My first real Seven Kingdoms story! (I wish the other one unwritten, really. Especially since Bitterblue came out.)
For those of you who know me as a HTTYD writer, Kristin Cashore's Seven Kingdoms trilogy (or Graceling Realms) is one of my absolute favorite series, and something I rarely dare write fanfiction for.
Kudos to the people who get the reference (to Bitterblue) that is the title, and I hope this story makes you feel something. :)
Spring comes slowly to Bitterblue's great courtyard. Rain drips from the eves in a less dramatic way than it does in the winter, although the magnificent fish still flop and leap along the tiles. Bitterblue stands before the Bellamew of her mother, and wonders why the tinge of warmth in the air seems to soften the sculpture some.
In the bitter Monsean winter, the sculpture of Ashen seemed to scream more loudly. Her silent cries echoed through the shrubbery and haunted Bitterblue all the way back to her blue sitting room.
Leck wrote in his last journal that Bellamew sculpted an Ashen who hated him. Bitterblue can feel that hate as she reaches out, so gently, to touch the slick stone. Hava's heart broke when Fox put her hands all over the Bellamews and tried to take the little Hava away, but Bitterblue knows this touch is completely different, and Bellamew's daughter will not mind.
Ashen could not hate Leck in her right mind. Perhaps it is her hate that is the mountain lion in her, allowed to ravage only when Leck brings her to the very brink. But Bitterblue has a feeling that the mountain lion is the protective part of Ashen, savage enough to save Bitterblue from the most savage man in all seven kingdoms.
With flowers blooming around her, the scent of peonies and roses at the edge of her consciousness, Bitterblue tilts her head up to look into her mother's stone face and sees it in less terrible pain than before.
Perhaps it is because Bitterblue is in less pain herself now than the moment last year she recognized her mother as the tragic figure on the pedestal.