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The first time the name is burned upon her skin, Kit had cried out in in pain. She had not known in that moment, that it would have been the least excruciating part of the whole ordeal.
Kit had waited impatiently for the day to pass her by. She had read the same lines in her books, hardly paid attention to her lessons, and fumbled her way through the most elementary of parries and dodges. Blows from the heavy wooden training sword easily landing on her fingers, her arm, her ribs.
//
When the time came to be alone, she had cried tears that burned hot against her face. She screamed into her pillow until her voice was ruined. She had poured herself empty from the sheer anguish.
The name above her heart was not the one she had wanted to read.
Yet it stood there, unchanged. Mocking her.
“Jade Kael.”
Through red, tired eyes, and angry, prying fingers, it refused to change.
For a terrible moment, Kit had held onto the hilt of her sword with a sick intent. Wanting to take it out of its scabbard so she could carve out the name, along with her broken heart.
She didn’t want anyone to ever know that the girl she loved, the one she dreamed of going on adventures with beyond the barrier, was meant for someone else… just as she was meant for whoever this Jade Kael was.
//
Surprisingly, Airk doesn’t want to talk about his name either.
Instead of feeling slighted, because Airk and Kit had shared everything since the day they were born. She is relieved.
He doesn’t have to know that something can hurt infinitely more than the mother’s cruel tongue. It is having the one thing you had been dreaming about your entire life, and it being entirely wrong.
Kit thinks about those in the castle that had names of loved ones never met. Of people beyond the barrier that died too young, and so their wrists, their hips, their hearts, they never burned. Their names looked different than the angry red above her heart and Kit wonders if it would have been easier to know that the person meant for her was gone.
//
With this new knowledge, Kit tries to tamp down the love she feels for the wrong Jade.
She fails every time.
Only, it doesn’t feel like failure when Jade’s bright eyes reflect her own mirth at a joke about a clumsy palace guard during dinner.
Or the way Jade looks up at her with amazement whenever she towers above her. Having won another duel. It makes her heart stand still and Kit doesn’t know how the universe could be made with magic, and still make her soulmate be wrong for her.
The knowledge of another woman being meant for her hurts worse than having to pretend not to notice the different ways that Jade tells her she loves her. Without ever needing to say the words, Kit knows, she knows, that this Jade loves her.
And it feels unfair, the way Jade’s eyes turn soft whenever they meet hers across a crowded room. Because Kit has to live with the knowledge that it can never go beyond that.
A fleeting look. A distracted touch that is as natural as breathing.
They will have to be enough.
//
Sometimes, even Kit forgets that the wrong name sits traitorously above her heart.
It’s when she thinks that only this Jade, the one in front of her, could ever be the one she loves. Jade Claymore was made solely to fit her. Just as Kit was made for her. They had been together their entire lives, and it seems like there is nothing she can do but fall deeper in love with her best friend.
Until Kit catches a glimpse of the red name, etched on her skin, and her day turns sour.
Kit doesn’t mean to be so mercurial.
To go from giddy to painfully aware that she is not meant to be this happy. Not with Jade.
Not with her Jade.
And it makes her almost feel relieved when her mother announces that she’ll be forced to marry a man that carries another woman’s name.
//
Another year goes by, and her doomed engagement doesn’t feel as real as the constant ache below her ribs.
Until the night she meets the very real Graydon Hastur.
To his credit, he doesn’t say much. He lets himself be dragged by the hand and made a fool of by a very upset Kit.
And his acquiescence hurts more than the indifference she’s used to feeling from her mother. The disdain from King Hastur. And the pity from Queen Hastur.
Kit wants to rip the golden crowns from their heads and smash them against the ground. Watch the beautiful jewels scatter across the stones, the way her heart is breaking into a million pieces due to the news that Jade would be leaving her.
Kit could have gone through the agony of not belonging to herself, if Jade was hers.
But having Jade ride down to Galladoorn with them, after her wedding, only to leave her again… it’s too much.
//
Kit might not understand what true love is like. Not like her mother and father. Who had each other’s names on opposing wrists since they were old enough to have a soulmate.
But she does know what it means to be headstrong. To be selfish. And she packs her bags. Intent on doing one last act as a princess.
//
She climbs through Jade’s window and stares at her friend. She knows it’s wrong, to want to kiss someone not meant for her. But she has to know what it feels like to have Jade’s lips against hers. Even if it’s just for tonight.
Jade wakes up and Kit tells her the truth. She’s leaving.
Kit kisses Jade, a final goodbye, and the moment their lips connect, the name on her skin burns hotter. Like a brand being pressed down into her chest. All the way down into her heart. Crashing against her soul and telling her that the universe is wrong. This is the woman she is meant to love.
Kit pulls back and holds onto that feeling. Knowing that nothing would compare to kissing Jade. Not even kissing some random woman that could never compare to her best friend.
She looked out the window and her pulse quickened at the exciting thought that if she slipped, then her heavy heart would never know the true agony of having to belong to anyone but Jade. Her Jade. A Jade with a different last name than Kael.
She said goodbye, and as always, safely made her way to the bottom.
Solidly grounded in the reality that she would never be good enough for her mother. For her father to come back… for the universe to grant her just one mercy: to be loved by her best friend and have it be preordained.
//
They are beyond the barrier and Kit apologizes to Graydon.
It’s not his fault their parents care more about politics and allegiances than they do about their happiness.
He shrugs and admits that he’s not too happy about marrying some stranger he didn’t love. Not when he already knew that Kit was not the name carved upon his skin.
Kit’s shoulders sag in relief. He’s a good man and Kit hopes that whoever is meant to be loved by him, can make their way to him.
And she looks up at Jade’s back. Her curly hair catches rays of light and she longs to reach out and touch it. To help Jade braid it tightly against her scalp to keep it safe from errant blades flying around during practices with Ballantine or the other recruits.
She wonders if that could be enough.
//
Kit is filling her waterskin and the unexpected blow of Jade having lied to her all these years makes her understand how much of her life had been dictated by her mother.
Jade had only become her friend because it had been allowed.
She looks down at her hands, chapped and red from the cold. They are shaking and Kit understands, for the first time, that her fantasy of their love being spelled differently than the names on their skin, was rooted in never actually knowing Jade at all.
Kit feels sorry for Jade. She might have not even felt anything but pity for Kit. Someone who had thought their friendship was real. That their feelings were real… when it had just been Jade trying to please her Queen.
Kit hides her sadness through bitter words. Hoping that Jade won’t look too closely at how stupid and childish she was.
How could Kit want someone like Jade to choose her? To go against whatever name was burned into her skin, when she never even had a choice about how much time they spent together.
Kit had been so blinded by her own love, that she didn’t see the truth. Jade had been forced to be her friend. She had probably forced herself to be okay with Kit climbing through her window. Trained herself not to flinch whenever Kit sought her out. Touched her shoulder.
Tried to reassure her.
She swallows and looks away. Thinking of Graydon. The man she had meant to marry and she wonders if that is what her future would have been. Had Airk stayed safely within the walls of the castle that night.
Kit scoffs at Jade and leaves. Fighting back the bile in her throat. Jade had let her do so many things because she was the princess… and for some reason, her own immeasurable pain, echoes against the name on her skin.
Making her chest burn like it never did before.
Kit hopes that her soulmate never meets her at all.
She wasn’t even the right type of person someone else could befriend.
How could Kit think that Jade would let herself be loved by someone like her? Someone that cost Jade her dreams of being a knight.
Kit couldn’t be so cruel as to ask Jade to love her back and go against the name of her soulmate.
//
She goes off with Boorman because she doesn’t know how to be herself around Jade anymore. She wants to be mad at Jade. But really, she’s mad at herself. For failing to notice how much Jade might have been uncomfortable with their closeness… because she thought the other woman felt the same.
Jade might think she’s in love with Kit… but now that she was beyond the barrier, maybe she could find the woman she was meant to belong to.
And Kit would have to force herself to be okay with that.
//
When Jade has to kill her father, Kit doesn’t have the right words.
They are shivering in the rain and even though Jade is across from her, they have never been further apart than this moment.
Kit doesn’t know what it means like to lose a father. Hers is still out here. She knows he is.
The others are trying to take stock of their options after the battle and Kit lost Ballantine’s helmet when Boorman bumped into her.
Kit leaves the group and piles loose bits of earth and stones upon Ballantine’s body.
The mound will probably wash away when the storm comes through here, but she doesn’t know what to say. So Kit listens to everyone argue and wishes she could talk to whoever Jade Kael is and tell her that she’s broken. That Kit will never be the kind of woman that could love anyone back.
Not like her brother.
Not like her mother.
Not like her father.
Kit might look like them.
But she was an ugly and broken thing.
//
The castle only makes that intense feeling of being broken even worse.
She tries to follow Jade, to comfort her. But the other woman walks away from her, telling her she needs to be anywhere else but next to her. And Kit hunches into herself.
The name on her skin burns.
It burns and Kit wants to scratch it off her chest. She wants to replace it with Jade’s last name. But she can’t fight against the whims of the universe when they are running out of time to save their friend.
//
Jade is taken away and Kit is sick with worry.
She wants to know what Scorpia is doing to her in her tent but the men around them won’t let them move.
They might no longer be restrained or imprisoned, but they are still not free.
Kit touches the name above her heart and clenches her teeth. Whoever Jade Kael is, feels like they are flickering against her skin.
She doesn’t know what it means. All she can feel is a bottomless worry for Jade.
//
They come out and Jade looks luminous. There is a light glowing within and Kit is so distracted by her smile, her beauty, that she almost misses the way the forest floor is pulled right from underneath her feet.
General Kael was their father.
Jade’s birthfather was bound to serve Bavmorda. Overthrowing their masters in Galladoorn in exchange for freedom.
And Kit’s father had killed General Kael.
Jade’s entire family history was so closely entwinned with hers that she wonders why it took until today to realize that Jade’s last name, had not been the one she was meant to keep.
Jade is so happy to have found her family that Kit feels the immutable weight of Jade’s name on her skin. And she wonders if Jade should even know that her soulmate is the one person responsible for her not knowing who she truly was.
Jade seeks her out and Kit stumbles through an explanation of why her mother would do such a thing.
She lands on protection. Because Kit doesn’t know. She can’t understand her mother. And yet, she would have done the same thing. Raised someone devoted to her family just so she would know they were loved. Even if they weren’t related.
But really. Kit doesn’t know.
Just like she didn’t know that this Jade, her Jade, was actually Jade Kael.
Kit had prayed.
She had hoped.
She had raged against an unfair universe that would make her love someone as amazing as Jade Claymore. Only to be devastated by the truth.
Jade Kael. Jade Claymore… she was always meant to be hers…
And yet… Kit doesn’t know who Jade truly is. Who she wants to be.
Of course, that doesn’t come out.
Instead, Kit says that she suspected something… because what could be worse. Being Kit’s soulmate, or simply having your best friend lie to your face? Never reveal the name above her heart because she wanted it to be yours. And suddenly you were her soulmate but it was a lot more complicated than that.
Kit tries to explain why Jade would not want to know and inadvertently breaks Jade's heart instead.
//
Kit is leaning against a tree, lost in thought.
It was terrible. Knowing that her soulmate and the person she was in love with were one and the same. Because it was exactly what Kit wanted, and yet, it was all wrong.
Elora stumbles around. Feet and arms too big for her body.
The truth plums had that effect on everyone.
Kit is dying to ask Elora how to fix things. But her pride gets in the way.
Until Elora, just like before, reads her as if she hadn’t spent her entire life hiding behind snarky comments and dismissive scoffs.
Kit touches the name that burns above her heart and looks into the crowd that is celebrating the return of one of their own.
Elora is right, Kit does want to get better, and she will do whatever it takes to prove to Jade that even if the other woman is meant for someone else, she could always rely on Kit. In whatever capacity she wanted from her.
//
Kit’s tongue seizes up when it’s time to tell Jade whose name rests above her heart. It feels more intimate than expressing to Jade how much she means to her. How Kit needs her for the rest of her life. That she can’t imagine going on any more adventures without Jade by her side.
Before Jade can say anything else, Kit pulls back the neckline of her shirt and Jade’s name nearly bowls the other woman over.
She reaches out and Kit can feel her skin burn. Making it hard to concentrate. To breathe.
Jade’s name goes from angry red to a shining golden hue that makes her gasp.
The only other names that shone like these, were her parent’s.
Soulmates might not always be born out of true love.
Sometimes it was merely a person you were destined to love but they would never feel the same. And so, the name would stay an angry red. If they died, the flames burned out into a charcoal gray that was never meant to burn. The other person had died too young. Too old. Too out of touch with you.
Golden love. True love. It was a fairy tale. A dream.
And yet. Here she was, Jade Kael, making the name above her heart change.
When Jade told her that she was ridiculously, desperately in love with her. Kit believed her.
Elora Danan was back.
Magic was real.
And even that was not as wondrous as tracing her own name, above Jade’s hip, and watching it turn into a shimmering gold that made her entire body feel like it was glowing.