in that world. He had spent so much of their childhood dreaming of some way that she might take the throne instead of him, but that was always in a world where she could never possibly do it. Would he feel differently if she could?

“Dad didn’t have favorites. I mean, it felt like he did, when we were children. Why was John allowed to run around and play and see people like a normal child while I was forced to hide in my room all of the time? Even when I was doing well, the only people my own age I was allowed to be around outside of our family were Karkat and eventually Kanaya, though even that was past the age where I really wanted to play games with other children…” She didn’t mean to complain, and she digs her teeth into her cheek for a second until her thoughts slow down again and she can force herself back on track. “But I realize now that he was just trying to protect me, in his own way. He was doing what he thought he had to to keep me safe.”

“I don’t think my father cares very much about keeping me safe,” he says bitterly.

“I didn’t mean…” she starts, but cuts herself off just as early. Being defensive isn’t going to help anything. She takes a deep breath and then cautiously says, “Our father is dying.”

The quiet that hangs over them after that feels oppressive. She’s finally done it—finally forced herself to admit the truth. How could she keep it from him, when he had been staring so intently at Dad all night? And she doesn’t want their marriage to be founded on a lie, anyway. The idea that this is just a political marriage so Prospit can get off scot-free without Derse realizing they could have won one over on them and so Jade can finally learn how to use the magic she was born with died weeks ago. Months ago, even. If Dave doesn’t love her, then she doesn’t want him to marry her, and that means that she doesn’t want to trick him, no matter what it costs.

“I know.”

And of course, all of that immediately turns on its head. He knows? Who told him? Why didn’t they tell her that they told him? “What?”

“I’ve known for a while. After my blunder at dinner that night that we went to the village, I started to suspect that something was up. I’m marrying the king’s daughter and he hasn’t even tried to talk to me? I’ve met farmers more protective of their goats than your father was of you.” She snorts, and then bites her lip to try to contain it. “After a couple of weeks, I asked John. And you know him, he couldn’t lie to me about it, so he told me the whole thing.”

She stares. He’s known for that long and he didn’t tell her? He’s known for that long and he’s still here? “Why didn’t you say anything?”

He shrugs, and they’re still pressed so tightly together she can feel it. “I figured if you wanted to talk to me about it then you would. If the only thing stopping you from telling me was that you thought Derse was gonna go to war over it, then once you got to know me and realized I would never do that to you, you’d have told me. So there must have been some other reason, and I wasn’t about to pry about it. Plus, I figured that John probably would have told you that he told me.” She sees one corner of his lip quirk up just slightly, and once her eyes are on his mouth, she can’t pull them away.

Slowly, carefully, she licks her lips and starts to lean up toward him. She’s close enough that she can see the outline of his eyes through his glasses, and she can see how wide they are, but he doesn’t make any move to pull away. She can feel his breath against her mouth when the sound of the doors opening suddenly echoes through the hall.

One of the guards with a deep, booming voice announces, “The royal family of Derse has arrived!” She feels every muscle in Dave’s body tense against her even as she reels back to stare toward the entrance. When she finally manages to look back at Dave, it’s as though someone’s ripped the soul from his body, leaving behind something… empty.

Chapter Text

The morning of Jade’s wedding, her mind occupies itself rehashing all of her old anxieties and mulling over new ones.

Maybe she had been oversimplifying things when she told Dave last night that she was only a little nervous about going to Derse. She’s sure that things aren’t anything like she imagined based on the horror stories she was fed as a child about their rival kingdom. Dave is a shining example of how kind and wonderful they can be. But that doesn’t mean she’s not still scared.

What if she gets there and they’re just as violent as she was always taught they are? Dave and Karkat would never let anything happen to her, but who’s going to stop anything from happening to them? She doubts anyone is going to be endeared to the loud-mouthed Prospitian soldier she dragged along with her, and Dave is already the black sheep.

Or what if they’re not? What if she gets there and they’re all perfectly lovely, and she has to know with certainty that they were wrong? That her family spent hundreds of years waging a war on an innocent country for the crime of allowing magic to flourish and feeding the people propaganda so they wouldn’t question it? Then the only thing Derse ever would have done wrong was accepting people like her, while all of the people she loves would have been complicit in an attempted genocide.

And it would be easy if that were really the thing she was most afraid of, but it’s not. If the worst thing that happened because of her marriage was that she learned the worst people she had ever heard of weren’t actually that bad, overall, she would call that a win. But regardless of what happens in Derse, Jade is leaving Prospit.

She’s afraid of what she’ll miss.

Her father is sick and dying, and as much as she wants to believe that she’s going to learn the magic that she needs to heal him and make it all better, she’s so scared that he’s going to die and she won’t even be there. That she’s going to move away and then that’ll be it, and she’ll just never see him again. How is she supposed to live with herself if her father’s light is gone from the world and she doesn’t even see it fade away? And then they’ll put him in the ground somewhere, and she won’t be at his funeral, and she’ll never visit his grave, all because she thought that maybe she could save him if she ran away.

And it’s not just Dad. Her brother has just been crowned king, and when they were growing up, she always thought that she would be there to support him. They both knew that it was going to be scary and hard, and now he’s going to have to do it by himself because she’s leaving him. The idea of missing all of his milestones is devastating. Yesterday they were joking about how he’ll have to take a queen someday, and now all she can think is that she’s never going to be able to go to his wedding, not like he’s here for hers. She’s never going to hold his first child, or visit the capital city with him.

Dad and John and all of the rest of their family are here for this wedding, and it might be the last time she ever sees any of them, and that’s terrifying.

And it’s not like the family that she’s joining is exactly welcoming. Dave seems terrified of them, or at least, he closes off anytime he talks about them, and she can’t get the image of his face when their arrival was announced out of her mind.

She wants to know why he seems so scared of them. She wants to know if it’s more than just being the black sheep, if something happened to him, but there’s no way to ask that—or if there is, then no one ever taught her how. Are they cruel? Are they going to be cruel to her? For a moment she tries to comfort herself that nothing could be worse than the utter isolation she’s lived with in Prospit her entire life, and immediately she’s struck with such an intense wave of guilt that she almost buckles under the weight of it. Her family loves her, she knows that. And for whatever reason, Dave doesn’t have that same assurance.

“What do you think?” Kanaya’s voice cracks through her rising despair like it is made of ice, and suddenly her attention snaps back to the room around her and the mirror in front of her. She had almost forgotten Kanaya was dressing her.

Jade’s clothes are not the rich, royal blue that John’s had been. Her base dress is made from a brocade in a lighter shade of blue, much like the summer sky peering in from the nearby window, with thin strands of gold expertly woven into the fabric, shimmering like fields of wheat in the breeze. The sleeves of the underdress are made from a different material from the bodice and skirts, a lighter taffeta dyed a shade of blue so pale it’s almost white, like puffy clouds. The real sleeves are tied with thin silk ribbons to the bodies, made from the same silky brocade.

Her skirts are held in a bell-like shape that billows from her hips by a farthingale made from taffeta and whalebone. If she were getting married in the winter, she would have several layers of petticoats creating a fluffy, cloud-like appearance at her feet instead, but such a thing simply isn’t practical for late summer.

Kanaya has been dressing her for formal events long enough that the bodies are not pulled uncomfortably tightly, but Jade can see how much they thin her waist, anyway. They work with the long skirt, the ends of the fabric just barely shorter than floor-length to show the tips of her toes, to make her look just a little bit taller. She’s wearing the sort of shoes with thick heels that are mostly worn by men to give her just a couple more inches. Standing in front of Dave, she’ll need as much help in that area as she can get.

They have all sorts of gold jewelry on her: layered necklaces, heavy earrings, and delicate chains woven through her hair and around her neck and shoulders. A circlet she thinks must have belonged to her mother sits on top of the intricate braided bun all of her hair has been piled into, which feels so heavy it’s hard to keep her head up. She wants to believe that’s the only reason.

It’s beautiful, but it all blurs together into a muddy blue mess as her eyes grow bleary.

“What’s wrong?” Kanaya asks, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, and Jade doesn’t look at her but she can hear the concern in her voice.

What is wrong? How can she even begin to explain any of this to Kanaya? And would it even be okay to explain any of this to Kanaya?

She blinks and feels tears spill over and run down her cheeks, and she can only be grateful that they had opted to put her in minimal makeup. Something about the value of modesty that she had rolled her eyes at. She’s not rolling her eyes now. Instead she’s wiping at them hastily and sniffling sharply, and just so that she’s said anything at all, she asks, “What do you think of Dave?”

She never found the opportunity to ask why Kanaya had avoided him for so long. Standing up for him against Jane and Vriska’s scrutiny at dinner the other night had been the first time Jade heard her say anything positive about him, and even since then, she still hasn’t spoken directly to him at dinner. Jade doubts that it’s the usual prejudice against him simply for being Dersite, but that could just be wishful thinking on her part. She doesn’t want to believe that one of her best friends could believe those things, especially when they’re about to live there.

With the tears no longer pooling in her eyes, her eyesight is a little less blurry, and she sees Kanaya’s eyebrows pinch together in confusion or concern. She’s not sure which. Maybe both. After a long moment, though, she finally says, “I had my… hesitations about the arrangement. I didn’t like the idea that you would be forced to marry anyone, and when I first met him, I wasn’t exactly impressed. But… I have to admit that Dave is a good person, and I’m glad that he seems to make you happy. He does make you happy, right? You’re not having any second thoughts?”

“No,” she says, and it somehow manages to be halfway between a laugh and a sob. Kanaya pulls away from her to get a handkerchief, and Jade pushes her glasses up to let her dab at her eyes. After a shuddering inhale, she says, “He makes me very happy.”

“Alright… then, what is wrong?”

Jade swallows around the lump in her throat as she tries to gather her thoughts again. “I’m just… scared. It feels like I can’t do this.”

“Can’t do what?”

“Any of this! I can’t live up to any of the things everyone is expecting me to do.”

Kanaya takes one of her hands and gives it a firm squeeze, and after a second, Jade gives a feeble squeeze back. “I don’t know what things you think everyone is expecting you to do, Jade. Nobody has any idea what to expect about any of this. Your parents were the first international marriage in a very long time, and as far as I know, no Prospitian noble has ever married a Dersite or vice versa.” None of this exactly makes her feel better, and Kanaya must realize this, because she pulls Jade to sit on the nearby chaise and pulls her head into her lap. They can’t risk undoing all of the work that went into her hair, so Kanaya brushes her fingers over Jade’s eyes instead until her eyelids flutter shut and continues, voice soft, “This is your wedding day. The only thing that matters is that the two of you are happy together. Anyone with eyes can see that Dave is completely enamored with you, and you just said that he makes you happy, so forget about the rest of it. Just enjoy today, and we can figure out the rest of it as we go, alright? And I’ll be with you the whole time, so if you want to run away, just say the word.” Jade breathes a laugh, sniffling again. “Do you want to run away?”

Jade opens her mouth to answer, but before she can say anything, they’re interrupted by a knock at the door. “Are you ready to go?” John’s voice.

She and Kanaya make eye contact, and Jade manages a small smile. Kanaya nods, and Jade gets up and crosses the room to open the doors.

When John’s eyes land on her, he stares for a moment, eyes wide. The opportunities to see her dressed so nicely have been limited, and this is definitely the nicest dress they’ve ever stuffed her into. She imagines that it must be a little overwhelming for him. “Wow,” he practically breathes before holding his arm out for her. When she loops her arm through it, he leans down to murmur, “You look just like Mom.”

She wishes that people would stop telling her that, and it hurts even more knowing that their mother’s brother and sister are in the hall with everyone else waiting to catch their first glimpse of the bride. She’s never met them before, and she doubts they’ll exactly have time to talk before she’s swept away to Derse.

“I don’t think I’m quite as elegant as Mom always looked,” she says carefully. Of course, Jade only knows her face from paintings, which probably don’t provide as accurate a picture as she’d like to pretend, but how much can John possibly remember? He was only a toddler when Mom died, not even fully weaned yet.

“Jade, I’m serious. If I hadn’t seen the portrait of her and Dad in their wedding clothes a thousand times, I’d think I was looking at a ghost. The only difference is the dress. No one in that room is going to be able to take their eyes off of you.” As the doors to the grand hall where the ceremony is taking place comes into view, she hesitates. It’s not what he’s said, she knew that everyone was going to be staring at her, it’s just…

Suddenly, she throws her arms around John and squeezes him tight, and she feels him tense for just a second before he hugs her back awkwardly around the waist. “Are you okay?”

She wishes that people would stop asking her that. “I’m going to miss you,” she mumbles into his shoulder, and he squeezes her a little tighter. When she doesn’t have to look at his face, it’s easy to continue, “I’m scared… I’m scared of leaving home. I know that I spent my whole life wanting nothing more, but now that it’s happening, I just keep thinking of everything that I’m going to miss. I might never see you or Dad again, and that’s scary. Is that stupid?”

He pushes her away enough to look up at his face, blue eyes blazing as he says, “Yes. It’s extremely stupid.” Hurt slices through her before he continues, “You’re not getting away from me that easy, Jade. You think just because you’re going to Derse, we’re never going to see each other again? I’m the king, and there’s not a soul in Prospit or Derse who could keep me from seeing my little sister. You’re stuck with me. You and Dave.” She softens a little bit, and when he says it like that, it feels so silly to have worried in the first place.

“Then why were you so worried about me feeling isolated in Derse? You were so insistent in that meeting—”

“Because I know how isolated you are here, and I know how miserable it makes you.” His voice is soft, tinged with what she thinks must be guilt. “I wouldn’t care if you were going to Derse for a week. How could I send you there if you were going to be all alone and unhappy where I couldn’t even try to make it better?”

“John…”

“You’re my sister, Jade. And Dave is my brother—or, well, he’s about to be. Whatever. The point is, I’m never gonna leave either of you alone. Okay?” She nods a little bit, and he tugs her into another hug and squeezes her so tight it makes her ribs ache. She couldn’t be happier about it. “Now. Are you ready to go get married?” She nods again, and he presses a kiss against the top of her head before he loops his arm through hers again. “Then let’s go.”

When they finally take the first step into the room, her breath catches in her chest at the sight of the hundreds of people piled inside and the feeling of all of their eyes on her. There are even more than there were at John’s coronation. They’ve been cleared from the center of the room to form an aisle, all crammed together so she can only clearly see those people lining the edges of the crowd. One little girl reaches out as though to grab her, which makes Jade smile and a barely-contained laugh bubble up in her chest while her mother grabs her arm and pulls her in against her. The closer she gets to the front of the room, the nicer the clothing gets.

There are relatives she has never met in person in attendance. Her mother’s siblings stand next to each other close to the front of the room with expressions like… well, like they’ve seen a ghost. Her uncle looks so much like John, and she finds this startling because she’s always thought of her brother as a near-perfect doppelganger for Dad.

At the very front of the crowd stands a line of guards separating the rest of the guests from a row of chairs on either side of the aisle. On one side, Dave’s parents and sister sit. On the other, her father sits, and he doesn’t look quite so far away as he did yesterday. When they pass this point, John gives her arm a squeeze and then lets her go to take an empty seat next to Dad, and then she’s alone in front of the crowd—and in front of Dave.

He doesn’t immediately react to seeing her, and her heart sinks. He looks so far away, like someone threw his soul directly back to Derse and left his empty body here to shuffle through the wedding without any conscious awareness. Likewise, his body is stiff, his shoulders tense and back straight like someone’s stuffed a metal rod up the back of his jacket.

If she was especially naive, she might think that it was because of how aggressively Prospitian they’ve made him look. It’s Jade’s understanding that in Derse, the fashion tends toward darker colors—black, burgundy, and midnight purple. As such, the blue of Dave’s suit, with delicate golden embroidery on the lapels of his waistcoat that she can only see because of how close to him she’s standing and the slight sheen of velvet, doesn’t look right. It occurs to her she’s never seen him in real velvet before, only the cheaper and sturdier velveteen she’s used to associating with knights and not princes. It only adds to the overall effect: He looks like they’ve stuffed him into a costume. The only part of Dave that remains are his glasses.

She’s not especially naive, though. Her eyes slide over to his family, so close by, and she thinks back to everything he’d told her about them. His father’s face has that same blank look he’s worn nearly every other moment she’s seen him, like he couldn’t care less about where he is or what’s happening. His mother’s face is a little more complicated, like she’s trying to push through some fog. Jade wonders if she’s already drunk, even though it’s still only mid-morning and her only son is getting married. Rose is watching them intently, leaning in just a little bit rather than sitting with her back ramrod straight like Jade gathers she is supposed to.

“You may join hands,” the man next to them says, and it’s like Dave lags a second behind before he processes the statement and reaches out for her. When she takes his hands, she gives them a delicate squeeze, something comforting that she knows the rest of the crowd won’t be able to see. After a dragging second, he squeezes hers back, just barely.

The officiant is perhaps the only person in the room nearly as ornately dressed as she is. His cream-colored robe is so loose-fitting that it swallows any shape his body may have tried to give it, with sleeves that come down just above his wrist and then spill open into something almost like a bell sleeve, revealing a silky white garment layered underneath. They’re embroidered with simple braid-like patterns twining around each other from the shoulder all the way down to the wrist in golden thread, just barely darker than the fabric they’re sewn into. Near the center of his chest, there is a symbol much like a cloud embroidered with thread that is a shade of blue so light it’s nearly white, and he wears a tall hat in matching colors.

He looks ancient. He could be twice her father’s age easily, and it makes her wonder if this is the same priest who officiated her parents’ wedding—she might even be persuaded to believe he had officiated her grandparents’ wedding, though her paternal grandparents had both passed away before she was born, so this wouldn’t mean very much to her.

“A wedding marks the beginning of a new chapter in a young couple’s life,” he starts, and his voice has a throaty quality, low and deep and just a little bit rough with age. “As they stand in front of loved ones and speak their vows to one another, they unite their souls both here in Prospit and above the clouds. Their blue garments represent the sky in both light and darkness, as, too, shall their lives be. The golden goblets represent the prosperity, material and spiritual, that their union may be blessed with. The wine represents their blood, poured together to symbolize the mixing as one in a new family line they shall create together.”

Jade can’t help the way that her eyes slide over to the items in question. The goblets on the small table between them and the priest must be hundreds of years old. They’ve been in her family longer than anyone can remember. You wouldn’t guess it by looking at them, though; they’ve been polished so they shine as bright as the sun.

Until now, the priest has been looking at them, or at least had his head lowered to such a level that it seemed like he was looking at them. She guesses it would probably be harder to actually look at them both from so close, what with the way they’re standing. Now, though, he lifts his head, directly addressing the crowd.

“This wedding represents more than just the union of these two souls, however. This wedding represents a union between two noble houses, kept apart by politic. This wedding represents a union between two kingdoms, plagued for centuries by war. This wedding represents the coming of a blessed period of peace and light.”

Jade feels like her heart is hammering against her ribs, and she feels Dave’s grip on her tighten, but as her eyes slide over now to look at the crowd, she sees people nodding and smiling. She gives Dave a small smile and gives his hands another tiny squeeze. He doesn’t smile back, but she feels his grip relax a little. “As witnesses of this union, you express your support for the nation of Prospit and the nation of Derse, and of their royal houses, and of the bride and bridegroom, with your presence and your prayers. Let us all take a moment of silence to pray that the sun continues to shine on these two.”

Jade bows her head respectfully the way that she was always taught to growing up, but she stopped believing in all of the clouds nonsense years ago. It’s her own personal theory that it all started as a way for particularly clever Prospitians to get around prohibitions surrounding magic. Oracles and clergymen would claim to see visions in the clouds, to gain power to perform certain miracles from the sun, and once it was attributed to an external force—a religious one nonetheless—suddenly they were exempt from any consequences one might usually face for the use of magic. Maybe if she had been smarter as a child, she would have made the same claims.

Out of the corner of her half-lidded eyes, she can see that the Dersite royals keep their heads straight up, and she can only quietly hope it won’t cause any sort of incident.

“Now.” The priest lifts his head to look between the two of them. “The exchanging of vows.” Jade has read the traditional Prospitian vows a thousand times before. They appear in all sorts of works—historical texts, religious ones, fairy tales and stories of romance. She has had nursemaids and governesses coach her through them, and even the other residents of the castle have offered to recite them with her in the last few days before the wedding. Somehow, none of that prepared her for actually saying them.

Dave is asked to speak first, repeating after the priest for every sentence: “I, Prince David III,” and there is something so wrong about the use of his full name and title in this moment, “vow to protect my wife, Princess Jade, from any darkness or danger that may come her way. In shadow or in light, in rain or clouds or sunny skies, I vow to stay by her side. If the clouds above should bless us with children, I vow to protect them and their mother with my life, by pen or by sword. I vow to always treat her with kindness and respect, until death do us part.”

It’s the first time she detects any emotion in his voice, just the slightest warble at the end, and she could cry for the relief she feels. He’s still not doing anything with his face, still standing so rigid and petrified, but he’s here. He’s here with her.

The priest looks to her now, and she swallows hard. “I, Princess Jade, vow to support my husband, Prince David III, through any darkness or danger that may come his way. In shadow or in light, in rain or clouds or sunny skies, I vow to stay by his side. If the clouds above should bless us with children, I vow to nurture them with all of the warmth and light of the sun. I vow to always treat him with kindness and respect, until death do us part.”

When her parents were married, they shocked the nation of Prospit by kissing after their vows. It shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone that a kingdom that worries about the corruption of magic worries about the moral corruptions of public displays of affection. Matters of intimacy are, somewhat ironically, shrouded in darkness in Prospit, restrained to stilted lectures on how to satisfy one’s future husband from nursemaids that ultimately amount to ‘lie down and wait for it to be over.’ She doesn’t even know what they must tell young men. But in Golgotha, the couple wrap each other up in their arms and kiss after their vows. It is meant to represent an embrace of each other’s lives, whatever struggles they may endure. An exchange of breath, to let their souls meet and combine into one. She had always admired the way her mother stubbornly stuck by her own traditions, and there’s a part of her that desperately wants to honor that part of her heritage.

With the oldest priest in Prospit (possibly the world) standing next to them and Dave dressed in the most aggressively Prospitian formalwear they could find, the weight of tradition bears down on her. It would be a scandal to kiss in front of all of these people, and their wedding is already scandalous enough on account of who the groom is. Plus, she doesn’t think she wants their first kiss to be in front of all these people.

So the priest holds both of his arms up, toward the rows where their families sit, and says, “The blood relatives may now step forward.”

She’s surprised when it’s Dad who stands up instead of John. Based on John’s face, he’s surprised, too. None of them say anything, though, as Dad joins them at the front of the room, standing right at the officiant’s side and beaming at her with pride. His blue eyes are shimmering, and her breath catches in her chest because it’s really him.

All three of Dave’s relatives exchange a look. No obvious emotions pass over their faces, but Jade is used to reading Dave enough by now that she thinks she can catch the microexpressions, and they make her heart sink somewhere to the pit of her stomach. His father is the hardest to read, naturally, but if she had to put a name to it, she’d say he seemed… annoyed. Like this entire Prospitian ceremony is so involved and he’d rather just be done with the whole thing. Like his son’s wedding is nothing but a waste of time. His mother and sister both look guilty, like the especially stoic expressions they’re wearing are compensating for their knowledge that they’re doing the wrong thing. They’re not going to come, she thinks, horrified, and she doesn’t know what they’re going to do because she doesn’t think this has ever happened before.

Then she sees Rose’s jaw harden, and she stands up, smoothing her skirt down with both hands. Both of their parents stare at her, their mother’s eyes widening a little bit while their father’s, in contrast, narrow into slits, the only indication that he’s noticed anything. Mirroring Dad, she steps up to the front of the room and stands at the priest’s opposite side, and Jade thinks she and Dave must lock eyes for a moment, his shoulders relaxing marginally.

The priest gives some speech as Dad and Rose pour two of the goblets of wine to full that Jade doesn’t listen to. Rose pours heavier than Dad does, and Jade doesn’t bother suppressing her amused smile. Once they’re filled and their relatives have each taken a step back, she looks back to Dave, and she gives his hands a last squeeze before she drops them. When he squeezes back, it’s much stronger than before.

They each pick up one of the golden goblets, and it’s a good thing that Jade’s isn’t as full as Dave’s is, because she can’t completely stop her hands from trembling. Slowly, she pours half of her wine into the two empty goblets on the table, then watches as Dave does the same. They pick up the new cups and twine their arms through each other, bringing them up to their lips.

It is bitter on her tongue. She has had wine before, and while she’s never been an especially big fan of it, she swears it was less acrid. This tastes like fruit that’s gone sour—which she supposes it is, but she thinks they could have done something to mask it, surely. It takes an effort to gulp it all down without pulling the cup away from her lips.

Once they’re emptied, they place them both back on the table and turn to their relatives. She’s not sure if Dave studied the wedding traditions or if he just understands this part intuitively. She hugs her father for what she is extremely aware may be the last time in her life, and he squeezes his arms tight around her. With the way she has her head turned, cheek squished against his chest, she can see Dave hugging Rose, and although it’s blurry through the tears beading up in her eyes, she’s pretty sure she sees him murmuring something in her ear. She feels Dad drop a kiss against the top of her head, and she lets out a shaky breath.

When she’s pulled away and had a last moment of proud, hopeful, grieving eye contact with her father, Dave offers her his arm and she threads hers through it, squeezing herself against his side. For the first couple of steps, it all feels so easy, until they pass by that first row of guests. His parents. Against her, Dave tenses, and his movements become almost mechanical. He stares straight ahead like if he makes eye contact with anyone, he’ll crumble into dust.

With one hand, she makes an effort to smile and wave at the right people as they pass, and with the other, she gives his arm another careful squeeze. Another check-in. If he notices, he doesn’t do anything to respond to it, until they’re out in the hall and he breaks away from her. She stares at him as he retreats, torn between running away to hide in her room and chasing after him.

She wishes she had kissed him.

END OF ACT 1

Chapter Text

She drags him with her until her back is pressed against a wall and he’s pulled flush against her, and he leans down to kiss her if only to get that shit-eating grin off her face. He pulls away just as fast as he’d kissed her, though he doesn’t go very far, to murmur, “Terezi, I’m supposed to be on-duty. And I need to finish packing my shit tonight.”

She rolls her eyes, milky white layered over a pale blue-green, and he thinks he might be the only person in the world who remembers what color they were. She’d probably make fun of him for that. “I get to see you once a year. Why am I being punished because you procrastinated packing your shit?”

He thinks about commenting on her language, but he figures now is not the time. “I didn’t procrastinate, Terezi, I was busy.”

“Busy with what?” she snorts derisively. “Having a pissing contest with the prince, no doubt. Karkat, if you want people to take you seriously as a leader, maybe you should try being less insecure about it.”

“Fuck off,” he huffs, and as he tries to pull away, she locks her arms around his shoulders and pulls him in for another kiss.

Though the prince and princess had left the ceremonial hall immediately after the wedding, no doubt to consummate the marriage, the large room is still full of guests—guests Karkat is supposed to be helping to monitor. There had been some nerves in the weeks leading up to the wedding that protests might break out, that the citizens of Prospit still might not approve of the king’s choice in suitor for their princess. With Jade cleared out of the room and away from danger, that’s most of the worry assuaged, but technically, John and their father are still in there for who knows what reason. If there was an assassination attempt and Karkat was in another room getting handsy with a noblewoman, he cannot imagine the kind of shit that would come his way, even if it failed. He’s risking a lot to sneak away with her.

She’s worth the risk, though, as much as he wishes she weren’t.

The unfortunate thing about being in love is that they’ve both got noble obligations. Even though Vriska’s family’s social standing is only barely higher than Terezi’s, Terezi is still technically her lady-in-waiting. Oh how Karkat would kill to have been privy to the conversation where they decided that. Likewise, he’s a knight—no, not just a knight, the princess’ personal guard. If he was just a knight, they’d probably keep him in Prospit. He could probably even bargain to be sent to the capital city where Vriska and Terezi live with the amount of experience he has. But Jade is going to Derse, and his duty is to Jade, so he’s getting shipped off to Derse, too.

He can’t bring himself to be entirely upset about it. As much as he’ll miss Terezi, he does care about Jade. It’s hard to be responsible for someone’s personal safety for so many years and not care about them, he thinks. He’d have to be some sort of Serket-level sociopath obsessed only with wealth and power and his own social status not to have developed something akin to a friendship with the princess—if for no other reason than because he was one of the only people she had when they were children. Plus, he owes her. It was only because Jade advocated for him in the first place that the royal family actually let him train as a knight. Without her, he’d still be begging for scraps in the ruins of what used to be Beforus.

“You’re distracted,” she murmurs against his mouth, and he lets out a grunt that he thinks sounds vaguely apologetic and slides his hands down her waist to cup the backs of her thighs and pick her up off the floor. He’s not sure which one of them hates the stupid dresses they stick her in more. At least she’s not wearing one of those stupid fucking cages this time, just regular, flat layers that bunch up at her waist fairly easily.

When his hand makes contact with her bare thigh, he sucks in a sharp breath and pulls away, looking around like someone might be watching them. “Not here,” he murmurs, and she rolls her eyes again.

“You are so paranoid,” she says, but she slides out of his hold without any argument. She knows as well as he does how bad it would be if they got caught.

It’s not that they can’t be together, not in the traditional sense. It’s not forbidden or anything. He didn’t take a vow of celibacy when he was knighted, and she’ll be expected to marry someone someday. He thinks that as a moderately high-ranking soldier he’s probably got the social standing to toss his name into the ring, if nothing else.

It’s just that this isn’t the time or place. If he was smarter than he is, or maybe just less smitten, he’d have turned down her advances, pulled his hand away from her when she started to pull him away from the party, and stayed at his post. Unfortunately, he isn’t smarter than he is, or any less smitten, so here they are.

“I bet the knights’ quarters are empty,” she says, with another one of those shit-eating grins, and he groans and drags a hand down his face.

“Why do you always want to do it in the most insanely fucking risky places possible?”

“It adds to the thrill.” She grabs his hand again and starts tugging on his arm. It’s not like she can actually take them there, though, considering that she’s never been in the knights’ quarters, or in this castle at all, and considering the fact that she’s completely fucking blind. He lets her pull him until she starts to lead them in the wrong direction, anyway.

When they get to the knights’ quarters, she wastes no time at all in practically tackling him with another kiss, and he moves his hands to her shoulders to push her away a little bit—not out of the kiss, mind you, just a little less all over him. She doesn’t respond well to this, pulling away to look up at him with her brow furrowed and say, “What’s wrong?”

She’s going to think that he’s being stupid. He knows that she is because he is being stupid.

“I just,” he starts, fumbling for the right words. He looks at her face, all twisted with concern, and he swallows. “It might be a long time before I get to see you again. I don’t want to rush this,” he finally mumbles.

Something in her face softens, which he didn’t think she was even capable of. Terezi is always all sharp lines and angles. Sometimes, out of the corner of his eye, he’s certain that her teeth are actually pointed.

She pulls away from him to sit down on a bed—not his bed, just the nearest one she can find. The bedrooms in the knights’ quarters are four beds to a room. His room has fortunately been mostly empty for most of his service—him and Nitram and whatever idiots get sent to the castle for a few months before inevitably being sent back to the capital. Right now, that bed is Dave’s.

“Do you really think it’s going to be that long? I mean, longer than usual?” she asks, and she does a good job at masking her insecurity—a much better job than he’s ever done.

He wants to believe that it won’t. Surely Derse must have holidays, too, must let their soldiers see their families from time to time. Karkat doesn’t have any family, so he’s always gone with Kanaya to the capital city where her mother lives and stayed with the Serkets and the Pyropes, who have lived together much longer than he’s been in Prospit. But if he’s being realistic, even if there are holidays, he probably won’t get to see Terezi for them. It takes two days to get to Skaia from the castle by carriage, and Derse’s capital of Vale is a two-day carriage ride in the opposite direction. If he gets a week off, he wouldn’t even have time to travel back and forth. Sure, she doesn’t have any year-round obligation to Vriska, and if he’s not living in the hyper-protected castle where they’ve kept the princess locked up her whole life, she could come to visit him, but if being in the Dersite army is anything like the training regimens Dave has been putting them through the last three months, he’s not sure he’ll have any time to see her.

He sinks down onto the edge of his bed, their knees touching through the silk of her dress and the cotton of his pants. “I don’t know,” he answers, because that’s easier.

She sees through him, like she always does. For a blind woman, she sees so much. “What if we just ran away together? Steal a horse, sneak out tonight, and ride off to one of the countries in the west. I’ve heard it’s nice and warm there, since you’re such a baby about the cold.”

He snorts. “Terezi, we can’t run away. For one, they would never let us over the border dressed like this on a horse belonging to the royal family.”

“And for two?”

It’s his turn to roll his eyes. “And for two, I didn’t actually have a second reason, dumbass. We just can’t.”

They’re both quiet for a long minute. Her eyes drop down to her lap, as though she could actually see his face if she kept looking at it and she doesn’t want to see his expression. He knows he must look miserable, but she has no reason to know that. “Am I ever going to see you again at all?” she asks, and her voice is so small he almost doesn’t hear it.

His chest squeezes painfully. For just a second, he hates Dave and Jade for making him do this. Then he thinks of Jade all alone in Derse, and he brings his hands up to run through his hair. “You can’t get rid of me that easy,” he says, and he hopes he sounds reassuring.

She does smile, for whatever that’s worth—and it’s worth a lot, to him. “And what if I just never let you leave?” she says, with a teasing edge, and her grin isn’t anywhere near as sharp or bright as it usually is, but it’s there, at least.

He snorts again and reaches out to grab one of her wrists and haul her into his lap. She settles into it so easily, like she belongs there, and he slides his hands down to the curve of her waist while leaning his face closer to hers. “Yeah? And how the fuck are you going to manage that?”

She takes the bait, leaning down to kiss him and really grinning against his mouth now, and he lets out a relieved sigh through his nose as he kisses her back. Her hands slide up to his chest, and he can barely feel it through the leather and steel of his brigandine, but he feels her push him back until he’s flat on his back and she’s settled over him with a wide grin.

If Tavros finds them in bed together later that night, he’s gracious enough not to say anything. Peeling himself away from her so he can start throwing the last of his shit into the small trunk all of his belongings are stuffed into is the most painful thing he’s ever had to do. Second most painful, maybe, after having to look at her still sleeping in his bed when it’s time for him to go. He leans down to press a kiss against her forehead and murmurs, “I’ll see you later, Pyrope.”

Chapter Text

Rain beats down against the top of the carriage with a thousand tiny little thumps per second, like someone drumming their nails against a desk in boredom. The sun kisses the tops of the trees, the sky burning shades of red and orange that make the tall conifers around them look more black than green. Small red and pink cones cling to the branches in the face of the pummeling storm, still not heavy enough a few weeks before autumn to fall to the ground.

Jade had (reasonably, in her opinion) expected to be in a carriage with Dave on the way to the palace in Vale. Obviously, they wouldn’t have actually been able to do anything in the back of a carriage, likely with at least one or two other people, but it’s still traditional for a newlywed couple to have some time alone together following their marriage. Instead, she had spent the night alone in her childhood bedroom and been ushered out at dawn to get on a carriage and leave her home forever, and there was still no Dave in sight.

The four-person carriage they’ve stuffed her in is shared with Rose, Kanaya, and a girl Jade assumes must be Rose’s lady-in-waiting. She’s small, maybe even smaller than Jade is, with olive-toned skin slightly paler than the typical Prospitian but significantly darker than any of the Dersites Jade has seen (which, in fairness, only includes the royal family if limited to those she’s seen in person). Her eyes are wide and green, but they’re much darker than Jade’s are, creeping toward hazel. The most interesting thing to Jade is her hair: It’s black and cut into shaggy, uneven layers, the shortest parts reaching just below her ears and the longest ones, the locks just in front of her ears, brushing against her chin. Despite the mismatched lengths, it looks very intentional, and Jade thinks it’s even… cute.

She doesn’t occupy much of her time staring at the other inhabitants of the carriage. This is the second day that they’ve been on the road, and they’ve been sitting in silence for most of the journey so far. Yesterday, Kanaya had tried to engage Rose and the other girl in small talk, and while they were perfectly polite, it quickly became apparent that they didn’t have very much to talk about. No such attempts have been made today.

Instead, Jade has spent the last several hours quietly staring out the window. She’s been watching the landscape transition from the warm familiarity of her homeland (as familiar as it can be when you’ve been locked in a castle your whole life, anyway) to the twisting conifers and dirt paths that make up Derse’s forests. When Dave had described it to her at their first meeting, she doesn’t think he did it justice.

The rain beating down on them is not accompanied by harsh winds or dark skies but rays of sunshine and a gentle breeze. It’s a heavy summer shower, with the sunlight shimmering off of the raindrops as they fall, filling the air with liquid gold. If Dave thought that there weren’t flowers in Derse, he was mistaken, because she can see star-shaped purplish-blue flowers and shrubs with drooping, bell-shaped flowers that transition from pale yellow at the base to dark pink at the tips of the petals lining the dirt road, swaying in the wind and bouncing with every drop of rain that hits them. Instead of grass on the ground between the trees and other plants, there’s moss, stones, and wide patches of dirt rapidly becoming mud. In the breeze, the rain, and the warm sunlight, it looks almost like the forest is dancing.

Jade wants to get out of the carriage and stretch her legs more than anything. Really, she just wants to get away from the miserably awkward quiet of it all. She suddenly misses the way that Dave would try to fill a room with himself if it was too quiet, where “too quiet” really seemed to mean quiet at all. Even when she was locking herself away at every given opportunity for most of the last three months, it had never been strictly quiet. John and Dave would talk in the halls, the knights would train on the grounds outside. More than it ever had been, the castle was full of life. And now this carriage is… lifeless.

She tears her gaze away from the window to look once more at the other passengers. Kanaya is seated next to her, her head leaned against the window as she dozes. Most of the carriages in Prospit don’t have windows, not ones with glass panes anyway, but Jade is grateful for them, considering the weather. Rose’s lady-in-waiting sits across from Jade, staring out her own window. Away from the scrutiny of the public and her parents, Rose, diagonal from Jade, slouches into the purple seats in the carriage. A book has been cracked open in her lap for hours, and it looks like she’s nearly to the end.

“What are you reading?” Jade asks, unable to take the quiet any longer. Rose blinks a few times, looking almost startled, and slides a ribbon sewn into the book’s cover to mark her place.

“It’s a text about hypothetical means of producing healing magic. It’s not really possible, but it’s an interesting read.”

Jade furrows her brow, a sense of dread growing in the pit of her stomach. “What do you mean it’s not possible?”

Rose gives her a look like she’s a child asking a question about something very obvious, and Jade feels her cheeks flush with embarrassment. “The only form of magically enhanced healing that has been successful is a sort of time magic that artificially ages the wound. However, this doesn’t do anything to prevent infection or to reset bones that heal wrong. About as many people die from the treatment as those who make miraculous recoveries—and that’s just soldiers on a battlefield. It’s never managed to heal any sort of serious illness.”

Jade’s jaw clenches tight against her will while her stomach does a terrible little flip. If magic can’t heal people, then what is it good for? What is she going to use it for? She doesn’t have any interest in military life or joining the clergy, and as far as she knows, those are the only other good uses for it. She’s past the point of pretending that her marriage is solely political in nature, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t want to learn magic and help her father anymore.

Tentatively, she asks, “But… wouldn’t that be useless, then? It’s just as risky as letting someone heal naturally all on their own without medical treatment at all, only you might kill them in an hour instead of a couple of weeks.”

Rose looks almost amused at this, and rolls her shoulders in a little shrug. “I suppose you could consider it a win-win. If it works, it can get a soldier back on his feet in a matter of minutes or hours instead of days or weeks. If it doesn’t work, it’s one fewer soldier taking up limited space in a med tent on the battlefield.” The very concept of this is horrifying to Jade. The idea that Derse’s soldiers’ lives could mean so little to them, even as their army is so much bigger than Prospit’s. Rose must see some of this turmoil on her face, because her smile softens and she adds, “Most healing mages work in conjunction with traditional healers, to treat the wounds.”

Jade’s mind is rushing to file this information away, rushing to try to sort through the other thousand questions she wants to ask. The last time that she was alone with someone she could talk to about magic, it was Dave, and it turns out that he’s never had any sort of firsthand experience with it. The experience that Rose seems to have, the experience that she’s describing—it seems so different from her own. It had seemed so intuitive to her that the warm light she would make to read late into the night as a child would so easily translate to healing.

Peering tentatively over at Kanaya to make sure that she’s still asleep, and then at Rose’s lady-in-waiting, who doesn’t seem to be listening in on their conversation in favor of staring outside, Jade scoots closer to Rose, until their knees nearly brush against each other, and whispers conspiratorially just like she had in the gardens, “What does magic feel like, to you?”

Rose seems reluctant to answer, and Jade can only imagine how superior the other girl must feel, having been learning about magic all her life. To her, it must seem like Jade is the most naive person in the world. And maybe she is, when it comes to magic—she doesn’t have the first clue about how to tap into the wellspring of it inside of her.

Eventually, she takes a deep breath and says, “It’s the most natural thing in the world. Learning how to use magic is… it’s like learning to swim, if swimming was something only an elite few could achieve. And actually using it is like being adrift in the sea, fighting against the tides for control; the deeper you swim, the weaker the waves, but the darker the waters.”

Jade can’t help but notice the way that her phrasing mirrors Dave’s from that first meeting in the gardens, and she wonders if Rose was the one who described it to him. Or maybe… 

“Was Dave born without magic? Or… did he lose it somehow?”

Again, Rose is quiet. Talking to her is like the opposite of talking to Dave. All of her words seem so carefully selected, like she needs to be especially conscious of how the things she says come across. There are long periods of silence between answers as she seems to mull them over. She talks like someone who has never had to beg to be listened to.

“Our parents tried for a very long time to help Dave learn magic. They must have spent a fortune on tutors—magical tutors can be very expensive. There are some people who still believe that only the upper classes and soldiers should be able to learn how to use magic, as though peasants are more likely to be corrupted by Their influence.” Jade can’t help but notice the way Rose seems to detach herself from this ideology. She wants to ask who They are, but before she can open her mouth, Rose continues, lips quirked into a small smile, “Our parents sought only the most experienced tutors. I remember one was convinced that Dave simply hadn’t found his nature yet—that there was a right type of magic for him. He had us trying out a new type of magic every week, and Dave was so frustrated with it that he complained to Father.” Her smile drops, then.

“Is that why your father is so cold to Dave? Because he couldn’t learn magic?”

Rose seems to withdraw a little, sitting up in that perfectly straight, poised posture she’s had every other time Jade has seen her. “Our father is just looking out for the security of the kingdom. I don’t think he would treat Dave any differently if he had magic. It’s common for princes to command the armies of their kingdoms before ascending to the throne. It is their way of proving themselves to the people.”

“But Dave isn’t ascending to the throne, is he?”

“...No. I am Derse’s heir apparent.”

“Does he treat you that way?”

Rose goes silent, her eyes dropping to her hands folded together in her lap. If she looks closely, Jade thinks she might see a tinge of guilt in the lines of her face, but it’s hard to tell with that characteristic stoicism she and Dave both have.

Jade doesn’t want Rose to feel guilty. She may not completely understand her relationship with Dave or the rest of their family, but she knows that she’s there for him in a way none of the rest of their relatives seem to be. She’s seen it with her own two eyes. “Thank you,” she says, somewhat abruptly, and Rose looks taken aback. “For what you did at the wedding,” she clarifies, and if anything, Rose only looks guiltier.

“You don’t need to thank me. Prospitian traditions are… unfamiliar to us, so I think we were all a little taken aback. I was just the first one to step up.”

They were never going to step up, she wants to say. She thinks they both know that, though, and it wouldn’t do anything to defuse Rose’s guilt. “Being the first one to step up is important. It’s certainly more important than quietly following other people your whole life. People who are wrong.”

Rose stares at her for a second, her expression completely indecipherable to Jade. It’s like a muted version of the way Dave had looked at her when she stood up for him in the face of her relatives’ criticisms, and Jade wonders if that’s what Rose sees this situation as. Defending her in the face of some criticism. She wonders how literal that criticism must be.

“I suppose that must be what good people do,” Rose responds somewhat absently. Jade notes the way she detaches herself from this idea, too.

“I think you’re a good person,” she says, cutting straight through to the implication of Rose’s words. What startles her the most is that she thinks she believes that. “Since the day we first met, Dave has been… weird about his family. Your family. I wish that he would talk to me about why, that he would tell me what happened, but I don’t want to pry. But… when he talks about you, it’s different. It’s… sad, kind of? I think that he’s sad that you two aren’t close, the way that you used to be. I think he really thinks that you’re different. And after what you did for him at the wedding, I see it, too. So, really, thank you. I can’t stand the idea of Dave being all alone, and I’m glad that there’s somebody who’s willing to stand up for him.”

Rose just keeps staring at her, her mouth open like she’s trying to speak and can’t pry the words out of her chest. With her alabaster skin, Jade can see that her cheeks are flushed, and she wonders if it’s guilt or embarrassment or something else. It’s frustrating how hard it is to read Dersites, and she guesses she’ll have to figure out how to if she’s going to survive here. But… she doesn’t seem upset. That has to count for something.

Kanaya wakes up before Rose finds whatever answer she was looking for, and her mouth snaps shut as Kanaya sits a little straighter and blinks her eyes open. She must sense some awkwardness, because she looks between the two of them and says, “Is everything alright?”

“Everything is fine,” Rose says, her voice a little too insistent. Jade thinks the flush to her cheeks must definitely have been embarrassment, then, and she’d apologize if Kanaya weren’t watching. After a moment, Rose softens, slouching down a fraction again, and asks, “Did you sleep alright?” From equal parts disinterest and fear of being rude, Jade doesn’t listen for the answer, eyes sliding back to the window.

The rain has settled to a light drizzle, and the sun has dipped behind the trees, leaving them under the cloak of darkness that comes with the early evening. Stars are just starting to peek through the blanket of daylight. Her mind wanders to Dave. She can’t imagine what it must have been like for him, being the least favorite child, kept apart from the only person in his family who cared about him. Her relationship with her father and John could be… complicated at times, largely due to their insistence on keeping her in isolation, but she didn’t doubt for a moment that they loved her.

She wonders what her relationship with Dave would be like if he did have magic—or if they would even have one. If Dave had magic, would he be the heir to the throne instead of Rose? And if he was heir to the throne, would the Dersite monarchs have allowed him to marry a Prospitian at all, let alone Prospit’s princess?

Suddenly, for the first time, she feels grateful that Dave doesn’t have any magic. Immediately after, she feels awful for it. It’s horribly selfish, to prioritize her marriage over his relationship with his family. She couldn’t imagine if their roles were reversed. Maybe her father would treat her the way his father treats him if he found out that she had magic, and maybe if someone asked John, he would defend it the same way that Rose defends it, even as she doesn’t even seem to fully believe it. The thought makes her chest ache, and she wishes that anything else was true for Dave. She wishes that there was something she could do to make their father see how amazing he is.

She lets her head sink against the glass and her eyes flutter shut. Rose and Kanaya are talking about something now, but she can barely hear them over the pattering rain and the fog of exhaustion.

She dreams that she and Dave are being crowned the king and queen, though she can’t quite tell whether it’s Derse or Prospit. When she looks out at the sea of people, there are familiar faces from home: John, Vriska, Karkat, Terezi. There are Dersites, too. Rose and her lady-in-waiting stand near the front of the crowd, and Rose is hand-in-hand with Kanaya. The queen is smiling at the both of them from the side, wearing a simple but elegant black dress. She turns toward Dave and leans up to kiss him. Finally.

Before their lips make contact, she feels someone shaking her, and her eyes flutter open. It’s not raining anymore—there are fluffy white clouds in the sky outside the window, as if she’d never left home at all. She turns toward the source of the shaking and sees Kanaya. “We’ve arrived at the palace,” she says, her voice soft, almost apologetic.

Karkat stands outside of the open door to the carriage, holding out a hand to help her step down. It doesn’t look at all like it’s rained here. The ground is dry, and a gentle breeze rustles a long field of grass leading up to the palace.

She is surprised by how simple the architecture is. It is a large building, with what must be dozens of windows inlaid in dark, slate-like stone. There are two tall towers at either end of the building, with large stained glass windows on the higher floors, while the rest of the palace must only be two or three stories. It is surrounded by a large stone terrace with a fountain streaming in the middle, and a large, immaculately groomed courtyard surrounds it, with a stone pathway that branches off toward a smaller building. From that building, several people come rushing over to them to grab their luggage and haul it inside.

She looks around with her brow furrowed. Rose’s lady-in-waiting is standing several feet away and stretching, her back arched like a cat’s and arms far above her head. Rose is walking toward the palace at a hurried pace, her book cracked open again and her nose buried in it as though she doesn’t have a care in the world about bumping into anyone else. This is apparently warranted, as the half-dozen people grabbing their things move fluidly around her. Karkat and Kanaya are both still standing by her side, like they’re waiting for her to start moving before they leave.

“Where’s Dave?” she asks.

Karkat and Kanaya look at each other, and she’s known both of them long enough to recognize when they look guilty. Kanaya’s cheek is dimpled, like she’s chewing on the inside of it, and she won’t meet Jade’s eyes. Karkat’s grey eyes are dulled to such a point they almost look black, his mouth pressed into a thin line.

“He… went to go check on the knights,” Karkat says eventually, his tone so carefully neutral that she can’t tell whether he’s lying or not. “To make sure they didn’t slack off in his absence.”

She feels disappointment settle in her gut, but she nods, locking her jaw to keep herself from frowning. When she turns toward the building, she’s startled to see Rose’s lady-in-waiting right next to her. Her approach had been so quiet, or maybe Jade was really that distracted. “I can show you to your room,” she says, with a peculiar sort of trill.

Jade follows her into the palace, and she’s too lost in thought to pay much attention. It’s dark, almost as dark as the castle had been, and she wonders what the point of all of those windows is if not to let in the sunlight. The girl, who introduces herself during the walk as Nepeta, leads her to one far side of the building, and they start climbing the stairs to one of the towers.

“Most of the bedrooms are in the towers,” Nepeta explains, even though Jade didn’t ask. “The middle portion of the palace is the ceremonial hall, the throne room, the war room, the library… stuff like that. The tower in the east wing is where guests stay, while the tower in the west wing is for full-time inhabitants of the palace. Oh! Except for the servants and the palace’s soldiers. They live in that smaller building you saw outside.”

Jade can’t help but notice that the stairs they’re climbing are in the west wing, and she feels a sense of relief over an issue she didn’t know she was dreading.

They don’t go all the way to the top floor. If Jade had to guess, there are still two or three floors above them when they stop and Nepeta holds open a door for her. “This is your bedroom,” she says, with a small smile. “There’s also a dressing room and a small study on this floor.”

The room is aggressively Dersite. It’s shaped like a semicircle, or perhaps like someone cut an octagon in half. Light bleeds into the room through a bay window nestled into the arc, splaying a half-rainbow of color on the floor through shards of stained glass. The two panels on each side are made from what must be a hundred small, jagged shapes in red, purple, and blue, depicting nothing in particular. The pane in the center must be made with a dozen different shades of purple, ranging from pale lavender to such a rich violet that it almost doesn’t let any light through, and there’s a single, large panel of clear glass in the shape of a crescent moon where she can see the natural blue of the sky. She imagines curling up on the cushioned window seat with a book, with the deep red curtains parted and held open by black hooks on the wall at either side like they are now.

The four-posted bed in the center of the room has thin, somewhat transparent sheets of fabric tied to each post and silk bedding that matches the color of the window curtains. The wooden furniture is stained so dark it’s nearly black, and the handles on the tall wardrobe in the corner of the room are dark-colored bronze. Jade can’t help but notice how… empty the room is. Devoid of life.

“Is this Dave’s room?” she asks, looking to Nepeta with her brow furrowed.

“Um, yes, I think so.”

Jade swallows and looks around the room again. It’s immaculately clean, not a speck of dust or a wrinkle in fabric in sight. But there are no pictures, no books, no… well, anything to indicate that anyone might actually live here. Her bedroom in Prospit had stacks of books she had taken from the library when she wasn’t done reading them, potted plants she would tenderly care for first thing in the morning, dolls from her childhood. This is… empty.

Chapter Text

Jade isn’t sure if Dave has actually been given a room separate from hers or if he’s simply been sleeping in the staffhouse to avoid her.

She never sees him. Of course, she’s seen him in passing since they’ve been in Derse, she’s not sure it would be possible for him to avoid her completely, but they’ve hardly spoken to each other. The Dersite royal family does not have dinner together every night the way that her family in Prospit does. In fact, it seems like they do their best to avoid seriously interacting with each other at all—it’s not just Dave being the black sheep. When Rose has a message for her, she sends Nepeta or Kanaya with it. She hasn’t seen the king once since she arrived, and she’s only seen the queen wandering through the halls like a ghost who has forgotten where it is or where it was supposed to be going.

Karkat brings her meals directly to her room for her. She’s tried to ask him about Dave’s whereabouts, but perhaps out of some sense of duty to spare her feelings, he refuses to tell her—and she doesn’t understand how he can’t see that this only makes her feel worse. She doesn’t understand what she did wrong after John’s coronation that he’s been so avoidant. Is it simply because she’s now a member of his family too?

The only times she has seen her sister-in-law have been the brief tours she and Nepeta have been giving Jade and Kanaya around the palace the last few weeks. It’s a large building, deceptively so, but mostly it’s taken so long because they get so caught up in talking. Rose and Kanaya seem to get along much better than Kanaya and Dave did while he was staying with them, and even though Jade doesn’t feel particularly up to chatting with anybody, she has to admit that it’s hard not to strike up a conversation with Nepeta.

“This is the library,” Rose says, stopping in front of a tall pair of double doors. Jade has been asking about it for days. “Our family has been collecting books on a variety of subjects for hundreds of years, so while there’s a substantial collection here in the palace, many are also stored in secondary buildings. If you can’t find something here, it’s likely in one of those.”

When she opens the doors, Jade has to admit that her breath catches in her chest a little. The library here is much larger than the one in the castle in Prospit. She supposes it’s likely due to a combination of factors. For one, Jade never saw what the library in the palace in the capital city must have been like. She’s sure it must have been larger than the one in the castle, where no one was meant to live long-term before she was born. For two, she’s willing to bet that there are fewer banned books in Derse, where magic is not a forbidden subject. She wonders how many books about magic they must have just in this room.

Rose is talking about something, but Jade doesn’t listen to her in favor of squinting at the books on the nearest shelf. She recognizes some of the titles from the bookstore in the village she and Dave had visited, and she concludes that (assuming the library has any sensical organizational system at all, anyway) this shelf must contain some number of medical texts. She makes a mental note to review them the next time she has free time alone. She might not be able to see her father anymore, but she can at least research his condition based on how it was progressing before she left and write a letter to John about it.

She remembers the conversation she and Rose had in the carriage about healing magic, and she wonders if there are any books here like the one she was reading. If the conversation then had gone better, she might have asked to borrow it after Rose was done with it. As it stands, she asks almost absentmindedly now, “Where are the books about magic?” When she glances back at them, all three of the other women look startled, though Kanaya’s expression eventually settles into something a little more disapproving.

Before anyone can get over their surprise long enough to answer her, one of the doors creaks open. When it’s cracked a few inches, a black cat slips into the room, practically twisting its whole body around Rose’s ankles with a loud, whining meow that clearly demands attention. “I know, I know, can you wait for two—” Dave freezes in the doorway, and Jade stares at him with wide eyes, her breath catching in her chest again for a very different reason.

Kanaya looks between the two of them and then tentatively suggests, “Perhaps we should leave you two alone to talk?” No one answers out loud, but Rose stoops down to pick up the cat and the three of them shuffle out of the room.

“I didn’t realize you had a cat,” Jade says, and she doesn’t know why those are the first words out of her mouth.

“It’s Rose’s cat. He just won’t leave me alone,” he answers, slowly, like he’s trying to be very careful with his words.

They stare at each other for another second in awkward silence, and Jade slides her arms up to wrap around herself. It’s a gesture she’s been using to comfort herself since childhood, when what she needed more than anything was some sort of physical comfort from people who were not there to give it to her.

“Have you been busy training with the knights?” she asks, trying to offer him an out. If he doesn’t want to see her, it’s not going to make her feel any better for him to force himself to do so just for her sake. Plus, if he takes the excuse, then she can try to convince herself that it’s true, even if she sees the guilt flash across his face before he can catch it.

“There’s war brewing with Viridan,” he answers after a moment, and she will grant, at least, that his voice sounds honest, if cautious. Then again, she guesses she hasn’t had much opportunity to hear his voice when he was lying—at least, she thinks she hasn’t. “We’re trying to prepare for the worst case scenario.”

“Are there a lot of countries you’re on the verge of war with?” she asks venomously.

She sees him flinch, and she feels bad immediately. He doesn’t answer her, his eyes drifting down to the floor under her feet. When she speaks again, her voice is a little softer. “What were you coming to the library for?”

“Honestly, I just wanted some privacy,” he answers, and somehow this makes her feel better. It helps to sell the idea that he really has just been busy and not avoiding her. “I don’t get much privacy here. Uh, at home.” There’s something hollow about the way he says home.

She supposes this makes sense, though. In Prospit, he was a noble visitor, with a bedroom all to himself, although she’s told he hardly used it. Beyond that, he was a Dersite, so even if people had found him charming, she would be surprised if anyone was particularly eager to spend time around him. His only obligation was training the knights, and that was on a schedule he set.

Here, he is the prince, and the commander of the army—the more time she spends here, the clearer it seems to her that he is much more the latter than the former. She thinks of how guilty Rose had looked when she asked why their father treats him so coldly. 

She has seen, in passing, Dave talking to the other knights, has even glimpsed him having a whispered conversation with Rose in the stairway, once. She still hasn’t seen either of his parents speak to him.

“What were… you doing in the library?” he asks, when she guesses the silence must have stretched on too long. She can’t help but smile, a little bit. So Dave hates the quiet no matter where you put him. She wonders why, and then her smile leaves as quickly as it had arrived when she realizes how much silence he must have been forced to sit through.

“Rose and Nepeta were showing us around the palace. It honestly doesn’t seem like there’s that much to do here, though, other than read in the library, I guess.”

“There’s more to do in town. I’ll show you sometime.” She thinks he says it before he has time to think about it, based on the way his face pales a little while hers brightens. She doesn’t think he meant to promise her anything, and she’s going to cling to that as tight as she can.

“Would you like to stay in our bedroom with me tonight?”

It must seem like a nonsequitur. One minute they’re talking about going into town at some point in the vague future, and then she’s inviting him to sleep with her. It’s just that as long as she’s getting promises out of him, she might as well try to get something a little more immediate and a little less vague. She can’t do all that much with one day, eventually, we’ll do something in town, if the palace gets too boring.

He doesn’t answer her verbally, but after a moment, he gives her that little smile, the one she had seen so much of back in Prospit that she was sure was reserved just for her, the one that she hasn’t seen since his parents arrived in Prospit weeks ago. It makes her heart flutter in her chest, and she grabs a few books from the nearby shelf and leaves him in the library.

The medical textbooks in Derse are written differently than the ones in Prospit, but they contain much of the same information. There is a chapter on wasting diseases that details the process by which people’s bodies begin to shed muscle and fat, which hypothesizes that there are small creatures living under the skin feasting on the body, causing the loss of mass. The detailed drawings of gaunt, tired men with skeletal faces and dark circles under their eyes make her stomach twist with nausea. Her father had been losing weight, but last she saw him, it hadn’t progressed this far. She can’t imagine that he could have gotten so much worse in only a few weeks, and yet she can’t help but picture him like these drawings anyway.

Another chapter details cancers, hard masses under parts of the skin where no such mass should exist. She knows that no such masses were identified on her father, and further, most of the cases detailed in the book seem to be inside of women’s breasts, but the other symptoms associated with the disease more closely match her father’s illness than anything else she’s read about thus far. There are several different proposals for where the disease may come from, but between the three books she had taken up to her study, she only finds two proposals for treatment: surgery, which is not an especially popular medical treatment in Prospit due to the risks associated, and purgatives.

For a little while, she allows herself to fantasize about the idea of healing magic. Perhaps no one has been able to successfully use magic to heal in the traditional sense before, but that doesn’t mean that she couldn’t be the one to figure it out, if she really devoted herself. She could still be the one to heal her father, to save his life.

While she thinks about it, she feels a familiar tingling warmth under her skin, like her heart is heating up into a miniature sun and sending sunbeams out to the rest of her body. It’s pleasant, and for just a moment, it’s easy to sink into, before she spots the little ball of light, no larger than a marble, rolling over her fingers almost like a conscious being trying to prompt her to play with it. She can practically hear the giggling.

Anxiety claws at her chest like muscle memory, held somewhere deep inside of her body from long nights spent petrified that her father and brother were going to find her out and… well, she was never sure what they would do, but she was terrified to find out. Jade can’t imagine a world where her father and her brother do not love her, but sometimes there are more important things in the world than love. If the people of Prospit found out that she had magic, and that the king had known and done nothing about it, it would mean a revolution. She doesn’t want that for her brother.

And she’s in Derse now. They sent her to Derse. Maybe, if she really wants to fool herself, she can tell herself it was because they already knew about her magic, and that was simply the kindest thing they could do for her.

But she remembers John’s insistence that they would see each other again at the wedding, and she has to believe that he meant it. She wishes she had made him promise to write to her. Maybe if she had, she wouldn’t have had to feel so completely alone the last few weeks, the exact way that he didn’t want her to. Then again, maybe if he heard about how alone she’s felt the last few weeks, he’d storm Vale himself and start another war.

She resolves to write him a letter in the morning about what she’d found in the medical texts. That can’t be too risky, can it? And it would mean that he would probably update her on Dad’s condition. If she wants to have any hope of finding a cure for him, magical or otherwise, no matter how slim, then she needs to keep herself apprised of his condition. In the meantime, Dave is supposed to be meeting her soon.

She plays with the wording of the letter in her mind as she peels off her clothes from the day. As she steps out of the chemise pooled at her feet, she tries to anticipate what sorts of questions John will probably ask her when he writes back—mostly so that she can try to pre-empt them in her own letter and avoid as many as possible. When she pulls her cotton nightgown down over her head and brushes her fingers through her curls to avoid tangles, she ponders what questions she wants to ask him. Do the people seem any more amenable to the arrangement now that she and Dave are married and in Derse? Has their father been able to come off of bedrest again since the wedding? Has he asked Vriska to marry him yet? She grins to herself at the last one.

Finally, as she’s twisting the long strands of her hair into a braid, there’s a knock on the door, and Jade can’t help but smile. It would be just like Dave to knock on the door to his own room.

“I was starting to think you weren’t coming,” she says with a teasing tone and a grin as she opens the door, only for her grin to fade and her heart to drop to her stomach as she sees Karkat with a tray of food for her. In the depths of her research, she had forgotten about dinner.

“I’m sorry, Jade, I guess there was some sort of delay in the kitchens and—” She takes the tray from him with a weak attempt at a smile and turns back into the room, trudging to sit in the bay window and look out on the grounds.

She can feel Karkat lingering in the doorway more than she can see or hear him, and she thinks he probably wants to offer her some sort of comfort, but it’s likely he doesn’t know how. She hesitates for a second, and then glances over at him. “Do you know where Dave is? Or what he’s doing?” she asks, even as she doesn’t expect a real answer.

It’s hard for her to identify the look that flashes across his features. There’s a sense of anger there, she thinks, but she's smart enough to recognize that it’s not at her. She sees his nostrils flare as he sucks in a sharp breath, and his face smooths out a little before he starts talking. “I haven’t seen him today. I’m sorry.” She can tell that he’s being honest—she does have experience with Karkat’s lying, and even though he is generally very good at it, she’s always been able to see right through him—but somehow that just makes it worse. So he’s not even training with the knights to avoid her?

Karkat lingers in the doorway for an extra second, and she can tell that he wants to say something more but doesn’t think it’s entirely appropriate to say. After a second, he just mumbles, “Goodnight, Jade,” and leaves.

She turns her head to stare out the window again. After a few minutes, she sees Karkat scurry across the courtyard and into the staffhouse through the clear crescent-shaped pane of glass. Even from a distance it looks like he’s fuming. She wonders what he’s so mad about—well, she doesn’t, really. Just like John, he’s been protecting her practically their whole lives. If she had to level a guess, he’s upset with Dave for hurting her feelings.

She doesn’t want him to be upset with Dave for her. She’s perfectly capable of being upset for herself, and it makes just as much of a difference. And it isn’t Dave’s fault that his father is so war hungry that he’s constantly stretching Derse’s army thin, nor that he was exiled to the role of a soldier instead of royalty from an early age because he can’t use magic. Based on what Dave said earlier today and what he told her back in Prospit, she’s lucky that he’s still here and hasn’t been deployed somewhere. Reflecting on that conversation makes her feel especially childish—she had told him then that she was used to being alone. If he had to be gone so often, she could do what a good wife would do and grin and bear it, rather than stomping her feet and throwing a temper tantrum like a child. Still, she hadn’t thought that he would feel so far away when he was still on the palace grounds.

She doesn’t touch her food. It’s childish, starving herself so a boy will pay attention to her, but she doesn’t have much of an appetite in the face of her disappointment. She stays propped up in the windowsill, staring out at the courtyard like she might see Dave emerge from the building and start walking up to their room with an apology about how he’s had a long night. Eventually, staring at the courtyard is too painful, so she tears her eyes up to the sky instead.

The constellations look different in Derse than they did at home, not helped by the purple tinge of the glass. Different stars shine brighter here, and some aren’t visible at all anymore. She wishes that she had John with her to help her spot their favorites from when they were children, but she guesses she’ll just have to get better at doing that on her own now. She’s going to have to get better at doing a lot of things on her own. Her eyes drift up to the moon, the thin sliver of a waxing crescent the palest hint of purple, as though the window had painted it in watercolors. She remembers the big yellow harvest moons at home, when the moon was full and it looked so close you could touch it. There had been one that first night that she and Dave met, when their marriage was arranged.

She doesn’t know how long passes just sitting at the window before her limbs start to feel heavy with exhaustion and she can hardly keep her eyes open. She knows that she should pry herself away from the window and go to bed, but she still wants to believe… After a blink that she almost can’t open her eyes from, she casts a last longing look at the courtyard and the building her husband should be emerging from.

Now, she guesses, she knows what Dave is like when he’s lying—and it hurts because it doesn’t seem distinguishable from the truth at all. John is a terrible liar, and he had a thousand tells you could always pick out. Karkat is a good liar, but there are still ways to tell when he’s not telling the truth, like the way he shifts from foot to foot or the way his lips tug down just slightly in a frown unlike his usual ones. Dave didn’t even have to use words to lie to her. He had just smiled, and it had felt so sincere.

Chapter Text

Jade wakes up with her head leaned against the window, the glass warmed to skin temperature from her cheek. A shiver runs through her anyway. She hadn’t been thinking of anything when she fell asleep—she wasn’t even trying to fall asleep—but there was a part of her that was still hoping Dave would make his way into their bedroom at some point in the middle of the night with a soft explanation about how he had gotten caught up in training exercises. Sure, maybe she didn’t see the soldiers training when she was staring out the window, but for all she knows, they could have been doing it inside. She has no idea what the inside of the other building looks like.

When she lifts her head to glance outside, the sun is still rising, giving the sky a pale grey-blue sort of color through the clear portion of the window, and if she squints, she thinks she can see snowflakes drifting down to the ground. That gets her to sit bolt upright immediately. Jade has never seen snow in person before. Even the northern part of Prospit that she grew up in does not get very cold even during the winter, so the idea that it could snow before autumn seems fantastical to her. She remembers Dave telling her that Vale was warmer during the summer than the rest of the country, so she figures this must be some sort of anomaly.

She tells herself that she is not going to mope about Dave. She is not the sort of needy little girl to cry in her bedroom with the pillows pulled over her head just because somebody is avoiding her, even if that somebody is her husband. She had plenty of other, non-Dave reasons for coming to Derse in the first place, and she’s been neglecting them to whine enough as it is. She is going to get dressed in something weather-appropriate and go outside and play in the snow, and tomorrow, she is going to go to the library and find the books on magic.

A wrench is thrown in that plan when she opens the bedroom door to find herself face-to-face with Dave, barely stumbling back in time to avoid bumping into his chest. When she looks up at his face, there is a fresh bruise on his cheekbone and he looks almost startled, but by the time that she blinks, he’s back to his perfectly expressionless stoicism.

She wants to confront him for not showing up last night. She wants to yell at him and say that she stayed up late waiting for him to join her and he just never showed up. She wants him to earnestly apologize for standing her up and offer her a damned good explanation for it. She doesn’t think any of that would be very productive, though.

“Hey,” she says softly instead, and she has to force herself to look away from the bruise and up to his eyes, even though they’re still hidden.

“Hey,” he says back, and it’s hard to read any sort of emotion from it—even harder than usual. He seems… cautious. “Did I wake you?”

She thinks that this idea is funny, because it’s not like he had knocked or made any noise, but then she realizes that she’s still wearing her nightgown. She refuses to be embarrassed for her state of undress in front of him. They’re married! This is all normal!

She thinks her cheeks are probably flushed anyway as she redirects, “I was going to go for a walk. Would you… like to join me?”

She doesn’t know how to explain it, but something about him seems almost amused even as his face doesn’t do anything. “How ironic. I was just coming up here to ask if you wanted to go on a walk with me.”

It’s silly to hesitate. She was already planning to go on a walk, and she had asked him first. But the part of her that is still recovering from so recent a betrayal is afraid to find out how he’ll hurt her next. The lonely part of her that has been longing for his presence for weeks protests this idea, and that part of her has been festering for a lot longer. “I’ll need to change into my winter clothes,” she says, and she thinks she catches the barest hint of a smile as he nods.

Only a few of her day dresses are kept in the wardrobe in their bedroom, mixed among men’s clothing that she presumes must belong to Dave even if he’s never come into the room to retrieve them. Most of her clothes are instead kept in the dressing room across the hallway from the bedroom, and she waits until Dave has disappeared down the stairs to enter it.

She stares at the clothes in the dressing room for longer than is probably reasonable. Most of it is her own wardrobe from home, butter yellow and sky blue silk dresses and the brown, green, and white clothes she used to wear for gardening. There are a few additions, though, likely selected for precisely this sort of situation, as it’s not like she had an especially large winter wardrobe (or any at all) back at home. Prospit barely has winter, and she was hardly allowed to spend any time outside unless she was gardening, anyway. What would she have needed one for?

What shocks her is that the additions to her wardrobe have been carefully selected to match the fashion in Prospit, and she wonders which poor maid was forced to do the research about that. She was so sure that she would be forced to match the dark colors of Derse that seeing the clothes in the wardrobe dominated by pastels makes her chest squeeze with affection, and she has no one with a name to send it to.

The outfit that she selects is not pastel, but she wears a creamy white blouse and a forest green skirt, both made of a comfortable wool. The skirt only comes down to her ankles, and she thinks it must only be calf-length on a person with any real height. It’s shorter than anything she’s ever worn, but the brown boots that she wears under it come up nearly to her knees, so she lacks any exposed skin for the cold to bite at or men to stare at. She tugs on the long brown cloak hanging from a hook on one of the armoire’s doors and practically skips down the stairs to meet Dave.

Dave is waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs, and she wants to hook her arm through his before they begin walking, but she suspects that he would flinch away from the touch before she was even able to make contact. She walks close to his side instead, and smiles brightly at him when he holds the door for her on the way outside.

Her breath puffs out in front of her in a misty cloud of white, and there must be stars in her eyes as she notices, a grin spreading on her face. She sprints out several feet further from the door, head tipped back to stare up at the sky as snow flutters down, individual snowflakes catching in her hair. She’s already sticking her tongue out to catch them before she’s even stopped.

“Be careful,” Dave says behind her, and when she looks over her shoulder at him, he’s got that tiny little smile again. It tugs at her chest and pulls her back to him like a magnet, full speed regardless of his warning. Of course, she almost slips on a patch of ice, and he throws his hands out to catch her by the shoulders. “Don’t want that to happen.”

She stares up at his face for a moment, her eyes flicking to his mouth, and then straightens herself out as her cheeks flush, eyes now pointed straight at her feet.

They walk in silence for a long time. For the most part, it is comfortable, and she watches as the snow starts to form a thin layer on the ground that crunches under their feet like dry leaves. She thinks about dropping down and rolling around in it like a child, but she doesn’t especially want to look like a child in front of Dave. Still, she can’t entirely keep herself from sticking her tongue out to catch more snowflakes when she thinks he isn’t looking.

As they approach the edge of the grounds and start to reach the treeline, the silence starts to feel a little oppressive, so she tentatively attempts to strike up conversation. “I’ve never seen snow before,” she says softly, still somewhat amazed by the way that the air in front of her mouth turns into puffy clouds with every breath. The priests in Prospit would never emotionally recover. “I mean, I’ve seen it in paintings. But the last time it snowed in Prospit was before I was born.”

“It’s always cold in Derse,” Dave says, rolling his shoulders in a shrug, and she thinks that he must be exaggerating. “Usually, the summer lasts a little longer. This is early for a first snow. But this is hardly the first time in my life it’s snowed in the summer. I wouldn’t be surprised if it snowed on our wedding anniversary.”

The mention of their wedding anniversary brings a warm flush to her cheeks, and she can feel a snowflake melt against her skin as it drifts too close to her face. She was starting to wonder if he had somehow managed to forget that they were married. Or worse—that he regretted it just as much as she was afraid she would. She doesn’t want to think about all of that right now, so she offers him a bright smile.

Instead, she tries to imagine living like this, in a world where it is always winter. She thinks that it’s beautiful, but as the mounting white snow starts to overcome the green grass, she thinks that she would miss gardening and seeing little wildflowers pop up in the spring. Dave had said that there weren’t plants in Derse, and while she can see with her own two eyes that there are certainly some plants here, evergreen trees whose pinecones are now small and brown rather than the blushing little buds they were when they crossed the border, it’s still nothing like her gardens. “Do you prefer the cold?”

“I always hated it,” he answers with another shrug and no hesitation, and she furrows her brow.

“Okay, hypothetical question,” she starts, almost startling herself. “Let’s say that we didn’t have to live in Derse anymore. All of the wars in the world ended and you… retired with honors or something.” He scoffs a barely-audible laugh, a tiny cloud in front of his face the only trace of evidence left behind as he quickly stifles his smile. She beams brighter at him. “Let’s say we moved to… I don’t know, Prospit. Do you think you would miss all the snow?”

“They would never let me live there,” he says, though there’s no trace of bitterness in his voice, not like when he talks about Derse. Her smile dims just as quickly as it had lit up.

“What do you mean? Of course they would,” she insists, without any real reason to believe it.

“I might not have any magic, and I might have married the princess, but I’m still a Dersite. Always will be.” After a second, so much softer she almost doesn’t hear it, he murmurs, _{“Too Dersite for Prospit, not Dersite enough for Derse…”}

“Dave…”

“Do you miss it?” he asks, swiftly cutting off whatever she might have said so smoothly she almost can’t tell that’s what he was doing. Almost.

For a second, she wants to ignore his question. She wants to push, to keep prodding until he finally caves and talks to her. She’s scared that he’d leave before he’d talk, though, so instead she finally says, “I miss… parts of it. I miss John. I miss Dad. I miss my gardens at the castle. But I don’t regret coming here with you.”

His shoulders relax a fraction, and she hadn’t even realized they were tense. After a moment, he says, “I always preferred traveling to warmer places like Viridan. Especially during the winter, when the weather gets especially harsh. I don’t think I’d miss it.”

She chooses not to pry about whether he means the winter or Derse. She thinks she knows the answer. “Do you think I could ever go with you?”

Something like guilt flashes across his face, and he looks almost pained. That’s more of an answer than anything he could say out loud, which is good, in a way, because he doesn’t say anything out loud. Silence settles over them again—uncomfortable, dragging silence, and she’s tired of uncomfortable, dragging silences. It’s not just Dave. It’s like nobody knows how to talk to her anymore. Maybe they never did.

The snow is really starting to pile up now, and an idea flashes through her mind that she sets into motion before she has time to talk herself out of it. She stoops down to start scooping snow up with her bare fingers, and she had anticipated it would be cold, but it's like the joints in her fingers instinctively lock up to protect against freezing and she has to force them to move. She should have worn gloves. She’s not even sure if she owns any.

She takes a good few steps back, but she doesn’t have much time to move before the snow starts to melt against her fingers, so when she throws it, it’s less of a throw and more of a shove, and it’s less of a ball so much as vaguely lumpy mush. It plops pathetically against Dave’s chest, and he just sort of stares at her for a second.

She feels like she may have miscalculated. Things were obviously tense between them, and if she was worried about looking like a child in front of him earlier because of her excitement, then playing in the snow probably isn’t doing her any favors. He doesn’t want some silly little girl for a wife—who would? But then she sees his face starting to split with a grin, and excitement stirs in her gut again as he bends over to start gathering snow in his own gloved hands, which seems like an unfair advantage that she probably should have considered before getting them into this.

She realizes belatedly that he has a perfectly clear shot of her and probably much more experience with snowball fights (as is clearly indicated by the perfectly round little ball that he’s forming in his hands), and she turns to start running away. She doesn’t really know where she’s going, though, and the last thing that she wants is to spoil their fun by getting lost, so she turns at the last moment to dart to the side where she can still keep him in her peripheral vision. None of this stops her from taking a snowball straight to the center of her back, and she shrieks.

“That’s not fair!” she says, but she’s laughing too much for it to properly come across as scolding. “Your hands are… bigger than mine, your snowballs are going to be better!”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before starting a snowball fight with me,” he replies without missing a beat, and he’s laughing, too.

“Then prepare yourself; I am determined to win my very first snowball fight!”

“Oh, of course. I wouldn’t want you to go easy on me just because I’m a high-ranking military official who is perfectly qualified to rain down on you with righteous retribution. Or, you know, your husband.” He tacks on that last bit somewhat sheepishly, and it makes her chest squeeze. Maybe she didn’t mess up as much as she thought she did.

Her grin grows a little wider, and she at least has the advantage of being stationed much closer to the ground, so she barely has to bend at the knees to start scooping up snow into another snowball, still poorly formed but much larger this time.

For the most part, they stay in the same little area, running circles around each other. She thinks that Dave must be aware of the fact that she doesn’t have much experience running around on ice and snow, which makes them one tragic slip away from him hiding her body in the woods somewhere. Instead they try other means of hiding from each other’s assault, ducking behind trees and carefully peering over their shoulders to make sure that the other hasn’t gotten too close. Jade has the advantage here, too, because she’s actually small enough to properly hide behind the trees. Dave is a relatively lanky guy, with muscles that seem better suited to agility than brute strength, but that doesn’t change how much more broad-shouldered he is than her and how thin the trees are. All of the bottom branches of the tall conifers appear to have been chopped off for reasons unbeknownst to Jade.

The only thing that’s helping her to contain her giggles as she carefully builds another snowball in her hands, her fingers starting to tinge red from the cold, is just how out of breath she is. It’s an impossibly airy feeling, laughing while she plays in the snow with her husband, and she hasn’t been this happy in weeks. Months maybe. Any thoughts of Dave avoiding her or missing home have been thoroughly chased away, off somewhere past the visible treeline with snow piling down on top of them. They are cold and buried exactly where they belong, which is also what Dave is going to be after she throws this next snowball.

A sequence of events so comedically improbable immediately unfolds: As she turns to bend around the tree and launch her newest weapon, she yelps with surprise as she comes face-to-chest with Dave for the second time today. She tries to stumble back a step, but her foot finds a slick spot and slips out from under her. He reaches out to catch her again, but as her feet knock into his ankles, he falls down with her.

He catches himself on his elbows when they crash into the ground, which means that he at least doesn’t crush her. She might not have survived that. But they’re still close enough that their puffs of breath mingle in the air as they both pant with the adrenaline-fueled mix of fear from the fall and excitement from the fight.

She can’t help but stare at his face. He’s closer than they’ve ever been before, and from here she can see the shape of his eyes through his glasses—no, she realizes a moment too late, his glasses have fallen off, and she’s seeing his bare eyes for the first time.

They’re beautiful. They’re a vibrant shade of red, but she wouldn’t go so far as to call them unnatural. They’re the color of roses and garnets and apples and songbirds and blood. They’re the most natural color in the world.

She can see the panic in them, though, and it makes her chest throb. She’s not supposed to be seeing him like this, she realizes that, so she feels blindly around in the snow under them until she finds his glasses, thankfully unbroken. She steals a last second to look at his eyes and really burn them into her memory before she carefully slides them back onto his face, hugging the tall, aquiline bridge of his nose.

She hesitates a moment, and her hand slides from his nose to his cheek, her fingers just brushing against the bruise under his eye. She thinks she hears him hiss through his teeth, but when her eyes flash down to his mouth for a moment, his breath is still puffing out in front of him normally, so she chalks it up to her imagination. He leans into her touch, lets out a long, slow breath, and then starts to lean his face down closer to hers.

He seems to realize what he’s doing after a minute, though, and he rolls off of her. He sits in the patch of snow next to her while she’s so stunned that she just lays on the ground staring up at the sky with wide eyes, her heart still racing (or perhaps racing again). When she finally sits up to look at him, his whole body is visibly tense. Just as she’s about to ask what’s wrong, he says, “I should get started on training for the day.”

She feels something like despair wash over her, and the desire to beg him to stay makes her feel tiny and weak. He stands up and brushes snow off of his pants, and then reaches down to help pull her to her feet. His tone is softer as he asks, “Do you need an escort back to the palace?”

She looks at the woods around them again. There’s still something unfamiliar about them, and with the snow washing away anything on the landscape that might stand out, the risk that she might get lost if she stays by herself only grows. Still, even with her fingers turning a shade of red that could rival his eyes, she doesn’t want to leave the quiet serenity of the woods quite yet. And she likes the idea of being able to navigate them on her own. “No, I’m alright,” she dismisses, and she thinks he hesitates before he nods.

She lets the disappointment sink into her body as he walks away, shoulders slumping. For the first time since they got to Derse, she thought they were having a moment— the sort of moment that she’d gotten a taste for in Prospit, and even though he warned her that they couldn’t spend as much time together in Derse, she can’t help the selfish part of her that misses it. If she could travel back in time to strangle herself for avoiding it for so long, she would, but then she would never get the opportunity to make up for it now.

That night, though, as she’s in bed allowing herself to wallow in self-pity a little bit, she’s startled by the bedroom door cracking open. She stares with wide eyes as Dave quietly slips into their room and starts to peel his armor off.

Neither of them says a word as he all-but collapses into bed. She’s scared of breaking whatever spell this is, and she suspects he doesn’t want to acknowledge what’s happening out loud.

She turns onto her side and tucks herself into his chest, warmth radiating from his skin and blossoming into her whole body. After a while, still silent, he wraps an arm loosely around her back, and her heart hammers against her ribs. It takes her forever to fall asleep like that, no matter how comfortable he is to cuddle into, because finally, he’s here.

Chapter Text

She doesn’t see Dave every night. Some nights, he doesn’t come to bed at all. Some nights, he comes to bed so late that the sun is already threatening to peek over the horizon, and she only knows he’s there because she feels his warmth next to her and does her best to squirm closer. Still, she’s doing something dangerous—she’s getting used to having him in bed with her. Some nights she’ll wake up and feel for a warm body that isn’t there and then spend hours fighting and failing to get back to sleep. She doesn’t see him every night, but she hopes to see him every night, and it’s starting to have an effect on her.

It’s been dark outside for hours, and she stares at the canopy over her head while she tries to force herself to sleep instead of listening for Dave’s footsteps approaching the door. There’s no predictable pattern to when he comes to bed, either which nights or what hour, so it’s really quite silly to stay up waiting for him. She knows that.

That doesn’t change the fact that her brain latches onto every tiny sound as a potential sign that he’s about to join her, which isn’t helped at all by the wind making all of the trees outside creak. She cracks an eye open to cast a longing glance at the window, but she refuses to get out of bed so she can try to look for him more properly. She’d already fallen asleep waiting for him at the window once, and she doesn’t need or want to do it again, especially not with the weather making a turn for the colder. The snow had melted only the day after it had fallen, but the official start of autumn had brought with it the bitter wind that currently torments her with hopeful expectations of her husband’s arrival.

So she stays in bed, still barely warm enough to keep off shivering even under two blankets and trying very hard not to think about the fact that she wouldn’t be so cold if she weren’t alone. What she needs is something to occupy her mind. It’s the quiet, the sitting alone with her own thoughts that has her longing for Dave’s presence. Certainly not that she misses him. It would be silly to miss him when she had seen him only yesterday, and when she knows that he can’t spend every night with her, even if she doesn’t know why.

With another shiver running up her spine, she pulls the blankets a little tighter around her shoulders and curls into herself. If this is only autumn, she can’t imagine what winter must be like. The cold weather had been much more enchanting when it was accompanied by snow and could be blocked out by lying still in bed for long enough. And there were fun things to do in the snow, even if it hadn’t been around for all that long. She thinks of her snowball fight with Dave and it brings a flush to her cheeks that is, frankly, relieving.

But of course, that’s another thought of Dave. She looks at the window again, and then jams her eyes shut.

What must he be doing at this hour? Surely they’re not training in the middle of the night. She remembers what he had said in Prospit about rest.

That Karkat had refused to tell her where Dave was or what he was doing during their first few weeks in Derse feels like evidence enough that he had been avoiding her. But he’s been climbing into bed with her for weeks now—not every night, of course, but sometimes. It doesn’t make any sense to Jade that he could still be avoiding her.

The horrible image of Dave getting caught in the cold outside while trying to make his way to her flashes behind her closed eyelids, and she squeezes them tighter shut to try to force it away. This is silly. It’s not raining or snowing. There’s no ice on the ground. Dave has lived through all of the seasons in Derse, and just because she’s shivering and miserable doesn’t mean he’s some helpless little duckling all of a sudden.

When she slides out from under the blankets, it takes several minutes before she can even move.

If she had thought she was cold under the blankets, she must be at risk of frostbite now. She’ll just run down to check that Dave hasn’t turned into a Davecicle on the front steps of the palace and climb right back into bed. Once she has reassurance that he’s okay (and of course he’s going to be okay, she’s being silly), she’s sure she’ll be able to go to sleep with no fuss. It’s anxiety, that’s all. She’s used to him in bed with her by now, isn’t she?

She tugs one of the blankets off of the bed and wraps it around her shoulders before she leaves the room to start down the stairs. The stone under her feet is as cold as ice, and every step makes her hiss through her teeth. There’s a draft through the stairwell as though there’s a window open on one of these floors, and she wonders which sociopath is able to sleep like this as another shudder that makes her teeth chatter rips through her.

The main hall that leads to the front doors is not any warmer, but at least she doesn’t have to try to drag herself down any more stairs. She stares at the large doors that mark the entrance to the palace. They must be at least twice as tall as her, and it’s a weird thing to realize, but she doesn’t think that she’s ever opened them herself before. She’s never left the palace by herself before, and even when she had come back from her walk with Dave a few weeks ago, there had been someone waiting at the door to help her inside. (She suspects he had asked someone to look out for her to make sure that she got back okay, even though she specifically told him that she would be fine by herself. It’s hard to really be mad about it.)

Her fingers are stiff with cold when she frees one hand from the blanket to grab the large brass handle on one of the doors. It’s freezing to the touch.

The door is heavy, and for a second, after it clicks, it doesn’t move at all. She has to put in a great effort to shove it, and then all at once, it flings open, pushed by the wind until it slams against the stone wall that serves as the building’s face. The wind bites at her fingers and toes, and it takes all of the strength she has to cling to the blanket around her body so it doesn’t get whipped away. A few thin wisps of hair are pulled loose from her braid and fly in front of her eyes, forcing her to squint through the darkness.

Through the night and the wind, it’s hard to make out much of anything. She thinks the lights in the little stone building across the courtyard might still be on, but they’re so faint that she could just as easily be imagining it. What she’s certain she doesn’t see is Dave, and of course she doesn’t. Why would he be out here with the weather like this? She was being silly, trying to convince herself that he wasn’t coming to their room for any reason other than simply not wanting to. He’s probably sleeping soundly in the staffhouse with the other soldiers.

She grasps blindly for the door handle, but it’s out of reach while she’s tucked in the warmth and safety of the palace walls. The idea of stepping out into the wind makes her shudder, but she reasons that it’s only for a second.

When she takes the first step past the doorway, the force of the first icy draft nearly knocks her over, and she clings to the solid wood of the door for support. Her hair whips into her face and threatens to leave angry lashes against her skin, and the blanket goes flying off of her shoulders, leaving her standing there shivering against the cold in only her nightdress. This was such a monumentally stupid idea.

Pressing her body tightly against the door, she ignores the stinging numbness in her limbs to inch closer to the edge of the entryway. Her fingers barely have enough feeling to tell without looking when they make contact with the door handle again, but she can’t crack her eyes open enough to look, so she grabs blindly for it until she’s sure her hand is wrapped around it. She hauls on it with her entire body weight, and the wind howls at her like it’s actually trying to argue with her, pressing her more insistently against the door. Another shudder rips through her body and her teeth start to chatter, and she practically throws her other arm forward to pull on the handle with both hands.

With a final loud, angry wheeze, the wind breaks enough that she’s able to bring the door slamming closed, narrowly avoiding shutting any parts of her body in it.

She stands there with her back pressed against the door, panting and shivering, and unfortunately, it’s still so cold inside of the palace that the lack of wind blowing against her doesn’t do much for the frost nipping at her whole body. At least it doesn’t feel like it’s actively slicing through her anymore, though.

She should go back upstairs to their room. The wind may have stolen the blanket that she brought down with her, but there’s still one up there, and that’s better than standing here in next-to-nothing just waiting for someone to find her while her limbs freeze solid. She should be asleep, and maybe, if she’s lucky, she’ll see Dave tomorrow.

Her limbs feel too heavy to climb up all of the stairs without a rest, and she reasons that anywhere away from the door to the courtyard has to be an improvement. Wrapping her arms tight around herself like she can physically hold in whatever warmth is left in her body, she trudges toward the library instead. Of the rooms on this floor, it’s the most welcoming one, and she doubts that she’d warm up significantly more sitting in the empty war room, staring at the table where the king gives her husband his orders about what corner of the continent he’ll be forced to pillage next.

The door opens with a creak that she swears she’s never heard in the daytime, like it’s trying to announce to the whole palace how stupid she was. She winces. She regrets not bringing the lantern from her study for a reading light as she squints through the dark at the shelves and shelves of books. She tries to find something that can either exhaust her enough to go back upstairs and finally find rest or occupy her mind well enough that she can get through the rest of the night without miserably laying in bed and waiting for her husband on the slim chance that he is just having an especially late night until someone comes to wake her.

It feels as though one particularly tall and fat book calls to her. There is no title etched into the leather cover, so dark it’s nearly black, or into the well-worn spine. When she opens it to look through the first few pages, she finds that it’s hand-written in looping cursive that she can barely read in this light. She brings it back to her seat anyway.

Between the lack of light and her own lack of understanding, it takes forever to read even a single page of the book. She keeps going over the same sentences over and over, reading one and then going back to re-decipher the words with the new context provided by the next sentence. It’s clearly a very old book, between the yellow-brown color of the aged paper, the musty smell from the pages, and the outdated language. She thinks it might be someone’s journal, but it’s hard to decipher who—someone from the royal family, she has to presume, but beyond that there’s little in the way of context clues. The book mentions war a few times, but that’s about as useful in Derse’s history as mentioning magic would be.

Of course, eventually it does mention magic. The descriptions make Jade’s breath catch in her chest. She’s never seen such a detailed account before, and her attempts at conversation with the Dersites around her haven’t yielded much better results. It feels like she’s been given a gift.

There have been a few passing mentions of the Horrorterrors on previous pages, but now the book describes them in detail: Old gods living in a realm called the Furthest Ring who choose human pawns to lend their power to for mysterious, unknown goals. Some of them are named things like Fluthlu, Nrub’yiglith, and Oglogoth, but the vast majority appear to be nameless. They are divided into circles of sorts, with Oglogoth being identified as the smallest of the Smaller Gods, operating in service to the Middling Gods, who in turn carry out the will of the Noble Circle. This is the origin of magic, a communion with beings so ancient and eldritch that merely learning too much of their nature can corrupt the mind irreparably.

Learning magic begins with learning to commune with the Terrors in a tongue so ancient it almost cannot be identified as language, which the writer of the journal seems to view almost as a form of prayer. Jade’s mind flashes to Dave when they point out that those who aren’t magically gifted from birth can still commune with the Terrors to attempt to curry favor, though this almost invariably results in the user going mad. The old gods, apparently, don’t care for communication that isn’t initiated on their terms.

With the help of learned tutors, those who have been able to make contact are able to ask for more power from the Terrors, in exchange for, it seems, typically unknown favors to be carried out at a later time.

The author also talks about other sources of magic. There are mentions of the fey and something called a First Guardian, but even the author refers to these as dying practices and doesn’t offer much further information on them.

She has a thousand questions about these. There are tales of the fey in Prospit, old ones, but she’s never heard of a First Guardian before. First Guardian of what? Does “First” imply the existence of other Guardians? And could the magic that these beings offer differ from the magic people can pull from the Horrorterrors? Perhaps the things Dersites think are impossible to do with magic could be possible if only they found the right source.

Jade skips ahead several pages, not out of boredom but rather enthusiasm to see whether the author gets more in-depth in the later pages. She’s not disappointed, as they start to explain different types of magic that one can manifest in detail. The page that she’s opened to is describing the same sort of time magic that Rose was talking about before, drawing some special distinction between magic that turns time forward versus magic that turns time backward. The pseudo-healing that Rose described seems to be the former (and she can’t help but wonder why), but it seems like a highly technical process that Jade can’t fully wrap her head around. It still fills her with a renewed sense of excitement and gratitude to the mysterious journal author.

The further she gets into the book, the more warmth seems to bloom through her body, and she’s aware of a light slowly filling the room more than she actually sees it, because she can’t tear her eyes away from the book to look around her. It shouldn’t surprise her, considering how long it had taken her to get through just the first page of the journal, that the sun is coming up. It hadn’t felt like that long, and she can’t quite convince herself to put the book down when it feels like she’s almost reached what she’s really looking for.

Still, there’s an exhaustion spreading at the edge of her awareness, and with the newfound warmth in her limbs and an almost tingling sensation at the tips of her fingers, she’s fighting to stay awake more and more with each passing moment. She had told herself she was only coming to the library to warm up before going back to bed, but how can she sleep now?

There’s almost a pleasant sort of daze as she reads through each new section, like the comfort of sinking into Grandpa’s chest when he used to read her bedtime stories. The brighter the light gets, the more it starts to feel like laying in the sun, basking in its rays and soaking up the heat like a cat. She’s waging a war with herself at this point. Her eyes flutter shut, and she almost doesn’t have the will to open them again.

A hand on her arm pulls her back to herself, and the room shrinks back into something dark and cold as her eyes snap open to see Dave staring at her in a sort of mute horror. He’s so close she can see the outline of his eyes through his sunglasses—and she’s sure they’re there this time, wide open with what she can only identify as fear. It’s not just his eyes. He looks pale, his chest heaving with labored breaths like he’d run here. She sees the blanket she’d lost to the wind in his hand, and her chest squeezes with guilt.

A moment of silence passes between them. Jade doesn’t know what to say. She has the uncomfortable, itchy feeling that she should apologize. She has no idea what it is she’s supposed to be apologizing for, but Dave looks so afraid. Did he think that she got caught in the windstorm? It must have been that. He was going to come join her, and then he found a blanket from their bedroom outside on the way and he must have been so worried. He cuts that thought process off swiftly as he hisses, colder and more biting than the wind, “Don’t ever do that here.”

It feels like something in her chest shatters, sending sharp splinters out that threaten to poke into something important, and her brow furrows with hurt and confusion. “I don’t understand,” she starts carefully, trying to keep her tone measured so none of her heartbreak leaks into it. They’re in Derse now. Shouldn’t this be the one place in the world she can do this?

“You can’t use magic,” he insists, his tone even angrier than before. “You can’t, not—” It’s clear that he was going to say more, but his mouth snaps shut as their eyes meet.

She stares up at him in her own wide-eyed terror. She thinks she can see his breath catching in his chest with every other inhale in silent hiccups, and she opens her mouth to say something, anything comforting as she reaches a hand out toward him. She’s not sure whether he’s more upset with her or himself as he stumbles back a step, but then he turns and leaves with a hurried pace, all-but running away from her. She stares at his back until she can’t see it anymore, her limbs suddenly just as heavy as they had been when she first came into the library, and then she feels her eyes stinging.

With Dave gone, the cold in the room presses in on her all at once. There’s some part of her that has to make sure the room is empty before she breaks down into sobs that shake her entire body and compress all of the sharp spots in her chest into one dull, throbbing ache in the center of her ribcage. She’s not sure whether she’s more upset with him or with herself. This wasn’t how she wanted him to find out. But if there was one person in the entire world she would have thought she could safely expose her magic to, it was Dave. He’s her husband. She thought he… She thought they were… Another wet sob rips its way out of her, swiftly cutting off the ends of any of those thoughts, but that doesn’t stop the general current of distress still washing over her.

Is he jealous of the fact that she has magic and he doesn’t? But then, she’s heard the way that he talks about Rose with such reverence. Even when he had talked about their childhood while they danced at John’s coronation, Jade figured that their growing apart had more to do with the fact that their father had worked so hard to other Dave than the fact that she had magic and he didn’t. Does he think that she’s going to look down on him because she has magic? But shouldn’t he know after months with her by now that she would never?

No, she knows exactly why he’s upset with her—she just doesn’t want to. She learned that he didn’t have magic the first day that they met. She had three months to consider whether she wanted to marry him or not, to come up with another plan or to try to run away and escape. She tried to fool herself into believing that it was the escape to Derse that she was after. Even as she was so afraid of her magic, she convinced herself for months that it was the real reason she was agreeing to this, and that the moment she got to Derse she would throw herself into her studies without letting her marriage become a distraction. This was a political marriage and that was all.

And now, she’s convinced Dave of the same thing.

Now he thinks that she was just using him. Now, every memory he has of them together must be tainted by this idea that she was lying to him—and she was, but it wasn’t like that. She chose him. Even if she had no magic, even if he was the most powerful mage in the world, she would have chosen him. Because she wants to spend her life with him.

Fueled by the sudden desperation to make him understand, she forces herself onto her feet and pushes through the miserable ache of cold sinking into her bones to run after him. The door creaks again as she pushes into the hallway, once more announcing her shame to the whole palace, but she pushes through it to keep running until she reaches the entrance hall.

He’s nowhere to be seen. She stares with horror at the double doors to the courtyard, and he must have run out into the storm. She wants more than anything to keep chasing after him until she has him in her arms and she’s told him everything, but she knows she can’t face the wind.

She realizes with a sudden sense of alarm that she’s still holding the journal. She hadn’t even noticed it, like it didn’t weigh anything in her hands, and she glares at it now. “This is your fault,” she mumbles bitterly out loud, as though it can argue back, and as though that would make her feel any better. “Why did you have to be so tempting?” she asks, and this, at least, is more honest, though that may only be because she can hear the real question. Why did I have to be so tempted?

Why couldn’t she just ignore the allure of magic like she’s done her entire life? Why couldn’t she trust Dave enough to just tell him about it? Why couldn’t she just let herself enjoy that things were finally going well for her?

“I should throw you in a fireplace somewhere.”

But that wouldn’t make her feel better. And it certainly wouldn’t help anyone. If this really is some great, ancient text on magic, it would be criminal to just throw it away in a childish temper tantrum because she was forced to face the consequences of her own actions. And it’s not its fault that she fought with Dave, not really. It’s hers.

She should put it back in the library, though. She should trudge right back in there and put it back where she got it, and then she should march to the knights’ quarters first thing in the morning tomorrow to apologize to Dave. She isn’t sorry for having magic, can’t be sorry for having magic, refuses to be sorry for having magic, but she’s sorry that she lied to him about it. She should put this thing away to show him that she means it. She should.

Chest still tight with guilt, she keeps it tucked under her arm as she shambles back up the stairs.

Chapter Text

Dave hasn’t spoken to her in a week. She hasn’t even seen him.

Of course, it’s hard to say if that’s because he’s actually avoiding her, or if it has more to do with the fact that she hasn’t left their room since that night in the library. There’s a part of her that feels like there’s something poisonous about her now, like if she lets anyone see her then they’ll find her out and… well, she doesn’t really know what would come after that.

On the first day, Nepeta had knocked with her blanket folded neatly in her hands and then sheepishly asked if she was alright. There was probably something about her bloodshot eyes and fingernails chewed down to the quick that indicated that she wasn’t alright and it was a question worth asking, but Nepeta didn’t argue with her when she said that she was fine. She could have kissed her if she wasn’t married. Maybe she will, once she finally accepts that the whole marriage thing has actually fallen apart.

On each of the first five days, Karkat had knocked on the door and waited patiently for her to answer, which was impressive, because Karkat doesn’t do much of anything patiently. She doesn’t know how long he’d wait on the other side before finally giving up and leaving her dinner for her outside the door, but by the time she finally drifted over to the doorway when she got hungry and picked up the food to eat in bed, he wasn’t on the other side of it. Last night, he gave up on the knocking entirely.

Perhaps that’s why she’s so startled when there’s a knock on her door, and in the middle of the afternoon to boot. It’s not the way that Karkat knocks, but it is still familiar, and she’d stay right where she is under her blankets if she didn’t know this knock wouldn’t go away.

She’s embarrassed to let Kanaya see her like this. She hasn’t changed her clothes or brushed her hair in days, and she’s been intermittently crying and reading so much and sleeping so little that her eyes seem to be permanently puffy and red, with a glossy pink sheen at the tip of her nose to match. It’s not like it’s the first time that she’s been a mess at Kanaya’s fingertips. She was thirteen when Kanaya moved into the castle, and at that point, she was probably a mess more often than she wasn’t. She wanted a friend more than anything in the world, a friend who wasn’t working their way up the ranks in the military and steadily making a name for himself and leaving her behind, but then Kanaya’s presence forced her to realize that she had no idea how to have one.

It makes her feel like a child again. Everything seems to these days.

She cracks the door open, just barely poking her face out and looking up to meet Kanaya’s eyes, and she sees something in them immediately soften. Jade thinks this might be the first time that they’ve been alone together since they came to Derse, now that she thinks about it. Kanaya spends a lot of time with Rose and Nepeta, and when Jade had stopped doing the same, her lady-in-waiting didn’t exactly come to her rescue. She probably thought that she was spending more time with Dave—which was true, to a point. “Oh, Jade,” Kanaya says, her voice soft, and pushes the door open a little wider. It doesn’t take much effort. Jade’s not sure she could fight her if she wanted to, but she doesn’t put much muster into trying.

Jade tries for about two seconds to stop Kanaya from pushing her way into the room before she gives up, and when Kanaya pulls her over to the bed, it doesn’t take much coaxing for her to slump sideways and rest her head on her lap. The age difference between them is so small and they’d met when they were so grown that Kanaya’s nurturing-bordering-on-meddlesome nature shouldn’t feel so motherly. Maybe it’s just because Jade never had a mother, but when Kanaya buries her fingers in her hair the same way her grandfather always used to when she was upset, it feels like she’s been doing it her whole life, and she can feel the love in her featherlight touch.

Her eyes flutter shut and she lets out a slow breath. She could go to sleep right here. Maybe the only thing that stops her is that Kanaya starts to work her fingers through her mess of curls, and Jade’s nose crinkles and she hisses through her teeth every time they snag on a tangle. She doesn’t ask her to stop, though. It had been easy to forget in the hustle and bustle of everything lately that Kanaya is one of her best friends.

They sit in silence like that for a long time, and Jade almost lets herself believe that maybe Kanaya will let her get away with not talking about it. Maybe she’ll just come up here and let her melt into her lap, and maybe that really will make everything all better. She wouldn’t really know her at all if she really believed that, though, and eventually, Kanaya finally murmurs, “Tell me what happened.” Jade sucks in a sharp breath that is entirely unrelated to tangles.

She has to find the Kanaya-appropriate version of the story. Even if Kanaya probably already suspects Jade’s magic (or maybe that’s just the paranoid part of Jade’s brain that suddenly believes everyone must suspect her), she doesn’t want to think of the damage to their friendship if it was outright confirmed. Plus, as much as she loves Kanaya, she’s a notorious busybody, and Jade doesn’t need her storming down Dave’s door and raining righteous fury upon him, as funny as the thought admittedly is. “Dave and I had… a fight,” she starts tentatively, glancing up at Kanaya’s face to gauge her reaction.

Her lips purse into a thin line and her eyes narrow slightly, but Jade knows better than to think that she’s the subject of her ire. Her voice is a little tight when she replies, “A fight?” but she’s clearly making an effort to keep any emotion from her tone.

Jade nods against her thighs rather than elaborating, as much as she can sense the prying energy vibrating in the air around Kanaya now that she’s finally started to open up to her. There’s not much else she can say about the fight itself that doesn’t risk getting her in some sort of trouble. Instead, after a long minute, she manages to add, “And I think that he’s really mad at me. I haven’t seen or heard from him in days, and…”

“Is it possible that you haven’t heard from him because you haven’t left your room?” Kanaya prompts, and Jade purses her own lips. Yes, it’s possible, but it doesn’t seem very likely, she thinks, but she doesn’t say this aloud because then Kanaya would probably ask why it doesn’t seem very likely. When it’s clear she isn’t going to answer her out loud, Kanaya lets out a long-suffering sigh and says, “Jade, are you really locking yourself up because you had a fight with a boy?”

“Well, when you say it like that, it sounds silly,” Jade murmurs with a note of petulance.

“It is silly,” Kanaya says, and Jade opens her eyes just enough to look up at her through the side of them and pout. Kanaya sighs again. “Jade, you’re one of the smartest, kindest, most cheerful people I know. There isn’t a single person in Prospit who could deny the way you’ve lit up every room you’ve ever walked into. I can’t stand the idea that you’re moping around over some boy saying something mean to you. I know that he’s your husband and you love him, but Dave shouldn’t have that sort of power and control over your life. No one should.”

Jade wants to point out that Dave isn’t just some boy, but she knows that’s just avoiding the matter at hand. It’s hard and a little uncomfortable to hear someone say so many nice things about her in a row. It’s not like she’s ever been the black sheep or the outcast in the way that Dave is, but it’s not like people were going out of their way to assure her about how great she was when she was growing up. She thinks maybe John and Dad just figured that she knew, and she’s not sure she’s ever seen Karkat get through an earnest compliment to anyone. “What do you propose that I do instead?” she mumbles, which is still avoidant, but a little less transparent.

“My offer from your wedding still stands,” Kanaya says, with a clear tinge of amusement in her voice, and for a second Jade’s eyebrows pinch together as she tries to remember Kanaya’s offer from her wedding. Then she does remember, and she can’t stop a snort, even though she slaps a hand over her nose and mouth like she can stuff it back in if she tries hard enough.

“I don’t want to run away,” she says, and she’s surprised by how true it feels. After a week of hiding in her room, how can she say that she doesn’t want to run away and mean it? How is hiding substantially different from running away? But I want to fix things, she thinks, and her chest aches with desperation. Yes, she wants to fix things with Dave more than anything—she just doesn’t know how.

“No?” Kanaya asks, still sounding amused. “Well, then perhaps I have a different solution. Rose—er, the princess asked us to join her for tea. Both of us.” Jade feels a surge of panic at the thought that Dave must have told her. Why else would she want to have tea with Jade? It’s not like her sister-in-law has made any attempts to be close with her.

Kanaya swiftly cuts this train of thought off, pushing her to sit up. “Come on. We are going to get out of bed, get dressed, stop moping, and have tea with the princess.”

Jade groans miserably, but she lets Kanaya push her into her dressing room, and by the time they actually get there, she even has a little bit of a smile. Kanaya helps her get dressed in one of her fancy evening gowns that are undoubtedly way too nice for a simple afternoon tea and even helps her put together her hair and some makeup that does a lot of work to hide just how miserable the last week has been for her. She doesn’t really like to wear makeup, didn’t even wear makeup to her own wedding, but she likes the thought of walking into a meeting with the Dersite princess looking like she’s been bawling her eyes out for days even less. Maybe Rose has given her no reason to distrust her, but she can’t help but notice the way that the Dersites refuse to be emotionally vulnerable with each other, and she wants them to take her seriously.

It takes hours, but by the time that they’re done, Jade’s smile feels a little more solid and real.

“Feeling a little bit more like yourself?” Kanaya asks, and Jade snorts again without trying to hide it this time and shoves her shoulder playfully.

“Alright, don’t pat yourself on the back too much.” Kanaya does look very pleased with herself, but she figures she’ll let her have it, looking at herself in the mirror with a bright grin that somehow feels entirely real.

They continue to snicker and joke together on their way down the stairs, and Jade didn’t realize just how much she missed being around people. Thus far, self-isolation has been far from an ideal coping mechanism, but in her defense, she’s never gotten to isolate herself before, so maybe she deserved an opportunity to try it.

Their initial path starts toward the library, and Jade’s grin dims a bit as she feels a growing sense of dread the closer they get to it. It feels like the library is a crime scene—a crime scene for a crime that she committed and everyone else is investigating quietly behind her back. She’s not sure that she can face going back in there right now, but before they reach the door, they pivot down a hallway and to a smaller room that Jade doesn’t recognize instead. She lets out a little breath of relief, and if Kanaya notices, she’s gracious enough not to comment on it.

The room that they stop in is a cozy, study-like room, with smaller bookshelves lining the walls with all sorts of books, framed sketches, and potted plants that immediately spark Jade’s interest. There’s a small table at the center of the room with an ornate tea set in the middle and five mismatched chairs stuffed around it, close together. Two of them are empty, and Rose and Nepeta are in two of the others, but the occupant of the fifth chair surprises Jade—the queen sits half-slumped over, with a glass of wine and a bored expression.

“Ah, Jade. I’m so glad that you could join us,” Rose says, with a somewhat reserved smile that Jade cannot meaningfully decipher as real or fake. She’s still learning all of Rose’s expressions—the microexpressions and the clearly put on macroexpressions. Why can’t anyone in Derse just communicate like people? She smiles back regardless, much smaller than it was upstairs, and squeezes herself into the seat between Rose and Kanaya while internally lamenting that this table was clearly not meant to seat more than two or three.

“Well, I have to admit that Kanaya had to convince me a little bit,” she jokes, or at least, she says it like it was a joke. “But I was curious about why you wanted to have tea with me. I’m flattered, but I’m not necessarily the most interesting conversational partner for an afternoon tea.”

“Oh?” Rose asks, with her eyebrows raised. Leaning onto her elbows on the table, she says, “Well, I’ve heard some very interesting things about you.” Jade’s heart lurches in her chest. Dave wouldn’t tell, would he? Even if she’s completely shattered his trust, he’s not the sort of person who would turn around and violate hers. She tells herself that Kanaya must have told the princess stories about her as Rose asks, “Would you like me to pour you some tea?”

Jade nods, and they all sit in a tense sort of quiet while Rose pours the cup and passes it to her. “Is Dave going to be joining us?” Kanaya asks as Jade takes her first sip, somewhat pointed, and she nearly chokes. Spluttering and slapping a hand against her chest, Jade levels Kanaya with a sharp glare as if to say, Could you even pretend to be subtle?

Rose opens her mouth to answer, but she’s cut off by the queen interjecting, “Dave has very important things to attend to. He won’t be joining us today.” She says it like there’s something funny about it to her, and Jade even sees her smile in what she guesses is amusement before she brings her wine glass to her lips, which are already stained the same deep red color as the drink.

Rose looks miffed, but smooths her features back out before she makes eye contact with Jade and says, “I noticed some books were missing from the library.”

Jade’s stomach churns with nausea even as Rose doesn’t mention what the books were about. So she does know. She hurt Dave, and of course he ran to the only other person in the world he can trust about it. Why else would she be bringing this up now, a week after he had caught her in the library and promptly decided he didn’t want anything to do with her anymore? Voice high and heart pounding, she says, “Oh, that’s weird. Maybe somebody borrowed them. Were they important?”

The silence drags on a beat too long, and she can feel Kanaya staring at her with her brow furrowed like she’s trying to figure out why she seems so nervous. Meanwhile, all Jade wants to do right now is run away and hide for the rest of her life. Her husband hates her, and her sister-in-law hates her, and everything is going to be bad forever.

“Y’know,” the queen cuts in, and everybody stares at her. If it bothers her, she doesn’t show it. “I really regret that I didn’t get to know my daughter-in-law any sooner. My baby boy is married and I barely even know who to.”

It’s a miracle that Jade manages to keep her eyebrows from pinching together in confusion. She still feels so left in the dark when it comes to Dave’s childhood, but nothing about what he’s told her implies that his mother would refer to him in such fond terms as her baby boy. Is this supposed to be the same woman who wanders through the halls like a part of her has died? The absentee mother who drinks to fill a hole that her husband left behind years ago? Or is there something about the queen that Dave didn’t tell her—maybe even something he doesn’t know? There are a thousand questions she suddenly wants to ask.

Instead, she says, tacking as much cheer onto her voice as she’s capable of, “Well, we have the whole rest of our lives to get to know each other! Maybe we’ll just have to start having tea with each other a little more often!”

The queen’s smile is halfway a smirk, but Jade thinks she’s too drunk to really filter her thoughts if something about the statement was funny. “You’re a sweet girl,” she says, and there’s a sickly sweet quality to her own voice. “Why don’t you tell me something interesting about yourself?”

Jade purses her lips as she thinks about this. There’s that paranoid voice in the back of her mind again pondering whether Rose and the queen are trying to get her to admit something. Maybe they even think they’re being courteous about it, not explicitly asking in front of Kanaya. They could have asked her in private if they were so insistent about it.

She thinks of that first conversation she’d had with Dave in the gardens in Prospit. Why does everything make her think of that? He had asked her to tell him something interesting about herself, too, and the only thing that had felt safe, the best way to sidestep the topic of magic that he didn’t even know she was trying to avoid at the time, was to talk about the gardens. She could talk about that now, too, but it feels too intimate. That was a part of her that she shared with Dave, and she doesn’t want to share it with anyone else. Unable to come up with anything else, she says, “Oh, I’m not so sure there is anything interesting to say about myself.”

“Don’t sell yourself so short,” Kanaya says, presumably believing that she’s being helpful. Jade, at least, doesn’t glare at her this time.

“Just anything that somebody else wouldn’t know,” the queen adds.

Jade isn’t sure whether to be angry or terrified. She feels like a cornered prey animal, and the one person in the room who should be on her side is unintentionally working against her. She’s certain that Rose must know about her magic, but how much does the queen know? Are they just trying to force her to admit it? She doesn’t know why they need her to admit it herself, but she’s not going to give them the satisfaction (or the ammunition against Dave, just in case).

“Honestly, I lived a pretty sheltered life. I’m not sure there’s much of anything I could say about myself that you couldn’t find out from somebody else.” It’s not technically a lie. After all, if they asked Dave whether she had magic or not, he would definitely be able to answer.

Kanaya opens her mouth as though to interject again, but Rose cuts her off. “Maybe we should leave them alone,” she says, voice sharp.

There’s a tension in the room as Rose and Kanaya stare at each other for a long minute like they’re having a silent conversation just between the two of them. Kanaya’s jaw is tight, clearly torn between whatever duty she seems to have to Rose and the very concrete duty she actually does have to Jade. Nepeta stares between them like she can’t decide who’s more intimidating.

Finally, the queen barks a laugh and waves a dismissive hand, and everyone stares at her. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it,” she says, pushing herself to sit up a little more properly. “I have other matters to attend to, anyway. A queen really mustn’t get all caught up gossiping. But, Jade.” This might be the first time the queen has ever properly looked at her, and Jade shrinks under her magenta gaze. “Join me for a drink tomorrow evening. Please?”

The whole thing is so sudden—the tea in the first place, the course of the conversation, the queen’s other matters—that Jade is sort of left reeling and unsure of how to respond. Does she really want to lock herself into a private conversation with the queen with the matter of her magic hanging above her head? Or would it be worse to say no?

“That would be nice,” Jade says tentatively, offering the queen a nervous smile that she hopes isn’t so obvious to everyone else.

“Great! Tell Nepeta what sort of wine you prefer and I’ll send a servant into town tonight to fetch a bottle,” she says with another dismissive wave, and then she stands from the chair and walks out of the room. Her hips sway dramatically with every step, and Jade isn’t sure if it’s the alcohol or something else about the queen. Everything that she does seems like a caricature of… well, Jade doesn’t even know what, but it certainly must be a mockery of something.

Everyone in the room continues to sit and stare at each other for a long minute after the queen leaves, but Jade suspects the afternoon tea portion of the day is done with. Apparently it was all just a ruse so the royals could try to swindle her for information anyway—and she’s just agreed to another session of that tomorrow night.

Sometimes she really is so stupid.

Chapter Text

Jade can’t help but pace in the hours leading up to her meeting with the queen.

She’s sure that Dave must have told them, or why would they suddenly want to spend so much time with her? They don’t even seem to spend this much time with Dave , and he’s a person who they actually have some reason to want to be around. So it must be related to her magic, and Jade isn’t sure what to do or say about that.

This isn’t fair, though. She knows that it isn’t fair. She wants Dave to have betrayed her trust because it would mean that she didn’t have to feel so bad for betraying his, but Dave is a good person, and he loves her—or at least, he loved her, even if she might have ruined it. Plus, he had seemed so worried about anyone finding out, so why would he immediately turn around and tell two of the people who stand to benefit the most from that information?

They must have figured it out themselves, but how? And what is she supposed to do about it? Does she deny the accusations and insist that she has no magic? If she confirms it to them, that’s something that they have to hold over her head. They can threaten to tell her family, and while she’s not exactly at risk of being executed in Prospit anymore now that she’s in Derse and all, she still can’t handle the thought of John and Dad being so disappointed in her.

On the other hand, if she denies it and they do have some sort of evidence, would it get her in more trouble? Would they use the fact that she lied about it against her? Maybe they don’t even want to punish her at all. Maybe Dave is worried for no reason. It is Derse after all, and even if they do have a terrifying reputation as warmongers and cold-hearted killers, they don’t have any hard lines against magic—the opposite, really.

She casts a longing glance toward the journal that’s currently on the desk in her study. After Kanaya had stopped by yesterday to get her for tea, she realized that there were people other than Dave who might come into their room and see it. She’s lucky Kanaya didn’t notice it yesterday, when it was still sitting on the bed wide open to one of the many pages about those other sources of magic. Jade is only confident that she didn’t and simply isn’t bringing it up because she didn’t react to Rose’s comment about the missing library books.

It feels like the book should have the answers to this situation. In the past week, it’s become sort of an emotional crutch for her, and admittedly, she can’t help projecting onto the writer. When she’s not digging into the sections on magic, she’s trying to find everything that she can get her hands on about the mysterious author.

She’s been able to surmise that the author is a young woman, who can’t be more than a few years older or younger than she is. She writes about being from the royal family, but she never mentions the name Strider anywhere, either as a current last name or a maiden name, which Jade knows to be the old last name of the Dersite royal family before they switched to the more royal mononyms. Does that mean that she’s from a time after they stopped using the name? How long ago was that? She strains to try to remember history books she hasn’t read in over a decade, history books she could only read in the dead of night when she was certain nobody would catch her with them. The entries stop very suddenly, with several open pages, leading Jade to guess that she died very suddenly. Was she killed? Assassinated? Did the Terrors do something to her?

One peculiarity that Jade has noticed is that the author never refers to the country by name, or refers to anything as Dersite. Sometimes, she refers to “home,” and Jade wonders if she was exiled to Derse in much the same fashion that Jade was. At other times, she writes sentences in the strange script originating from Beforus, and Jade can’t remember what other countries use it.

In some ways, the book has generated more questions than it has answers. She knows that she’s just using those questions as a means to distract herself from what’s about to happen.

She takes a deep breath as she prepares to go downstairs. She’s wearing the same dress that she did yesterday, because it feels in some small way like she has a little more power if she’s dressing the part of a beautiful princess. She paces another line from the study into the dressing room and stares at herself in the mirror. Her hair is still neat from Kanaya’s care yesterday, but she’s not wearing makeup anymore. Her bodies are drawn just a little tighter than they were yesterday. She looks and feels a little more like herself, and she thinks that’s probably the best state she can ask for before a confrontation with her mother-in-law. 

She doesn’t encounter anyone between her room and the room the queen had designated for them to meet in, and she counts her blessings for that, at least. She’s already delayed enough that it’s creeping toward rudeness.

The room itself is occupied by a long table, and the queen sits at one end of it with a wine glass in her hand, tipped over so far that the wine threatens to spill over the lip and onto her dress, though it probably wouldn’t be visible against the deep purple fabric. At the opposite end of the table, a full glass waits for Jade while kindly indicating where she’s expected to sit down. There must be at least ten feet between them.

“Sorry that I’m late, Your Majesty. I had a few things that I needed to wrap up.” The vague lie spills from her lips easily.

Like yesterday, the queen waves a dismissive hand through the air. “If I had a specific time restraint, I would have sent a servant to fetch you. Honestly, I wasn’t sure that you were going to come at all. I’m glad that you decided to.” She smiles at Jade, and Jade smiles back, though hers feels significantly more forced than the queen’s looks. “And don’t bother with all of the formalities. We’re family. More importantly, we’re two women enjoying a drink together in the privacy of our own home.” She raises her glass as though to toast to that, and then takes a long drink. Jade stares at her own doubtfully. When the queen’s is back on the table, she adds, “Call me Roxana. Or Mom, if you’d really like to.” The last part is said with a teasing edge.

“Roxana,” Jade repeats, like affirming that she’d heard and acknowledged the request. For a long minute, the two of them sit in silence, Roxana nursing her drink and Jade watching hers like it might come to life and attack her. It’s only once Roxana’s cup is empty and she stands to pour herself another from a new bottle that either of them breaks the silence, with Jade nervously asking, “I had… some questions, if you’re in the mind to answer some.”

“I can do my best, but I must admit that I don’t have a lot of the knowledge that my esteemed husband and children do.” She says it with an almost mocking tone, like there’s some sort of subtext there that Jade is missing out on. She almost wants to abandon her planned line of questioning to ask about that, but she thinks she’d be more likely to get the information that she wants on that particular line of questioning out of Dave, anyway. If he ever talks to me again.

“Rose mentioned that some library books were missing over tea yesterday. At the time, I suggested that somebody might have borrowed them. The truth is that I borrowed them—well, I borrowed one, anyway. It appears to be some sort of very old journal, but the author is never named, and she doesn’t mention Derse by name, either.”

Roxana seems to think on this for a moment, her head leaning over to one side in what she can only guess is contemplation. She can only quietly hope that she doesn’t know precisely which book she took, or why she might have taken it. Finally, she answers, “What would you like to know about it?”

She purses her lips. “Well, who is the author, for one?”

Roxana seems to consider this for a moment, before she asks, “What do you know of Derse’s history?”

She stares, more than a little taken aback. “History texts of Derse weren’t readily available in Prospit, and I suspect much of what we did have access to was propaganda.”

“Smart girl,” Roxana says, with a smile and a laugh. “Still, do your best, and I’ll correct anything as needed.”

Eyebrows knitted together, Jade starts, “Derse has been at war with someone for basically as long as it’s existed. I think it might have been Beforus first? The land was first discovered by powerful mages, including the modern royal family, who were gifted with especially powerful magic. Magic has been its lifeblood ever since. That magic is bestowed by the Horrorterrors, eldritch gods whose motivations remain unknown to this day, but too much exposure to their power corrupts the mind and drives people mad. During the revolution, refugees from Beforus who sailed north across the sea seeking asylum were directed to Viridan instead.”

Roxana leans back in her chair with another pleased smile, and Jade watches her for a long minute in anticipation of what she’s going to do or say. After yet another drink of her wine, she finally starts, “Most of that is true. In fact, it’s even more than I would have expected you to know—perhaps because of your mysterious author?” Jade winces. She said too much. She shouldn't have mentioned the Terrors. “But the truth is that the first King Strider was not among those mages who first founded the country that is now called Derse. That’s a piece of our own propaganda, I’m afraid.” Jade stares at her with her brow furrowed.

“This is a closely guarded secret of the royal family. You can’t tell anyone. But you’re a part of this family now, so you have as much of a right to know as I do. Originally, this territory was occupied by the very same dictators of Beforus that Prospit’s founders were fleeing from. Noticing the civil unrest beginning to rise and fearing a violent revolution, the queen, whose name has been lost to time, but who is usually referred to in the journals of kings long passed as the Black Queen, fled north across the sea with her young daughter.”

Jade had a bad habit when she was a child of imagining herself in all of the stories her grandpa used to tell her. That was really what had led her to discovering her magic for the first time—alone with a book, thank goodness. She can't help but imagine herself now as that little princess being ferried away to another country far away from everything she'd ever known for reasons she couldn't even comprehend yet. Why does that feel so familiar—and so ominous?

“The land was untamed and unoccupied at that point, just as we’ve told people that Derse was when the Striders first discovered it. Back then, the winters were even harsher, and there were all sorts of wild beasts stalking through the forests. But the Black Queen was quite a powerful mage, and she noticed the same potential in her daughter. Perhaps if the queen was alone, she may have succumbed to the conditions. But there’s little that can stop a mother trying to protect her child’s life, and so they persisted.”

Now, the people in the story are changed. If before she was imagining herself as the little princess, now she can't help but imagine Dave that way, with Roxana playing the role of the Black Queen. If she looks closely at her mother-in-law's face, she thinks she can even see a note of reflection there, and if she reads between the lines, she must be thinking about her own failure to protect her children. Her child.  

Suddenly Jade finds herself questioning this narrative she's constructed in her head that Dave's whole life has just been him versus his family. How much did his mother try and fail to protect him behind the scenes? How much of a choice have any of them had? She feels an aching sadness for the queen, and if she was willing to interrupt the story, maybe she would apologize. She's not sure for what, exactly, but she feels so strongly that she owes her one.

“We don’t know exactly how long they lived here without being discovered. Perhaps a decade, perhaps two. Eventually, whether through magic or through some other means, the queen was able to build a house of wood and stones to shelter them. She exchanged letters with the Black King, her husband, keeping track of what was going on in their homeland, and as more time passed, the king started sending knights and soldiers to accompany her and her daughter in the forest so that they might not be so lonely, and their little house began to grow.”

Lonely. Clouds does Jade know about lonely.

“But of course, there was revolution brewing in Beforus. There nearly always was. A knight, a member of the king’s inner circle, discovered his letters with the queen and brought them to the revolutionaries. He formed a party of the most powerful mages in the country and overtook the small ship ferrying the letters back and forth, forcing the sailors on board to bring them to where the queen was hiding. When they got there, they had to fight through all of her guard—but by the time the fight was finished, the Black Queen and her daughter had disappeared, the only traces of their existence being letters from the king, the princess’ journal, and the house they and their guard had been occupying. So they burned the letters, hid the journal, and took over the house.”

Jade’s mind is reeling trying to take in all of this information. It contradicts so much of what she’s thought or known about Derse, as restricted as that always was. But there’s still something about all of this that seems strange to her. “But… why hide this? None of this seems that bad, in terms of history.”

The queen swirls the wine in her cup. Jade wonders if she’s actually supposed to be telling her any of this. “I suppose you’re right,” she says eventually, and Jade is almost startled. “In terms of history, even in terms of Derse’s history, none of this does seem that bad. A violent revolution against the brutes who used to rule over Beforus? That’s practically the origin for every country in the modern world at this point. I wonder how anyone will ever start anything new now that they’re gone.” The amused tone in her voice sounds out of place, and Jade can’t entirely help a grimace. “But the knight who led the charge had no magic. And that knight was the first King David Strider.”

Jade can only stare at this reveal. So Dave isn’t the first member of Derse’s royal family with no magic? Derse was founded by a man with no magic, and who knows how long it was before magic made it into their particular bloodline. Was it the first king’s children? Was it before the family dropped the name Strider? Perhaps it was only a few generations ago, and it is only through the careful revision of history that the royal family have painted themselves as the most magical family in Derse when in reality there might be thousands with magic more powerful than theirs.

Finally, Jade picks up her glass and takes her first tentative sip of wine as she ponders these questions. It’s a lighter shade of red than the wine she and Dave had had at their wedding, and significantly sweeter, too. When she sets it back down, she asks, “Why are you telling me this?”

Because you asked, a part of her thinks, and she wants to roll her eyes. Yes, she asked, but why is the queen being honest about it? What has Jade done to earn her confidence?

Roxana takes a deep breath, like she’s debating whether or not to reveal the real reason that she brought all of this up. After a minute, she stands up to pour herself another glass and crosses the room to sit in one of the empty chairs next to Jade, bringing the bottle with her. Her voice is a lot lower when she starts, “I see a lot of myself in you, Jade.” This only serves to confuse Jade even further, and she can’t help but wonder if this is a good thing or not. Like most members of the Dersite royal family, Jade can’t help but get the impression that the queen doesn’t like herself very much.

Before she can ask anything, though, Roxana plows on. “Our situations aren’t exactly the same. You had never met my son before your marriage was arranged, and Diederik and I were born one day apart and practically raised together. My mother, Rosalind, Duchess of La Londe, was his father’s advisor. Our marriage was arranged on my sixteenth birthday, but it was three years before we were married. I had been in love with him for as long as I could remember, and he loved me… just, not in the same way, I suppose. Sometimes, it seemed like we were the only people in the whole world who had each other’s backs. We hardly knew our parents, they were always so busy strategizing the next peace treaty with Prospit.”

It’s weird for Jade to try and picture this. Those peace treaties that were negotiated long before she was even born—possibly even the peace treaty that resulted in the cold war that she’s always known. But really, what’s weird is to imagine the queen living through the exact same sorts of circumstances she was in. Is that why she looked so absent during the arrangement? So troubled during the wedding? Could it really be as simple as bad memories?

“But everything changed once we got married. Suddenly, I was alone. Isolated. Our parents already didn’t speak to us, and now my husband wouldn’t speak to me either. It felt like the palace I had lived in my whole life was suddenly cold and foreign, and there was no one I could talk to about it. When I got pregnant with Rose and Dave… maybe it was selfish, but I was so excited to finally have someone who could love me as much as I loved them. But I grew distanced from them when they were still very young, and then I was alone again.”

This, too, is uncomfortably familiar, and by the time the queen has finished her story, Jade has drained her cup. She pours herself a second to ponder over. Is it that obvious that she’s felt isolated in Derse? She’d been isolated at home, too—but for Roxana, those things are one in the same. There is no escape for her, no moving away to start over.

Perhaps just to keep hearing the queen talk, Jade asks, “Why did you grow apart?”

Roxana lets out a miserable, self-pitying little chuckle. “If you asked Rose, she would probably say I was cold and distant from the start. I’m not sure what it is about my daughter, but even those who approach her with the best of intentions tend to get the cold shoulder, and then she turns around and places the blame on their shoulders—you may have noticed. If you asked Dave, he would probably say that I abandoned him and his sister to succumb to the drink instead.” Jade privately knows exactly what Dave would say, but she doubts it would be especially helpful. “The truth is that Rose first started showing signs of magic at 5—much earlier than most mages, even in Derse. And Dave… well, he didn’t show any. Ever. My husband pressured both of them to learn more magic, and as Rose continued to excel, Dave continued to flounder.”

This phrasing makes Jade’s stomach turn—or maybe it’s the wine, with how quickly she’s already gone through a glass and a half. Talking about her husband like this makes her feel like she’s betraying him in some indescribable way.

As if reading her thoughts, Roxana says, “He showed incredible skill in other ways. Mathematics, painting, music, fighting—it seemed he could master almost anything other than magic. But magic was all Diederik cared about. Both of my children were driven away from me to focus on their studies, and it was all I could do to maintain a connection with Rose at all to take on the brunt of her education myself. Dave and I never had that chance. When they turned thirteen and he still showed no signs of magic, Diederik declared Rose the heir to the throne instead of Dave, and he practically banished our son to train as a knight so he might be useful to his sister in some way. He was all-but disowned. I wish that I had pushed back, but my grasp on my marriage was already slipping through my fingers so much that I didn’t want to sow more discord by arguing with my husband’s decisions.”

Jade is overwhelmed with emotions. Pity for Roxana. Pity for Dave. Contempt for the king. She wants to take Roxana, Rose, and Dave with her and run away somewhere. Probably not to Prospit, where they would be treated so terribly in equal parts for being mages and for being Dersites, but somewhere where they aren’t all trapped under the king’s thumb. She knows that she can’t, though. Better add helplessness to the list. She stares at her reflection in her empty glass, and she hates how sullen she looks. Jade is not a person who mopes around all day! She is a person who pushes boundaries and does things about the things that are upsetting her!

She looks back at Roxana, and somehow the queen looks even more sullen than she does. Jade watches sadly as she pours herself more wine, and she finishes it before Jade has time to say anything—which is not to remark on the length of her silence. In many ways, her mother-in-law is even more isolated than she is. At least she was able to bring Karkat and Kanaya with her, but the only person the queen had was the king, and now…

Jade takes a deep breath before she confesses, “I never had a relationship with my own mother.” It’s the queen’s turn to look at her with her brow furrowed, and Jade can’t meet her eyes as she continues, “She died in childbirth when I was born, and I was isolated for a long time after that. I was small and sickly, and my father and brother worried that I might get hurt or even die if I was allowed to venture too far outside of my bedroom. My garden in Prospit was my only reprieve from being cooped up in my room all day, so I started gardening a lot, but here…”

There are no windows in this room for Jade to pointedly look out at the snow, which has been steadily piling up the last few days again. She doesn’t know why she’s trusting Roxana with any of this information. The queen has done nothing to make herself an enemy of Jade’s (not like the king has), but they aren’t exactly close, nor are they expected to be.

Roxana seems to read between the lines of what she said and what she didn’t say, and much like Jade had poured herself a second cup to buy herself time to think before she was expected to speak again, the queen pours her a third presumably for the same purpose. Jade’s brain already feels a little fuzzy, warmth tingling in the tips of her fingers and toes, but Roxana looks at her expectantly, like she’s waiting for her to take a drink before she says anything. When she finally raises it to her lips, Roxana starts to talk.

“My son inherited his father’s tendency to pull back and act cold when he doesn’t know what to do with a situation. It’s possible it was beaten into him during his knight training—Diederik handled so much of the early stages of it, and sometimes I wonder if it was all just an excuse to punish him. Or maybe it’s because Dave was one of the situations that my husband never figured out how to deal with. Regardless, you should talk to him before he makes a habit of it.”

Jade stares down into the drink. The wine colors her reflection now, highlighting the flush to her cheeks. When she looks back up at Roxana, the queen is giving her a pointed look, and it takes her mind a second to put together what exactly she’s trying to express.

Suddenly, with a little gasp, Jade realizes that she means for her to talk to Dave now. She stands much faster than she should have and has to lean on the table for support, and then swallows the last quarter of her wine in one big gulp. When she looks at the bottle between them, it’s empty, and for just a moment, she wonders if talking to her husband about something so serious while so very drunk is a bad idea. She pushes that thought away with a physical shake of her head, and smiles at her mother-in-law. “Thank you.”

Chapter Text

Jade is not dressed appropriately for the cold weather. The snowflakes catch on her silk dress and soak into the sleeves, and cold is already biting at her toes and seeping into the rest of her body by the time she reaches the building the palace staff stay in during their downtime. Once she gets to it, she stops and stares at it for a minute.

It’s a deceptively large building up close. It was so dwarfed by the palace when she first arrived, and she guesses the distance from the tower must have only amplified that effect. She thought it was maybe the size of a large house. Now that she stands directly in front of it, it’s not hard to see how the entire palace staff and all of the soldiers could live in it. Even from outside she can tell that there must be at least a dozen rooms in the place. It looks like it’s only a single, tall story, but it stretches wide in front of her, and a quick peer around the corner tells her that it stretches far back toward the forest, too. There’s an open expanse of land behind the building that she imagines it would be easy to train in which she doesn’t think she would see from her bedroom.

That’s not the only thing about it that catches her attention, though. The bottom half of the building is pieced together from dark cobblestones, while the upper half is wood painted a cream color. It looks like it must have been touched up in the last few years, because it doesn’t show any signs of wear and tear from the weather or cracks of aging. It’s the sort of upkeep that only a royal family could afford, re-painting such a large building every few years, and for a moment Jade wonders why they would go to all this effort to maintain the servants’ quarters. She’s not sure she’s ever even seen the Dersite royals directly interact with their staff, and if she has, it’s only been in such a capacity to give some sort of order.

When it hits her, she gasps. This was the Black Queen’s house. She stares at the building for another minute in wonder, bringing a hand up to brush her fingers, tinged red with the cold, against the wall next to the door. Her mission is temporarily abandoned, as her drunk mind is only able to focus on one thing at a time and that space is now occupied by imagining the Black Queen and her daughter running around on these very grounds.

How long did they live here? Did the princess grow up in this house? Is there some sort of secret escape in the back of the building, and if so, do the people who live in it now know about it? Does Dave know about the history of the building he sleeps in so often, or is he just as clueless as the rest of the citizens of Derse?

Thinking about Dave reminds her of her purpose for coming here, and she takes a deep breath to shore her resolve that puffs up like fog in front of her face.

The building’s warmth hits her before she even crosses the threshold, and at the end of a long hallway she can see a fire burning in a fireplace. It reminds her briefly of her brother, who used to insist on always having a fire in the fireplace because it wasn’t a proper fireplace without one, even if Prospit never got anywhere near as cold as Derse always seems to be. There are sounds coming from the room at the end of the hall, which looks like some sort of sitting room with all of the furniture taken out. She recognizes the same sorts of grunting and clanging she had heard from the training in Prospit.

As much as she wants to run into the room and see what’s going on, her movements are still a little too sluggish and stumbling from the wine and the cold, and she has to lean on the wall while she creeps toward the noise. There are ten rooms down the hallway, five on either side. The first few doors on the right side are closed and locked, while all of the ones on the left are hanging open, revealing simple rooms with four rows of bunk beds and two dressers apiece, some with drawers hanging open that have casual or formal clothes sticking out like they had been haphazardly thrown into the dresser without regard for where they’d end up.

At the end of the hall, the last two doors on the left are also open, revealing a study with a single bed tucked against one wall and a kitchen, where a loaf of bread that might only be a day or two old has been cut in half and left out. Without the wall to lean on, Jade has to take a moment to steady herself and make sure she isn’t going to trip over her dress or her own feet and call attention to herself before she wants it.

When she finally makes it into the large sitting room, no one immediately notices her—not even Karkat, who she spots only a few feet away from her. Perhaps that has to do with how haggard they all look, like they’ve been training all day without breaks, or possibly even for multiple days. She can see bags under Karkat’s eyes, and granted, those have been there for most of their lives, but it looks… worse, somehow?

Most of the room is a flurry of movement as the men sword fight with each other. Some of them closer to either end of the room climb onto the furniture that has been pushed up against the walls to get a better vantage point against their opponents. Trying to keep track of the fights, or to pick Dave out of them, makes her head spin, and combined with the anger of seeing them all like this when she was already angry with Dave for avoiding her, it only takes a minute before she impatiently yells, “Prince David!”

Karkat is the only person among them who knows her well enough to see that she’s angry and has the good sense to get out of her way about it. He takes the opportunity to drop his sword and scurry past her, down the hall, and into one of the open bedrooms. All of the other knights, Dave included, freeze and stare at her like they’re not sure where she came from—which, in fairness, they probably aren’t. She shrinks a little under their gaze, and now that they’re not moving, she’s able to make eye contact with Dave as she continues, “We need to talk.”

Dave stares at her for a long minute, unmoving, but she can see the slight pinch of his eyebrows in… confusion? Frustration? It’s even harder to read him when she’s not sober. Finally, as though reading her thoughts, he says, “Are you drunk?” He sounds almost startled.

If her cheeks weren’t already as flushed as they possibly could be, she would probably blush. “I had a few glasses of wine with your mother,” she admits, even softer and more timid than before. She sees Dave’s shoulders slump slightly, and she’s not sure whether it’s relief or disappointment, so she adds somewhat petulantly, “But that doesn’t matter right now! What matters is that you’ve been avoiding me for days!”

One of the nearby soldiers coughs a laugh, and Dave shoots him a deadly glare before bringing a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose, his mouth pressing into a thin line. “You’re making a scene,” he says, although his tone is more embarrassed than scolding, which doesn’t stop another surge of cold rage from running through her veins like ice.

“This seemed like the only way to get your attention.”

“Would you like me to escort your lady wife back to the palace, Your Highness?” says a short, muscular man with sweat beading on his brow and multiple teeth missing. The way he leers at her over the tops of his dark glasses makes her uncomfortable, and she stares at her feet to avoid meeting his eyes.

“No, Zahhak, I’ll take care of it,” Dave dismisses.

He pads across the room and rests his hands on her shoulders, turning her around and steering her back toward the palace. She tries to struggle against him, scoffing, “You can’t just put me to bed to avoid talking to me!”

“If you want to talk about what happened then we’re going to have to go somewhere private,” he practically hisses.

She snaps her mouth shut, but her thoughts are still racing with everything that she wants to say to him. Why does he want her to hide her magic? She might understand his concern about her magic regarding his father, given what she learned about his oppressive tutoring and training regimen for Dave and Rose when they were children, but she’s been given very little reason so far to believe that Roxana or Rose would judge her for it. That’s one thing that’s been made perfectly clear by her meeting with the queen. And why won’t he just talk to her about it? Why is he avoiding her? It was bad enough when they first got to Derse and he hardly spent any time with her at all, but now she knows that he’s upset with her and she just has to stew in it. There is no more plausible deniability.

When they get to their bedroom, he takes his hands off of her shoulders and crosses his arms over his chest instead. The darkness and the quiet of their bedroom feels oppressive, more than it has even for the last week. Maybe if she had known that talking to Dave would feel like this, she wouldn’t have confronted him at all. It’s so much worse to have him looking imperiously down at her than it was to have no contact, and they’re still standing in complete silence rather than talking to each other. That is, until Dave impatiently asks her, “Well?”

She was already wilting under his gaze, and now when she tries to open her mouth to answer him, she feels the words get stuck in her throat as the last of her rage melts away and anxiety nestles into its place. This was stupid, she berates herself. You should have just waited until he was ready to talk on his own terms.

She can feel tears pricking at her eyes, and she wraps her arms tightly around herself. “You’ve been avoiding me all week,” she eventually croaks. “No; longer than that. Ever since we got to Derse. Really, since John’s coronation. You told me that we wouldn’t be able to spend much time together once we were home, and I knew I was going to be spending a lot of time alone, but I didn’t expect you to be so… cold. It’s like you can’t even stand to be around me anymore, and I don’t…” She swallows and murmurs softly, “Did I do something wrong?”

Immediately, it’s like all of Dave’s annoyance and frustration melt off of him. He brings a hand up to her cheek and she leans into the touch desperately, her eyes fluttering shut. She can feel tears beading up on her eyelashes. “Fuck, Jade. You didn’t do anything wrong,” he murmurs, soft and horrified.

She bites her lip and thinks about what to say for a moment. Should she be reassuring him? She’s not sure she even knows how, let alone what for. Should she argue with him? Despite the question she had asked him like a child trying to avoid the consequences of her own actions, she knows exactly what she did wrong. She lied to him. Over and over again, for months. He deserves to be angry with her. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, and it feels like her ribs have a vice grip around her heart and lungs. 

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Jade,” he reaffirms, and it makes her chest squeeze even harder. “When I saw you in the library, I was… scared.” He says it like it’s painful to admit, or like he’ll get in trouble for admitting it. “I don’t know what my father would do if he learned that you had magic, and if anyone else learned and didn’t tell him, it would be probably considered treason or something. And I watched the way that he twisted Rose’s magic when we were kids to practically take control of her, and I didn’t want that to happen to you. I shouldn’t have shut you out, and I’m sorry for that. I just… didn’t know what else to do.”

This makes so much sense that she feels childish for assuming it was about her. It does nothing to assuage the guilt still prodding at all of her internal organs, sharp and uncomfortable, but at least he isn’t upset with her. She can be upset with herself for lying on her own time.

She wants to say something, to find the right words to reassure him that everything is going to be okay, but whether it’s the wine or the overwhelming emotions or the days of silence between them, she can’t find the right words. Her tongue feels heavy in her mouth, and all she can think is that he’s probably right. His father would do something terrible if he found out. She can’t bring herself to lie to him again, not now, so she stays quiet.

Instead, she slides her own hand up to his cheek, mirroring his touch on hers. His skin is so warm it makes her still-cold fingers tingle, which doesn’t stop him from leaning into her touch and letting out a slow breath that drags her eyes down to his mouth. She swallows around her dry mouth and leads him down, steadily closing the distance between them until finally, their lips meet. His are warm and slightly chapped, and it feels like magic. It fills her with warmth and comfort and makes her feel in control.

For a moment, Dave doesn’t react at all. He doesn’t startle and pull away, but he doesn’t kiss her back either, like he hasn’t even processed what’s happening. A wave of panic washes over her when he moves his hand away from her cheek, but it is just as quickly washed away when she feels his arms wrap around her waist and pull her tight against him.

His mouth opens against hers first, swallowing down her sharp breath, and she slides her hand up from his cheek to thread her fingers through his hair. She melts against him like she was built out of snow—or rather, she would melt against him if their height difference didn’t mean that pressing too close would mean craning their necks at angles that might kill them to keep kissing each other. So instead, maintaining her grip on his hair, she stumbles back a few steps until the backs of her knees hit the edge of the bed, and he follows after her without breaking the kiss for a moment.

He unwraps his arms from her waist to brace himself with one forearm while his other hand sneaks a little further behind her back to tug at the lacing holding her dress together. She lets out another sharp breath, her hands sliding up to his chest and pushing slightly.

When he pulls away, brow furrowing, her eyes catch on his kiss-swollen lips. They barely have time to catch their breath before she surges up to kiss him again. Every time he pulls away from her to glance at what he’s doing as he starts peeling back the layers of her clothes, she chases after his lips. Likewise, whenever she tries to pull away to catch her breath, he holds her a little tighter, and if she wasn’t already tipsy, she thinks she’d be getting there just from the lack of oxygen. With their faces pressed so insistently close together, she can feel every puff of hot breath from his nose against her top lip.

“Jade,” he eventually manages to gasp, and she stops halfway through her latest pursuit of his mouth to look up at him through her eyelashes, which she’s startled to realize are still wet. Their conversation somehow feels so long ago. “We should—”

“No,” she interrupts before he can say stop. Slowly, carefully, she brings her hand back up to his cheek, pushing at one of the earpieces of his glasses without fully pushing them away from his eyes. They’re still so close to each other that she can see the outline of his eyes through them, but she wants to see him. “Please,” she manages to murmur, a little more timidly.

He sucks in a sharp breath and doesn’t stop her as she pushes his glasses up and off. His pupils are blown wide, but they’re not wide enough to mask the brilliant red that she was looking for. Her breath catches in her chest as she is reminded all at once that her husband is the most beautiful man she’s ever seen.

His glasses dangle from her fingertips as her hand lingers on his cheek, and he leans into her touch again, his eyes half-closed, his breathing still ragged. “Please,” she says again.

She can feel his fingers against her skin through the thin fabric of her chemise as he works them under her dress, and then she has to sit up a little bit to help him work it off of her. The process of removing her clothes is slow, and even once her dress is off, she still comes away mostly covered. Only her arms are really bare, and they prickle with goosebumps even as she laughs a little bit. The look he gives her is bewildered, like he’s scared he might have done something wrong, and she says, “Sorry, it’s just…” She gestures at herself, grinning up at him. “I’ve never exactly had anyone undress me before, but I guess I thought it would be a little faster.” He manages a breathless laugh of his own.

“I never understood all the layers they stuff girls in. Dressing like a soldier is easy. Pants. Shirt. Armor. Bam, dressed. You’re in, like, three different dresses.”

“I’ll draw you a diagram sometime.”

He laughs again and dips down to kiss her, and she hums against his mouth, pleased. The mention of his clothes reminds her that she should probably take those off of him. It’s not as simple as he’d made it out to be—it seems like there are a dozen different leather straps and buckles for each piece of his armor, and she suddenly feels a little bad for not letting him look when he was trying to get her dress off earlier.

She doesn’t really want the metal and leather in the bed with them, not while they’re doing this, so she drops each piece of his armor on the floor with a loud clattering as she gets them off. For the first time, she wonders how audible the things going on in their bedroom must be to people on the adjacent floors. She hopes the answer is not very.

Once the armor is off, it’s much easier to open the buttons of his shirt and pants, and he pulls away from her just enough to shrug out of his clothes and push her chemise off over her head, and then they’re both naked. She can’t help but stare at him, breath caught somewhere in her chest. Scars criss-cross all over his skin, some pale white, others raised pink lines. She reaches out to brush her fingers against one just above his hip bone, and they both gasp as their bare skin makes contact.

And then, of course, there’s the throbbing erection curved against his stomach. She swallows when she sees it, lower lip catching between her teeth. It’s hard not to be a little nervous. She’s never seen a man naked before, let alone even thought about doing this. He must sense her hesitation, because he breathes, “Are you sure you want to—”

“Yes.”

Her eyes flit up to make contact with his again, seafoam meeting blood. The undercurrent of emotions there is so powerful that she wonders if the reason he wears his glasses isn’t to keep the whole rest of the world from reading his mind just glancing at him. He’s nervous. He’s embarrassed. He wants her. It’s enough to drive a girl mad.

Her hand trails over from his hip until it wraps around him, and he lets out a strangled sort of noise, his head falling forward until his forehead presses against hers, his eyes jamming shut. His skin is flushed down to his chest, and even before she moves her hand, she can hear his breathing, ragged and trembling. “Is this okay?” she whispers.

“Please,” he chokes, echoing her pleading from earlier.

She starts at a slow place. She’s never done this before, and she’s more than a little cautious. She doesn’t want to hurt him or to somehow mess this up before they’ve even done anything. She’s pretty sure that when he groans, it’s not out of pain, though, and she lets herself get a little more confident. She doesn’t dare look down at what she’s doing, mostly because she doesn’t want to miss any of the ways his face twists up, his mouth dropping open to gasp with every stroke of her fist along his length. With his forehead still pressed against hers, she can feel every one of those gasps against her lips, and it’s exhilarating.

Suddenly, he snatches a hand out to catch her wrist, and before she can question him, he grunts, “Jade, I can’t—I need to—”

She leans up to kiss him, sliding her hand back to his hip and giving it a squeeze. Moving blindly, he rolls his hips down against hers, and she sighs into his mouth. He grinds against her like that a few times before he seems to figure out what he’s doing. The friction is nice, certainly much nicer than nothing at all was, and then he presses inside of her and her thigh squeezes against his hip while her chest arches up against his.

If kissing him had felt like magic, she doesn’t even know how to describe this. It’s like she had spent her entire life empty and hollow, and Dave was the key to finally feeling full. There’s nowhere else in the world that she’d rather be, nothing else in the world that she’d rather be doing, and no one else in the world that she’d rather be doing it with.

For a long while, he doesn’t move at all, like he’s just giving her time to adjust to the size and shape and feel of him. He keeps his mouth moving against hers, his tongue darting against her lower lip, and he cradles her cheek with one hand like she’s the most precious thing in the world to him. When she finally starts to make little whimpering noises into his mouth with every kiss, he gives a slow, shallow roll of his hips.

She throws her head back against the mattress with a broken, high-pitched moan, and already she can feel the beginnings of something warm and bright and wonderful. With her mouth pulled away from him, he trails his kisses down the column of her throat to her neck, her shoulders, her collarbone, and she’s panting by his third thrust. Every time he rolls his hips back into hers, it feels like their bodies slot together like puzzle pieces, and she squeezes her thighs around his hips like she might just hold him there and never let him move again. 

Jade is filled with a frantic sort of energy that she doesn’t know what to do with, and if it were up to her, they would be moving as fast as their bodies could manage, hips snapping against each other, rutting like animals. Dave keeps moving so slow, so loving, the hand that he isn’t using to hold himself up so he doesn’t collapse on top of her trailing over every inch of her skin that he can reach. His mouth trails over a lot of her skin, too, but its range is a little more limited. If she listens closely, though it’s not exactly easy for her, not when the only outlet she has for all of this energy building up in her body is to toss her head from side to side, several stray curls coming loose from the tight braid Kanaya had so carefully done up for her yesterday and threatening to get in her eyes, he’s murmuring soft praise against her skin.

“Fuck, Jade, you’re so fucking incredible,” he breathes against her collarbone, fingers tracing a path up her side and under the curve of her breast that lights her skin on fire. “I’m so fucking lucky, didn’t even know how lucky I was,” he mumbles into the crook of her neck, lips brushing against her pulse and sending a shiver through her whole body. “Don’t deserve you,” he mutters into her shoulder, his hand sliding across her chest to her other side and back down to her hip, which he gives a tight squeeze.

She rolls her shoulder to nudge his face back up to hers, presses a quick kiss against his mouth, and then presses her forehead up against his. “I love you,” she says, so softly it’s practically just a breath.

“Jade—”

“I love you so much,” she says, a little more insistently.

She feels him shiver against her, and he leans down to kiss her, slow and sweet and nothing at all like the desperate crush of mouth against mouth from earlier. He manages to roll his hips into hers once, twice more before she feels heat pooling in her belly, but she’s the one who moans into his mouth.

His body has stopped moving, but he slides a hand down between them to press his fingers against her in a way that feels like it sends licks of flame over her entire body. She gasps against his mouth, breaking the kiss without pulling away, and squeezes her eyes tightly shut. There are sunspots dancing behind her eyelids, tingling warmth spreading out to the tips of her toes.

He rolls his fingers against her, pressing a little harder, and she keens, something like electricity shooting up her spine and making her arch her back off the bed. He slides the arm he’s been using to hold himself up under her back, holding her tight against his body and working his fingers a little faster, moving now at the feverish pace she had so desperately wanted him to give her earlier. Her whole body burns, and his hold is the only thing stopping her from squirming.

When it feels like something inside of her pulls taut, all of the heat and light bursts out of her, and her eyes go wide just in time to see light dancing around the room.

It looks like light shimmering off of snowflakes in the air around them, or like dapples of light against the ground through the leaves on the trees around the castle she grew up in, or like the stars in the night sky in Prospit. It is bright and shimmering and warm and comforting and beautiful and home in a way she can’t possibly describe. As she slowly comes down from the high of his touch, her breath coming in soft gasps that feel like they could lift her up in the air and she could drift away, the light starts to fade, and there is only her and Dave.

She presses her forehead up against his again and manages a breathless laugh. “Where did you learn to do that?”

His cheeks flush, and he doesn’t pull away from her at all, but his eyes dart away. Embarrassment. “The—soldiers tend to talk. I didn’t… I mean, I haven’t—”

“Dave, I’m not mad,” she says, still laughing.

He looks back at her, and something about his expression is so vulnerable that her laugh dies in her chest. “It was good?”

“It was amazing. You were amazing. I love you,” she says, beaming at him so wide her nose crinkles.

“I love you too,” he says, soft and a little bit startled, like he’s never heard himself say it before.

In the morning, she nestles herself so far into his side that she’s not sure there’s any part of her body that isn’t touching him. Like last night, it is warm and comfortable. His arm wrapped around her back, fingers brushing up and down along the bare skin over her spine, feels safe and secure in a way she’s not sure she’s ever felt before—certainly not before they met. “I love you,” she says for what must be at least the hundredth time, admittedly just a little thrilled that she can.

“I love you too,” he answers, just as immediately as he has every time, and she wasn’t sure it was possible for her to smile any brighter, but she’s pretty sure that she does. He smiles back—the private smile she had gotten so used to in Prospit, the one she hasn’t seen in weeks, since their snowball fight, not even when he slipped into bed with her in the dead of night in the weeks following before they had their real fight.

She presses a kiss against his chest, just below a scar over his collarbone, but they don’t have much more time to revel in the blissful moment before there’s a knock on the door. Both of their heads snap toward it, Jade startled and Dave tense, like there might be some sort of threat. They look at each other with furrowed brows. “Come in,” Dave says slowly, while Jade hikes the blanket higher to hide her naked body.

Karkat cracks the door open, and Jade lets out a little breath of relief that it is at least someone familiar to her. He doesn’t seem to give any regard to the state he’s found them in (they are married, so surely this was to be expected eventually) as he announces, “Shortly after you left last night, we received an emergency letter from one of our scouts in Viridan. He says that their army set off for the border yesterday morning—at least a hundred men.” He hesitates for a moment, and then adds, “If we’re going to meet them before they cross into Derse’s territory, we’ll have to set out today.”

Jade’s heart sinks to her stomach, and she looks up at Dave with wide eyes. His jaw is tight, and she thinks she can read the conflict on his face, sees his eyes slide over to her briefly. He takes a breath and then says, “I’ll start packing.”

Chapter Text

When Jade tries to help Dave pack, he waves her off, so she just sits on the bed cross-legged and watches him work.

He moves diligently, folding clothes and putting them in a trunk so efficiently it’d be easy to mistake him for a maid and not the prince that he is. She wonders how many times he’s done this. She doesn’t know a lot about the history of Derse, but she knows that they’ve always been in conflict with someone, and she knows Dave told her he spent a lot of time away.

Internally, she can’t help but be a little bitter. It feels like their entire relationship moves in stops and starts. They’re bonding before their wedding? He’ll freeze her out immediately once his parents arrive. They have a nice moment in the courtyard? He finds out she has magic and panics. They share a night together? Time for him to go to war for who knows how long!

“Do you have to go?” Jade asks, even though she knows the answer. She doesn’t like feeling like this—feeling like she’s forcing Dave to choose between her and his people. She knows that if he was ever given any choice in the matter, military life wouldn’t be anywhere near the top of the list of options. Right now, in Jade’s opinion, it’s pretty firmly at the bottom. But nobody ever asked either of them.

He doesn’t even pause in his packing. He spares her a brief glance over his shoulder, and then stares pointedly at the contents of his trunk as he answers, “I have to go. I’m the prince, I’m the commander of the army, it’s my job twice over to lead my people into battle.”

She mulls this over, her lips pressing into a thin line with displeasure. “Isn’t it supposed to be the king who leads his people into battle? Why isn’t your coward of a father riding off to war and leaving you with me where you belong?”

Any amusement he might have had over her saying he belongs with her is evidently overridden by displeasure at the mention of his father. “Jade, if the king did any of the things he was supposed to do, we wouldn’t be going to war in the first place. We’d be… I don’t know. I can’t even imagine what it would be like if he did that.”

“Well can’t you just refuse to go?”

“That might have been an option if we were the ones declaring war here instead of the invading idiots who stole and pillaged and tormented until we got a small army sent after our asses. But instead he had to be the most aggressive coward they’ve yet invented, and there is a small army being sent after our asses, and there are innocent people living in villages at the border who I can’t abandon just because he’s terrible.”

It’s not fair how good he is. It’s not fair that the thing that she loves the most about him is the thing that’s going to take him away from her. Of course she doesn’t think those people deserve for something bad to happen, and she wouldn’t be much happier sending Karkat far away to fight alongside a bunch of soldiers he doesn’t know in a war for a country he didn’t choose all alone.

Eventually, just desperate for any solution, she asks “Can I go with you?”

This time he really does stop, turning around to look at her more fully. She sets her face and holds her head stubbornly high, refusing to drop this just because he looks at her like she’s crazy. After a long minute, he sighs and says, “Jade, I can’t take you onto a battlefield. You’re not a soldier or a trained mage. And you’re my wife.”

“As your wife, I hardly think it’s fair to ask me to sit around the palace with a bunch of practical strangers for an untold amount of time during which you might die. You’re taking Karkat with you, and that only leaves me with Kanaya, except she’s always too occupied with your sister to spend any time with me at all.”

“I wouldn’t be taking Karkat with me if I didn’t have to. He’s a good soldier, Jade. That’s something to be proud of—something I know he is proud of. The last thing that I want to do is leave you here alone, but it’s more important to me that you’re safe—and I’m sure that Karkat feels the same way.”

She holds his gaze defiantly for another moment before her shoulders finally slump and Dave turns back to his trunk.

With his method of packing, it doesn’t take him very long to get all of the clothes that he needs into the trunk. She sees the way he stands perfectly still for a moment. There are very few steps between this and his leaving. He stoops down to start gathering all of the pieces of his armor that they had left on the floor, and Jade finally clambers out of the bed. “Let me help you with that,” she says, all-but batting his hands away.

He’s got that barely-there smile when she straightens back up with all of the pieces of armor she can carry in her hands in one go, and she deposits them onto the bed without much care so she can grab the rest. Once they’re all laid out, she starts picking pieces up to fasten them onto him. “When did you learn to don armor?”

“Probably when I learned to doff armor,” she says, eyes flashing up to look at him with a grin.

“Ooh, doff armor. Learning all the fancy soldier lingo? Are you trying to seduce me with army talk so I won’t leave, Princess?”

Her cheeks flush, which she pointedly ignores in favor of glaring up at him. “I hate it when you call me that.”

“It’s not my fault that’s your formal title.”

“We’re married. We’ve seen each other naked. I’m not sure that you need to address me by my formal title anymore.”

He laughs, and it’s so warm and easy that it makes her chest ache. She wants to hear that sound again, and she’s so scared that she never will. She accidentally pulls the leather straps of his cuirass too tight, and he hisses through his teeth.

She doesn’t know enough about armor to know if his is especially light, or if he’s somehow supposed to be so exposed. It seems impossible to her that with only a helmet and steel plates over his chest and shoulders, he is supposed to stay safe. Nothing below his waist is even covered, except for by tall leather boots that go over the knee. It’s like the king wants his soldiers dead—wants Dave dead.

With so few pieces, it’s not hard to figure out how to put them on him, but it also doesn’t take long to finish putting them on him. When she has only his helmet in her hands, she looks between it and his face, her teeth catching on her lower lip.

“This armor doesn’t exactly seem all that protective,” she says warily, looking him up and down like she’s looking for pieces she forgot to put on him.

“It’s a little minimalistic,” he agrees, indulging her.

“How is this stuff going to keep you alive with people trying to stab you and, I don’t know, throwing fireballs at you or something?”

He laughs, and she thinks he’s entirely too amused considering the situation they’re in. “Nobody is going to be throwing fireballs at me.”

“How do you know?”

“Because,” he says, bringing a hand up to cup her chin and using his thumb to pull her lip from between her teeth, “I’m very good at what I do. I’ll be back before you know it.”

She stares at his face for a long minute, like she’s searching for a lie. He just smiles, which isn’t especially comforting, even though she thinks it’s supposed to be. She sets the helmet down on the bed and slides her hands up to brush his curls back from his forehead, showing off the little patch of freckles on his forehead.

Her hands fall to cup his cheeks, and they linger there, thumbs stroking against his cheekbones, while she takes the time to memorize his face like she might never see it again. She’s never seen a man who was as pretty as Dave is. Of course he’s handsome, too, and strong and scarred and somewhat rugged, but when she looks at his face, it’s his full lips and high cheekbones that draw her attention. He looks so much like his mother and sister.

She stares at his lips for an extra second, and when her eyes finally drift back up to meet his, she thinks he’s looking at her almost as longingly as she’s sure she must be looking at him. Dragging out their goodbye is only hurting both of them. She lets out a shuddering breath and leans her head down to press her forehead against his chest. He hasn’t been wearing the breastplate long enough for the metal to have warmed up, and she tells herself that’s why she shivers. He wraps an arm around her and buries his nose against the top of her head.

After a final squeeze from Dave, Jade finally peels herself away from him. He stoops down to grab the helmet from the bed, and she slides across the room to pick up his trunk. It’s heavy enough that she has to haul it up with both hands, and it still takes almost all of the effort she has not to drop it on her toes. Still, when he tries to take it from her, she stubbornly takes another step toward the door. If they’re going to be separated, she wants to do this last thing for him.

She’s a little more used to the weight by the time they get to the stairs, which is good, because if she wasn’t, she’d probably topple down them. As it is, she has to focus so hard on what she’s doing that they haven’t spoken a word to each other by the time that they reach the courtyard, and suddenly she feels like they’ve wasted what might be their final moment alone together.

It’s warmer outside today, with no snow drifting from the sky and the snow on the ground rapidly melting into a sort of slush that she can only stand walking through because she’s wearing her boots today. All of the soldiers she saw last night are gathered around the courtyard with horses held by leads, most of them in helmets and with swords at their hips or bows on their backs. There must be at least three dozen people here, and she only recognizes a couple of them. Rose and Kanaya stand nearby, watching. Nepeta is tearfully talking to the soldier from last night—Zahhak, she thinks—and they’re standing so close Jade can overhear their conversation.

“You have to let me come with you,” Nepeta insists.

“No. It wouldn’t be proper.”

“I don’t care what would be proper, and I don’t think you care either.” His eyes are still covered by those dark spectacles, the ones that Jade swears half the men in Derse wear, but she thinks she can see his jaw harden even from where she stands. Nepeta is wearing her own half-frustrated and half-desperate look, mouth pressed into a thin line, until she finally snaps, “Well you shouldn’t care what would be proper!”

“Nepeta,” he starts, and his tone is somewhat placating. Nepeta’s face does not soften any. “I am very strong, and I have been training for a very long time. I am a soldier. It is my duty to answer the call to battle. You are a noblewoman and the princess’ lady-in-waiting. Your responsibilities remain here within the palace.”

“You’re a worse archer than me.”

“No, I am not.”

“Yes, you are!”

“No.”

Jade loses track of the rest of their argument as Karkat steps in front of her, his jaw set. He and Dave exchange a look, and Dave nods, reaching to take the trunk from her hands and carry it over to one of the wagons the other soldiers are loading their things onto. She stares at his receding back until she can feel Karkat’s eyes boring into her.

He’s got a helmet propped on his hip, probably just as aware as Jade is that he’ll look ridiculous the second he puts it on over his mess of curls, and he is wearing a grim expression that doesn’t brighten any when they make eye contact. It’s hard for her to blame him. He might be the only person in all of this who’s in a worse position than she is. She doesn’t know what to say. She wants to thank him, but she doesn’t really know what for. She refuses to say goodbye and give him permission to be gone.

If she didn’t know how to say goodbye to Dave, she thinks it might be impossible to say goodbye to Karkat. He is as much a brother to her as John is, and the thought that whatever she says to him next could be the last thing she ever says to him makes her heart squeeze painfully in her chest. He must feel similarly, because he just stands there and stares at her, wearing an expression like he’s trying to push through the pain of some hidden injury.

Finally, regardless of his sour expression or all of the soldiers watching them, Jade throws her arms around him and squeezes him into a hug. He’s her oldest friend and he’s leaving and she can’t say anything, but she would never forgive herself if he died in a war that shouldn’t have anything to do with either of them and she didn’t get to hug him one last time, even if it might be embarrassing in front of all of the other soldiers. Somehow, she doubts any of them would dare say anything about it right now.

He hugs her back like he’s trying to pack every hug they might never get to have into this one, squeezing her so tight it’s hard to breathe. She only nestles further into his hold, and only finally pulls away to look up at his face and murmur, “Be safe.”

That earns a laugh from him that makes her own smile grow a little wider and a little more real. “If I don’t make it home, you can kill me yourself,” he jokes. She lingers a minute longer, eyes flitting over his face like she’s trying to memorize all the details, and then joins her husband by the wagon he still hasn’t loaded his trunk onto.

It only takes one hand for him to hold it, and she wants to roll her eyes, but there are more important things to do and say in this moment. Much like she had with Karkat, she throws her arms around his neck and pulls him down into a hug, as close as she can manage with his trunk between them, and he lets out a startled noise that makes one of the nearby soldiers snort before scurrying away.

“Will you write to me while you’re gone?” she mumbles close to his ear.

“Whenever I can,” he assures, squeezing his free arm tight around her like he had in their bedroom.

She pulls away just enough to look up at his face. He’s wearing his helmet now, and she hates how noble and good he looks in it. He looks like the proper image of a knight, the proper image of someone preparing to lead an army into battle, and she hates it because she wants him to be able to be just Dave. To be able to be just her husband. He is so young to have seen so much strife—they are both so young.

Even with him pulled down into her arms, she has to lean up onto her tiptoes to press her face as close to his as she can get it, until he gives her the small mercy of leaning down to catch her lips. His arm around her back loosens just a little bit, and when he tries to pull away, she just leans in after him. She wants to keep him with her like this forever. Warm and safe. They have not been married long enough for her to become a widow.

They have not had the time together that they deserve.

She finally pulls away when she’s completely out of breath, sucking in a gasp through her mouth that trembles as it reaches her chest and staring up at him with wet eyes. “If you don’t come back, I’ll never forgive you.”

He lets out a startled laugh, attracting even more attention from the nearby soldiers than the kiss already had. She guesses they must be as unused to Dave expressing genuine emotion as… well, as anyone seems to be. “Never gonna happen, Princess,” he assures, smiling down at her. She doesn’t call him on the title this time.

When he takes a step back from her, his face resets to its usual neutrality, and he shoves his trunk onto the wagon. She finally joins Rose and Kanaya when he climbs onto his horse, a beautiful, humongous, pure snowy white draft horse. It’s certainly not the horse he’d had in Prospit, and it startles her to remember. That feels so long ago, and somehow it’s only been a matter of months.

He holds his sword high in the air, drawing everyone’s attention. “Alright guys, you know the drill,” he starts. “Well, except for Vantas.” There’s a collective chuckle among the crowd, and even Karkat doesn’t seem to mind the jab. It’s a much needed boost to the mood. “The Viridian border is a three week ride away. We’ll ride from dawn until we and the horses absolutely need to rest. Our goal here is for as little bloodshed as possible. Ideally, we can meet with their leader before combat starts on either side, end this thing, and come back home.” She sees his eyes flit toward her, and she has to clench her jaw to trap in a sob as the first of the tears she’s been fighting since they pulled apart spill over down her cheeks. Rose and Kanaya aren’t looking at her, so she wraps her arms tight around herself for some semblance of comfort.

“Alright. We’ve all said our see-you-laters. We all know the plan. Take one last look around, because you might not see home for a while. But we will see it again.” This time he looks at her long enough that they make eye contact, and she swears even from here, even with his glasses on, she can see his face soften when he sees that she’s crying, like he’s debating the merits of jumping off the horse and abandoning the whole mission just to comfort her. She forces her arms to uncross to scrub furiously at her eyes and wills the tears to stop flowing for just a moment, giving him a single jerky nod. He doesn’t need to feel any worse. She thinks he nods back, but she might just be imagining it, because a moment later he’s swinging his sword down into the scabbard on his saddle and yelling, “Let’s ride!”

It’s only once the horses finally start to run that Nepeta finally backs away from Zahhak and slides next to her, and Jade wraps an arm around her shoulders. Rose and Kanaya both turn to go back into the palace, but she and Nepeta seem to be operating on the same level of understanding. They stand there in silence, watching the soldiers ride off until they can’t see the puddles splattering as the horses trample through them.

“I’m so scared,” Nepeta confesses, so soft that Jade almost doesn’t hear her. “Equius and I have never been apart before. I don’t know what he’ll do without me… or what I’ll do without him."

Jade swallows and looks out over all of the hoofprints and footprints in the mud where the army was standing just a few minutes ago. She’s scared too. She’s scared for Dave, and for Karkat, and for herself. The only other time she’s ever had to say goodbye was to John and Dad, and they were so insistent that it wasn’t goodbye that it didn’t even feel real. But Dave can’t promise her that it’s not goodbye, because neither of them knows what the future is going to look like.

She takes a deep breath and then pastes on a smile, looking over at Nepeta, who is perhaps the first person who has ever been eye-level to Jade. “Equius has all of the other soldiers to keep him safe. I know Dave and Karkat, and I know they won’t let him get into trouble. And as for you… well, I guess we’ll just have to keep each other sane while our boys are gone, huh?” Nepeta offers her a wobbly smile, and Jade takes her hand to lead her back to the palace.

It’s hours before they separate and Jade is able to slink back to the security of her room. The bed is still unmade, and her chest aches as she sinks into Dave’s cold half of it and finally lets herself finish crying, burying her sobs in his pillow.

END OF ACT 2

Chapter Text

Kanaya holds her breath and a shiver runs up her spine as she feels Rose’s fingers against the back of her neck. “Here?”

“We can start there,” she confirms, swallowing hard around her dry throat.

“Start there? You’re very brave,” Rose says, and Kanaya can see her teasing little smirk in the mirror. She’s suddenly very grateful her cheeks do not flush easily.

Kanaya sits with her back ramrod straight in Rose’s dressing room. It’s not the first time she’s been in here by a longshot, but it always feels like they’re doing something inappropriate. She’s Jade’s lady-in-waiting, not Rose’s, and yet she’s barely spoken to her princess since they got here. Or maybe it’s the way this princess circles her a few times like a hawk.

“And you’re still sure that you want to do this? Once we do, there’s no going back,” Rose says, and it feels so close to her ear. Something about the phrasing makes Kanaya hesitate, despite the fact that this is something she’s desperately wanted her entire life and never been allowed to have. It simply wasn’t done in Prospit.

She takes a deep breath and nods. “I’m sure,” she affirms, voice low like she’s confessing something especially shameful. Maybe there is no going back, but maybe she’s okay with that.

She sees Rose shrug in the mirror, still wearing that smirk, and something familiar flops in her belly. She hears the snip before she sees a lock of raven hair drift to the floor in her peripheral vision.

Long hair is the fashion in Prospit—for young women, anyway. Her mother’s hair has been chopped off at the nape of the neck as long as Kanaya can remember, but anytime she would beg for her mother to let her cut hers, she would always be told that she could cut it when she was older and that it wasn’t proper for a noble young lady like herself to have short hair. Porrim told her to just cut it by herself when their mother wasn’t looking if she hated it so much, and she did think about cutting it when she went to live at the castle, but as Jade’s lady-in-waiting, she figured that she probably had some obligation to look like she actually belonged in high society.

But in Derse, all of the women seem to have short hair in some fashion or another. The longest that she’s seen is the queen’s, which falls to the bottom of her neck without even brushing her shoulders. Nepeta has two long strands in the front that curl at either side of her face, but the rest of her hair curls against the back of her neck, flaring out in a way reminiscent of her older sister’s if somewhat less dramatic. Rose, who must be one of the most beautiful people that Kanaya has ever seen, keeps her hair neatly trimmed at chin-length, with a seemingly ever-present headband to keep her bangs out of her eyes.

Kanaya’s hair doesn’t grow very long naturally. It has to have been two or three years since the last time she had a real haircut, and her hair still barely reaches past her shoulder blades. Still, it’s longer than she would like, and it feels like it marks her as an outsider in Derse, clinging to Prospitian ideals she never believed in in the first place. The only reason she’d kept it for this long was out of some sense of loyalty to Jade, and she’s starting to realize how little sense this actually makes. Jade doesn’t care about the length of her hair. She’s not sure Jade cares about her appearance at all.

“What are you thinking about?” Rose asks, and Kanaya blinks. She always knows when to ask.

“Jade,” she says, voice even lower—this is something especially shameful, she knows.

“Again?” Rose’s voice does not carry a hint of jealousy, and Kanaya feels bad that she wishes it would, the same way she feels bad when she sees Jade in the courtyard with Dave and feels jealousy twisting in her own gut. There’s another snip as Kanaya tries to figure out what to say, and then Rose prompts her, “What is it this time?”

“It wasn’t especially rational,” she tries to dismiss, and she sees Rose raise a skeptical eyebrow behind her. Her shoulders slump a little in defeat. “My hair. I hadn’t been cutting it because we wear long hair in Prospit, and Jade loves her long hair so much, and I always thought… But she’s never noticed it.”

Rose hums for a moment, which she tends to do when she’s thinking about what to say, Kanaya has noticed, like she wants to make sure it doesn’t seem like she’s not going to respond. She doesn’t do that with anyone else, and it’s silly that it makes Kanaya feel special. “I’m not sure your hair is the primary thing that stands out about you.”

It’s obvious bait, and Kanaya chooses to take it anyway. “What is the primary thing that stands out about me, then?”

There’s a pause in the locks of hair falling to the floor, and then she really does feel Rose’s lips against her ear. “You’re kind, and you’re smart, and you’re extremely nosy, and you’re willing to stand up for people even when they don’t deserve it.”

Again, she feels heat creeping up to her cheeks, and she swallows hard. “I’ve never stood up for anyone who didn’t deserve it.”

“You stood up for Jade.”

“Jade deserves it.”

“I know. It’s a shame my brother got to her first.”

Kanaya turns in her chair to look at Rose with her brow furrowed, and Rose is smirking again. She glares, though there’s not much behind it, really.

“Relax,” Rose says, sliding a hand up to cup her chin, and Kanaya digs her teeth into the inside of her cheek, eyes sliding to the door. Rose grips her chin a little harder and turns her head to look at her again. “Relax.”

“I’m not very good at that,” she eventually replies.

Rose laughs. “I know.”

Rose lets her go, and Kanaya turns back to the mirror. They return to silence, so she stares at her hair. Rose is about halfway through it, and already it feels like so much weight has been removed. She’s cutting it to the same chin-length that she wears, and it is so foreign that Kanaya almost doesn’t recognize herself in the mirror, but she likes that. It feels like she is reinventing herself—and Rose is graciously acting as her assistant.

“Do you think that Jade will cut her hair short, too?” Rose eventually asks, and Kanaya is so startled that she has to fight to keep herself from moving.

She ponders this for a moment. So much of her life has been spent helping Jade with her hair, and something about the idea that she might cut it feels wrong. It would be as though she were symbolically severing their bond, although it’s hypocritical, and it could be argued that Kanaya is doing much more work on that front considering she’s here when Karkat and Dave have both been sent to war. She’s sure that Jade has noticed that she’s avoiding her, and she has no idea how to begin to explain it. Guilt starts to sink into her gut, but she tries to reassure herself that she’s seen Jade and Nepeta spending much more time together lately. Nepeta will probably be a better friend to Jade than Kanaya ever was. “I don’t think so. She’s very attached to Prospit.”

“So are you saying you’re not attached to Prospit anymore?” Rose asks with a raised brow, and Kanaya swallows and keeps her mouth shut. She wouldn’t want anyone to think she was questioning her loyalties, even if it does feel a little bit like she’s got her feet on two opposite sides of a cracked floor that’s starting to break apart. “Well, good,” Rose adds after a moment when Kanaya doesn’t answer. “Her hair is beautiful.”

“Why do you do that?” she asks, more snappish than she means to be, and Rose doesn’t pause this time.

“Why do I do what?”

“Why do you talk about how beautiful Jade is, and how smart Jade is, and how kind Jade is? Why do you mention her so much?”

Rose hums in thought, still cutting off hair, but the longer she says nothing, the more frustration starts to bubble up in Kanaya’s gut, until she has to clench her jaw to keep from snapping further. “Jade is your best friend. It’s concerning to me that you’ve barely spoken to her since you told me—”

“You know why I’ve barely spoken to her.”

“I know,” Rose agrees. “I disagree with your reasoning. I recognize that I reacted… poorly, when you first told me. Alas, I have managed to have tea with Jade several times since then, and she hasn’t even brought up my blunder. You should talk to her.”

You should talk to her is such easy advice for Rose to give when she doesn’t have a tenth of the history that Jade and Kanaya do together. She doesn’t have any of the cultural or political context that makes this so… complicated.

The only person she had ever talked to about this before Rose was Karkat, and of course he was supportive, but Karkat is all-but obligated to support her no matter what. He may not rely on her mother’s support to maintain his position anymore, especially now that they’re in Derse, but his loyalties run too deep to forget it. And it wasn’t as if Karkat was the one at risk, anyhow.

Kanaya only realizes how long she has been silent when she sees the last long strand of hair drift to the floor and Rose starts to carefully even it all out. She doesn’t say anything, anyway. She just watches the princess work, pushing away any lingering thoughts of Jade—or trying to, at least. She knows that Rose is right. That she should talk to her. But Jade has so much going on, she doesn’t need that on her plate as well. And it isn’t as though it matters now, anyway. Not in Derse. Not with Dave. Not with Rose.

“What do you think?” Rose prompts. Kanaya swallows and looks at herself in the mirror—not Rose, as she has been doing practically this whole time, but herself. She can feel her hair brushing just slightly against her chin, and it swishes nicely when she turns her head. She thinks it’s been left slightly longer in the front than the back, as though to grant her plausible deniability. Maybe Jade would feel about Kanaya cutting her hair as Kanaya feels about the reverse, or maybe Rose just expects her to.

Of course, her eyes slide back up to Rose anyway. She’s openly smiling in a way Kanaya knows she wouldn’t have a month ago. In a way Kanaya knows she wouldn’t be if it were anyone else sitting in her chair.

“What do you think?” she deflects.

Rose’s eyebrows go up and her smile twists into another smirk that almost makes Kanaya squirm. She walks another circle around her and then stops in front of her, cupping her chin and tilting her head up to look at her again. With her hand so close to her face, Rose can probably feel Kanaya’s cheeks heating up even if she can’t see them.

“I think,” Rose starts, leaning so close to Kanaya’s face that their noses almost touch, “that your hair is the least remarkable thing about you. And I think that you should talk to Jade.”

Kanaya heaves a sigh, but Rose cuts it off with a kiss, until Kanaya’s hands come up to rest on her waist. It is so deeply unfair when she does this.

“I just need some time,” she finally breathes as Rose pulls away. Then, “Can we cut it shorter?”

Chapter Text

Jade has never been so surrounded by people, and she has never felt so lonely.

Her in-laws make attempts to spend time with her. Rose invites her for tea, Roxana invites her for drinks, they both invite her for dinner. She still never sees the king, but she’s not exactly lamenting that as any great loss. She and Nepeta see each other nearly every day. Sometimes they just sit in the library in silence. Nepeta likes to play with her hair while she reads, and admittedly, it’s comforting. Other times they sit together in Jade’s room late into the night and swap stories about their respective knights. Jade learns that Equius comes from one of the wealthiest families in Derse, and that he has an older brother who wants to become a great inventor. In return, she tells Nepeta about how Karkat had been practically the only person who treated her like a person when they were growing up, and she thinks she sees stars in Nepeta’s eyes whenever she talks about him.

But it feels like all of the things that connected her to Prospit are being taken away from her one by one. As the weather starts to get colder, there’s nothing even resembling the sunshine and warmth of her home, where she swore she could smell sea salt on the air even hours away from the coast. Karkat is off fighting in a war he never asked for, and Dave, as the only Dersite who had spent any time getting to know Prospit at all, is right alongside him. She still hasn’t received a single letter from her brother, and she’s stopped bothering to send them anymore.

Perhaps the most painful wound is the way Kanaya ignores her.

She’d noticed from the jump that Kanaya was spending less and less time with her once they got to Derse, but she thought that it was to give her time with Dave. Now that he’s gone and Jade needs her support more than ever, she is nowhere to be seen. When she tries to wrack her brain for what she might have done wrong, she draws a blank. She’d briefly wondered if maybe there was something wrong with Kanaya, if maybe she was upset and self-isolating the way Jade had after her fight with Dave, but from what she can tell, Kanaya is still spending more and more time with Rose.

It is easy to have drinks with the queen. The more time she spends with her mother-in-law, the more Jade starts to suspect that she may be right about how similar they are. Unlike all of the other members of the royal family, Roxana wears her emotions so plainly on her face, and though her unmasked grief is painful, it is familiar. Relatable.

She misses him.

She misses him like the sun misses the moon when it is blacked out by the cloak of night once a month. She misses him like the trees miss the birds and their young at the end of summer when the time has come to learn to fly. She misses him like the wind misses leaves in the winter, carrying instead the bitter cold of snow. She misses him like a widow misses a ghost. It’s been a month since he and the other soldiers left and she still hasn’t received a single letter, not from him or Karkat or someone informing her that one of them has died.

That doesn’t stop her from worrying. She tries to remind herself that Dave is still the prince, and if he died, a messenger would have to come to inform them of his passing. She tries to remind herself that he is at war, and he is the commander of the army, and he probably doesn’t have much time to spare for writing letters. She tries to remind herself that no news is good news.

But the anxiety still gnaws at her.

She distracts herself with her hours in the library. More than tea with Rose or late night talks with Nepeta or even drinks with her mother-in-law, this helps to fight off the tight pain in her chest, like an invisible giant has curled his fist around her ribs and is squeezing until she can’t breathe. She has nightmares like that, sometimes.

She doesn’t read about magic. Even the journal she had spent so much time occupying herself with has been returned to the shelf in the library, and if Rose has noticed it, she’s elected not to say anything. Even if Dave had assured her before he left that she didn’t do anything wrong, she’s wary of the king catching wind of her magic. Plus, she feels like she’s the only person left in the palace representing Dave’s interests, and part of that is no magic.

Instead, she reads about just about every other subject she can get her hands on. She reads about the history of Derse until she thinks she’s heard so many different tellings of the same stories she could write one herself. She pores over maps—old ones, when Derse was smaller and hadn’t pushed so far west, and newer ones, which have the names of dozens of tiny towns and big cities on the other coasts. She reads encyclopedias rattling off facts about every city she can find one on, population statistics and military history and architecture.

Her current fixation is on the native plantlife. It hasn’t snowed again since that bizarre flurry at the end of summer, and as she and Nepeta have walked the grounds, she’s started to notice new plants springing up at the edges. Some of them she recognizes from home—wild sage and thyme, yarrows in half a dozen different colors, the very same wormwood she used as a pest repellant in her herb garden. Others are entirely unfamiliar to her. She had panicked when Rose’s cat, trotting alongside them, had started to chew on one of the plants she didn’t know, worried that it might be poisonous, and Nepeta had laughed and said it was catnip.

It fascinates her just how many plants Derse seems to have. Dave had made it sound like a barren wasteland, but the botany books she finds could perhaps be more accurately described as tomes, some of them hundreds of pages long. With the sheer size of the country, of course there’s bound to be so much diversity, but even when she looks for books and chapters only about Vale, she still finds dozens upon dozens of pages describing whole landscapes’ worth of herbs, flowers, shrubs, and trees for every season. If she’d spent her whole life before Derse learning about gardening in Prospit, she could spend the rest of her life learning about gardening here.

She’s been closed in the library by herself at all hours of the day for the last… three days, she thinks. She’s lost count a little bit. She didn’t mean to shut herself away from everybody else or anything, it’s just that it had gotten a little overwhelming, being surrounded by people who seemed to only know how to mourn prematurely or act like nothing was wrong at all. A lot of the time, it’s relieving, the way Nepeta can be optimistic in the face of anything, and it’s gratifying, the way the queen mirrors her feelings about it. She just… needs a break.

She’s curled up in the library as her “break” stretches into its fourth day, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and Flora and Fauna of the Coasts of Derse cracked open in her lap. It’s a little bit older, doesn’t quite cover all of the territory that modern Derse has, but it’s still interesting, and more importantly, with Vale being the oldest city in the country, she hasn’t managed to find a book so far that doesn’t at least mention it, even if only in passing. The chapter she’s currently reading is about natural pest repellants like the wormwood she’d seen before.

She’s in the middle of turning the page when she hears a rapid series of thumps that sounds a whole lot like someone or some thing sprinting, and she flinches so hard that the book falls off of her lap as the entire library is filled with a yowl of pain.

In a tangle of tiny, supposedly-agile limbs in the middle of the floor, Rose’s poor, tormented cat lays on his back, kicking his legs at his assailant. On top of him, Nepeta’s cat, pure snowy white and looking perpetually pleased with herself in a way that Jade can’t completely articulate, has one of his ears in her mouth, holding his head between her front paws and gleefully ignoring his attempts at escape.

Just as Jade is debating getting up to pull them apart (which she’s only attempted once before, and she thinks she might wind up with a scar for her efforts), Nepeta, looking equal parts winded and thrilled, runs in after them. Unlike every time Jade has ever attempted to pick her up, Pounce de Leon makes absolutely no protest as Nepeta bends down and scoops her up. “Pounce, you are going to get yourself in trouble!” she hisses, and Jade can’t help a snort.

Jaspers takes the opportunity to flee, running faster than Jade has ever seen him move when he wasn’t trying to get away from Pounce, and Pounce allows this, happily snuggled into Nepeta’s arms. “If you believe they’re in love, I’m not sure I understand cat romance,” Jade eventually says in lieu of a greeting.

“Well, I’m sure you could find a book about it if you locked yourself up in here long enough,” Nepeta says, without a hint of malice or bitterness in her tone. Jade grimaces anyway. Nepeta doesn’t ask before squeezing herself into the armchair next to Jade, letting Pounce puddle into her lap as she leans down to pick up the book. “Pretty!”

The page, now featuring a probably-permanent crease in the middle, features a drawing of drooping white snowdrops. “They actually grow in the winter, you know.”

“Getting ideas?” She hums, setting the book in her lap without really sparing it another glance. She and Nepeta sit in silence for a moment, before Nepeta leans over to squish her cheek against Jade’s shoulder and murmurs, “You’re locking yourself up again.”

“Again? What again? There’s no again, I wasn’t locking myself up before,” she says defensively, and yes, she is definitely doing a good job representing Dave.

“Yes, you were. When you and Dave had your fight. Only then you were locking yourself up in your room to avoid thinking about Dave, and now you’re locking yourself up in the library to avoid thinking about Dave.” Jade wants to ask how Nepeta knows about that fight because she never told her about it, but she decides that the answer is probably just that Nepeta always seems to know much more than she reasonably should, and she should probably just be glad that she’s not nosy enough to pry into it.

“Ouch. Do you think it’s possible it’s not Dave-related?” she teases instead.

Nepeta hums for a moment as she seems to consider this. “Maybe not completely. But it is at least a little bit Dave-related.” Jade rolls her eyes rather than bothering to deny it. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“It might make you feel better.”

It probably would make her feel better, but talking about it would require really understanding what was wrong with her in the first place, and she doesn’t. Well, she knows the broad strokes of it. Dave is gone. Karkat is gone. Kanaya might as well be gone. Jade’s still here. But she doesn’t know much more than that, and she’s willing to bet that Nepeta has already figured all of those parts out. She’s not as naive as the other occupants of the palace seem to think she is.

“I’m just… restless,” she eventually says, which is at least true, even if it isn’t The Truth, two capital T’s. “Dave and Karkat are off risking their lives and I’m just sitting here. It feels like I should be doing something.”

“What do you think you should be doing?”

“I don’t know!” Jade huffs, annoyed, and even makes a grand show of tossing her hands up in the air with frustration. “I should have… fought them to stay. Or I should be putting up with His Majesty, King Diederik to try to draft peace proposals or something.” Nepeta snickers at that, and Jade’s lips purse. “Maybe I should have dressed like a boy and gone off with them.”

“We could still do that,” Nepeta proposes—rather unhelpfully, in Jade’s opinion. “I’m sure there’s extra armor in the staffhouse. I think they might have taken all of the horses with them, but we could probably buy some in town. I mean, you’re basically a princess, so who’s gonna stop us?”

Jade rolls her eyes. “Right. We can buy stilts while we’re there.”

“We can!” Nepeta giggles, and Jade can’t help the little smile that tugs at the corners of her mouth. “We would be great soldiers! I’ll pounce on all of the enemies and tear their throats out with my teeth.” As if to highlight her point, she forms her face into a snarl, and Jade’s little smile becomes a laugh and a grin. Then Nepeta holds Pounce up with her hands under her front legs, waking the cat up from her brief nap. “And Pounce can come with us!”

“I don’t think that Pounce would be a very good soldier,” Jade says skeptically, eyeing the cat like she’s really trying to appraise her fighting prowess. Pounce yawns and glares at her, and when Nepeta sets her back down in her lap, she springs off of her thighs to stalk back out of the library, evidently done being patient for the evening. “See? The moment things get uncomfortable, she abandons us. She would never have our back on the battlefield.”

“She’s just scouting ahead,” Nepeta defends, and Jade snorts again, head sinking down to rest against Nepeta’s. “Alright, so maybe we don’t sneak off to join the war effort. But if you’re restless, then what you need is a project.”

“A project?” she says, voice flat, and she raises her eyebrows even though they aren’t looking at each other.

“Yes! When I feel restless, I like to paint. And I go hunting with Equius and his father when we visit for the holidays. Well, Equius doesn’t really hunt, he just kind of stalks around and looks grumpy.” Even though Jade only met Equius twice, she can picture this clearly, and she brings a hand up over her mouth to stifle her bark of laughter. “What did you like to do for fun back in Prospit?”

Jade doesn’t hesitate for a moment before she answers, “Gardening.”

“Gardening?”

“It was the only thing I could do to get out of the castle. When I wasn’t gardening, I was in my bedroom under lock and key, getting fussed over by maids and guards like I was going to drop dead. But in the gardens, I got to be in control of something.”

Nepeta is quiet for a moment, turning the new information around in her head. Jade doesn’t think there’s anything in the world Nepeta likes more than learning new information about people. Cats, maybe. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think that she was Prospitian. The other Dersites that she’s met are all so stoic, so distant—whether they want to be or not. But Nepeta is friendly and warm and so insistently present. She’s still working up the courage to ask how her friendship with Rose even works, or if maybe it’s wholly arranged.

When she seems to have considered this to her satisfaction, she talks again. “Well, that’s awfully convenient then, isn’t it?” She snatches the book out of Jade’s lap and holds it up, wiggling it in the air like she’s showing off a trophy. “Here you’ve been shut up in the library reading about the plants in Derse for days, and now you need a hobby. Why don’t you just start a garden here?”

Jade stares at her sideways for a second, feeling a little bit stupid. “I… can’t, can I? I still don’t really know anything about the seasons in Derse, and it’s almost winter.”

“You were already thinking about it, weren’t you?” Nepeta pulls away from Jade enough to look at her and tilts her head in the same curious way that her cat does. “I mean, why else would you be reading so much about plants and stuff?”

Why else would she be reading so much about plants and stuff?

Of course there’s the obvious reason—that she just needed something to keep her mind busy, and plants are something that she’s always been interested in, so it was easy to sink into that. But she didn’t start with the plants, and if she’s being honest with herself, she could have moved on to a new research topic days ago.

There’s also a natural and healthy curiosity about the place that she lives in. She grew up in Prospit, spent her entire life learning about history and geography and gardening there. She didn’t need to play catch up by cramming all of those things into one very busy month in the library back home, but if she wants anything even halfway comparable to that sort of knowledge base about her new home, then she’s really going to have to sink her teeth into this stuff. Is it reasonable to dismiss that as the only reason she’s been so diligent about it?

But then why focus so much on the plants? Sure, it’s interesting, but if she really wanted a well-rounded self-education, then she should have moved on. Or at least mixed in some other content to balance it out. Really, if she wanted a really well-rounded education, she should have gone to Rose or Roxana or even Nepeta about it. It’s always easier to learn when you’re working with somebody else, and it’s likely any of them would have been happy to teach her, even if just to hear themselves talk, as the case may be for some more than others.

She was embarrassed for them to learn that she was so interested in the plants. She was embarrassed because she cares about it, because she wants to do something with that knowledge. And maybe they would have thought that was stupid.

“Do you really think that I could start a garden here?”

“I don’t know anything about that stuff. You’re the one who’s been in here reading about it for days. What do you think?”

Jade bites the inside of her lip, eyebrows pinching together in thought. “I think… I might need your help.”

For the next several days, Jade is still locked in the library, but she’s not by herself anymore. She reads books about gardening in Derse, about seasons and soil types and what plants grow well together and what plants will kill each other. She reads about what’s toxic to cats one afternoon when Nepeta is sitting next to her with both cats in her lap, which is the most magical thing Jade has seen since she got here, although Jaspers still watches Pounce skeptically like he expects her to disrupt the peace at any moment. (To be fair, Jade also watches Pounce skeptically, because she does expect her to disrupt the peace at any moment.) Some days, Nepeta reads about gardening too. Others, she reads romance novels or flips through what Jade can only guess used to be somebody’s sketchbook. And others still, she just sits there quietly, usually with a cat in her lap, and watches Jade until she comes up with a question for her.

Nepeta doesn’t know very much about gardening, although she’s picking it up faster than Jade would have expected. What she’s able to help Jade with more than anything is learning the seasons in Derse. She knows that it’s technically autumn, but she doesn’t know what the real difference between early and late autumn is. She doesn’t know how to tell when a frost is coming in, or a storm, or when winter is threatening to make itself known. She can read all the books in the world about which seeds to sow how many weeks before the first frost, but it doesn’t mean anything if she doesn’t know when the first frost is going to be. But Nepeta does.

Nepeta teaches her how to identify the smell of rain on the air before the first drops start to fall, and how to tell when the wind is going to become a storm versus just complaining its way through the leaves, and what colors mean the leaves are about to fall.

It takes a week, but then she feels like they have a solid enough plan to move onto the next step— talking to Rose about it. While Jade is nominally a princess, she knows that she needs the permission of the royal family to do anything. Rose is the most likely to grant it. Nepeta is invaluable here, too—while Jade never really knows where Rose is or what she’s doing, Nepeta acts like she has a mental map of the palace with moving dots for all of the people in it.

When Jade and Nepeta find her and Kanaya having tea and tell them that they want to start a garden, the first thing that Rose does is laugh. It doesn’t even sound cruel, but it feels like it spears right through Jade’s chest anyway. “Well, you’re certainly welcome to try, but it’s not going to work,” she eventually says, when she’s composed herself enough to speak using words.

Kanaya’s eyebrows pinch together, but she doesn’t say anything, and that makes Jade’s heart throb more than Rose’s laughter had. “Kanaya and I were the ones responsible for managing the gardens back home in Prospit. I might need some help, but I’m sure if I could just try—”

“It’s great that you’re an experienced gardener,” Rose cuts in while some emotion Jade hardly recognizes flashes across Kanaya’s face. “But not even magic could make a garden survive Derse’s winter. Maybe if you want to try in the spring—”

“I want to try now! ” Jade says, insistent, a little pleading. Something in her chest is tightening, and it feels like she has to rush to get the words out before it strangles her and she no longer has the opportunity to. “I like gardening, and I’m good at gardening, and I need something to do so I don’t go insane in this palace all by myself!”

It feels like the words hang in the air, and she feels one of Nepeta’s hands slip into hers and give it a squeeze. When she looks at her, she looks more proud than hurt.

Rose and Kanaya look at each other, and both of their faces are tinged with guilt as Rose looks back at her and Kanaya looks away. “I’ll make sure whatever resources you need are available to you,” Rose says, voice soft.

“...Thank you,” Jade breathes.

Chapter Text

The day after they get the approval for their gardening project, snow falls.

She doesn’t see it snow, but she knows that it happens because she wakes up and there’s a thin layer of snow on the ground that crunches under her boots when she ventures outside. She doesn’t see it snow again for days after that, but she thinks it must be snowing when she’s not looking, because that thin layer of snow never goes away or gets any thinner.

By the time a week has passed, Jade decides to start walking the grounds again just so she has something to do. Every morning as she puts on her winter clothes, she hopes that the snow will all have just melted away. She hopes that this sudden cold snap is just that. But if this is an early winter, she isn’t waiting months until spring just sitting around, and it might be useful to see what the grounds she’s going to be working with look like during winter.

Some days, Nepeta joins her. The cats aren’t allowed in the snow nor do they really seem all that interested in venturing out into the cold, so it’s usually just the two of them; Nepeta is always much less talkative when it’s just the two of them. Something about it strikes her as funny—the idea that Jade is a less interesting conversational partner than Pounce and Jaspers are. Then again, maybe she is. She’s never tried talking to them before.

Today, she’s by herself. It doesn’t bother her, really. She doesn’t understand the full extent of Nepeta’s duties in the palace, but she knows that there are more than Kanaya was ever given, and certainly more than Jade has ever been given. It makes her introspective, though. Exploring the grounds is the sort of thing that she, Karkat, and Kanaya would have done together in Prospit—if she had been allowed to explore the grounds in Prospit, anyway. It’s not something they ever did do together, but she finds herself turning to gush to Kanaya about how hard she thinks it would be to add a certain plant to their garden or whether some spots are good for planting. Her heart aches when she remembers that she hasn’t seen Kanaya in days. They haven’t spoken in weeks.

Karkat can’t be here for her. He’s off playing soldier like he always claimed to want, and she wants to imagine it isn’t making him as miserable as she was always sure it would. Maybe he commands the respect of the Dersite soldiers. Maybe they don’t care that he’s Prospitian. Maybe they even respect him more for being Prospitian and being hand-picked by Dave as his unofficial right hand anyway. It was always so important to him to be seen as a leader, and now he finally has an opportunity to shine as one. She can’t even imagine what must be going on with Kanaya, though. She realizes that she’s never really known what Kanaya wanted in a long-term sense, and she feels like an awful friend. Maybe, in secret, all she wanted was to get away from Jade.

Jade is properly dressed for the cold this time. She’s even wearing gloves and everything. The snow may not be actively falling, but the wind (perhaps her arch nemesis) is still sending chilly drafts through the city, and even with the cloak pulled tight around her shoulders, she finds herself occasionally shivering. At least it doesn’t feel like her fingers are frozen solid.

Every once in a while, a gust of wind will kick up a powdery flurry of snow, which always makes her pause for a moment and stare. She could make snowballs like a champ if she had anyone to make them with.

She heaves a sigh, and out of the corner of her eye she sees something startle in response. When she turns to look, her breath catches in her chest.

Two deer stand maybe ten feet away from her, a mother and her fawn, and Jade wonders how she didn’t notice them earlier. Had she gotten so lost in thought that she just stood there and they crept up on her like she was just some weird statue or something?

The doe stands alert, staring at Jade now like she is an unexpected predator, while the fawn keeps munching on the plants still clinging to life at the edge of the woods. Jade has never seen one in person before. They don’t have deer in Prospit, and she guesses in the early autumn all of the mothers must have been hidden away with their babies who were still too little to venture out into the world. This one is still molting into his winter coat, with little white freckles dotting patches of his body. He doesn’t seem cognizant of his awkward adolescent appearance, or at least it doesn’t bother him.

It must be so simple being a deer.

Jade stands as perfectly still as she can until the doe’s skepticism finally ebbs away enough for her to dip her head back down and start eating again, and she watches the plants that they eat around with curiosity. They leave little bundles of yellow flowers that, despite weeks of research, Jade can’t identify from appearance alone. It tells her she needs to spend more time in the library.

She holds her breath until the doe stops watching her out of the corner of her eye like she’s about to attack them, and then lets it all out in one puffy cloud of wonder. Maybe it’s worth it to be alone if it means she gets to see this.

Snow crunches under her boot as she takes a single step toward them, and she hardly has time to process what’s happening before they both bolt away from her, kicking up snow in their wake that Jade has to throw her hands up in front of her face to keep from getting in her eyes. Her heart sinks into her stomach, and she lets her arms drop heavy at her sides. If it wasn’t for the tracks in the snow, there would be no evidence that the deer had been there at all. She feels a little bit like she made it up, anyway. It feels like she imagined some animals to keep her company because all the humans she loves feel so far away, only then her imagined animals abandoned her, too.

She knows this is not a kind train of thought and shoves it away as she turns to start making her way back to the palace.

She makes most of the walk lost in thought and somewhat unaware of her surroundings. What does it say about her that every living thing she so much as breathes near runs away? How long will it be until Nepeta and Roxana and Rose all get tired of her and abandon her, too? How long will it be until she’s a little girl locked up in a tower all by herself again?

Out of the corner of her eye, she notices the dark shadow of the staffhouse and halts in her tracks, chewing on the inside of her lip.

Not everything ran away, she thinks, but there’s no sense of comfort in it. It makes her chest feel like it’s caving in, crushing against her ribs until it’s hard to breathe. Dave might be the only person in the world who’s ever chosen to be around her, in spite of everything. In spite of the fact that neither of them got a say in their marriage. In spite of the fact that she lied to him about her magic. In spite of the fact that he was practically locked away from her in this building. She feels like she should have spent more time here with him.

At this hour, it’ll be empty. The cooks and maids and other miscellaneous staff Jade doesn’t even know the names or roles of will all still be in the palace doing their jobs, and the soldiers… She swallows hard and takes a step toward the door, hauling it open. Well, she would haul it open, but it’s nowhere near as heavy as the palace doors, so she kind of ends up flinging it open.

Her cheeks flush and she scurries to close it behind herself before anyone catches her.

She’s never seen the staffhouse empty. Granted, she’s only been in it once, but it had seemed so full of life then, and it seems so… devoid of it now. The furniture has all been reassembled into a normal-looking sitting room without any people climbing all over it, and there’s no fire in the fireplace even though it’s much colder now than it was then. John would be aghast.

All of the doors are wide open, and she supposes the staff must not have anything to hide from each other when they have communal bedrooms anyway. Those rooms all look nearly identical, with neatly made beds and drawers all closed with what she must imagine are neatly folded clothes, but she couldn’t say for sure, because they’re all carefully tucked away where she can’t even glimpse them. It’s like the soldiers were never even here in the first place.

That is, until she reaches the end of the hallway.

The door to the study hangs completely open, and the single bed is entirely unmade, with the blankets and sheets all tangled up as if someone had slept in it yesterday. It is so characteristic of Dave, who always left the blanket on his half of the bed crumpled up when he left in the morning, that there’s no question in her mind it must be his room.

She wonders why no one has tidied the place up. This is where all of the maids live, surely they must have seen how messy and disorganized the room is and… what, ignored it? Do the residents of the palace really dislike Dave so much that they avoid his room even when he’s not in it? When he’s not even in the country?

She tells herself that she’ll just tidy a few things up as she crosses the threshold, sparing a glance around the room.

This room doesn’t have a dresser, and she supposes the clothes he had taken from their wardrobe when he left must be the only ones he has. It strikes her that this means she had more clothes in Derse than Dave did, and she wonders if that’s not the reason he was in his armor so often. She wonders if that was to force him to wear his armor so often.

She smooths her hands over the blanket as she pulls it over the bed properly and straightens it out. It’s not the smooth silk of the bedding in their shared bedroom. It is rough and, frankly, unpleasant, like untreated wool—or at least what she imagines untreated wool must feel like. She thinks sleeping under it for any extended period of time would make her itchy, and she makes a mental note to petition for nicer bedding for the staff, not that anyone is especially likely to listen to her, anyway.

In place of a dresser it has a desk. It looks like someone could have been sitting there scattering around papers only hours ago, and there’s even an inkwell uncovered, with all of the ink dried up into blue-black nothing. She thinks these are probably important military documents that she’s not supposed to see, and she tries to keep her curious eyes to herself as she starts picking pages up and bunching them together into a neat stack. She can’t help catching words like handmaid and sister, and she can’t help the way the gears in her mind start turning.

They grind to a halt when she reaches the bottom of the stack of papers and finds a sketchbook, effectively hidden by all of the chaos. Her mind flashes back to the conversation she’d had with Roxana a month ago.

Maybe she shouldn’t pick it up. Maybe it’s an invasion of privacy. At this point, she really doesn’t care.

The first page is a disorganized mishmash of small, rough sketches and scribbled notes in a sharp, angular hand. His handwriting is messy while remaining legible, like he was writing quickly as opposed to just having bad handwriting. Everything is written in sentence fragments, too, like he’s used to writing in shorthand.

6 mins. need bring down. zahhak injured, claims fine but obvious load of shit. 2 wks bedrest? wouldnt listen unless i made it a federal fucking issue, would definitely be weird about it. sick nep on him? might work. might be worse. find menial task. meeting ampora 6 wks. such bullshit, can that asshole retire already? would be stuck w asshole son. so far promotion sucks.

It’s easy to read it in his voice, and she smiles. The sketches seem vaguely related to the notes. Pieces of armor that she doesn’t know the names of, silhouettes she thinks might be Zahhak and “Nep,” who she’ll apparently have to prod for embarrassing childhood stories, the cats fighting, a giant warship with no less than a dozen flags. None of the sketches are very detailed, but they all get across the idea of what they’re meant to depict, and Jade thinks she understands what Roxana meant when she said Dave could do anything he put his mind to that first time they’d talked.

She flips to the next page, and this one is different both in that it is dated and that it is not quite a sketch, per se. The date is from a little over a year ago, and the portrait is more detailed. The man is middle-aged, maybe a few years older than Dad is, with his face twisted into a scowl—though it’s hard to say from the still image, he might just look like that. He has a dark, well-groomed beard rimming his jaw and two long, jagged scars from his eyebrow to his top lip. Jade knows this face, and it makes her shudder. There are more scribbled notes at the bottom of the page.

scars on wrong side? should have paid more attn, hard to look at that guy very long. harder when trying to pay attn to maps and logistics and shit. verify at next meeting. 8 wks. tried to push to 12. didnt go for it.

Jade flips ahead a few pages and finds a drawing of his sister, less detailed than the portrait of Savvas Ampora but softer. It’s obvious just from the style that he likes her more, although Jade guesses this must not be hard.

father arranging marriage, i guess. rose seems to think will be good for me. wouldnt say why. probably some magic bullshit. whatever. didnt wanna know anyway. whole family going down to prospit 8 wks. reschedule next meeting w ampora. at least theres some justice in the world.

Her heartbeat speeds up in her chest, and she flips through the next several pages. There are a few more portraits, and many more of those pages with all of the small drawings and smaller notes. They abruptly stop when she knows that he came to Prospit, and she’s not sure if he forgot the sketchbook or intentionally left it for some reason.

Then there’s a drawing of her.

She stares at it for a long minute, swallowing around a suddenly dry mouth. It’s the most detailed drawing in the book by far, with freckles so carefully placed across her nose and cheeks you’d think he was trying to draw a star map for a sailor or something. Her hair is down in its natural loose curls, and her mind flashes to the picture of them she still keeps in their bedroom.

jade. nose crinkles a little bit when smiles and teeth poke out, dont have heart to tell her even though its cute. hasnt smiled as much since left home. should ask if misses home. know thats just an excuse im making to be chickenshit. miss hanging out w her. didnt hang out w her nearly enough in prospit. idiot. vantas rants getting increasingly lengthy. record 12 mins. could try to push 15. could probably get to hang out w me anyway. wouldnt be as fun. should try going to room again. should try not chickening out this time. idiot.

Her chest feels unbearably tight now, and she squeezes the sketchbook against it like if she hugs it hard enough, Dave will feel it from whatever battlefield he’s stuck on. She hopes that he’s okay. She hopes he knows how much she thinks about him, somehow. She hopes he doesn’t think about her that much, because that idea is too painful to imagine.

She flips to the next page and finds it still blank. This shouldn’t be surprising. There are plenty of long gaps between drawings in the other parts of the sketchbook, and it’s clear that he doesn’t necessarily find time to draw often. She finds herself torn between a sudden sense of distress that he doesn’t have it and a profound sense of gratitude that she does. It feels like he’s left her a little piece of himself to hold onto.

She sort of stumbles back to the bed and collapses into it, staring up at the ceiling. The drawing didn’t have a date on it. When did he write this? Was it before that first night he finally came and slept with her? After their fight?

She flips through several more pages as though to verify that the rest of the sketchbook really is empty and then nestles further into the cold, messy bedding. The blanket really does feel itchy, but she thinks maybe the pillow still smells like him. She might just be imagining it.

An exhaustion that she thinks must already have been there and that she was merely ignoring seeps into her bones, pressing her harder down into the bed, and her eyes flutter shut. She hasn’t slept right since Dave left. She’s not sure she’ll ever sleep right again, but it feels a little easier here, where she can close her eyes and imagine him next to her.

There’s blood all over her hands, and there’s an overwhelming rush of twin panic and confidence, neither of which are like anything she’s felt before. All her thoughts can manage is a steady loop of No, no, please, no, and it feels like what she imagines praying would have felt like if she’d actually believed in all of that stuff growing up.

Her fingers are slick against each other as she presses down on the wound, more blood gushing out in rivulets over her fingers. No, no, please, no. The pressure isn’t enough, but somehow she already knew that, and somehow she knows that she already knew that.

With a shaky deep breath, she presses her hands down a little bit harder and lets her eyes flutter shut so she can concentrate, trying to block out another pleading chorus of No, no, please, no. She feels the warmth more than she actually sees anything, and it blooms from her fingertips and in toward the rest of her body faster than it ever has, until there’s a pleasant, buzzing heat under all of her skin and thrumming through her veins with every insistent beat of her heart.

Almost absently, she feels that warmth seeping away from her, feels the thready heartbeat under her hands starting to sync up with hers until it’s almost as strong, almost as steady. He coughs, and her eyes immediately fly up to his lips in time to see blood flecking on them. There’s a spark of confusion in those eyes, those eyes that might be even redder than the blood all over her hands, before he croaks, “Jade?”

Her eyes snap open and her whole body is shaking. No, she realizes after a moment, someone is shaking her, and she stares at them with wide eyes. The woman who looms over her has dark, ruddy hair pulled up into a bun, with a few strands hanging loose at either side of her face, highlighting just how gaunt she looks. It seems longer than the typical fashion Jade has grown used to seeing in Derse, maybe even as long as hers is, but Jade supposes this makes sense, because this woman is so clearly not from Derse. Her soft brown skin and almond-shaped eyes are both trademarks of Viridian, or perhaps East Beforus, although the color isn’t one Jade knows to be common anywhere, the same vibrant, startling green as hers. Her eyes are narrowed into a sort of glare, or perhaps a suspicious squint.

“You in here why?” she asks, with peculiar grammar and a thick accent.

“I…” she starts before she realizes that she doesn’t have an answer, and then her eyes flit back down to the sketchbook, which has slid from her chest to her stomach but otherwise remains undisturbed.

“Oh. You his girl,” she says, in a way that does not sound at all softer or more endeared.

His girl meaning Dave’s wife. She nods, a little dumbfounded. “Yes, I… I just thought…” She grasps for an explanation, which isn’t made any easier by the way this woman is glaring her down. She swallows thickly, eyes flitting down to the sketchbook like it can offer her some sort of support. “Would it… disturb anyone, if I came in here sometimes?”

The woman’s face does soften somewhat at that, but it looks more like pity than sympathy. “You him miss. No one cares,” she says, and despite the blunt phrasing, somehow Jade feels that it really does sound reassuring. She’s not even sure if it was supposed to be, but she offers a small, tight smile and a single nod. She waits until she’s alone in the room again before she makes any move to leave, reluctantly leaving the sketchbook on the pillow. She somehow doubts anything good would come of bringing it into the palace with her.

When she steps outside, she freezes as she stares at the landscape. The snow has been replaced with slush and mud, which makes an unpleasant squelching noise under her feet when she stops. That brings a real smile to her face. It means that the ground is soft. Soft enough for gardening, certainly.

It’s too close to dinner to get her hands in the soil, as much as she’d like to, so she has to wait until the next day to get started. It’s miserable. It feels like the snow is going to come down twice as hard and she’s going to miss her one opportunity. She tries to force herself to be patient by reminding herself that if the snow comes down twice as hard, all of the seeds she put in the ground will die anyway.

She is rewarded for her patience with wet earth and dirt under her fingernails, and it’s the most incredible thing she’s ever felt. She missed the feeling of dirt under her nails. She doesn’t have real gardening clothes, and her dress, which was carefully tailored for her by one of the royal family’s seamstresses after Dave left, is easily ruined by the mud. She couldn’t possibly care less. It’s the first time since he’s been gone that she’s truly felt like herself, like she might have a reason for being here.

By the time that the sun starts to creep toward the horizon, she wipes sweat off her forehead despite the chilly weather that nips at her muddy fingertips and leaves a smudge behind. She smiles in satisfaction at the smudge, and all the other smudges of dirt all over her clothes and skin, and at the small plots where she’s planted dozens of seeds in a single day.

The ground freezes over again the next morning.

Chapter Text

The Royal Library in Vale is about an hour’s walk from the palace, but Nepeta serves as both a guide and a companion, which makes even trekking through the snow bearable.

Once they’re past the palace grounds, the little dirt road winds between thick, untrimmed trees and shrubs that come up to nearly her hips. Sometimes, she stops to look closer at them, and Nepeta patiently indulges her. No matter how much she reads about it, Jade is still so fascinated by the persistence of Derse’s plantlife.

And she reads about it a lot. Nepeta says they’re not allowed to bring the books from the Royal Library back to the palace, so she spends long days there poring over the additional material that is available there. If nothing else, she might be able to keep herself occupied with reading through the winter.

The little yellow flowers the deer had avoided are called winter aconite, and different sources make different reports over how poisonous they are. Some say they are so toxic they can be used to poison wolves and you must use gloves to handle them. Others say that they’re only poisonous when ingested, and even then would only make you a little nauseous. Some say that the whole plant is poisonous, while others say only the tubers are.

“Why are you so interested in this stuff?” Nepeta suddenly asks, squinting at the pages of a book she holds entirely too close to her face to actually read it.

Jade hums in thought without looking up from her own book, although she thinks she sees Nepeta smile out of the corner of her eye. Who knows why this time? “It’s kind of a long story,” she says when she finally decides there’s no simple explanation.

“Tell me anyway!” She should have expected that.

Jade sets her book down with a sigh, but she can’t help a smile. “I started gardening when I was little. I had to beg Dad for weeks to let me get started, but Grandpa advocated for me—he said that it would probably be good for my health to spend more time outside, and at least if I was in the gardens they’d be able to keep an eye on me.” She remembers the way Dad had looked so skeptical until Grandpa pointed out that she was always at her healthiest after chasing John around the courtyard. It wasn’t really true, she had chased her brother around until she couldn’t breathe while playing plenty of times, but for some reason he gave in anyway. “It was basically the only thing I was allowed to do outside of my room. At first, they assigned some maids to help me, but when Kanaya moved into the castle, we started gardening together.”

Nepeta’s got the same wide-eyed curiosity she gets whenever Jade talks about something she finds interesting, and she asks, “So why did Kanaya move into the castle?”

With the distance between them lately, the question sends a pang through Jade’s heart. Karkat had been her first friend, but in a lot of ways, Kanaya was her closest. Kanaya was always allowed to be much closer than Karkat was, due to the nature of their different positions.

“I was finally allowed to go to a public event for the first time when I was 13 years old. It was my cousins’ wedding, and they were some of the only people I had ever been allowed to know. I was so excited. It wasn’t really anything like Dave and I’s wedding.” Her stomach flutters mentioning her own wedding, even if it had been sort of awkward and terrifying in a lot of ways. “It was smaller,” she says, pushing through it. “Only the noble families of Prospit were invited, and lots of them didn’t come. There weren’t many people my age, and nobody talked to me. It was like people thought that I’d get sick if they just looked at me wrong. It was nothing like the public debut I’d always dreamed of, and I was miserable.”

“But you had Karkat, didn’t you?” Nepeta asks, with the same starry-eyed expression she usually gets when they talk about Karkat, and Jade can’t help laughing just a little bit. It feels like when a child interrupts their guardian in the middle of a story.

“Yes, I had Karkat, kind of. Technically, Karkat was working. He may have been my personal guard, but at a public event like that, that meant something much more formal than what it meant in private. And anyway, just when I was about to ask him to escort me back to my room and give up on the idea of interacting with the public for good, Kanaya came and talked to me. She was a little bit older than I was, so I think she felt a little bit awkward and didn’t really know what to talk about, but it was so relieving just to have anybody talk to me at all. To not be all alone. I guess Dad must have seen how happy I was to have a new friend, because he wrote to Kanaya’s mother and then she came to be my lady-in-waiting. But, really, I went to public events so infrequently that it was really more like we were just friends.”

“Wow,” Nepeta practically gasps, leaning her cheek against her hand with a dreamy expression. “You must love each other a lot.”

Jade grimaces without meaning to. Yes, she does love Kanaya a lot. She’s not sure Kanaya loves her very much right now, though. Rather than prod at the open wound of the unexplained loss of one of her oldest friendships, she redirects. “What about you and Equius? How did you meet? And how did you two wind up… here?”

Like always, Nepeta perks up at the opportunity to talk about her best friend. “We grew up together! His father married my mother when she was pregnant with me.”

“Oh, wow,” Jade says before she can stop herself, eyebrows raising a little. “Why didn’t you ever tell me Equius is your brother?”

“He’s not! Not really.” Nepeta laughs at Jade’s confused expression and explains, “My mother was in Beforus during the revolution. She was from Derse, but she hadn’t been here in a long time and they weren’t going to let her back in, especially because she was pregnant with me and refused to tell them anything about my father. She won’t even tell me much about him! But I guess Equius’ father took pity on her and he married her so she could come home. And Equius was just a baby at the time.”

“Wow. You really haven’t ever been apart before, huh?”

Nepeta looks a little sad, and Jade immediately feels bad for saying it. “No, we haven’t. He enlisted in the military when we were 14 and came to live in the capital, and I begged our parents to send me with him. I guess his father pulled some strings and I was sent here to be Rose’s lady-in-waiting.”

Jade has so many follow-up questions. What strings did his father manage to pull? Why was her mother in Beforus? Why is Nepeta’s father such a big secret? Nepeta already looks so sad, though, and she doesn’t want to make it worse. She doesn’t really want to invite more prying into her relationship with Kanaya, either. So instead she offers Nepeta her best reassuring smile and says, “Why don’t we head home for today? I bet it’ll be almost time for dinner by the time we get back.”

Days later, when the snow has started to melt but the ground isn’t soft enough for gardening, Jade decides to try something new.

She sits at the edge of the treeline where she had seen the deer, wearing a skirt that’s already got smudged dirt stains on it. Kanaya would know the right treatment to get the stains out of the fabric, but Kanaya still isn’t speaking to her. She’s not all that attached to this skirt anyway. When she can finally start the garden, it’ll probably be relegated to gardening clothes.

Dave’s sketchbook is open in her lap. She’d looked through the pages again, brushing her fingers over the drawings like she’d be able to feel Dave’s hands while he was drawing them if she tried hard enough. She can’t, but it makes her feel closer to him anyway. Now she’s opened to a blank page.

She got charcoals on her last trip into the city. Nepeta took her to some shop she liked and haggled as if Jade really needed the price brought down at all. She thinks maybe Nepeta just likes haggling.

She started out working on those smaller sketches like Dave’s pages filled with dozens of different drawings. The flowers are dead again, but she did her best to sketch them from memory. Then she tried to sketch the deer from memory, too.

Now, hunched close to the paper so she can squint at the details, she’s trying to draw Dave. She doesn’t think her portraiture is as good as his is, but it feels important in a way she can’t entirely describe. She’s petrified of forgetting the smaller details of his face. She sees him in her dreams most nights, but he’s always half-dead. She doesn’t want that to be how she remembers him.

“Come inside soon,” a voice over her shoulder says, and Jade jumps, smudging a streak of charcoal across Dave’s face.

Jade has learned that the ruddy-haired woman with the perpetual bun is Mitoki Megido, a refugee from Beforus who serves as the queen’s handmaid. She hasn’t been able to work up the nerve to ask why Mitoki was an exception to Derse’s refusal of Beforan refugees while Nepeta’s mother was not.

“Why?”

She doesn’t usually question Mitoki’s advice—or, typically, orders—no matter how bluntly or cryptically she tends to deliver it. Sometimes it seems like she knows things before they happen, but it doesn’t seem like the way other Dersites use magic. It seems like she just… knows them.

“Person coming,” she says, and Jade’s eyebrows pinch together. “Delivering bad message. You hear don’t want.”

Jade looks around and her heart sinks. None of the army’s messengers have ever come to the palace before, but she’s seen them on her trips to town, and devastation always follows. They bring the messages about deaths. And just a few yards away, at the edge of the treeline, she can see one marching straight for the palace.

She carefully closes the sketchbook and clutches it to her chest, but her charcoals are abandoned in the mud as she trots closer to him. “Wait,” she says, and he dutifully ignores her. “Please,” she says, a little more insistently, and he spares her a glance.

“I must deliver my message to the palace. I am not to say a word about it until I’m inside the palace walls,” he says, but she can hear a tinge of sympathy to his voice that does nothing to make her feel better.

“Who is the message for?” she asks, and he ignores her again, so she scurries after him. It feels like the walk from the edge of the grounds to the palace doors takes forever, and her heart races even as they’re not moving at an especially brisk pace.

Something must be wrong with Dave, she thinks. The occupants of the castle are so few, and there are no other soldiers with family here. Only the royal family. Only Dave. Maybe if she’s lucky, he won’t be dead. Maybe he’ll just be injured. They must send messengers for injuries too, right? For soldiers who are being sent home? Maybe Dave is coming home.

When the palace doors finally creak open, it is Nepeta who answers, and a grim look of recognition instantly flashes across her features.

“Well?” Jade asks, trying not to sound as impatient as she feels. The messenger crouches on the floor in the entrance hall to sling his bag over his shoulder and start rummaging through it. Nepeta moves to wrap an arm tight around her, and she does her best to do the same as they both hold their breath.

“Is one of you Nepeta Zahhak?”

It’s awful, the way that relief washes over her. She bites the inside of her lip and looks at Nepeta, whose face is completely blank except for eyes wide as saucers as she nods.

The messenger hands her the letter and then hauls his bag back up, slinging it over his shoulders again. Then he pauses for a moment and rests a hand on her shoulder. “My condolences,” he murmurs, before scurrying back out of the palace as quickly as he’d come.

For a second, they both just stare at the unopened letter in Nepeta’s hands, and Jade can’t help but note that the address is written in Dave’s handwriting. She wonders how many of these he must have written by now. She wonders who will write it if one must be written for him.

When Nepeta finally opens the letter, her hands are visibly shaking.

Ms. Zahhak,

It is with the deepest condolences that I must inform you of the passing of your brother, Equius Zahhak, in the line of duty. He nobly sacrificed his life in service to his country and his king, for which he has been granted the highest honors we can bestow upon him.

Due to the wartime restrictions on cargo travel, we are unable to return his remains to your family. Rest assured that he has been given a soldier’s burial and read his proper rites. However, the royal family would be honored to reimburse any costs associated with a memorial service. If you wish to claim this reimbursement, please send a notarized letter to the palace in Vale with the army messenger stationed in your region for the king’s consideration.

Know that your brother’s sacrifice brings our noble kingdom one step closer to the end of this atrocious war. Though I cannot express enough sorrow for your loss, it is my hope that you may find some reassurance in this fact.

My sincerest apologies,
Prince David III, Commander of the Royal Army of Derse

p.s. im so fucking sorry nep

Jade does not have any time to process her own feelings about the letter before Nepeta lets out a wail and surges toward the doors with her whole body. Jade tightens her arm around her, effectively holding Nepeta back as she claws at the air to try to get to the door. Jade doesn’t know what she’s going to do if she gets through it, but she’s sure it can’t be good.

After a long minute of desperate struggle, Nepeta practically collapses against her with a sob that wracks her whole body.

“Shh. I know,” Jade breathes into her hair, even though she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know at all.

“He has to come home,” Nepeta eventually sobs against her shoulder, voice full of more despair than Jade has ever heard. “I have to see him, he can’t be—”

“You don’t want to see him, Nep,” she murmurs into the top of her head, adopting Dave’s nickname for her in the hope that it will be more comforting.

“But they’re wrong!” Her voice is tinged with anger of all things, and Jade has even less of an idea what to do with that than she does anything else.

Evidently they’ve made enough of a scene to attract attention, because Jade hears footsteps rapidly approaching them only a second before Rose and Kanaya burst into the room like they expect to find a dead body in it.

When Jade makes eye contact with Kanaya, it feels like her heart sinks to the pit of her stomach. She hasn’t seen or heard from her in weeks. Even now, she can see the way Kanaya’s eyes flit away for a moment to avoid her gaze, and it’s not the time or the place but she wants to ask why. What has she done to deserve this level of avoidance?

Nepeta’s distress, apparently, is more important than whatever Jade did, because Kanaya finally takes a few steps toward them and carefully pulls Nepeta away from Jade to squeeze her against her chest. Nepeta crumples, and they sink until they’re both sitting on the floor.

Jade is suddenly struck by how small Nepeta looks. They’re so close to the same size that Jade rarely thinks of Nepeta in such terms, but in Kanaya’s arms, she looks remarkably like a little girl seeking comfort from her mother. It’s not the first time Jade has been struck by how maternal Kanaya always seems to act, but it’s the first time she’s ever watched her do it with someone else. Kanaya tilts her head down to murmur something against the top of Nepeta’s head so softly that Jade can’t hear what it is.

Hours later, after Nepeta has fallen asleep in Kanaya’s lap and Rose has assured her that they’ll make sure she finds her way back to her own room, Jade slips back out of the palace. If her sister-in-law and lady-in-waiting question why she’s not going up the tower to her own bedroom, they don’t ask her about it directly. She’s grateful, because she doesn’t think she has an explanation in her after the drama of the evening. It means she can just slip quietly into the staffhouse and start toward her room—Dave’s room.

It doesn’t seem like anyone is going to intercept her path, but she finds Mitoki waiting for her in the study, sitting on the edge of the bed with her eyes narrowed into a glare before Jade has even finished opening the door.

“I tell,” she says, and it takes Jade a moment to understand what she’s talking about through the thick fog of exhaustion.

“Yeah, you did,” she answers, voice soft. Bed unavailable, she collapses into the chair at the desk instead. “How did you know what he was going to tell us?”

She seems to consider this for a moment, turning the idea around in her mind, and Jade isn’t sure if she’s trying to decide whether she wants to answer or trying to figure out how to put the answer together.

Eventually, she says, “You how not know?” Jade isn’t sure whether she’s asking if she doesn’t know how or why she doesn’t know how. Neither of those options makes much sense, so she shakes her head. “First Guardian,” Mitoki says, slowly, emphasizing it like the words should mean something to Jade.

Where has she heard the words before? It’s most likely something magical, so she’s certain it doesn’t come from Prospit. There had been such a brief window where she was studying magic in Derse, though. Only that week when Dave wasn’t talking to her and… “The Black Princess’ journal?” she asks, realization hitting her so hard it nearly knocks the wind out of her.

“More,” Mitoki says, and Jade finds her breath catching in her chest with excitement. As she perks up, though, Mitoki continues, “Sleep now.” Jade doesn’t have time to respond before she brushes past her and out of the room.

Jade stares after her for a long minute, and if she wasn’t so tired, she would chase after her. It feels like she has the answers to every question Jade has ever had if she could only figure out how to communicate with her.

She wakes in the morning to a knock on the door, so soft it wouldn’t have woken her at all if she wasn’t having the same recurring nightmare she’s been having for days. Blood on her hands. Panic. Magic. Dave. It feels so much more real and so much more petrifying after yesterday’s news. “Come in,” she calls without bothering to ask who it is.

The door cracks open slowly and Jade sees Nepeta with Pounce held close to her chest. Her eyes are rimmed with red, and Jade’s chest squeezes. “I came to say goodbye,” Nepeta murmurs.

“What?”

Nepeta crosses the room to sit on the bed next to Jade. She’s not sure which one of them leans against the other first, only that she can feel Pounce’s whiskers through her chemise a moment later. “I’m going to stay with my mother in the countryside for a while. I can’t… I’m not ready to be here without him.”

Jade swallows and packs away all of her feelings about the issue. It isn’t fair to ask Nepeta to consider what she’s going to do without her. “Okay,” she says instead, when she feels like she can speak without her voice warbling at all. “Thank you for coming to say goodbye.”

Nepeta seems to hesitate for a moment, and then gives a jerky nod against her shoulder. “I’m sorry I’m leaving you all alone.”

“I’m not all alone,” Jade says, and she’s not sure which one of them she’s trying to comfort. “When do you leave?” she asks then, hoping to shift the focus away from her. None of this is about her, really.

“Now.”

“Oh,” Jade says, before she can stop herself. She swallows hard and then murmurs, “What about Pounce?”

“I don’t think she would like the countryside very much,” Nepeta says, in a way that makes Jade unsure if she’s completely telling the truth or not. Before she can try to pry into it, though, she adds, “...Will you take care of her?”

“I…” Jade starts, stunned. She’s never been responsible for anything that breathes before, but Nepeta looks so heartbroken. How can she say no? “Yeah. Of course I’ll take care of her.”

They wrap each other up in one more hug before Nepeta carefully deposits Pounce into her lap, who somehow seems to understand that now is not the time to protest, because for once she doesn’t put up any fuss at all. Even more impressively, she doesn’t put up a fuss at all when Jade picks her up in her own arms and cradles her like a baby to follow Nepeta out of the staffhouse and onto the grounds.

She realizes belatedly that she didn’t put on any winter clothes or even any shoes, and a shiver rips up her body that makes her teeth chatter as makes her teeth chatter as her toes sink into the cold, wet mud. She refuses to turn around and go back inside until Nepeta’s carriage has disappeared far past the treeline, anyway. With a shaky sigh, she looks down at Pounce and murmurs, “What are we going to do?”

That night, Jade is restless. She tries to lay down and get some sleep with Pounce curled up on her chest, but every time she starts to drift off, she’s struck by that image of Dave covered in blood again and wakes up gasping in a cold sweat. By some miracle, Pounce doesn’t lash out at her for disturbing her sleep so much.

She stares at the ceiling of the study. Maybe it would be easier to sleep if she dragged herself back up to the palace and slept in the more comfortable bed in their bedroom— her bedroom. It was always her bedroom, even when Dave was here. This was Dave’s bedroom, and that’s exactly why she can’t sleep anywhere else.

“Well I can’t just lay here doing nothing all night,” she murmurs, more to herself than to Pounce. Pounce does not protest when Jade gently sets her to the side.

She has the sense to pull a cloak on over her nightdress before she goes outside even if she doesn’t change into winter clothes completely. The snow is still clear and the earth is starting to soften, and it leads her to staring at the muddy patch where her garden should be growing.

“You could pretend like you wanted to grow,” she says bitterly. “Most plants aren’t lucky enough to have humans that want to take care of them, you know.”

It feels silly to treat her garden like an ungrateful child, and she finds herself feeling more than a little guilty for it. “Sorry,” she mumbles. “I guess you’re just the only thing I have to vent my frustration at, but that’s not fair to you. You didn’t do anything. I’m the dummy who decided to start a garden in the middle of autumn.”

She hadn’t thought to grab a watering can on her way out, so she’s left just sort of standing over the garden and staring at it without any real idea of what to do. But she feels like she needs to do something.

She sits on the ground next to it, once again ignoring the mud that is almost certainly seeping into her cloak to stain it. “I know that I just need to be patient,” she says, tilting her head back to stare up at the sky. There’s an inky black circle where the moon should be for the new moon, leaving her in more darkness than usual, but there’s something that feels almost comforting in that—her newfound sense of security in having time alone. The stars here are still so different from the ones in Prospit, but she’s starting to get used to them. She thinks she could even identify some constellations, if she was pressed to.

“It’s just hard, y’know? I thought gardening was finally going to be my big ticket to feeling normal here. Or at least to feeling like I had something to do. Maybe it could have been if I’d started when I first got here, but I waited too long. I wanted to make everything work with magic and with Dave and…” She trails off, her throat growing tight. “It just feels like nothing is working. I haven’t learned anything about magic. Dave is who knows where doing who knows what. Karkat is off with him. I haven’t gotten a single letter from John since I got here, and now Kanaya is avoiding me. And now Nepeta’s gone, too. This garden was supposed to be mine and it feels like I can’t even keep you alive.”

She shouldn’t be talking about this with a garden. A dead and dormant garden to boot. She shouldn’t be talking about it out loud at all. But she can’t just hold onto all of it.

A snowflake catches on the lens of her glasses.

She stares at it for a second, the whole world going blurry as her eyes try to focus on a tiny point that is much too close to her face that just as quickly becomes a tiny droplet of water. She focuses back on the sky above her, and her breath catches in her chest as she sees a small flurry of snowflakes starting to drift to the ground.

“No,” she breathes, and her heart sinks as she watches it puff up in front of her.

There isn’t much buildup. The snow starts suddenly, and then there are snowflakes catching in her curls and brushing against her cheeks until her face is so cold it stings. When she looks down at the ground again, she can see the snow already starting to create a thin, crunchy layer of ice crystals over the ground. “No, please,” she says, a little more desperately, and throws her body over as much of the damp patch as she can like she can sit here all day and single-handedly keep the snow from piling up again. She can feel the hot, salty sting of tears in her eyes and squeezes them tightly shut so she doesn’t have to watch all of her hard work get undone again.

“Please…” she all-but sobs. Then, “Why?”

That’s the real question, isn’t it? What did she do to deserve all of this at once? Her husband is at war, and despite the fact that he is alive, he isn’t speaking to her, even though she thought everything was finally okay. She has one best friend risking his life for a country he was never given a choice in serving, another shutting her out for no apparent reason, and a third mourning the loss of the closest thing she ever had to a brother. She has no idea what’s going on at home, if her father is even still alive. The only thing she has is this, and this is nothing.

A sob wracks through her body, and as she lets herself cry for the first time since Dave left, she feels some of the cold ebbing away. It’s like the further away she pushed her emotions, the more space there was for the winter to sink its claws into her. She feels silly, suddenly, for criticizing Dersites for being so cagey about feelings. Or maybe she just let them corrupt her—just not in the way she had imagined the Prospitian people might think.

She doesn’t know how long she sits there like that, shaking and sobbing on the ground, but when she can finally breathe without it shaking her whole chest, she cracks her eyes open. Her eyelashes are wet and it feels like she almost has to peel them apart, and then her breath catches in her chest all over again when she sees them. Her hands.

The pale green glow of her fingertips is not unfamiliar. Indeed, after a lifetime of doing everything in her power to conceal it, she’s deeply familiar with this. Her mind briefly flashes to her talk with Dave in the library again. Then to the night before he left.

For the first time in her life, she doesn’t push it away. She doesn’t stifle herself with a surge of panic. Following some instinct she didn’t know she had, she cups her hands over the ground.

It takes a moment. Like in her dream, she feels the warmth spreading and buzzing under her skin, until it starts to seep away from her into the earth. Then, all at once, she watches in amazement as a yellow flower blooms from her touch.

Chest tight, she looks around in terror and plucks it from the ground, scurrying back inside.

Chapter Text

Jade spends the next several weeks in hiding. Not literally—she keeps having her afternoon teas with Rose and her evening drinks with the queen; she spends more time than ever in her garden. No, she’s hiding from herself. From her own power.

She’d like to think of herself as having been resistant to all of the Prospitian propaganda about magic’s inherently corrupting nature. They had all heard stories of the Dersite mages whose skin would turn inhuman shades of grey and who would start speaking in tongues as they indiscriminately slaughtered ally and enemy alike, but she had always figured those stories must be greatly exaggerated. With how many Dersites they always claimed had access to magic (which she can recognize now as further propaganda to justify discrimination against otherwise innocent people), it seemed to Jade like these attacks would surely have been happening more often if it was really just magic that did it. How could it be possible they hadn’t won the war yet if Derse’s soldiers were so unreliable?

Still, the idea that magic might make her lose sight of herself so that she accidentally hurt Dad or John or Karkat—it was petrifying and unbearable. Whenever she felt like her magic was trying to claw itself to the surface, she would hide away where no one could get to her just to make sure no one she loved got hurt. In that way, at least, isolation had been useful.

Learning more about magic since her arrival in Derse has not actually done much to disabuse her of this notion. The Black Princess’ journal had spoken so much about the risks of trying to take what the Horrorterrors are not willing to give. Something about their power really does corrupt the mind and drive people mad—and as far as Jade can tell, there’s no clear way to know when you’ve asked for too much before it’s too late. What if they’re angry with her for rejecting them her whole life? Or for being Prospitian and seeking their power in the first place?

What if her magic doesn’t come from the Terrors at all?

But even beyond childhood notions of the harms of magic and endless questions about her own power, Dave’s warning about what his father would do if he found out about her magic still feels so fresh. There’s a growing number of people in the palace she feels like she can trust, but the more people that know, the more likely it is for word to spread where she does not want it to go. Hadn’t Dave said he thought keeping it a secret might be considered treason? She might have friends and family here, but how many of them would be willing to commit treason for her?

So she avoids using her magic. Instead, she redoubles her efforts to tend to the garden in mundane ways. She pours hot water over the plots when the first true winter freeze hits. She covers the plots with linen sheets overnight to ensure they do not get buried under the snow and removes them in the mornings to ensure they get enough sun. One day, she reads a new book about gardening in Derse from one of the bookshops in the city (and there are so many bookshops in the city, she almost can’t believe it) that says some of the flowers in her garden prefer less sun, and she spends the week carefully, lovingly digging them up and moving them to new plots in the large, empty field behind the staffhouse.

What is perhaps most shocking is that it all seems to be working. After so many weeks of struggle, suddenly it is like the garden does its best to bend to her every whim. Being winter plants, it should take them much longer to sprout, but it is only a few weeks into the new year that she starts to see the first green shoots determinedly muscling their way out of the earth. It makes her sad that Nepeta is still at her mother’s in mourning and cannot see the fruits of all their research.

Her operating theory, though she really doesn’t have very strong evidence, is that when she slipped up that day at the end of autumn and pressed her magic into the soil, it stayed there. Why else would her garden make a sudden turnaround at the very start of winter? As much as she’d like to believe it was her skill as a gardener alone, she finds that unlikely.

That makes her extra nervous when she digs up and moves those flowers to grant them more shade. It’s silly to worry about. The winter is nearly halfway over by then, and all of her plants are thriving. Derse’s winter plants are famously hardy—they have to be, to be winter plants in Derse. And besides, they’re just flowers. Would it really be the end of the world if a few of her flowers didn’t make it, after everything she’s been through?

But after everything she’s been through, even the tiny loss feels unbearable.

“Your flowers are going to die,” Mitoki tells her one morning, and it’s the first time she’s really spoken to Jade in weeks. Months, maybe. Since she mentioned the First Guardian the night before Nepeta left.

“What?” she replies, heart dropping to the pit of her stomach.

“Blizzard coming,” she says, and Jade’s eyebrows knit together. It’s not the first blizzard that’s hit Vale this winter, but it’s the first that’s hit since she moved her plants. This aligns with her theory, but what confuses and concerns her is how Mitoki knows that.

“This isn’t the first blizzard that’s hit this winter. My plants are hardy. They’ll be okay.”

“No.”

Jade swallows around a lump in her throat. “...All of them?”

Mitoki seems to consider this for a minute, like she doesn’t have an answer readily available. Then, finally, she says, “No. Only ones you moved.”

Her heart is hammering against her ribs by now, and she feels like she’s going to cry, although she’s not sure whether it’s because of the thought of her flowers dying or the thought that Mitoki knows more than she’s letting on. “Why?” she asks, voice raspy. Mitoki just stares at her for a minute like she’s stupid, blinks, and then leaves.

For a while, Jade just stays in the study, panicking. She trusts Mitoki. It’s hard to believe that she would rat her out to the king when she’s not sure she’s ever even seen her talk to any of the royals. Jade really doesn’t get the impression that she has any great love for Derse and its reigning monarchs, which sparks several questions Jade really isn’t in a position to ask. If she is an East Beforan refugee, why would she come here instead of Viridan? And why did Derse accept her in the first place? What does the royal family know about her that Jade doesn’t? Or what does she have that they need?

By that same token, if her presence in Derse is in some way reliant on some ability she has, is her position not too precarious to protect Jade’s secret? Is she really the sort of powerful and important to have that sort of freedom? If she was, would she be relegated to the position of the queen’s handmaid? Shouldn’t she be some noble being waited upon?

Eventually, when all of these possibilities feel too exhausting and overwhelming to keep considering, she lets her mind turn to her garden. She has spent months slaving over it, desperate for results and desperate for a distraction from all of the loved ones missing from her life right now. With winter nearly over, she should be excited about the flowers she will be planting when spring comes, not agonizing over the potential loss of some plants that shouldn’t have made it this far in the first place. She nearly exposed her magic by using it on her garden the first time, so she certainly shouldn’t be thinking about using it again.

But she is.

She knows how childish it is to cry over thoughts of dead flowers, but when she thinks about never being able to see some of the flowers she’s poured her heart and soul into for months in full bloom, she finds tears springing to her eyes anyway. They might as well be her babies—at this rate, maybe the only babies she’ll ever have. How can she just let them die?

So late that night, when she’s sure every other occupant of the palace must be asleep, she sneaks out to the garden. She can feel the cold on the wind, and she’s sure the snow will start any minute. She needs to do this quickly. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, and reminds herself that this portion of her garden is behind the staffhouse. Even if anyone in the palace is awake, they couldn’t possibly see her.

She holds her hands out in front of her and feels heat bubbling up under her skin. Her fingertips tingle pleasantly, and it reminds her of the moment just before she had kissed Dave for the first time, when she had touched his cheek and he had leaned into it like he’d never felt a kind touch in his entire life. At the time, she had thought kissing him felt like magic, and it makes her shiver now as she’s filled with the same sort of warmth and comfort. It has been so long, and she misses him so much. It brings tears to her eyes, but she finds that it’s different from how it had felt in the study. She is not overwhelmed or distraught. It’s almost… joyful. It feels like he’s there with her.

When she opens her eyes, eyelashes wet, the entire field is bathed in pale green light, as if the full moon overhead had been placed behind a window of sea glass. She gasps when her eyes flit up and she notices a green orb of light like a miniature sun perhaps a foot above her head. She reaches out for it, and when her fingertips brush against it, another shiver rips up her spine. Suddenly, she is sure that everything will be okay. “Thank you,” she breathes, unsure of who she’s saying it to.

She crawls back into bed in the staffhouse and falls asleep easily. She dreams of fields of flowers, yellow and white and purple, swaying in a gentle spring breeze.

By the time morning hits, the snow is packed so high that the door to the staffhouse can’t even open, and some of the maids in the kitchen who have gotten friendlier express concern that she won’t be able to go back to the palace (as if she’s done that in weeks) and sympathy over the inevitable loss of her flowers to the storm. “I think they’ll be okay,” she says with a bright grin. They don’t ask for an explanation, so she does not offer one, and they must think she’s naive, in denial, or both.

She offers help where she can while they’re snowed in, and in exchange, she is usually rewarded with interesting stories. While she is boiling a kettle of water for tea, one of the cooks whose name she does not know, with red hair and a long nose, tells her, “My family owns a farm in the far east, near the Viridian border. We’ve been growing and drying our own tea leaves for generations—since before the area was a part of Derse. We’re the official suppliers of tea to the royal family.” His chest puffs with pride, and he offers her a toothy smile.

“I hope they’re alright, so close to the border,” she replies, and she means it. His smile grows a little sad.

Another time, while she’s tending to the fire, two of the maids sit on one of the couches nearby—an older, toady woman who dotes on her like it might gain her some favor with the royal family and a girl with blue eyes so vibrant they look almost unnatural that Jade can’t believe is any older than 13 wrapped up tight in what looks to Jade like a white bedsheet.

“I wish you would let me help you with that,” the older woman frets, though she doesn’t make any real move to get up and help.

“I don’t mind! I’ve never liked sitting around doing nothing, and you guys usually take care of everything around here.”

“Well it’s only our job,” she laughs, and Jade smiles.

“How did you end up with this job, anyway?”

She hums in consideration, leaning back and rubbing her chin. Jade wonders if she’s trying to make something up on the spot and then wonders why she would do that. “I have seven older brothers. When our father died, our mother just didn’t have the means to take care of us anymore. My brothers were all enlisted in the military, but I couldn’t very well go and join the army, not in those days anyhow, so she started taking me with her for her work as a maid.”

Jade nods her head toward the girl curled up on the couch. “What about you?”

The girl’s eyes go wide, and the woman cuts in to say, “Oh, she don’t talk much.” Jade stares at the girl for another moment, but the woman continues, “She and her brother were dropped off here at the palace when they were only babes. We maids took it upon ourselves, raisin’ ‘em. It was nice having little ones around again.”

“Again?”

“Well, after the prince of course,” she says. Then, as if realizing she’s said something she wasn’t supposed to, she adds, “Of course, we were hardly raisin’ the prince.”

Jade’s stomach twists with nausea. “And… her brother?”

“Well, we don’t have a whole lot of little boy maids, you know, and they weren’t really in need of a footman neither. He was brought up as a page, and I suppose he rode off with the other soldiers when the war started.”

“But,” she starts, before she can stop herself, “he’s a child, isn’t he? They couldn’t possibly send a child off to war.”

The conversation peters off into uncomfortable silence after that, and Jade stares into the crackling fire for the rest of the night, chest tight.

By the fourth day, either the royal family has gotten tired of having no service or the staff believe they’re tired of having no service, because she winds up outside, helping the old marshal to shovel a clear path from the staffhouse to the palace. “You could really go back inside!” she says for at least the third time as she watches him limp a few more inches forward.

“I ought to be saying that to you,” he says slowly. Through some combination of his beaky nose and protruding lower jaw, his voice comes out nasally. “No princess should be shoveling snow. Princess Rose would never be caught dead with a shovel in hand. It just isn’t right.”

She laughs, breath puffing out into the air in front of her. “I’d be shoveling the snow off my garden anyway, thank you very much.”

“Awful shame about that garden,” he says sadly. “I haven’t seen flowers in such a long time—not real ones, anyway, just those wispy things that grow at the edge of the woods.”

She’s used to comments like this by now. Everyone in the palace seems to have come from somewhere far away. “Where did you last see them?”

“Oh, it must have been Prospit,” he says after a moment.

Her heart lurches. “What? You’ve been to Prospit?”

“Oh, yes,” he drawls. “Back before King David and the Duchess negotiated the peace treaty, I was one of the soldiers stationed near the capital city. We didn’t see as much combat near the cities. I saw so many beautiful things—Prospit really is so full of life. And the food is so…” He trails off, apparently grasping for a word.

“I never got to see Skaia,” she breathes before he finds it, and she only manages to feel a little bit bad for it. “My father and brother went every year. They said it was beautiful.”

He hums and hobbles a few more steps. He moves so slowly, but Jade is trying not to rush him when she knows her presence is merely being tolerated in the first place. “The coast is the best part. I spent as much time as I could at the beach. That’s one thing I’ve never seen in Derse.”

It is weeks before the snow melts, nearly the end of winter, she thinks. She still hasn’t heard any word from Dave or Karkat, or, now, Nepeta. She takes the earliest opportunity to distract herself by checking on her garden, though she knows it will be weeks yet before it’s in full bloom.

Or, it should be weeks before it’s in full bloom.

It’s not warm outside by any means, but after months of winter cold, the sunshine and the gentle breeze aren’t enough to make her shiver. Most of the grounds are muddy, with wet, dirty puddles dotting either side of the footpath from the staffhouse to the palace. But the little patch of earth where she’s planted her garden has vibrant green grass. Her snowdrops are so heavy that they droop nearly to the ground, and some of the flowers are so big that they resemble bells as they are shaken by the wind. In contrast, the bright purple crocuses stand obstinately tall, golden yellow stamens pointing straight toward the overhead sun. But it’s the winter aconite that really makes her breath catch in her chest—butter yellow flowers in tight clusters packed into the spaces between all of the rest of the flowers.

She doesn’t take a single breath as she runs to the back of the building.

Where the garden in front of the staffhouse is a relatively small patch of earth, no longer than she is tall in either direction, the grassy field behind it stretches as far as the eye can see, until it finally fades into the treeline. In every place she had re-planted a flower, a tall, reddish-purple stalk stands with large blossoms. They resemble roses with their cup shapes and double flowers, but it’s the color that really stands out to her. They’re a purple so dark and rich it looks almost black, like someone had spilled ink all over a white rose and stained its petals.

“They’re stunning,” Rose says suddenly, and Jade jumps, her heart hammering against her ribs. She whips around to see Rose and Roxana standing against the wall, looking at the field of flowers instead of her—at least, until Rose’s gaze cuts over to make direct eye contact with her. “I’m sorry for doubting your abilities. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Jade laughs, forced and more than a little uncomfortable. “It’s nothing, really. I only planted winter flowers that grow naturally in this area. I probably could have done nothing to them and they would have bloomed just fine.”

“But you didn’t do nothing,” Roxana cuts in, and Jade swallows hard as she looks at her. She thinks it might be the first time she’s ever seen her without a glass of wine in-hand. “You worked very hard. We should celebrate.”

“I don’t think—”

“I insist.” Jade swallows. It feels like when she had been cornered at the afternoon tea all over again. At least Nepeta and Kanaya aren’t here this time, she thinks, although it stings immediately after. “We’ll have dinner this evening. Whatever you like.”

Jade looks between them, but she notices that it wasn’t said as a question. If she reads between the lines, it’s a command. “Okay,” she says, hoping her voice doesn’t sound too tight.

When she gets ready in her room that evening, she realizes that it’s the first time she’s set foot in the castle in weeks. Despite that, it’s in pristine condition. The bed is neatly made. All of the surfaces have been dusted like she might stop by to inspect them at any point. The sketch of Dave and her from Prospit sits in a wooden frame on the night table on her side of the bed.

She sits on the edge of the bed and picks up the picture, staring at it sadly. His face is so painfully soft, and she knows she must be imagining it because he wouldn’t have let it be immortalized on paper, but she swears she can see that little smile he’d always saved just for her. She brushes her fingers over it, careful not to apply too much pressure and smudge the charcoal.

“I miss you,” she murmurs, and her chest aches. Then, “I hope that you’re okay.”

She sucks in a sharp breath and lets it out slowly, and then sets the picture back down. She smooths her skirts when she stands up even though they don’t really need all that much in the way of smoothing just to get the feeling of the paper off of her fingers. She doesn’t need to go into this dinner feeling this vulnerable.

The first red flag is that they’re sitting at the small table they had used for the afternoon tea when Rose tried to question her about her fight with Dave. The long table would give some breathing room, but this creates a sense of forced intimacy. They want to make her comfortable.

The second red flag is that Kanaya still is not here. As her lady-in-waiting and Rose’s… whatever is going on between those two, it would make perfect sense for her to be here. That she isn’t means they want to discuss something they can’t discuss in front of her. (That, or that Kanaya is still avoiding her, which is a red flag in its own right.)

The third red flag is that the queen still does not have a glass of wine. Jade has yet to have encountered a topic of conversation Roxana felt she needed to be sober for, and considering they’ve discussed the country’s secret history, she can’t imagine what this must be about.

“So,” Roxana starts, and Jade snaps her attention to her face. “Let’s talk about your magic.”

Chapter Text

Jade can’t breathe.

Her heart is hammering in her throat and she feels like she’s choking on it. It takes all of the effort that she has not to let her eyes go wide or her face otherwise react in any way to what her mother-in-law has just said. She tries to pull all of the discipline she’s seen Dave use to school his expressions, and it works alright, she thinks, except she can’t breathe.

They know. Of course they know. How do they know? It can’t just be the garden, can it? Maybe it is and she can still try to spin this like she has no idea what they’re talking about. But how does she do that? Somehow, despite the fact that she’s been hiding her magic her entire life, she’s never been confronted about it before. She doesn’t have any experience actually lying about it to cover it up, and she feels like such a stupid little girl for never having prepared a lie for this situation before. Did she really believe she would hide it so well that no one would ever even question if she might have magic?

“Relax,” Rose says, apparently sensing Jade’s panic despite her best efforts, which does not actually do anything to calm said panic. She reaches over to rest a hand on Jade’s wrist, and it feels like it burns her. “You aren’t in trouble. We don’t care that you have magic. We don’t even care that you hid it.”

Jade manages to suck in a little breath for the first time, but it sends a sharp pain stabbing through her chest. “I don’t know—”

“Yes, you do,” Roxana says, with all of the exhausted patience only a mother can speak with. “You’re not in Prospit anymore, you don’t have to go through this I don’t know what you’re talking about routine. You know exactly what we’re talking about. And we really don’t care that you’re secretly a mage.”

“I’m not a mage,” she eventually manages to choke out, only to immediately feel like they’ve somehow tricked her into confessing a crime.

“That you have magic,” the queen sighs, waving a dismissive hand. “The particular terminology is not what’s important. You’re not going to get in trouble for having magic in Derse, least of all with either of us. I’m disappointed that you didn’t trust us enough to tell anyone, but with the lies they feed you in Prospit, I’m not entirely surprised.”

Jade swallows around the lump in her throat, peering cautiously between the two of them. “Then… what…?”

“What we want to know is why it’s so different,” she says, leaning closer.

“What?”

“We draw our magic from the Horrorterrors,” Rose cuts in to explain, and Jade has to jam her mouth shut to keep herself from saying that she knows, because it’s probably not going to do her any favors to reveal how much she’s already studied about magic. “Practically as long as there have been people in Derse, there have been mages, chosen as avatars by the Horrorterrors for reasons that have never been entirely clear to us. But the Terrors are dying.”

Jade freezes, staring at Rose like she’s just said something impossible—which she has. “But… what?”

If Rose and Roxana notice that she’s practically admitted to knowing more than she was letting on, they’re gracious enough not to say anything about it. Rose stands and crosses the room, pulling a book from one of the numerous shelves. It’s a lot like the Black Princess’ journal, but it looks less ancient. When Rose sits back down and cracks it open, Jade can’t resist the urge to lean closer to peer at it.

The drawing on the page is more inky black than empty space, as if the artist had dyed the page with ink and then etched clean lines into it. As Jade stares at the image, it somehow looks like it’s writhing on the page, and it makes her stomach turn. She gets the distinct impression that she shouldn’t look directly at it.

“There are relatively few Horrorterrors with known identities. The High Priestesses of the Peixes family have been in communication with Her,” she gestures to the drawing, “the Emissary to the Horroterrors, Gl’bgolyb, for generations. Since Derse’s founding.” Jade wonders how much Rose really knows about Derse’s founding, but now seems like a bad time to ask.

“Still, in spite of this fact, more and more mages have been cropping up in recent generations—but it’s been a double-edged sword. More and more mages have been going mad. Even those training under the best of circumstances have been slipping into the fabled blackdeath trance of the woegothics at an alarming rate.”

“Rose, all of those words sound made up,” Jade can’t help but interrupt. Her cheeks flush at the unamused looks from her in-laws.

“To commune with the Terrors is to share your mind with Them,” Roxana explains, and Jade’s brow furrows. “There’s a certain sort of… exchange. It’s not quite a give and take, because there is so little we can truly give Them, and we certainly cannot take from Them in the traditional sense, but the boundaries between the patron and the avatar can become somewhat fluid.”

It’s startling how much her mother-in-law sounds like Rose when she’s sober, especially when Dave speaks so differently from both of them. Jade doesn’t have much time to ponder the implications of this before Rose chimes in again. “When they become too fluid, the mage begins to experience a sort of melancholy—a detachment from the world around them and their experiences in it. We know so little of the Terrors, but it seems clear that They don’t experience the world in the same ways that we do. Time and space, light and darkness, emotions— none of these are concepts They seem to be able to understand, and the more one yields their mind to Them, the less one can understand these things themself. When the boundaries between avatar and patron become too fluid, the resulting mind is neither fully human nor fully Terror. It is merely a thoughtless being with no ability to understand the things it experiences or the world it is trapped in, which lashes out in the attempt to get out of it. This is what we call the blackdeath trance of the woegothics.”

“Okay,” Jade says slowly.. “So, normally, that happens when a mage tries to take too much from the Terrors?” She shoots them a questioning glance, and Rose nods with a single eyebrow raised. “But if it’s happening more often and mages aren’t entering these negotiations at a higher rate, which would mean we weren’t having this conversation because there would be no mystery, then it must be happening because the Terrors are pushing for more control. They’re desperate. They think They need more mages.”

“An impressive observation,” Rose praises. “My initial conclusion was that there must have been more Terrors than we initially estimated. There has never been any conclusive census on Their numbers, but we have made approximations based on how many we’ve been able to make contact with over the years. There are those who seem more amenable to pacts, like Gl’bgolyb, and there are those who have no interest in the trifling affairs of humanity. It seemed likely that some may have changed Their minds.”

“But even if that was true, why? They wouldn’t do that for no reason.”

“Correct,” Rose says, sending Jade a pleased smile that makes her cheeks flush again. “That was the crux of my initial research. If the Terrors were reaching out because They were desperate, there must have been some cause. The question became: Were They under threat, or were we coming under siege?”

This possibility makes Jade’s stomach turn. If the Terrors decided They wanted to take over, there would be very little anyone could do to stop Them. “But you said They were dying,” Jade says, and she’s not sure whether she’s questioning Rose or comforting herself. “So that implies you have some evidence that we’re not coming under siege, right? That there is some threat to the Terrors’ existence? How?”

Rose hums and turns the page in her book to reveal another illustration, this one of a beast with dozens of eyes and mouths etched into the same inky black background. Jade still finds that she can’t look at it for very long, but Rose starts talking again, so Jade looks at her instead. “There are two reasons I don’t believe it’s that, although I admit I have a certain bias around the evidence in question. The first is my own ability. Do you remember when I told you about the old concept of a magical nature?”

Jade has to think back to remember what Rose is talking about. Right. The conversation they’d had in the carriage. Rose had seemed amused at the time, like the entire concept was some sort of joke, so Jade’s not sure what relevance it has to this conversation now. She nods anyway.

“The earliest arcane scholars believed that one’s magical nature determined which Terrors they should seek patronage with. The idea was laughable from the very start. There is simply no way of telling which Terrors might be able to provide what sort of magic; we don’t have that sort of documentation on Them. But, of course, there is a grain of truth in this idea. Each patron one makes contact with brings a mage that much closer to madness, and most mages are only able to successfully bind themselves with one of the Terrors. To attempt to share the mind with more than one for more power would be to virtually ensure an ascension to the ranks of woegothics. One who could successfully draw power from several different beings at once would be lauded as a prodigy—like myself.”

There’s no sense of arrogance in the way that Rose says it. She says it like it’s simply a fact, as immutable as the onward march of time, and not necessarily something to be extra proud of.

“How many patrons do you have?” Jade asks, unable to entirely keep the concern from her voice.

“I hardly remember anymore,” Rose says. When she seems to realize this doesn’t bring Jade any comfort, she rests a hand over one of hers. “But this is what I mean by evidence. Surely if the Horrorterrors were attempting some sort of hostile takeover, I would be the prime target—but here I am, perfectly in control of my own mental faculties.”

For a second, Jade stares at Rose like her skin is going to turn grey and she’s going to start speaking in tongues at any moment. How can she be so confident that the Terrors aren’t trying to manipulate her? That They don’t just want her to believe that she’s in control while They put all of the pieces into place for… whatever They’re doing? “So… what’s the other reason?” she asks.

“I’ve spent most of my life communing with the Terrors, documenting what information I could find about Them in this grimoire.” She turns another page in the book, and Jade sees names she recognizes from the Black Princess’ journal over more dark illustrations. “They are not the most… open creatures, so this process has been painstaking. Slow. My hope is that by more clearly documenting this information, we can decrease the prevalence of the trance. Young mages could study their patrons before making first contact, assuming less risk to their vulnerable minds.”

“I’m not really seeing how this is connected?”

Rose sighs. “I’m building dramatic tension. But very well, I’ll cut to the chase: I’ve had to spend my life doing this alone.”

Jade stares at her like she really is speaking in tongues. “What?”

“While my mind has been open to the Terrors for as long as I can remember, my brother—with whom I shared a womb, with whom I shared every tutor and instructor for nearly a decade, my brother who was born mere minutes before I was—has been completely unable to make contact with even a single patron. Despite the fact that we have all of the same resources, that we share the same blood without question, that our lives have been so completely intertwined from the first breaths we took, the Terrors have made Themselves available to me in ways They have to no other, but They have rejected my brother completely. If what They wanted was to somehow take over the kingdom of Derse, why would They not choose the crown prince?”

Jade’s heart sinks. She still can’t completely wrap her head around why Rose has magic and Dave doesn’t, let alone why her magic is apparently so powerful while Dave has none. If he was here, she thinks he would crack some joke about Rose stealing all of it in the womb, but that doesn’t make any sense if magic is some process of negotiation. Granted, Jade doesn’t think that can possibly be completely accurate either, given her own experiences, but she doesn’t have the brainpower to solve that particular mystery tonight.

She stares down at Rose’s book, at the writhing masses on the pages who still make her head spin a little bit to observe too closely, and she wants to ask Them why. Why give Dave such a life of hardship? Why, if They are so desperate, would They shun someone who wants nothing more than to prove himself to a family for whom magic is the only thing that matters?

“Is… is that why your father pressured him so hard to learn magic?” Jade asks, and she’s not sure which answer would be worse.

Rose and Roxana exchange a look then. It’s hard to read, but Jade is sure she sees traces of guilt there, and she swallows around another surge of nausea. Roxana is the one who eventually answers, “My husband’s priorities are not necessarily in line with ours. It would be… difficult to say for certain why he pushed Dave so hard.”

Jade wants to ask a thousand more questions about Dave and the king. Why won’t the Terrors answer Dave? Does the king know that, or does he view it as some personal failing on Dave’s part? If the king’s priorities aren’t in line with Rose and Roxana’s, does he know about the fact that the Terrors are dying at all? Does he care?

What she says instead is, “I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with me.”

Rose and Roxana exchange another look that Jade can’t read for the briefest moment before Rose looks back at her, looking a little softer, and rests a hand over hers again. “I have spent my entire life being praised as the most powerful mage in Derse. Yet I have still had to study Their ways my entire life. I have still had to ask for Their power. To commune with Them. And there are still some things that I simply cannot do. Magic does not create life. Magic does not come naturally. Jade, a lifetime of study should not allow anyone to do the things that you do.”

Jade’s stomach is twisting itself into knots. None of this makes any sense. Even if the Horrorterrors are desperate, would They choose to lend Their power to Jade? And if that was really what happened, why would her magic be so fundamentally different from the other mages in Derse? Is it really so simple as growing up in Prospit? But she never studied anything.

And if her magic is as powerful as they seem to believe, why has she never heard these whispers before? Mere moments ago she had sent questions up to Them, all-but inviting Them into her mind, and she was met with nothing. Shouldn’t They be in her head? Whispering in her ear, driving her mad? Shouldn’t her magic feel the way every Dersite has described it to her?

Not every Dersite, she suddenly realizes.

Mitoki Megido had seemed surprised when Jade asked how she could see the future. You how not know? she asked, in that peculiar way she speaks, and Jade thought it must have been common knowledge in Derse. Another basic fact of magic she didn’t understand because she grew up in Prospit, like the fact that magic can’t heal. But of course it’s not.

First Guardian, she had said.

Jade makes a mental note to seek out Mitoki as soon as she can. If her magic comes from somewhere else—from some thing else—then she’s sure it must be related to whatever is happening to the Horrorterrors. But she can’t give Rose and Roxana that sort of false hope, not when she still knows so little.

“I don’t really understand it either,” she says instead, slowly. “It’s not like we exactly talk about magic and where it comes from or what it feels like in Prospit. The first time anyone ever really talked to me about it was when… well, when you explained that book to me in the carriage ride to Derse. But… what you’re describing right now, it doesn’t sound anything like what magic has been like for me.”

“What has magic been like for you?” Roxana asks, with all the curiosity of an excited child trying to pry a story out of their grandparent. Jade’s breath catches in her chest.

She remembers running around in the gardens with John, laughing until she couldn’t breathe as he tried to catch her. She’d always been faster than him, maybe the only person in the world who was faster than him if their cousins had anything to say about it, and he used to get so frustrated when he could never get her while they were playing. She darted around a corner to pause and catch her breath, only to trip and fall hard on the ground. The wind had been knocked out of her, and she stared at her hands, covered in scrapes with dirt threatening to get in them, and then she wailed. John came running with Grandpa hot on his heels, and Grandpa scooped her up and told her to let him see, and she held her hands up to him with tears in her big green eyes. “You’re alright, pumpkin,” he told her with a big smile. When Dad finally caught up to them, he said, “She must have just gotten scared.” When Jade looked at her hands, the scrapes were gone, and she told herself she must have imagined them.

She remembers waking up in the middle of the night with a nightmare and crying so hard that the guard stationed outside her bedroom had gone to get her father. “Grandpa’s dead,” she wailed into his chest while he wrapped his arms so tight around her it was like there wasn’t any space for anything else in the world to get to her. Dad’s hugs always made her feel so safe, second only to Grandpa’s. He murmured into her hair that Grandpa was fine, he was just on an expedition and he would be back in the morning. She had never been apart from her grandfather so long before, he pointed out, so it was natural that she would be a little anxious—but Grandpa would be fine. The next morning, a messenger came to tell them that her grandfather’s ship had sunk.

She remembers staying up late reading a book of fairytales from Derse that one of the guards who had a soft spot for her had snuck her. She had felt so grown up, politely refusing Dad’s offer of a bedtime story, even if he had looked a little sad about how big she was getting. It was the first time she had ever read a story where a mage was portrayed as a hero, and she was so startled to realize that was even a possibility. There was a warmth under her skin, a familiar one that she had always so persistently ignored, and she cupped her hands together over the pages of her book and watched in fascination as a little ball of light formed between them. She didn’t sleep that night, reading by the light of her own magic.

Her eyes feel wet, suddenly, and she is startled to realize that she’s crying. She brings a hand up to swipe at her eyes with her thumb. “I was a child. I was a scared child who spent my entire life believing that being a mage would mean being exiled or killed and never seeing the people I loved ever again. I did everything that I could to hide it, and I certainly didn’t study or commune with anything. It was like it was leaping for opportunities to spill out of me, and it took everything I had not to expose myself.”

Rose and Roxana exchange a look that Jade doesn’t know how to read, but it makes her jaw clench and her throat feel tight. “Would you like to study?” Roxana says, voice soft. Jade stares at her, and she adds, “With me. I could teach you—try to teach you.”

Could she study? Could Roxana teach her something about her magic, even if it was somehow different? If it had nothing to do with the Terrors at all?

“I’m not sure. I don’t know what I’m doing. None of us know what I’m doing.”

“We don’t,” Roxana agrees, “but we might learn something about it if we work together. We might gain new insight about the Terrors, or about whatever else might be going on with your magic. And it would give you the opportunity to learn. To expand. I don’t know enough to say confidently what you must be going through. What magic must be like for you. But if you want to learn more about your magic, then as your mother-in-law, I’d like to do what I can. I didn’t get to be much of a mother to my own children. I’d be honored to help you come into your own—to help you become the first real Prospitian mage.”

Jade looks to Rose, who she realizes suddenly has been quiet for a long time. Rose isn’t looking at her, and her jaw is tight. Jade’s heart aches. She’s spent so much time thinking of Dave as the poor, isolated black sheep that she forgets that Rose was separated from their mother, too. It must sting, hearing her speak like this with Jade.

“I want to learn magic,” she starts, and she sees Rose’s fists tighten just slightly on the table even as she doesn’t have any other external reaction. Dersites and their bottled up emotions. “But I don’t want to learn by myself. I’ve spent my entire life in isolation, and I don’t want learning magic to become one more thing that separates me from everyone I love.”

Rose looks over at her with wide eyes, like she’s read Jade’s mind. Maybe she has—Jade doesn’t know the full extent of her powers. She certainly hopes not, though. Jade holds a hand out to Rose, offering her a gentle smile. “Would you be willing to practice with me? I know it’ll probably just be the basic stuff you already know, but…”

Rose takes in a breath that Jade swears she can hear and then slides her hand into Jade’s. “I doubt some review could hurt much.” Roxana beams between the two of them.

Rose doesn’t drop her hand until they’re in the hallway to part for the night. Once Jade turns to leave, though, she says, “Thank you… for inviting me. I know that we aren’t very close, but my brother loves you very much, and I suppose that makes us family.”

Jade can’t help but laugh a little bit. It’s such an awkward and stilted way to say what she knows she means. She turns to face Rose again with another smile, brighter this time. “I didn’t know we weren’t close. Why didn’t anybody tell me?”

Rose stares for a second and then snorts, and they both devolve into laughter. When they’ve managed to catch their breath, Rose gives her another soft look, until her smile eventually drops. “Be careful about what you reveal during practice.”

Jade stares at her with her brow furrowed, her own smile dropping. Is this a warning? A warning against what? She gives a slow nod, and Rose gives her a single nod back before she turns and leaves her there in the hall.

For a minute, Jade debates whether or not to go back to the staffhouse for the night. On the one hand, she needs to talk to Mitoki Megido about the First Guardian and what all of it means. If she can learn more about her own magic, she can start using it to help. But on the other hand, she is exhausted. Her head is already spinning with all of the new information and all of the questions it’s left her with, and she doesn’t think she has another long-winded conversation about magic in her tonight.

For the second time tonight, when she gets to her room, she sits on the edge of the bed and stares at the little drawing of Dave and her together. He had been wiping away a dirt smudge on her forehead. It seemed like there was always a smudge of dirt on her somewhere whenever she saw him in Prospit, and he never seemed to mind, but for some reason he’d wiped it away that time and then looked at her so tenderly. The artist understated the height difference between them, drawing her as coming up to his shoulder instead of…

She swears she feels her heart shatter as she realizes that she can’t remember precisely how much taller than her he is. She remembers having to guide him down with a hand on his cheek to kiss her that first time. She remembers having to stare at the ground with flushed cheeks when she’d gone to see the knights training so she wasn’t looking straight at his bare chest. She remembers ducking and weaving behind trees to hide from his snowballs, and the way that he hadn’t quite been able to fit behind them as well as she could.

These memories don’t feel like enough. She didn’t get enough time with him, and even if he’s not gone forever, she doesn’t know when he’s coming back, so it aches just as much. Maybe it aches more —like at least if she had a solid answer, she could figure out how to move on. But now all she can think about is all of the memories they’re missing out on right now.

She clutches the drawing to her chest and slips out of bed before she even understands what she’s doing.

She finds herself climbing up the stairs to Rose’s floor. Of all of the occupants of the castle, Rose is the only other person who knows Dave—not as a soldier, but as himself. She remembers the way Rose stepped in at their wedding when his parents were going to sit there and humiliate him in front of all of Prospit. Maybe not literally, but at least symbolically. Even Roxana, who she has a generally more nuanced and favorable opinion of now than she did six months ago, is willing to sit down and shut up in the face of the king’s mistreatment of her son when he demands it. To hold herself from her son at arm’s-length.

When she stands outside of Rose’s door, Jade can’t help but hesitate. She and Rose have never been in each others’ rooms before. There had been an air of almost passive aggression for those first few weeks after Dave left, when Rose would send Nepeta up to fetch her as if she couldn’t be bothered to get Jade herself. Their conversations feel easier now, even friendly, but what if this is a breach of some social etiquette Jade doesn’t understand? What if Dersites simply don’t spend private time together in their rooms like that? What if Rose thinks she’s behaving like a child for missing Dave over nothing? Should a picture be making her so sentimental she has to seek comfort from a sister-in-law she barely knows?

Before she finds the courage within herself to knock, the door swings open, and Jade stumbles back a step, startled. She isn’t any less startled when her eyes settle on the doorway’s occupant and she finds Kanaya, hair messy and cheeks flushed.

They stand there for a long moment, both frozen, both staring. Jade feels like her breath is caught in her chest, and like if she moves then Kanaya is going to run away like the deer did. She doesn’t know what Kanaya must be feeling to look at her like that, like she’s been caught doing something she wasn’t supposed to.

Kanaya is the one to finally break the silence: “We need to talk.”

Chapter Text

Jade doesn’t really want to talk to Kanaya.

Of course she wants answers. She wants to know why Kanaya has been avoiding her. What she did wrong.  But with the ache of missing Dave and the exhaustion from the conversation with Rose and Roxana, she’s not sure she has the emotional wherewithal to talk about it.

“Alright,” she hears herself answer anyway. How could she push her best friend away, really? What if this is the only olive branch Kanaya is willing to offer her, and if Jade denies this conversation, Kanaya really does never speak to her again? That’s not a risk she’s willing to take.

Jade clutches the picture a little tighter as she takes a single step into Rose’s room, which, for the most part, actually looks quite similar to her own. Rose’s bedding is a deep purple color instead of red, but the wooden furniture looks like it could be part of a matching set with Dave and Jade’s, and a small stack of books is piled into the nook of the bay window.

Rose lays sprawled in her bed in her nightdress, and Jade’s cheeks flush as she averts her eyes, but if Rose notices, she doesn’t make any move to cover herself. On the contrary, she stands from the bed and says, “I’ll give the two of you some space.”

“No, don’t,” she and Kanaya both say at the same time, which shouldn’t sting. It shouldn’t.

Jade sucks in a sharp breath and forces herself to ask, “Why have you been avoiding me?” At this point, she feels like she’s clutching the picture frame so tightly her knuckles are white and the glass is at risk of shattering.

Kanaya winces, and her eyes dart away. “I haven’t been…” she starts, but trails off when she seems to realize that she doesn’t have a convincing argument to the contrary. “It seemed… easier, this way,” she says, and Jade’s stomach turns.

“Easier than what?” Jade says. Her voice takes on a note of desperation that makes her grimace, and she takes another breath to steady herself. Her eyes flit over to Rose and she feels her chest squeeze with anxiety and betrayal. When she looks back at Kanaya, she’s barely able to croak out, “Did she tell you…?”

For a moment, Kanaya looks confused, and Jade is worried that she’s just exposed herself and she’s going to have to have this conversation all over again, except Kanaya is Prospitian and Kanaya will know why she should be ashamed and—

“Oh, Jade,” Kanaya says, her voice so soft Jade almost manages to find it comforting in spite of everything. “I already knew.” Almost.

“You… what…?” she starts, grasping for words. It’s like suddenly her grip on language is failing her. She swallows hard and forces out, “You already know what?”

Kanaya looks uncomfortable at the prospect of elaborating, and that’s almost enough for Jade to believe that she knows. Somehow, despite how hard she tried to keep it a secret, Kanaya already knew about her magic. And… she never said anything? Jade feels like her head is spinning, and then she feels Kanaya rest a hand against her back to gently push her to the bay window. She sits down even though what she wants to do is run away, mostly because it suddenly feels like her knees are buckling under her and she can’t do anything but sit down.

“I know about your magic, and I’ve always known about it. Or—nearly always.” Jade stares at her, and the muddled mix of feelings bearing down on her all at once feels suffocating.

She has a thousand questions. How does Kanaya know? Why didn’t she ever say anything about it? Is she the one who told Rose and the queen? How many other people know at this point? Was Jade’s deepest shame an open secret to everyone but her?

All she manages to choke out, after trying and failing to take more deep breaths, is, “I… how?”

“I always suspected,” Kanaya says slowly, which doesn’t do much to comfort her. Kanaya must be able to tell, because she takes the picture out of Jade’s hands to grab them herself and give them a careful squeeze. “We were warned in advance of the event about the princess. About how you were sickly, and certain precautions were to be taken if we were to interact with you. Of course, Karkat had told me a little bit about you before, and sickly seemed incongruous with how he’d always described you. It wasn’t until I saw you that I really questioned things, though.”

“When you saw me?” Jade repeats, unable to keep the dread out of her voice. People can just look at her and tell?

“Yes. Everyone had emphasized how sick you were, but you were so full of life when I saw you. There was such an excitement in your eyes at all of the people around you, even as no one talked to you. I wasn’t sure I would be able to work up the nerve to talk to you, but as the night went on, I watched some of that light in your eyes die, and I couldn’t take it anymore. So I went to say hello. At first, I thought that you couldn’t possibly be ill, so there must have been some other reason they were keeping you locked away. When I thought about reasons there might be for that, magic seemed to make the most sense.”

“But no one else ever knew,” Jade says, hoping Kanaya isn’t about to prove her wrong.

“I realized that shortly after my arrival at the castle,” Kanaya confirms, and Jade lets out a soft breath of relief. “I tried to investigate the matter with John—”

“You what?” Jade interrupts, horrified. It’s bad enough that Kanaya knows about it, but John knows? Maybe he really did send her away to Derse to exile her as punishment for her magic, and that’s why she still hasn’t heard from him at all. The idea of her brother pretending to care about her for so long stings, and—

“I tried to investigate the matter with John,” Kanaya says a little more sternly, and Jade swallows hard and tries to listen. “But he seemed oblivious. I didn’t want to ask him outright and risk exposing you in case he didn’t know. Your brother can be obtuse at the best of times, and I got the impression that he had no idea. I know John is a much better liar than he lets on, but when he didn’t give any hint that he might know, I decided it would be best not to say anything more, in case it could put you in danger.”

This idea makes Jade wince. Of course, she spent her entire life terrified of what it would mean for her if people found out about her magic, but she never thought of John as a danger. He was always the hapless victim of the people’s ire, the future king who would face a revolution for daring to love his sister.

But she pushes those feelings aside for now. Kanaya still hasn’t answered her question. “How?”

“I paid attention,” Kanaya answers simply, although she looks like it pains her to admit. “It was obvious how much you resented being locked away. Karkat told me about how much you used to argue with your father to go into the village when you were children. But one day you just… stopped. It wasn’t entirely obvious that you were afraid to go to town, but it was clear that something had changed. And then we spent so much time together, yet it felt as if I was getting to know two Jades—one was joyful and bright and warm. She laughed easily and it seemed as if nothing in the world could bother her in spite of the unfair circumstances she had been kept in.” Kanaya might as well have stars in her eyes, and Jade feels her cheeks flushing. “But the other one… she was flighty and paranoid. She would retreat at a moment’s notice and disappear for hours. It was startling.”

Jade waits for her to say more, for her to give some other crucial piece of evidence that makes it make sense that she could have put it together from that little, but nothing comes. It seems like such a leap for her to have taken. How could Kanaya possibly know her that well? How could Jade not have noticed?

Shrinking in on herself a little, Jade mumbles, “Is that why you hate me?” It makes a certain kind of sense. Kanaya started avoiding her when they got to Derse—before that, really, when her marriage with Dave was first arranged. Jade had worried about the Prospitian nobles thinking that Dave was corrupting her, and somehow she never considered that Kanaya might be one of them. Once they were in Derse, though, of course Kanaya must have thought she was going to spend more time practicing her magic and…

Kanaya looks like she’s been physically struck. She gapes at Jade like she’s just said the most horrible thing in the world, and Jade’s stomach is twisting itself into knots again. “I don’t hate you,” she says, so soft Jade almost doesn’t hear it.

“Then… why?” Her own voice is soft, muffled by how tight her throat feels with the anxiety she has been trying and failing to ignore for months. “Why have you been avoiding me if you don’t hate me? What did I do?”

“I was in love with you,” Kanaya says. Jade gapes. She… what? Jade opens her mouth to ask a question, but she has no idea what question to even start with, so she just closes it again and stares. Kanaya looks so uncomfortable, and Jade is sure there must be something she’s supposed to say here.

“You were?” she manages to ask somewhat dumbly.

Somehow, that actually makes Kanaya laugh, although it’s a brief, quiet thing. There’s almost a tinge of bitterness to it that makes Jade feel even worse. “How could I not have been? You were kind and intelligent and beautiful. The only person who had ever made me feel half as important as you was Vriska, who isn’t exactly known for her warmth.”

Jade manages a startled laugh of her own. “Don’t compare me to Vriska, what did I do to deserve that?”

Kanaya smiles, but Jade can still see the traces of guilt and anxiety in the lines of her face. “You’ve always been much better than Vriska,” she says. “That was what made it so hard that you never…” She gestures vaguely.

At this point, Jade is pretty sure that her face burns. It’s embarrassing to think that her best friend was in love with her for all those years and she never even noticed. “But why didn’t you ever say anything?” she murmurs.

Kanaya’s eyebrows go up. “Would it have made a difference?”

Jade purses her lips as she considers this. Would it have made a difference? She doesn’t think she was so desperate for affection that she would have entered some affair with Kanaya just for the attention. It would have felt manipulative and wrong. And she loves Kanaya, but she knows it’s not like that. A little sheepishly, she says, “I guess not.”

Kanaya’s face softens, and she gives Jade’s hands another squeeze, as if she’s trying to comfort Jade. It feels so silly. “It was… difficult, watching you spend so much time with Dave,” she continues. “Seeing how enamored with him you were. I admit that it was childish on my part to be jealous of your husband. And I am glad that you two made such a genuine connection in spite of everything. But… I didn’t really want to watch it happen, either.” Kanaya is grimacing, and all Jade can think is that it looks so wrong on her.

“And I kept her rather busy,” Rose says, and Jade practically jumps out of her skin. She’d almost forgotten Rose was in the room. When Jade looks over at her, she looks amused more than guilty, and Jade smiles and laughs while Kanaya glares.

A moment of quiet passes between the three of them, and then Jade grabs Kanaya’s hands and gives them a squeeze. “Well, I’m glad that you’ve found someone who can make you happy. And I’m sorry it wasn’t me.”

Kanaya’s face is soft again, and she brings Jade’s hands up to her mouth to brush a kiss against her knuckles. “I was always happy with you, Jade,” she says, and it makes Jade’s chest squeeze with fondness. She pulls her hands away from Kanaya to throw her arms around her, squeezing her into a tight hug. Kanaya hugs her back just as tightly, and Jade buries her face in her shoulder.

“Well,” Jade eventually murmurs without pulling away. “Now I know. So no avoiding me anymore, okay?”

Kanaya laughs against the top of her head and nods. When they finally pull away from each other, they exchange a long look and then Jade looks over at Rose. “Thank you,” she says. “For everything.”

Rose looks taken aback, staring at Jade with owlishly wide eyes. “Um,” she starts, and for some reason it reminds Jade so much of Dave. “Right. Of course. I’m glad I could help.” Something about it makes Jade laugh, and she crosses the room to wrap Rose up in a hug that it takes her a long moment to return. After the hug, as she’s leaving, Rose says somewhat awkwardly, “I’ll see you tomorrow. For practice.”

Right. Practice.

Jade doesn’t get much sleep that night. Her head is still spinning with all of the new information. She’s fundamentally misunderstood her relationship with Kanaya for years, and there’s still the issue of magic. Jade thought the Horrorterrors were gods. Well… she thinks everyone thought They were gods. But what could possibly kill a god? The idea is terrifying to contemplate. And what about the First Guardian? What is it, and how is it connected to her? How does it connect her to Mitoki Megido, who she’s certain she never met before she came to Derse?

When the sun fills the room with cool purple light in the morning and Jade determines she isn’t going to be able to get any more sleep, she resolves to get the answers to at least some of her questions.

The crisp spring morning is not so cold as to penetrate through the cloak she wraps herself up in on her way to the staffhouse. She enters quietly, and the few people who are both already awake and still in the building barely spare her a glance before returning to their mundane tasks—boiling water for tea, making beds in the bedrooms Jade passes on her way down the hallway. It’s like they’re a little household of their own.

She glances into the rooms with open doors as she passes, but she doesn’t spot Mitoki in any of them. Dave’s room, she notices, has actually been tidied up. She supposes it’s more her room now, and she wonders if that isn’t why. “Do you know where Ms. Megido is?” she asks the beaky-nosed marshal, who is in the middle of pouring himself a cup of tea.

He hums thoughtfully for a long moment and then drones, “Oh, I believe you’ve just missed her. She heads for the palace a little before dawn, most mornings.”

Jade’s brow furrows. If she had just missed Mitoki on her way to the palace, she would have passed her, right? “Thank you,” she says anyway, barely managing to suppress a sigh.

If the handmaid is going to avoid her, then Jade is going to make it as difficult as possible. She pours herself a cup of tea and takes a seat on one of the couches, smiling to herself at the memory of the soldiers climbing all over it. Even knowing they were preparing for the very war they’ve all been shipped off to now, Jade can’t help but think they had looked so much like children playing at the time. She was too drunk and angry to properly appreciate it then.

Pounce finds her shortly after and jumps up into her lap. “The poor thing was yowling all night,” the marshal tells her, and Jade grimaces as guilt sinks into her gut for leaving the cat. She shouldn’t take the tentative alliance they’ve formed in Nepeta’s absence for granted, and beyond that, she’s the one who’s supposed to be taking care of Pounce now. She doesn’t seem to be holding a grudge, though, happily bumping her head up against Jade’s hand when Jade goes to scratch between her ears.

They sit there for a long time—Jade isn’t sure how long, but by the time the last of the palace staff has come through for breakfast before setting about their various jobs for the day, she decides she can’t take sitting here any longer. She doesn’t know how Dave stayed cooped up in the staffhouse all day every day. By running drills with the other soldiers, she supposes, but she can’t imagine spending all day doing that either. How did he manage to live a life with such a singular purpose?

The same way she did with her garden, she supposes.

She resolves that when Dave gets back, she is going to find some hobby for them to share. Maybe he would like gardening with her. Or maybe he could teach her to draw.

She hasn’t tried to pick up a sketchbook again since the day the messenger told them about Equius. It’s not that she’s being superstitious about it, it’s just that everything has been so hectic since then—or it’s felt that way, at least. Nepeta left, and then Jade threw herself into her gardening, and then it was winter, and now she’s learning magic with her in-laws. Once she can decide what she wants to do with it, anyway.

Pounce hops out of Jade’s lap and starts toward Dave’s room, and Jade raises her eyebrows. “Do you miss him too?” she mumbles, more to herself than the cat, as she gets up to follow her.

It turns out that whoever had tidied the room had set out food for Pounce, and she munches happily on the scraps of whatever the palace staff had for dinner last night. Jade feels a little guiltier, and she makes a mental note to find out who had taken care of things in her absence and thank them properly.

The papers on Dave’s desk have been neatly arranged into stacks, with his sketchbook laying in the center, opened to the drawing of Rose. Jade studies it more closely. Though it’s still not as detailed as the earlier portrait of Savvas Ampora or the one of Jade several pages later, Jade thinks it captures Rose better than any of the paintings in the palace do.

Her mouth is twisted into a wry smile, as if she was trying very hard to look annoyed and couldn’t quite manage to keep the amusement off of her face. Her hair is a little shorter, and Jade thinks she must have just gotten it cut, although she doesn’t really have any good evidence for it. Rose doesn’t have nearly as many freckles as Jade and Dave do, and Dave seems to have left the little dusting over the bridge of her nose out of the sketch in favor of hatched shading.

“I told him to throw that away.” Jade nearly jumps out of her skin, whipping around to see Rose standing in the doorway. Pounce eagerly rubs against her legs, and Rose squats down to pet her.

“It’s a nice picture!” Jade defends, though really, it’s more a defense of Dave’s art than of Rose’s portrait specifically.

Rose’s half-pitying smile shows how clearly she sees through her. Rather than calling her out, Rose looks around at the rest of the room with her nose wrinkled. Jade can’t help but laugh, and then Rose looks at her with her eyebrows pinched just slightly together. “What?”

“You just look so out of place,” Jade snickers.

“Well, I’ve never been in this building before. I didn’t realize Dave kept his room so…” Rose trails off, and Jade’s eyebrows pinch together.

“You’ve never been in here before? But… hasn’t Dave been staying here for years?”

Rose grimaces. “I was… discouraged from visiting my brother in the servants’ quarters.” Everything about the statement makes Jade’s nose wrinkle, from the way that Rose obviously avoids saying Dave’s name to the way she called it the servants’ quarters instead of the staffhouse to the reminder of the king’s cruelty. “I came to get you for practice.”

Jade’s chest squeezes with anxiety at how freely Rose just says it. Doesn’t she know the walls have ears? Slowly, she says, “I thought that would be… later.”

“I expect it will take several hours, and my mother was never fond of staying sober for very long.” Rose says it so pointedly Jade winces even when her mother-in-law isn’t around to hear it.

“I don’t know… I left Pounce here alone all night. I should probably spend a little more time with her before I run off again.”

Rose rolls her eyes. “I’ll have one of the servants bring her back into the palace.” Jade wonders what the palace staff have done to earn such a punishment, but she keeps her mouth shut. It’s obvious Rose isn’t going to leave her any room to argue here, so she reluctantly follows.

As they cross the courtyard, Jade keeps expecting Rose to pivot and lead her to a hidden third building, or a secret clearing out in the woods or something. Somewhere private. Instead, Rose leads her to the same study where they’d had tea together that first time, when Dave discovered her magic and Jade was sure he must have told them. Between the room and the broad daylight, her heart is racing, and no matter how much she tries to remind herself that they’re in Derse, where magic is perfectly acceptable, she can’t put aside the fear that she’s going to get caught.

Perhaps that anxiety is the reason she’s not able to manifest anything with her magic, regardless of what sort of help or advice Rose and Roxana try to offer her—and they try to offer her a lot. She sees the sky outside turning from pale blue to the streaky orange and pink of the evening, and the frustration and exhaustion from the repeated failed attempts makes her want to run away and hide in her room.

“Clear your mind,” Rose says for what must be the thousandth time. “Imagine yourself floating in a pool of water. Let all of your thoughts and feelings drift away, and reach out for Them.”

Jade jams her eyes shut and grinds her teeth, feeling very much how she imagines Dave must have felt every time they forced him to do this as a child. After another humiliating minute, she finally snaps, “They’re not there, Rose.”

“Of course They are,” Rose says, clearly trying to make herself sound patient and, in Jade’s humble opinion, not doing a very good job of it. “They are the source of all magic, Jade. You’re just having some trouble finding Them. It’s normal.”

Jade wants to snap that They aren’t the source of all magic, but she knows it would be revealing too much, which Rose had explicitly advised her against. Instead she just says, “Well I’m not sure how much more I can do to look. This doesn’t feel natural for me, Rose. You’re talking about water and clearing my mind and reaching out and I’ve never had to do any of that before.”

“Alright,” Roxana says, cutting off what is threatening to boil over into a heated argument. “We expected this, remember? Your magic and our magic is different somehow. So what have you done before? What feels natural?”

Jade pauses at that. She’d complained like she had a real answer to that question, but what does come naturally to her? She’s let herself actually use her magic so few times that there’s really only one thing she knows for certain how to do.

Her eyes flit around the little room, and she notices all of the little potted plants on the shelves again. That’ll work.

She starts out cupping her hands in front of her, taking a deep breath and trying to focus. It doesn’t feel like reaching out to anything or floating in water. She doesn’t feel like she’s centering herself. She feels like she’s letting all of her frustration and exhaustion and desperation seep out of her and into the palms of her hands, until the only thing that’s left behind is a warm, pleasant buzz under her skin, like she’s just wrapped herself up in a big blanket. It’s an awful lot like contentment.

In time with the feeling of weight being lifted from her shoulders, a ball of light starts to form in her hands. It’s just like that night in the library, and the very first night she’d used magic all those years ago. She thinks about that story and forms the light in her hands into two small figures that start to twist and move together like they’re dancing. She watches them, a little bit enamored, and she realizes that it’s the same dance Dave had taught her after John’s coronation.

The dancing pair splits into two, and then four, until she’s filled the room with a whole ball of tiny, shining figures. They twirl and twist around each other, all moving as one fluid body, until they sink into the soil of each pot.

Jade can practically feel the roots twisting around something inside of her. Somehow, it doesn’t feel unpleasant, like getting caught in a trap, but comforting. Secure.

When she had done this with her garden, it wasn’t immediately visible. The soft green glow of the light had sunk into the soil, and it was only weeks later after the last of the snow from the blizzard melted away that she got to see the fruits of her labor. But these plants start to grow and bloom before her eyes. Some sprout extra leaves, while others burst into milky white and butter yellow flowers.

“What does it feel like?” Rose asks, and it almost startles Jade because she’s been so immersed in watching it that for a moment she almost felt like she was alone.

“It’s…” she starts, but then trails off as she considers how to explain it. She can’t find the sort of metaphorical language Rose always uses when she talks about her magic. Instead, she says, “It’s warm and bright and… everything.”

Roxana nods. “I’ve seen enough.” Jade and Rose both stare at her for a second, and she continues, “Your ability to create life with magic is impressive, but we already knew about that. It’s not something that I know anything about. It’s not something that I can help you with. If your magic runs as deeply as you say, though, you may be a prodigy in nearly the same vein as Rose. And if that’s the case, I’m not sure there’s anything you couldn’t do with magic.”

Jade looks to Rose like she expects her to be upset by this, but Rose is just nodding along with her mother impassively, and it makes something in Jade go soft. It feels so nice to have people who really believe in her, she realizes. “You could assist me with my research, once you had a bit more experience,” Rose says, and Jade gapes at her.

“You would… let me do that?”

“I am not without hesitations,” Rose admits. “But it’s clear that you’re a powerful mage in your own right, and I believe my mother is correct. You have a lot of potential, Jade. I’m not so prideful that I’d let that go to waste.”

“You could have any position you wanted in the military,” Roxana adds, and Jade raises her eyebrows. At what point had she given the impression she had some great love for Derse’s military? “You could be by Dave’s side, even when he was away.”

Her breath catches in her chest as it squeezes painfully. Oh. Maybe Roxana understands her better than she realized. What Jade wants more than anything is to get Dave out of the army, but barring that option, she would love to be able to keep him safe.

And she would love to protect vulnerable young mages in Derse. She’s not sure she’ll ever really understand as much about the more complex mechanics of magic as Rose does, but if she has some deeper bond with it than anyone else, then she’s sure she could still help. And she loves to research, and she would love to spend more time with her sister-in-law. Even just getting to be Rose’s research assistant could be fun.

There’s still the matter of her father in Prospit, too. Her research about his illness had fallen by the wayside when she realized John wasn’t going to keep her updated about it, and sure, Rose and Roxana’s magic doesn’t heal, so they might not be able to teach her how to do it, but maybe she could try to extrapolate from what they could teach her. She can throw herself into researching that, try to fill in the gaps by herself.

There are suddenly so many options at her disposal that it makes her head spin. After a lifetime of avoiding any fleeting thought of using her magic, especially in front of anyone else, she has two people offering to help her learn so much.

As if to emphasize the point, Roxana asks, “What do you want to use your magic for, Jade?”

Jade can only stare. It feels impossible to choose. “I don’t know,” she breathes.

Roxana doesn’t look upset or even surprised by this answer. She smiles at Jade like she’s given exactly the right answer and reaches out to rest a hand on one of her arms, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Then that’s your first assignment,” she says. “Go back to your room and get some rest. When we meet again tomorrow night, we can start practicing whatever you want to learn.”

Jade blinks and gives a slow nod. When was the last time someone asked her what she wanted?

Chapter Text

Jade lays in her bed in the morning staring straight up at the ceiling, with Pounce curled up on her stomach. She didn’t sleep very well—she’s not really sure if she slept at all. She knows she didn’t dream, though at this point, it feels like a blessing. She cannot escape the nightmare at this point—Dave, dying. Blood on her hands. Panic, and then calm. Unearned confidence. She wishes she had any idea what it meant. Not for the first time, not even for the hundredth, she hopes he’s okay.

That’s not why she couldn’t sleep, though. She’s been thinking about what Roxana asked her last night. What does she want to use her magic for? She thinks the better question is what can she use her magic for? That Kanaya, Rose, and Roxana all know about her magic should create a sense of freedom, but she still has to worry about the king—assuming he doesn’t already know about her magic anyway. Was that why Rose had warned her to be careful about what she reveals during practice?

There’s a familiar knock on her door, and she smiles. Pounce doesn’t put up much of a protest as Jade scoops her up and sets her to the side, and when she answers the door, she smiles to see Kanaya, already fully dressed for the day.

“Oh, sorry,” Kanaya says, sounding more than a little awkward. “Did I wake you?”

“Nope! Just didn’t feel like getting up yet,” Jade answers, which is sort of a half-truth. She doesn’t need to hide her magic from Kanaya anymore, but trying to conceal it is so much like second nature at this point. To redirect, she asks, “Was there something that you needed, or just stopping by to say hi?”

Kanaya smiles, and it is so easy and so normal that it makes Jade smile, too, her chest squeezing with relief. “How about I help you get ready for the day, and we can talk about what I came for while we work?”

Jade rolls her eyes, but it’s accompanied by an affectionate grin, and she lets Kanaya pull her into the dressing room. It turns out that what Kanaya wanted was to accompany her to the garden, so she dresses in fairly simple gardening clothes and Kanaya takes the time to carefully pull her hair into one long, thick braid that trails all the way down her back.

They keep talking as they descend the long, winding staircases. “Have you decided what you’re going to add to the garden, now that spring has officially started? I noticed that you haven’t planted anything other than flowers yet.”

“Not yet,” Jade says, both agreeing and answering. “I did a lot of research about the native plants in Derse for all of the seasons, but I’ve been focused in on winter for so long that I wanna do another deep dive before I get started with the new planting.”

As they approach the bottom of the stairs, Kanaya asks, “Should we pivot to the library, then? It would probably be nicer weather for gardening to wait until the afternoon, anyway.”

Before Jade can say anything in response, Kanaya grabs her by the shoulders to stop her quite suddenly, and she looks up to see that she’d very nearly bumped into the king. She freezes like a prey animal. He looks down his nose at her and her stomach lurches.

“Good morning,” he says, but his tone lacks any of the warmth that might convince Jade it was legitimate.

“Um, good morning, King Diederik.” Jade dips her head down in what could probably resemble a respectful gesture. “We were just heading for the garden—”

“Well, you can spare a moment for the King of Derse and your father-in-law, can’t you?” he says, but it sounds less like a question and more like a demand. She clenches her jaw. She wants to ask why, but she knows better than to question him—he wouldn’t refer to himself as her father-in-law if he didn’t want to remind her of the position of authority he holds over her, beyond just being the king.

She offers Kanaya a tight, apologetic smile. “Sorry. You go ahead, and I’ll meet you there in just a moment. I’m sure it won’t be long.” Kanaya stares at her with her brow furrowed, but then she nods and steps around them to go outside.

“She’s very well-trained,” Diederik says as he watches her go, in the way someone might compliment a particularly intelligent animal. When he looks back down at Jade, he takes a single step backward to allow her to get off of the stairs, which only increases the height difference between them. If she didn’t know any better, she would think it was some kind of weird intimidation tactic. She’s still not entirely convinced that it’s not.

He doesn’t say anything to tell her to follow him. He just starts walking, and she scrambles after him. Jade stares at all of the doors they pass instead of looking at his back as he walks ahead of her, and she tries to remember Nepeta’s tour of the palace. She doesn’t think they’d ever gone in this wing—from the way the decor changes, Jade guesses few people other than the king do. This hall lacks the personality that some of the other rooms do, with their potted plants and paintings. Instead, there are banners and flags bearing emblems of Derse’s noble families. She hasn’t learned all of them, but she can pick out the white centaur against the blue and black of the Zahhak family from Nepeta’s descriptions of them.

“These are military banners, right?” she asks, because the silence is starting to feel more than a little uncomfortable. He just hums in response, with no particular emotion behind it.

The king holds open the door for her like a proper gentleman, and she offers him her best attempt at a smile, but her eyes don’t stay on him for long.

The room they’re in is dark—not just because of the lack of windows, but from the wood furniture stained that same near-black color as the furniture in her room and the long shadows that stretch over them when he lights a flickering candle. Jade guesses this must be the war room.

The war room in Derse is very different from the one in Prospit. The table in the center of the room is small, as if it is never intended to have more than three or four occupants at it at a time, and the map, if it can be called that, more closely represents a chessboard than a real world map. She guesses there’s probably some code to it that she doesn’t understand, but even that isn’t what really catches her eye.

All around the walls are various portraits—some that Jade recognizes, and some that she doesn’t. Savvas Ampora, with the scars stretching across his face and the same scowl from Dave’s drawing. King Diederik, though he looks much younger in the painting than he is now—Dave’s age, she thinks. There’s a man Jade doesn’t recognize, and none of the portraits name who they are depicting anywhere, but Jade isn’t inclined to ask.

The portrait on the far wall looks so much like Dave she can’t help but stare.

There are a few tells that it’s not Dave. He looks older, for one, with the faintest traces of crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes—his eyes which are the same color of ruby red, but not hidden behind Dave’s trademark spectacles. He’s also wearing the same carefully calculated neutral expression that everyone in Derse seems to wear by default, but while Dave seems to express so much ( especially with his eyes when he’s not wearing his spectacles, but she thinks she’s one of the few people lucky enough to know that), she can’t get a read from this man’s expression at all—but maybe that’s just because this is a painting.

“My father,” Diederik says over her shoulder, and Jade can’t help jumping. When did he get right next to her like that?

Jade stares at the portrait again. The former king. “Dave was named for him, wasn’t he?” she asks, although no one has ever told her that. Given that this was King David II, it just seems intuitive to her.

“He was,” he says, although there’s some tone there Jade can’t completely read, like maybe he doubts what he’s saying a little bit.

“The two of you were close?”

“Not exactly.” She looks over at him with her brow furrowed, and he does not look back at her when he adds, “It was Roxana’s idea. The name.”

Jade hesitates. It feels like she’s been given something particularly personal, and she doesn’t entirely know why or what to do with it. “What did you want to name him?”

She thinks she sees him hesitate, but a moment later, his face is back to apathy and his voice… He doesn’t speak in a monotone, but he still somehow manages to affect no particular emotion. He just sounds cold. Distant. It makes Jade shiver. “I was a twin. Did you know that?”

Jade stares. This doesn’t make any sense to her. Hadn’t Roxana said… but Roxana never did say it was the two of them, did she? She had said it felt like they were the only ones in the world who had each other’s backs. What does that say about the king’s brother?

He’s still not looking at her, but he’s not talking either, so she shakes her head slowly. She worries that if she says anything out loud it will disrupt whatever spell is making him talk to her like a real person. “I was the older twin. The heir. My brother never quite got over the insecurity of being a spare, although our father never called him that. We fought constantly as children. Roxana was the only one who seemed to notice or care. She used to fuss over us every time she spotted a new bruise or scrape, as if she was our nursemaid. She told me one day that she was going to crack healing magic just to make sure we didn’t get ourselves killed. I thought if anyone in the world could do it, it would be her.” His voice seems almost warm, and for some reason, Jade feels a sinking sense of guilt.

She swallows around her tight throat. “What happened to him?”

Diederik looks at her, and she can’t see his eyes through his spectacles, but she thinks he might have actually forgotten she was there. “He died,” he says, voice flat again. She has to try not to wince. “When we were thirteen. We spent our entire lives in competition—as though it would have mattered. Our father,” he says, looking back to the portrait again, “would never have named him the heir. He was too invested in his peace negotiations to think about something so petty as who would rule the kingdom once he was gone. He had two children—whichever one of us made it to adulthood would inherit the throne. In the end, that was me anyway.” Jade thinks there’s more that he’s not saying. He didn’t even really answer her question, but she thinks it might be a sensitive topic. “I would have named him Hendrik.”

Jade forgot she had even asked him about names, and she blinks a few times, startled. “Why didn’t you? Why did Roxana choose David?”

“It’s women who name babies. King David II had recently completed peace negotiations with Prospit that resulted in a ceasefire. She said that it would honor the new era of peace,” he says, with what Jade thinks is a trace of scorn.

A quiet settles over them, and Jade wonders again why he brought her here. She doubts it was to educate her about family history—why bring her to the war room for that? Just so she could see how much Dave looks like his grandfather?

Jade decides to be bold. She wants to get the upper hand on her father-in-law while he’s still vulnerable. “Tell me something about Dave.”

When he looks at her, he’s plainly amused, most likely by her audacity. “Alright,” he says, with the most inflection Jade has heard from him so far. Granted, he’s never directly spoken to her before—not even when her marriage was being arranged, she realizes. “Roxana went into labor in the early afternoon on my birthday,” he starts, and Jade’s eyebrows go up. “The twins weren’t expected for weeks—not until the first official day of winter. I told her it was a peculiar birthday gift, and she laughed. But it was nearly midnight before they were born. David took his first breaths on my birthday, but Rose, just eight minutes later, shared her birthday with her mother. I remember how strong David’s lungs were. There was no doubt he was alive from the moment he emerged, not like his near-silent sister—he wailed so loudly we thought the whole palace could hear. And when I held my son for the first time, my heir, I was startled by how strong he was when his tiny fist curled around my finger.”

Jade thinks she might actually see his face soften into something almost fond. A second later, he adds, “It’s a shame he turned out to be such a disappointment.”

She must have imagined it.

“He would do anything you asked him to,” Jade can’t stop herself from saying. She at least manages to keep some of the bitterness out of her tone when she says it.

“That is the least that can be expected of him,” he says, and his nose actually wrinkles in displeasure. “He was born with such promise, and yet he has no gift for magic. David has less potential than even a Prospitian.” Jade’s sure her heart stops for a second, her breath catching in her chest as she just stares at him. Why would he say that?

“I’m not sure about that,” she says cautiously, staring at the portrait of King David II again so she doesn’t have to risk looking at his face. “Dave is the commander of the army. For all intents and purposes, I’m just a humble palace gardener.”

Diederik laughs, and it sends something cold down to her bones. “Yes, in a manner of speaking, I suppose you are. But I’m impressed by the devotion you show to your garden.” It’s startling. Even though he doesn’t manage to make it sound kind, a compliment was still the last thing Jade expected to hear fall from his lips—to anyone, let alone her. She feels like she hasn’t known what to expect from a single moment of this conversation.

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” she murmurs, tacking on the formal title instead of his name. She might as well have said nothing for all that he reacts to or acknowledges it.

“It reminds me of the dedication it takes to run a kingdom. You dedicated the whole winter to this childish passion project, one which should rightfully have died before its inception. While the rest of us questioned your judgment and believed you naive, unaware, you persisted until you saw results. And, certainly, the tasks of the gardener are not entirely dissimilar to the tasks of a king. Returning over and over again even when things seem futile. Thinking over every possible solution. Pruning the harmful weeds that creep their way into the beautiful and important parts of the garden.” Her stomach twists and her jaw hardens. The metaphor feels so transparent.

Jade looks at him with a tight smile. “Thank you, Your Majesty,” she says again, even though thanking him is just about the last thing she wants. This is a game she’ll have to learn to play if she wants to protect Dave. “I’m grateful for the opportunity to serve the kingdom in whatever way I can.”

He smirks at her, that same cruel smirk he’d had when it had come out that Dave had no magic at the marriage arrangement. “You would have made a great queen,” he says, which is already enough to make her throat feel tight and her stomach twist up into more knots. “It’s a shame that you’ll never be one. Derse needs an heir with magic.”

If she had been questioning the comment about Dave having less potential than a Prospitian, this feels like he’s poured a shock of cold water over her.

He must know about her magic. Why else would he say that? Why else would he have pulled her into the war room for this interrogation in the first place? He may have cloaked it in sentimental stories about his brother and the birth of his children, but at the end of the day, this was an intimidation tactic—she just doesn’t understand why yet.

“I’m very happy with my position,” she says, keeping her own voice carefully neutral.

The king laughs again. “Of course you are. Why wouldn’t you enjoy being a humble palace gardener?” he says, mocking. “In fact, you should really get back to work. You’re dismissed.”

As much as Jade wants to run away from this interaction, she hesitates a moment. “That’s all you wanted to tell me?”

He’s still smirking, and the way he looks at her makes Jade feel so small. “Yes, I suppose it was.”

Jade holds her breath and offers him a curtsy. She makes sure to keep a slow, steady pace until she’s out of this hallway, and then she makes a beeline for the gardens to find Kanaya.

Evidently, Kanaya was waiting for this, because she anxiously springs to her feet the moment they’re within each others’ lines of sight. “What happened?”

Jade doesn’t even know where to start. She’s sure her head is spinning, and her chest feels tight when she tries to breathe in a way it hasn’t since she was a child. In a moment, she finds herself in Kanaya’s arms, and Kanaya stares down at her with wide eyes. “What happened?” Kanaya repeats, a little more insistently, and Jade hears an edge of anger in her voice.

“Nothing happened,” Jade says, keeping her voice soft. But when she tries to speak again, she chokes on something she thinks might be a sob, and Kanaya pulls her tight against her chest.

“He knows,” she eventually manages to cry, and she feels Kanaya’s hold tighten on her protectively. “I don’t even understand what it means. He was just kind of rambling about the royal family, and then he told me that it was a shame I would never be queen because Derse needs a magical heir.”

“He’s disgusting and pathetic and he has no better source for amusement than your torment,” Kanaya says, with more vitriol than Jade thinks she’s ever heard her speak with. Then, a little more gently, she adds, “He doesn’t know anything. He was making a slight against you for being Prospitian. Most likely, a slight against Dave as well.”

“How do you know?” Jade whispers, her breath shaking. “Did Rose tell you that?”

Kanaya pulls away from Jade just enough to look down at her face, her eyebrows knitted together. She brings her hand up to stroke her fingers through Jade’s hair near her temple, and Jade realizes belatedly that some of it has fallen loose from her braid. “Rose hasn’t told me anything, Jade.” She hesitates a moment, and then adds, “I don’t believe they speak much.”

Jade’s eyebrows pinch together. This doesn’t make any sense to her. Rose is the golden child, isn’t she? The beloved prodigy to Dave’s disappointing failure? And if he doesn’t talk to Dave or Rose, then why would he talk to her?

“You king no talk.” Jade practically jumps out of her skin, whipping around to see Mitoki Megido.

“What?” Jade says, eyebrows knitting together and chest growing somehow even tighter. Is this a warning?

The handmaid takes a single step toward them and, a little urgently, says, “King dangerous. Stay away.” Jade is sure her head is spinning twice as hard now, and she leans against Kanaya again.

“Why?” Kanaya asks when Jade can’t. Jade is so grateful for Kanaya.

As if she hadn’t noticed her before, Mitoki’s lips purse and her eyes narrow as she looks at Kanaya. She locks eyes with Jade again, those eyes the same startling shade of green as her own, and repeats, “Stay away.” As she heads back into the staffhouse, Jade finds that, like usual, Mitoki has left her with more questions than answers.

“That was incredibly ominous,” Kanaya says, and under different circumstances, it might actually make Jade laugh. As it stands, she just nods mutely, swallowing. “Come on,” she says, wrapping an arm around Jade’s shoulders and steering her inside.

Stepping back into the palace feels like stepping back into the watchful gaze of the king, and she finds herself looking around in paranoia. Maybe he has spies keeping tabs on her while she’s in the palace. 

The feeling of eyes on her does not go away, and when it comes time for practice, Jade finds herself wishing once again for some secret, hidden away place.

Roxana is once again free of her glass of wine, and Jade wonders when the last time she had a drink was. She wonders if anyone but her has noticed. It seems impossible not to notice, but Jade thinks it seems impossible not to notice lots of the things that seem to slip completely under the Dersites’ radar.

“Have you given any more thought to what we discussed last night?” Roxana asks, snapping Jade out of her thoughts.

She realizes that the conversation with the king had actually, for the first time all day, made her stop thinking about what they discussed last night. Suddenly, there had been more pressing issues, but now the question is laid at her feet again: What does she want to use her magic for? What does she want to learn?

The main mental block she’d had when she was considering the issue was figuring out what sort of magic she could use without being caught by Diederik. Rose and Roxana might care about what she wants to learn, but if he knew what sort of powerful magic they believe she has, it wouldn’t matter. She would have to learn whatever he directed her to learn, and it would probably be something designed to make her just as miserable as being a soldier makes Dave. But if the king already knows about her magic?

Well then what would be the point of restricting herself?

The very first thing she told herself she would study when she got to Derse was healing for her father. She had wanted to help him so desperately, and guilt presses down on her like a pile of stones. Rose made her think that healing magic was impossible, but Jade knows from her gardening that her magic can do things that theirs can’t. Maybe she could go back to Prospit and find out why John and Dad haven’t contacted her in months, and to make up for whatever wrong she’s committed against them, she could cure Dad’s illness.

Thinking of her garden makes her think of Nepeta. While Kanaya is the one who helped her with the garden in Prospit, and it seems like she’s going to be helping with this one from now on, it was really Nepeta’s help that had made it possible. She taught Jade about the seasons in Derse, and more importantly, she kept Jade sane while she was doing her research. She made her laugh. She made her forget about all of the loss she was going through for a little while. She hopes that she’s alright. There must be some sort of magic that would let her check in on her, right? Some sort of teleportation or something.

She imagines teleporting onto a battlefield and squeezing Dave in her arms and kissing him until neither of them can breathe. She doesn’t want anything more than she wants to keep him safe. If Dave doesn’t have any choice in being a soldier, then she at least wants to make sure he doesn’t have to give his life for it. What sorts of things would be good for that? She should learn to fight. She asked Karkat to teach her once, when they were children, and he acted like she was insane.

Karkat. She wants to protect Karkat, too. She wants to peer into his future the way Mitoki Megido always seems to be peering into hers and know that he’ll be okay. That he’ll rise in the ranks and become the leader that he always wanted to be. Or maybe that he’ll realize that being a soldier is stupid and terrible. He could move back to Prospit, finally stop pretending he isn’t in love with Vriska’s lady-in-waiting and settle down. She would miss him, but he deserves it.

She stares between Rose and Roxana, and they are both still looking at her so patiently. She’s not sure how long it’s been. She’s sure they must recognize the overwhelming nature of the question they’ve asked her and the wealth of options at her disposal, though. But she knows what she wants—really, what she’s always wanted.

“I want to learn… everything.”

Chapter Text

Jade is exhausted.

They have been practicing for weeks, and despite the fact that she hasn’t made any progress, she doesn’t think she’s ever used so much magic in her life. It always just came out of her before, like it took more energy to hold it in than it would have to actually use it for something. Finally letting it out in the garden that night had made her feel so energized.

It doesn’t help anything that the ways Rose and Roxana try to explain these concepts to her don’t make any sense. She can tell that they’re trying, but that only makes the process more frustrating for all three of them. She’s pretty sure they can tell at this point that her magic must come from something other than theirs, but neither of them have said anything about it. With Rose’s warning, Jade’s not sure she should say anything about it either.

She’s tried to seek out Mitoki more than once in the last few weeks in the hopes that she might be able to provide some of the guidance Jade can’t get from the Dersites, but as per usual, Jade hasn’t seen or heard from her since her latest warning. It’s starting to get frustrating, the way she seems to show up only to give Jade some sort of cryptic warning and then disappear. What does she know about the king? Did she see something with her strange powers, powers she should be able to teach to Jade, or is she speaking from more personal experience?

“You’re getting distracted.” Rose’s voice cuts through her thoughts, and Jade can’t help wincing.

“Of course I’m getting distracted,” she huffs, even though her cheeks flush with embarrassment at getting caught. “I can’t just clear my mind the way you keep telling me to—I don’t think that’s even how this works for me!”

“Maybe it’s not,” Roxana agrees. Rose purses her lips. “But we can’t possibly know what works for you if you don’t try.”

“I am trying!”

“Try harder,” Rose says. Jade wants to scream at her, but she jams her mouth and eyes shut and takes a deep breath through her nose instead.

They want her to make fire. They say that it shouldn’t be too hard to translate from the light that she already works with, but when they explain it to her, it sounds like the complete opposite of what her light feels like. They describe it like walking into deep ocean waters and cracking your eyes open to find the sun through the waves. This doesn’t mean anything to Jade.

She wills the flush of frustration and embarrassment on her cheeks into the whole-body warmth she knows how to work with. She tries to imagine a crackling heat under her palms, the way her skin would feel stretched taut after she sat in front of the fireplace with John for too long. They had both always been such babies about the cold, and that was long before she ever experienced a Derse winter.

She feels herself smiling, and Roxana says, “What do you see?”

“John,” Jade says. After a second, she laughs at herself a little and adds, “My brother. He always used to be so bossy with the maids about keeping a fire in the fireplace. He used to insist a fireplace should always have a fire. I think the only reason he didn’t push the matter during summer was because he thought I’d throw a fit, and then he’d get in trouble with Dad, and—”

“You’ll have to push past that,” Rose says, and Jade’s smile falls.

She takes another deep breath and tries to push aside thoughts of her brother. As she does, though, she feels that warmth leaving her again, and frustration starts to bubble up in its place again. Finally, she huffs and opens her eyes. “I can’t do this.”

“Jade, it’s a very simple concept to translate—you already know how to make light. Just put some heat into it. Fire is perhaps the simplest thing to manipulate,” Rose says, starting to sound a little impatient.

“I can’t,” Jade insists, her own frustration leaking into her voice. “You keep talking about how simple it is but I can’t.”

Roxana cuts in, “Maybe we should call it a night. It’s getting late, and it’ll be easier for you to learn if you get some rest.”

Jade’s jaw clenches as she looks between them. She feels like a child when they talk to her like this. They probably think of her as a child, since she can’t even get the hang of the most basic sorts of magic after she’d talked about wanting to learn everything.

Rose rests a hand on Jade’s shoulder, and Jade stares at her. “Would you like to walk up together?” she asks, voice softer than it was a moment ago.

Jade hesitates for just a second before she unclenches her jaw and lets out a slow breath. “Sure, that sounds nice!” She doesn’t want to push Rose away. And she’s sure Rose is probably asking her for a reason.

Roxana does not follow them, and Jade peers curiously over her shoulder as they walk down the corridor toward the stairs. “She’s sick,” Rose says, and Jade’s head whips to look at her, stomach churning. Rose senses her panic and explains, “She hasn’t had a drink in weeks. I don’t think she’s handling it very well.”

“Oh. I didn’t realize that could make you sick.” She hesitates for a moment, and then adds, “Why hasn’t she been drinking?”

Rose looks… contemplative, if Jade had to place it. They start up the stairs, and it isn’t until they’ve cleared the first set that she finally starts talking again. “I suppose it must be related to practice. She seems to have taken an interest in you in a way she never really did with my brother and I.”

Jade frowns. “I don’t think that’s true. Roxana loves you and Dave.”

“Does she?” Rose snaps, and Jade thinks it’s more than she meant to say.

“Of course she does,” Jade insists. “I’ve had drinks with her a few times now, and you two are all she can talk about. She’s so proud of you! Both of you. It’s just that the king—”

“Don’t,” Rose says, and Jade’s mouth snaps shut. They’re silent the rest of the way up the staircase to the floor below Jade’s, until Rose finally mutters, “I don’t know that loving us was enough.”

Jade doesn’t come up with an answer to that before they reach her room, and she and Rose sort of stare at each other at the top of the stairs for a moment. Before Rose is able to break away, though, Jade wraps her up in a tight hug. She wishes that Dersites would just talk to each other. She wishes that they weren’t all puppets in King Diederik’s weird game. When they pull apart, Rose offers her a ghost of a smile.

Practically the moment her head hits the pillow, Jade is asleep.

She’s looking around frantically for him. Dave is here somewhere, and he’s hurt, and she has to do something. She has to help him! The air is damp, and it feels like she’s suffocating, which doesn’t make it any easier to quell her panic. Calm down. She takes a deep breath and scans the area around her—there.

Jade wakes up with a strangled gasp, clutching at the sheets at either side of her. She’s had this nightmare enough times now to know how it goes, and she can only be grateful that she woke up before the part where she has to feel him dying under her touch. As she pants, she realizes that it’s easier than she would usually expect it to be. A moment later, she processes she doesn’t feel Pounce’s familiar weight against her chest.

Fresh off of another nightmare about Dave, it’s much harder to quiet her anxiety. Most likely, Pounce slipped out sometime in the night to torment Jaspers. But she closed the door last night, didn’t she? She leans up onto an elbow, and a brief glance confirms as much.

She gets up to look for her and her eyes catch on a piece of paper on the seat of the bay window. That wasn’t there last night. Did someone leave a ransom note for her cat?

Her eyes go wide when she gets close enough to really see it.

Jade would recognize that handwriting on the envelope anywhere, scrawling her name, and it knocks the wind out of her. When did this get here? How did this get here? Any thoughts of searching for Pounce are temporarily abandoned as she sits in the window to open the letter.

jade,

just thought you were due for another update. i mean, not much is really happening out here right now, but were moving again soon, so it might be a little while before i can write again. and i guess i just miss you.

vantas is even grumpier than usual lately. im not really sure what crawled up his asshole, but i dont really wanna look up there and check, so hes just gonna have to figure it out. i told him id send you his regards, though. he seemed happy with that, at least.

we got this new soldier in the latest batch of reinforcements who i swear must be even tinier than you are, and hes not even cavalry. i cant tell if hes dersite or prospitian because hes taken some sort of vow of silence or something—or at least, thats the rumor. he doesnt talk to anybody and apparently nobody knows him, so, yknow, its kind of hard to say for certain. hes really good at what he does, though. no magic, but ive seen him tackle people, like, twice his size. its crazy impressive. ill see if i can pry his story out of him at some point to update you, since i think thats the kind of thing youd dig. or you can always tell me if youre not interested.

alright, let me think about what youre probably up to while youre reading this. its almost spring, so i bet youre thinking about starting a garden, since mom and rose have never been able to keep a plant alive. i think we used to have, like, a palace gardener when we were little, but i dont think we have one anymore. i dont know, maybe im just losing my edge keeping track of all the palace staff better than everybody else does. seems kind of impossible when i live with them, but yknow, crazier things happen at sea or whatever. ill have to save that one for the next time i deal with ampora. ugh, i hate that guy.

okay, im getting off-track here. youre starting a garden. i dont think i know any spring fruits in derse off the top of my head. actually apples might be the only dersite fruit i can name at all. theres this whole harvest festival that happens, like, right after the time i left. i hope you got to go, but ill make sure to take you this year. and ill keep my eyes peeled for what fruits i notice popping up around here, but im pretty sure the stuff this far east wouldnt make it in vale.

i bet you probably saved this letter to open when you were all weepy about me being gone because you miss me so much. that, or youve completely forgotten about me and youve started a torrid love affair with my sister. damn, i hope not.

i hope these letters are getting through to you. and, you know, that youre okay. some of the guys have gotten letters about their wives and children dying while weve been out here, and im still technically the damn prince. i dont think theyd skip on mine. so im gonna hold out hope that youre okay. but damn, i miss you. ill tell the messenger to give you our new station.

i love you.

-dave

Jade’s eyes sting.

He’s been writing her letters? But why hasn’t she gotten them? And why did she get this one now? It’s dated from weeks ago, and even if it had taken that long to deliver it from whatever battlefield he must be stationed at now, he references other letters—letters she’s certain she never got. Clouds, how many letters has she missed?

She briefly entertains the idea that maybe his letters have been intercepted. He’s the commander of the army, surely his letters would seem valuable. But his name isn’t anywhere on the envelope, and she knows that letters to the capital city and even the palace aren’t being intercepted en masse because they’d gotten the message about Equius’ death.

No, something is up. No one is intercepting Dave’s letters—someone is intercepting her letters. And she is going to demand answers.

She doesn’t bother to change out of her nightdress and into proper clothes before she storms down the stairs, a cold sense of rage filling her chest. She makes a beeline for the dining room; though it’s almost never used, for some reason, Jade just knows that’s where she’ll find them.

Sure enough, the king and queen are seated at the table, with the queen’s handmaid standing by her side with her head held down. When Jade glares at Mitoki, though, her eyes flash up to make eye contact for a brief second.

Jade holds the letter up where she’s sure they can see the letter while keeping it out of their reach. She doesn’t want them to touch it. “Explain this,” she says, unable to keep her contempt from her voice. The king does not even bother to look up at her, but Roxana looks at her with a damning mix of fear and guilt.

When neither of them speak up, her anger flares, and she slams a hand down against the table. “I am not going to walk away from this table until someone gives me an explanation for this!”

Roxana’s eyes flash over to her husband and then back at Jade, and though her mouth opens, no sound comes out. Just as Jade is about to yell again, to demand Diederik at least look at her rather than sitting there and spreading jam onto his bread, she hears the shuffling of feet behind her and whips around to see Rose.

“Did you know about this?” Jade demands.

Rose’s expression can only be described as alarm, with wide eyes and eyebrows knitted together. “Know about what?” She takes a single step toward Jade, and Jade takes a step back on instinct, clutching the letter to her chest as though someone might try to take it from her. Rose’s eyes drop down to it, and then somehow go even wider.

“This is weeks old,” Jade hisses, and Rose flinches. “And it mentions other letters. Why haven’t I gotten them? Why wasn’t I given this sooner?”

“They were a distraction,” the king dismisses from behind her, and Jade’s stomach churns as she whips around to look at him. He regards her with an almost bored expression as he takes a bite of his bread, and the red jam against his teeth looks like blood.

“A distraction from what?” she asks, slowly. She watches as his face blooms into the cruel smirk she is beginning to believe is the only way he allows himself to smile.

She looks to Roxana, but the queen refuses to meet her eyes. She looks to Mitoki, her head still bowed in submission, so different from the way Jade has always seen her in the staffhouse and the garden. She looks to Rose, who at least has the decency to look horrified by the revelation—or maybe she’s just a better liar than the rest of them.

“I want to see the rest of them,” she demands as she turns back to Diederik. She expects him to dismiss the notion outright, but instead he waves a hand and Mitoki breaks from her position to scurry out of the room.

The air is tense as they wait, and the only person who attempts to speak is Rose. “Perhaps we should discuss—” she starts, but her mouth snaps shut obediently when her father holds up a hand to silence her. It only makes Jade angrier. How dare he?

When Mitoki shuffles back into the dining room, she offers Jade a stack of papers so thick she thinks they could be bound into their own novel. They are all opened already, Jade realizes, and another wave of nausea washes over her as she pictures her father-in-law reading all of the private things Dave wrote for her.

The letter at the top of the stack is another from Dave.

jade,

dont have a ton of time to write today. ive got a ton of condolence letters to sign. this shit fucking sucks, worst part of the job by far. just wanted you to know i was thinking about you and that everything is okay and that i love you. write back soon if you can. or, you know, no worries if not. no pressure. itd just be nice to hear your voice. or. read your voice, i guess. yeah. ill try to write something longer soon.

-dave

It doesn’t even take up the full page, and she can tell from the handwriting that it was written in a rush, which makes her heart lurch. What must he have gone through? It seems so impossible to her that it could really just be letters of condolence like he claims.

He doesn’t completely hide the circumstances of the war from her, though. In another letter, dated earlier, he writes about Equius’ death, about how they had both been soldiers in the palace as teenagers, and how, though they were never close, it was the first loss that had felt so personal. He says that he loves her and apologizes for not being able to show it properly from halfway across the country. She shudders and feels a sob bubble up in her chest, but she tamps it down. She refuses to give the king that sort of satisfaction.

Some of the letters are several pages long, and she doesn’t care about the way her in-laws must be staring at her as she reads through them, though eventually the details start to blur together through the rush of emotions. The letters don’t only come from Dave, either. There are some from Karkat, though they’re brief and they almost read as military reports to a commanding officer. If she’d been getting them in real time, maybe they would have made her laugh. As though Jade commands that much respect or authority. As it stands, they make her heart ache.

There are some from John, too, though it seems it’s been months since the last time he wrote to her. He must have thought she was choosing not to reply and given up, and she feels another cold flare of rage. How could they keep these from her?

Her brother got married this winter. He writes about his rushed arrangement with Vriska Serket. About how she had actually been forward enough to ask him, pointing out that the people needed good news after…

Jade stares at the paper, her entire body going numb.

John and Vriska’s marriage had been arranged at the beginning of winter, and while Dave and Jade’s engagement was three months, they only got one. The winter in Prospit was the harshest it had been in years, and John worried people wouldn’t make it without some good news after the death of their father.

Their father is dead.

Jade is vaguely aware of tears running down her cheeks as she reads over the letter over and over again. Prospit had been hit with a rare cold snap at the end of autumn, and though it did not snow, something about the chill and the rain had aggravated Dad’s illness. He died in bed before the winter holidays, John at his side.

Her father has been dead for months and she didn’t even know about it. Whoever was reading her letters didn’t even bother to tell her, as if it didn’t matter. All because of what? Because of her magic? Because mourning the loss of some of the only family she has left would have been a distraction?

What else would they have hidden from her? If something had happened to Karkat, would they have let her know about that? If something had happened to Dave?

Her eyes snap up to her father-in-law. Rage fills her body like ice rushing through her veins, so cold her fingers feel numb, and her jaw hardens.

“You kept these from me,” she says, and her own voice sounds so foreign to her own ears. “You hid them on purpose.”

“They weren’t important.”

“Weren’t important?” she hisses, clenching the papers a little tighter in her hands. She takes a step toward him, and in her peripheral vision, she can see the flame in every candle in the room flaring up, tinged arsenic green. “Letters from my husband weren’t important? My brother’s marriage? The death of a former king wasn’t important?” She raises a hand as she spits the last part, and then she feels a hand on her wrist.

She turns with all the force of a whirling hurricane only to see Rose staring at her, face unreadable. “Jade,” she says, voice low enough that Jade thinks she is the only one who can hear it. “Don’t do anything that you’re going to regret.”

Jade gapes at her. How could she say that to her, now? How, knowing what he’s done, could Rose ask Jade to give her father mercy? When has he ever given any of them mercy?

But when she looks back at the table, he is still smirking, as if everything is going exactly the way that he wants it to. Maybe Rose isn’t asking Jade for mercy. Maybe this is what he wants. Maybe he wants Jade to attack him so he can use this as a strike against Dave.

Dave.

Her heart aches at the thought of him. What must he think, if he’s been writing her letters for all these months and she hasn’t sent a single response? He can’t possibly think she’s actually forgotten about him, can he? He said that he loved her, and she didn’t say a word. She needs him to know.

Her eyes slide back to Rose, and suddenly Jade thinks she understands the carefully calculated neutrality the Dersites always wear. There is something safe in keeping your cards close to your chest. There are people in this room who would exploit her emotions if they completely understood what they meant. Maybe that’s what Diederik is trying to do.

Rose gives a minute nod, so subtle Jade thinks she might have imagined it.

She doesn’t know what to do with all of the emotions welling up inside of her or the way her magic responds to them, so she does the only thing she can think to—she lets go.

There is no flash of brilliant light or burst of heat. The flames in the room do not grow large enough to swallow the people in the room at all. In fact, Jade’s world goes rather dark and cold, and then the light hits her eyes and her stomach lurches.

She is falling.

Frantically, she looks around for anything she can grab onto, but she’s far above even the highest treetops. The treetops. There are evergreen trees that stretch in a dense forest as far as the eye can see. She strains her memory to identify them, but her vision is so blurry from tears and the rush of wind in her face that she can’t make them out clearly.

Where does she remember seeing dense forests like this on the maps of Derse she’d studied? Were there dense forests like this on the maps of Derse at all? Wherever she is, there’s still snow on the ground. Not west, then, toward Prospit. East. Close to the border of Viridan, maybe. Near Dave, she thinks.

And then she crashes.

She falls through the branches of a tree, and as limbs crack and snap under her, she feels cuts scouring her skin and bruises beat themselves into her body. In real time, she can also feel the warm buzz of her magic under her skin, but she can’t focus enough to channel it anywhere.

She somehow manages to throw her arms up in time to protect her head from cracking against anything before she hits the ground, but the world is still blurry and spinning. Vaguely, she’s aware of her glasses being gone. When she tries to reach out and feel for them, she gags through a shock of pain.

Every breath she tries to draw rattles her chest. “Dave,” she calls feebly. She tilts her head as far back as she can and sees a silhouette rapidly approaching her, but the world goes dark again before it reaches her.

END OF ACT 3

Chapter Text

Dave sees all of the other soldiers in the camp they’ve set up perk up before he hears the hoofbeats approaching, but he’s on his feet and at the messenger’s side faster than any of them. “Letters are here!” cries one of the soldiers nearest to Dave, and it doesn’t take long for everyone else to flock to the messenger after that.

When he hops off the horse and starts digging through his bag, Dave stares at him, trying to remember not to show any of his anxiety on his face. Karkat rests a hand on his shoulder when he makes it over, so he must be doing a pretty shit job of it. “Lieutenant Volk,” the messenger announces as he finally takes the first letter out of his bag. One of the older soldiers shuffles over to him to take it, and while some are more secretive about their letters, he starts opening it even before he starts shuffling away.

The messenger passes out hundreds of letters. Some soldiers get more than one—some of them thick stacks of what must be at least half a dozen letters from wives and children and parents and siblings. Dave can’t imagine what it would be like to have so many people who cared about you. He only has one.

Dave does not get a letter, and he swallows down his disappointment. Again.

Jade hasn’t sent him a single letter since he was deployed, and he tries not to take it personally. She hasn’t sent any to Karkat, either, and apparently she actually asked him to write to her when they were leaving. So maybe she’s just busy. Maybe she’s just got a ton going on back at the palace and she’ll tell him all about it when he goes home.

Fuck, he hopes she’s okay.

He should go back to the fire until they put it out for the night. Dave hates the snow, and the cold, and basically everything about Derse’s shit ass climate, and the fact that winter hit early this year doesn’t make it any better even if it did give him a fond memory of playing in the snow with his wife before he left. Maybe especially because it gave him a fond memory of playing in the snow with his wife.

He misses Jade so much it hurts. He hasn’t yet shaken the urge to roll over in the middle of the night and bury his face in her hair, even though he doesn’t find her there, and even though he was hardly doing that every night even before he left. He feels like such an idiot for avoiding her so much when he was home. But how could he not be terrified of Jade? She’s beautiful and smart and the only person who’s ever been able to crack through his metaphorical armor so quickly and so thoroughly. After a lifetime of beatings reminding him to never be vulnerable, not even for a moment, how was he supposed to just let her in? And right under his father’s nose to boot?

He should go back to the fire, but he retreats to his tent instead. He has letters of condolence to sign, and if the messenger is here, maybe he can knock them out quickly enough that he can get them sent without making the soldiers’ families wait another week.

He hates this stupid fucking war. He’s always hated war, even before he had a wife, and missing Jade doesn’t make him any more amenable to the idea of dying in combat like his father undoubtedly wants. Any excuse to play the conqueror. Any way to get rid of his son that doesn’t require him to do his own dirty work.

There’s a part of Dave that wishes he’d just run away with Jade like a coward. Maybe they could have settled somewhere nice and warm. Prospit probably would have granted them amnesty, even if Dave is technically the prince of Derse. They could pop out a couple of kids. Jade could start a nice little garden. It’d be perfect. Instead he has to sign letters of condolence.

He hardly gets a second alone in his tent before he hears the flaps opening, and he doesn’t have to look up to know who it is. “Don’t you have letters to read or something?”

“Ha fucking ha,” Karkat gripes, and Dave looks up to see him crossing his arms. “You were there when we got the letters, genius. You know I didn’t get anything.”

“Maybe they forgot one and gave it to you after I left.”

“Dave, my girlfriend is blind,” Karkat says, voice flat, and it actually manages to startle a laugh out of Dave.

He sets his quill down. He guesses he’ll do these next week. “Why are you in here, Vantas?”

“I wanted to offer you some advice.” Dave raises his eyebrows. He’s not sure what kind of advice Karkat could offer him—really, he’s not sure what Karkat could even advise him about. He’s pretty sure they’re in basically the exact same boat on all fronts.

“Shoot,” he says anyway.

Karkat takes a seat on the edge of Dave’s cot, and he mourns the opportunity to joke about making himself comfortable. “We’re getting our asses kicked,” Karkat points out, which earns another startled laugh from Dave.

“Yeah, no shit dude.”

“We need reinforcements.”

“Do you have some kind of Prospitian magic you’ve kept on the down-low that’s gonna make some out of thin air? I’ve written to Ampora about sending reinforcements from the navy more than once and he’s not budging—not that we’re even really close enough to any of the coasts to make that work, anyway. I could write directly to the king, but do you see that working?” He crosses his arms and raises his eyebrows, leaning back in his seat.

Karkat glares at him. “Don’t sit like that, you look like a jackass.”

“You think I’m a jackass anyway.”

“You are a jackass, but you don’t have to look like one.” Dave snorts and straightens back up. Karkat sighs and says, “I don’t have Prospitian magic—not exactly. But Prospit’s army is almost twice as big as Derse’s is, and, frankly, better-trained.”

Dave bites back a comment about how he’s worked with Prospitian soldiers and he’s pretty confident that they’re not that well-trained. The soldiers he’d worked with when he was staying there weren’t terrible, and Dave knows that they were the rejects from the capital city. And realistically, if Prospit’s army wasn’t well-trained, they wouldn’t have been able to hold their own against Derse for so long, and Dave wouldn’t have even had the opportunity to marry Jade or meet Karkat. Instead, he says, “Okay. Good for Prospit. You gonna tell me about their recruiting efforts or something? How’d they sucker you into enlisting, Karkat? I’m all ears.”

Karkat rolls his eyes. “Will you shut the fuck up, you obnoxious asshole?” Dave holds his hands up in surrender, but in the privacy of his tent, he can’t help an amused smirk. “Your marriage to Jade means that Prospit and Derse are allies, and I know that you got all buddy-buddy with John when we were still in Prospit. So write to him. Ask Prospit for reinforcements.”

Dave gapes. Yes, he did kind of become friends with John while he was in Prospit—and they’d even talked, a few times, about what sort of military aid Prospit might be able to offer if the alliance actually went through. Those were all hypotheticals, though. Derse wasn’t supposed to end one war and leap head first right into another one.

And what would Jade think? He can’t imagine that she would be okay with him dragging her kingdom into a war—or, for all intents and purposes, asking John to put his life on the line, because there’s no way Dave could possibly write to John about sending in Prospitian reinforcements and he would just sit back to be all kingly. John’s the kind of idiot who would want to help, hands-on style.

Clearly seeing his hesitation (and it’s annoying, the way that Karkat can read him like a fucking book no matter what he does), Karkat says, “Look, it’s not like I want to drag Prospit into this war either. Jade doesn’t even know the worst of what the war did for Prospit’s citizens, growing up in that castle and never leaving. But I do. I remember seeing people living on the streets in the capital city, begging for food. I remember Kanaya’s mom dragging us to go volunteer in fucking soup kitchens during the holidays. If I had thought you and Jade getting married would mean Prospit would only get a break from war for like, five fucking minutes, I would have told John he was being stupid.”

“Thanks for that. Glad to have your ringing endorsement, buddy,” Dave says, and Karkat rolls his eyes again.

“You know what I mean. The whole arranged marriage thing was supposed to mean peace for Prospit. Let Derse go do their evil conquerors schtick and leave us out of it. So of course I don’t want to ask Prospit for reinforcements—especially not fucking John, who’s going to hop right on his white horse and ride all the way out here to play hero. Frankly, I’m shocked he didn’t try to enlist in the military when we were teenagers so he could put his life on the line like an idiot earlier. But we need reinforcements. We’ve tried negotiation and they’re not listening. Derse won’t send anybody else out here. Prospit’s our last hope if we ever want to get back to the capital and see Jade again.”

It’s a dirty trick, bringing Jade up like that. Dave hates Karkat for it, a little bit, because he’s right.

He takes a breath and pushes a hand up through his hair, racking his brain for any reasonable argument. Maybe if he writes another letter to Savvas, the navy will finally budge. Maybe they can push the front lines a little further. They’d lose some lives in the process, definitely, but they’d be in a slightly more advantageous position. Or, hell, maybe they could retreat, pull back and buy some time to think of something, anything else.

They’ve tried all of that, though, and none of it has worked.

“If I ever become king, remind me to make you my advisor.”

Karkat pulls a face. “If you ever become king, Derse is doomed.” He pauses. “Actually, how do I make that happen?”

Dave laughs, and then groans and sinks miserably in his chair. “Maybe if we’re lucky, Prospit won’t actually be stupid enough to send their king out onto a fucking battlefield.”

“You mean the way that Derse couldn’t actually be stupid enough to make their prince the commander of the army?”

“Yeah. Exactly like that.”

They exchange a look of mutual bittersweet amusement, and then Karkat stands up. “I’m going to go sit by the fire. I don’t know how you Dersites fucking survive the snow. Write to John.”

Dave rolls his eyes. “I’m going to, I’m going to. Save me a spot.”

When Karkat leaves the tent, Dave turns back to his desk, staring at the stack of condolence letters he still has to sign. He doesn’t think he can handle it if he has to sign one of these things for his brother-in-law.

He sighs and picks up his quill and a piece of paper. How is he supposed to start writing this thing? What can he even say that doesn’t result in fucking John of Prospit bursting onto the battlefield and getting himself killed? What is he supposed to tell Jade if that happens? He decides to just start writing and see where it takes him.

Jade,

He stares. Of course it took him there. But, fuck, he misses her too much to throw away a letter with her name on it. So he writes another one.

Chapter Text

Wind howls outside as rain pours relentlessly, filling the room with a miserable chill even despite the closed windows. There are voices in the hallway steadily approaching the room, but they aren’t approaching fast enough.

There’s a crack of light from the door as someone seems to peek their head in. “Dad?” John’s voice. It seems… confused, almost. Tentative. Then he repeats, with a more clear tinge of panic, “Dad.”

When he gets no reply, he rushes to Dad’s side and tries to shake him awake, only to find he’s already cold to the touch. There’s some commotion as more people come to the room, but there’s nothing any of them can do. The former king is dead.

Tick.

Yarrow. Foxglove. Poppy. Sage.

Jade takes a mental inventory of the plants as she moves them from the nursery bed to their new, permanent home. They’re all medicinal plants, she knows, but she can’t remember choosing them for that reason. She can’t remember choosing them at all. Maybe she never chose them. But then why are they here?

Tock.

Dave always looks at her like she’s the most precious thing in the world to him, and it makes her stomach tie itself up into knots. No one has ever looked at her that way before. She doesn’t think anyone has ever loved her as much as he does.

She doesn’t understand how he can be so loving and come from a family like… well, like his. She never expected much from the king, but the betrayal from Roxana still stings, and she still doesn’t know how much Rose really knew about it.

She doesn’t want to think about that right now, though. Dave is looking up at her so reverently, and she slides her hands through his hair to cup the back of his head and pull him up into a kiss. He follows her lead eagerly. She can’t help but think of how exhausting it must be for him to be in charge all of the time. That, at least, she can fix.

He touches her like he’s a little afraid of breaking her, which is as endearing as it is frustrating. Still, regardless of how he touches her, his fingers against her bare skin still gives her goosebumps, especially as they slide around to her lower back so he can pull her a little tighter against him.

Tick.

The whole world sways, and her stomach lurches as she grips onto the posts of the bed to make sure she isn’t launched out of it. She wishes her grandfather had lived long enough to take her sailing at least once when she was little, just so she might be used to this already. As it stands, the only times she’s not overwhelmed with nausea are when she’s just thrown up. It’s the sickest she’s ever been.

She wants Dave with her more than anything, and she pulls the blanket a little tighter around herself like that might be an adequate substitute for his arms. She’s being childish about this. She knows that.

Tock.

She pulls his head into her lap, stroking her fingers through his hair. His eyes are open and she realizes, suddenly, that his spectacles are gone, which makes her heart squeeze in her chest. What happened to them? Are they broken? She can’t imagine Dave letting anyone other than her see him without them on purpose. He must be so upset.

Even though she knows what she’s doing, her heart is still pounding as she settles her hands over his chest. Blood immediately starts to coat her fingers, and her stomach lurches. She whispers reassurances down to him as best she can while she works, even though she doesn’t think he can hear them. Maybe she’s whispering them to herself.

She presses on his chest a little harder like she can force her magic to work faster that way, and as if she was squeezing a sponge, more blood pours over her fingers.

She closes her eyes against the tears she can feel beading up at the corners and tries to clear her mind like she was taught to. Focus. She takes a deep breath, and through the numbing sense of panic, she can feel that warmth starting to build in her chest. She can feel the way it passes out of her and into him. She can feel his heartbeat changing under her hands. And then she hears it: that wet cough that means he’s still alive.

Jade blinks her eyes open slowly, like it takes all of the effort in the world, and is rewarded with the sight of a cozy little cottage.

The first thing that she notices is the incessant ticking filling the entire room. She doubts it’s as loud as it seems, but with how quiet the rest of the room is, it sounds thunderous to her. She finds herself counting out the seconds until her heart rate has slowed down.

Her eyes focus, and she notices the bundle of dried flowers tied to something she can’t see hanging directly above her head. Yarrow. Her mind flashes back to the nightmare from… last night? No, she doesn’t think it was that recent. Where is she, and how long has she been there? How did she get there in the first place?

Dave.

All at once, she remembers where she is and what she was doing, and she tries to push herself up onto her elbows. Her entire body screams with pain in protest, but all she hears come out of her mouth is a low groaning sound. Her heart rate is kicking up again, thumping against her ribs ceaselessly in a way that suddenly calls her attention to just how much her ribs ache. They ache nearly as much as her lungs do when she sucks in another shuddering breath, which is perhaps the only thing keeping her from hyperventilating.

She needs to find Dave. He’s all alone. No, not all alone. He has the other soldiers. But he thinks she abandoned him, and she can’t let him think that. She needs to find him and tell him how much she loves him. She needs to tell him about how his letters were kept from her and how his mother betrayed her and…

She squeezes her eyes shut and tries to take a deep breath. She has to calm down.

She focuses on what she can sense around her. The sound of the ticking clock. The bedding under her hands, smoother than what she remembers from the staffhouse in Vale—not a soldier’s bedding. She squeezes her eyes shut tighter.

The room smells like some sort of broth. She tries to pick out the individual herbs that she can smell. Sage. Thyme. Rosemary. She thinks there’s a hint of meat, but her mind is still too fuzzy with panic to identify what kind of meat it must be.

She takes another breath, as deep as she can manage. It’s not as deep as she’d like, but it serves the purpose of calming her mind well enough. She tries to push herself to sit up again, but before even the pain can stop her, there’s a hand gently pushing down on her chest.

Her eyes snap open. It takes them a moment to focus, but eventually, the hazy shapes coalesce into a person.

The face above her is skinny bordering on gaunt, although its owner doesn’t look haggard. Their skin is smooth and dark, and their head is completely barren of hair. Something about them seems simultaneously young and ancient, and there’s an ethereal quality to them that prevents Jade from telling by appearance alone whether they’re a man or a woman.

“Ah, ah, ah. I wouldn’t do that. You’re still healing, darling.” A woman’s voice, melodic and sweet. Soothing. Jade thinks for a moment that she should know the voice, but she brushes this off immediately. If she had met this woman before, she’s sure she would have remembered her.

So why is her mind straining so hard to place her?

Jade opens her mouth to try to speak, but nothing comes out. Her throat feels raw, as if she’s been screaming and screaming for hours, and when she tries to wet her lips, she finds her tongue as dry as parchment.

“My name is Calliope,” the woman says. “You’re Jade, right?” Jade’s brow furrows, which makes her whole face feel tight, and Calliope holds up a bundle of letters that look water-damaged. Her heart lurches. Are those her letters? Her fingers twitch with the urge to reach out and grab them, but she can’t manage much more than that. Even the thought of moving any more makes the muscles in her arms burn. “I found these in the snow next to where I found you,” Calliope says. At Jade’s immediate panic, she adds, “Don’t worry, I didn’t read them!” A pause, one which reads to Jade as hesitation. “I thought you were dead at first, but then I saw you were still breathing. You’re very resilient.” Jade thinks about saying that she had to be resilient, but then she remembers again that she can’t talk.

“I’m a healer,” Calliope explains, and then seems to hesitate again. “…Well, hypothetically. Honestly, I don’t get many visitors all the way out here! It’s been a very long time since the last one.” She looks reflective for a moment, and then shakes her head to snap herself out of it. “I’ve been trying to bring you back to consciousness for weeks, but I suppose you needed the extra rest. I’m glad I could provide you with a safe place to get it!”

Weeks? Jade’s stomach lurches. If it’s been weeks, then she must have missed Dave—if she was even anywhere close to him in the first place, that is. From the letters, it seemed like his regiment was moving every few weeks. Wherever he was, he’s gone now.

Something seems to catch Calliope’s attention, because a moment later she perks up and then says, “Oh dear! I nearly forgot!” She turns suddenly, and Jade turns her head despite how much of a monumental effort it feels like to watch Calliope until she disappears from her field of vision. A moment later, she’s back with a small wooden bowl. “You’ll need to drink this very slowly. I wouldn’t want you to choke now that you’re finally awake!”

Jade swallows every drop of soup greedily. Sage and salt and chicken broth all soothe her throat on the way down, but she isn’t able to attempt speaking again until she’s gone through a second bowl, with the last few drops dribbling down her chin. Her voice still comes out hoarse and cracking as she asks slowly, “Where are we?”

The smile Calliope offers her looks equal parts sad and proud. “In Derse. Near the border.”

Jade’s chest feels tight. She wants to ask about Dave. The odds are so slim, but maybe Calliope knows where he is. Jade swears that she saw him when she first got here, didn’t she? Or was that just Calliope? She remembers feeling so delirious when she first hit the ground that it suddenly seems possible she didn’t really see anyone, and that her mind just projected the image of a person to comfort her.

Jade stares at Calliope, since apparently that’s all she’s capable of, until her vision starts to go blurry. She thinks she must have a head injury or something, even if she did manage to cover her head before she hit the ground. That is, until she feels a horrible pain rack through her chest and she realizes that it’s a shaking, breathless sob tearing its way out of her and she feels the tears starting to pour down her cheeks.

“Oh, darling,” Calliope breathes, pushing a hand delicately through Jade’s curls. The touch is so gentle, and yet it feels like it sends pins and needles through Jade’s entire scalp, which only makes her cry harder. “It’s alright. Let it out.”

Jade wants to curl in on herself into a protective little ball, but she can’t move enough to manage it. Even just the crying feels so painful, like every sob and heaving gasp has claws tearing through her lungs or something heavy and hard smashing against the inside of her ribcage. She doesn’t think she’s ever been in so much pain, not even when she was a child and every little injury threatened to break her—or at least, that was what John and Dad and Grandpa all seemed to think. Thinking about her family—the one that really cares about her, the one that didn’t betray her—doesn’t make it any easier to pull herself together and stop crying.

Calliope keeps stroking her hair for several minutes, but eventually, she drops a hand down to Jade’s chest, and Jade can feel a familiar sort of warmth pouring into her.

She thinks about her grandfather’s bright grin when he used to tell her stories about his adventures. He always used to exaggerate his tales, or at least, she thinks they were exaggerated to be more exciting for a small child. She doubts her grandfather was really battling pirates out at sea and rescuing fair maidens.

She thinks about her father’s hugs. She remembers the way she had climbed into bed with him in the nights after Grandpa died, too scared to sleep by herself for fear of whose death she would dream of next. He cradled her against his chest until she fell asleep to the even rise and fall of his chest as she lay on it and held her close until the morning.

She thinks about chasing her brother around the gardens when they were children and the pranks he used to pull on the castle staff. He tried to rope her into one, once. Jade remembers barely being able to contain her giggles as John tried to get her into one of the suits of armor displayed in the hall between the library and the war room. Dad caught them before they managed to get it all the way on, and then all of the suits of armor Grandpa had been so fond of were locked away.

She thinks about Dave. Their wedding, and how terrified she had been despite how much she already loved him. Their morning snowball fight after Derse’s first snow of the year. The night they spent together before he left. She thinks of an entire life together that they are supposed to have and how desperately she wants it.

The tears are still pouring down her cheeks, but it hurts less to cry now. Her breaths come a little easier, and her chest doesn’t feel so tight. Her eyes flit down to Calliope’s hand on her chest, and she realizes with startling clarity that Calliope is healing her.

It’s just like her own magic. The realization is startling, but she realizes this is exactly how she had felt when she was using her magic on the garden in Derse, down to the flashes of memories with Dave and the bittersweet feeling they left behind.

She wants to ask about it. Before she can open her mouth to try, her mind flashes back to the queen’s face before she left. To the guilt in her eyes as she realized that Jade knew she betrayed her, and the way she didn’t say a word before Jade left.

Jade doesn’t have any reason to trust this woman. She can’t just go around telling everyone about her magic because she’s not in Prospit anymore. She should learn from the Dersites—about keeping her cards close to her chest rather than telling everyone everything so openly. She feels stupid, suddenly, for crying in front of this woman. Calliope seems very nice, but it’s easy to seem however you want to when the person you’re trying to impress is bedridden and lost, and when you’ve had access to their personal letters for weeks, even if she says she didn’t read them. Why should Jade believe that she didn’t read them?

So the two of them sit in silence, and Jade tries not to steep in her bitterness. She tries to focus on making a plan. As soon as she can get out of this bed, she is going to leave. If she’s close to the border, then she can’t be far off from the conflict. If she can figure out how she did that disappearing act back at the palace, then maybe she can do it again to get closer to Dave. It brought her to Dave last time, right? She has to believe that.

Jade is snapped out of her thoughts as Calliope takes in a breath and then starts, a little hesitantly, “So…” Jade blinks and stares up at her face. “Where did you come from? And what are you running from?”

Jade’s stomach lurches, and for a moment she thinks she’s going to be sick. She shouldn’t have had a second bowl of soup. It’s just anxiety, though, and the nausea passes even if the terror remains. “I’m not running from anything,” she says, and it feels obvious to her that she’s lying through her teeth.

Calliope purses her lips, raising her eyebrows at Jade. Jade feels a sudden urge to cover herself up with the blanket, if only she could make her arms cooperate enough to do it. She thinks about trying it with her magic, but that would expose herself and be a pointless waste of energy.

“I know running when I see it—and falling from the sky? That’s a pretty good indication of running.” She says it like she’s speaking from experience, and Jade’s own eyebrows knit together. What is this woman running from?

She’s still hesitant to tell Calliope anything about herself, and her mind scrambles to find a more believable lie. “The war,” she eventually manages to spit, barely managing not to stutter over her words. “I was trying to get away from the war.”

If anything, Jade was trying to get to the war, but if Calliope senses that she’s lying, she doesn’t say anything about it this time. Instead her face warms up into a bright smile, and she slides a hand to pat Jade on top of the head. It stings again, but Jade manages not to wince. “That must have been very hard,” Calliope says. “You should get some rest.”

Calliope leaves, and Jade lays in the bed, her mind spinning. How long is she going to be trapped in this bed? How long is it going to be before she can see Dave again? The idea of being separated from him for even another day makes her heart hurt, but she can’t move. And, upon further consideration, even if she could force herself to flash away again in the hopes of getting closer to whatever battlefield he’s stuck on, she’s not sure she wants Dave to see her like this. He would find some way to blame himself for her being hurt, and she doesn’t want that. No, she’s just going to have to wait until she’s healed—and trust her life in this stranger’s hands until then.

Jade jams her eyes shut and takes a deep breath, until her lungs hurt and she can barely resist the urge to cough. She suddenly realizes how much she had been fighting just to stay conscious, and as her thoughts start to drift away from her, she thinks about her plan. Rest. Leave. Dave.

Chapter Text

When Jade wakes up the next morning, it is with only slightly more clarity about where she is. Her mind still feels a little hazy, like there’s some thick fluid pooling between her ears and catching all of her thoughts until she can pry them loose. She sees the flowers hanging over her bed. She hears the clock ticking. Her fingers twitch, and she feels the way it makes some muscle running the length of her forearm twinge painfully.

Right. She’s on bedrest. She’s on bedrest in a stranger’s cottage. The stranger… Calliope.

It takes Jade a couple of moments to work her way up to turning her head. Her neck still feels stiff, like she has to re-stretch all of the muscles until they’re flexible enough to complete the motion, but it still somehow feels easier than it had yesterday. When she doesn’t immediately see Calliope, she decides to get a better look at the room she’s in.

It’s small. It sort of reminds her of her childhood bedroom in Prospit, with plants on the windowsill and large tomes stacked on a desk tucked into one of the corners of the room, but unlike her childhood bedroom, this room feels more cozy than confining. The desk is scattered with papers that Jade strains to see, but her eyes refuse to focus enough to offer her much more than that they are drawings of some sort. Other than the drawings, it seems meticulously organized, with pens arranged in a neat row and books stacked evenly on top of one another. The books look as if Calliope might have bound them herself—or at least, there is certainly some sort of homemade quality about them.

Her eyes skim away from the desk and land on a chess table not very far from it. The pieces are all neatly arranged in their default position, and though she isn’t sure why, Jade gets the impression that they haven’t been used in a very long time. At the very least, the table only has one chair, on the side of the white pieces.

Her fingers twitch again. Her grandfather taught her to play chess when she was very little, but she hasn’t played since he died. She searches her memory for the rules, the strategies that Grandpa used to be especially fond of, but through the fog still clouding her thoughts, she can’t find them. She tears her eyes away from the chessboard.

There is a chest at the foot of the bed that Jade can only assume is for clothes, although it seems rather small for the purpose. It is stained a shade of green that Jade isn’t sure she’s ever seen furniture in, a shade which comes very close to the sage green quilt she currently lies under. A closer look at the quilt shows that it is embroidered with bright red roses.

When she turns her head to look at the other side of the room, she’s startled to see Calliope. Luckily, Jade manages to catch herself before she can jolt.

Her heart is still pounding against her ribs when Calliope cheerfully says, “Good morning, love!” She sets a steaming cup onto the night table that Jade realizes a second too late must be tea. “You already seem much better off than yesterday.”

Jade does her best to offer her a smile, although it feels like her lips threaten to crack from the effort. Her eyes flit to the tea, and she licks her lips. “Yes, that’s for you,” Calliope confirms, and Jade snaps her attention back to her a little guiltily. “I’m making you some more soup, too. I’m hopeful that with enough fluids, now that you’re awake, you may be able to hold more of a conversation.”

Jade thinks back to the conversation they had yesterday and only manages not to grimace because of how much it would hurt. She hates how much of her self-restraint is currently reliant on pain—not in the least of which because Calliope is, at least hypothetically, actively healing her, and she won’t have that pain to rely on soon.

“Do you think you can drink by yourself?” Slowly, Jade shakes her head. She can barely move that, so she doesn’t want to test again what it would feel like to try to move her arms, especially with how that muscle had twinged when her fingers had barely twitched. “Alright. That’s alright, darling. I’ll help you.”

Calliope picks the cup back up and brings it up to Jade’s lips. The tea is still hot, but it’s drinkable, and Jade tries to identify what must be in it.

She can recognize chamomile and lemongrass from the tea that Rose favored, and she thinks there’s a hint of spice to it. Ginger? She quickly surmises that it’s too complex for her to identify everything and makes a mental note to ask Calliope when she can. Actually… She wets her lips and opens her mouth, but before she can say anything, Calliope asks, “Did you sleep well?”

Jade tries to remember and realizes, blissfully, that she can’t remember sleeping at all. That means that she didn’t have any of the nightmares that have been plaguing her for months now. “Yes,” she says, and it’s less of a croak this time.

“Good! Excellent.” Calliope beams, offering Jade another sip of tea. As Jade drinks, she continues, “I noticed you were surveying my room when I came in. I’m sure you must have so many questions.”

“Yes,” she says once the cup is pulled away again, hoping that if she can interject fast enough, Calliope won’t say anything before she has the opportunity to ask any of them. Sure enough, Calliope stays quiet while Jade struggles to find the right words and put them together, until she eventually manages, “When you found me, were there… There should have been a regiment of Dersite soldiers nearby?” She means to say it as a statement, as if that’s more likely to make it true, but it comes out as a question anyway.

Calliope gives her a slightly pitying look. Jade’s heart sinks before she remembers the lie she’d told yesterday. Maybe Calliope thinks she’s asking out of fear. “No, there weren’t,” Calliope says. Jade can’t tell from her tone whether she’s saying it as a reassurance. A moment later, she adds, “Is there someone you’re hoping to find?”

Jade’s jaw clenches and her stomach rolls. “My husband,” she says, and this time it does come out as a croak, but it’s due more to emotion than her throat.

Calliope’s pity doesn’t wane any. “Is he a soldier?” Jade gives a single nod. Calliope considers this for a moment, and then offers, “Well, soldiers don’t tend to pass through these woods. Maybe he’s close by and I just haven’t seen him?”

This, Jade recognizes, is definitely reassurance, and she tries to smile at Calliope again. Then she wets her lips and tries to keep her voice steady as she asks, “How long have you been here?”

Calliope grimaces. “A long time. A very long time now…”

Jade imagines what it would be like, living in these woods all by herself for a long time. At what point would loneliness make a person feel that it had been a long time? Months? Years? Jade stares at Calliope again, trying once more to consider how old she must be. Older than Jade, certainly, but there aren’t any wrinkles around her eyes, and she doesn’t have any hair that Jade can use to make a guess from the color.

Her eyes drift back to the chess table, set up as though waiting for players. Calliope’s eyes follow hers, and when she turns back to Jade, her eyes are bright. With her vision a little clearer, Jade can see that Calliope’s eyes are the same verdant green her own are—that striking color that everyone at home had clamored over being so rare. Before she left Prospit, she’d never met anyone else with eyes like that, and now she’s met two.

“Do you know how to play?” Calliope asks, and Jade blinks a few times as she snaps back to attention.

She nods, and then her face twists. “Yes, a little. It’s been a very long time, but my grandpa taught me to play when I was little.”

“Oh, how lovely,” Calliope says, voice taking on a dreamy quality. “I never knew my grandparents. I never knew my parents, either. My brother and I taught ourselves how to play from books at the library. Well, he never really liked reading much, so mostly I taught myself and then I taught him.”

Her smile has grown soft, and Jade tilts her head a little curiously. “Your brother?”

Whatever happiness Calliope found in the memory is immediately lost as her face falls, and Jade’s chest squeezes. That almost certainly means that something bad happened to him. Jade recognizes that face from the palace staff talking about their families.

“Well then!” Calliope announces, slapping her hands against her knees, and Jade startles a little, hissing through her teeth as her flinch aggravates her injuries. “Let’s get some soup in you so I can get on with healing you for the day, yes? Don’t move, I’ll be right back!” Calliope chuckles a little, as though she’s just told a very funny joke, and then she scurries out of the room, leaving Jade to sit with the guilt from prying.

She shouldn’t be trying to get to know this woman anyway. They aren’t going to be friends. The moment Jade can leave this cottage, she will.

The next morning, Calliope wakes Jade from another blissfully dreamless sleep, and Jade can’t help feeling a little disgruntled about it. Shouldn’t she be resting so she can heal? “I’m terribly sorry to wake you, dear,” Calliope says, and Jade can’t entirely tell if she’s really sorry. “I’d like to see if you can try to eat by yourself today,” she explains, gesturing to a bowl of soup on the night table.

Jade stares at the bowl and tries to run a mental check on her body. She doesn’t think any of her bones are currently broken, but she thinks they may have been. She’s never had a broken bone before—her family was always much too cautious for her to sustain any serious injury—but she can’t imagine anything else that could cause the sort of sharp, shooting pain she had felt when she tried to move the day before yesterday. Even without the horrible, stabbing pain she remembers when she’d first tried moving her arms the other morning, there’s a sort of dull ache thrumming through her entire body, like the whole thing is one big bruise. She thinks she was probably lucky to survive that fall.

Still, she does think it’s better than the other morning. When her fingers twitch at her sides as she prepares to use them, the muscles in her arms don’t immediately twinge.

What security she felt in that is immediately robbed as she lifts her hand only to be greeted by a burning pain in her shoulder, as if someone is holding a flame directly against the muscle there. The pain moves down her entire arm until it seizes up, halting the motion in its tracks. She looks at Calliope with wide-eyed fear.

“It’s alright, dear,” Calliope says sweetly, and despite Jade’s base instinct, she doesn’t think it’s meant to be condescending. “Take your time with it. We’re not in any hurry.”

Jade swallows hard and stares at the spoon. She wills her fingers to inch toward it, wills her arm to let the motion pass.

Her hand is already shaking by the time she wraps it around the handle of the spoon. Sweat beads on her forehead, and she has to take a deep breath to steady herself. She’s in so much pain it’s making her nauseous, which doesn’t make her any more eager to eat the soup. Perhaps to stall, or perhaps to provide herself with a distraction from the way it feels like all of the tiny, delicate bones in her hand are being squeezed together and threatening to crack under the pressure, she says, “I was under the impression that it wasn’t possible to heal with magic.”

Immediately, she realizes that magic is such a dangerous topic. It invites questions about her own strange circumstances. If she’s lucky, Calliope hasn’t questioned how she appeared in the middle of the forest out of nowhere. She’s certainly been gracious enough not to ask, but how much of that is because Jade is still healing?

Calliope laughs, though it is not mocking so much as it seems like they’re sharing some sort of private joke. Jade is lucky that furrowing her brow is too painful right now, so her confusion is not immediately caught. After a moment, Calliope finally says, “That’s a soldier’s mindset for you.” For a moment, Jade feels distinctly like she’s gone pale as she tries in a panic to figure out why Calliope would associate her with a soldier’s mindset. But of course she would—Jade told her that her husband was a soldier just yesterday morning, didn’t she? She wishes her head were clearer.

Evidently, Calliope does not sense her panic, because she continues without hesitation, “Derse’s royal army wants people to believe war is the only use for magic. It encourages those of us with innate magical talent to enlist where we’re stuck under the king’s thumb.”

She thinks of Rose and Roxana, how they had asked her what she wanted to use her magic for. They are as under the king’s thumb as it is possible to get, she thinks resentfully. “So… how did you learn, then? Did the Horroterrors teach you themselves?”

This time, when Calliope laughs, there is just a hint of derision in it, but Jade doesn’t think it’s directed toward her. “Oh no, dear. The Horrorterrors don’t teach anyone anything. They like to remain shrouded in mystery up there, wherever They are. But we don’t all draw our power from the Horrorterrors, do we?”

Calliope winks at her.

Jade loses her concentration on the soup, and the spoonful she’d been carefully lifting to her mouth instead splashes down her front, seeping into her shirt and the green bedding still pulled over her lap. Any hint of mischief or amusement is gone from Calliope’s face, and Jade almost questions if she’d imagined it. Calliope can’t know, can she?

Whatever appetite she’d come close to working up through the nauseous pain leaves her as her stomach twists up into knots, and Jade finally drops the spoon into the bowl. “I can’t,” she says apologetically.

Calliope’s face softens, reaching out to pick up the spoon. “That’s alright, dear. I’ll help you.”

It is so different from the way that Rose and Roxana would have responded to Jade saying she couldn’t do something that Jade can’t help but stare at Calliope as she brings the spoon up to Jade’s lips.

After that, Calliope keeps waking her up in the mornings to try to get her to feed herself. It takes days. For days, Jade is trapped in bed like that, and it is difficult for her not to feel uneasy about it. More than the pain, she is bothered by being trapped at someone else’s mercy so soon after escaping from her in-laws.

But after three more failed attempts, Jade is able to eat the whole bowl without help.

Calliope is a diligent nurse. In addition to the healing magic she uses that fills Jade with a pleasant warmth like sunshine, she is constantly bringing her different flowers and herbs. Now that Jade is awake and making improvements, she’s frequently told to swallow some paste, or to rub some salve on her skin. She asks Calliope skeptically what they are each time she’s offered one, and Calliope is always happy to tell her about the materials each medicine is made from, and what she’s giving it to Jade for, and how it works. It seems like Calliope has an endless knowledge of the plants in the area, and of medicine, and of all of the other things that Jade would have given anything to know only a year ago.

Knowing that someone out there could have saved her father is almost as painful as her injuries themselves are. It makes her imagine bitterly what she could have done if she had been able to practice her magic her entire life rather than being forced to hide it.

When she’s been at Calliope’s cottage for a week—at least, a week that she’s been conscious for—she finally manages to grit her teeth through the pain to drag herself out of bed. Her entire body still aches with each subtle movement, though, sharp pain radiating out into her limbs. She only makes it a few steps away from the bed before she threatens to collapse. Her ankle rolls with her next wobbly step forward, and she is out of self-control with which to prevent herself from letting out a pained cry.

Calliope doesn’t come running, and Jade stares around with wide eyes. It occurs to her a moment later that she must be alone. Calliope has gone somewhere, and this might be the only opportunity she has to leave. To go find Dave. Her plan.

Another step toward the door has her sucking in a sharp breath that feels like it jabs directly at her ribs, but she forces herself forward. She refuses to think about how much pain she’s in, or about what her odds are of surviving the harsh Dersite winter like this.

It feels like it takes hours just to leave the bedroom, let alone to go down the hallway to leave. When she finally makes it to the door and throws it open with one hasty, jerking motion, it is not the harsh Dersite winter that she is staring at.

The sun is shining bright over the tops of the trees, and fluffy white clouds drift lazily through the sky. There is no snow on the ground, nor even mud indicating that snow has recently melted. No, the ground is covered in grass and wildflowers, many of which Jade recognizes.

Hadn’t Calliope said she had been trying to wake Jade for weeks? How many weeks has it been?

She takes another step and feels a cool breeze. It feels like the breeze had when the seasons were turning in Vale.

It feels like early spring back home.

That thought, more than the pain, knocks the wind out of her, and she nearly crumples to the ground with the weight of it—with the weight of her sudden longing for Prospit, unlike anything she’d felt in Derse. She stumbles a couple of steps forward and feels the sun on her face, and it’s so much like Calliope’s healing that she can imagine the pain ebbing away from her limbs.

“Oh goodness! What are you doing out of bed?” Calliope says, startled, and Jade’s head snaps to look at her. Calliope is crouched near the ground—gardening, Jade realizes, which does nothing for the sense of longing in her chest. Her fingers twitch with the need to be buried in the soil.

Calliope stands and hastily wipes her hands on her pants, and somehow Jade had never noticed before that Calliope wears pants. A moment later, she’s at Jade’s side, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. Jade realizes suddenly, startled, that Calliope is shorter than her. She might even be shorter than Nepeta. It feels odd, somehow, to know that someone so small can contain so much power, before she realizes a moment later that she’s been given no indication that Calliope really does have that much power. She’s a powerful healer, sure but that’s a far cry from the sort of power Jade’s heard legends about.

She doesn’t have the strength to fight as Calliope steers her back inside and into the bed, although she realizes with a sudden startling clarity that they hadn’t passed any other bedrooms on the way back inside. Jade had been so singularly focused on moving on her way out that she hadn’t really thought about it, but now her eyebrows knit together as much as they can.

“Where do you sleep?” she asks as Calliope pulls the blankets up to Jade’s chin.

Calliope stares at her as if she’s grown a second head before understanding crosses her features. “I’ve been sleeping on the couch.”

“But… why? Why would you give up your bed for me? Why are you doing any of this for me?”

Calliope’s expression softens, and she brings a hand up to brush her fingers through Jade’s hair. It hurts less than it had that first morning. “Because it’s the right thing to do,” she says softly. Tenderly. Jade can’t find it in herself not to trust it. “Now, where does it hurt?”

Jade can’t help but cough a laugh. “Everywhere,” she murmurs, sinking back a little further into the bed and letting her eyes flutter shut.

Jade can feel Calliope’s hands checking that she hasn’t aggravated her injuries, and she can feel that sunshine warmth of healing, too. Suddenly, she feels silly for trying to leave at all.

“I wish you would have told me if you were feeling restless,” Calliope chastises, sounding every bit like the mother Jade never had.

Jade manages to laugh again. “I’m sorry,” she says, and she thinks she means it. “I was just… my husband…”

Calliope purses her lips. At least, Jade imagines that she purses her lips for the moment of silence that passes between them. “Your husband would want you to get to him alive, and presumably in good health,” she says, but her voice is tinged with sympathy. A moment later, a little softer, she says, “I’ll see about bringing you some books, alright love? I promise I’ll get you up on your feet as soon as I can.”

Jade believes her completely. She thinks very hard about nodding, but she’s too exhausted from the pain, the movement, and the anxiety to so much as pick up her head now that she’s sunk into the bed again. When Calliope leaves the room, Jade takes a deep breath and seriously considers her situation. The lone bedroom. The soup. The healing.

And she allows herself to begin to believe something very dangerous.

Chapter Text

For the next several days, Jade focuses on building her strength. She makes the short trip down the hall and to the table for meals, and she practices feeding herself until doing so doesn’t leave her so exhausted she immediately needs to take a rest. She spends more time sitting up in bed rather than lying down. Calliope loans her a book, and at first, Jade can’t spend hours reading like she used to because it is too tiring, but eventually, she is able to work her tolerance up to an hour or two at a time.

The books that Calliope keeps are unlike anything Jade has ever read before. They seem almost like fairytales, telling stories about girls who become gods and men who can steal magic from witches, but Jade can’t imagine reading them to a child. They’re illustrated, too—in what Jade eventually learns is Calliope’s art style.

“Where did you get these?” Jade eventually asks, once she’s finished her second book and is halfway through her third.

Calliope’s skin is too dark for Jade to clearly see if she flushes in embarrassment, but Jade would like to think she’s learning to read her expressions. The way she ducks her head down toward her bowl of stew seems downright bashful. “I wrote them,” she admits.

Jade nods. This, at least, she expected. Between the art and the handmade quality, Jade was starting to doubt there was any other possibility for where they came from. But… “Where did you get the ideas for these?”

Calliope’s expression, Jade thinks, grows a little grim. “I see them in my dreams. Fragments of the past. Fragments of the future.”

Jade’s eyes go wide. Her mind flashes to her nightmares. “Is it magic?” she breathes, unable to keep the anxiety out of her tone.

“Yes, in a way.” Jade’s brow furrows, so Calliope explains, “It is something that some mages are able to do, but it is very difficult to do it intentionally, especially while conscious.”

“Can you do it intentionally?”

The smile that Calliope offers Jade does not meet her eyes. “I could, once,” she says, slowly. “But I don’t anymore. Not when I can help it. They are seldom the gift that they seem.”

Jade has to stop herself from asking if Calliope can teach her how. Calliope doesn’t know about her magic. Calliope shouldn’t know about her magic. But… If these nightmares that she’s been having are visions of the future, she wants to know for sure. She needs to be prepared for… “What else can you do?” Jade asks instead, swallowing down the emotions that idea stirs up.

“Anything,” Calliope says, but it doesn’t sound as delighted as Jade is used to. Her host, who until now has seemed so persistently chipper, seems almost miserable in the face of Jade’s questioning. “There’s a bright side and a dark side to magic. Always.”

Jade’s mind flashes to Calliope’s brother, who she had seemed so upset to think about the other day, and she can’t help filling in some blanks. But she only has more questions now, questions that it seems almost forbidden to ask.

“I have a brother,” she hears herself say, voice so soft she wonders if she might have just thought it loudly. Calliope’s eyes go a little wide, though, and she leans closer. Jade takes a deep breath. “His name is John. I haven’t seen him in a long time—almost a year now.” She almost startles herself with the information. Has it really been that long? Her marriage with Dave was arranged at the end of spring, and it had been late summer when she left Prospit. Her breath catches in her chest and she feels her eyes welling up with tears.

“I learned recently that he got married this winter. I wasn’t able to go. I didn’t hear about it until… But I probably wouldn’t have been able to go anyway. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to go home again.” She feels hot tears starting to run down her cheeks, and she brings her hands up to hastily scrub them away, suddenly more grateful than she’s ever been in her entire life for the use of her arms. “I would give anything to know what was happening with him. To know if… if he’s okay.”

Calliope gives her a soft look that Jade can only identify as pity and reaches out to rest a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she says, her voice just as soft as Jade’s had been a moment ago. After only a moment of hesitation, Jade collapses against her with a shuddering gasp.

Calliope holds Jade all through her crying fit and then gently helps her get settled back into bed.

That night, Jade has the nightmares again. Dave, bleeding out. John finding their father’s lifeless body. Other fleeting moments that are meaningless to her, but somehow feel so foreboding. She wakes up panting and so sweaty that her clothes are practically glued to her skin, and she drags a hand against one side of her face.

She almost doesn’t notice the pain when she gets out of bed this time. It’s still there—a throbbing in her spine, a burning in her leg muscles. Maybe she’s just gotten used to it.

For the first time in a week, she makes her way to the front door of the cottage. It doesn’t feel so exhausting this time, so sluggish. She still has to lean against the wall on her way down the hallway, but she doesn’t have to lean on any of the furniture she passes in the front room, her eyes only briefly sliding to the couch where Calliope has been sleeping for weeks.

She pauses at the door. Through the windows, she can hear the soft patter of rain even though she can still see the sun shining through the glass. It reminds her of the carriage ride into Derse, the summer shower that had painted the landscape with shimmering golden hues as the droplets fell to the earth. That was the first time she ever talked to Rose.

That was right after she and Dave got married.

It’s so close to the anniversary of their betrothal, and every part of her is screaming at his absence. She hasn’t seen him in too long—hasn’t heard his voice, or felt his skin under her fingers as she cupped his cheek. At this point, that loss really does ache more than the last of her healing injuries.

She’s well enough to leave now. To go look for him.

She stares at the door.

It feels like it represents such an impossible choice. She told herself from that first morning that the moment she was well enough, she would leave. She should run far, far into the forest without looking back until she finds him.

But… It’s clear that Calliope’s magic is different from Rose and Roxana’s. That Calliope’s magic is like hers. How can she sacrifice the opportunity to learn more about such a fundamental part of herself?

Would Dave want her to do that?

That’s the question that she’s having the most trouble answering, she realizes. Dave had been so terrified of Jade learning to use her magic—of what the king would do if he found out that she had it.

And he was right. The king did try to exploit her magic the moment he learned about it. Jade doesn’t know how long he had the queen spying on her, how quickly Roxana betrayed her, but she knows he was keeping her letters from her for months.

She thinks she trusts Calliope, though. And if Dave had a choice between her studying magic in the woods or coming to find him at war, Jade knows what he would choose. She remembers that last argument, before he left. The last thing that I want is to leave you here alone, but it’s more important to me that you’re safe. Could she be safe on a battlefield without knowing how to wield her magic properly? If she’s going to find Dave, shouldn’t she learn more about it before she does?

She takes a deep breath to steel her resolve.

When she steps outside, the rain is warm against her skin, leaving her feeling more like she’s taking a bath than standing in the forest. She tilts her head back, up toward the sky, eyes squeezed shut. It feels so peaceful—more peace than she’s known in months. Maybe more peace than she’s ever known.

“Oh! You’re up!” Calliope chirps, and Jade jolts, staring at her like she’d forgotten why she was coming out in the first place. Calliope is bent over her garden again, and even though Jade is sure she’s probably been out here for hours, it doesn’t look like the rain has touched her at all. Jade narrows her eyes like she can see the magic she’s using to do it.

“I’m up,” she agrees after a moment, when she realizes that Calliope is waiting for her to respond.

“I knew it would be any day now! You’ve been recovering quite impressively.” Jade might be imagining it, but she thinks Calliope’s smile grows a little sad. “I suppose you’ll be wanting to leave then.”

Jade swallows, trying to think of how to ask this. At first, she just shakes her head, and Calliope’s face morphs into one of confusion. She licks her lips and says, “No. I was wondering if…” She trails off, and then hardens her resolve again, standing a little straighter. “I want you to teach me.”

Calliope stares at her, still confused. “Teach you…?”

“Teach me about magic.” Calliope’s brow unfurrows in favor of raising high toward her non-existent hairline. “I want to learn to heal. And to look into the past, and the future, and… Everything. I want to learn everything. Please.”

The moments it takes for Calliope to formulate a response are agonizing for Jade. It feels like hours tick by instead of what is probably only seconds. Finally, Calliope takes a breath. “Are you sure, dear? Everything?”

Jade jerks her head in an eager nod. “Yes. I know that there are drawbacks, and I want to learn about those, too. But I’ve spent too much time trying to learn magic the wrong way, or trying to pretend like I didn’t have any magic at all. I need to know.”

There’s another brief pause, and then Calliope lets out a breath and smiles up at Jade with a sort of gleam in her eye. “I thought you would never ask.” She stands and wipes the mud from her hands onto her pants again, and then holds her hands out toward Jade. “Come here.”

It’s Jade’s turn to raise her eyebrows. She hadn’t thought that they would start so quickly. Still, she doesn’t waste time in scrambling the few steps it takes to close the distance between them.

Calliope holds her hands and gives them a gentle squeeze, one which Jade is relieved does not make her metacarpals creak in protest. Then she pulls Jade to the ground with her, and Jade can’t help letting out a startled yelp. “We’ll start with the garden,” Calliope says. “It’s nearly the rainy season in Viridan. This close to the border, we’ll be getting offshoot storms for weeks. It’s nice and gentle right now, but trust me when I tell you that this place will be at serious risk of flooding, and all of the plants in the garden will die if we don’t protect them properly.”

Jade’s face hardens into something a little more serious. “What do we need to do?”

“When there’s a stop in the rain, we’ll need to dig them all up and move them to a new bed—one that’s less prone to flooding. Until then, we’re going to have to protect them.”

Jade’s eyes light up. “With magic.”

“With magic,” Calliope confirms, smiling. “Plants are excellent practice.”

Jade has to stop herself from saying she knows. In fact, she can’t imagine this will be very different from protecting her garden in Derse from the blizzard. She tries to think back to that moment. What she had done. How it had felt.

She holds her arms out in front of her, even though she can already feel her shoulders starting to grow tense and heavy with exhaustion. She doesn’t know if it really helps, but she remembers doing it when she had been trying to reach out and protect her plants before the blizzard. Even beyond that, she remembers that very first time she allowed herself to use her magic, the way she had desperately thrown her body over the flower bed like if she could just shield them from the snow with her body then everything would be okay. Whatever it took. She thinks about trying to channel that sort of desperation, but she just as quickly grimaces and pushes it away.

What did it feel like to protect them? What did it feel like to be powerful?

She takes a deep breath, and warmth starts to tingle at the tips of her fingers. She keeps her eyes open this time, watches as her hands start to glow, faintly at first, and then with a vibrant green. She thinks about that green sun she had made, the way it shimmered over the falling snow. It hits the raindrops now as the light grows brighter, filling the air with liquid emeralds that, she realizes with a sudden startling clarity, are the color of her eyes.

It’s faster this time, or at least it feels faster. Granted, her awareness of time hadn’t exactly been very precise that night. She was too absorbed in her memories of Dave. Dave. She tries to picture him with her, to imagine how full her heart would feel if he was here. He would get along with Calliope, Jade thinks; he would get along with anyone who was that nice to him.

The light glints off of Calliope’s eyes where she watches Jade, wide-eyed and slack-jawed as the orb of light grows to easily twice the size it had been that night in Derse. Jade watches the shimmering drops of rain bounce and roll off of the leaves of the flowers and herbs in Calliope’s garden as they soak up the light, and she watches as the rain starts to pool around them, as though it can’t seep into the soil.

Jade brings the orb closer to herself, feeling the warmth from it until it’s close enough that she can wrap her arms around it. Closing her eyes, she can imagine its warmth as her husband, can almost feel his arms wrapping back around her, the borderline protective way he’d held her that night before he left. She feels tears at the corners of her eyes, but she ignores them in favor of the sunshine warmth seeping into her whole body.

When she finally opens her eyes again, Calliope is still staring at her, and Jade realizes her shoulders don’t ache anymore. In fact, as she takes stock of her body, she realizes that the only lingering ache is a soreness in her feet from standing barefoot in the rain and the mud too long.

Calliope snaps her mouth shut, but she grins at Jade a moment later. “You’re incredible, darling.”

Jade grins back. “Let’s just hope that wasn’t all for show!”

The next morning, Jade is woken up before the sun has even risen high enough to shine through the windows. She leans up on an elbow and squints, just barely able to make out Calliope’s silhouette in the darkness. A light from somewhere gleams off of her eyes, though, giving them the uncanny appearance of glowing in the dark.

“Calliope?” she mumbles when her host doesn’t offer any explanation for the disruption. Jade scrubs a hand against one side of her face in the attempt to wake herself up a little more, just in case it’s something important.

“I want to see something,” Calliope says, and Jade’s brow furrows. As her eyes adjust, she realizes that Calliope has a box in her hands. “The garden makes for good practice, but I believe you may be more advanced than I initially thought. It may be time to offer you some more practical experience.”

Before Jade can ask practical experience in what, Calliope lifts the lid off of the box. Jade strains to see what’s in it, but before her eyes focus, she hears a soft, miserable little chirp. Her chest squeezes, and she lifts a hand, summoning the pale green light that she is so familiar with.

Inside of the box lies a small bird. Jade thinks, based on its patches of dark, downy feathers that it must be an adolescent, probably making the awkward transition from childhood to adulthood. It reminds her of the deer she’d seen in Derse, and it only makes her chest squeeze harder.

One of its wings is twisted at an awkward angle, obviously broken, and Jade realizes upon a closer look that its downy feathers aren’t patchy, but rather glued down against its skin in some places. Jade isn’t sure whether it’s with blood or rain, and she’s not entirely sure that she wants to know.

“Where did you get this?” she breathes.

“In the forest. I think the rain must have knocked his nest down while he was still in it. His brothers and sisters were all dead and his mother was nowhere to be seen. I think he might be the only survivor.” Before Jade can ask why she was in the forest, Calliope says, “I want you to try and heal him.”

Jade stares at her like she’s just said something insane. In Jade’s defense, she kind of has. “I don’t know the first thing about healing.”

“You don’t need to know anything. Magic is just as much about feelings as it is about knowing things. More, even. Haven’t you felt it when I’ve healed you?” Jade thinks about it, the warmth and the way it seems like her mind is always drifting to happy memories from her childhood. Somehow, she hadn’t entirely connected the dots between the two.

Jade takes a deep breath and moves her hand over the top of the box, letting her light wash over the bird. Her eyes flutter shut, and she tries to think of happy things. Happiness feels like it must be the closest thing to healing, right?

She thinks back to the first time she can remember being hurt. She was three or four, she thinks, and Grandpa had just returned from some sort of expedition. She doesn’t remember what it had been for—why a retired naval officer was going on expeditions anywhere when he should have been staying at home with his grandchildren. Of course, at the time she wasn’t bothered by it because she always liked to hear Grandpa’s stories about his adventures and imagine what it would have been like if she could have gone with him. Sailing seemed like the most freeing thing in the world then.

She and John made him play hide and seek with them. Perhaps made is a strong word, since he always liked playing with them when he could find the time. It was always most fun when they could get Dad and Grandpa both to play with them at the same time, but it was so rare for them both to be available. It was John’s turn to seek, and Jade thought she was so clever hiding in the little dumbwaiter the servants would use to send Jade her daytime meals during bedrest.

It was a tight fit, but she was sure it would take John forever to find her. And it did. She doesn’t know exactly how long it was. In her small mind, it felt like hours, but in hindsight she can’t imagine Grandpa or the castle’s staff would have abided by the princess being missing for hours. Either way, when he finally did find her, she tried to get out of the dumbwaiter only for it to get stuck. For her to get stuck. Dad had to help pull her out while she cried, and she was rewarded for it with big bruises that took a week to go away. Still, she doesn’t think she spent a single moment of that week alone, which was a real luxury to Jade.

She smiles softly and feels that familiar warmth spreading through her fingertips. She reaches down to stroke them gently along the bird’s broken wing, and she can imagine the bones knitting themselves back together.

Jade’s stomach twists when she feels something slick under her fingertips.

She picks her hand up to stare at it, the red smeared against her brown skin, barely visible in the dim green light. Her mind flashes to that nightmare with Dave. His blood coating her skin. Her desperate attempts to heal him as she feels his life draining from him under her hands.

Her heart pounds, and suddenly she goes cold. She shudders, and it reminds her of the night when Dave discovered her magic. The freezing drafts. The argument.

“Jade,” she hears distantly, but she can’t make herself focus on it. She is shivering, freezing down to the bones, ice running through her veins. She remembers the cold shock of betrayal when she learned that the king and queen had been withholding her letters, that familiar sense of rage rushing through her veins like ice. She thinks of how Dave and Rose had described magic to her—like being in the deep sea, cold and dark. Losing yourself. Suddenly she’s drowning, and—”Jade.”

There’s a hand on her wrist and Jade sucks in a sharp gasp, her eyes snapping to Calliope’s face. The light in her hand disappears, leaving them cloaked in darkness. The bird has stopped making its sad little sounds, and for a moment Jade’s heart sinks as she’s sure that she’s killed it. This bird is dead and it’s all her fault.

A moment later, Calliope releases her to scoop the bird into her hands, and Jade watches as the life practically pours back into it in front of her very eyes. Its wing twists back into place, and as the sun crosses the threshold of the horizon to bathe the room in golden light, it flutters its wings and lands on Jade’s shoulder.

Calliope stares at her with concern etched all over her face. “What happened?”

Jade has to take a moment to think about this. What did happen? It had felt like it was going so well, but… “My nightmare. About my husband. I have this nightmare that he’s dying and that I have to heal him, and he just keeps bleeding and bleeding and…”

Calliope’s face softens into something sympathetic, and she reaches out to cup Jade’s cheek. “So much of magic is rooted in emotion, love. You can’t let yourself be afraid of it.”

Chapter Text

Over the next week, Jade’s pain starts to settle into a dull ache in her bones and joints that she begins to suspect will never go away with any amount of healing. Calliope still insists on healing her every day anyway, and it’s difficult to turn away the sunshine warmth of her magic even if Jade doesn’t think it’ll help anymore, especially as the rain continues to beat down against the cottage for days with no end in sight.

After a few days of daily healing, Jade asks Calliope to help her practice her healing on the baby bird they’re still taking care of. Calliope seems to know a lot about taking care of baby birds, and Jade always watches with fascination as she feeds him and helps him pluck and preen his feathers, which are still making the awkward transition from baby down to the sleek feathers of an adult.

“The bones are all healed, but he’s still recovering his strength,” Calliope says as Jade carefully scoops him into her hands, as if he’ll break if she touches him wrong.

He peeps angrily at her when she first picks him up, but then nestles into her hands and closes his eyes. Her chest squeezes. He trusts her so much even after she hurt him so terribly the last time, and she strokes her fingers against the top of his head. There is no blood there this time, only the soft fluff of his last remaining down.

“Think healing thoughts,” Calliope says helpfully, and Jade can’t help a breath of a laugh. What exactly are healing thoughts? “I like to think about the garden,” Calliope adds as though reading her mind, and Jade stares at her for a moment before she takes a deep breath and lets her own eyes flutter shut.

The first thing she thinks of is John. It must nearly be his birthday, she thinks. She still doesn’t know exactly how long she was unconscious, but if it’s the rainy season in Viridan, then Jade is sure that it must be close to the middle of spring by now. It had already been so close to the end of winter when she left and when the weather had already been making a turn for the better that first time she managed to stumble out of bed.

How would he celebrate his birthday? When they were little, their father always used to give the staff the day off so he could make John a cake himself, although John always hated it. Jade never understood why—she loved anything sweet, and she was happy to smuggle away an extra slice to her room at the end of the night. Once, their cousins were visiting during John’s birthday, and Jane had helped Dad to make the cake. Jade swears that’s still the best cake she’s ever had. She should write Jane for the recipe someday, once everything settles down. If it settles down.

Their father is gone now. There wouldn’t be any cake. Jade’s heart aches at the thought, but she pushes that aside. She has to focus on the positive. John is married now. Is Vriska the sort of wife who would do something special for his birthday? Jade isn’t sure that Vriska is the sort of wife who would even remember John’s birthday—perhaps she’s not the sort of wife who would even remember that he had one. She’s not being very generous, though. Vriska is strategic enough to recognize the benefits in being a diligent wife.

She tries to imagine John celebrating his birthday. It would be his first birthday as king. Maybe the people would treat it as a national holiday. She imagines citizens from all over the kingdom coming to present John with gifts. He would be so adorably overwhelmed.

Her eyes finally flutter open again when she hears the bird chirping in her hands, and it’s such a soft, peaceful sound compared to the shrieking that still rings in her ears from the last time. She can see his chest puff up with his strong breaths, and he flaps his wings a little experimentally. Then he makes the short leap from her hands to her shoulder like he had the last time, crossing the distance with only a single beat of his wings. He tugs curiously at one of her curls with his beak, and she laughs as it springs when he lets it go.

“Well done,” Calliope praises, and Jade almost startles. She’d forgotten she was here. “You’re a natural. It won’t be long until you’re a stronger healer than I am.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Jade says, keeping her tone light to mask her uncertainty. She can’t imagine ever being as good a mage as Calliope seems to be.

“I am,” Calliope says, voice firm. “You’re one of the strongest apprentices I’ve ever had. I can sense it. You’ll be back to your husband in no time.”

Her cheeks flush at the praise, but her heart thumps a little harder in her chest. She doesn’t feel especially talented, but Rose and Roxana had said the same thing. What if they’re right? What if it’s only a matter of time before she can get back to him?

Jade stays diligent about her practice, sitting down with the bird twice each day, once at sunrise and once at sunset. The rain still hasn’t let up, so she goes out to the garden to reinforce her charm each afternoon. She’s not sure if it even really needs reinforcement, but it makes her feel better to be useful, and Calliope doesn’t stop her. Each time she reaches out to feel for the plants’ roots, she’s sure she can feel them reaching back to her.

Outside of practice, her life with Calliope carries on in a fairly domestic fashion. Calliope teaches her how to make the soups and stews that they’ve been eating the past few weeks and tells her about the vegetables and herbs that go into them. Jade learns that Calliope hasn’t had meat in years because she is a terrible huntress, although she misses it, and she offers to try hunting for them when the weather permits it. Jade has never been hunting, but she heard enough stories from Nepeta that she’s sure she can figure it out. When Jade tells Calliope that she feels strange borrowing pants, she takes it upon herself to teach her how to sew, and it occurs to Jade how silly it is that she never learned before—Kanaya’s mother is a seamstress, after all.

She keeps having nightmares.

They aren’t always about Dave. She’s still plagued with visions of John and her father, of Karkat off fighting a war for a kingdom he didn’t choose, of Rose having screaming matches with the queen. Sometimes there isn’t anyone at all. She has a dream that she is on a ship rocking violently in a storm, or in a room on fire, and each time she panics about where Dave is.

The ones about Dave are the worst though.

It isn’t only the one where he bleeds anymore. At least in that one she can still scramble to save his life, can feel his thready pulse under her hands as she fights to keep his heart beating. There’s always a sense of cognitive dissonance between herself as the dreamer, panicking at the fact that Dave is hurt, and herself as the one in the dream, feeling so calm and steady as she heals him. In the dream, she knows that she can save him with the sort of confidence Jade cannot imagine having in her waking life. She tries to take this as a positive sign.

She has other dreams about him too, though. She dreams about Dave as a teenager, swordfighting with his father for hours in the blazing summer heat. She can practically feel the sweat rolling down his back, and she swears each time he earns a different scar. A smooth cut that follows the curve of his collarbone. A deep gash in his side that she’s sure will take weeks to heal. A straight cut from his navel to the waistline of his pants that barely beads up with blood at first, but won’t stop bleeding for hours.

Calliope assures her that they probably aren’t real. A mage can have nightmares like any other person, they aren’t all visions. Jade has a hard time feeling very assured by this when she remembers seeing the scars crisscrossing all over Dave’s body when she’d had him undressed.

But the worst nights are when she doesn’t have any nightmares at all.

Every time, she’s sure that this is a sign that something terrible has happened to him—that he’s gone and her magic doesn’t feel the need to let her check on him anymore because of it. Those are the mornings she wakes up nearly inconsolable and Calliope has to hold her for what feels like hours until she can stop sobbing and remember how to breathe.

It’s two more weeks before the rain finally lets up enough to start moving over the plants in the garden. Two weeks of cooking and sewing and practicing magic and having nightmares. Jade insists that she can take care of the transfer by herself, and before she gets started, she decides she is going to do it without magic. She needs this if she’s ever going to feel normal again.

She takes a deep breath as her fingers sink into the soil, feeling for the roots of the cluster of yarrow like she’s been doing with her magic for weeks.

“There you are,” she murmurs affectionately to the plant as she finds what she is sure is the very deepest of its roots. Digging her fingers a little deeper, Jade tugs it out of the ground slowly and delicately until she feels the roots let go of the soil without snapping. She watches the dirt crumble between her fingers and back to the earth as she walks around the cottage and to the back, where she’s already moved the foxgloves, poppies, and sage. Only the yarrow is left now.

Her fingers are caked in mud, her fingernails packed with rich soil, and she finds that there’s nowhere else she would rather be and nothing else she would rather be doing as she settles the plant into its new home. She hums absentmindedly as she works, and it’s just about lunchtime when she finally gets the last of the flowers settled into the bed, which crests the top of a small hill where the water should flow down and away from the plants rather than drowning them.

She wipes at her forehead and feels mud smudge against her skin. It’s almost nostalgic. “Oh! You work so fast, darling. I was sure this would take you all day.”

Jade manages not to jump before she turns to Calliope with a proud, beaming grin. “I’ve got a lot of experience with gardening; I know how to work efficiently!”

Calliope smiles back at her. “That you do! And how are you feeling? Do you need to lie down?”

Jade pauses for a moment to take inventory of her body. Certainly, she’s exhausted, but she’s not in much pain beyond that dull ache that she’s already growing used to. It’s not enough that she needs to take a rest. “I’m alright.”

“Good!” Calliope never disputes Jade’s answers to questions like this, even when she’s obviously lying. More often than not, Jade is grateful for it. “Then I want you to go on a walk with me. I think our bird friend is ready to return home.”

Jade blinks a few times and realizes that Calliope’s hands are cupped together, with the little bird nestled comfortably against her palms. Her chest squeezes at the thought of saying goodbye to him. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, quite sure,” Calliope answers, her voice soft with sympathy.

With a nod, Jade wipes her hands against her skirt, although it does little good for the dirt under her fingernails. She doesn’t really mind the dirt under her fingernails, but it doesn’t exactly present the image of a proper princess. Then again, she still hasn’t told Calliope that she’s supposed to be a proper princess, so she thinks she can probably get away with it.

They don’t talk much as they walk, and Jade instead looks around to take in the forest now that she’s in a state to really observe it without the rush of panic from falling. The trees here are so tall and thick that they must be ancient, with long branches and needles that still drip with lingering droplets of rain from the storms.

The last traces of the snow that still blanketed the ground when she crashed have melted away, replaced by puddles from the recent showers.

After a while, they come to a tree that has fallen onto its side, cracked branches blocking much of the beaten path they’ve followed until now. “This is where I found him,” Calliope declares, and Jade gapes. Calliope had said that the rain knocked his nest down, not an entire tree.

When Calliope spreads her hands open, the bird chirps a few times, looking between them in a way Jade almost reads as curious. “Go on then,” Jade gently encourages, even though it makes her heart squeeze tightly. He chirps again and hops up onto her shoulder, nestling his head into her curls. She laughs, bringing a hand up over her mouth. “I know, I know. I’ll miss you too! But you belong out here in the forest, with the trees. And lady birds.”

He lets out a squeaky noise and gives his wings a single testing flap before he swoops off of her shoulder and disappears into the trees.

Jade stares after him for a long minute, smiling to herself, until Calliope says, “This is where we’ll begin the next portion of our training.”

Jade raises her brows. “What will we be doing?”

Calliope takes a deep breath. “You’ve been doing very well in practice these last few weeks. You’ve made a lot of progress on your healing. But you still must learn not to be afraid of magic. These nightmares that plague you—they only hurt worse because you’re so afraid of what they mean. In a way, this may even be causing them. You’re seeking them out, trying to discern their meaning. You’re torturing yourself, darling.”

Jade’s brow furrows, and she starts to shake her head. “No, I’m not afraid of magic. The nightmares are… different. It’s not about the magic, it’s about—”

“I know very well what it’s about,” Calliope interrupts, but her voice is still soft with kindness. “I told you that there was a bright and a dark side to magic. Please do not misunderstand this to mean that there is good or evil magic. All magic has its purpose, and it’s important to me that you learn to use all of it.”

Jade takes a step backward. “I don’t want to learn dark magic.”

“You asked me to teach you everything.”

Jade opens her mouth, but her voice catches in her throat. She did say that, didn’t she? “But I didn’t know.”

“Yes, you did. We had our talk about this dual nature of magic before you asked me to teach you. You have to let go of this, Jade. You can’t be so afraid of yourself.”

Jade wants to argue. She wants to point out that if she was so afraid of herself then she couldn’t be making such improvements with her healing. That was when Calliope warned her not to be afraid of magic, wasn’t it? And she’s been able to push aside those nagging worries she’s had about John and Dave to focus on that. She’s been getting better. She doesn’t need Calliope to teach her about dark magic.

But why not? A voice somewhere in her mind that sounds an awful lot like Rose points out that she has no reason to avoid dark magic other than fear. It’s a reasonable thing to be afraid of, though, isn’t it? Jade remembers all of the stories of the mages who went too far and lost their minds. Rose had told her about it—the blackdeath trance of the woegothics.

She can’t lose herself like that.

Her eyes snap around the forest like she can find some way to get away. She can just turn around and run back to the cottage. But Calliope will still be there, and she’ll still expect her to learn this. She would have to run away for good to get away from this. She would have to…

Something dark creeps into the edge of her vision.

Jade freezes, her whole body going tense as her heart hammers against her throat. What is it? Is she going to lose consciousness again? But no, it’s not a problem with her vision—it’s the forest itself.

There’s a blackness spreading through the plants, flowers at the edge of the dirt path they had followed to get here withering at an alarming rate. The grass curls into itself, browning with rot. Jade hears a loud crack somewhere as a tree branch threatens to fall.

When she looks at Calliope, she’s startled to see something dark in her eyes. Something unidentifiable. She’s the one doing this.

“Stop,” Jade says, but her voice comes out pathetically small. When Calliope doesn’t respond, she yells again, loud enough that it echoes off of the trees back at her, “Stop it!”

“Make me.”

Jade’s eyes go wide. None of the warmth and kindness that she is so used to associating with Calliope is there anymore, replaced only with a cold, demanding tone that she would expect to hear from the king. Jade looks around again, and the needles are starting to drop from the nearest conifers, falling to the ground in the dull orange of death. “Stop!” she repeats, a little more frantically, but if Calliope hears her, she ignores her.

A branch breaks with a brittle sound and falls to the ground a few feet away from Jade, and she yelps.

Without much thought, she rushes over to Calliope and shoves her as hard as she can. Calliope stumbles, but the blackness doesn’t stop spreading. “Stop,” Jade says a final time, her hands finding purchase on Calliope’s shoulders where she digs her fingers into the flesh. It brings with it the familiar sensation of ice rushing through her veins.

Calliope’s eyes go wide, the light that Jade is so used to shimmering again like it always has, and for a brief moment, Jade thinks she sees a flicker of a grin. Pride. She’s proud of her, or perhaps proud of herself. Disgust curls distastefully in Jade’s gut as her fingers start to go numb from the cold, and she sees Calliope’s face fall.

A moment later, Calliope starts to choke, and Jade can feel her shoulders trembling under her hold. She only squeezes tighter, gripping Calliope with bruising force. Calliope’s chest seizes and she writhes with what Jade can only imagine is pain, one of her legs twisting under her, but Jade doesn’t let her fall. Let her hurt. Let her understand what she was doing to this forest, for no reason other than because she could, and because she wanted Jade to do it, too.

“Jade,” Calliope gasps, and Jade feels a flare of annoyance. How dare she grovel? How many times did Jade ask her to stop, and she refused to listen? “Jade,” Calliope says, voice firmer, and Jade feels something sharp and stinging cut across her cheek.

Her eyes go wide and she gasps, instantly releasing her hold on her host. Calliope sags to one knee and sucks in a sharp gasp of her own, and Jade brings her hands up over her mouth.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean…” She trails off. She didn’t mean what? Tears spring to her eyes as she realizes suddenly how much she had wanted to hurt her friend. A moment later, Calliope wraps her arms tight around her, and Jade sinks against her completely with a sob. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright, love,” Calliope whispers against her hair, stroking a hand up and down her back. “It’s alright. I’m alright.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“I know.” Calliope shifts down to her knees as she cradles Jade against her chest, and Jade has no choice but to follow her to the ground. “This is why you have to learn, darling. If you don’t know how to control it, you’ll never be able to stop.”

“I can’t,” Jade chokes, squeezing her eyes tight against the onslaught of tears.

“Alright.” Calliope nods, and her hand slides up to stroke through Jade’s hair now. “It’s alright, dear. It’s alright now. You weren’t ready. That’s alright.”

Jade doesn’t know how long she stays like that, trembling and crying in Calliope’s arms. When she finally manages to come down, she croaks, “Can we go back home?”

They are silent as they walk back.

Chapter Text

Jade spends the day after the incident in the woods curled up miserably in bed, refusing to get up even when Calliope prompts her to come eat.

The idea of using her magic to hurt someone like that makes her stomach twist. It makes her feel like the king. She hadn’t felt at all remorseful over the fact that she was hurting her friend—if anything, it had felt good. That’s the most horrifying part.

But if Calliope harbors any bad blood over the incident, she doesn’t show it. She finally pulls Jade out of bed after three days spent miserably moping by requesting her help with the garden. Admittedly, seeing all that life thriving and feeling their strength under her hands does succeed at making Jade feel a little bit better. Calliope coaxes her to start using her magic again in the garden, and it’s as if Jade had never been practicing with her at all—not because of a regression in her skill, but because of how hard her heart starts hammering at the idea of using magic around someone else. It reminds her of how it felt sneaking around in Derse.

After two weeks of light work in the garden where Jade is barely using her magic at all, Calliope wakes her up early one morning with a gentle shaking of her shoulder. Jade squints up at her through bleary eyes and finds that, much like when Calliope brought her the bird, it’s barely dawn yet. “Calliope?”

“It’s time to get up. We’re going out today,” Calliope says. Jade sits up immediately at that. They don’t often venture far from the cottage, and while Jade feels perhaps less isolated than she’s ever been, the idea of going to see something is exciting. She’s not even sure where the nearest town must be, but she’s gotten the impression that it must be pretty far.

When they start to venture deeper into the woods, Jade gets a sinking sense of disappointment as she realizes how silly she was being.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

“Back to the clearing,” Calliope answers. Jade freezes, her heart rate immediately climbing and her stomach roiling with nausea.

“I can’t.”

Calliope turns to face Jade with a patient smile, and it only makes Jade feel worse. How can Calliope forgive her so easily? How does she trust her? Why would she want to bring Jade back to the place where she nearly killed her? “I know you’re afraid,” she starts. Jade winces. “But we’re not going to practice dark magic again. Not today.”

Not today is not very comforting to Jade, but she forces herself to take a deep breath anyway. Calliope has never lied to her before, at least not as far as she knows, and if she says that they aren’t going to practice dark magic then Jade believes that they aren’t. Plus, it isn’t like Calliope could force her. No, the problem is the fact that she had wanted to do it in the first place. That no matter how hard she fought the idea, the urge to hurt someone was too powerful to resist.

She jams her eyes shut and takes another deep breath. She’s not tempted to hurt anyone right now. The idea of it makes her feel sick. There is no secret evil lying inside of her springing at the first opportunity to escape. She is in control.

She opens her eyes to give Calliope a shaky nod and starts walking again. Even as she keeps repeating to herself in her mind that she’s not going to hurt anything, it feels like all of the trees in the forest are bearing down on her. Watching her. Judging her.

“What are we practicing?” she finally asks just to distract herself from it all.

“Do you remember when you told me that you would give anything to know what was going on with your brother?” Jade’s heart squeezes painfully, but she nods. “Well, today we’re going to try. I’m going to teach you how to scry.”

Scrying is not something that Jade has ever heard of before, and her paranoia starts to ebb away to make room for curiosity as they draw closer to the clearing. Jade can tell they’re nearly there when she starts to see those dried out pine needles on the ground from the evergreen trees. It’s the end of spring, so it’s not nearly the right time of year for the trees to start shedding their needles. These are the trees that Calliope had started to reach before Jade stopped her.

The clearing is beautiful in a way that makes Jade’s breath catch. It’s like a tiny slice of autumn, with fat toadstools cropping up between the dead flowers and patches of yellow-brown grass.

“Now, have a seat. Make yourself comfortable,” Calliope instructs.

Jade raises her eyebrows, but sparing another brief glance around the clearing, she strides over to the fallen tree. Its trunk comes all the way to her chest while she’s standing and she actually has to pull herself up onto it, but then she sits cross-legged.

Calliope pulls her own legs up to sit. Jade gapes at her. Calliope sits cross-legged on the air itself, as if she’d brought a chair with her that was invisible to Jade’s eyes. She floats higher until she and Jade are eye level, offering her a warm smile.

“Don’t worry, dear. We’ll practice this sometime, too,” she says, and Jade feels a spark of excitement. Calliope always uses her power so casually, and the idea of being able to do something like that almost makes Jade feel good about her magic again. “Now, why don’t you tell me some more about your brother?”

“He’s an idiot,” she says immediately, without a moment’s hesitation, voice filled with fondness. Calliope laughs, her smile growing into a grin. “He was always telling jokes and pulling pranks when we were children. He had so much responsibility thrust upon him from such an early age, but he rarely let it weigh on him. And he was always my biggest protector, yet somehow also one of the only people who ever made me feel normal. I wasn’t just a sickly little girl who needed to be locked away from the world for her own good. I was his sister, who he would chase around the gardens with a wooden toy sword while we played pirates.”

Jade finds that her eyes suddenly sting and her throat feels tight, and she swallows hard around it. “I always thought that we would be so close when we grew up. After our grandfather died, I hardly had anybody else, and I never considered that I would be sent so far away. I didn’t know what my life would be like, but I was sure that John would always be a part of it.”

“That sounds nice,” Calliope says, but there’s a faraway quality to her voice that pulls Jade’s thoughts away from her own bittersweet nostalgia as her brow furrows. She opens her mouth to ask what’s wrong, but before she gets the words out, Calliope adds, “Focus on your relationship with your brother. Think of it like a tether, and pull on the chain.”

Jade’s eyes flutter shut as she tries to imagine her bond with John as a physical thing. Calliope had said chain, but Jade doesn’t feel shackled to John. She never did. If anything, it had only hurt more when they got older and more distance was forced between them, like she was on a boat and the rope tying it to land was being loosened and threatening to send her adrift at sea. She imagines that boat more clearly, the waves of uncertainty rocking her and threatening to knock her over the edge. John is standing on the dock and laughing at her, saying that she looks like a baby horse trying to get up for the first time, and then she’s laughing with him. Then he grabs onto the rope and pulls her closer to help her out of the water.

In her mind’s eye, her foot finds purchase on the edge of the dock and she stumbles, but John catches her in his arms.

Then she sees a flash of John with his face scrunched up in concern as he reads over a letter and she gasps.

The image is gone as quickly as it had come, but it sears itself into Jade’s memory immediately. The pinch of his eyebrows, the exhaustion in his bright blue eyes—the eyes that he inherited from their father, which look more like Dad’s now than they ever have before.

“What did you see?” Calliope asks, and Jade opens her eyes to stare at her.

“John,” she says, though she suspects Calliope already knew that much. “But it was only for a moment. Just a flash of… I’m not sure. He was reading a letter, but I don’t know what it was about. He looked… distraught. Tired. I don’t know.” She huffs and slides a hand up into her hair to tug at it in frustration.

“Relax. This is your first time. The fact that you were able to see anything at all is impressive. It took my last student a year before she was able to divine anything at all, and even then she always seemed to struggle with scrying. She was better with events.”

Jade gapes at her. “You’ve had other students?”

Calliope grimaces, and Jade isn’t sure whether it’s because she thought Jade already knew or because she didn’t mean to reveal the information at all. “Just one,” she eventually murmurs. “It was a very long time ago.”

“What happened?”

Calliope is still grimacing, and Jade almost feels bad for asking, but she makes no attempts to take it back. After a moment of clear hesitation, Calliope sighs. “Her name was Damara. She was even younger than you are. A teenager. And such a tiny thing, practically all skin and bones. I thought that she was going to die when I found her.”

“Found her?”

“Yes. She didn’t fall from the sky quite like you did, but it was clear that she was running away from something, too. I think she must have been in the forest for a few days before I found her, because it was clear she hadn’t had any food or water in quite some time. She was curled up under a tree, shaking. But she was so vicious! She sprung at me the moment I got close enough, although I’m still not sure what she was hoping to accomplish by attacking me. I managed to restrain her with my magic, and I saw an understanding pass through her eyes. I think we both realized in that moment that we were the same.

“It was difficult for us to communicate at first. We didn’t speak the same language, and it was clear that she was hesitant to get close with me, even when I offered to teach her how to use her magic.” Jade can’t help a flare of envy. She offered to teach this girl, but Jade had to ask? Calliope must read this on her face, though, because she says, “Damara made it clear from the start that she didn’t want to be an imposition. She would wake before dawn every day just to do the household chores before I was up, and she refused my offers to help mend her clothing with magic or to sew her new garments. I’m not sure she had ever known a life where she was treated as an equal before, and I thought it likely that someone had used her magic to hurt her.”

Jade’s stomach turns as she imagines someone much like her being used by someone much like King Diederik. Someone even younger and more vulnerable than her.

“She had been staying with me for a year when she finally started to tell me more about her past. She was born in Beforus, before the revolution, on a small farm near the border of Viridan. She didn’t remember much about her parents. She started to show signs of magic at an exceptionally young age, and I suppose word must have spread about it… somehow. I never did completely understand how. But one day, a man rode onto her parents’ farm. She couldn’t understand what he was saying, but she recognized his accent as Viridian in origin, and she could tell that her parents seemed quite distraught. That evening, they said their goodbyes, and the next morning, she left with the man. She had been sold.”

Jade brings her hands up over her mouth as her eyes go wide with horror, and she can feel them stinging again. “No… that’s horrible!”

“It used to be very common.”

Jade tries to imagine her father just selling her away and thinks she’s going to be sick, her stomach turning again. “But… how could they?”

“I don’t believe they had much choice in the matter,” Calliope says, voice soft. Somehow, that doesn’t make Jade feel any better. Calliope’s voice has that faraway quality to it again as she continues, “The man served a local lord who had been looking for magic like Damara’s. Like ours. Magic from a First Guardian.”

“Why?”

Calliope is silent for a long minute. She stares off into the distance for so long Jade almost thinks she sees something in the forest, and she cranes her neck to try to spot it. Finally, so softly Jade almost doesn’t hear her, she says, “Because of me.”

Jade balks, head snapping to stare at Calliope again. “What?”

“Do you remember when I told you about my brother?” Jade nods. “When we were children, we were the only people in the world that we had. Only each other.” Jade thinks of John, but before she can get very far with that train of thought, Calliope adds, “Don’t mistake that to mean that we were fond of each other. My brother hated me for as long as I can remember, and I can’t say that I liked him very much either. We fought about everything—but a favorite of his was that I had magic and he did not. He hated that more than anything.”

Instead of John, she thinks of Dave and Rose. She thinks of the way that their father has tried to pit them against each other their whole lives, and of how much they clearly love each other in spite of that. Suddenly, her heart aches for Calliope.

“I tried to teach him, at first. I thought that maybe if we both had magic then we could just get along. Perhaps I was just a bad teacher…”

“No, you’re a wonderful teacher!”

Calliope smiles sadly. “Thank you, darling. But this was a very long time ago, and I didn’t have nearly as much experience then as I do now. And Cal… well, he was never very studious. He could be clever, but he always wanted to find some sort of trick or shortcut. Eventually, he became convinced that he could take my magic from me. He was obsessed. He told me that he would kill me for it one day. I’m not sure what was holding him back, but I didn’t wait around to find out. At the earliest opportunity, I fled. I found this forest, and I’ve been here ever since. But I suppose he never gave up searching for me, and he believed that finding someone else with magic like mine would be the key to finding me.”

Jade starts to connect the dots and winces. “So… how did Damara get away?”

“I’m not sure. She never told me, and I didn’t ask. Once I realized it was my brother that she was hiding from, I realized that she would never be safe with me. I told her that she needed to leave. Run somewhere far, far away.”

Jade’s chest squeezes, but she’s not sure whether it’s for Calliope, who had to send away what must have been the only friend she’d had in a very long time, or for Damara, whose mentor sent her away, even if it was for her own safety. “What happened to her? Where is she now?”

“I couldn’t say for sure. We made a plan, of course. She was to flee to Derse and find a job as a maid for a noble family who would pay for tutoring so she could keep practicing her magic. Dersite training is still more valuable than no training, even for mages like us. If anyone was to ask, she was a refugee from the revolution in Beforus.”

Something in Jade’s mind clicks and she gasps, eyes going wide again. “That’s Mitoki Megido!”

Calliope stares at her with raised eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”

Suddenly, Jade feels stupid for not having connected the dots earlier. A girl from Beforus with magic like theirs, with a talent for divining the future? Of course it’s Mitoki. “Mitoki Megido. She’s the handmaid to the queen of Derse. She was the person who first told me about the First Guardian. I always meant to ask her about it, but I didn’t find the time before I…” A lump suddenly grows in her throat as she realizes what she’s saying. What she’s doing.

Drawing a connection between herself and the royal family of Derse.

Calliope doesn’t say anything about that, though. Suddenly, her eyes are bright again as she says, “And she’s doing well there?”

“I think so,” Jade says cautiously. “It was always hard to get much of a read on her. She didn’t talk very much, and when she did talk, it could be kind of hard to understand her. But she enjoyed a lot of privileges that the rest of the staff didn’t have because of her position as the queen’s handmaid. She was very valuable. And… she helped me a lot.”

Mitoki was the one who warned her about the blizzard that would kill her flowers so she had the opportunity to use her magic to protect them. Mitoki was the one who warned her to stay away from the king because he was dangerous. And though she can’t prove it, Jade has suspected that Mitoki is the one who snuck her that first letter from Dave since the moment they made eye contact when she burst into the dining room. Who else would have had access to the letters and chosen to betray the king? It was all too apparent that the queen would rather betray Jade.

Just as suddenly as it had struck her that Damara was really Mitoki Megido, Jade realizes that these were all of the things that led her here. To Calliope. It was the blizzard that led her to start practicing her magic. It was Mitoki’s warning that gave Jade the first real hints that the king might have known about her magic already, beyond the paralyzing sense of paranoia from their conversation in the war room. And it was knowing that the king and queen had been withholding her letters that pushed her to run away before she crash-landed in this forest.

So what does all of that mean? Was Mitoki trying to get her to run away? Why? So that she could come study in the forest with Calliope like Mitoki had as a teenager? Could it be possible that she could have foreseen that? Just how powerful is her divination?

Jade takes a slow breath. “I want to try again.”

Calliope raises a brow. “To try what?”

“Scrying,” she says. Calliope is raising both eyebrows now, and Jade sets her face into a determined look. “I want to be able to divine things about people. About events. To be able to do something useful.”

“Your healing is already very impressive,” Calliope counters.

“Yes, but,” Jade starts, her cheeks flushing. She doesn’t know how to explain this. “I want to know that everything is going to be okay.”

Calliope’s face softens into something sympathetic and, Jade thinks, a little sad. “Well, divination can’t do that,” she says softly, and Jade’s heart sinks. “But we can try it again.”

Jade nods and closes her eyes again. “Scrying is a simpler form of divination because it pulls on your connections to people,” Calliope explains. “But it is still difficult. Divination is one of the most difficult forms of magic there is. Time, in general, is very elusive. Few things are set in stone, and trying to grasp the future is much like trying to pluck a fish from the river with your bare hands. But with focus and patience and a lot of practice, you can begin to master it. Remember that magic is ruled by your emotions. For something as precise as this, you should focus on something… less emotional in nature.”

Calliope doesn’t say not to think of Dave, but Jade can tell that’s what she means. It’s hard to blame her. After all, most of the times Calliope has heard Jade talk about her husband, she’s been crying. Even now, she aches to see him even if only for a moment, but she knows that means that Calliope is right. She won’t be able to focus if it’s Dave.

She thinks of John again instead. She takes a deep breath and tries to channel the sort of certainty that Mitoki always seemed to go through life with, the sort of certainty that Jade is sure must be so easy if you have the power to look into the future. She thinks briefly of the boat and the dock again, but she shakes this image away. She needs to think of something real.

What must John be doing now? He’s married. He had been so enamored with Vriska when they were kids. He always used to come home gushing about her after his trips with Dad to Skaia, about how pretty and smart she was. He had mentioned once, off-handedly, how great a queen she would make, and Jade teased him about it for weeks. Now that they’re married, Jade bets John must dote on Vriska endlessly. If he has time to, anyway, now that he’s king.

With the war between Prospit and Derse being over, he should have less to stress over—but then, she remembers how worried he had always been when they were kids. He used to dream of being the king who would finally bring peace, but he was always terrified that the peace could never last. That both sides would take up arms again within a generation and his entire rule would have been meaningless. He got along so well with Dave, seemed so genuinely relieved when Jade earnestly fell in love with him, but would that have been enough to cement their kingdoms’ alliance in his mind?

A bitter, cold rain pours on the city of Skaia, thunder rolling in the far distance. Sailors move like a well-oiled machine at the docks to secure the smaller ships so they aren’t carried off to sea by the storm, ignoring the way their sopping wet clothes stick to their backs like glue. They must have done this a thousand times before—every winter, there’s at least one storm like this.

King John paces in front of a regiment of soldiers with his arms crossed behind his back. The lenses of his glasses are covered in so many droplets of water that it’s hard to believe he can see anything and his hair is completely soaked, rivulets of water pouring around his ears and down his neck as the rain keeps pattering against the top of his head.

He pauses and turns to face the soldiers. “The Dersite army has called for aid,” he says, voice ringing out clearly. It doesn’t sound like he’s yelling, but rather like the storm itself is carrying his voice. “Their war with Viridan is viciously blow-for-blow. It’s one step forward and one step back. They can’t hold an advantage. The Viridian general has refused negotiations.” He pauses, and the soldiers all stand stock-still and silent, looking at him reverently as they wait for him to continue. Instead, he gestures for someone to approach.

Alyona Serket makes for an imposing figure. The coat stretching down to her ankles only emphasizes her height where she stands just a little taller than John, and the wide-brimmed hat she wears casts her face in shadow so that the only clear feature is the notorious predatory grin that plagues the nightmares of Prospit’s enemies—the ones who survive her, anyway.

“As I’m sure you all know, approaching Viridan on foot would require riding through the ruins of Beforus. That territory still hasn’t been fully explored since the revolt, and it is unknown what threats might lie there. As such, the king has kindly requested my aid as the leader of the royal navy—and as the mother of his wife.” If it’s possible, her grin seems to grow even sharper at that. “So! For the foreseeable future, the lot of you can consider yourselves honorary members of my fleet—and consider me your leader. Of course, our courageous, heroic king has so bravely insisted on joining the army for this battle, but make no mistake: While we are in the water, you will follow my orders above all else. There is no king of the sea.” She takes a dramatic pause, and the soldiers who stood so impressively still while waiting for John to speak shift uncomfortably from foot to foot now.

“We’ll take the north sea to ambush Viridan in the west, and the army—that’s you—will continue to push northeast until you’re able to meet with the Dersites while the navy continues south along the border to disrupt reinforcements where we can. If you call for reinforcements or we need to retreat, we will plan to meet you on land. If you need to retreat, don’t! We will not show any weakness in front of the Dersites. We may be allies now, but we must always prepare for the worst.” John grimaces, but she ignores him as she finishes, “We set sail first thing after the storm breaks.”

Jade’s eyes snap open with a sudden burst of sharp pain. Calliope is at her side in an instant, resting a hand against her back. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” she insists, squeezing her eyes shut again like that will shut out the pain.

“What did you see this time?” Calliope asks, as if that might have the key to Jade’s reaction. For all she knows, it might.

“John.” She realizes that doesn’t offer much information, so she takes her glasses off to rub at her eyes with the heels of her palms and adds, “It was the past—weeks ago, if not months. Prospit is sending reinforcements to assist Derse in the war.”

“To assist Derse?” For the first time, Calliope stares at Jade like she’s crazy, and Jade’s headache is nothing compared to the nausea that crashes over her then.

“They—there was an alliance made last year. A marriage alliance.” Jade watches Calliope for a moment, two, waiting for her to react, but Calliope just balks at her. Jade swallows hard. She trusts Calliope. She takes a slow breath, and then says as calmly as she can, “My marriage.”

Chapter Text

Despite Calliope’s warning that divination is one of the most difficult forms of magic to master, Jade really thought that she would be the exception. Everyone is always talking about how special she is, how impressive her magic is, how powerful. On her very first attempt, she was able to get a glimpse of John, even if it was only for a moment, and then on her second attempt she’d had a real vision of him. It felt like she was a natural, the same way she seems to be a natural at everything else. It wasn’t arrogance, it was pattern recognition.

She was wrong.

Over the next couple of weeks, they keep practicing divination. Spring passes into summer and the storms stop rolling through, but Jade’s mind might as well be just as grey and cloudy as if they’d never left.

Everything else that Calliope asks her to practice, she’s able to get a handle on. Sometimes it takes a few days, but she’s at least able to crack the basics. She learns to fly. She learns how to teleport—on purpose this time, rather than the panicked need for escape that had brought her here in the first place. Calliope says Jade’s healing is almost as good as hers now.

But she can’t crack divination.

“Perhaps you just care too much,” Calliope offers one day, and Jade glowers at her.

“I thought you said that magic was rooted in emotions. Shouldn’t the fact that I want to see them so desperately make it easier?”

“Not necessarily.” Jade purses her lips, and Calliope laughs and continues, “It’s a bit of a balancing act. Yes, it is good to embrace your emotions, since they are fundamentally the source of your power. But if you get lost to them, you can’t control that power, and your magic will act in unpredictable ways. If anything, we’re lucky that yours just seems to fizzle out.”

Jade still doesn’t like that phrasing, but she pushes that aside in favor of letting her eyes flutter shut and trying to focus again. She takes a deep breath, and as she exhales, she feels some of her frustration ebbing away. She is in control of her emotions. She is in control of her power. She can use her magic however she wants to.

She focuses on John. She always focuses on John. It’s not that he’s the only person that she wants to see, and it’s certainly not that she cares about him any more or less than the rest of her loved ones; John is just the only one she’s actually had success with so far, so there’s a part of her that feels like he’s somehow the key to cracking this.

She hears his laugh ringing in her ears, can see a flash of his smile, but she knows that it’s only memories. She squeezes her eyes tighter, until she can feel her nose crinkling with them. John is at war. Her stupid, kind-hearted brother rode off to war despite the fact that he’s the king and basically his entire job is to stay safe in the capital. Sure, Dave is the prince, but Dave was never given any choice in the matter. If anything, this war is a punishment for Dave, just for the way that he was born.

She can feel her hatred for King Diederik starting to rear its ugly head, and she sighs and opens her eyes. “I’m not going to be able to do it,” she mutters, voice tinged with bitter disappointment.

“That’s alright,” Calliope says, as kind and sincere as ever. It does help to soothe Jade’s temper a little bit. “Would you like to help me with dinner?”

Jade doesn’t point out the fact that she already helped with dinner by catching it in the first place. She and Calliope haven’t spoken of dark magic again since the first incident, which must have been nearly a month ago by now, but Calliope had still insisted that Jade needed to learn other ways to defend herself. Considering her ultimate goal was to reunite with Dave, Jade didn’t fight it either. Calliope taught her how to ensnare with her magic, and the first practical thing Jade’s done with it is hunt, just like she promised. She only managed to catch one rabbit, but as Calliope skins it for dinner, she can’t help beaming with pride.

Nepeta would be proud of her, she thinks.

Jade doesn’t watch very closely as Calliope prepares the rabbit, but she sits on a chair next to her, swinging her legs while she thinks. “Where did you learn to do this?” she asks somewhat idly.

Calliope pauses for a moment, and Jade stills her swinging legs as she tilts her head to watch her. She’s got one of those unreadable expressions again, the ones that are so different from everything Jade has come to associate with her mentor. “My brother and I had to learn to provide for ourselves from an early age,” she eventually answers.

“You’ve mentioned that before. What… happened? To your family?”

“I’m not sure,” Calliope says, shrugging. “As far as I know, we never had one.”

“But you must have come from somewhere,” Jade argues, furrowing her brow.

Calliope laughs. “Well, yes, of course we came from somewhere. I only mean that I don’t know where that is. We were born in Viridan, and as long as I can remember, we were all we had. Insofar as we had each other, anyway.”

“Was your relationship always bad?”

Calliope pauses again. Her eyes get that faraway look that Jade is starting to see more and more often, and guilt churns in her stomach. “I’m sorry,” Jade says, frowning. “I didn’t mean to bring up a sensitive subject. You don’t have to talk to me about it.” As much as she’d like to know about Calliope’s past, Jade doesn’t want to push if she’s not ready.

“No, it’s alright,” Calliope says, although it still seems a little faint to Jade in a way that indicates it’s clearly not alright. “I was just trying to remember. It was all so long ago.” Calliope frowns, and then turns her attention back on the rabbit. “No, it wasn’t always bad. I don’t think we ever liked each other or got along, but there were… moments. Moments where it was nicer to have my brother than to think about him being… gone.”

They sit in silence for several minutes after that, until Calliope has finished skinning the rabbit and is cooking it in a large cast iron pan with garlic, mushrooms, and several spices that Jade does not recognize. The smell is enough to make Jade’s mouth water, but her mind is still far from food. “What would you do if you ever saw him again?”

Calliope blinks, clearly startled, and then stares at her for a moment. “I beg your pardon?”

“Your brother. If you saw him again, what would you do?”

Calliope purses her lips thoughtfully, turning to stare into the fire as it crackles and pops under the pan. With the firelight dancing in them, her eyes take on a glassy appearance. “I would kill him,” she eventually says, voice soft.

Calliope killing anything intentionally is unthinkable to Jade. This is the same woman who has lived out in the forest for years and has never hunted a rabbit. How could she kill her own brother? “Why?” Jade can’t stop herself from asking, but she makes an effort to keep her voice just as soft as Calliope’s.

Calliope’s face twists into something pained and her hands ball into tight fists at her side. “For his own good,” she answers, voice low.

They don’t say anything else to each other for the rest of the night—not during dinner, nor when they’re getting ready to turn in for the night. Several times, Jade opens her mouth to apologize, but Calliope looks so lost in thought that she’s not sure she would even hear it. Still, as she stands in Calliope’s room, twisting her curls into the neatest braid she can manage without an extra set of hands helping her, she feels startlingly aware of how much she has taken from Calliope without giving anything in return.

For nearly two months, Calliope has sacrificed her bed for Jade. She’s cooked for her, healed her, taught her about her magic. All Jade has offered is some help in the garden that she’s not sure Calliope has even really needed and a single hunted rabbit.

And companionship, some part of her mind offers, and it makes her chest squeeze. Jade can’t deny the value of companionship. When her grandfather died, it was devastating. When Karkat came to the castle, it felt like it completely turned her life around. Kanaya turned her life around in an entirely new way. Rose, Nepeta, Dave—all of these people have touched her life undeniably. She wouldn’t be here without any of them; not just here, with Calliope, but here. Living and breathing.

How could she ever downplay that?

But how could she ever believe she can offer the same to Calliope?

For some reason, her eyes are drawn to the chess table near the corner, with its single chair still unmoved from the first day she and Calliope had talked about it. That was when Calliope had first told her about her brother. Back then, Jade assumed that Calliope must have been close with her brother and something awful must have happened to him.

She didn’t consider that he might have been the awful thing.

She pads over to the table and sits, eyes flitting all over the board as she tries to imagine all of the different ways a game could play out. She can practically hear her grandfather’s voice in the back of her head, explaining that there are only a few limited strategies in chess, really, and that once you know someone well enough, you can make a good guess as to how they’ll play. She used to get so frustrated wondering how he could read her mind like that, and then he would laugh and tell her that she’d get better at it with practice.

How would Calliope play?

Jade picks up the white king’s knight and moves it ahead of the pawn and the bishop. She stares at the new layout of the board, playing around with it in her mind. She idly considers what her next move might be as she stands and clambers into bed.

She doesn’t have any dreams that night. It’s starting to become the new normal, and there’s almost a part of Jade that is beginning to forget that she’d ever had nightmares at all. She doesn’t understand why they’re gone, but she doesn’t miss the mornings spent in tears.

Instead, she wakes up with a renewed sense of purpose. It’s barely dawn, and she can see the sun still touching the horizon as she climbs out of bed. She’s startled when she steps out of the room to find that Calliope is still asleep on the couch, and she tries to stay as quiet as possible as she creeps into the kitchen to get a start on breakfast.

Calliope wakes when Jade is halfway through frying a pan full of vegetables, and she seems just as startled to find Jade already awake as Jade was to find her asleep. “You’re recovering amazingly. If I didn’t know any better, I would think you were never injured at all, princess,” Calliope says. Jade detects a hint of a teasing edge and raises her eyebrows.

“I thought I was darling.”

“You’re many things.” Calliope smiles as Jade sets a plate of fried vegetables and toast in front of her and then takes the seat next to her. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Me making you breakfast?” Jade asks, raising her eyebrows again.

“Yes! Believe it or not, it’s been a very long time since anyone has made me breakfast; not since Damara, and not for a much longer time before that.”

Jade doesn’t want to admit that she felt guilty over last night, so she shrugs instead. “I feel good. Today is going to be a good day.”

“Do you think you’ll finally crack scrying?”

Jade purses her lips in thought. She does have a feeling about today that she can’t quite put her finger on. Maybe it is that. “Perhaps,” she says noncommittally, shrugging again.

They make idle small talk over their breakfast, which carries as they head out to the garden for the day. It is finally around noon when they head into the forest again. They’ve made a sort of unspoken agreement over the last few weeks to treat the clearing as their designated practice spot, and the familiar sight of the fat little toadstools makes Jade grin.

“Perhaps we should try channeling your energy in more than one place today, hm? Since you seem to have so much of it today,” Calliope teases, and Jade beams at her. They’ve had limited practice with manifesting multiple kinds of magic at once, and it feels like a big step to Jade. “Let’s start with flight.”

Flight is not really the most accurate term for what they do. Flight implies some degree of motion, some sort of active attempt to maintain your position in the air. Jade doesn’t manifest wings to flutter and lift herself off the ground or anything. It doesn’t feel like work at all. Jade takes a deep breath and takes account of all of the stressors she can think of—the lingering guilt over prying with Calliope, the bitterness with her in-laws, the longing for her husband, the exhaustion and pain from weeks of healing. She imagines them all floating away, until she’s left feeling light. Airy. Weightless.

She feels her feet lift off the ground, and then her body is a weightless thing levitating in the air. She floats until they’re high above the treeline and then pulls her legs up to sit cross-legged, like she had watched Calliope do that first time. Calliope moves right alongside her, sitting so close to her that their knees touch.

“Good,” Calliope praises, and Jade smiles again, although it’s a little smaller this time; a little more detached. Flying doesn’t require she feel disconnected from her emotions, per se, but it requires that they not weigh her down, and Jade struggles not to bear the weight of any of her emotions, even the positive. “Now, who are we scrying on today?”

“Who are we scrying on every day?” Jade says, rolling her eyes.

“No need to be snarky,” Calliope says, though it’s with a clear tinge of amusement. Then her smile turns into something a little more serious, and Jade finds herself sitting a little straighter before Calliope even says anything. “Perhaps you should try focusing on someone else today,” she offers.

Jade’s heart squeezes. Calliope doesn’t pack someone else with implication, but Jade is sure she means Dave anyway. That’s practically the only someone else there is, as far as Calliope is concerned.

“I don’t know…” she starts warily, trying to push away the anxiety creeping up on her again. Calm down. She has to stay steady or she’ll fall. “I mean, if you really think that I can’t scry on John because I care too much, then—”

“Your powers prove time and time again to defy expectation. Just give it a try.”

Jade snaps her mouth shut and takes a breath before she nods. Calliope is right. Rose and Roxana thought her magic was unusual because it didn’t come from the Horrorterrors, but it feels like she surprises Calliope with every new thing they try.

With John, the tether that Calliope had told her to reach for felt like a rope anchoring her so she didn’t drift out to sea. Their whole lives, John has been something stable; someone who, with very few exceptions, she’s known that she would always be able to rely on. Part of the reason she had felt so adrift in Derse, she realizes in hindsight, was because every stable relationship she had ever had was suddenly pulled out from under her. There was no anchor, nothing holding her in place, and suddenly she was fighting against harsh waves in uncharted waters.

It’s not like that with Dave. She loves him so much, she misses him so much, but their relationship is the furthest thing from stable. She’s not sure if it ever will be stable. When she imagines their bond as a physical tether, she really does imagine the chains that Calliope had described before. It doesn’t feel like she’s chained to Dave, like she’s his prisoner in some way. She doesn’t want to escape. She wants to be by his side forever, to make sure that he’s safe and that he knows how much she needs him.

She realizes with a sudden startling clarity that Dave is the one she imagines in chains.

Dave is the one who can’t escape. Dave is the one shackled by obligations to his father, and his sister, and his people, and her. That’s why he’s spent his whole life being treated as a soldier rather than a prince. That’s why, when their marriage was arranged, Dave was introduced first as the commander of the army. She can still hear the carefully neutral way the king said it wasn’t relevant. She can hear the way he had said Dave turned out to be such a disappointment. She can hear it as clearly as she can hear the shackles around Dave’s wrists and ankles rattling in this mental dungeon she’s constructed.

And now he’s chained to his father, and he’s chained to her, and they’re pulling him in two different directions.

In her mind, she reaches out for him. Chains shift and drag along the ground as her fingers brush against his cheek, and when he leans into her touch, it feels so real that her skin prickles with goosebumps.

“I don’t want you to feel shackled to me,” she breathes, and she’s not entirely sure whether she only thought it or she said it out loud.

“Never gonna happen, Princess,” he replies, as clearly as the day he left.

Jade feels a tear streak down her cheek and her eyes flutter open, but it’s not the clearing that she finds herself in.

Suddenly, she’s aware of an oppressive sort of heat bearing down on her. It’s a lot like the damp unpleasantness of summer in the forest that Calliope assures her is the same every year, but there’s something else to it. The way that it clings to her skin.

Smoke.

It isn’t just the natural heat of early summer, the last lingering traces of offshoot storms, but fire. She doesn’t know how she missed it before. It’s loud in her ears, terribly loud, and she grimaces away from it before, suddenly, she hears someone yelling.

Her eyes snap around what she realizes is a battlefield a moment later in search of the noise, and then her heart leaps into her throat. John. He looks panicked, and she can’t help thinking that her brother wasn’t built for war, but she can’t think it for very long because there’s someone in his arms. They’re hurt.

She’s had this nightmare.

Jade’s world lurches suddenly, and she realizes that she is falling. Her eyes search the area around her frantically for something to grab hold of, but she’s barely processing the world around her and there’s nothing and—

Everything stops in a way that makes her head spin, but then she realizes that there are arms wrapped tightly around her. “Jade? What happened?”

Calliope’s voice sounds so distant, and Jade answers automatically, “Dave is in trouble.” She doesn’t see Calliope’s expression before she peels herself out of her arms, and she’s not flying, can’t fly because she’s too bogged down with this sense of panic, so she teleports instead. She knows how to do that when she’s desperate.

She doesn’t know how far she goes, but the moment that she’s in the new place, she’s falling again. She barely registers it. Her eyes flit all over the rapidly approaching treeline, and when she starts to get too close, she flashes into a new place instead. She repeats this until the trees are starting to thin out and Jade sees fields stretching into the distance. Were they in a field?

As she struggles to remember the details of her vision and struggles to just keep moving, she reaches out with her magic the same way she reached out to the plants, trying to feel for him. To find him. The trees are gone now, but she doesn’t see anything resembling either an active battle or the wreckage left behind from a finished one.

The next time she tries to teleport, she winds up closer to the ground instead of higher. Her heart is hammering against her throat and she feels like she’s going to throw up as she tumbles into the ground, but she didn’t fall very far. She only has a few scrapes to show for it.

“No, no, please, no,” she cries, and it sparks something in her brain, but she doesn’t know what. It feels familiar. All of this feels so familiar.

Jade tries to take a deep breath, but she chokes on it and winds up sobbing instead. She can’t help picturing Dave in that dungeon, shackled to the wall, leaning into her touch so desperately. She manages to take in a sharp breath that shakes in her chest and she squeezes her eyes tightly shut. She tries to picture that battlefield again, where Dave needs her. The heat. The fire. The yelling.

The world goes quiet. She hadn’t realized that there was sound around her, but now she realizes that she can’t hear the wind rustling in the fields of grass or the buzzing of insects moving from plant to plant. There’s no light past her eyes, either. The world is cold and dark and Jade is sure with startling clarity that she is alone.

And then it erupts.

Jade’s world is red and hot and humid, and she flutters her eyes open to see the exact same scene she saw in her vision. Her eyes scan frantically over the battlefield, skirting past dead bodies as she looks for Dave. He’s here. He’s here somewhere, and he’s hurt, and she has to do something.

Calm down, she urges herself, clutching for the sense of confidence she’s had in training these past few weeks. She takes a deep breath, sweeping over the battlefield again even as the smoke stings her eyes and threatens to make her cough.

There.

She sees John before she sees Dave. He’s yelling for help, clutching desperately at the body in his arms—the body that is covered in blood and limp but not quite lifeless. He can’t be lifeless. No, no, please, no.

She’s at their side in an instant, and John curses and reaches for what she assumes must be a weapon before his eyes widen in recognition. “Jade?” he asks, and under different circumstances, the horror and confusion in his voice might make her wince.

She doesn’t answer him. She falls to her knees on the ground next to him and sits on them as she pulls Dave’s head into her lap. His eyes are open and a little bit glassy, and his spectacles are gone. Broken, maybe. Her heart squeezes. As much as she loves the brilliant red of his eyes, she knows they’re not something most people are meant to see. She knows how exposed and vulnerable he must feel without them.

She strokes her fingers through his hair and over his eyes, urging them to close. It’s a little relieving when he resists her at first, because it means that he can resist her, even if he isn’t saying anything. As her eyes fall to his chest, she’s pretty sure she knows why.

It’s hard to clearly see the edges of the hole in Dave’s armor through all of the blood. She can tell that the metal has been rent open by some sort of large weapon. She doesn’t want to imagine the sort of power someone would have to have to do that.

Her breath shakes and her heart pounds as she moves her hands to his chest. She can just faintly hear him hiss, and she feels awful for how much relief it brings. “I know, I’m sorry. I’m going to help,” she whispers. Her stomach lurches from the slick feeling of blood coating her fingers. “You’re going to be okay.” She’s not sure whether she’s trying to reassure him or herself.

She can feel the familiar heat of healing building. She’s not flooded with pleasant memories of her childhood or a sense of calm. Instead, she is clinging to hope and desperation as they slip through her fingers like water. Like blood. Desperately, she presses her hands harder into his chest, urging her magic to work faster, and she’s met with more blood.

“You’re going to be okay,” she repeats, breath shaking. “Please.” No, no, please, no.

She squeezes her eyes tighter shut and tries to clear her mind. She takes a deep breath and pushes through another chorus of No, no, please, no. She focuses instead on the growing warmth she can still feel, on Dave’s heartbeat under her touch, which is so faint that she almost can’t feel it at all, but she thinks it is growing stronger. Steadier. She can feel her confidence building, which only makes her magic stronger. The panic is still there, drumming against her ribs and stirring in her stomach, but she knows what she’s doing. She’s done it a thousand times.

Dave’s heartbeat starts to sync with hers, and in turn her own heartbeat starts to calm down, until they’ve settled together into something almost normal. “You’re going to be okay,” she whispers again, letting the last of her helplessness and desperation and terror bleed into it even as she can feel her magic working through him. “I’ve got you. You’re going to be fine,” she says, a little more insistently.

He coughs. Jade’s eyes snap open, dragging up from the wound on his chest—still open, still bleeding, but so much better —to his face. His eyes have opened again, and she sees a spark of confusion in them. Those brilliantly red eyes. Red like the blood still coating her hands, and, she realizes, like the blood flecking his lips. Her eyes catch on them, and she wants to kiss him so desperately it almost overwhelms her, until finally, he croaks, “Jade?”

END OF ACT 4

Chapter Text

It’s hard being in the navy. It’s hard and nobody understands.

Eridan Ampora was only six years old when it was decided for him that he would join the royal navy. That was the year that his father was promoted, when Savvas Ampora managed to make himself the right hand to the king. That was when the Amporas became important.

Eridan was supposed to become important.

But naturally, his father isn’t so easily impressed as to hold Eridan in high regard for the mere coincidence of being his son, and a bastard to boot. Despite the countless accusations of nepotism he’s faced since he first enlisted, he’s had to rise through the ranks to earn his father’s respect like any other soldier. When people say Eridan will probably be the next commander of the royal navy, it’s because he deserves it. He just needs an opportunity to prove himself.

An opportunity like a war.

When word of Viridan’s declaration of war reached his ship, Eridan knew that this war was his moment. And now that his father is stuck on land assisting the incompetent army, he’s the one in charge of the royal fleet, just as he was always meant to be.

Of course, that doesn’t mean he isn’t struggling to hold things together in his father’s absence.

There’s a crash that nearly knocks Eridan off his feet as the ship jerks, and then there's a series of shouts from outside his door. “Captain Ampora!” one voice calls, and Eridan grits his teeth. Great. Now he has to deal with whatever this miscreant wants. Dealing with subordinates has got to be his least favorite part of the job.

“What?” he snaps without moving to open the door. Whoever is on the other side must take his acknowledgment for permission to enter, because the door creaks open a moment later, bringing with it a miserable stench. Eridan likes to think he’s got a strong constitution, but even his stomach turns at the smell. It doesn’t improve his mood. “What is it? Have the Viridians gotten more reinforcements?”

“No, Captain,” the man says. Perhaps man is a strong term, though. The pale, shaking thing in the doorway to the captain’s quarters looks to be a boy more than a man—he must be no older than… What, 19? The same age Cronus was when—“I think you should come see for yourself.”

Eridan scowls. He doesn’t like leaving the captain’s quarters unless he absolutely has to. It’s not that he’s hiding; it’s just that he has to spend so much time strategizing. He’s used to dealing with the sorts of backwards savages who live to the west of Prospit, but the Viridian army is trained. Sophisticated. They’re a more complicated enemy requiring more complex strategies.

Another crash indicates that he should probably listen to the boy, though.

Eridan follows the boy through the door to the deck, and then his eyes go wide.

A sea monster.

This isn’t the first time he’s dealt with one. It’s not even the first time he’s dealt with one this voyage. If anything, sea monsters are sort of Eridan’s specialty.

But why is this the third one they’ve encountered in as many weeks?

The horned head is covered in dank fur that smells like piss and rotting grass and seawater, but past its neck, the fur starts to trail into a seemingly endless, almost serpentine body, covered in scales that finally end in a fishtail. A sea goat, then. A huge one at that; its body is easily the length of Eridan’s ship, although he doesn’t get a very good look at it before it dives under the surface of the water aiming, Eridan knows, to get under the ship next to his and butt its long, thick horns against the hull of the ship until it finds a weak point.

There are four ships in Eridan’s current fleet. There were ten at the start of the voyage, but between sending reinforcements to the coast, fighting against the Viridian army just to stay afloat, and now three sea monster attacks, their numbers have been steadily dropping.

There’s another crash as the beast rams into the ship, which rocks hard enough that it’s in danger of tipping over, but Eridan doesn’t see anything break. The resulting wave as it rocks back in the other direction comes crashing toward his ship, and several members of his crew stumble.

“Of all fuckin’ things, why did it have to be a sea goat?” he grumbles under his breath. The white whale that they came head-to-head with last week was significantly easier to deal with—among other reasons because it presented a much bigger target.

Reaching out with his magic to summon Ahab’s Crosshairs is like second nature to Eridan at this point. It’s his father’s weapon by right, but as Savvas Ampora has gotten increasingly involved in the political scene, Eridan has found that he uses it more often than his father does these days. The sense of cold calm that washes over him as the weight of the rifle settles into his arms is as reassuring now as it always is, and Eridan lets out a slow breath.

This weapon is perhaps the sole reason his father was able to transition from the dread captain of the most feared pirate ship this side of the globe to a member of the royal navy. Well, that and the fact that King Diederik hardly seems concerned with his soldiers’ backgrounds if they can get the job done. Still, nothing like Ahab’s Crosshairs exists in the world—rifles on their own are extremely rare, let alone one that uses this particular sort of… ammunition.

He’s snapped out of his reflection at another crash. The sea goat has rammed into the neighboring ship again, and Eridan grimaces as he spots a large crack in the hull.

Immediately, the sea goat launches into its real attack. Like a snake, it winds its long body around the ship and uses its hooved front legs to put more strength behind its next dive under the surface, hauling the ship deeper into the water like a draft horse pulling a wagon. It sends another wave out into the water around it as it goes.

“Can you hear me?” Eridan yells at the top of his lungs. He’s never been great at projecting his voice, but the water carries sound far, and as he squints through the viewfinder on his rifle, he sees one of the higher-ranking members of the crew nodding frantically. “Which one of you brave souls is going to jump into the water?”

Another look through the viewfinder shows the soldier pale and wide-eyed, and Eridan rolls his eyes. “Fuckin’ useless…” he mutters, turning back to his regular crew.

“Sir, their ship is sinking,” the boy says, looking nearly as pale and wide-eyed as the soldier from the other ship.

Eridan rolls his eyes. “You don’t say? You’ve got a keen eye for observation,” he says, failing to keep the mocking tone from his voice. “Since you’re so concerned with helpin’ ‘em out, I’ve got a job for you: Dive into the water.”

The boy’s eyes, if such a thing is even possible, go even wider, and he stares at the railing at the side of the deck without moving. Still, he’s smart enough not to argue with his captain’s orders. When Eridan prompts him with a nod of his head in the direction of the railing, he takes a trembling step toward it.

The sea goat dives again at the same time that the boy does, and Eridan is met with panicked yells from the crew of the other vessel as water sloshes over the sides of the deck, but it still hasn’t been pulled completely under the surface of the water. This is good, because the moment that it is is the moment that Eridan can’t do anything to help anymore.

Hauling his rifle up onto his shoulder to squint at the water through the viewfinder, Eridan sees the vague outline of the sea goat’s upper body, but it’s still deep below the surface.

“Come on, you stupid fuckin’ animal,” he grumbles. “Take the bait.”

Barely managing to keep himself afloat in the violently churning waters, the boy’s clothes are already soaked through, and his eyes are still wide with terror. If Eridan can see the pale body of the sea goat shimmering under the surface of the water, then he’s sure the boy can, too. At that age, Eridan is sure he would’ve been pissing himself even worse than this kid seems to be.

Evidently, the monster is frustrated with how little progress it’s been able to make with dragging the ship into the water, because Eridan watches its body uncoil from the ship and sink back into the water. It’ll be ramming against the hull again, and he just has to hope that it gets distracted by the boy in the water, who should make for an easy and appealing snack in the face of a ship that’s fighting against it so hard.

Squinting through the viewfinder again, Eridan sees the sea goat’s body twist and wind until it’s turned back toward the ship. He holds his finger over the trigger as it pauses, frozen. And then it finally happens: The sea goat surges toward the boy, its snout just starting to poke out of the water where it can grab him in its horrible maw.

Eridan fires.

It feels remarkably similar to diving into the water like the boy has. A sort of chill washes over him, a hundred times worse than the one from just summoning the weapon, and a lesser man would probably shiver and wind up missing his shot. Eridan is not a lesser man, though. He holds the rifle steady as he channels magic into it, aiming for where he knows the creature’s head will be when it breaks through the surface.

Like lightning streaking through the air, white light explodes from the end of the weapon and bursts into its head with a visceral spray of dark purple blood. There’s about a half-second when the light first touches it that the sea goat manages to open its mouth with a horrid smell like rotting grass and a wailing bleat that threatens to make the ears bleed, but then it’s cut off by its own swift execution.

Letting the rifle drop to his side, Eridan assesses the damage. The sea is filled with a growing pool of inky midnight purple, and the damaged ship is still sinking, if at a significantly slower rate now that it doesn’t have a monster actively trying to pull it under the surface. And the boy is still exactly where Eridan left him, although he looks like he could drop dead from a heart attack at any moment, staring at the white foam in the water where the sea goat had briefly emerged and nearly eaten him alive.

Eridan turns to yell at the crew on his ship, “What are all of you idiots standin’ around for? We need to get those soldiers onto this ship before they drown!”

There are far too many soldiers from the other ship to feasibly stay on Eridan’s vessel, but he decides to make that a headache for later as half-drowned men are wrapped up in dry towels.

“I’m goin’ back to the captain’s quarters,” he grunts once he’s sure that all of the men have been seen to. “Unless there is an emergency, do not disturb me again.”

A murmur passes among the crew, but Eridan ignores them in favor of ascending the stairs back to his quarters. When he sinks down into the chair at his desk, he lets out a drawn-out groan and buries his head in his hands. He doesn’t want to ask for reinforcements, but he knows that they don’t have a choice in the matter. Not if he wants to prove himself.

Chapter Text

There’s a moment after Dave says her name where all Jade can do is stare because this doesn’t feel real. She can’t count the number of times she had that nightmare where Dave was dying in her arms while she tried desperately to save him, but she knows that there wasn’t a single one that lasted past the moment where he said her name.

But even ignoring all of the nightmares where she had to know with horrifying certainty that her husband was dying, it doesn’t feel real because it’s been so long. How many months have passed since the last time she heard his voice? Certainly, it’s been more than half a year. Has he been gone longer, at this point, than they were together? It doesn’t feel possible, but she knows that they were only married for a few short months before his father sent him away.

His father.

All at once, Jade is hit by the memory of all those letters his father intercepted—the ones that he kept writing her even though she never wrote back. The ones filled with all of his hope and anxiety and love which he must have begun to question if she even really returned. He didn’t get to know how much she missed him too, how much she loved him too—loves him. She opens her mouth to say something, anything, but before she can get any words out, the reality of their situation crashes in around her again as John stoops down to pull Dave out of her arms.

Her grip tightens around him reflexively. “We have to get him to a medic,” John says, his voice carrying all of the gentleness one might use to soothe a horse before they’re thrown off—but it’s only when Dave hisses through his teeth that she’s able to force herself to let go of him.

Still, as John half-drags him through the battlefield with one of Dave’s arms slung across his shoulders and Dave struggles to walk, Jade can’t stop herself from clinging to Dave’s free hand like she’ll lose him if she lets go. She’s not sure she’s ever going to be able to let go of him again.

With the adrenaline still rushing through her veins and nothing to do, Jade finds her eyes snapping around at every sound or sudden movement—although there aren’t many of them. She doesn’t know how far her brother must have dragged Dave before she got here, but it’s far enough that the only signs of an active battle are the distant sounds of fighting and the smoke clinging to her hair and skin. Instead, the area around them looks more like the ruined remnants of a battle already ended. There are collapsed and broken tents scattered around, abandoned weapons of such variety they almost make it look as though the soldiers of either army simply vanished into thin air—lances, spears, long and shortswords, arrows both intact and broken.

But the worst thing by far is the bodies. Jade had just mindlessly rushed past them before in her determination to get to Dave, but now it feels like they’re all staring at her with hauntingly empty eyes. Some of their faces are still contorted in agony, but most of them are completely slack, expressionless. They present a harrowing facsimile of the cold, neutral way King Diederik nearly always looked at her. They’re all identifiably Dersite or Prospitian, which presents an equally haunting image of how the battle must have progressed before she got here.

She manages to tear her eyes away from them when they reach the only structure left standing, a long tent with two soldiers stationed as guards at the entrance. They immediately burst into motion when they recognize John and Dave. They hardly even spare her a glance—why should a princess matter on the battlefield?—as they move to help John support Dave’s weight.

The med tent is a different sort of chaos from the battlefield. There are only two women that Jade can immediately identify as healers—a short, plump woman whose hair is secured away from her face with some sort of pin but otherwise cascades down her back in dark curls, and a young woman Jade recognizes to be Aranea Serket. They flit frantically between half a dozen cots, nearly all of which are occupied—but through some divine act of chance, they manage to find one for Dave to slump into. Jade immediately sinks onto her knees at his side.

Whatever sort of brave face he was putting on while they were moving, whether it was for Jade’s benefit, John’s, or his own, Dave doesn’t stay conscious for long once he’s lying down on the cot. Jade still clings to his hand, squeezing it hard enough that she’s sure she can feel the bones creaking like that can somehow staunch the last of his bleeding. Her other hand comes up to stroke her fingers through his hair and over his face in a way that she hopes is soothing, although her skin feels so grimy from all of the smoke that still clings to every last inch of her that she imagines it must be unpleasant to the touch. Finally, after what feels to Jade like hours but she’s sure is only moments, the healer she doesn’t recognize is at their side.

“What happened?” she asks. Jade isn’t sure if it’s directed at her or John or both of them, because the healer’s eyes are only directed at Dave—at his wounds, specifically, as though he were any other soldier not warranting any special acknowledgment.

John looks grim, his eyes cast toward the floor. He crosses his arms over his chest, holding his own forearms with a white-knuckled grip as he mumbles, “He jumped in the way for me.”

Jade stares between Dave and John, wide-eyed, her mouth opening and closing a few times as she tries and fails to find something to say. The healer is either less stunned by this or better at hiding it, because she just pushes on, even managing to sound somewhat annoyed, “Jumped in the way of what?”

John grimaces. “It was some sort of magic. I didn’t even really understand what was happening.”

The healer mutters something in a language that pings something at the edge of Jade’s awareness and then looks up from Dave toward Aranea. “These injuries seem fairly minor; I don’t think they need magic. I’m going back to Tavros. Take a look at him when you can.”

Jade’s chest squeezes at the name, her heart suddenly pounding somewhere in her throat, and she watches the healer with wide eyes as she strides two cots away to stoop over… Her stomach lurches at the sight of him.

There’s a lance buried deep in Tavros’ gut, and it’s difficult to tell where the lance ends and the injury begins for the amount of blood that coats the weapon. His eyes are closed, his face slack, but Jade can see his chest rising and falling with his breaths. Unconscious, but alive.

“We need to talk.” Jade’s eyes snap back up to her brother.

John’s arms are no longer crossed over his chest like a shield but wrapped around himself in a self-soothing gesture she recognizes from childhood. It’s not the miserably guilty expression he used to get when someone would lecture him about princely conduct or the poorly concealed embarrassment when Dad would talk about how proud of him he was.

It’s the way he’d always look when Jade was in trouble and he felt like it was his fault.

It’s the way he’d look when she’d try to pull off some prank on him and wind up getting stuck somewhere. It’s the way he’d look when they were playing together and she would hurt herself. It’s the way he’d look when he and Dad would come back from visiting Skaia and she would get sick. It’s the way he’d look when the two of them would get caught in some scheme and she would lie and say it was her idea.

It’s the way her older brother looks when he feels like he’s failed to protect her.

Jade knew that it was only a matter of time before they would have to talk about her magic, but she was hoping she might get at least a day. Even an hour; despite the way it feels like exhaustion is starting to settle over her mind like a thick fog, Jade knows it’s really only been moments since she got here.

She looks down at Dave’s face again. He’s still unconscious, but there’s something about it that looks so peaceful. Her heart throbs at the idea of leaving him. A moment later, though, as if sensing her presence was in some way urgently needed, Aranea approaches and rests a hand on Jade’s shoulder. “I’ll take care of him, Your Highness,” she answers. Jade isn’t sure if she’s saying it because Dave is Jade’s husband or if it’s because they’re technically sisters-in-law now.

With a deep breath and a last squeeze of Dave’s hand, Jade pushes through her exhaustion to force herself onto her feet. John leads her to one of the far corners of the tent, and she spares another glance at Tavros as they pass. The healer leaned over him seems to have used some sort of magic to slow his bleeding so she can start the process of slowly and carefully removing the lance; there is still so much blood it makes Jade’s stomach turn.

When they reach the corner, Jade starts, “John—”

“You can’t be here,” John says quickly, swiftly cutting Jade off before she can start explaining anything.

She grimaces. “John,” she starts again. When he doesn’t cut her off this time, she continues, “I have to be here. I can help. I can keep you safe—I can keep Dave safe. I don’t want either of you dying for each other.”

A flash of hurt crosses John’s face. “Do you think he wouldn’t die for you?” he says, managing to make his voice sound stern. Then, softer, he adds, “Do you think I wouldn’t die for you?”

Jade’s stomach turns at the idea. “You don’t have to die for me. Neither of you have to die for me.”

“How can you possibly say that? This is a battlefield, Jade! People die all of the time. And there is no way I could ever let that happen to you.”

“And how am I supposed to just let that happen to you?” she snaps, louder than she means to. Jade can’t bring herself to look around and see if anyone is looking at them, but she can feel a tension hanging in the air. Quieter, she adds, “I couldn’t live with myself if I just left you here, John.”

A dozen different emotions flash across her brother’s face—some horrible mix of guilt and betrayal and anger and concern. It’s so obvious she can practically feel it squeezing her own chest like a vice grip, until he finally sucks in a sharp breath and says, “How long have you been using magic?”

No matter how long Jade has spent trying to prepare herself to hear those words from John, it feels like it sends a painful jolt through her whole body. The worst part is the way that he doesn’t say it with a trace of disgust or hatred. It would almost be easier if he was repulsed, because then she might be able to make him understand why she couldn’t tell him.

“Our whole lives,” she finally whispers, and she brings her own arms up to hug herself tightly, mirroring his posture perfectly.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I couldn’t.”

“I would have protected you.”

“That’s exactly why I couldn’t,” Jade insists, a pleading edge bleeding into her tone. “You couldn’t be the king with a magic sister, John. After all of those mages in Prospit who were killed or exiled just for being born like me, and with the war in Derse, how would it look if people found out there was a mage in the royal family and you were protecting her? They would have rallied against the double standard—and they would have been right.”

“They wouldn’t have been right,” John argues, indignation flaring up on all his features. His arms come away from his body to start gesturing wildly in the air as he continues, “The prejudice against magic is wrong. It’s always been wrong. You don’t know how many times magic has saved a Prospitian’s life in this war, even though we’ve never given Dersites a single reason to help us—a single reason other than you. How could…” He falters for a moment, his arms dropping to his sides and his eyes dropping to the floor. His impassioned speech becomes a sad murmur when he says, “How could they ever have been right hating you?”

Jade’s throat feels tight and her eyes sting as she stares at him. There’s so much more she wants to say—about how that’s not what she meant, about how it’s more complicated than that, about how this isn’t Prospit’s war in the first place so of course the Dersites are helping them—but all of the words die on her tongue until she finally throws her arms around him.

John’s arms come up to wrap around her instantly. It’s the sort of bone-crushing hug she’d been used to from their father, and it’s easy to sink into her brother’s chest where no one can see her suck in a shuddering gasp. “I’m sorry,” she breathes, so soft she’s not sure even he can hear it. Either way, his arms tighten around her and he buries his nose against the top of her head.

They spend a long moment standing there together like that before the sound of someone entering the tent draws their attention. “The Viridian army has retreated. We’re still counting the injured and the dead, but it’s not looking good. What’s the status on the shitheads in here?”

Jade can’t help but stare for a moment, her eyes still stinging, her heart still aching. Perhaps it’s just because she’s just hugged her brother, but the moment her body unfreezes, she practically launches herself across the tent to throw her arms around him.

“Ooph—what the fuck?” Karkat grunts. Then, hardly a second later, he lets out a startled, “Jade?”

Her voice warbles with a wet laugh as she says, “Karkat.”

He hugs her back a moment later. He doesn’t hold her nearly as tightly as John had, but it feels like safety and security in a way she’s not sure she’s felt since he left. Karkat pulls away much faster than John did, too, placing his hands on her shoulders to hold her at arms-length. “How the fuck are you here, Jade?”

“It’s a long story,” she dismisses, swiping hastily at her eyes. Karkat is one of the few people she would ordinarily be okay with crying in front of, but not after making such a public spectacle of their reunion. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

“Okay is a word for it,” he grunts, and she manages to huff another laugh because it’s so like him. His face softens, and then he mumbles, “I’m glad you’re okay, too. I know that they wouldn’t have let anything happen to you in the palace, but when you weren’t writing back…”

Jade grimaces, her eyes darting away from him. “I’m sorry. I would have if I could have, but… Well, that’s another long story. Two, actually.”

She can practically feel the way Karkat’s brow furrows as he stares at her, but before he can start prying, they both spot Aranea approaching. Jade straightens and holds her breath, chewing nervously on the inside of her cheek. “He’s awake,” Aranea reports.

Jade doesn’t wait for anything else. She breaks away to return to Dave’s side in an instant, and she’s only absently aware of Karkat and John following behind her.

Dave’s skin still has a chalky tone, his lips an impossibly pale shade of purple, and his forehead is sticky with sweat, but their eyes meet and he starts to lean up onto an elbow at the same time that Jade sinks down to her knees at his side again. A relieved sob is already bubbling up in her chest, and it breaks through the surface when she brings a hand up to cup his cheek and he leans into her touch, his eyes fluttering shut.

“What are you doing here?” he breathes, his voice still low.

“You were hurt.”

He huffs a sound that might be a laugh, and he’s apparently too exhausted from the injury to keep one corner of his mouth from turning up in a half-smile. “If I’d known that’d get me back to you, I would’ve jumped in front of John ages ago.”

“That’s not funny,” she says, even as a laugh trembles in her chest. There are tears welling up in her eyes again, and her voice breaks halfway through as she murmurs, “I thought I was never going to see you again.”

He laughs weakly again. “Never gonna happen, Princess.”

She can’t stop another sob, and she leans in where she can finally kiss him again.

It feels just as magical as the first time. His lips are still chapped—worse, this time, she thinks, straining to remember how it had felt back then—but they manage to feel almost cold against hers. She can feel the hand he’s not using to hold himself up move to hold her waist, and she wants to sink against him completely, but she’s pressingly aware of the fact that they’re still in a med tent, completely surrounded by people.

Instead, she focuses on the familiar wellspring of warmth in her chest and channels all of the healing magic she has left into him. She moves her free hand to rest against the injury on his chest, feeling the rough bandages Aranea has wrapped around it under her fingers, and tilts her head to press that much closer to him. She doesn’t break away from him until she finally has to breathe, and even then she sinks her forehead against his.

Like that first night they spent together, the entire room is bathed in the characteristic green light she’s come to associate with her magic. She never learned how or why Calliope’s magic can’t be seen, but by this point, the soft glow of her own has become something of a comfort. It doesn’t make her feel like a terrified little girl trying desperately to hide her magic and just be normal anymore; it makes her feel like the witches who became queens in the Dersite fairytales she used to read in secret.

Dave’s breaths are no longer wet and ragged against her mouth, and she can see, hear, and feel him take a deep breath before he leans a little harder against her. “I love you.”

It feels like her heart might just swell out of her chest. “I love you,” she repeats, hoping her voice is soft enough that they might have some privacy in this moment.

A second later, there’s a soft groan from several feet away. The last thing Jade wants to do is pull away from Dave, but he leans his own head over to look toward the source of the noise, so she turns to find it, too.

Her eyes go wide as she realizes that Tavros is awake, and the healer who was working on him moves her hands as though to catch him as he rolls halfway onto his side. His legs don’t move, though, and the way that he twists at the abdomen threatens to re-open the deep wound where the lance has finally been pulled from his gut. “Stop! Don’t!” the healer says a little frantically, but he just stares at Jade with wide brown eyes.

Her chest squeezes and her stomach churns with an anxious sort of nausea as she looks around to find that everyone else in the tent is staring at her, too.

Chapter Text

Jade all-but lives in the medical tent for the next few days while the soldiers work to reset their camp. The most recent battle, apparently, was the product of an ambush, and according to the other healers, it isn’t the first time. The Viridian army is persistent and ruthless, and they rarely get a moment of rest. The idea that this is how Dave, Karkat, and John have been living for months makes her sick, and it’s the primary force that pushes her through her work.

She learns in the medical tent that there used to be more healers, but some have been dispatched to support the naval forces while many others have become casualties of the war. Of the two who are left, Jade already knows of Aranea Serket. They’ve never met before—she wasn’t at Jade’s wedding like Vriska was, and Jade briefly wonders why—but it would be difficult not to know her name or recognize her face given who her mother is. Plus, there’s the surreal fact that her sister is married to Jade’s brother.

Aranea does not have any magic—she’s a good Prospitian noble, after all—but she makes up for it with an in-depth knowledge of medicine that rivals Calliope’s. She usually tends to the soldiers who have the least urgent injuries, and she’s always happy to ramble to Jade about the procedures she’s carrying out as she does them.

The other healer is Aradia Megido.

“Megido?” Jade asks the first time she hears her name, staring at her in bewilderment.

“Yep!” Aradia says, grinning brightly despite the ghastly scene under her hands as she speeds up the healing on a leg injury that Jade is pretty sure will need to be amputated. “I take it you’ve met my mother? That’s the only reason people ever react that way.”

Jade has met her mother, but it’s the connection to Calliope that really has her staring at Aradia like some sort of odd miracle child. Somehow, when she was piecing together the handmaid’s escape from Viridan, her time with Calliope, and her subsequent exile to Derse, Jade hadn’t factored in the possibility that she might have had any children. She certainly didn’t act very maternal when Jade was in Vale.

“How did that happen?” Jade finally asks.

Aradia laughs, a warm and bright sound that fills the entire tent. “My mother was a refugee from Beforus. My father was a soldier. He found her on the brink of collapse while he was patrolling at the border, as though she hadn’t eaten or slept in days. She didn’t trust him at first, but she didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. He took her home and took care of her.”

“I didn’t know that she was married. She never mentioned…”

Aradia shakes her head, and Jade might be imagining it, but her smile suddenly seems sad. “They weren’t married for very long; he died when I was only a baby, in some war or another. Mother doesn’t like to talk about it, so I’ve never gotten all of the details. She went to the palace and pleaded to serve the royal family, and then she became the queen’s handmaid.”

This, at least, aligns with the story that Calliope gave her. Jade finds herself staring at Aradia’s face for some sign of the same magic that Mitoki has—that Damara has—that Jade has. She doesn’t have the same vibrantly green eyes that her mother and Jade and Calliope all do, though; hers are a dark, rich color treading a thin line between brown and red. Finally, Jade remembers to say, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Aradia simply shrugs. “That’s the way of things. And in a way, it was probably the best thing for us. I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to master time magic if I hadn’t grown up in the palace halls, sneaking glances at the princess’ tutoring sessions.”

Jade’s stomach churns, and she stares down at the soldier that Aradia is tending to, whose leg is almost black with infection. “You grew up with Dave and Rose?”

“Not with them, per se,” Aradia says, shrugging. She evidently comes to the same conclusion as Jade about the leg, because she finally pulls away from it, wiping the blood from her hands onto her dress absentmindedly. “We weren’t close the way that Nepeta and Rose were close. I could probably count the number of times I talked to them growing up on my hands! But we were certainly around each other, and it’s undeniable that their lives influenced mine.”

Jade has a thousand more questions about that; even when she and Nepeta had been spending so much time together, they didn’t really talk about the years between being sent to Vale to be Rose’s lady-in-waiting and Jade’s arrival in Derse. She doesn’t have access to those stories from their teen years, may or may not ever have access to those stories, but here Aradia is apparently a repository for childhood stories about her husband in a way even the queen wasn’t.

But before she has the opportunity to ask any of them, Jade hears Tavros groaning from across the tent, and she reports dutifully to his side.

Dave recovered quickly after she healed him. He was only in the med tent for one more day so Aradia and Aranea could keep an eye on him, and he did receive a slight nudge in his natural healing process from Aradia’s time magic, but then he was right back to his duties as the commander of the army. Since then, Tavros has been Jade’s primary patient.

She can’t imagine the sort of luck Tavros must have that the lance failed to rupture any of his vital organs. There was some minor internal damage, but it only took Jade two days of devoted healing to patch that up, and by now, most of his external injuries are completely gone.

It’s just the issue of his spine.

“How are your legs feeling today, Sir Nitram?” Jade says, trying to inject her voice with pep so he might take some comfort in it. That feels important to the healing process, somehow.

“They aren’t,” he answers. Jade grimaces.

“Well, let’s see if we can make any more progress today!”

Jade takes a deep breath before she presses her hands against his abdomen, working her fingers under the layers of his clothing. His armor had been stripped away long before she got here, but in some vain attempt to protect his modesty, they’ve only asked him to take off his clothes when strictly necessary. Her eyes flutter shut, and she summons forth some positive memory she can use to focus on healing.

“I’m not, uh, a Sir, yet,” Tavros says, and Jade blinks her eyes open to stare at him.

“Huh?”

“I’m just a squire. You don’t get, uh, Sir until you’re a real knight. So, probably I won’t ever, uh, be a Sir.”

“Don’t talk like that! We just need a little more time—”

“Wow. It’s, uh, really nice of you, to try to make me feel better, Princess, but it’s okay. I was probably, uh, never going to be a real knight anyway, on account of being kind of, uh, lame, and a baby. And I’ve never heard of a knight who, uh, couldn’t walk. So you don’t need to try to, uh, make me feel better.”

Jade’s brows pinch together, and she tries to think of something to say, some argument to show that he’s wrong, but admittedly, it’s kind of hard to be optimistic. “We’ll keep trying,” she assures. “And hey, maybe you could be the first!”

Tavros actually laughs at that, offering Jade a weak smile. “Thanks, Jade,” he says, and then lets his head sink back against the cot. Before she has the opportunity to try to heal him again, though, the tent flaps open.

She freezes when she sees Dave coming straight for them.

Even from halfway across the tent, Jade is pretty sure she can see him clenching his jaw, and there’s a tense set to his shoulders as he walks. She turns to look at him more fully when he comes close enough, and she can’t stop herself from bringing her hands up to hold his arms for just the smallest hint of contact. They haven’t seen each other since he was dismissed from the med tent, and they still haven’t had a moment alone together.

“Jade,” he says, and the way that he says it makes her tense up, like it’s physically painful. “I need you to come with me.”

Jade’s brow furrows again, and she glances over at Tavros. “I can’t. I have healing to do, I’m the only one who—”

“I know,” Dave says, cutting her off, and she stares at him even harder. He’s clearly not happy about the fact that he’s been sent to retrieve her, but being that he’s the commander of the army, she’s not sure who has the authority to summon her if he says no. Briefly, she considers that it might be the king and her heart starts to pound against her ribs, but she pushes the thought away. It wouldn’t make any sense for King Diederik to have come to the battlefield now, after so many months where he was happy to ignore the front lines he sent his son to.

Still, obviously, Dave doesn’t feel like he outranks whoever it is. Jade purses her lips and glances over at Tavros, who’s picked his head up again to look at the prince. When he notices Jade looking at him, he smiles again. “Go. I’m, uh, not going anywhere.”

Under different circumstances, she might huff a laugh. As it stands, she just bites her lip and nods, sliding a hand down Dave’s arm to tangle their fingers together.

Jade keeps her head down as they walk past soldiers cobbling together tents from whatever they can salvage, until Jade is led into a seemingly-undamaged tent about half the size of the med tent. She’s not sure which person in the room makes her want to run away the most.

Her brother is standing at one side of a square-shaped table with a map spread out on it; the small wooden pieces that dot the landscape remind Jade of King Diederik’s war room. John’s arms are crossed over his chest, and he doesn’t look any happier than Dave does when she walks in, so she guesses he’s not the one who sent for her.

Not far from him, Alyona Serket is bickering with Savvas Ampora. Their voices are low enough that Jade can’t hear what they’re saying, but she can tell that it’s bickering from their body language.

The hat that Alyona was wearing in Jade’s vision is nowhere to be seen, giving Jade a clear view of her face. She looks somehow older than Jade would have expected. She doesn’t know why; Alyona is old enough to be her mother—is John’s mother-in-law, she guesses—not to mention the fact that she’s been a high-ranking military official as long as Jade can remember. Still, whenever Jade pictures her, she still thinks of that portrait in the long hall leading to the castle’s library, with the vicious grin that makes it look as though she’s prepared to eat the painter as soon as the portrait is done. Here, she just looks annoyed, although Jade thinks there might be an odd kind of fondness behind it, and the way that she glares at Savvas emphasizes the traces of wrinkles stemming from the one eye that isn’t covered by an eyepatch. Her wavy black hair has the first streaks of white-grey in it.

Alyona had become known as Captain Mindfang early into her service, but the stories about the origins of the nickname always change—at least, the specific details do. What Jade has gathered, at least, is that she became famed for her skills in interrogation. She could break the spirit of any man; of course, it was probably made easier by the fact that she seems to have no qualms with torture.

Across from her, Savvas Ampora presents exactly as imposing an image as Jade would expect. Much like her grandfather was called Golgotha’s Terror long before he was called Grandpa, the leader of Derse’s navy earned a reputation as the Orphaner Dualscar even before his military service, when he was still the dread captain of the most-feared crew of pirates in… possibly the world. Among Prospitian children, his name was sometimes whispered like some sort of ghost story, warning that if you were bad he might sail up to your town and slaughter your family. Whenever John would tell her about it, he would always tack on an addendum that Alyona Serket was one of the only sailors who crossed paths with him before he reinvented himself as some sort of politician who lived to tell the tale, so he was sure that he wouldn’t get very far before someone swooped in to stop him.

He looks more like the sketch Dave had done of him than the portrait in the palace, with his face twisted into a scowl that only serves to emphasize the two long scars dragging from his brow, over his right eye, and down into his top lip, which looks as if he’d been caught on a fishing hook as a child for how shredded it is. His hair is slicked back neatly, apparently undisturbed by the grueling months of combat, and his beard is neatly trimmed. He has rings on each finger of both hands, which are currently curled into fists against the tabletop.

Both of them snap their attention to Dave and Jade as they enter the tent, and Jade has to focus very hard to keep from shrinking in on herself. Mindfang’s mouth immediately widens into her trademark grin, which doesn’t make Jade any less nervous, while Dualscar seems to scowl even harder, if such a thing is even possible.

“This is the powerful mage no one will fuckin’ shut up about? She’s a little girl,” he scoffs, and Jade bristles with indignation, standing a little bit straighter.

“You’re the one who insisted she be brought here in the first place,” John says, and Jade knows him well enough to hear the barely-concealed anger in his voice.

“He wasn’t the only one,” Mindfang cuts in, and then she takes a step around the table to approach them. Jade clenches her jaw around her nerves, and Mindfang’s grin twitches at the edges slightly before she brings her fingers up to stroke along Jade’s jaw. “Such a pretty little thing. This is your wife, isn’t it, Prince David?” She somehow manages to make prince sound like an insult.

“I am,” Jade cuts in. “And I can speak, too. I was doing important work in the medical tent. There are a lot of men who need healing, and I’m not under the impression that we have many more soldiers to spare at this point. Why did you pull me away from that to come here?”

Mindfang laughs, throwing her head back dramatically and stumbling a step back. Jade’s eyes flit around to the other occupants of the room, like she’s trying to verify that she isn’t crazy for finding the display a little overt. “Oh, she’s feisty. I like her.”

“Of course you do,” Dualscar grumbles. Then, “Come here, child.”

Jade considers staying in place in protest against being called a child, but that’ll only prolong the time until she’s able to get back to the soldiers who need her, so she clenches her jaw again and walks forward until she’s standing on the other side of the map. She peers down at it, her mind already working to piece together what each of the pieces laid out must mean.

“We’ve heard tell that you’re able to move great distances with magic. None of our soldiers will shut up about it,” he grunts. She looks back up at him, even if she doesn’t want to. “Is this true?”

Jade considers this for a moment. Even after months with Calliope, it still feels so unusual to talk so openly about her magic. It’s as if being with John and Dave again has reverted her right back to where she was the last time she saw either of them, when it seemed like keeping her magic hidden was key to her survival. “It’s true,” she eventually manages to force out.

Dualscar grunts again, and then starts gesturing at the pieces on the map. “The majority of our battles have been at sea. While they’ve had small squadrons ambushin’ the land-based army to keep them exhausted and on high-alert, the naval fleet has been sinkin’ ships left and right. Our navy desperately needs reinforcements.”

“Our navy has been trying to send reinforcements for months,” Mindfang cuts in, and then points at the expanse of sea between Prospit’s northeasternmost coast and the southwestern border of Viridan. “But they’ve effectively blocked us out of this entire stretch of sea, so we can only access Viridan by sailing from the southern coast, around Beforus, and up to the southeastern border. It’s a long journey, and the conditions are rough even without factoring in the abandoned naval mines from the revolt. From there, we have to cross Viridan’s land by foot to meet here. It just isn’t effective.”

Jade stares between the two naval commanders and the map, chewing on her lip. She can barely wrap her mind around the logistics of it all even with the map for reference. Still, after a moment, she says, “What can I do to help?”

“We need to get reinforcements to the ships,” Dualscar says. “If you can repeat your little magic trick, we might actually be able to turn the tide and end this fuckin’ war.”

Immediately, Jade furrows her brow and shakes her head. “I’ve never tried to move anyone else before.”

“How long do you think it would take you to figure it out?” John asks, and Jade is almost startled. She had sort of forgotten he was here; this is the first time he’s spoken since he angrily snapped when she got here.

She glances back down at the map like she’ll somehow find the answers written on it, but she isn’t really looking at it. Instead, she’s trying to think back to her training with Calliope. How long was she studying magic in the woods?

“Maybe two months?” she offers.

“We don’t have two months,” Dualscar sneers.

“Could you do it in one?” Mindfang says, tone surprisingly gentle, like if she’s patient enough she can somehow coax Jade into learning magic faster.

Jade looks between Dave and John and chews on her lip. She doesn’t like the idea of them being stuck at war for another two months while she tries to figure out how to teleport an entire army across an entire sea in the hope that that would somehow bring an end to the war. But if she doesn’t try, they could get stuck out here even longer—they could never come home. That possibility terrifies her more than anything.

“I can try,” she offers again, tentatively.

“Well, that’s all we can ask, isn’t it?” Mindfang smiles softly, and it’s such a sharp turn from how she was acting when Jade first came into the tent that it almost makes her head spin. Her name really is well-earned, Jade thinks.

“Was there anything else you needed from me?” Jade asks.

“No. You may leave,” Dualscar says, even waving his hand at her dismissively.

When she gets back out of the tent, though, a hand catches her wrist. Jade spins on her feet immediately, her heart pounding as though there’s anyone in this camp who really poses a threat to her. She still lets out a sigh of relief when she realizes that it’s Dave.

“Hey. I can’t talk, I have to get back to the med tent; I still haven’t healed Tavros, and there are so many other people injured—”

“Come rest with me,” he says. There’s a fragile quality to his voice that makes her heart throb.

“I can’t,” she says softly. “They need me.”

“There are other healers.”

“But not any who can do what I can do!”

“Jade,” he pleads. “They’ll be fine for one night.”

“Then I need to be training to teleport all of those people into battle.”

“You can’t just use magic all of the time, Jade.”

“Why not? I know how. I’m good at it. I’ve learned a lot over the last few months, Dave. You have no idea.”

“You’re going to burn yourself out, and that’s not going to help anyone.” She stares at him, her stomach churning. As much as she doesn’t want to admit it, she’s sure that he’s right. Calliope had always made such a point of rest, and though Jade is sure some of that had to do with the fact that she was still healing from her injuries, she can also feel the exhaustion already starting to seep into her bones.

But… “I have to do something, Dave.”

Dave brings a hand up to tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear and then cradles her cheek, murmuring, “You’ve done enough, Jade.”

She shakes her head. “No, I haven’t! An ambush could come at any moment, and barely any of the soldiers injured in the last battle are back up on their feet, and—”

Dave swoops down to kiss her, swiftly cutting off any of her other arguments (not that she really had many other arguments). She melts into him instantly, sliding her own hands up to cup either side of his jaw and hold him close. For a moment, she thinks that this is their first moment alone together, but then she remembers that they’re still out in the open while the rest of the soldiers rebuild the camp around them and this isn’t a moment alone together.

Dave sinks his forehead against hers when he breaks the kiss, and Jade tilts her head up to nudge her nose against his affectionately. “Please come rest with me,” he breathes.

There’s still so much to do, so many people counting on her. But Dave is looking at her like she’s the most precious thing in the world, and there’s a familiar terror in his eyes. She recognizes it as the same terror she felt when the messenger came to the palace to deliver the news of Equius’ death, the same terror she felt every time she had a nightmare where she had to feel her husband’s life draining out of him under her hands—the terror that he might lose her, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

“Okay,” she says softly, tilting her head up to press another quick kiss against his mouth. Her hands slide down to grab his, and he leads her backwards into his tent.

Chapter Text

Jade wakes up in the morning to the blanket slipping from her naked form, and she hastily grabs it to cover herself. She doesn’t really expect anyone to come bursting into Dave’s tent without announcing themselves, both because he’s the commander of the army and because she knows plenty of people saw them walking into the tent together even if she tried her very best to be quiet. She also sort of doubts that anyone would care even if they did find her naked, but she can’t help some ingrained sense of modesty. Years of growing up as a princess don’t go away after a few months in the woods, even if most of those years were spent in seclusion.

She’s a little surprised to find that Dave is still pressed up against her, his arms wrapped loosely around her waist. He’s spent most of their marriage slipping out of bed before she woke up. Granted, he did stay after their last night together, but then he was called away to war the very next morning and she didn’t see him for…

Thinking about how long it’s been makes Jade’s stomach churn and her heart throb, so she focuses instead on how peaceful Dave looks while he’s sleeping. His brow isn’t furrowed with concern, his lips aren’t tugged down into a barely-perceptible frown or forced into a carefully neutral line, and his chest rises and falls with slow, steady breaths.

She slides her hand against the still-healing scar on his chest and she grimaces. She wishes that she could have done more for it. What sort of healer is she if she can’t even heal her own husband? But she can hear Dave’s voice in the back of her mind telling her that she saved his life, so she pushes that thought away, too.

She briefly considers waking him, but she can’t stand the thought of disrupting that peace. She tries instead to carefully peel herself away from him without disturbing him, letting out a breath of relief when his arms slip away from her easily rather than tightening around her.

It takes Jade a moment to find her clothes, and then she tugs her dress back on and steps out of the tent. She squints against the dim light and realizes that it’s barely dawn—of course Dave didn’t wake up before her.

Overnight, it seems like the soldiers have finished resetting the camp. There’s a small group gathered around a fire not far away from her, and past them she can see members of the cavalry tending to horses. She doesn’t remember there being horses, and she finds it unlikely that she wouldn’t have noticed them. Did they get reinforcements?

One way to find out, she guesses.

When she gets a little closer to the soldiers gathered around the fire, she realizes that one of them is Karkat, and she sits in the empty space on the ground next to him. There are no chairs or logs to sit on, just soldiers sitting on the bare ground with their hands held out to the fire. Jade doesn’t think that it’s really all that cold—in fact, she’s sure it must be nearly summer—but she holds her hands out toward it anyway, just to feel like she’s fitting in a little better.

“Jade,” Karkat greets; he doesn’t bother with her formal title even though they’re around people who might find it overly familiar, and she feels a sense of palpable relief.

Jade leans over to bump her shoulder against his, and Karkat rolls his eyes. “It’s good to see you,” she says, because she’s not entirely sure if she said it the last time they talked, and even if she did, it’s still true.

Karkat huffs something like a laugh. “I promised you you would, didn’t I? Actually, I’m pretty sure my exact words were, ‘If I don’t make it home, you can kill me yourself.’”

She huffs her own laugh, startled by the memory once he brings it up. So much has happened that she can’t believe Karkat actually still remembers what he said back then, but then, his memory has always been better than hers. “I think there are some other people who would probably deserve it more,” she teases. Then, her face settling into something slightly less teasing, she adds, “Has Terezi written to you at all?”

He grimaces, and Jade is pretty sure she sees a pair sitting across the fire from them lean in to murmur something to each other. “I don’t think Terezi is exactly equipped to write me letters,” he mutters.

“Vriska could help her.”

“I would rather die at war than have Vriska fucking Serket be involved in any step of the process in writing me letters—and that’s from anyone, not just Terezi. But the clouds only know what sort of embarrassing personal shit Terezi would stick in there just because she thought it was funny, and I definitely don’t want Vriska fucking Serket to have access to that.”

Jade snorts, biting her lip. “Hey, be careful. I hear that’s your queen now.”

“Queen consort,” he corrects. Jade doesn’t see why the distinction really matters—it’s not like they’ve ever had a queen regnant in Prospit before—but she also doesn’t care enough to keep poking fun at him about it.

“I don’t remember the camp having any horses,” she posits instead. She eyes the nearest one a little warily, although it seems perfectly content to stay where it is with someone stroking a thick, boar-bristled brush along its sides. “Are these reinforcements?”

“Not exactly,” Karkat says, his face twisting up into something unpleasant that Jade doesn’t entirely know how to read. “We sent a small squadron out to do some scouting a few days ago—see if we couldn’t locate the Viridian camp before they located ours.”

“Well, that obviously worked,” Jade snorts, although she immediately feels a little insensitive for it. As if he had any control over that.

Karkat doesn’t seem affected by her comment—in fact, he snorts his own laugh, which Jade guesses aligns better with the sorts of jokes he always used to make under his breath when they were growing up, now that she’s thinking about it. “I guess they started riding back when they caught wind of the ambush, but obviously they didn’t make it back in time to do anything.”

Jade raises her eyebrows. “They were far enough away that it took them multiple days to ride back and they still didn’t find the Viridian camp?”

He grimaces again. “I haven’t had the opportunity to ask how far out they went yet, but it’s not exactly surprising. We think they’re using magic to conceal their camp.”

Jade purses her lips thoughtfully. Is this the sort of magic that can’t be seen, like Calliope’s healing, or is there some sign that the soldiers just don’t know to look for? “I could try to check it out,” she offers.

Karkat raises his eyebrows. “Does this have to do with the long story that you mentioned?”

She winces, even though he doesn’t say it in an accusatory manner. “Yes.”

“You think you’re ever gonna tell me about it?”

She hesitates, a familiar, deeply-ingrained apprehension about openly discussing her magic clawing at her chest. Karkat knows, though, and so do all of the other soldiers in the camp. Beyond just knowing, they seem to actually admire her for it. At least, Dualscar certainly seemed to think so.

“The king and queen learned about my magic,” she starts, and Karkat’s eyebrows raise up even higher before he leans back and crosses his arms over his chest in what she knows to be his I’m listening posture. “At first I thought it was going to be fine; the queen even offered to help me learn.” Jade doesn’t know why she doesn’t want to implicate Rose, who could have been just as responsible for the king discovering her magic as Roxana was; she doesn’t, though. “I tried studying magic with her for a few weeks, but I wasn’t making much progress. It was… frustrating. I guess I wasn’t the only one who was frustrated, because I learned that the king had been withholding my letters. He said that they were a distraction. I didn’t realize that you and Dave had been writing to me until… Well, much later than I should have.

“I… didn’t react very well. At first, I really thought I was going to attack the king, but Rose managed to talk me down, and I just ran away instead. Or… Well, I didn’t really run away. I sort of flashed away—the same way that I did to get here. But I ended up falling and hurting myself pretty badly. I was lucky enough that there happened to be a mage in the woods near where I crashed. She nursed me back to health and then taught me how to use my magic. I’m still not an expert or anything, but I could probably do something as simple as scouting out a camp.”

When she finally stops talking, Karkat just stares at her for a long minute, and she can practically see the gears turning in his head. It’s a lot of information to dump on him all at once, but she did warn him. “So, when the war is over and we all go back home… Where are you going to go?”

Jade winces. She’s been trying not to think about it, but she knows that if and when they win, Dave will have to go back to the capital. Back to his father. She hates the idea of being there and under the king’s thumb again, but she hates the idea of being away from Dave again even more.

“I’m not sure,” she answers honestly, when she can’t come up with any better answer.

Karkat grunts. “Well, you know I’ll follow you anywhere,” he says. There’s a trace of something in it—loyalty, obviously, the same loyalty that he’s been showing her since they were children, but something else, too. It makes something guilty and uncomfortable stir in her gut.

“Let’s just try to focus on winning the war before we try to plan for whatever happens after,” she says lightly, offering him the best teasing smile she can muster.

“It’s not looking good on that front,” he mutters. She raises her eyebrows. Karkat has never been known for his optimism, but the verbiage implies evidence. “We’re at a standstill. We can’t get reinforcements in or out, and their magic is unlike anything we’ve ever seen—even the Dersites.”

“So I’ve heard,” Jade says, grimacing.

“And who’s been filling you in?” he says, although it sounds more amused than anything.

“Dualscar. And Mindfang, a little bit.” He gapes at her, and she shrinks in on herself. “...They really think that my magic could make a difference here.”

“The Orphaner Dualscar thinks that?” he asks incredulously. When she just nods meekly, he says, “Holy fucking shit, Jade. You didn’t mention that your mentor in the woods gave you superpowers.”

She snorts. “I don’t think that he was very impressed with me—I think that he’s desperate, and I happened to show up in a particularly dramatic and attention-getting way.”

Karkat shakes his head. “Ampora doesn’t give a shit about what the soldiers in camp are whispering to each other behind his back. If he did, he’d be a little more covert about the way he’s constantly up Serket’s ass. If he said that you can make a difference, it’s because he thinks that.”

Jade can’t help but wrinkle her nose at the thought that Savvas Ampora is impressed with her and she’s supposed to feel good about it. Granted, she barely has more to go off of than rumors and Dave’s one journal entry when it comes to him, but none of those things have exactly painted a pleasant picture.

Before she can grumble about it, though, Karkat says, “So what does he want you to do? Teleport the whole army in one place so we can push the front?”

He says it like a joke, but Jade winces. “Basically,” she mumbles.

Again, Karkat gapes at her. “I was fucking kidding,” he eventually scoffs, incredulous. It actually gets a single startled yelp of a laugh out of her, but she can see anger blooming on Karkat’s features and her amusement quickly makes way for guilt. “You’ve been here less than a week and they’re, what, trying to make you responsible for the entire fucking war effort?”

“I don’t think it’s that serious, Karkat.”

“I don’t really give a shit!” he snaps. When she flinches, he pauses and deflates a little bit. “I know that you’re more than capable of protecting yourself,” he says, voice much softer. “But it’s still my job, too. I hate the idea of you on the front lines.”

“Well what choice do I have, Karkat?” she huffs.

He blinks a few times and then furrows his brow. “What the fuck are you talking about?” he asks. Before she can open her mouth to explain anything, though, he barrels on, “You are not a soldier, Jade. And I am so not the fucking boss of you, I get that. I’m not going to sit here and try to convince you to go home; we both know that wouldn’t work. But you’re doing incredible work in the med tent—using magic nobody has ever even fucking heard of, as far as I can tell. You would be making just as much of a difference there as if you were… going through some sort of strict training regimen so you can move an army en masse, or whatever they want you to do. It’s stupid, is my point. They’re stupid for asking you to do that. I mean, I guess if you really want to then nobody can stop you, but don’t do it just because you feel like you don’t have a choice. They literally cannot fucking make you do that.”

Jade stares at him for a long moment, her mouth hanging open as she tries and fails to come up with an adequate response. Leave it to Karkat to tell you exactly why you’re being stupid, royalty or military rank be damned. What she wouldn’t give to see him go off on Dualscar like that. “Thank you,” she eventually breathes, her chest feeling tight with affection.

“...Yeah,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest again.

She swallows and pushes herself up onto her feet before she murmurs, “I’m going to go check on Dave. It’s late for him to still be asleep.” It is late for him to still be asleep, but it’s an excuse and she thinks they both know it’s an excuse.

When she’s out of the immediate line of sight of the other soldiers, though, she’s stopped by a positively tiny soldier. She guesses this must be one of the members of the cavalry who just got back, but she’s not sure what he wants with her. “Hello,” she says, smiling politely.

“Jade!” the soldier says, and it immediately makes Jade’s heart lurch, because…

“Nepeta?”

Sure enough, the soldier pulls off her helmet to reveal Nepeta Zahhak, beaming like the cat who caught the canary. Jade’s breath catches, and then she throws her arms around her friend.

“I can’t believe you’re here!” Nepeta says.

“You can’t believe I’m here?” Jade laughs, pulling away to look Nepeta over, although she can’t really see most of her due to the armor they’ve got her in. It’s not like the armor that Dave wears—it’s heavier, more like the full coverage armor that the Prospitian soldiers wear. Jade guesses she must have needed it to conceal her identity. “What are you doing here?”

“I joined the army!” Nepeta laughs back, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. Jade guesses that it sort of is.

She’s reminded suddenly, almost startled by the memory, of the conversation they’d had when Dave and Karkat were first sent away—when Nepeta said that they could find extra armor in the staffhouse, buy horses in town, and ride off to war. At the time, Jade had laughed it off—they were too short, too girlish, and frankly, at the time, she wouldn’t have had any practical skills to offer the army at war. She’s still having trouble convincing herself that she does now.