There was a tap on my door but before I could rise from my bed, Nettle entered. “You’re still spilling,” she whispered. “Half of Buckkeep Castle will be having nightmares tonight. And eating like ravenous dogs. Oh, Da.” Sudden tears stood in her eyes. “Out there by the stones. I could not even speak to you afterward … our poor folk at Withywoods. That fight! And how much agony you feel about Bee. How hurt you were that I asked for her, and how guilty … How you love her! And how you torment yourself. Here. Let me help you.”

She sat down on the edge of my bed and took my hand. As if I were a child being taught to wield a spoon, or an old man leaning on a youngster’s shoulder, her Skill flowed into me, mingled with mine, and she set my walls. It was good to be contained again, as if someone had buttoned a warm coat securely around me. But even after I found that the clamor of the lesser Skill-stream of strangers had been sealed out of me and my own thoughts fenced in, Nettle kept hold of my hand. I turned my head slowly to look at her.

For a time, she just looked at me silently. Then she said, “I’ve never really known you, have I? All these years. The things you kept hidden from me, lest I think less of Burrich or my mother. The reserve you held because you felt you did not deserve to intrude into my life … Has anyone ever really known you? Known what you felt and thought?”

“Your mother did, I think,” I said, and then I had to wonder. The Fool, I nearly said, and then Nighteyes. That last answer, I knew, would have been the truest truth. But I did not say it.

She sighed a small sigh. “A wolf,” she said. “A wolf best knew your heart.” I was certain I had not shared that thought with her. I wondered if, after I had been so vulnerable to her, she now could tell when I held things back. I was trying to summon words to say to her when there was a second tap on the door and Riddle entered, bearing a tray. King Dutiful, looking less than regal, was behind him.

“I brought food,” Riddle announced even as the scent of it dizzied me with longing.

“Just let him eat first,” Dutiful advised as if I were an ill-mannered dog or perhaps a very small child. “He’s sharing his hunger with the whole castle.” And again, I could think of no words. Thoughts were too fast for words and too complex. There was too much to say, more than anyone could ever say in a lifetime about even the simplest things. But before I could despair about that, Riddle put the food in front of me. I recognized it as having come from the guard’s mess, the simple hearty food one could find there at any hour of the day or night. A thick brown soup, lumpy with vegetables and chunks of meat, good brown bread with a chewy crust. Riddle had not skimped when he had buttered two slabs of that, nor on the wedges of orange cheese beside them. The flagon of ale on the tray had spilled over a bit, wetting the edge of the bread. I didn’t care.

“He’s going to choke,” someone said, but I didn’t.

“Fitz?” said Dutiful.

I turned to look at him. It was strange to remember that there were people in the room. Devouring the meal had been such a consuming experience, it was startling to discover the world could hold more sensory information than that. My eyes wandered over his face, finding my features in his, and then Kettricken’s.

“Are you feeling a bit more yourself?” he asked. I wondered how much time had passed. I found I was breathing hard. Eating that fast was hard work. No one else had spoken since his last words. Was that how time was truly measured? In how many people spoke, in how much information was shared? Perhaps it was measured in how much food one ate. I tried to pare my thoughts down to something that might fit in words.

“I think I feel better,” I said. No. That wasn’t true. I thought nothing of the kind. Better than what? My thoughts raced away from me again. Someone was touching me. Nettle. She had moved behind me and set her hands on my shoulders. She was making my walls stronger. Making me one thing, one separate person instead of the taste of the bread and the sound of the fire crackling. Separating me out from everything else.

“I’m going to talk,” Dutiful said. “And I’m going to hope you are listening, and that you can find the sense of my words better than Chade can. Fitz. Fitz, look at me. You were almost a day in the stones. You told us you were coming, and we waited for you, and you didn’t emerge. Nettle reached out to try and find you, and with Steady’s strength and Riddle helping her she found you and held you together until I could reach into the stone and draw you out. Eda and El, that was strange! I felt I found your hand and pulled you out of the earth itself!