23 Beatrice
23 Beatrice
“It may not have been pretty!” Vandra proclaimed. “We may not have Sir Hugh. But no one has died, and we know where to journey
next.”
Over the campfire, she thrust a wine bottle forth in grandiose exhibition.
“Which calls for celebration!” she cried.
Everyone cheered. They sat around the fire, knees hunched to chests on old logs Clare had hauled inside. The gentle flames
warmed them, uniting the questing crew in hard-won comfort.
Questing crew? she wondered wanderingly. The phrase was profoundly ugly. Questing group? No, worse. Questing party?
She drank deeply from the bottle in her hand. The wine was hers, procured from Thessia’s royal stores upon her very reasonable
explanation of how heroes simply could not quest without wine. Thessia had winked and loaded her horse up on the way out of
Queendom.
Vandra had discovered the stash of three wine bottles while watering the horses. Beatrice had not intended to share, but Vandra
was right. For perhaps the first evening of the journey since she’d left her lonely hometown, Beatrice felt hopeful.
No, not just hopeful— grateful . Vandra, Elowen, and, yes, even Clare had saved her today. Sharing her quest wine was only fair.
Clare gulped his down enthusiastically. With firelight flickering on his features, he looked the way she felt. His eyes shone
with renegade light, one part exhaustion, one part happiness. “For three washed-up heroes and one reformed villain with messier
histories than the Winter War,” he contended while Vandra returned to her seat, “I would say survival itself is victory!”
“Huzzah!” Beatrice found herself cheering with Vandra.
“Huzzah!” Clare echoed.
“Elowen, say huzzah ,” Vandra urged, passing her bottle to Elowen.
Elowen sipped, her cheeks reddening like they always had when she and Beatrice stole drinks from Elowen’s parents in their
youth. She had commenced the night surly, either due to the events in the crystal caves or ordinary Elowen-iness, until, with
the wine, she’d loosened up. “I do not need to say huzzah to participate in the sentiment,” she said primly.
“Yes you do,” Clare replied with the same seriousness. “Come on now.”
Passing his bottle to Vandra, he stood, swaying slightly. The wind coming into the cave ruffled his hair. His shirt was unbuttoned.
He looked the way he did on the cover of Mythria Magazine when he was named Sexiest Man Alive for the third time. Beatrice remembered the year well. The week magazines hit the scribestands,
she’d “forgotten” items on errands in the village every day in order to eye the cover without purchasing one for herself.
“ Huzzah! ” he roared into the night.
Everyone clapped. Beatrice was tipsy enough to laugh. Ghosts, it was wonderful. Beatrice was no stranger to feeling drunk,
but she’d forgotten how it felt to laugh .
“Go on then, Elowen,” Clare prompted. “One good huzzah!”
“No,” she replied. “The moment has passed.”
“It certainly has not!” Beatrice interjected. On every other night she would have worried Elowen would hear judgment or painful pressure in her refutation. On other nights, she might have meant them. Inebriation and hope erased the second-guessing from her mind.
Vandra leaned back on her elbows. Her eyes lingered on Elowen in adoring amusement. When Elowen’s gaze caught hers, Elowen’s
cheeks went their familiar shade of Vandra-induced pink.
It was enough. Elowen relented, standing with wine in hand. She drank deeply. She wiped her mouth. Then for no reason whatsoever,
her demeanor shifted entirely, dramatic grandeur consuming her. She looked—she looked rather like Domynia on Desires of the Night , full of commanding inspiration.
“ Huzzah! ” she announced into the echoing cavern.
Everyone applauded. Elowen sat, looking uncharacteristically pleased with herself.
Beatrice felt loose, even happy, and not only from the wine. Clare’s confession had been... nice. Earlier, in the crystal
caves, she and Elowen had worked together. She knew they would never be what they once were to each other, but perhaps one
day, they could be something. She could settle for something .
Sharing laughter with them now was—improbably—lovely. It was funny, how the darkest of seclusions could change into the warmest
of refuges with the presence of the right people.
She passed her wine to Clare. Feeling free, she dipped her foot into the slipstream of memory. Where often its currents felt
cold and unforgiving, she now found them welcoming. “Remember,” she posed, “the night Clare got kidnapped?”
Clare humphed. “ Kidnapped is a strong word. I prefer to consider it unplanned, involuntary espionage in the Order’s carriage.”
Elowen—Elowen!—hiccupped a giggle.
Vandra, however, laughed loudly. “You were kidnapped,” she confirmed. “I would know.” The other women’s eyes rounded innocently.
Clare’s narrowed. “ Why would you know?”
Vandra grinned. “I may have tipped them off,” she confided with remorseless glee, “and I may have spooked your horse so he
ran off and you were right where they needed you to be.”
Clare put down his drink. “No.” He sounded legitimately scandalized, which was hilarious. “You didn’t.”
“I’m sorry, Grandhart. Add it to my tab of villainy,” Vandra replied.
Shaking his head, Clare gestured in Beatrice’s direction. “Prove it,” he challenged Vandra. “Let Beatrice take me into your
memory of the day.”
While Beatrice often resented others invoking her magic without her permission, she found the present proposal wonderful.
Clare getting kidnapped? His horse on the run? Vandra snickering out of sight? Everyone in Queendom would want a head-magical
glimpse of such a sight. She could probably charge for admission!
It was, however, Vandra who faltered. Her eyes shot to—Elowen. “There are parts of the day I wish to remain... private,”
she explained.
Elowen’s cheeks went even pinker, indignation rose-hued with drink’s sweet disposition. “Don’t say you seduced me to distract from Clare’s—” She reconsidered midsentence. “Oh, wait, that’s exactly what you did.”
“A very fun day’s work,” Vandra conceded.
Elowen softened. “You’re forgiven. I remember the afternoon in question.” She smiled, her gaze clinging to Vandra. “It was
worth it.”
“Hey!” Clare protested.
Inspired—okay, disappointed Clare would not insist on replaying proof of his “unplanned, involuntary espionage”—Beatrice reached for Vandra’s wine and held it high. “I propose a game!” she cried. Her mind fought the wine to chase the idea sparked by Clare’s challenge. “Truth,” she said dramatically, “or Dare.”
Clare groaned. “We’re not children.”
“You whine like one,” Elowen muttered.
Beatrice refused to listen to the interruptions. Oh, she was loving her devious diversion now. “Truths,” she explained excitedly,
“will be confirmed with Elowen’s magic. She’ll feel it if you’re defensive. Dares...” She paused for emphasis, pleased
to find her compatriots— questriots ? Ugh, no—watched her now with curiosity. “Dares will consist of the revelation of embarrassing or interesting memories using
mine.”
Clare frowned skeptically. “I’m not sure that’s more fun than something like Strip Carousel.”
“While I commonly endorse games involving removal of clothing,” Vandra replied, “no one has playing cards. Go on,” she prompted
Beatrice, who was preparing to redouble her case when Elowen spoke up.
“I find it sounds greatly amusing,” Elowen declared unhesitatingly.
Beatrice faltered. She’d expected Elowen’s resistance on, more or less, principle. The other woman’s instant support stopped
her silent.
“Why don’t you go first, Beatrice?” Elowen went on. “Truth? Or dare?”
Beatrice feared neither, in honesty. What were embarrassing memories or embarrassing revelations to her? How much more embarrassed
of herself could she possibly feel?
“Truth,” she said, knowing the choice would involve the use of Elowen’s magic, not hers. It was her quiet thank you of sorts for Elowen’s support. In the crystal caves earlier, and now, in Elowen’s unprompted cheering of the Truth or Dare
idea itself. It would bring them together, just slightly.
Firelight flickered in the look Elowen gave her former friend. “Who called for divorce? You or Robert de Noughton?”
“I was wrong,” Clare commented, leaning in. “This game is indeed delightful.”
The question, combined with the quantity of wine she’d consumed, set Beatrice’s stomach churning. Supportive or not, Elowen
was, as it happened, skillful in the manner of embarrassing Beatrice. She’d forgotten quite how skillful. Nevertheless, she counseled herself, she’d wanted to play this game. She couldn’t be a coward now.
Very well, then.
“Robert,” she replied. One word would do, wouldn’t it? The game was Truth, not Truth and Feeble Explanation. She drank from
her bottle, knowing the only way out was deeper in.
“Oh, Beatrice,” Vandra said heavily, not helping matters. “You let yourself be dumped by that bore?”
“It’s not like I was in love with him,” Beatrice protested. “I was just fine... existing,” she found herself elaborating.
The words managed to make perfect sense and none.
Clare’s voice, quiet in the dark, grated next to her.
“Robert de Noughton is the greatest fool in Mythria,” he said. “He didn’t deserve you.”
Not even perfectly sober could Beatrice have responded comprehensibly to the compliment. Unspoken gratitude would need to
suffice for the way his words eased the confession’s embarrassment from her. She glanced in his direction, finding his faraway
gaze on the fire.
The moment passing, she held her wine back to Vandra. “Your choice?”
“Dare, baby,” Vandra replied, predictably.
“Very well.” Drink did not dull or muddle her magic. Instead, she’d found rather the opposite. The looseness of inebriation
made the folds of memory easier to slip into. “Show us,” she proposed, “your most humiliating defeat in combat.”
Vandra laughed. “I have no humiliating defeats,” she replied.
“I sense embarrassment,” Elowen sing-songed.
Everyone saw Vandra stiffen. “You’ve been away from people too long, love,” Vandra shot back hastily. “You’re getting mixed
up.”
Beatrice grinned. The poised Vandra, flustered like a child caught shattering their mother’s vase during playtime.
“Why don’t we let the magic determine the truth?” Beatrice replied sweetly. “Or would you prefer to welcome defeat right now?”
Vandra’s hesitation stretched until finally she drank, grimacing with the swallow of wine. “ Fine ,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.”
In delighted victory, Beatrice took her outstretched palm. The four of them joined hands, permitting Beatrice to draw the
group into her magic. When the veils of the past unraveled, they were in the mud. Stables were nearby. The focus of the memory,
however, was the hulking hroxen in front of them, lumbering on six legs, growling in promise of the destruction it intended
to wreak in every direction.
Including Vandra’s, where she stood, sword in hand—wearing only her underclothes.
Her fighting stance did not intimidate the enormous hroxen. With one roaring swipe, the beast knocked Vandra flat in the mud. When she hauled herself to her feet, wiping filth from her eyes, the creature was gone, charging off unhindered. Past-Vandra looked dismayed, her underclothes filthy.
The vision ended sharply when Vandra yanked her hand from Beatrice’s. “That’s certainly enough,” she commented.
“You’re evading.” Elowen narrowed her eyes.
“Why were you half naked?” Clare had the unclouded intuition to ask.
Now Vandra looked down. “The creature surprised me when I was... attending to someone. In the stables. Obviously the moment
was completely ruined. She did not even leave her address.”
Clare laughed, one loud guffaw. “Embarrassing on several fronts, then.”
His chiding earned Vandra launching a bottle his way, relying on his instincts to catch the wine without spilling, which he
did. He grinned in welcome of the challenge to come.
“You must know I won’t go easy on you, Grandhart,” Vandra warned.
“Ooh, perhaps we’ll finally figure out the truth of his magical gift,” Elowen speculated.
Clare lifted his chin. “Do your worst,” he replied. “Dare.”
“Worst performance in the bedroom.”
The very idea cooled Beatrice with displeasure. Yet, she consoled herself, the dare was not the most terrible Vandra could
have demanded. Indeed, the present premise was probably the one occasion on which Beatrice would not despise the idea of Clare’s
intimacy with other women.
“Personally, I don’t wish to see that,” Elowen interjected.
Clare, however, looked unperturbed. He leaned back, visibly cocky. “None exists,” he informed them. “I’m always spectacular.
Honestly.” He held out his palm for Beatrice. “Go look. You’ll find nothing.”
She hesitated. She did not really want to clasp his hand.
Vandra watched them, her eyes darting from one to the other. She looked unnervingly like she’d managed to win a game with
no winners.
“Very well,” Vandra said with a much darker sparkle entering her eye. “What about something else?”
In the uneasy quiet, Clare waited, refusing to concede.
“ Best night of your life,” Vandra proposed.
Beatrice caught the way Clare went quiet. His reaction, she found, consumed her. The whole realm vanished right down to the
way he—
“Once again,” Elowen chimed in, halfway drunk, “I must insist we leave as soon as Clare’s butt makes an appearance.”
In the next instant—yes, relief flickered with the firelight on his features. He was glad he could grasp onto Elowen’s humorous
jab instead of—of—what? “How are you certain my butt is involved?” he protested in playful indignation.
Elowen’s glance was withering. “Of course it’s involved.”
Clare snorted.
Then his gaze went to Beatrice. The vulnerability in his crystal eyes held everything.
She wondered whether she’d cheated disaster or lost something precious when he rounded to face Vandra. “Let’s return to the
first one,” he requested hastily. “Worst performance.”
Vandra slowly shook her head. Oh, the perils of having friends who were wicked.
Beatrice watched Clare, clinging on to his every movement, his every shift, the merest inflection fleeting over his features.
She was, she found, at once terrified and desperate to know what night Clare held fondest in memory. With the way his eyes
held hers, pleading preemptive mercy, she knew she was part of the night in question.
What was it Galwell had said in the scene she replayed in Keralia?
Legends never wait.
She outstretched her hand.
Clare placed his palm in hers. Whatever drink did for the fluidity of her magic, Clare Grandhart’s touch did tenfold. The
past unwrapped with an ease she’d never felt, like the memory wanted her to return there.
Where the conjuration found them was not unlike where the four of them sat. Rough stone walls. The quiet of night. The cave
of Clare’s memory was hushed except for the soft sounds of sleep.
Except past-Clare wasn’t sleeping.
Beatrice’s breathing hitched. She knew what night he’d conjured. She’d never revisited the memory herself, yet she required
no magic to remember every detail. For Clare’s dearest night, she realized in heart-racked wonderment, was one of her own.
Earlier, the Four had escaped cursed fog in the forest they were navigating. The fog embraced them without warning, enshrouding
Clare first. Only Galwell’s grip had wrenched him free. If the fog had consumed him, he would have died. While Beatrice could
only watch in helpless horror, he very nearly did.
When nightfall ushered them into the cave, Beatrice had let down her walls. Her persistent resistance of him, her everything.
She positioned her sleeping roll near his, needing to be close to him. To remind herself he wasn’t gone.
With Elowen and Galwell and her pride in the cave with them, she couldn’t speak, couldn’t say what she was feeling. I was scared today. Don’t leave me.
Instead, she faced him in the darkness and took his hand in hers. While his eyes widened in silent surprise, she held on tight.
With the comfort of his closeness, she could permit herself something like slumber.
Her own memory ended there.
Clare’s, she found, did not.
While the Beatrice of the past slept, her grip relenting on their entwined fingers, he watched her. He looked... The only
word she could find to describe his expression was enraptured. While she dreamed, he’d let down his own guard. His cocksure
carelessness, his rugged ribaldry.
His eyes wide open, gazing upon her sleeping face, he looked like he was seeing the stars for the first time.
The memory ended there. The four of them emerged from Beatrice’s magic, their rowdiness subdued. Not surprisingly, no one
quite knew what to say.
She looked to Clare instinctually, and found him watching her. The sparkle of his eyes was not like the memory. Not hostility,
either, nor embarrassment. In one of her youth’s only years of consistent schooling, she remembered learning how the immeasurable
pressure underneath mountains could change metallic ore into glittering gemicyte stones. What improbable gems had the past
decade pulverized Clare’s regret, his resentment—his passion—into?
He severed their gaze suddenly. Into the stilted silence, it was he who managed to dispel everyone’s discomfort. Clare Grandhart, king of jokers.
“I think we can agree that was much worse than my naked butt,” he commented.
The wink he shot Beatrice let her know he was only jesting. It left her impossibly grateful. No matter the rigor of exposing
his deepest feelings, he wanted her to know he held their happiest moments dear.
She was touched. “Well,” she replied, her heart light, “your naked butt is fairly spectacular.”
“ Sliiiiiiiime ,” Elowen said.
Clare tossed his head back and laughed. The others joined in. Magic Beatrice never, ever expected started to work, for she
found herself disregarding her effort to find the right name for her group. Questing crew, questriots—it didn’t matter.
They were her friends .
The game drew on for hours into the night. Everyone unveiled his or her share of revelations. Elowen’s first kiss—the daughter
of their village’s finest weaponeer, when they were fourteen. Vandra’s first paid mark—the Duke of West Waverly, who tortured
his peasants when they could not pay his tithes.
Drunkenness inspired them. With minutes passing, they found themselves growing less guarded. It was harmless, except when
it wasn’t. Beatrice noticed it in Elowen first. The hunger pervading the other woman’s eyes was one she would never permit
in daylight.
It worried Beatrice. It blazed in her so brightly Beatrice knew someone was sure to be hurt.
Like dark magic, upon her noticing, Elowen passed the wine right to Vandra. “Truth for you,” she said.
Vandra frowned. “That’s not how this works.”
Waving her hand, Elowen dismissed the objection. “Have you,” she pressed, “ever been in love?”
It was the rare demand to elicit no reaction from the rest of the group. No scandalized cheering. No laughter. Only quiet.
When Vandra’s eyes tightened, Beatrice suspected she was less drunk than she’d let on.
“Yes,” Vandra said.
Elowen looked like she expected the revelation—or perhaps like she knew how she would feel no matter what Vandra said. “With
who?”
Vandra’s pause opened chasm-like, promising to swallow the four of them. Finally, she set the wine down, the glass clinking disharmoniously on the rocky ground. “I think maybe I’m done playing for the night,” she declared. “This game grows dull.”
Elowen pouted. “You’re no fun,” she slurred.
Grimacing, Vandra rose to her feet. “I rather remember being only fun,” she said bitterly.
Beatrice could hear the double-edged sword of the remark. While she did not know its hidden meaning, Elowen undoubtedly did—she
frowned into the fire, saying nothing, letting her paramour leave without following her.
It saddened Beatrice. Elowen was eternally closed off, portcullises down, drawbridges up in her fortress of sorrow. Beatrice
wished she could encourage Elowen to simply follow Vandra. To speak to her. To show her feelings. But Elowen’s heart magic
only went one way, and Elowen had no interest in extending herself the other.
Gazing emptily forward, Elowen finished the wine Vandra had set down. Knowing what doldrums waited in the depths of drink,
Beatrice caught the deepening change in Elowen’s eyes instantly. She looked—defeated. The dull edge of despondence.
“I have a dare for either of you,” she intoned. “Favorite memory of Galwell.”
Of course the night would end here , Beatrice thought. Especially now, with Vandra gone, the empty hole in their group opened large.
With her own senses dulled, however, she did not feel the stab of panic the mention of Galwell ordinarily induced in her.
Instead, what descended over her like cursed fog was only wistful sadness.
Then Clare held out his hand. “I have one,” he said softly.
Beatrice interlaced her fingers with his. He did the same with Elowen. Beatrice’s magic coursed into them, the cavern vanishing.
The tavern in which they found themselves was worse for the wear. No fault of the establishment’s, Beatrice remembered. Crimes
of intimidation had been growing more common. In the vision, the tavern owner was boarding up the windows for security.
Fear was sweeping the land with the widening of the Order’s hold—the way they emboldened their followers to strike at everyone
who looked different from them, who spoke different, who felt different. The realm was witnessing how easily rich men who
loved themselves could change into cheerful cultists who hated everyone else.
In the pub, the Four were getting drunk. Beatrice could not remember what they were celebrating or commiserating—the night
was gone from her own memory. She felt inexpressibly grateful drink had not wiped it from Clare’s.
Even Galwell, who rarely drank, held a goblet of mead in his hands. Ever perceptive, ever sympathetic, he noticed the mood
in the room. While the rest of them imbibed, he hefted himself on weary legs from his seat.
He crossed the tavern, where one of the musicians on his off hour sat with his lute. When the musician nodded in unspoken
permission, Galwell carefully lifted the polished instrument. He played familiar chords. Then, in the midst of everyone, he
sang.
“ My home is Mythria ,” he started slowly. “ My love is here. ”
Heads rose from goblets. Conversations died in solemnity. Only Galwell’s resonant voice filled the room, singing the first
lines of the realm’s famous reverent hymn.
Until one more voice joined him.
The tavern owner, pausing in his work, hammer in hand, voice wavering.
“ My home is Mythria. I hold her dear. ”
With the first chorus, everyone joined them. Not one person didn’t know “My Home Is Mythria.” Poor singers and melodious, young and old, drunk and keen-eyed—everyone was singing. Everyone
was united.
Including them, even Elowen. Beatrice, watching herself, heard Clare next to her—the true Clare, not the memory—join the chorus.
Elowen did the same. Finally, her eyes wet, Beatrice sang, harmonizing with the voice of her past self.
They remained in the vision until the song was over. When Clare removed his hand gently from Beatrice’s, the magic ended.
Except it didn’t, not exactly. She found herself wrestling with shadows, struggling with the strange sensation that the vision
they’d just left was what was real, while the cave in which she found herself was the conjuration. The nightmare, haunted
by the echo of the voice they would only ever hear in memory.
“It should’ve been me,” Beatrice heard herself say.
No one spoke until Clare, paused in the effort of reemerging from her magic, looked to her. “What?”
She knew what the wistful sadness was now. It was clarity. The cold zeal of the conviction she hid even from herself. She
spoke it plainly now.
“I should have died instead of him,” she said. “He was... the hero. The inspiration. The everything. I’m just... me.
But the truth is, I’m glad to be alive, and I hate myself fiercely for it.”
Clare watched her, his expression like stone.
It was Elowen, however, who spoke. “Don’t,” she said.
Her voice was firm. Beatrice was not certain she’d heard right until Elowen went on, removing her doubts.
“I’m glad you’re alive,” she said. “Even though I’ll miss my brother every second for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t ever
wish you to trade places.”
Elowen rose. Their game was over.
Touched beyond words, Beatrice sat in front of the warmth of the fire long into the night.