Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

It would be unkind to say that winter in the Mountain Kingdom was dull. Days shortened, skies darkened to full blackness in late afternoon, and snow fell, snow as I’d never seen it before, blanketing huts and weighing trees down to the ground and layering over paths until they had disappeared completely. Gardens were pared down to branches and icicles, pastures were cleared, and I would have predicted a silence to fall over even the populous city of Jhaampe by nightfall as people retreated to their cozy homes and warm fires.

But the folk of the Mountains were hardier than I. The harvest never ceased. Instead of tending plants, gloves and hats and capes of fur were donned for brisk walks seeking tough, evergreen herbs and lush winter berries that stain lips and teeth. Merchants and artisans dragged sleighs laden with goods, the treads adding a pleasant, rustling whistle to the marketplace chatter. Players and minstrels wrapped in heavy coats performed in the streets late into the night, next to massive bonfires to keep the frigid air at bay. Light sparkling off snow and the bright Mountain garb made Jhaampe look as though Winterfest had come early, and would last all season.

So perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it was I who was dull that winter. Cold had never agreed with me, though I braved it dutifully to gather herbs with Jofron and deliver her remedies to those who needed them. I suspect the healer knew it was best to keep me occupied with tasks, though in truth I longed to curl up by the fireplace in our hut and sleep until winter had run its course, or perhaps even longer than that. Even carving toys for the local children, the joy of creating something beautiful where once nothing had existed, the thrill of excitement on the faces of those who received my gifts, was dulled by my dampened spirits. I smiled through my work. I think Jofron knew my smile was false.

The news of two deaths had shattered me. I hadn’t visited the palace at Jhaampe since Kettricken had borne her stillborn son. The delicately grown walls that had once been a sanctuary for her and I both would forever hold the echoes of her weeping.

I’d been by her side for the birth. Not at any request of mine. She had wanted me there. I do not think the women of the birthing chamber thought my presence strange, as is usual for me; the company of women can often be more forgiving in that way. I was as fascinated as I was anxious and hopeful to see the face of the tiny Farseer heir. Kettricken labored in a way I’d come to expect after our journey together. She was as striking as the mountain cliffs around her, stark and wonderful and filled with determination. Almost I could see a halo around her, tethers of light extending in every direction, as if by her will alone she could thwart my dreams and fate. Almost I believed her.

The babe was born dark and wild-haired. Unmistakably Verity’s. But he was born silent. Kettricken held back her tears as a midwife gently wiped blood from his small, still body. Then she took her child in her arms and kissed his blue lips. “Sacrifice,” she whispered, and began to cry quietly.

Her women gave her as much comfort as could be offered. They stroked her face and braided her hair, cleaned her and held her. They whispered prayers or perhaps blessings, told stories in a language for which I still only held a shallow grasp. It was a long while before I approached my queen, my shining, tear-laden eyes mirroring her own.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I’m so sorry.” I pressed my brow briefly against hers before kissing the baby’s forehead. “Sacrifice,” I echoed her. “You would have made an excellent king.”

Kettricken looked at me fiercely, and I could see that she understood the full intent of my words. This child had been the future of the Farseers, the hope of the Six Duchies. With his passing, something vital left Kettricken. I felt her sorrow, and I shared it, along with the distant dread that loomed when a path was closed forever.

But it was another death, one I could not bear to think of even now, that had torn me apart. Delivered weeks later, in a missive from the palace that was kind but far too impersonal for this sort of news. Jofron found me sitting in the street, back against a wall and legs curled to my chest, shaking from cold and grief and clutching the fine paper. She was generous enough not to ask me about it. She took my hand and guided me home on shaking legs. She wrapped me in a blanket and poured me a strongly spiced tea before returning to her work, for she knew I needed to be alone for a time.

I’m certain I wept, but what I remember most was a great feeling of emptiness. With his death, I was unmade. I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t know his face, could scarcely remember a time when my goal was anything other than keeping him alive. So many of my dreams had pulled me in this direction. I was so sure he was the subject of all of them. The myriad paths of fate spun from him like drops of water from a shaking dog. I sobbed picturing how he had looked in the glow of their radiating light.

More agonizing than my sorrow, I felt anger, and something new that I’d never fully experienced before. Surprise. Betrayal. I hadn’t been warned of this, in any of my dreams. It felt wrong. When the baby died, the Farseers lost an heir. When he died, I lost everything. I was powerless without my Catalyst. I could see the world and its futures, but I couldn’t change anything. I was only a White Prophet. What could I do on my own, now that he was gone?

An old, dark thought crawled its way to the front of my mind. Maybe I’d been wrong all along. Maybe I wasn’t a White Prophet at all.

In the end, that was how I managed to continue. If I were not what I thought I was, if I’d been brought here not as a prophet, but as an inconsequential passenger swept through the currents of fate, I should act as one. A prophet would wail and gnash his teeth and demand answers of the world. An ordinary person would find a new task, and a new home, and carry on.

So I did. Jhaampe welcomed me. At first, the residents were relieved that Jofron had found someone to help with the menial tasks of healing. Changing wash water, fetching salves and preparing bandages were all necessary parts of the process. I grew adept at cleaning all manner of small wounds and attending to minor pains. Sometimes my cool touch alone was enough to ease a fevered man’s suffering. And after I carved a pretty beaded necklace for Jofron in thanks for her hospitality, others noticed my talents. I found myself occupied with many small projects, often toys for children. Through smiles as wooden as the gifts I carved, I took to my new role as a Mountain villager with alacrity.

Indeed I did not dream much in those days. I tried not to. I slept little, and fitfully when I did. Dragons and serpents and other portents I could not understand still plagued my night hours. I wished I could tell them to stop, that I could send my dreams to others who would have use of them. I felt I was dead myself. Past my usefulness. Jofron’s assistant the toymaker did not have need of such nightmares.

I awoke from one in the early hours of the morning, when the sky was still dark outside the hut. My blankets were wrenched over my face and twisted about my body, and my feet were bare and cold. I sat up suddenly, pulling them in close to my chest, and nearly retched with the need to write down my dream. It was an important one, my body reminded me. It didn’t know that none of my dreams were important now.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” Jofron asked from across the room. She must have heard me shuffling in the dark.

“Tell you about what?” I hedged, but I knew the answer already. Jofron was far too knowledgeable about the legends of the White Prophets for someone born and raised in this far northern kingdom.

“Your dream,” she replied.

A great wolf dug a hole in the ground. Large, large enough for himself, and when it was finished he lay his body down and waited for the earth to cover him. Once it did, all was still for a time, and quiet as snow fell gently and winter hares danced over his grave. Then the ground began to shake, and the hares fled, and when the wolf emerged his eyes swirled red and gold.

“No,” I said shakily.

“As you wish. I’ve left paper for you if you’d like to use it. I wouldn’t mind the light of a candle.”

“No. Thank you,” I said carefully, for the urge was great and the offer generous. I swallowed and rubbed my hands over my frozen toes, pondering for a moment. Then I rose gracefully from my pallet.

“I’m going for a walk,” I explained. I began to grab my assortment of winter coverings from their places near the door. Socks first. Warm wool socks, and then a second pair.

“Are you sure? It will be very cold this time of night.”

“I know,” I told her, though truthfully I was regretting leaving the smoldering remains of the evening’s fire. The cold was already seeping through the doorway. I pulled my hat firmly over my ears. I couldn’t believe the restlessness my dream had inspired in me.

“As you wish,” said Jofron indifferently. “Take a lantern.”

I did, and waited until I had left our hut before I kindled it, out of respect for the soft, even snores Jofron had already started producing. The cold air bit my face, and to my discomfort, tiny snowflakes pinwheeled gently through the night, caught in the beams of light from my lantern. Almost I returned to the safety and warmth behind me, but somehow I could not commit to that course of action. Instead I trudged off aimlessly, snow crunching underfoot.

My boots grew uncomfortable quickly, their carefully constructed layers of fur and leather not quite managing to keep my feet warm and dry as I subjected them to the touch of freshly powdered snow. My idea for a distraction was a rather poor one, for at this time of day there were no warm lights or colorful garlands to look at. I could barely see past my outstretched arm, let alone to the vista of pine trees and mountain sides that surrounded me.

My mind was eager to return to the dream. Desperately I wanted to think it over again, to puzzle it out with the rest of my dreams and find its place in the web of fate. I tried to resist the urge. I’d already known the wolf of my dreams, or so I had thought. A streak of agony shot across my heart at that. It was more than a loss of possibilities that plagued me. I felt something deeper, almost frightening, when I thought of that wolf.

I shook my head. I didn’t need to ponder it further, or the dozens of other dreams that I recalled suddenly in relation to this one. Dreams of living ships and a great yellow serpent and a man stepping into a river and emerging a dragon.

I startled, so enraptured was I in my thoughts. I saw a shadow at the far end of the lane. In this half light, it was enormous, twice the size of me with too many limbs besides. Out of its depths glowed many eyes and sharp, white teeth.

Then I blinked, and it was not a shadow, but a man. As I stood frozen, he stumbled forward and fell to his hands and knees. Something dark leaked from him. When I approached at a run, my lantern revealed red streaks in the snow.

“Here,” the man croaked. He looked up at me, but in his condition I could not tell if he saw me. “You’re here.”

He was wretched, battered and broken, his dark hair matted and his face a patchwork of scars. More alarming was the shaft of an arrow embedded deeply into his back. The fabric around it was soaked through, with blood and I suspected pus or other infection. He held his weight on quivering arms, but his eyes had a glazed, yellow look to them and I knew he was not long for consciousness. There was no time for questions. He badly needed to see Jofron.

I knew what I had to do. I prodded him backwards, and he was pliant to my touch. I braced an arm under his legs and another at his back, careful to avoid his injury. My strength always served me well at times like these. I carried him not easily, but decisively down the road, the arrow swinging sickeningly from his back with each step. I knocked bodily against the door to my home.

“What are you doing?” Jofron demanded, then went silent when she saw my burden. “Put him on the bed.”

A good healer knows to act first and ask questions later. Or never. Jofron was a good healer. She betrayed no shock at my ability to carry this wounded man, or arrange him carefully on his front on the bed. I turned his head to the side. His eyes were closed but he was still breathing.

Jofron expertly tore his shirt up the back, and I recoiled from the smell his freed injury produced. A great, pulsing welt was raised in the center of his back, surrounded by several smaller pustules. His blood was so dark it was nearly black, and I wasn’t sure how much of it was new and how much had been caked on over several days. His brown skin had turned a mottled blue and purple, dark capillary lines spidering out from the wound.

Jofron didn’t warn me before piercing the infection, releasing a torrent of infected fluids. I didn’t need to be told to begin cleaning the injury. Jofron worked with needle and knife, and I followed with a series of cloths that grew filthier and filthier as the wash water could not handle the concentration of waste. Finally, Jofron halted, dropping her tools into a bucket and inspecting his back, which was now a much more livid shade of red. She plastered the wound with a thick, green salve. I was grateful the man had not been awake through our ministrations.

“What about the arrow?” I asked, for it was sticking out of the same place it had been all night.

Jofron shook her head. “It’s too dangerous to try to remove it. He should be awake when it comes out. He doesn’t have the strength for it now.”

I nodded, though the knowledge made me queasy. “Will he live?”

“I think so.” Jofron pursed her lips. “If he survives the day, he has a good chance.” She looked twice from the man to me, then to the window, where the first colors of sunrise had begun to bloom. “I’ll catch some sleep at my sister’s. Will you watch over him for a while?”

“I will,” I said, and I fiercely meant it. I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone else dying.

So Jofron left, and I stayed. I reapplied the salve, for the first application had already sunk deep into his skin. I wiped his brow one more time. He was sweating profusely, despite the chill and his half-nakedness. His body was fighting hard to keep him alive. I found myself staring at his face. Someone had greatly despised this man, I thought. His grievous injuries could be attributed to nothing other than pure malice.

He was young, I realized, underneath all the scars. And he had been handsome, once. And perhaps would be again, if he lived long enough for Jofron to pull out that arrow. I was already very attached to him, I discovered. I desperately wanted him to be well. I sat near his bed and watched his back rise and fall, making sure he stayed with me.

I must have dozed, for the next thing I recalled was bright, golden sunlight streaming through the windows of the house. I stretched out my joints that had cramped during my uncomfortable sleep. Blessedly, I had not had any dreams.

Remembering my charge, I turned to look at him. His eyes, darker than coals, blinked open. I changed my mind. He was still handsome. A smile crept over my face before I understood why.

He coughed once, and then spoke, his voice low and raspy. “Fool?”

And there had only been one person who had ever so confidently named me such. “Fitz?” I asked, not daring to believe.

“Fool, what have they done to you?”

And there he was, wounded and changed, but alive, and in my home. FitzChivalry Farseer, returned from the dead as my dreams had shown me and I had ignored. As if in response to this miraculous revelation, I saw the paths emerge from him, shallow and dim still, but there. I laughed, and then leapt to his side. Forgetting myself, I cupped his cheek and kissed his brow.

“What have they done to me?” I exclaimed. “What have they done to you, that I could not recognize you though I carried you in my arms?”

Fitz was dazed, but even so he managed a weak smile. Something locked into place then, something right and true. My dreams had been real, and yet I felt something more than relief and vindication. The joy of being together went beyond fate, to something impossible and inevitable. I was a White Prophet, and he was my Catalyst, and we were alive to change the world.

Yet he’d come so far and experienced so much hardship, and I saw it written on the scars and lines of his face. In time he would share that with me. For now we had time. “Oh, Fitz,” I said, and let my sparkling tears fall upon him. “When I recall how beautiful you were.”

I had never hunted before. I came from a place of gentle, rolling fields and verdant pastures, where shepherding and gardening were common, and in my span of years spent in the service of King Shrewd I’d been privileged with plentiful meals prepared by the servants of keep. I never pictured myself braving forest thickets in search of wild game. Nevertheless, I was honored that Fitz would allow me to join him for the day’s work. And that Nighteyes would, too.

It was difficult, still, to think of the roving grey wolf as his own being, and not an extension of my friend. But I knew from Fitz that he had his own mind, as fiercely independent as any man’s. I strove to perceive him as he truly was, this valiant creature Fitz understood and loved. To any observant eye it was obvious that they communicated with one another, a fact that pierced my heart when I thought of how Fitz must have appeared to the court in the days following his capture. Nighteyes ranged ahead, slinking in and out of shadows, and Fitz followed at a sedate pace, stepping exactly where his companion had trod. They crept noiselessly through the trees, mirroring each other’s movements with a bond greater than trust.

I fared not so well. My tumbler’s training served me perfectly within the walls of a palace, or in the streets of a town where light footing gave me the ability to maneuver silently. Here in the Mountain forests, there always seemed to be a hidden twig to tread upon or a misplaced branch to rustle out my movements. Occasionally my creaks and snaps would set the wolf’s ears to twitching, or cause Fitz to swing his gaze in my direction. My face reddened in embarrassment for my poor performance, but Fitz only nodded to himself, smiled slightly, and continued his search.

He stopped just ahead, one hand braced on a smooth birch trunk and crouched slightly, his dark hair blending with the undergrowth’s tangle of branches and grasses. I crept up behind him, doing my utmost to remain stealthy and unnoticed. But it was impossible to catch Fitz unaware. Despite my efforts to avoid prickling plants and noisy footsteps, he sensed my presence unerringly. I crouched beside him.

“Look,” he whispered, in a voice more quiet than the day’s mild breeze. I knew speaking aloud was a concession for me, as he and Nighteyes communicated ever silently and efficiently. “A rabbit.”

His eyes were keener than mine, for it took me a moment to spot the animal hiding in the small forest clearing. Its fur was mottled white and taupe, a perfect match for the backdrop of wet snow and bare branches it nestled among. The rabbit was so still that only its quick, frantic breaths and the darting of its eyes betrayed that it was alive. It took me several moments longer, and finally a gesture from Fitz, to spot Nighteyes lurking in the trees beyond.

So deep in the shadows was he that he was barely visible save for the light reflecting off his stalking green eyes. He rolled forward with a gracefulness I had never seen in any creature, in my dreams or otherwise. He flowed through the forest like sand filling a glass, taking on its shape but never disturbing its form. I felt privileged to behold his craft. His gaze was locked on his prey and his great wolf’s body was tensed to strike. The shaking of his muscles betrayed both a hunter’s anticipation and a puppy’s unabashed excitement.

I held my breath as he prepared to leap, for it only seemed appropriate. I let it out immediately, as several things happened very soon and very quickly.

At the last moment, the rabbit stirred, darting out of its hole. Nighteyes’ attack landed out of place, and too late, and at that same instant Fitz sprung. He moved inhumanly fast, at once at my side and then across the clearing to intercept the fleeing rabbit. He caught his charge between the wolf and himself. At first, I thought he might bite into the rabbit as Nighteyes would have, but in the end he snatched it up in his hands and deftly cracked its neck. A few drops of blood leaked from its limp body.

“There’s one,” he said, grinning as he handed his prize to me like a boy eagerly showing his mother the fruits of his day’s labor.

I strung the rabbit up and hung it from my belt for that, at least, was something I could do. “That was incredible!” I gasped at him, and was rewarded when he lowered his eyes and smiled a bit more shyly.

“Really?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said stoutly. “I had no idea you could hunt this way. You were lightning fast. Just like a wolf. And Nighteyes did an excellent job, too.” I ruffled the wolf’s head playfully as he trotted up to us, and then scampered away again. If I wasn’t mistaken, I sensed a streak of competition in him that Fitz had claimed the first kill. He gamboled ahead of us, doubtless determined to even that score.

“Perhaps it will not be so bad to live my life here in the forest, once our quest is complete,” Fitz mused. “Since I’m so excellent at it.” We walked a bit more noisefully now, since it was likely we’d need to range further to find more meat.

I regarded him quizzically. “Then it is no longer your intention to return to Buckkeep?”

He sighed. “Everyone there believes I am dead, Fool. Maybe it’s time to admit it would be best to keep it that way.”

“But you aren’t dead,” I pressed. I felt it was important to remind him of that.

“Dead, disgraced, or changed beyond recognition, is there much of a difference? Either way, I would have no life to step back into if I returned to the castle.”

I thought on this, for I did not have an answer. It was true that I did not have many visions of him living in Buckkeep Castle as a man in his prime. The beating he received in Regal’s dungeon was a crossroads of fate, a closing of many pathways, even if he could not see as clearly as I the new ways that had then opened.

It was my duty to remind him of them. He could not make his choices if he forgot that he had any. “What of Molly? And your child?”

He bit his lip, and for an instant I worried I had pressed him too far. Then he said slowly, “The baby may be safer far away from me. Far from my Farseer ties and all of the duty that entails. As for Molly,” he paused heavily and gestured vaguely at himself, at his worn, soiled clothes and the scars on his face. “I doubt she would accept all that I… all that I’ve become.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, though I feared I knew already.

“I am not the strong, healthy young man I once was. What Regal - what was done to me changed me. Killed me. I’m frail, and scarred. And my face…” He lowered his voice, ashamed to speak the words aloud. “It’s not a face most people could love.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but none of my responses were adequate. It smote me to hear him speak of himself in such a way, but I knew there was nothing I could say to convince him otherwise. This was a hurt that mere words would not soothe. He had to believe it for himself before he could heal.

“I am ruined,” he said into my silence. He showed only the closest face of the mountain of despair that lay beneath those words. “But not yet useless. Nighteyes likes to remind me it’s best to think only of the task in front of me.”

I was happy to follow this conversation out of the deep waters of his self-doubt. “And perhaps a bit further than that,” I said, thinking of Verity and his quest to wake the Elderlings. “You are far from ruined, Fitz. And far from useless. We have great things to accomplish, you and I. And we are close to our goal. Very soon we will change the world.”

“You are always so certain when you say these things,” he said with only a hint of scorn. “How can you be so convinced that the future will unfold as you see it?”

“I see it more clearly with you here,” I told him truthfully. “And I’m not convinced of any one future. Many events can occur on a single path. I only know that in most of my dreams I’ve seen this one.”

“Confusing as always,” grumbled Fitz, and I nearly laughed, for I had spoken to him as plainly as I ever had.

Just then, Nighteyes reappeared. He burst forth from the trees ahead of us with none of his earlier stealth, a second rabbit carcass dangling from his mouth. He circled us excitedly a time or two before depositing his kill, with some reluctance I perceived, at my feet.

Fitz’s face changed when his wolf came into view, the hard lines around his mouth and carved into his forehead softening as he praised his companion. Nighteyes accepted his gruff accolades before roaming again, and when he looked at me to continue our journey, Fitz’s eyes were lighter, the storm clouds behind them not quite cleared, but slowly dissipating. I felt a sudden pang as I wished I could have that effect on him.

“The task in front of us?” I prompted him.

“Yes,” he agreed. “We should hunt at least enough for tonight, if not for two or three days besides.”

We did not have much luck after that, or in fairness, I should say that he and Nighteyes did not, since I had not been a great help to begin with. I watched them follow game trails that I could not discern, stalk birds and ground animals I had yet to notice, and even snuff at the air, the both of them, to catch the scent of some distant prey. I beheld their efforts with unfeigned delight. It was a wonder to me that the folk of the Six Duchies despised such magic, for in seeing Fitz like this, paralleling his Wit-companion in earnest pursuit of their shared goal, I felt I was privy to more of him than I ever was before.

A satisfying soreness had settled in the muscles of my legs by the time they gave up the hunt. Fitz informed me that some other large predator, likely a mountain cat, had passed through the territory recently, claiming or driving away most of the smaller game. He pointed out signs of the creature’s presence, claw marks in bark and trails in the underbrush, and explained the patterns of the seasons and their effects on life in the forest. He found a small outcropping of late-blooming winter berries, plucked them and gave some to me, and their sweetness burst ripely against my tongue. He enumerated his movements as he discovered a series of tiny, clear mountain springs, and by the time we arrived at a wide, shallow stream, there was nothing I wanted more to do than follow him into that freezing current.

The first touch was agony, and I couldn’t fathom how Fitz and Nighteyes were already knee and hip deep in the water. Nighteyes splashed cheerfully, hot under all his fur after the morning’s exertions. Fitz stood wide-stanced, staring into the clear depths.

“Watching for fish?” I guessed, bravely stepping further into the stream.

Fitz nodded. “There will be trout here,” he said confidently. To prove it, his arm shot into the water and emerged clutching a fat silver prize. The fish flailed in his grip, spinning droplets into his hair and eyes, and I laughed at his predicament. Then I promptly stopped laughing, for he tossed the creature to me. It nearly slipped from my grasp before I managed to still it and attach it next to the rest of our spoils.

“You could keep some of them, you know,” I spluttered at him, my hands and forearms solidly drenched.

“And deny you your praise?” he replied. “I plan to tell everyone these were all your doing.”

Nighteyes yipped indignantly at that before tossing me one of his captures. I grinned. “I’m sure they would believe that.” I splashed over to Fitz and rolled up my damp sleeves. “I’d better do my part then, shall I?”

He and I fished together, and Nighteyes raced up and down the riverbed in what seemed more like play than any legitimate effort. Fitz was rewarded with several more trout before I had any success. He had such an innate sense of what went on under the water beneath him. His eyes remained fixed on it, as more often than not mine remained fixed on him. The wolf in him, I suspected, lent him a physical advantage.

Finally I managed to snag a fish of my own, holding my hands expertly still in the frigid water until the creature slithered into my grasp. I closed my fingers around its slippery scales and lifted it from the stream with a shout of triumph.

Nighteyes tore the fish from my grip before I had the chance to react. “You fiend!” I exclaimed with real consternation. The unrepentant puppy flung my catch into the air and caught it in his strong jaws, crunching its bones before it disappeared down his gullet. “That’s my fish you stole!” I reprimanded him. I turned to Fitz, expecting him to share my indignation, but my disloyal friend was laughing at me. I splashed a bit of water at him and got my satisfaction when Nighteyes stole a trout from him as well, covering him with a healthy wave in the process.

Fitz emerged from the deluge wide-eyed and blinking. A wicked grin spread across his face. “Come here!” he roared at Nighteyes, but the wolf was fleeing already, each of his steps flinging water back at his pursuer. I cheered when Nighteyes rounded on Fitz and sent him careening into the current. Fitz responded by tossing freezing water at me of all targets, and now all three of us were embroiled in a water fight like children half our age. We were soon all dripping from head to toe, though Fitz suffered the worst of it as Nighteyes and I made a rather good team when we wanted to.

Fitz’s hair hung lank, curls weighted with water and the tie for it long forgotten somewhere in the stream bed. His mouth was opening to shout either a warning or a plea. A perfect target. I advanced on him threateningly I am sure, before Nighteyes ambushed both of us and rose suddenly from the water at my back. Fitz and I toppled forward into the stream.

I found myself on my knees, water to my hips. Fitz sat up slowly beneath me. Emerging from the stream, he shook his head like a dog. I shrieked as I was splattered with droplets, and he grinned up at me. We had become very close, my legs on either side of his. The joy that shone from his boyish eyes bubbled up between us in a giddy exhalation. My heart caught in my mouth. I looked into his face and saw nothing but beauty.

Matter-of-factly I took his chin in my hand. He let me move his face this way and that, inspecting every angle. I recalled his words from earlier, and how wrong he had been. I traced the vein of white in his hair and then, giving in to sudden impulse, kissed the spot where it grew from his crown.

“You’re not ruined,” I told him. Emboldened, I kissed the scar across his cheek, and then the bridge of his nose. “Your scars are beautiful.”

I do not know what possessed me to say such a thing, or what possessed me afterward as I laid my lips upon his. I kissed him gently, and then when I saw his hopeful, bewildered expression I kissed him again. I heard him make a small noise and felt his hand settle, ever so lightly, on my hip. Nighteyes gamboled joyfully somewhere nearby. A cold drop of water tumbled from Fitz’s hair to my lips.

I drew back then, my heart hammering in my chest. I desperately wanted to hear what Fitz would say. But he only stared up at me, blinking as if awakening to bright sunlight. For a time, we stared quietly at one another. His dazed silence was so familiar, I nearly laughed. The boy hadn’t said a word for most of his childhood. Why should I expect him to say something now?

Just as sudden as my urge to hear him speak was the certainty that I could not bear to hear what he might say. I leapt from him, grateful for the cool water that took the heat from my steaming face. I fixed my features in my usual witty smile and offered him my hand. “Shall we bring these back to camp?” I asked, gesturing at my belt.

He nodded and accepted my help, finding his voice when Nighteyes bounded over to us with another catch. “I think the others will be very pleased,” he said, and I do not think I was mistaken when I felt him grip my hand tightly, reluctant to let my fingers fall from his grasp.

In the depths of my wretchedness, I never imagined Starling would be the one to seek me out. I had fled from the others, leaving the pedestal upon which Verity’s stone dragon proudly gazed, as if its unseeing eyes could pierce the sparse landscape and behold the distant walls of Buckkeep Castle. Its face was the one that bid me farewell, as my shame did not permit me to look at any of my companions. Least of all Fitz, my Catalyst, whom I had betrayed.

Nighteyes came with me. Not for the first time I wished I were bonded with him as Fitz was, so he could understand my despair. Even so, his warm physical presence was grounding. Instinctively I found myself walking the familiar path toward Girl-on-a-Dragon. I had anguish for her now, and memories to give her. She could share this hurt with me as no one else could. But the wolf’s flank pressed against my own and forced me back to our tents, where I sank down next to the canvas.

I hated myself then. The Betrayer was a dream I had dreamed since childhood. It was a near certainty, a part of the Catalyst’s path that could be foretold by any poet or minstrel. All people, especially those who suffered as Fitz had, faced betrayal at some time in their lives. Never did I think it would be now, and never did I dream the betrayal would come from me.

Nighteyes crossed his paws and lay with his great muzzle resting on my knee. My seat in the dirt was hard and rough but more than I deserved. I threaded my fingers through the coarse fur at Nighteyes’ neck, gripping perhaps too tightly as I sorted through apologies. None felt adequate. Fitz was not a man who trusted anyone, though I had hoped he might be coming to trust me. Now that tenuous bond was shattered. I had taken his last happiness, the possibility that his Molly and their child would be safe somewhere, far from here, and dashed it against the sharp rocks of Regal’s ambition. How could he ever bear my presence again? Nighteyes keened low, and I buried my face in his hide.

So lost was I in these swirling thoughts that I almost didn’t hear Starling approach. Nighteyes’ ears twitched first, and I hastily wiped the tears that hadn’t soaked into his fur already. My quickened heart thumped in my chest when I heard the grass rustle around the corner of the tent. I didn’t like to be taken by surprise, and I had only that notice before Starling appeared before us.

I expected her to gloat, perhaps, or at least look haughty and amused. Starling was a petty person who wouldn’t hesitate to take her own pleasure from my situation. Instead she frowned mildly, lines creasing her regrettably lovely round face, and sighed with a put-upon air.

“You’d better come back,” she said. “If you’re finished crying.” She couldn’t resist a small jab at me.

Not for an instant did I believe Starling had my best interests at heart. I chuckled hoarsely at her attempted trickery. “I can’t,” I told her truthfully. “I know where I’m not wanted. Where I don’t belong anymore. I betrayed him. There aren’t enough words in this world to make that right.”

“Oh, save the theatrics,” she replied, rolling her eyes in response to my heartfelt outburst. “Honestly, are you sure you’re not a woman?”

I let my steely gaze answer that question.

Undaunted, she sat down next to me, the warmth of her body invading my space. She was all curves and folds and wild, curly hair. Like a proper woman, I’m sure she would say. “All this talk of honor and betrayal,” she said instead. “From what I’ve heard, Fitz shared his mind with you, and you shared yours across two duchies with a prince you’ve never liked, and somehow it means that Fitz’s family, all the way on the coast of Buck, is in danger. That’s a bold claim, and very faraway for any of us to confirm with any certainty.”

“You doubt the Skill magic, even now?” I asked her with some incredulity.

“I don’t doubt whatever it’s doing to King Verity,” she said, her voice deepening with a rare solemnity. “But some of the things they talk about, Fitz and Kettle and the King, well. Perhaps I’m too common to understand.” She paused. “Then you’ve never questioned it?”

I recalled itching, grabbing fingers in my mind, like rough nails scratching down my back, and shivered. I recalled more so drinking elfbark, and how its bitter wash brought a mental freedom I hadn’t known I’d needed. Hesitantly I recalled the fleeting times when my mind brushed Fitz’s, instants of bright clarity and support. Was I certain that I hadn’t invented these feelings, these memories?

“I suppose it’s not my place to question, either,” I decided. “I trust Fitz.”

“And he trusts you.” Starling said it like she had to force herself to, not meeting my eyes. She added quickly, “And he needs you, I think. They’re going to try to do something with the Skill.”

“They?”

“Fitz and Kettle. I’m not sure exactly what, but Fitz seemed daunted. You would be a better judge than I.”

“Fitz and Kettle?” I asked again. But Kettle was unable to Skill. Her magic had been locked away for years. Did Fitz know of a way to remove that block? Did Verity, and he expected Fitz to perform the act? Fitz, who was still a novice at this magic, who had a tendency to pour all of himself into a task, who followed instructions with all the foresight and self-preservation instincts of a beloved hound? “That sounds very dangerous,” I worried aloud.

“So you do know what this is about,” said Starling, unsurprised.

“We have to go back,” I realized, jerking to my feet.

“As I’ve been saying.” Starling rose leisurely. “A messenger is all I’m good for, aren’t I? And not even as cute as this one.” She said the last while fluffing Nighteyes’ head between both of her hands, and I didn’t need any bond with the wolf to know he was unimpressed.

Despite my conviction, I was still hesitant to return to Verity’s dragon. I dragged my feet and approached slowly. The pale sunset had given way to a moody twilight, and there were many shadows with which to hide my presence from the meager touch of the nearby campfire. Only two figures remained at the base of the pedestal, sitting on the ground opposite one another. One was Kettle, thin and wizened, legs tightly crossed and lips pursed in frustration. The other was Fitz, as I had only seen him on few occasions, one hand braced against Kettle’s temple and immersed in the Skill. The lines of his body were crisp and still, as if he was made of the same stone as the dragon behind him. His eyes were closed and his mouth slightly parted, though no trace of breath showed in his face or chest. Only the slight sway of his hair in the wind betrayed that he was a living creature, and not a statue sculpted to perfection.

I watched and waited, knowing there would be some time before they emerged, and selfishly happy for it. Starling shifted uncomfortably behind me, but I was adept at remaining still and silent, trying to collect my thoughts and not worry as each moment passed with Fitz buried in that magical current.

Finally, they stirred. Immediately I knew that they had been unsuccessful. I saw Kettle open her eyes and a flash of bitterness passed through them, sending a wave of indignation over me that she would dare to look at Fitz that way. She muttered at him and Fitz muttered back, tiredness evident in his voice. I didn’t want to interrupt but I needed to talk to him, to offer some sort of apology, for what use was my fretful vigil if he had no idea I was here?

Except he did know. He always sensed my presence, and when he met my eyes I couldn’t keep quiet. “I tried to stay away,” I blurted out, a lie. I deflected. “Starling told me what you were doing. She told me all that was said while I was gone. I know I should wait, that what you do is vital. But…” I suddenly couldn’t look at him, at his blank black eyes. “I cannot. I betrayed you. I am the Betrayer.” I looked back at him then, aching, pleading.

“Fool!” was all he said, and the exclamation was a dagger in my chest. Then he smiled, exhausted yet beatific, and I was dazzled and confused. “No, it is all right,” he continued, easing the dagger back with gentle hands. “You have given me the answer. You are the answer.”

I moved toward him in a daze, scarcely believing his words, heedless of Kettle’s protestations. I was a raindrop speeding toward the earth, pulled by the force of his attention on me, the way his smile softened around the edges as I approached. One hand still on Kettle’s forehead, with the other he touched me, took my hand and pulled me close. Breathing my breath, he whispered, “See if I feel you have betrayed me.”

He kissed me. And he turned my hand in his, pressed my silvered fingertips to his wrist, and pulled me into the Skill current with him.

I left my body with a joy unlike anything I had ever experienced. It was like being engulfed in a wave so enormous I hadn’t the time to take a last breath. I was so small, so insignificant, that instead of the wave overwhelming me I became the wave and my former, small self was but another bit of debris I had collected on my journey. I swept away through high and low tides, along coastlines I had never seen and beyond to an expanse of endless currents to explore and infinite beaches to kiss.

So this was magic.

I had known magic as a fickle, fleeting thing, as visions in dreams or sporadic sharings of thoughts that were as mystifying as they were unsettling. I had not known magic as a beauty that could not be captured by any hand or expressed by any heart. It could only be experienced, as I did now, racing breathlessly along its flow.

And then Fitz was there, slowing and surrounding me. Or rather I shattered upon him like a star, baking his earth with my light. There was no beginning or end in the Skill, no separateness of self. I was with him and so I was him, and only for him would I stop to examine every part. I saw his loyalty, his resilience, his kindness and valor and a million other virtues I already knew he possessed. I saw how he saw himself, rough but capable, a sacrifice for the throne. I saw parts of him that he wouldn’t let himself see, deep hurts and real betrayals. I knew without a doubt that he never felt mine counted among them. I saw the shape of Burrich in him, and Verity and Chade and Patience and Shrewd, and I saw the shape Regal had cut out of him, and the shape of his mother that he had cut out himself. I saw Molly in him. And I saw love.

You do love me! I exclaimed, with neither voice nor mouth but in the strange way of that place. The fullness of the relief that passed through me could not be expressed in laughter or tears, so we succumbed to both, together. His love was small and tight, but it burned bright, threatening to immolate him from the inside. Some of it was for me.

That portion of Fitz’s love consumed me, gilded me with brilliance. I had never been loved before. I had been wanted and perhaps I had been needed. Occasionally I had been desired. But never loved. And I hungered for it. As soon as I tasted a morsel of what it felt to be loved, I was starving. I devoured it greedily and let the sweetness of it linger in my throat, ate until I was brimming with satisfaction and wonder. Love for me existed, and I felt it, and it was enough.

A great tongue lapped up the side of my face and I realized Nighteyes was with us, too. Of course he was. He and Fitz were one, as I had so often been told but didn’t truly understand until this moment. Seeing Fitz in his entirety meant seeing Nighteyes as well. At last I beheld his strength of spirit, valiant and raw. He was more than a loyal companion and more than a friend. As was I.

Yes. You are Pack with us, Nighteyes told me, as clear as if he spoke in my ear with a man’s tongue, and I was shocked and comforted. Such a kingly beast, worthy of my friend, and so much of Fitz in him as well, and as much of Nighteyes in Fitz. Both of them were entirely open to me.

Abruptly, I became aware that I must be equally revealed. Fitz would see all of me, my greatest privacies and deepest secrets. That realization shot me directly back into my body, breathless with panic. Except in my body, Fitz was still kissing me, and it was safe and lovely. I relaxed for an instant and that was enough to throw me back into the Skill.

Don’t worry. I won’t pry, said Fitz, and there was no way he could lie to me like this. My reply was unnecessary as my gratitude passed instantly and wordlessly between us. For a short while longer he was everywhere, next to me and above me and within me. And then a part of his awareness slipped elsewhere. He held me and yet he also moved in a way I couldn’t follow.

Now he wielded me like a blacksmith’s tool, and like iron before the forge I could not comprehend the final form of his creation. He worked at his Skill while I luxuriated in his delicious, foreign magic and trusted he would bring about the changes he felt were necessary.

At last he guided me out of the current and back to our physical reality. I broke our kiss with a gasp, and began to topple forward before he caught both my arms and steadied me. I stared at him, pride and curiosity shining in his eyes. On his left wrist, just below where he gripped my elbows, he wore the silver stamp of my fingerprints. The sight of it sent liquid fire down my spine.

Behind Fitz, Kettle made a loud noise that startled me out of my trance and Starling out of her bored stupor. Only then did I perceive that barely a moment had passed while Fitz and I had been joined in the Skill. That moment felt like a blissful eternity, and even now I groped at the memory that was rapidly fading to a pleasant dream. Kettle’s voice jarred me, but Fitz did not seem at all surprised by her delighted exclamation.

“You’ve done it, boy,” she told him. The change in her was obvious. Her weathered joints straightened and the deeper lines in her skin faded before my eyes. I wondered that the Skill could bring about such physical changes in a person. Her gaze suddenly contained that same distant longing I saw so often in Fitz. A part of her consciousness cast elsewhere. She closed her eyes to it and muttered, more to herself than any of us, “I never dreamed I would feel this again.”

Her task done, she had forgotten Fitz, and so had I for a moment, intrigued by her transformation. I turned back to him now and he was green about the ears, eyes half-closed and swaying slightly where he sat.

“Are you alright?” I leaned down to ask.

“I think so. That was…” He searched my face, at a loss for words. “Did you feel it, too?”

“Yes,” I confirmed easily. “So that was the Skill! It’s breathtaking. I can see why some lose themselves in it.”

“That was unlike any Skilling I’ve ever experienced,” he admitted.

I flushed, and covered it with a coy wink. “Well, that’s because you’ve never done it with me before, of course.”

Fitz simply blinked and nodded, so I knew he was out of sorts. “Come. I’ll brew us some tea,” I said, and hauled him up to his unsteady feet.

“Elfbark?” he asked hopefully. Already he clutched absently at his head.

“We’ve none left,” I said, even before Kettle’s attention snapped back to us at the question. The old woman had a supernatural instinct for motherly interference. I ignored her. Rich enough that she would criticize Fitz while she herself wandered through the eddies of that addictive magic.

I needed not worry about tea, for as soon as I brought Fitz to the tent, he collapsed into his blankets. His arm still rested lightly on mine as his eyes drifted shut and his breathing slowed. I had no desire to get up again, even to stoke the dying fire or warm myself with a hot beverage. I slept in his arms that night and wondered if he would ever kiss me again.

In my dreams flew dragons. Scores of dragons in all shapes and colors, flashing scarlet and sapphire and gold. There were proud creatures larger than mountains, and those that were small and swift and streaked across the sky. Some dragons bore great curving horns, some antlers, others frills on their necks and acid in their spit. I was at times among them, caught up in the breath of their flight. Almost I could grow my own wings, paper my skin with scales and join them. Then just as a crest painted my crown I suddenly watched them from below instead. I basked in their faraway brilliance and majesty.

A scent of salt washed over me, and the sound of the sea beckoned, as lately it so often did. I turned from the dragons, and I knew this was a dream, for I would not be able to look away from them otherwise. I stood at the shore of a summer beach. Waves frothed on white sand and seabirds circled broad, leafy trees. The sea breeze was warmer than any I’d experienced in the Six Duchies. Sand pushed between my toes as I walked toward the only ship on the horizon, a behemoth that rose past the tops of the trees but was only a few hands tall from my distant vantage.

“Follow me,” commanded a boy with black hair and an intense gaze. He spun and ran across the beach, salt water licking his skinny heels. I ran after him in the manner of dreams, never closing on him or the ship. Except he was a girl now, and her long dark hair billowed as she ran. She wore her first woman’s dress, cut in an old style and dirty at the hem where it dragged through the sea. Then she was a queen, tall beyond imagining and dressed more finely than any I’d ever seen in delicate silks embroidered with rubies and golden thread. I couldn’t keep pace with her long stride, and the boat we ran toward seemed eternally far away. I stumbled over loose ground and caught myself on my hands and knees.

When I arose the ship towered directly above me. I marveled at its silvery wood with its intricate knots and whorls. My gaze travelled up the panels of the hull, fastened tightly without a single gap or imperfection. I took in the detailed carving of its portholes and railing, and high above me a sailor peered over the edge. Her face was sun-weathered. Dirt dusted her cheeks and her warrior’s queue. She cocked an easy smile at me. “Amber. Won’t you join me?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but I was struck dumb when my eyes drifted to the fore of the ship. An enormous figurehead graced the prow, four times the size of a man yet carved exquisitely in his image. His warm brown skin bore the faint grain of the wood that made him, yet beneath it the muscles of his arms flexed and rippled as they would were he alive. Slowly he turned his face toward me.

Fitz. I stared at Fitz as he carved Verity’s dragon. Gone was the ocean, the ship, the boy and the queen and the sailor. I stood in the mountain quarry as if this were not a dream at all. Fitz shaped the stone lovingly, caressing it into form with nothing but his bare fingernails. He turned around the creature and his eyes caught mine. He extended his hand toward me. “Fool. Won’t you join me?”

I awoke in semidarkness. Only a faint gray light slipped through the corners of the tent’s flap. In reality Fitz snored lightly beside me, safe for the moment from the dangers of the memory stone. The vague worry that suffused me in sleep washed quietly away.

It left me restless. There was no use trying to sleep after such a dream. Though many of my dreams felt ominous, this one left me exhilarated. Never had I been so certain that we were on the path. I was changing. Soon, my visions would come to pass. That certainty filled me with an excitement that contrasted sharply with the gloomy atmosphere of our camp, like a bright butterfly fluttering through a graveyard. I rose quietly, unable to return to sleep. My charge, too, would have slept fitfully and risen early. I left the tent to find him.

King Verity, for he was ever the rightful king of the Six Duchies, was near unrecognizable as such. I caught him leaving his own tent, blinking like a recluse though the morning sun had barely broached the horizon. He touched the canvas of his tent only briefly and winced at that slight brush of fabric. Apart from his shining, silvered hands and forearms, his skin was dirty, his hair tangled, and his form emaciated.

“My King,” I greeted him with an elaborate bow. “I’ve come to attend you.”

His brows furled. I knew whatever memories he possessed of me had long since slipped from his grasp. I hoped my servant’s bearing at least was familiar to a man who’d been brought up a prince.

“I must go to my dragon,” he insisted. He stumbled on, his gaze sliding smoothly past me.

“I know,” I said. “But first, eat. You’ll need strength to carve.”

Verity was poised to ignore my suggestion, but he was so physically weak it wasn’t difficult to ease him to sit on one of the bits of log that formed our camp’s makeshift chairs. He quivered like a man twice his age, giving a great sigh once off his feet. I rushed to our cookfire to gather breakfast before he had any ideas about leaving.

In a bowl I cut slices of apple and flaked the remains of a dried fish. I considered adding tubers of a root vegetable Starling had found the other day, but even this sparse meal would be a challenge for Verity. I brought it back to where he sat, not moved an inch from where I left him.

He took the food from me and picked at it before eating some. I spied a bucket of water and used it to wash some of the dirt from him, knowing I wouldn’t be able to convince him to return to the tent and change his tattered clothing. He let me trickle a bit of water through his hair.

“There is no joy left in food,” he remarked, picking up bits of apple and letting them fall back into the bowl.

“With this meager fare, there wasn’t much to begin with,” I assured him.

“I used to enjoy it,” Verity mused. “The feasts at Buckkeep, when the kitchens would prepare for days and servants would arrive with wagonloads of bread and meat and fresh fish. The smell of the great hall on Winterfest Eve… Ah. But that’s gone now. Gone into the dragon.”

“Sweet spices,” I supplied for him. “Those are the smells I remember. Rosemary and nutmeg, and cinnamon in richer years.”

“My enjoyment was gone long before that,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “Before this quest, before this quarry. The Red Ship War took that from me. I can’t recall the last time I craved a hot meal.” He took a sliver of fish on his finger and pressed it painstakingly to his tongue.

He drifted into silence for a time. I fastened his hair into a queue. He ran a hand over the plait absentmindedly and I jerked my fingers out of the way before the silver brushed them. At that, Verity turned around and looked at me for the first time that morning.

“I should feel ashamed to be seen like this, shouldn’t I? A prince, a king, behaving like an invalid. And yet I don’t feel any shame at all. Strange, isn’t it?”

“Not at all. There is no shame in claiming your fate. Especially when it comes at such a cost.”

Something like a smile tugged at the corners of Verity’s mouth. “I suppose it is my fate. There was never any return to Buckkeep for me.”

He looked at me hard, as if I knew the answers that would contradict or confirm his claim. Which, of course, I did. I shook my head. “No, there wasn’t.”

“Well. I’ve no sadness left for that, at least.” He set down his breakfast, still less than half eaten, and rose with some difficulty to go to his carving.

“Verity,” I called after him, and he turned, surprised, I think, to be addressed. “You say that sadness and shame and warmth have left you. But when you carve your dragon…” I struggled to express my question. “Don’t you feel something? Anxiety? Passion? When you think of the dragon you will become, do you love him?”

A spark of emotion such as I hadn’t seen in weeks flared behind Verity’s dark eyes. “Oh. Yes,” he agreed easily. “This is my last great work. Nothing else can compare.”

It was the wrong question to ask. As I watched him leave the shelter of our campground, my thoughts turned immediately to Girl-on-a-Dragon. It was impossible not to think of her here, surrounded by the thick Farseer magic and the crossroads of fate. Impossible to watch Verity become what he must, an Elderling, a creature from myths and ancient histories, and not want a taste of that experience. In this quarry I was so close to beings greater than humanity, just out of reach of my grasping fingertips. I had to go to her.

She stood where she had for centuries, four dragon feet fused to the stone that made her, wings outstretched, human arms reaching skyward. As always she was captivating. Her anguish was written so clearly on her too-human face, frozen and captured forever. When sunlight glinted off her silver-black flesh she almost appeared to breathe. Who had she been, this woman, and the coterie that gave their life for her vanity?

I set out my tools and knelt before her. I traced a half-formed claw, careful to avoid touching her with my Skill-tipped fingers. Even after only a few days with them, I felt blind without the information they gathered with a touch. My carving tools were dull instruments for such a task. But I chipped diligently at a foot and thought of her, my Girl-on-a-Dragon.

I imagined the woman as she was in life. Due to perhaps a lack of imagination, I pictured her at Buckkeep Castle. As leader of a coterie, she would have served a distant Farseer monarch of her own. I wondered if she had fulfilled that duty, if she had considered it as integral to her character as did the Farseers of my time. I supposed it more likely she had resented her calling. Giving up her life to the throne, and then to her coterie and her dragon.

I etched tiny striations into bone and thought of her coterie. Five people, each with great Skill of their own, totally united in purpose. Five people who shared each other’s deepest thoughts and feelings. Five people who trusted one another completely. The idea thrilled and terrified me. I couldn’t imagine an invasion more threatening, a relationship so sensitive and ultimately so fragile. What did a coterie become to one another? Closer than brothers, closer than lovers. Perhaps closer than any humans should ever become.

My mind drifted to my own fears. I had never been able to trust someone with my full self. I thought of the secrets I kept. The years of my childhood, decades that I no longer wished to speak of. My initial journey to Buckkeep and all that entailed. Dreams I had never written or told to a single soul. The different lives I’d lived, the different people I’d become. My body, and the finality of being I didn’t wish to possess. These were all secrets of a sort, and I would divulge none of them. I kept them as close to my chest as my heart itself.

“You shouldn’t be doing that.”

I startled to hear Fitz’s voice behind me. My chisel slipped from my grip and clanged loudly against the stone. I blinked, and saw that in my reverie I had only managed to shape the tip of a single sharp claw.

I whipped around sheepishly. I was surprised to find that the sun had sunk low in the sky; it was already late afternoon. Fitz stood just behind me, silhouetted with his arms crossed. I hadn’t realized how close he was. My heart sped up at the sight of him, and I tried valiantly to calm it. It was damnably unfair that he had such an effect on me and remained so oblivious to it. As he ever was. I tore my gaze from him and regarded my dragon with a sigh. “How can I resist?” I asked.

“Resist pouring yourself into a stone statue until your mind is gone and your body drops lifeless to the ground?” Fitz replied. “Yes. I can understand the appeal.”

“Oh, Fitzy, you’re ever so macabre. Did you come here to mope?”

“Actually, I came to find you.”

“Aren’t I lucky.” I patted the stone by my side and Fitz stooped to sit next to me. I scooted closer and looped my arm through his. He was warm and smelled strongly of fresh pine and campfire. We sat quietly for a while. Before us, the short yellow grasses and rocky outcroppings of the quarry gave way to skinny evergreen trees. Their cover thickened in the distance, shielding the ground from the last snow that just barely dusted the top of the woods. A few final patches, as well as the myriad pools of meltwater reflected the surprisingly strong light of the late winter sun. Fitz saw even more of the forest than I did. He listened to it and felt it. I grew bored, and set my bony chin on his shoulder.

“So. What did you want to ask me?” I queried.

Fitz turned to me, his face barely a few inches away. “Nothing,” he said, but that wasn’t true, for his cheeks colored slightly.

“Don’t pretend you came here to brood in silence.”

“I came here to stop you from carving the dragon. That’s done. I don’t mind sitting in silence.”

“Ah, but I do. Entertain me!” I smiled beatifically at him. “You’re supposed to distract me from Girl-on-a-Dragon, are you not? A silent vigil is not very distracting. Come. Tell me a tale.”

“Why don’t you do the telling? You always have much to say, even if there isn’t much sense to it.”

“My stories always make sense. It’s you who lacks the sense to understand them.” I laughed at his frown. “And you are the one who’s always pestering me with questions. ‘Can’t you speak plainly?’ and ‘How do you know these things?’ And never the important questions like how your hair looks or whether you should wear your stable shoes to a feast.”

“I should have expected asking you to speak would only result in mockery,” he griped, but there was no depth to it.

“The answer is no, by the way. You should never wear your stable shoes to a feast.” I looked at him very meaningfully.

He slowly started to smile. “All the way out here, and still you care about such things?”

“Beauty exists everywhere. And I will always find the time to care about it.” I carefully did not mention that I found it in the gaps between his teeth, when his lips tugged apart to reveal them.

“I suppose that’s something a boy doesn’t learn among the stable pens and on warships,” he admitted.

“Now that, I believe not at all,” I told him. “Lady Patience would not have so neglected your education.”

“She did try. I used to draw for her. And Fedwren. Pictures of herbs and plants, mostly. My copies were never particularly beautiful, but some were. She also made me play instruments. And memorize minstrel’s songs. I can’t say I found much beauty in those.”

“On that we are of one mind. But beauty is not only present at courts and in palaces.”

“No, it isn’t,” he agreed, and I was surprised that he indulged this conversation. Not that he possessed a softer side, but that he let himself reveal it. “Out here it’s everywhere.” He looked around us, wistfulness softening his features. “The shape of the trees against the horizon. Colorful stones at the bottom of a clear stream. Over there, where those sprigs of lavender peek up through the snow.” He looked back at me. “I see it in Nighteyes, sometimes, when he blends so seamlessly into the underbrush. And you, strikingly pale against the blue sky.”

Could he see the flush that heated my face, the one that matched his? Or did my colorlessness hide it?

“In Girl-on-a-dragon,” he continued quickly, turning to her. “And Verity’s dragon, and all the others in the quarry. The Elderlings are much more beautiful than the tapestries would lead you to believe.”

I didn’t want him to look away from me. “Fitz,” I begged. “What did you come here to ask?”

He paused. I had pushed too far. He only ever spoke openly when he wasn’t thinking about it. He was always so guarded. I wanted to know everything about him. I let the silence linger until he squirmed with it.

Finally he asked, “Will Verity’s dragon awaken?”

The tension snapped. “So now you seek a prophet’s wisdom,” I said. “We were having a nice conversation.”

He lowered his eyes. “We can’t have come so far to fail.”

“I can only see the possibilities. Not the outcome.” I repeated the truth I’d so often expressed. “And when did you start believing in either?”

“It’s all thanks to you. You seem so sure lately.”

I was. I wasn’t going to tell him that. “The more the paths converge, the more questions I have. Up to a certain point fate seems inevitable, but beyond that… Fitz. You are the Changer. I can only see the path. You can direct it.”

“In which direction? I’m an exiled, Witted bastard. I lack the Skill to help Verity with his task. Regal seeks to kill me as soon as the opportunity presents itself. What am I supposed to do?”

Suddenly I was in no mood to entertain his melancholy. “Help me carve,” I suggested. I left him and took up my tools again. I pondered the claw I had worked on, and then set my fingers to the ankle above it, where the tight scaling required more detail. I scraped out the shape of one, barely bigger than my thumbnail, which I used to create its fine texture. It was easy to slip back into the dragon’s world instead of my own.

“Don’t. Please.” Fitz’s hand was light on my arm. I was only slightly taken aback. I hadn’t thought he would still be here. “Look at me.”

I ignored him. Petty, I continued to carve, focusing only on the black stone.

“I didn’t come here to ask about Verity’s dragon,” said Fitz. “I wanted to ask...” He sighed. “Will you look at me?”

I did. His face was red, but he held my gaze, dark brown eyes boring into my very soul. It took him a long moment to find his voice.

“I wanted to ask if you wanted to try something. Again. With me.” He stumbled over the words, but each one stoked a fire in my chest. I was left briefly speechless. His hand, still on my arm, tugged me closer. “It might prove a very good distraction.”

In confirmation of the endless possibilities that skittered through my mind, his eyes darted to my lips, and back up again. I caught my breath. “Yes. It might.”

I do not know if it was I who fell upon him, or he who seized me, but my fingers were on his wrist and we were kissing again. And he opened up before me. Joined in the Skill, there were no boundaries, no misunderstandings or walls of tangled emotion. All my earlier apprehensions about the magic fell away. Recklessly and fearlessly I threw myself into its grasp. I felt safe doing so, for I threw myself into him. I knew Fitz down to his core, and I knew he would catch me.

That was the first time, but there were several times after, stolen moments in between Fitz’s duties while Kettle and Verity finished their legendary creation. It was more than physical, though the physicality was undeniable when I straddled him in the melting snow and felt him want me as much as I wanted him. The pain and pleasure of the Skill bond combined with our tryst in a way that was intoxicating. It was foolish, perhaps, the extent to which we gave into it, but if this was Skill addiction, it was all that I craved. As I touched every part of him in the depths of that magic, I grafted myself to him. The space between us closed with every kiss. I was his Catalyst, he was my White Prophet. This was not something I had foreseen, nor had any of my kind. This was something Fitz and I created together, something entirely new.

I recall those days with glimmering fondness. We were both so young then. We had lived only a short time, grown only partially into what we might become. The armor of youth is invulnerability, even against the onslaught that was the driving Skill current we so daringly dove into. In the briefness of our lives, the joy of becoming totally eclipsed the risk of unbecoming. In the grips of the Skill we denied each other nothing, nor did we fear losing our separate selves. We only sought completion, what we glimpsed when we explored what we could be together.

The last time was late at night, after all our company had retreated to their beds. Or so I thought. I awoke alone, and it seemed natural that my unconscious mind should react to Fitz’s absence. I rubbed my face, shaking off the night’s fog, and groggily rose to seek him out.

The night was full dark. Not even embers survived in the pit that had formed from several weeks’ worth of camp fire. The large tent Kettle, Starling, Fitz and I shared was covered in shadow, but faint light emanated from Verity and Kettricken’s smaller one. I caught movement and heard small, satisfied noises. I left them well alone.

I had not much to go on. With no torch I had slim hope of finding Fitz if he had wandered into the forest. I walked past Verity’s dragon, for it was a short way from the camp, but it stood motionless and unhelpful to my quest. Moonlight reflected off of its silver-streaked hide and caught a shape in the dirt below. A wolf’s pawprint glinted up at me.

How I followed Nighteyes’s trail, I could not now say. Perhaps I saw nothing, and simply wandered in the dark. Perhaps the Skill-link between Fitz and I guided my footsteps. Perhaps I knew where to seek him out all along, and simply followed the path I always intended. Regardless I found myself approaching Girl-on-a-Dragon. A fallen torch illuminated her, or the light of the stars, or nothing. But I remember this vision quite clearly.

I saw Fitz next to her. This I know, for the sight of him is burned into my memory. At first I despaired, and then I nearly wept for joy. He was old. Grey streaked his midnight hair, a full beard graced his cheeks, and he stooped with a stocky, weathered weariness. He was not aged beyond his time, but aged with the weight of a life that had been lived. My goal had always been for him to survive. Never had I dared to hope that he actually would.

Then I stepped closer, and the mirage was shattered. This was Verity I gazed so fondly upon. His silver arms were unmistakable. Except I felt this was Fitz, just as he felt me and any other living being in his vicinity. I saw it in the way he moved, in the way he sank against Girl-on-a-Dragon’s flank like a spent soldier, not like an unrepentant king. There was magic at work here that I had no desire to unravel. I simply went to him.

“Fitz,” I breathed. Verity’s eyes looked up at me, but Fitz’s soul bled out of them. Tears flowed freely down his face, his Skill-laden arms hanging uselessly at his side. Nighteyes kept a silent watch at his right, so I crouched across from him.

“Oh, Fitz,” I said, wiping tears from a face that was not his. “What’s happened?”

“My life is over,” he said simply. “I’ve given all of it for my king. And yet I’m still here.”

“Of course you are.” I smiled at him. “I am not finished with you yet.”

He sighed in his world-weary way. “Are you not? I gave my body to Verity. Tonight he will use it to make his final memories. Tomorrow, his stone dragon will be complete. He will rise and the Six Duchies will be saved. Is that not all? Have I not fulfilled my purpose?”

His predicament made him blunt. He all but hammered out the words. I suddenly had a very different image to accompany what I had heard from Verity’s tent earlier. I tried not to dwell on it for several reasons. Still, I could not lie to Fitz. “No. There is still more for you to do.”

“More? You would ask more of me?”

The defeat and exhaustion I saw in his eyes was nearly enough to wake tears in my own. “I would not ask anything of you,” I told him earnestly. “But the same is not true of the world. I wish I could prepare you for what will come next, but in truth, even I don’t know. Only that your fate does not end here.”

“If only it would.”

I looked at him askance. Fitz was prone to bouts of cynicism and self-destruction, but not so strongly as this, not since we had started our journey up the mountain path. I put my hand to Verity’s cheek, unfamiliar and rough under my touch, and forced Fitz to look at me. “What ails you?”

Almost I thought he would not answer me. He met my eyes, but the shame in his ran deep. Then after a long moment he said, “Molly… and Burrich. I can’t go back, Fool. I can never go back.”

“Ah,” I said quietly, dropping my hand, and he instantly read the guilt on my face.

“You knew, didn’t you?” he demanded.

“I foresaw,” I hedged. “A path or two.”

“And you kept it from me?”

“Would you rather I be the one to tell you?”

“Yes!” he exclaimed. Then just as quickly as it had arisen, his anger ebbed. He was left dull, and shaking in Verity’s body. “No. It’s no use anyway. I ought to leave camp tonight, disappear into the forest where I won’t be a burden on anyone.”

“You truly think that little of yourself?”

“Why not? I am not needed. Other than to be your supposed Catalyst.”

There were words I could have said, then. I felt them tugging in my gut, tearing at the walls of my throat, begging to be let out. But we were so new, and I was so unsure. Everything up to that moment felt as if it would crack under the slightest pressure, and I’m not too proud now to say that I was afraid. Not only of what may have built between us, but of the futures I kept glancing, and the effect my words could have on all of them. I’ve learned much over my years of being a prophet, lessons on action and inaction and my own imperfections. At the time I could do nothing but choke on my response.

“Then, as my Catalyst, I demand that you still be with us tomorrow,” I said. Instead of anything more meaningful, I injected some poorly timed levity. “No running away, or throwing yourself into a dragon or anything else. Just rest for now.”

Fitz exhaled and the deepest of his bitterness passed. He let his head roll back to rest on Girl-on-a-Dragon. “That is not so great a demand, I suppose.”

“Indeed. So see that you do it.”

As I rose, he reached toward me, then stopped himself with Verity’s hand hovering just above my own. “Fool. Will you stay with me, until Verity returns? This body… It frightens me. I never wanted to feel this weak.” The hopeful supplication on his face was all Fitz.

“Of course,” I said. Some of the fondness I had failed to express spilled out of me, and I leaned over and kissed his lips. It was strange, with him as Verity, but not as strange as I might have expected. This was Fitz, and though we were not Skill-linked, we had learned each other in other ways. He relaxed under my touch, and after a moment we parted. I sat beside him and carefully rested my head on his shoulder. He had asked me to stay. So I did.

Blue sky rushed past me as Girl-on-a-Dragon climbed ever higher. I clung to her desperately, my arms wrapped tight about her human waist and my thighs gripping her flank with a strength that only arose out of sheer panic. The exhilaration I’d felt in my dreams gave way to a reality where icy particles stung my eyes and cold wind stole the breath from my lungs. My stomach dropped out of me at the first swoop and was left on the distant ground below.

Where was Fitz? I couldn’t tell which direction was down, let alone keep my eyes open long enough to spot him. Far from a daring scout from above, I was barely a passenger on Girl-on-a-Dragon’s first flight. I never appreciated how much I took the air around me for granted until it was pummeling me from all directions, gusts from Girl-on-a-Dragon’s strong wings battling with the forceful currents that arose this far up. I was thrust into a foreign domain, as hostile and unknowable as the Skill current, and far more terrifying.

I did not want to be here. Not yet. Girl-on-a-Dragon awoke mere moments before she carried me off, alone. I had no time to react, beyond holding on for my own survival. Fitz was still down there, and somewhere too nearby Regal’s coterie and the rest of his soldiers still sought him. Even if I was hurtling in the right direction, coastward toward the armies of the Outislanders, I couldn’t leave him behind.

“Go back! Put me down!” I tried to shout the words, but they were stolen from my mouth, left in a swirl of breath that was already some distance behind me. The sky was no place for speech.

Girl-on-a-Dragon showed no sign of hearing me, nor of noticing my presence in any other way. She beat her wings strongly, rising even higher into the already frosty air. We surpassed the tallest of the mountain peaks that surrounded us until the sun was revealed in its full glory. With nothing but wisps of cloud to obscure its rays, its brilliance was so intense as to be almost painful. I hid my face in Girl-on-a-Dragon’s back until my eyes could adjust.

Then she stopped her flight and hovered for a moment. My body was grateful for the stillness, though my head spun and I still felt a phantom lurching and swooping in my stomach. Cautiously I opened my eyes, and saw that we had begun a gentle, gliding descent.

I steeled myself and peered out over Girl-on-a-Dragon’s shimmering haunch. The wind caught my hair more strongly as I leaned out, but I did not give into fear and continued to shift my position as my dragon maintained her steady flight.

Finally I caught a glimpse of the world below. It was a vision I had never seen. In my dreams, I always looked ahead, caught up in the flight, or else peered up from below. From here, the mountains and valleys were as small as toys, or figurines on a map table. I could trace my finger along ranges that had been carved out over centuries. Meadows were flat yellow scraps of parchment, forests no more than a carpeting of verdant green. Streams cut shining ribbons through the landscape. In the distance I glimpsed a stark grey cleft that could only be the rockslide we had crossed on our journey. And in another direction, just before the dragon’s flight dipped us once more below the horizon, an ancient city of black stone.

I couldn’t let my wonder distract me from my purpose. I strained my eyes, following the faintest trail from the landslide over the cliffs where we had walked, creeping across a higher vale to the stone quarry. The immense outcroppings that had dwarfed me appeared now no larger than the tip of my finger. I thought I spotted the place where Girl-on-a-Dragon had sprung from the earth, but I saw no movement there, no antlike figure hurrying across the land. No Fitz.

He could not have gone far. I scanned the ground, looking for him and leaning to one side as if my weight had any bearing on the direction Girl-on-a-Dragon would fly next. He was nowhere in the quarry, and if he had disappeared into the forest surrounding it, I had no way of knowing. I spied a spire of midnight stone that could only be a Skill pillar, then trained my eyes to catch its sisters dotted across the valley. There was one swarming with activity. The crossroads. And another further away, the garden of stone dragons. As still as they had been when last we visited. Except, and it couldn’t be, for I wouldn’t be able to see a wolf at this distance…

Without warning, Girl-on-a-Dragon dove. I lived a moment of pure blackness, as my eyes failed me and I became weightless. Then I slammed into her back with shattering force. A loud crack echoed through my skull and throughout the surrounding valley. Girl-on-a-Dragon held in her claws a man, all dressed in Farrow brown and gold. I had no Wit but I could see the life leave his eyes. I felt his death pass over me in a rippling wave before it was absorbed into the body of the beast I bestrode. Hot, scarlet blood flung into my face as if driven by a storm, and then he was gone.

The dragon’s flight of victory, or satiation, or pure excitement carried me up and around until I was completely lost again. We soared for a time, wending our way crazily through the sky between the mountains. Her speed and exuberance left me jumbled and confused, but after a while the stinging wind on my face and cold that concentrated in my hands and feet became familiar sensations. I grew more tolerant of her tumbling, nauseating movements.

Girl-on-a-Dragon let out a cry, a sound that was part animal and part echoing command, layered with meaning I could not grasp. She righted herself and I jerked back into awareness of our position in the world. We flew close over the landscape, her talons almost brushing the tops of the sparse trees below us. A little lower and I could jump, perhaps, and not break my body in the fall. And then what? Hope I landed anywhere near my allies, and not in the middle of Regal’s forces?

All thoughts in that direction fled as Girl-on-a-Dragon gave cry once more, and beside me a second dragon rose into view. He was antlered and gleaming, and fully as beautiful as Girl-on-a-Dragon herself. I had not the time to gape at him before another dragon joined us, this one appearing in a flurry of wings that rocked me as she hurtled past. I spun about to behold a third and a fourth, and finally a multitude of dragons glittering like jewels in the bright sunlight.

Suddenly I was dreaming. I flew with these dragons. Our wings beat hard at the air, our bodies arrowed through the sky. We had one direction and one purpose, and the distance between ourselves and our goal was nothing to creatures of such power and majesty. This sky domain held no mystery or confusion; our path was clear. We followed him who had been King Verity, and we would wreak havoc on his enemies. This was the future we would create. The future I would witness.

Except I could not. The small strings of my heart, the desires of my tiny, separate self tugged me back. I had to go back. “Fitz!” I cried uselessly. Somehow I knew he had done this.

I pulled at Girl-on-a-Dragon’s arms, willing her to see me, to hear me. But I was so small and she was caught up in not only her own goals but the shared ambition of her kind. No matter how I screamed and kicked at her, she would not heed me. I was only one person, a single prophet whose function was to observe, not change the course of this predestined flight. I was desperate to draw attention to myself before I became lost in a sea of dragons.

So I touched her, my silver fingertips to her jeweled hide, and I sank into her and into the Skill.

It was worse than takeoff. I was flung completely from my body. I was a young girl at Buckkeep, and then I was a Skill user and spy, and then I was an old woman with many regrets, all in the span of seconds. Then I was awake as a dragon, after an eternity of suffering no touch of the outside world. How delightful to hear birds sing, to sense their flocks in the sky around me. How sweet to feel the cool mountain breeze on my skin, to taste the blood and the lingering life trapped between my teeth. My kin was here with me, breathing the same air, their unspoken thoughts rumbling pleasantly through the current between us. I could taunt them with my prowess. I should fly ahead and show them the speed of my body, the gracefulness of my wings.

Something important groped distantly at my consciousness. A man’s face, a human man’s, formed in my mind. Brown skin and dark, curly hair. Fitz! I gasped the thought out as I emerged from the drowning current. I had never been here without him. But where was here, and who was I?

I clutched at my sense of him. This place felt like him to me, the me that was not the dragon. I pushed him toward her, I bombarded our thoughts with all the visions I had of him. I was annoying, like a flea biting into my back with just enough strength to cause an itch. I wanted to be free of myself, to cast that part of me aside, but I couldn’t until I agreed to this one, desperate demand.

So I did, and I threw myself aside. I tumbled gracelessly into my original body, where I barely had enough focus to hold on before Girl-on-a-Dragon barreled backward. The onslaught was merciless as we cut through the pack of dragons, weaving this way and that until we escaped the flock. I didn’t dare hope for anything until my dragon approached the ground.

There I saw him. Unmistakably Fitz, for the halo of paths that spun from him shone brighter than ever. I blinked away their dazzling light and saw that he was covered in blood, from the ends of his hair to the toes of Nighteyes’s paws. Stupid Fitz and his stupid wolf. Dirty and exhausted, but alive. Alive!

Joy escaped me in a bubbling laugh. I slid from Girl-on-a-Dragon’s back and sprang across the grass on feather-light feet. Fitz gawked at my dragon and I until I seized his idiot’s face between my hands and kissed him firmly on the mouth.

We tumbled backwards into the grass. I peppered his face with kisses, heedless of the streaks of grime and blood. “You did it,” I told him and watched a smile overtake his stunned expression.

“Nighteyes and I woke the dragons,” he said. “They fly to Verity now. You were right. There was more for me to do.”

“And you lived!” I exclaimed.

“I did.” He beamed up at me. Then he kissed me slowly and deeply. I threaded my fingers through his hair and his hands at the small of my back pulled me to him. Meadow grasses tickled my face and dropped dew into his eyes. We were more physical than we had ever been, without the Skill-link between us. My body moved with his and it ignited in me hunger and urgency as he claimed me with hands and lips and teeth.

I pulled back red and gasping, though every part of me wanted to lie back in the meadow with him. A looming presence pressed on my mind. “Fitz,” I told him, brushing the hair back from his brow. “We must go. Girl-on-a-Dragon will not wait so long to resume her flight.”

“Then let her leave.” He took my hand and kissed it, then shifted enticingly below me and caught my mouth with his. Pleasure coursed through me, and excitement with no apprehension. Never had I so greatly regretted my position as a White Prophet.

“Fitz, we must.” I eased him upward, which only put him in a better position to kiss my throat and neck. I spoke through heady laughter. “We must return to her quickly. Once she leaves, there are no more dragons to fly us to Buckkeep.”

“I’m not going back,” he spoke into my chest.

“What?”

He stopped and looked up at me. “I’m not going back to Buckkeep. Nighteyes won’t fly, and I won’t leave him. We will make our way through the mountains on foot. And when we return, it may not be to Buckkeep.”

“Oh.” A cold wave washed over me.

Fitz saw my concern and ran a thumb over my jaw and grinned. “But you can stay with us,” he said, excitement rushing his words. “We can hunt for you, and I'll build fires so you won’t be cold. Spring is nearly upon us. The mountains will be beautiful in summer. We can travel through all the Six Duchies, to places neither of us have been before. And beyond, to your trader coasts, or wherever it is you came from. We can return to Buckkeep eventually, if that’s what you want, when some years have passed and we are forgotten.”

The happiness that radiated from him broke my heart. I felt it tear in two as I licked my lips and waited to respond. I memorized this look on his face, the hope I saw there before I dashed it. That hope bled away with every second I stayed silent. “I can’t,” I said finally. “I have to go with the dragons. That is my path.”

“Your path?” he asked, confused.

I nodded. “In all my dreams I fly with the dragons. This I must do. And then I must go away and continue to change the world.”

My betrayal shut Fitz down completely. “Change the world? Have we not changed it already?” he exclaimed. He disentangled himself from me and stood angrily, leaving me sprawled in the grass.

“We have. You did!” I leapt up and reached for him but he shrugged me aside. “You are my Catalyst. In waking the dragons you have proven that.”

“If I am your Catalyst, how can you leave me?”

His words cut me to the bone. I would leave him. As his mother and father, his wife, his king, and so many others had left him. I understood now that fate was often cruel to those it had chosen.

Honesty was all I could offer. “You know what it is to be bound to duty. This is mine.”

“I don’t understand. Who is it who binds you?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but Fitz continued before I could speak. “The world, and your dreams, and these White Prophecies I’ve never heard of. You’ve told me so before. Nebulous things. What we did -” Here he gestured between us, and as he dropped his gaze I saw for the first time shame creep into him. “Did this mean nothing to you?”

“No. Never think that. This meant everything to me.” The truth spilled out of me.

“But it’s not enough.”

Fitz’s face was drawn in that wan resignation it so often bore. His scars looked even whiter against his skin, aging him. Disappointment settled over him so easily, anger giving way to a sad loneliness that I shared. I touched his cheek and he did not turn away. “Would that I could stay.” The words were not enough to express all I felt.

He met my eyes and sighed. “Please, my Fool. Just tell me. Will I see you again?”

I had no answer for him, so I did not give him one. Instead I pulled him to me and kissed him, and in that kiss I put my desire that we were both fully human, and unimportant, and that life had offered us more kindness than it did. I hoped I kissed him enough to remember me for a lifetime.

“Goodbye, Fitz,” I said, and I ran toward Girl-on-a-Dragon.

I did not see him again for fifteen years.