Lilies and Apple Trees - ohHOLYmoves (2024)

“This is highly irregular. It’s a foolish mistake.”

“These are highly irregular times, Heritic.”

Ripples of tension heat the air. Around the table, most of the attendants do not react outside of a polite obfuscation of their true emotions. The one who spoke first grits his teeth and spreads his fingers over the cloth to serenely expel anger. Instead of slamming his fists into the wood like an enraged toddler. The second person keeps her body aimed toward at him apathetically, cool beneath the shade of her cowl.

A third expresses annoyance in a sigh and rubs her forefinger and thumb into her eyes. There is a wave of discomfort after this. Not one that can be easily seen but is felt.

“Ruger.”

“Your majesty, she should be in prison. Not invited to sit at your table! I understand times are changing but she is an enemy of the state! She murdered a Royal member of this family in cold blood!”

Again, the lady sighs and gives her uncle a stern look, “Ruger. We have more important matters than this.”

“Magic is illegal in her country! We are harboring a fugitive! She killed your brother!”

“Ruger.”

Across the table, under her cowl, the woman titters. It sounds like a wisp of smoke caught on a breeze, burning old oak and cedar.

Uncle Ruger points a warning finger at her, “You should have reported yourself when you were a girl.”

“If you don’t like me being here, do something about it old man.”

Clara, Third Lily Queen of the Kingdom of Flowers, gives the woman a plain scowl. The disappointment makes all attendants and their guards tighten. Except the vagabond curled into a strange form in her chair, knee drawn to her chest so she can lean against an armrest.

“Be silent. You are welcome here only by my grace and my grace will dry like water in a desert if you keep taunting my men and interrupting my negations.”

A Cheshire grin splits the face half concealed by the cowl. Stray bits of dark purple hair peak from beneath, bunched together with jeweled clasps and carved ivory. Lips that are painted a red the color of wine spilled on a dark alter. Very small white runic letters are tattooed on her plump lower lip, beneath the makeup.

Once the tiff is stamped out, conversations about their current situation resume. Clara half listens. Her mind is troubled so it remains fixed on the point of contention that brought them together.

An unfortunate point that comes about every few cycles. Something she was warned would happen when she was given the title of being a Lily queen. Only the third in their dynasty. When she should have been one of the hundred Roses that came before her but she was not shown to be a meek queen. Not timid nor conceited. Bold and stalwart. Brave and brash. It was seen as a threat to nations beyond their boarders. Flower Queens are meant to behave certain ways.

Lilies are flowers of war.

It is frustrating but nothing she did not expect. Long had the shadow grown that the Empire of the Sun King had cast. To the dismay of their citizens, it had at last fallen upon the garden that housed Spirits of their faith. Had their former queen not felt such fear and cowered, they would not be in this position. Her goodly father had warned her this would happen. The moment he died, things would spiral into a type of chaos only bloodshed could save and he had been right. Rose Queen, mother to Princess Clara, had declared her engagement to the Sun King—their greatest enemy as old faithful to Spirits—within the first month of mourning. Chapels of the Sun were erected in the mortal God’s image, converts were slow but present. Civil war started and the old faithful came out on top. The Rose Queen was overtaken and Clara was crowned. Her infant son, the Sun Prince, had been taken away to meet up with his father and then war had been declared.

Most often, flowers are given as gifts to enhance social situations and the Flowers of the crown have never been any different. Roses make fine wives that appease egos of foreign kings wanting to plant roots in their soil. Seeing as the Kingdom of Flowers has never once been conquered, never once lost an inch of ground nor felt the bloodshed of war on its own land, it is coveted. Appeasing slobbering mouths that want a bite from their land stops greedy thieves from trying to steal it. Nightingales have made excellent gifts in the form of ‘daughters’ given as brides who turn out to be all thorn and no petal. When their husbands mysteriously die, they return home to their poisonous Queen.

But Lilies are flowers that are grown over graves or given to the families whose soldier did not come home. Before Clara, there had only been two. Each saw war in their time. The First Lily Queen, Adesta, was shot on horseback by six arrows when visiting the Feltelands so peace about the nature of spirits could be met. Even when the poison sickened her, she strapped thick armor to her chest and cut a bloody path to the castle of the Duke. She declared that never again would a flower grow in his country and that the last drops of water it would know would be his families bloodline seeping into the dirt. Because the Feltelands soon became a desert after the last wife gave birth to his last stillborn son, Lily Queens became taboo. Feared creatures who showed the fierceness of a gardener keeping out unwanted pests, zealots to many religions for showing a spark of the chaotic Spirits. Younger Kings have shown interest in Clara just to see if the myths are true. Others crave blood that may finally break their walls and offer a path to claiming their country. Some fear them as curse doctors that would waste a city for the spite of it. Most that are allied with the Sun King see her as the Usurper.

Clara sighs into her tea that has gone cold and has an ungodly taste of lemon in it.

Now, because of this, three kingdoms have issued threat upon her head and her country. One by sea and two by land that swear to march if she does not cede the throne or agree to marriage. Or, as for the case of the barons of the Black Waters, she does not agree to the terms issued in their violent letters. ‘Release the refugees, return the escapee witches, cede the Lagoon and the Heziyl Port, cede the throne.’ Encouraged by the Sun King who promises riches and places in his Empire if they fight his war on Spirits and now his war on the heartland of where Sprits crawl from. The ones who pushed out the loose hold he was securing through the weak Rose Queen and his son would have become the Kingdom’s of Flower’s first king. Uncle Ruger advised she be cautious and consider her options because a war on three fronts is a fight they cannot win. That is precisely why they have pressed her in that way. Confronting a Lily queen frightens most but she is young and new and they are banded together to form an unconquerable force.

They expect her to bow and break and give her country over for free. Without blood or bone to pay. Without tasting her ire for daring to threaten a single flower in her garden.

She had chosen this path instead. The path that sees them in an overcrowded room lit by a large fire in a larger hearth. Discussing means of truce between their factions so they can come together and think of a way to fight an un-winnable war.

Jehez Kithrok is a Stone Son of the mountains in the furthest reaches of the Otur Kingdom, so far north she cannot imagine what it must have taken to travel here. Long ago they broke their pact with the crown to live in seclusion, taking the warriors of the country with them. Clara understands the feud still burns at some of the older generations. Bad blood still bitters the roots of the lilies that grow on grandparents graves. He is young so a new chief, most likely. Proven by the scars ritually given to him that form parallel lines running over his brows, his eyelids, and down his cheeks to his jaw. Each cut given by the former chief to prove his line and name was passed to this new warrior that earned his place. He glares at Clara and at the Plumule Knights behind her.

A mountain son has not set foot in the sacred valley and fields of the Kingdom of Flowers in over a thousand years. A mountain son who had beseeched the former queen for aid and she had instead sent troops to slaughter his clan in the name of the Sun God. Clara’s own mother.

Xad the Quiet is second. A clean child with dark, brooding stares and a narrow face. His body looks stretched out in the wrong places, pulled like taffy over hooks that left him somehow short and gangly. A child that has not yet left boyhood to become a full throated man. One who never will. Blood always stains the cuffs of his sleeves from his butchery. Demons are never clean creatures and his particular breed like to showcase their cruelty. Most of his kin are native to the valley that Clara was born in. In different times, she had known Xad as a girl. He had been kept in a soul cage in the Prism beneath the chapel. Every day she would go beneath to feed and water the demon kin who had been imprisoned. Xad had been a trickster, a puck, a con artist who grew too clever. Most of his cons had involved tricking children and teenagers to follow him into places where he would butcher and eat them. Outside of the Kingdom of Flowers, demons are hunted down and sold for parts or viewers as enemies of foreign faiths. In the gardens that weep, they are simply weeds amongst flowers. Not wanted but usually left alone for the work of uprooting them. Not all weeds are ugly, anyhow, and Xad had been harmless most of his life inside the Kingdom. Leaving was his mistake and being a thistle weed in the world made him a criminal. One of the former Flower Queens negotiated for his life in the agreement that he would serve prison time in his homeland. Little horns made of dark black wood and purple headed weeds sprout from his dark hair. Still as pretty as she remembered them. Alluring like a trap left in the woods that some silly uneducated fool will fall into.

After all, in the Kingdom of Flowers children learn from grannies how to play with demons. If one lures you into the woods, you offer candy and spice and he will be nice. Offer nothing thrice and you become his vice.

Two more proceed him. The Princess of the Salt, Umakya Dolyu and her husband the Thrillbrand of the Iron Setters. A fake title for a throne not recognized by their government but one that is meaningful to some of their artisan guilds. And the merchants beyond the seas. And all the thieves who she employees including her fleets of pirates. The most bountiful house in many of the worlds known to them. One who does not share and does not like being asked for even a single coin from her mountains of gold. And her husband who is the master smith of all masters. The one that brings adventurers from countries beyond their boarders to have weapons and armors made by him. Rumors say he could forge heavy armor for a mouse that would function and fit all at once.

During the reign of the Rose Queen Delenski, Clara’s mother, Umakya had been banished and driven out. Often referred to as the Heretic Queen because of her sudden embrace of the bastard religion of the Suns that declared witches and demons and all spirits to be evil. Dolyu families had been firm proponents of the old faiths for as long as the Kingdom of Flowers had worshiped Spirits. Only one saving grace had been the factor for the Princess of Salt answering Clara’s missive. At sixteen she had been the one to lead the coup agaisnt the Heretic Queen and spent the next year uprooting all the Sun Worship rhetoric from her country. To make a point she had announced that she would spend her entire reign making the Kingdom of Flowers whole again. Starting with welcoming in the Sprite and Spriggin refugees from the Spirit War rolling across the Black Water Wastes. By building travel routes in secret for witches and greater Spirits to escape the Sun King’s holy war that had been hunting them for years. And then by welcoming in the people who her mother made the Kingdom of Flower’s greatest enemies to become her greatest allies.

Then lastly the witch. Concealed for her safety or to present herself as a frightening horror story come to life. Wisps of white powder still cling to the baggy clothes draped off her long body. Not sand as it at first appears but fractal pieces of crystal that blow in the adamantine glade just outside the Sun City capital of the Empire. Long has she traveled to return to the birthplace of witches. Far from where she was born in the horrid wastes that are the kill box for witches outside the Kingdom’s walls. This place is where her grandmother was born though. Aspen, another tall tree in the grove where Spirits and mortals have human children called witches, had fled with her daughter and infant granddaughter. Clara had been only a few months old when that had occurred. A clairvoyant woman, she had seen what the Rose Queen would become and what would become of the witches who did not flee the kingdom.

They had run from the death in the Kingdom of Flowers directly into the early start of the Sun King’s holy war. Only accounts given to Clara through spies is what she has to go off but that was how she found Willow. The woman who had always resented the crown from her misgivings and the death of her family. Who had been the one to kill the Sun Prince at the age of sixteen. Clara’s brother who she had held no love for. But killing him had made her an even higher enemy on the King’s list than the usurper Clara Clearblade so she imagines that is why she agreed to the summons. Given an offer to be smuggled into a state wherein she was free to be a witch and protected by the Queen and military might faired a bit better than whatever Clara may ask.

A round table for her enemies to ask them how they might feel about fighting larger enemies of hers.

Willow the Witch of Fern and Dale sits in her chair quietly. Unlike the others she does not bleat or bark when an open air lends space. They argue and curse, throw accusations at Clara and the kingdom and demand justice. Demand many things. But Willow stays quiet.

Until they all finally agree to help with terms that Clara was expecting.

“We want the whole range of the Yellow Mountains and part of the Fanged Beasts.” Says the Stone Son, smile giddy because he knows he has already won.

Clara signs it away without issue. They are her people even if they refuse her as their queen. No matter how long the limb has been cut from the body, they remain a piece of the whole and this will simply be a homecoming to them.

“One thing though,” Clara Clearblade signs in red ink, staring placidly as it cools, “You will relent to performing the scared duty of a Stone Son. Henceforth for all the coming years your people inhabit the Yellow Mountains and the Fanged Beasts mountains, once you sign. And you will be respectful of the mournful travelers that bury their dead in the Yellow Mountains. You will not crush their lilies. If before the schism your people were respectful warriors that understand loyalty and where kindness belongs in war, understand that it belongs there. In those mountains on trails that will need tending and in the graves of the grandchildren your forebears forsook. We sleep there because you live there now. We died for your pride so you will be gardeners for the bones you betrayed.”

Uncomfortable tension spreads after her quiet and flat delivery. Paper scratches against itself from how silent the room falls. She catches Willow’s curled lips when she hands the contract to Jehrez. He signs unhappily. In his elder, twisted version of their language she hears his question to his advisor what she means. And this she understands. The Stone Sons do not remember their ancient calling. The one they forsook when they refused to fight the war they were called to ages past. Part of her cannot blame them. They were monster hunters, not soldiers. Militant creatures that took root in random villages months at a time to keep at bat the thick variety of monsters native to their land. To keep people safe. Since leaving hundreds of years ago, they have been overrun. Burdened with sickness and decay, ripped apart in the streets, consumed and possessed, and made walking hosts for infections that turned whole towns into undead.

Clara had called these people to her table for more than just the war. Perhaps through the war she can work on mending the divides made hundreds to thousands of years before her reign and in the recent times of her mother and the damage she managed in such a short time.

Xad is simple. He just wants his freedom and is happy to give it. He will call demons to their aid. He will act as a scout commander for his many eyes he can send out and, for the larger beasts, he will give her behemoths. Walls of muscle that win wars. He will be able to summon them to her aid because he is a charmer. That is what he does.

The other two are a means to funding the war and dressing her soldiers. More than that, utilizing the Princess means she can act as a party planner. Someone who has fingers in every pocket in every city in every country. If she says that selling raw ore or barley to the King Greism is in poor taste then none of the merchants will. Except for a few that are not afraid of Umakya. It will be their folly. The trick is motivating her.

“I cannot offer you the place of an heir nor can I readily offer you a marriage into the crown,” They both dislike alluding to it, “However I can make your house name an honest one. You could become a duch*ess and I will give you land in the Eastern countryside. Near the water as I know your family was beholden to the river Spirit, Iioloe.”

There will be more talking it over later. They will draw up an official contract that both parties will look over and made amending for days before they come to an agreement. But she will say yes and that means Clara will get her husband as part of the deal.

Lastly, the witch. All eyes turn on her, waiting for her response to this modified peace talks before the real war begins. Rather than speak, she makes a disinterested sound and smacks her lips after downing her tea. Each member asked here, now satisfied with themselves for their gains, flinch away from her inspection. Except for the Lily Queen Clara.

“I want peace.”

“Ask me something reasonable.” She rubs her thumb along the curve of her tea cup’s handle. They have been at this meeting for too long. Her advisors are surely itching to drag her away and detail her with new reports, new concerns, new sightings. That will be another two hours sat in uncomfortable chairs while her stomach eats itself alive. While her head throbs from the terrible day she is having.

“Not in the world. Here, for me.”

She looks up, staring at the folds of the cowl concealing half the face. The corner of those dark lips lifts in a smirk she finds to be too impish.

“What does that mean exactly?”

One hand lifts to wag a finger at her while the tongue clicks at the back of Willow’s teeth. Each nail is painted a glossy black and bands of runic script are tattooed around the fingers like rings.

“You are not what I envisioned a Lily Queen to be like, Clara Clearblade. Lily. Is it a lily or a lily of the valley? Vicious as our Queen appears to me.”

“Often our presumptions are based off speculation.”

The witch snorts out a derisive laugh. In one swift move she pushes her hood back to, at last, reveal herself fully. Bright yellow eyes stare back at her, unflinching and unkind. The roots of her purple hair are a glossy black that matches her nails. Magic has odd effects on the body so she wonders if this is simply how it grows.

“I want peace,” She says again and this time the effect is stronger when she can hold Clara’s gaze, “For me and maybe some day for all like me.”

Ruger hisses an ancient prayer that wards against curses predominant in a witch’s arsenal. Willow flicks her eyes to him, just to survey the way his lips wrap around the words, then back to Clara. A very slight tick to her cheek when she notes that Clara is watching her uncle’s lips too and frowning, marginally.

“I assumed my role in this little meeting already. Two brutes to battle the two wars by land. An army our Lady Clara has already but fortified by mountain men and demons? That’s a reckoning. Then a mistress of coin to deal with the army by way of sea. A navy our Lady Clara has but buying mercenaries will fortify what we have. Choking their supply lanes and their gold will starve them out there. But me? What does a single witch who has hidden from the government her whole life offer? Personal protection. Strength in the boarders, fortifying the walls. Keeping the home fires burning. Keeping the Queen’s heart beating. Unless,” Willow has a vicious look, one that sings of a lifelong hate, “You brought me here and will give me presents like the others. And once I’m sated, you’ll get revenge for your mewling baby brother I killed.”

Uncle Ruger starts to breath heavy. She watches his face redden from the corner of her eye. Stoically, she reaches for her tea and takes a prim sip.

“That boy barely survived the civil war. I do not care what you did to him. His father and their churches are my enemy. Every single one,” Here she makes sure everyone in the room hears her, sees the truth in her body and face, “If you had not done it, I would have.”

“Hm,” Willow does not look appeased but she does seem curious, “I’m the last line of defense if your other plans fail. You must know I cannot rally my kin to your aid?”

Clara folds her fingers together on the table in front of her, staring at the clever witch. Mutely, she offers a graceful nod.

“So then. I would sew magic, protect the queen, and play at something? Hm…a spy, maybe. You did somehow find me instead of another witch which means you know, to some degree, what I can do and that is what you need. Am I right?”

Again, she nods this time with an impressed curl to her lips.

Willow’s smirk is the bone that shows when a leg is badly broken.

“They should have spoken more of your cunning instead of your beauty.”

Uncle Ruger makes a gruff sound and cuts his hand through the air, “That’s enough, witch.”

“So,” She tilts to the side slightly for her servant to pour her a fresh cup of tea and manages to conceal her distaste when lemon is added, “you’ve deduced my need. What are your terms that help achieve this peace you desire?”

“I want your first born.”

A soft gasp cuts through the air from one of Clara’s attendants. Utter stillness falls over them, interrupted only by breathing from her Uncle barely holding back his rage.

She smiles against her folded hands, having expected this.

“You intend to raise my heir to be a witch and return with her to stake her claim on the throne?”

Yellow eyes reflect intense light that look like licks of flames dancing across wood. Her canines are sharper than an average human.

“Perhaps peace is something that takes a while to cultivate.”

“Isn’t it just,” She snaps and holds up a palm, waiting for an attendant to place parchment in it that she had drafted prior to the meeting, “I expected you to request this.”

Rather than appear surprised or annoyed, this makes the witch smile wider, “Is that so? Is that Clara I wonder or the Lily? My grandmother spoke of stories given to her by her grandmothers. The former Lily Queen Alexandria was something as raw as lightning and as wild as the sea, she said. I expected more fire.”

“Fire only knows how to burn. I try to keep a more level head,” She unfurls the scroll to peruse the finalizations she already checked hours before then passes the scroll over, “Sign when you’re done please.”

“Hm. You are agreeing to give me your heir, your first born?”

She sits ridged in her chair, hands clasped, and face blank, “Yes.”

“Hm. That’s—oh, what’s this?” Willow’s dark brows pinch when she continues reading. There is not a knot of anxiety in her stomach the way there probably should be. She was raised to expect these situations. Her marriage and her children would always be something of a rare currency and she always thought little of it for that. If parlaying this particular pact with a witch is what keeps her people and their queen safe, then it is a small price to pay.

It was always going to be sold anyway.

Willow looks back up and this time she can see cracks in the mask. Little veins of a person that peak through.

Clara sips her tea, wincing only slightly from the lemon.

“Is this a joke?”

“You thought I would simply hand my daughter to a stranger?”

“I would not expect this.”

“You may have my first born and raise her as a witch but you will not do so without my oversight and input.”

Willow spreads her fingers across the parchment on the table, splaying out the curled edges to read. Wordlessly, after going over it, she signs and hands it back.

“Oh, that look,” She stands from the table, co*cking her head in an avian manner, “You didn’t expect me to agree.”

“Hm. I did not.”

“I want peace. I was going to wait years but agreeing to sire your child will work just as well.”

Now her stomach gets that twisty unpleasant feeling. It gets pushed down with the host of her feelings the way she was taught. Let nothing show, else she give things away that are secrets for her alone.

“I had a room prepared for you. Tomorrow we can begin drafting the official marriage contract.”

Willow hums a long note, eyes like a wolf in the bushes watching a hare stop at pond to drink.

“You are very curious, Clara Clearblade.”

For being a brush raised witch, Willow shows herself to be adept at handling legal matters. She wiggles her way out of all the little traps Clara insisted be placed in the clauses. She agrees to living in the capital so long as Clara agrees that once they make a child, she can take it to the witches grove. Days pass that spends a lot of precious time she does not have negotiating with Willow. The woman seems to enjoy toying with her as a cat does a mouse, batting her around but never outright killing or harming her. It gets tedious.

When at last they finalize the papers with all the many amendments and they both have parties to witness, she takes a pause. Ink drips from the nub of her quill from how still she goes. Yellow eyes flick up to regard her blank stare.

“Why marriage?”

“It is the only way you could have a child with me that would be a legal heir.”

“Yes but why?”

She flicks away a bit of grass that had snuck it’s way onto her coat cuff and sighs, “Because you would have brought a wildling into this castle to rule. You would have presented my legal heir and whatever child I had after my first born would have been the lessor. My daughter who you would make a witch queen would have been a fish thrown into a parlor room. She’d have been slaughtered. Ill prepared and ultimately uncaring for half the population of the this garden she grows. This way, you are legally bound to me and while you implant whatever witch work in her, I can train her to take my throne someday.”

Willow leans across the table, a predator inches from closing its teeth round its prey, “She will be born a witch.”

“Yes,” Clara rolls her eyes which makes Willow and her witch attendant part lips in surprise and Clara’s attendants stiffen, “but that witch will be my daughter. She will be my next Queen and she will have my name. My heart. Whatever you make her will not change that.”

Slowly Willow leans back in her chair, squinting at her with soft purse to her plump lips. Without another word she begins the lengthy process of signing document after document.

Over supper, after the signing and legalization of her marriage, her Uncle is sour. To his credit he keeps quiet through most of the meal, simmering

for so long his face begins to redden. Finally, when they are brought a like sorbet, he blows out an irritated breath and speaks his mind.

“This was a foolish plan, Clara.”

“Do you think so?”

“I understand and even agree with some of what you’re doing. We are in a bad position but making a deal with a witch? Agreeing to give away your first born?”

“She will be our daughter though Uncle. So she will be forced to love her.” She licks the concave part of her spoon to warm it before scooping out the smallest bite.

Her uncle sighs, “Witches can’t love. They are evil.”

“Uncle, you sometimes sound like the thing I am fighting.”

“Fine. But you shouldn’t have given away your marriage. How do we sell that? Our Lily Queen wed to a witch from the brush? Why would you do something so foolish, Clara?”

She thinks about a friend she had as a child who did not make it to her thirteenth birthday. She thinks about the history texts read during lessons and how they upset her so badly she got sick and cried. She thinks about the unfounded and awful things her mother used to say and how she had waved her off when she argued. ‘Only those pure under the light deserve its embrace.’ She had said and Clara had thought that vile.

“Maybe I want peace too.”

Their first night as a married couple is one she hopes to forget some day.

They do not have an official ceremony. Not yet. Clara needs it to remain a secret inside their walls for just long enough that it can be a rumor beyond them. To test a theory of hers.

Her wife is a fox in a foreign den, prowling around with eyes that flash in light and teeth unhappy tools for destruction. Some things are knocked over, some things are touched and then there is a great shriek and hissing and glares sent at Clara. Reddened fingertips make her brows dip with concern and confusion but the wild animal licks her wounds privately. So Clara tends to herself. She calls for her handmaidens to help her out of the restrictive dress then sends them away once the work is done. The less they cohabitate the room with a stewing witch, the better.

“The bed has iron nails in it.” Willow glares at the four post bed, following the silken privacy drapes with a hatefulness.

“Does it?” There is genuine curiosity in the question but Willow gives her a look that speaks of offense. One that confirms for a cornered thing that it is not safe and that it is being attacked.

Befuddling her, Clara stands and watches in her night shirt the way her wife rips all the bedding from the mattress. Her faithful black footed bobcat familiar helps by clamping his jaws around some pillows. Together they make a nest on the floor by the stone hearth, overtop an embroidered rug. Even more baffling, Willow starts to divest herself until she sits naked and unburdened by the shame of being so.

“Will you carry or shall I? I need to know before I cast the spell.”

A working begins to spin into existence between Willow’s spindly fingers there on the floor. Something bright and powerful that scents the air with wild flowers and petrichor.

“Why does that matter for your spell?”

“Because I need to know which of us to alter.”

Her eyebrows hike up, “I see. That is far more practical than I was expecting.”

Let down for bed, the purple and black hair is long and appealing. Like a river that runs down her smooth back. Faint tattoos run up her arms, across her shoulders, and down her spine. Where they mark her legs and feet they turn to a dark red.

An unfriendly kind of amusem*nt clouds the yellow of Willow’s eyes when she looks over her bare shoulder to Clara, “What were you expecting?”

“I was expecting the rolling of bones on an ancient deer skin marked by a hot poker. Crystals and the waiting on a moon that needs to shine a certain way. Lots of whispered words and body paint made of crushed this and that. Sage in wine and a hundred lit candles made from specific fats.”

“You have an active imagination,” The bobcat chuffs and Willow flicks attention toward him, smiling softly in a real way, “That is a bit too old fashioned for me.”

“That’s good. I prefer practical.”

Willow leans back on her palms, head tilted back so she keeps Clara in view even if it’s an upside down angle, “Yes, you seem the sort.”

“You’ll find the implication you hid in there amuses me more than offends.” Clara had never been partial to sex with strangers. Time is what she needs to find lust and passion. Understanding needs to bloom, bonds need to be formed, a friendship at the very least needs to be found first. Sex, of course, has always been something she had looming in her future as a chore that would need preformed. She enjoys it but she also knows that marriage would be a lottery and it would take time for her to even discover if she could enjoy it with a future spouse. Her own mother spoke of her marriage bed as something lukewarm from the start to the end of her short marriage. Not something pleasant nor unpleasant, just a thing that needed done and that was all. So she was trained to expect the same thing from her own marriage.

“You’re not easy to rile, are you?”

“Not really. I’m fairly enigmatic or so I’ve been told.”

“Do people often catalog your character traits for you?”

“When I give them little to go off, I suppose,” She shrugs out of her night shirt and steps around the violently purring big cat to the nest of blankets, “You will carry.”

A curiousness like a cat’s takes over Willow, “You surprise me again.”

“I dedicated a piece of my plan to each of you and yours was to protect me,” She kneels on the blanket, feeling the prick of Willow’s eyes on her, “I will survive by my daughter.”

The stunned look she watches tear away Willow’s casualness feels like a victory.

“So,” While she speaks, she works the spell past Clara’s skin, tapping her fingertips against Clara’s lower abdomen, “You based your plans off assumptions on the characters of people you’ve never met. And deducted correctly that I would ask for your first born so you conceived this plan that worked in your favor. But on top of that, you also secretly asked me here to actually be self serving? My job is to just hide the pregnancy until the child comes to term while you know I’m going to use her for my own gains?”

“Yes.”

She jolts away when Willow leans forward suddenly, eyes wide and wild, “To what end?”

“I am not going to survive this war. I knew that before it had even been officially declared. I barely survived my first assassination attempt when I was a girl and they’ve only been more clever since. My mother is bitter and my step father more so. When someone has the perspective that they will not live to see the future, they show more care for it. Many of my aspirations cannot be seen through in this life time and so I will have to hope they can be born again through my child and what way you raise her to be.”

“Hm. A curious answer. I’ll accept it for now,” She leans back on her palms, head co*cked to the side and face nearly blank save a small, seemingly perpetual, frown, “Lets move on to the more practical matter at hand. How does that feel?”

There is a pressure in her lower half that makes her stomach tense. It does not hurt but the unfamiliarity is unpleasant. The added weight and sensations are foreign. When Willow shifts her thighs, skin brushes the new appendage and ripples of newness crawl up her spine. Familiar but different.

“Fine.”

“No numbness or tingling?”

“No. It feels like how I imagine it should.”

“Good. Move back on your knees a moment, let me look at you. Hm. Now come closer.” Obediently, she kneels between Willow’s spread legs and flinches, just slightly, from surprise when Willow takes her face into her hands. She hums as she tilts Clara’s face side-to-side, smoothing her thumbs along her cheeks to push hair from her face. A hum of interest when she traces the tapered shape of her elven ear. Then she tips her head back to look at her throat.

“You’re not inbred, are you?”

The witch blinks in surprise when that makes her puff out a soft laugh.

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“I only asked because I had heard monarch families of the mortal kingdoms will be rather twisted into a knot instead of a proper tree,” When she laughs again, Willow sours, “Why do you keep doing that?”

“Evidently you’re funny.”

The slight quiver to the upper lip of Willow reminds her of a dog preparing to unleash a vicious snarl. She demurs to appease the tense air because she does not have pride that will sting between them. Not when this particular task should be offered with great care and greater gentleness. Only somewhat visibly appeased, Willow continues her inspection. Once finished she sighs with knitted brows.

“I suppose it’s nice that you are so attractive,” Between Willow’s fingertips and in the light of a hot fire, her hair is burnished gold that glows, “Though it does me little good.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you see, I do not like you. I’m not sure I even tolerate you.”

She tilts her head and pointedly does not laugh this time. Particularly because Willow says it with a narrowed eye glare that speaks of intense hatred and an old power sitting on her fingertips. That same power thrums in the hands that curl over her biceps and anchor down, tightening just enough that she can feel the buzz of something electric.

“Now Clara, listen to me.”

She nods to show she is doing so, remaining silent out of respect.

“I have been a midwife to many women in my time. Many of them have given me stories about their wedding nights that left me with a deep unease and disinterest in a union. I will have you know my wedding night will be nothing like that. I will not allow it. I expect better of you than those men in those stories,” Deadly serious, the voice is sharp and rumbling, eyes growing steadily darker yellow and brighter as she speaks, “If I tell you to stop, you will do so. You will be gentle with me. If you hurt me, I will never forgive you and you will live to regret it for the rest of your life. Since this is not a union of passion but one of need, I don’t harbor much expectations in you as a lover. You need only finish and we can be done. But take steps to prepare me so it does not hurt. Can you work with that? Say so now, before we progress. Because if you break one of these rules after I make my boundaries clear, I will rip your throat out. And then you’ll need not worry about your fanciful war nor your heir.”

Only then it occurs to her that this wild thing, a witch of the wood, a Spirit of true chaos, is still just a young woman who came from the sticks and cold stew. One that has not been prepared for this particular life event that way Clara has been since she was old enough to conceptualize sex as a tool and her own body as a means to an end. That Willow was likely raised with more respect toward her own image and given a reason to be treated kinder. Likely her own mother instilled the proper roots for a better relationship to her own self than Clara’s did.

There is no point in defending herself. If she says that she would have already been aware and mindful of those things it would fall flat. Reassuring a stranger of her character would only make the woman less trusting of her. Offering instead a sure and honest answer is better way to do that work.

“I hear you,” The hands on her arms do not budge but they do loosen the grip slightly, “Anything else?”

“The way you behave will dictate how our marriage proceeds and my trust in you. Be aware of that.”

“I understand. Could you alert me if something does hurt? I may not immediately recognize it and I’d be upset were I to cross one of your boundaries.”

Willow gives her an indiscernible look, “You’ll be aware. And also don’t do that, it annoys me.”

Now she is utterly lost, “Do what?”

“Try to act a noble.”

“I was not acting.”

That same look that has a flatness to the eyes and a threat upon the mouth. Bewildered, she can only nod to agree though she is not precise about what she did wrong.

“Alright,” There is a very slight moment she almost misses where Willow relaxes, “Don’t paw at me either.”

“I could keep my hands just here, by your hips.”

This makes Willow wrinkle her nose and emit a strange, distinctly nonhuman sound.

“I’ll just stay quiet then.”

“That would be preferable.”

There is just a bit of experience under her belt. Taking lovers is usually a process she does not have time for. By the time she has realized she has attraction for someone, they are too dear friends for her press on it or things are spinning out of her control. What she has done has always been special to her for that reason and she is more grateful for it now than before.

Willow is quiet for most of it which concerns her. She cannot parse if this is due to pain, discomfort, a lack of needs being met, or if that is simply the way she is. Once, she reaches down to fist her hair then blinks, mewls a word she cannot understand, and lets go. Tension keeps her bones brittle so her body is already aching by the time she realizes that means she has done enough and Willow is ready. She wipes wetness from her mouth on the back of her hand.

Willow’s chest is dewy and lifting from heavy breathes, “Clara?”

“I was waiting for permission.”

Eyes are hazed but still focused enough to glare, “I had given it earlier.”

“Earlier was earlier. Now is now.”

“You have permission,” Willow jumps from the feeling of it nudging between her legs, “Go slow.”

Sensations that come with this new way of engaging are pleasant but strange. They run through her differently, more focused and intense in places she cannot remember feeling it. To be sure, she goes slow and focuses entirely on the seconds between her hips meeting Willow’s and the woman’s facial expressions. Her eyes remain closed and out of respect, she does her best to remain indifferent and quiet. Surprise nearly makes her break that indifference when Willow slides her long fingers into her hair and pulls her down. Not to kiss her but to press her lips against her jaw and to nip at her ear.

She jolts, making a noise she is surprised to hear. They both freeze.

“Did I hurt you?” Fear has turned the yellow eyes to a burnt caramel. It is the first time she has held a tone of softness and without ice coated barbs.

“No, it surprised me. My ears are sensitive.”

“You didn’t know?”

“No, I know. I simply forgot, I think. People do not often touch me kindly,” Heat has warmed her neck and now her face, “Sorry. That was awkward of me.”

Now Willow has a new look that is shrouded but intense in whatever it is. She purses her lips and gives the shell of Clara’s red ear a tap with her thumb.

“Keep going Clara. You’re doing well.”

There is a throaty quality to the wisp of her voice when she speaks her name. It sounds musical when it is not granted harshly.

The next few times she feels Willow’s teeth, she is able to ignore it and remain quiet. Closing her eyes and setting her forehead on the woman’s tacky shoulder helps. She cannot recall the last time she was intimate with someone and the sensations, new and familiar, are a bit overwhelming. On the tail end of trying to keep quiet so as not to upset her partner.

Toward the point where time slips a bit, Willow curls into her and holds tight. She floats in that sensation more than the intensity of riding closer to climax. Clara cannot remember the last time she was hugged much less with abandon. Crushing and close, not worried about daggers or nasty words or Clara’s increasing need to be somewhere. She clings back just as tightly, feeling small and wanted for just a moment. When fingers slip into her hair and pet it flat to her scalp, she realizes the end came and passed in a way she almost did not notice. The bliss of being held without cruelty overcame her more than bodily pleasure.

Willow shakes beneath her, wet with sweat and breathing hard against her neck.

“Okay, off. Now.” Fingers prod at her shoulders and cool air rushes between them. She scrambles away as quickly as she can, stinging from the sensations that are bitten by frosty air. She catches Willow wiping away some of their combined release from her inner thighs on a blanket that is thrown toward the door. Then she rolls over and draws the rest over her body. From the shadows, the black footed cat comes back into the room to curl against her back overtop the cover.

There is a strange hollow feeling when she walks past her bed toward her work desk.

Her writing desk is an old thing made of wood from so long ago it has turned a black under the varnish. It sits beneath long rectangular windows of stained glass, moonlight creating rainbows on the stone floor. Prickling feelings race down her nape that are from the sudden cold after being held in such a warm embrace. And from eyes set on her. Beside her desk, there is a tall wardrobe that she hardly uses. Opening it now, she pushes aside clothes to find the lever in the back that opens into a hidden room beyond.

“Clara? What are you doing?”

“Changing.”

Inside is a small carved out room. Unlit as there are no windows and the candle is snuffed out for when she is not using it. This time she leaves it dark since she will not spend much time in it. Just feeling around for a crate that she brings into the main room with her.

The moment she steps out, she freezes. The bobcat is hunched in front of the wardrobe, lips pulled back over black gums and baring his long fangs. She holds his eyes, frozen in the pose of being bent over the crate.

“Willow?”

Rather than answer, the woman strides across the stone floor swaddled in blankets to toe the crate closer. A blanket slips down to expose one sun kissed shoulder as she pulls out a pair of men’s trousers and riding boots. A travel cloak and a peasant shirt.

Dark brows hunker in confusion over still dark eyes, cheeks rosy, “What is this?”

“My clothes. What is this?”

The big cat hisses, body jerking from the strength of the sound. One wide paw lifts slowly in a threat.

“You disappeared into a secret room. For all I know you came in here to grab a tool you’d need to bind me or kill me,” She flips over the hook tool used to pull the laces on the boots tight, “These aren’t sleep clothes.”

“I don’t have time to sleep. To be honest, I didn’t think you’d be ready to start the process toward conceiving so I’m running a bit late. Can you please call off your animal?”

Yellow eyes give her a placid, almost annoyed look, “His name is Verho.”

She holds out her hands, “There is no desire in my heart to hurt you. Not tonight nor throughout our marriage. I intend to be a kind wife albeit, in all honesty, probably an absent one. Though that will be to your liking. I will attempt to be attentive unless you find that as undesirable as my personality. I do not want you to be hurt. I swear it.”

“And if I don’t believe you?”

“That’s your prerogative. But this room is where I can be myself and so in it I can give you my total honesty. I will never hurt you,” She takes a risk to look away from the predator mere inches from her face so she can ensure Willow sees the truth in her eyes, “I will not lay a hand on you, begrudge you, undermine or belittle you. I will listen and I will care. This extends to making sure no one hurts you either, best I can. But, as I said, you’ll need to protect yourself. I have many enemies and this war is making me more. I’m not sure I will survive the full term of your pregnancy.”

“You are very certain about that.”

A dry, humorless chuckle is all Clara gives her.

Tense moments pass before Verho’s ears prick back up, the rumbling sound stops, and he plods away to lay on the bedding. She throws the boots by Clara’s feet and follows her familiar.

“Thank you.”

She slips under the blankets again, yellow eyes catching firelight and reflecting the way an animals does. Nothing is said but there is a violent distrust and that quivering lip that issues threat.

After dressing as quickly as she can, she is stopped by the hidden door that leads form the room. Both witch and familiar are watching her intently.

“Do not die tonight. It will look like I have done it and I’ll be annoyed for the way they’ll draw and quarter me.”

Clara cannot fault the cynicism nor the ice.

Deep in the lower city, out past the palace grounds, she slips into a warehouse used to slaughter and brine fish. The gathering is small but still larger than the last time she dressed as a man to spy on the group. Today they are boasting more rhetoric about witches and demons and allying with the hateful men past their walls. The ones who want to wash over the Kingdom of Flowers to uproot everything growing in their garden. She makes notes of the old faces and the new ones. They have not become a problem yet but their agitation is mounting and it is only a matter of time.

Before it ends she slips away to visit the local priest in the Pavilion of Suns. He is an old, haggard hedge witch in hiding who preaches gentleness and love. Hobbling along with an old cane made of gnarled wood, he walks beside her and tells her of his days blessings. His church of the heathen faith is the only one still standing in her country after the civil war. Namely because he is a man sitting square in her pocket. Through him and this church, they use it to smuggle in witches and lessor Spirits fleeing the war. While there, he takes her down a dark and winding step to visit with a small family who had just arrived by boat. They are leery of her, understandably, but take her promises that they are safe within her walls and the coin purse she gives them to hell start a life.

Just before sunrise, she runs across the rooftops to climb back into the window of the kitchens. Drifting through shadow and melting her way through rooms to get back. Willow surprises her simply for the newness of having her there. She is bundled under the blankets, shivering from the cold that comes from the stone floor. Stealthily, she toes around them both to add logs to the dying fire and drapes her thick winter cloak over her shaking lump.

The day will start soon. Her maids will be in to bathe and dress her. Just a few hours left. She uses them to sit in her uncomfortable desk chair and write letters until her wrist cramps.

Witches are spirits trapped or caught in the web of their mortal world. Creatures of immense power and mystery concealed in the fleshy forms of humanoid or beastly bodies. Whimsical some, malicious others. Xenophobia lead to a clash of immense bloodshed so mortals came to fear their fey counterparts, in the parts of the world where Spirits were not so prominent. For all of history, they have frolicked in the gardens of the Kingdom of Flowers and children were raised to respect and fear them. Proper respect and remembering history makes cohabitation easy. Not all men are vile so too not all Spirits are deadly tricksters. History is ruined when one person does not teach it. Trying to find information on witches post civil war is difficult. Her mother had many books burned, had village elders and shamans, sages, cast out of their country.

Once more she has to venture into the town proper, searching through old shops run by even older folk. Eventually there is a ring of papers bunched together that talk of taboos with Spirits. Of the many children witches sired—half Spirits or lessor Spirits depending on the translation—and of the many cousins to Spirits. Of the traditions and curses and cruel ways they can be found and bound.

It surprises her, when she starts looking for information, to discover elves are considered lessor Spirits. That part of the reason she has never slept well and always woken feeling sick, sometimes to the point of vomiting, had been the iron nails used to bind her bed frame. Most of her search had begun with finding a bed her wife could sleep in and finding why she had been angry that first night. She finds more than she expected in the end.

The new bed frame she orders to he made is just wood and wicker. Made of joints that undergo swelling from heat and water so they can fit together without glue and hold like a weld.

Sleeping in it, just a few times, makes her feel like she has gone to sleep for the first time. She hopes it gives Willow more comfort than the floor.

One such morning she is woken by the shift on the mattress. Her eyes blink open to drink in the shadow beside her on the bed, holding a pillow between hateful hands. Yellow eyes piercing the gloom.

“You’re awake.”

Clara considers the pillow in her wife’s hands and the blank look on her wife’s face. It is disappointing but she expected this might happen.

“I would have expected a knife. This seems too gentle for your taste.”

“I considered biting your throat and just squeezing down until you stopped screaming and I felt your neck snap. But I didn’t want to sour my tongue with your vile blood. So here we are.”

“So here we are.”

Willow shifts forward and she is surprised find a scrap of fight in her rise to the occasion. She forces it down because no matter what, this woman is her wife. She took an oath that swore loyalty and honesty and protection above all else. No matter the occasion, she will not harm her wife. Whether her wife chooses to keep her oath is no matter to her.

Maybe this is why Willow hesitates. The pillow hovers near Clara’s face. In the dark, Willow is an outline that cuts against the lighter dark of the room. All she can make of her wife are two pin pricks of yellow glow where some moonlight bounces off the iris.

The pillow is lowered to rest upon her chest. One tanned hand pats the pillow and smoothes out wrinkles to make a point.

“I’m going to kill you,” She says softly, lulling like rain upon the canvas roof of a wagon, “but not like this. It is too easy. You do not deserve to die easy.”

They stare at one another in this moment. Clara watches the yellow disappear in slow blinks when she rolls over and yawns.

“Alright. Close the door on your way out, please. The traffic in the hallway keeps me up if the door is open.”

In the meeting she has with her rouge agents that day, Willow glares at her from the seat she has chosen. Never once does it waver in the hatred nor does it shift or shy away. Xad watches the interactions with an amused curl to his devilish grin. When Clara sighs, his tail flicks and he starts to snicker.

“She loathes you,” He simpers once they have concluded business and her wife had turned to a bird that flew through an open window, “What did you do to her?”

“Exist. Isn’t that a heinous enough crime?”

“I suppose for her. Do you know what they call her? Over there?”

Clara tries to walk away because she does not have time for demon games. The kind that are meant to twist little knives into sensitive places a person will not recognize hurts until days later, when it has festered.

A demon is not one to be denied their games however. Every new hall or room she escapes to, Xad is waiting in an umbral shroud of hazy mist.

Kicking his feet from the flat top of a wardrobe, “Do you?”

Leaned against a stone statue, “Do you know?”

Sitting cross legged in the middle of the war table, tail curled around himself, “Do you?”

Tapping her on the arm until her guards take note of her annoyance and levy polearms upon his small form. She turns toward him, arms folded behind her back, to glare down at his face that is cracked by a wide smile.

“What do they call her?”

Her curls his thumb and finger around his lower jaw, forked tongue rolling over his lower lip between the needle points of his teeth, “They call her Ulswri Kyell. It means Bloody Smile. Do you know why?”

She remains patient but her annoyance is mounting, “Why?”

There is the little knife, she thinks when he grows into his mischief and his eyes flash.

“Because when she killed your baby brother, she cut his lower jaw off and kept the bone. Do you know why?”

She unbuttons the clasp on her gloves and works them each off finger by finger. Calmly she folds them into the thick belt cinching the waist of her jacket and gestures at the demon to go on. To free her from this miniature hell he is delighting in.

“Because your little brother found her coven and took her wee bitty grand mammy and dragged her into the city square. He rang the dinner bell for all his little birdies to come see supper served,” Distantly she can hear hounds baying and chains rattling mixing with screams of anguish and bones crunching and laughter and begging, “He fed her to his dogs. Right there. Let everyone watch them rip her to pieces.”

Clara firms her posture, mangling the ring on her finger baring the Royal crest, “I see.”

“Granny, granny fell on her fanny and that great big man he, well he…” Xad tapers off intentionally, devolving into a fit of awful giggles.

Clara gives him a tight lipped purse of her mouth and shakes her head.

Xad traces his fingertip around his lower jaw, “I bet she wants to make a Bloody Smile out of you too.”

“I imagine she does. I only hope she waits for a time that works with my schedule,” She gives him a pointed look that makes him laugh unkindly, “Would you excuse me?”

Xad hops into the places she sets her boots when she strides away, following her like a frog skipping over a lake via lily pads.

“Clara, Clara. Haven’t you any fear of dying?”

“No. Should I?”

The tail lashes against the back of her calf when she opens a door and decides it hold it open for him since he is following her. It leaves behind a slimy feeling that crawls across her skin like a wet splat of decaying flesh riddled with maggots. The image slips under her skin and invades her mind rapidly. When she blinks, assaulted by it, Xad giggles. Both of her guards shift awkwardly when she slaps the young demon upside the head with the book in her hand.

“Oh you don’t fear death,” He says rubbing his head and licking his lips, eyes cold and steady upon her, “Is that common among mortals?”

“I do not think so. But most mortals are not hunted by it the way I am. There are whole collections out there battling to be the one to kill me. What does it bother me?”

“Clara, Clara. You’re fun.”

She tucks her book under her arm and folds her hands in front of her, “Xad, if you keep following me around I am going to put you to work. Do you want to work?”

He promptly hisses at her, flicks his tail, and dashes off.

“I thought not.”

The next rebel meeting she attends reveals what she already knew but cannot prove. They know of her marriage to Willow which had been confined entirely to the castle. Someone inside her walls has been feeding their group information and she knows who. She just cannot prove it. Yet.

Since the news is out, she decides to test another theory by hosting an official ceremony. Willow is not pleased with the fanfare and detests that she will show her face to be the one tied to Clara Clearblade. When they ride through the streets, waving through the windows of the wagon, she grits her teeth the entire time. Twice she drives the heel of her shoe down onto the toe of Clara’s boot for no reason she can discern.

“Would you—“

“Do not speak to me.”

When she sits back in the seat, dejected and annoyed, she notices the piece her wife wears around her neck. A lower mandible with string looped through holes drilled into the hinges near the end. Red string is looped around the bone, woven between teeth to keep them in the sockets. Between the thread she can see etched runes that radiate a feeling. One that makes her feel sick to look at. She suspects whatever the working is, her brother’s soul is not resting peacefully. Wearing it to their very public wedding is a talking point that bothers her. Not because of what Willow is trying to say but because of the fires it is going to start in court that she will have to put out. More time she does not have to waste and more energy than she has to spare. Though it will perhaps help alienate some of her mother’s loyalists hidden in her court.

When they have finished the parade and come to the place where they will exchange one carriage for another, Clara draws into her focused area. The quiet place she goes when she needs to think sixteen steps ahead.

“No.” She holds up her hand to Willow when her wife attempts to get into the second carriage.

“No?” Sharp teeth show from her wife who begins to growl, quietly but decidedly inhumanly.

“No.” If she is right, it is imperative that Willow does not go with her.

“So I am to walk to our neighbor’s home? Would you do that to your wife, noble Clara?” Such vitriol makes the attendants encircling them flinch and turn their eyes away. Malice drips from Willow’s exposed fangs.

“No. You may take a horse and a retinue of guards.”

“Are you unwilling to be seen with your witching wife, your majesty? And be careful of your answer,” Willow taps one fingernail against the breastplate of Clara’s ceremonial armor, beneath the moon cresting over an ancient apple tree, “My temper is flaring.”

Instead of answering, she draws away and flags one of the boys standing nearby, “Saddle a horse for the queen consort. Take the trail around to the Duke’s house estate. You should arrive before me, if all goes well.”

He bows low then hurries off to complete his task. She turns to the guards accompanies them, pointing to five in turn and snapping for order. They form an immediate line in front of her, saluting by tapping the shields and bowing their heads.

“You five will accompany the Queen consort. If you are attacked en route, your obligation is to die in her place. If I should return and any of you live and my wife does not, I will kill you myself. Understood?”

Again, they salute without question or complaint. A few swell with blatant pride for being given this order doubled as a threat.

She flicks her cape aside before turning so she does not step on it. Wind makes the fur collar sway, tickling her cheek.

“Clara.”

She pauses by the carriage with a foot on the step, looking back at her wife, “Travel safely. I will hopefully meet you there.”

Metal sings from the blades being drawn and arrows being knocked when the Queen consort grabs the queen by her armor and throws her into the side of the carriage. Willow keeps ahold of her by the armor and comes in close enough they share breath.

“You are trying to kill me.”

“You are overreacting to an assumption of your own making,” She grips her wife’s wrists and sinks into her own violence, feels it settle over her like a warm blanket, “Get your hands off me.”

“I will kill you.” It is not the empty promise of a woman in an unhappy situation. They are both aware that she means it and can keep this promise easily.

Clara leans closer and lowers her voice so it comes out hoarse and thick and cold, “Then stop saying words and f*cking do it.”

In the brief second that Willow is shrouded, she uses the window to shake her hands off and turn away.

As she is climbing into the carriage, she says more evenly, “Travel safely, wife.”

The carriage door slams shut behind her. She sinks into the seat with grit teeth, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles. Part of her waits for the door to be ripped open, for her wife to crawl in wearing her true Spirit form and drag her out to kill her like a dog in the street. Her muscles remain tense waiting for it.

It does not happen.

For the majority of the ride along the highway to go attend a celebration event being hosted by Duke Groth nothing happens. Scenery flashes pasts in colors of green and yellow and brown and the only sound is that of wheels on road. She begins to worry that she was wrong.

Until arrows pierce the cabin of the carriage, horses scream in pain, and men begin to shout. She does not fight much. Not yet. Rustic men with large, callused hands drag her out of the carriage to throw her into the mud. Her crown is taken from her head in such a way hair is torn out with it.

“We got the bitch!” One crows triumphantly.

“Hold on, where is the witch!? He said the witch would be here! The whole point was getting them both!”

Ah. Just as I thought.

“sh*t,” One begins to pace near Clara’s prone form, “What do we do?”

“My Lady,” Commander Alder reaches with his good arm to curl his cape around her and pull her against his ribs, “I have you.”

“Thank you Commander.”

He curls around her, forming a protective barrier with his body. Without the held she can see the way his face hardens and, gore streaked, he firms his resolve. He will die here to protect her.

“He set us up!”

“What are you on about!? He—“

“He said they would both be here! He promised a pardon if we killed them both! He said the Sun Queen would rule again! He said a bunch of bullsh*t we wanted to hear. f*ck this was a ploy to get the Rebels to come out of hiding!”

This is perfect. If she can signal to Commander Alder discretely, they can take the men captive and interrogate them. They will confirm her suspicions that her uncle is the ring leader and she can finally put her uncle down. This will propel her timeline forward which works splendidly because Willow is far more hostile than she was expecting. Getting her uncle off the board will set the pieces in play however. After Willow kills her, everything will be smooth enough that their daughter should be able to take the crown in an easy transition.

Except the men she sent with her wife come marching from the brush and unload a volley of arrows.

“Wait!”

They do not hear her. Each come in nobly to save their queen from apparent danger and cut down the men swiftly. Not a single one is left alive.

When Willow comes in behind them, she surveys the scene with lifted eyebrows.

Clara glares even as Commander Alder lifts her to her feet.

“You ruined everything.”

Willow snaps her teeth instantly because of the tone, “I was coming to thwart whatever plan you laid for me. I was not expecting…this. What is this?”

“Would-be assassins, damn you. And now you’ve gone and had them killed and all their assets have gone to the dirt with them.”

Clara tries to storm off in a huff but her leg is injured, without her realization, and she falls back to the ground.

Willow kicks dirt toward her fast as she walks past and laughs, “Moron.”

Sometimes Willow follows her around, with enough distance between them that it is obvious, just to watch her. Regardless of the situation the queen is in, Willow is her shadow that watches. In meetings, she perches on a chair in a corner or in an open window. Upsetting a number of counselors that are not used to the Queen consort nor the Queen’s attitude when around her new wife. During a bath when Clara sits in the steam and combs her hair with a wooden toothed piece to even dispense soap. Attendants swivel aorund the brooding figure she cuts upon a stool, glancing awkward between the queen who ignores her wife and the Queen consort that just stares. During travels to the providences owned by landlords she likes to speak with personally even though it is not something her advisors particularly like. As well as smaller lords and ladies who bow and curtsy to her first then to Willow when they realize who she is. During the long suffering hours that ruin her back to sit and write letter after letter. When she goes to visit her hunting dogs that bark and stomp happy circled around her. She crouches down to pet their heads and muzzles and feed them treats, smiling and laughing at their antics. Willow watches in tense silence for most of these times. Except this one. She comes to crouch beside Clara to speak softly to the dogs in the language of the Spirit. Each bark and prance around, tails wagging merrily.

After a few days of this, Willow vanishes.

Having a wife is no different than having a house cat. All day long she either eats or sleeps or vanishes without a trace for hours on end. Evidence shows that she sleeps in their room, in the new bed, and moves around the castle but Clara never seems to catch her. There are reports that she has been caught in the library, napping on a pile of books, or seen walking in the glades outside the palace walls. Sometimes she hears eery stories of a hulking wolf that prowls the grounds at night, followed closely by a smaller bobcat. Only twice she comes back to their room to change or write letters and Willow is curled up in the bed sleeping.

They do not take meals together. It is not too different from her day to days prior to having a wife. Lonely and busy, feeling the weight of compounded exhaustion and a sense of underlying dread about time and how much is left. More reports pour in of former allies abandoning them to join their enemies on the promise of a quarry or a plot of land rich with ore and minerals in the Kingdom of Flowers.

They do not take walks together. Do not share spaces just to be. They do not write letters or speak casually or have any secrets. When she has to leave for trips, be it a few days or a few weeks, she does not tell Willow. She is not sure how she would. Neither does she invite Willow to join her only private moments of worship. When she goes into the glades and the deeper wood to hunt and leave her kill on the alters of Spirits.

In many ways, having a wife is exactly the same as not having one at all.

That is why, in the second month of their marriage, she is surprised to walk into her apartments and find Willow waiting for her. A long thin blade is being twisted between her spindly fingers. The kind used to break wax seals on envelopes. It had been her great grandfather’s wedding gift to her great grandmother. Many of Clara’s personal missives are spread across the desk, left open after Willow had read and discarded them. A few have seals broken that she did not do herself. She wonders if Willow did it to test the length of her patience or if it is because she simply has no concept of personal space.

“When you said you would be an absent wife, I should not have been flippant about that. You meant it.”

A streak of confusion miles wide run a river through her. She pauses in the middle of the room, absorbing that and wondering over it to find a reason and an answer. There is an implication that Willow would like her to preform differently. That knocks the legs from beneath her in the mental jog she had been doing, running years ahead in the path they started months ago. Already she had been planning to survive at least a year, maybe two by some grace, and welcome their child into the castle. She had been prepared for this continued quiet between them, for Willow to hide away with their infant in whatever dens she goes to. To only see them once every few months if her schedule allowed it. In her imagination, Willow preferred it this way using the context of all their previous interactions. She does not like Clara. Why would it bother her that Clara is never around?

As rare as the situation is, she must have miscalculated and missed an important detail somewhere.

“Have I done something to offend you?”

Willow turns the letter opener over in her palm to drive the point down through a stack of letters. Then she folds her arms over her chest, making the many necklaces she wears sing, and leans back in the chair to glare at the knife.

“I am breathtaking. Outlandishly beautiful. You are very lucky to have me as your wife.”

Now Clara is drowning in the river, sinking below the dark surface and wondering how the river even came into being. Slowly she steps closer to the desk where her fuming wife is a roiling dark cloud. She snaps her head over to glare the moment she moves and takes that as a silent word to stay put.

“You are beautiful, it was wrong of me not to say so before now. A woman such as you deserves praise. Forgive me.”

This makes Willow roll her eyes and flick the knife so it falls over, “Do not placate me, Clara Clearblade.”

Never before has anyone stumped her thusly. She turns to find her armchair and sinks into it, staring at the flames as if they hold answers.

This woman is confusing. Every expression and spoken word had signified that she wanted nothing to do with Clara. In one of those rare occasions that she had found Willow sleeping in their bed, she had paused to pull the blankets smut around her. Willow had woken up to hiss at her, like a wild animal, and told her to get out of the room. Being busy is something she has always been but there were pockets she could have carved away for Willow. She simply chose not to because she thought her wife wanted as little to do with as possible.

What had she missed?

“I thought this would be easy,” Willow sounds glum, annoyed, and kicks at the leg of the desk, “I have former lovers who are wrecked by the thought of me. Who are poisoned by memories of my touch and taste and smell. Sometimes their fantasies are so strong, I am still poked and prodded by them. But you do not think about me. You haven’t looked at me, haven’t wondered or wanted. You pushed me from your mind in the same night you held me and that’s infuriating. Because I thought this would be easy. You should be obsessed with me.”

Horror makes her muscles tense and shake. Is this what is happening? Willow feels neglected. How could she have missed it?

When they had been together, she had implemented the tools of her trade honed by years of use. Going quiet and blank, so empty not even dark could be found in her quiet place. Then she had gotten up and left without another word. Not having given a word of kindness or spoken of what they did, no reassessments or praise. Neither had she mentioned it in the proceeding months they had been wed.

What a blundering fool she had been. In her ideas of not bothering someone who hates her already, she had treated her wife like a transaction.

She drops her face into her hand and sighs.

“I apologize Willow. I should have been more attentive and—“

“Stop. This is not about your performance or my needs as a woman. This is about your appalling lack of knowledge when it comes to magic.”

Slowly she lifts her head and turns to stare, “What?”

“We are two women attempting to conceive with magic! Did you think this was going to be as simple as the biological predisposition of just f*cking your way into parenthood?”

She cringes from the crude wording. With a hot neck, she gestures to the part of the floor they consummated their marriage, “Is that not what we did?”

A noise of utter frustration pushes between Willow’s clenched teeth, “No, it is not. And that is my point! Spirits, what do they teach children these days?”

“If what we did could not get your pregnant, then why did we do it?”

“You’re so ignorant,” Willow heaves herself from the chair that creaks under her and comes to sit on the floor by her feet, glaring with vivid amber eyes, “What do you know? I know you know of Spirits. I see you praying at the alters often.”

She leans forward, elbows braced on her knees, “And how do you know that?”

“I follow you.”

She narrows her eyes, “How often do you do that?”

“As often as I feel like. Now, answer the question.”

She leans back in her chair and shifts attention back to the fire, annoyed now, “Spirits are everything. The world we live in. There is a Spirit in all things. In the woods, in the water, in the mortar of a home, in the apple and cheese you have for lunch. There is only a few differences between the Greater and Lessor in terms of power and how they present. Magic comes from them and can only be wielded by Greater Spirits which is why you can use magic and I cannot.”

There is a gleam in Willow’s eye that for once is not malice or apathy or sly danger laying in wait. Talking of magic and Sprits lifts joy into the swirl of color that makes them gleam. Her wife is ineffable but this one small thing is the first time she actually sees it outside of the purely physical.

Willow taps the outside of her knee, “Go on.”

“Witches are the children of the Greatest of Sprits. More material than most Spirits like to present but just as powerful as Great or Ancient ones. They can shape reality. They can change their form, wear different faces, slip in and out of reality. They can see the things in the world like Spirits that Lessor Spirits or mortal men cannot. Ah,” When disappointment fills her wife, she finds to bizarre that her heart gives a sad twinge, “That’s all I really know.”

“I find it strange that the birthplace of witches does not have a formal education.”

She shrugs, chest hollow, “My mother burned what we had. Killed teachers and banished the rest. I was forbidden to—from a lot of things.”

“Magic is connections and bonds. These are not the same thing even if they sound like it and I am simplifying it in a way that you can grasp. What we are trying to do is make a Spirit between us. I am part of both worlds, the mortal and mystical. I can tread that line because I see everything. You cannot. So, magic. The first night you said something about bones and such and you were not wholly wrong. That is the simplest way of creating a connection and bond for making a child between two people who otherwise could not. But not for us.”

Clara slips from her own chair to sit on the floor beside Willow. There is a slight flinch from expecting pain comes when Verho nudges his wide head against her knee. Very pointedly, she tucks her hands beneath her thighs so she cannot even accidentally touch him.

“Why not?”

“Because love is a powerful tool for magic. It can be both a connection and a bond. We are not in love and never will be. I hate you. I hate your f*cking blank face and your brown eyes that remind me of your ugly mother and your dead little brother. I hate your entire family. Once upon a time, I was going to end your bloodline but now here I am continuing it. Some twist of poetic irony,” Willow draws her knees to her chest, glaring over the top of them at Clara’s blank face that she hates, “That particular spell uses love for the bond and connection with some help from a few physical items. I decided on a simpler one. Sex. A physical connection that would serve and I had hoped the bond could be infatuation. That laying with me would make you mad for me and you’d think of me constantly. But evidently you either don’t find me attractive, did not enjoy our sex, or you are as empty inside as you appear outside. This is all to say I am not pregnant and our night did not bear fruit. So, I am infuriated to say, we will have to try again and I will have to find some way to drive you crazy.”

“I see,” This troubles Clara for all the new variables and the way this could fracture her plan entirely or drag out the time frame which she cannot afford, “This is problematic.”

“You don’t think I can do it?”

Willow huffs angrily when she blows out a quiet whisper of a laugh.

“I do not doubt you. I am just perhaps the worst person you could have needed for this particular spell mixture,” She waves away the curious look, “Does that mean the anatomy shift was not particularly needed? If it was just sex, I would have been better suited doing it the way I have practice with.”

There is a look that means Willow has made a note of something that has value to her.

“It was the physical connect. You finishing inside me—“

Clara winces, “Must you?”

“—but that is not enough for us. That is what I am saying. Why I’m telling you it didn’t work. We aren’t a mortal man and woman. The bond was missing because you,” Willow huffs and rolls her eyes with blatant irritation, “Do not recognize what you have.”

When she tries to take Willow’s hand, her wife rips it away and slaps her quick as a snake strike. The sting will be remembered the next time she tries to be galant.

“It is not that. I just have always struggled,” She pauses, realizing she is sharing herself in a way she does not do with people anymore and sighs, “I need a bond too. One that supersedes pedestrian lust. I apologize.”

Willow is still glaring at her for trying to take her hand but she softens a little, just around the mouth.

“You need to know someone to want someone?”

“That’s about right.”

“Hm. That is problematic. Stop it,” This time she snaps her teeth at the air and a low, vibrating noise comes from her chest, “I hate when you laugh.”

“Is that everyone or just me?”

“I hate you.”

“Ah,” She rises from the floor, aching from having sat upon cold stone for so long and stretches her tired muscles, “You really do. You love to tell me how much you hate me, at any available opportunity.”

Eyes follow her as she goes to her writing desk and lowers herself into the chair. All the joints in her fingers and wrists already ache from the writing she will spend most of the night doing. Copy after copy of the same three letters that need to be sent to allies and burgeoning allies and hopefully securing old allies on the verge of tipping toward the Sun. Tea will need to be sent up. Dark, bitter stuff that will tickle her tongue and keep her awake.

“Do you ever sleep?”

She startles, having already forgotten Willow was in the room. After their talk, she expected the woman to slink off the way she usually does but no. She is still sat upon the rug in front of the fire, watching her.

Awkwardness makes her stiff, “I try. I don’t have much time for it. Will I keep you awake?”

“No.”

“Alright then,” She rolls her neck and flexes her fingers after turning back and begins to write, “Have lovely dreams, Willow.”

There is soft sounds of feet on carpet and stone. Of cloth rustling and skin sliding agaisnt the satin sheets.

“What of our conceiving issue?”

“We can try again soon. I will be sure to keep you in mind afterward, if not in the sexual way you planned. I’ll make a small shrine for you,” Ink wells agaisnt the nub of her quill, dripping back into the pot, “Do you have preferences for sacrifice?”

A long pause then a string of words she cannot understand. From the corner of her eye she sees Willow draw down the blankets to stare at her.

“I am a timberland Spirit.”

Now she pauses to smile secretly to herself. Those had always been her favorite.

“Very well.”

“Goodnight Clara.”

Once every week they attempt to hold a meeting of the monthly crew Clara brought together. Each come with reports and complaints aplenty, talking of their exploits and endeavors to accomplish the goal she gave them. Normally Clara is very present for these meetings that are important to her. For all the work she did to set this into motion, it is so important that she keeps every detailed filed. If she cannot check up with them to make sure the plans are moving forward, even if it is inch by inch, she becomes anxious for days. Anxiousness leads to irritation and that makes for a glowering queen that prowls the halls muttering and glaring.

Today she cannot focus. For days she has not felt herself. Unable to eat much, burning alive one second then freezing the next. When she woke this morning, it had been with a horrendous fever that the physician had warned her about. His official attempt at telling her to remain in bed had earned him one of Clara rare bursts of anger.

Being sick irritates her. She does not have the luxury of wasting so much time on being sweaty and vomiting and being exhausted. So she is already in a horrible mood when the meeting begins. Try as she might, she does not have as many questions as she normally would nor the energy to offer polite conversation. Thrillbrand, who she has devloped something akin to a friendship with, continues trying to engage with her about a water Spirit living in his tea pot. His briefest look of disappointment upsets her more because she does want to discuss the tea Spirit and she wants to enjoy his company. Unfortunately most of her energy is going toward forcing herself to keep her tea down.

Willow is hooded again. Sitting in her chair toward the darker corner of the room, worrying a set of knuckle bones in her hands. They make a dry scraping sound every rotation they make around each other. Just her chin and a few purple braids show from beneath the deep hood drawn over her head. Despite being unable to see the eyes, she feels her wife staring.

“It will not happen,” Uncle Ruger sets his fist upon the table beside a pile of papers that the Stone Son has brought for everyone to read, “Do you’ve any idea how expensive that would be?”

“Wars are expensive. Do you want to win or not? Is this not what I’m here for?”

Eyes turn upon Clara to await for her response. In the situations where arguments arise, all decisions fall to her cool head to pick apart and calmly squash. Her head dips down to her chest then jolts back up. A bead of sweat rolls down the back of her neck to soak into the fine material of her dress.

“Clara?” Uncle Ruger leans over to give her look from beneath the bushes of his eyebrows.

“Is that not your Queen?” Willow’s voice is the slither of a snake over hot coals. It reminds everyone of her shadowed presence that has been silent for the majority of the meeting.

Uncle Ruger glares at the shape of her wife lonely in her corner. When he looks back at Clara, his teeth grits around the words, “Your majesty, are you well?”

She cannot stop herself from glaring at him, “It is inappropriate that you would ask me that, Uncle. Perhaps stay focused on the task at hand instead of me. Perhaps show yourself to be capable of something other than arguing with my allies without needing to rely on me solving all the problems for you.”

“Oh, yes,” Xad giggles, kicking his feet from the chair and leaning his elbows on the table, “You are being fun today, Clara.”

Willow hisses at the demon boy which makes his eyes flash and a little pout form. He takes his elbows off the table to flop back in his chair.

“The witch isn’t being fun.”

“Shall we take a break?” Offers the more cheery Umakya.

Clara waves her hand to approve but does not get up from her chair. Dizziness is consuming her head and nausea is chewing at her belly. The Stone Son offers an arm to Xad who licks his black gums and cackles before taking it. Jehez makes gagging sounds all the way to the tea room where food has been set out for them. Thrillbrand hangs his head to whisper against his wife’s ear something that she nods in agreeably too. They swerve away from the sitting room to head in the opposite direction.

Uncle Ruger leans a hand on the table, thin lips hidden behind his fluffy mustache, “Clara, we must speak about the way you just addressed me. What has gotten into you?”

“I am not in the mood for a fight today.”

“You cannot speak to me like I am your lessor, Clara. It sets a poor precedent.”

Without a sound, Willow slinks from her corner to appear by the other side of Clara’s chair. Neither of the Clearblades heard her move nor noticed that she had not left with the others. Instantly her uncle changes his posture and his facial expression.

“You are her lessor, lest I am mistaken?”

“Willow—“

Being sick and unhappy makes her sharp and impatient with her uncle’s usual audacity.

“Show her the proper respect she deserves as my wife, Uncle.”

He works his jaw side to side and says again, “My Lady, can I help you?”

Willow curls her hand around the back of Clara’s chair and gives her uncle a smile that is not friendly in the least. One of her thinner braids brushes Clara’s ear. It smells like honey and wildflowers baking in the sun which oddly settles her stomach for all of a second.

“It seemed like we were having a family discussion,” Willow’s teeth shine, smile widening the more unhappy and uncomfortable her uncle visibly grows, “And I’m family so I should be present. Right, Uncle?”

“You—“

“If something oily and cold slips out next, your ears will be in danger.” She hisses. Willow hums an interested sound behind her.

Uncle Ruger throws his arms up, “So now you two get along?”

“I did not know he snipped at you like this when you two are alone.” Willow ignores him completely to address her. If she did not feel so poorly, she might find herself surprised to hear the tone so jovial. Almost no hatefulness at all. One of Willow’s fingers brushes the back of her shoulder.

Clara is tired. She is alone with her wife and her uncle who are her only family now. Family that hates for her the same and for different reasons at the same time. Normally she is proper and careful about the way she presents herself in the way she speaks and moves through her day. Today, here in this room with her family, she does not bother.

“He’s always been like this. When I was little, he whipped me over the knuckles if I spoke out of turn. Mother didn’t care much.”

Something dark passes over her wife’s face. A shadow that makes the natural contours of her face seem distinctly inhuman. A deep, dissatisfied clicking starts from her diaphragm.

Slowly Willow leans down, eyes flat and nearly glowing, “Is it customary for your family to discipline children this way?”

Clara shrugs and gestures to her uncle carelessly. His face has gone red from holding his breath.

“Clara, I was training you. Do not give the outsider an improper perception of the royal house Clearblade. And you were a troublesome child.”

“If you say so, uncle.”

Her wife makes a sound that draws Clara’s heavy head up.

“What is it?”

“Do you intend to do this to our child?” There is a darkness in the voice that conceals a violence that will savage this castle.

Clara chuckles in the face of it, “No. Even if our child is troublesome like I was, I would not subject her to my youth. Because of certain events and my behavior, it was decided that I would be easier to raise as if I were an emotionless soldier rather than a girl and a future queen. I was generally disliked or overlooked by my family after a certain age. They needed to prepare me quickly and I was unruly due to many things. My mother wanted me to cut ties with the old faith, my father wanted to strengthen them. I became a pawn for their arguments. And my uncle stepped in to groom me for the throne so that is why he expects an inordinate amount of respect from me. He believes I am only the queen now because of him and because he will always see himself above me no matter what.”

“Clara,” He ripples with anger, fists clenched at his sides, “That is out of order. Do not lie to this woman. She is ignorant to the ways of the castle and will believe you.”

“It is out of order, I will agree. But it’s true.”

“What is wrong with you!? Have you lost your senses?”

Willow hums, smile flashing again, “These family discussions are amusing.”

“Yes, certainly,” She feels a wave of nausea roll over her again, “Why don’t you two go have lunch with the others? I’ll finish some things and work on improving my poor mood, shall I Uncle?”

He mutters a few things, glares at the pair of them, and storms out. Her ears listen for the feet hitting stone and the door swinging shut. Only the sound of her breathing and the fire chewing on logs is left in the room. She leans back in her chair with a sigh, squeezing her eyes shut to combat the dizziness and the urge to purge.

A hand just brushes her forehead, for only a second, before she jolts from surprise.

Clara blinks open her eyes to stare at her wife who evidently never left. Willow surveys the knife that Clara produced from her wrist pocket with interest.

“I thought—“

“Lean back and hold still.” This time Willow lays her palm over Clara’s forehead and leaves it there for a moment. She clicks her tongue against her sharp teeth.

“You’re on fire. Why did you not say you were sick?”

“I did not think it would be an issue.”

“You look atrocious. I don’t know if you are aware but you’re hiding it very poorly.”

She watches Willow take Clara’s half-finished tea and give it a sniff. Even more horrifying, she dips a finger into the amber liquid and licks the collection from her skin.

“Do you suppose I’ve insulted any of our allies?”

“No but I am not as adept in the gameplay of court life. Time will tell. I’m surprised your physician let you out of bed.”

“He didn’t. He recommended I not exert myself beyond sleeping all day. I just chose to ignore that.”

“Hm. Well, come on. You’re going to bed.”

Clara blinks again, surprised at the firm tone but the lightness in her posture.

“I’m fine, Willow.”

“You aren’t. You’re very ill.”

“Our meeting—“

“Is going poorly. You may not recognize how much they require your levelheadedness and congeniality to keep things moving forward. All they have done is argue and whinge and moan and you’ve barely noticed. Because you’ve barely been sitting up in your chair, staying awake. I could practically hear you sweating. I can certainly smell it and it is too sweet. Come, we will reschedule.”

Whatever little arguments she tries to summon die out when the little bit of tea she drank tries to come back up. She plants a hand over the stomacher and clenches her eyes shut to fight the feeling off. Hands gather her frail body to lift her form the seat and start guiding her away. Willow is warm and strong against her side. She is also clever enough to make it seem like they are just walking close as a married couple might do. The bobcat trots along behind them.

In their bedroom, she is not sure how she is undressed and helped into a nightgown. There are a few faces that come and go and there is a bit of murmured conversations. Once she is under the blankets, Willow sends the help away and starts moving around the room to do something.

“Hello.” She whispers to the bobcat that jumps onto the bed to lay beside her. One massive paw lifts to pat at her stomach. He turns his head side to side before chomping down on a length of golden hair. A coarse tongue rolls along the side of her face into her hair.

“Thank you.” She mumbles with good humor. Satisfied, he curls into a ball against her hip with her hand trapped between his front legs.

When Willow returns to the bed, she pauses at the sight of her familiar beside her and the hand he has stolen as his own. Something is spoken in a langue she cannot parse that just makes the cat’s ears flick.

Rolling her eyes, Willow decides to ignore him and focus on Clara.

“Here, drink this.” A small flute of glass is held up to her lips. Inside is a semi clear liquid with something chunky and green floating inside.

“Willow, I appreciate the opportunistic nature but I already feel like death. Could you poison me at a later date?”

“I’m not going to kill you with poison. It’s too impersonal. This is medicine. Drink it.”

“It will come back up in a few moments. I haven’t been able to eat much in the last few days.”

“This will help with that,” Willow coos a soft word that makes her feel like she’s sitting in a field with a cool breeze blowing through her hair, “Drink.”

“Did you just cast a spell on me?”

“A little one.”

“You made this for me?”

“Just now, yes. It will not make you better, it will help with the symptoms so you can get a proper rest.”

Clara parts her lips for Willow to tip the glass slowly for her to swallow it. Oddly, the concoction tastes a bit sour and muddy. When it hits her stomach, she relaxes from how quickly it makes the roiling sick feeling disappear.

“Thank you.”

“It is not given freely.”

She blinks heavily, growing tired quickly now that her body is not being assaulted by unpleasant sensations.

“Of course not.”

“You can repay me by answering a few questions I have.”

Her eyes slide shut simply because the task of keeping them open is too great. Verho rumbles happily from a deep purr, head rested on the back of Clara’s trapped hand.

“Ask.”

“Do you secretly worship the Sun?”

“No. I hate the Heretics just as much as you do.”

“Do you worship the Sun King?”

“You just asked that.”

“Answer again.”

“No, I do not worship the faith of men. The Sun and its fire holds no interest over me. I hate it for the thin disguise it is. It inspires hatred and has led to countless innocent lives being taken. It disgusts me.”

Verho turns his head to nuzzle against her hip. Willow makes a series of unhappy sounds that make her open her eyes. She has sat herself on the end of the bed to lean against one of the posts. Displeasure rolls off her in waves.

Before she can ask why that displeased her wife, Willow asks another question, “Do you plan to take revenge on me for your brother?”

“You’ve asked me this before.”

“Just answer the question, Clara.”

“No. He deserved to die. How gruesome his death, I cannot say. It is not my business what a broken grieving heart does with revenge. Though I wonder at times if it hurts me to think of him. If I had saved him, perhaps he would have grown differently. Before his father made him into what he became. I at least know I feel a sense of duty toward what he was and that makes me feel guilt. Then I look at that and wonder what’s the point. What difference does it really make when he is the monster his father made and I am the empty thing my uncle made. He might not have been any better here.”

That is strange. Why did she admit that?

Willow’s shoulders lift to her ears.

“What is it?”

“You’re not answering the way I expected,” She licks her lips and looks around the room for an excuse to no longer hold eye contact with Clara, “Is the child and our marriage an elaborate ploy to get to my coven through me?”

Her brows furrow form confusion. She feels young for the expression, appearing like a child receiving complex lessons for the first time, but her wife is asking silly questions. She is too addled from sickness for this sort of inquiry.

“Get to them? In what way do you mean? The child was your idea, I just planned for you asking for it.”

“To kill them. Hurt them.”

Clara barks out a laugh. It is gravely from her sickness and it makes her head spin, stomach lurching back into the danger area of wanting to spill. Willow narrows her eyes.

“Have you not asked around? Do you know which side I took in the civil war? Do you not know that I am the one that started the civil war? Willow, my people worship Spirits. This is where Spirits and my forebears laid together to make the first witch. My people do not want to see your kind hurt. If their Queen killed or harmed something that we worship, I would not be welcome to lead them anymore.”

“And yet your mother married the fake god. She built churches for the Sun King. She killed many witches. She f*cked that Heretic and made that twisted little prince of evils.”

“Yes. And have you seen how well they went for her? Do you know what the people did to heretics when they found them? I’m sure you could find a few skeletons still hung from spikes. You can see the scars in the castle walls where they carved prayer marks that would curse the Rose Queen. There is only a small number of my people who sided with the former queen and most of them were put to gruesome deaths. Made offerings to appease the angered Spirits. It isn’t our way. I would never harm a Spirit, not intentionally. Not a witch. Whether you like it or not, you are one of my people and so are your coven. I want you all safe.”

Rapidly Willow goes from being at a relaxed position of control to looking cornered and afraid.

“That isn’t what you were supposed to say. You were supposed to prove you’re a monster just like the rest of your family.”

Clara licks her dry lips and the roof of her mouth. There is a sticky feeling and the taste of rain water that makes her wonder something.

“Did you put something in that medicine to make me incapable of lying?”

Willow glares at her and does not answer which is an answer in itself.

“Taking advantage of me while I’m sick,” She coughs up a dry laugh that scrapes against her tongue and her aching throat, “It is below the belt but resourceful, I’ll give you that. Did you make me sick to put me in this position? Because that would earn my respect. I would never trust you again and I’d hold a grudge, but I would be quite impressed.”

“No,” Willow folds her arms and leans back agaisnt the post, glaring at the far wall, “You’re sick because someone has been slipping small does of poison into your tea. I could smell—why are you laughing? Stop it.”

“The f*cking lemon,” Willow’s eyebrows shoot up form the curse and the feral smile that slides onto the Queen’s face, “I knew it. I hate lemon. It must cover the taste because all I can notice is the awful f*cking lemon. Ingenious.”

“Do not praise your would-be assassins. What is wrong with you?”

“A lot. It does not matter,” She sinks into her bed contentedly, tucking her nose beneath the thick blanket to soak up the warmth, “Things are going smoothly. Make sure the Stone Son gets the money he requires for troop reinforcements and supplies. We can afford it. If Umakya needs motivation to supply the coin, remind her that you are a Spirit and she will give it. She is extremely faithful.”

“I have no interest in playing a part in your meetings. I told you we would reschedule, you can tell them yourself when you are on your feet again.”

Clara feels sluggish and warm all over. She does not have the energy left for any of this.

“Am I not dying?”

“You could be. I’ve been feeding you charcoal for the last two days and a few other things. I was only waiting so long to treat you to see if your poisoner would show their hand. If you stay in bed the next three days and take the medicine I make you then you will be fine.”

“You—why would you do that?”

“I’m not pregnant yet.” She says in a strange tone with her eyes averted.

“Ah, right. Still needed for the title. Damn, I was almost relieved for how gentle this way would have been.”

“Why do you not care if you die?”

“Oh, I do care. I don’t want to die,” She wiggles her hand free to pet the bobcat between his big ears, “I have simply accepted it. Despite the vast way we are outnumbered by our enemies, we cannot be taken by siege. The Kingdom of flowers has three massive sets of walls that have miles between each. Behind the first wall is desert which is a terrain they know. Still, it would take an enormous amount of artillery to break that wall and then walk across. Then the second wall and behind that is ocean. Endless ocean that has islands in it and mountain ranges but mostly ocean. And then the last wall which is the largest and behind that is us. The forests and all of the Spirits who are furious and ready to defend their home. Then I suppose the walls around the castle. And there are noble houses with their own militaries that live in each ring they would have to get through before they got to us. The only way they take the Kingdom is if they break us from the inside. The Sun King almost had us when he married my mother but he, like everyone in my life, underestimated me. So now the only option is to kill me. Which is fine. All I have is my life, there is no one who will miss me when I am gone and nothing for me to leave behind. If all I have is this life, it doesn’t matter if I lose it so long as I keep tradition and make sure this kingdom does not fall. These walls have never been breached and I will make sure they remain that way from my grave. That is why my plans are mostly hands off for my part. I need you all to do your part and everything will be fine. Everything is already at a point where it would be fine if I died now. Granted, you need to be with child, but you are queen consort. If I fail there, at least I can trust you to be the queen regent until you remarry and produce an heir. Or perhaps if you are quick enough, you can convince you are pregnant with my child after I’ve passed and play it off as mine. Find someone with my particular shade of blond, so you can be convincing.”

Clara sighs, miserable without the motivation to hide it, “I just need to do my duty. Then I can rest.”

Willow’s eyes are sharp pricks of haunting light that do not move from her. The longer they are set upon her, the deeper the discomfort in her grows.

“Why are you staring at me like that?”

Willow shakes her head, “You are continuing to be not what I expected. That’s frustrating. You annoy me. I—“

“Hate me, yes. I know. Could you ring for someone to bring me water?”

“No.” Willow says, disappointing her then surprising her by getting up to collect the pitcher herself. She pours half a glass and comes to sit beside her with the offering. A hand cradles the back of her head to lift her to the water glass and keeps her steady while she drinks.

“Thank you.”

Willow’s fingers brush away the stray droplets crawling down her chin.

“Be more aware of your surroundings. Then perhaps you would not have to worry so much.”

Clara chuckles which earns her a fierce glare from her wife.

“Do not die until I’m with child.”

“As my lady commands. I shall ask all my enemies to just hold off a moment so I can impregnate my wife. I’m sure they will be amendable.”

“Stop f*cking laughing. I hate your f*cking laugh. You sound like a pig snorting.”

“Stop!”

Because the Queen in her glittering ensemble pauses so too does her entire party. When she spins to find the voice that she never expected to hear, the two attendants beside her bend at the waist to bow. They remain bent during the swift approach of the Queen consort. There is a flighty, furious expression on Willow’s face that convinces Clara this is the moment.

Finally her wife has come to kill her the way she promised.

“You two, f*ck off.” Willow flicks a dismissive hand at the two bowing to her. Immediately they snap up straight and vanish around the other side of the wagon.

“Hello wife. Can I help you with something?”

“You’re leaving.”

“Indeed. I have some business with Lord Byr in Bacclir, just inside the third wall. Would you like me to bring you back some things?”

“You did not tell me you were leaving.”

Clara tugs on her gloves to make them sit tight against her fingertips, “I wasn’t aware I was obligated to.”

Baffling her seems to be the goal. Rather than verbally abuse her yet again or chastise her for something, Willow throws herself at Clara. Instinctively her body coils inward to protect vital organs and she reaches for a knife. The hand is smashed against her ribs because Willow is not attacking her.

She is hugging her. The grip is angled oddly because Clara is tucked inward so that her chin is to chest to defend her neck and her arms are trapped against her ribs. Nothing intimate is passed through the hug. It has no feeling behind it except an ominous sense of urgency.

“Willow?”

Just as quickly as it happened, it ends. Willow draws away and shoves her back a step. The witch pivots on her heels to storm off without saying a single word.

Clara rubs her jugular for the phantom ache she can feel after expecting it to be cut open.

On one of her routine trips to break bread with an ally, an attempt is made on her life. The third attempt since her four month old marriage. This time they get close. The wheels are broken from her carriage and she is thrown far into hard earth. Dragged by her ankles into the brush and held under the water. A knife in her belt saves her. The letter opener that she did not remember bringing. There is a scuffling when she crawls away, between her and the surviving members trying to mount a horse.

When she rides away, clutching her bruised ribs, she does so alone. Bleeding down the flank of the beautiful mare and swallowing agaisnt the stinging in her throat. She wishes she could miss Commander Alder for his gentle goodness but her relief for surviving supersedes all else.

“Lay on your back this time. I will do the work.”

Clara feels confusion and a deep awkwardness but goes pliant regardless. Her back settles on the comfortable pile of pillows agaisnt their headboard and the soft mused blankets. Long purple hair tickles her skin when Willow bends to throw a leg over her hips and settle comfortably in the between.

When she jolts, almost gasping but swallowing it back, Willow slows. Attentive even when she does not like Clara because this is a place they agree to let grievances go. Where they are just people, skinned and raw, who need to be able to trust one another. Clara swore to never hurt Willow and she kept that promise so Willow keeps it too in reverse order. Because they fight and they lose their temper and they are cold for days on end but that stops here.

One hand touches her collarbone, not to hold her down but to provide a stabilizing contact. Concern is bright in yellow eyes.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No, not at all.”

“Oh, I understand. I’m going to…”

“I shall hold ever so still.”

Willow gets a strange look on her face. The muscles near her mouth twitch.

“Don’t smile at me like that. Just lay there.”

“Of course.”

“I said don’t smile like that.” She watches Willow blow out a breath and close her eyes tightly as she sinks the rest of the way down. They both expel a breath once their skin meets and heat springs up between them.

“I just…give me a moment.”

“Take your time. Your comfort is paramount to me.”

That same look from her wife where her emotions are behind a glass case but the glass is foggy so she can only see the outline of the truth.

“Thank you,” Willow gives her collarbone a soft tap, “Your comfort is important to me too.”

Fingertips touch the painting made of runny watercolor purples and yellows and blues on her ribs and throat. Lacerations made by knives on her cheeks and arms have been bandaged but still she touches those too. A furrow in her brow makes her seem intense. Angry which is a usual look for her but maybe not angry at her for once.

“What is this? What did you do?”

“Did no one tell you?”

Eyes like amber lit by a blazing fire alight upon her sorry, bruised face and glare. That is all the response she is awarded.

“A few assassins. They were not near the castle, so there no was threat to you. That was why I did not sleep in our room for a few weeks. I caught pneumonia from nearly being drowned and having a rib or some broken.”

She does not speak on it again. Her jaw tightens enough that she sees the muscles jump but nothing else comes up.

This time is a little different than the last. Not warmer in the heart nor settled in a blanket of passion. Willow is softer under the canopy of their bed and perhaps that is because of how broken her body is. Their fingers fold together, tight so the palms are sealed without air, and pressed into the mattress by her head. The tickle of hair on her face and chest taps on the marble of her mask until she cannot withstand it. Laugher comes with her twisting her head away only to get mouthfuls of it or long lashes across her face and throat.

Willow goes still overtop her, staring without blinking, to just watch. One of her hands releases Clara’s to tuck away some of the purple lengths. When they lock eyes again, she is flushed from the mixture of sensation and exertion. Trying to hold in laughter and wiggle away from the tickling without moving so much it makes their connection unpleasant for Willow.

“Sorry,” She’s smiling, content despite the situation because it feels nice to have a moment where she can laugh, “I know you hate that. It’s just that your hair is quite long, it was tickling me.”

She just nods, still staring and barely blinking.

“If you lean down, and you wouldn’t mind, I could tie it back for you.”

There, past the pursed lips and glower, a small melting. A gentle embrace that is not offered but seen. Slowly she leans closer and frees Clara’s other hand so she can reach around to gather her hair in one place. She is gentle, careful with the knots that she combs away with clawed fingers then binds it with a leather strap she keeps tied around her wrist.

Something shifts in the look Willow gives her that makes her smile, easy and free for a rare moment in stolen time, vanish.

“I tried to be gentle, I apologize.”

“You were,” She slips their fingers back together and glares at the union, “You said before that you had a preferred way of doing this. Should I draw conclusions that you have a lover?”

“Not anymore. Things ended between us some time ago. But she was a true love of mine.”

“Hm,” Slow enough that it is nearly unsettling, Willow tilts her head, “I see. That’s all I wanted to know. No, I lied. One other thing.”

“Ask.”

“Did this woman love you too?”

“I cannot ever speak with certainty but she told me so. Abundantly once.”

“Interesting.”

“Is it?” Clara is curious by the silencing of emotion in a sudden blankness more normal to her than Willow. Curious by the hums and the way she continues to stare with the intensity of someone looking for something.

“Quiet now,” She draws back in a blink, holding Clara’s hands in her own, and hums a note when she shifts her hips, “Close your eyes too. I don’t want you looking at me while we do this.”

Silently she tilts her head back in the pillow and closes her eyes.

This time is different. She is quiet to be considerate and keeps her eyes closed but Willow is not. Not entirely. The notes of song drifting from her tongue are exquisite. Soothing. Perhaps not taken down into the lusty place where sounds like those would normally go. For her, they are the choral note of the woman beneath the cold hateful shell she knows. Someone soft as a flower petal, sweeter than honeysuckle, strong as the vine when she has only known the rage of a swollen, vicious muddy river. Instead of just the wild and killing nature, there is something under it all that is beautiful. Truly beautiful the way Clara can see in people, not just the fleshy exterior.

Willow keens long and low, trembling all over. Bonelessly she drapes herself over Clara, panting against her shoulder.

“Stay in bed this time,” Willow does not look at her but keeps a firm grip on her hand when she tries to get up after they have finished, “Please.”

“I’ll fetch you a cloth and some clothes for us both first.”

That same intense furrow and displeased frown but she nods and mutters, “Thank you.”

Their skin brushes when she gets from the bed. Surprise sweeps over her from the fingers that brush the small of her back. She looks over her shoulder, unable to stay blank this time.

Willow is frowning, naked atop their messy blankets and glowing, but still unhappy. Her outstretched arm is reaching for Clara.

This time when she takes her wife’s hand, it is grasped tightly instead of slapped away.

“What is it?”

Brows stay furrowed. The body language is closed off, coiled inward to protect a vulnerability Willow is not willing to share.

“Hurry.”

“Hurry to….?”

“I don’t like the sticky feeling.”

Clara shifts her focus, just for a second, to the thighs then nods with a flush.

“Apologies.”

“And I…”

She stays there, holding her wife’s hand, “Yes?”

“Nothing. Just hurry.”

She lifts her wife’s hand to her mouth to kiss the knuckles before hurrying away.

Deep in the glades, in the oldest part of the forest, she works diligently. It does not speak of her station but these are old things of her faith taught to her by her father and grandmother. With tools to dig and chop roots, she makes a shrine of carved idols and flat stones. Upon the alter she places an ivory bowl full of lake water and sprinkles in seeds from all kinds of plants the royal gardener grows.

“Willow of Fern and Dale, Great Spirit of thrush and rock. I call and I pray.”

From her pack, she pulls out packages of meat and tendons, bones and fats. All from a stag she felled with one clever arrow the day prior. Each are scraped into the bowl of water with an old hunting knife.

“Accept this offering.”

It sinks beneath the water like the small collection is still a part of the larger lake it came from. Bits of blood cloud the stale green for a heartbeat then fade.

She sets her tired hands on her thighs and remains kneeled on the cold ground. A cape flutters in the cool breeze then settles back around her, turning to a pool of vivid red. Around her shoulders the mantle of thick fur rustles and tickles her cheek.

“I’m thinking of you, wife. I am hoping for your long health and for better days. When I am gone and you are the Queen Mother, I pray that you are safe and happy by our daughter’s side. I pray that she is not a Lily Queen. I pray that these woods remain green and wild, that my people thrive and stay faithful to our customs and traditions. Do not let them forget like I have.”

After an hour, she gets up and picks her way back across deer trails toward home.

If a busy schedule and war allows for it, she visits her wife’s alter once every week to pray.

“Hello Mother.”

In the room, a woman in a fine gown sits in a chair beneath a small window. Light dapples her face in watery patterns, dancing over elegant features Clara inherited. Burning gold hair has been twisted into a style that has gone out of fashion but was popular during her mother’s reign. Locked away in this room, deep in the castle, she has little means of availing herself to the newest styles.

Upon entering the room, her mother does not acknowledge her straight away. She remains stubborn and hateful as the day Clara overthrew her and had her locked in here.

“I truly wish you would stop paying off your servants to send letters, Mother.” Each of her leather gloves are taken off before she settles on a chaise and folds the gloves over her knee. Fur tickles her face from the cloak she wears for winter. Snow blankets the grounds and freezes the stone bones of the building. Delenski looks over just briefly to glare and snap her fingers. Childhood memories make her back stiffen and makes her uncross her legs to sit more lady like.

“Go away Daughter, I’m not in the mood.”

“Mother, you cannot keep paying servants to send letters to men who try to kill me.”

“I am doing no such thing.”

“This recent attempt was thwarted only by accident. My wife is a light sleeper evidently, but she was very displeased for having to save me. We haven’t spoken in weeks over the entire deal and that frustrates me. Not the speaking part, I’m used to this, but that you sent an assassin to kill me while I slept. Just beside my wife who might be pregnant with your grandchild,” She flattens down the fur lining, so it stops tickling her face and folds her hands primly in her lap, “I’ll be very cross if you harm my yet born daughter.”

Delenski has blue eyes that Clara thinks might have been demonic in her bloodline for how cool and hateful they have always been. Two beads of intense color that stayed fixed on her for half a life, too cold to be homey and too unaffected to be anything except disappointed. Now they are the same as in her memories. Distant and devoid of anything a mother might give her child like love or comfort.

“You are married?”

“Yes. We were wed six months back.”

“Who?”

Her ability to stay flat and blank is one inherited. They stare at each other as two white canvases, empty anything except endless space.

“Willow the Witch.”

Now her mother turns her head away in disgust, “Then a child conceived that way is no child at all. Not a grandchild either. It deserves to die.”

“Mother, I do not know where you learned this hatred, but you truly must grow up. It’s unbecoming of a lady to—“

“Have you heard from my son?”

Clara sighs, knowing this is where they would eventually land.

“No Mother. I told you, Yarrik is dead. He was killed nearly two years ago.”

A slight tremble in her mother’s lip and a polite clearing of the throat, “No, you’re wrong. He just does not answer your letters because you’re a heathen and you are cruel to him.”

It is almost sad for her. After everything, she had sentenced her mother to life locked away in the castle. Not a hard life but not a kind one either. She did not have the heart to start her reign as a cruel one who killed her own mother even if the woman had committed heinous crimes. Since her imprisonment, she has started to slide sideways into the dark places Clara can remember. Like a schism forms in her personality or mental state and she cannot accept reality for its fearful truths. Once in her youth, her mother locked herself and Clara in a room for three days because she was convinced a demon was outside waiting to kill them. That is why she has never blamed her mother for her fear because it has always been irrational, born from the sickness in her own mind.

“Mother, I brought you more books.”

Instead of listening, she keeps staring out the small window and worries her hands in her lap, “Your brother will write to me soon. I know it.”

“Mother,” She sighs and realizes this is going to be a visit where nothing gets done so she slips her gloves back on and stands, “I’ll have the books sent up. Once I find out who you have been asking to pay the servants for you, I’ll have them executed. I need you to know this.”

Nothing changes the forlorn look being cast outside so she spins on her heel and leaves.

A slight hiss scrapes her molars as it rips from her. Startled awake, she nearly falls out of her chair.

Yellow eyes blink owlishly, one hand extended from where it had touched her cheek.

“Willow? Sorry,” Her voice is rough from sleep, body thrumming from adrenaline but still slow and aching from falling asleep at her writing desk, “Did I wake you?”

“No. You sleep like a corpse. Sometimes I check to see if you’ve been poisoned and if I am a widow for how still you are when you sleep.”

“Mm. Was there something you needed?”

“No.”

“Oh. What is it then?”

“Nothing,” Willow hugs the blanket around her body a little tighter, staring still without an expression Clara can understand, “You need to stop falling asleep in your chair.”

“Don’t I know it. My neck is sore already,” It twinges when she turns to give her wife a friendly smile, “Thank you for waking me. I needed to finish these requisitions.”

Willow takes a faint step closer. Her fingertips just brush her shoulder, barely, then vanish.

“You work very hard.”

Blinking tiredly, she glances over her shoulder to squint at her wife, “Are you alright? Has something happened?”

Now she has started learning some of Willow’s expressions. Nearing seven months of marriage, they have tentatively started spending time together. Time spent praying at an alter has helped cultivate some small thing between them. Only because she knows Willow listens. There is always a blessing on the breeze when it is warm or an extra warmth under her clothes when it is cold. A few times she has even caught Willow’s lupine form prowling after her when she goes on hunts. They still do not often spend time together and Willow is a ghost that haunts the castle halls but they have made connections. Sometimes Willow leaves letters on her pillow. Nothing precious or prolific but not unkind either.

Clara,

I’m leaving for a handful of days.

Never signed because a name written on paper is another form of binding a witch.

Clara,

Tell the cook to never make that dish again. It was vile. It tasted like ash and broken dreams. If we cannot have fresh clams, why bother?

There are also letters that are not sealed by wax. Instead Willow keeps a journal bound with leather straps and wire and each new note is done on a new page.

Clara,

You have permission to leave me missives. It irritates me when you go on long journeys, and you do not tell me you’re leaving. I’m your wife. Communicate with me.

So when the journal is found on their bed or in a drawer in her desk or in the saddle bags of her horse, she starts to leave replies. Unlike her wife, she does not leave the journal in random places because she cannot look ahead to see where Willow will be.

I am unsure how to head these since I cannot write your name.

I have to leave soon. I’ll be gone for a month. I will leave you an offering before I go and I will take a holy token with me so I can pray while I’m gone.

I was told that you found where my mother is in confinement and stayed in there for a long while. Thank you for not killing her. I’d understand why you would, but it would have been a hassle. I did not want to deal with how to punish you for that crime and honestly, despite it all, the woman is still my mother. So thank you.

Lastly, I bought you a few things. They are left on our bed wrapped in the brown paper.

The journal is nice because she can flip through it and read old messages that were colder than the newer ones.

First;

Clara,

I saw you sitting alone in the courtyard today. You were crying. It was embarrassing for you so I left.

Clara,

Stop leaving me flowers. I told you, acting noble will get you nowhere and it infuriates me. In addition, we need to have sex again tonight. Wash beforehand and be ready for when I return. You may braid my hair beforehand so it does not bother you again. I do not mind you touching my hair which was a surprise for me but even still you must seek my permission first. This is perhaps more improtant to me than anything else. If you ever touch my hair, even a single strand, without my permission I will kill you. I will bind flesh to rotten bone to bring you home and then I will kill you again. I am grateful that you were gentle the first time so I am extending this single thing. But do not get used to it.

Clara,

Stop it. If I find one more flower in this room, I will burn your blankets and curse you so that you go bald. I don’t need gifts either.

Clara,

That hart you shot in the woods was me. I am peeved. I am vexed. Until I decide you are forgiven, I have cursed you so that all your food tastes overly salted. You wretched whor*. Suffer.

Be glad you missed.

Then;

Clara,

I know you’re gone at the moment but that you’ll read this when you come home. I am peeved about this particular trip. I know you will only be gone for a handful of days this time but going to the active war fronts is stupid. Our troops do not need the motivation. Nationalism and a hot meal do most the work or so I’m told. What does seeing their queen do except test my patience? I needed to tell you something and you’re gone.

f*cking infuriating.

Rest assured, if you dare come home to me injured, bruised, or otherwise out of your usual state of ambivalent blankness, I shall be aggravated. Stay far from the combat and do not stay long. Give them their obligatory pat upon their heads and say well done and come home.

Clara,

It worked. Well done. Our child will be beautiful and horrible and clever and the queen this kingdom deserves. I am surprised to be this pleased. To be a mother is a very special thing among witches, so I find myself in a weird position. I am overjoyed to carry this tradition but disjointed that it came about this way. Either way, take comfort. I will cherish our daughter. I will be a perfect mother. She will not live the way you did. And I am thankful to you for making her. For doing this to me. I am thankful that you made the memory of her conception a pleasant one. You were nothing but perfect, each time we laid together. That matters, if you were unaware. If she has a fraction of your cleverness, your just heart and both our beauty, we shall make a weapon together. I imagine that made you do that pig snort laugh of yours. Good, that pleases me too. You’ve earned it.

Well done.

Clara,

I feel I need to tell you. I was going to kill you once I knew I was pregnant. I’m not going to do it anymore. I’m not sure why, I just don’t feel like it.

Will you buy me more of those sweet things? I loved them. I’ve no idea what they were. And the flowers are excessive and annoying. I know you flounder with words and company, and you are trying to make me feel welcome and comfortable. This is not the way. However, I like the orange ones with the arrowhead shaped petals. You may get those for me, on rare occasions. They smell like your perfume. I like that.

Clara’s response is written on the page just beside Willow’s.

I’m still not sure how to head these.

I know you were going to kill me. You were on the list of many things that were gonna kill me that I try to keep track of. My spies are clever in that you’ve met them many times and did not know. They intercepted the missives you had with your coven in our first weeks wed. I didn’t mind overly much which I suppose speaks of my character. I don’t really care. It does not matter to me, one way or another. Honestly, I was charmed. You were going to kill the thing you thought was a danger to you and your child and cut a way toward peace. Setting your daughter on the throne so the birthplace of witches could be run the way you thought it should be. I understood. I’m even surprised you changed your mind.

I am behind on replies to many of these so I will skip past quite a bit. Except the one. The important one. I’m writing in the rain, by the coach that is taking me forward to meet with one of my generals. Would you find it embarrassing of me to know I am crying again? Tears of joy this time. I do not seem it, but I am happy to be a mother as well. I will play no significant role in our child’s life but I will look upon her from the afterlife with great pride. I understand some witches speak with the dead. I hope some day our daughter will see my sorry ghost clinging to the rafters of her castle and know that I stuck myself fast there just to watch her grow. With you as her guide, I know she will be a fierce and wonderful queen. Perhaps one of the rare types. A Lavender Queen, maybe. That would be on the nose if she gets your hair. Bloodroot, there has just been one of those. Bloodroot Queen Holi who was a high priest of the Harteesong Spirit. A Poppy Queen perhaps who are said to be of such grace and beauty that being within their presence puts one into a dream like state.

I would give anything to hold her. Just the once. To know her weight in my arm and to hear the song of her name. I know it is not how witches behave with their younglings and I do not expect to survive that long. So I word this confession for you alone. When she is born, if you could give me but one thing, hold her for me. Bring her close to your breast and tell her my name. Tell her that I loved her and that I hope she does not hate me for giving her this throne. I wish the best for her. I wish better than the best.

Congratulations to us both then. Thank you for taking this burden upon yourself, for giving me a daughter. If anything is available, I will do anything to help you. I am here for you. You will be a sunrise as she grows. You like to be complimented so there is that and also, you are radiant. You will only grow more so as our child grows in you. I will tend to your needs better than I have ever done my own, in the coming months. Call upon me for anything. Any cravings of any sort. I want you well.

I will get treats to celebrate.

Clara,

I did not know that within you beats a heart that can feel such depths. You are cold to me. Distant. Vacant even when I catch you off guard. You are polished and still as a statue for every circ*mstance I have ever seen you in. But underneath it rages a passion that can write like that? Speak of your child like that?

Perhaps I was right not to kill you. I wish to learn what other depths you are hiding.

With the letters, they now occasionally have tea together. To discuss things about the baby, at first, then more than that. She has started enjoying leaning back in her chair to watch Willow’s face when she goes into detailed stories or complains about some weird witching law or spell. Or at times, just to complain about anything at all. Two days back she had complained about the different kinds of salt her cooks use and before that, the migration pattern of some of the small birds that roost in briars outside the castle walls. Now she has started changing her smoked black teas for something lighter and sweeter that Willow prefers. Now she has started growing sad if Willow does not show up.

So now she can tell that Willow is perplexed in the way that means she is confused and annoyed by it.

“Nothing is wrong.”

“The baby isn’t bothering you?”

Willow touches the slightest bump of her belly, just by habit of having their daughter mentioned.

“No,” Her lips pinch and she sighs, “I woke up because you weren’t in bed. I’ve gotten used to sleeping beside you. So I came to see if you had left me a message saying you’d be gone.”

“Oh,” She surveys the papers strewn across her desk with new eyes, “Shall I come to bed then?”

Willow says nothing. Her answer is just a difficult look that means she does not want to share with Clara. That is, in a way, an affirmation.

Now when she huffs out a laugh, she is not admonished.

“I shall come to bed. Come my wife, let me not be a poor excuse for a partner and see you and our daughter off to dreams.”

“Who taught you to talk to women like that?”

“Taught me?”

Willow takes her hand after it is offered as a tether that will lead her to sleep.

“So you’re naturally a silver-tongued sh*t?”

“The ways in which you hate me are endlessly amusing. I think often of that time you snapped at me when I was doing nothing but standing beside you while we held court. You said ‘the way your hip co*cks just so makes me want to place my fist ever so delicately into your nose.’ Whatever I did in a past life to you must have been awful. I have never met someone that hates so artfully. You put your whole soul into it.”

It knocks the breath from her lungs when, quietly, Willow admits, “I don’t hate you.”

“Oh, that cannot be. Please don’t toy with me. First you’ve given up on your ideas of murdering me and now you like me?”

“The way you care is alluring.”

They both come to a sudden stop because Clara cannot consume that gently. It makes everything inside her stop functioning. Because she stops, Willow does too. Her head co*cks, eyes reflecting the blaze from the fire that is dying down.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“I don’t understand it though.”

“The way you throw everything into what you care about is rare. And you’re gentle. You listened to me, that first night. It meant more to me than you know that you listened. That you always listen. Even if you are absent, you try for me. I think I found myself getting protective of something like that because of how rare it is. How little of that particular kind of care is left in the world. And once I started doing that, it made me realize I don’t hate you. I don’t even mind the way that you stand anymore. I think I like your laugh.”

They stand in front of each other, distant but tethered by their hands still loosely linked. Willow does not look apologetic or that she has done anything to be awarded Clara’s response.

“Oh.”

“Stop giving me that look.”

“I have this strange need to be hugged by you now.”

Willow’s nose twists from distaste, “Why?”

“I’m not sure. I have not desired to be hugged since I was a little girl. I had forgotten what it felt like to need this kind of comfort or whatever you wish to call it but here we are. How strange. Will you?”

“I suppose.”

Willow is slightly taller than her when they both stand without shoes that provide height. At this height difference, her nose is pressed against the curve of Willow’s shoulder. A hand curls around the back of her head to keep her close, done so effortlessly she knows it is instinct for Willow to hug this way. To embrace so fully she feels eclipsed. After a moment, Willow drops her forehead on Clara’s shoulder, breathing out some worries in a sigh, and clings tighter to her.

Clara is surprised on a cold, wet morning by the sight of her wife leaving the gates to meet with her. Bundled in velvet the color of dried blood that is lined with fur and wearing heeled boots that are shined to perfection. Her hair is a splash of silk that hangs down her back but is braided behind her ears and held in place with a silver clip. Both hands are protected by black gloves lined with dark fur. She curtsies to Clara and her entourage when she is within speaking distance.

“Good morning, wife.”

Clara is so stupefied by the sight, she just stands under the morning sun and blinks. Silver steam falls from her open mouth. Beside her, the attendant carrying her bow and quiver bows to the queen consort. Seeing that finally knocks her into her better senses and she she too bows to her wife.

“Good morning. Is everything alright?”

Willow hums an affirmative and holds out a hand. Instantly she scrambles to provide an arm for that hand to rest upon. She hopes it seems smooth and not at all like she is shocked by this moment. By the idea of her wife reaching out a hand toward her and wanting to confirm a touch.

“Everything is quite fine. I was up early because your daughter is fussy. And since I was awake I thought I might see if you wanted company on your walk this morning.”

“Of course,” She takes a hot iron to her voice to flatten out the surprise making it sound wrinkled, “You always have an open invitation.”

“It will be good for us to spend time together, don’t you think?”

Knowing there is people following them is why she does not goggle at her wife. To her credit, Willow acts as if this is perfectly normal thing for her to say. As if they have always been in a state where they are kind to one another.

“Yes. I think it might be. I intended to go for a hunt but plans can change. Perhaps just a stroll through the garden?”

“That would be nice,” She looks over her shoulder at the attendants and jerks her head toward the palace, “You are dismissed.”

“M’Lady.” Both attendants bow low before hurrying away to tend to duties elsewhere.

They proceed over a stone path into the sprawling royal gardens. Half of it is left within the sun while the rest is moved under a large glass greenhouse. For the beginning of their walk, they stay under the sun. Clara does not guide them in any direction, instead opting to let Willow take them where she wills.

“Have you had breakfast?” She asks at last just to break the silence.

“I have, thank you.”

“That’s good.”

Willow touches her fingertips to the bloom of a flower and bends to smell it. One of her ears gives a happy twitch that partners her growing smile. A yellow eye shifts to catch Clara’s attention upon her.

“Have you?”

“Hm?”

“Had breakfast.”

“Oh, yes. I had a small breakfast before the sun came up.”

“That is good too.”

“Wife? I feel, since the opportunity has arisen, I should mention that you look resplendent.”

Willow stands from the flower and moves them back down the path. Her face remains neutral when she hums, “Those should have been your first words for me instead of gawking at me like you couldn’t believe you were seeing me.”

“Forgive me. I forget how you love to have your ego stroked.”

“A joke that isn’t funny. How nuanced.”

Clara demurs “Apologies.”

“I like when my wife praises me and acknowledges what she has. That is partly the point of having a wife.”

With some wisdom afforded to her through time she has learned that some things do not require her input. This time she stays quiet. At times words are traps she does not want to stick her hands in by opening her mouth.

They move round a bush bursting with tall stalks flowering unpleasant smelling buds. On the other side, they move through the roses. A sea of color spreads out starting from orange to white then purple and red.

“Is this where you always pluck flowers to bring me?”

“It is.”

“Hm,” The black tips of Willow’s gloves dance over soft petals as they pass, “How have you been, Clara?”

Surprises abound with this woman. There always seems to be a shifting sand under her feet that means she cannot ever known where she stands. Much like herself, Willow is adept at hiding her true feelings behind a mask of apathy so there is little go off there. She knows Willow does not like to be ignored so perhaps she has grown tired of being alone in the castle.

“I am well, thank you. And how about you? How goes the pregnancy?”

Willow sighs though there is a gleam in her eyes and an upturning of her lips. Joy like this cannot be hidden. She lays a hand over her stomach and squints up at the mist clinging to the glass of the greenhouse.

“Lovely. I have been feeling sick which has not been pleasant but I enjoy that she is making herself known. She will not be a meek girl. Aches and pains trouble me throughout the day but that is to be expected.”

Clara is only just now hearing of this. Her eyes flit around for a bench she knows to be hidden somewhere in the maze of the garden. If her wife is in pain, she should not be about in this chilly air. That can only make it worst.

Fingertips lay over her bicep and Willow hums an amused note. Clara looks to her, confused again, to find a charmed smile looking back at her.

“I am fine, wife. It is natural to the process.”

“Are you certain? I should not keep you on your feet if—“

“Don’t be so noble.”

Her shoulders sink from displeasure, but she nods. All she can do is take Willow’s word for the matter so if she claims to be fine, she must trust her. That does not stop her constantly checking the body langague for hints of displeasure or pain.

“Do you come here often?”

“No. When I was a child, I would play here with my sister but after we lost her, it made my stomach turn to come inside. She loved flowers. I loved annoying our tutors,” Clara points to a row of apple trees where ivy has started growing around the bark of the trunk and branches, “We used to hide in those when our governess came looking for us. For hours we would sit up there with books or play pretend. Sometimes I was a great general in an awful war and she was the voice of peace that saved us all. Other times I would be a prickly fickle husband and she officiated my wedding with that bush of hydrangeas, just there. She could barely get through the ceremony without laughing until she complained of her sides hurting.”

“I did not realize you had a sister.”

Now the trees are lonely standing all alone. Mixed with flowers where apple trees should not be. Their gardener had been appalled when they had shot up one day and the former king and queen had been too delighted by the surprise. They could not be torn down, not when the princesses came to love them so dearly as children. After Clara became queen, she nearly ordered them be ripped out and burned. Looking at them makes her miserable in the way that prevents her from being cool and careless.

“She was older than me by a small number of years. She was the first thing that,” Here Clara pauses to swallow back her anger, looking away from the awful trees and turning her wife back so they can leave the green house, “My sister grew ill. My mother became lost when a witch confirmed it was an illness from a Spirit and there was nothing to be done.”

“That is the origin of her hate for us?”

Clara glances over, surprised to hear the tone still remained gentle, “I don’t know the origin. She just woke up broken one day. At least, that’s how it feels. I think that losing her first born did not help. And the fact that my father remained just as faithful as ever afterward and he would take me to prayer when she would beg he not. Because she did not want me around Spirits.”

Willow scoffs, a quiet dainty sound instead of a loud cruel thing, “That’s impossible. Spirits are everywhere. There are many in here with us now. The ones in the apple trees are fond of you.”

“Really? There are…in those trees?”

Willow looks over her shoulder at the ivy choked bark and the blooms in the green that will be fruit soon. Her smile is saccharine.

“They wanted to be here. As seeds, they convinced birds to bring them here and let them grow so they could be place for children to play.”

Clara looks back too. To her, they look the same as they ever did. Sometimes bees make the entire tree buzz, nearer to spring, when the buds are open and ready to receive. Other times she would run beneath them with her sister, and they would laugh for ages when heavy apples fell and struck their heads. Much joy was sewn there and seeped into the roots. Much life was nurtured under the shade of those bows.

“Take our daughter to visit them. They should raise her with their mischief the way they did me.”

Willow looks over, eyes agleam and mouth parted slightly. They walk on for a long quiet stretch, leaving the glass walls behind to enter the brisk morning air once more.

After a loop around dewy bushes and rows of neat greenery, Willow peels herself away to give Clara another curtsy.

“Thank you for spending your morning with me.”

Clara bows with a tenderness squeezing her heart and warming her on this chilly morning, “My thanks are to you instead. It was a fair bit nicer than a hunt would have been.”

Something primal shines in her wife’s eyes, “I’m not so sure about that but thank you all the same. I’ll be off for now. Have a lovely day.”

When her wife smiles, it is quite possibly the most beautiful thing in the whole of their world. Not a fake smile or the hateful kind she used to give Clara but a true smile. From a place of real joy.

Perhaps the smile is the second most beautiful thing in the world. When she laughs, it sucks the air from Clara’s lungs. To hear a chorus of fey song roll from her tongue changes her.

They start taking meals together. At first, it is just to break their fast but then they start sharing evening meals as well. Over plates and drinks, they share more than food. Willow tells her stories of mystical things, of the way she sees the world and how it inspires awe in Clara makes her smile. They talk of their childhoods and Clara’s ascent through war and Willow’s grief. There is talk of siblings, of the one Clara did not know and the ones Willow lost and left behind. Some stories of the former lovers Willow mentioned make her laugh till tears touch her lashes while others make her feel a bit off. Not angry but certainly not happy. Willow tells adoring tales of her grandmother who she worshiped and who taught her everything that has made her the woman she is. Clara is mournful to admit that she does not have many stories of her own grandmother because of her mother. Both her father and grandmother were banished when she was thirteen and since becoming queen, she has never found news of them.

Underneath the briars Willow shrouded herself in, the woman is revealed day by day. As each day gives an opportunity to know the woman she married, Clara finds herself becoming more and more infatuated with her wife.

Fever makes her sweat under piles of thick quilts and fine blankets. According to the court physician and the sages invited in to see her, she is going to be fine. She does not feel like she is going to be fine and the way everyone paces the room at all hours contradicts that she will be fine.

The poison was not detected by her taster. Somehow, it skipped past his collected senses honed for this particular skill. Unreadable to him but tasted by her the moment she took a single bite. Sickness ravaged her in mere minutes after consumption. Remembering everything that happened is a challenge. Willow had been beside her because it had been an event. That was why they poisoned this particular meal instesd of another she would have taken alone. Some message was made in the convulsing and the foamy blood that came from between her lips. In the panic and the screaming and the lockdown and Willow. In Willow who had turned wretched and violent and did something that Clara cannot recall. Something that made their staff never look her in the eye and the Knights bow in deference. Something that people whisper about and something that, she hears, left scars on the stone of the dining hall.

Now she is recovering. Somehow, they say, the poisoned escaped killing her when by all rights it should have. That does not mean she has escaped it though. Sickness grips her and has held her for days. A fever that refuses to break no matter what they try and shakes that make her feel loose under the skin. Endless vomiting, it feels like, until the muscles ache from heaving up nothing.

They say she will be okay, but she knows they are lying. Lily Queen Clara is dying.

Days pass in a haze when she is awake. Most of the time she thinks that she sleeps but it is hard to tell. When she is present, she finds herself grateful for making it this far. That she will be dead but that her line will continue and will be kept in good hands. Willow will raise their child with enormous care and with the kind of love that leaves room for anger and mistakes and trust and community. All will be well. Willow will make the future Queen that Clara dreamed for her people to have so that the kingdom can become what she wanted to build.

When she slurs that to the human shape of her wife, sat against the headboard, Willow hisses at her. A real guttural sound that is not human at all. She adjusts the cold compress on her forehead and tells her unkindly to shut up.

Willow is sometimes a woman who paces their room, rubbing her protruding belly and cursing. Sometimes she speaks to the Spirits Clara cannot see and it seems like they are arguing. Her name is picked up between the ancient Spirit language, in between hand gestures and eye rolls. When she is not in the bone and flesh form of a woman, she has shaped herself into the Spirit she is. When she is most hostile, most feeling cornered or unhappy. A great wolf with white and grey fur longer than Willow the woman is tall. With paws wide enough across to span the length of both Clara’s hands held side by side and long vicious teeth stained yellow at the roots. Long ears pointed like arrows that flick back agaisnt the short elk horns made half of horn and half of wood. Fireflies circle her proud lupine head in lazy circles, forming a halo of a soft yellow light. They buzz near her ear when the large Spirit crawls in the bed and lays beside her.

Warmth blankets her, suffuses her to the marrow that boils. Her shaky fingers curl over the muzzle of the Spirit who lays her head upon Clara’s chest. It rises slow and jerkily from her breathing.

“I left a manual, in the secret compartment of my writing desk. It details all you’ll need to know to rule. It will be okay. Fusotomos will help with the transition of power,” She licks her dry, cracked lips and turns her head on the pillow to seek one of the large yellow eyes that blinks open to watch her, “You will be queen regent until our daughter comes of age. You’ll do fine. Don’t trust my uncle, he’s betraying me, I just can’t prove it yet. Don’t…don’t ah…”

The Spirit yips and whines, crawling on her belly to nudge her wet nose against Clara’s tacky cheek. Tiredly, she reaches to tangle a shaking hand in the wolf mane.

“I lasted a year. I wanted to last at least a year. I did alright. You will be okay. You’re safe here. The Sun King won’t have you, you or any of your coven. You’ll rebuild here, it will be what I hoped. Don’t try—“

A sudden shock when the wolf is not a wolf anymore and the Spirit has turned back into the woman. Her fingers are buried in silken purple hair that she has only touched twice before. Willow is glaring at her, propped on her elbows.

“Close your mouth.”

“It’s important. When I die—“

“I said, be quiet,” There is a slight growl behind the vocal tone, “You aren’t dying. You will be fine. Save your trite deathbed speech for when you are actually dying.”

Clara’s eyelids feel like they have weights on them. She is grateful when Willow moves a lock of her hair adhered to her forehead with sweat.

“Have you seen it?”

Willow bristles, “I don’t look that far into your future.”

“That was a silly question. I knew that answer.”

“Don’t laugh, it isn’t a joke.”

Despite that, she laughs until it makes her cough.

“I don’t look because I am afraid of what I’ll see. I don’t want to see you…gone. But I know you will be alright.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I want you to stay.” Willow runs the backs of her fingers along Clara’s sweaty brow, watching her face with a pinched concern.

“Hand me my totem.”

Surprising her, Willow shakes her head. Instead she takes Clara’s clammy hand into her own and squeezes it lightly.

“Just pray. I’m listening now, I am here with you. Just pray.”

It takes another week and a half before she is feeling decent. There is still a tremble that makes her feel cold and one of her legs is left weak. Her physician claims it to be improbably she will walk freely in the future but Willow scoffs and tells her she will be fine. During their morning meals, she takes a medicine that Willow makes and it helps. Hobbling around with a cane becomes only needed on days when the weather is cold and she gets stiff. During it all, the Greater Spirit Willow surprises her by sticking to her side. Though a Spirit is prone to wander and be wild, she keeps herself locked indoors. With Clara ill and the baby growing each day, their room becomes a den.

Willow snips at their attendants, actually snaps her teeth at handmaidens, and chases anyone out who comes in after a knock. People that try to touch Clara are growled at and cursed in large and small fashions. One unlucky mail boy is hexed by a nasty little spell that makes him feel stung by a bee on the chime of every new hour. After she turns into her lumbering Spirit form and nearly mauls Clara’s uncle, she confronts the issue.

Over their morning meal, she sets a small wooden box on the table between them. Willow narrows her eyes at it, watching it then Clara adjust in her seat so her cane rests between her legs.

“What’s this?”

“A peace offering.”

One little pinky pokes the corner of the box to push it away.

“No thank you.”

“It’s candied oranges.”

The pinky stops pushing to tap the corner in indecision. She changes her grip to push the lid off and reveal a few sugar-coated oranges laying on red paper.

“Why?”

“I think I upset you. I want to broker peace so there is no threat of bloodshed in our room.”

“House.” Willow murmurs around the candy, leaning around her to glare at the woman standing in the doorway of their apartments. A small shooing motion with her fingers makes the woman choke out a sound, bow, and hurry away.

“Willow, this has to stop. You cannot keep chasing away attendants and threatening anyone you feel like. I understand if you don’t feel safe here, that being heavy child may have affected this, but—“

“You are not going to tell me what to do. If you want peace, put your peace talks in a grave,” Willow daintily plucks an orange from the box and sets it on Clara’s plate beside her slice of quiche, “Tell me about your plans for today.”

Despite the intent she had coming here, to really put this to a stop, amusem*nt tickles her throat.

Reasoning with a Spirit comes to this sorry ending so often that she should have expected it. Recalling the story of her grandmother arguing with a broom Spirit only increases the amusem*nt.

“Can you at least stop hissing at Gillia? She is terrified of you.”

“No.”

“Willow, she is not the one who poisoned me.”

Yellow eyes flick up, darkened by intent, “But she could have been. Or might be in the future.”

“Wait,” Baffled, she sets her fork down after wiping her mouth on a cloth and diverts entire focus on her wife, “What do you mean by that?”

“There is no hidden meaning. It is exactly what it sounds like. I don’t trust anyone in this palace anymore.”

“But you’re making it seem like that is because of me.”

“It is. Someone poisoned you, again. Someone nearly drowned you on the roadside. You were stabbed a few days before the poisoning which I am cross about. You did not tell me and thought I wouldn’t know. There was blood on our sheets, Clara,” Willow has no stomach for cooked food today, she can tell from the way she is pushing food around with her fork, “That’s a terrible omen for a new child to be brought into the world.”

“Then you are upset with me?”

“No. Are you even listening to me?”

“Well, you are making it seem like you’re upset that attempts are being made on my life.”

“Is that so strange? Can I not care?”

“You can, I suppose. I just didn’t realize you did.”

Willow pushes her plate away with an unsatisfied curl to her lips, “I am going to go for a hunt.”

“Hold on,” She grabs her wife’s wrist, demure when that makes the woman bare her teeth and glare, “Please, hold on.”

“What?”

“You don’t need to worry about me. If you are, which I struggle to comprehend, but if you are you do not need to. This was always the end of my story.”

For a long moment, Willow stands beside her chair with her wrist in the snare of Clara’s grip. She looks toward the wall, face half obscured by shadow. One of her hands rubs over the swell of her pregnant belly to ease away pain or occasionally tap hellos when the baby kicks.

“I worry,” Slowly Willow looks back, lips almost turned into a pout but she is scowling too, “Do not take worrying away from me.”

“I’m not! I just…did not expect it.”

“Neither did I but here we are,” The hand in a vice turns to grip Clara’s in turn and pull on it, directing to lay over the swell of her belly, “Can you feel that?”

Little taps agaisnt her palm make her breath catch. She leans further in her chair so suddenly the cane dips forward and strikes the floor. She does not mind it. The little taps sing in harmony with her heart that lines up, in that moment, with that music being made. She chases the feeling with her hand, tapping her fingertips the way she has seen Willow do. Another tap against her fingertips and she gasps, looking up at Willow in delighted surprise.

The look Willow is giving her is unlike any she is received yet. Blanketed in tenderness that warms every feature, every laugh and frown line.

“You do not get to decide the end of your story anymore, Clara Clearblade.”

“I can’t end a war and all the people who want me dead that quickly.”

“You can’t, I know.”

Her throat bobs from a hard swallow, “Are you saying you’d like me to stay, if I can?”

“I am. I decided you are worthy.”

“Of this?” They both expel a surprised note from the breathy, watery quality in her voice. For a startling moment she thinks Willow is leaning forward, lifting a hand to touch her, but it’s just her imagination.

“Of much,” Willow co*cks her head, watching in that intense way that is more predator than human when she bends to collect her cane, “Come. You’re going to walk beside me while I hunt.”

“Won’t I scare prey off? I’m not as agile anymore. My leg will begin to ache and I will grow slow and clumsy.”

“I will take the easy trails. You may sit and while you do, I will go out and find something. There is nothing faster out there than I am. Come,” Willow laughs after she makes a surprised squeak from her wife tapping the underside of her chin, “Hurry. I’m hungry.”

“Let me dress for the cold. I’m not as stalwart as you.”

Another gentle laugh, “I’ll wait by the door.”

They have to walk slowly for her. The limp will persist for most of her life but it is better than what her physician first warned her. She is mobile and while the pain is more prominent in the winter, it is mostly fine. Sometimes she is able to walk around without the cane but that, as she has learned, makes the end of the day worst. An exhaustion that reaches a point that will make the next few days terrible if she goes past the invisible threshold.

Outside her lungs feel cleaner so her head feels clearer. The woods have always been a sacred, safe place for her which is why timberland Spirits have been her favorites. To walk a wide path beside one now is surreal and thrilling. It feels like being a child again, chasing a little rabbit Spirit with wings and three fox tails along the underbrush. Except this Spirit is a great one and it walks so close to her that the haunches brush her hip. She keeps her hand buried in the thick mane of fur around the lupine head. Beneath the shaggy coat, all of Willow’s tattoos remain on the skin but are illuminated in springtime colors. Along the side of the trail, little toadstools pop up amidst plumes of fireflies and frog song melds with the sounds of nature.

When her leg grows tired, Willow in Spirit form leads her to a large rock to sit on. Before leaving she nips at Clara’s fingers, gives the side of her face a lick, and bounds off into the forest. Some time later, Willow comes trotting back with an elk clamped in her powerful jaws. Bones crunch under the force of her jaws and wet slurping sounds form from meat being torn. She lays curled on Clara’s boots, back warm against her shins while she eats. Every few moments Clara pokes the wolf spine just to be a pest. Each time the Spirit growls, stopping to do so, then resumes her meal.

Willow licks blood from her lips and paws, yawning wide after completing the job.

“Shall we head back? I have letters to write.”

The wolf tosses her head and gives a mighty wuff as an answer.

Through another month and many hours spent together, Clara starts to realize she might have somehow developed feelings. Strong ones that make her wonder where Willow is and how she is feeling and if she can make time to see her. Clara starts to miss her after their morning meals and spends most of her day in a cloud thinking of her.

Their journal becomes less of a thing to leave quick messages and becomes a book for thoughts they want to share but cannot if they are separated by distance or in a group. Sometimes when they will be gone for an entire day, during meetings Clara will leave long messages inside. It is a bad habit to develop when she should be putting her entire focus into that which is happening in and around her Kingdom.

This is so tedious. I am ever so tired of my uncle spewing his vitriol. On and on he’s been prattling for hours and to be honest, I feel as if I’ve lost feeling in my arse. I wonder where you run off to sometimes. I know you’ve said you’ll not reveal your secrets to me and that’s fine. I don’t wonder out of a sense of needing your secrets. I simply miss you when you’re gone and hope that you are well.

Ah, he’s going on about budgets and military costs now. He wants more funds for the troops on the western advance. I know he is a traitor. I know he is. I just cannot find the proof and without that, I cannot do a thing. It irks me to no end.

My leg is aching terribly today. I think once I am free, I will go lay in our bed and wait for tea. Should you come back, I will have tea waiting for you and some sweet rolls.

Sometimes the journal goes missing when Willow does, and it reappears in the place Clara always ends up being.

Clara.

Your child is fatiguing me. My everything hurts and I am ever so tired of carrying her around. Sometimes she drives me up the wall. I could not sleep. It is peaceful to have you beside me and I did sit with you for a while, but I grew needles under my skin. She makes me restless too.

Ah, yes. That’s right. I did shout at you the once when you asked where I had gone and you did not flinch when I flung a knife at you. It was ever so impressive but that irritated me further so I snapped at you to never ask me where I go. I apologize for my former disposition and know now that I do not mind confiding in you. I leave to be with my coven. I cannot be around people so often for so long, forgive me. I need to run the rivers and taste the earth and speak in my mother tongue. They tell me that our daughter is healthy and vibrant and that she is going to be an exceptional witch. You are a lessor Spirit and that has had some effect. They say she feels mellow compared to me so maybe she will be a different kind of Spirit. I pray for a river child but I wonder if that can be. Your crown house loves flowers so and you title yourselves thus so I endeavor to guess she will be a garden Spirit. I am beyond words now. I want to have her in my arms so badly it makes me emotional. I am sorry for how I’ve been lately. That is why. If ever you want to leave with me, I welcome it. To have you in the wild beside me is my secret joy.

You’re sleeping beside me now but I’ll be gone by morning. I need to have raw meats. I cannot stand the ashy taste of mortal food right now. It salts my tongue. I need green and brown and blue and red. A lot of red.

Come with me again soon. Please.

At times they write messages to each other in the journal even when the other is with them. When Clara has to sit down for a while during their walks.

Willow writes with her fingers and lips covered in blood from the beast she ate. Head tilted so the temple rests on Clara’s knee.

This has been an excellent hunt. It invigorates me to have you here beside me. Thank you for this time together.

You are getting blood all over the pages. And we are sitting beside one another. Why are you doing this?

Posterity.

Fine then. For the record: you manage to look an unreal beauty even when you are coated in gore. I would like it if, while in your beastly form, you did not yowl and snap and growl at me because I refuse to share your dead rabbit.

I worry. You don’t eat enough.

Perhaps cooked.

Disgusting.

When Willow is bored during meetings. Every few months, the allies Clara called to her aid rally around a table to share news and reports. Willow always has little to say and even less care to be involved. Lately, however, she had stopped hiding herself in the shaded corner and started taking the chair beside Clara. The proud high backed one that was built for her by their craftsmen after she became the Queen consort.

You look bored. Can I help somehow?

Willow’s yellow eyes flick down to the page then back up. Subtly she slides the journal toward herself so she can write a note.

Clara,

No. End this f*cking meeting or I will kill your blabbering uncle and the wise ass demon boy. Why does he make so many lewd jokes?

Does he? I can’t understand what he is saying. It sounds like bones clicking together when he speaks to me.

Willow hums a laugh so that it is quiet and slips under the sound of arguing.

Clara,

That’s for the best. You would be annoyed for how poorly it speaks of your wife.

When Clara lifts a brow, frowning slightly, Willow laughs again.

He claims he can smell me on your breath.

Clara twists her nose up in utter distaste. Her eyes cut to the demon boy to glare fiercely. Beneath the table, Willow’s boot slides across the floor to knock against her own.

Looking over makes the thoughts she held prior slip away. Light shines on her through an open window above, making her glitter under golden accents dipping into the exposed collarbones and resting on her long lashes. Eyes that shine with the lovely color of tree resin watch her all the same, waiting to catch her and keep her entombed in the sticky vise for all her life.

You look ravishing. In fact, I like to imagine that the reason rain strikes our windows now is out of a fit of pure jealously. The sun cannot shine when it knows you are brighter than it is. I love what you’ve done with your hair today. You don’t often wear it up and while I adore it down, this is something rare. It lets me see your whole face. I wonder about that little scar behind your ear. I hope it did not hurt you terribly. I am distracted by you. I’m not often distracted by anything.

Willow’s eyebrows lift, surprised but delighted too. Her lips curl into a smile that hides a secret behind the teeth. She shuts the journal and hugs it agaisnt her chest for the rest of the meeting.

In the latter months of her pregnancy, Willow’s disposition changes alongside her moods. Much of the bristling hostility and standoffishness vanishes. In its place comes a sweet kind of neediness and an openness. Wherever the Queen is found, their queen consort is never far behind. Fingers curl around the sleeves of her shirt to keep a grip even when they are sat beside each other at the dining table. If Clara tries to sit at her writing desk, Willow appears to tempt her away with pleas for comfort and closeness.

“Come lay in bed with me. My feet ache and I am lonely.”

“Lonely?” She says as she rises, laughing around the devotion clogging her throat.

“Yes. I wish for you to comb through my hair while I lay my head on your chest.”

“Only if you promise not to bite me this time.”

“That is an affectionate gift. It doesn’t draw blood, does it? Do you not like my affection?”

“How is it you always win these arguments? Fine.”

Demands for her attention come more frequently. At a certain point, Willow assumes the feral form of her Spirit self and does not change back for many weeks. Ever plodding beside or behind her, great big paws that leave mighty grooves on earth and tap against stone. Some snickers and wide eyes follow Lily Queen Clara when she strolls past and a mighty Spirit follows behind with the long cape of the queen clamped on its jaws. During meals, the Spirit sits against Clara’s chair so the mighty lupine head can rest in the Queen’s lap. Happy rumbles echo off the walls while she scratches the head behind the ears and around the horns. When she has a meeting with advisors, her counselors continue giving her odd looks. Her attention keeps splitting to the door, watching and waiting for her wife to appear because it is the longest Willow has allowed them to be apart in a long time.

“Oh my.” One of the men in flowing white robes whispers loudly. The lean Spirit form slinks into the room with a bloodied hare hanging from its mouth. Willow bullies her way under the table to lay her body over Clara’s feet, panting heavily from the run she must have just been on. Each of her counselors flinch at the sound of crunching bone, the squelching of meat being ripped apart and swallowed. One of them clears their throat after Willow finishes her snack and climbs from beneath the table to lick the side of Clara’s face. Blood smears from her muzzle onto her cheek and temple.

“Thank you. Please stop now.”

The Spirit growls, just a short warning, and licks at her hair that is instantly pulled from the clip keeping it up. She sighs and gestures to her counselor, “Continue.”

“Ah,” He flicks his eyes to the large Spirit nuzzling the side of Clara’s head and licking away the blood, “Yes, of course.”

“Is something the matter?” She asks it sweetly but her face stays placid, mouth set in a grim line. Willow turns her lupine head to smush it against her shoulder, licking leftover blood from her black gums and sharp teeth. Yellow eyes fix upon the suffering counselor who swallows loudly and starts shaking his head.

“No, your highness. All is well.”

“Very good. Continue with your report then.”

She hears later that the staff who had to remove animal bones and strips of half chewed fur and intestines had not complained. Evidently, the Queen consort had been leaving them all around the castle.

Witches are highly sensitive creatures who feel emotions in a broader and richer way compared to mortals. Considering it was Clara who contributed to conception, she assumes that is why Willow behaves this way. Needs to be near to her to the point she will find Clara wherever she is in the castle if they are separated.

Even when Clara goes to the Marquess Terif’s home in the desert part of the Kingdom, Willow finds her there.

In the middle of the room afforded to her, a Spirit lopes into the room and shakes off a mess of red sand. Clara pauses by the bed, startled by the appearance because she is sure the door was closed and locked.

“Willow? How did you get here so quickly? It is a five day journey from the castle. Please do not tell me you walked in your condition.”

The Spirit pads across the floor to butt its wide head against Clara’s hip. When she reaches down to pet the head, it tilts to the side so it can lick her fingers and nip at the sleeve of her nightshirt.

She crouches down then laughs when that makes her knee give out and she topples to the floor. Even the little pricks of pain that flare up do not strike away her amusem*nt. The big ears on the wolf pin back and the Spirit begins to whine in sympathy.

“I’m alright. I sometimes forget things are a bit different now,” She leans back against the trunk at the foot of the bed with her legs spread open for the wolf to step between, “Why did you follow me?”

The wolf just noses at her collar, huffing out heavy breathes and nudging their heads together.

“Do Spirits have separation anxiety?”

Another long whine and a wet nose that pushes against her cheek.

“I should have invited you to come then. I apologize. Would you like to go to bed with me or do you plan to go out and hunt first? The animals out here may bring sour memories of your time behind enemy lines. Big nasty lizards and coyotes. Nothing like our loving forest.”

In answer, the wolf hops up onto the the bed sniffing across the matress and the pillows. Once satisfied, she returns to bite into the collar of Clara’s shirt and tugs on it.

“Yes, I am coming. Do not rip my shirt.”

On the day that their daughter is born into the world, Clara sits in the hall. Fingers folded over the head of her cane and head bowed, she can only sit and wait. Inside their room is a coven of witches who will not be trifled with nor bothered by mortals of any kind. Most of the palace had been rocked by the Spirits who came marching along the streets in their wild forms. Some of whom have never taken a mortal form and never will. Some of whom are truly just Spirits through and through but allow themselves to be seen in the way some Great Spirits can. They had calmly insinuated the Queen consort would be entering labor soon and Clara had better allow them entry to the palace.

So now she sits waiting in the hall, hoping her ears will catch a sound of screams that do not belong to Willow. Hours pass but she does not move from her position on an uncomfortable chair in the hall. Occasionally she gets up to stretch her leg and pace the hallway then sits again when it starts to ache. Each time Willow screams, a piece of her heart breaks and in the void, anxiety wells up that says it will not be abated until she sees that Willow is alright.

Then, finally, the door comes open. Standing there is a Spirit made entirely of water and bees that somehow collect together in a shape that sings and squishes. It pulses a quick light then fades back into the room, leaving the door open. Eyes alight upon her sorry, shaking form when she hobbles her way inside. Sitting outside for over fourteen hours without sleep or a proper meal has left her in a sorry state. There is not a bone in her body that seeks to complain however. Not while her wife lays in bed trembling, pale as the sheets she lays upon, and covered in a sweat that comes from intense pain. Notably, she does not see the child.

The worst jumps to mind. Absolute dread washes over her so quickly she stumbles in her haste to get to Willow, causing her to kick her own cane from beneath her.

Tired as she is, Willow still flinches in sympathy and reaches out, “Clara—“

She stumbles into the bed, keeping herself up with the strength of her arms. Quickly she takes the hand and brings it to her mouth to kiss the curled bundle of fingers.

“Are you alright?”

“Are you?”

“I beg you not be selfless. Please, are you alright?”

“I’m tired, Clara. Sit with me, please.”

She does so, on the bed just beside the pillow Willow’s weary head is rested upon. A woman so old her wrinkles have developed a weight that pushes her eyelids down watches her. With the same fierce stare as an animal watching for a vulnerability to be exposed. When she reaches out to touch Willow’s hair, the room jolts from an intensity that makes the very air she breathes seem thick and hostile. Low growls and clicks mingle with a whistling noise and the older woman strikes a staff against the ground.

Willow makes it all stop with a tired wave of her hand. Yellow eyes lift to meet her own, “Go ahead.”

She continues her original path to unstick a chunk of lavender hair from her throat and forehead. An exhausted smile stays on Willow’s face. There is a sticky feeling of many eyes upon her that does not fade.

“You seem worried.”

“The child isn’t here and you’ve been in labor for hours. I was starting to fear the worst,” Clara swallows back tears that sting her nose, “Women die giving birth. I did not want to upset any tradition you may have, I was not aware of any and I feared what my ignorance could do, but I wished to rush in. To check on you. Please tell me you’re alright.”

“I am tired and hurting but I am fine otherwise. Better for having you worry so much over me,” Willow tiredly lays her fingers over the back of Clara’s trembling hand, “Your daughter put up a fight.”

A soft whirring, clicking sound keeps echoing from someone in the room that makes the others harmonize. Willow breathes out the same sound in discordant notes, coming and going with the energy left in her.

Clara sits in the tense air that sings a strange song, mounting in her worry. Until Willow surprises her by reaching up to touch her cheek.

“No, don’t pull away.”

“Very well.” She holds very still so Willow can hold her by the jaw.

“Calm down, you’re worrying over nothing. I am tired and I need rest but I’ll recover. And our daughter is healthy too.”

Air fills her chest in bubbles that burst under the pressure, “She’s here?”

“I wanted you to hold her. It’s not customary. Normally I would go away for my recovery and spend the time with my newborn in my secret homes. But you’re worthy of this. I want her to see you before I go.”

The clicking is threats, she realizes. The coven of Spirits and witches is worried about this new thing Willow is doing. They are telling Clara that if she is not grateful then she will regret it.

“Will you be gone long?”

“I cannot say.”

“I understand,” She lays her hand over Willow’s on her cheek, “I will miss you. You’ll be well with them? Safe? Please say yes. Please tell me if there is anything I can do to lend you aid in this journey. With the power of a crown, I should be the only one who can give you anything you ask. Whatever you need.”

Willow just smiles at her, eyelids drooping and staying shut longer between blinks.

“I am always safe with my family.”

“Good. That’s good.” She drifts her focus to the shapes of Spirits and people in her room. Trying to find the smallest one that is oddly quiet for a babe so probably sleeping. Something slips under her range of hearing which she only knows because she sees Willow’s lips move but hears no words. The elderly woman looks displeased. She glares the entire time a giant Spirit made of wood in the rough shape of a man stalks toward her. In the arms of ancient madrone, veined by amber and sap, is a wriggling bundle wrapped in silk. This timber Spirit has no face nor eyes but it looks like as if it is watching Willow. Waiting for any signs that she wants to change her mind.

Clara wonders how often the contributors to bringing a new witch into the world get to meet their child. If they ever do. The energy of the coven gives her the impression that this is not normal, and they watch her with exposed teeth that will do harm should she give them reason to.

As the infant is extended, the tree Spirit makes a long creaking noise and rattles with the hiss of a snake hidden somewhere inside its hollow body.

Her daughter is tiny. A sad little wrinkle layered in satin. Her fingernails are so small that Clara has to turn her toward the light to find them. Little wisps are dark purple hair are flattened against her head from a sponge bath. Small nose and tiny ears that come to the smallest elven point.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” A strangled sound comes from her chest that is partway between a sob and a laugh, “I’ve gotten a tear on you. Hold still, I’ll be exceptionally gentle.”

Bunching up the cuff of her fine shirt, just as she promised, she gently dabs at her tears falling onto her daughter’s beautiful face. More fall during the process of wiping them away turning it into a fruitless endeavor. The little eyes come open to look at her, bright yellow as Willow’s are.

“Now I’ve woken you up. What a tragic tale this is becoming,” She rubs her thumb over the wet tuft of purple hair, heart hammering in her chest, “Hello my daughter. You are a precious, tiny thing.”

Willow huffs out a tired laugh, “Hand her to me.”

“Straight away,” Gently she hands the baby over, feeling an attachment that makes her want to be selfish and petulant and keep the girl just a moment longer, “Here you are.”

“What do you think?”

“What do I think? What a question. I think she’s beautiful. I am a bit overwhelmed with my thoughts. Thank you for her,” Clara smiles, feels the trail of her tears curve through the dimples and the stress lines forming, “I think I am glad to have survived long enough to see her.”

“You should stop this,” Willow reaches up to wipe her thumb through the tears, “Tears are powerful connections.”

“There is little I can do.”

“Still.”

Clara watches the babe look over to Willow, small brows dipped in that way of a baby. The way that means she is learning what she is seeing. Willow watches her back with the softest look Clara has ever seen on anyones face.

“She is perfect. I’m grateful to you Clara.”

“It looks as if I have done very little.”

Willow traces her nail tip over the baby’s small nose, “No, I see your beauty in her too. She’s quiet like you.”

There is absolutely nothing Clara has to say after that. All she can do is sit and try to stop crying.

“Her name is Aeryn.”

“Aeryn,” Clara touches the purple curls atop her daughter’s head, “I love it.”

“And her?”

Clara blinks, taken aback by the question, and nods at her wife, “I told you I would love her the day we met.”

“You did and I did not believe you then but I do now. That’s important. The tears and the love. Good. I want you to have that with her. Clara? I am going to leave in the morning with my coven. But tonight I am going to sleep here with our daughter. Please stay with us.”

“Willow, I do not wish to be anywhere else. I’ll bring a chair over so I do not nudge you overly much in your sleep. I do not want to hurt you.”

“You sleep in chairs too often. Come, lay down beside me, beside your wife. You won’t hurt me,” Eyes with an intimate wisdom behind them watch her, hold her captive in their intensity, “I know you never will.”

That night she does not sleep. For once it is not due to an immaculate mountain of work that breeds endless stress. Clara is a clever woman. With such cleverness comes the simple understanding of time and how little she has. In the morning her wife and newborn child will be gone. For how long she does not know. What she does know is that she has this one last night with them and she will not waste it on sleep.

Clara lays in bed on her side to watch the small chest of her daughter rise and fall in sleep. Slow as Willow’s who is a pale body under covers, half reaching toward their child even in sleep. Each time one of Aeryn’s little arms flail or her face scrunches, Clara rises on an elbow to prepare herself. Waiting for the child to cry. To wake screaming her greeting to the nighttime sky and bid attention, bid whatever a child needs of a mother. Then the baby relaxes but Clara does not. Not immediately. She remains stiff and ready for when duty demands action. Eventually she sinks back down to resume her vigil.

“Clara.”

She did not notice when Willow’s breathing changed. She had been so focused on Aeryn’s eyes moving rapidly beneath her thin eyelids.

“Willow.”

Above Aeryn’s head, an arm extends so that Willow can brush her fingertip along one of Clara’s golden brows.

“Sleep. She will be fine.”

“I cannot. I do not want to lose a second with her.”

Willow makes a tired sound, one rife with hurt and rough from sleep. The fingertip trails down the slope of Clara’s nose.

“You’re love for her is powerful.”

“This where you marvel at my ability to actually have a heart?”

“No. I know it to be so. Remember, I am the one you pray to. I have felt it many times.”

Aeryn’s balled up fist starts to lift and shake in the air. Clara rises onto her elbow to prepare yet again, watching intensely for any sign of the baby jerking awake.

“My, you are responsive. Don’t royals usually leave their children with a wet nurse?”

“Do witches not?”

“No one is allowed to raise my child but me,” Willow’s eyes are heavy, staying half closed while she tiredly speaks into her pillow, “And you. We would not trust anyone else. She just looks like an elven infant, don’t forget that she is not. She is a Spirit, a young witch.”

Yellow eyes come open seconds before the wailing begins. Clara is quick to take her child into her arms, setting her tight against her chest where her heart is racing. The girl is so small in the crook of her arm. Her entire body jerks from the intakes of air to produce such a loud sound. She lays her palm over the girl’s chest while she comforts her, speaking softly and rocking her.

Willow scoots closed on the bed, moving like sludge that reaches slowly.

“Is she hungry?”

“Perhaps.”

Again she finds it hard to separate herself from Aeryn even when the girl is screaming with abandon. Before releasing the child, she piles some of their pillows up to help Willow sit up against them. There is a squeeze to her elbow as thanks for the kindness.

Clara watches the motions. It may be the only time she gets to be present for this and she wants to remember. Fussing still, Aeryn’s face is a pinched pink contortion and her arms flail around. Willow soothes her just by holding her close, by speaking that language that buzzes in Clara’s chest. She gets as close as she thinks Willow will let her then closer when her wife surprises her with a tired smile and beckons her to be nearer.

“Will this be too much alone?” She lays her palm over Aeryn’s back, desperate for any contact while she has the chance to feel it. Partially because she will be gutted by an assassin tomorrow morning. This could be her very last chance to experience motherhood and the all-encompassing love for this precious, tiny thing they have made. Her thumb tip traces the small wiggling ear of her child. Sharp like her own.

“I will not be alone.” Willow reminds her gently.

“True, that is true. You will be missed. Both of you.”

Willow leans over, making Clara’s breath stick in her chest, but the woman just lays her tired head on Clara’s shoulder.

“You will be missed, Clara. If I could bring you with us, I would.”

“It is better this way. She will be safer with you and this is exactly what I asked of you. To ensure the line carries in. You will raise the next Queen. Take the book I wrote for you so that you can prepare her once she is of age. I will pack it into your bag actually, you need to go back to sleep. Rest while you can. And I—“

“Clara,” Willow breathes her name out tiredly, “I will not be here to shepherd you to bed and take meals. I will worry about how you are fairing. Do me the courtesy of sleeping now so I can be at peace.”

Her fingers splay over Aeryn’s little back. Already the child has drifted back to sleep upon Willow’s chest. Wordlessly she takes the infant, prying her from the witch’s grasp as gently as possible, and pulls Willow’s dress back up for her. Eyes stick to her through the entire process. She lays Aeryn on the bed between them again and sinks back down into the bed.

Fingers touch her hair, petting through the strands in the front that hang around her face. She looks up, drinking in the otherworldly beauty of her wife.

“I will worry for you.”

Clara blows out a breath, “And I will worry for you. Both of you.”

“We will keep you with us where we go. It is impossible now for us not to. Clara, do not get yourself killed while we are gone. I am expecting you to be a part of your daughter’s life. I will be very cross if you die before we can rejoin you to become a proper family. Remember Clara Clearblade,” Yellow eyes drink all the light in the night becoming two jealous stars, “Your life is mine to do with as I please. Just because I chose to spare you from my own wrath does not mean you get to decide what happens with your life.”

Clara chuckles very softly, mindful not to wake the babe, “I had heard from older men how controlling wives can be.”

“It is how us wives show we care. Sleep now, my wife. Your burdens are heavy enough as is. You should not carry a sleepless night ontop of that.”

Clara swallows down the lump in her throat, “I find it hard.”

Willow sighs out a sweet word, touching her still with just the tips of her fingers, “If nightmares concern you, I can make you a charm that will ward off dream Spirits.”

“No, save your energy. Nightmares are practically a part of my personality at this point. I only mean that I have a crippling fear gripping me like an icy claw that I will wake up and you both will be gone. Should I miss my chance to say goodbye, I will be devastated.”

“Then I will wake you.”

“You must swear it.”

Willow taps her thumb against Clara’s sensitive ear, “I swear it.”

Come morning, Willow is gone with her coven and their newborn child, the princess of the Kingdom of Flowers, is gone too. They have a quick farewell and share a tight embrace that the coven of Willow’s watches. Willow whispers commands against her ear and this would be a terrifying thing if her voice was not choked. If she was not crying when she pulls away. Before they leave, Clara gives her the ring of the Queen with the royal crest on it. Her heart trembles to watch Willow kiss the ring before placing it lovingly on her own hand and curling her fingers over it to protect it. Misery beats her over the head, keeping her stuck under the blankets to wallow in their absence.

Going about her days is torture without the incentive of having supper with Willow and listening to her talk about her day. The bedroom is hers again at the cost of her now realizing she never wants it to be hers alone again. All the ways in which she misses Willow do not add up to anything friendly which is something she knew about herself. Being forced to confront it so directly, in this way, sets her into a deep and dark mood. For days, she is a dark cloud that moves through the castle and anyone caught under her dark light shies away.

Only after nearly a month of this does she find their journal tucked into her writing desk. Not in the usual place Willow would normally hide it away nor in a drawer she uses often. Many pages have been filled that she just never noticed before, at the end of their last shared communications.

Clara,

Part of me was at war with leaving. It is my tradition and yet I was struggling. Do you know why? I had seen the way you would look at her when she is born and I felt immeasurable loss. Because I wanted to see the way you will look at her when she starts to crawl and walk and speak. Traditionally, I would never come back. We find the right person to mate with and then we raise our little witchling communally with our coven. In circ*mstances of love, witches come back to their partner after their child has reached an age of self sufficiency. Since the Sun King has started his attack, this has not happened in a good long while. We are hidden everywhere, often in plain sight. I myself do not know who my mother spent her night with to produce me. I do not think I can wait that long, Clara. See, I’ve been a midwife for a large part of my life among many other things. I know how you mortals raise children. Long ago I scoffed at it and thought it—I thought a great many things. The appeal has crept up on me during the many long months of our marriage and my pregnancy. Being a mother is sacred to me. It is something I have wanted for a long, long while. Our daughter will become what I am now. My apprentice, in terms you’d understand. That is why they are raised with us all, taught our ways. Kept safe if they slip into the world of Spirits and find it more comfortable there. Mortals would not understand this, could not accept it. I can still see her and speak to her and train her. You could not. This is a battlefield that many mortals would not and cannot fight in so long ago we stopped bothering. And I mean long, long ago.

I’m sure you’ve heard many stories of witches stealing children from villages? Grinding them into paste and sucking marrow from bones? Turning them into beasts that come back to haunt their fathers or mothers. Or eat their siblings.

You cannot raise a child like us among small minded idiots such as those that create these illusions.

I don’t think that to be a point of complete unchangeable fact anymore. Because you have done much more than make me trust you. Do you know what sending prayer to a Spirit truly does, sweet Clara? You don’t, I know. I will not explain. Just know that you share something with me deep. An intense bond. I know you. You’ve let me know you, you’ve shown me the lands that are lies and truths. Memories that built you. The scars on your soul. You don’t lie to me. You lie to others in abundance and with flare but not to me. Not often. I like when you make me feel special and that, you not lying to me, is what makes me feel special. So I know that if our child decides she prefers the Spirit and casts away her mortal tethers, you will embrace her still. You’ll build her an alter as you did me and try to contact her the mortal way. You’ll love what you cannot see. That makes you deserving to raise this child with me, the way your people do. Or at least in some hybrid fashion. I cannot come back quickly. I’m writing this months in advance. Now that I’m gone, you’ll find notes in this book that were not there before. Magic is a marvel.

I will walk with our daughter along the hunting paths you have walked with me. Meet me out there. When you can, meet me out there.

Know that even as I write this, I miss you with all of me and I am aching to see you again.

Clara sits stunned not just by the secreted letters now appearing on pages but also by the tears in her eyes. By the churning in her heart that has secured itself to Willow and mourns her absence. For the length of time her wife would be gone rearing their child, she could not guess but she expected it to be a good long while. Long enough for her to find the courage to tell her wife how she feels and ask for the chance at properly courting her. Love must be unveiled in a proper form with all the related fashions. It is what Willow deserves.

She had not expected it to be just that long. Nor did she ever imagine Willow might like for her to reach out, to express herself, to make her intentions known.

Clara thumbs through the book now with a fever in her heart that makes her burn. A shorter letter catches her attention.

Clara,

You are fretfully ignorant of my kind. I understand better now as to why that is and speaking with your mother enlightened me to your childhood. So I don’t blame you anymore, but the fact remains.

I can hear your thoughts when you think of me. You do not know this about witches and that amuses me. I know what you’re doing, sitting just there at your writing desk. Not focusing on your letters while I read. You think I look beautiful and you want to kiss me. How could you do this me? After all our work to conceive, only now do you desire me? Feverishly want me. I should be annoyed. I’m not. It’s delicious to sit here and listen to you spiral in the heat of your own want.

I should probably tell you that you would be welcome to kiss me but I prefer this. I know you have been spiraling about the proper ways you mortals do this. Again, I hear when you think of me so I know you want to court me. A quaint thought.

Clara? I want you too. You know, our first night I was terrified of you. I hope that I put up a valiant effort to appear otherwise, but you were a stranger to me. Your family married the greatest tyrant of mine and my grandmother’s age. Hundreds of years of hell and your mother chose to marry him. The queen of the land witches come from. To me, all of you were monsters. Do you know what your brother did to me? But you were kind and gentle. You listened to me and beyond that, you listened to what I was not saying. The unpleasantness your stiffness and silent self did not stop the talent you showed. I think about you near constantly. You are the worm in my brain. I imagine you’re blushing and frowning for my impropriety and I was being vague for your sake. Here is the thing though, I do not want that night again. I don’t want it that way. I want you the way you are. I want to experience what it is like when you actually want me. The way I know you do know. I hear your fantasies. I hear the way you adore me. It makes my heart flutter. It sets me on fire.

This is me telling you that I feel what you are thinking right now. I love you too. Oh and yes, you have permission to do that too. You just noticed me looking and now you’re feeling self conscious. You think I’m angry. I actually am imaging you coming over here to kiss me. You are so breathtaking. I suppose I’ll end this now because you’re going to go for a walk and I want to walk with you.

Wife of mine, when you eventually read this come find me and kiss me silly. I’m owed. Don’t worry about permission or any of that silly mortal stuff. Just do it. My telling you to do this bypasses all that. Thank you.

Another letter after that.

Clara,

You are going to be poisoned. I have seen it. I look into your future often, now days. Never too far because I do not want to see that deep. I do not want to risk going blind to the real world. Just a few weeks. A month at most. I want to make sure I am still in it, your future. That our family can survive and we can be together. Unfortunately I am not a particularly talented clairvoyant. Not like my grandmother. I can’t see the whole picture, just pieces. So I know you will be poisoned, and I know you are going to die. I do not know when or who does it. I am mad with rage. Once I find out, I will slaughter them. I will follow them wherever they go and when they think they are safe, I will brutalize them.

You are not going to die.

Darling, I left this letter half done. It’s been a while now. You are recovering because I begged my coven for aid and they were willing to help. Because I asked. They still do not trust you and they still think I should kill you. They think I am blinded by your beauty, that you’ve seduced me and you have but I’m in my own mind. They simply do not know you as I do. So you are going to live and I am going to watch over you while you recover. I believe I know who has done this and I will be leaving shortly to be certain. Once I know, I am going to kill them. You will not find what I’ve done to them so do not bother looking, it will do no good. You will never remember their name or face. I am ruining them in more ways than one. They will not go to an afterlife. They will suffer. Because you are mine and I am a witch and they were foolish to ever try to harm a witch’s love. The world must hate us for the trite that Heretic King preaches. He tells them about the worst of us, the worst of what we can do, and I will prove some of that right. This man will suffer for an eternity.

I love you. I love you. Please know that when you read this in a few months. Please know that I am crying as I write this. That I’m terrified. That I’m realizing how much I love you and how I am imperfect and broken without you. That being your wife is my greatest fortune. I love you and it’s not enough to say. I need you. Panic and fear are driving me forward, forgive me and be patient with me. I know you’re annoyed with how I’ve been. I’m unstable right now Clara. I’m distraught.

I see it now. The long line of my lonely blood soaked life and how changed it became when you sent emissaries to smuggle me out of the dour lands here. I’m not sure you’ve seen it so I’ll explain it here. How we fell in love. It brings me comfort so let me go through it. It may calm me down and help you once you read this.

It happened for me before you which I can say because I’ve heard you thinking about me. So I know. I was learning more about you than you were me in the first handful of months, darling. Every day I was asking about you from your workers, in disguise so I could be trusted, and in the towns too. Nearby and further out at the edges of your territory. I asked the local Spirits their thoughts on you and it surprised me, immensely, to hear how devout you are. I admit I was a little territorial when I spoke to the Spirits you have chosen to pray to which is simply the way we are. I cannot explain it. I learned about your grandparents and your father and your youth as a hunter. An excellent one I learned. I heard the story of Sir Cretch and maybe that’s when it started for me. Because it filled me with this lightness to learn you, my darling, had cut off your hair when you were fourteen and took the identity of a Knight in your court so you could go fight in the Battle of the Silver Tears. Then when you came back a hero, you were unveiled and punished severely by your Uncle who was the regent of the time. Clara, you are so damn noble. It infuriated me because it endeared me. Rapidly. You were a young woman who became a Knight and tricked soldiers for three months in the camps. Three months. You just truly are so noble you embodied it and they did not blink. I was helpless against that.

Your laugh is stars. It takes my breath away. So I was infatuated for a bit and then we had sex. We had sex after you had nearly been killed and you were covered in bruises.

I saw it, you know. I put the letter opener in your things just before you left. I was almost too late. So I had to hurry and was only able to tuck it in your belt as you were leaving. That’s why I suddenly hugged you and startled you and then, because I was flustered, I snapped some insult at you. I’m sorry for that. You were going to drown and then I saw a slight change where they beat you to death with chains. So I hurried. And then you came back and we had sex and you treated me like I was delicate. You touched my hair and didn’t cut any. Didn’t take a single strand. You tied it back and smiled at me and I was in love. It was stupid and silly and I was furious. I kept telling myself it hadn’t been long enough, that you had not given me enough reason yet, and there I was. In love. Stupid. I’m still mad.

You just are so wonderful and the way you are wraps me around you. I’m the witch and you enchanted me. See how frustrating that is, my love?

I wanted you near constantly. Every little thing you did seemed to birth this system of stars and each were given a name of a new kind of want. Want for you attention. The intoxicating way you look at me and dote on me and compliment me. Want for your touch. To hold your hand. To kiss your face. To touch your hair. Your hair is so lovely, Clara. It’s like spun threads of molten gold. I am realizing as I write this that perhaps the pregnancy is making me crave you as well as other things. I have been far more needy lately than usual. It’s not quite fair that I want you this badly and now there is no reason for us to lay together.

I craved to learn more about you but the only option I had left was to do it through you so I started writing in this. It irked me that you would leave and not seek me out. I followed you sometimes. When you went to Uenzi, I was with you. Disguised as one of your guards. It was a bit foolish but I was desperate. We had tea together then and you spoke to me in that firm but polite way you speak to your men. I did not realize the particular guard I was pretending to be was one your spies. I hope I preformed your tasks well enough you did not realize anything. I worried I had made you suspicious and you would come home and execute the real man for treason. Then again, you are a fair and patient ruler. You wouldn’t have done it without evidence. You spoke of me to this man I was pretending to be. You said, ‘I wish at times I was a better woman. It is unfair the way I treat her. She is likely so miserable. What would you suggest I do for her? To make her feel welcome? The flowers aren’t working. She hates them. Almost as much as she hates me.’

I did not realize you had been trying to find ways to make me feel welcome. Clara I leaned in to kiss you and you gave me, your spy, the strangest look. I felt so embarrassed I had to leave.

I found excuses to be near you whenever I could. I was lucky that you had started to become endeared to me as well. I heard you think about how to compliment my eyes and how lovely the curve of my lips is. About the way light hit the skin of my throat and made it look divine, tempting. You wanted to tell me how you adore my mind and the way I word things. It fascinates you. Clara, that drives me wild. You think of me as a person and you fumble with your own tongue. You want to explain how the curve of my accent when I speak the language of Spirits makes you weak in the knees but cannot. You worry about my reaction.

I’m a coward for not telling you how I feel. I leave you to think we are still enemies or something near friends. It’s awful of me. I like to watch you squirm. This is dragging on. It’s too many pages and my hand is starting to cramp.

I miss you already. Please recover quickly. Please notice me. I love you. I’m frustrated. I’m going to go find who did this and kill them.

Clara tucks the journal in a bag as she is making her way to the door.

“Gillia?”

A door opens that joins with Clara’s apartments, welcoming in a stout heavy set woman with a charming smile.

“My Lady, how may I be of service?”

“I am cancelling my afternoon plans. Please inform my advisors and Khey. Have my fastest horse saddled. And have you any notion as to where I put the Queen Consort’s gift?”

“Yes, my Lady. You had it left in your office.”

“You are a national treasure, Gillia. Have that packed into my bags as well. And take the rest of the day off afterward.”

Deep in the verdant scape of a forest at the height of autumn, she walks her horse down a skinny trial as far as she can. When the end point is reached, there she dismounts and ties his reigns to a post left by her own hand. From there she walks slowly with her cane, shouldering a light bag to carry her things. There is no expectation that her wife will be waiting for her there. Just a hope.

On the trails they cut together over many months of learning to coexist, there is a new alter at the end. One that would be easier for Clara to make her way to alone now that her leg slows her down. There she sits and prays as she has many times since her wife left. On a blanket that spreads over damp grass and leaves in front of a pewter bowl full of rain water.

Her eyes close for what feels like only a few minutes. There is no sound except the sounds of a forest bursting with life, pushed around by wind and the light rain fall.

Then hands curls over her shoulders from behind and Willow’s smoky voice, “Clara.”

Her heart leaps. Almost always there is a fear of the worst coming about. Years of waiting for her death to catch her has fostered this in her young heart. So part of her expects to turn and discover it had been an illusion. Something her mind conjured to make the absence feel less wide.

Willow is standing behind her with a sling tied around her chest. In it is their infant daughter, holding some sort of wooden stick layered in soft leather that she is chewing on. Small horns have sprouted from her head, just barely poking past her thick purple hair.

Willow is gracious in her beauty. Not hiding any of the joy nor suppressing her beautiful smile. Today she is wearing a pair of trousers that are loose cloth except where they cinch at the ankles and waist. Just a shawl covers her shoulders and a band of cloth over her breasts, exposing a lot of skin for the autumn air and rain to kiss.

“You came.”

“Help me up.” One arm extends, knowing Willow will take her hand and give her the anchor she needs to get up. Once on her feet, she does not hesitate to step forward, take her wife by the jaw, and kiss her for the very first time. Between them, she keeps a hand cradled around her daughter’s head so they do not come too close together and harm her. Willow hums against her lips, a delighted noise, seeking more that Clara is all to happy to give.

When Clara draws away, Willow catches her by the collar and tugs to keep her close. Her long fingers curl over Clara’s neck, thumb caressing the line of her jaw.

“Aren’t you cold?” She breathes between her wide smile.

“No, I am a bit warm actually.” A glimmer in her wife’s eyes makes her huff out her soft laugh.

“Have my coat.”

“No, darling, really I’m fine. This sort of weather does not bother me. But thank you,” Clara leans into the touch grazing her cheek and lifting to push through her hair, “You kissed me so I’m assuming you found the pages.”

“I have not read them all yet.”

“Oh? Which have you?”

“I love you.”

Willow’s smile is a bit glib and she thinks it speaks poorly of her that Clara finds it so attractive.

“I know.”

“I wish you had said something sooner and put me out of my misery.”

“I know that too.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

Instead of giving her an answer, Willow lifts their daughter from the wrapping to set her gentle in Clara’s outstretched arms. Clara takes a breath that gets stuck at the back of her throat. Feeling the girl’s weight now reminds her of how long it has been. How light she was the first time and how much heavier she is now. Clearer now are the eyes that look up at her, watching Clara’s face and the hand she sets over the girl’s small chest. A tiny hand flaps against hers, smacking gently, until it secures around one of Clara’s fingers.

Warmth blossoms from the center of her chest and spreads outward rapidly. Willow leans against her side, watching the baby and the emotions flash across Clara’s face.

“She has gotten so big already.”

“If you think she is big now, just wait a few years. You’re never going to believe it.”

“I missed you.”

“This won’t be our lives. You saying I miss you and she has gotten so big.”

Clara glances over to lift an eyebrow, “Won’t it?”

“It won’t. I can’t live like this so it won’t be.”

“Yes, you have a proclivity for digging your heels in until you get what you want, don’t you?”

Willow presses a kiss to her cheek, “I do. I’m simply too pretty to be mean to.”

“And unfortunately you have me wrapped around your finger because of that.”

She can feel her wife’s smile against her cheek, “Good.”

“So what is our lives?”

“Once the war is done, I’ll come back to the castle with her. We can live together there and raise her and any other children we decide to have. I do want more. And she may decide she does not like this mortal skin so we may need to provide another heir anyway. Until then, I will live here. And you will come see us as often as you can.”

“Here? As in right here or here in the broad scope of the forest?”

Willow points down to the ground beneath their feet, “Right here.”

“Darling, there is not a house here.”

“Don’t be so pesky. Do call me darling again though. I love that.”

“Darling.”

“Just once more.”

Clara feels a little sick with her love. It makes her weak and shaky and hot all over. She leans over to kiss her wife just once more because she can. To taste the rainwater on her lips and cherish the sensation.

“Darling, there is not a house here.”

“There can be. Forget all that, come walk with me. Keep our girl close. She has missed you too.”

“How do you know?”

Willow scoffs, “I’m a witch and so is she.”

“Is that all?”

Yellow eyes are a happy homecoming especially when they sparkle with love, “Our first moments as witches are improtant. When we are born and held, we latch onto our people. She learned who her coven was the day they each held her. She made a bond with me as her mother that is strong. But the bond she made with you might be even stronger, in different ways, because you cried over her and you love her every second of every day you are awake. She may be young but she is a witch and that made it magic. It has been a point of contention between my coven and I. They do not like this non-traditional approach I’ve taken that has caused my little cub to become dependent on you and besotted with you. I’m quite pleased with myself. I cannot speak of the way it makes me feel to watch my daughter adore you even half as much as I do.”

She draws her cloak over her shoulder to wrap it around her daughter. The chill might not effect her but that does not stop a mother worrying. Sweet giggles ring through the air when she rubs the bare feet of the babe between her fingers to try and warm them.

“What does that mean?”

“It means her magic made some sort of spell that anchors you two.”

“What spell?”

Gracefully Willow lifts her shoulders in a delicate shrug, “We will find out when she gets older and it presents itself. For now all I can tell is that she loves you very much and she trusts you as much as she does me. Which is not an easy thing to earn from withlings. Well done.”

Clara falls into step beside her wife. She tries to keep her eyes on the trail they move on but her eyes keep falling down to the infant bundled I. Her cloak.

“And what does that mean?”

“It means that witches form intense and immense connections they cannot explain to mortals. Only Spirits or fellow witches like us understand it so because of that children born between a witch and a mortal or lessor Spirit favor their witch parent. It is not that they do not care for their mortal parent, it is just that we don’t really understand them in the same way. It is hard to love something as strongly as we love when they cannot love the same way back. But, somehow, you have convinced her that you can love her just as strongly and she feels much the same for you as she does me. With some slight differences, naturally,” Willow slips her hand around Clara’s arm the way she did that day they strolled through the gardens, “Don’t forget that just because she looks like a mortal bab, she is not one.”

“Very true,” She looks down at the innocent cherub face of her daughter, the sun within her universe, and the fawn points of her horns and the deep yellow of her eyes, “What are you going to be, my wild one? A wolf like your mother or something new?”

Willow glances down too as if waiting for an answer. It surprises her with Willow’s eyes get squinty from the depths of her joy and the laugh that comes free.

“What?”

“Aeryn is displeased you did not bring her a bird.”

Clara blinks her confusion and sputters, “A bird? What would she want a bird for?”

Willow again just shrugs and suggests, “To eat? To play with? Who knows. Babies are a mystery.”

“Yes,” She looks at her child who looks at her and shakes her head fondly, “Spirit babies more so.”

Light as the rain that falls upon them, Willow laughs. The way in which rain hits her face and rolls down her neck should inspire poetry. The way her head tilts back to accommodate the joy and her hand squeezes tighter around Clara’s arm makes her burn. Desire makes her heart race.

Willow looks over to meet her hooded gaze with a knowing look.

She sucks in a sharp breath between her teeth for having been caught. Embarrassment turns her ears to flames.

“So,” She hugs her daughter tighter to her, feeling the cool fingers on the tiny hand slap against her blazing cheek, “Tell me how have you been. How was your healing? I was worried for you daily.”

Willow sighs out a dreamy sound, hugging Clara’s arm against her ribs, “I know.”

“What did I miss? With our Aeyrn.”

“I’ll answer these all. Come, let’s find a spot to sit so you can rest your leg and play with our daughter. There is a nice alcove up above, under a great big rock. I’d like to kiss you there.”

Often when they are apart, she thinks of her wife and child. A swirl that clouds her focus but for once she does not mind her focus clouded. It almost feels indulgent as a full night of sleep to sit and daydream of them during meetings. War is not a kind time for her to daydream over being reunited with her wife.

Clara is always busy. There are meetings that interrupt other meetings. Meetings that have to be held on site or in forward camps. Meetings with prospective allies in the castle and beyond the Kingdom of Flowers. Meetings about plans and strategies, about losses and wins, about property and supplies and funds. When there are not meetings, there are things to oversee and letters to write and people to visit. There are plans she set in motion like seeds planted in the spring and now the harvest comes too quick.

Perpetual exhaustion is an old friend. Lack of sleep mingles nicely with hardly pausing to take meals and now the misery of missing her family. In such times, she hardly feels like herself. There is little time to be a woman with a name and needs.

Tonight she decides to sleep. To take a hot bath and ignore the pile of papers on her desk, just for once, and fall into blissful sleep. She gives her attendants the night off after they prepare her water and luxuriates in the near boiling water. A long soak to draw some of the anxiety and the ache out of her weary body. Sitting in those chairs for hours on end are going to slowly break her over a life time.

After the bath she moves to the vanity to comb her hair before bed. She stops, just shy of reaching the chair, because there is a wolf in her bed. A sleek white and grey wolf with fireflies buzzing around its noble head. Yellow eyes blink open to give her a look then the mouth cracks open for a yawn.

“Willow?”

The Spirit gives a toss of its mighty head before lifting into its legs. First it stretches forward then backward to get each leg and shakes the entire body.

“Darling, on the bed. Really?”

The Spirit jumps down onto the floor to laze its way to Clara. Even standing on all four legs, the shoulders of the beast reach her hips. Teeth catch around her hand in a gentle bite, tugging her toward the bed. Water drips from her tousled hair that smells like the oils she used to clean her skin and the soap for her hair.

“Where is Aeryn?”

The beast tosses it head with a snort. Another large yawn before it hops back onto the bed to stretch out, tail thumping against the bed. In a blink, Willow is the one stretched out. Long leans bare against the mussed bed. Arms are splayed out beside her with the long tendrils of her glossy hair hanging over them. Yellow eyes watch her through the thickness of her dark lashes.

Clara swallows down her own heart and stomach after running her eyes up the length of her wife’s naked body.

“Our daughter is with my coven. She is fine.”

“What,” She pauses to clear her throat, flushing when Wllow gives her that same knowing look, “What are you doing here? How did you get in?”

“I am your wife. This is my home. And it’s obvious what I’m doing here. I missed you. I ache for you.”

Clara moves toward the bed in a haze. Once she is close enough for her knees to bump the edge, Willow sits up. She slides her hands up Clara’s toned thighs to grip her hips. A kiss is pressed to her belly through the thin material of her nightgown.

“Do you miss me? Have you ached for me?”

She reaches down disbelieving, even when her fingers make contact. When she feels the supple texture of her wife’s smooth cheek. The silken caress of her lips.

“How are you here?” She whispers, awed.

Willow threads her fingers through Clara’s cool golden hair to bring their foreheads to touch.

“I have been here most the day waiting for you.”

“But—“

“She is fine. Just because I cannot stay here with you for now does not mean I cannot visit you. Aren’t you happy to see me?”

“Overjoyed. I have missed you more than words.”

“Then don’t think about it. Just be grateful,” Teeth scrape the edge of her jaw and the purr that comes from Willow makes Clara’s teeth rattle, “Come to bed with me. I need to feel you above me and beneath my hands. I need to be remembered and reunited with the one I love.”

The embers in that whispered beckoned set her ablaze. She falls into her passions with a vigor nearly forgotten to her.

They are not new to one another’s bodies. Still this time is vastly different than all the times before. Love is strong between them and Clara wants. Clara wants every inch of Willow’s beautiful heart and it has kindled a fire in her. Clara is feverish from the depth of her desires. It has been many years since she had felt this way for someone. Felt such a bond with someone that it opened the door to her passion and her hungers.

Touching Willow now feels different. Like living in the dark and now suddenly waking up to a world of color. Even the smallest sensation is something that curls her toes, racks her with divinity, makes her melt against the body that clings to her. This time she is fully present because she is thriving in the seconds that pass too fast. This time she is not quiet. This time Willow grips her and whines her name and whispers hotly against her ear, “Don’t be quiet. I want to hear you. I want to see you. Be here with me.”

And she is sundered by love.

When the hours roll by and they do not have the energy to go on, she breathes heavy into her pillow. Willow curls against her side, rumbling from her contentment, and kisses at her arm without any intent.

“You are a better lover when your heart is in it.”

“I did tell you so.”

Willow’s laugh is throaty, still coated in the dust of her passion that makes it hot and ragged, “You make the most lovely sounds. If I could go back and convince myself of anything, it would be to allow myself to enjoy the times before. I am now hooked into this feeling and I already am aching to hear you again.”

A kiss against her shoulder draws her head to the side so she can meet her wife’s eyes. Bliss suits her. Beneath the light of the moon, laid bare on the bed, she glows. To see her now with her hair tousled and marks made on her skin, her heart leaps. She feels lethargic, tired to the bone, but she summons the energy to pick herself up long enough to lay her head on Willow’s chest. Fingers instantly come to her hair, combing through the tangles gently.

“I am so happy you are here.”

“It was too long for both of us. I will visit sooner next time. I was becoming irritable and my coven forbid me from returning until I saw you so I’m sure they will not mind if I leave more frequently going forward.”

Clara imagines the way her wife paced restlessly in the castle at times. When things would irritate her without Clara understanding the root, she would become a violent storm that no one wanted to brace being near except her.

“Because of me?”

Willow rumbles and curls a possessive arm around her hips, “It is hard for me to be apart from you. It would feel a might easier to go on with my horns or my arms cut from me. In my heart that is how it feels. I turn vicious when I cut away the part of me that is you to be with our daughter. Especially while I know you are not safe here. Do you know what it does to an animal to leave them in a constant heightened state of survival?”

Clara is surprised, “You feel unsafe without me?”

“Yes. Because you are a part of me and I cannot know you are safe without you by me. And because it does not feel good to be in love without you near to express it. I am extra emotional at the moment, after becoming a mother. I feel the need to keep my family close,” Willow presses her nose into Clara’s hair and sighs, “And you fly so far from me. It is torture.”

Clara lifts herself onto her elbows braced beside Willow’s shoulders. Her hair pools like wax around their faces when she bends to taste her wife’s lips.

“Forgive me. It is my misery to trouble you.”

“As it should be.”

Her laugh, a rough sound, makes Willow’s eyes darken to a burnt orange.

As always, she is enchanted by the beauty of her ethereal wife. It becomes a thought so profound she feels the fool who swallowed the sun and will feel it burn as it sinks through her. An inferno that sinks through her waxen insides until she is naught but a puddle of unnamed desires and unspoken truths.

“You are magnificent. My love for you drives me mad. I have never been happier to be lost to my senses.” She drags her fingertips over the bruises her lips left on Willow’s throat. Beads of sweat are made glittering trials beneath her quest to feel. A hitch in Willow’s breathing when she crests the large swell of her breast. They meet for another kiss when she closes her hand around it, giving a firm squeeze that makes Willow whine beneath her. Hips lift to meet her own in an unintentional hope for attention. Understanding is something that does not always need words if the body speaks so clearly. It is her pleasure to move down her wife’s body at a slow pace, tasting parts of her skin that are salty and soft. Fingers bury themselves in her hair, anchoring deep and giving a hard tug when she dallies to kiss each breast.

Yellow eyes watch her with an eerily inhuman hunger. The kind that is impatient jaws snapping in the night at a mindless thing unaware of the danger they are in. They warn Clara to hurry, to satisfy the beast before it bites back.

Looking back on their time together is surreal. To think of where they started and how much time has changed them in such a seemingly small window. A little past a year ago, they had laid together on the cold stone floor and Willow had shaken against her while mumbling threats and telling her to be silent. Though she had clung to Clara and breathed out sounds of pleasure, they had been distant. Willow had been a caged beast in this castle who stalked around growling at anything that moved. As frequent as she could manage, she would remind Clara of her hatred for her and swore at her if they came too close. Once she had even snarled at Clara, ‘I hate when your ears do that. When they flatten because you’re upset and wiggle when you laugh. You look stupid and I hate you.’ Perhaps there had never been an unhappier union between royals within these drafty halls.

Then somehow, love blossomed. To look back, knowing now that Willow had loved her first and known her thoughts, she can see where they started to draw closer. Where the switch flipped in Clara from trying to keep a respectful distance to dying to be near the smell of her wildflower hair and the radiance of her beauty. The slow softening of Willow’s hard exterior to show the real woman beneath had slipped past her notice the first time. The feral thing that hooks into a person and draws them into the dark with her where she can hover over them and hiss mine, mine, mine. Who speaks clean and quick, precise to a point but cryptic enough sometimes Clara leaves more confused than ever before. When her wife had started hovering around her work desk, appearing at night to drag her to bed, occasionally finding her by the wagon before she would leave so she could crush her in a hug. How sometimes Willow would snap at her teeth and growl at her advisors if they came to collect Clara for meetings while they had tea. How deeply endeared she become until suddenly she could not breath without desiring her wife’s winsome smile, her laugh that sometimes has a smell or a taste. To make love again only this time in such a way she could feel every moment in joy. Clara can see now how they had been reaching toward each other but doing so blindly until their Aeryn had been born.

Once Willow had admonished her for not being grateful what she had and now she understands. Being haunted by the phantom touch of Willow will be a triumphant joy for future years to come. To drown in thoughts of her. To roll in the richness of her own love and concede to the tongue’s parade that will sing of it forever. Down into the murky depths of whatever grave they place her in, she will carry this devotion so purely that her bones will sprout purple flowers so that the world may recall the color of her wife’s hair and how it lived in her.

Willow gasps suddenly and sharply, looking down with darkened eyes that speak of an enormous affection, “Clara.”

Wordlessly, she moves her worship to kiss the supporting arches of the chapel she has made of her wife’s body. One rib at a time. Then over the soft swell of her belly that makes her eyes roll back for the beauty of it. A statue come to life. A pliant masterpiece beneath her hands. So perfect she feels an impertinent sinner for coveting a goddess.

Willow moans softly, shifting her hips to reach up for something not there yet.

“You think of me differently now. When I heard you before it stopped my heart but now, oh Clara,” Fingernails bite into her scalp from Willow curling her fingers inward, “The jealousy I feel thinking you could have been anyone’s but mine had you not arranged our marriage.”

“I would have been no one’s,” She moves down with ease when her wife spreads her legs wider apart to accommodate her, “Before everything truly turned and war was declared, I intended to name a distant cousin my heir and die young.”

“What a waste.”

Clara smiles against the sleek curve of her wife’s soft thigh, “I am gladly yours now.”

Willow rattles from a rumble that comes of a pleased beast whose territory has been claimed and respected thusly.

Willow releases her grip upon golden threads to reach under her chin and hold her there, tapping a thumb against her lower lip. A flush has crawled across her chest, giving her a warm glow that makes her head fuzzy. A knot of gnawing hunger is eating through her belly already and this, the sight of her wife flushed and desperate, sends her reeling.

“Just as I hoped.”

“What’s that?” Clara husks, sinking so deep into her desire that she feels afloat. Drunk on the look in her wife’s eyes.

“I was going to bring the Clearblade heir to her knees. I was going to utterly destroy you,” Coals live on the tongue that speaks her name like the rolling of thunder, eyes dark and wanting, “And I have wrecked you, Clara Clearblade.”

The desperate whine she hears next does not immediately register as one of her own making. Willow shivers beneath her, lashes fluttering prettily as her eyes fall shut.

“Shall I wreck you in turn?”

“You sunder me daily. My heart thrills at the sound of your name. I swell with pride when I think of you. Though you may not have the eyes to see it, I am at your feet begging for your attention. A single flower begging the sun to care about only it, to make it the only living thing that deserves its light. I am starved for you. You could not wreck me anymore than you already have. Simply do your worst and ruin me now. It will be nothing new and I am eager for that truth.” Willow melts into the bed, making a plethora of sounds when Clara bends her head down to taste of her wife.

Deep in the wild green of the forest, a queen sits in a field of wild flowers. Without a crown upon her head but a laurel of flowers instead. Set upon burnished gold hair that gleams under the sun and is the thing that sets a glimmer in yellow eyes. This queen does not sit upon a throne but upon the earth itself. Back pressed to the warm surface of a tree trunk. Purple hair is splayed across her lap from the head pillowed upon her thigh. Wine is a sweet smell on the air that comes from two glasses abandoned for the moment. Bees buzz around a plate of fruits and meats and cheeses, sliced up, and abandoned much like the wine. A queen and a witch are held captive by the small Spirit crawling through flowers. A minuscule thing wrapped in thick canvas clothes tied together with leather strips and a fur shawl that matches that of the Queen’s. Every few steps, she comes to stop with an intense look of concentration upon her face. The small elven ears turn down when she shimmies herself onto small feet and sways there.

Both parents are riveted. A breath is held when their child considers her first step.

“Aeryn,” Clara says and feels her soul rise upon wings when the small held jerks up and yellow eyes squint at her, “Come here, love. Walk to us.”

Willow stretches like a cat lazing in the sun, arms reaching up past her head and sharp canines showing in a yawn. Her eyes blink sleepily. Instead of words, she makes a sound that comes from deep in her chest. A mother calling to her youngling in some primal call.

Aeryn wiggles her entire body in antisipstion, looking focused. The excitement throws her balance off and she tumbles sideways into the flowers.

“Ah, that’s alright beloved. Try again when you’re feeling brave,” Clara is bursting with pride, looking upon her child with eyes that can see no wrong, “She’s incredible. She’s doing so well.”

Willow reaches up to poke the underside of her chin, “You are shining.”

“Hm? What’s that, love?”

Her wife turns onto her back to look up at her now, “You love our daughter very much.”

“More than the world.”

Willow rumbles happily, eyes slipping shut in bliss, “Yes. It feels wonderful. I chose well.”

She traces Willow’s nose with her fingertip, up along the bridge to her forehead where she shifts aside some hair. Quickly she bends down to kiss her wife, once then twice, in brief meetings.

She does not speak on the measure of her happiness that Willow forsook tradition so that Clara could be a part of Aeryn’s young life. That she has trusted Clara enough she had given her heart and her daughter’s over to Clara and whispered protect us, we’re counting on you without speaking the words. Willow must know what it means to her.

Instead she asks, “You can feel my love for her?”

“I can. It feels like stepping into a rushing river that is cool and refreshing when the summer heat is intense. It—you know what it is,” Willow reaches up to curl a hand around her cheek, looking at her in a new way, a way that is so intense it makes her stop breathing, “It feels like how my mother loved me. And that is…Clara, it is not how anyone else is. I’ve never met a mortal like you.”

“That is good?”

“It’s very good. It’s exceptional. It’s like a myth but it’s real and it’s mine.”

Clara turns her head to kiss Willow’s wrist, “I’m glad then.”

“I am glad I didn’t kill you.” Said with a bright, cheery tone through a wide smile.

“I am glad for that too,” Clara looks up at their daughter when she sees her climb back to her feet for another try, “I haven’t had a family in a very long time. I never expected to have one again. I had only planned to set everything in motion by getting people who move things and trusting them to finish the mess I set on their plates. Despite what the others of my original crew think, I gave you the largest mess because of the fact that it seemed small. You were meant to raise the next queen and—“

“Your uncle. The rebels. The loyalists and the Heritic. The Sun King. The entire war. I was meant to end it with Aeryn, after you were gone.”

Aeryn wobbles side to side, crunching her face into a furious look of intensity. One of her arms reach out toward Clara who is only a few feet away. Her little fingers open and close in a grabbing gesture.

“While you were in enemy territory, I heard that you acted as an assassin for your coven and for other covens. An assassins work is not entirely dissimilar to a spy so I had hoped you would be able to find evidence of my uncle’s treason. You would kill him and his rebels would either flee or raise some small civil attack that you would squash. It was going to work. Then, once that garnered you the trust of the people, you would change things. You’d raise Aeryn to see the world you made and she’d continue in your legacy. You would take our armies to the desert and you would rid the world of the false faith and the slaughter in the wastes. You would kill the Sun King like you killed his son.”

“I still might,” Willow walks her fingers along the edge of Clara’s jaw toward her mouth, tapping the seem of her lips and smiling when Clara kisses the tip, “But after your princess learns to walk, mayhap.”

They both look toward their child unsteady on her feet. Loud sounds keep coming from her to explain her frustration to her mothers that she cannot take a step but wants to. The longer she looks at Clara, the more frustrated she seems to become. A little foot in a little boot lifts off the ground to stomp back down.

Clara leans forward, rapt, “Almost. So close, my love. Come now.”

The tiny triangular ears perk up with the head coming up to focus on the face the voice came from.

“Mm!” The baby reaches out with grabbing hands again.

“If you want your mother, you have to go to her,” Willow is cool as a wind in the breeze, firm but gentle too, “Hurry now. You’re too old to be taking this long to walk.”

Clara clicks her tongue against her teeth, “Darling, be kind. She’s not yet a year old.”

“But wild cats walk within a few weeks. She is a Spirit after all. And she cannot show her form until she walks on those stubby mortal legs.”

“Won’t she be a wolf like you?”

“Certainly not. She has taken after you, my love. I am a vicious pack animal. I need my people, I need my you and my her and my coven. But you are a sleek, lonely thing and when you do show your claws, it is often too late to notice them. That is in her so I know she will be a cat.”

“Mmm!”

Willow lays an arm in the grass, reaching toward their daughter with her palm held up and fingers wiggling invitingly, “Aeryn, walk.”

One foot lifts over and over in a stomping pattern. The ears flatten downward from mounting annoyance and squeals of frustration come from the little girl.

Then, magnificently, a first step is taken. And another that turns into a rapid trot forward. Momentum carries the girl faster than she is ready for so she stumbles and begins to teeter forward. Clara is there to catch her quickly round her small ribs and lift her into her arms. She is bursting with pride and love for her daughter who has done the impossible.

She kisses one of the little ears because it is close to her then her cheek and one of the small hands. The tiniest little purr rumbles in Aeryn’s body.

“Well done,” Clara kisses the crown of her head, unable to keep her heart inside her body for even a moment, “You were remarkable. I am so proud of you. Willow, did you see? She ran to me!”

Her wife reaches up to grip the leg that pokes out between the arms Clara has folded around the baby. She is grinning, gleaming brighter than the sun.

“I saw.”

“Praise her!”

Bright, breathtaking laughter from her wife, “You do it well enough for the both of us.”

“No, she did a remarkable job,” Clara turns to Aeryn who is happily watching Clara’s facial expressions and gripping fistfuls of her hair, “Tell your mother, you deserve praise.”

“Mm!”

Willow gives the small leg a gentle shake, “You did well, Aeryn. We are both proud.”

“Yes, we are,” Clara hugs her daughter close to feel the vibration of her whirring purr and her little heart beating rapidly, “Thank you for choosing me, Aeryn.”

Willow makes an odd sound and tilts her head on Clara’s thigh. It grows slow but the look that comes upon her face is beyond words. It speaks too many emotions at once for her to comprehend. Deeply profound, as old as the making of the world and twice as meaningful. Then it fades into an easier smile that is soft with devotion.

“You say the right things. You have always done that. It is what won me over.”

“I do not always mean to.”

“I know.”

Aeryn looks over the arm around her toward Willow who looks dotingly upon her daughter. One little hand reaches down in a silent plea. Willow hauls herself up, yawning wide as she moves and showing off her impressive teeth again.

Aeryn begins to laugh when Willow takes her chubby wrist and chomps down on her little fingers. The other tiny arm flails out to slap over Willow’s face over and over until her hand is released. They both make soft buzzing noises that make Clara’s head warm and her heart feel swollen. Willow lays her head on Clara’s arm so she can press her face against Aeryn’s belly. The baby is presenting with a new fun treasure trove of hair to play with. She looks up at Clara with handfuls of purple, flapping her arms and unintentionally pulling as she does so.

Strange as it is, she feels ready to cry. Emotions well up so swift and so intense that she can feel a sudden burn behind her eyes. Within the pocket of nature that she used to come to alone, she is whole. In this quiet glade where the sun shines in spiderweb patterns through the canopy, watery upon waves of swaying flowers. When the world was getting crueler to her and she was entirely alone except for an uncle who has secretly been trying to kill her for years, this is where she would fly. To be alone in the woods and listen to foxes scream, birds sing, tree bones crack when the wind makes them stretch their ancient bodies. Sometimes she would sit so stone still and silent that birds when flock to her, settle upon her shoulder and preen their feathers. To drift away from the sorrows of her existence without eyes to watch her break. Other times she would sit and bawl for hours, breaking apart the crusted layers of the masks she slathers over herself to hide from the world that wants her dead. To remain indifferent. To hide the lonely child. The girl who misses her sister that slowly turned into something theh could not recognize and who just left one dead. Who was declared dead by the grieving queen and declared a new Spirit by their pious father. Clara still aches when she recalls sitting at the dinner table, unable to leave, while her parents fought and screamed until eventually she became a ghost in the house. The child that survived who they need and nurture to be a queen and who is made a symbol for faith to spite their spouse but not a daughter. Not someone they recognize is grieving too and lonely and afraid and in need of love. This place was where she would run to, to get away from them and that environment, for just a little while. Then she began hunting to make prayers to a sister that might be a Spirit or dead. Then hunting just so her hands would stop shaking and she could breath and run far away from everything hounding her.

And now she is here for the first time as a whole woman with a heart full of love and a family that worships her. And who she worships in turn. She has come here to weep again but simply because she has so much she does not know what else to do. It creeps upon her. Serenity and peace chokes the tears from her. In this place she holds a life that she helped make and the woman who helped make that life has stayed. They do not fight like her parents did. They do not hate each other behind a thin layer of propriety that says spouses act this way because they must. There is real love between them and she never expected this. Her greatest hope was to at least set the path that others would take to fix her broken country.

Willow lifts her head suddenly, looking at her softly and sadly. One of her hands reaches to cradle her cheek, wiping away tears with her thumb as they fall.

“Pardon me.”

“Clara,” Willow leans forward to kiss her with the same lightness as a raindrop, “You’re always crying.”

She laughs and thinks about how Willow used to glare at her for that. Now she radiates adoration and melts, watching her with eyes that say it is a blessing to see and to hear.

“I was overwhelmed.”

Willow nips at her chin, humming a note that harmonizes with Aeryn, “We love you too.”

“I just—“

“I know,” Willow lays her head on Clara’s shoulder and they both look back to their child, “You have given me the same thing. I know.”

“It is nice to see you with her. We have been married for some time now and you still unveil your gentler nature in little bits and it takes my breath away.”

“Good. Then you understand how I feel about you.”

Aeryn tips forward in Clara’s arms after growing tired of watching her mothers converse. She lays herself on Clara’s chest with a huff that makes her whole chest expand and relax under Clara’s palm. A gentle purr starts up again, tickling her down to the bones.

Willow curls her legs beneath Clara’s bent knees, “She is tired now.”

“You both lay in a sunbeam and get sleepy.”

“Mm. Mhm.”

“Sleep then. I’ll watch over you both.”

“Will you be comfortable?” Willow mumbles sleepily.

“I could not be anywhere better.”