#bellewrites

-

The sky is blue and glassy as the bulb buzzes above. Amanda’s hand wraps around the hilt of her sword, squeezing the leather out of habit, slotting her fingers against the worn grip.

“We’re having trouble to the north,” her knight, a Sir Dots of House Dippin, says, neither of them looking at each other, instead facing the sky above.

“The Sundae Sorceress?”

“Maybe. All we know for sure is trouble.”

Amanda cuts Sir Dots a look, and finds xem already smirking at her. “Informative.”

“Amethar’s always had the best spies,” xe says and looks back out at the horizon.

“You just mean Lord Cruller.”

Dots snorts, “Speaking ill of our marquis?”

“Oh, never.”

They laugh together, for a moment, in the bulb’s light. It pales in comparison to the memory of Caramelinda’s soft, perfect hands, dancing above hers against cream sheets.

“We’re a long way from home,” Dots says.

“Yes, we are.”

The bulbs blazes on.

-

The milk silk ribbons tangle in her hands, too slippery for Amanda to thread through the dress’s loops. “Just give me a moment, I almost have it.”

Laughter, the kind Amanda only ever hears when they’re alone, bubbles up from in front of her, dripping and smooth like sweet sugar sizzling on a stovetop. “It’s alright, Amanda, I can do it myself.”

Amanda huffs. “They’re behind you, m’lady. How could you ever hope to even find them?”

“Well, usually I don’t take them out all the way,” Caramelinda says, smile clear in her voice.

Amanda blushes, tries once again to thread the ribbon through its loop, and gives up. One of her hands finds the curve of the queen’s waist, the other going to brush her hair from her neck, which she presses a kiss to, right atop a freckle.

“Amanda,” Caramelinda murmurs, a soft exhale.

“Mmh,” Amanda hums into her skin, combing a hand through her hair.

“I need to go to court, my love.”

“Court can wait.” Amanda mouths at her neck, tightens the grip on her waist.

“Amanda.”

“Mmh.”

“Are you doing this so you don’t have to fix my dress?”

Amanda smiles and pushes her hands into said dress, pulling it from Caramelinda’s shoulders. “Only a little.”

Caramelinda laughs as Amanda pushes her down onto the bed.

-

“Sir Maillard.”

“My King.”

Amethar smiles from beneath his crown, and claps Amanda on the shoulder. A part of Amanda threatens to do something rash, like break his hand.

“How’re you doing?”

Amanda nods, perfunctorily. “Well.”

“Not one for conversation. That’s fine, that’s fine,” Amethar’s smiling dumbly. Amanda wants to ask him if he understands what Caramelinda gives up for this kingdom every day while he sits with that crown on his head.

“What do you want? My King,” she tacks on at the end.

“Just wanted to, eh, congratulate you for your win, out on the Sucrosi Road.”

Amanda attempts at a smile, it probably looks more like a grimace. “Thank you.”

Amethar takes a step closer to her, still grinning, “Jet would love you. She’d like to train with you sometime, maybe as a present for her eighteenth Saint’s Day?”

“It would be an honor, My King.”

Amethar claps her on the shoulder again. Amanda remembers the way she found Caramelinda, crying over a dress of blue cloth, Caramelinda, asleep atop a pile of work, Caramelinda, deep circles under her eyes and a defeated slump to her shoulders. Caramelinda, barely holding on.

Amanda does not hate Amethar. She just doesn’t like him all that much.

-

A flash of s’mores steel catches the air before sinking into the chest of the popcorn warrior before her. He falls, crumbles into pieces of kernel, and Amanda is already twisting, slamming her sword into the opponent behind her.

She’s always come alive in battle, in a way she doesn’t anywhere but with Caramelinda. It’s a mix of both the rush and the wait—each swing of her sword is practiced, watchful. She does not strike recklessly like the King she serves, her strategy more like the words from her Queen’s lips.

Battle is where she feels the closest to home, while she is away from it. Battle and war and violence and peace and sweetness and strength, creating a web of spun sugar in her head. As her sword fells another opponent, her hand raises Caramelinda’s fingers to her lips. She trips a celery stalk into the praline ground, and she presses kisses to Caramelinda’s calves, the skin behind her knees, the freckles on her thighs. She watches the light leave the eyes of those who seek to hurt her Queen, and she stares into Caramelinda’s eyes as she stands by her side in the throne room, their hands not touching but close, the space of a breath between them.

Amanda lost her helmet two opponents ago, and she whips her hair back from her face where it has fallen from her bun. Her hand comes away sticky with sweat and blood—both Vegetanian and her own—and she uses that hand to slam Sir Chocolat’s combatant down to the ground so she can drive her javelin into their chest.

Amanda misses the battlefield when she is home, and she misses home when she is battling. She hopes that the two never meet.

-

“It’s too dangerous,” Amanda says, and she has never seen Caramelinda truly angry with her, but she sees that fire now, her eyes burning and blazing. Amanda tries not to take a step back.

“You will do as I command, Sir Maillard.” This is not her Caramelinda speaking, this is the Queen of Candia, whose life is spiralling from her fingers and whose daughters do not and have never listened to her and whose closest companions are all her husband’s allies.

“Please, Cara. I can’t leave you. Uvano is—”

“He is dying, and Amethar will become emperor.” Caramelinda’s chin is turned up, but she manages to look down her nose at Amanda even though she towers over her. “Now, the Sucrosi Road requires your knights’ attention.”

“Please,” Amanda says, her voice breaking around the world.

She sinks to her knees there, in Caramelinda’s study as her Queen orders her to leave when she needs her most. It is easy, so easy, to catch Caramelinda’s hand where it is fisted at her side and press her forehead against it.

“Sir Maillard…”

“Cara, I can’t.”

Caramelinda snatches her hand away. “You must. I order it of you, I am your Queen.”

Amanda rides from the castle at sunrise, armor and heraldic flag gleaming, as the Queen of Candia swallows her heart back into her chest and watches with barely hidden rage and pain as she sends her protection away.

Amanda will never get to train Jet Rocks.

-

The war is over. The battle is not.

She holds Caramelinda where she has collapsed at the statue of her fallen daughter, fifty paces from the statue of her fallen wife. She holds Caramelinda, buries her face in her hair, breathes in her caramel and sweet sugar smell.

“I know you said you’re fine but I just... This is so stupid, what am I, a twelve year old girl?” Fabian’s on his balcony, the metal bottom of which is providing Riz his shield from the stars.

Riz doesn’t picture the way Fabian probably looks, leaning on the railing, hair ruffled by wind and eye a little sad and tired. Riz doesn’t picture it just like he doesn’t hide from his own best friend.

“You’re literally right across town,” Fabian mutters, and Riz has to strain himself to hear. “I could just go see you. I should just go see you. I don’t know why I’m doing this.”

Technically, Riz should be in bed right now. The doctor was very stern about the wonders a full eight hours could do for a sticky possession, and his friends had seemed hopeful when he told them about potential easy cures, that there might be a way out of this one that avoids death and gods and pain. It was a doctor who told him this, though, and Riz had never been particularly fond of them, so he’d politely nodded his head, because his mom was in the room, and then proceeded to do everything but change his piss poor sleep schedule, even though he knew Kristen could sense the levels of exhaustion building up and Adaine could see the rings under his eyes.

He spends most of his nights in his office, trying and failing not to think or say the two words that make him nauseous, that make his bones ache and his eyes feel like they’re going to pop out of his head. Most nights, however, are not all of them, and the others he spends here, at Seacaster Manor. Which is why he’s so surprised to hear Fabian talking to him, or, rather, talking to the wind that bears his name. Because Fabian is always so careful, when there is a chance at being overheard.

Fabian heaves a sigh and the metal above Riz shifts. “I don’t know how to help you, The Ball. You won’t... you won’t let me help you.”

Riz bites his tongue and closes his eyes and lets the breeze and the words whip over his face, ignores the burning of the tattoo across his chest in favor of the sting of claws in his palms.

“I wish you would just fucking take care of yourself for once. God, it shouldn’t be too hard. It shouldn’t be... these things are supposed to be easy for people like you.”

People like me? Riz thinks, before he reminds himself that he isn’t allowed to think anymore.

“You’re basically being given a mandatory vacation. That sounds,” Fabian blows out a breath and it adds a new tone to the whistling in Riz’s ears. “That sounds so nice.”

Riz chews the inside of his mouth—it’s already a raw and bloody mess from weeks of this and he isn’t sure what it could possibly hurt to keep going.

“But you don’t, you don’t get to rest, ever, even when you need it. You don’t let yourself. I don’t understand you.”

Riz gets that a lot, even from the people, the creatures who cohabit his body. Riz is used to that. It hurts, a little, anyway.

And then Fabian says something truly surprising, something that finally pulls the back part of Riz’s brain from where it’s sinking deeper and deeper into a pit of night yorb night yorb night yorb night and back into himself, the part that he can still allow to be himself, that he can still trust to be himself.

“You’re my best friend. I love you. I wish you’d let me help.”

Fabian never says those things. Never. Not even when Riz is cold and dead in the dirt of a forest. Not even when Riz is shaking and trying not to cry in bed after bed in hospital after hospital, as surgeons and clerics and wizards attempt to remove his tattoo. Fabian never says those words, no matter how many times Riz does.

He immediately follows it up with another, “This is so stupid.” And then the metal creaks and Fabian’s sliding glass doors drag on the floor and Riz hears footsteps pause, directly over his head, on the threshold of his bedroom and balcony. “I’ll make sure you’re okay, The Ball. I’m going to make sure you’re okay.”