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Chapter Text

Relatively speaking, the bracer incident is much more tame than other magical incidents they have been embroiled in. No one was kidnapped or imprisoned or swept away into a magic-created dreamworld, and there was no dark magic involved - only the clearly defined, rune-controlled light magic of an enchanted bracer.

However.

However, the two involved in this incident are Prince Geordo Stuart and Lady Katarina Claes, two of the most influential (if not the two most influential) young nobles of the kingdom.

However, the bracer - whose activation requirements had long been lost, but which in Katarina’s hands blazes to magical life - is enchanted to make the wearer speak the truth.

However, Lady Katarina holds a secret - several secrets, really - she has never spoken of to any living person.

However, Prince Geordo, instead of politely keeping his mouth shut until they figure out a way to get the bracer off, ruthlessly decides to take advantage of the situation.

“Katarina,” he says, after his eyes flicker to the bracer now snapped snugly around his fiancée's right arm, “Do you love me?”

“Yes, I love you,” Katarina replies, and immediately claps her hands over her mouth.

Geordo lights up like a firework, a smile wider than any she had ever seen from him - even when they had been children - spreading across his face. Then he visibly pulls himself back under control, tossing his head like a stallion reined back harshly.

“Do you love me in a romantic fashion?”

“I love you romantically,” Katarina admits. “I was attracted to you as soon as I first saw you, even when I was too young to really know what that means. And over the years I’ve really fallen for you. I just try very hard not to think about it.”

“Why?” Geordo demands, this last admission killing his flame-bright joy at her confession.

“Because I have the memories of a dead girl inside my head, who saw what we’d be like if I let myself love you, and it would be awful,” says Katarina.

There follows a period of question and answer, Geordo’s sharp mind weighing the absolutely truthful answers and following the trail as closely as a bloodhound on a fresh scent, Katarina’s replies stark and nakedly honest. The bracer compels the truth out of her, but there is an exhausted air of relief in the compelled true answers, like a criminal long on the run finally run to ground - and eager for the end of the hunt.

“So you’re also a girl from an alternate universe...?” Geordo finally sums up, in a questioning tone. It’s not so hard for him to believe - he has seen Katarina’s periods of abstraction, the things she has known with no explanation of how she knows it - as a royal he has had access to records of seers and prophets.

“No,” Katarina says, slowly. “I - I am Katarina Claes. I am the daughter of Luigi and Miridiana Claes, not of....of the other ones. I have her memories, somehow, but...I’m me,” she reveals, with the quiet wonder of someone coming to a realization as she speaks it. “Because of her memories, I knew it was nice to climb trees, and to grow your own vegetables, but when I climbed a tree, it was the first time I had done so. When I grew my first vegetable - it was a cucumber, do you remember? - I rejoiced that I had grown something for the first time. I knew her joys in her world, but her memories added to my knowledge - it didn’t override me.”

“Like Raphael and Sirius,” Geordo realizes.

“I remember, being little, and knowing there was something else I should know, and always feeling like I was forgetting something,” Katarina reminisces aloud. “It was very hard to explain. And sometimes I would get so angry at not being able to explain, or remember....After I hit my head, I suddenly knew those things. But it doesn’t mean the person who I was before I hit my head disappeared. I just - knew more things.”

“Like our future?” Geordo prompts.

“Yes,” Katarina replies in all seriousness. “If I hadn’t gotten her memories, what would have happened is something that played out in the game.”

“I would fall insanely in love with you. No, Geordo,” she snaps, her eyes narrowed and her tone uncharacteristically sharp. “Stop smiling. I am not being hyperbolic or sweet. When I say ‘insanely’ I mean it.”

“I like the thought,” Geordo murmurs.

“Would you still like it if I clung to you every single moment of the day, and the night if I could arrange it, and never gave you a moment’s peace, and attacked anyone who approached you in a friendly manner? If I brooded like a vulture over any female within theoretically-marriageable age - and over, if they were pretty - exchanging so much as a word with you? If I did nothing but circle you like some overly-needy dog with its master, with about as much conversational depth?”

Yes, Geordo doesn’t answer.

“No, you would not,” Katarina answers for him. Her voice is even sharper now, edged in pain. “You would find it, first, annoying, like anyone would - and then, suffocating, and finally insufferable - in a very literal sense. Because all that your very clear and very understandable distaste towards me will do is make me even more clingy and more savage, we end up in a vicious cycle until ultimately, I completely lose my wits and attack the sweet, lovely girl you quite naturally turn to instead of me, and then in sheer self-defense you either exile me or run me through the body with your sword.”

There are several things that Geordo wants to say in response to this extraordinary and very enlightening speech, but he focuses on one aspect that he has noticed in his fiancée before.

“Why are you so fixated on painting yourself in the wrong?” he asks her. “Why are your actions ‘savage’ and mine ‘understandable’, and ‘natural’, even if yours seems to be mostly being clingy and - justifiably, it seems - jealous, while mine are cheating and murder?”

Katarina blinks, taken aback. “Wuh - wait. Murder...? I just said I attacked your love...”

“A lover I took while still engaged to you? Who, I assume, also knew I was engaged to you? All right. Leaving that aside, do you become either a swordsman par excellence or a magical prodigy on your brother’s level in this future where you let yourself love me?”

“N-no,” Katarina replies, confused at this new angle. “Actually, I’m better at both now, even magic...I think.”

“Understood. So, unless I too am much weaker in this future, I should be easily able to subdue you and any attacks you make on me and my mistress without having to resort to lethal measures. Which makes such an action murder. And as you have not mentioned committing high treason against the crown - not me, Katarina, by the way, but the crown - then exile is not a warranted response either.”

Katarina gapes at him.

“Katarina, this future you saw - you are not the villainess in it and I am not your victim. It’s a painful and unhappy one where we hurt each other,” Geordo says earnestly, without adding that in his opinion, this other self of his is much more at fault than Katarina who is, after all, the ungrateful idiot’s legal fiancée. “And that’s bad, but it’s not only your fault. And also - at this point - do you really think that of me? That I would kill you or force you into exile for some mistress?”

“W-well, no,” Katarina stammers. “B-but, what if...”

“At least,” Geordo says, with some irritation in his voice, “Give me credit for some decency. If, after all this, I am cur enough to throw you aside after begging for your hand...”

“It’s not like that!” Katarina cries. “You’re - you’re better, you’re so much better than that other Geordo, you’re good and a friend, a real friend, and a good brother to Alan and, and - but it’s like fate would...”

“Oh, fate,” Geordo drawls in a mocking tone, with the beginnings of a sneer curving his fine-cut mouth.

“Don’t,” Katarina says, not with a snap but with a sudden heavy weight in her voice that cuts deeper. “I’m not joking about this. What I saw wasn’t a dream, and - do you think I didn’t try? I didn’t want to die; I didn’t want to be exiled, which - at the time I remembered - was a death sentence too. So I tried to change things. I tried not to be engaged to you - but somehow, even though I told myself I wouldn’t, I ended up saying yes. It happened twice, even! I told myself I’d improve my magic, and it’s still only slightly better, if it is better at all. I told myself I would stay away from all the main characters in those scenarios, and yet I ended up interacting with them anyhow. I tried not to bully Maria, and the students at school still treated me as if I had, and gathered to condemn me in exactly the same place and in the same way the game had shown. The world won’t let me change this!”

Main characters, Geordo mouths to himself.

Slowly, he tries, “Is it all the same? Everything?”

“No,” Katarina admits. “Most of the people I know are different. My parents, thank the gods - Nicol, Sophia - Alan, for example - he’s much more comfortable in his skin, and the Alan in those scenarios never gave concerts before at least the middle of his first year in the academy. He also wasn’t friendly with you. Keith is definitely different, he’s my greatest success (Geordo scowls at this) - a true gentleman, and not a playboy.”

“So why can’t you give yourself - and me - the benefit of the doubt?” Geordo demands.

Katarina begins to cry. “I - I want to. I want to, so badly. I love you! I already do, but - that’s what makes it worse. If I lose you - if I make you hate me...I can imagine becoming the Katarina who’s so bad, even if I should know better, because...I’m already jealous, when I think of you and - but I try not to act on it, to focus on other things, other people, and I should have broken the engagement instead of just saying I’d let you if you wanted, but I told myself I was being useful, and...I don’t want to be evil. But I think I was born to be a villainess. I’m afraid if I let myself go, I’ll become one.”

Geordo is silent for a moment, and then speaks. “...what if. What if I.” He swallows, hard, and then looks straight into Katarina’s eyes. “You said you’re afraid of becoming the villainess. What if I promise to kill you if ever you do?”

Katarina stops crying.

“I’ll make it look natural. And it wouldn’t hurt. And I wouldn’t let your parents or friends know you’d become a villainess. They’d just think - you’d died, somehow, in an accident.”

Katarina stares at him - and then slowly begins to smile.

“Do you promise?” she asks, clearly believing implicitly in his ability to do what he’s just proposed.

Geordo has been looking at the runes on the truth-bracer this whole time, and in reply he runs his fingers over them, pulsing his fire-magic in a precise pattern as he does so. The bracer unlocks and Geordo slips it over his own arm.

“Lady Katarina of Claes,” he says, using her full name and title to underscore the seriousness, the formal strength, of his statement. “I love you, and what I want more than anything else in this world is for you to love me back. If what that takes is for me to promise to kill you if us loving each other turns you evil, then I will so promise.”

Katarina’s response to his promise to kill her if necessary is to hug him fiercely and sprinkle his face with light, fierce kisses.

Geordo has, along with figuring out the activation requirements of the bracer, also figured out a weakness of it. It forces the wearer to tell the truth. And it does encourage them to tell the whole truth. But you can, if you concentrate very hard, and keep reminding yourself how important it is, hold back portions of your truth. (Later, he will wonder, with a full and complete understanding of his own high and rare calibre, if it takes a mind as honed and a desire as deep as his to control the truth the bracer forces. This wondering is completely pragmatic and without a trace of ego - a craftsman considering the limits of his tools. But as he intends to keep the bracer a secret, unleashed only when absolutely needed, it’s mostly a moot question.)

So, if his promise was a qualified promise - if Geordo will kill or otherwise dispose of anyone problematic, anyone who makes Katarina unbearably jealous or otherwise villainess-leaning before he ever kills her (for the sin of making Katarina doubt his love, they deserve death anyway); if he fully intends to kill himself immediately after killing her, if it ever comes to that - well, that doesn’t strictly need to be said, if he means his promise, does it?

Their friends know, immediately, that something has changed, when Geordo and Katarina rejoin them.

There is a fierce light of triumph in Geordo’s face, like a beacon-fire lit to announce a battle-victory - bright enough to remind everyone that his magic is fire. He has never looked so happy, nor so dangerous, and the other young mages of their group feel their hearts quail. Mary bites back a snarl, taking an unconscious step forward, while Keith breathes very carefully - because if he did not, he would sob.

The expression on Geordo’s face is so fierce and bright that everyone looks first at him - but then their gazes dart at Katarina, arm in arm with her prince, and the sheer contentedness radiating off her - something old and bone-deep settled and eased in her - some old pain that they had never known needing settling and easing until they saw her now free of it - a joy so pure, that it hurts. No triumph or smirk or anything but unalloyed joy, high and terrible. If Geordo’s face is a beacon-fire, Katarina’s is a snow-peaked mountain in the sun - blinding in its beauty, and killing in its height.

Edit (1/17/2022): Have replaced "Jeord" with "Geordo" due to the sudden realization that this way, Geoffrey and Geordo's names being alike is more obvious. (Like Ian and Alan)

Chapter Text

Geordo is not only intelligent - as prince of a re-invigorated royal house, with reigning parents who have survived great odds, he has been trained and educated to the highest standards. There has never been any room for lackadaisical meandering or slack indolence in his life. He is observant, calculating, and cunning.

And yet, on this night, when his fiancée has revealed the shape of her love and the lethal intent required to secure it, Geordo floats along as blithe and as carefree as a young animal - one who has never experienced danger or sorrow - and, at the moment, just as stupid. The halting, half-trembling voices of rivals-who-were-never-really-rivals pass in and out of his ears with little impression - all his attention is on the weight and warmth of Katarina’s arm tucked trustingly into his.

If an assassin did come for him then, he’d be practically gift-wrapped for them, he does think. But - no - his friends, yes, friends, they’re here too, and Nicol and Alan alone would be solid defense, much less with Sophia to back her brother and Maria’s powerful light magic in reserve. An attack on him right now would be as good as an attack on Katarina, and Keith and Mary would tear them apart both during the attack and afterwards.

And honestly, if they did attack - with Katarina so close - he’d burn them to ashes.

The thought deepens the warm glow in his chest.

He walks beside her, blind to anything but her face, her eyes, the shine of the palace lights on her ash-brown hair. He is genuinely surprised when suddenly they’re standing in front of the Claes carriage, with Keith already inside it, waiting for his sister with absolutely no expression on his face. Mournfully, Geordo escorts her to the very step of the carriage and helps her up, kissing her hand before he lets go.

She smiles back at him, and Geordo hugs the memory of that wide, unfettered smile to himself as he stands watching the carriage go.

The Claes carriage is out of sight (the following carriages ignored) when a hand is clapped heavily on his shoulder. Geordo winces and jumps away with a spasm of shock. The hand on his shoulder is solid and all too real - it is the waking moment that ends a dream.

“Geordo,” Alan says, peering into his brother’s face. “Are you...”

A moment before, Geordo had been alone in the world - his lady gone, and nothing remaining but the memory of her blue eyes. Now he is living in the same world with another, a twin, a brother, someone who also knew Katarina. He reels at the difference.

Alan’s face, which had been slightly depressed, is now turning rather alarmed. “Seriously, Geordo, are you okay?”

“I - I...” Geordo stammers, staring at Alan’s face. Alan, Katarina’s rival. Alan, who plays music that makes Katarina smile. Alan, who climbs trees and goes fishing and will cock his head at the same time and at the same angle as Katarina when they are both puzzled by something. Alan, without whom Katarina would not be who she is - as Alan would not be who he is without Katarina - as Geordo would not be who he is without either of them.

“Alan,” he says seriously, “I love you.”

Alan shies away as if Geordo had just hurled a fireball at him. “What the hell, man!” he yelps.

Geordo only laughs and throws his head up, looking around him with new eyes.

He feels suddenly small - not in any shrinking or sad sense, but as if he is again a child under an open sky, where everything bulks larger than he is - and suddenly aware of his happiness. Katarina loves him - she has loved him for years - and she will seal herself to him in marriage, because she trusts him against the world’s fate. He is aware of the height of his joy by being aware of how low he had been before this. Prince, genius, fire-mage, what did any of that matter? It is not any of those that had won Katarina’s kiss on his brow - it is his willingness. And anyone can have the willingness.

Geordo basks fully in what writers had called “the full warmth of that pleasure from which the proud shut themselves out; the pleasure which not only goes with humiliation, but which almost is humiliation.”

“Men who have escaped death by a hair have it, and men whose sins are forgiven them,” he murmurs, remembering the full quote, and only now fully understanding it, “...and men whose love is returned by a woman unexpectedly.”

Geordo laughs again and bounds - the word is entirely appropriate - into the palace. Alan follows hurriedly.

Geordo hurries back to his rooms, not because he wants to be there that quickly but he has to translate his energy into motion. Everything his eye falls on is as hilarious and as sweet as Midwinter candies on the children’s tables, and Geordo feasts on the sights of his familiar surroundings as if on actual food. The corners of the walls and their clean angles; the softness of carpet underneath, and then the smooth hard marble of the floor; the light of crystalline chandeliers and, just as much, of the common oil-lamps mounted on sconces - Geordo glories in them. He drinks in the colors of the walls like wine, and savors the evening air like spices.

At this moment, he is one of the happiest of the children of men - for in the instant that Katarina had let go of her long-held fear and trusted herself to Geordo’s safekeeping, his entire universe has been destroyed, remade, and studded with a million little stars.

“Geordo,” Alan demands, “Are you drunk?”

“On love, dear brother,” Geordo carols, spinning to face his twin. His eyes blaze in his flushed face, and Alan is abruptly reminded that Geordo and Geoffrey have the same eyes. “Only on love!”

“Did someone mention love?” a familiar voice asks, and the older Stuart princes emerge as if summoned by Alan’s thoughts - Ian, his normally-cool expression slightly incredulous, a step behind broad-grinning Geoffrey.

“Geoffrey!” Geordo cries out happily, and flings himself at his eldest brother for a hug. Geoffrey is so shocked by this that he actually staggers.

“Alan?” Ian asks, turning his gaze on the youngest prince.

“...don’t look at me, I dunno nothing,” Alan grouches.

“You certainly know better grammar than that...”

Meanwhile, Geoffrey and Geordo are dancing in the halls, their hands clasped together and their boots tapping out a synchronized rhythm. Geordo leads, Geoffrey happy to follow his younger brother’s uncharacteristic example. “So Katarina finally succumbed to your charms?” Geoffrey chaffs Geordo.

“She loves me!” Geordo sings out, and his joy is so honest and so bright his brothers stare. Alan, with the half-instinctive certainty that only comes to twins, realizes not only that Geordo is telling the truth, but how huge a truth this is to Geordo.

“Oh,” he says, weakly.

That night, Alan sits up late, setting his feelings down on staved paper, his pen dropping scribbled notes on the five parallel lines of the stave like raindrops pattering down on a glass window. It is complete within the night - a sudden onrushing flood of everything Alan has been wrestling with for years - his love for his brother, and his envy, and his love for his brother’s soon-to-be wife, and Alan’s knowing of how it will have to end, now.

When he’s done he stares at the paper for a long while, and then he goes to bed as the sun’s earliest rays begin to color the walls of his room.

He does not show this composition to anyone else for years, nor does he name it. It finally gains a title just before the first time Alan agrees to perform it.

“Saudade,” he says, when they ask for the name of the piece.

“....’Saudade’, widely considered as one of, if not the finest composition of Alan Stuart, Sorciere’s Prince of Musicians, is a mysterious piece in many ways. Unlike his famous Variations For A String Quartet, no one can place a definite date on its composition. What is known is that when he first performed it at Sorciere's Royal Palace in spring XXX, the whole audience was dumb-struck at the delicate yet powerful beauty of the piece, and that fully half the audience was said to be in tears by the midpoint. At the conclusion, says one contemporary account, there was not a single dry eye in the audience.

‘Saudade’ is a foreign term meaning ‘a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for something one loves, and carrying a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never be had again.’ Ethenell poet Austus Tey called it, “The memory of something with a desire for it.”

Certainly, Stuart’s ‘Saudade’ is shot through with regret, sadness, resignation and deep loneliness. The composition is a slow movement in ternary form, quite mournful, with the key in the tonic B minor. Among Stuart’s compositions, this is the only one known to end in a minor key. It is now often played as a requiem, and at other solemn occasions.

The composition is not dedicated to anyone or anything, although the prince once replied, when pressed on the topic, that he had written it for a cat. Clearly he was joking, although several scholars have since theorized that Stuart - who had been a sickly child - might have had a pet kitten in his early childhood..."

 

-- Music and Musicians: Essays and Criticisms. Translated and edited by Fanny Raymond Ritter. Duranti University Press. p. 391.

Chapter Text

After they return home from the palace on That Night (they will always refer to it as That Night in the years to come), Katarina’s friends are sad and downcast - both in the feeling of sorrow, and also in an actual physical feeling of shock and disorientation, exactly as if they have been cast down from a high place. Keith and Maria cry on their mothers’ shoulders, while Alan pours his feelings out in musical notation. The Ascart siblings huddle with each other in Nicol’s room, as they had not needed to since those bad days when the mockery for Sophia’s looks was especially cruel, while their parents hover fretfully near the doorway. 

Mary, however, lies in bed consumed with rage. She is almost literally spitting with fury. 

How dare Prince Geordo take advantage of dear, innocent Lady Katarina like he had? Both she and Keith had been on guard against his managing to get Katarina alone, but he had countered them with a multi-pronged plan that actually hinged on their distrust. The distraction had been masterfully carried out, but the very skill of his maneuvering shows how ill-fit he is to be by pure-souled Lady Katarina’s side. Black-hearted, scheming, treacherous brat! 

And because dear Lady Katarina always thinks the best of everyone, she probably thinks that - that whatever Prince Geordo had done, is a proof that he loves her. All it is, is a proof that Geordo wants to possess her. 

She could strangle him. (She dwells on this happy thought for some time.)

Still. It is not an irretrievable loss. 

There is no public scandal. No one in the group will let there be. Nicol, all by himself, will probably squash any rumours from any servants - if there are any - the Stuarts’ household staff are impeccably trained and very loyal. If need be she will lend him a hand. Meanwhile, Alan and Keith can keep Geordo occupied and away from Katarina. Between herself, Maria and Sophia they will have many ways to maneuver Katarina into activities without the evil one.

So, if she can keep Katarina away from the brat prince long enough for Katarina to forget, just like that time after Katarina had been kidnapped...

Mary falls asleep, still plotting, and still very angry.

She comes to the palace rather like a sudden thunderstorm, with all the lightning in her eyes. When she alights from her carriage, with the imperial step of a regnant queen, even the horses seem to shudder in relief - they are fine horses, but they are not bred to carry the storm. 

The palace majordomo, after a quick startled look at her face, directs her to where Prince Alan is currently having a late breakfast. She strides into the room, her heels clicking on the floor as distinct as hammer-blows on wood. 

“Alan,” she begins, her voice very carefully modulated. “I...”

“Sit down, Mary, do,” Alan sighs, waving a tired hand at a nearby chair. “Have some tea?” 

“Thank you, Prince Alan,” Mary’s long training in etiquette forces her to say, as she does take the indicated seat. “But I...”

“I can guess,” Alan smirks at her, but the expression is a tired one. All of Alan seems tired and faded this morning  - his color, his expression, the movement of his head and hands. “Let me start with the good news. I checked with the servants. Geordo was within eyesight the whole time.”

“He was?” Mary asks, honestly surprised. After his masterful distraction from everyone else, she is surprised the evil one didn’t also arrange to keep away from the servants’ eyes. 

“He took Katarina to the museum wing. They looked over some artifacts, and then - they seemed to have begun to argue a little.”

“Katarina...arguing?” Mary echoes.

“I know, right? But anyway, so Geordo took her to an alcove - set back a little ways from the main aisle, it’s got a small sofa and a coffee table...and they sit there and talk. They talk a lot.” Alan stares moodily into his cup of coffee.  “The museum wing attendants and Geordo’s manservant could see them the whole time, but they kept out of earshot, of course.”

This ‘of course’ makes Mary want to scream. What had Geordo said to Katarina? What had she said back? Of course people like the Claes and the Stuarts, who have the distressing habit of remembering to think of their servants as actual people, always make sure to keep them away when they want privacy. The tendency of other Sorciere nobles to neglect this precaution is something that Mary has already turned to her advantage more than a dozen times, but now - now, when she must know...

“And then,” Alan reports, gloomily, “At the end - Katarina threw herself into Geordo’s arms and began to kiss his face.”

Mary actually sways in her seat from the shock of this statement. “Wh- what...” she rasps.

“Oi, Mary, you OK?” Alan says with some alarm, beginning to get to his feet. 

“Of course I’m not,” Mary says, in the same, slow, rasping voice. “Katarina - you’re saying Katarina is the one who...”

“Whatever Geordo told her, he finally convinced her he loves her. And he - he said, last night,” Alan pauses to swallow. He achieves it with difficulty. “He said she loves him.”

Mary flinches from that as if from a physical blow. 

“He wouldn’t have said it like - like the way he said it, if he wasn’t sure. If he hadn’t made sure,” Alan goes on, with the expression of a sailor having to take a ship through a dreadful squall. “He was...he was so happy, Mary.” The way he says this last is part plea, although to who, Mary doesn’t know. 

“And it’s not only that,” Alan goes on, and Mary wants to beg him to stop. He does pause, and Mary doesn’t know if this is mercy or additional torture.

In fact it is neither - Alan is gathering his thoughts, remembering. When he was younger, he would sometimes accuse Geordo of things - little rudenesses, little mean things. No one ever believed him, because the accusations had never had anything to back them. When he said Geordo thought that Lord Normandale was a mean bully, Geordo would have said nothing of the sort. When he said Geordo wanted to kick that nasty Lady Mowbray’s little dog, which she insisted on bringing everywhere, and which pooped on the palace rugs, Geordo had never intimated anything like, and had in fact been seen to pet the little monster. When he wailed that the lessons were unfairly long, and that Geordo thought so too, the tutor replied sharply that Alan was a wicked little prince to lie like that, and look at his brother, dutifully filling out his worksheets and never having even flickered an eye. 

So Alan had learnt not to speak for his brother. But he was sure, to this day, as little Alan had been sure, that Geordo did, in fact, despise Lord Normandale, Lady Mowbray, all their pets, and the too-strict tutor who had been trying to push the youngest princes too far as a testament to his own teaching. The problem had been that Alan could never explain the knowing - not really.

And he did not know how to explain what he knew now. 

“...Geordo met her before any of us did. Even Keith,” Alan says, at last. “I - I was in the garden, that day, too. But the Duke had run into Geordo first."

“I was in the garden, too...” he says, again, in a quieter voice. 

Mary does not reply - she is, finally, weeping. 

Chapter Text

When their children return from their evening at the royal palace, Luigi and Miridiana know there’s something wrong. Keith looks devastated, but is trying to hide it, his face pale but kept very still. That means - they already know - that he’s burying his negative emotions deep inside him in a way they hadn’t seen since he had first come to the Claes manor.

Meanwhile, Katarina is obviously in a state where she is delighted with the world and everything in it - even more so than usual. She’s positively giddy as she floats into the manor, giving her father an impromptu hug and kiss on the cheek before doing the same to her mother. With a cheerful good night she dances up the stairs to her room, humming happily.

Luigi and Miridiana stare after her before their heads snap, at the same instant, back to their son.

“Keith?” Miridiana says in a concerned voice, laying a hand on his shoulder.

Keith bursts into tears.

The garbled and tearful story he tells, along with what he thinks has happened, is enough to severely alarm the Claes.

“What do you mean, fait accompli?!”

Luigi and his wife confer in their bedroom - well away from any ears - after they have seen a still-tearful Keith to bed, and checked in on Katarina. (She is fast asleep, sprawled half-under and half-over her blankets and smiling widely in her dreams. They exchange fond but worried glances over her sleeping form.)

They make plans.

The next morning, their plans are thrown off by Prince Geordo’s unexpected arrival.

They are used to his visits, of course - it feels like he has spent almost as much time at the Claes manor as at his own palace, ever since he became affianced to Katarina. But he has never arrived so early in the morning - usually the prince is polite enough to time his visits for comfortably after breakfast, so that the household is ready to receive him.

But today he has arrived just as the household help are preparing to start the day - that is to say, ridiculously early for any noble to be doing anything. Moreover, he has arrived on horseback, foregoing the comfort and dignity of his normal carriage for speed.

Luigi and Miridiana trade meaningful looks as the prince - attired faultlessly in his customary white and gold, but with his hair in some disarray, and an excited flush high on his cheeks - enters their foyer.

“Duke Claes, Lady Claes,” he murmurs politely. The Claes incline their heads rather than give him the full formal bow that his royal status entitles him to - years of his visits have moved them past such things.

“I bid you good morning,” Geordo continues, “And I apologize for disturbing you so early, but...”

His forthcoming explanation is cut off by an excited squeal of “Geordo!”

Their heads all swivel at once to see Katarina standing at the top of the stairs, beaming.

Miridiana notes several things at once - the fact that Katarina had called her fiancé by his first name only, with no honorifics or titles; the joy in her face as she calls out to him, brighter and more intense than her usual happiness at seeing a friend; the answering, even brighter joy in the prince’s face as he sees her; and, most of all, worst of all, most unbelievable of all...

“KATARINA!” Miridiana shrieks, seeming to teleport directly to her daughter’s side. “Get back inside your room this instant!”

...she is still in her pajamas.

Katarina has no chance to argue or even react, as Miridiana bullrushes her daughter back inside her bedroom with a speed and facility that would cause professional knights to applaud. The door slams behind them with an echoing thud - nearby, Keith jolts upright in his bed, awakened by the sound.

In the foyer below, Geordo and Luigi cough awkwardly at the same time.

“I cannot believe you! How could - how dare - in front of the prince - your father will - you do not appear in your sleepwear in front of unrelated males, Katarina!”

“But motherrrrr....he’s not unrelated, he’s my fiancé!” Katarina protests, wincing as one of Miridiana’s handmaidens - Anne is busy laying out Katarina’s outfit for the day - pulls a hairbrush through Katarina’s dark hair.

“Besides, it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before!” Katarina adds, and Miridiana freezes.

“Look, I’m even wearing my house-jacket on top, so actually, I’m even covering up more,” Katarina argues, waving one arm in emphasis. “The dresses I usually wear show my arms!”

“Oh that’s what you mean,” sigh Miridiana and Anne in unison.

“Never mind,” Miridiana snaps back, “That’s not the point! A proper young lady...”

“But mother....”

Miridiana realizes, with a start, that this is the sort of argument she has heard her friends complaining about with their daughters - the sort of normal, mainstream clashes with highborn teenagers that she had once wistfully yearned for instead of what she usually got with Katarina. Arguing about how daring their clothes were and their dallying with and/or mooning over boys, instead of begging her daughter to give up farming and eating food off the floor. Katarina had been a troublesome child but never outright defiant - she forgets to heed rules, or charges blindly onward, or is overruled by her stomach, but she always means to obey Miridiana, that is always clear during the many (many, many) lectures Miridiana had delivered her.

But here - for the first time - Katarina is talking back. Miridiana is both set back and slightly cheered by the novelty of having an argument with her daughter that she can actually relate to her friends.

She still hounds Katarina into suitable dress, of course.

Luigi and Prince Geordo await them in the manor’s finest parlor, sipping decorously at coffee. They both rise as their ladies come into the room, the prince even taking one impatient step towards Katarina before he visibly remembers to stop. Miridiana carefully does not react to his eagerness, an effort she can see echoed in her husband’s deliberate stillness.

The duke and duchess had discussed diplomatic and tactful strategies the night before, but now - with the way her daughter and Prince Geordo are looking at each other - with the memory of the prince’s formidable counter-strategies to her own efforts to save Katarina from the burden of queenship - with the unsettled feeling of Katarina’s new demeanor - Miridiana decides to simply plunge ahead.

(It is, the duke will tell her later, very like Katarina. “See, I said she gets it from you,” he will say cheerfully.)

“Your highness, Katarina, I am asking you to please put this on,” she says bluntly, removing a small carved wooden box from her pocket. She opens it to reveal a white ring nestled in purple velvet. The ring is quite plain, carved out of smooth white stone, with only a stylized carving of a stag - the Claes family crest - for ornamentation.

Katarina blinks in confusion, but the prince only observes blandly, “House Stuart uses rings too - ours are gold, with red stones,” as he reaches out to pluck the ring from the box. He slides it onto his left ring finger, and it begins to glow softly.

“Oh,” gasps Katarina in wonder, while Prince Geordo gives his prospective parents-in-law a courteous smile.

Prince Geordo’s easy willingness to put on the ring on had already alleviated most of their worries, but nevertheless they both sigh in relief as the ring glows.

“Eh?” Katarina says questioningly, moving her gaze between her fiancé and her parents.

“Your turn, Katarina,” Geordo says gently, taking up her left hand. She turns to him to see he has already removed the white ring, and is sliding it onto her left ring finger. He regards the sight of the ring he has placed with some satisfaction, and neither Miridiana nor Luigi miss the fact that this is exactly where an engagement ring - and, later, the wedding rings - will sit on their daughter’s hand.

It also lights up when placed on Katarina’s finger, which the two had expected since it had glowed for the prince, but the sight - and the confirmation it gives - is enough so that Miridiana collapses onto a sofa with a sudden release of tension.

“Mother?” Katarina cries out with worry, rushing to Miridiana’s side.

“It’s all right, Katarina,” Miridiana soothes her fretful daughter, patting the hand she has placed on her mother’s shoulder. She looks at the ring still glowing on Katarina's finger. “We just had to check...”

“Check what?” Katarina asks.

“If we had sex,” Geordo says bluntly. Luigi makes a sudden abortive movement, a sort of full body twitch that seems like it should have had a sword involved.

“I - I - what?” Katarina stammers.

The ring is indeed a magical artifact to check if the wearer is a virgin - an ancient relic. Most Great Houses have one, although the complicated magic means that no one in modern times can create a new one. The artifacts are kept secret for both security and for the ability to covertly deploy them if necessary. The common restriction, however, is that they can only be used once for any person, which is why they are commonly used right before a wedding. The fact they had used the ring now shows how concerned the Claes couple had been.

“Why would you...”

“Your behavior changed abruptly last night,” Miridiana explains in a soft voice. Luigi is still staring at the prince with a dangerous gleam in his eyes.

“That doesn’t mean I had sex with Geordo!” Katarina exclaims, and Luigi twitches again.

“We just confirmed that we love each other!” Katarina rushes on, and then stops, blushing, as she glances at Geordo. The prince, also - to the Claes’ considerable surprise - blushing, returns her gaze with open affection.

Luigi and Miridiana watch them - and, their gazes meeting, remember their own shared moment of realization - the rush and the joy of finding they are loved, that they had been loved all along. At least Katarina had not waited until married and with a child to come to that.

“Look,” Luigi finally sighs. “Why don’t we sit down and discuss this?”

Chapter Text

Geordo, Katarina, and her parents stay closeted within the parlor for most of the day, interrupted only by deliveries of food and drink. The servants stay well away from the room, even Anne - the invisible perimeter, keeping everyone out of earshot, enforced by the gimlet eye of the Claes family butler.

(Keith, upon hearing of Geordo’s presence, quietly leaves the manor.)

So they are able to have a long, uninterrupted, and much-delayed discussion.

“Let me begin with saying this: I intend to renounce my right to succeed the throne.”

Katarina and her mother gasp in shock, but Luigi only nods once, his eyes intent on the prince. 

“Geordo,” protests Katarina. “Why are you doing this? Is it for me? Isn’t the throne something you’ve been working for? I don’t want to be the reason you give up on your dreams...”

“Katarina,” Geordo laughs, and reaches over to take her hand in his. He raises it to his mouth and kisses it gallantly. (Miridiana, despite herself, is charmed at the gesture; Luigi twitches only a little bit.) 

“You are my dream. Being king is...an interesting-looking career option. And, really, not the most interesting either.” His face grows more earnest. “I will be frank. I know I could probably make a fairly good king. I am clever and I can work hard. However, my brothers are also clever and hard-working. Geoffrey is better than I am at dealing with people, for one thing; Ian is definitely more diligent. Alan would be a good king too, maybe better than me...” he muses aloud. 

“Yes, Alan would be a good king,” Katarina enthusiastically agrees. “I’m glad you think so too, Geordo! I felt so bad for him that time Sora explained why only me and Selena were being held hostage...”

“We are straying from the point,” Luigi interrupts gently. He gives the prince a cool look - not the usual amiable expression he wears around his children’s friends, or even the serious look of him being a concerned father - this is the Duke of Claes, one of the great powers of the kingdom, weighing a matter of the realm with all his formidable intellect and judgment. “Why are you renouncing the throne, prince?”

“First, because having too many viable candidates for the throne is a destabilizing condition,” Geordo explains in an efficient, clipped voice. He continues holding Katarina’s hand in his. “There are too many variables and too many nobles thinking they could take advantage. The end result is increased fragility of the state - lessened cohesion, increased factionalization, lessened focus on economic specialties in exchange for greater focus on politicking. The trade-off is worth it if it keeps the throne from going to an insufficient crown prince - or princess - but that is not the case here.”

He pauses to take a sip of tea. Luigi and Miridiana are still waiting and watching with neutral expressions, giving nothing away - being the pinnacles of aristocratic breeding that they are. However, their daughter - equally high-bred - has concern written all over her face, and runs her thumb over her fiancé's hand soothingly.

“Secondly,” Geordo continues, “I swear to you I truly do think Ian or Geoffrey would be a better choice for king. If the only other choice were Alan, who may or may not be a better choice than I am, I might hesitate a little longer, but, again, that is not the case.”

“Finally,” he says, deliberately meeting each Claes’s gaze in turn - beginning with the Duke’s, moving to the Duchess, and finishing by staring deep into Katarina’s eyes. “And ultimately. I would hate any position that makes Katarina unhappy. I do think she would make a great queen, but it would be a hard life. It is hard on my mother. It killed my grandmother. A king who resents his position would not be a good king.” This last is both observation and threat - not to anyone in the room, of course, but a threat nonetheless. 

“Geordo,” Katarina murmurs. 

“I already have all the papers ready,” Geordo says, in a lighter tone. “From that time that Sora fellow kidnapped you...”

“It wasn’t Sora’s fault,” Katarina immediately protests. “It was that horrible David Mason’s...” 

“The only reason I didn’t file them then,” Geordo continues, ignoring Katarina’s defense of Sora, “Is because of the time limit we were under - I’d have to be there in person to ratify them, but I wanted to go to where you were. But I had already mentally committed to the act.”

Luigi and Miridiana’s expressions darken at the reminder of their daughter’s kidnapping. It had been even worse than the time she had been put into a Dark Magic coma. No one has mentioned it to Katarina, but heads had rolled because of the situation. Both Luigi and Miridiana had been frantic, galloping around the countryside separately to coordinate search efforts for their daughter. When word had come from Keith that Katarina had been rescued, they had met up in a small country inn and wept on each other’s shoulders.

To this day, their relationship with the Burkes retains a touch of frost - and it is only as good as it is because the Burkes and Claes have united in their efforts to punish every last one of Mason’s colleagues. 

“And when I had - after everything had settled down and I wasn’t going crazy with worry about you anymore - I realized how relieved I was. Being king had been a sort of default setting - something I was aiming for because that’s what princes aim for. But if I didn’t have to become king - if not becoming king was not a failure condition - then I had many more options open.”

“For one thing, I will still be a royal duke at least,” Geordo notes. “I will be able to support my brothers in that capacity. I also could serve in the diplomatic corps. We can travel, Katarina!” he exclaims, showing more excitement. 

“Oooh,” Katarina says, looking interested. 

Like this, they look abruptly young, and abruptly hopeful - children wanting to grasp a bright future. The Duke and Duchess are touched - and wistful. Miridiana remembers, suddenly, the look on her father’s face when Luigi had triumphantly borne her away to Claes, and she had left the northern border-castle that she had been born and raised in. She had been full of happiness, incredulous happiness, at becoming Luigi’s wife. (A happiness later blunted and darkened by the doubts and fears sowed by jealous nobles....but at the time, nothing but a small shadow on her unbelieving joy.) But her father...she understands, now, in a way she has not really had to before. 

Luigi sighs, intentionally loud, and then leans back into the upholstered velvet of his finely-carved chair. He drops his neutral expression to give the children a genuine smile, and sees Katarina’s answering smile - quite similar to his own; the abrupt release of tension from Geordo’s shoulders, and the smaller, more tentative smile on the prince’s face.

Nearby, Miridiana is crying softly into her handkerchief, overwrought by emotion and love and the real, pure relief of the fear that has driven her for so long - the fear of her daughter being crushed under the weight of the royal crown. She herself, high-born daughter of a border-lord, had found it difficult when she had moved closer to the capital as the duchess of one of the three Great Houses, and the gap between her and Luigi - a ducal heir and the daughter of a duke, even if her House was less powerful than Luigi’s - had been much less steep. She’d had nightmares of the scrutiny and judgment Katarina would be subject to as queen, magnified versions of the torments she had endured as Luigi’s new wife.

And now, the prince - her enemy for so long - is telling them that he values Katarina more than the crown, that he will step away from the throne-fight. Miri cries in relief and hardly notices Luigi drawing her into his lap and murmuring soothingly to her. 

“Mother, oh...no...” Katarina says, getting up to hurry to her mother’s side again. 

“I’m so glad - so glad,” Miridiana sobs. Geordo is suddenly struck, stronger than any time previous, at the startling resemblance between mother and daughter. He remembers Katarina crying on that night when he had forced her to tell him the truth. 

“I was so afraid for you if you had to be queen...” 

Geordo leaves as the sun begins to set - even for a princely fiancé, it would be scandalous if he were to stay the night. 

As he calls for his horse, the Duke startles him by saying, “I will ride with you, Highness.” As Geordo gapes at him, the Duke tells his servant, “Have them saddle my horse as well.” 

“My lord - your Highness,” the servant murmurs respectfully, with a perfect bow, before leaving. 

Katarina had already bidden Geordo goodbye inside the manor. Her parents had tactfully given them a few minutes alone, and Geordo had taken the chance to exchange a few, relatively chaste kisses with his fiancée. (Her parents weren’t that far away.) 

He is distracted by the memory, and almost jumps when the Duke speaks again. “Ah,” Luigi says, blandly, obviously pretending - and to Geordo it’s clear that the Duke is being deliberately obvious about the pretense - to overlook Geordo’s dazed distraction. “Here come our horses.” 

Geordo turns his head to see his personal mount, Laurent, being led towards them. Laurent, a young stallion with racer’s lines and a coin-gold coat, is clearly restless, prancing and pulling at his reins. Beside him, the Duke’s mount - a warmblood hunter, heavier in build than Geordo’s horse, dapple-grey and elegant - paces with a smooth, steady gait, ignoring the capering of the younger horse. 

“Hsssh, hssh,” Geordo gentles his mount, going to the young stallion's head to stroke the silver forelock. By the time Laurent has whickered and nuzzled his master’s hair, the Duke is mounted and waiting politely. Geordo swings into the saddle with the ease of a natural athlete and the training of a royal knight - acknowledging wryly to himself that he is hoping to impress both Katarina (who he can see waving happily to him from a window) and her father with his feat. 

“Shall we?” he asks the Duke courteously. The Duke nods back with equal courtesy, and the two trot off, after they both wave goodbye to Katarina. They are a good distance away from the manor, surrounded by the trees of the Claes parkland, before either of them speaks again, and it is the Duke speaking to his horse. 

“Hush, Yoshi,” he murmurs, as the grey stallion snorts and tosses his head. 

“Yoshi?” Geordo echoes, careful with the pronunciation of the foreign word. 

“Katarina named him for me,” the Duke explains. “I believe it’s a name from Xiarmah, though I admit I am not sure. Katarina insisted on it. ‘If daddy rides him, he has to be Yoshi,’ she said,” he reminisces aloud, smiling fondly at the memory. 

“Oh,” Geordo mumbles, staring at his hands. Luigi, glancing at him, has to swallow down a laugh as he realizes the younger blond is sulking - that Geordo is obviously wishing that Katarina had insisted on a name for his horse. 

Geordo speaks again. “You really were glad, weren’t you? When I said I wouldn’t try for the throne.”

Luigi tilts a questioning glance at him. Geordo looks a little troubled now, and runs his hand through his hair. 

“I - I didn’t know it distressed Lady Miridiana so - the thought of my marrying Katarina. I didn’t mean to make her so anxious,” he says, his voice tentative. 

“I know,” Luigi replies, and his tone is kind. “We were happy, both of us, when you first proposed. And when Miridiana changed her mind, it was not because she found you lacking. Nor Katarina, not really. More, the world of the royal court in general.”

“You never changed your mind,” Geordo says, half-questioningly. 

“No,” Luigi agrees, staring straight ahead. “Although I did begin to wonder.” Geordo is struck with a chill at the admission. Luigi has been a silent but important supporter - the reason for his initial meeting with Katarina to begin with, and although his support was more a lack of action than anything else, it was still more than anyone else - who actively campaigned against the engagement - had given Geordo. If the Duke had decided to try and lift the engagement...

“The look on Katarina’s face,” Luigi says, slowly, “When she first saw you - was exactly how I looked, how I felt, when I first saw Miridiana. So I thought, I would help my daughter gain the happiness I had gotten. More, I hoped. At the time,” he admits, “I worried. I felt I hadn’t captured Miri’s heart completely, but I had married her anyway and told myself we’d have time together; I would make her fall in love with me. I gave her a title and a child and everything I could think of. It wasn’t enough - I thought. And I had hoped, if Katarina - unlike me - had the chance to grow up with her destined one, to know him,  they’d be better off than me and Miridiana. Turns out,” he says, brightening, and when he does Geordo can see shades of Katarina in her father - or should it be the other way around? “My Miri did love me!” 

Geordo, remembering his own, day-old realization - not even that - it had not yet been 24 hours - of Katarina’s love, of knowing Katarina did love him, and that Katarina knew he loved her - has to smile in empathic joy. Which is admittedly not a common occurrence for him. 

“Over the years, however, I never saw that expression again when she looked at you. So I wondered. That is - not until this morning, when she saw you in the foyer.” 

Geordo breathes out, slow and controlled. 

“I want my children to marry for love,” Luigi continues. Geordo feels a chill again when he remembers that Keith is counted one of this man’s children - one who is not within the four degrees of consanguinity which the Church  of Sorciere considers forbidden from marriage. “The dukedom is in no dire need for political connections,” he says with the casual arrogance of one of the kingdom’s most powerful men - an attitude, Geordo thinks, he has seen in his father. “And so, if her feelings had changed, I would happily support wherever she decided to bestow her feelings instead. But...”

“But she loves me,” Geordo finishes for him, fierce and half-defiant. 

“Yes, she does,” Luigi agrees affably. “Like I first thought.” 

Geordo’s ruffled feathers are soothed, remembering his first thought - that Luigi, alone among those who know Katarina, has supported Geordo’s suit. And then he goes further back to the original observation he had made.

“So when you - you chose me for your daughter, you did so only because of who I am, or who you thought I could be to Katarina. Not because you thought I would be king. Most people,” Geordo laughs, half-scornfully, remembering Ian and Geoffrey’s own potential in-laws, “Would be unhappy to hear their son-in-law turn down the throne he has a real chance of winning.”

Luigi goes suddenly silent. Son-in-law. The phrase hits him with sudden import - the knowledge that beside him is the boy Katarina will marry. He has known it in a vague way for years, in the sort of nebulous “Well, if nothing changes, it’ll happen in the future” way of knowing things, but it is a sudden and immediate piece of truth now. 

As he mulls this over, testing the concept for fit and feel in his mental landscape, Geordo continues: “But you are only happy that Katarina and I will be happy, together. You - you have given me the world, and I - I - thank you.”

Gently, Luigi says, “I have watched you grow up, too, Prince Geordo. Even if you had not married my Katarina, I would still sincerely hope for your happiness.” 

They ride together in companionable silence for a little while, Geordo biting his lip and Luigi politely pretending not to notice. Then, Luigi says: “However, I will have to remind you that even though we have used the Claes ring this once, we have access to other such artifacts, and I don’t mean the Stuart rings. I trust I make myself clear, Prince Geordo?”

“Of course, your Grace,” Geordo says with well-bred astonishment too obvious in his voice, clearly implying he is shocked that the Duke would even think to say this, because the prince has never even thought of such things, ever, in his whole entire life.

Luigi slants a flat-eyed look at him. “I, too, was once a seventeen-year-old boy, your Highness,” he notes dryly. 

Geordo nods, more serious. “Katarina says she wants to wait for marriage, and I would never do anything to disrespect her,” he vows, with the weight of solemn oath in his voice. Luigi twitches a bit at the thought of the two discussing such things together, (and he notes how twitchy he has become after the day's events) but sighs and forces himself to relax in his saddle.

“Only Katarina, your Highness?” he asks, after a beat of silence. 

“As you said, your Grace - I am a seventeen-year-old boy,” Geordo admits shamelessly, and Luigi has to laugh. 

Chapter Text

“Well, we can’t say today wasn’t successful,” Luigi remarks to his wife, after he has returned from his ride with the prince. “We have got our assurances that the Prince is not a seducer or worse, and I will not have to run him through with my sword to preserve the dignity of our daughter and our house.”

“Moreover, he’s not a politician,” Luigi continues, in a mild, thoughtful voice.   “That is to say, politics is not his driving passion. He’s got the training and the gift, for certain, but he’s not going to go after power.”

“And,” Miridiana adds, and her voice is very gentle. “He loves her.” She pauses, and reaches up to touch her husband’s face tenderly. “All the rest follows from that, I think.”

“I know,” Luigi replies in a low tone, turning his head to kiss the palm of his wife’s hand. “I, of all people, should know.” 

For a moment they just stand together, luxuriating in the other’s presence. Then Luigi sighs and reluctantly breaks the peaceful atmosphere. 

“But that does mean we will need to do something about Keith. I’m glad Katarina has found her love in Prince Geordo, but Keith’s really in love with her too, so...”

Miridiana blinks. “He’s...what?”

The truth is, Miridiana had not really seen Keith as a child when he first came to live with them - more a living culmination of all her dread and doubts about Luigi’s love. Writhing in an agony of fulfilled fear she had not even really registered the boy as a boy - too busy drowning in the implications of his presence to understand that he was present. 

Finally she had decided to flee. Back to her father’s castle which, if it was cold and lonely and far away, was at least safe from all the crawling hurtful whispers, from the beautiful husband who was too beautiful for her to keep. (She would take the best gift Luigi had given her, though - the only part of Luigi she would be allowed to keep.)

In the early days of her marriage, she had thought she would die of sorrow if Luigi left her; and then, she thought she would die if she did not leave Luigi. 

At least until a little voice asked, “But I thought Keith’s old daddy was that mean Viscount Coleman?” 

And then the whole truth had come out. She had spent the whole night weeping, and Luigi had cried too. 

(The next night, they had both cried again, but for different and much nicer reasons. She really was rather proud of how she had brought Luigi to tears that night.)

And Keith, to her, had become a real boy, and - looking like her husband as he did - had seemed to become her real child, in a subconscious and not entirely controlled way. She took him to her heart as her own son, all the more fiercely for having been so afraid of him in the beginning. 

Which means, when she hears that Keith is in love with Katarina, she recoils as if from something unclean. This is her son - this is her daughter. Qualifiers such as “adopted” and “blood” do not enter into this truth of her heart. How could such a thing come to be? How could they allow such a thing?

And then she pauses and makes herself regard the matter from a mental step away - framing it with all the detachment she can force. Keith is, in fact, not Katarina’s blood-brother; he is distantly related, in terms of actual physical kinship, distant enough that legally there would be no bar. And societally speaking there would not even be a whisper of surprise, except that Katarina had been previously engaged. It is a fairly common thing for Sorciere nobles to adopt especially magically-powerful children and marry them to their heirs, locking an infusion of new power into their bloodlines - in their kingdom, magical power is the ne plus ultra of noble houses, the ultimate proof beyond land, or money, or military arms, of their worth to rule.

(Which is, the thought has occurred to her more than once, the reason her children’s friend Maria Campbell is so hated by nobles; why even poor Mary Hunt - Miridiana’s secret favorite among the friend-group - with her commoner mother, is subject to such ill-treatment from her half-siblings and their friends, despite, or perhaps because of, Mary’s perfect deportment)

The difference, of course, is that those children (who tend to be the children of minor nobles) are adopted with the full knowledge of everyone involved of their eventual fate as noble consorts. Miridiana had regarded Keith as her son with Luigi, as Katarina’s brother - not as Katarina’s fiance. When he wept on her shoulder the night before, she had thought it was because he was sorry he had not been able to protect his sister; not because he was losing his lady-love to the prince.

It is difficult to shift her perception.

Luigi is looking at her worriedly. “I thought you knew,” he says, somewhat awkwardly. 

“We both know the problems of assuming what the other person knows, or feels, don’t we, husband?” Miridiana replies, archly, but then she is very off-kilter. 

She pauses. “Wait. Are you sure Keith…”

“Oh yes,” Luigi says, a little grimly, a little laughing. But the laughter is sad. “I’m sure.”

“Oh no,” Miridiana says, then, the full, unanswerable weight of Katarina’s joy crashing in on her. “Oh, my poor lad.”

That morning Keith had fled the manor like a thief - silent, stealthy, afraid. 

‘Is it not enough, o prince, that you have taken Katarina - her heart, her love, the very light in her eyes? Now you must take my rest in the morning - can’t sleep, you’re there, can’t have breakfast, you’re there. Gods, how I hate you.’  

But the hatred is a thin, weak thing - a forced thing, floating on top of a great sea of sorrow and loss. He would honestly rather hate Geordo. He can work with anger, with rage. But this feeling, this choking, drowning feeling, this fear …

He can’t even really hate Geordo. Geordo has always had the great, formidable advantage of being in the formal right - the secured position of being Katarina’s intended in the eyes of society, the eyes of the law. If Keith had been in his position…

Sometimes he had been astonished at his own daring - even as he thrust himself in between Geordo and Katarina, as he climbed into their carriages, as he ate the sweets Geordo brought for her - and at Geordo’s allowing it at all. If Keith’d had the force of right on his side, as Geordo had - if he’d been a royal prince - he would not have been so gracious. Like a dragon, greedy and den-dwelling, he would have hidden Katarina away, curled around her, ringed her with great earthen walls, guarded her like the treasure she is. 

He had dreamed of exactly that. He had dreamed of the engagement, broken, his mother triumphant - Katarina released from royal expectations, and freer than ever. If she is not promised to the Stuarts then she belongs to the Claes and he - he is to be the lord of Claes.  

She would stay here, in the sun-lit beauty of the Claes estate that she had been born in, with her very own farm plot in the garden, and their very own tree to sleep under, and he would be a good Duke, a good lord, for her , she would be the true ruler of Claes, the trueborn heir, and he would keep it well for her, and they would want for nothing, and for no one, and she would never leave him, never, never, never…

But she will leave. 

He will be alone. He will be alone, again. Alone, as he always is in his earliest memories - the little boy who had never been good enough for his mother to love - never good enough for his half-brothers and his blood-father to even tolerate - and who is not good enough to keep his Katarina by his side. 

If he had fled like a thief in the morning, he comes back like a dog in the night. Hungry, tired, and footsore - but pulled back by unseen bonds of loyalty and love. 

And she is waiting for him.

“Keith! Where have you been?” she cries out, dancing down the garden-path to meet him. The moonlight glints dark-silver off her hair, and her eyes are like pale stars. Keith chokes on the sudden onrush of love that wells in him at the sight of her - the feeling more potent than ever, in the knowing of how doomed it is. He wonders morbidly if this is how people at deathbeds feel, when they take their last glance of their loved ones. 

“Kata-” he rasps, and breaks off to cough. He realizes belatedly this is the first word he has said all day.

“Oh, you should drink some water!” Katarina fusses, and looks around as if she expects a glass and pitcher to appear out of thin air. She darts off, sudden as flame, and Keith takes one halting step in the direction of her disappearance. But just as suddenly she is back, holding her cupped hands in front of her, and the shine of water is in the hollow of her palms.

“Drink, Keith,” she commands, and obediently Keith stoops to drink. 

His thirst having been slaked, and now being able to answer her, Katarina then immediately forgets the question she had greeted him with and herds him into the warm kitchen, for more water, and cold meats, and bread with butter, and a small selection of sweets that - he is touched to discover - she has saved for him from dessert. 

She chatters to him as he eats, and he is grateful that she does not mention the prince - instead her talk is of household matters, homely and immediate - the food they’d had at dinner; the ripening tomatoes in the garden; Cora (who had left the Claes household staff two years back) and her new baby; Grandpa Tom’s newest innovations in snake-making.

“I will miss this,” Keith says, wistfully, as he watches her mouth move when she talks.

“But why?” Katarina asks, and her astonishment is genuine.

Keith’s expression is deliberately wry, so that it will not be something else. “Sister dear, you are going to marry the prince. Sooner rather than later, unless I misread last night?” 

Her delicate blush is like a blade through his ribs.

Then Katarina rallies. “If - if I am, still it doesn’t mean we won’t have dinner in the kitchen anymore!”

“The dinner in the kitchen is not the issue,” Keith replies. “Although, actually, that’s even more unlikely to continue.”

“No, it isn’t,” Katarina retorts, and her voice is very certain. “Maybe the palace kitchens sometimes, instead of here, but this is not far from the capital, and….wait, what do you mean it’s not the issue? What is, then?”

“Dinner with just you and me,” Keith says, and his voice is very low.

“What!” Katarina squawks, and actually slams her hand down on the table. “There is no way that’s ending. I won’t let it. Geordo is your friend, too! And, he has brothers too.” 

(He might kill her if she becomes evil - that’s fine. But he won’t stop her from seeing her family.)

“You’ll be married, Katarina,” Keith says, and his voice rings with defeat. Katarina goes still, and stares at Keith for a moment, her eyes darkening. Then she rises to her feet.

“Keith,” Katarina says, standing over him. She reaches out to tip his chin upward, and force his eyes to meet hers. “Geordo may become my husband.” Her fingers close tighter on his face.

“But - you will always be my brother.”

Keith’s eyes well with tears. He enfolds her hand in both of his, and bends his head over it, and begins to cry. 

Before our lives divide for ever,
      While time is with us and hands are free,
(Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever
      Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea)
I will say no word that a man might say
Whose whole life's love goes down in a day;
For this could never have been; and never,
      Though the gods and the years relent, shall be.

-The Triumph of Time, Algernon Charles Swinburne

Omake

“In many ways, having a prince for a fiance has been very difficult for our Katarina,” muses Luigi aloud. “But still, I can’t be sorry I got her one. I mean, the way she looks at him - it’s like she’s found her very own Miridiana.”

The aforementioned Miridiana pauses, dumbstruck. “Wait. In your view of the situation, Prince Geordo is my counterpart? And Katarina is yours ?”

“Why, of course,” Luigi replies, looking surprised that she is even asking. 

Miridiana just stares at him - at her tall, blond, blue-eyed husband, handsome and talented and intelligent. Well, usually intelligent. 

Luigi beams at her. 

Chapter Text

When Geordo goes to bed that night, tired from his ride and his talking, there are many things he has to think of. He has to think about what (and how) to tell his parents - both about his intention to renounce his throne-right, and about the development in his relationship with Katarina. He has to think about the paperwork needed, and about the formal ceremony that will need to be arranged. He has to think about securing the bracer. He has to think about going back to the Academy, and what will change regarding his and Katarina’s new understanding. (He doubts the Duke will allow Katarina to move into his rooms, but perhaps they can have closer quarters…) He has to - but his mind shivers away from the very thought - speak to Alan. 

There are many things to think about, that he should think about, but instead he thinks about Katarina. 

Her smiles - her worry for him - her hand in his, when he slid the white Claes ring over her finger - her waving to him from the window - her calling his name, dressed in her pajamas, beaming at him from above…

(“I wondered...until this morning, when she saw you in the foyer,” he remembers the Duke saying.)

And her in his arms, looking up at him with a trusting smile, her shy little laughs as he bent his head to hers - little kisses, soft kisses, more chaste than what he’s seen some of his classmates exchanging with each other; to be honest, more chaste than the kisses he’s stolen from her already - but still, utterly delicious, because it is Katarina and it is her willing. He dwells on this particular memory thoroughly . And maybe some of it is more imagination than memory - like if her parents had been a little further away…

He turns over to lay on his stomach and grins into his pillow, burying his face into its feather-stuffed softness.

When he wakes up, he considers the tasks awaiting him that day - paperwork, training with the royal knights, an inspection of the capital’s second-largest hospital - and quickly decides to forego them and visit the Claes estate again.

He leaves behind his sputtering aides after telling them of his plan, and heads straight to the stables. He tacks Laurent up himself, doing so with a quick skill that makes the shocked stable-boys gasp, and is on the road before any of his flabbergasted staff can stop him. He does make sure to keep Laurent at a steady trot, rather than the quicker pace he had set the day before - he remembers the clear strain of the Claes household staff when he had shown up too early yesterday.

He still makes it to the Claes estate fairly early in the morning - but not early enough, he finds, when he is told upon his arrival that Lady Katarina and Lord Keith have gone to the stables to take a ride together.

Nine years of constant competition has him galloping towards the Claes stables; but his first sight of Keith, mounted on a beautiful grey, reminds him that there is no longer any need - no longer any competition. Keith is already looking at him, attention drawn by Laurent’s hooves drumming on the brick-paved stable-yard, by the time Geordo recognizes him, and there is something bleak in his dark-blue eyes that makes Geordo yank a little harder than he means to on Laurent’s reins. Offended, the golden stallion comes to a plunging halt, snorting angrily. Absent-mindedly, Geordo reins him in a tight circle, re-establishing his control over his fire-tempered horse, while keeping his gaze locked on Keith’s. 

Keith’s face is very blank, and there are dark circles under his eyes - his skin seems a little paler than normal. Geordo does not know what to say - his normal greetings to the other boy, careless and always half-mocking, always met by half-mocking carelessness, seem cruel now. It feels as if they have not met for a long time and they are half-strangers now, learning each other’s new faces. 

Then Keith closes his eyes, blows out a heavy exhale, and opens his eyes again with a wry half-smile on his lips. “Good morning, your highness,” he says, and his voice is a little tired, but not otherwise different than normal. “I see that even your horse has to be a showy bastard.” 

Geordo, startled, barks out a laugh, and feels something tight in his chest begin to melt into warmth. He shakes his head, and then locks gazes with Keith again. He can’t say ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘Are you feeling all right’ or anything like that - because he isn’t sorry, and he could never be, not for winning Katarina’s heart, and anything so trite would be an insult to Keith - but he can tell, with that exchange, that they will be all right. Not now - maybe not for a while - but eventually. 

And that is when Katarina rides out on a giant black demon. 

Whether Laurent does it of his own volition, or whether Geordo’s shock communicates itself to his mount, Geordo doesn’t know. Either way, Laurent scrambles back several steps, snorting in fear, while Geordo has to grab hard at the saddle-pommel to keep from toppling off - something he’s not had to do since his very first few days of equestrian training. In the background, he can hear Keith laughing at him. 

Katarina’s mount is, he realizes belatedly, not actually a giant. It is tall, but something about its carriage makes it seem larger than it is - an effect heightened by the relative size of the slender girl on its back. It is powerfully built, with a long, arched neck and feathering on its fetlocks; completely black from nose to tail, with eyes that are…brown, yes definitely brown, not red, because horses don’t have red eyes…

The black horse looks them over, and then snorts dismissively. Geordo can absolutely tell that there was a dismissive intention in that snort. 

“Geordo!” Katarina calls, and her voice is joyful and surprised. “I didn’t expect to see you here!” With anyone else, Geordo would have examined the speaker for passive-aggressive overtones. But with Katarina, he knows that she really only means what she says - moreover, from the look on her face, that his unexpected appearance is unexpected in the same way a surprise gift is. He smiles at her, the smile turning somewhat fixed as he realizes what she’s wearing.

He hadn’t really taken it in before, distracted by the black horse, but Katarina is - not in a dress. Nor a riding habit, as he expected her to be in. Instead, she - like Keith, he suddenly realizes with a quick sideways glance - is togged out in hunting clothes, white riding breeches and tan-cuffed black boots, with dark indigo hunt coats over white tunics. Geordo has to swallow, hard. He knows this is something that will be making its appearance in his dreams from now on. 

“Mother’s not going to like this,” he can hear Keith drawling. “There’s a reason she said we’re not allowed to go riding with the others, you know.” 

“Oh, but we talked it over yesterday,” Katarina explains. “She knows Geordo can be trusted, now.” 

Keith is silent, and Geordo thinks he may be wincing, but he can’t look to check - because that would mean tearing his eyes away from Katarina. 

“...you don’t ride side-saddle?” he says, finally.

“No,” Keith answers for his sister. “She falls off all the time if it’s side-saddle. And says that if she’s going to ride, she’s going to ride properly , and ignores mother when she tries to explain that ‘properly’ means side-saddle for girls.”

“You don’t know how hard it is to get on and get off if you’re riding side-saddle!” Katarina complains. “And it’s so much more tiring than riding astride. And it frets the horses more. Cake doesn’t like it, at all. So of course I don’t ride side-saddle. Isn’t that right, boy?” she asks her horse, who actually bobs his head up and down in something like a nod.

“....Cake,” Geordo repeats.

“Oh, and now I can introduce you to him!” Katarina realizes, delighted. “Geordo, meet Cake. He’s my horse!”

Geordo just continues to stare at her, but with a bit less appreciation and a bit more disbelief. 

“Well, his full name is Devil’s Food Cake. Because of his coat, you know.” And she strokes said coat lovingly. 

Geordo looks over the tall black stallion, who clearly has some destrier forebears in his lineage - at the sloping, muscled shoulders, and the wicked light in those not-quite-red eyes, and the smooth, shining coat as dark as the void - and says only: “...Devil’s Food Cake.”

Keith has ridden his grey closer. In a low voice, meant only for Geordo’s ears, he notes, “As you can probably guess, his nickname in the stables is based only on the first part of that name.”

“Me and Keith were going for a ride,” Katarina then explains. “Do you want to come?” 

“Yes please,” Geordo says, and smiles.

OMAKE

“I would that I could save you from this pain,” Miridiana whispers, stroking her lad’s fair hair. She and Luigi are in Keith's bedroom, tucking their son into bed as they have not done for years. But it seems like he could use it tonight.

“Ah, but mother,” Keith whispers back, leaning his head into her stroking. “I wouldn’t. This pain is proof that I love - and I would rather have this than to have lived not loving her.”

“I shall not change you. Nay, though I might, 
             Would I change my sweet one love with a word? ” he quotes, and Miridiana smiles sadly at him.

“Sleep, Keith,” she orders him, and he obeys. 

They leave his bedroom. She is careful to keep silent until they are well away, and within the corridor of their private suite, when she sighs. “Well, he’s at the point of quoting love-poems, so that’s a good sign he’ll get over it. Most every teenager goes through that, I think - at least he chose Swinbern. For my part, I sobbed over Ceats - very melodramatic.”

Luigi stops dead in his tracks. “Miridiana - who were you thinking of when you read Ceats?”

“Eh? Oh, some schoolgirl crush,” she says airily, waving her hand. “Honestly I don’t remember his name. He was blond like you, though. I suppose Adeth girls have a type!” she giggles, remembering that her sisters’ husbands are also blonds, and of course Katarina is - it is now revealed - crazy over her golden-haired prince. 

She is still giggling, transforming her rather severely beautiful face into something younger and more approachable, when she goes into the bedroom - missing her husband’s dark expression.

Chapter Text

Keith is very obviously schooled, like Geordo, in classical equitation. He sits deep in the saddle, elbows tucked in tight, weight in his heels. He is a good rider - very well-trained, as is his horse, over whom he maintains flawless control. As they leave behind the Claes parklands for the cool shade of forest trails, Keith shows both his skill and his knowledge of the area, guiding his horse over the narrow, crooked forest trails with a sure hand.

Katarina, on the other hand, sits more forward in the saddle than classical training calls for, balanced so as to free her horse’s back. She tends to give her horse his head, holding the reins loose and easy - lets him pick his way through the forest, lets him kick up his heels and jump what he wants. She rides like a young centaur, moving with her horse, always ready for a jump or a bound, laughing when Cake shies or rears or bucks. Watching her post is a revelation in visual poetry to Geordo, who is very happy to take a position behind her, and does not even care - although Laurent does - that Cake proves faster, stronger and more dominant than any of the other horses. Technically speaking, she is a worse rider than either Geordo or Keith; practically speaking, Geordo has never seen a rider less likely to be tossed if she didn’t want it.

(They’d thought the Claes siblings did not like horses. “Earth mages,” Alan had joked, “They like their feet on the ground.” He’d paused. “Or at least on trees. Which - which have roots that go into the ground…?”)

This would not, of course, be considered very feminine by the standards of Sorciere nobility (although Geordo remembers hearing that the nobles on the northern border have their women learn to ride astride; the terrain is too rough, and the estates too remote, for anything else). Geordo can see why Katarina’s mother had not wanted Katarina riding with any but family, if this is how she rides. But - and he grins to himself, as he watches Katarina clear a fallen log with a clean leap - he is going to be family. 

(It is…irritating to consider that Keith has had this all along - that Keith shared this secret with Katarina, had been her riding-partner, had been able to see Katarina ride in hunt-clothes. But, Geordo reminds himself, he is the one who will marry Katarina; he can be gracious.)

When the three of them ride back to the Claes manor for lunch, Katarina’s mother is there to greet them; she only raises an eyebrow at the prince’s appearance, a calm expression that does not change even a jot at Geordo’s most ingratiating, charming smile. (Now that he’s won her approval to marry her daughter, he no longer has to be so wary around her. Even when he was most afraid of her, he’d always liked her - she looks too much like Katarina. And he’s never thought of her as being anything but sincerely interested in her children; something he could never fault her for. Something he could wish for all mothers.)

Beside him, he can hear Keith and Katarina sighing in relief that the look is all the Lady Miridiana greets them with; obviously they were not as sure about their reception as they said they were. 

He sees the amused glance Lady Miridiana gives her two children. With the burden of her fear lifted off her - like Katarina - she appears younger, and friendlier. (Again - like Katarina.) 

“I see you have picked up a prince over the course of your ride,” she says, mildly. “Would his Highness care to join us for lunch? We are having haddock in red pepper sauce.”

“I grew the peppers!” crows Katarina. “They turned out really well, Geordo, you have to try them…”

Geordo smiles at Katarina (the smile is on purpose - the level of adoration in it is not). “I would love to try some.” 

Katarina beams back at him. He has always been so very supportive of her agricultural efforts, but she’s always so happy when he tries some anyway. 

When they turn back to the other two in their group, it is to see Miridiana looking touched and Keith looking - reluctantly touched, and also in some pain.

“Keith!” Katarina says, looking concerned. “Are you OK? Does anything hurt? Oh! Do you find red peppers too spicy? We can ask the kitchen to prepare some yogurt - but these aren’t the super-spicy ones, I promise!”

“N-no, sister,” Keith replies. He looks at Geordo and sighs. “No, I’m fine. I promise I’m fine. Really.” He fishes up a smile of his own. “I was just thinking it - has been a long ride. And now it’s over.”

“We can go riding again tomorrow, if you like,” Katarina offers. 

“I would like that,” Keith murmurs, his gaze soft and affectionate. 

And then his smile turns more genuine. “Actually, though, I do believe we still have some of those ‘super-spicy’ ones you grew as an experiment in the kitchen. You should let Prince Geordo try them too.”

Geordo is a fire-mage. He adores the ‘ghost-peppers’ (as Katarina calls them).

That night, back at the palace, Geordo heads straight to the Music Room - knowing, in that strange, subtle way he knows things about his twin, that this is where Alan is right now. (When they’d been younger, he was right only half the time; nowadays, he’s never far wrong.) 

He catches a long, rippling thread of music as he places his hand on the bronze door-handle - delicate, like fine lacework, and inexpressibly sad. The music trails off even before he opens the door. 

“I don’t think I’ve heard that before,” he says softly as he enters the room.

“It’s new,” Alan says, just as softly. “I haven’t named the piece yet.” He looks up and meets his brother’s eyes. 

Geordo does not wince. (But he would like to.)

What he had not been able to tell Keith, he can tell his brother. “Alan, I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not,” Alan replies at once, smiling sadly. “But that’s fine.” 

Geordo shifts his weight restlessly. “But I am , though. At least - at least about how I acted the - the night before last. I was - thoughtless.” 

Alan looks at him and muses that the happiness from That Night is not gone - it’s just sunk deeper into Geordo, glowing behind his eyes. He thinks of Katarina pushing seeds into soft, dark soil. 

“She deserves that,” Alan says. “She deserves the kind of love that makes you forget yourself; she deserves to be celebrated. You should be blindingly happy, if she loves you. Anything less is…” He trails off, shakes his head, and his tone changes suddenly. 

“You knew, even before I did. Years before I did. Didn’t you?” But the question is just a formality. Both twins know the truth of the statement. 

“Yes,” Geordo answers anyway. 

Alan laughs, almost soundlessly. “And I wondered why you kept reminding me that she was your fiancée. ‘I know that!’ I always thought. But now - now I really know it.” 

“Alan,” Geordo says quietly. 

“I wonder,” Alan muses aloud, “If I would have been so kind to you if our positions had been reversed.” He closes his eyes and laughs again. “I wonder how close we were to finding out.” 

This time Geordo is silent.

Finally Alan sighs and looks at his brother. “I’d tell you to make her happy, but I - I already know how hard you’ll work - how far you’ll go - to do that.” He manages to smile. “And - I do appreciate you coming to check on me.” 

His voice a little hoarse, Geordo replies: “You’re my brother - you’re my twin brother.” 

“And you’re mine.” 

Alan rises to his feet and prepares to leave the room, gathering up his sheet-music. Geordo stays still and watches him. As Alan turns and passes by him, he pauses and claps a hand on Geordo’s shoulder. He squeezes, and then silently leaves the room. 

Chapter Text

After two whole days dedicated mostly to Katarina, Geordo compromises with his increasingly tearful staff and sets up a routine for the rest of his summer-break. 

In the mornings, he wakes early and dedicates all his time to work - even bringing paperwork to his breakfast. At lunch, he takes something portable from the kitchens, usually some kind of hardy sandwich, sometimes meat-stuffed pasties, once simply a block of cheese, and eats as he rides to the Claes estate. He then spends the afternoon with Katarina, and whoever is detailed to serve as chaperone - usually Keith. (He knows, and forces himself to tolerate, that Katarina spends her mornings and luncheons with Keith - that she spends more time with her brother than her already-generous usual, wanting to soothe what she sees as his sibling-loneliness)

Once, he and Katarina spend the afternoon with the Duke and Duchess - all four riding the bounds of the Claes estate for an inspection. 

Geordo is entirely unsurprised that the Duchess is an excellent rider (unlike her daughter, she is skilled both side-saddle and astride), but he is slightly surprised that she is the one who taught Katarina her northern-style riding - hunt seat, he is told they call it near the border, a style developed for mounted hunts, unlike classical equitation, which is developed from cavalry training. Apparently, her mother had hoped supervising Katarina’s riding would, firstly, lure her away from the siren call of farming; and, secondly, allow her to ensure that Katarina would not be caught riding “like a man!” by anyone outside the Claes’ most trusted inner circle. 

He is aware that the ducal couple are showcasing their trust in him by allowing him to ride along with them in their inspection - and, in fact, suspects that said inspection has been moved up their usual itinerary in order to include him. Geordo is, therefore, determined to do his best. Katarina, however, is simply delighted to be sharing a ride in the open air with her parents and her fiancé, and her genuine joy sweeps the rest of them up. It is honestly one of the nicer days he’s ever had.

(Katarina in her riding-clothes is a big element in that, too. Although, unlike with Keith, Geordo is not able to ride behind Katarina openly appreciating her…horsemanship. Instead, he rides beside the Duke, in front of the two ladies - although he does catch the Duke, now and then, swiveling his head to watch his wife. It is then Geordo will happily sneak his own glances at Katarina.) 

That night, as with nearly every night for the remainder of the summer-break, Geordo has dinner with the Claes family. This is not like the breezy, often al-fresco meals he has had while visiting Katarina as they grew up - nor the occasional formal meal, usually with the full group, that the Claes had hosted over the years - this is a family meal, intimate and comfortable, steeped in routine - not etiquette, but routine , born out of years of habits and preferences, not out of rules and court strictures - and Geordo is part of it now. 

They even make sure to have small bowls of those delightful ghost-peppers to spice his meals with, and although Katarina offers to give him some to take home, he is quite happy to leave them all here - a visible marker that he has a place here, that his tastes are being incorporated into the daily patterns, yet another reason for him to visit. 

“When we marry,” he tells Katarina, lingering over the delicious phrase and reveling in the certainty of the “when” rather than the “if” he’s heard too many people using when speaking of his engagement, “and set up our household, we’ll have a garden for you, of course. Would you try growing these ghost-peppers in your garden there too?” 

“I’ll make them my first crop!” Katarina promises, enchanted by the vision of a whole new farm-plot for her to tend. (Keith and Luigi, overhearing, both have tears spring to their eyes; Miridiana, remembering her own hopeful plans as a new bride traveling to her husband’s dukedom, smiles wistfully.)

After dinner, Geordo rides his carriage (which is sent over following his own faster lunch-time ride) back home to the royal palace. His parents tend to be waiting for him, usually with Geoffrey, wanting to hear about his time with the Claes. Not for the first time, it occurs to him that his parents are very eager to hear news of the ducal couple. When he tells them he’s spent the day riding with them, the Queen quizzes him on Lady Miridiana’s exact outfit (very like Katarina’s and Keith’s, with a longer northern-style coat) and horse (a palomino mare, paler than Geordo’s, named Tea Biscuit - mother to Keith’s own grey, Whipped Cream). His father just beams happily (and asks about Luigi’s dapple-grey, musing aloud that House Claes used to be known for the excellence of their horses; he’d thought that had died out, but apparently they’re just being subtle….) The king has been in an excellent mood since Geordo has explained that Katarina will be marrying him, all objections from House Claes being withdrawn, and that he will therefore be formally renouncing his throne-right. 

(Alan stays away from these talks. But, Geordo knows, he is preparing to renounce his throne-right as well.)

And so the days pass, very happily, until the day of the Midsummer ball - the day which, by previous arrangement, the whole group would meet again. 

Midsummer is one of Sorciere’s four Great Feasts; and, as the feast-day dedicated to fire, Geordo’s favorite. Before the Academy had let out for the summer-break, he and his fellow Katarina-admirers friends had arranged to meet at the palace on Midsummer Day, before the actual ball. They would dress for the ball there, instead of at their respective homes, and - an important consideration for the girls, especially - remove the risk of their finery being compromised by the rigors of travel. 

It is the first time since the night with the bracer that the whole group will be together. The first time any of them, save for himself and Keith, have seen Katarina. Geordo fights the urge to pace; Alan is already fiddling irritatedly with the piano in the drawing-room where they are meeting, plunking single notes out of the ivory keys in an irregular, arrhythmic pattern.

The Ascart siblings are the first to arrive. For a moment, as they enter, Geordo is frozen - staring into the dark eyes of his oldest friend. 

Unlike Keith and Alan, Nicol’s face is placid - beautiful, really, unmarred by the storms of emotion that had stolen the color from Keith and Alan’s faces, the sparkle from their eyes, put dark circles in the hollows of their faces. But - 

‘ Still waters,’ Geordo thinks, looking at Nicol. ‘ Your element is wind; but you’re all still waters.’

Unlike the open warfare he’d had with Keith, and the half-afraid, half-angry dance he’d led his too-oblivious, too-affectionate twin, he and Nicol seem to have existed simultaneously on two different levels; one where Nicol is his best friend, one year older and wiser, quiet, reliable; and the other, existing primarily in potential energy - like an avalanche, before it falls; a storm, before it breaks - where he is a rival, a boy who yearns for what is Geordo’s, a thief who could engulf Katarina in his beauty and rip her away from Geordo. 

Unlike Keith, who he had first seen clinging (who still clings) to Katarina, and unlike Alan, who had not even known he was (who still is) in love with Katarina for the longest time, Geordo knows that Nicol has fought against his attraction to Katarina; that he does not actually want to be in love with her. Politically speaking it would be messy; personally speaking, Nicol would really rather not be that staple of romantic tales, the best friend who wants to steal the bride away.

But he is, anyway. 

Unlike Alan and Keith, Nicol has actually taken steps - much to his younger sister’s clear dismay - to mitigate his situation. He mostly tries not to be alone with Katarina, which is the exact opposite of everyone else, and is faultlessly correct in his dealings with her. He has even tried to find his own fiancée - Geordo quietly working behind the scenes, bolstering the Prime Minister’s own efforts, to ensure that eligible women, women who could perhaps be….sufficient as Nicol’s wife, continue to meet with him even as the tales of Nicol’s rejections and polite disinterest make the rounds of noble society. 

(The attempt fails, of course, but Geordo is not even surprised - because who on earth could compete with Katarina?)  

And yet. And yet. 

Nicol still wants her; he was a threat, and one backed by his sister - who, Geordo has recently begun to discover, may be more cutthroat than even Mary or Keith. 

He was a threat - Geordo knew it; Nicol knew Geordo knew - but all that is over now. 

And now they look at each other, and say nothing.

The door swings open again, and Geordo’s head snaps to the side automatically to see who it is. It is Mary Hunt, and Geordo actually falters at the expression on her face when she sees him. Then her gaze flickers to Alan, and her face softens. Alan hurries to her side. 

Geordo smiles politely at everyone. 

Everyone stares back at him. 

‘ Well, this is going to be fun.’

Chapter Text

When the Claes siblings arrive at the Music Room, it is to the sight of Geordo standing by the fireplace - back to the wall, clear sightlines, Keith notes - while the rest of their friends ring him in a half-circle. Keith’s eyes flicker over the tableau, and he thinks of a wolf at bay.

Katarina notices exactly none of this and plunges into the room with a happy cry. Her arrival is like a burst of light and everyone blinks, straightening up, turning. She throws her arms around Sophia (who, with her brother, had been standing farthest away from Geordo - and, therefore, closest to the door) in a quick hug, flitting from person to person. Everyone, Keith notices, looks a little haggard, a little tired - and everyone blinks again after their Katarina-administered hug with the slow, hard blink of the sun-dazzled.

(Maria is absent. She'd been rather ambivalent even when they had first discussed it, frightened by the prospect of a royal ball - and, now, everyone understands why she had written that she was choosing to spend Midsummer Day with her mother and with the villagers cautiously trying to make amends with the Campbells. Keith wonders if he is more sorry for or jealous of Maria.)

“I missed you! I missed you!” Katarina tells them, her smile all over her face. “Where did you go this summer? Did you have fun?” But she’s too happy to stay to listen to their halting, stammering replies, bouncing from one to the other, drinking in their faces. 

Katarina is so happy, and it’s something they all can see - something none of them can help but see. She is overflowing with joy, delight spilling from her like bright water from a too-full glass. She is centered and steady in a way she has never been before - a way they saw the beginnings of, That Night, when she had reappeared on Geordo’s arm with a mountain-crest smile on her face. Her movements have a new-found elegance - nothing studied or deliberate, but a result of toned muscles relaxing, better sleep, nerves no longer on a hair-trigger. 

Finally she flies to Geordo and hugs him as well, and if she hugs him last she hugs him hardest. “I missed you!” she tells him, as she has told everyone, and with all the sincerity with which she has greeted the others.

‘I missed you too!’ is what he should reply. It is sweet and innocuous and Katarina will beam at him in reply, he knows. Instead he smiles, slow and exultant. 

“But you saw me only yesterday - and the day before that, and the day before that, and the day…” he drawls, his voice pitched so everyone can hear him. 

“I missed you anyway!” Katarina tells him, and everyone can hear that, too. 

‘I saw her more than you did,’ Keith thinks spitefully. ‘You’ll marry her, but you won’t be able to stop her from seeing me. I will always be her brother and nothing you can do will ever take that away from me…’ 

“Hey,” Alan is saying to Katarina, with something of his brother’s drawl in his voice, and something of his own insouciant gruffness - and underneath it all, a tense thrumming of loneliness. “So when you marry this idiot, you’ll be my sister, you know? And I’ll be your little brother.”

“WHAT!” Keith and Katarina squawk in unison. 

“Does that mean we can share desserts?" Katarina asks, eyes shining. TWO people to share desserts with, means twice the variety she can indulge in! Or is that 30% more variety? Either way, lots more desserts!

"That's...not what being an elder sibling means, Katarina..."

Keith yelps: “No neesan, I’m your only little brother!” He begins to glare at Alan. 

Geordo just laughs and laughs. 

They dress in the guest-wing, each having a guest-bedroom to themselves. For propriety’s sake, the girls dress on one floor and the boys on another. Katarina’s guest-room is the corner-suite, near the flight of stairs. As is Geordo’s, on the floor below. 

And when Katarina enters the room, Anne behind her, it is to the sight of a dressmaker’s mannequin set up in the corner - where the sunlight will hit it from the window - draped with a beautiful silk dress. Katarina and Anne gape at it. 

When she can manage to tear her eyes from it, a small slip of paper on a nearby table catches her gaze - she catches it up, and turns it over to see it has been folded and sealed with Geordo’s personal seal stamped into red wax; her name, in his flawless copperplate script, is written above it. 

She tears it open. 

Katarina, my darling - 

This is my present to you. 

With love, your fiancé
Geordo, Third Prince of House Stuart

The first three lines, with affection clear in every stroke of the pen, are written in a light hand; the final one, with his full name and title, is written with more care, the ink darker and pressed deeper into the paper, the letters slightly larger. Beside his name is his seal again, stamped this time in red ink. 

(Geordo has been planning this present for years - waiting for a time when his princess will accept silks and jewels rather than only seedlings and garden-shears. When Katarina takes his hand and gives her heart, he had set his plans in motion - had luxuriated in choosing the clothes, as a gourmand would in choosing the wine and meats for a particularly fine meal. He revels in the thought - shivers - of seeing her in his chosen colors; when he imagines others seeing her in his colors.)

The dress is made of white silk charmeuse, delicate and whisper-soft, and narrow-cut to drape close to her figure. There are accessories to go with the dress, laid out neatly in open boxes nearby - white satin shoes, dancer-light and strapped with ribbons; a sash-belt, with pearls and white opals sewn to cloth-of-gold; a slim golden cuff-bracelet for her wrist, studded along its length with diamonds, with diamond earrings to match - an outfit complete and opulent. 

But most dazzling of all is the great golden torc, made from gold wire twisted and braided into a crescent, carefully laid on a red velvet cushion. The torc opens in the front, and the terminals are inlaid with a single massive ruby at each end - each ruby carved into the shape of a lion rampant, with sapphires to mark the claws and tongue, the details fine enough to show that both magic and incredible craftsmanship had been involved in the creation. 

The red lion rampant, armed and langued azure - the sigil of House Stuart. 

Katarina runs her fingers over one of the carved lions. 

(“More than anything in this world,” she remembers Geordo telling her, with fire in his eyes and truth deeper than magic in his voice. “I want you.”)

“My lady?” Anne says, her voice quiet and reverent as it very rarely is when speaking to her harum-scarum young mistress. “We - we have two options here. The clothes from home are in the wardrobe. What will you wear?”

“The white and gold,” she hears herself saying, as if from a distance. “I will wear the white and gold.”

The dress fits quite well - well enough that Anne is a bit worried about how exactly the prince had known the measurements needed - but a few minutes into their dressing, there is a discreet knock on the door. Anne opens the door only slightly, just in case one of Lady Katarina’s male friends (or Lady Mary) is outside - but the person waiting outside is a stranger. 

One with a royal warrant of appointment as a dressmaker. 

The dressmaker and her assistants hurry into the room quietly, with an air of practiced competence - one that is validated when they swarm to Katarina and adjust the dress to her with swift expertise.

Soon the dress is made to fit Katarina literally perfectly, instead of only nearly so, and the dressmaker draws back with a murmur of professional satisfaction. She is a craftswoman, and Katarina with her athletic young body and high-bred bones offers a good canvas for the dressmaker’s work. 

Her assistants bustle about, helping with the sash and the shoes; with the delicate diplomacy of the trained specialist, they leave the jewels and the final touches to Anne, and hurry away as soon as their jobs are done.

“Whew,” Katarina whistles, in mixed relief and admiration, when they leave. “That was…a lot. But fast.” 

“Indeed,” Anne agrees. She is already pulling the stool in front of the dressing table out. She is pleased to see Katarina take the silent prompt, and the attention with which her young mistress seats herself, taking care not to unduly muss her tailored gown. 

‘ She’s growing up,’ Anne thinks, not without a tinge of wistfulness for the childhood Katarina seems to finally be leaving behind. But - as she watches Katarina making faces at herself in the mirror, giggling with glee at the sparkle of the diamonds on her bracelet as she turns it to let the stones catch the light - she doubts whether Katarina will ever truly leave behind every vestige of the pure-hearted child Anne had grown to love. 

And, she adds to herself, as she combs Katarina’s hair into an elegant chignon coiled low, leaving her nape bared for the golden torc, Anne - unlike the rest of Katarina’s friends and family - will be accompanying Katarina as she steps into her new role as Prince Geordo’s wife. The prince has already spoken with Anne about her place in the household he means to establish with Katarina - still Katarina’s lady’s-maid, but senior to everyone in the staff save for Geordo’s steward, the head butler, and the head housekeeper. As Katarina’s personal attendant, she will in fact have a small dedicated staff of her own - and, the prince has made it clear, the authority to override everything if needed to ensure Katarina’s safety and happiness. 

“Katarina,” he had said, with a wry smile and an adoring look in his eyes, “will sometimes require that kind of flexible oversight. As we all know.” 

“We do,” Anne had agreed then, knowing that the prince is moving to secure her approval with his plans - and entirely happy to approve. Her place is guaranteed by Katarina’s side. She asks for nothing more. 

“There we go, my lady,” she murmurs softly, finishing the updo with a jeweled hairpin. It is one of Lady Miridiana’s, a present from her father - Katarina’s grandfather, Duke Adeth - when she had been around Katarina’s age. There is a single small black tourmaline on it. 

“Wow,” Katarina marvels. “I don’t look half-bad…you’re a miracle-worker, Anne!”

Anne sighs. “Thank you, my lady, but you don’t need a miracle for that. And you look considerably more than ‘not half-bad’. Lady Katarina,” she says, her voice slipping into a more serious tone. “You are beautiful. And I am not just saying this to make you feel better. You are beautiful, and the prince has gone to considerable trouble to highlight your beauty. When you go to the ball, bear in mind that you will be treated as a beauty, and it will be an insult to Prince Geordo and myself - and your mother - and anyone with eyes, if you act as if you are not.” 

Katarina bites her lip, and immediately stops when she remembers the lipstick she is wearing. “I - I get it, Anne. I did luck out in the looks department even if I do look kind of scary…” she tells herself.

“If you do look scary,” Anne replies, her voice even, “It is because you are frighteningly good-looking.”

“Is that a thing?” Katarina demands. 

“Of course it is. Your mother terrifies your father with how beautiful she is,” Anne points out. “You’ve heard him; everyone in the manor has.”

“That’s true,” Katarina allows, “But daddy is stupid in love with her.”

“Because he is, ahem, 'stupid in love' with the duchess, he is biased, but have you considered how he came to be so in love with her?” Anne argues back. “He took one look at your mother and fell, hard enough that he was asking your grandfather for Lady Miridiana’s hand in marriage that same evening. Everyone in the manor knows that story too. She is that beautiful, and you are too, and your prince is also, how did you say it, 'stupid in love' with you.” 

“He does love me,” Katarina whispers, mostly to herself. “I know that now.” 

“Hm,” Anne hums in reply; there is a triumphant glint in her eye.

There is another knock on the door. Katarina turns to watch as Anne goes to answer the door, wondering if the dressmaker has come back for more adjustments - but rises to her feet when Geordo slips into the room after exchanging a few quiet words with Anne. The prince is dressed in the full dress uniform of a royal knight, with the white star emblem of the Order of Polaris on his high-collared white tunic, crossed by a golden sash. The other accouterments and aiguillette cord around his right shoulder are gold as well, as is the piping on his dress trousers, and Anne notes the effect of the matching white and gold as her eyes dart between Katarina and Geordo.  

“Geordo!” Katarina exclaims, hurrying to him. Anne steps aside, bowing respectfully, before tactfully retreating to the adjoining room. 

Katarina turns to watch her go, somewhat surprised; when she turns back, Geordo is, for the first time she can remember, kneeling. There is a small box in his hand. 

Engagement rings in Sorciere started out as more of a commoner custom - iron rings, to begin with, to show that a maiden was to be married, and that to take liberties with her was to invite an angry fiancé's retaliation. There were not a few jokes about the similarities of a village-maid’s iron ring of engagement, and the ancient iron slave collars that so many in Sorciere had died to stamp out. Nobles had bride-prices and dowries (depending on the relative strength and wealth of the families, and the complicated betrothal contracts hammered out between them) and single rings were too simple a consideration. Slowly, however, the custom grew, and now noblemen give their intended wives rings - no humble iron, but gold and silver, dazzling with jewels. For commoners, the ring shows they mean to be married; for nobles, more specifically, an engagement ring shows that the wedding-date is set, and that the arrangements are far enough advanced that there will be no rescinding of the contract. By custom, the ring means that they will be wed within a year. 

Katarina stares at the box without taking it, her head whirling. She looks at Geordo, and sees both love and fear, feels both love and fear. 

“Katarina,” Geordo breathes. “Will you…”

“You already know I will,” Katarina interrupts. She smiles and laughs and then cries. By next summer, they will be wed. She knows it. 

“I want to hear you say it,” Geordo insists, his own eyes very bright. He thumbs the box open on its hinge, revealing the ring; it is gold, with a bezel-set ruby cabochon. “Katarina, will you marry me?”

“Yes,” Katarina says. “Yes,” she says again, a sob catching in her throat. “I will marry you, Geordo. I love you.”

Geordo catches her hand and brings it to his mouth, kissing it softly before using his other hand to slip the ring onto her left ring-finger, where he had slipped the white Claes ring once before. This time, the ring will not be leaving her hand. 

“Thank you, Katarina,” he whispers, kissing the ring on her finger. “I love you too.”

Katarina sobs again. She tugs Geordo to his feet, so that she can hug him. 

After a moment - after an eternity - they hear a discreet cough. Anne has re-emerged from the other room. Her eyes, too, are rather bright, but her expression is serene. 

“Congratulations,” she tells them. “But I have to redo my lady’s make-up now.” 

Geordo stays while Anne performs the light touch-ups needed after Katarina’s tears. Anne levels a long look at him when he leans against the wall with studied nonchalance, but does not say anything. He is grateful to her for that.

Geordo watches Katarina’s being made-up with gleaming eyes. He is curious - his mother was too busy for a smaller Geordo to ever watch her at her dresser - but, more than that, he is smugly conscious that this is a domestic intimacy reserved for husbands, and only when their wives trust them enough. 

Katarina is admiring her ruby ring. The ruby is cut en cabochon, in the old style, and is the deep crimson that is called ‘pigeon’s-blood red’; the gold is imperfect - meticulously clean and polished, but nicked and marked with long use. Katarina finds it fascinating. 

“It’s an heirloom ring,” Geordo explains, as he watches his fiancée admire his gift; there is considerable satisfaction in his voice as he watches. “It’s from my mother’s side of the family, actually - House MacDonald. But originally, it was a present from Charles Stuart to Flora MacDonald…”

“Charles Stuart - Clan MacDonald - the Jakonin rebellion!” Katarina squeals. “Oooh! Is this one of the courier-rings - the ones they used to show they were messengers for the king?” 

Geordo cocks his head to the side. “Well, you guessed right.”

“They’re mentioned in ‘White Rose Rebel’ and ‘Highland Fling’ , the rings, I mean - oh, I can’t believe I get to wear one!” 

“White Rose Rebel? Highland Fling?” Geordo repeats. “Those don’t sound like history books.”

“No, they’re romance novels,” Katarina explains distractedly, having taken the ring off to examine it more closely. “Set during the rebellion. And the heroines of both get rings, and…” She trails off, remembering something. “Don’t these rings have tracking charms on them?”

“Well, yes,” Geordo admits, a little nonplussed at Katarina’s unexpected historical knowledge. 

“Huh. I wondered if that was true. You see, in ‘White Rose Rebel’, the hero - Laird Kinsey - needs to find his true love - that’s Mina MacDonald - she’s the White Rose Rebel - she gets kidnapped by angry Regent’s-men and because she has a ring, Prince Charlie helps Kinsey find her…” 

“I didn’t know people wrote stories about these rings,” Geordo says. “And my mother’s family?” (He is pleased that Katarina seems to take the fact that the ring allows him to track her in her stride.)

“Mine too!” Katarina tells him in glee. “Although my poor ancestor Lord Callum Claes is kind of the villain in it, since he was the governor of Edensburke, during the rebellion, for the Regent. He’s in love with Mina, in the book, and wants to marry her, but she’s in love with Kinsey, and…”

“I’m done,” Anne announces, carefully hiding the laughs that want to spill out of her mouth. “Please don’t make Lady Katarina cry again, your Highness.” 

“Only of happiness,” Geordo promises. 

“No, not even then - not for tonight, your Highness.”

Geordo and Katarina promise humbly. 

Chapter Text

“His Royal Highness, Prince Geordo, and his affianced, Lady Katarina of Claes!” announces the herald, with a suitable flare of trumpets, as Geordo and Katarina begin to make their way down the grand ballroom staircase. As for Ian and Geoffrey earlier, and as they will for Alan and Mary in a few moments, magically-powered spotlights swivel to focus on the couple now descending the staircase, and the lights make their outfits shine all the brighter. Some nobles have to squint against the blinding brilliance of it all. 

“Geordo,” Katarina whispers. “I can’t see.”

“Just hold on to me and keep stepping down,” Geordo whispers back. “I’ll tell you when we’re at the bottom of the stairs.”

“Is this another test,” Katarina mutters. “For being a princess, I mean. That you need to be able to navigate the royal palace while blinded by magical spotlights?”

“Mm,” Geordo murmurs politely. 

They get to the bottom and there rises a murmur of appreciation for their handsome young prince and his dangerously pretty intended. Katarina thinks it’s people applauding their frankly terrifying descent down the surprisingly steep and very smooth-marbled staircase, and nods back regally. Yes , it was terrifying, but my mountain-climbing past life sure helped! Someone in the back faints. 

“Geordo,” Katarina says, eyeing the crowd warily. “How many people do we need to greet before we can hit the buffet table?”

“Katarina? Why do you want to hit…the buffet’s not that bad, surely?”

“Rich boys,” Katarina sighs at Geordo’s lack of knowledge of otherworld slang, while Geordo twitches and does not point out that, barring the national treasury, it is quite likely that the Claes are wealthier in terms of possessed coin than his own royal house. “I meant, when can we eat?”

“I’m having a servant fix us a special meal and we’ll eat after we do one round of the ballroom,” Geordo whispers. “The buffet is too exposed. Who knows who’s drugged it?”

“What! Who would adulterate food like that?”

‘ Me,’ Geordo doesn’t say. ‘ I laced the punch, and sauced the fish, with a mild truth-producing serum based off what I learned from the bracer. It’ll be useful if everyone is more prone to blurting out the truth tonight. And who knows what on earth’s Geoffrey’s done.’  

“Better safe than sorry,” he says instead. 

“I’m sure I don’t remember royal balls being this cutthroat before,” Katarina mutters to herself as Geordo begins steering them towards a group of nobles in his faction. 

“Katarina,” Geordo says flatly. “You’ve been drugged twice at balls. Once by Marsha Cately, once by the madman who was drugging all the wine. Don’t you remember?”

“...no?”

“You passed out both times?”

“I remember…dreaming about salad…and you….”

Geordo grins at the thought of her dreaming about him and promptly leaves off the previous thread of conversation.

They make their round, Geordo whispering descriptions of the delights he is having the royal chef whip up just for them in order to keep his fiancée's spirits up. Gamely, Katarina tries to be nice to everyone, with the end result that by the end of the night, seven more men and five more women are in love with her, two couples break up because one of them wants to try his/her chances, one couple breaks up because both want to try their chances, and another are closer than ever because both want to try their chances together. Two of the men decide to fight a duel over the question of who exactly Katarina was smiling at. (She had been smiling at Geordo telling her about the chocolate lava cake with candied strawberries he’s having prepped for her, had turned her head, and both had seen and claimed her smile for his own.) Another girl is being carried out, smiling, because yes her new rival had stabbed her with a fish-knife but Katarina had squeezed her hand and said she hoped Edeth would be all right and who is the winner now, Rea, you bitch?

Geordo’s smile is very fixed. 

He steers them towards his parents, who happen to be chatting with Katarina’s. Katarina beams at the sight of her father and mother, who smile back at her. At the sight of all three Claes smiling with genuine love and affection, a wave of gasps and dreamy sighs sweeps the ballroom, and there are muted thumps from more people fainting. The king himself sways and has to sit back down on the portable throne he’s forced to use. The queen scoffs at her husband’s weakness while staring straight at Miridiana’s face. 

Geordo brings a hand to cover his eyes, wearily, while the Claes blink around them in honest surprise. 

“I think you’re right, Geordo,” Katarina whispers loudly. “Someone is drugging the food! This is terrible. I have to tell mother and father to be careful about what they eat!”

Midway through the night, Alan is to play a musical number for the attendees. It is one of the highlights that everyone has been looking forward to, but the anticipation - great as it was - does not match the performance Alan puts on.

He plays one of his own original compositions, and it is brilliant - sparkling - powerful - a musical tour de force both in terms of the composition and the performance. Later, the musical critics in the audience - and when your audience is the nation’s most powerful nobles, everyone is a classically-trained critic - agree: The music is beautiful, evocative, mysterious, sensuous.

At times it is frenzied. 

When it is over, he stands. The audience is silent - the dumbstruck, wonder-filled moment of silence sweetest to a musician’s heart - before exploding into a storm of applause. 

“I call this,” Alan says, when the applause has died down enough. “The Girl in White.” His eyes are fixed on Katarina in her white dress. 

“I made it all up just now,” he adds, while disbelieving murmurs sweep the crowd.

“I wrote it for you, Katarina,” he says, and the murmurs grow louder. 

“Katarina,” he says, and his voice is magnificent, the voice of a master musician who knows tone and pitch and how to use them. “I love you. Be mine!” 

Dumbstruck, Geordo and Katarina both stare at him but before either can reply, Mary leaps up onto the stage - a three-foot leap in a hooped-skirt ballgown and heels - and slaps Alan.

“You bastard!” she cries. “You said we’d ask her together!”  

“I got caught up in the music, sorry, Mary,” Alan says, rubbing his cheek. 

“Uh,” Katarina says, before she is whirled away from Geordo. 

“Don’t look at them, Katarina,” Nicol whispers. “Look at me.” And he gives her his best smile.

Katarina has never been exposed to the full force of an unfettered Nicol Ascart smile; no one has; this is the first time he had deliberately arrayed all his charms and unleashed them on the world. She swoons and so do all the people within eyesight.

Except Geordo, who sways on his feet but remains upright. 

“Nicol, you,” he begins, but is cut off by a quick and expert karate-chop to his neck. He drops.

“Brother, we have to go,” says Geordo’s attacker.

Nicol scoops Katarina up into his arms in a princess-carry and obediently begins to run. “Sophia, where did you learn that?”

“It came to me in a dream,” Sophia says airily, using wind-magic to move faster. “Now, hurry! I have the carriage waiting outside.”

There is a scream of rage behind them - they do not turn, but the way the earth buckles beneath their feet tells them, even more than the recognizable voice - who it is. They both leap and let their highly-trained wind magic fly them away through an open window (Sophia had arranged for it to be left open)...

…only to run into a wall of darkness. 

Katarina vanishes within the wall of shifting, writhing shadow and Nicol lunges for her. Failing to penetrate the wall, he cranes his head to fix the red-headed mage standing on top of the wall with a glare. 

“...I thought you said you’d lost all your dark magic, Dieke,” he notes, making sure to use the surname that he knows his ‘friend’ hates. 

“We lied,” Raphael/Sirius admits, shrugging. 

He glances behind him. “Looks like Sora’s got her. Well, goodbye, Nicol. We promise we’ll take good care of her. Better than you could, anyway. Birds of a feather and all that.” 

“What do you mean?!” Nicol demands.

“She belongs to the darkness,” Raphael/Sirius tells him. 

“Woof,” agrees a giant voice, very loudly. 

“Byeeeeeeeeeeee,” Raphael/Sirius sings out, and fades away in a starburst of void. 

“I shouldn’t have drugged the fish. And the punch,” Geordo admits, to the ceiling, as he awakens.

Chapter Text

There is a noise out in the corridor - a door closing, steps pacing by their room. Anne and Geordo’s eyes narrow in thought.

“I’ll go out through the window,” Geordo announces, prompting Anne to stare at him and Katarina to cock her head to the side like a puppy who has just heard something nice. The effect when combined with her atypical finery is - in Geordo’s opinion - at once adorable and slightly incongruous, and all the more adorable for the incongruity.  

Still smiling to himself, he fetches a coil of fine rope from behind one of the room’s chests of drawers and ties it around the leg of a heavy-looking armoire near the window, with a quick looping knot that looks quite careless but is as intricate and as fast as a sailor’s. Anne’s eyes narrow again. 

He waves to Katarina. “I will see you again soon, my beloved princess!” And then he jumps out the window.

Both Katarina and Anne rush to the window to see the prince rappelling down the wall. The window of the room below, they can see, has been left open, and Geordo swings neatly in with hardly even a thump to announce his arrival back in his room. Katarina, always one to appreciate good climbing, applauds, leaning out through their window so Geordo can see her smile and her hands. Geordo grins back up at her, and offers a mock salute. He then tugs lightly on the rope and Anne - sighing at these teenage shenanigans - unties the knot. The rope slides away through the window, and within a few minutes the window beneath is shut and there is no sign the prince has ever been in his fiancée's dressing-room; except, of course, for the gold-and-ruby ring now on her left ring finger. 

Mary bursts into the room, Sophia close on her heels. Katarina whirls to meet them, the sunlight full on her - she is still standing near the window, and the setting sun pours over her like liquid flame. Mary and Sophia are stricken still as people are by great beatitudes.

“Mary! Sophia!” Katarina calls out happily, dancing over to them in her new white satin shoes, loving how light they are on her feet. “I love your dresses!”

“I love you,” Mary mumbles in unheard reply, her gaze fascinated and fixed on Katarina. 

“You look - you look like Baydica, the Warrior Queen from Wrath of the Iskeni!” gasps Sophia in wonder. 

“Oooh?” Katarina says, turning around in a circle with her head craned as if she’s trying to see behind her. “I was thinking of the White Rose Rebel, but you’re right, this dress and torc do kind of look like Baydica’s in the collector’s edition of the novel! Oh my gosh, I love Baydica, she’s so cool.”

While Sophia nods in fervent agreement and Mary wonders what the character’s temperature has to do with anything - and isn’t Baydica historically a fire-mage? - Katarina speculates aloud: “I wonder if I could wear a sword…? I didn’t bring mine, since I don’t need to anymore, but maybe the palace has one lying around to complete the look.”

“Oh yes!” squeals Sophia, while Mary and Anne, at the same time, intone, “Lady Katarina, no.”

“I guess this belt doesn’t really look like it could support a sheath,” Katarina muses, brushing her hand over the jeweled sash. 

“Lady Katarina, that - that’s not the issue,” sighs Anne, while Mary - reassured that Katarina will not stride into the royal ballroom openly armed - muffles her laughs into her hand. She watches Katarina pout as Anne scolds her about bringing swords into the presence of the king and queen, and feels a wave of tender love sweep over her, washing away the pain of losing Katarina.

And in a way, she hasn’t lost Katarina. Katarina is still here, still smiling, still her same lovable self - still loving Mary. Katarina has never faltered in offering her love and friendship, not since the day she held out her hand to a shy little redhead in a flower-garden - it was Mary who had changed over the years. She had never gained what she had begun to crave - but she doesn’t have to lose what she already has, and what she already has had been enough to shape Mary into what she is today. 

Her eyes glance over the red lions on Katarina’s torc. 

(Mary, too, will have a claim to those same red lions.)

Katarina is a vision, literally a vision - it feels more like Sophia is having one of her more intense daydreams, forming an image of a heroine (who is always based on a certain Claes lady) with all the better-than-perfect details of imagination, rather than seeing something actually bound by the world’s restrictions. Katarina whirls in her white-and-gold dress and her jewels flash in the sunset light. Something hot clenches in Sophia’s stomach - an ache that seems to have always been there, a sorrow that is deeper than her very existence - a pain that only Katarina’s smile can erase. 

Nicol is better than Prince Geordo. Geordo is a friend but he isn’t better than her amazing, perfect older brother. 

Nicol is perfect, Nicol is amazing.

Nicol should be better bait than Geordo so why won’t Katarina take him, why won’t Katarina join her family? 

(Deep inside the beautiful, charming, well-read Ascart lady is a little girl, a little girl who cries, a little girl who has learned that the only people she can rely on is her family) 

Katarina wonders aloud about wearing a sword and Sophia can only think of how suited she is to a blade. For a champion should be armed with the finest of swords.

And Katarina is a champion, is her champion - she had leapt out of the sky to save Sophia long ago, landing like a hero, glaring like a queen, and Sophia has never wholly moved past that moment of wonder, of salvation of finding the one she had been searching for since death

Katarina flings her hands up, laughing, at something Mary says, and Sophia’s eyes are caught by a crimson glitter.

“Lady Katarina,” she says slowly. “Is that….”

“Oh!” Katarina squeals, catching the direction of Sophia’s gaze and holding up her hand. “Look at my engagement ring! Isn’t it lovely?”

Sophia and Mary flinch, catch each other flinching from the corners of their eyes. 

“It’s from Geordo’s mother’s family,” Katarina tells them, excited to share this important moment in her life with her two best girl-friends. “And - get this - it’s just like the ring in White Rose Rebel! And Highland Fling! They’re real! Although the one in Highland Fling was silver with an emerald….”

“Oooh!” Sophia says, despite herself. 

There is a knock on the door, quick and sharp - the three girls look up from their laughing conversation, and Anne sighs to herself a little at the extra shine she can see in the eyes of Lady Mary and Lady Sophia. For they know, as well as she does, who is waiting on the other side of the door.

“Geordo,” Katarina is already calling, laughter in her voice. “Aren’t you early?”

“We don’t need as much time as you girls do to get ready,” her fiancé teases. 

“I’ll have you know,” Katarina says, marching over to swing the door open herself. “That you and your stupid perfect hair…” 

Keith, Alan, and Nicol stand behind Geordo, all dressed to the nines, and they all gape at Katarina as she swings the door open. 

“So you think my hair is perfect!” Geordo gloats aloud, laughing, and raising Katarina’s left hand to his lips so he can kiss the ring he had placed on it. 

“Since all you need to do, as a boy, is comb it, none of the credit should go to you. It belongs to your mother, who gave you your stupid perfect blond hair,” Katarina answers, and they blink at her uncharacteristic taunt - except for Geordo, who only laughs again, loving that Katarina now, finally, feels comfortable enough to tease him. He is still holding her hand to his mouth, and subtly angles it so everyone can see the ruby flash. 

“His Royal Highness, Prince Geordo, and his betrothed, Lady Katarina of Claes!” announces the herald, and there is a flare of trumpets. Katarina keeps her chin up, remembering Geordo’s advice to pretend she is playing the part of a queen-villainess in a play. She keeps her expression neutral but faintly agreeable, matching Geordo’s, as the handsome young pair descend the royal ballroom’s grand marble staircase.

‘ He promised there’d be lava cake. With candied strawberries,’ she is thinking. 

“I can’t believe that witch dares to show her face here, looking so plain, so - so boring. Why, you could almost think her a commoner, she arrays herself so poorly,” scoffs a noblewoman - young, but not as young as she’d like people to believe. Her eyes dart around the knot of nobles she’s standing with, looking for people to nod and agree. “And how dare she embarrass the prince like that? He’s forced to bring little miss scarface to the Midsummer Ball and she can’t even take the trouble to dress properly?”

No one actually moves, but there is suddenly a subtle sense of distance from everyone around Lady Conant - as if they had taken one step away from her without any physical motion; a sort of spiritual withdrawing of the hems of their garments. 

‘ Parvenu,’ thinks Viscount Jors Vallers, knowing that others nearby are thinking the same thing. 

Because yes, while what Lady Katarina is wearing seems simpler and humbler than what most are wearing – the current fashion is for multiple colors and layered details - frills and lace and ruffles - anyone who’s anyone can tell it is actually a Statement.

To begin with, those jewels are - even from this distance - brilliant. If they are fewer than is usual for these balls - Lady Conant, for example, is practically dripping with topazes, citrines, and garnets, in all the colors those stones come in - that only highlights their high quality. Lady Katarina is a Claes and that House could send her out covered literally head to foot in precious stones just from their own mines, if they wanted; no doubt every single jewel she’s wearing is of the first water. That is real cloth-of-gold, if he’s not mistaken, not just dyed fabric, for her sash, and all this is not even considering the golden torc encircling that long, lovely neck. 

A torc . Jors remembers the old tales - what the torc symbolizes, was used for, in those ancient days - and he is sure that others remember too. 

The silk of her dress is the blinding, snowy white that only nobility could afford - the painstaking process to bleach silk to that level of whiteness, plus the upkeep necessary to keep it that way, make the wearing of such a fabric a declaration of wealth and power to spare. And from the slightly matte sheen of it, he can tell it is no ordinary silk to begin with. 

And speaking of colors, that white and gold is too perfectly matched to the prince’s to be anything but deliberate. The effect is striking as they stand side-by-side, the more so as the prince bends his head to whisper in his fiancée's ear, and stands just a little too close for strict etiquette. This must have been planned, and Jors remembers word going around about large sums being spent by the palace on craftspeople and traders - goldsmiths, jewelers, dressmakers. 

The lady’s attire is a Statement, and Jors suspects it is the prince who is making it. 

As for plain - for calling her ‘scarface’ - well, Jors had not paid much attention to Katarina Claes, except for knowing that most of his female acquaintances hate her, calling her odd, strange, fey even - but then, Jors muses, most of his female acquaintances would like to be Prince Geordo’s princess. The lady is rather too sharp-edged for conventional beauty, but plain is not in it; if she is sharp-edged, it is the sharp edge of a masterwork sword - glittering, finely honed - something that made you want to cut yourself on it, even if it made you bleed. It is not a safe beauty, Jors thinks. But it is beauty. 

He sips at his wine, letting himself drink her in. Even the cut of the gown is part of the Statement, in line with all the rest of it. It lacks the frankly architectural complexity of the current fashion, it looks simple - but it fits her so well, to such great effect, that it is obvious that both great care and great expense went into tailoring it for her. The gown drapes close against her figure, revealing the clean-limbed, slender shape of her - watching her step with the athletic surety of movement most noblewomen lack, Jors is reminded of the wild grace of deer in the forest. The Claes crest is a stag, if he recalls correctly…

Lady Katarina moves closer to Jors’s group, attention wholly on speaking with her prince, and Jors watches the light shift on her as the pair walk past the oil-lamps on the walls. The blazing white of the dress makes the lady’s lightly bronzed skin practically glow with the contrast, and Jors begins to rethink the old dictum that “the sun is a noblewoman’s enemy”. Certainly Lady Katarina’s skin looks flawless, smooth, soft - he wonders how it would feel under his fingers, under his mouth. Would something so sun-kissed feel warmer than the usual carefully milky skin of his conquests? His eyes wander to her neck, drawn by the glow of her golden torc, and unconsciously he licks his lips.

And then she moves, turning, and suddenly the prince is in the way - his blue eyes staring straight into Jors’s.

Jors drops his wine-glass.

There are noblewomen tittering. There are always noblewomen tittering, and so Geordo would just ignore them and move on, except that Katarina pauses. The tittering takes on intent and shape - they are laughing at her, laughing at his princess, on purpose.

“Katarina?” he asks, gently. 

“Hm,” she hums in reply. “Now that I am going to marry you, it matters what they say about us. I used to be able to ignore them because I thought I’d just leave this all behind, somehow; because I thought I’d never get to marry you, so people wanting to take you away from me were just wrong to target me. But now, it matters. I’m wondering if I’m angry; if I’m jealous.”

Geordo nods and lets his gaze roam the room at large, while actually taking stock of the women looking at him and Katarina with hungry eyes. Hm. Lady Tevant, Lady Ralls. Ralls - daughter of Earl Ralls, maternal family the Codbecks. Tevant, daughter of Marquess Tevant, maternal family a cadet branch of the Falstaffs - I think they have been having border disputes with the Adeths. I’ll have Carsworth look into that. Ralls’s estate is near the eastern fens; lots of venomous animals native there, it’d be easy enough to arrange an accident. Tevant, let’s see - I believe she fancies herself an artist, so…

He is interrupted by Katarina going, “Actually, I just feel sorry for them. They’re not really a threat, are they? I don’t see you going for them if someone like Maria doesn’t turn your head...” she says, and Geordo loves the unconscious arrogance of her. 

“While I agree they are not a threat,” he agrees smoothly, “I don’t actually find Maria that attractive.”

(In fact, though he will never, ever say this to anyone, least of all Katarina - sometimes he does not like Miss Campbell very much. Oh, she is pleasant enough in herself - he acknowledges she is pretty, though a little too milk-and-water for his tastes, and intelligent, and charming, and powerful - this last being the most important. But - but - she isn’t one of them, not really . She shows up late, and yet Katarina adores her. She hasn’t spent years learning Katarina, loving Katarina, growing up with Katarina - and yet Katarina loves her. And the way she looks at Katarina - Geordo does not like that at all. ) 

(And that's without being told that she's supposed to be the reason he kills Katarina; that he and Katarina are supposed to be satellites to her 'main character' status)

“Katarina - “ Geordo squeezes his right hand over his left wrist, covering it in an approximation of a bracer, angling himself so she can see it.

“Katarina, I have never been attracted to anyone as much as I have been to you - not by a long shot,” he says, his words bald and stark rather than cajoling and poetic as he would have tried before. “When I dream of girls, I dream only of you. I told you this before, right? That you are my dream. All sorts of dreams, really.” 

Katarina gapes at him for one moment before, to Geordo’s delight, she averts her eyes shyly and begins to blush. 

The fact that she believes him, when he says things like this to her, is still exhilarating. 

By tradition, the balls that are also High Feasts must open with the king. And so they do. However nothing says they must proceed with the king, and King Owain often takes advantage of this to duck out as soon as he can. He does not actually leave - rather, he would change his royal robes to something less distinctive, if still quite rich - leave behind his crown and scepter - and mingle with his nobles. Many of them know of this tendency of his, and “Catch the King” is a droll game among the various noble coteries. 

Owain knows this too. 

Sometimes he lets himself be caught; lets himself be recognized. Sometimes he mingles among the nobles, as anonymous as a countryside baron. And sometimes, he takes full advantage of his royal status, and uses the secret hidden compartments in the walls of the royal ballroom to hide from people and yet still watch them. 

He’s in one now, sipping on water and munching on tiny sandwiches and tinier cakes. He watches from behind the enchanted wall-panels as his nobles flow past his hiding-place in a never-ending stream of gossip and dancing and flirting and talking. Beside him are his two closest friends, Luigi Claes and Dan Ascart, who are currently discussing - with great intent and seriousness - about what kind of flowers would best please their wives as The Day After Midsummer Day presents. (Both had already presented their wives with expensive and very thoughtful Midsummer Day presents.) Owain tries not to roll his eyes. He himself loves his wife - in fact, he loves her to a depth that is continually surprising the country, which had suffered through his father’s decadent reign - but Luigi and Dan take it to a whole other level. 

Two young noblemen, both dark-haired, one tall and lean, the other slight and short, stumble into view. They lean against the wall, very close to the hidden entrance to the king’s secret compartment, and those in the compartment can hear them quite well. 

The king knows them - he makes it a point to know as many things about his nobles as possible - the tall one is Errold Jaxon, Baron Jaxon’s son and heir; the shorter one is Terrance Rigby, second son of Viscount Rigby. 

“Gods damn , look at the third prince’s woman. Talk about a tall drink of water. I’d like to sip at her cup!” says Jaxon, and the king suddenly hopes very hard that neither Luigi nor Dan knows who these cubs are. His two friends have gone very still. 

“Legs that go on for days,” Rigby rhapsodizes in reply.

“And wow, those eyes !”

They sigh in unison. Then Jaxon shoves his shorter friend.

“Hey - I thought you said she was ugly!”

“Well, Alexandre Blaith said so, and he was her schoolmate - he would know, right? Look, there he is now. Blaith! Over here!”

They wave at a passing nobleman - young, pleasant-looking, with light hair and a sensitive set to his face. His attire is just rich enough to be unremarkable in the setting of a royal Midsummer Ball, but has a few touches that show either a fashionable woman’s input, or a genuine appreciation of aesthetics in himself. Politely, he walks over to the two older nobles waving at him, with a hardly-touched glass of white wine in his hand.

“Glad Midsommar," he says, using the old Midsummer greeting.

The other two barely acknowledge his greeting before launching into their complaints. “Man, you said Katarina Claes was ugly, and she isn’t - she really isn’t!”

“She’s gorgeous!”

“Yeah, you said she was a fright.”

Blaith shakes his head. “I never said she was a fright. What I said was, she frightens me .”

There is a pause - puzzled on the behalf of Jaxon and Rigby, half-resigned on Blaith’s - and then Blaith begins to speak again.

“Katarina Claes is - well, if you ask anyone who was at the Academy the same time as her, each person will probably give you a different answer - but you will get an answer. She’s the kind of girl you end up hearing of, if you understand what I mean. I should call her pretty - quite pretty, but unusually so. Let me clarify - I do mean that she is prettier than many other girls, but more that her prettiness is of an unusual kind.  She likes gardens, and sweets.”

“That doesn’t sound all that scary.”

“That’s not the scary part. She is… she is absent-minded.”

“That also does not sound that scary.”

“...I know. All right, let me try - look, Katarina Claes is very kind. By the time I left the Academy, some of the students had begun calling her a Saint. Anyone can talk to her - and she replies nicely, no matter who you are. It’s not like when you’re trying to be nice to a commoner, but the whole time you’re aware they know you’re a noble, and you know you’re a noble. She really just treats everyone as if they’re on the same level, really sweetly, and not having to try , you know? And she the daughter of a duke, and the fiancee of a prince.”

“But she’s absent-minded. Sometimes her eyes - I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sky as clear as her eyes are - her eyes go quite blind, and she forgets you are there - she forgets the world is there. And she’ll apologize, but - how do I put it? It’s hard to describe it in a way that makes sense... She apologizes, but she’s not going to stop going away. I’ve seen her apologize to the prince himself, and to a kitchen-maid, and it was with the same amount of politeness. And - sometimes it feels like…look, an absent-minded man, who is good-natured, will apologize if he sees you waiting for him. Which she does. Sometimes, though, it feels as if she might kill you if she sees you when she comes back, and it would be with the exact same amount of polite kindness. I went through a forest in the north, once, on a mission for my father. It felt like that - the animals there are so wild they don’t act wild, they don’t flee. They are utterly innocent, and they are utterly pitiless. They might ignore you, or slay. How would you like to pass ten mortal hours in a parlour with an absent-minded tiger?”

‘An absent-minded tiger,’ Luigi mouths to himself silently, Owain and Dan watching him. 

“I said some people call her a Saint. I agree, but in the oldest meaning of the term - saint, from sanctus , from sacre . Someone who is above the ordinary order of the world; someone set apart by the gods. She treats us all the same because she is from somewhere indescribably higher than we all are, it feels like. To the divine, do the distinctions of a society only a thousand years old mean anything?” 

There is silence. Owain sees Luigi staring straight ahead into empty space, and his eyes are far away. He wonders if his future daughter-in-law looks even a bit like her father when she, as young Blaith put it, “goes away.”

“You seem to have put a lot of thought into this - into her,” Rigby says, finally.

“I have,” Blaith admits. “I could not help it.” Blaith pauses and swallows hard, the sound heard even to the watching men. “I have not seen her in more than a year and I have not spoken directly to her more than five sentences, all told, I believe. And I tell you I still dream of her. I think I will still dream of her when I am on my deathbed.”

Jaxon’s voice is slower and more thoughtful than it’s been at any point in the conversation so far. “The way you talk about her - it reminds me of my old man. There’s a woman he raves about, when he’s deep into his cups. He calls her his ‘Valkyrie rider’, and ‘hunt-goddess’, says her eyes cut straight through him. He’s said he wants her to reap his soul. What was her name....? Mirim? No, Diana, I think. Poor dad. When he talks about her, the tone of his voice - it was like you, just now.” 

Owain really, really hopes Luigi doesn’t know who these two are. 

Lady Jesebeth Conant had not liked the reaction - or rather, lack thereof - to her attempted witticisms about the hatchet-faced Lady Claes. She is all too aware of the muted contempt in the eyes of her peers (of those she’d hoped to convince that she was worth treating as a peer) and casts about frantically for another target to score off, to re-earn her place in the cutthroat society of Sorciere nobles. 

She had settled on Lady Selena Burke - Lady Claes's older counterpart. As magically weak and useless as that Claes bitch, porridge-bland and sheep-like where Claes is ridiculous and savage. And, just like Claes, unfairly possessed of a prince’s love and affection, just because they’d managed to be born to the correct set of parents. 

Lady Burke had gone to the crystalline fountains (formed from water-magic, that continually flow with ice-cold water) to get a drink for her parched throat. This means she had left the side of her now-openly-devoted fiancé, Ian. 

Her mistake, thinks Jesebeth, moving in for the kill.

“Is that - Selena?” Katarina says, looking in the direction of the drink-fountains. Her pale eyes narrow at the sight of the chestnut-haired lady looming over her older friend. She hurries in their direction, leaving Geordo behind in her rush. 

“....aw, what’s wrong, Lady Burke?” purrs Jesebeth, leaning into the younger lady’s personal space. “Do say if I am bothering you. I just wanted to know who did your hair? …if someone did do it? It’s such a….courageous style, after all.”

“I - I…” stammers Selena, holding tight to her crystal goblet of water. 

“Oh come now,” sneers Conant. “Why don’t you share your – good fortune? Or,” she gasps mockingly, “Did you do it yourself? I should have guessed!” 

“Why? Why should you have guessed?” demands another voice, as Katarina arrives next to Selena with an air like a warhorse rearing in battle. Selena and Jesebeth stare. 

“Go on! What did you mean with your remark, exactly?” Katarina says, her eyes narrowed so that her face looks more dangerous than ever. They glint with battle-light.

“I beg your pardon…” says Jesebeth, going red. 

“Then beg,” Katarina interrupts her coolly. There is abrupt silence around them. Geordo, who had quickly followed in his fiancée's footsteps, shivers in delight. 

He is still giving Katarina a worshipful stare when his older brother rushes in from another direction, and Selena hurries to his side. Lady Conant slinks away without another word, already planning her self-exile to her family’s countryside holdings. (And planning a triumphant return to the capital when enough time has passed. She will never get to achieve this, mostly due to the efforts of an incensed Ian Stuart)

“Geordo,” Ian remarks dryly, after he has checked Selena over. “Put your tongue back in your mouth, you’ll drool on your tunic. And you know how much that costs to clean.”

Geordo shoots Ian an affronted look, while Katarina - as delighted by this as Geordo had been by her villainess-act on the mean-girl threatening Selena - laughs aloud.

“Selena!” she coos, moving to the other girl’s side. Something about sharing a dark-magic-induced kidnapping incident just lends itself to bonding. “I’m so glad to see you. I love your dress! It’s beautiful!” 

“Yours too, Katarina,” Selena says, giving the younger girl a quick, grateful hug. 

“It should be, Geordo spent enough time working on it,” Ian notes sotto voce, while Geordo ponders kicking his increasingly-insufferable older brother in the ankle. And he’d thought Geoffrey was bad enough on his own. 

Katarina gives him a thankful smile, though, and Geordo immediately forgives Ian.

As Katarina and Selena begin to compliment each other’s accessories, Ian leans over to have a more private discussion with the younger prince. 

“The torc is very …shall we say, overt? Quite the declaration of your claim, little brother,” he says. “I’ll be honest, I am a bit jealous of your bravery.” 

“It was your idea to hold off the announcement about my throne-right renunciation,” Geordo replies. “And I admit that gathering a baseline to compare reactions to Katarina once everyone knows she definitely won’t be queen is a good idea. But why not make it clear that whether or not she’ll be queen, she’ll be my princess?” He lingers caressingly over the last two words and Ian laughs at him. 

“She’s a good friend to Selena,” Ian says, affectionately, and Geordo grins back at him. 

Finally Geordo leads Katarina to the dance-floor, and it’s everything she had once dared to dream about - her long days of practice finally clicking, hard-won footwork from swordplay turning into cross steps and pivots and no stepping on Geordo’s feet! Katarina lets Geordo twirl her, beaming - she’s spent the day with her friends, had gotten a pretty dress and pretty things as presents, and is dancing the night away in her handsome fiancé's arms. Also there is, in fact, lava cake with candied strawberries and caramel drizzle. She’s so happy. She’s never let herself be so happy. She’s never felt more like she has a secured place in the world than right now - just a happy, ordinary girl like all the others in the world - allowed to enjoy a dance, a lovely dress, a smile from a cute boy. 

If her doom flags come, they can only come through Geordo. And she will welcome it if he loves her while he delivers her doom.

Omake

“But Lady Katarina doesn’t seem to terrify any of her other friends? Or make them treat her like a descended death-angel?”

“Yeah, I never heard any of this ‘absent-minded tiger sipping tea’ bullshit except from you, Blaith.”

“Like Lady Mary - from House Hunt, you know, our dads are business partners - she says Lady Katarina is very gentle…”

“Lady Mary is terrifying, too. Have you seen her glare at her fiancé's fangirls?” Blaith protests.

“...I guess, but Lady Sophia Ascart….”

Dan Ascart sits up, his eyes intent. 

“Lady Sophia is not only terrifying, but is extra-scary because she hides it!” proclaims Blaith with fervency. 

“What? Is it because of her, y’know, hair and eyes? I mean they’re kinda freaky but not that bad. Actually it’s kinda hot…”

Dan’s grip on his wine-glass tightens while Luigi sends him a sympathetic look. 

“What? No, of course not. As Lady Katarina says, Lady Sophia’s hair and eyes are nothing to be afraid of. That’s not what makes Lady Sophia terrifying. It’s the way she always…knows things. I was just looking - just glancing, mind you! - at Lady Katarina and the next day Lady Sophia is sitting beside me in the library and recommending all these books to me. And then her brother - who is also terrifying - sits beside her to back her up! I had to read all those books! And - and - I wasn’t stalking, in the first place; in the second, how did she find so many books about stalkers and their punishments; and finally, I swear she knows how to phase through walls. And have you heard about the play in which Lady Katarina was the villainess? The original actress is a cousin of mine. Lady Sophia not only managed to sprain my cousin’s ankle while being across campus, but my cousin only beams and says she’s glad she was able to play a part in gifting Lady Katarina’s presence to the world. Isn’t that terrifying?”

There is a long pause. 

“Blaith,” says Jaxon, finally. “Are you just scared of all your schoolmates?”

Chapter Text

The day of the Stuart-Claes wedding dawns bright and quite clear, with the peculiarly pale blue sky reserved for summer mornings. The Weather Department of the Ministry of Magic (made up of specially-trained water and wind mages, working in paired tandem) calls in a special forecast ritual and tells the royal palace that the weather will remain fair throughout the day. 

‘ Which is a good thing,’ thinks Alan, sticking a forkful of eggs in his mouth, ‘ I think Geordo would make himself ill with worry if there was so much as a gray cloud on the horizon.’ As it is, his older twin - who had spent hours poring over historical weather records, looking for the day in the year most statistically likely to have good weather - already looks mildly unwell, absent-mindedly tearing his breakfast roll into tiny fluffy shreds. Geoffrey and their mother are cooing at him and continually trying to sneak more food onto his plate, while their father and Ian - who will be the next prince to marry, with his wedding to Selena Burke set for the next spring - smile sympathetically at Geordo. 

“Come on, take a sip of tea at least,” the Queen urges Geordo, half-worried and half-relishing the rare chance to pamper the son who has always seemed so very independent. Geordo obediently sips at the hot, dark tea and immediately looks like he will throw it back up. 

‘ I wonder how Katarina is doing?’ Alan thinks, as Geoffrey and Giulia simultaneously leap to their feet to pound a choking Geordo on the back. 

“Wow, this pastry is amazing,” Katarina enthuses, popping it whole in her mouth and still managing to speak clearly. Joanna, who had made it, beams in pride. A stack of already-cleared plates sits to the side of Katarina’s currently filled one, and Katarina looks ready to add a good few to the stack.

Keith and Luigi watch her adoringly, with tears in their eyes. The Claes have brought along select servants from the manor to bolster the staff at their smaller, but still very fine, city residence. The head chefs are in constant competition to earn Katarina’s especial commendations, and most of the staff have been as teary as Luigi and Keith with the thought that their young mistress will be leaving the household for her new husband’s. (The staff left at the manor had all wept when Katarina departed the manor for that one last time.) 

Miridiana, who had gone through a similar experience with the Adeth servitors - all the more intense as her wedding had been so sudden, and for some reason the servants had all thought she would live with her father forever? (Had she been that unmarriageable?) - sighs and finally puts a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. 

“Katarina,” she says, very seriously. “I understand.”

Katarina blinks at her mother, swallowing a mouthful of bacon as she does so. 

“I also stress-ate on the morning of my wedding because of my nerves,” Miridiana tells her daughter, which is the first time she’s ever admitted this to anyone. “And I paid for it by throwing it all up just before the ceremony. Ugh, and those b - women, women who saw me, they laughed and joked they knew why Luigi had to marry me so quickly,” she reminisces sourly - playing up the sourness to distract Katarina from the remaining bacon, eggs and toast on her plate. 

“I didn’t know this,” Luigi says, sounding shocked. “How did I not notice?”

“To be honest, my darling husband, you did not seem to notice very much during our wedding? I thought you were bored by the whole thing.” 

“I was so excited I was practically vibrating in place,” Luigi confesses, smiling at his wife. 

“Hm,” Miridiana hums in reply, covertly signalling to Joanna to clear the breakfast things away. 

Without food to distract her, Katarina begins fidgeting in her seat. “Do - do you really think I’ll throw up?” 

“Not if you work it out of your system,” her mother opines. She taps her ubiquitous fan on her chin. “I may regret this - but no, I don’t think I will. Katarina, go put on your oldest clothes, then go run around in the lawn. You can climb the trees - but only if you’re sure you won’t fall, do you understand? Do not take the slightest chance. If you break a leg before the wedding I will make sure no one feeds you sweets while you recover. And no leaving the grounds! At least with the walls around this place no one can see you…and be back here by eight! Not a moment later! We will need to give you an extra-good scrubbing with how dirty you’re sure to get…” 

“I love you, mother!” Katarina sings out, kissing her mother, and then her father, on the cheek before hurrying out to fulfill her mother’s orders to the letter. Keith kisses her as well before hurrying after his sister, and in the sudden silence of the children’s departure Miridiana finally allows the tears to fill her eyes. She is happy for her daughter, she is - unlike Keith and Luigi, she knows personally the joy of joining a beloved husband’s household, and the lifelong expectation of high-born noblewomen to leave a father’s house - but - she will still miss her baby. 

Luigi reaches over to clasp her hand in his. “She will visit us regularly. I made sure Prince Geordo’s new estate was one within easy traveling distance of ours,” he reminds her in a low voice. 

“Was that your plan all along?” she asks, finally, having suspected it for years. 

“Yes,” Luigi confesses candidly. “When he was eight I could already tell he would either be king - and therefore live here, in the capital, near us - or be given one of the royal dukedoms. He was too intelligent to be wasted on anything else, and Owain would never let one of his sons be squandered and spoiled to the extent of his half-brothers - or his father. Ryncaster was my first choice, and sure enough, he’ll take it. But Dainwall is within riding distance of Claes as well - Tarc as a third alternative, though that needs more than a day’s ride. Tuckingdam was too far but if it came to it, I know we could have our neighbors do a swap...” 

“My scheming rogue!” Miridiana laughs. 

“I learned,” Luigi does not mention, “From my father-in-law’s sorrow.”  Duke Adeth (as Luigi knows very well) had never really meant to marry his favorite daughter off, and had planned to keep her beside him. He had only reluctantly yielded to Luigi’s impassioned pleas. Without the great friendship and admiration he’d shared with Luigi’s father Lucan, he is sure the Duke known as the Wolf of the North would never have agreed. 

‘And ,’ Luigi thinks, as Miridiana alternates between laughing and crying, tears falling from his own eyes, ‘I must find out who those women were - the ones who laughed at my bride during our wedding. ’ This, he decides, takes even greater precedence than finding out the mysterious blond target of his wife’s schoolgirl affections was. 

Both Katarina and Geordo are dumbstruck at their first sight of each other in their wedding finery. Their parents laugh at their clear bewitchment with each other, while their friends are teary-eyed. Mary sobs into Alan’s shoulder, while Alan stares with blurred gaze at his twin and his beloved rival staring at each other. The others shuffle restlessly before they run forward to gather around Katarina, blocking Geordo’s view of her. Keith lifts his sister up in his arms while she giggles, and the sun shines through her veil so that she looks like she’s surrounded by a silver glow. Mary approves audibly, while Alan sighs and gives his disgruntled twin a commiserating look.

The wedding party will proceed in open-air carriages to the cathedral where the wedding will be held, before returning to the royal palace for the wedding feast. The route is lined with cheering crowds, eager for the first royal wedding since the ill-fated one between King Ariens and his foreign queen decades ago. (Owain and Giulia had already been married when Owain took the throne). The carriage with Geordo and Katarina, at the forefront, is richly decorated with roses and lilies, drawn by four milk-white horses with harnesses trimmed in gold. The route and all the details of the procession have been carefully plotted out by Duchess Claes and Queen Giulia. 

Therefore, when Geordo and Katarina are attacked by manic fanclub members, they take it personally. 

The first attacker is a slim girl in red, screaming “For the saint!” Geordo has his saber - ceremonial, but still very much a real weapon - out and blocking her before he quite knows what he’s doing, trained reflexes superseding conscious thought. 

Then the second person hurls themselves into the carriage - another girl, this time in pink, hurtling for Katarina with her hands crooked into claws. “You’re too stupid for Prince Geordo, scarface trapper!” she yowls, and this time it is Katarina - drawing a slim rapier from who knows where in the voluminous folds of her wedding dress - who blocks the attack with automatic swiftness. 

It all dissolves from there. 

Before the escort knights can ride up, the Duchess is already there, her famous eyes narrowed and dangerous in a way her daughter is not yet capable of fully emulating. Somehow she is on a knight’s charger (the knight who it belongs to sitting on his bottom a good distance behind, blinking, and wondering how he was swept from the saddle) and she handles it expertly in her beautiful gown as she glares down at the three attackers in the carriage and the several more circling. 

“And just what,” she demands, in a voice that brooks no defiance, “Do you think you are doing?” 

The crowd murmurs in awe. 

The procession resumes, with somewhat more haste and with the escort knights riding in protective detail, eyes scanning constantly - the Duchess at the van, with her Duke taking rearguard on his own stallion. Alan, Nicol and Keith ride flanking, while Geordo and Katarina sit tensely, weapons at the ready.  (In the carriages behind, Maria and Mary fret, wanting to check on Katarina, while Sophia - believing implicitly in her brother’s ability to take care of everything that could arise - instead happily daydreams about Katarina in her gown, wielding her rapier.)

The crowds cheer even more loudly when the procession begins again.

When they get to the cathedral, everyone breathes a sigh of relief. They alight from the carriages and proceed inside the grand old stone pile, hurrying into a private chamber while Geoffrey and Ian arrange security - bolstered and augmented - for the cathedral in general and the wedding party in specific. The King and Queen, who have been waiting in the Cathedral, are drawn to the side to be updated on the latest developments.

Now safe, Katarina lets her needle-pointed rapier drop and bolts to her mother’s arms. For the first time in a long time, she weeps on her mother's shoulder. Katarina’s dress is rent and torn, spattered with blood - not hers, but from her instinctive sword-defense. Her bridal veil, so light and delicate she had clapped her hands in delight when she had first seen it, is an utter loss.

“Katarina, don’t worry, I prepared a back-up dress,” say two voices in unison, and Luigi and Geordo look at each other in surprise. 

Katarina cries, “I just wanted today to go well but maybe we’re doomed…?”

Geordo stiffens when he hears those dreaded words and lunges for her. Around him, their friends mill restlessly, their eyes fixed on Katarina in tears. (At that moment, each of them makes a private and unbreakable vow that they will ensure the rest of the day goes well - come hell or high water.)

“My dress is torn - I knew it was too fine - I can never keep things pretty,” Katarina gasps, half apologetically, to her mother, and Miridiana vows revenge and recriminations, including upon herself. 

“It is not your fault,” she tells Katarina firmly, while Geordo hovers nearby fretfully and tries to figure out a way to take her from her mother’s arms into his. 

“It’s not!” he echoes Miridiana, and his voice is angrier. 

“Reports are in,” Nicol says coolly, his hand raised to his brow as he uses his wind magic to exchange messages with his father. “Those…people were from your fanclub, Geordo, allied with that new movement, the Church of the Saint of Claes.”

“The what ,” say the Claes in unison while Mary scowls and mutters, “I knew they were planning something, but I thought they were unfanged, I was watching the Katarina Claes Is Our Goddess fanclub more closely…”

“Apparently,” Nicol continues in his unruffled manner, “They are usually mortal enemies, but joined forces today to prevent the marriage as being, and I quote, ‘Saint Katarina’s defilement by the black prince!’ and ‘Prince Geordo being entrapped by her scar, it’s almost too late!’” The absolute deadpan with which he delivers these words causes more than one person to hide a smile. 

“I’ll kill them,” Geordo vows, before Alan claps a hand over his twin’s mouth. 

“Your Highness, there is no need for you to dirty your hands on such fools,” intones Miridiana with a voice that even Katarina, on the days she has committed her worst sins, has never heard. “ We will attend to them.” Her husband grunts in terse agreement, already reviewing the forces available to him mentally. 

“Lady Miridiana, please allow me to render what small assistance I can,” Mary immediately asks, while Nicol and Sophia are murmuring into the wind to alert their father. 

They mix and match pieces from both Luigi and Geordo’s back-up outfits and the end result is a little more martial and a lot more attractive than anyone was expecting. Katarina insists on wearing her sword, which - it turns out - she has been armed with every single day of her life since she was fourteen and had figured out a way to hide it in her skirts. Because of the attack, no one can gainsay her. She wears it strapped to her back, and Miridiana notes it at least enforces a straight-spined posture. 

The ceremony is…not exactly hurried, but not encouraged to linger at any point. The guests - all of whom have been thoroughly checked - are a little wide-eyed, and the wedding party is visibly tense. The great doors of the Cathedral are closed and barred, and at one point there is an audible thump on them - everyone goes stiff, the wind picks up, Katarina touches the hilt of her sword, and Geordo stares at the door with flames flickering quietly behind his eyes. Aside from Geordo, everyone determinedly ignores the door, and the sounds of the knights shouting shortly thereafter. 

(“It is the KCIOUG!” mutters Mary, when Sophia whispers what the wind is telling her. “I knew it!”) 

“And now, the rings!” announces the high priest as soon as he is decently able. 

A royal page approaches the altar, kneels, and holds up a cushion with two ruby rings on its velvety surface. With the smoothness of practiced movement, Katarina and Geordo pick up a ring each. Geordo first slides one onto Katarina’s left ring finger - mirroring the engagement ring now on Katarina's right ring finger. The ring glows gently, including the ruby nestled on top, and the high priest nods in response. Then Katarina slides the other ring on Geordo’s left ring finger, and when it too glows from metal to ruby, the priest nods again. 

“With this ring, I thee wed,” Geordo says, his trained voice ringing clear and triumphant through the silent nave. “To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, beyond death and after it.” 

“With this ring, I thee wed,” Katarina says in reply, her voice steady and measured and showing no trace of the intense study she’d dedicated to getting it down perfectly. “To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, beyond death and after it.” 

“What the gods have joined, let no man put asunder,” declares the high priest. “I now pronounce thee husband and wife. You may now…” He trails off, coughing awkwardly, because Geordo has seized his new wife and dipped her into a dramatic kiss before the priest could finish the ritual invitation to seal the wedding with a kiss. 

The guests begin to applaud, some rising to their feet. The king and queen and duchess are wiping away tears; Luigi is outright bawling and cannot be bothered. In this he is joined by his son and Mary Hunt; the rest of the wedding party are similarly tearful. (In particular, Nicol’s face actually showing emotion is so powerfully beautiful that some of the guests faint.)

At the royal ballroom, the wedding feast is going well. The king has retreated, not to his secret compartments, but to a little quiet alcove near the entrance to the kitchens, for a moment of peace. His chancellor finds him there and offers him a goblet of wine. 

“Congratulations, Your Majesty, on your new daughter,” he says, with a wry smile. Owain, who knows Dan would have very much liked to welcome Katarina into the Ascart family, takes the goblet and raises it to Dan in a toast.

“Thank you,” he says sincerely. 

“I see the rings and the stones glowed during the ceremony? Well, he’s surely your son,” Dan jokes. “I remember the stones glowed for you too during your wedding.” 

“What can I say,” Owain shrugs elaborately. “We Stuarts are a passionate race, and our fiancées were beautiful women who became even more beautiful wives.”

“What does that mean?” interrupts a new voice, and Owain flinches before turning to Luigi. 

“Oh, didn’t you know? I thought you allowed it, since you were so for the young prince as your son-in-law,” explains Dan casually, sipping at his own drink. “The Stuart rings’ metal glows if the wearer is pure; the rubies glow if they remain, ah, pure, but, shall we say, have sipped at the fountain of intimacy…”

“What!” 

The server is beaming proudly as she carefully wheels out the royal wedding cake. It is a triumph of both bakery and architecture: a five-foot-tall multi-tiered plum-cake, rich and dense, studded all over with candied fruits (including berries grown by the princess herself!) and soaked in gallons of rum. It shines white under the ballroom lighting, covered in royal icing that has been sculpted and poured to resemble the Northern Tower of the royal palace, complete with buttresses, tracery, candied roses climbing fluted columns on buttercream vines, sugar-glass for the windows, and topped with fondant roofing-shingles colored and textured to look like the actual shingles. It is a marvel and everyone applauds, including the wedding couple. The bakers who had labored over it stand near the entrance, also beaming with pride. 

And that is when the earth rumbles and shudders under their feet, and the cake topples over. 

Katarina looks at the fallen cake with the flat, thousand-yard stare of the weary war-veteran. Maria takes one glance at her face and vanishes into the kitchens, while Geordo grabs for his wife’s hand. She squeezes it back, but the next moment is away from the table, hurrying to the server and helping the young girl up. The girl is crying hysterically for having ruined the royal wedding cake and Katarina focuses on consoling her, patting the girl’s head and making her sit down.

“Here now, here now. Why don’t we have some water,” she says soothingly, and immediately multiple glasses are offered from the small crowd around them.

“Your Highness…Your Highness,” hiccups the server. “I - I am so sorry…”

“It’s not your fault, at all,” Katarina insists, unconsciously borrowing the exact tone and firmness of her mother earlier. “There was an earthquake - everyone felt it! Of course the cake fell.” 

And it’s at that point that Maria returns, pushing a cart piled high with cupcakes prettily arranged in three tiers. The guests all applaud again. 

“I was stress-baking last night; there were lots of left-over ingredients,” Maria explains with a beautiful smile. 

“Enough for a hundred decorated cupcakes?” murmurs Mary. “....oh well done, Miss Campbell. Well done, indeed.”

(Maria had wanted to do the wedding cake to begin with. Katarina had, with tears in her eyes, thanked her for the offer but - “I want you there with me, as my friend attending my wedding, not busy as the baker! Please stand beside me as my bridesmaid, Maria,” she had begged. And Maria had of course said yes, but conceived a great rivalry with the bakers - who were not from the royal kitchens, but a specially chosen bakery from the downtown area near Katarina’s manor. She had never before glared like she had glared at the bakers when Katarina was enthusiastically collaborating with them during the wedding planning. There is, indeed, a triumphant gleam in her eyes as she wheels in the cupcakes.) 

(Later, Miridiana will corner her husband and son. “I know it was one of you,” she will say coolly, while they shiver in fright.)

The Stuart-Claes wedding is followed by a national manhunt during the couple’s eventful honeymoon.

But that, as they say, is another story. 

Author’s Note:

With this I end the “To Tell The Truth” fic! It didn’t want to get written, partially because I didn’t want it to end. Originally it was only supposed to be about the Stuart rings glowing both red and gold, but I had so many other ideas I wanted to stuff in. I cut out a lot, added it back in, cut it out again.

There was a whole bit about the Queen and Miridiana and Katarina on wedding planning, and Geordo almost becoming a groomzilla but being firmly sat on by Alan and Ian, and originally the attack on the carriages was way bigger. Also I kept trying to figure out a way to involve Katarina’s horse Cake, but it didn’t flow well.

I don’t know if I could say I am super happy about this chapter, but I am happy with ending it. 

This is what I was picturing during the wedding:

King Ariens: Named for Urien/Uriens, the king of Rheged and father of Owain mab Urien; both later incorporated into Arthurian legend. One of my next projects may use my made-up backstory for him. In LN8 they say the dowager queen came from Etran. 

Cake inspired by the wedding cake of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra (1863), per this article from Eater: https://www.eater.com/2018/5/18/17340392/cake-royal-wedding-meghan-markle-prince-harry-william-kate-elizabeth-history

I also just realized you can rearrange the chapters in a fic, and have moved the chapters around so they’re in chronological order fic-wise, not according to my kind of scattershot approach to writing the incidents.