Archive of Our Own ^beta

One.

Jester in her wedding dress is radiant, and Caleb feels like his heart is going to tear itself out from his chest.

The Lavish Chateau truly lives up to its name today: velvet draperies drip from the dark wood walls, the magical lights floating above everyone’s heads, lighting everything warm and golden. All the food on the bright tablecloths is beautifully plated, incredibly delicious, and probably endlessly expensive. Caleb picks at an artfully peeled orange, its peel opening out like a flower, and tries his best to keep his eyes from Jester.

It won’t do him any good, he knows this much. If he still remembers his mother’s gentle smile during his childhood illnesses, when he was delirious and feverish, nearly twenty-five years ago, how much more will he remember the sight of Jester, twirling in her gown and laughing like bells?

Jester in white, Jester in silk that swishes like waves and water. Gold thread shimmers faintly on the ocean-floor embroidery at the hem of her wedding gown, golden fish darting in and out of silver seaweed like half-glimpsed treasure. Jester with tinkling chains on her horns and lace pooling down her back, Jester laughing, Jester with a purple flush to her cheeks and adoration in her eyes as she gazes at Fjord. Jester. Jester. Jester.

He feels ill. He feels a fool. He feels like he is no longer in his own body, is anchored only to his mortal form by the despair building in this throat. Caleb swallows—there is nothing but dryness in his mouth and water in his eyes. His hand reaches blindly out for a glass of juice.

“Caleb, be careful,” Veth admonishes.

He snaps back into his body. His friend, flushed pink with drink, is peering at him from across the table.

“My apologies, Veth,” he murmurs. “I may have had too much.”

A lie. He hasn’t had a drop of anything alcoholic since the day after Jester had burst into the Xhorhaus, flushed bright and joyous, and cried out, “I’M MARRYING FJORD!!!!”

Fjord had trailed in sheepishly, smiling, holding an empty ring box and standing back as Jester flew around the room hugging everyone in delight.

He had stolen Veth’s flask of infinite whiskey and drunk himself unconscious, waking the day after to Veth’s worried face and quiet question: “Caleb, are you okay?”

“I am well, meine freund,” he had said. Thank the gods there was no sunlight in Rosohna.

“Is this about Astrid?” Veth had pressed. “Because you know, Cay-cay, there are so many other women out there, or men if you want. Nice ones! Smart ones even! Ooh, what about Essek, he seemed to like you…”

“Nein, Veth, I am not interested in Essek,” Caleb had said. “May I have a glass of water?”

Veth had subsided, brought him a glass of water, but ever after he noticed she was gentle with him, and tried her best to keep the wedding talk away from him.

Not that the wedding could ever be far from anyone’s minds—Jester whirled in and out of the Xhorhaus, carrying swatches of silk and satin and lace and taffeta, wrangling everyone into pastry-tasting, and Sending messages to everyone they had ever met, inviting them to her wedding.

Caleb had spent most of it hiding in his room, or spending time in the Marble Tomes, but there had been one time where Jester dragged him out of his room, declaring, “Cayleb! Fjord is busy, so you’re going to help me pick the best cake ever!”

“Lavorre, did you not already do this yesterday?”

“No, silly! That was for cupcakes. This is for the big wedding cake! It’s going to have four tiers and all of them are going to be different flavors, but I haven’t decided what flavors they’re going to be—oh, and it’s going to be suuuuuper tall, Cayleb, like taller than Veth even!”

“That is quite a lot of cake, Lavorre.”

“We are going to have so many guests, there has to be enough cake! Mama promised I could have the entire Chateau for my wedding, and everyone’s attending, it’s going to be so amazing, Caleb.”

“The entire Chateau? Everyone gets, ah, a day off?”

“Of course! Mama promised it to me when I was ten, you know. I’ve had this planned out for-e-ver.”

“I…see.”

They had gone to cake tastings, and though Caleb didn’t claim to be an expert on cake flavors, Jester had pronounced his choice of chocolate “boring but valid!” and cheesecake as “that’s really good, Caleb!”

Dimly he realizes he is gripping the glass he had picked up far too tightly. He unclenches his fist and takes a sip. Lemonade, cool and sweet, slides down his throat. Citrus fruits were rare in Nicodranas, but then again Marion Lavorre had spared no expense for her darling daughter’s wedding.

Speaking of Marion Lavorre, there she was, sitting in a dark corner, watching her daughter whirl around, her face unreadable.

He doesn’t know what possesses him to walk towards her, but he grabs a jug of iced lemonade and a spare glass, and makes his way toward her.

“Frau Lavorre,” he murmurs softly, as he approaches.

She looks up, and she is so elegantly lovely, this woman, so statuesque. “Mr. Widogast,” she acknowledges.

“May I offer you a drink? It is not alcoholic,” he says.

Her smile is a small sad thing. “Thank you very much.”

He settles next to her and pours her a glass of lemonade. She nods thanks, and they clink their glasses together silently.

They watch Jester together.

“She’s beautiful,” Marion says suddenly.

“She is.”

“She’s beautiful and kind and all she’s ever wanted was to be loved.”

Caleb jolts. “Frau Lavorre?”

The Ruby of the Sea turns to him. Every hair is perfectly in place, falling in waves down her back and framing her face, but her voice is just a touch wild when she says, “All she ever wanted was to be loved. When she was a child she used to talk about her wedding and falling in love and her wonderful husband who would love her so much and the children they would have, one that looked just like her and another who looked just like her husband.

“I did her best to give her everything. Everything in this room is exactly as she pictured it in her head fifteen years ago. Down to the napkins folded into swans.” She laughs a little wildly.

Caleb looks at the table napkins and yes, indeed, they are swans.

“Frau Lavorre, I—I don’t understand.”

“She’s my only child,” she whispers. “My only child. I wish I hadn’t failed her. I wanted to give her everything.”

“Frau Lavorre, I don’t believe you have—”

“Oh, I have,” she says. Suddenly all the energy drains out of her. “I have. I have. My daughter. My little sapphire. I filled her head with romance because I thought it would soften the blow that she has no father. I told her she would fall in love and live happily ever after.”

Caleb’s throat is tight. “She will, Frau Lavorre. Fjord loves her very much, I assure you, I—”

She laughs, short and sad and bitter. “My daughter is very lovable. She makes sure she is nothing else.”

She sips the lemonade, face twisting. “My daughter,” she repeats. “My love. I am heartsick. But then, I am not the only one, am I?”

Her crimson gaze nails him into place, and Caleb cannot speak.

“I—I—”

“Mama!”

Jester bursts into the scene, a flurry of silk and smiles. “Mama, it’s almost time for your song! Hi, Caleb!”

“Hello, Jester,” he manages.

“Is it that time already?” Marion Lavorre says lightly, all trace of previous emotion gone. “I must take my leave, Mr. Widogast. It was interesting speaking with you.”

“Likewise, Frau Lavorre,” he says quietly.

“Please, call me Marion.”

“Then you must call me Caleb.”

When Marion Lavorre takes the stage later, she is the very image of a happy, tearful mother. “This song is for Jester, of course,” she says. “But it is also a message to my new son.”

The lights dim, and a single spotlight shines on Marion Lavorre. In her own cream dress, a much more subdued version of Jester’s, she was a jewel in her own right, but much less bright, much less brilliant, than her daughter. It was probably on purpose.

A beat, and then another spotlight falls atop Jester and Fjord.

“I loved her first, I held her first, and a place in my heart will always be hers,” Marion Lavorre sang softly. “From the first breath she breathed, when she first smiled at me, I knew the love of a mother runs deep…”

Raw pain, raw love, echoes through the hall of the Lavish Chateau. Caleb has to look away. He grasps at a napkin-swan, and hands that seem disconnected from his body unfold and refold it.

“Someday you might know what I’m going through, when a miracle smiles up at you,” Marion croons. “Yes, I loved her first.”

Two.

The Bright Queen, Leylas Kryn, peers at Caleb’s calculations with an elegant interest that reminds Caleb of Marion Lavorre. He shakes the thought away. “And you are certain these are correct?”

“Very much, Umavi,” he says. “I believe with help from some of your spellcasters trained in different fields, we may even be able to add resistances to most damaging elements the addition, and with the addition of some more spell components, as I’ve detailed, we may be able to make the transmutation permanent.”

“I see.” Leylas Kryn gathers the papers together and taps the edges on the arm of the couch to straighten them out. “If that is all your business?”

“Yes, Umavi.”

A beat, and then a smile breaks across Leylas’s face. “How have you been, Caleb? It feels we’ve barely spoken.”

Caleb relaxes into the couch cushions, and feels himself smile as well. 

After the wedding, Caleb had returned to Xhorhas, the country he had begun to, ever so tentatively, think of as home. The Xhorhaus proved too large and empty without the Nein running around, so he had asked around for a new house, something small, with just enough space for him, Frumpkin, Jannik, and a guest room for when Beau and Yasha decided to drop by.

It was not a joyful house, but it was a content one, and Caleb had the Marble Tomes Conservatory to entertain himself with.

However, just a few days after his return, Essek Theylss had come to say the Bright Queen wanted his help on something. He went, conversed with the Queen, did what she wished him to…and later that week the Queen asked for his help again.

It became a pattern, and now, two years after settling in Xhorhas, Caleb was a consultant on arcane matters and a frequent guest of the Bright Queen.

And, strangely enough, her friend.

“I am well, Leylas,” he says. “These calculations have kept me very busy. I am glad of it.”

“I see that,” Leylas says. Her turquoise eyes scan him. “Is there any particular reason you would want to be kept busy?”

Caleb smiles as disarmingly as he knows how, but it feels awfully brittle on his face. “You know me, Umavi, ja? I love to learn.”

“Quite,” Leylas says, and leans back. A beat of silence, and then she says, “Jester sent me a message earlier.”

“Oh, did she?”

“Yes. It seems she is, and I quote, soooo bored right now, so I’m coming over to Rosohna for a while! Can I? Did you receive a similar message?”

“Ja, I did. I told her she should ask you first. It seems she did.”

“I said of course she could, and asked if I should inform the housekeepers to prepare the—” her mouth twisted “—Xhorhaus.” Then Leylas’s voice pitched up in an imitation of Jester’s. “She said, That’s so nice of you, but I’m staying with Caleb! His house is pretty, I mean Xhorhaus is too! Oh shit I have to call—”

Caleb feels the blood drain from his face. “She’s—pardon?”

Jester’s Sending had said nothing of the sort, only that she was bored, wished to stay in Rosohna, and did he think the Bright Queen would let her through the teleportation circle? Caleb had replied in the affirmative, but tense and clipped—he had been in the middle of the very important calculation for the walls of Rosohna.

Jester—was coming to stay with him?

Scheisse.

“Will that be a problem?” Leylas says, peering at him. “I was under the impression you two were dear friends.”

“Leylas, I—” he sighs. “Would you please stop toying with me. I know you know.”

Leylas sighs, and leans forward, taking his hands in her own. “My friend.” She says nothing for a long, long moment.

“I am…fond of Jester,” she says finally. “But I cannot help but…you are dearer to me than she is.” She laughs. “It is strange. I have not had friends for decades. Had anyone told me this ragtag group of—oh, who even knows—would become dear to me, I would have laughed.

“I am fond of Jester, but you are more my friend than she, and I would not have you hurt.”

“Jester Lavorre cannot hurt me,” Caleb says quickly.

Leylas looks at him. “Pray do not lie to my face.”

“Jester Lavorre cannot hurt me in a way I do not deserve,” he amends.

Leylas lets go his hands. Her pale moonlight hair ripples as she leans back. Her body is relaxed, a panther at ease, but a predator at ease is still a predator.

“I have lived years nearly beyond counting,” she says. “I have seen the fall of the gods. I understand the mortal heart. And I tell you this: your insistence that you deserve only pain and suffering is incorrect. My friend, in life we will suffer—this is true. But that does not mean suffering is one’s only due. You deserve joy as well.”

“I am content,” Caleb says, “which is more than I deserve.”

Leylas sighs. “I cannot sway you. You are determined to be sad.”

Caleb inclines his head, a small, bitterly triumphant smile on his face.

“But I think I will not permit you to be sadder,” she says. “I will have rooms prepared for Jester. You will not have her in your space.”

“Leylas, I—She will think I am rejecting her! That I no longer wish to be her friend!”

“You do not wish to be her friend,” Leylas says. “It has been a long time since you wished to be just that.”

Caleb steels himself. “No, Jester will stay with me. I will send a message to her and inform her as such. Leylas, I thank you, but—”

He shakes his head. “No.”

Leylas sighs. “As you will.”

🌊

Jester arrives in a flurry of skirts, as she always has. The light in her eyes is manic as she throws her arms around Caleb, squealing, “Caleb! It’s so good to see you! Hello, Frumpkin, I have missed you so much, oh yes I have, I have!”

Frumpkin meows, and doesn’t protest as he is scooped up and lavished with kisses by an overenthusiastic blue tiefling.

Caleb is left with the phantom feeling of Jester in his arms, her front pressing to his front, her lavender scent like a breeze—there one minute gone the next. His hands clench and unclench.

“May I take your bags, Jester?”

“Oh, Caleb!” she laughs. “You are a string bean! I can definitely do it all on my own.”

“Of course you can,” he murmurs. “Of course you can.”

He is helpless, heartsick—Jester hefts her bags and bee-lines straight to the guest room, which is essentially just Beau and Yasha’s room. She pushes open the door and says, “Oh.”

It is Beau and Yasha’s room. It is Beau and Yasha’s room, which means the walls are painted with flowers—not a mural like in the Xhorhaus, but carefully, painstakingly painted anyway, little ladders of climbing roses twisting around the corners, soft little wildflowers dotted among the lower walls, a bright cobalt-blue sky above them. Beau’s wood carvings are displayed on every surface—many flowers, but also swords, and owls, and cats, and little figurines of the Mighty Nein.

It’s a couple’s room.

“Oh,” Jester says again. Her bags dangle from her hands. “Maybe I—maybe I shouldn’t…?”

“I’m sorry, Jester,” Caleb says, flushing hotly. “But it is the only guest room I have, you know the house is really only meant for me. If you want I can sleep in the study, and you can take my room—”

“Don’t be silly, Cayleb!” Jester rallies. “I’m sure Beau and Yasha won’t mind, we’ve roomed together looooads of times, like loooads of times, and anyway it’s bigger than the hut! I’ll be fine.”

She smiles hugely at the last sentence. “I’ll be super fine, don’t worry!”

And as if to prove her point, she sets down her bags and goes running at the bed, doing a front flip in the air and falling dramatically on the mattress.

“Jester!”

Jester pops up, laughing. “I learned that just recently! It looked soooo cool, right? I should have learned it like, way before, it would have been soooo useful in so many fights.”

She bounces up again. “Come on! Come on! I want to see if Rosohna has any cool new pastry shops! Let’s go!”

He is tugged along in her wake, helpless as always. He is tugged along in her wake, but something, some doubt and pain starts to grow in his mind, something he doesn’t want to think about.

🌊

He wakes the next day to see Jester in the kitchen, Frumpkin in her lap, sipping hot chocolate from his mug.

“Good morning, Cayleb!” she greets brightly, too brightly. “It’s so good to see you! Did you want breakfast? I made breakfast, I’m not sure it turned out very well, but here it is!” She gestures to the eggs, bacon, and rice set out on the table.

“…Danke,” he says blankly, still taking in the image of Jester in the morning.

She’s beautiful. She’s always been beautiful to him, blood-splattered or no, wedding dress or not. But this Jester he is seeing now is something else.

Her hair is a mess, her long lace nightgown is rumpled, and she’s smiling so wide it must strain her mouth. There are bags under her bloodshot eyes and she’s pale and thin, much paler and thinner than when he’d seen her last.

“Jester, I.” He stops. “Jester, I was not going to ask, but why are you here.”

Her smile falters for just an instant, then returns, if smaller. It’s still bright as the noonday sun that never comes in Rosohna, but brittle as glass.

“Oh, well, you know, Fjord is getting reaaally busy with the merchant fleet, you know, as in reaaally busy, and I got, well, don’t tell him, but I got kind of lonely! I mean, I get it, he’s Captain Tusktooth, he has to be on the sea, right? Then I thought, well, maybe I’ll go visit my friends! But Beau and Yasha are like, in Tal’dorei or somethingggg, and I didn’t want to bother Veth and Yeza and Luc, and Caduceus, well, I didn’t really want to stay in the graveyard, so I thought, Caleb! Caleb will let me hang out with him!”

She’s babbling now, words falling from her mouth as if she can’t stop herself. “Caleb always lets me hang out with him, or well he did, and I haven’t seen him in a while, you know? Plus he’s all alone in Xhorhas, like I’m all alone in Nicodranas, and I thought maybe he was lonely? I thought maybe he’d like to see me?”

“Jester, I—I am not lonely.” He latches on to that thought. “I have Leylas, we are good friends—”

Jester’s face crumples. “Well, if you have Leylas that’s great!” she says. “I mean, she’s like, reaaaallly pretty and stuff, and so smart, and she’s a queen, I mean I get it, I’m glad you have a friend—”

“No, what I mean is.” He clears his throat. By the gods, it’s so hard to speak. “You do not need to worry about me. I am fine. But of course you can come to visit me whenever you want, even if you are just a little bit lonely. My home is your home, Chyester.” His accent is thicker, it is always thicker when he is emotional. He corrects himself. “Jester. I have missed you.”

Her face crumples, and she throws herself at him. Luckily Frumpkin manages to leap off her lap in time. “Oh Cay-leb,” she sobs, throwing her arms around him. “I’ve been so lonely.”

He stands there with her in his arms, her tears soaking his thin nightshirt, and ever so carefully his arms wrap around her.

“It’s all right, Chyester,” he says. “I am here.”

🌊

After that it’s both better, and worse.

The dangerously thin Jester he had seen at the beginning of the visit begins to fill out once more, so that she looks more like the girl he had met in Trostenwald all those adventures ago. Her hair, already thick and shiny, is longer than when he’d last seen her, and seems to be getting longer and shinier every day. She glows with happiness, and he’s nearly blinded.

But it’s also agony for him. Every morning there is Jester, smiling at him over the kitchen table already having prepared the day’s breakfast; every evening there is Jester, sketchbook in hand and chattering away eagerly. Her voice fills his previously quiet evenings, and her sketches and paintings fill his blank walls.

The art she produces is never consistent. Sometimes it’s Rosohna as she saw it that day, as she explored the city while he worked on his research. (He had tried to tell her the research could wait, but Jester had waved him off and said she’d be fine on her own during the day, as long as he was home at night.) Sometimes it was a study of a pastry, the cinnamon carefully dotted. And one time, it was an absolutely beautiful rendition of Frumpkin, lantern light glinting off his fur, his eyes glowing in the eternal night of Rosohna.

Days pass, and then a week. And then two weeks. Caleb remembers a book he once read as a child, I am half agony, half hope. There is no hope, he knows that perfectly well.

And yet Jester is in his home, and in his heart. Jester is here, not in faraway Nicodranas. Jester being in his space was all he ever wanted.

And then he wakes up one day to the sound of her vomiting.

The first day, they attribute it to bad curry. The second day, a suspicion dawns upon him. The third, he knows.

He is clever, oh so clever. He wishes he weren’t so clever.

By the fourth day, they have gone to a physician and she confirmed what Caleb had known.

“You are with child,” she says to Jester, smiling. “Congratulations! You’ll be parents in, oh, perhaps seven or eight months?”

“O-oh, I—nein, nein, I am not—I am not the father!” Caleb stammers. “I am. I am. Her brother.” He smiles as convincingly as he can. “I am like her brother.” He did not dare to look at Jester.

“Yes. We have a sibling relationship,” Jester says. Then she laughs, loud and happy. “Oh gods! I’m pregnant! I’m pregnant!!!!!” She pauses, then says with some awe, “I’m never going to be lonely again.”

By the morning of the fifth day she’s packed, and by the afternoon she is stepping through the teleportation circle, waving “Goodbye! Goodbye!” to Caleb and Leylas.

Then magic swallows her, and Caleb collapses on a nearby chair.

Leylas, bless her age-old heart, says nothing. She simply stands over Caleb, stroking his hair with her fingers, alternately humming and murmuring words in Drowic, words Caleb doesn’t understand, but knows to be: It’s all right, all right. I am here.

Three and three point five.

The birth of Guinevere Lavorre is the first time all of the Mighty Nein and most of the Mighty Nein-adjacent gathered in one place since Jester and Fjord’s wedding.

Beau and Yasha teleport in from Tal’dorei, a bit more scarred but bronzed and smiling. When they empty their bag of holding, clothes and toys and all sorts of little delicacies tumble out—gifts for Gwen, gifts for Jester, and for Fjord. Twiggy just happened to be in Nicodranas that day, somehow, and comes to the party too, and she and Jester have a joyous reunion. Kiri flies in from Hupperdook, and it’s amazing to see her—she’s capable of long flights now, and has gathered such an arsenal of mimicry she can hold a near-flawless conversation. When she sees the baby, her eyes fill with tears and she says, “Welcome to the Mighty Nein,”; Jester nearly sobs out loud.

Somehow Calianna arrives, treasures in her arms as offerings to the new mother and the new life. Shakaste is there as well, and Luc throws himself into his big friend’s arms in delight—Luc adores Shakaste, ever since their flight from the empire to the various safe houses set up for them in order to avoid the war between Xhorhas and the Dwendalian Empire.

Caduceus arrives with Nila, both laden with herbs and tea that according to them will soothe babies and help parents stay up for their children. The door swings open and with a clink and a clank, Keg comes clattering in, to cries of delight.

Everyone is there, and Jester and Fjord’s large, airy bedroom is cramped with people clamoring for a look at little Gwen.

And well should they. Little Gwen is a miracle—a lovely blue-green blend, something close to teal. Little horns are just beginning to poke out, tufts of hair sticking out from a soft little head. Most babies, Caleb knows from books, are ugly at birth. Not so Gwen Lavorre, who seemed to have been born blessed.

When she opens her Feywild-green eyes, Caleb knows she was.

“Would you like to hold her, Cay-leb?” Jester says.

“Oh—I—”

“Don’t worry, it’s easy!” Veth butts in suddenly. He jerks, and there she is, his little halfling friend, looking at him with a strange look in her eyes.

“Yeah, Caleb,” Jester says. “Like this.”

She settles her tiny, tiny, tiny daughter in his arms, and Caleb almost staggers under the weight. Not the weight of the child, but the weight of what she means—Jester’s child, Fjord’s child, the Mighty Nein’s child, his little niece.

He looks down at her and remembers Marion’s song at Jester’s wedding: Someday you might know what I’m going through, when a miracle smiles up at you. Gwen hasn’t smiled yet. But oh, when she does, Caleb knows it will be magic.

Everything about Gwen Lavorre is magic.

“Hello, schatzchen,” Caleb whispers to her. “It is good to meet you.”

Gwen blinks, and it feels like his heart will rip out of his chest. Hastily he hands her over to the next in line to hold her—an awestruck Yasha—and flees.

He comes back to himself in the little garden behind Jester and Fjord’s home, just within sight of the sea. He settles on the marble bench, looking out at the blue waves lapping at the shore, and tries to calm his breathing.

“It was never about Astrid, was it.”

He sighs.

Veth comes to his side, and without a word he lifts her into his lap, just like they used to years and years ago, before the circus, before Trostenwald, before anyone loved them besides each other. “Nein, Veth.”

She leans back against his chest, and it feels good to have her there, close to his heart. He doesn’t see Veth enough. He doesn’t visit her enough. He is a terrible person, a terrible friend, a terrible man. He has always known this, but with Veth settled against him, he knows it to be true once again.

“Stop it, Caleb,” she commands. “I can hear you thinking.”

Against his will his lips curve into a smile.

She wriggles around to face him, and tips his face down to hers. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“I did not tell anyone,” he points out. Even now he is not saying anything. He is not saying any names. “I had hoped that…if I did not speak of it, it would not. It would not ever be a. It would not ever become an issue.”

Veth leans her forehead against his, head to head, close as sharing breath. He holds her tighter, his friend, his best friend. “Do you love her, Caleb?”

“She is married, Veth. She has a child now.”

“Do you love her, Caleb.”

This is not how he and Veth work. Veth has never questioned him, she has always waited for him to come to her. Caleb has never questioned Veth, merely told her that he was there for her and helped her in all her endeavors. They are coming up on a decade of friendship and he is coming up on a decade of love in silence and this is the first time he will ever say anything about the secret he has kept beneath his tongue.

“Ja, Veth. I do.”

Veth holds him closer, and her brown eyes shut. “I wish you’d told me.”

“It would not have done any good, Veth. She has loved Fjord the moment she saw him. She loved Fjord the day we met her.”

Veth nods. She knows this as well as he does.

“Veth, please…Please. Don’t do anything—don’t. Don’t tell her. Please.”

Veth leans back so as to look him in the eye. Her face is sad. “Haven’t we learned our lesson with keeping secrets, Caleb?”

“Ja, but this is. This is not. This is not a good secret to tell. This is. This is not something that should be told. Veth, bitte, meine freund—” The words keep falling from his mouth, not pleas, not desperation, but—“Veth, meine freund, Veth—”

“I won’t,” she whispers. “I won’t, Caleb, I promise.”

🌊

They walk back into the house hand-in-hand, like they used to, Caleb and Veth against the world. Caleb’s heart is aching, but Veth’s hand in his is warm and comforting and it keeps him steady. It keeps him from collapsing when he sees Fjord with Gwen in his arms, eyes rapt and a finger tracing over a teal cheek.

Everyone has congregated in the living room but for Jester, who is apparently in her bedroom, asleep. They are in little groups, chatting and catching up, but Caleb only has eyes for the baby, and for her father, who holds her like something infinitely precious. He’s right. He is so, so right.

Fjord looks up at the sound of the door swinging open, and he smiles to see his old friends. Caleb’s heart clenches in guilt. “Hey there,” he says.

“She’s a beautiful child, Fjord,” Caleb says. His throat is very tight.

“She is,” Fjord says, and his voice is so, so full of awe. “I didn’t think—I didn’t think I could ever have this. She’s.”

“She’s a miracle,” Caleb supplies. Fjord lights up.

“She is,” he says. “A miracle. A little miracle. I can’t believe someone this perfect is in my life.”

Caleb is dimly aware of Veth squeezing his hand, but the entirety of him is focused on just surviving this conversation, of keeping control and keeping his eyes dry. “Ja, I can relate. Congratulations.” Was that tone too clipped? Was it aggressive?

Fjord looks at him, and his eyes soften. “Hey. She’s in your life too, you know? You’re her uncle. She’ll grow up loving you.”

Oh Fjord, you are a good man, Caleb wants to say. I do not deserve this from you. I do not deserve your goodness, or Jester’s, or Gwen’s existence in any way.  

“I know you—you ain’t really.” Fjord stops, clears his throat. “You lost your family real early. What I’m trying to say is. Uh. Let me start over.

“I never had a family,” Fjord says. “I never thought I could have this. A daughter. A part of me.”

“And a wife,” Veth inserts.

“And a wife,” Fjord agrees. Every word he says is like a nail being driven into Caleb’s heart. “I didn’t think I could be this blessed, you know? I didn’t think it was possible.

“You’re a good man, Caleb. And I think you should. You should stop punishing yourself for things that are in the past, you know? Let yourself be happy. Find a girl, you know? Or maybe don’t, if that’s not something you, uh. If you want, if you want a, if you want a man. Or if you don’t want anyone, like Caduceus.”

“Fjord, I really don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”

Fjord sucks in a breath, then lets it out. “I want you to be happy, Caleb. If I, a fuckup from the ass end of the Menagerie Coast, a nobody, can have. Can have this, can have a family, so can you.”

I don’t deserve any of what you have, Fjord, Caleb nearly says, but stops himself. I want everything you have, Fjord, he could say, but he doesn’t say that, either.

“That is very kind of you,” he says instead. “I am grateful for the thought. But Fjord, my friend, I don’t think I am a man built for families.”

Or happiness.

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Fjord says. He holds Gwen out. “Go on. Hold her.”

“I don’t think—”

“You never stop thinking, Caleb. Just hold her.”

Her little weight settles in his arms again, and there she is, the little miracle, little Guinevere Lavorre, named after Jester’s favorite romance novel protagonist. Born blessed, as Jester was.

“I love her,” Caleb says. He doesn’t mean to say it. He doesn’t know why he said it. He doesn’t know who he’s referring to: the child in his arms, or the woman who bore her.

He says it again anyway, and Veth’s hand clenches around his. “I love her.”

When he looks up Fjord is smiling. “Not built for families my ass.”

“Your ass is flat as a pancake,” Veth says quickly, and Caleb throws his head back and laughs, laughs, laughs until he’s wheezing. Gwen, thankfully, does not wake or fuss.

“The Mighty Nein is all the family I will ever need,” he says, after he gets his breath back.

“Gwen’s part of us now, too.”

“You had better not be taking her into any fights!” Veth interjects.

“No, I’m not a fighter anymore. I’m strictly a respectable merchant man now.” Fjord sounds a little sad, then says again, “Gwen’s part of the Nein, and the Nein is your family. You’re built for families, Caleb, and you deserve to be happy. Be happy.”

Four.

There’s knocking at the study door, and Caleb looks up. “Ja, come in!”

Luc Brenatto comes in, beaming. “Hi, Uncle Caleb!”

“Luc!” Caleb gets up and hugs his adopted nephew. “You didn’t send ahead to say you were in town!” Frumpkin leaps from Caleb’s shoulders and coils around Luke’s, purring up a storm. “It’s so good to see you.”

Luc at thirty-five is a stout, brawny man, thickly muscled, and much stronger than Caleb ever was at any point in his life. His hair is the same shade as Veth’s, but shaggier, and he has the same adventurer’s heart as his mother. Thank the gods he inherited his father’s common sense, though.

“I guess this means you don’t mind I let myself in?” Luc grins.

“Of course not, you’re welcome anytime. But is there a particular reason you wanted to see me?”

Luc settles down on the couch near the fireplace, a familiar place for him. Caleb obligingly pushes aside his research and sits down next to his nephew.

“Tell me everything.”

More than twenty-five years ago now, after Gwen’s birth, Veth and Yeza had a long talk about Alfield and Xhorhas and how attempting to integrate back into the Empire was not working out for any of them. Luc had had far too much fun adventuring with Shakaste, Veth had had too much fun adventuring in general, and Yeza could feel the discontent in his wife and son. Additionally, having seen the things they’d seen, it just didn’t feel right settling down and just carrying on where they left off.

Thus, the Brenatto family had uprooted and moved to Rosohna, where Veth became a mercenary again, though one who only operated within the bounds of Xhorhas and never for very long, and Yeza set up shop.

And Luc and Caleb became dear, dear companions.

Luc would go to school, then rush right to Uncle Caleb’s to experiment with magical components and learn “adventurer’s tricks” while Yeza was at the shop. Caleb, on the other hand, would help Luc out with his homework and listen to all Luc’s secrets and troubles.

It was a happy time in Caleb’s life—he had his best friend cum sister, a brother-in-law, a nephew, and earnest, fulfilling work as a magical consultant to the Bright Queen. If Jester’s paintings and sketches still hung in his little home, that was no one’s concern but his; if he never took any lovers and never married, that was no one’s business. He was a content man. How could he ask for more than this?

And every year or so, little Gwen Lavorre teleported in to visit, sometimes with her parents, more often without. Fjord sailed the seas off the Menagerie Coast and was a highly successful merchant and explorer; he was rarely home, but whenever he was he brought shiploads of treasure and many, many stories to tell. Jester was a lady of leisure, which mostly meant she sketched and painted and consumed her bodyweight in cinnamon pastries.

Gwen was a lovely child, just as engaging as her mother, just as clever. She adored Uncle Caleb and Aunt Veth, was awed by Uncle Yeza’s alchemical prowess, and did her hardest to keep up with Luc, who was a full eight years older.

Luc, on the other hand, was an infinitely gentle playmate, careful with Gwen (who would not be?), but was otherwise disinterested. He was far too absorbed in training to become an adventurer when he grew old enough.

And Luc did grow old enough, and went off to form a group of his own, and mostly fell out of contact with everyone but his immediate family.

That was ten years ago.

And then, two years ago, a brash, bright-eyed, teal tiefling bard showed up and declared her intent to join Luc’s adventuring party.

Gwen Lavorre had grown up, grown strong, and grown a desire to see the world and never, ever settle down.

And that, Caleb learned from Luc, was the problem.

🌊

“I love her, Uncle Caleb,” Luc says quietly, firmly, despairingly. Like it was a fact of life that hurt to admit. “I love her, and I don’t know what to do.”

All at once Caleb is thrown back into time: holding Gwen, who was all of a day old, and himself whispering I love her. I love her.

It’s more than a quarter-century later and he sees a young man with hands buried in his hair and whispering I love her, I love her.

It hurts to breathe.

“If you love her,” Caleb manages to say, “then why don’t you tell her?”

Luc laughs. “It’s that easy, isn’t it, Uncle Caleb! Just walk up to the tiefling you love and say, ‘Hi, I love you. My dreams are full of you. Your smile makes me lose my breath. The way you beheaded that one gnoll that was chasing us made me weak in the knees. You’re amazing. I love you.’ ”

“Makes me lose my breath, hmm?” Caleb says. “Is it Gwen or you that is the bard?”

“Uncle! Be serious.”

“I am being serious. What have you to lose?”

“Her friendship? My dignity? The cohesion of my adventuring group? Her?”

“Is she in love with anyone else in your adventuring group?” It slips out of him. He doesn’t mean to.

“As far as I know, no,” Luc says.

Caleb laughs, and if it’s a little wild and a little bitter he can’t help it. “Then you should tell her. Lavorres are—precious.”

Luc sits up, and his brown eyes, so much like Veth’s, sharpen. He looks at Caleb, and Caleb can almost see the synapses firing, thirty years flashing through Luc’s mind—Luc sags, and looks at Caleb, and says, “Oh, Uncle Caleb.”

Caleb doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. Luc is the son of an ace detective.

“Oh, Uncle Caleb,” Luc says again, and wriggles around to embrace him.

“So you see,” Caleb says lightly, too lightly, “I know what I’m talking about. Hmm?”

“How long?”

Caleb’s lips quirk into a smile, and it’s not even bitter. “Does it matter?” He ruffles Luc’s hair—thirty-five and Luc is still a little boy, still his nephew no matter what. “Long enough to know that you should tell Gwen before it’s too late.”

“I watched her grow up! I was practically her brother!”

“You’re thirty-five, she’s twenty-seven. None of that is inappropriate in any way. You didn’t even remember she existed until she joined your group.”

“No,” Luc admitted. “She. She was there in the background all my life and then one day I opened my eyes and she was the only thing I could see. Gods. Maybe I am the bard, Uncle Caleb.”

Caleb thinks of Jester, and he’s only a little sad now. The last time he saw her, there had been silver threading in the blue hair, and she had smiled at him and embraced him gently. None of the exuberance of their younger years; Jester was quieter now, smoothed out by marriage and motherhood.

He remembers Jester in her wedding dress, Jester almost thirty years ago, dancing with chains in her hair and horns. He remembers what it felt like to feel his heart crashing against his ribcage, and the despair in his throat.

It doesn’t hurt him anymore. He thinks. He hopes.

“I heard a song once,” he tells Luc.  “When you love somebody and you bite your tongue all you get is a mouth full of blood. I don’t want that for you.”

Luc lays his head against Caleb’s shoulder, and Caleb threads his wrinkling hands through the dark curls. They are quiet until uncle and nephew fall asleep.

Five.

Gwen Lavorre’s wedding is much, much different from her mother’s.

For one, it takes place in Rosohna, presided over by the Bright Queen herself, and it is not a large wedding party at all. Instead, the entire ceremony takes place in a house that was named Xhorhaus many years ago by seven silly adventurers. For another, Gwen wears no dress, but gorgeously tailored pants and a large, billowing silk blouse with lace at the throat. Her rapier is strapped to her side and no veil obscures her face from her husband.

And Caleb lets himself cry this time.

Veth, at his side, is outright sobbing, stuffing a handkerchief into her mouth to muffle the sound as her son presses a hand to a teal cheek and speaks his vows.

Caleb’s eyes go to Jester. He can’t help it. There she is, beside Fjord, dressed in a simple cream dress and her long hair loose. There is more silver in her hair than before, and when he saw her walk by earlier, he saw she had started to stoop a little. Age was coming for her, as it was coming for him.

He looks at her, and waits for the familiar stab of pain in his heart. It does not come, it merely twinges. He breathes.

“The day I knew I loved you,” Luc says, and his voice is soft but it carries to the entire hall. His voice is soft, as if the words were meant for Gwen and Gwen alone. “The day I knew I loved you, I ran to Uncle Caleb.”

Choked laughter from everyone.

“I was afraid,” he said. “I had known you since we were children, and I didn’t know I could feel that way about you. I told Uncle Caleb that all my life you had been in the background until one day you became the only thing I could see.

“Uncle Caleb said, ‘When you love someone and you bite your tongue all you get is a mouthful of blood.’

“Guinevere Lavorre, you have seen me bleeding, you have seen me bloodied, you have seen me with a mouth full of blood and teeth.” More laughter from the audience. “But I promise you that when it comes to saying I love you to you, I will never bite my tongue. I will tell you I love you when the sun rises, I will tell you I love you when the sun sets. I’ll tell you I love you when we are in a place of eternal night.” Caleb can see Leylas biting her lip in amusement.

“Gwen, we are adventurers. We know that the next day could be our last, and that’s why I will never skip saying I love you. You are a bard and you know the strength of words.

“But Gwen, we are adventurers, and that’s why I promise you: you have my life. You have my magic and my sword. When death comes for you I will step in front of you and say not today; when teeth bear down on you I will be there with my shield. And wherever we may wander, wherever we may roam, know that I will be with you, for always and always.”

Luc moves as if to take his hand away from her cheek, but Gwen’s hand comes up to keep it there. Her tail flicks one way, then the other. She laughs.

“By the gods, that was beautiful. I feel silly now, my love.”

“Don’t,” Luc murmurs. “You’re the bard, aren’t you?”

“Shut up,” she says. “Luc Brenatto. I once read somewhere that if you trip, it’s easy to stand up, but if you fall in love, you can never get up again.

“Wouldn’t it be romantic if I said I have loved you since I was five and I fell down and you offered your hand to help me up? Wouldn’t it be romantic if I said I have loved you since the day I broke my leg climbing the Xhortree—” choked laughter from the audience, “—and you carried me down to get healed?

“Alas, it’s nothing so romantic. Woe are we.” She pauses to let the chuckles ripple through the air. “Instead, I will talk about how I love you in the heat of the fight, when your eyes are flashing and fire is blasting through the air. I will talk about how I love you after the fight, when you’re running around checking everyone for injuries and making sure they’re all right. I will talk about how I love you when other people say I can’t be an adventurer, and you say ‘She could punch you through a wall.’ I will talk about how I love you when you sleep. When you breathe. Luc Brenatto. I will love you until neither of us can go on adventures anymore, and I hope you know that day will never come, because loving you is the greatest adventure I have ever been on.”

 A silence, and then a loud, audible sob from Veth. He can’t blame her. They had all watched Gwen and Luc grow up, and now they’re grown up and in love—he feels a tear trickle down his cheek. He lets it.

Gwen and Luc are declared wife and husband, they kiss, and there’s cheering. It’s a haze of smiling and congratulations until finally, he is the one in front of Gwen and Luc, and both of them are wrapping arms around him and hugging him tightly.

“Uncle Caleb, thank you for telling me to get my head out my ass,” Luc says. Gwen echoes, “Thanks for getting his head out of his ass, Uncle Caleb!”

“Anything for you,” he tells the two of them, and he means it.

But Gwen’s eyes are very green and very sharp, and he is uncomfortably aware that—Gwen might know.

🌊

Gwen does know.

A few days afterward, before Gwen and Luke and the rest of the company set out on an adventure again, Gwen seeks him out.

“Uncle Caleb,” she says delicately. “May I talk to you?”

“Of course, Gwen,” he says. He knows what this is about, has prepared for it. Mostly.

 “Do you love my mother?”

He prepared for it, but he still wasn’t strong enough to withstand the gut punch of such a blunt question. He can’t look at Gwen as he says, “I did. Ja. I did.”

“Oh, Uncle Caleb,” Gwen says, and it’s such an echo of Luc when Luc found out that Caleb smiles involuntarily. Then, suddenly, he has an armful of teal tiefling.

“Oh, Uncle Caleb,” Gwen says again. “I love you. I love you so much. I hope you know that.”

“Of course I do, Gwen,” Caleb says. He’s a little confused. “I love you very much as well.”

Gwen pulls back and kisses his cheek. “Did you—all this time—because of Mama?”

“Gwen, schatzchen…” Caleb does not know how to express to Gwen that he is not truly so unhappy. “You are so young.” Gwen scoffs. “You are, schatzchen. You think that...romantic love is all that matters, that you would die without Luc.” She inhales deeply. “Hush. The thing is that you can survive love. The thing is…”

He thinks of nigh-on thirty years in Rosohna, and the life he built as an uncle, as a magical consultant. He thinks of Luc as a child, learning how to cast Firebolt; he thinks of Gwen as a child, with chubby cheeks and skinned knees, running after him wherever he went.

“You can survive love,” he says again. He doesn’t know how else to say it. “I loved her. I don’t think I can love anyone after her. But it does not hurt so much, after a while.”

Gwen hugs him tighter. He repeats into her hair, “It does not hurt so much.”

One.

Caleb in his funeral outfit both looks nothing like him, and exactly as he did in life.

His eyes are closed, like he could be sleeping, like all the times Jester had seen him in the hut so, so long ago. Like all the times she had stumbled upon him in the study, on the couch, just passed out from sheer tiredness. Like all the times he’d just crashed after days of research. His hair is more gray than red, but she’s used to that too. That’s Caleb still.

He went in his sleep, Veth tells her. He didn’t suffer. After a life defined by tragedy and suffering and pain, Caleb Widogast, Bren Aldric Ermendrud, Hopebringer, Hero of the Kryn Dynasty, went quietly, and gently.

But he looks nothing like himself, because the Caleb in the coffin is pale and drawn; there is no flush to his cheeks, no brightness in his eyes. His eyes are closed. There is no quirk to his lips, no little quarter-smile that always showed up whenever Jester looked at him.

This corpse isn’t Caleb, it can’t be Caleb, it’s impossible, it’s—

“I never. I never thought he would die,” Jester had said blankly, when the message arrived from Xhorhas. “He. He survived so much.”

“He was old, Mama,” Gwen had said softly, pressing her mother’s hands between her own. Jester lets her. “And he lived a good life, didn’t he?”

Gwen, Guinevere, her little girl. She turns to her child and presses her face against that dear neck. She must be suffering so much also, Gwen had always loved Caleb best of all.

“Oh, my darling, I’m so sorry,” she says, muffled. “You must be hurting so much, my love, I—”

“Mama, Mama please,” Gwen says, and pulls back to hold Jester’s face in her hands. “Don’t worry about me, okay? Worry about yourself, and Uncle Caleb. I’ll be all right.”

“Fjord doesn’t know yet,” Jester realizes. She sits down limply. “Fjord—Fjord doesn’t know.”

“Mama, I’ll do it, I’ll tell Dad—” Too late. Jester has already cast Sending.

“He’s dead,” Jester says, point-blank. “Caleb is dead. You have to come home. Leave your stupid ocean and come home. Caleb is dead. Caleb is dead. Caleb is—”

And then she breaks down sobbing. Gwen wraps her arms around her mother and holds on tight, tight, tight.

She’s crying so hysterically she barely hears Fjord’s answer in her mind: Caleb—what? He’s—oh gods, Jester. How did he—god. Shit. Fuck. I’m coming. I’m on my way. Going straight to Xhorhas. Meet you there.

So that’s what it takes to get you to come home, Jester thinks acidly, but it’s a dull pain, a fleeting thought. Caleb is dead. What else is there? What else is there?

She shuts down. That’s the only thing to describe what happens to her: she stops functioning. Luc and Gwen are the ones who pack up their belongings, Luc and Gwen are the ones who get her to the teleportation circle, Luc and Gwen are the ones who cast the magic and catch her as she falls to the floor in the Bright Queen’s palace, unable to keep her footing as she meets the age-old, sorrow-filled eyes of Leylas Kryn.

Because of course Leylas had loved Caleb. Who wouldn’t? Who wouldn’t?

Everyone arrives. Jester thinks dully that this is how to get people to convene: get married, give birth, die. Hers was the first wedding. Gwen was the first birth. Caleb was the first death.

Caleb was the first death.

She can’t think, she can’t breathe, Caleb is gone. When Fjord arrives, still windswept and salt in his hair, he takes one step towards her and then she’s falling into him, sobbing and wailing and he holds her. He holds her, but it’s not sea breeze and salt she wants, it’s woodsmoke smell and strange magical components and—Caleb is gone, Caleb is gone, how can Caleb be gone?

 “Are you. Are you burying him here?” she asks Veth.

Veth is pale and drawn and utterly heartbroken, but she is still the one organizing everything. She’s the one sending messages and telling everyone, she’s the one dealing with well-wishers in the streets that want to give condolences to the grieving family of the hero and Hopebringer.

Her hair is still vibrantly brown. Caleb’s best friend still has a century to go before she meets Caleb again.

“No, we’re only holding the wake here,” Veth says. “He said he. He said, at the end, that Xhorhas was. Xhorhas was where he made his home.”

“Where are you burying him?”

“Caduceus’s place,” Veth says, looking at her strangely. “Where else would he go? We worked that all out a long time ago.”

A long time ago. Caleb had been preparing to die a long time ago?

“I thought—I thought maybe he’d want to be buried next to Astrid. In Blumenthal.”

“Astrid?”

“Yes, Astrid,” Jester repeats. Has Veth gone a little mad with grief? “His ex-girlfriend? His true love? The reason he never married?”

“You thought Caleb still loved—” Veth breaks off. “Of course you did. Of course you did. No, Caleb said he wanted Caduceus to make him into tea, after.” She laughs a little wetly. “Someday Luc and Gwen’s kids will be drinking Grandpa Caleb tea.”

Jester wants to sob.

Caleb’s wake isn’t at his little house, but instead in the Xhorhaus, because it’s the only place that will hold all of them and all the well-wishers that come by. Leylas Kryn flings all dignity and tradition out the window and stays there with them, guarding the empty shell that was once Caleb. When Veth tells her she needs to sleep sometime, Leylas says, “Sometime. When my friend is in the ground. Not before.”

“Caleb wouldn’t ask you to wear yourself out for him, even if you did love him,” Veth says.

“Caleb never felt worthy of anyone’s love, and that was the entire problem,” Leylas says.

Then Veth’s and Leylas’s faces crumple in unison, and they both have to sit down.

But Veth does eventually persuade Leylas to go to sleep. Leylas gets up and walks straight to Caleb’s room and closes the door.

“But the, but the guest room is—” Jester says.

Veth looks at Jester, and says nothing.

🔥

“Traveler? Traveler, are you there?” Jester calls.

She’s in Caleb’s house’s living room, not the Xhorhaus but his little house, where she had fled before Gwen was born. She’d been so lonely then, and he’d been so kind, and—she sees the portrait of Frumpkin still hung up on the wall, and the little framed studies of donuts displayed about.

Her heart aches.

“Traveler? Hello?”

He hasn’t come by so much lately, not since Jester settled down as a married woman. It’s fine, she gets it, the Traveler is busy! He has lots of other worshippers to pay attention to now, Jester’s happy for him she really is!  Since she got married and had a kid and got everything she ever wanted, of course the Traveler would need to train like, more clerics and stuff, that was just common sense.

(She’s still like, a really good cleric! But it’d been years, maybe, since she had to kill a monster that wasn’t like, a spider, and more than that since she had to raise the dead. So maybe she’s not as good as she was, but she’s still pretty good!)

She closes her eyes, and when she opens them there he is, verdant cloak and all.

“Hi,” she says softly. “Hi.”

“Oh, Jester,” he says with infinite empathy, and the tears well up in her eyes.

“Can I. Can I borrow some power so I can. So I can bring him back?”

“Oh, Jester,” the Traveler says, all tenderness. “I’m sorry. He passed of old age, and the Raven Queen has him now. If he had died in battle or through poison or…something other than what he did, then I could have. I would have. But it’s not possible.”

The tears do start dripping down her face, then. The Traveler reaches out, and fey fingers wipe the salt from her cheeks. “Dear heart. I am so sorry.”

She stands there and cries for a while, and the Traveler just keeps wiping her tears away. Finally she composes herself and says, “At least he’s with Astrid now. That’s good, right?”

“Astrid,” the Traveler says. “Yes. I suppose so.”

“She was his one,” Jester persists. “She was the reason Caleb never got married or anything.”

“I believe you believe that.”

“Of course!” Jester says.

The Traveler’s fingers guide her to close her eyes, and she feels a phantom kiss on her forehead. “Dear heart. Call on me more often than just to grieve the man you loved. I will see you again.”

🔥

The next person she goes to is Leylas Kryn.

“Was he consecuted?” she asks her. “Can he come back?”

Leylas Kryn’s eyes are bloodshot when they lock onto hers, and she pauses in the middle of braiding her hair into what looks to Jester like a very complicated pattern.  “I offered.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing that should concern you,” Leylas Kryn says.

Jester feels like stamping her foot. “He was my friend! I want to know if he’s coming back!”

“You have a fundamental misunderstanding of consecution, Jester Lavorre,” Leylas Kryn says. She holds the braid in her hand, not tying it off just yet. “Consecution does not mean you come back exactly the same person. The soul endures, but the body and the experiences are different. I am Leylas now, but I was someone else before. That is how a consecuted soul learns.”

“I—I don’t understand.”

The Bright Queen sighs. “Let us say Caleb’s soul was reborn into another body. As you know, the soul does not remember it was someone else until the body’s adolescence. The soul develops a personality different from the one that came before. What do you think happens once the soul starts remembering who they once were?”

Jester cannot answer.

“A consecuted one must negotiate those personalities,” the Bright Queen informs her. “They take the lessons from their old lives, and learn new ones in their current ones, and thus take one step closer to becoming Umavi. Therefore, if Caleb ever comes back, he might not even be Caleb. Or he might be Caleb, but more. Or he might be someone else, but with a touch of Caleb. It depends on the personality. It will depend on him.”

“So he is consecuted?” Jester seizes onto the Bright Queen’s words. “His soul is coming back?”

Leylas Kryn sighs. “He might. I do not know.”

“Then why aren’t you searching for him? Find all the babies who were born after he died! He was your Hopebringer! He’s your hero!”

“How painful it must be,” Leylas Kryn observes, “to grow up knowing that someone is watching you, wishing you were someone else. How awful it must be, to know that someone wants you to not be you.”

Jester reels back, stricken.

Leylas Kryn nods, and lets go of her braid. The fine moonlight hair falls, braid already beginning to fall apart.

“Oh, I have a, I have a hair tie—” Jester begins.

Leylas Kryn smiles, a small sad thing. “This is a mourning braid. Much like grief, it will unravel when it unravels, and not before.”

🔥

This is the thing about grief: you are always looking for them. You turn to say something, and there is no one there. You start to prepare their favorite food, only to remember they are not there to appreciate it.

Here is the thing about grief: you are always looking for them, until one day you forget.

You learn how to laugh and not feel guilty. You learn how to eat that favorite food without crying. Some days you see them in a crowd, or you think you see them, and it hurts you, but other days it’s fine and you can walk through the city without hurting.

Many, many years later—many, many years of peering at a crowd and looking for red hair, blue eyes, blackened fingertips—Jester Lavorre dies, as all mortals must.

Many, many years later, a young hobgoblin and a small bugbear meet and become friends.

Here is the thing about love: You can survive it.

Here is the thing about love: If you love somebody and you bite your tongue, all you get is a mouthful of blood.

Here is the thing about consecution: You learn and you die and you live and you learn.

May the light of the Luxon be ever upon you.