This will be fun, p.1
This Will Be Fun, page 1
Dedication
To all the heroes in the group chats, who save the world for one another
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Before
Ten Years Later
1: Beatrice
2: Elowen
3: Clare
4: Beatrice
5: Elowen
6: Clare
7: Elowen
8: Beatrice
9: Clare
10: Elowen
11: Clare
12: Beatrice
13: Elowen
14: Beatrice
15: Clare
16: Beatrice
17: Elowen
18: Clare
19: Elowen
20: Beatrice
21: Elowen
22: Clare
23: Beatrice
24: Clare
25: Elowen
26: Beatrice
27: Clare
28: Elowen
29: Clare
30: Beatrice
31: Elowen
32: Clare
33: Beatrice
34: Elowen
35: Beatrice
36: Clare
37: Beatrice
38: Elowen
39: Clare
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Copyright
About the Publisher
Before
Galwell the Great was almost sad they would be saving the realm tomorrow.
Not, of course, because he was reluctant to defeat the dark powers wishing to rule over Mythria. He stood on the bluffs overlooking Queendom, the realm’s capital, where they would lay their siege in just one more day. The sight of Mythria, the land he loved, corrupted with evil wounded his heart. Gone were her green hills, where one could nearly feel the magic flourishing. Instead, foul power had seeped gray into the landscape. Over the mountainous Queendom, dreamlike in peacetime with her white stone parapets, dark shadows loomed.
While night was falling, the sky surrounding the queen’s castle offered little in the way of sunset. Clouds of perilous magic churned, lightning crackling ominously within.
No, tomorrow he would become a hero. He would live up to the name bestowed on him as a young boy from whom everyone knew to expect greatness.
Galwell the Great.
The name never felt burdensome to him—perhaps because he was admittedly quite strong. Magically so. It was his gift, the hand magic of strength. Never did he chafe at the expectations of others, either. His noble birth, his prodigious might, and, above all, his goodness made him a person people rallied behind and believed in.
He didn’t mind that. Galwell the Great did not fear that he would fall short tomorrow. He knew he and his three companions—his sister and his two closest friends—would prevail. Mythria would be saved. Evil would be destroyed. The four of them would be heroes.
. . . but then what?
Prevailing, Galwell felt, was rather the problem. What was a hero’s purpose after the villains were vanquished? Who would Galwell the Great be then?
They were the sort of existential questions he’d never contended with before. What waited past the edge of greatness? Marriage to his betrothed, the princess, he supposed, although the idea gave him only the pleasure of honoring the promises his parents made in his youth. Thessia was a nice enough princess. They would have a fine life. He would be true to her because it was the right thing to do, and doing right was all he would have to hold on to when heroism was no longer needed.
True was his surname, after all. Not “the Great.” Perhaps the honorific would fade into obsolescence. Perhaps he would remain just—Galwell True.
The idea frightened him in ways swordfighting, horsemanship, and infiltrating dark fortresses did not. Would it be enough?
It would have to be. Heroism demanded sacrifices.
Wind whipping his long auburn hair, he knelt in the dirt, offering up a silent prayer to the Ghosts, the heroes of Mythria’s founding thousands of years ago. Life lasted long past his twenty-seven years. Ghosts, grant him the wisdom—
“Galwell, please come inside.”
His sister’s voice interrupted his reverence.
“Beatrice and Clare are bickering over the last of the stoneflour loaf,” she went on. “It’s simply too much veiled flirting to tolerate. You must stop them.”
He turned and found Elowen True crossing her arms, her characteristic scowl on her face. He privately considered the contrast of her fiery red hair with her closed-off demeanor a little ironic. She did not open up easily, and, seven years her senior, Galwell considered their closeness one of the greatest blessings of his life.
He grinned. “Have patience with them,” he counseled gently. “You’re not much better to be near when that Vandra comes around.”
While Elowen harrumphed, he knew she was not really annoyed. Putting a hand on her shoulder, he returned with her to the cave where their group was camped out.
Inside, Beatrice and Clare were indeed sitting far too close for people who purported to hate each other.
Clare Grandhart glanced up, looking half relieved for the distraction, half dismayed. “Galwell, at last!” he greeted the other man. “Please say you weren’t just standing on a cliff looking majestic as you contemplated destiny or something else stuffy.”
A bandit and mercenary they’d brought on for part of their quest, Clare had not yet left despite claiming to have no heroism in him. When asked why he hadn’t merely taken his payment and departed when his job was finished, he had offered only weak excuses. Farthings would hold no value if the realm was destroyed, he’d pointed out—his gaze lingering on Beatrice the whole time.
Despite Clare’s jesting, Galwell the Great-for-Now made no habit of dishonesty. “I’m always stuffy, Grandhart,” he replied.
Beatrice plucked the final bite of stoneflour loaf from Clare’s hands. He did not protest.
Galwell had known Beatrice since childhood. She possessed powerful magic, like Elowen, and the two had quickly become best friends. Naturally, this made Beatrice his friend as well. The daughter of peasants, she held gifts farthings could not purchase—wry wit, unflinching rebelliousness, and an insatiable lust for life.
“Not tonight you’re not,” she protested. “This could be our last night. We should have fun. Wine, anyone?”
She held up the bottle next to her—the end of their provisions. The quest had gone on longer than anyone anticipated.
While Galwell would not keep his companions from enjoying themselves, he could not let her words stand.
“It won’t be our last night,” he said.
Everyone looked to him.
“We will prevail. I have confidence in every single one of you.” He fixed his gaze on each of them in turn. “Beatrice, my oldest friend—smarter, fiercer, and more resilient than any a soul I’ve known. Clare, my newest friend—while I’ve not known you long and though you try to hide it, you possess the rarest gems of loyalty and kindness. And Elowen, my other half, whose heart is so strong her love is a gift to all on whom she bestows it. There isn’t a force in Mythria that could break the bonds that hold us together. It is why the Order will fail.”
Everyone was silent for a moment, as they often were after Galwell’s speeches.
Clare spoke up first. “Ghosts, you’re good,” he commented. “A hero already.”
What more? Galwell’s inner voice queried. “We all are,” he said instead. “There will be songs written about each of us four.”
With firelight flickering on the cave walls, the weight of their futures settled onto them. They would make history. Perhaps when they died one day, they would join the Ghosts of Mythria legend. It was Galwell’s greatest wish.
Yet in his friends’ eyes, he saw how the scale of their fate frightened them. They’d found greatness without having the word linked to their names their whole lives. It made them greater, in his view.
“Songs,” Clare mused. “I do hope mine are dirty.”
As usual, Clare cut heavy moments with humor. It was not a skill Galwell possessed, and he appreciated Grandhart for it.
“I hope mine are folksy. Something sung with only a lute and a single husky female voice,” Elowen said. “That would suit me very much.”
“Mine should be something you can dance to,” Beatrice declared.
Three pairs of eyes turned to Galwell.
He rarely did not know what to say in front of a crowd. However, his companions’ easy joking banter sometimes eluded him. It was not because he was older than them, he knew. In his heart, he recognized he was just different. Responsibility had robbed him of frivolity. Heroism demanded sacrifice. Heroism demanded he remained apart. Friendship required the opposite.
“What do you want your songs to be, Galwell?” his sister prompted.
“If you don’t answer,” Clare joined in, “I’ll be forced to commission the first song about you to be titled ‘Galwell the Glum.’”
“Oh, or ‘Galwell the Galling,’” Beatrice contributed.
Clare eyed her, impressed. “Good one.”
“Thank you,” Beatrice replied.
Galwell smiled, glad to see them getting along. It encouraged him. “Very well,” he ventured. “My music should be . . . simple. Something a child could sing. Happy and hopeful.”
Elowen nodded, approving of his selection.
“However, I welcome ‘Galwell the Glum’ and ‘Galwell the Galling’ into the Mythria canon,” he went on, emboldened. “As long as ‘Galwell the Gaseous’ is never sung.”
The remark left everyone stunned. His friends exchanged glances, until Elowen spoke up. “Did you . . . just make a fart jest?”
Clare burst out laughing. “He did! Mythria’s greatest hero partaking of flatulence-based humor the night before he saves the realm!”
Beatrice wept from laughter.
Into the night the four shared one another’s company like it was one more ordinary eve on their extraordinary quest. The wine was indeed passed around. Several stanzas of “Galwell the Gaseous” were indeed composed. They did have fun.
When the fire finally started to die, Galwell felt he knew what waited past tomorrow. Yes, he was a hero, but he was also a friend. He knew what he could hold on to, in victory and forevermore—the people in front of him.
Ten Years Later
1
Beatrice
Beatrice was drunk in the bath.
She deserved to unwind, she told herself. The bath she’d run in her . . . cozy new cottage was the only comfort she’d found in her dismal week. Divorcing the lord of her village was not easy. Soaking in the scented water provided her a much-needed distraction from the many headaches life was causing her.
She’d managed something sort of like unwinding—she was lucky one of her only friends in the village marketplace was the home-goods potioner, who offered her generous discounts on her finest concoctions. Roselia petals! Honeyjade oil! Content, she immersed herself in lavender foam.
Until she realized her favorite robe, enchanted to stay warm, somehow wasn’t in the chest of her things her ex-husband’s footman had delivered last night. Of course it wasn’t. The bastard would “borrow” her enchanted robe every chance he got, though he would never own to it.
Well, he may have gotten the manor, but he wasn’t getting the robe.
The conviction pulled Beatrice, wine-tipsy, out of the bath. Was her new quest petty? Possibly. Was her fury frivolous? She, who once fought great evil, who fended off hordes of enemies, marching in pursuit of her favorite bathtime garment? Perhaps!
It mattered not. These days, Beatrice clung stubbornly on to every flash of feeling she could find. When life left one little to care about, one could care very deeply about very little.
She’d nearly reached the door, hastily dressed, when she remembered she had no money. Her ex-husband was the nobleman, not her. Without his finances, she had no carriage, no servants. Nothing.
The surprise stung in the same dull way she was getting used to. Nothing in the life she found herself living resembled the one she had expected growing up.
When she was twenty years old, Beatrice, with her three closest friends, had saved the realm of Mythria from dark magic summoned by the Fraternal Order. She’d followed the famous Galwell the Great into the fray.
They were heroes! everyone said.
Beatrice could only ever remember how they’d failed. How she’d failed.
Fate was punishing her, she suspected. She felt like everything wrong with her life now—her divorce, her current finances—was unpredictable penance for what she’d done wrong then, the way one never could know where rain would pool underneath leaking rooftops.
The thought made her want to pour more wine into the glass perched on the tub’s stone rim. Why not? Wine not, she half-joked to herself. She could crochet the saying onto one of her new pillows.
No, damn it, she scolded herself. If she couldn’t fix her life, she could have her robe.
Not wanting to lose her nerve, she swung open her cottage’s front door. With the sun just starting to set over the green hills, she walked, carriage-less, across the village, heading for where she once called home.
Ignoring the whispers from the spinning women who paused in their garment making outside the marketplace, she continued with her head held high. The brewers behind the brewshop counter hesitated over the foamy concoctions they were producing with hand magic for customers on dates or on their way to nighttime work. Uriel, the old weaponeer, just stared, his eyes like dull crystals watching her while his forge cooled under his distracted ministrations.
Not much of note happened in Elgin, the hamlet where her ex-husband’s family had lived for generations. It was sort of the point, for Beatrice. Mythria was no small realm. The castles of the land’s nobles stood impressively on its valleys and mountains, small villages surrounding them like the hamlet where Beatrice grew up. Monstrous and marvelous creatures existed in its shadows and outskirts. Magic flourished in every corner. Her quest with Galwell, Elowen, and Clare had carried her far from her humble hometown, from the elegant streets of Queendom to the horrific Grimauld Mines.
Never to Elgin, though. The country village’s wide roads held no shadows where memories could hide.
In the earliest days of her courtship with Robert, she’d found its ordinariness beautiful. Then, with time, comforting. Then, just familiar.
Now, it was nothing but the reminder of the gossip her evening robe quest would cause.
Without stumbling despite her drunken state—great job, Beatrice—she managed to reach her destination on the edge of town. The manor.
Her manor, once.
The home was half built into the hillside, with the upper floors rising into the sky. In the center grew a grand oak, with the house’s walls constructed and enhanced with hand magic to accommodate the plant’s massive limbs.
In front of the door, Beatrice hesitated, her disheveled state giving her the slightest pause. She was not proud of how she looked. In flattering light, her shoulder-length hair shone like bronze. Now, she imagined it looked more like dead weeds. She was sure a drunken pink had swallowed the freckles in her pale, round cheeks.
Was there soap in her hair? There definitely was.
Furthermore, from the unevenness of her stride, she suspected she was wearing two different boots.
Let everyone who called her a hero see her now.
But what could Robert do if she looked like shit in front of him? Divorce her a second time? She swung the door open, mind made up.
Instantly, she stilled.
From inside the house drifted minstrel music, punctuated by raucous laughter. She even recognized the song. It was the popular verse of the day, written about the deeds of Clare Grandhart. Creeping across the empty gallery up to one of the interior windows, she peered past the courtyard, into the grand hall, where—
Robert was having a fucking banquet.
Near the long table piled high with the feast, people were dancing in elaborate costumes. There were masks. Her ex-husband was putting on the party of the season . . . to celebrate their divorce.
While she was drinking wine in the bath.
Good for him! Good for Beatrice! Everyone should celebrate divorce.
While the separation of her life from Robert’s was exhausting, it honestly did not sadden her. She’d married him because he was meek, which she mistook for kindness—and, yes, she’d married him somewhat for his title. She’d dreamed of marrying into nobility from her humble birth, especially since her closest childhood friend, Elowen True, grew up wealthy. After their quest, marrying rich felt like the one thing Beatrice could take from saving the realm.
Robert had played his part well in their courtship. He’d portrayed himself to be everything the last man she’d let into her heart wasn’t. Polite, patient, even noble.
Nothing like Clare.
Within the walls of their home, however, she’d swiftly learned nobility and politesse only extended to court and reputation. Under the impartial presence of the old oak, Robert was . . . petty, jealous, and, worse, boring.
She wished she’d been the one to leave him. In the end, he’d denied her even this satisfaction.
Like he was denying her her robe.
In order to retrieve the garment, she needed to go upstairs. Unfortunately, the main stairs were right in the middle of the festivities. She would not let Robert’s guests see her—the savior of Mythria—with soap in her hair and mismatched boots. Imagine if they thought her heartbroken. Over him.
No. Servants’ stairs it was.
She would just have to reach them without being seen. Starting for the hallway, she noticed footmen on the other end of the passage.
She refused to let her confidence falter. Yes, she was drunk. What of it? Clare had been drunk when they’d snuck into Castle Corpus. She only needed to get upstairs outside the watchfulness of the de Noughton manor’s footmen. She was Beatrice of the Four—she’d stolen the Orb of Grimauld from the Orb Weavers.
