A/N: I do not own the preview image. I am using it with the permission of abigaily on deviantart. fav .me/ d2o07sq. There's a link to her image, just without spaces. I also do not own these characters, they belong to Kristin Cashore, as does the majority of the dialogue. This was written for a choice book project a few years ago. This is my take on what Bitterblue would be thinking, poor little Bitterblue, hanging out with crazy Katsa and wacky Po...oh, and when I wrote this, Bitterblue had not yet come out, and I am currently in the middle of reading it, so the ending will be nothing like what Bitterblue has.

Part 1: Leck's Grace

Like any good fairy tale, my story begins with "once upon a time" and includes a prince, a princess, a knight, and a romance. But just not what you'd think.

I'm the princess. I'm ten. I am most definitely not in love. My name is Princess Bitterblue of Monsea; daughter of King Leck and Queen Ashen. My mother is King Ror of Lienid's sister. Prince Po is the seventh son of Ror. The knight's uncle is King Randa of the Middluns. Monsea is set apart from the 5 inner kingdoms by a huge mountain range. There are four kingdoms surrounding the Middluns: Sunder, Wester, Nander, and Estill. Sunder is just across our mountain border. The seventh kingdom, Lienid, is actually on a little island of the west coast of the inner kingdoms. One last thing- the prince and the knight are Graced.

Gracelings, like Katsa and Po, are marked by their eyes. Katsa has one emerald green eye and one turquoise blue. Po's eyes are silver and gold. Graceling eyes are unnerving to some, but I find them beautiful. Gracelings are people whose eyes settle into different colors a while after they're born. They have special talents. Po's Graced with fighting. The daughter of an Estillian borderlord with one squash orange eye and one dirt brown can read minds- people's desires. Katsa is Graced with killing and her lady maid Helda, has a son who is Graced with swimming- he has one black eye and one blue. I wish I were Graced. I'd have one royal purple eye and one as pink as a newborn piglet. Leastways, that's what I imagine. Instead, I'm stuck with plain old gray, and my plain dark hair doesn't make my features any different than anyone else. Mother says that I have the face of a queen, though.

Mother.

She was the one who protected me from Leck. King Leck is also Graced, but you can't tell because he always wears an eye patch. Leck's Grace is deception. The minute his words enter your head, you believe everything he says. He tortures small animals but is known throughout the inner kingdoms for his kindness to children, animals and all helpless creatures. What a load of donkey poop! Course, we could hardly realize that his torturing wasn't helping thanks to his Grace. The only reason I'm still intact was because my mother had enough wits about her to refuse the king when he decided he wanted to spend more time with me, to "get to know his daughter better." At the time I was just a child, and I wasn't altogether against the idea (there was Leck's Grace working) but my mother seemed frightened and I didn't like to see her that way, so I did whatever she told me to.

We got word that Prince Tealiff, King Ror's father, had been kidnapped. My mother knew it was Leck who had kidnapped her father in the hopes of pressuring Ashen to hand me over to him in exchange for the safety of her father. No need to worry about Grandfather Tealiff, though. Katsa and her Council had already planned and executed a rescue mission. But of course, my mother didn't know this.

She locked us into a tower and only allowed a handmaiden in to bring us food and linens. Sometimes Leck would talk to my mother through the door, but we covered our ears. We kept ourselves safe, her love for me and mine for her, kept Leck's Grace at bay. But when a girl not older than I brought in our food with three cuts on each cheek, bleeding freely, my mother decided it was time to go. I wore my sturdiest boots and clothes, and we made a rope from our bed sheets and climbed down the tower. I brought a knife with me- for protection. It was about as big as my arm. She told me to run to the woods if anything should happen to us, to run to a place where we used to ride to. Leck found us missing and sent a search party after us. I ran to the woods, but my mother twisted her ankle in a foxhole and couldn't follow. I vaguely remember seeing two Graceling fighters, a lady with a bow and a young man yelling at her to shoot. I recognized the lady as Lady Katsa of the Middluns. I'd heard that if you crossed paths with Randa, he would send Lady Katsa after you to pull your arm out of socket or cut off your finger, or even kill you. Lady Katsa was terrifying, she was a killer, she was a thug and she scared me. As for the young man, the only man I ever knew well was at this moment trying to kill me, and as I ran through the woods, I made up my mind never to trust a man as long as I lived.

I could hear Leck's soldiers coming. I ran through the water of the stream to make sure I left no trace of myself. I found a hollow tree along the bank of the river and crawled in. Believe me, crawling into a hollow tree trunk in a dress and carrying a knife is no easy feat, especially if you are in a hurry trying to escape men who are trying to kill you, but I did it just the same.

I don't understand why they didn't hear my pounding heart or notice the trembling tree trunk, but the soldiers never did. "Bitterblue!" they called. "Princess Bitterblue! Come out, we won't hurt you! We'll take you back to your father, safe and sound. Come on out!" I almost did. Leck's Grace works even when others speak his words. I stubbornly covered my ears and refused to listen. After a while the soldiers left, and soon I heard more footsteps coming up the river. And then a man looked into the hollow tree and saw me. I don't trust you, I don't trust you, I don't trust you! My mind screamed at him. I could tell he was a Lienid by his rings and the hoops in his ears. He reminded me of Ashen. The only difference was his eyes- brilliant silver and gold, with a purplish bruise showing faintly around the gold one.

"Bitterblue," he said. "I'm your cousin Po, son of Ror. We've come to protect you." I didn't say anything. This Graceling male cousin of mine scared me. "We're not going to hurt you, cousin," I couldn't tell if this Po was telling the truth or if it was just Leck trying to get me. "We're here to help you. Are you hungry? We have food." To tell you the truth, I was starving. But I didn't answer. Finally, his scary face disappeared from view.

I heard Po mumbling with someone else. They snorted. "You think she'll be less afraid of me?" Another pause. I heard Po mention a knife, and then the voice said "Good for her." I was scared and cold, and breathing hard by the time I saw a woman's face, with her hair cut like a man's, and- another Graceling. "Princess Bitterblue," the green-eyed blue-eyed lady said. "I'm the Lady Katsa, from the Middluns. I've come with Po to help you." I still didn't trust these people. Lady Katsa was a killer. What if Leck had Graced her into helping him get me? "You must trust us, Bitterblue. We're both Graced fighters," as if I didn't already know her reputation and couldn't tell by their eyes. I wasn't stupid. "We can keep you safe." Sounded like Leck's Grace talking. "We know your father is after you. We know he's Graced. We can keep you safe, Bitterblue." Yeah right. No one could keep me safe. But my mother…

"Where is my mother?" My voice sounded small and shaky. Lady Katsa and Prince Po didn't answer for a while. I steeled myself for the worst.

It was Katsa who finally answered, "Your mother is dead, Bitterblue."

I might have known. I swallowed my sobs. When I spoke again, my voice was even smaller. "The king killed her?"

"Yes."

I was silent for the longest time, crying mutely. The tears only wet my face making me colder. Po muttered something about soldiers coming to Katsa. But I wasn't coming out of my hiding place.

"I can see that knife, Princess Bitterblue," Katsa said, trying to lure me out. The knife I'd taken was my father's knife, the one he'd gotten as a boy and kept in a display case for all to see on his desk. "Do you know how to use it?" I didn't say anything. I didn't – no girls know how to use knives. "Even a small girl can do a lot of damage with a knife. I could teach you." If Lady Katsa the Killer would teach me how to use the knife maybe then I could protect myself from Leck. And if Po was a Graced fighter, maybe he could help as well. I decided to take a chance. I pretty much spilled out of the tree trunk. I didn't have a coat or muffler, or gloves and I was soaking wet from walking through the stream.

"Great hills!" Katsa exclaimed. "You're frozen stiff!" Katsa tried to pull her coat over my head but my knife got in the way. I wasn't letting go of that knife, no matter how cold. I was so cold it was all I could do to think about anything other than how cold I was. Katsa pried the knife from my hand and pulled her coat over my head. Then she and Po argued about if I could walk and about how cold I was and about the soldiers that were coming. Po ended up donating his coat to keep me warm, and slung me on his shoulder. And then through the fog, I heard the oddest thing. Po and Katsa were having a conversation, only Po was doing all the talking.

"Fifteen," Po said, "at least." Katsa had a panicked look on her face. Then Po said in a low voice, so low I could hardly hear, "I wish I could fight them alone, Katsa, and out of your hearing. But it would mean us separating, and right now there are soldiers on every side of us. I won't risk your being found when I'm not there." Katsa snorted, wearing a nor-will-I-let-you-fight-fifteen-men-alone look on her face. "We must kill as many of them as possible, before they're close enough for conversation. And hope that once they're under attack they're not very talkative." Leck's Grace, I realized. They're talking about Leck's Grace. Funny how Po talks like he's immune to it. No one's immune to Leck. "Let's find a place to hide the girl. If they don't see her they're less likely to speak of her."

They stuck me behind some rocks and weeds, near a tree. "Don't make a sound, Princess," Katsa instructed. "And lend me your knife. I'll kill one of your father's men with it." The cold was making it hard for me to fully comprehend Katsa and I let her take my knife. In my daze, I counted 17 men. It was a terrifying fight, Katsa flinging daggers and my knife left and right, Po drawing arrow after arrow. I was too groggy to understand- but not a single man survived. But after seeing the two of them, plucking arrows and daggers out of dead men's chests and hoisting them on their horses and sending them back to the king to put him off our trail, one thing was made quite lucid and clear to me.

"I feel warmer," I told Katsa when she gave my knife back to me, her clothes bloodied by the fight.

"Good." Katsa said, then asked somewhat nervously, "How much of that fight did you see?"

"They didn't have much of a chance, did they?" I now was increasingly aware of the powerfulness of their Graces. "Where are we going now?"

"I'm not sure," Katsa replied. "We need to find a safe place to hide, where we can eat and sleep. We need to talk about what happens next."

I decided it was time to tell her what I knew had to be done. Quite calmly and very certainly, I said. "You'll have to kill the king if you ever want him to stop chasing us." I was quite certain that if I knew Leck at all, he would never stop until he either won or was dead. And I wasn't about to let him win. Again.