The two women walked down a quiet road in the town of Ace, the wallstone to either side of the road stacked up above their heads to hide the villas that lay beyond. Occasionally they passed by a large, wrought-iron gate and Jac could glance the winding driveways that led to wooden farmhouses that you would never see in Broken Earth.

“Moonshine.” Jac placed a kiss gently on her friend’s dirt- and sweat-smudged temple. “Moonshine, we’re almost there.”

Jac looked down at Belle’s face, her empty eyes, her slackened jaw—she doubted Belle had even heard her. But no, it was just a few seconds and the words sunk in. Within those empty eyes something sparked, went wide and wild, and Belle jerked in Jac’s arm. She opened cracked lips to say something, but only a rasping noise came out—she hadn’t spoken in days.

“Ay, it’s okay, it’s okay!” Jac clamped Belle closer to her side—they’d been traveling like this ever since they’d left Urden. A barely-standing Belle propped up on Jac’s side.

“I’m—” Belle coughed, and her eyes rolled in her head, seeing nothing. “I’m not ready.”

Jac realized, suddenly, what the panic was about. “Quiet House, Belle. Not the castle. We’re almost at Quiet House!”

“Quiet…?” Though her breaths came in gasps, her eyes finally stilled and she stopped trying to fight out of Jac’s grasp.

“Yeah. We shed our nice clothes here, remember? Didn’t want to stand out in…” Jac stopped herself. Maybe mentioning Urden wasn’t a good idea right now.

Jac hadn’t seen Belle fall apart this bad in a year or two. Actually, this might be the worst Jac had ever seen her, because usually she pulled herself out of it by now. It was always astounding to behold, the transformation from a broken little girl into the charming, confident woman she called the Other Belle. Lady Belle.

But about a day ago, Jac had started to wonder if maybe this time, Lady Belle wasn’t coming. If maybe that giant dick and his camp of sycophants had actually killed her.

Finally, finally, Belle’s eyes focused. “Quiet House.”

“Yeah.” Relief loosened the muscles of Jac’s shoulders ever so slightly. “We’ll get cleaned up. And rest our bones before we make ‘em carry us to the station. A nice hot bath and a nice long train ride might make you feel better, yeah?”

Jac was shit at saying the right thing when people were upset, she knew that. Normally it didn’t bother her—she had no interest in being soft and kind. Those were just the word “weak” wearing another name. At least, that’s what she’d thought. Until she met the words “soft” and “kind” themselves, woven into the figure of a little blonde circus freak. One Jac had seen break a thousand times, but kept getting back up anyway.

Jac didn’t know what to name that, but it certainly wasn’t Weak. She started to think maybe there was something to this gentle thing… But every time Jac tried it, she felt clumsy and rough and just like she was making everything worse.

At Jac’s words, a weight seemed to settle over Belle’s expression, and Jac cursed herself. Once again, she swore to quit trying her tongue at kind words—she’d have better luck trying to talk to monsters. No, Jac needed to stick to what she knew: giving bone-crushing hugs and hammering the heads off anyone who tried to hurt Belle.

“Bath,” Belle almost slurred, like she’d forgotten how to use those muscles.

Belle looked down at herself—covered in mud and blood, the bit of visible skin red and irritated from where the blood-soaked fabric had rubbed and rubbed against it, her hair limp, black, and matted. At least three times a day, whenever Jac sat down for a break from walking, she tried to convince Belle to bathe, or tried to bathe Belle herself. If not for her comfort, then simply for her health—but Belle had recoiled every time. She wouldn’t even let Jac take the old rag she kept clutched in her fist, and would shove Jac away any time she tried. It would be easy to do it by force, but Belle had had enough forced upon her in the last five years. Jac wasn’t about to be one of them.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Oh, Jac,” Belle croaked. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Jac quirked an eyebrow, a tinge of relief and a whole lot of hope lighting up her chest. Belle was talking. “For what?”

Belle tried to force a lighthearted tone and failed miserably, her chin trembling. “I fucking reek.”

A weight fell off Jac’s shoulders and went crashing to the ground. She hadn’t even realized how hard it had been to move—not from supporting Belle’s weight or even the hammer on her back. The weight of worry, that her friend would never recover, was a thousand times heavier.

Jac smiled and pulled Belle even closer to her. “Please. My nose adjusted to your stink days ago.”

It got a twitch out of Belle’s cracked lips. “I love you, Sunshine.”

“I love you, Moonshine.”

Belle sighed and glanced around, blinking at the stone walls. “We are in Ace.”

“You named my words a joke?” Jac teased.

“No. I name my memory a joke,” Belle said softly. “I don’t remember…. I remember leaving Urden and … that’s it.”

“Not much to remember,” Jac said. “Just a lot of walking and a few hitched rides.”

“You carry me the whole way?”

“Nah,” Jac said and gave her another squeeze against her side. “Just propped you up.”

“Sorry you had to.”

Jac waved a dismissive hand, then used it to tap the hammer’s handle behind her head. “Compared to my other best friend, you’re nothing. It was just like keeping … a potato tucked to my side.”

“A potato?” There—just a hint of humor in her voice. Only a hint, but it was something.

“A big one.”

Belle seemed to consider for a moment, then said, “I like potatoes.”

“You and all the rest of us.”

“Well. Propping me all the way here—it’s another I owe you,” Belle said, her dead tone dissonant with her teasing words. “Name the score now.”

“I’m up by three,” Jac said, following Belle’s lead with the teasing.

Belle sucked her teeth. “And I was up by two just a few weeks ago.”

“Well,” Jac said as they rounded one final corner before reaching Quiet House’s drive. “I name these past weeks Eventful.”

“That’s one name that fits,” Belle mumbled. “‘Messy’ would suit them about as well.”

“True sh—,” Jac stopped, staring ahead at Quiet House’s iron gate.

It stood open.

Jac was sure Belle had locked the gate before they’d left for Urden, and that lock only opened for Broken Earth’s Official Seal. The list of those who wore one was not long, and the list of those who even knew of Quiet House’s existence was even shorter.

Richard himself had tattooed the seal on Belle, the only place he knew for sure Aran wouldn’t see it: under Belle’s tongue. It was something like blasphemy for the prince’s ‘Entertainment’ to wear the seal, and if Aran were to find out, Belle’s tongue would be gone from her head within the hour. If she were lucky.

A burning sensation started in Jac’s hands and crawled up her arms to burst forth fully in her chest. Contract be damned, if it was him waiting for them in Quiet House, no doubt furious to arrive and find the house empty, and no doubt furiouser if he saw Belle caked in monster blood, Jac would not let him touch either of them. She’d break the contract with sheer will alone.

But what if she couldn’t?

All that worry came crashing back down on her shoulders again, twice over.

As Jac started forward again, afraid to let herself think, Belle became limp, compliant against her side. Jac hauled her up to the gate and—

Belle didn’t react, didn’t so much as breathe, as if she couldn’t see what waited for them at the end of Quiet House’s drive, or was unwilling to look. Not until Jac let out a sigh of something between relief and annoyance, only then did Belle take another breath.

The carriage, enormous and pure black with gold trimming, explained the open gate, because its owner certainly wore Broken Earth’s Official Seal. And said owner was the only one who wore the seal that wouldn’t immediately order their deaths upon finding they’d lied about staying at Quiet House. But still.

Jac sucked her teeth and grumbled, “And shit’s about to get even messier.”

A tiny smile appeared on Belle’s filthy face, and she breathed,

“Z.”

Jac groaned.