LIKE ANY EVENT requiring formal clothing, the crowning ceremony was tedious, but Bitterblue endured it with the appropriate gravity and poise. The rim of the great golden crown was padded with some thick purple material, to keep it from sliding down to rest on her nose. It looked, Katsa thought, as if it weighed as much as the girl herself did.
Katsa didn't mind the tedium, for Raffin was on one side of her and Bann on the other, and not five minutes passed without them amusing themselves in some way. When Bann whispered to her about Raffin's new medicinal discovery that cured bellyache but caused itchy feet, and his subsequent discovery that cured itchy feet but caused bellyache, Katsa giggled. Standing three rows ahead with his two sons, Ror whipped his head around to glare at her. "This is not a Sunderan street carnival," he whispered with great and dignified reproach. And Po's shoulders began to shake with laughter, and various voices whispered for Ror to shush but then realized whom they were shushing and issued an appalled stream of apology.
"Yes, all right," Ror was left saying, repeatedly and with increasing volume. "Truly, it's all right." The interruption grew to something rather large and intrusive, causing a coronation attendant to stumble in his litany of the Monsean rulers across time. Bitterblue smiled softly at the attendant, and nodded for him to continue. After that, word passed through the crowd that the young queen was kindhearted, and not one to punish small mistakes.
"And how is Giddon?" Katsa murmured to Raffin once things had settled down. She was feeling kindly toward her old suitor because she was happy and surrounded by friends.
Behind her, Oll cleared his throat. "He gets a bit mopey whenever your name is mentioned, Lady. I won't pretend I don't know why."
Raffin spoke quietly. "Randa keeps trying to marry him off, and Giddon keeps refusing. He spends more time than he used to on his own estate. But he gives himself completely to the work of the Council. He's an invaluable ally, Kat. I daresay he wouldn't object to seeing you someday. If you wanted to visit us at court, you know, we'd find a way of sneaking you in without Randa knowing. If you wished it. You haven't told us your plans."
Katsa smiled quietly. "I'll go back to the mountains with Po after this." It was all she said of her plans, because for the moment it was all she knew.
She tilted her head and rested it against her cousin's tall shoulder. The coronation passed in a blur of contentment.
Epilogue
THEY SWAM through the tunnel, Katsa and Po, and burst into the black air of the cave. They hoisted themselves onto the rocks and wrung what water they could from their clothing.
"Take my hand," Po said. He led her up an uneven slope jutted with rocks. Katsa could see nothing in the darkness, not even the slightest shape. She tripped, and swore.
"Where exactly are we going?"
"To the beach," he said. He stopped and lifted her over some rock formation she couldn't see. When he put her down, her feet touched something gritty and soft. Sand.
Outside, the trees were green with spring's end and the sun thawed the world, but inside this cave was always a cold season. They sat on the sand and huddled against each other to keep warm; and shivering led to playful pushing, and pushing to roughhousing, and before too long they were laughing and wrestling full tilt on the ground, their wet hair and clothing full of sand. Finally, pinned against her, Po whispered his surrender, running his hand along the back of her leg in a manner that was distinctly uncombative. And the wrestling turned to something slow and gentle and yielding, and they were warm, and occupied with each other, for some time.
***
SOUND WAS STRANGE in the cave, wet and musical. They lay side by side, warm where their bodies touched. "I've inhaled some sand," Po said, coughing. "So have you, of course, but it doesn't seem to be bothering you."
"No," Katsa said absently, staring up into blackness. Her fingers felt along the scars on her shoulder, and then the scars on her breast. "Po?"
"Hmm?"
"You trust the men who'll be Bitterblue's advisers?"
"For the most part."
"I hope she'll be all right. She never talks about her mother's death, but I know she's still having nightmares."
"I don't see how she could help having nightmares," Po said. "She's so young, and she has so much she's trying to make sense of: a murdered mother, a father who was a madman."
"Do you think he was mad?"
Po hesitated. "I truly don't know. Certainly he was cruel, and perverse. But it's hard to tell where he ended and his Grace began, do you know what I mean? And I suppose we'll never know now where he came from. Or what it is he really wanted." He breathed in and out slowly. "At least people's feelings for him are shifting. Have you felt it? He won't be remembered kindly."
"That will be a help to Bitterblue."
"You know, she wonders if I'm a mind reader. She wonders it, Katsa, and still she trusts me and doesn't press me to spill my secrets. It's extraordinary."
Katsa listened to the quiet that came over the cave when Po stopped speaking. "Yes," she said simply. "Bitterblue is not like other people."
"At the coronation Skye accused me of refusing to marry you," Po said; and now she heard a smile in his voice. "He was quite indignant about it."
Katsa sighed. "Oll came to me with the same point. He thinks it's dangerous for us to leave each other so much freedom and make these vague plans to travel together in the future, doing Council work, with no promises. I told him I'm not going to marry you and hang on to you like a barnacle, just to keep you to myself and stop you loving anyone else."
"It's all right, you know. Other people don't have to understand."
"I worry about it."
"Don't worry about it. We'll muddle through. And there are those who do understand. Raffin does, and Bann."
"Yes," Katsa said. "I suppose they do."
Po shivered, and she reached for him to warm him. A feeling swelled, suddenly, at the edges of her heart. She whispered. "You're determined to go to Lienid right away?"
He took a moment before answering. He couldn't quite manage to keep his voice light. "My mother will cry when I tell her about my sight. To be honest, I dread that as much as anything else."
"I'll come with you."
"No, Katsa, I'll be all right. I want to face this thing and be done with it. And I don't want you to change your plans."
Katsa was en route back to Bitterblue City to give fighting lessons to girls. It was a thing she'd decided she wanted to do, in all seven kingdoms, and after the coronation Bitterblue had begged her to start in Monsea. Po had encouraged it, rather insistently, for it gave Katsa an excuse to keep an eye on Bitterblue's welfare for just a little while longer.
"I'll be in Monsea a few months at least," Katsa said. "But I promise the next lessons I give will be in Lienid."
"So I'll hope to see you by autumn's end. I'll pretend to myself it's not a long time."
"I'm going to take the land route west," Katsa said. She hesitated, then made an admission. "I'm going into the Middluns, Po. There's one more king I need to face."
Po released a small, surprised breath. "But you faced him already."
Katsa sighed. "Yes. But I was scared of myself then. I was scared of him. I'm not anymore. Po—I need Randa to know I'll come and go as I please. I won't hide myself like some kind of criminal, and I won't be afraid to visit my friends. I miss Raff so much already, and I need to see Helda—I want to convince her to go to Monsea. Bitterblue needs her."
Po's arms came around her and pulled her against him. His fingers brushed sand from her hair. "All right," he said softly. "Be careful. I'll look for you after you've faced your king."
They lay quietly together in the dark. Katsa settled her head against his chest. She heard lapping water and its echo. She heard the pulse of his blood through his skin.
"You know," he said, "I wish you could see this cave."
"What's it like?"
He paused. "It's ... beautiful, really."
"Tell me
."
And so Po described to Katsa what hid in the blackness of the cave; and outside, the world awaited them.
Acknowledgments
A DEBUT NOVEL is a true team effort. With all my heart, I would like to thank my sister Catherine (and the guys), always my first reader(s); my stupendous editor, Kathy Dawson; my agent, Faye Bender, who is a rock star; Liza Ketchum, who taught me to think like a novelist; Susan Bloom, Cathie Mercier, Kelly Hager, Jackie Horne, Lisa Jahn-Clough, and everyone else who changed my life at Simmons College's marvelous Center for the Study of Children's Literature; my sister Dac, Dana Zachary, Deborah Kaplan, Joan Leonard, Mom, and Rebecca Rabinowitz, aka my fearless readers; Daniel Burbach, who offered loads of support; my uncle Dr. Walter Willihnganz, who answered a lot of silly medical questions with great patience; my uncles Alfio, Salvatore, and Michael Previtera, who answered a lot of even sillier questions about bows and arrows at the Previtera family Christmas party; and last, but far from least, both of my parents, for everything.
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