This Will Be Fun

1 Beatrice

1 Beatrice

Beatrice was drunk in the bath.

She deserved to unwind, she told herself. The bath she’d run in her... cozy new cottage was the only comfort she’d found in her dismal week. Divorcing the lord of her village was not easy. Soaking

in the scented water provided her a much-needed distraction from the many headaches life was causing her.

She’d managed something sort of like unwinding—she was lucky one of her only friends in the village marketplace was the home-goods

potioner, who offered her generous discounts on her finest concoctions. Roselia petals! Honeyjade oil! Content, she immersed

herself in lavender foam.

Until she realized her favorite robe, enchanted to stay warm, somehow wasn’t in the chest of her things her ex-husband’s footman had delivered last night. Of course it wasn’t. The bastard would “borrow” her enchanted robe every chance he got, though he would never own to it.

Well, he may have gotten the manor, but he wasn’t getting the robe.

The conviction pulled Beatrice, wine-tipsy, out of the bath. Was her new quest petty? Possibly. Was her fury frivolous? She,

who once fought great evil, who fended off hordes of enemies, marching in pursuit of her favorite bathtime garment? Perhaps!

It mattered not. These days, Beatrice clung stubbornly on to every flash of feeling she could find. When life left one little to care about, one could care very deeply about very little.

She’d nearly reached the door, hastily dressed, when she remembered she had no money. Her ex-husband was the nobleman, not

her. Without his finances, she had no carriage, no servants. Nothing.

The surprise stung in the same dull way she was getting used to. Nothing in the life she found herself living resembled the

one she had expected growing up.

When she was twenty years old, Beatrice, with her three closest friends, had saved the realm of Mythria from dark magic summoned

by the Fraternal Order. She’d followed the famous Galwell the Great into the fray.

They were heroes! everyone said.

Beatrice could only ever remember how they’d failed. How she’d failed.

Fate was punishing her, she suspected. She felt like everything wrong with her life now—her divorce, her current finances—was

unpredictable penance for what she’d done wrong then , the way one never could know where rain would pool underneath leaking rooftops.

The thought made her want to pour more wine into the glass perched on the tub’s stone rim. Why not? Wine not , she half-joked to herself. She could crochet the saying onto one of her new pillows.

No, damn it , she scolded herself. If she couldn’t fix her life, she could have her robe .

Not wanting to lose her nerve, she swung open her cottage’s front door. With the sun just starting to set over the green hills,

she walked , carriage-less, across the village, heading for where she once called home.

Ignoring the whispers from the spinning women who paused in their garment making outside the marketplace, she continued with her head held high. The brewers behind the brewshop counter hesitated over the foamy concoctions they were producing with hand magic for customers on dates or on their way to nighttime work. Uriel, the old weaponeer, just stared, his eyes like dull crystals watching her while his forge cooled under his distracted ministrations.

Not much of note happened in Elgin, the hamlet where her ex-husband’s family had lived for generations. It was sort of the

point, for Beatrice. Mythria was no small realm. The castles of the land’s nobles stood impressively on its valleys and mountains,

small villages surrounding them like the hamlet where Beatrice grew up. Monstrous and marvelous creatures existed in its shadows

and outskirts. Magic flourished in every corner. Her quest with Galwell, Elowen, and Clare had carried her far from her humble

hometown, from the elegant streets of Queendom to the horrific Grimauld Mines.

Never to Elgin, though. The country village’s wide roads held no shadows where memories could hide.

In the earliest days of her courtship with Robert, she’d found its ordinariness beautiful. Then, with time, comforting. Then,

just familiar.

Now, it was nothing but the reminder of the gossip her evening robe quest would cause.

Without stumbling despite her drunken state— great job, Beatrice —she managed to reach her destination on the edge of town. The manor.

Her manor, once.

The home was half built into the hillside, with the upper floors rising into the sky. In the center grew a grand oak, with the house’s walls constructed and enhanced with hand magic to accommodate the plant’s massive limbs.

In front of the door, Beatrice hesitated, her disheveled state giving her the slightest pause. She was not proud of how she

looked. In flattering light, her shoulder-length hair shone like bronze. Now, she imagined it looked more like dead weeds.

She was sure a drunken pink had swallowed the freckles in her pale, round cheeks.

Was there soap in her hair? There definitely was.

Furthermore, from the unevenness of her stride, she suspected she was wearing two different boots.

Let everyone who called her a hero see her now.

But what could Robert do if she looked like shit in front of him? Divorce her a second time? She swung the door open, mind

made up.

Instantly, she stilled.

From inside the house drifted minstrel music, punctuated by raucous laughter. She even recognized the song. It was the popular

verse of the day, written about the deeds of Clare Grandhart. Creeping across the empty gallery up to one of the interior

windows, she peered past the courtyard, into the grand hall, where—

Robert was having a fucking banquet.

Near the long table piled high with the feast, people were dancing in elaborate costumes. There were masks. Her ex-husband

was putting on the party of the season... to celebrate their divorce.

While she was drinking wine in the bath.

Good for him! Good for Beatrice! Everyone should celebrate divorce.

While the separation of her life from Robert’s was exhausting, it honestly did not sadden her. She’d married him because he was meek, which she mistook for kindness—and, yes, she’d married him somewhat for his title. She’d dreamed of marrying into nobility from her humble birth, especially since her closest childhood friend, Elowen True, grew up wealthy. After their quest, marrying rich felt like the one thing Beatrice could take from saving the realm.

Robert had played his part well in their courtship. He’d portrayed himself to be everything the last man she’d let into her

heart wasn’t. Polite, patient, even noble.

Nothing like Clare.

Within the walls of their home, however, she’d swiftly learned nobility and politesse only extended to court and reputation.

Under the impartial presence of the old oak, Robert was... petty, jealous, and, worse, boring.

She wished she’d been the one to leave him. In the end, he’d denied her even this satisfaction.

Like he was denying her her robe.

In order to retrieve the garment, she needed to go upstairs. Unfortunately, the main stairs were right in the middle of the

festivities. She would not let Robert’s guests see her—the savior of Mythria—with soap in her hair and mismatched boots. Imagine if they thought her

heartbroken. Over him.

No. Servants’ stairs it was.

She would just have to reach them without being seen. Starting for the hallway, she noticed footmen on the other end of the

passage.

She refused to let her confidence falter. Yes , she was drunk. What of it? Clare had been drunk when they’d snuck into Castle Corpus. She only needed to get upstairs outside

the watchfulness of the de Noughton manor’s footmen. She was Beatrice of the Four—she’d stolen the Orb of Grimauld from the

Orb Weavers.

Next in her heroic legacy would be this robe!

She sprung for the servants’ stairs. Even wine drunk, in mismatched boots, Beatrice no-longer-de-Noughton was nimble. She mounted the winding stairs swiftly, swung right, followed familiar corridors under limbs of the oak—until, just like she’d planned, she found herself in her old room.

She was startled by the unpleasant feeling in her gut the moment she stepped inside. How did she not notice it in years of

living here? Fortunately, the room provided her the perfect distraction.

Her pink robe, draped over Robert’s bed.

She snatched up the soft garment. Pulling on the sleeves, she welcomed their sudden warmth. It was perfect. Reveling in the

enchanted comfort, she strolled out of the room—

Only to find footmen spilling from the servants’ stairs. Well, she had not gone unseen, then.

Following the footmen were—worse—guards. She was too drunk for guards. While she could not fight them, however, she could

flee. Rerouting, she wove through the house’s hallways. Finding the main stairwell wasn’t difficult. Her robe snug on her

shoulders, Beatrice descended the stairs.

From her wine fog, she suddenly remembered why she had avoided the main stairs in the first place. They were crowded with

guests celebrating the end of Beatrice’s marriage, sipping wine from the manor’s fanciest glasses. Her head ducked, Beatrice

evaded the guards while keeping herself inconspicuous. Until—

Halfway down the steps, she collided with someone. Someone large. Someone male. Someone whose jostled drink flung flecks of

wine into her soapy hair. Well, she couldn’t look worse .

“Shit, sorry—” she started.

“Beatrice.”

The sound of her name—in that voice—stunned her motionless like not even the realm’s darkest magic could.

She looked up. For the first time in ten years, her gaze met with the eyes of her closest-guarded fantasies, his irises crystal blue like the waters of the Galibrand Strait, though the storminess in them held more in common with the cruelest winds of Mount Mythria. The years had not drawn on him. He was intolerably handsome.

“There you are,” Clare Grandhart said.

There you are? Like he was looking for her? Here, at Robert’s banquet? Or here, in front of him, despite the years and the distance they

carefully maintained, entrenched in rage neither of them would ever forsake? There you are, at last. She didn’t know.

Oh, she was struggling. Only resilient instincts, combined with the power of inebriation, kept her coherent in the face of

the man who’d occupied her dreams and shattered her heart. “Did you expect to find me at the party being held in honor of

my eviction?” she said witheringly.

With her own words, she faltered, realizing. When her eyes went wide with indignation, Clare smiled, politely grim or perhaps

grimly polite.

“Did you journey here to celebrate my divorce?” she shouted.

In fact, the notion of handsome eligible men coming to this party eager to cheer her singlehood rather pleased her. What did

not was the idea of this man. If there was one person in Mythria who had no right to revel in Beatrice’s new relationship status, it was Clare Grandhart.

He watched her carefully. When she shouted, she could have sworn she caught something flicker in his expression.

Unfortunately, her exclamation had the one result Beatrice did not wish. The musicians halted with resinous squeaks of their

strings. Everyone stared. Here was Beatrice of the Four, in her favorite enchanted robe, standing drunk, uninvited, in the

middle of her ex-husband’s banquet.

Whatever emotion crossed Clare’s expression was gone in fleeting moments. While the guests gawked, he only shrugged. “I was invited to a nobleman’s party,” he offered with unconvincing nonchalance. “If I happened to notice the name and the neighborhood on the invitation... well...” Once more, his warmthless smile. “Your ex-husband’s idea of roasted grawk likely wouldn’t have justified the journey. Commemorating your unhappiness, however...”

She gaped. Not in surprise, exactly. Nothing Clare was saying contradicted the way she understood them to have left their

ruined relationship. She’d just never expected to feel his unforgiving disregard in person. Why end their decade of spiteful

silence now ? She could hardly believe the golden-haired, glaring ghost of her past was here.

“You and Robert should form a club,” she returned. “Beatrice’s Greatest Mistakes. You could wear sashes.” The words tasted

deliciously bitter on her tongue. It was unconscionably tempting to keep going, to open up old wounds on the staircase of

her freshest injury. To see just how much she could hurt .

Clare leaned forward, like he, too, was pulled to the pain pulsing between them. To yell, to curse, to clench, to dig his

fingers in deep, to—

He glanced to the side. Conjurists were conjuring their image, preserving the way their heads leaned together forever. It

would reach Mythria’s gossip pamphlets forthwith, she knew. The scribes would love this. The Four’s contentious couple, reunited

and... fighting.

Curious or not, masochistically or otherwise, Beatrice did not want to deal with conjurists. She stepped back, forgetting she was on the stairs.

Clare caught her.

The closeness hit her white-hot, hurtling her past and present into one impossible collision. How could his hand, on her for only one steadying instant, feel exactly the way she remembered when everything else was devastatingly different?

Then he released her. The moment was over, its hint of chivalry—of fucking compassion—erased. In its place, however, Beatrice

was darkly delighted to notice him uncomfortable. It felt like points scored in a game she didn’t understand.

While she waited, Clare squared his shoulders. His demeanor, she noted, was changing. Inexplicably, he was putting on something

like formality. It fit him like poorly smithed armor.

“You—look well,” he said, standing straighter for their spectators.

Beatrice knew Sir Clare cared for his celebrity more than he cared for anything or anyone. The three of them had been offered

knighthoods in recognition of their quest. Beatrice wanted no involvement with the guilt-ridden spectacle. Elowen had by then

practically vanished from the realm. Only Clare showed up—strutting and smiling for every scribesheet.

Beatrice, however, cared nothing for the scribesheets. She didn’t then, and she didn’t now. She wouldn’t play nice just so

he could look gallant. “ Do I , Clare?” She gestured to her pink robe, to the calamity of her hair. “Do I look well?”

“I didn’t say you were dressed well... but you—” He coughed. “You’re lovely as ever.”

The compliment soured her stomach more than too much wine. How dare he try to be nice to her in front of an audience. What an absolute scoundrel.

“Same old Clare Grandhart. Enjoy the party,” she said loudly, intending to leave him behind for the second time in her life.

She stepped successfully down the stairs while everyone watched. Beatrice heard murmurs of “ Claretrice ,” which made her want to shrivel up. She’d on occasion heard the “couple name” Mythria’s popular scribes had coined for her

and Clare’s unfortunate liaison during their quest, like they were shadow play stars or something. It grated on her, one more

way her heartbreak had become nothing but the source of others’ entertainment.

The herald in the great hall’s entrance was likewise struggling with the surprise of her presence. “Esteemed guests,” he started

unsurely, speaking to the crowd. “Lady Beatrice of the Four, hero of the realm!”

With her confidence starting to ebb, Beatrice reminded herself she’d faced worse. She stopped and managed to curtsy. “Just

‘hero of the realm’ is fine,” she said loudly. “No longer a lady.”

When she surveyed the room, she caught the eye of Robert, standing motionless near the roast. She recognized the look of quiet

fury vibrating on his face.

In her ex-husband, she’d eventually noticed the hunger she knew to lurk in other meek men. To be looked up to. To have women

listen to him. When he couldn’t make himself look grand, he settled for making others look small.

“No longer much of a hero, either, by the looks of you,” Robert remarked loudly.

Uncomfortable laughter rippled over the room. Despite the arrow her ex-husband had successfully shot into one of her sorest

spots, she didn’t let her features fall. “Well, sharing your bed for eight years certainly required heroics,” she replied.

When new laughter rang out, she watched Robert seethe. His features screwing up, he waved one finger forward, summoning guards.

Beatrice flung up her hands in surrender. “Don’t bother,” she said. “I’m leaving.”

“Beatrice—” she heard Clare say.

“ I’m leaving ,” she repeated harshly.

With whispers following her—damn “ Claretrice ,” gossip she knew every guest would eagerly share for probably months to come—she pushed her way through the crowd, head

low.

The entry hallway was in sight, the cooling forgiveness of the night within reach—when, damn it , she felt a grip on her elbow. It could only be Clare’s. Frustrated, she whirled.

Leaving her caught off guard by the depth in his eyes. They looked... earnest. Sincere. Rogues weren’t supposed to look

sincere. Men who hated you weren’t supposed to look sincere .

“Can we begin again?” he started, his voice rough, like he was inexperienced in the subject matter.

She laughed. “It’s ten years too late for that.”

His jaw tensed. “I mean tonight. Let’s have peace. People change. I’ve changed.”

“You’re standing in the middle of my husband’s divorce banquet,” she seethed, “saying you’ve changed ? Why would you want peace with me anyway?”

The combative smolder in Clare’s eyes—this, she recognized. “Because we’ll have to see each other at the queen’s wedding soon. We should be civil,” he said.

Surprise left the half-drunk Beatrice without words.

Clare went on, sounding flustered and half frustrated with himself. “It’s—I—we shouldn’t mar the festivities with our discord,”

he explained. Mar? Discord? She wondered why he was speaking like the fancy characters in shadow plays. “We must mend our... fighting, and go to the

wedding properly. It’s what...” He faltered. “It’s the right thing to do,” he finished.

Beatrice narrowed her eyes. She could not understand why Clare Grandhart was offering this play of propriety.

However—drunk or not—she finally knew what to say.

“I decline your suggestion of peace,” she informed him, “on the grounds that I’m not going to the queen’s wedding.”

In the weeks since she had received the formal invitation to the wedding of Mythria’s Queen Thessia, she had not once stopped

feeling horrible for discarding the heavy paper, deciding instantly she would not attend.

She wished Queen Thessia nothing but joy on her wedding day. While they hadn’t spoken in years—one more effect of Beatrice’s

guilt, one more reason for it—she did consider the young queen one of her few real friends. Beatrice found the thirty-two-year-old

ruler of Mythria uncommonly caring even despite everything she’d lost.

Nevertheless, Beatrice couldn’t stand to see her former friends, her former flame. Couldn’t stand to relive everything they

went through. Worse, the wedding would coincide with the Festival of the Four, the upcoming celebration of ten years since

the deeds of Beatrice, Galwell, Elowen, and Clare. Beatrice did not need magic to foresee scribes on every corner chasing

them for interviews, fans screaming their names...

Just more commemoration of the worst thing that had ever happened to her. No, she would not be joining the festivities. She

couldn’t.

Confusion contorted Clare’s eyes. “You have to go,” he said.

“I don’t, actually,” she informed him sharply. “Good night and have a good life!”

She strode for the door.

He gripped her arm once more, gently firm. Urgent. She shook off the heart-racing memories the contact left her with.

“You don’t want to forgive each other, fine,” Clare said, his voice low, his effete diction gone, the rogue she remembered leap ing out in his whipcrack sentence. “But don’t rob Thessia of her happiness. Not after all she’s been through.”

The hurt of his reference stunned her. She lifted her eyes to his once more, feeling betrayed. It shouldn’t have surprised

her, in hindsight. Betraying her was something of Clare Grandhart’s specialty. In the look they shared, of secret wounds,

the hallway full of gossiping guests watching them disappeared.

“The Beatrice I knew would’ve come,” he pronounced.

She wrenched her arm from his grip.

“You were half right. I guess some people change,” she said.

Then she proceeded out of the house she once called home.

The manor’s front door closed behind her before she let hot tears sting her eyes. She hated how Clare had pushed on regrets

he knew would hurt, which they did. She hated how true her ex-husband’s words rang. What was she left with? Just fame for something

she did a decade ago, already drying up.

Fame, and guilt.

In the deepest part of her heart, Beatrice felt the prickle of scars from wounds of memory she refused to let close. Ones

Clare had touched with familiarly effortless fingers.

Many in Mythria possessed magic of one of several types. Hand magic was useful in controlling the material world, whether

in the form of culinary gifts, powers to shape metal, rock, or other materials, or gifts of manipulating the body. Heart magic

pertained to understanding or controlling matters of emotion or inclination. Head magic related to gifts of memory or perception.

While some magical gifts were minor or specific enough that they weren’t much different from simple skill—intuition in the

kitchen or resonance on the harp, for instance—others could yield considerable, rare power.

Beatrice possessed uncommon head magic. With her gift, she could revisit memories of her own, or others, like she was living or reliving them herself. Which she’d become obsessed with doing, immersing herself in just one memory, over and over. Robert de Noughton had grown impatient with her exhaustion, her irritability, her preoccupation.

She didn’t care.

For while everyone knew Beatrice had helped Galwell the Great defend the realm, no one knew he’d died because of her.

The guilt never let Beatrice go. Galwell was special. He wasn’t just her girlhood crush, her best friend’s brother, or her

lover’s best friend.

He was... hope incarnate. In the eyes of many, he was the man on whose example Mythria could become kinder, stronger, nobler.

He was their hero.

He was dead now. Because of Beatrice.

Every night in bed in the room she just revisited, she would return to the battlefield where she would relive the moment when

he died before her. It was part masochism, part vain hope she might understand what she could’ve done differently. She’d found

a hundred little things that could have prevented his death, and yet, still, she could not stop submerging herself in the

memory, searching for respite.

Tonight, of course, would be the same.

Don’t rob Thessia of her happiness. Not after all she’s been through.

Beatrice clenched the tears from her eyes. Reminding herself she was no hero made her feel honest. Remembering whom she’d

failed, however, just hurt.

It wasn’t just Elowen, who’d lost her brother, then eventually forsaken the entire fabric of her life. It wasn’t just Mythrians, whose idol was gone. Thessia had been betrothed to Galwell the Great. Oh, how she had loved him. Beatrice remembered the fawning look in the young royal’s eyes, full of feelings Beatrice fondly recognized from her own youth.

She remembered the princess’s scream when they returned from the final fight with the Order, the gutted sound of someone who’d

known bad news was coming. It was pretty much the only thing Beatrice remembered from their day of victory.

She sighed out loud, hoping it would ease some of the pressure in her chest. No, she was not the hero the people of Mythria

deserved. Still... Clare’s words rang in her head, consuming her completely in the way only he could. If she was not the

hero the realm deserved, she did not have to be a coward, either.

Not when her cowardice would wound Thessia.

In the end, she came to the worst conclusion. She hated it when this happened. Infuriating or not—ridiculous or not, showing

up here to her ex’s divorce party—posturing or not, Clare Grandhart was right .

This wedding was her chance to be part of letting light into Thessia’s life instead of darkness. If she were to hide from

the celebration, she would close the door on sharing Thessia’s joy, maybe for the last time.

She couldn’t. She needed to go to this wedding. Guilt would weigh on her forever, but she could give her kindest efforts to

one of her only friends in the world.

This time, she honestly didn’t know if she’d lived through worse. She just knew she’d live through this.