Graceling (Graceling Realm, #1)

by Kristin Cashore

“If there’s anyone I wish to stun at dinner, I’ll hit him in the face.”

“How will you answer Giddon when he asks you to marry him?” Po asked. “Will you accept?” Katsa sat up, and stared at him. “That’s an absurd question.” “Absurd—why?” His face was clear of its usual smiles. She didn’t think he was teasing her. “Why in the Middluns would Giddon ask me to marry him?” His eyes narrowed. “Katsa. You’re not serious.” She looked at him blankly, and now he did begin to smile. “Katsa, don’t you know Giddon’s in love with you?”

“Oh, this is dreadful. Whatever shall I do?” “If he asks you to marry him, you’ll say no. You’ll tell him it’s nothing to do with him. You’ll tell him you’re determined not to marry, that you don’t wish children; whatever you need to say so he understands it’s nothing to do with him.” “I wouldn’t marry Giddon to save my life,” Katsa said. “Not even to save yours.” “Well.” Raffin’s eyes were full of laughter. “I’d leave that part out.” Katsa sighed and walked again to the door. “You’re not the most perceptive person I’ve ever known, Kat,” Raffin said, “if you don’t mind my saying so. Your capacity for missing the obvious is astonishing.”

When you’re a monster, she thought, you are thanked and praised for not behaving like a monster. She would like to restrain from cruelty and receive no admiration for it.

A monster that refused, sometimes, to behave like a monster. When a monster stopped behaving like a monster, did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?

She couldn’t remember crying, not once in her life. Not until this fool Lienid had come to her court, and lied to her, and then announced that he was leaving.

“and I see you’ve already skinned that hare. I’m beginning to think I won’t have much responsibility as we travel through the forest together.” “Does it bother you? You’re welcome to do the hunting yourself. Perhaps I can stay by the fire and mend your socks, and scream if I hear any strange noises.” He smiled then. “Do you treat Giddon like this, when the two of you travel? I imagine he finds it quite humiliating.” “Poor Po. You may content yourself with reading my mind, if you wish to feel superior.” He laughed. “I know you’re teasing me. And you should know I’m not easily humiliated. You may hunt for my food, and pound me every time we fight, and protect me when we’re attacked, if you like. I’ll thank you for it.” “But I’d never need to protect you, if we were attacked. And I doubt you need me to do your hunting, either.” “True. But you’re better than I am, Katsa. And it doesn’t humiliate me.” He fed a branch to the fire. “It humbles me. But it doesn’t humiliate me.”

She glanced up at him, and in that moment he pulled his wet shirt over his head. She forced her mind blank. Blank as a new sheet of paper, blank as a starless sky. He came to the fire and crouched before it. He rubbed the water from his bare arms and flicked it into the flames. She stared at the goose and sliced his drumstick carefully and thought of the blankest expression on the blankest face she could possibly imagine.

“What? What are you grinning about?” “It’s meant to be attractive to my wife,” he said. Katsa nearly dropped her knife into the fire. “You have a wife?” “Great seas, no! Honestly, Katsa. Don’t you think I would have mentioned her?”

WHEN THEY STOPPED to rest the horses beside a pond swollen with rainwater, he leaned against a tree and ate a piece of bread. He watched her, calmly, silently. She didn’t look at him, but she was aware of his eyes on her, always on her. Nothing was more infuriating than the way he leaned against the tree, and ate bread, and watched her with those gleaming eyes. “What are you staring at?” she finally demanded. “This pond is full of fish,” he said, “and frogs. Catfish, hundreds of them. Don’t you think it’s funny I should know that with such clarity?” She would hit him, for his calmness, and his latest ability to count frogs and catfish he couldn’t see.

And then he raised his eyes and looked at her, and she saw what she had not seen before. She gasped. His eyes were beautiful. His face was beautiful to her in every way, and his shoulders and hands. And his arms that hung over his knees, and his chest that was not moving, because he held his breath as he watched her. And the heart in his chest. This friend. How had she not seen this before? How had she not seen him? She was blind. And then tears choked her eyes, for she had not asked for this. She had not asked for this beautiful man before her, with something hopeful in his eyes that she did not want.

He would sit there gleaming in the light of the fire, and she unable to look at him, because he glowed, and he was beautiful, and she couldn’t stand it. “Please, Katsa,” he finally said. “At least talk to me.” She swung around to face him. “What is there to talk about? You know how I feel, and what I think about it.” “And what I feel? Doesn’t that matter?” His voice was small, so unexpectedly small, in the face of her bitterness that it shamed her.

“I love you,” he said. “You’re more dear to my heart than I ever knew anyone could be. And I’ve made you cry; and there I’ll stop.”

She cried like a person whose heart is broken and wondered how, when two people loved each other, there could be such a broken heart.

Katsa sat in the darkness of the Sunderan forest and understood three truths. She loved Po. She wanted Po. And she could never be anyone’s but her own.

THE NOTION of having a lover was to Katsa something like discovering a limb she’d never noticed before. An extra arm or toe. It was unfamiliar, and she poked and prodded it, as she would have prodded an alien toe unexpectedly her own.

“But you’re not answering my question. How will you feel?” There was a pause. “I don’t know. I’ll probably feel a lot of things. But only one of the things will be unhappiness; and unhappiness I’m willing to risk.”

Katsa said, reaching into the neck of her coat. “He gave me his ring so you may know to trust us.” She pulled the cord over her head. She held the ring out for the captain to see. She registered the woman’s shocked expression, and then the outraged cries of Jem and Bear alerted her to the room’s sudden descent into bedlam. They were lunging toward her, both of them, Jem brandishing his knife, Bear swinging his sword; and the sailor beside the captain had also pulled a blade. Po could have mentioned that at the sight of his ring his people devolved into madness; but she would act now and contemplate her annoyance later.

How absurd it was that in all seven kingdoms, the weakest and most vulnerable of people—girls, women—went unarmed and were taught nothing of fighting, while the strong were trained to the highest reaches of their skill.

“I believe your Po has been hiding a secret from you,” Leck said. “Tell me if I’m right, Lady Katsa, that Prince Po is actually—” It was then, at last, that a bolt of certainty struck Katsa. In that moment she moved. She dropped the child, snatched the dagger from her belt, and threw. Not because she remembered Leck must die. Not because she remembered the truth of Po’s Grace. But because she remembered that Po did have a secret, a terrible secret, the revelation of which would hurt him in some horrible way she felt deeply but couldn’t remember—and here this man sat, the secret on the tip of his tongue. And she must stop him, somehow stop him; she must silence this man, before the ruinous words were said. In the end, Leck should have stuck to his lies. For it was the truth he almost told that killed him.

“The others think you remembered the truth, suddenly, about Leck,” she said. “They think you remembered it suddenly and silenced him right away, before his lies caused you to forget again. And perhaps that is what happened. But I believe I understand why you found the strength to act at that moment.” Katsa looked back at the woman, at her calm face and quiet, intelligent eyes. She answered the question she saw in those eyes. “Po has told me the truth of his Grace.” “He must love you very much,” the queen said, so simply that Katsa started. Katsa ducked her head. “I was very angry,” she said, “when first he told me. But I have . . . recovered from my anger.” It was a woefully inadequate description of her feelings, this Katsa knew. But the queen watched her, and Katsa thought the woman understood some of what she didn’t say. “Will you marry him?” the queen asked, so plainly that Katsa started again; but this she could answer as plainly. She looked into the queen’s eyes. “I won’t ever marry,” she said.

“Po,” she said to his back, “where’s your coat?” “Where’s yours?” She moved to stand beside him. “I’m warm.” He tilted his head to her. “If you’re warm and I’m coatless, there’s only one friendly thing for you to do.” “Go back and get your coat for you?” He smiled. Reaching out to her, he pulled her close against him. Katsa wrapped her arms around him, surprised, and tried to rub some warmth into his shivering shoulders and back. “That’s it, exactly,” Po said. “You must keep me warm.” She laughed and held him tighter.

He was smiling still, and Katsa couldn’t bear it, because it was the smallest and the saddest smile in all the world. But as he raised his fingers to touch her face, she saw that he was wearing his ring.