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The battle is over and Liam has stabilized the bodies piled in the courtyard and he’s standing on the battlements, staring. He thinks he knows what he is, now, and his crossbow is lying broken where the bodies of the carrot and the pontifex used to, and when he looks out at the devastated battlefield it makes him sad and so he stands in the sadness.
He lets it wash over him but doesn’t let it drown him, and he’s pretty sure this is the right kind of guy. A seed guy, but with a hard outer shell, so the teeth of predators have to really work to get in there, you know.
There are the clink-clink-clink of glass footsteps, and they sound different on candy-stone than sweetgrass, but Liam turns around and there’s Primsy, and when their eyes meet they both blush.
“I’m probably going to be staying here for a few more days, to hammer out the Dairy Islands’ and Candia’s official relationship,” Primsy says, and Liam thinks of all the forest they haven’t had a chance to walk through yet, and Primsy reaches out a hand to hold his and he holds on right back and it’s small and warm and soft and... good. Really good.
“That’s... really good. I’m glad,” he says, much less smoothly than Primsy, but that’s okay.
“After that, though, I have to get back going home. There’s still so much to fix from the first war, and it’s all quite a mess, really, and-”
“-Honestly, cleaning up here is gonna be, like, a really big project, and uh-”
They both stop and look at each other before bursting into nervous giggles. Primsy recovers herself first, and speaks up, still holding Liam’s hand.
“I really like you, Liam. And, well, you’re a really good suitor. I’d love for you to come visit the hanging gardens of Lacramor one day, but I don’t think that today’s that day yet.”
Liam smiles. “That’s okay. I’ve got plenty of gardens to start here.”
There’s a comfortable silence before Primsy nods back toward the castle proper.
“Would you like to walk the castle with me, Liam?” she asks, and Liam looks at the battlefield one last time.
“I’d love to,” he replies, and they move away from the broken walls.
“You know, we set up this great place for the carrot and the pontifex, and Saccharina and Ruby are helping me pick out some literature, and you know I think it’s gonna be slow, but I think it’ll be good...”
A few months later the Duchess Primsy travels back to Dulcington for policy discussion and she takes walks with the Master Gardener Liam and when she returns there are Candian flowers in her bonnet that sparkle with just a little bit of peppermint magic.
A few more months later the Master Gardener of Candia finds himself on the new borders of Candia on a botanical survey and there’s a merchant ship headed to Lacramor and he visits the hanging gardens there and even notes a few possible cross-pollination options and when he leaves, there are milk silk patches embroidered onto his overalls.
It’s after peaceful years of letters and travels and courtship, of sunset walks along the coastline watching the yogurt tides and hikes into mountain forests bristling with newly-borne magic that the union between Primsy Coldbottle, Duchess of Lacramor and Liam Wilhelmina, Master Gardener of Candia is announced.