Chapter Text
Jade could remember when she had first truly realized that Kit was engaged. It shouldn't have stuck out in her mind like a brilliant spike that seemed to divide one half of her life from the other, as deep and jagged as the gorge that separated her early years from this one. It wasn't as though it was a secret. Kit had been betrothed since she was six, to a boy who was 11 years old and only just beginning to climb the first low branches of every tree he saw. Jade had heard servants talking about it before, and you could hear heated discussion about what a unified Galladoorn and Tir Asleen would look like in any guild hall or tavern, the pitch of the discussion wavering as relations between the nations became increasingly rocky.
"When the princess is married," a cobbler might say, "nails won't be nearly this pricey, not with the Galladoorn mines part of the kingdom." Or an irate farmer might remark, "Mark my words, once they marry off that girl we'll be paying double the taxes to satisfy two royal coffers."
It was a sort of low level background noise, spoken of in the same way you might discuss the upcoming weather– everyone had an opinion, but what the skies might bring was anyone's guess.
It simply hadn't concerned Jade for many years, because it had no urgency to her own life, and besides, she was busy. It was remarkable how quickly little hands could be taught to smooth a brush over a horse's flank, or wheel wooden carts full of hay to the stables, or muck out stalls with pitchforks that were taller than she was. Even refugees had to earn their keep, and everyone kept telling her how gracious Queen Sorsha was to let her work in the royal stables. So when Jade would pull a saddle blanket over herself in the hayloft and feel something twisting in her gut at the sight of the stars through the loose roof slats, she would close her eyes against them and mouth her own thanks to the Queen under her breath.
When Jade first meets the princess– really meets her, not sees her across the courtyard or hears her shrieking out a palace window– it was before Kit was promised to another. It was perhaps inevitable, after all royals must learn to ride early, and the Tanthalos twins were no exception.
It’s a family affair when the time comes, the twins are five years old and shrieking with excitement, the Queen’s Consort nearly as loud as his children, scooping them up and flinging them over his shoulders, pretending to be a troll kidnapping them off to the mines. Even the Queen herself has a certain levity to her graceful steps that she rarely expresses, and there are moments away from prying eyes where she takes her husband’s arm and presses her head to his shoulder that make her look like any common woman in love.
Jade has one such pair of prying eyes, crouching in an empty stall and pressing her eye against a knothole in the boards, both fascinated and frightened.
It was the twins that fascinate her, and she watches them yell and run with a carelessness she never remembers having, even three years ago when she was somewhere close to their age, or at least their height. The boy twin, Airk, has short golden hair and a sweet laugh. His sister, Kit, has a braid of the same gold already coming undone, and her own laugh is slightly sharper when she manages to stuff hay down her brother’s shirt. Not for the first time Jade’s heart pangs with the desire for a sibling of her own– someone who was as bound to her as her own blood was, someone whose laugh would echo her own but in a different timber.
Had Jade’s own mother ever looked at her with the kind of fond exasperation the Queen looked at her squawling children with? Had her father, not even a face or voice in her memory, ever swung her around by her arms while she begged him to go faster like Kit does? What did it feel like, not to be alone?
It’s jealousy, and anger– always anger– that make Jade’s fingers dig tighter into the wood of her hiding place, the wood that splinters beneath her grip threatening to dig sharply into her skin, but she can’t bring herself to care. A splinter would hurt far less.
It’s the Queen’s Consort who saddles the two horses, his hands familiar with the tack and bridles in a way that even Jade’s still aren’t yet. He offers a hand to his lady, and she takes it with a half smile and rolled eyes as she alights the saddle. The man hefts the boy twin up to sit in front of his mother, who pulls an errant bit of hay out of his locks.
He reaches down to lift the girl twin up onto his own midnight black charger, but she deftly avoids his hands, slithering away like a silverfish.
“I can do it!” she demands.
Her father laughs and links his hands together, creating a stepping point between the ground and the stirrups.
“Honestly, Kit, you’re going to–” the Queen begins.
“I–” Kit practically snarls as she grabs at the leather of the saddle to balance herself on her father’s hands, “can do it.”
Her father grins and shrugs, barely catching himself as his shifting body nearly overbalances the girl still teetering on his hands. There’s a moment where Kit is stuck, one foot jammed in the stirrup and the other still wavering on her father’s hands until she bends her knees and makes a terrific push to shove herself up and onto the saddle, aided by a bit of extra power from her father’s arms following the movement. While the princess has managed to fling herself over the saddle, belly pressed to the leather, she has not managed to find her balance and after a frozen moment begins to slip over the other edge of the horse, a trajectory that can only end in her head cracking against the stable floors. Her father, quick and seamless as can be, snatches at one of her ankles and manages to haul her back, but not before Jade fails to stifle a laugh at the sight of the princess’s legs kicking upside down and the startled shriek she makes at her near disaster.
Jade can see the steel that reenters the Queen’s posture as she turns her gaze over what she must have assumed were entirely empty stables. Her eyes catch Jade’s through the knothole, and Jade gasps and ducks her head down, but can’t help herself from sneaking a glimpse around the side of the stall anyway.
The Queen’s Consort has now managed to finagle a red-faced and wriggling Kit upright into the saddle, her hair now entirely escaping from its braid and her blue eyes flashing in embarrassment and anger. She stares at her brother a moment, as if to judge whether it was him that laughed at her, and when he returns her gaze guilelessly, her sharp eyes dart around the stable.
“It seems we have a mouse in our midst,” the Queen says, her eyes not having left the spot where Jade is hiding, and now Jade is starting to become afraid.
It’s not safe to catch the eye of royalty, and she’s heard the stories about the Queen– how she had kidnapped babies and her mother was an evil sorceress. Yes, she helped break an ancient enchantment and now rules over a kingdom that had been asleep for decades, but you don’t forget about baby kidnapping. The saga is a favorite story of the older children when they want to spark fear in their younger compatriots and Jade has always listened, riveted, to the whole thing. She was much more interested in hearing about Elora Danan though, and how the little empress was supposed to unite the nine realms and end all war. No one, not even the oldest children, seemed to know much more about that part of the story.
"Come out, child," the Queen orders.
It’s with the understanding that the woman astride the gray mare has killed perhaps more people than Jade has ever met that leads Jade meekly out of her hiding spot when the Queen commands her to come forth. The Queen’s eyes flick down her, and Jade’s hands run across the edges of her frayed tunic as if she could will the scrappy material into wholeness.
“I like your hair,” Airk says, craning his neck around his mother’s body to smile at her.
His cheerful pleasantry breaks the tension and the Queen smiles. Jade lets out a breath– she may yet survive this.
The Queen’s Consort strides over to where she stands, squatting down on his haunches to be level with her and running a hand through his long dark hair in a way that Jade thinks must be dashing.
“And what’s your name, mouse?” he asks, narrowing his eyes, but they glint too much to be really meant to frighten.
“Jade,” she says.
“I’m Airk!” Airk yells, leaning over so much he almost topples off the horse and the Queen has to wrap her arms around his middle.
Kit glowers.
The Queen’s Consort laughs, an unpretentious laugh that she knows isn’t making fun of her, and asks, “Jade what?”
Jade feels embarrassment start to well up inside her, and with embarrassment comes anger. She can feel it happening, that crushed up ball of rage that’s always lodged somewhere in her stomach starting to burn, and grow. That anger that seems so large and so bright that she can feel it in her fists when she punches the boy who tugs at her curls. The rage that she feels climbing out of her throat when she screams wordlessly at the cook as he chases her away from the kitchen fire where it’s warm, like she’s just another pest to sweep away.
“Jade nothing!” she snaps.
He tilts his head at her, taking in the way her shoulders have gone up, how her hands shake in fists, and he looks at her like he knows. Like that incandescence that lights her up is an old friend of his.
“Wow," he says, and gives a low whistle, "We’ve got the same last name. I’m Madmartigan. Madmartigan nothing.”
“I thought our last name was Tanthalos,” Airk says, perhaps intending to whisper and not whispering at all.
“Shut up!” Kit says, looking like she’d like to kick him if her legs were long enough to reach.
“Kit,” the Queen says, “enough.”
Kit looks very much like she doesn’t think it’s enough, but after only a seconds long– but piercing– staring contest with her mother, Kit huffs and buries her face in the horse’s mane with a stifled growl. The horse flicks its ears and stamps once, but otherwise puts up with the sulking princess.
Madmartigan keeps his eyes on Jade though.
“Those three are Tanthalos,” he says, nodding his head in the direction of his family, “But you and me?”
He stands and tweaks her nose. Jade jumps back in shock. She’s not sure when she last received an affectionate touch, and it startles her like she’s something that is only half domesticated and already leaning back towards feral.
“We’re nothings.”
She looks at the man who calls himself nothing, at the gleam of his riding boots, the fineness of the fabric he wears, the silkiness of his hair, and the way he smiles so easily. A nothing, maybe, but also a knight, a hero, and loved by a queen. What else might a nothing do?
He swings himself up effortlessly on his black charger, shifting his daughter forward and letting her hold the reins. Kit looks between Jade and her father with narrowed eyes, finally settling them back on Jade. She takes a moment to archly raise her eyebrow, looking very like the Queen when she does so, and sticks out her tongue.
Jade doesn’t know what possesses her in that moment, but her nose is wrinkling and her tongue is sticking out practically before she realizes it.
To her surprise– and relief– the princess does not order her head taken off, but instead her eyes glimmer like a cat’s and she grins.
Jade instantly hates her a bit, and likes her almost as much.