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“Elora.” Elora mutters to herself, frowning. “Elora? E-lor-a. Eloraaaaa…”
“Dear mothers.” Kit drawls. “The strain of destiny was too great. She’s already gone mad.”
Jade elbows her. “You hush. It’s not every year you get a new name. A, er, old new name?”
“At least it’s better than Brunhilde.”
“Kit.”
“What? It is!”
“Ah,” Willow chuckles, “I’d hate to agree with Madmartigan’s daughter on anything, but…”
“First of all, rude. Secondly.” Kit gives Jade a smug look. “Told you.”
Jade takes a deep and calming breath.
“Yeah…” Elora agrees, still mumbling, “I really hated Brunhilde…” She turns her frown on Kit. “How come you and Arik got such nice, short and snappy names? Arik! Kit! Why did queen Sorsha have to name ME Brunhilde?”
Kit shrugs. “To make you sound boring and not at all destiny-like?”
“Brunhilde is a perfectly good name.” Jade says firmly. “There is nothing wrong with Brunhilde.”
“Arik’s name comes from a friend of Madmartigan’s. A good man.” Willow explains, words softening on the last part. “He followed me into Nockmarr castle to save you, Elora, and died there fighting.”
“Oh.”
Elora’s expression twists between sad, guilty, and unsure.
“Well that was very… nice of him?”
“Dad killed his killer, general Kael, with Airk’s own sword. AND Kael’s. Pulled him right into it!” Kit adds proudly. Then she whips her head around at Jade, stricken. “I- I mean-”
“I’ve heard the story before.” Notes Jade dryly. “Several times. You even let me play the part of Madmartigan, once, and then died a somewhat drawn out death on the north tower steps. In the rain. In fall. We both caught colds because of you.”
The stricken look shifts into something hesitant. “But that was before you..”
Jade rolls her eyes. “Let’s focus on one trauma at a time. Besides, Ballentine was my father.”
“Right.” Kit winces. “He was. Sorry though. Stupid of me.”
“Lucky I like you stupid.”
“Yeah?” The grin returns three times as proud as it had been a moment ago. “Right. ‘Course you do.”
Jade smirks. “Right.”
Willow clears his throat uncomfortably. “About names. You’re only half right, Elora.”
“Huh?” Elora tilts her head away from the idiots. “I am? Wait, half right how?”
“Brunhilde wasn’t the only name Sorsha gave that, ahh, didn’t get used so much in the end.” Willow waves a hand. “Kit here, for example. Her name-”
Kit spins. “No.”
“Kit what?” Elora clutches her hands together, eyes huge and darting between them. “Kit’s name WHAT?”
“Nothing, it’s nothing.”
“Tell me! Oh please Kit- is Kit short for something? How did I now KNOW that? I grew up in the same castle as you! You’re the princess!”
“Don’t remind me,” Kit grumbles.
Jade lookes at Elora askance. “How can you not know? You were with her brother.”
“We were busy.” Elora leans in, dancing excitedly in place. “Tell me tell me tell meeeeee…!”
“There’s nothing to tell.” Holding eye contact with Willow, Kit forces a smile. “My name is Kit and I like it very much.”
Jade purses her lips and says nothing. She also doesn’t smile. Mostly.
Willow made no such effort as he meets Kit’s intense stare, amused. “I gave a few suggestions, I’ll have you know. I did my best. But your mother wasn’t interested in agreeing to another name so… lacking in history… or solemnity… without a dead war hero backing it up.”
“I don’t know what solemnity is but it doesn’t sound like Kit at ALL!” Elora squeals, grabbing Kit’s shoulders and using her as leverage to bounce even higher. “Please! I can’t face my destiny not knowing this!”
“Oh you most certainly can.”
Prying off Elora’s hands Kit ducks back, brushing imaginary dirt from her cloak.
“I signed up to guard you with my life and all that toss, not die of embarrassment for you.”
“Is it embarrassing? Oh my gosh.” Elora wiggles helplessly. “Is it worse than BRUNHILDE?”
“No!” Says Jade quicky, right as Kit spits out a vehement “Yes.”
They look at each other.
“I’m not telling her.” Say Kit stubbornly.
Jade says nothing.
“I’m not.” Kit insists. “No, Jade. No.”
Jade hesitates.
“… Dove- that is, Elora did have to live with Brunhilde all this time,” she points out cautiously, “which is not a bad name at all. But. Still. And you know she won’t stop bothering your about it, otherwise.”
Kit glowers.
Shrugging Jade adds, casually. “It’s a long way back, even without being bothered by a sorceress the whole way…”
Kit’s face twists. Slumping, she lets out a long-suffering sigh.
“Sod me. I can’t say no to a lovely lady.”
Elora points at herself. “Who, me?”
Kit gapes at her, horrified. “No, not you! That face has kissed my brother.”
“It is still lovely though,” Jade promises without looking at Elora, voice a little bit giddy, “Kit’s just overly particular.”
“Funny thing to say about the girl who’s kissed you.” Quips Kit.
“If we don’t stop talking about who kissed who or if the daughter of my best friend finds my foster daughter attractive,” Willow breaks in mildly, “I will be turning myself to stone. Imminently. And gladly. With much relief.”
“You could just turn us to stone.” Elora ponders.
“Don’t tempt me.”
Kit snorts and pushes her hair back in a smooth, practiced motion. “Well, to save the world from the terrible fate of not having us three in it, I guess I’ll have to tell the tale of how I got the name Kit.”
Elora pouts. “That’s not what I asked for.”
“It’s what you’ll get.”
“Kit,” Jade cuffs her upside the head, ruining the careful fall of Kit’s short hair. “Just end her suffering.”
“Urrrggghh….” The inhuman groan went on for almost a full minute. “Rrgh- Fine then.”
Rearranging her hair Kit scrunches up her face.
“It’s.”
Elora edges closer. “Yes?”
Kit rolls the words around her mouth like they're lemons. “The name they gave me at birth, it’s, ah…”
Elora’s eyes are so wide the whole world seems reflected in them. Right then the world was mostly just Kit and Kit’s squirming. “Yeeeesss?”
Kit shudders.
“It- it’s, Akanthos. Happy now?”
Elora stares.
Willow giggles.
“…. You mean.” Elora says slowly, blankly. “Acanthus, like the flo-”
“Yes, like the bloody flower!”
Kit tosses her arms in the air and yells it to the sky.
“I’m named after a flower! A flower! Did everyone hear that, then? Everyone sear that into their mind forever!? Birds, trees, are you listening?! The princess is lovely delicate blossom! IF YOU HEARD THAT RIVITING BIT OF NEWS, SPEAK NOW AND MAKE MY DAY THAT MUCH BETTER!”
“I heard it!” Boorman calls from the distance. “That’s adorable!”
“A flower?” Elora repeats, stunned.
“No comment!” Graydon pipes up, also safely out of harm’s way. “And I’m sorry!”
“A flower that rhymes with your last name?”
“I already knew,” Airk chips in, rapidly putting more distance between himself and Kit by the sounds of it, “I’ve always said it suits you!”
Kit makes an ominous move in the direction of his voice, every line of her body filled with killing intent.
Jade catches her by the cloak and hauls her back, “Nooo, nope. No murdering your twin brother.”
“Why not.” Kit growls, staring daggers at leafy bush shielding Arik’s retreat from view. “You don’t have to help. Just close your eyes and when my queen mum asks about it, tell her you saw nothing.”
“That’s still going to be a ‘no’.”
A disgusted noise rips from Kit’s throat. Giving up, she pulls her cloak free and tugs it back into its proper rakish angle.
Elora is examining her like she’d never seen Kit before. “Akanthos?”
Kit sighs. Lifting a hand, she extends a single finger and stares dully over it at Elora.
Willow blanches, scandalized. “Kit! Who taught you that!? Put that finger down right now!”
“You had one free pass to say it.” Kit says, ignoring him. She wiggles the finger. Slowly. Threateningly. “Now never again, got it? Under pain of getting your hair trimmed for free in the middle of the night. With a knife.”
Elora opens her mouth and shuts it. She does it again, like a fish. She gulps.
“Drat.” Laughing nervously, Elora drags her hair over one shoulder and clutches it protectively. “Now I really wanna say it.”
“Because it’s a perfectly good name.” Jade says staunchly. “Just. Maybe not the most fitting, in some ways. For you.”
“Yeah no shit?” Kit blows a strand of hair of her eyes, huffing like an angry horse. “A flower. Really.”
Jade nudges their shoulders together. “Tell them about Kit,” she urges, “about how your dad fought a dangerous foe and got a new scar, just give you a name you’d like.”
“Oh no.” Willow runs a hand down his face. “Not another Madmartigan tale…”
“I’d LOVE to hear it,” Elora gushes, “all I did to get Dove was look out a window one day. Not very epic or fantastical. What happened? What foe did he fight?!”
Kit’s back straightens and she beams.
“It’s a thrilling story-” She begins, with a sweep of her arm worthy of any market square bard.
“-a tale of a curse placed by an evil queen-”
“Ah-hem.” Jade and Willow both clears their throats.
“-a maybe not evil but certainly somewhat inconsiderate queen,” Kit amends smoothly, “and the brave warrior who stood up to champion a young child from a cruel fate! It begins,” she drops her voice, quieter now as her audience leans in closer, either eager or unwilling but unable to help themselves, “in the castle of Tir Asleen, as the greatest swordsman in the world held the future next greatest swordswoman safely in his arms… Ah but little did he know… even within high stone walls, danger still can lurk in the places you least suspect…”
“Who’s my little flower?” Madmartigan cooed, tickling the baby with a fingertip. “Who’s my pretty little blossom?”
“She doesn’t like that.” Said Sorsha dryly, forehead propped on one fist, not looking up from a pile of letters as the baby’s twin drooled sleepily on her shoulder.
Madmartigan scoffed. “Oh she loves it. Trust me, I’m irresistible to women for a reason.”
“Mm.” Flipping a page Sorsha hummed. “It’s the hair.”
“Oh you noticed?” There was a dramatic hair toss as Madmartigan fanned himself. “I’m flattered~”
Sorsha’s attention flicked over to him for the barest moment. “You were disguised as a woman when I met you. If you’d left your hair uncovered, and not fallen in love with me, you might actually have pulled it off.”
“I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
Grinning, Madmartigan clucked and wiggled a finger under his infant’s chin.
“And youuuu will be irresistible ladies too! Won’t you, little Akanthos? Won’t you, my flower?” Swaying across the floor he poked and prodded at the wiggling baby. “Who’s the prettiest little blossom in Tir Asleen? The most delicate and lovely thing growing here?”
“She’s going to fuss.” Sorsha scribble a note on one of the letters. “Keep bothering her and she’ll make you regret it.”
“How could I ever regret anything to do with such a divine little angel?” Madmartigan asked, “With her cute widdle hands and adorable widdle ears! Aww she’s smiling! My little flower’s smiling. And whoooo’s my little flower?” He tickled her chin again tittering. “You are! Yes you are-! Yes you a- OW!”
Yelping Madmartigan staggered. He wrestled for a moment, face twisted in pain, before finally freeing his hand.
“…she bit me.”
A few bright red drop of blood oozed from his finger. He held it up as they gathered in a bright, berry-like cluster.
Madmartigan watched them, awed. “Sorsha- she BIT me! Look!”
Sorsha looked over, eyes rolling. “She hates your nicknames, Maddee. That’s what I’ve been telling.. you…”
Blood dripped onto the flagstone floor. Sorsha blinked. Her lips quirked up in a smile.
“…You’ll need a healer for that.”
“What? And risk it healing all nicely and without a mark? Never.”
Beaming, Madmartigan wiped the blood off on his pants leg and popped the injured finger in his mouth, ignoring Sorsha’s grimace of disgust.
Sucking the wound, he grinned down at his child. “I’ll wear the scar with honor. It’ll match the one I got teasing badger kits a kid.” He mumbled proudly.
Baby Akanthos burbled, one small hand reaching up to slap at her father’s shaven chin.
Madmartigan’s face lit up. “Oh you like that, you rascal? My little badger kit?”
The badger kit shrieked gleefully, arms thrashing.
“Badger kit!”
“Gah-bree!”
“Kit! WHEEE!” Lifting her in both hands Madmartigan spun wildly, laughing with her. “Is that it? My wild and dangerous little Kit?”
“Heee~”
“If you wake up Arik,” Sorsha warned, still smiling as she turned back to her letters and gently patting her sleeping son, “that baby won’t be the only thing in this room that’s dangerous.”
“Sorry love.”
Flopping on the floor Madmartigan set Kit on his stomach, holding her tiny hands in his as she leaned back against his up-crooked knees, the long dark hair spilling like a halo around his head matched by her own tiny tuft.
“Shhh…” he warned her, “your mother needs quiet and your brother fusses whenever he’s awake right now. Maybe if he teethed on human flesh, he’d feel better, eh?”
“Bah!” Kit drummed her feet on dark curls covering her father’s bare chest, bouncing happily. “Bah hahaha!”
“Shhh, little Kit. Hush-huh….”
Letting go with one hand Madmartigan reach into his pocket, glanced cautiously over at Sorsha, then quickly pulled out a few dark twists of something dark and plant-like.
“Here now,” popping one in his mouth, he offered her the other, “let’s teeth on something that won’t bleed or need stiches afterwards, hm?”
“Mawm.” Kit murmured, eyes wide and bright as she mouthed the tidbit.
After a few moments of unusual quiet, Sorsha frowned suspiciously at her letters, gaze unseeing.
“…Maddee.”
Madmartigan craned his head back to flash a roguish grin. “Yes, my sun and moon?”
Sorsha shut her eyes and rubbed them tiredly. “Is that more blackroot?”
“….no?”
“Madde-”
“She likes it!”
“Willow told us NOT to-”
“It’s good for her! Puts hair on her chest!”
“Hair on her what?”
“If it was good enough for a future empress, then it’s good enough for a future queen.”
“-you gave it to ELORA!?”
“And she’ll thank me for it later.” Madmartigan gave a haughty sniff. “Or she will once you stop pretending she’s the orphaned child of a kitchen maid, anyway.”
Sorsha tossed the letters aside and rounded on him, chair scraping the flagstone floor. “No she will NOT! Do you know why? The cooks will have taught her better than to give a child blackroot!”
“Shhh, shh! Little Arik is-!”
“This is the THIRD TIME THIS MOON that you’ve-!”
“My mother-”
“Your mother must have had the patience of stone but she still raised an imbecile.”
“Yes. A HANDSOME imbecile. And if we’re lucky, we’ll do the same~”
“You-!”
Kit, oblivious and forgotten along with her little tuber treat, gnawed in rapturous silence as her parents made funny sounds and faces and her twin brother stirred, startled, before rather loudly adding his own.
“…aaand THAT’S why my hair is so much better than Arik’s!”
Kit finishes with a dramatic flourish, bowing at Elora’s blank and slightly overwhelmed expression.
“Oh, and it’s also how my dad re-named me Kit. That was the original question, right?”
“I have no idea...” Elora admits dazedly.
“It’s only a nickname,” Jade corrects, “she is in fact Akanthos Tanthalos, princess of Tir Asleen.”
“I still can’t believe you’re named after a flower.” Hands digging in her hair, Elora’s face screws up with pain. “I can’t believe your father fed you BLACKROOT! Three times in one moon? THREE?”
“I can.” Grumble Willow. “You’re lucky I was there to stop him when it was you.”
Kit frowns, looking hurt. “Well what’s wrong with that anyway? Dad grew up on it and you saw what a catch he was!”
Willow pulls a sour expression. “He was called ‘Mad’ for a reason, Kit.”
Ignoring him Kit plows on. “And look at me! I’m absolutely dashing!” She turned to Jade, worried now. “I’m dashing, aren’t I?”
Jade is clearly working hard to keep her smile small and proper.
“You’re alright.”
“Wha-”
The abject indignation on Kit’s face is priceless.
“Jade!” She wails, clutching her chest with one hand and Jade’s shoulder with the other, hanging off her in a terrible mime of heartache. “Say it isn’t so! Tell me you don’t just fancy me for my cunning mind and fantastic skill with a sword! Please! The wound, it’s too deep- I won’t survive it!”
Jade laughs. She lets the princess dangle off her a second more, then shakes her head and pats Kit’s hand.
“Alright, alight- Yes, Kit. You’re very handsome.”
Instantly Kit whirls to point triumphantly at Elora and Willow, other hand still on Jade.
“HA!”
“Especially your hair,” Jade muses, eyeing the short, loose flop of deliberately windswept bangs. Exactly long enough to fall in Kit’s eyes, not long enough to easily pin back or tame, “that is… not hair you usually see on people.”
“Thanks.” Kit tosses said hair and smooths it back proudly, preening. The hair promptly fell across her face again. “I am not most people.”
“No you are not.” Jade mutters under her breath, eyes softer now.
“And that’s not a compliment,” Willow grunts, “It’s the reason you should never EVER feed a baby blackroot. The world can’t survive many more Madmartigans.” He glanced warily up at Kit. “Or Acanthuses.”
“Akanthos.” Jade corrects as Kit groans. “With a ‘k’ and a ‘thos’ at the end.”
“It’s a flower, Jade.” Argues Willow. “Nasty little thorny thing, it grew in our village back home. We called it Bear’s Leggings. It’s the same thing.”
Jade’s eyebrows lift. “It’s not her name if you say it that way. And don’t you dare call her ‘leggings’.”
“It’s not my name any way you say it.” Folding her arms Kit glowers and broods. “My name’s Kit. Wyrm’s teeth, who names their kid after a flower when she’s got an incredible swordsman for a father? I could have been Bloodyblade, or Brightedge, or Swordswift-”
“Or Claymore?” Elora suggests innocently.
Jade twitches.
“-Exactly!” Kit rails on, clearly not listening. “Any of those would have done well enough. Arik’s name comes from a great warrior! A hero! Mine’s so old and dusty people don’t even know how to say it!”
“That’s a them problem,” soothes Jade, rubbing Kit’s hunched shoulders and neatening a wayward strand of Kit’s hair while she was at it. And ignoring Elora’s grin as she did so. “Maybe if you used it more, people would learn.”
“Never.” Kit declares. “Soon as he’s king, I’m having Arik royally decree I’ve always been Kit and always will be. Or, hmm.”
She turns an appraising eye on the suddenly very quiet Elora.
“I suppose you might be Empress before then, huh? How much do I need to bribe you, to get you to make the decree instead?”
Elora stares intently back at her, a faint frown slowly creasing between her piercing eyes.
Her eyes flicks down. Her focus sharpens.
Alarmed, Jade moves forward and flings an arm protectively between Elora and Kit’s chest. “Uh, Elora Danan, future empress- Kit’s eyes are NOT down there.”
“I know.” Elora mumbles, still staring and frowning. “I’m trying to see under her shirt.”
Jade gawks. “Excuse me?”
Kit just looks baffled. “What in Andowyne do you want with what’s under there anyway? I mean, if that’s the price of the bribe, I’m afraid they’re, well.” She gestures at Jade’s shielding arm and wire-tense body. “Spoken for, as you see.”
Knuckles creak and crack as Jade’s hand curls into a fist.
“That’s not it.” Elora squints, utterly unbothered. “I just want to see…”
“What else is there.” Jade grits out between clenched teeth. “If you’re trying to see under her shirt.”
Kit grins, lower lip dragging between her teeth as she eyes Jade up and down. “You’re beautiful when you’re angry. Did you know that? Have I ever told you that?”
“No.”
“No to the knowing or know to the telling? I’ll tell you from now on, if you like.”
“Shut up Kit.”
“Yes ma’am!”
Willow closes his eyes and pulls his cloak hood over his head. “Children. Please. Don’t inflict mental suffering on your elders.”
“Sorry.”
“No you’re not.”
“No you’re right old man, I’m not sorry. My girl’s an inch away from doing murder and I’d like to kiss her.”
Propping an elbow on Jade’s shoulder, Kit laces her fingers together and rests her chin on them, eyes lidded as she slowly turns her gaze from Jade back to the still staring Elora.
“Any last words, Empress of hope and salvation and whatever?” She asks, smug as a cat in the milkmaid’s pail.
“Aren’t you supposed to be guarding her?” Bemoans Willow, voice aggrieved.
“I’m on break. So?”
“Pick your words, carefully.” Cautions Jade.
Elora rubs her chin and thinks about it for a long moment.
“Kit… I have to know.”
She points at the bit of loosely unlaced shirt just visible under Jade’s wary arm.
“Is there hair on your chest?”
Kit’s elbow slips off Jade’s shoulder, jaw slamming into studded leather vambrace. “Wh- Ow! SHIT!”
“There would be.” Jade confirms flatly, “If she didn’t yank them out twice a moon with the tweezers she keeps in her boot, next to her comb.”
Willow’s eyebrows lift into his elegantly receding hairline. “Comb.”
“JADE!” Kit howls, bent double, clutching her jaw as her split lower lip starts bleeding lightly.
“Really.” Elora breathes, enthralled. “Are they everywhere? The hairs that is. Because I have a few, very long and dark, but they’re only on my-”
“Please don’t.” Willowed pleads. “Elora. Please.”
“What?” she chirps, “I’m just wondering. I mean, if she pulls them out all the time, it’s just, if I tried that, instead of trimming them- ohh ahh- I don’t even wanna THINK how bad that’d hurt-”
“It makes her cry.” Slowly Jade lowers her arm, something small and sly tugging at her mouth. “She used to steal snow from the cellars to sleep with, the next night, to ease the soreness. And pretened she was flirting with the maids when she wore her shirts unlaced for a week after.”
“Of course you noticed that.” Willow sighs. “Of course you did.”
Jade’s cheeks flush beneath her freckles.
Just then a hand reaches up and grabs Jade by the coat collar. She looks down.
Kit, dragging herself up to Jade’s front, glares at her- face haunted, completely drained of whatever color she’d ever had, bloody lip standing out bright and red.
“I can’t believe you would betray me like this.” Kit rasps. “My best friend…”
Blush deepening, Jade’s smirk sharpens at the edges. “Friend? Really?” Her gaze flicks down to the blood on Kit’s lower lip and up again. “Well if that’s all I am..”
Something sparks in Kit’s eyes at the challenge. “Oh you know what you are.”
Shifting her hands, she tugs Jade in, and-
“Wait Kit- the blood-”
“Don’t care.”
“But your lip-”
“Completely your fault, by the way.”
“Is that you’re way of asking me to do something about it?”
“No. It’s my way of asking you to k-”
Willow winces at the ensuing wet noises. “Teenagers. Uagh.” He shudders.
Elora watches for a second longer before deflating sadly. “Welp,” she sighs, “Guess that’s all the answers I’m getting for now.” She looks thoughtfully at Willow. “Do you think it really was the blackroot? The amazing hair, I mean. Kit’s really is nice. Maybe Madmartigan was right after all.”
“Oh don’t say that.” Turning Willow starts stumping quickly away. “If you say that, he’ll hear you no matter where he is, and he’ll be insufferable about it. I can feel it.”
“Maybe I could brew a shampoo from it.” Elora muses, following him. “Or a potion. Blackroot’s luscious locks hair treatment! If it catches on, I might even get famous!”
“Elora. You’ve been prophesized.”
“Oh… but I mean, famous for something useful.”
“Teenagers.” Willow sighs again. “Cherlindrea and Raziel forgive me, we’re all going to die.”
“As long as I can die kissing Jade then I’m fine with it!” a revoltingly cheery Kit calls out from behind them.
“You’re WHAT!?” screeches Arik, faintly, and from very far away.
“SHE’S SUCKING FACE WITH JADE!” Boorman roars from the other direction, startling a flock birds into flight. “SWAPPING SPIT! PUTTING HER TONGUE DOWN HER THROAT AND ALL THAT! AND BE GLAD YOU WEREN’T AROUND WHEN THEY WEREN’T BECAUSE IT WAS BLOODY AGONIZING TO WATCH!”
“Shut UP, Boorman!” Bellows Jade.
“I thought it was sweet!” Chimes in Greydon, possibly from the safety of a tree. “I’m so happy for you two!”
“SHUT. UP. GREYDON!” Kit howls, scattering squirrels for a mile around.
Elora perks up. “Oh oh me too! I’m so happy for you both also!”
“Elora-” Jade starts, voice strained.
“Shh-ut-!” Kit’s voice cracks, hoarse and blown out from yelling.
“I know, I know!” Smiling, Elora skips along happily, trailing after the still-grumbling Willow. “Shut up, Elora~”
Maybe the new name is growing on her after all.